Literalism does not necessarily determine existence. For example, we utilise story to share a purpose or lesson. We utilise descriptives and adjectives to describe a concept, without even knowing about the concept directly.
Making grammatical sense is not the same as developing a cogent argument. The best way to test your logic is to put it to good use in real life. Call it literalism or reality, if your car breaks down and you don't know how to fix it, you are stuck unless someone who knows how to fix it does it for you.
If you are lost alone in a forest and you don't know how to survive in it, you die unless someone else rescues you first. All the philosophical explanations will not save you.
We can not touch love, nor understand it, but we utilise symbols, metaphors and visual depictions to convey this concept in a tangible way.
Love is real, even if our qualifiers fail to fully express the emotion that can only be experienced through feeling.
Love is a real emotion that can be defined in different ways by different individuals and can be observed by a series of behaviors. Love is unique in every individual as is pain and any other emotions. Your emotions only exist in you. They are not transferable and they do not exist outside of you. No one would pray to your emotions and no one would attribute superpowers to them.
Same with God and Eir existence.
Exactly, God is an emotion that you feel. One that is real to you in a different way that it is real to any other person because your emotions only exist in you, and your god only exists in you.
Yes, emotions are all powerful. I knew a woman that died of sadness after her husband was murdered. I also know people that have risked their lives out of love. Ithink our emotions are all powerful and what guides most of our actions
and why can Ey not utilise story to bring about eternal purposes.
You and other people are the ones that tell yourselves and others stories about God. You cannot blame your emotions for the stories that you may use to express those emotions. The emotions are yours, not the other way around, and emotions cannot tell stories. People do.
Scripture brings us to give a glimpse of God's power and greatness, even if our conceptions are limitations and idols of fancy that God's limitless Personality goes beyond.
Scripture comes from Latin and it means literally "writing". People write poetry, philosophy, novels, books of mathematics, religious books, and other writings about anything in life including emotions. Writing was considered mysterious by those that were illiterate many centuries ago and the word "scripture" (writing) had a mystical sort of air about it. Now people use the word "scripture" with the same mystique as illiterate people did when the word "scripture" was used instead of the word "writing".
Now both words are used. The old one is used when people want to add mystique to written material, and the word "writing" is used when people simply concentrate on content.
Whether you want to call it "Scripture" or simply "writing", emotions do not write anything. People do.
"The Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding."
-- 2 Nephi 31:3
Can you see the purposeful intent to give some words mystique? Notice the purposeful use of Old English as if that gave it more credibility. Do your feelings speak Old English?
"And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasure. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever.
Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written."
-- 2 Nephi 29:9-10
More like the mother saying "I am not your father, so I can not truly say about him; nevertheless, I know him by these virtues that he possesses..."
I have a mother and a father, and I think it is best for children to have a mother and a father. It sounds sad that the child would not know his/her father and that the mother would only know the father by his virtues. Is he generous and pays for favors? It sounds unwholesome.
