dear peter,

1) the problem with non-Copernican religious cosmology is that it, figuratively and literally, put Man at the centre of the Universe. it's long after time to accept that this just isn't true.

2) my life and my soul are perfectly fine, thank-you. if you want to indulge in your particular religious myths, i am quite happy for you to do so. but please don't begrudge me my choice to do without. it is condescending and insulting.

Obviously another dry day down at the OLO news room.

Peter, Peter, Peter, where do we start young fella?

Bushbasher is being extremely polite.

"Truth" is such a flimsy word in the hands of religious folks.

Evidence based science can never share a stage as an equal with fairy tales and 15th hand recollections of what some bloke might have said once at the back of a crowd in some now forgotten place and time.

We really need to move on.

Keep your faith if it helps you get through life but don't expect other rational souls to accept your proposal, 4th last para:

"What we need is an educational program that teaches the two realms just as literature is taught alongside natural science. But this must be done so that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology is given equal weigh for being “true” as it does that of natural science."

Unbelievable - no pun intended.

Bushy! Not a more true-er word has been spoken. Well done!

EVO

For the most part this is very true. People need something to believe in, something to give their life meaning due to the little else in this world that can. Something to hope for and look forward to instead of just the daily grind. It is also very true that people are losing their imagination. I am a story teller who enjoys telling fairy tales, thank you very much tebbut, but I find that I have a scarce and dwindling audience as most people would rather sit in front of a TV than listen to a story and let their mind run free.

This is a very sad state of affairs as many people find it hard to imagine that there could be anything different from the world we know, find it very hard to accept change as it may lead to a worsening of their situation never considering that things may get better. While it is true that many times things do get worse as a result of meddling most are unwilling to try new things just in case.

However, the intonation that teaching Christian creation stories as part of a balanced education system can only be regarded as dangerous. There is a very good reason why there is a clear division between church and State, religion and power are dangerous allies. Invariably when religion attains power those who are considered as undeserving by that religion become disenfranchised, a state untenable in a seemingly democratic system. Religion should be taught in the home, instilled by parents in their children rather than forced by the state.

For the most part the fall of the religion see the consequent fall of society in selfish and deplorable me-ism, however the State should remain neutral in all matters of religion. Let us not forget the devastation caused by the Inquisition among other things. Teach those thing that give peoples life meaning but not in the schools and not directed by the government of the day.

'However, the intonation that teaching Christian creation stories as part of a balanced education system can only be regarded as dangerous'

We teach the evolution myth which eases peoples consciences in killing the unborn and behaving immorally so why not teach something with a lot more evidence to back it.
At least one prominent evolutionist is honest when he says

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint. . . the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
'Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy and author of The Darwinian Revolution (1979), Darwinism Defended (1982), and Taking Darwin Seriously (1986), acknowledges that evolution is religious:

Why not begin any conversations about Real God as Conscious Light and The Happiness of the world by referring to this reference.

1. http://www.realgod.org

Plus once again this site thoroughly deconstructs every aspect of christian-ISM, including the lies at its origins, and how ALL of its foundational stories were just rehashes of similar stories that exised throughout the pre-christian ancient world. And its claim to be a source of moral authority---its actions speak for themselves---mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.

1. http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

christian-ISM because it is just another set of man-made ideas created to serve and extend the worldly power interests of those who happened to be in power at the time. Power won and attained by slaughtering the "heretics", and those who refused to submit.

I know i should know better, but Runner! Seriously mate! what is wrong with you? Evolution is a religion! lol! if so,

where is our god?

EVO

Sellick writes, "The Bible contains...stories that were included because when read they produced that tug of recognition, yes, life is like that, now I understand what it is to be a human being in all its trial and joy, life and death. Such an experience is an experience of God".

Such an experience is an experience of good fiction writing. The same qualities apply to the Torah, or Koran, or Shakespeare, or a season of Seinfeld. You can't just say "these stories ring true, therefore we are obliged to swallow the primitive supernatural nonsense attached to them."

Excellent essay, Peter.

Sellick's obviously still expending many words and much mental energy trying to reconcile his faith in mumbo-jumbo with his scentific training.

Unfortunately for him, it's still not working.

Sellick is certianly right that you need imagination to read the bible, but he fails to accept that religious doctrine doesn't really want too much imagination because it usualy leads to the questioning of the doctrine, splitting of religious sects, and a general dissatifaction with rigid rules.

Spirituality is a good thing, but organised religion far too often becomes a business with a dictator at its head. Sad but true.

In my opinion, there is certainly no need to have religion to have a spiritual and fullfilling life.

Peter's words :"Augustine said that if he were not moved by the scriptures he would not give them authority. In other words simply to read the scriptures with an open mind and heart is to feel their pull of truth. Thus the authority of biblical texts does not rely on the idea that they are the dictated words of God but on our experience of them."

I completely agree with Peter except for me it was Harry Potter that moved me and caused me to give bestow authority on it. I was a Muggle, blind to the truth. I now see witches and wizards everywhere and, although I can see no evidence that my spell making is working I am sure that with enough blind faith it will all come together soon. I realize that Harry Potter was not dictated by a God but at least I know who it was dictated by which is more that Augustine could claim.
Yes Harry Potter has the "pull of truth", it gives my life meaning. If it wasn't for Harry I may as well just lie in a nice warm bath a start hacking. Stuff science mate....Harry is the way to go!

I must confess to a kind of 'evil' relishing of dealing with the barren wasteland of the life Brother Tebbutt suggests.

The comfortable confident 'I'm alright Jack'.. and the clinging to emptiness as if it was substance.. the denial of the logical ramifications of these cherished (but meaningless) presuppositions...the fear of actually living them out.. the hypocrisy of claim Tebbutts position is truly monumental.

If Tebbutts was honest he would take a grim hard look at life, and say:

1/ I'm only here for a while.
2/ Lets maximize my pleasure while here.
3/ It doesn't matter whether helping an old lady across the road or raping her daughter fits the bill.. it all doesnt matter anyway...

4/ He would admit that the only thing holding back all of the above is the "Law"...
5/ He would admit that there is no such thing as morality.. just power...

annnnnd so the highway to hell of secularism atheism etc goes as it winds it's way past many signposts which call it to account..

