I\u2019ve had something of a revelation this morning, related to the old stand by question, \u201cdo you believe in God?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, I thought that this question was about belief in God. On reflection \u2013 I don\u2019t think that it is. I think that it\u2019s more akin to \u201chow\u2019s it going?\u201d Perhaps a bit more serious and intimate \u2013 but not much. When someone asks \u201chow\u2019s it going,\u201d the appropriate answer is \u201cnot bad \u2013 yourself?\u201d or a similar platitude. This is just a drop of the social grease that lets us get through our days and years without killing (too many of) each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think that people who ask \u201cdo you believe in God,\u201d are really asking \u201cdo you agree with me?\u201d \u201care you one of us?\u201d or maybe \u201cdo you think I\u2019m a good person?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This would explain a lot about how freaked out people get when I answer \u201cno,\u201d and also explains a lot about their total inability to explain this \u201cgod\u201d or \u201cbelief\u201d thing they\u2019re interrogating me about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This goes double for people who ask about a relationship with \u201cJesus.\u201d They seem unable to quantify to any extent exactly what that means besides \u201cwe\u2019re all cool \u2013 right?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve had something of a revelation this morning, related to the old stand by question, \u201cdo you believe in God?\u201d Historically, I thought that this question was about belief in God. On reflection \u2013 I don\u2019t think that it is. I think that it\u2019s more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}