Often times it seems to me that people who believe in God see not knowing as a scary thing. I’m not scared. I feel like I am just learning what it might mean to actually know.

There is a small element of fear I guess. A lot of people I am around don’t seem to think it is necessary to go through such an extreme degree of questioning. I don’t know if they are right. I actually don’t know. It’s possible.

I’m am dead-set opposed to assuming though, as I don’t see it as fair to those who believe differently than I do.

I want to know if someone is wrong. I want to know if I have any right to tell them that.

it really isn’t that I don’t think I can know, I just know that I don’t and the assuming and facade tear at me

i have nothing if not honesty. who really knows enough to be righteous in hiding? i can’t do it anymore. i don’t want to.

I am also struck by your honesty. In fact, I am often bowled over by it. Perhaps one way of dividing the world is between nihilstic despair (nothing can be known) and hope. Hope that something can be learned. I have felt times of each. I choose to believe in hope, when I can.

I don’t envy you your dark times, I’ve don’t enjoy mine.

Your brother Brian.

I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say I know nothing, but I definitely don’t have thing totally figured out either and I hope that we can talk more on this topic. Struggling between seeing the physical actual, and a perceived spiritual actual, as a process to determine The truth… it’s definitely an interesting topic, and one that I dealt with for a long, long time, too. Still do. In fact, I think a lot of people could probably relate to parts of what you are experiencing.

Take care, Owen.

Ben

I guess this might be kind of odd. I don’t feel like it necessarily normally fits in religious oriented debates/discussions. Perhaps it is more of a psychology thing.

I just don’t really get along with people. I don’t get along with people in my church or people outside my church

I often don’t enjoy the company of people. I don’t really get this either because it doesn’t seem like a thing a good person should do. I feel like good people, according to my religion and according to a lot of people, like being around other people, at least to a certain extent.

The reason I am bringing this up is because it totally colors the way I see my religion and how I try to make my religion fit. Sometimes I don’t feel like my religion fits at all. I also don’t feel like an absence of it would fit either.

Neither one fits because there is one constant that doesn’t make sense to me. People scare me. I don’t like what people do. I don’t like how people talk.

I’m actually completely at a loss as to why this is. I have guessed at it that perhaps I have gone delusional with some sort of religious oriented judgment that has just taken a grip in me. I really just don’t have any idea. I’m afraid of being nice to most people. I don’t feel like they deserve it.

I know it may seem like I’m revealing too much about a deep psychological issue, but I’ve really struggled with this a lot and have come no where with conclusions about it. I don’t care now if anyone thinks its odd or anything.

I noticed a long time ago that I am the greatest barrier to seeing the truth and so I started a struggle in myself to take away the blind movements I make and to do instead things that are not blind, but that I can understand and appreciate.

I am the one who is at fault constantly. I have huge flaws and do not know if I will ever see outside of them. I can see them though and I can see they flaw my perspective enormously.

My point with the last two paragraphs is that I decided to first fix these flaws in myself before I could be sure at all to help other people to see. The problem is the more I look the less I am sure of. The more I see I am influenced every which way to not see the actual but instead the wanted.

What it comes down to is that I do not see how I can offer a perspective when I know for sure that it is not coming from a place that wants to see the actual. I do not know if I will ever be coming from a place that wants to see what is true, and by true I mean true.

I know nothing, this I believe.

That helps a lot. I share your belief that the effectiveness and success of a well-meaning action can hinge largely on how well informed the actor is – particularly in the specific area of knowledge that pertains to the need they are trying to satisfy for another. Your knowledge of health will certainly help you heal more effectively. Your knowledge of nutrition will help you nurture. Your knowledge of psychology will help you counsel, etc. If we can agree, and it sounds like we can, that the good intentions can still be just as good regardless of the understanding of truth that accompanies them, even if the effectiveness of the well intended actions may suffer, then I am fully satisfied. We can also agree that, knowing that truth is necessary to help guide good intentions toward their intended purpose, it is vital for people to seek the truth earnestly … and once you realize this connection between truth and good outcomes, it probably becomes part of the definition of being a “good” person to seek that truth. And I think we’re both sincerely intending to seek the truth.

