You have the ability to sense and know a higher truth.

[caine2000]

Someone once asked me what I thought faith was. I said that to me faith is the obsessive compulsion to believe in something despite a complete lack of evidence or preponderance of evidence to the contrary. He asked me if I had faith enough to believe in God. I told him that beliving in God was not nearly as important as understanding why. I

Comments

And another's girl's opinion

[the_ericai]

With this, God is also a man. He has to be. When we look to the Almighty we don't look to Him for nurturing or care. We look to Him to for guidance and limits. We look to Him to be omniscient and omnipotent. We want to know that somewhere, somehow, someone is in control of this haphazard mess we call reality. We call him Father because that is what we want him to be. I must disagree.

Much like my "twin" above, I was raised sans a male role-model figure. I was raised, mostly, by my grandmother and then, when that became impractical, myself. I have never looked to a man for guidance and limits and it chafes me now when one tries to impose such things upon me. I have not felt any man to have more power than others, to be onmiscient or omnipotent. Rather, I usually see them as weak, conniving, manipulative, controlling and/or egotistical, among other adjectives. When I need guidance or knowledge or boundaries, I get them from myself because I'm the only one who knows what's best for me. And I'm no man, though I am as stubborn and vain as one. Ergo, I do not concur that God is a man...nor a woman, for that matter. I think God just is...and God isn't anything we can recognize or understand.
But, again like Ericka, I'm agnostic. Yes, I believe there's a God, for lack of a better word, but I can't prove it so can't tell others that God exists for sure. I can only think it for myself. I guess that's agnostic faith. :)

I do agree, though, that there must be a higher power because we have to feel that we're not a chance happening, irrelevant to the universe and all it contains. Plus, it's nice to have someone to blame and someone with whom to beg for favor.

Also, I take exception to the fact that you apparently have no love for the lj-cut. Dang it.

Re: And another's girl's opinion

[eeeniebean]

it chafes me now when one tries to impose such things upon me
Exactly. We gotta rail against The Man! *realizes I'm going into law* Shit.

When I need guidance or knowledge or boundaries, I get them from myself because I'm the only one who knows what's best for me.
Yes, though I'll hedge to offer that others can certainly offer suggestions and assistance. To take this -too- literally would likely border on the sociopathic (though I know you don't.)

Getting to the male-female discussion, actually, the idea of the all encompassing, accepting female Gaia versus the elevated, judgemental male God is a pretty fruitful discussion.. and brings up the notion of distributed versus centralized authority which is a very common theme in modern Western gender politics.

J. says I don't know how it works for girls, but for boys that concrete, that steel, that bedrock comes from your father.
It could just be that I didn't happen to have that from any figure - male or female.. but I wonder about Girls (capitalized to speak to the general) and their relationship with Fathers. How do they relate to paternal, protective authority when they are seen as mysterious, weak or Other? All the fathers I've known seem to be more confused by and terrified of their daughters rather than judgemental. Not just that, but they seem to warn the nearby males of their impending judgement (example: the oft told pre-date shotgun/intimidation story) and excuse the girl.

Hmm, I wonder if, for girls in our current culture - authority often comes more from a distributed sense of propriety and social acceptance - taught through the mother.. and the father is seen as more of the Protector, rather than the Judge.

Hmm. I'm just rambling now and have no real idea. :)

Re: And another's girl's opinion

[the_ericai]

1) Yes, you are right, E. I do not find myself solely believing my own advice and guidance. I do tend to bounce my thoughts off others, first, to make sure I'm taking a good course of action. Although I like to think I'm a sociopath, by the medical definition, I am not. I'm just really self-righteous and egotistical. You and your hedges. :D

2) I don't know much about Girls and their Fathers, either. I've watched the relationships between my best friends and their dads with interest. And those dads always take me under their wing and treat me as their daughter, but I'm not, so, it's still different. I watch the father/daughter interplay in my relationship and realize it's more active than many I've seen, but it certainly isn't a "I'm the FATHER and you are the CHILD and I define your life and you obey" type thing. They're friends above all else.

