NOTE: This post is part of a series in which I am blogging my way through Blaise Pascal’s book Pensees.
OK, I admit it, I AM going to blog through Pascal’s Pensees. Here’s another interesting quote by T.S. Eliot from the Introduction to Pensees:
His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly objective, because they are essential moments in the progress of the intellectual soul; and for the type of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the Christian mystic. A similar despair, when it is arrived at by a diseased character or an impure soul, may issue in the most disastrous consequences though with the most superb manifestations; and thus we get Gulliver’s Travels; but in Pascal we find no such distortion; his despair is in itself more terrible than Swift’s, because our heart tells us that it corresponds exactly to the facts and cannot be dismissed as mental disease; but it was also a despair which was a necessary prelude to, and element in, the joy of faith.
NOTE: This post is part of a series in which I am blogging my way through Blaise Pascal’s book Pensees.
Though I am not blogging through Pascal’s Pensees, maybe I should! Here’s another interesting quote by T.S. Eliot from the Introduction to Pensees:
The Christian thinker–and I mean the man who is trying consciously and conscientiously to explain to himself the sequence which culminated in faith, rather than the public apologist–proceeds by rejection and elimination. He finds the world to be so and so; he finds its character inexplicable by any non-religious theory; among religions he finds Christianity, and Catholic Christianity, to account most satisfactorily for the world and especially for the moral world within; and thus, by what Newman calls “powerful and concurrent” reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation….
To the unbeliever, this method seems disingenuous and perverse; for the unbeliever is, as a rule, not so greatly troubled to explain the world to himself, nor so greatly distressed by its disorder; nor is he generally concerned (in modern terms) to “preserve values….The unbeliever starts from the other end, and as likely as not with the question: Is a case of human parthenogenesis credible?
“For every man who thinks and lives by thought must have his own skepticism, that which stops at the question, that which ends in denial, or that which leads to faith and which is somehow integrated into the faith which transcends it.” ~ T.S. Eliot from the Introduction to Pacal’s Pensees.
Interesting, his description of three outcomes. You could look at this as a process towards faith, or as three separate outcomes. For example:
OR
The worst outcome, of course, might be to stop at the question and stay agnostic. Then again, maybe the questions are unanswerable!
At Apologetics315 is the second interview I’ve heard with former atheist Richard Morgan (hear another interview at Unbelievable), and his story is interesting. In the context of this site, what is interesting are the factors that led to his conversion. They seem to be:
This highlights one of the disconnects between the common path to faith, one of experience first, followed later by intellect (or as Augustine said, ‘faith seeking understanding”), and atheism, which values reason and empiricism first, almost to the exclusion of experience.
NOTE: This post is part of a series in which I am blogging my way through John Loftus’ book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity.
In Part I, Part II, and Part III of this mini-series, I covered the lists of bad reasons for both belief and disbelief from John Loftus’ book. In this post, I’d like to complete the discussion of my own list of bad reasons for belief.
My list of bad reasons to believe include:
Let’s continue discussing the last four items.
NOTE: This post is part of a series in which I am blogging my way through John Loftus’ book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity.
In Part I and Part II of this mini-series, I covered the lists of bad reasons for both belief and disbelief. In this post, I’d like to discuss my own list of bad reasons for belief.
My list of bad reasons to believe include:
This image still has the watermark from the site I ‘borrowed’ it from – if I use it on my book, of course, I’ll purchase it. This is just a proof of concept. Do you like this better than the others?
This is my favorite so far, and since I took the photo, I don’t have to pay for it. It’s also much wider, so I could wrap it around the back… what say ye?
NOTE: This post is part of a series in which I am blogging my way through John Loftus’ book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity.
Yesterday, I began evaluating John Loftus’ list of bad reasons for belief. Today, I want to continue that evaluation. Here’s his list again. Belief…
So, let’s continue from #5…