Just to pop in here. The folks who use "God said it," etc don't usually say it in a bellicose manner. The way they say it is being misunderstood and misrepresented in this. The same goes for "reason being the enemy of faith." Am not going to attempt to describe the real meaning of faith here but sufficeth to say the folks who use it are generally not talking about evolution, etc. They are usually talking about reasoning about spiritual things, not reasoning about rationale things. If you get what I mean. So reasoning about the existence of the soul after death is an enemy of faith, for instance. Christianity tells us to love God with our whole minds, souls, strength, heart. There are a ton of theologians out there who have faith and reason working quite well together.
The quote is much the same as John Keats comment about negative capability, "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Examine 'King Lear', and you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness-The picture is larger than 'Christ rejected'.several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration." I've always liked that quote because it describes so well how reason must sometimes bow to faith. And Einstein himself and Stephen Hawking have said very near the same thing about certain truths than can only be spiritually guessed at because as the great philosopher/mathematician Pascal said "The heart has its reason that reason cannot know." In short, faith is not insecurity about belief but a higher kind of belief and a higher kind of security in that belief...a belief so secure that people (like myself) allow themselves to be mocked because they are so sure of it. As for God's gender, the Bible portrays God as a mother brooding over creation and as a father. The word "he" does denote masculine. But biologically and entymologically speaking the word "man" denotes both male and female. A woman has only XX chromosomes, a man has both XY...therefore to call God a man would seem to better and mroe fully describe the sexlessness or bisexual nature of God better than calling that Being a Woman. Not that sex manners. God, last thing I heard, did not have a pen*s. -C --- In scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com, "Amy Harlib" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > INSECURITY > > > > It suggests an insecurity that belies the bellicose battle cry of Bible > > literalists: ''God said it. I believe it. That settles it.'' Or in the > words > > of a church sign as related to me last week by a minister in Maine: Reason > > is the enemy of faith. > > > > That's a sad, troubling and even pathetic mind-set. > > > > We inhabit a universe vaster than human comprehension, older than human > > wanderings, more wondrous than human conception. And in the face of that, > we > > do the natural thing. We ask questions and seek answers. > > > > That's not a denial of God. It is evidence of Him. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/LRMolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
