The Bishop

[_zeezrom]

Yeah, I'm being kind of silly.

But still...

Why do men say they are inspired? Are they delusional?

[_zeezrom]

I'm having trouble seeing how God can play any role at all since none of its inspiration can be trusted.

[_Chap]

Yeah, I'm being kind of silly.

But still...

Why do men say they are inspired? Are they delusional?

Well ... let's just say that a belief that they are being inspired by a deity is not the kind of belief that certain kinds of people thrust away from themselves very violently ...

[_Fence Sitter]

Yeah, I'm being kind of silly.

But still...

Why do men say they are inspired? Are they delusional?

Because it gives them divine authority without responsibility. I don't know about delusional but why would anyone reject such power?

[_honorentheos]

Yeah, I'm being kind of silly.

But still...

Why do men say they are inspired? Are they delusional?

In some ways, I think the broader question is interesting - From where comes the sense of moral superiority common to any group?

I apologize for mixing threads, but this line from Tess regarding Angel's brothers sets up the question:

Each brother candidly recognized that there were a few unimportant score of millions of outsiders in civilized society, persons who were neither University men nor churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than reckoned with and respected.

If a person is "All Church" or even "All College", the above can be seen as directly addressing the location if not the root of that person's sense of moral superiority. But I think it's much more universal than that.

As a mountain biker, you may or may not have ever encountered this, but I would say I've meet few people in my life as dogmatically certain of their "rightness" than amongst the liberal biking community. And in some ways "God" plays just as significant a role in that certitude, only as the source of the evil against which their particular virtues are pitted. From my view, it often seems the only difference between the two is the age of petigree of their moral argument.

My opinion again, but nuance and tolerance are the real opposites of what we are discussing. Inspired by God or something more base, intolerance is common among any group and generally serves as boundary defense. I've come to believe it's not a common mark of adulthood to overcome this, either. Maybe for good reason, though I'm not sure. When one does, it seems one ends up somewhere on the spectrum between Omar and his rubaiyat and Nietzche, with the Preacher somewhere between. "Vanity, vanity..."

ETA: the above is why that particular phrase from Tess stuck with me. Is "culturalization" an opposite to intellectual dexterity of the useful kind?