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From: will@futon.webo.dg.com (Will Taber)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: [soc.religion.christian] Re: The arrogance of Christians
Message-ID: <Apr.20.03.02.36.1993.3809@geneva.rutgers.edu>
Date: 20 Apr 93 07:02:36 GMT
Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
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Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

In a previous message  aa888@freenet.carleton.ca (Mark Baker) writes:

>If I don't think my belief is right and everyone else's belief is wrong,
>then I don't have a belief. This is simply what belief means.

 [More stuff deleted]

This seems to be a pretty arogant definition of belief.  My beliefs
are those things which I find to be true based on my experience of the
world.  This experience includes study of things that I may not have
experienced directly.  But even then, I can only understand the
studies to the extent to which I can relate what I study back to what
I have experienced.

Which means that by beliefs about God are directly related to my
experience of God.  Having experienced God, I try to make sense of
that experience.  I study religion and read the Bible.  I find things
that echo what I have already experienced.  Out of this I build my
beliefs.  I also find things that don't match my experience.  That
doesn't make them false.  They just don't match my experience.  Maybe
I will understand that stuff later.  I don't know.  Maybe all of my
beliefs are wrong.  I can change my beliefs.

If someone else has beliefs that are different from mine, so what.
Neither of us are necessarily wrong.  Someone else is making sense out
of a different set of experiences.  Even though we have different
explanations and beliefs, if we talk we might even discover that the
underlying experiences are similar.

Some people approach religion as a truth that can only exist in one
form, and usually has a single revelation.  The more dogmatic and
inflexible the belief system, the more arrogant it will appear to an
outsider.  There is another approach possible, however.  God is a
mystery.  I am trying to solve the mystery, so I look at the evidence
available to me.  I try to arrive at the best understanding that I can
based on the evidence.  New evidence may cause me to change my
understanding.  When I encounter someone with a different belief than
my own, it isn't a threat, it is an opportunity to perhaps discover
something new about this mystery I can never fully comprehend.

Peace
Will Taber
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| William Taber         | Will_Taber@dg.com 	  | Any opinions expressed |
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