Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Opara's Emotion and Reason in Religion

Thirteen, not to stop at the number of apostles, so Prof Wariboko is your room in the jungle or in the zoo to make you rationally postulate that a lion could jump into your room and make your flight or fight both rational and emotional?

Fourteen, do you really agree with Aistototle that the golden mean is best when he rejected democracy and monarchy in preference for aristocracy?

I think that Chidi is quoting from Thomas Merton without necessarily agreeing with him in toto. I think therefore I am. Thinking is Greek and emotion is African said the Negritudist. How about the knowledge that we do not know enough.

Biko

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On Sat, 6/1/18, Nimi Wariboko <nimiwari@msn.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Opara's Emotion and Reason in Religion
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, 6 January, 2018, 17:52











Dear Sir:
 
This statement is too general.
First of all, spontaneity can spring from deep
contemplation. Deep contemplation can lead to sudden ecstasy
or outburst of praise or adoration.
Second, worship as an appropriate response to God, the
divine, or the sacred can be spontaneous when the ethical
principles of one's faith has become second nature in one.
Third, your statement assumes too much of a division between
emotion and reason/rationality.
They are always intermingled. When a lion jumps into my
room and I immediately take flight, is it all emotion of
fear? My brain might have calculated that the probability of
my survival in the grip of the lion is very low and thus
sent the necessary chemicals
to activate my sudden flight. My apparent emotion of fear
is based on some solid calculations. Scientists now tell us
that our brains make decisions faster than we can
consciously perceive them. Fourth, emotions such as
compassion—as philosopher Martha Nussbaum
has amply demonstrated in her book, Upheavals in
Thought—are based on reason. She rejects your kind of
hard and fast demarcation between emotion and reason. Though
compassion is an emotion, Nussbaum argues that it is
rational (based on reason), and
not driven by irrational sentimentality. She rejects any
understanding of emotion that opposes it to reason. The
emotion of compassion has a cognitive (thought) structure.
Fifth, emotion does not always obscure contemplation.
Emotions can drive reason or contemplation.
Martin Luther once said reason is whore, often prostituting
itself to defend certain emotions. The great scientists of
the world are driven by passion for their research. So are
the philosophers and footballers for their own interests.

 
Now let me come to the second part
of your statement, the nature of God. Sixth, is wonder as in
your "wondrous essence" devoid of emotion? Seventh, what
is the "essence
of God." Who decides what it is? Now when I see my fellow
human being suffering and I spontaneously rise to help her,
am I not worshiping God or in tune with the essence of God?
Didn't Jesus Christ in Matthew 25 translate true faith or
religion into helping
others. Is this also not contained in the book of James in
the Bible?  When does thinking, contemplation,
Aristotelean contemplative existence become the "essence
of God" we must all accept? Even Aristotle (Nicomachean
Ethics) in working toward his
notion of contemplative existence as human flourishing
(eudaimonia) passed through a theory of virtue, which
is a mean between excesses, two extremes. For instance, for
him, courage is the mean of cowardice and rashness, two
extreme emotions. Reason
enables one, according to him, to come to the mean between
the two.
 
Let us turn to the final part of
your statement, "from which true reverence emanates."
Eighth, is reverence different from worship; some may argue
they are same? Ninth,
what is the meaning of "true" here? Tenth, do you mean
to say that true reverence for God cannot emanate from deeds
(as Jesus argues in Matt. 25) or from deep love (which is an
emotion. See also Mark 12:30-31)? Eleventh, do you mean that
true reverence for
the divine cannot emanate from the fear of hell or love of
heaven? Religion has always played on these two emotions?
Twelfth and finally, if religion (the holy, the numen) is
deeply tied to emotions (as Rudolf Otto argues:
mysterium tremendum et fascinans) should we be quick
to define the "essence of contemplation" or believers'
understanding of the essence of God as opposed to emotion.
Religion is often a mixture of emotion and reason (as in
other areas of human existence)
and these two take believers to the essence of God,
whatever that means. By the way, can we reasonably know the
essence of God apart from how any one particular religion or
spiritual practice defines it?

 
My brother Chidi Opara pardon me
for my spontaneous reaction (which may or may be reasonable
or rational) to your one sentence. Has my emotion here led
me to contemplate
on God or divine the Divine in this short response to you?
 I appreciate your ability to provoke reaction to your
thoughts.

 
Thanks and blessings,
 
 
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
  
 

From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara
<chidi.opara@gmail.com>

Reply-To:
"usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com"
<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Date: Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 4:37 PM

To: USA African Dialogue Series
<usaafricadialogue@gOpoooglegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's
Quote


 


Spontaneity in the worship
of God springs up from emotion, which obscures contemplation
of the wondrous essence of God, from which true reverence
emanates.


 


CAO.


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