Intellectual Honesty and Articulating your Beliefs

"Since human resource managers and psychologists both value behavioral consistency as qualities of reliability and mental health, it would seem safe to assume that the choices people make tend toward an overarching goal or goals."-- JV

I think JV is on to something, but I would make an edit to his comment that changes the direction by 180 degrees.  I would say that it is "safe to assume that the choices people make tend to reveal underlying belief or beliefs".  This still fits with JV's examples, such as the first example of the scholar:  The scholar believes in the importance of improving themselves intellectually or in contributing to a body of knowledge, and their consistent actions reveal that belief. 

Dave made a point that hits on what I think is one of the most honest parts of the Atheist position.  He said that, "...one of the big reasons to have a religion (read: God) is to have the value set of the religion, and the comfort of the belief that someone or something is out there guiding us,"  And I think that most Atheists truly believe that is why most people "have a religion".  Atheists, as Christopher Hitchens said in the debate JV introduced us to, as well as in an essay conversation with Wilson on Christianity Today in 2007, choose not to believe in God because it would be "too easy and too comfortable", but it would not be intellectually honest.  To tie this in to the comments above, their actions reveal their belief that sound reasoning and intellectual honesty is something that can be attained and something to strive for, which I also believe.  But what about those many many people, me included, that believe in God because they believe it is the most intellectually honest position?

Atheists and Christians, Buddists and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans (just to provide a non-religion example) all have their value sets.  These value sets often, if not always, direct their actions.  Obviously, value sets (read: beliefs) are not a simple thing.  They are often convoluted and obscured and complex which makes it difficult to articulate what we believe and what we think other people believe.  I think this is a good place to re-quote Sister Carlotta:

You are so convinced that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing you believe it.'"

--Shadow of the Hegemon, pg 80-81

Dave made the excellent point that (difficulty aside) we should be able to articulate the positions of our counterparts [people who believe differently than we do].  And that's what I was trying to do with Atheism in my last post.  So maybe using "god" was a little goading on my part, but I don't think that it was confusing the dialog.  Because what I'm trying to get at is: what do you trust?  Christians believe that there is a Truth out there and that it can be articulated and understood as God.  Atheists believe that there is a Truth out there, but that God doesn't fit anywhere in the picture.  The truth, as they see it, is that Nature explains everything. 

To put it another way: Christians believe that God created the world. That at some point in time nothing existed but God and then He created the Universe.  Atheists believe that Nature created the world.  That at some point in time nothing existed and then the Universe came into being of its own accord.  Does one of those things really require more belief than the other?  And you can't get out of this question by saying that science proves one or the other.  Christian sceintists believe that science provides evidence of a Creator's design.  Atheist scientists believe that science provides evidence of Nature's development from nothing to the current state.  Their assumptions and value sets affect how they interpret the scientific data.

The reason I keep pushing on this whole assumptions / value set thing is that I think it is crucial to being able to get anywhere with the next two questions.  I don't think that we have to agree with each others' value sets in order to dialog, but I do think that we need to be able to try to understand (at the very least) our own value sets in order to have an honest dialog.

As JV mentioned and Dave alluded to, evaluating the "rightness" and "wrongness" of a person's value set is a lot harder than defining it or understaning it.  But I think trying to evaluate the "rightness" or "wrongness" points to something that people don't always want to say directly, and that is that each person believes that her or his value set more correctly describes the world. 

So what are your values?  What are the rules that can't be broken?  What can you trust and fall back on with any certainty?

Okay, I'll give it some time to get feedback from you on this latest one, and then in the next post we'll move on to the next question that I wanted to address:  Is there a God?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To everyone who is checking blogs and doing stuff on the internet today I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year.  It all centers around giving thanks for what you have, family, and a communal meal.  I love my big, weird family and can't give thanks enough for the privilege of being able to spend Thanksgiving Day with my wife, mom, dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, ancles, grandparents, nieces and extended family.  I only wish Melissa's family and my family could be in the same place so that we could celebrate together. 