As I’ve already said, I’m comfortable with the fact that the truth we each feel we’ve found is not identical… or at least certainly doesn’t appear to be from our individual perspectives. So I’m going to offer one more assessment/observation, and it’s OK if you simply disagree:

It seems to me like applicability of truth is a big factor in how well that truth guides good intentions. Aside from clever little indirect parallels, having a perfect understanding of how a ‘97 Chevy Malibu operates probably wouldn’t have much effect on how successfully you could comfort a friend grieving the loss of a loved one. And empathy and emotional intelligence probably won’t ensure that your efforts to fix your mother’s car work out how you had hoped. Knowing whether or not good intentions come from a divine source doesn’t strike me as especially applicable in determining how effective my good will towards others can be for the vast majority of actions I make in attempt to help others. There’s usually a pretty tangible, universally recognized source of applicable knowledge that will make the difference. I recognize that it’s entirely possible to disagree with this assessment, but this is just how it occurs to me. How can having the “correct” answer to metaphysical questions have such a large bearing on how successfully I can go scoop up my son when he trips and falls, kiss him on the forehead, successfully cheer him up and make him feel loved, smear some neosporin in any scrapes, etc. It seems to me that I have both the right intentions AND the right information I need to do real good in that situation, by anyone’s standards, and I don’t see how my suspicions about metaphysical realities would really alter that. So are there only some areas of charity that are impacted by having the answers to these questions? Which ones?

Not prodding… just really enjoying our back and forth, and feeling like I’m getting a lot out of clarifying where the true disagreements, if any, are.

Thank you for your recent posts. I feel moved and humbled by them.

Sophia

He went out early in the day to get workers. He made an agreement with them about what to pay them, and set them to work.

Throughout the day at different times he went out and got groups of new workers. The last group was brought in just an hour before stopping time.

At the end of the day he paid them. He paid them all the same amount – the amount he had originally agreed to pay the first workers.

The first workers to be hired complained.

He said, didn’t I pay you what we had agreed?

To me this story has a lot to say about “Equality” and “personal value” and “fair treatment”.

Everyone received equal pay, but unequal hourly wages. They were paid fairly according to the agreement but at different levels.

I think that everyone is doing their own work at their own time of the day. Since I am another worker, its not for me to decide what the owner does with his money – so long as he pays me what I agreed to.

I don’t need to judge what any of you other workers should get.

(disclaimer: This story may have been made up by a ficticious person)

I still stand entirely by my most recent post. I would especially draw your attention to my point that I don’t think I mysefl am any more good than either of you. On a spiritual level or a natural level. So their is no condescention there.

Thor, though I don’t think you break down any of my recent post, I do think you raise some important issues. Thank you. I appreciate being scoured for any signs of condescending thinking.

(I wish IE would allow me to copy paste, but I will just try to refer to your statements.)

I stick to my religion because I think it adds value. As Rabbi David Wolpe says about himself as a Jew, “My job is to argue Judaism’s excellence, not its superiority”. I really like this line. I am just (on my good days) trying to offer the excellence of my position, but that does not have to result in ideas about superiority. I have used phrases that invoke superiority, not between people but between ideas. Perhaps I should steer clear of even that, but we know that some ideas are superior to others.

The gorrilla analogy was not designed to show the difference between intention and action but the difference between higher and lower perspective. Perhaps we should add this example: a working class, single mother with poor education is giving her kids whitebread sandwhiches instead of brown because it tastes better. The white bread is bad for her kids but she’s doing it out of love.

We could keep creating examples to show a spectrum of increasing perspective, or truth allowing for greater actual good to be accomplished. Now in the example of this mother, I would consider her good intentions to be far more meaningful and valuable than her the “bad” done by her actions. And yet bad, on some level, was done.

I am suggesting the notion that Divine truth can elevate our perspectives and the quality of the good we do, beyond what our naturally based thinking can accomplish. So more good is being accomplished. I’m not suggesting we will be able to measure the greater good in this world. Nor am I suggesting that the person doing the good is himself a better person because of it. The intentions are far more valuable.

So for you, as a skeptic, I offer the following. When religious people use the line about, “we don’t actually know what is in your heart”. Try to take *them* at their word(s). Another way of saying it is, “if your intentions are really excellent then you are partaking in goodness”. My belief is that if your intentions are of a higher quality than mine, then you will go to a higher heaven in the afterlife, despite the fact that you died a skeptic with regard to specific claims about God. This will not make you an intrinsically superior person to myself. It will simply mean that you have better intentions.

Now we could leave it at good will, good intentions, and love. However, love is meaningless when it doesn’t opperate in the context of Truth or reality. Thus, good intentions is a saving virtue in the individual, but it is only Good done with regard to Truth that accomplishes good purposes.

