Archive for May 14th, 2011
Let’s Keep the Big Picture, please
Apparently, I ruffled a few feathers with the opening sentence of my last post. Good – at least it gets the dialogue going, but I learned a few things in the process. As I have stated before, I am more interested in discovering why people believe what they believe as opposed to simply arguing about random rants. It has been said that some people determine truth based on what they feel is true as opposed to what they have reasoned to be true and I couldn’t agree with this more. There is a difference between fact and opinion, however, and even when someone reaches a conclusion based on opinion it can be very distant from any definition of truth.
Sometimes it takes a series of questions to get someone to open up and share their views and expose their beliefs for examination and I encourage this type of discussion. Conclusions from faulty logic and presuppositions are easily revealed and flushed out. This saves everyone involved a lot of wasted time arguing about generally insignificant topics instead of focusing on the big picture.
The fact is that everyone who subscribes to any religious belief fits somewhere within a definable structure. It’s easier to pan back a bit to reveal a timeline of various belief systems.
Now it may be easy to proclaim “Me likes truth”, but it becomes clear that this statement becomes vacuous when discovering the source of that belief is a self-authenticating text impervious to critical examination. Like it or not, your religion was created somewhere and modified by someone. Your “truth” is relative to you, but not to the rest of us. Good luck defending it.
So, religious followers out there, I ask you these simple questions:
1. What religion do you believe, how long have you followed it and how did you come to that conclusion?
2. Is there anything that could be presented to you that would cause you to change your belief? (and please explain why or why not)
