Should the egg not be chocolate, in keeping with the season?
It’s a difficult one to debate, because it really is a chicken and egg thing!
But, for the sake of starting the debate, I would say that experience is likely informs faith first – when we first know Jesus and our expectation of a Messiah – but as our love and knowledge of Him grows it is our faith that starts to transform us – sanctification.
Comment by youthworkerpete — April 8, 2009 @ 7:14 am
I think (perhaps) that experience often informs our faith, but it should be the other way round. I’m not waiting till I see a mountain move before having the faith to push some…
Maybe the point of a chicken and egg conundrum is not to see which came first, but to watch what happens after that: a life cycle of one producing the other
Yeah of course..but that shape’s not permanent, it’s just a starting point…for progressing to another shape…which shapes the starting point of the next shape….which…….
On your ‘more serious note’ – yes, I think there is a danger. As with so many other things, there are balances that need to kept, tensions that need to be held, mysteries that need to be ‘known’, even if they can’t be articulated…..
Let me just say that our experiences make our faith grow (at least gives us the opportunity to let it grow), where the faith transforms both our actions, and therefore our experiences, and our perceptions of said experiences.
Of cause it is dangerous to become unevenly weighted either way – faith cannot grow without experiences, and a faith that doesn’t transform our actions and perceptions is worthless.
And to answer the question of which was first, the chicken (experience) or the egg (faith) – God was first.
bo… “God was first.”… that’s cheating! but i like it!
off the subject but loosely connected…
a minister in my childhood gave an illustration of the difference between involvement and commitment. he said, when it came to the old english breakfast, the pig was fully ‘committed’ in terms of the giving of itself to the meal, where as the chicken was simply involved in it’s provision of the egg.
hope you enjoyed that little diversion.
Credo ut inteligam
Latin for “I believe in order that I may understand” – comes from St Anselm’s Proslogion.
Anselm claimed that it is impossible to understand Christian doctrines without faith or belief.
Reason itself cannot discover anything intelligible about God.
The view has inspired other explorations of non-intellectual or non-rational conditions of understanding.
Outside theology, it is popular to affirm that one must use the practical means of living in a culture in order to understand that culture, and that detached rational understanding of a culture is impossible.
“I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand (credo ut intelligam).
It’s definitely like this for me…
Comment by growingenthusiasm — April 8, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
it must be a he… he has a wobboly throat thing… now ‘m uber confused
but must give my input…john stot said we should have a bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other… this doesn’t mean they are equal but are understanding one one must shape our understanding of the other.
we can never start from a point where one and the other are not intertwined.
and this is seen in the bible tooo, always a good place to look!… when peter has his vision and meets cornelius in Acts 10 he realises that the gospel is for gentiles too… a really good example of interation between faith and experience shaping one another methinks.
Comment by Welshdisastergirl — April 8, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Hmmm…welshdisastergirl…you’ve got me thinking…I thought boy chickens had a wobbly head thingy…and don’t turkeys have wobbly nose thingies…has our chicken’s wobbly head thingy slipped or is the wobbly throat thingy a valid anatomical feature in chickens?
This is a bit of an oversimplification. For a nice model, see The Wesleyan Quadrangle, which discusses the relationship between faith, reason, and experience. Very nice. It doesn’t matter which came first. The question is, what is their relationship AFTER one acquires faith?
The other chicken-and-egg is the whether the Bible is so compelling that it inspires faith, or whether people’s need for something to believe is so compelling that they reach for the Bible.
i work with kids and spend alot of time mulling their spirituality. would it be too pesamistic to suggest that our in the firstoff our faith informs our experience until something bad happens and then our experience informs(erodes) our faith…?!
Fowler is a Christian developmental psychologist, and his book on the Subject, Stages of Faith, is a good, but tough read. However, if you get his book Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, this has a really nice overview, as well as a nice overview of Erikson’s 8 Stages of Pyschosocial Development.
Hi danielq! So, God makes us in such a way that we need a faith, and then we go out & believe in him. That’s a neat circle. And people that believe(d) in other gods, or worship the sun, or the “juju up the mountain” etc. are fulfilling their God-given need for faith, but simply barking up the wrong tree? Is that what you mean?
