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ismnotwasm

(41,919 posts)
1. Read "Answer to Job" by Carl Jung
Thu Jun 27, 2013, 08:10 PM
Jun 2013

"On account of its somewhat unusual content, my little book requires a short preface. I beg of you, dear reader, not to overlook it. For, in what follows, I shall speak of the venerable objects of religious belief. Whoever talks of such matters inevitably runs the risk of being torn to pieces by the two parties who are in mortal conflict about those very things. This conflict is due to the strange supposition that a thing is true only if it presents itself as a physical fact. Thus some people believe it to be physically true that Christ was born as the son of a virgin, while others deny this as a physical impossibility. Everyone can see that there is no logical solution to this conflict and that one would do better not to get involved in such sterile disputes. Both are right and both are wrong. Yet they could easily reach agreement if only they dropped the word "physical." "Physical" is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof." CG Jung


I'm not a believer, but as Jung points out, that means nothing to those of faith. The logical fallacies, or even the ridiculousness of a river running backward, are true to those who believe and need no proof. (which is why church needs to stay far away from state)

Yet another quote I like, one of the type that keeps me just this side of being agnostic rather than athiest is this:


“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”

― William James
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