(though one passage in the bible kinda' scares me, and it has nothing to do with devils, angels, war or hell. I think it was something along the lines of "and man should not waste his time pondering about the cosmos..."...seriously, that makes me feel as if they WANTED people to be ignorant back then...I could be wrong, or misreading it though)
it is a motif in abrahamic religion and particularly what we call the old testament, this idea that God will sometimes hide things from us for a number of reasons. The main ones suggested are :
Ignorance is punishment for sin
Ignorance of enemies allows for the success of god's chosen people
Ignorance is blissful (this sometimes turned to be that ignorant bliss is sin...but that's another matter)
allowing yourself to pursue thought and theory too far will lead you to become negligent
allowing yourself to pursue thought and theory too far will lead you to become arrogant
allowing yourself to pursue thought and theory too far will lead you to question your faith in God
Now that last one is not to say that science demands God not exist, or that God demands science not exist. Most devout, intelligent people will attest that to deny the existence of God is to live an empty life, while to deny the accuracy of science is to live in ignorance and therefor be sinful. Both amount to taking God's gifts for granted. Therefor, a scientific knowledge of the universe is not an attack against God, but is created and provided by God as the ultimate test of our faith, and that a person who can understand and appreciate the scientific world but maintain their faith in God is the most true follower.
Food for thought.
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Helm - As usual, the easiest way to present an idea is through a simple dichotomy, and you're right, nothing is that simple. You've also had a bit of a misreading there : being internally defined is not being counter-defined or ignoring the external, and I would never say that it is. If you're just going to do the opposite of what you're told, there's nothing internal there, it is merely, like you said, being defined by the external in a negative manner. And yeah, there's nothing healthy about running away or blindly rejecting things. Still, there's nothing healthy about blindly accepting, either.
I think that there are not so many terrible do-not-computes though, as the devision is one of intention, not of manifestation. It's a matter of approach - you need to come at everything with an understanding that you are coming as yourself, and that you are vulnerable but opportune in that state. To make things particularly banal, a person who plays football or watches anime purely because they should or shouldn't (external pressure) gains nothing, a person who does either because of a
genuine desire (internal pressure) may further themselves thereby. If you choose your friends
purely because of their station (external pressure), they will never be as good or as powerful as someone befriended by a true (internal) sense of affection. (And yeah, I'm trying to say purely because nothing is ever pure, so it softens the dichotomy a bit.)
This also touches on the idea I've been mentioning that happiness is, at it's core, another set of paradoxes : being vulnerable, yet unafraid to lose, trusting, yet not reliant, adoring, but not obsessive, etc. Which also makes life complicated.
In general, I'm a very accepting person, despite my laying out everything as rules
.