It never fails to amuse me how some people dislike mint flavoured ice cream because it reminds them of toothpaste. Isn't toothpaste made to taste like mint to remind you of more heavenly sources (like mint ice cream)? But I suppose I can easily imagine how unappetizing something would taste if it were the shadow of toothpaste. As would the idea of toothpaste in your mouth be tantalizing if it promised a hint of your favourite food.
So it appears that the order of events in a cause-effect relationship could change our opinions on a particular affair. And if opinions dictate our beliefs and guide our actions, then it seems important in certain cases (arguably, the attractiveness of mint ice-cream is not one of them) that we get the chronology right. That would be easy - if not for the fact that our points of view are accrued from our place in time. So I've been thinking, what if our persistent philosophical questioning of religious belief is a result of a wrong viewing point?
Today, thousands of years after the holy books were authored, we find ourselves unable to convince ourselves of its reliability because we stand in the present, trying to look back into the past which characteristically leaves no satiable evidence. But if we could somehow place ourselves at the other end, beginning with the time the Word of God was transcribed, then assuming the divine revelation was witnessed and that it is true, confidence in the bible (and subsequently religion) would effortlessly ensue.
We cannot, for obvious reasons, place ourselves at the other end to test the truth of our religious doctrines and chronicles. But neither can we find truthful answers from a system invariably tied to pyrrhonistic conclusions, can we?
1 comment:
Philosophically speaking, it makes sense. But as a Christian, what I believe in...it's not because i've witnessed it or anything. I mean, witnessed as in the sense that I've talked to Jesus like the disciples did...but perhaps witnessed in the sense that my religion has had a significant impact in my life.
29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29
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