Biblically-based discussions on Christian philosophy, authentarianism, and religious deconstruction.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Spiral Reasoning
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I'd put mathematical proofs further out on the spiral, at least for myself. I could have all the hard data in the world and still not believe that Jesus was the Christ/Messiah and Son of God. When I came to faith, the logical reasoning was the beginning for me (including the mathematical proofs). After that, it was the affairs of the heart and the things of the Spirit that drew me to true faith in Jesus.
I do love the chart, however. It is actually really cool, and I will put that feather in my hat for when I might find a use for it.
PS I switched to Beta-Blogger, so it won't let me comment under my Blogger identity on "regular" blogs. Save yourself the heart-ache and don't bother with it if it is offered to you.
Jared, Thanks for the comments. There are a couple of changes I'm going to make to this, actually. I'm going to change the statement, "Whatever is not supported by the Bible is false" to "Whatever disagrees with the Bible is false." I think that's more accurate. The grass is green, even though it may not be "supported" by the Bible.
Also, "Mathematical Proofs" will be changed to "Mathematical Probability". Again, that's just more accurate. You can't really prove mathematically that Jesus was who He said He was, but it's very, very probable, based on the evidence.
The order is another enigma. I think this spiral is such that a person can work backwards or forewards and even skip rungs. It's going to be different for each individual. I didn't come to faith in that order, either. I was raised Christian, so I started out in the middle and worked my way backwards to try to define why I believed what I did (except, of course, I never got to the end--not believing in God.) A friend of mine suggested that maybe a picture of a tree would work better. He may be right, but I like this because it is built on increasing, reasonable logic. It's a good picture for someone who is trying to explain their faith to someone else, I think.
I'm glad you like it. I may update it with those corrections here in the near future.
2 comments:
I'd put mathematical proofs further out on the spiral, at least for myself. I could have all the hard data in the world and still not believe that Jesus was the Christ/Messiah and Son of God. When I came to faith, the logical reasoning was the beginning for me (including the mathematical proofs). After that, it was the affairs of the heart and the things of the Spirit that drew me to true faith in Jesus.
I do love the chart, however. It is actually really cool, and I will put that feather in my hat for when I might find a use for it.
PS I switched to Beta-Blogger, so it won't let me comment under my Blogger identity on "regular" blogs. Save yourself the heart-ache and don't bother with it if it is offered to you.
Jared,
Thanks for the comments. There are a couple of changes I'm going to make to this, actually. I'm going to change the statement, "Whatever is not supported by the Bible is false" to "Whatever disagrees with the Bible is false." I think that's more accurate. The grass is green, even though it may not be "supported" by the Bible.
Also, "Mathematical Proofs" will be changed to "Mathematical Probability". Again, that's just more accurate. You can't really prove mathematically that Jesus was who He said He was, but it's very, very probable, based on the evidence.
The order is another enigma. I think this spiral is such that a person can work backwards or forewards and even skip rungs. It's going to be different for each individual. I didn't come to faith in that order, either. I was raised Christian, so I started out in the middle and worked my way backwards to try to define why I believed what I did (except, of course, I never got to the end--not believing in God.) A friend of mine suggested that maybe a picture of a tree would work better. He may be right, but I like this because it is built on increasing, reasonable logic. It's a good picture for someone who is trying to explain their faith to someone else, I think.
I'm glad you like it. I may update it with those corrections here in the near future.
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