How do you slice a banana?

This blog grew out of a couple posts which Camille made on her "everyday" blog. We started by asking two questions:

What do you believe about god?

Why?

I'm very interested in getting more responses to these questions in our comments. On the other blog, we got a variety of comments, most of which dealt with the first question, but there were only two commenters that really dealt with the second.

We had one commenter said that he was a Christian because it "just made sense." I posted a response to his comment asking him to outline how he arrived at that conclusion, because, frankly, I don't think that it makes sense. I have heard Christians (Chuck Colson, I think) defend the faith by saying that it is so nonsensical that it could not have been fabricated by a man (thus proving its divine inspiration). Indeed, it seems that a large part of "the point" is that the Christian proposition is so far-fetched that we must have faith to accept it. Thus, I'd ask a third question for the people reading this:

What is faith?

Another commenter said that she believed in god because of personal experiences. Many Christians have "heard the voice of the Lord" or felt his guidance. Growing up in a evangelical and fundamentalist environment, I was raised with an ironic healthy disdain for "religion." Christianity wasn't to be a "religion," it was all about the personal relationship with Christ--that is, it was about experiencing god (I think that I still have a book by this title somewhere in my basement). The obvious problem with this idea is that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and many many others experience this connection with the divine or the supernatural. Does anything about the Christian experience suggest that it is true, while the others are delusions? Does the fact that other religious people (with other deities) experience god mean that all gods exist, or none? Could all supernatural experiences be a creation of the human mind?

I think most people have had dreams at some point which seemed real while they were occurring. Yet when I wake up, I discover that I am not superman, nor do I own a Ferrari, and I have definitely not been walking on the ceiling. Merely experiencing these dreams does not make them true--they're a product of my subconscious mind acting while I sleep. Experience is not evidence.

Now to explain this posts title:

Until this year, I have always used a butter knife to slice a banana. Seriously. I have an entire drawer full of really sharp knives, but I reflexively reached for a dull butter knife anytime I wanted to slice a banana. I never gave it any thought--a butter knife was just "the tool" to use when a banana needed slicing. Early this year, when during an early morning pre-caffeine haze I was preparing a bowl of cheerios when Camille asked: "Why are you using a butter knife to slice that banana?" Of course I did not have a good answer, so I took a sharp knife out of the drawer.

Here's my hypothesis for how I reached the age of 25 with the unquestioned belief that a butter knife was the appropriate tool (indeed, the only tool) for slicing a banana: Bananas are one of the first foods which you begin to prepare for yourself, or at least they were for me. I suppose that I began to need to slice bananas long before I was dexterous and trustworthy enough to use a proper knife. Thus my parents would have entrusted me with a butter knife to accomplish this chore. I might have even been reprimanded for suggesting that there was a better tool for slicing a banana. My parents may have even used butter knives to provide a good example for me. When you're 5 or 6, it doesn't take long for slicing a banana with a butter knife to become something that you never question. It's not worth expending the mental effort--it's just how it's done.

Please comment:

What do you believe about god?

Why?

Sincerely,

Scott