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On 2/22/2023 at 11:30 AM, MustardSeed said:

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t operate from a cafeteria mindset.  We all pick and choose because we can’t possibly eat it all.  I think the term is derogatory and by nature hypocritical.  You add a lot here just the way you are.

Thank you.

The term doesn't bother me, I brought it up... and I think it's funny.  But I don't pretend to speak for anyone else. 

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3 hours ago, manol said:

Thank you very much, that means a lot to me. 

Of course.  "He ain't heavy!  He's my brother!" :friends:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Ain't_Heavy,_He's_My_Brother

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4 hours ago, manol said:

Thank you.

The term doesn't bother me, I brought it up... and I think it's funny.  But I don't pretend to speak for anyone else. 

I loved as a kid going to eat at a cafeteria in a mall by our home, a predecessor of a food court I think.  My parents were big into nutrition and being prudent with their money and Mom could cook a fantastic meal for what we would have spent going out to eat even at an IHop, so my typical dining out experiences were limited those few times they gave in to our entreaties to eating Burger King hamburgers in the car, sharing a couple of fries packets among the five of us and drinking out of plastic cups the milk Dad brought from home.  And not much of that as we had been warned of the folly of spilling the milk in the car, so none of us dared ask for that much and since Dad never wasted time, we might manage seconds but never thirds before the car took off again.  The cafeteria on the other hand was a real excursion.  It was the only place my grandparents would take us out to until I got much older (and then it was mainly Sizzler).  They were the ultimate creatures of habit.  And they had worked hard for that money, they weren’t going to spend it on frivolities even if they weren’t obsessed with nutrition like Mom.  I only had to endure the dreaded school cafeteria for a few months when staying with relatives to give Mom a break and then the only choice was get in line or not, which is not a real cafeteria experience at all, but just a quick and dirty preparation of tasteless calories forced upon the unprotected masses, so that experience never impinged my conceptualization of the Cafeteria archetype.  My cafeteria was where I first fell in love with Chinese food (technically the American caricature labeled “Chinese”, but the love was authentic through and through) and the only place at the time I could find the perfect jello (not quite Jello jigglers, but very close).  My parents always bought quality ice cream, but of course true indulgence is always the rarer treat, so unless it’s Mom’s homemade Heavenly Hash, give me my chewy jello cubes over ice cream every time. 

Long way around to explain that cafeteria has positive connotations for me personally and even though if I think of it I can figure out the word is often meant to be derogatory, my mind just doesn’t go there and it takes a bit for the insult to register, lol.

Edited by Calm
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5 hours ago, manol said:

Thank you very much, that means a lot to me. 

For what it's worth, I second his thoughts. You have been a very welcome fellow traveler.

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23 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

As usual, St. Paul nails what philosophers spend years anguishing about. 

I was reading a delightful paper by the excellent philosopher Dr. Eleonore Stump (incidentally also a Catholic - actually it's not incidental, Catholicism is integral to her philosophy, but you get the drift.) I have linked it here: https://ojs.tnkul.pl/index.php/rf/article/view/16476/15702

She spends a large portion of the paper discussing second-person knowledge, or knowledge/acquaintance of other people. Along the way she constructs a very good argument for the idea that second-person knowledge is a form of non-propositional knowledge, the contents of which are ineffable or simply cannot be encoded in propositions. This got me thinking - it seems to me that a lot of our modern miasma suffers from an acute methodological problem. We have set the foundations of our society on the Enlightenment and the principles of rational argumentation - but argumentative rationality can only work with propositions. I believe it was Heisenberg who said that science is not reality, rather it is reality subjected to our methods of observation. I suspect that knowledge of God is likely the highest form of non-propositional knowledge, but is unsatisfying at times because it a) is an undeveloped method, we are still growing into it, and b) it relies on a form of knowledge to which our methodological zeitgeist is blinded. 

OG, hey. thanks again for the link.

I have skimmed it with the delight that you have had. The limitations of propositional knowledge keeps popping up for me. I need to re-read the whole thing carefully. I really appreciate the idea behind why we need narratives, and why the Gospels give us narrative descriptions of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God knows that we cannot love propositions that state what God is. But He gives us narratives so that we can picture ourselves at the various events of His Son's life. By deliberately placing ourselves at the Gospel scenes we can love the goodness, beauty, and truth that is personified in Jesus. Love of persons over love of facts. We are not easily moved by bare facts about persons. We are moved by knowledge of persons that can only be experienced in person or vicariously as we should do when we read the Gospels. Now I understand better why the spiritual authors so frequently recommend meditations that ask us to make the mental exercise of being present at a narrative event that can become more vivid and real, truly moving to us, if we should take the effort.  

I had never thought about philosophical and theological methodology. That theology is not about a fact, but about Person/Persons (Three for many of us) is gigantic with regards to method. I found this paper in my first reading (with some skipping for sake of time), to be accessible with effort. Highly recommended. It seems like it will be influential to my thinking moving forward.   

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22 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

OG, hey. thanks again for the link.