Yeah, I don't know much about any of this either. I think since we left the "ideal nuclear family" (do I have to say Nuculer until Bush is out of the White House?) behind, there is no longer any set definition of gender-based parenting; the father is no longer the disciplianarian ("Just wait 'til your father gets home!"); often, there IS no father. The mother no longer teaches the daughters how to keep house and cook. Everything's sort of up in the air and kids learn everything they know from TV or video games.
That's how I learned to fly a Scyk Fighter.

I concede the point... that you are a girl. (I've checked)

[caine2000]

I did mention in the post that I didn't know how it works for girls. I'll now follow that line of thought through to the logical conclusion which is "I'm sure it works differently for girls than for guys" as I've gotten a fairly constant "I disagree" responses from girls and "I feel ya" from (some) guys. And one "I concede the point" but we'll let that go... ;) The bulk of my post pertains pretty much exclusively to guys since fathers and daughters have an inherently different relationship. So there you go. On the other hand, I'll tell you that this is how it works between (most) fathers and sons.

It's funny that the religious, atheists, and agnostics have to try so hard to distance themselves. Agnosticism isn't a unique mindset; it's a measuring system on which Atheism and Religion are just extreme viewpoints. Everyone believes in something, it's just a question of which way you lean and how far.

As for God, I never said He was an actual man. And don't go quoting "God is a man" from my journal; it was part of a larger point. That point being that God is not a being, He is a reason. He is not the answer to the question of why, He is why we ask it. His personification is just an attempt to fill a basic need. I can understand why you might not think of Him as a guy since I'm sure we look for different things, but since men have pretty much written the books since the way-back, He's a guy. Plus I say so. :)

measuring systems and checking...

[eeeniebean]

"I'm sure it works differently for girls than for guys"
Right, and I'm certainly not trying to derail your recounting of your experience of Father and Son. Really, the details about my difference of experience as Daughter and the Void matter very little (though I love any experience to reminisce about my Grampie, thank you for that). What is relevant to the point is the -room- for maneuvering.

I like the flexibility that I'm hearing (because I like to hear what I want to hear) in your standpoint, which is that the conclusion is a factor of the experience. Since I have both a different experience (no authoritarian figure) -and- conclusion (no belief in God) - it seems clear that our raison d'etre is variable rather than static.

His personification is just an attempt to fill a basic need.
Yes, I would say that the concept of a God -is- an attempt to fill a need, but I would argue that it is not basic (read: universal). It is subjective and requisite on experience. If, in someone's life, they find the need to concede authority, seek approval and have faith in a higher, controlling, order-seeking being (possibly, as you posit, because of the experience of an authoritarian father), then a conception of God can fill that need.

Clearly, not everyone has the same experience.. Although I rambled about the feminine/masculine power trope for a while there, in the end, I suspect it is an individual/circumstantial thing rather than primarily gender based.

When it comes down to it, I think we're saying essentially the same thing - that which metaphysical belief system you subscribe to (if you make an effort to subscribe at all) is a function of your needs, experience and desire.

(by the way, I love it when you post)

I didn't know how to do the lj-cut thing because I'm dumb.

[caine2000]

Also, you're both entitled to your own opinions, which means you're both entitled to be as wrong as you want. I have to run just now but we'll discuss it later. ;)

How can we be wrong? We're never wrong and seldom in doubt.

[the_ericai]

You didn't do the lj-cut thing, not because you're dumb, but because you're male and it is a well-known stereotype that males cannot ask for directions. The "lj-cut thing" and the directions on how it's done, is listed very specifically in the Help section AND it's easy to find.

Do you have to run now because you've offended someone and they're chasing you with an axe?
Just wondering. It seems like the kind of thing that could happen to someone like you.

*remembers to tip hitman*

I lied to make you feel better.

[caine2000]

I didn't do the lj-cut thing because I like it when I take up like 50% of your friends page. What I lack in quantity of posts I make up for in sheer length. It's not a male thing or even a laziness thing; it's an ego thing.

And I had to run because I needed to go kill people. At poker.