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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Evidence for a religion/Should I be rational?
Message-ID: <665@pucc-h>
Date: Fri, 13-Apr-84 01:39:32 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.665
Posted: Fri Apr 13 01:39:32 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Apr-84 06:26:30 EST
References: <7012@decwrl.UUCP>,<7013@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 46

Reply to two articles by David Dyer-Bennet:

> Many people have "transcendental" experiences,
> or claim that some random thing changed their lives.  And, if you look,
> it's true, too; their lives often did change.  But that doesn't mean
> the event they claim as cause was really the cause, or that the event
> they claim as cause actually occurred outside themselves.

Actually, I don't claim that a single transcendental experience, or "random
thing", changed my life.  I do say that my life has been changed gradually
as a result of my following God in a great number of events over a period of
a number of years.  (And my life has changed; people who knew me in 1975 say
that if my personality then and now were put into the same person, the result
would be a schizoid person--I'm that different, and [more importantly] that
improved [I know no one who thinks the old me was better].)  I see no reason
to doubt my belief that my relationship with God and His people has caused
these changes.
  
> This is another variant of the problem of determining, from my non-theistic
> position, who are the "true" christians.  I don't accept the "Christ
> changed my life" attitude largely because it is indistinguishable from a
> wide range of hysterical con games being run in the world today.

Funny...I didn't think any of my articles were hysterical.  And I KNOW that
I'm not trying to con anyone.

> ....being Christian isn't necessarily "irrational" by my standards; if your
> experience or logic drives you to Christianity as the most effective way to
> fulfill some part of your needs, then it would be irrational NOT to be
> Christian (and this is equally true whether Christianity is true or false).

> Sometimes rationality can lead one to set emotions aside temporarily -- for
> example, when accepting an immediate loss for an important, but longer term,
> gain.

These two quotes fit well together, since much of the Christian life is
exactly "accepting an immediate loss for an important, but longer term, gain"
-- i.e. accepting the loss of your self-oriented nature (which we all have) in
order to gain a Christlike nature and a Christlike life, both temporally and
eternally.


-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
{allegra|ihnp4|decvax|harpo|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
One man's data are another man's garbage.