Re: I wasn't "discounting" Glenn's story or his questions

Sorry Alexanian, but C S Lewis's beliefs are far closer to mine than yours,
as his are based on a reasoning faith. You can't make Lewis a fundamentalist
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "ed babinski" <ed.babinski@furman.edu>; "Bill Payne"
<bpayne15@juno.com>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 1:13 PM
Subject: RE: I wasn't "discounting" Glenn's story or his questions

> You choose your belief system. That is all there is to it. Every
> one believes, even the atheist, but our beliefs may differ. You may
> base your beliefs in "reason" but on the final analysis there is some
> presuppositions that you make that are self-evident to you. That is
> your set of beliefs.
>
> I quote from C.S. Lewis,
>
>
> Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is
> the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, in spite
> of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your
> reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I
> do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but
> when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked
> terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real
> self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary
> virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can
> never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a
> creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on
> the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently, one must
> train the habit of Faith.
>
> The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods
> change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted
> Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately
> held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily
> prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of
> the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we
> believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain
> alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you
> examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I
> wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of
> it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
>
> Mere Christianity, Chapter on Faith, page 123 in my copy.
>
>
>
> Moorad
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of ed babinski
> Sent: Sat 10/23/2004 1:15 AM
> To: Bill Payne; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: I wasn't "discounting" Glenn's story or his questions
>
>
>
> Dear Bill,
> Hi. If you read my reply I discounted nothing, in fact I began by saying
> that coincidences CAN agree perfectly with one's beliefs and religious
> assumptions, yet the question remains whether such a coincidence
> constitutes "sufficient proof" of EVERYTHING that a person believes about
> God, the supernatural, and the Bible. For instance, members of Jehovah's
> Witnesses and other religions also have stories of coincidences to share.
> (Heck, there's more Jehovah's Witnesses than Southern Baptists on the
> planet. Surely the JWs have SOME stories to tell. )
>
>
> Bill Payne <bpayne15@juno.com> writes:
> >Glenn shared this story on this list some years ago. You should be able
> >to search the archives for "translator" or "Turkish" and come up with it
> >in a few. Sounds like you've already figured out a way to discount it
> >though.
> >
> >On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 11:59:05 -0400 "ed babinski" <ed.babinski@furman.edu>
> >writes:
> >>
> >> All I wondered about were more of the circumstances of the story you
> >> alluded to. I am interested in testimonies. I read dozens of
> >> testimony
> >> books of Christians when I was born again, and read dozens of other
> >> autogriographies of others who left the fold too.
> >
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>
Received on Sat Oct 23 16:38:24 2004