Comments on: Four Points of Contact http://metaphorager.net/four-points-of-contact/ All That's News To Me, I Print Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:49:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: micha http://metaphorager.net/four-points-of-contact/#comment-443 micha Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:05:25 +0000 http://metaphorager.net/?p=349#comment-443 In your language, though, I would have said: It is the nature of religious <b>knowledge</b> to be compelling only to the <b>knower</b>. There are religious experiences that are as sure to the one experiencing them as your knowledge that you were typing this blog entry. However, they are inherently internal, and thus can't be compelling to anyone else. The personal nature of religion that I was asserting does not inhere in the distinction you're making with the words "belief" vs. "knowledge". Even at the level of knowledge, the "evidence" isn't one that can be shared. If it could, we would be in the empirical domain, and thus be discussing science, not religion. IMHO, this was the point of our ancestors' words at Mt Horeb, "we will do and we will listen" (Exodus 24:7). The thing Judaism is based on is "listening" to our own doing. -micha In your language, though, I would have said:
It is the nature of religious knowledge to be compelling only to the knower.

There are religious experiences that are as sure to the one experiencing them as your knowledge that you were typing this blog entry. However, they are inherently internal, and thus can’t be compelling to anyone else.

The personal nature of religion that I was asserting does not inhere in the distinction you’re making with the words “belief” vs. “knowledge”. Even at the level of knowledge, the “evidence” isn’t one that can be shared. If it could, we would be in the empirical domain, and thus be discussing science, not religion.

IMHO, this was the point of our ancestors’ words at Mt Horeb, “we will do and we will listen” (Exodus 24:7). The thing Judaism is based on is “listening” to our own doing.

-micha

]]>