There is no difference between the “heart” and the “head”. It’s all just the processing of information.
I assume you’re not seriously suggesting that the muscular organ centrally located in the chest is the seat of humanity’s emotional drives, Libertarian, but even so, you’re wrong to separate emotion from rationality. The two are one.
You’ll have to ask God. It would be presumptive for any person to answer. The only thing I presume is that God is smarter and wiser than I am.
As for being smart and a critical thinker I like to think I am. I am also a poerson of faith as a Christian. I don’t have a conflict but many people have asked how a person like me can possibly be a Christain.
You may be interested in what Rev. Rod Debs had to say based on the poem My Easy God is Gone by James Kavanaugh
Here is a little teaser from it.
I think the OP’s question still stands. Do critical thinkers inherently find it harder to be saved?
Padeye wrote:
I don’t know about that Padeye. A being that is so horny for attention as the christian god seems to be can’t be all that smart. In a human being this would be seen as being horribly insecure. I’m not saying this to just stir up a lot of argument and name calling. I’m serious. “Love me, love only me or I’ll hurt you forever,” isn’t the calling card of anyone I’d care to associate with.
I think it’s more ‘Keep my commandments’, which are ‘Love me and love one another’. Your interpretation sound sort of chilling.
Sandyhook, why do you think God is bound by our limited ability to understand?
Interesting quote Kniz, I think that’s very appropriate.
This has always bothered me. Why is it presumed that we can not understand the workings of God?
Padeye wrote:
Our ability to understand is all we have. It is what makes us human.
As I understand it, true believers say we were made in god’s image. My assumption here is that this means more than just a physical similarity. If not then god must look chinese. We have minds, curious, inventive minds that were given to us, as I understand christian thought, by god. A mind that is in god’s image, if the idea of being in his image has any real meaning at all. So why would you think we are inferior?
With that mind we have acheived a lot. We perform miracles (as they would have been seen by anyone living before 1900) every day with no easily seen limit in front of us.
PhiloVance wrote:
ONE: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.’
TWO: ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
THREE: ‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.’
Sounds kind of whiny to me. Chilling it might sound, but I’m serious.
Ted Bundy, so I understand, got religion. Called Jesus right into his heart. I remember seeing an interview with him where he said he’d be in heaven becaused he believed. Myself, OTOH, am pretty much hosed, if there’s a god, because I don’t believe even though in most other aspects of life I conform to the christian idea fairly well. It isn’t somethng that I worry about a lot.
This is all too heady
It may be that the intellect stands in the way between you/I and god. Perhaps we are addicted to thinking, and identify too much with it.
A Zen monk who has meditated a long while is said to have gone stupid, because when one suspends their thinking for long periods of time they can’t spontaneously start thinking again, they can’t call up a thought and engage it, at least for awhile.
Of course there is a difference between that and being dumb.
Enlightenment may be a kind of ego death, or dying while alive to who you think you are. A loosening or disidentification with thinking and mental image making.
Anyway we can’t will a thought so who the fuck are we?
What is this thinking thing?
** Harmonix**
Saved from what?
Ignorance
It might just be the effect of eating from the tree of knowledge.
The ability to discern right from wrong.
I really don’t know what to think of you.
but could you PLEASE explain that?
My 2¢:
I’m no theological scholar, but I do fancy myself a fairly decent Christian.
I think that thinking critically and using your intellect to delve into the root of your beliefs is not inherently bad. I think that those who fail to ask questions that they are intellectually capable of asking do a disservice to themselves and their faith.
I don’t presume to know whether gullible people would find it easier to get into heaven, but I think that on the flip side, those who use critical thinking walk a fine line.
I think the main factor in this is not to cease thinking crticially or asking questions, but what your motives for doing so are.
Many people who consider themselves of the religious persuasion are constantly questioning, challenging, but they do so in an unconscious need to disprove or debase other’s beliefs, or even their own.
I think what the Bible asks for is really more of an open, honest curiousity, such as that of a child. The difference is whether you ask the question with a particular answer in mind, or whether you ask with a completely open mind.
Not so much a situation where one would ask of themselves, “Will I accept what I find as truth?”, but more of a realization that you may not know what truth really is.
Please note I did not say that. I said I presume that God is smarter than me. I leave it to others to decide if they think they are smarter than God. Knock yourself out.
I believe in God as the creator of the universe and all its underlying principles. FTR I do not believe in a six-day creation. All evidence points to just a bit more complexity than the Genesis account but that was appropriate for its original audience. I do not have the ability to create the universe and I don’t know if I am capable of understanding it all. I did not say that God and the universe are unknowable but that I don’t know all there is to know.
Critical thinking, knowledge, logic and reason are some of the most important things that make us human. I think it’s critical for us to try to understand and know all we possibly can. Still, I believe there are things beyond logic and reason. I take these things on faith and have no logical argument to make in defense of them. I won’t use the faulty argument that because there are things we still do not know that God must be behind it all.
all. That’s a stupid argument that serves neither faith or logic. God is not diminished by our understanding of the universe.
** Latro**
Is thinking an ability?
If it is, who or what possesses the ability to think?
Doesn’t it beg the question to say I possess the ability to think?
** Harmonix**
you wrote:
So I asked, “From what, ignorance?”
I was thinking along the lines that critical thinkers need to be saved from the same thing as non-critical thinkers, i.e. their own lack of knowledge of the true nature of their existence and/or who or what they are?
Fair enough.
You have some interesting syntax. Is english your 2nd language?
I was referring to critical thinker’s ability and predeliction toward questioning what they percieve. It would seem to me if you 2 groups of people. Non critical thinkers and critical thinkers. On average i’m betting the non-critical thinkers will meet the requirements for heaven.
** Harmonix**
Is English your second language?
I don’ t know if there is a heaven but reaching any kind of intellectual enlightenment requires brains, although I do think intellectual knowledge can only get one so far. At some point one has to let it go.
And I think there are other kinds of enlightenment besides intellectual, i.e. spiritual, Zen, nondual etc.
I’m not trying to insult you, i’m just wondering. You seem to have write with interesting syntax.
It would seem to me if you take 2 groups of people, non critical thinkers and critical thinkers…
seems I forgot a word.
It appears i’ve proved gaeduers’(Sp?) law.
In any case, this isn’t what I was talking about. Due to the natural predelicition of intelligent people to critically think, and question I believe they will on average not have faith and therefore not enter into Heaven. Assuming of course there is a Heaven, and a requirement of entry is faith.