NO! he says.. I'll have none of that rot.. away with it.

and out from the mists of time....comes that voice.. "For me.. to live is Christ.. to die is gain" which in turn hark back to a moment on the road to Damascus..."who are you Lord?" response "I am Jesus who you are persecuting".. and thereafter.. he proclaimed the man he had tried to destroy...

"In Him dwells the fullness of deity bodily".. yes..quite a turn around indeed....

One day.. it will all come home.. the aged body, the fading mind..the wearyness of life.. "What's it all about.. Alfie?" the eyes glaze over.. as he does not wish to hear the answer..

But Paul has said it "He who knew no sin became sin for us, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God"...

"I am crucified with Christ..it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me"

A silly myth ? :)

some might say so.

Peter doesn't realise that we already have a word to describe things which are not literally true but only 'imaginatively' or 'spiritually' or 'analogically' true.

That word is 'false'.

EVO

'I know i should know better, but Runner! Seriously mate! what is wrong with you? Evolution is a religion! lol! if so,

where is our god?

That is the point. Evolutionist are ignorant enough to practice a religion which denies that creation requires a Creator. That is one dumb religion.

From a philosophical standpoint, thought that this problem was solved when Thomas Aquinas spurred on historical Christianity towards Enlightment and Democracy, when he realised that to be truthful, faith needed be tempered by Reason.

It is also so interesting that it was not only St Thomas who became a Saint through his realism, but other great Christian thinkers during the same period.

Regards, BB.

"Thus the authority of biblical texts does not rely on the idea that they are the dictated words of God but on our experience of them."

There is a lot of truth in this statement. The problem is that those of us who are not Christian and whose ancestors have suffered at the hands of Christians do not read the biblical texts with a sense of wonder and wellbeing. Instead we can often find ourselves reading them with fear and dread.

Sells, you are clearly getting closer than you know to the most exhilarating experience life can offer.

Which is that nothing, absolutely nothing, can compete with the sheer vital, gut-grabbing moment of realization, that this is, in fact, all there is. Life is about living, that's all. In the real, corporeal, material world.

Full stop. Punkt. Point. Punto.

It is the single most exciting and energizing moment of one's existence. It also brings fear - what will I be able to make of this opportunity? And humility - how unbelievably lucky I am to exist at all.

http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/galaxy_song.html

The progress you are making towards this goal is evident.

>>Imagination is the necessary ingredient when reading biblical texts.<<

As it is also needed, Sells, when reading the back of a cornflakes packet. Or Dante.

See how close you are?

>>The universe did not stand for something else, Plato’s forms, or God himself, the universe was nothing but itself.<<

Yep. Moving along nicely. Just one tiny step from realizing that...

"...mankind does not stand for something else, Plato’s forms, or God himself, mankind is nothing but itself"

As Popeye so beautifully put it, "I yam what I yam"

>>...the only purpose to human life, we are told, is the transmission of genetic material. But why would we want to do that?<<

This is the bridge that will take you across the chasm of uncertainty to the land of self-awareness.

When you can accept that this is not actually a purpose - that would be silly, wouldn't it - but a process, you will find yourself able to free yourself of the need for a spiritual support group, and begin to live your own life, instead of someone else's.

I can't recommend it too highly, Sells, but it is a realization that you have to come to on your own. There are no sacred texts to enlighten or confuse. No self-proclaimed leader whose example you can emulate. It is something that you do entirely on your own.

And no-one to praise or blame, but yourself.

Now that's living.

What a lot of non sense comments; maybe egos would be a better word.

For me, the last line says it all.

Peter, I strongly agree with the general thrust of your argument. I also suggest there are many people reading your article who secretly – perhaps even unconsciously – want to agree but are afraid to deviate from the prevailing faith of our age. The blind faith in rational-empiricism so aggressively promulgated by many in influential positions dictates that to live with imagination is infantile, or effeminate, or dangerous, simply weak. This leaves no room for thinking in symbols (rather than signs) nor for conceiving of alternative realities.

Tebbutt: Demands for evidence are utterly misplaced when it comes to drawing spiritual sustenance from narratives. There need be no clash between science and story. The challenge for our age is to learn to grant each its own validity in its own realm.

Jon J: It seems quite erroneous to assert that if a narrative is not literally true it is therefore necessarily false. How meaningful is it to declare a novel “false”? Analogical and imaginative thinking are reliable avenues for nourishment of the soul. The “truth” that they can provide is of a very different category from the “truth” of a sensory perception or scientific theory.

Yes, I enjoyed the article also.
The distinction between dogma and metaphysics is blurred, though. I go along with Kant, who recognised that we cannot know for sure. I find it astonishing that a person can claim definitively that God actually does or not not exist- which claim is more preposterous than the other?
Therefore, I go along with the notion that we must follow our nous, if you like. I say this because I also find parts of the bible, such as the parables and the sermon on the mount striking a chord within me. And the crucifixion, my sense of it as a powerful parable discussing guilt and complicity as conditional to the human condition and additionally, plausible precondition to redemption, in a unified theory ascibing a role for ethic and natural justice constantly intriguing. A God that is prepared to live by the same rules s his creations- there's a new one and one of the few theologies that progresses to a moral and experiential rather than control freak identification of god.
I do find creation theology obnoxious, tho; certainly in the way it has been presented and used in parts of America (eg in pursuit of politicised hobby horses).
Keep religion, at least of the US fundammentalist sort, out of (science) education but let's try to encourage more philosophy and metaphysics in the education system so young people can think objectively about the truth claims of dfferent philosophies and dogmas- if only too many parents wouldn't oppose this in case their attempted exclusive role in the brainwashing of their kids to their exclusive personal biases is challenged.
In other words, keep science out of religious instruction and church and recognise that science may not have all of the answers either, but also keep theological dogmatism as the criteria for what can be fitted into a course out of science classroom teaching, since science is about specific skills concerning the physical world, rather than metaphysics, let alone religion, which is surely only a speculative attempt at an answer to more generalised metaphysical inquiry.

PAUL WALTER...not a bad post there mate.. "Obnoxious" is not quite the adjective I'd choose for describing Creation Science though.

Creation Theology in a nutshell is found in Genesis 1:1

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"

Now..given your other statements about not being able to know with absolute certainty one way or the other.. I'd feel better if you used adjectives like 'Unproven' or something less inciteful :)

I don't have a problem with keeping Theology and Science a happy few meters apart in the classroom.

PERICLES.. I blame myself.. your tone has radicalized more in your last post..and seems to hold distinct echo's of our conversational transactions in the Song from the 60 thread.