JF – yes, that’s not a bad summary. As Bob Dylan said during his Christian period, “you’re gonna serve SOMEBODY.”
We all have physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, and we can meet them in ways that are valid and healthy, or invalid and unhealthy. I would say that our hearts reach out for connection with God by nature.
Christians would say that God has revealed himself to us in the creation (generally), and through the prophets and Jesus (specifically, or revelationally).
So we all reach out for a faith by nature, but some sources are not healthy or valid.
according to professor robert winston, it seems that the need for faith may be genetically programmed into us. this may eplain the behaviour of religious fanatics the world over, whether they be babtists, evolutionists or pragmatists. let’s be honest, even those who believe only in themselves show the same fervent traits.
A genetic predisposition does not lead to fanaticism, other compounding effects create such warped outcomes.
While we all have a predisposition to have sex, it is not bad within proper guidelines, and that doesn’t make all people who want sex fanatics or perverts.
Same with faith. Our predisposition could be entirely healthy, but some people are unhealthy in other ways, or meet that need in illegitimate ways.
Mankind has had faiths of many different types throughout the many millenia here on earth and continues to do so today. To say that only those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God are the ones NOT barking up the wrong tree is ludicrous. What sheer accident of history and geography has placed us in a culture where this is the standard religion, with which we are indoctrinated as children and grow up to accept?!
>> PAT: What defines whether a source is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘invalid’
Well, the first is, whatever leads to physical and emotional well-being, freedom, and joy in humans.
Of course, there are qualifiers. For instance, regarding wine. While it may make us happy, abuse of it leads to dire consequences. So, as the Bible teaches, we are allowed to get tipsy, but drunk is abuse. I preached a sermon on this entitled The Biblical Perspective on Drinking and Alcohol.
But I am not making a religious argument. The first line of definition is the simple epidemiological and heuristic one – does it lead to sickness and death, or to life and health?
Does it cause sorrow or joy? Pleasure or pain.
Again, these must be qualified, for there are exceptions – surgery causes pain, but it also heals.
But as a Christian, I would also say that sin is what the bible says it is – because what is bad for us spiritually may not immediately produce death and illness.
>> JF: To say that only those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God are the ones NOT barking up the wrong tree is ludicrous.
We can use logic and reason to eliminate pretenders. While all religions may make claims, the health they produce, and the validity of their claims can be analyzed so that we could at least, for instance, tell the difference between some good religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, some mediocre ones (Hinduism, Wicca, Rastafarianism), some bad ones (Islam, Animism, Satanism, Voodoo), and some nonsense ones (Thor, Pastafarianism).
For an interesting take on how we can eliminate pretenders, but not necessarily POSITIVELY determine which is best, see my series on Pascal’s Wager
Today I cracked open a double yoke egg!! Out of fear and no other reason than it was different, I dumped the poor twins down the drain. What was I so afraid of?
“the difference between some good religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, some mediocre ones (Hinduism, Wicca, Rastafarianism), some bad ones (Islam, Animism, Satanism, Voodoo), and some nonsense ones (Thor, Pastafarianism). ”
Wow – that is the most … erm… patronising…. judgemental…. elitist sentence I’ve ever seen on ASBO.
“not sure i agree with those lists danielg… in fact i don’t.”
If I didn’t see a truth claim in Christ’s death and resurrection, I’d quite like to be a mediocre one!
Jon, it was only a couple of days ago you referred to chickens as ‘really thick.’ Clearly there’s a lot more going on in their heads than we think!
Love this cartoon, particularly the fact that it has already admitted that we won’t come to a conclusion. Can’t wait to read the debate though!
(Inbetween writing my essay, of course. I am Queen of Procrastination.)
Comment by Hayles — April 8, 2009 @ 1:50 am
The answer is “yep”
Comment by Laura — April 8, 2009 @ 6:21 am
Hilarious! I had a dream last night about wringing chickens necks, how bizarre.
Comment by dennis — April 8, 2009 @ 6:49 am
Should the egg not be chocolate, in keeping with the season?
It’s a difficult one to debate, because it really is a chicken and egg thing!
