AJ

Interesting.

I thought universities originated as places specifically to study the crusades-re-discovered ancient classics, and particularly Justinian's Institutes?

Anyway, even if all the claims of the Christians were conceded, it still begs the question why the same benefits could not have been achieved directly by recourse to reason, and not indirectly by way of god-fables.

"When atheists make this claim, it is often influenced by nationalism."

"In a post-9/11 world, Islamophobia has become yet another motivation"

Motivation for what?

When atheists make what claim? ""the dubious links between Christianity and all that is good"? And what's "it" in your sentence? I'm not understanding you there

In replying to my post where I referred to "otherwise western societies have sidelined or rejected Christianity" POGI decided (somehow) that I was probably referring to places like Russia and China. Now I don't care how historically illiterate you might be, it’s mindboggling to think of China as a western state that rejected Christianity. But to be fair to poor POGI, it was more a case of him feeling the need to defend atheistic states, despite claiming to not be defending anyone in particular.
To do so, he trots out the usual tropes to explain why the church opposed communism, being its claimed need to defend its property and privilege. Quite what privilege and property the western church had in Russia and/or China to defend is left unexplained for obvious reasons. He then launches into an entirely fruitless but revealing attempt to educate me about how atheism wasn’t a factor in the misery of the regimes he is/isn’t defending. Since I hadn’t mentioned atheism, the segue seemed elusive.

So to help POGI, I was thinking not of China but of, primarily, Stalinist Russia, 1930’s Germany and the early French revolution as examples of what happens when western societies seek to reject Christianity as a foundation stone of society. The point about all of these regimes was that they sought to provide their subjects with a new purpose to the great societal project ; eg the perfection of man, the victory and pre-eminence of the Volk and the victory of virtue, respectively. Clearly it was in the interests of such societies to defeat completing world-views and the best way to do that is to suppress them. Christianity, being the most prominent competing philosophy was thus rejected and the results need not be covered here. The Christianity fought back and won seems to irk POGI.

Perhaps it’d be worthwhile to note here that I’m not a Christian.

/cont

/cont
I simply note its importance to western civilisation and note that when it is removed the consequences aren’t good for that society. I don’t dispute that it is possible to conceive of a society that is tolerant, peaceful and irreligious. It’s just that no such society has ever existed and in the long history of civilisations world-wide there is good reason why religion was always at the forefront of their existence. It may be that there were societies in those 7000 years that didn’t have religion as a cornerstone, but we don’t know of them because they didn’t succeed and/or survive.

POGI and AJ seek to disparage Christianity by constantly refer back to the evil done in its name. I don’t dispute any of that but merely point out that in the assessment of world civilisations the western version has been no worse than any other and, usually a whole lot better than most. To my point that it was to our credit that the first and only society to reject slavery was western, POGI meekly demands that we attack Christianity for what it said about slavery 2500 years ago. I’m much more concerned about what it said 200 years ago since this is a discussion about the now, not the then.
Western civilisation, begun in the plains and fora of Hellas all those years ago, has been, over the later part of its history, a boon to mankind and an example to all. It wasn’t/isn’t perfect and it doesn’t always live up to its own standards. Nonetheless it has provided the world with examples of how to create tolerant, free and successful societies. It has defeated slavery, liberated women from their own domestic slavery, and raised even the lowest of its members to a standard of living that would be the envy of the richest of men from prior periods. Its science has defeated hunger, and many diseases and doubled life-spans. Was that down to Christianity?..No. But Christianity is an integral part of the mix that made all that possible.

AJ doubts that western civilisation is in decline, based upon the views of “virtually every sociologist”.

Oh good, a consensus of sociologists! Are they the same sociologists who led AJ down the garden path concerning the origin and longevity of the traditional family?

Western civilisation is in decline as a society that no longer recognises its virtue and has no confidence or memory of its achievements. We are no longer prepared to assert the supremacy (for us) of our civilisation but instead seek to disparage our society for its failures while excusing all others for their (greater) failures.


Being so good for so long, we’ve forgotten how we got here and can’t see how easily it might be lost. We are no longer prepared to defend our civilisation and, instead of boldly defending its virtues, try to demur to those who attack its faults.