<<Sells, you are clearly getting closer than you know to the most exhilarating experience life can offer.
Which is that nothing, absolutely nothing, can compete with the sheer vital, gut-grabbing moment of realization, that this is, in fact, all there is. Life is about living, that's all. In the real, corporeal, material world.>>

Peggy Lee would be proud of you.. but her publishers might scold you for plageurism :)

Now.. for other posters.. you won't find dear Pericles admitting this, but the obvious outcome of his newly firmed up personal philosophy are cleary demonstrated in this clip which I've posted in another thread.

Edgler Foreman Vess.. aaah..what a character (Scrubs fans listen up..its Dr Cox as a psycho)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY6lGZRBpDc

"People don't realize just how HAPPY they could be, if they..could just.. understand...that the value of any experience is not in it's positive or negative effect..no, THAT'S NOT IT....the value of any experience is in the inTENsity of the charge that you get from it"

What viewers will not realize in looking at that clip..is that Vess is speaking down to a man he has just blasted with a shotgun, and who is bleeding to death in front of him.. this is 'Vessology 101' from Edgler.. to a dying man regarding why he did it.

How unsettlingly close are Pericles words to Vess's!

There are a couple of things that need to be said in my article that were not spelled out. Firstly, the historicity of the second person of the Trinity, the Son, is the objective substrate of faith. All is lost if Jesus did not “die under Pontius Pilate”, all is lost if the Word did not become flesh and live among us “full of grace and truth.” However, that does not allow us to dispense with imagination, we still have to stretch ourselves to understand that “through him all things were created” as much as we need to stretch ourselves in understanding that the resurrection is infinitely more than the resuscitation of a dead man.

Experience is almost as troubling a category as transcendence. As Polycarp has indicated via the youtube clip we live in a society in which experience and the intensity of it has become all. This has the danger of leaving us as creatures of the moment, hooked on the adrenalin rush. But a quiet meditative engagement with God is also an experience. That does not mean that the experience of God is entirely subjective, the object of that experience is Jesus Christ and his pre-figuration in the history of Israel. The modern understanding of experience has the self at the centre, the experience of God in biblical narrative is decentering to the extent that the self dies and rises again.

It is fundamental that Jesus is the creator, it is by his life, death and resurrection that he creates a new world. This is subverted by the common PC version of the names of the Trinity as creator, redeemer, sanctifier. God does not create a thing, he creates a history and a future. The problem with much creation theology is that it is not Trinitarian, all three persons are engaged in this fundamental divine activity.

By the way, I thought Polycarp’s first post in this thread one of the best I have read, thank you.

Peter Sellick

At last the author comes out of the closet!
It now seems that factual accuracy - ie scientific truth - is irrelevent whilst a formal narrative as distilled from any number of fairy-tales and works of fiction reigns supreme as the blueprint of the human condition! Wow! Post modern nihilism at its very best!

Literally unbelievable. Boazycrap babbles on again about a fictitious character from a telemovie based on a novel, and Sellick laps it up as some kind of contemporary parable.

Guys, while it's hardly surprising that you credulous types have difficulty distinguishing reality from make-believe, are you really unaware that "Edgler Vess" is a character from a pulp horror novel by Dean Koontz?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensity_(novel)

While of course many of us would rate the facticity of such a document as similar to that of the equally fictitious stories found in the Bible, I'm a little surprised that you godbotherers do as well.

This article does give a wonderful insight into religious doublethink. From the premise:

1. The statements made in the official books of my religion conflict with what I know to be true about the world.

a rational person would deduce:

2. My religion is based on falsehood.

But with the aid of faith Peter is able to come up with:

2. Therefore they must be 'interpreted' and 'understood' to the point where I am able to reconcile them with what I know to be true.

The fault is not Peter's, of course: he is just taking advantage of his convenient soapbox to rabbit on about his opinions, as we would all like to do. But it is depressing to realise that this amiable drivel is to be given a public forum when much higher standards are set for articles on other matters. Does anyone really think that if I wrote in the same terms about, say, flat-earthism, I would stand any chance of being published? The bar is obviously set much lower for those with a Invisible Friend than the rest of us.

sellick, you're still being insulting. just because i respect scientific truth, just because i do not share your fundamentalism that "jesus is the creator", this does NOT mean that i lack imagination or disrespect its power. and my understanding of experience does not in any way have the "self at the centre". once again, it's the beliefs of your church which put Man at the centre of the Universe, not mine.

i try not to trivialise your beliefs. your continued arrogance in trivialising mine is silly and distasteful.

Jon J.
I'm shocked!

Are you suggesting that a belief does not become "truth" simply because it is a belief?

The next thing you will be suggesting is that Harry Potter doesn't exist....that he is a figment of my imagination, a meme placed there by a writer of allegory and myth and propped up by a self interested lobby group and clever sales team.

I am off to seek some comfort in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" .

To sum up the article:

Ignorance is Bliss.

Truth has had a deleterious effect on religion.

Church schools should ignore science and instead teach Christian dogma along the lines of the Islamic Madrassa

bring on the Inquisition and other institutions of Christian enlightenment.

Interesting article but it comes back to the old question of whether humans are capable of living within a system of values without the need for religion.

'Spiritual' experiences can take many forms - wonderment of the beauty of our earth around us, the joy we might find in helping others, loving our family and friends, meditation, even tending a garden.

If we accept the the fable of Jesus is a myth designed by 'enlightened' minds of the past to give the people something to believe in and to provide solace, direction and comfort we have to ask ourselves about the efficacy or value of any idea of which the premise is false.

As I have got older I believe more than ever that 'truth' is more important. Without truth or honesty we are all wandering about in the dark.

Does Religion really provide a uniform moral or spiritual framework in which to live? Religion is blurred by the myriad of religious sects even within the Christian Church. Christians (and others) are not unified in belief nor in values, some choosing the capitalistic versions such as Hillsong, some the more traditional Religions and others much newer charismatic versions.

Even the bibilical story has changed to suit humans (not God). Contrast the versions offerred up by sects like the Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witness, Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists who all offer varying and bizarre versions of the story of their God and of Jesus.

Humans are very good at changing the story to suit their own purposes. For me better to stick with truth and the strength in believing that people are naturally altruistic and that a values system is possible without deference to a non-existent icon.

Continued...

Continued on...

