While reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, it is apparent that one can question their true faith and where their beliefs really come from. From Paine it brought many questions of my loyalties lie and where my faith comes from. Throughout life, from time to time, questions of what is true from the Lord can be muddy. With this writing, there are many contradictions, false facts, and inconsistent thoughts. Paine’s main thesis discussed in the writing was his open mindedness for others to accept other religions and not blindly follow other people with that they believe.
The main reason Lawrence Cunningham and John Kelsay use a phenomenological view point towards religion is for a better understanding. A better understand on a number of aspects for multiple different religions. The phenomenological approach helps them accomplish this by letting them look at religion in an un-bias way and be totally accepting of that religion’s traditions and ideas of sacred. They state in the text, “At its simplest, a phenomenological approach leads to an effort to understand religious thought and behavior from the point of view of the religious person.”, (Cunningham and Kelsay 4) this means that if that person says that a certain book or object is sacred we take them at their word that that book or object is sacred. Phenomenology is also geared towards creating a framework for understanding religious traditions.
“ A Symbol can provide a meaningful way to talk about God.” Discuss A symbol is something that represents something else. Symbolic language is evocative in the sense that it brings strong images, memories or feelings to mind when you look at it or read it. The purpose of these strong images or feelings, like any religious language, is to generate the meaning to an individual to exactly what God is. By meaning I talk of something which corresponds to actuality. A symbol is not literally stating what something is; instead it acts like a road sign to point you in the direction of where the truth lies.
Authorial intent is when the author control the meaning of the text and the meaning, author intent according to textbook is defined as that which the author wishes to convey with his signs. Reader response and author intent are very different from each other. author intent is less bias. Assignment 10-2 Communication is crucial when it comes to read the scriptures, communication lies at the heart of interpreting a biblical text. For example, the Bible is God’s revelation to us, God’s purpose is to communicate with us about Himself and His will for us.
PRECIOUS The movie I’m conducting a content analysis on is “Precious”, which is based on the novel “Push”. Claireece Precious Jones, also known as Precious is overweight African American teenager who is still in Junior High School at the age of 16 years old. She lives with her mother in an apartment in the slums of New York. Precious is a victim of psychology, physical, and sexual abuse from both her mother and father. She has had one child and is pregnant with her second child by her father; that is considered incest.
It is through these types of questionnaire’s that give us a better and possibly a fuller understanding of someone and their personality. My personality questionnaire found me, my personality to be one who is Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Judging. I am not sure of what other traits the questionnaire may have told someone else, but when I was compared to individuals as Barak Obama, Ophra Winfrey – I was needless to say amazed, and amazingly I was also compared to King David. By what I perceive the first two individuals actions to be as I am not sure of their walk with the Lord, but I have had them on my prayer list and I have asked that their hearts be softened and listen to the Lord’s gentle knocking. But how would a questionnaire such as this measure an individual’s Christian and or Spiritual walk with God?
The argument from religious experience states that if we can experience God, then surely God must exist because what we experience must be real. There are many philosophers that try to explain this but the one I am going to focus on in this essay is William James. James defines religious experience as though it should be the primary topic in the study if religion rather than religious institutions, since institutions are merely the social descendent of genius. He also defines a religious experience as, 'The feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatsoever they may consider divine.’ To James a prominent feature of religious experience is mysticism. He says, '...propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical...' The marks to which he is referring to are inefficiently, notices quality, transiency and passivity.
A portion of it is there to show morals, if not give information on actual events. The Bible uses many figures of speech, some of which is not understood completely. Atheists tend to not see those figures of speech for what they truly mean. The fundamentalists tend to do the same, but with a different approach to the meaning. A balance must be set between fundamental and more "radical" approaches.
Messy Spirituality and the Core Book Reviews The books Messy Spirituality and the Core have spoken words of truth that I often don’t hear or in some cases, hear all too often. What I mean by that is the words God used through both of Mike Yaconelli’s books were words that I deal with. Words not only that I deal with, but at the same time words that adolescents hear and feel on a consistent basis. Both books offered advice to me personally and at the same time adolescents. Reading through both, I felt a more personal connection driven towards me when reading “Messy Spirituality” and an adolescent, big-picture connection when reading “The Core”.
Leafy was raped by her school teacher and she became pregnant with Janie. After Janie’s birth Leafy begins to drink and stay out all night. Eventually, she runs away leaving Janie with her mother. When Janie is sixteen nanny sees Janie kissing a boy