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The Experience of God, Chapter 1

In chapter one of Hart's novel, he introduces many different topics that go way in depth about multiple controversial issues. Something that I wanted to touch on is when he begins to mention the truth about a perfectly circular argument: how it makes sense to believe in God if one believes in the real power of reason, because one is equally justified in believing in reason if one believes in God. The way Hart tries to put it into simpler terms would be it makes sense to believe in both God and reason; however, it is ultimately contradictory to believe in one but not the other (19).

If we commit to reason, then what Hart is trying to state is that we are committing to God as well. There cannot be one without the other, and I stand strong in him with this.
Think about what motivates you and what your actions and words are because of the 'reasons' you do them. We are all doing things for reasons, and what Hart says is that if God is your motivation, then He is also your reason. Towards the end of his argument on the same page, he goes into talk about how life can be a glorious, terrible, beautiful, and horrifying things.. but at the end is very meaningless, and this is where I come to question how he goes from reason and God to this statement.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 5, 2017 at 8:52 AM

    I know that it is contradictory to believe in one but not the other because others would say, "God created us so that we could reason and we reason because we want to think more about him (his existence)." This whole world is full of reasons because why would God put knowledge in a fruit or evil in the world. These are all questions that have reasons, but we would never know the true answer to these reasons just like how some atheists would reason if there is a God or not.

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  2. Delanie DavisOctober 5, 2017 at 12:50 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Delanie DavisOctober 5, 2017 at 12:54 PM

    Is Hart stating that God is Being, so he is also motivation or is he stating that everyone should be motivated by God? Or maybe both?

    ReplyDelete

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