But when it all is said and done, people will choose what they will whether it be dancing around a totem pole or kneeling in front of a wooden cross and one thing we can be sure of is every group will believe that their version of Religion is the right one.

For some to argue that evolution is a Religion is cowardly. Evolution is a scientific theory based on evidence and which might change over time depending on new available evidence. Unlike Religion, science does not claim to be all-knowing only all-seeking. The science is only as good as the current evidence allows but at least it is honest and does not seek to deceive. Science has given us medical, engineering and other wonders - that is the real stuff of human spirituality and endeavour.

'Church schools should ignore science and instead teach Christian dogma along the lines of the Islamic Madrassa '

State schools do teach earth worshiping religion along with dogmas that deny the unborn being a person. No wonder they are being deserted even by those who claim not to believe in a Creator.

THAT'S NOT IT....the value of any experience is in the inTENsity of the charge that you get from it"

David! People who are addicted to drugs gets the same high.

Why do you need it? Has anything anybody said make no sense to you? (evolution)

I would still recommend warning labels to anything that is uncertain.

especially CHILDREN> I think telling one side of the "story" is not enough.

But seriously! although mankind still needs to believe in something, this is a clear case of evolved and not so evolved,(if I can be so bold) and with religions tainted past, the popularity of the sect is going to draw the wedge even deeper. its time to keep god where it belongs!

In the mind or heart, and not banging peoples ears with it.

Some see right though it!

EVO

I was thinking that now I have more time I would could put aside my neurotic preoccupation with my newly found faith in Harry Potter (blessed be His name) and address Peter's article:-

Where do I start? Perhaps the beginning?

Paragraph 1:-
"There is no doubt in my mind that the replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science has been a disaster. Not, of course, a disaster for our physical well being but a disaster for the spiritual, the existential. This displacement has meant that we have exchanged a story that told us who we were and where we were headed for one that leaves us rootless and directionless."

This is only the first paragraph and I know I will run out of my allotted 350 words before I get to paragraph 2.
Maybe Peter might resolve this by using his allotted words to answer a few questions regarding paragraph 1.

1. What makes you think science has "replaced" the Christian story? I can't even see a connection. Do you mean that the "Christian story" has diminished in its importance in Western society and that other ways of thinking are on the rise?

2. Sorry, call me ignorant, but how come you have thrown "spiritual" in with "existential"? Are not these two opposing ideas? or do you have a different definition of existential than I do?

3. Are you suggesting that everybody who exists or ever existed or is ever going to exist is "rootless and directionless" unless they embrace(d ) the "Christian story"? or is this simply directed at your perceived enemies The atheists/humanists/rationalists/relativists. Do other religions provide any kind of direction or is it simply the wrong direction. (you are not, I trust, suggesting that my new faith in Harry Potter could possibly be the wrong direction to take)

May I also thank Peter for the untold hours of fun we have with his articles. Certainly my life would not be as rich without reading his theological ponderings.

Keep it up mate we need people like you.

A silly myth ? :) Obviously not Polycarp. It remains the greatest of myths and it continues on... an allegory of love that makes love and its purification the very heart of the Christian understanding of God where “wholeness" is ultimately reached. The 'mysterium coniunctionis' or connection of opposites is where Jung reveals a union. Symbolic of this is the Yin-Yang bound in a circle; Leonardo's drawing of the naked human being outstretched within a circle; or Ezekiel's vision of four living creatures, each with four faces and represented by a wheel within a wheel (Ezekiel 1)...

Bemusing it is that that Peter continues to attract such a response – Jung, no doubt, would see a repression of the religious instinct. The power of the primordial, finding the usual idolatries - money, work, food, drugs, a complex of inferiority , an identity crisis, family, and love relationship. We can fall into identification with this power and perhaps see ourselves as gurus, wise beyond telling, inflated beyond our small human size. We can always spot an idol because it apes the way of God. We can also dodge the religious instinct by substituting our map of it for the territory it describes and puff up instead, in the wake of unreceived primordial power, to become instead fanatical-and boring.

It can be argued, with great persuasive power, we live in a post mythological age and in this age 'God is dead'. The myth of a God 'out there', in space somewhere, of a personified parent-figure seems gone with its potential for ontological truth also lost. But, as with the alchemy of old, a belief persists in the unity of the universe. Ironically so, Christian/ alchemist, Isaac Newton with his literalistic theological and prophetic thought helped shape the elements of his natural philosophy in a profound way.

As strange as it may sound, science will forever be in the debt of millenarians and biblical literalists. Today’s ‘creationist’, however, is no match for Newton for he was never considered “obnoxious” but more, a heretic, for being ‘un-triune’.

I'm not entirely sure how you will ever live this down, Boaz, when Sells tells us that:

>>By the way, I thought Polycarp’s first post in this thread one of the best I have read, thank you.<<

I'm sure you'll find a way to bounce back though.

>>PERICLES.. I blame myself.. your tone has radicalized more in your last post..and seems to hold distinct echo's of our conversational transactions in the Song from the 60 thread<<

You flatter yourself, of course. No-one is to blame for my observations on Sells' self-flagellation but myself. And you must be the only person on the planet to find a link between this post and Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

But you leave no stone unturned in your attempts to warp reality to fit your dreamy musings, do you?

>>you won't find dear Pericles admitting this, but the obvious outcome of his newly firmed up personal philosophy are cleary demonstrated in this clip which I've posted in another thread.<<

I have told you before, Boaz, that I rarely open your YouTube clips these days. However, today I made an exception.

Quite frankly, you are occupying space on an entirely different planet if you believe this piece of schlock-horror to represent anything more real than the Teletubbies.

It is a work of imagination, Boaz. Nothing more, nothing less.

(Imagination, as Sells explains to us, is also "the necessary ingredient when reading biblical texts")

>>It doesn't matter whether helping an old lady across the road or raping her daughter fits the [maximize my pleasure] bill<<

Your assumption has always been that relying upon one's own ability to separate right from wrong must inevitably lead to depravity. According to you, unless we believe in your particular version of religious dogma, we are all but a casual whim away from becoming an axe murderer.

This is, of course, arrant nonsense.

As Sells himself is now aware, "mankind is nothing but itself".

All I was doing was agreeing with him.

Sellick, Pericles, Bushbasher, and Bushbred ... I don't know.

