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Maybe he can take medical care wherever he has to and thank the doctors and scientists rather than an invisible guy in the sky.
Even when medical care is nominally given in the name of the invisible guy it still works because of medical science, not because of some sort of special magic unction from the spirit world.
That's just fine too.
He will need to find a few facilities administered and supported by Atheists; however, did you notice the "invisible guy" has the last say when this guy's time is up and the last curtain falls.
Won't be honored, Guaranteed!
Your time * will * come to an end and he will make the last curtain fall on you. That's his promise for all forms of life and every single living specie on earth.
The falling away started with unitarianism (denial of the Trinity) and universalism (embracing of universal reconciliation) and ended with a denial of generally accepted historic creeds.
More importantly, the ratification of ongoing revelation (of which, incidentally, Jesus was a major practitioner himself), and the recognition of myriad sources of spiritual wisdom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Maybe you can think of him as a Christian except that he knows the stories are just stories.
And a Jew, and a Buddhist, and a Muslim, and a Wiccan, and a Hindu, and an agnostic, etc. who knows the stories are just stories.
More importantly, the ratification of ongoing revelation (of which, incidentally, Jesus was a major practitioner himself), and the recognition of myriad sources of spiritual wisdom.
Is this different from simply recognizing that human knowledge and understanding are always evolving?
In light of our discussion in another thread, the answer to your question is 'yes' because "human knowledge and understanding" is viewed by most people to be a smaller scope than you mean to imply by use of those terms.
In light of our discussion in another thread, the answer to your question is 'yes' because "human knowledge and understanding" is viewed by most people to be a smaller scope than you mean to imply by use of those terms.
Yes, I probably have fewer limitations in my thinking about the scope and potential of human knowledge and understanding and its expansion. But it seems unhelpful to spiritualize it in an effort to compensate. I would rather people educate themselves about the realities of the situation. The only knowledge and understanding that actually exists that we can bring to bear on anything is our own knowledge. Just because some religious people decry human knowledge and understanding as puny, unworthy, corrupt, evil and dangerous, and imagine an idealized version of it that they ascribe to an invisible infallible deity which we must appease and convince to let its superior thinking trickle down upon us, doesn't make it true.
The most you can say is that "divine wisdom" has archetypal or symbolic value, allowing us to objectify and step outside our own thinking and ennoble it according to a conceived ideal. It gives us something to aim for. Though only, as I suspect you would say, so long as we understand that our stories are just stories ;-)
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