At 12:19 PM 3/20/99 -0800, KMO wrote:
>Unless the Dali Lama is a Neo-cheater extraordinaire, pretending to
>value spiritual concerns and compassionate action simply becuase those
>are the trappings of his position of power, then I think that his
>religious sensabilities and convictions are a very significant part of
>his personal identity. If the only acceptable usage for the word "faith"
>in this forum is as a synonym for "rigid adherence to a falsifiable
>claim without evidence or even in spite of evidence to the contrary"
>then it may well be that the Dali Lama is a faithless man.
I concur with all of the above. Here's my simplistic analysis of
the great faith debate so far:
Con-side: "It is counter-productive to use the same word for
distinctly different meanings (at least in our own discussions)
because it causes confusion, miscommunication, equivocation
and generally wastes a lot of time and effort that could be
better devoted to more relevant, interesting discussions."
Have I misrepresented either position? Are there any others?
>If that's the only definition that we can all accomodate, then I take
>back every word I ever wrote in defense of faith and propose a new word,
>"phaith." I think Eric provided us with a very useful starting
>definition for "phaith" as "the internalizing and embodying of a
>principle, (to which I would add) frequenlty resulting from an
>experience of boundary dissolution and/or seeming participation in a
>wider, more pervasive consciousness than is the accepted norm and
>integrating the principle and/or the effects of the experience into
>one's actions, perceptions, and decission making."
I fully support coming up with a new word for this profound concept,
but would prefer one that could be used in spoken discourse in
addition to writing.
--
David McFadzean david@lucifer.com
Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/