Apropos of the original thesis—“Faith is a VENTURE/daring. One has to be STRONG to let go (of one’s rational/faithless view of the world) and open oneself for Jesus etc.”—the things people tend to have faith in tend to show their weakness: People tend to have faith in things that meet their psychological needs and desires . . . e.g., that when they die they’ll go to heaven; that when infidels like you and I die, we’ll go to hell; and that they can petition the Lord with prayer (but as Jim Morrison and I learned back in seminary school: YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!).
Not all believers believe the same things, of course, but there’s an awful lot of overlap between any two particular faiths. The brains we humans have evolved are much more susceptible to some memes than others, and the religions that still survive today are still around because they’ve adapted to meet our evolved psychological needs and desires.
And regarding religious experiences like “visions,” I knew a guy in the Army who got a medical discharge because it turned out he had temporal lobe epilepsy. His hallucinations were so real to him that he just couldn’t help but see them as genuine visions from his god. And I’d be willing to bet that the apostle Paul had the same “affliction.”
You may have heard, last year, about Professor VS Ramachandran’s research pertaining to temporal lobe epilepsy and its relation to religious experience, but it’s so important, it probably bears rereading and re-researching. You might want to check out this BBC News story: “God on the Brain” by Liz Tucker, from March 20, 2003:
Hmm, sometimes I get the feeling that the mind is merely what the brain does—that it’s just an emergent property of the brain . . . an epiphenomenon, if you will. ; )
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Gorogh <gorogh@pallowrun.de> wrote:
but then again, in regard to your post, ken,
<snip>Yep, only a coward and a weakling would defy the majority.</snip>:
whether or not it is defying the majority is not the main argument (would be kind of a fallacy of numbers) - not mine anyway. in regard to the "daring" aspect of christianity, i referred to coping strategies mostly... for if, hopefully, one day "the rational people" become the majority, it still won't be valid in this respect to call faith "daring". in the sens of being in a minority, yes, but not in the sense of psychological relief (which, of course, depends on a certain amount of people for its social effects...)
’Tis better to have loved and lost
than never to have known what it’s like
to have sex with someone besides yourself. —LenKen __________________________________________________
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