by AllanS » February 14th, 2009, 10:21 pm
I know things like pleasure and pain, though I certainly can't define them. I couldn't communicate this knowledge to an alien who has had no experience of such things. I can only say "Pain is nasty", or "Pain hurts." ie. Pain is painful. I can tell you that I feel pain when various nerves are stimulated and various chemicals slosh about in the brain, but unless you also have had a direct experience of pain, all such talk would be meaningless. The nervous impulses, the chemicals, are not the experience.
In chemistry, we have elements that aren't made of simpler atoms. Perhaps we also have elemental experiences that can't be broken into simpler experiences.
I think it's the same with God. Faith is a gift. Unless God opens our eyes, we will never see. To the blind, all God-talk will be meaningless. The most sane prayer of all is this: God, if you exist, if you are good, open my blind eyes. Believers need to pray this prayer as earnestly as anyone. What makes me so sure my God is not a mere idol, a human construct? (Pretty likely, I reckon.) It reminds me of Moses. The thing he most desired was to see the face of God... not some proof of God, but a direct experience.
“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."
Quid and Harmony: a fund-raising project for the Fistula Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
www.smithysbook.com