Of another world

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Many times even the most learned have never quite thought their personal views to their end... I think we could rephrase your question: "What POINT is there to life, if this short span -so easily ended in a car accident or a medical breakdown- is only a small part of what we get?"

Do you see it Form? Isn't life's precariouisness just the thing that gives it meaning and depth? Why to care, if this is just an interlude or or an overture? Just play your cards wisely and wait for the next level (like in WW-game, flying under radar and hoping you wouldn't be noticed?).

I get what you're saying....

But what if your chance to move on the next level is determined by what you do in this one?

To use the Werewolf analogy, if this is all we get, then at the end of Day 1, we all die- good or evil- it doesn't matter. All we get is one Day 1, so there's no point in hiding one's Wolfishness or Giftedness, but one had may as well blow the game now, because it's over.

If, however, there is an afterlife, then it makes sense to play the game according to the rules, because otherwise you won't make it to the "Afterlife".

And to the second point. The fideistic point (called forwards by Kierkegaard & co.) is quite new indeed - but widely held in protestant countries nowadays. They think, that you should make a difference between belief and knowledge. It's an old & new fundamentalist view to call the questions of faith epistemological ie. being questions of truth or falsity - things to be known, or reasoned / proved about... So when you call your belief rational, you line up with the fundamentalists - even though you say the contrary.

Already most of the medieval monks felt quite uneasy with those rational "proofs of God's existence" (brought forward from 11th. century forwards), as they seemed to tie God in logic and (human) reasoning... So there is this tension between rationality and christianity - has been there since Paul, of course, but it has not been done away with quite yet.

Perhaps so...

The Resurrection of Christ, to paraphrase St. Paul, is a "stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks" (or have I got their positions mixed up?). Resurrection does not seem logically possible.

If, however, the Resurrection DID happen (and that is the simplest explanation to fit all the facts), then it seems a good deal more rational to believe in the Resurrection- and therefore the entire Faith that Christ taught, than not.

And that, as I see it, the great difference between Christianity and other faiths: Christianity has a "Great Proof": the Resurrection. Scholars, historians, and others deny that Christ was ever raised, because to admit it undermines everything they say about Christianity in general. Rightly or wrongly, they HAVE to hold to that position if Christianity is to be disproved. No other faith has a singular "Great Proof" of the same nature.