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6.18.2004
Faith and Politics I left up the post pointing you to Neologic for a good reason(s). I had over-posted that day and I really really wanted you to read what I was pointing out. I hope you did. I see faith as a pattern of thinking. Neologic from the comments explains: "It's a matter of accepting a premise as a matter of faith even if the premise is false, then building a chain of belief from there" Faith as a way of thinking leads to dangerous conclusions. Because it relies on a disprovable belief then no debate will sway the believer. As I have witnessed in many Bush followers (let's get the terminology in line shall we?) no matter how strong the evidence of wrongdoing the belief that "Bush is good" is unshakable. There are varying degrees of faith in our society. At some level there has to be some faith, simply because not all things are known. A large majority in this country will profess to "believe in God". That does not surprise me at all. Its when you start to reach into deeper levels that the level of faith plays a factor. It takes more faith to believe in the inerrant word of the Bible than it does to believe that God in some shape or form exists. Its a huge leap and a better indicator of extent that one uses faith as a dominant mode of thinking. Disproving the notion of God is much harder than disproving the diefic authorship of the Bible. The latter is easily done. In my opinion. The depth to which you are willing to use faith as a preferred mode of thinking is also going to determine just how easy it is for a person to manipulate you. Most people, when confronted with statements that conflict with reality will use their skepticism to come back to reality. Those without skepticism will believe anything as long as it follows from a premise that they already accept from faith. Taken to the extreme you can get fundamentalists who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in service of their beliefs, even when they are based on a severely flawed premise. Just how far do you have to go down that path to accept that killing innocent people is "god's will?" We have to work open the outer links of the chain without destroying the premise. Just how is that done? Simply believing in God does not make you a Bush worshipper. In other words, most Republicans and most Democrats pray, believe in life after death, and find religion important. The vast majority of people in both parties are, in fact, religious or spiritual. The difference is the extent that faith-based thinking dominates your decision making. Its understandable (to me) to accept life after death and still be spiritual without accepting Bush as God's appointed leader. Its simply a matter of letting faith reign in areas that do not overlap with areas where critical thinking should take over. Is that so hard? |
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