I'll leave you with the words of thanks which I really like and are attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (but I can't find anywhere that helps me cite where this prayer is from):

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Does Belief Matter: Continuing the Discussion

Does it even matter if we believe in God at all?

If you're starting the discussion here the original post might be helpful to give you some background.  You can find the original post, and the comments I am responding to now by clicking here.

Ok, I was going to try to respond to a few of the comments with a comment of my own, but I want people to keep engaged in the conversation and I know that some people don't go back to read comments on a blog after a day or two.  So for clarity's sake and to see if I can get more people's input I've decided to post my reply to JV, Nate, Ariah, and Dave as a new post.

Believing in God: What's the point?

Is there a God?  If there is, does it matter which God it is?  Does it even matter if we believe in God at all?

I know, each one of those questions above has been the subject of whole books, of entire categories of books even, and here I am putting all three of them at the top of one of my blog entries.  Who does this guy think he is, right?  I don't plan on writing a book here on this blog, but I do want to talk about these questions for several reasons:

1) I know that many Christians come to a serious questioning point in their faith over one of these questions, or a similar question about who God is and how He (She? It?) relates to us.
2) I know people that would answer these questions exactly opposite to the way that I would.
3) I know lots of people that have no idea how to answer these questions, or don't think that there is an answer, or never even thought about these questions.
And...

Jesus Answers the Question

Thanks everybody for your answers, they were great! I purposely tried to ask the question using today's language so that it wouldn't be an automatic tip-off that I was asking the exact same question that a Pharisee asked Jesus in the Bible.  Aleya started us all off with the right answer, but the conversation continued because people rightly understood that it needed to be a little more clearly defined.  Rachel and Ariah worked to define "love" a little more clearly and Whitney and Robin both seemed to then begin working out what exactly it would look like to "Love God".  And Whitney, I think you are right that to love Him we must know Him.  Robin, I love that you brought up the point that while Loving Him is the correct answer, the acting out of that love is going to be a form of worship for us.  I think you meant worship through music, but you stated it so well when you said, "love manifests itself in worship".  I think our love for God, in it's full and complete sense, will have a very strong element of worship.  How could it not if we truly know Him as Whitney mentioned.

But Jeremy saw my question and recognized it as the same one from Matthew and Mark where the Pharisee asks Jesus what was the most important commandment.  Rachel summarized the answer in her comment, but thanks to Jeremy for bringing out Jesus' full answer.  When the Pharisee asks Jesus his question, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 for the first answer, and then summarizes whole chapters of Deuteronomy for the second part of His answer:

Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, [a teacher of the law] asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

And [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the Law and Prophets." (Matthew 22:34-40)

I mentioned that the Pastor was talking about this passage on Sunday.  He was actually focusing on the second part of the answer that Jesus gave.  The teacher asked for a single answer, and Jesus gave him two.  Why?  Because they are so closely intertwined that they really shouldn't be separated.  The pastor began his sermon with an anecdotal story about a Mennonite man who was asked by a stranger one day if he was a Christian.  And the Mennonite's answer was, "I'm the least qualified person to answer that question.  You should go ask my neighbors." 

Now, I talked with David and Melissa about it a little, and David commented that he didn't necessarily subscribe to the whole "preach the gospel, and if necessary use words" philosophy.  I think he's right, and I think too often people use that as a "way out" of  speaking about our beliefs and our God.

But I think that Jesus made the point clear: Loving God is specific, it's all out, no-holds-barred.  It's not just with words, it's with your heart and your mind and your soul.  In Deuteronomy is says, "with all your strength".

So thanks everybody for your answers.  Keep the conversation going.

Most important thing for a Christian to do

So rather than a long involved "part 2" post today (don't worry, that's coming soon) I have a question for you instead.  This is a question that I'm curious to hear your answers to after having listened to a sermon related to this on Sunday.  So here it is:

"What, in your opinion, is the most important thing that we are called to do?"


I'll give my answer in a bit, but I'm interested to see your responses first.