The society has lost its confidence and sees only black clouds in its future. People, not seeing a future for the society nor a need to defend it, cease to provide its next generations. The decline of western birth rates is not just a result of economics, it’s a statement that people don’t see a good future.

Liberty is under attack throughout. Freedom of speech, once a non-negotiable freedom, is now negotiated. Dark whispers are advanced that maybe people shouldn't be free to speak even in their own house to their own family. We have lost pride in our history and teach our young only to be ashamed of it. (We abolished slavery and can only assert it wasn’t done fast enough). Our universities, once the lifeblood of innovation and new thinking, are mired in political correct warfare.

Its not surprising that many don’t see the decline, because they didn’t recognise the summit.

Of course, the decline can be arrested and I hold some hope that we may be seeing some of that with recent elections and the way the people have instinctively reacted to things like the unopposed invasion of Europe by an alien culture. But we’ve lost much and have much to regain.

Dear Jardine,

If over a billion people are convinced, then whatever convinced them is convincing. Indeed, it may not be rational - but who said that people are rational?

Axioms are not rational because, by definition, they're not derived, whereas rationality means deriving, using correct logic, new conclusions from existing ideas (axioms and/or theorems).

Mathematicians never argue the truth of an axiom: there are no "erroneous axioms" as such, only contradicting axioms which don't fit with each other.

As for "self evident", for millennia it was considered self-evident that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. We know that both our sense-organs and our brains are far from perfect (take Fata-Morgana for exapmle). Believing in what our senses and mind are telling us, is thus irrational. Now I don't consider it wrong/inferior, but you seem to [consider it wrong/inferior].

Whether we believe in our senses, in an astronomy book or in scripture, it's all irrational. The classical astronomy book may contain lots of rational conclusions, but it too relies on irrational assumptions (for example that light travels in straight lines, this was refuted by Einstein). Moreover, unless you used a telescope yourself and repeated Kepler's observations and calculations in person, then you act out of faith in Kepler and others. That too is irrational (but not wrong).

Rather than discard it all as garbage (in/out), one can still speak of rationality in relative terms and it makes useful sense among people who accept the same axioms.

A common mistake, is to assume that others accept the same axioms as yourself. One of the axioms often considered a foundation of Western ethics, is that living is good and death is bad. However, if you trace that axiom, it comes down to the brainwashing dictates of our genes. Genes are programmed to survive, but believing them as if their "interests" are also your interests, is irrational.

Even if "man acts" was true, it doesn't follow that actions are good, how more so if the real actor is not even man, but rather his genes.

Yuyutsu

According to that doctrine, any proposition, no matter how dubious or downright unhinged, could be called “convincing”.

“Axioms are not rational because, by definition, they're not derived, whereas rationality means deriving, using correct logic, new conclusions from existing ideas (axioms and/or theorems).

This doesn’t mean they *cannot* be rational, for
1. An axiom may be a "given", and not-derived in that sense, as the basis of the syllogism that is to follow. But that doesn’t mean an axiom cannot be rational in its own right. For example “all birds have feathers”. That’s rational and it involves deriving. It’s saying that there’s a definite relation between thing A and thing B. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an axiom.

If what you are saying were correct, then by the process of launching out on a process of reasoning, our first step would have to be to give ourselves up to pure intuition, and abandon rationality in the very foundation and core of the process.

2. I don’t see why axioms can’t be *both* intuited, or arrived at by non-rational process, and have a basis in reason.

3. If what you are saying were correct, there’d be no such thing as truth or reality. We would be in a fantasy land that reality is whatever anyone says it is, with any later limitations imposed by rationality, being purely subsidiary to the primacy of the original irrational proposition.

So I don’t think it’s right.

“Even if "man acts" was true…”

It is enough for me that you prove the truth of it either by having to perform a self-contradiction in order to deny it.

“ it doesn't follow that actions are good”

No it doesn’t; and I didn’t say it does.

But it does follow from the fact that man acts, that in arguing, he necessarily implies and admits certain ethical propositions.