I've seen the magnificance and power of the universe and of human effort. I've immagination, a small belief in the foreordaining of the Hebrews, some of the reason of the Greeks and a sympathy with the thoughts of Freud yet I've been dumbfounded by the a simplistic statement of a nine year old.

'someone started it.'

I thought but left unsaid 'I don't know'...

I won't need a bathtub but I wrestle with these ideas daily. Those of you who have settled one way or the other are truely blessed and ... bloody fortunate.

<< Your assumption has always been that relying upon one's own ability to separate right from wrong must inevitably lead to depravity. According to you, unless we believe in your particular version of religious dogma, we are all but a casual whim away from becoming an axe murderer. >>

It's a standard fallback argument for fundamentalists. It requires us to believe that all the good works in this world are done by Christians, and all the evil acts by non-Christians. Of course, no atheist has ever shot an abortion clinic to pieces or started a campaign of genocide in the name of god, and Christians are no more likely to be found in charitable and helping roles than an agnostic or atheist.

The other, disturbing, possibility is that those who roll out that argument really DO need rigid fundamentalism to keep them from being murderers and rapists.

I have offered some guidance on the interpretation of Peter's articles in order to progress discussion in these forums...

For the benefit of the Dawkins/Harris/Dennett epigones in this forum (who take the views of the aforementioned men as the objective 'Word of God') we really need a broader discussion on various different notions of truth (objective and subjective), perspectivism, phenomenology and existentialism. It is clear to me that Peter is talking in the language of these philosophies, but many of his detractors have not recognised the language and fallen into category error. I recommend the late Robert Solomon as an introduction to the above topics. For Christian theology I recommend Marcus Borg. To help all of us approach matters more open-mindedly I recommend the following article as a thought experiment: "Why Every Christian Should 'Quite Rightly Pass for an Atheist'", http://theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=341

Peter, like Kierkegaard and Sarte (an atheist), supports the position "all power to the sciences" in objective matters, but does not support positivism and scientism (in the pejorative sense of the term).

"But this must be done so that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology is given equal weigh for being 'true' as it does that of natural science."

Peter is not saying that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology should be treated as objective fact on par with natural science; that would be category error. His detractors must stop making this strawman and consider more broadly where he is coming from (i.e. a Christian existential perspective, see Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Rudolph Bultmann, Karl Barth, etc.). He is talking about existential truth. This truth is just as 'real' as objective truth and from a certain perspective, much more important. The Christian narrative or Gospel is just as real as objective facts (from a certain perspective, of course!). Further reading: "Ideology, predestination, and the stories we tell", http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/02/ideology-predestination-and-stories-we.html

paulr: << He is talking about existential truth. This truth is just as 'real' as objective truth and from a certain perspective, much more important. >>

Indeed, but that perspective is an entirely subjective one. It is a category error to confuse subjective truths with the objective reality that empirical science seeks to describe and explain.

Further, to assert that these kinds of subjective truths are of equivalent valence to those to which science aspires is to engage in a kind of sophistry - one which ultimately fails the reality test, no matter how cleverly nor circuitously the argument is presented.

CJ Morgan: You’ve just proved my earlier point. You are saying that subjectivity (or the “inner life”, or “soul”, or “spirituality”) is to be shunned. You and others have made a shrine to rational-empiricism and heap scorn on any other way of knowing and being. Humanity is suffering from a chronic malaise caused by the virus that is your scientism. The dogma of scientism is alienating people from their spiritual well-springs. That’s what Peter, Paulr and I deplore. Science is great as long as it rules in its legitimate territory – which is not the existential or spiritual life of a person.

The more you move away from the civilization ethos of the basic premise of Judaic- Christian values and the Hellenistic philosophical principle – You only enter the realm of New Polytheistic Cultism and self indulgent Egoistic perversion ; Just ask a few Communist and Proletariat and the Many mutating Socialist regimes that are revolving around Nothingness.
When you try and understand the psychological parameters and the deceptive notions many participate in today;
The one subject that is close to a posters heart that contributes here is Sir Oswald Mosley, and I have done much homework on that subject; only to find the continuum and Egocentricities of total misrepresentation and the typical proliferation of Propaganda to create confusion.
Who said this in 1968?
"I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics".
If you know the answer, then you know the deception and the Freudian tactics they engage in.

keith, i have imagination too. and i haven't settled anything in the manner being suggested. in particular, i haven't "replaced the Christian story with that of the natural science" in any way that i can understand that expression.

what i object to is people like sellick trivialising my world sense, and demanding which stories my children and i should listen to.

paulr, your dawkins/harris/dennett reference is the straw man here. again, i'm not demanding that sellick's story be true. i'm demanding the right to not listen to his story. and an ounce of respect for my ability to live a rich, thoughtful life without his story.

but no. apparently i'm a polytheistic self-indulgent egoistic pervert, with a shrine to rational empiricism. is it really a standard part of christianity for people to be this bloody arrogant?

After reading Sells exhortation that to read the bible one needs imagination, I was laughing so hard I have been unable to post on this thread until now.

I am totally bemused when people like Sellick claim that morality can only be found in Christ, just what do they think humans did on the eons BEFORE Christ? We didn't murder each other into extinction. We have always been able to understand issues of morality and ethics well before JC - think Greek philosophers or Eastern religiouns - Buddha preached much good sense 500 years before JC.

Christianity has only been around for 2000 years - there has been no discernible increase in morals or ethics. In fact some of the most resolutely evangelistic have been anything but ethical - grabbing dollars rather than souls.

Sellick believe what you want to believe, but casting aspersions on those who do not follow your particular version of Christianity or even any religion at all, is insulting at best and immoral behaviour towards others, at worst.

The golden rule of 'treating others how you would prefer to be treated' was around long before Christ, but I suggest it would not be heretical for you to apply it to yourself before writing yet another piece extolling your 'superiority' to others because of your religion.

crabsy: << You are saying that subjectivity (or the “inner life”, or “soul”, or “spirituality”) is to be shunned. You and others have made a shrine to rational-empiricism and heap scorn on any other way of knowing and being. >>

I said no such thing. To assert that scientific knowledge and reasoning is of a different ontological and epistemological order than 'spiritual' or other subjective dimensions of experience in no way suggests that the latter are to be "shunned".

There is no doubt that many, if not most people attach enormous subjective meaning to 'spiritual' myths, legends, rituals, laws and philosophies. But that doesn't in itself make those kinds of truths the equivalent of objective scientific knowledge and theory, which as you say is rational-empiricist in nature - and, more importantly for this discussion, objectively verifiable.

