i have another question i was hoping the theologians and others interested can answer.
has anyone ever written a treatment of all the thinkers who've defined god as unknowable.
is the idea of god as unknowable a way to think about it that's always been around. Does the idea take hold in certain eras? Which is to say, while ideas are always around, they can come to hold greater influence under certain conditions (to put it to simply) according to some authors.
or, even better, if'n ya want to trace it for me in, say, 15k, I'd love you forever and ever and ever. (heh. when i explained to my son what infinity meant, a couple of days later, as we were saying g'night, he threw his arms around me and said, "love you 'finity mommy!" now, if that isn't a good example of how, when we've conceptualized god, we are really conceptualizing society... i don't know what is.
which is why I'm asking. I was think about this whole privacy thing, and Simmel's answer as to why wer experience a sense of privacy and come to glorify privacy. And that led me to Goffman's investigation of the social interaction rituals around the presentation of our selves to one another -- through social rituals that uphold the sanctity of the individual through ironic one-upmanship and bragging -- where the sacredness of the individual is upheld when we let others brag and don't call them on it.
kelley
I personally loved a brief account of one explanation for god, it was Judaic. God was so lonely that he turned himself inside out with longing and made the world. Or, at least, that's how I recall it. Anyone heard of it?