"To successfully impart knowledge, communicators need to understand how people process information, how they modify their existing knowledge and how worldviews affect their ability to think rationally. It’s not just what people think that matters, but how they think," he says.It's a recursive (self referential) universe if you are human. All you CAN know is banging around in your head if you are a pure physicalist, and while Descartes thought that the beginning of all knowledge was "I think, therefore I am", it is earlier than that ...
Man always wants to be the "center of the universe" ... and today, science and humanist thought are the latest to claim that mantle. They are CERTAIN that THEY think "rationally". Even true brain scientists could tell them that what all humans do is RATIONALIZE -- we are so beset with confirmation bias and selective "facts" that none of us are remotely objective.
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."FIRST, you have to recognize your human place in the universe -- tiny, temporal, needy, dependent, emotional, fragile, easy to confuse.
From there, you can pretty much decide "it is all meaningless, I prefer to not think about it", **OR** you can decide "there is more to me and what I see around me than mere randomness, I want to believe there is a purpose, something in my core SCREAMS there is more, and I think I'll look for it".
From that point, Christianity is a pretty quick and easy to understand answer -- none of the other religions offer anything like the success in history of Christianity, nor anything like a God that cares enough for man to take human form and die to save him. What's more, we have 11 Apostles and hundreds of people that saw the risen Savior. Ten of the 11 Apostles died martyrs declaring that knowledge to the end, along with many others.
To die for what you believe when you THINK it is true, but have no way of verifying it, is one thing. To die a horrible death for something you know to have been a lie -- as the 10 Apostles would have if Christ did not rise, is beyond comprehension or belief. But that is what you MUST believe if you are to deny the Resurrection!
Our thinking is often in error, as is the thinking of the dominant political parties, scientists, journalists, thinkers, etc.
The beginning of knowledge and wisdom has always been and will always be the fear of the Lord! It is the only escape from human centric thought.
'via Blog this'
The whole who's more rational debate is interesting to me. You should look at the book "the ultimate proof of creation" and my review of it. I'd be interested in your opinion over a coffee sometime.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/review/REB01KBCW9KVK/ref=cm_cr_rev_detup_redir?_encoding=UTF8&asin=0890515689&cdForum=Fx3APC0ZBXO53JF&cdPage=1&cdThread=TxBLS1387B70R7&newContentID=Mx10B0D159KGMDN&store=books#Mx10B0D159KGMDN