There is no need to "shun" spirituality of any sort. Rather, those whose subjective realities incorporate a spiritual dimension need to realise that it only exists inside their heads. I think that religion and spirituality are perfectly valid dimensions of meaning for the credulous, but they really ought to stop trying to elevate their beliefs to the status of scientifically derived knowledge.

This is why Sellick and other Chrisitian sophists are doomed to wrestle endlessly with these irreconcilable aspects of their being. And good luck to them, so long as they don't demand that others take their existential angst as seriously as they do.

I think you are being a bit harsh about yourself Bush basher; I do not know you- and I would not pass any judgement , although purveying the virtues of others as arrogant is a bit much; do you wish to purchase a chain saw? Ha
You probably ducked when the basic point was made and it has passed over your head .

Many thanks paulr, for your "guidance on the interpretation of Peter's articles".

>>For the benefit of the Dawkins/Harris/Dennett epigones in this forum (who take the views of the aforementioned men as the objective 'Word of God')...<<

Your use of the word epigone is in itself deliberately insulting. As is your suggestion that we entertain the ridiculous notion that these writers output acts as a substitute for religious tracts.

It may allow you to feel more comfortable, to perceive us in these terms, but it is both arrogant and odious.

>>Peter is not saying that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology should be treated as objective fact on par with natural science<<

We know that. We read the same article that you (presumably) did. We noted specifically his words:

"Thus the authority of biblical texts does not rely on the idea that they are the dictated words of God but on our experience of them."

This - as other posters have noted - indicates an enlightened approach to the subjective nature of our relationship with texts of any kind.

Without needing to plumb the depths of Derrida and his mates, we all know that we react as individuals differently to the same story. This is true whether the text is in the form of a religious scripture, or as simple as a football match. The same construct impacts us in a different manner; if I am a Swans supporter, the fact that they whacked Brisbane yesterday at the SCG has a different meaning to me than were I to barrack for the Lions, or even to a Collingwood fanatic.

In the same way, the Bible affects the religious - of any persuasion - differently to the non-religious. As Sells points out, it is our experience of those words that matters; the experience of a Muslim would of course be different to mine, and different again to a devout Christian theologist.

>>The Christian narrative or Gospel is just as real as objective facts (from a certain perspective, of course!)<<

That perspective being, of course, entirely, and appropriately, subjective.

CJMorgan: I really have to point out that your protestations do not ring true. Even as you deny it you really are belittling subjectivity. You insist that “spiritual and other subjective dimensions of experience” are of a different order from rational-empirical cognition. “Order” means a hierarchical rank. You thus assert that the subjective life must be treated as of less value than the objective.

You then describe people with spiritual or religious leanings as “credulous” – i.e. gullible, easily fooled, too eager to believe. You are doing exactly what you deny doing: shunning such people and the subjective life in general. You denigrate them for “trying to elevate their beliefs to the status of scientific knowledge.”

This arrogance of scientism is what Peter Sellick and I are opposing. Once again, I emphasise that science is a wonderful thing and should be vigorously taught and applied – but not to the imaginative and spiritual aspect of human life. By the same token, art and story and spiritual belief have no rightful place in the objective world of science. (Creation stories must not be used as objective explanations of the origin of species, for example.)

The subjective and the objective are obviously different categories but they are also of equal value for living our lives to the full

"What we need is an educational program that teaches the two realms just as literature is taught alongside natural science...this must be done so that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology is given equal weight for being “true” as it does that of natural science.

??

That's a huge call. But if so, all faiths - all thirty thousand or so of them - should be included. Being popular doesn't make it any right or any more true.

I think the article can be summed up as "ignorance is bliss".

Or was.

All,
The Hebraic-Christian and Hellenistic traditions certainly underpin Western civilization, and for good reason. What is lost, when the basis for these values decline, allows the formation of a totalitarian system or authoritarian state, as you suggest. Neither of these can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge the state or ‘system’ for its actions.

The egocentrism of ‘Sir’ Oswald Mosley is clearly evident in his autobiography. He was an aristocratic fascist who said, ”the blackshirt movement in the thirties was the only guarantee of free speech in Britain, and a spirit which was banished from our country”. Despite being anti-communist, his inspiration was drawn from a type of Marxist materialism. He considered himself a genuine British socialist and willed the social revolution he believed necessary through means of his fascist brigade of thugs. His ambiguity, initially, was such that for a very brief time Churchill and Bevan alike were keen for him to lead their respective parties. Fortunately, the British eventually recognised him for what he was, as they did eventually with Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Peter,
Thank you for a thought provoking article. I can see why it attracted such a response in which “Jung, no doubt, would see a repression of the religious instinct“, as relda so aptly put it.

The replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science would be - rather than has been - a disaster, because I am not sure a replacement is always taking place. I think the “Christian story“ is simply being ignored but I also think that a return to the past, where the “Christian story telling” ignored the insights of modern science, would also be a disaster. The car replaced walking and horse-riding but the solution to the ensuing lack of exercise is not a return to the past, but sport and fitness centres. A new solution is needed also here: for instance, RE teachers able to interpret scientific and religious (e.g. Christian) insights in such a way that students understand that they do not have to contradict each other.

As to the subjective nature of religion, I do not know if this is OK, but since I have to wait 12 hours before I can post a reply to relda on another thread, may I post here a part of it:

I personally believe that the Divine/Spiritual has both objective and subjective (individual as well as of humanity as such) features. It cannot be reduced to either, only one of its features can be suppressed by this or that individual or school of thought. This probably comes from my experience with “doing mathematics“ where it is also hard to tell whether one creates (the subjective feature) or discover (the objective feature).

Since quantum physics, this clear distinction (between the observer and observed) became problematic even in the philosophy of science. A lot of misunderstandings - including those manifested in derogatory remarks about religion and faith on this OLO - arise when one strictly separates what is subjective and what is objective when dealing with what “really exists“. “Epistemology models ontology” is a favourite saying of John Polkinghorne, the physicist-theologian I often refer to.

Fasctinating:)

aaah.. Poor Pericles out there like a shag on a rock.. and his bedraggled cormorant friend CJ hanging his wings out to dry nearby...

*grin*... sorry guys.. I have to have a bit of a poke at you's sometimes eh.

