How open minded are we?

[Serena03]

An interesting counter to such a dismissal of God is offered in Ibsen's first successful play Brand of 1865. Here the priest Brand, living in a humble manse under the overhang of a remote glacier subject to avalanches, willingly sacrifices his life to an omnipotent and unchangeable God, a God of love.

His God is fully defined by an unqualified, infinite and absolute love for the individual, a love without weakness or wavering. Brand is unreservedly a disciple and, for him, uncompromising love is the only possible truth. Human truths fade into insignificance alongside his timeless and limitless perspective. He is a man of action while other look on.

Thank you, but the forces of love itself is a 'human truth' hardly considered insignificant and hardly able to fully comprehend rationally. How is this any different to state that love equals God when it is essentially just another easy explanation of a complicated concept? If a perceptions of God means for one to label or credit every mysterious force or nature with God, so be it, but it does not get us any closer to the truth. Love could equal truth, but it is still irrelevant to God. Since God cannot be universally justified, the principles of logic are becoming more and more ambiguous and may just cancel out due the overbearing alternating calculations. The mind itself, really the most powerful creator, creating concepts and sensations even it cannot comprehend. But all in all, if you need this sort of system for guidance in your life, I can respect that, it just has never been very satisfactory for me. My mind has never felt more caged.

[ClaesGefvenberg]

A mind as open as the sky is indeed worthy of having, but not so wide that the ground is no longer a boundary.

Yes. In business peope often talk about the need to have a Birds Eye view, which too often ends up as a Bird Brains view (Both head and feet in the clouds). I prefer to go for the Giraffe's view, which provides you with a good overview, and still allows you to keep your feet firmly planted on Terra Firma.

I'm not saying that this is easy, but I try...

/Claes

[Lynne50]

Haven't posted in a really long time, but thought I would add my two cents in to this discussion. I'm not sure why religion was brought into the mix since it's faith-based and cannot be proven. Christianity, however, bases it's religion on historical facts. Jesus was a real living person as well as many of the prophets in the Bible. However, we still have to take a leap of faith that what these prophets heard was the Word of God.
In regards to the initial points...how open-minded are we? I don't think anyone mentioned Fear, as being a motivating force.
It seems when we become fearful our open-mindedness takes a back seat. Just yesterday Oprah revisited a town in West Virginia after 23 years.In 1987, one of the men in town, who had AIDS, swam in the local pool and the mayor shut it down. Oprah's initial show, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, pitted the townspeople against this one young man. I'm sure many of those people in her audience at the time would have thought they were open-minded, but all logic and compassion went out the window. Of course, as one the women said today... Knowledge is a powerful thing. So what we may or may not be open-minded about today, may change in the future, when we get more facts. Being close-minded should not prevent people from being compassionate nor respectful of other people.

[Gladys]

I'm not sure why religion was brought into the mix since it's faith-based and cannot be proven. Christianity, however, bases it's religion on historical facts. Jesus was a real living person as well as many of the prophets in the Bible. However, we still have to take a leap of faith that what these prophets heard was the Word of God.

For the priest, Brand, his desperate leap of faith had nothing to do with "historical facts" and everything to do with the absurd prospect of salvation, in the moment, through uncompromising love. An open mind?

So what we may or may not be open-minded about today, may change in the future, when we get more facts. Being close-minded should not prevent people from being compassionate nor respectful of other people.

For Ibsen's Brand, being open-minded is to love and absolute love is unchangeable, dispelling all fear.

[altheskeptic]

I am close minded. It takes a lot to pry it open.

I just love to argue with someone as close minded as I am...as long as we disagree.