@revhambrick Hi!
I read your intro post and was struck by the closing line: "I'm daily seeking to take a leap of faith"
As an atheist myself (or agnostic to some), I find this concept of taking a leap of faith simultaneously intriguing and perplexing.
It always sounds like wanting to come to a conclusion even though you don't have a good reason. Is that what you mean? Is that a good thing to seek out? Or do you mean something different? I'd love to learn more, if you're interested in chatting about it!
@lack I love this question and am really glad you asked it. Let's zoom out to a 10,000 ft view for a moment. Let's leave religion behind for the purposes of phase one of the answer and begin with the father of existential philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard thought that at the core of being a full human being was taking a qualitative leap. He believed there were things in life that logic, reason, and rationality would get in the way of. A perfect example, but not the best example for 1/
@lack him is a love relationship. Love is not logical. It does not have reason (though their may be compelling reasons for a relationship). Love is not rational. But love is central to being a full (whole) human.
So to take a leap is to move beyond. Heidegger used the term 'dasein' to describe such a person. One who is 'being there.' That is one who has made it or reached the highest level of existence.
Now, since Rev is at the front of my name, I am contractually obligated to talk about 2/
@lack religion /s.
Kierkegaard is often painted as seeking atheism or using Christianity only for his philosophical framework. I would argue that his connection to his God, which he found in a relationship with Jesus, was his only true leap of faith. He left his fiance. He never could force himself to enter the ministry, though he felt called. He struggled to want to move out of Copenhagen, though his relationships suffered there.
Ultimately, he ends his life, asking that the fifth verse of 3/
@lack a hymn be carved on his gravestone
Det er en liden tid
Saa har jeg vundet
Saa er den ganske stride
Med eet forsvundet
Saa kan jeg hvile mig
i Rosensale
og uafladelig
min Jesum tale
In a little while
I will have won
the battle will
at once be done
Then I can rest
in a hall of roses
and ceaslessly
speak to my Jesus.
His leap of faith was a connection to the divine.
I do not believe that is the only leap available. See the above example about love. Some days it is the ability to 4/
@lack be able to see oneself as a person of worth, whether sacred or secular. 5/5
@revhambrick Thank you for the great response! I wish I had more time to read these days; I'm not really familiar with Kierkegaard and he sounds fascinating.
So in a general way I might agree with a "leap" of sorts being needed as part of the human condition. We're stuck with a few sticky puzzles like solipsism and induction, and even after that we can't have full knowledge of any situation, so we always have to act with incomplete information and just muddle on. However, I don't think it's as simple as just choosing an arbitrary conclusion and moving forward with certainty. I try to scale the amount of confidence in my current tentative conclusions to the quality and quantity of the evidence I have, and move forward cautiously, revising conclusions as needed as new information becomes known.
Maybe I'm not following the "love example" that clearly? I think there are many different kinds of things we mean by "love"... There's an emotion, which at its core is not logical, but happens for reasons. I think introspection can show us many of the reasons underlying emotions like love, though some of those may be more instinctual or subliminal and not fully available to introspection. Then there's a relationship that may start with emotion or a risk taken in the face of uncertainty, but it can only grow if it is sustained and nurtured by reasons and evidence. I think this seems pretty logical and rational to me!
What a lovely conversation! Forgive me for coming in weeks later. :) I like very much what both of you said.
As an atheist / pantheist with a philosophy background :) I'll add that even the most thoroughgoing rationalist or empiricist must take something, or some cloud of things, more or less on faith, or at least without support, just because there is no given foundation.
If we come to a conclusion by reasoning from some premises, we must assume (if only provisionally) that our reasoning and our premises are correct, or at least correct enough to (provisionally) accept. If we see our conclusions in some more holistic light, as a mutually-justifying cloud say, we must still assume / have faith that the entire cloud is good enough to accept.
The, or a, question that remains is what sort of things we are willing, or eager, to accept unsupported like that. :)
@ceoln @revhambrick
Well said!
I prefer to think of those unsupported assumptions as "provisionally accepted" and not "taken on faith" because to me the latter phrasing feels like it implies more certainty than is actually warranted. But that might just be my baggage with the "f-word" and your mileage my vary.
I'd say a good goal, generally speaking, is to reduce the set of unsupported assumptions to the smallest number possible.