But, for the sake of starting the debate, I would say that experience is likely informs faith first – when we first know Jesus and our expectation of a Messiah – but as our love and knowledge of Him grows it is our faith that starts to transform us – sanctification.
Comment by youthworkerpete — April 8, 2009 @ 7:14 am
I agree with Laura
Comment by miriworm — April 8, 2009 @ 7:29 am
all i know is that one is good on a barbecue and the other is good for breakfast
Comment by marcus — April 8, 2009 @ 7:57 am
well, err… umm…. kinda…. sort of…. maybe
oh, I have a way with words
Comment by Caroline Too — April 8, 2009 @ 8:10 am
I think (perhaps) that experience often informs our faith, but it should be the other way round. I’m not waiting till I see a mountain move before having the faith to push some…
Comment by Ben — April 8, 2009 @ 8:12 am
that chicken has the cutest voice…
Comment by christine Gill — April 8, 2009 @ 8:18 am
Maybe the point of a chicken and egg conundrum is not to see which came first, but to watch what happens after that: a life cycle of one producing the other
Comment by cooperton — April 8, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Aah! The one-legged chicken motif…I think both are true, in a wonderfully symbiotic, cyclical way.
Comment by Carole — April 8, 2009 @ 9:22 am
Carole – I agree; absolutely; both inform and shape each other. How could it be otherwise?
And I’m glad you too think the chicken is a little challenged in the limb department. I didn’t like to mention it so soon after my ‘meringue faux-pas’
Comment by Pat — April 8, 2009 @ 9:38 am
hmmmm… doesn’t the chicken shape the egg, pat?
the chicken only has one eye, one wing and half a beak too… he’s in profile dammit!
on a more serious note… is there a danger in allowing it to become unevenly weighted either way?
Comment by jonbirch — April 8, 2009 @ 10:12 am
Yeah of course..but that shape’s not permanent, it’s just a starting point…for progressing to another shape…which shapes the starting point of the next shape….which…….
On your ‘more serious note’ – yes, I think there is a danger. As with so many other things, there are balances that need to kept, tensions that need to be held, mysteries that need to be ‘known’, even if they can’t be articulated…..
Comment by Pat — April 8, 2009 @ 10:19 am
is there a danger in allowing it to become unevenly weighted either way?
Yes, indeed…that is why it is absolutely essential to keep the one leg central and keep perfectly still.
Comment by Carole — April 8, 2009 @ 10:56 am
Let me just say that our experiences make our faith grow (at least gives us the opportunity to let it grow), where the faith transforms both our actions, and therefore our experiences, and our perceptions of said experiences.
Of cause it is dangerous to become unevenly weighted either way – faith cannot grow without experiences, and a faith that doesn’t transform our actions and perceptions is worthless.
And to answer the question of which was first, the chicken (experience) or the egg (faith) – God was first.
Comment by Bo — April 8, 2009 @ 11:08 am
carole… hahaha! you’re soooo funny!
bo… “God was first.”… that’s cheating! but i like it!
off the subject but loosely connected…
a minister in my childhood gave an illustration of the difference between involvement and commitment. he said, when it came to the old english breakfast, the pig was fully ‘committed’ in terms of the giving of itself to the meal, where as the chicken was simply involved in it’s provision of the egg.
hope you enjoyed that little diversion.
Comment by jonbirch — April 8, 2009 @ 11:22 am
“he’s in profile dammit!”
Jon – HE???
I suggest that in that case there is no link with the egg!
Comment by Chris F — April 8, 2009 @ 11:28 am
Chris
Problem solved then.
Comment by Pat — April 8, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Credo ut inteligam
Latin for “I believe in order that I may understand” – comes from St Anselm’s Proslogion.
Anselm claimed that it is impossible to understand Christian doctrines without faith or belief.
Reason itself cannot discover anything intelligible about God.
The view has inspired other explorations of non-intellectual or non-rational conditions of understanding.
Outside theology, it is popular to affirm that one must use the practical means of living in a culture in order to understand that culture, and that detached rational understanding of a culture is impossible.
“I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand (credo ut intelligam).
