thread: 2006-09-08 : Picky-choosy religion, 3 views
On 2006-09-12, Ian Burton-Oakes wrote:
But those ideas and attitudes are aids to salvation, not salvation itself.
See, but as soon as you say something like this, I have to ask—what gives you the capacity to say to someone else that, for example Mormonism isn't the right path? You say, well, they are flying against the Holy Spirit. Well, that seems like a load of hokey—the Holy Spirit flies where you say it does, and only there? If I go all Meister Eckhart, what is to say that all these anti-Christian responses are not the true expression of the holy spirit—God saving his people from the idolatry of his would be followers?
You want to go back to tradition and appeal to the tried and true, but that is not a spiritual statement, that is an empirical one, and a shoddy one at that (a point Jonathan Walton's description of tradition makes clear). If it is the 'flight of the holy spirit' and not any particular belief, then you have no place from which to judge—the person you judge may just have caught a different updraft than you. And this whole discussion here just becomes a game of 'You say tomato, I say tomato, let's call the whole thing off.'
But I don't quite think that is what you want, is it? If it isn't, then how can you knock people for raising the belief talk? It's what started this—"I believe monotheism, I believe..." If it isn't about belief, then there is no reason for you to criticize a girl for worshipping Cthulu.