"arrogant and odious" ....

"fear and loathing" (from another thread)

Seems like Perilous is compiling a book of '2 worders' to sell at the next meeting of "Atheists_All_Over"

Some guidance for Pericles who sees everything as "how people interpret it"

CHRISTIANITY 101.

-Mankind is alienated from its Creator.
-Mankind has a natural tendency to err, because of that alienation. (The fall)
-Jesus came with a message "Repent"(from sin).. and "Believe"(in Him)
-He taught many parables..stories illustrating from many angles the nature of the "Kindgdom of God"
-Faith in Christ transforms people from that fallen state by undeserved kindness (Grace) and results in reconciliation with/to the Creator. ("we must be born..again")

-In Him, we are now children of God, and members of his Family, and are assured of forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

-When we do the above, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, the fruit of whom is "Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Self control etc"
No, we do not manifest those characteristics 100% of the time, as 'automatons' we still err...but are restored. Repentance is not just a 'one point in time' event, it is a life process.

-All of the above is well founded on the miracles, teaching and resurrection of the Lord, confirmed by the conversion of Saul, and the Scriptures.

"That" is the truth of the Christian story. Yes, there is much more.. many depths to be plumbed, but it always comes back to the above.

Well said Peter. Some of the venom that pours out in these comments tends to reinforce your point. Dawkins et al and their absolute certainty remind me of another famous atheist (Bertrand Russell)who said that the main problem with the world is that "fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, while wiser heads are full of doubt".

You do so love taking quotes out of context Boaz. It is a bad habit that you should make an effort to eradicate.

>>"arrogant and odious"... Seems like Perilous is compiling a book of '2 worders' to sell at the next meeting of "Atheists_All_Over"<<

These two words were used to describe the attitude of a poster who presumed to insult non-Christians by describing them as "Dawkins/Harris/Dennett epigones".

It was a very specific attribution, not a generalization. That you try to distort it so does you no credit.

>>"fear and loathing" (from another thread)<<

That speaks for itself. So far out of context, it even has to be dragged in from another thread.

Truly, you are a shameless piece of work, Boaz.

>>Some guidance for Pericles who sees everything as "how people interpret it"<<

What is staggering about this little barb is that I was merely observing that Sells himself is fast approaching this particular standpoint, and has the courage to admit it.

"Their truth does not rely on whether they actually happened just as the truth of any story does not depend on historicity. But with any story it is the exercise of the imagination that is crucial for them to reveal their meaning."

Please explain to me, Boaz, how an individual can "exercise the imagination" in anything but a subjective manner?

I live in a city of five million people, in a prosperous and educated country. Would I, do you think, "exercise my imagination" and arrive at precisely the same conclusion as, say, a Berber tribesman?

What else could anyone's imagination be, except subjective?

You would do well to heed your colleague, Eckadimmock, who quotes Bertrand Russell.

"fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, while wiser heads are full of doubt"

Do you ever entertain doubt, Boaz?

George,
Willem Drees (Theology Dept.Leiden University, Netherlands) holds a view where the integrity, coherence, and completeness of reality as described by science certainly does not imply its self-sufficiency. A transcendent Creator is consistent with, though not required by, naturalism. He, along with Ayala , generally expound the conceptual revolution that Darwin completed: that everything in nature, including the origin of living organisms, can be accounted for as the result of natural processes governed by natural laws.

Naturalism rules out objective reference to divine action in the world and it offers an evolutionary account of how such ideas arose - rejected is a view of God as altering the laws of nature or as acting within the contingencies of nature since nature is complete and the integrity of nature affirmed. Naturalism renders their cognitive content “extremely unlikely” without claiming absolute proof. (i.e. under part of the definition of being scientific, it is “falsifiable”). Our human action is perhaps the ‘objective’ in relation to a Divine ‘subjectivity’ as we appear to bear this unique image.

Though their cognitive claims may need revision, religions confront and challenge us with ideals and values, offering a vision for a better world - this mystical function of Christianity can be complementary to its more prophetic, functional characteristics. Evolution has bequeathed us the capacity for imagination and thus for transcending any one particular perspective, regulative ideal or Bible - this can in turn lead us to the notion of divine transcendence. This is far from what one expects of the traditional, but I find it edifying when Francisco Ayala gives serious consideration to the importance of cultural and mental aspects in the evolutionary explanation of morality - which can go beyond our emotions. Sociobiology, for instance, undermines the claim that values originate in a supernatural source, people however are still free to choose from among competing values. The anthropic principle in communication with the theory of self-organized complexity, as revealed through evolutionary biology, certainly gives theology a rich resource.

I note that nobody has challenged the statements made by Fractelle. I tend to agree with them.

I would also have thought that all the good Christians out there would forgive us non-believers for our disbelief, rather than start to froth at the mouth in a rather unchristian way in their attempts to set us straight.

Instead,I suggest you take solace in the fact we stand to get knocked back from the pearly gates, spend our lives committing no end of sins, and will end up having a rather disappointing judgement day.

However, all said and done, I look look forward to these philosophical debates and thank all the contributors for providing so much entertainment!

Lucy Van Pelt: Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud's formations. What do you think you see, Linus?

Linus Van Pelt: Well, those clouds to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean.[points up]

Linus Van Pelt: That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there[points]

Linus Van Pelt: gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.

Lucy Van Pelt: Uh huh. That's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: Well... I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie but I changed my mind.

I suspect that religion is no more than misunderstood mythology - a personification of human hopes, fears and ideals.

When organised and controlled, it brings out the very best and very worst in us all.

crabsy: << You insist that “spiritual and other subjective dimensions of experience” are of a different order from rational-empirical cognition. >>

Yes, which is hardly the same as saying that subjective/spiritual experience should be "shunned", is it?

<< You thus assert that the subjective life must be treated as of less value than the objective >>

Well, yes - that is, if you want to understand the world outside the subjective self. By all means tell yourself stories about gods, spirits or whatever, but I'm certainly asserting that rationality and empiricism are far more explanatory when it comes to the material universe. Indeed, that's what much of the Enlightenment was about.

If we give equal weight to subjective/supernatural theories and knowledge with that derived from scentific method and inquiry, that would open the door to Creationism, Sharia law and other forms of hocus pocus. I accept that many people feel the need to believe in supernatural beings and the powers that they attribute to them, but there is no way that I agree that these beliefs should have equal salience to scientific knowledge.