I have skimmed it with the delight that you have had. The limitations of propositional knowledge keeps popping up for me. I need to re-read the whole thing carefully. I really appreciate the idea behind why we need narratives, and why the Gospels give us narrative descriptions of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God knows that we cannot love propositions that state what God is. But He gives us narratives so that we can picture ourselves at the various events of His Son's life. By deliberately placing ourselves at the Gospel scenes we can love the goodness, beauty, and truth that is personified in Jesus. Love of persons over love of facts. We are not easily moved by bare facts about persons. We are moved by knowledge of persons that can only be experienced in person or vicariously as we should do when we read the Gospels. Now I understand better why the spiritual authors so frequently recommend meditations that ask us to make the mental exercise of being present at a narrative event that can become more vivid and real, truly moving to us, if we should take the effort.  

I had never thought about philosophical and theological methodology. That theology is not about a fact, but about Person/Persons (Three for many of us) is gigantic with regards to method. I found this paper in my first reading (with some skipping for sake of time), to be accessible with effort. Highly recommended. It seems like it will be influential to my thinking moving forward.   

A quick personal anecdote in support of Dr. Stump's conclusion about the necessary methodology for knowledge of persons. Last year I read a biography of the great poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde. Long story short. He fell into a destructive lifestyle that was truly tragic. But at the end is the story of his deathbed conversion. It gave me an increase of affection for Mr. Wilde, and the good God who kept loving and caring for him to the very end. I could dare to call it love. I wept at the close of that book. It makes me happy whenever I think about it which is often. I now know it was the narrative that enabled me to think I know the poet as a person enough to conceive an affection for him. And a greater esteem than before for the Person who cares for all of us as much as He does for the great British wit.     

Edited by 3DOP
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@3DOP/Rory,

I was going to quote you here, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm responding to that you wrote, or I would have had trouble paring it down and I didn't want to quote it in its entirety.  Perhaps it is sufficient to note that these thoughts are inspired by what you wrote even if they're not exactly responsive to it!  ;) :D  Here goes:

Certainly, both Moroni and I agree with Saint Paul, who exalts charity above all else, including faith and hope: “[T]he greatest of these [virtues] is charity.” I Cor. 13:13.  And, as Moroni put the same concept, “[C]leave unto charity, which is the greatest of all.”  Moro. 7:46.  That said, Moroni has some interesting things to say about the relationship between the three virtues of faith, hope, and charity that I think you might find interesting.  Though I doubt you’re any stranger to the Book of Mormon, see vv. 35-48 of Moro. 7. (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/moro/7?lang=eng)  You might also find Alma’s discourse on faith interesting.  See Alma 32—again, with the caveat that you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with it already.  (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng)

By the way, how, exactly, did Moroni plagiarize Paul, since they are separated by a continent and by a few hundred years?  While that question might be another subject for another day, perhaps each was quoting from an even earlier source.

Edited by Kenngo1969
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5 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

For what it's worth, I second his thoughts. You have been a very welcome fellow traveler.

 

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I third it, manol is awesome!

Thank you.  I need to take a break and figure out some stuff for myself, some really basic stuff that most people have long since figured out.

For instance “faith”, the topic of this thread... what that word encompasses is not (yet) obvious to me.  Seems to me there's a continuum, and one region on the continuum looks like “hope for the best and expect the worst”, which is a rational, circumspect, protective, play-it-safe approach which very sensibly does not extrapolate beyond those facts demonstrably in evidence.  Elsewhere on the continuum is “actively being a generator/radiator of far greater positive energy (or positive attitude) than can be justified solely by those facts demonstrably in evidence”.  And I suspect such might have something to do with "having faith."  

I feel compelled to actually find out this (and several other things) for myself, one way or another and to whatever extent I reasonably can, instead of merely having a bunch of evolving/revolving theories.  So I'm taking a break.

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17 minutes ago, manol said:

 

Thank you.  I need to take a break and figure out some stuff for myself, some really basic stuff that most people have long since figured out.

For instance “faith”, the topic of this thread... what that word encompasses is not (yet) obvious to me.  Seems to me there's a continuum, and one region on the continuum looks like “hope for the best and expect the worst”, which is a rational, circumspect, protective, play-it-safe approach which very sensibly does not extrapolate beyond those facts demonstrably in evidence.  Elsewhere on the continuum is “actively being a generator/radiator of far greater positive energy (or positive attitude) than can be justified solely by those facts demonstrably in evidence”.  And I suspect such might have something to do with "having faith."  

I feel compelled to actually find out this (and several other things) for myself, one way or another and to whatever extent I reasonably can, instead of merely having a bunch of evolving/revolving theories.  So I'm taking a break.

Good luck, friend. 

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20 minutes ago, manol said:

 

Thank you.  I need to take a break and figure out some stuff for myself, some really basic stuff that most people have long since figured out.

For instance “faith”, the topic of this thread... what that word encompasses is not (yet) obvious to me.  Seems to me there's a continuum, and one region on the continuum looks like “hope for the best and expect the worst”, which is a rational, circumspect, protective, play-it-safe approach which very sensibly does not extrapolate beyond those facts demonstrably in evidence.  Elsewhere on the continuum is “actively being a generator/radiator of far greater positive energy (or positive attitude) than can be justified solely by those facts demonstrably in evidence”.  And I suspect such might have something to do with "having faith."  

I feel compelled to actually find out this (and several other things) for myself, one way or another and to whatever extent I reasonably can, instead of merely having a bunch of evolving/revolving theories.  So I'm taking a break.

 

3 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Good luck, friend. 

Indeed! :)

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