Allan quoting someone famous said >"faith is rarely provable but it must be reasonable." Why? I don't believe there is any implicit reason why God must be "reasonable" as "reason" whilst helpful (perhaps even neccessary) to us humans is only one discourse amongst many... This of course doesn't mean faith may not be "reasonable" as there is a wad of humanity tied in with faith... - Misquoting Nick Cave "I don't believe in a reasonable God"
I suppose a lot depends on what we mean by "reasonable". Once upon a time, "reasonable" was an absolute and "reason" was expected to lead the human race to the final absolute truths about life, the universe and everything. The post-modernists have upset that comfortable state of mind, and now we have to acknowledge that much in life is relative, including reason and reasonableness.
So why should we expect that who or what we understand by God is constrained by what we humans know to be reasonable, given that we keep changing what we understand as reasonable and given that we usually cannot agree amongst ourselves at any instant in time what is reasonable? 100 years ago we thought that all matter was made up of well behaved little things called atoms that were themselves made up of well behaved smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons - it was all so reasonable, big ones made up of little 'uns made up of littler ones and so on. But now we know that those smallest particles are anything but "reasonable", being statistical blurs which may look like solid matter to our macro view of existence, but which behave like anything but - even Einstein had problems with the [unreasonable] idea that God "plays dice" with the universe. Our notion of what is reasonable changes, with time, with increasing knowledge and with shifts in cultural paradigms (those paradigm shifts themselves being driven by, among other things, the increase in knowledge - a sort of knowledge entropy). Reason is a function of knowledge, understanding and intelligence. Wouldn't it be a wee bit arrogant of us humans to think that an all powerful Creator could be constrained by our human limitations of comprehension and intelligence?
But a lot more depends on who or what we mean and understand by God. Some reject the notion of a theistic God, preferring an indwelling spirit. If God is some fuzzy indwelling spiritual perception of self, then reasonableness may not need to come into it. If God is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient theistic God of what I understand to be the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition, then he is probably far beyond what we understand as "reasonableness" and has no need for such notions.
It comes back to the "F" word - faith. What do I believe, and is it "reasonable" to me in the context of my present knowledge base, paradigms and comprehension. And being reasonable, do I then have the guts to trust and to act upon my beliefs.
It comes back to believing that we humans are purposely and purposively created, rather than just statistical blips in an eternity of time and space.
It comes back to believing that there is "good" and 'bad", that we humans are created to be "good" rather than "bad" (even though "bad" is often more in our immediate self-interest than "good").
It comes back to believing in "sin" - that is, in doing things that are less than the best that we are capable of, and consequently distancing ourselves from the purpose of our Creator.
It comes back to believing that there was, about 2000 years ago, a Palestinian Jew who had a unique relationship with the Creator and around whom and to whom some surprising and some humanly incomprehensible things happened - and who probably looked more like one of the Palestinian Arabs that we see nightly on the TV news, rather than the Californian surfie image of Jesus so beloved of some [American] evangelicals.
------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
