| BookTalk.org News |
| • BookTalk.org News will soon go out via email in HTML format. The goal will be to keep people posted on our current book discussions and other relevant news items. |
| Donate & Support BookTalk.org |
Please support our free community by making a credit card donation through our secure PayPal account. We appreciate and depend on the generosity of our members. Thank you! •
See who supports us
|
| Show us where you live! |
 |
|
| Author |
Message |
Robert Tulip 
Freshman
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 204
Gender: 
Location: Canberra
|
 Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject: Re: Despair!!!!
|
 |
|
| Penelope wrote: |
How do you cope with despair without some kind of faith??? This is nothing to do with this forum.....but.....I had stopped going to our local parish church..... Because I stopped going...some one whom I loved...died and I didn't know about it....so I never went to his funeral.....and I 'so' wish I had. I hasten to add that I loved his wife too...... In our local Parish Magazine - the Bishop has written:-
| Quote: |
| Without transcendent reference for our lives, it is easy to slip into seeing life as a terminal disease with a 100 per cent mortality rate. Saying this is hardly likely to cause anyone to believe in God. Belief arises in more subtle, less controllable ways, as we are opened up to God's gentle call, which always is the call of love, and therefore doesn't compel or force us to believe. Believing in God is a form of falling in love, of discovering that we are loved, have been loved, and will be loved for all eternity. But love needs belief. |
I am feeling a bit devastated......so forgive me. Love and gratitude....from Pen |
Your situation opens the question of how we build community without faith. Institutions are founded on common bonds, as for example the Christian creed. It often happens that people disagree with something and as a result sever all contact with the object of their disagreement. It is an illustration of the increasing atomisation of our society, as people interact through technology rather than in person, and so lose the familiar links that result from informal friendship. Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone dissects this problem of the collapse of social capital quite well.
I think you touch a nerve regarding despair,. There is something very bleak and lonely about faithless life. It often gets discussed as the problem of nihilism, the loss of all transcendent values in modern culture. Without faith we have to create our own values rather than respond to something eternal, running the risk that our personal assumptions will not be well grounded in any absolute reality. Of course the problem is that the things that are claimed to be absolute values by the church are often wrong. The trouble is how to retain the social capital of the church while entering a dialogue about how it can update its doctrines without falling apart as an institution.
I personally do not think that people can live without faith. I don’t mean this in the sense of believing things that are not true, but in the sense of believing things for which they do not have compelling evidence, such as our sense of trust in cultural continuity. Most important, for both atheist and theist, is the idea that there is a bigger purpose and meaning for life than we can articulate and prove, that we are wrapped in an enigma, to paraphrase Churchill.
Sorry for mentioning Heidegger again, but his situation seems to me to epitomise your problem. He said we live in an age where the Gods have fled. The implication in his existential philosophy was that resolute anticipation of death was the only freedom. I know that is a bit jargonish, but it illustrates his very bleak outlook, where everyone is exposed as lacking any divine support. He later amended this to call for a rekindling of the presence of the Gods, but remained in thrall to nihilism in that he never achieved any faith himself.
Jesus' saying in the Gospel of John ‘I am the true vine’ is one that illustrates to me the meaning of true faith. It suggests we need a connection to a cosmic reality (God), and without this organic link we find ourselves abandoned to a bleak despair. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender: 
Location: Cheshire, England
|
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:58 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
Robert said:
| Quote: |
| The implication in his existential philosophy was that resolute anticipation of death was the only freedom. I know that is a bit jargonish, but it illustrates his very bleak outlook, |
Thank you Robert.
I don't think that the above quote is a very bleak outlook. I can't remember where I read the advice that everyone should contemplate/face his own death every day. I think this advice has only done me good.....and I do practise it. I think it helps me to feel alert and appreciative, but not to get too stressed and assign undue importance to mundane matters.
It might have been no less a person than Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle - as I have read most of what he wrote about spirituality.
Thank you very much indeed all.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Interbane
Senior
Joined: 09 Oct 2004
Posts: 369
Gender:
|
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 9:18 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
It seems that there are multiple answers, some more attractive and more comforting to a human psyche in general. I won't provide more detail other than to say that as I learn more and increase my verisimilitude, the results take away from the magic of the world. Where I once saw wonder and mystique, I now understand it and look forward. The act of looking forward requires me to find new mystique where the old stuff has been "defogged" and understood.
Also there's the definition of the word "faith". You have to really understand what it means to have faith, without religion monopolizing the meaning. I have faith in the love of my significant other, and the inherent good of mankind.