It’s definitely like this for me…
Comment by growingenthusiasm — April 8, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
it must be a he… he has a wobboly throat thing… now ‘m uber confused
but must give my input…john stot said we should have a bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other… this doesn’t mean they are equal but are understanding one one must shape our understanding of the other.
we can never start from a point where one and the other are not intertwined.
and this is seen in the bible tooo, always a good place to look!… when peter has his vision and meets cornelius in Acts 10 he realises that the gospel is for gentiles too… a really good example of interation between faith and experience shaping one another methinks.
Comment by Welshdisastergirl — April 8, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Hmmm…welshdisastergirl…you’ve got me thinking…I thought boy chickens had a wobbly head thingy…and don’t turkeys have wobbly nose thingies…has our chicken’s wobbly head thingy slipped or is the wobbly throat thingy a valid anatomical feature in chickens?
Comment by Carole — April 8, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
All this talk about the chicken…I’m far more interested in the egg with a face
Comment by Hayles — April 8, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
Re: Does my experience infoem my foath, or, is it my faith which informs my experience?
Answer: Yes.
Comment by Forrest — April 8, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
Forrest – admirably succinct
Comment by Pat — April 8, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
Either way, the egg seems very happy. It’s humming to itself as well as smiling ….
Great cartoon, Jon
Comment by janetp — April 8, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
This is a bit of an oversimplification. For a nice model, see The Wesleyan Quadrangle, which discusses the relationship between faith, reason, and experience. Very nice. It doesn’t matter which came first. The question is, what is their relationship AFTER one acquires faith?
Comment by danielg — April 9, 2009 @ 4:34 am
The other chicken-and-egg is the whether the Bible is so compelling that it inspires faith, or whether people’s need for something to believe is so compelling that they reach for the Bible.
Comment by JF — April 9, 2009 @ 8:58 am
Wattle ‘ode of interesting comments.
Comment by Robb — April 9, 2009 @ 9:28 am
so many chickens, so many eggs, so little time.
Comment by jonbirch — April 9, 2009 @ 9:30 am
I’d like my experience fried, sunny side up; but it mostly comes out scrambled.
Comment by Forrest — April 9, 2009 @ 11:25 am
forrest… haha!
i didn’t know the term ’sunny side up’ existed in the states. i thought it was ‘light over easy’, or something like that. 
Comment by jonbirch — April 9, 2009 @ 11:52 am
Robb – that was a very poultry joke
Danielq @ 27 – half of your Wesleyan quadrilateral appears to have disappeared into the ether!
Comment by Pat — April 9, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
Robb – thanks, I fixed it.
JF#28 – I’d say that we are made to have faith, and so we look for it.
Comment by danielg — April 9, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
i work with kids and spend alot of time mulling their spirituality. would it be too pesamistic to suggest that our in the firstoff our faith informs our experience until something bad happens and then our experience informs(erodes) our faith…?!
Comment by schmikey — April 9, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
For a couple of models of how faith develops in young children, you should read the following:
Kohlberg’s Fowler’s stages of moral development
Stages of faith development
Fowler is a Christian developmental psychologist, and his book on the Subject, Stages of Faith, is a good, but tough read. However, if you get his book Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, this has a really nice overview, as well as a nice overview of Erikson’s 8 Stages of Pyschosocial Development.
Comment by danielg — April 9, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
Sorry, I messed up the name of Kohlberg’s – the word “Fowler’s” is supposed to be part of the second link, but the links are still good.
Comment by danielg — April 9, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
Hi danielq! So, God makes us in such a way that we need a faith, and then we go out & believe in him. That’s a neat circle. And people that believe(d) in other gods, or worship the sun, or the “juju up the mountain” etc. are fulfilling their God-given need for faith, but simply barking up the wrong tree? Is that what you mean?
Comment by JF — April 9, 2009 @ 6:32 pm
JF – yes, that’s not a bad summary. As Bob Dylan said during his Christian period, “you’re gonna serve SOMEBODY.”
We all have physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, and we can meet them in ways that are valid and healthy, or invalid and unhealthy. I would say that our hearts reach out for connection with God by nature.
