Actual life Quote by George Pattison

“At a theoretical level, I think a naturalist approach to religion is just asking questions I'm not interested in. They're perfectly legitimate in their own terms, but they don't address the actual experience of how one or other aspect of religion becomes existentially meaningful to us in our actual lives. The fact that we ourselves are the subject of investigation makes all the difference.”

George Pattison

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Actual life Addresses Approach Asking Asking Question Asking questions Aspect Differences Facts Investigation Levels Meaningful Naturalist Not interested Religion Subjects Term Theoretical Thinking

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I'm not sure if Cupitt himself still uses this term, but it's useful in suggesting that, actually, there are more choices than the choice between nihilism and faith. In fact, the issue may not be faith as such but the fact that for millennia, Christianity has buttressed itself with a particular kind of metaphysics that has now seemingly reached the…

George Pattison

When I'm on the operating table, I'm happy for the surgeon to treat me as a machine, but the moment I return to consciousness I have other needs and aspirations that should be recognized. We're not here only to survive or extend our individual or species life but to do something seemingly more difficult, for which I've used words and…

George Pattison

But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger's that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start,…

George Pattison

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And perhaps this has to do with what I sense is a turning away from the idea of religion as being about conserving a…

George Pattison

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a paradox here! Kierkegaard's own indirect communication proposes that we start with the experience of those who don't believe and meet them on their own ground. His success in doing this is evidenced by the fact that, at least for some periods of the 20th century, aspects of his work became a major focus for radical thinkers…

George Pattison

I think he [Heidegger] sets the question up in a useful way and, despite appearances, he's not 'against' technology. He just wants us to…

George Pattison

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I still read a lot about teenage angst! Of course, any kind of mourning CAN become pathological and then it 'has to stop', but…

George Pattison

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But my point is that 'the death of God' is not something like the Battle of Waterloo or Magna Charta. It's not a historic…

George Pattison

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Barth's approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it…

George Pattison

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But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what we might call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of…

George Pattison

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Essentially I see the new atheism as largely part of the crisis of the left. Having failed to carry through its agenda in relation…

George Pattison

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In brief, I regard love as a more decisive focus of meaning than death. In terms of Heidegger's argument, this is because I think he misdescribes the importance of the deaths of others and focuses exclusively on my relation to my own death. But, in reality, the deaths of others have a more urgent and immediate impact on our lives…

George Pattison

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“On the other side of graduation was her actual life, the slow narrowing of possibilities that would catch her and freeze her in a…

Ling Ma

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“Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that the poet…

E.T.A. Hoffmann

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The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning; whereas, the experience gained from actual life is of…

Samuel Smiles

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“Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed…

E.M. Forster

“I like those very realistic paintings that look like photographs, or novels that are so much like actual life that you feel understood.”

Deb Caletti

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All actual life is encounter.

Martin Buber

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“The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained form actual life is of the…

Samuel Smiles

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“It is essential that a work of art should be self-consistent, that an artist should consciously or unconsciously draw a circle beyond which he…

T.S. Eliot

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“After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be…

Brock Clarke

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The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.

Sigmund Freud

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From this I conclude that the best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of…

Polybius

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One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which…

John Berger

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Actual life Quote by George Pattison

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