You don't need the love of a higher power to make you feel loved. Love doesn't concern transcendence other than the idea that transcendence promises "eternal" love. That is a myth. Life is not a disease, and you do not need to believe in a fallacy to feel the comfort of love. Love is all around you, but it is manifested in different ways than the fake "transcendent" love. You need to alter your frequency a bit and tune into the near and now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
|
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 10:54 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Interbane said:
| Quote: |
| Where I once saw wonder and mystique, I now understand it and look forward. The act of looking forward requires me to find new mystique where the old stuff has been "defogged" and understood. |
Well, I always understood the fact that no matter how much one prayed for a miracle....God didn't make bananas grow on the tomato plants!!
I do believe in miracles......but I am sure that God uses natural means to perform them. I don't really hold with the belief in a transcendent God. I believe we are all in him and through him and part of it all. That is the concept of Brahma. Which I learned through my Yoga class philosophy.
Thank you...though. I do appreciate you taking the trouble to post...and..I do consider and think about what you are saying. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Robert Tulip
Freshman
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 204
Gender:
Location: Canberra
|
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:04 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
| Penelope wrote: |
Interbane said:
| Quote: |
| Where I once saw wonder and mystique, I now understand it and look forward. The act of looking forward requires me to find new mystique where the old stuff has been "defogged" and understood. |
Well, I always understood the fact that no matter how much one prayed for a miracle....God didn't make bananas grow on the tomato plants!! I do believe in miracles......but I am sure that God uses natural means to perform them. I don't really hold with the belief in a transcendent God. I believe we are all in him and through him and part of it all. That is the concept of Brahma. Which I learned through my Yoga class philosophy. Thank you...though. I do appreciate you taking the trouble to post...and..I do consider and think about what you are saying. |
Hi Penelope and Interbane, the embedded quote presents the key problem regarding the status of atheism. Precisely the issue is that we cannot “understand wonder and mystique”. This is like saying we have a theory of everything that explains the nature of reality. Such a theory remains elusive. On defogging the old stuff, I simply don’t accept that our modern rationality has “defogged” such complex phenomena as love, grace, faith, justice, meaning, purpose and beauty. The need for faith arises because these complex phenomena are intrinsically foggy. Accepting that God works through nature does not make the divine economy any less mysterious – indeed it makes it more mysterious because we can dispense with the old deus ex machina ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina ) idea that miracles can occur which are not physically possible. Everything that happens in the universe is physically possible, but there remain many things which we do not understand. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
DWill
Sophomore
Joined: 31 Jan 2008
Posts: 264
Gender:
|
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:02 am Post subject:
|
|
|
| Interbane wrote: |
| The act of looking forward requires me to find new mystique where the old stuff has been "defogged" and understood. |
Science is often taken to task for this de-mystifying, leaving nothing in its place to sustain wonder. But I always try to keep in mind how much we don't know even when we think we've explained something scientifically. We may think we've reduced mind to the actions of neurotansmitters jumping synapses, but can we really ever understand the miraculousness of this (even if we ever get to the stage of accurate basic understanding)? In these material processes there are depths that may elude our comprehension.
In a simliar sense, I tend toward naturalistic origins of our moral beliefs, that our minds created them in the process of our evolving. But what about mind itself? Where did that come from, both in ourselves and in other creatures? That I'd have to put in the category of the way beyond.
Science, for me, doesn't do a very good job of de-mystifying, if that is what some people expect of it--and that is a good thing!
DWill |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
|
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 9:06 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Will said:-
| Quote: |
| Science, for me, doesn't do a very good job of de-mystifying, if that is what some people expect of it--and that is a good thing! |
I don't really think I have a right to comment here, since a 'tin-opener' mystifies me!!!!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sweetpea27
Eligible to vote!
Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 14
Gender:
Location: PA
|
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:54 am Post subject:
|
|
|
| very sorry to here about the loss of your friend,the way i deal with loss is to remember the good times you had with them,like all the times you used to laugh togather,that helped me some when i lost my father,it is very hard to loose someone you love but try to do that it might help some. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ralphinlaos
Intern
Joined: 17 Mar 2008
Posts: 161
Gender:
Location: Thakhek, Laos
|
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 3:53 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Even the atheist is committed to an enormous act of faith in his belief that the universe created itself and the subsequent creation of intelligent life was simply a biological accident.
"There are no atheists in foxholes."
Ralph |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
|
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:57 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Sweetpea! What a lovely post! Thank you!  I am remembering the laughter...... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Recent Topics |
|
|
|
