In the face of doubt it is sometimes said, "I am of two minds on this". The recognition of two minds makes communication and the discovery of newness possible. With respect to beliefs we hold, two minds allow for doubt. And that can be healthy for decisions based on belief can work two ways, that is, with good outcomes and with bad. Perhaps most decisions we make are ambivalent in outcome because reasoning behind them is often of two minds or more.
Dialog within the mind is a natural process of openness to reason, openness to learn. Openness to learn supposes openness of mind to differences and willingness to change when experience and better judgment call for change. After all, a fence does have two sides to it and sometimes we need to jump fences.
So it is with worldview, with belief, and with education. Fixation in old presumptions in any of these areas is irrational, counter-intuitional, and hurtful in outcomes. Take, for example, worldview and the presumptions of beliefs behind a discredited worldview. This is a real societal problem today for human consciousness has largely moved from centrism, staticism and absolutism, bases of dominion theology and imperial politics, to evolutionary consciousness and openness to the transformational understandings of liberation (democratic) theology/politics.
Personally, I've been wrestling for fifty years now (1957-2007) in a committed capacity to discover the common ground of belief and to reconcile faith and reason, religion and science. Throughout this time I have felt alone and viewed upon as a skeptic of questionable faith and intelligence. Throughout this time, and even now, I am of two minds in the journey-quest of truth, knowledge and fidelity. While the rationality that has brought me to my worldview and belief system is compelling to me it isn't equally compelling to others. So, I am constantly called to resolve my inner uncertainties; this I do by asking questions:
Is my truth understandable only to me?
Is the truth I find something others cannot find?
Will doubt prevail and despair the truth I seek?
Is the truth we find a matter of where we look for it?
Is truth different in different places?
Can any two people be in the same place and come to different truth?
Can truth differ within the same religion?
What is religion if not the affirmation of fulfilling relationships?
Can others not of my religion not understand my truth?
That it takes time to understand and come to truth, I understand,
not coming to understanding, I don't understand.
For fifty years I have pursued new worldview truth and still I seem alone with it. What is it others don't get? Is this a deception on my part, and if so how can it persist so long? Where is the deception? Surely, others can uncover the deception for me? If it isn't a deception, what is it? My sense tells me that it is cosmic awareness against which to measure everything and which refuses to be gainsaid and to allow trivia or doubts to unsettle it. I am convinced that every person possesses it deep down, but in different degrees. It is the deep-down intuitional ground of health and sanity by which faithfulness and authenticity are secured. It is this conviction that holds me to the work of reconciling faith and reason, religion and science. And isn't that the educated thing to do?
Education seems to be in trouble, if for no other reason than the alienation of many people from it due to high costs, whether of maintaining infrastructures and personnel, or whether due to ancient presumptions and motivational pretexts of system-engaged people. Does education's worldview yet cling to imperial-era thinking? Are there practices of elitism that prevent education from serving a larger and more diverse population? Is there a singular and universal defect within education, static worldview, for example, that gets in the way of institutional effectiveness? From the personal and social points of view, is there a singular, overriding outcome, above all others, that is the primary objective of education? What is it? What needs to be done to reprioritize professional motivation, if it needs to be reprioritized? And finally, is education not about facilitating the justification of personal living, the sustainability of social living and the conscionable harmony of communal living?
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Comments: 5
The first six sentences in the second to last paragraph you speak of "deception". I can only say look to the 3rd century "desert fathers" they will speak to you.
Shalom
As Nietzche said, "If god doesn't exist we would invent him."
More importantly, religion provides absolute validation for societal and political power. To wit, Every despot that has taken their nation to war, has done so "with god on their side." In the end the only things that is proven is that one "imaginary friend" is more powerful than another.
George Bush and Osama bin Laden are philosophically aligned in that they both believe that they are serving
God's purposes.
I think they are both wrong because, I spoke to God last night and boy is she pissed.
About the pope's conversation with German broadcasters and Vatican Radio the National Catholic Reporter (8/25/06, pg 3) writes: "Pope Benedict XVI said women should not have to face obstacles as they seek a greater role in church even as he reiterated church teaching against female priests. 'I believe that women themselves, with their energy and strength, with their superiority, with what I'd call their spiritual power, will know how to make their own space. And we will have to try and listen to God so as not to stand in their way.'"