As a skeptic, you have access to plenty of truth to do actions that have genuinely good effect. But, my claim is that revelation from God (personal and objective) improves the quality of truth available. As I have said, I think no sense of morality and ethics would exist in the absense of God. (obviously this is not a statement that can be proved).

I will read your post again later, because I think it is good for me. I think you offer truth that can help me improve as a person.

Do you believe in love and wisdom? As the highest principles to be pursued? If so, then we really believe in the same God. You don’t have to call him that. And I have concepts of his incarnation and presence that you are uncomfortable with, but we are on the same page with regard to essence.

Brian

Fear not… I do not feel insulted by you. I commented a while back, I remember not where, that conflicting worldviews often, unless we are going to abandon all logic and resort to purely relative truth, contain necessary conclusions about each other that will likely be perceived, though never intended, as insulting. I think that’s partially the case here, and I won’t ask you to change your worldview for fear of insulting me. But I do want to invite you to question the relationship you seem to be drawing between different intellectual beliefs/expectations and the quality of good intentions.

You said: [To me, a person’s ability to be Good is limited by their conception of Good. So if a gorilla mimicks an ethical behavior he is not a “good” gorilla.]

I think this is the wrong distinction. Every human being, regardless of their worldview, faith (or lack thereof) etc. recognizes the difference between actions and intentions. To just perform certain actions because you’re mimicking or deceiving is clearly not about intending the outcome of the action. That’s an obvious distinction, but I don’t think it serves the comparison you’re trying to make.

What I’ll call “humanity,” essentially good will, meaning well, intending to benefit other people, etc. is something that is VERY widespread and VERY meaningful and VERY important to people from every background and faith and upbringing and worldview. Sure… there may be a few tragic instances where we detect no humanity at all, but that’s usually accompanied by severe mental illness and extremely rare (and shocking because of its rarity.) So to draw a line between one who feels/practices humanity and explains the origins of that humanity as being some objective standard of Good, and another who feels/practices humanity and, upon contemplation, expects that that desire is driven by some other mechanism, we need to do better than actions vs. intentions.

The experience of humanity is to do something with another’s best interests in mind because it occurs as important and meaningful to you. It’s the same experience and desire regardless of where you *think* that desire comes from. Humans care about each other. We don’t all agree on why. How does not claiming to know why, or suspecting that it might have an natural explanation diminish that humanity?

The reason this matters so much to me, and I’d imagine to anyone else who identifies with my best guesses about metaphysical questions, is that humanity IS the meaning in my life. It may be THE most important sense we have. It’s what we all feel and what connects us all. It’s how we distinguish ourselves from robots or (most) animals. To take that one beautiful, meaningful, uniting, essence of the human experience that we can all appreciate, and attach a certain intellectual conclusion/conceptualization as a prerequisite to recognizing REAL humanity in people, as opposed to just an empty shell of Goodness, is to be blind to that human beauty and connectedness except where you happen to find similar beliefs. It’s divisive. It creates an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. You’re not alone in this (and granted, you’ve made a lot of disclaimers and allowances for how one might get past this distinction) and many religions include a great many more conditions than you do… but on some level, it’s there. You’re choosing to trust an authority that says some variation of “your Goodness can’t be real unless you believe in X.” OVER recognizing the true humanity of those who don’t believe in X.

So I ask you… is good intention and good will towards others not enough to make humanity REAL Good? Are you sure you believe it’s limited by one’s ability to conclude that Good exists? I think that on some level, you may be conflating “doing something with selfish intentions” and “doing something with selfless intentions, but expecting that your other-serving preferences may have their origins in naturally acquired self-benefiting traits.”

To conclude, I don’t feel sad or overly concerned when I see that someone else has looked at all of the information and ideas and experiences available to them and drawn different intellectual conclusions than I have. I don’t need everyone to agree with me. But I do feel sad and somewhat concerned when I hear statements that sound like someone’s worldview is preventing them from recognizing the sincerity or depth of humanity in myself and others based on where we think that humanity came from, and what we don’t (and INSIST that we don’t) believe. The “you may still believe in X in some way, even though you say you don’t” explanation is a kind-hearted attempt at pulling a lovable “them” back into an “us” to reduce the cognitive dissonance caused by encountering such a “them,” but I’d prefer that we “them”s be taken at our word as to what we believe, and that the cognitive dissonance remain until it is truly resolved.

Peace,
Thor