Christians would say that God has revealed himself to us in the creation (generally), and through the prophets and Jesus (specifically, or revelationally).
So we all reach out for a faith by nature, but some sources are not healthy or valid.
Comment by danielg — April 9, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
[...] Enjoying: Deeper than the chicken and the egg… [...]
Pingback by How To 207 « Let the music move your body — April 9, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
according to professor robert winston, it seems that the need for faith may be genetically programmed into us. this may eplain the behaviour of religious fanatics the world over, whether they be babtists, evolutionists or pragmatists. let’s be honest, even those who believe only in themselves show the same fervent traits.
Comment by jonbirch — April 9, 2009 @ 11:49 pm
A genetic predisposition does not lead to fanaticism, other compounding effects create such warped outcomes.
While we all have a predisposition to have sex, it is not bad within proper guidelines, and that doesn’t make all people who want sex fanatics or perverts.
Same with faith. Our predisposition could be entirely healthy, but some people are unhealthy in other ways, or meet that need in illegitimate ways.
Comment by danielg — April 10, 2009 @ 12:04 am
What defines whether a source is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘invalid’ or whether a certain way of actualising faith is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘illegitimate’ danielq
Comment by Pat — April 10, 2009 @ 8:30 am
Mankind has had faiths of many different types throughout the many millenia here on earth and continues to do so today. To say that only those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God are the ones NOT barking up the wrong tree is ludicrous. What sheer accident of history and geography has placed us in a culture where this is the standard religion, with which we are indoctrinated as children and grow up to accept?!
Comment by JF — April 10, 2009 @ 8:47 am
>> PAT: What defines whether a source is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘invalid’
Well, the first is, whatever leads to physical and emotional well-being, freedom, and joy in humans.
Of course, there are qualifiers. For instance, regarding wine. While it may make us happy, abuse of it leads to dire consequences. So, as the Bible teaches, we are allowed to get tipsy, but drunk is abuse. I preached a sermon on this entitled The Biblical Perspective on Drinking and Alcohol.
But I am not making a religious argument. The first line of definition is the simple epidemiological and heuristic one – does it lead to sickness and death, or to life and health?
Does it cause sorrow or joy? Pleasure or pain.
Again, these must be qualified, for there are exceptions – surgery causes pain, but it also heals.
But as a Christian, I would also say that sin is what the bible says it is – because what is bad for us spiritually may not immediately produce death and illness.
Comment by danielg — April 10, 2009 @ 10:47 pm
>> JF: To say that only those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God are the ones NOT barking up the wrong tree is ludicrous.
We can use logic and reason to eliminate pretenders. While all religions may make claims, the health they produce, and the validity of their claims can be analyzed so that we could at least, for instance, tell the difference between some good religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, some mediocre ones (Hinduism, Wicca, Rastafarianism), some bad ones (Islam, Animism, Satanism, Voodoo), and some nonsense ones (Thor, Pastafarianism).
For an interesting take on how we can eliminate pretenders, but not necessarily POSITIVELY determine which is best, see my series on Pascal’s Wager
Comment by danielg — April 10, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
not sure i agree with those lists danielg… in fact i don’t.
Comment by jonbirch — April 10, 2009 @ 11:05 pm
Today I cracked open a double yoke egg!! Out of fear and no other reason than it was different, I dumped the poor twins down the drain. What was I so afraid of?
Comment by Katy — April 11, 2009 @ 12:36 am
“the difference between some good religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, some mediocre ones (Hinduism, Wicca, Rastafarianism), some bad ones (Islam, Animism, Satanism, Voodoo), and some nonsense ones (Thor, Pastafarianism). ”
Wow – that is the most … erm… patronising…. judgemental…. elitist sentence I’ve ever seen on ASBO.
“not sure i agree with those lists danielg… in fact i don’t.”
If I didn’t see a truth claim in Christ’s death and resurrection, I’d quite like to be a mediocre one!
Comment by Robb — April 11, 2009 @ 12:37 am
I thought I was Pastafarian, but now I think maybe I’m spagnostic
I have faith, however, that danielg will be back to continue this thread…
Comment by JF — April 11, 2009 @ 9:37 pm