Just read this in A History of Philosophy: "To affirm one's relationship to God, the personal and transcendent Absolute, is to affirm oneself as spirit." And just a few lines later, this: "...the man who appropriates and affirms his relationship to God in faith becomes what he really is, the individual before God."
Which got me to thinking.
This Faith thing seems to be very easy for some people. Like it's the default setting or something. And that's hard for me to swallow. It's hard for me not to assume that that's ignorance in action. And having talked to more than a few of Those People, I am pretty sure that the ignorance accusation would hold up in any court of law.
Still....
Those lines from A History of Philosophy resonate with me.
I had been meaning to write about this in another way a couple of weeks ago, framing it as
What does denying the existence of God say about a person?
Copleston has an answer to that here, I think. He says that it says that that person has denied their own spirit. Is that an inescapable conclusion? Maybe it is. If you deny the existence of God, then I don't see how you can affirm the existence of your own soul. Definitely not in the sense of an immortal soul.
And maybe that's okay. We live our lives, we do some stuff, buy some things, and then we die. Enter the next generation.
Doesn't strike me as worth doing, though.
Hmm. I had to step away from the car for a minute (since I have no computer of my own, I have to catch as catch can), and it hit me that something I'd read a few pages earlier on in AHoP leaned into these thoughts on God and faith and religion. It went like this: "...a mob is capable of performing actions which its members would not perform precisely as individuals." In other words, joining up with a mob. ..whether it's a Christian mob or an atheist mob...is going to affect your actions....obviously....and your thoughts, too. So if you identify as Christian, you abdicate your incredulity, perhaps? Sure. But if you identify as atheist, what is abdicated there?
That's what I'm talking about.
Hmm. I had to step away from the car for a minute (since I have no computer of my own, I have to catch as catch can), and it hit me that something I'd read a few pages earlier on in AHoP leaned into these thoughts on God and faith and religion. It went like this: "...a mob is capable of performing actions which its members would not perform precisely as individuals." In other words, joining up with a mob. ..whether it's a Christian mob or an atheist mob...is going to affect your actions....obviously....and your thoughts, too. So if you identify as Christian, you abdicate your incredulity, perhaps? Sure. But if you identify as atheist, what is abdicated there?
That's what I'm talking about.
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