Boazycrap: << Poor Pericles out there like a shag on a rock.. and his bedraggled cormorant friend CJ hanging his wings out to dry nearby... >>

Hardly. What I see are some intelligent Christians (and Boazy..) desperately trying to assert that their religious beliefs are somehow the equivalent of science, by using increasingly convoluted reasoning and argumentation.

It must be pretty tough for them, I guess.

Relda, it's not what is lost, but what is gained when one is freed from the shackles of Middle Eastern myths, legends and superstitions.

These religions were the original fascist and totalitarian regimes. If you don't believe what they believe, when you die you'll go to hell. In past times (for Christianity at least) they would even assist you to get there early.

Ratzinger is the great authoritarian role model. He got it from a long line of authoritarians that started with Paul of Tarsus.

An earlier post said that people need something to believe in. It's called your Self.

The world would be a better place if more people believed in their Self. In this country the Commonwealth Goverenment spends $150B in various welfare programs principally because people don't have sufficient belief in their Self to make their own way.

It's when Man dreamed up religion that things went haywire.

The gods of our imagination will always be crazy.

Phil Matimein,

Thanks.

I was beginning to think that I was the only one who'd noticed the 'elephant in the room' - the fact that human beings practiced moral and ethical behaviour, philosophy and as a part of other religions long before Christianity decided it knew what was best for us.

Getting back to Aquinas along with Immanuel Kant, one wonders with their acceptance of Reason whether they were still not sure about Faith.

Having lost my loving wife over two years ago, after nearly 65 years of marriage, while some of my friends tell me I must have faith to meet her again in an afterlife, my philosophical studies only tell me to hope for it.

Finally, to have no hope left at all, still seems as if one should give thanks for nearly 65 years of a wonderful human partnership.

Regards, BB - WA.

Do not take this as a cop-out Frank, but, just as I understand evolution to have begun with the irreducibly simple and branch out into a hierarchy of the startlingly complex, so too it is with religion – this is not to say a simple mind is beyond its grasp and there are also far greater minds than mine.. But still, perception needs an observer. Our senses are automatically working, but our evaluation is not, and it depends on our knowledge of a perception which, according to William James, is always in the inverse ratio to our senses.

The idea of God can be about as baffling as QM where the observed is affected by the observer. Man goes "haywire" when he forgets to dream and has nothing to observe. The fascists of history have thrived in times of cultural decline or decadence, seeking to achieve national rebirth through its narrow Weltanschauung of ‘purity’. This is not the religion I know, espousing diversity or tolerance, but is its antithesis thereof.

Where our legends were once simple our myths continue – from which our modern science has grown, putting to rest our superstition. Getting what ‘sophisticated’ theology is, or comprehending what ‘sophisticated’ theologians think or believe isn’t the same as a ‘non-belief’ nor is it a superstition, far from it - it takes some serious work, time and effort - far more than a blog post, or two, or a hundred...

BB,
As with you, I tend to live in a ‘Kantian’ hope where God and the afterlife are not possible objects of sensible experience. "The speculative man becomes entangled in mysticism where his reason does not understand itself and what it wants..." My trust isn't in my own limit of understanding.

Fractelle,
I was beginning to think that I was the only one who'd noticed the 'elephant in the room' - the fact that other creatures practiced many things humans do, and some of them had over 90% of human DNA, long before humans decided that, just because of the few extra genes, they are more intelligent and carry more responsibility for the fate of this planet of ours than their predecessors in evolution.

The times have gone when people were ashamed of “coming from apes“, and Christians ignored the anthropological, historical and cultural roots of their religion.

CJ Morgan,
>>desperately trying to assert that their religious beliefs are somehow the equivalent of science, by using increasingly convoluted reasoning and argumentation<<
I do not know who on this thread was asserting that religious beliefs are the equivalent of science, but I am certainly glad I never had you as a student in my maths classes (or any classes where some very abstract and hard to grasp ideas are being taught) if this is your reaction to sincere attempts to explain things to you, to broaden your perspective (which does not mean wanting to convert you).

You seem to be living in the reverse of Galileo‘s times - when the scientific perspective was seen as threatening the Christian perspective - by thinking that it is the other way around.

Gday Bushbasher; I am sympathetic to your great loss; and in regards to some Philosophy, it is their interpretations and put to language perhaps best known to themselves.
There are literally hundreds of Philosophers other than the basic mainstream ones so well known; dissecting their words, you may become well rehearsed in the reasons why: (No Pun Intended) ha

Anyway I have supplied a link to a lesser know philosopher, but more powerful in words and they are not a bag of worms to add the old proverbial.
Happy reading, and check out the main site;
Santayana, George, 1863-1952
•
&#61607; The Life of Reason (English)
&#61607; Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
Five Essays (English)
&#61607; Winds Of Doctrine
Studies in Contemporary Opinion (English)

Ps. relda , I do not know why you would doubt your tallents- they seem to be quite advanced.

Bugger , the link did not work ; Ill try the main site; http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

Happy reading , and Give Arthur Schopenhauer (Spelling ? ) a going over.

Hi George - I would certainly liked to have had someone like you as my maths lecturer or tutor when I was an undergraduate doing a Science degree with a double major in Maths and Psychology back in the early 80s. My reading of your comments at OLO over time are such that I respect your opinions and your way of putting them. Clearly, you are an unusually intelligent and rational religionist.

My point about equivalence is that Sellick and those who agree with him seem to be arguing that their interpretations of (and belief in) various Christian texts are as salient and valid an apprehension of reality as are those of the corpus of scientific literature. I disagree - rather, I think that they are perfectly valid as frameworks by which people attach meaning to what are often otherwise variously nasty, brutish , short, boring or otherwise unpleasant or alienating lves. But that doesn't in itself adequately describe the real world, where belief isn't necessary for things to happen.

There's another gorilla in the OLO room here - and that's the one where what might appear to be simply an affirmation of a purported essential "spiritual" dimension to humanity jumps out of its cage and becomes an impediment to more secular aspects of life that include, for example, issues like abortion, euthanasia, censorship, immigration, drug laws etc etc. Even climate change - for example, you rarely get a Christian perspective here at OLO that actively supports climate change mitigation policies, or even acknowledges the reality of AGW.

Quite simply, I'd rather that such issues were approached from a perspective where empirical evidence and rational, humanist thought outweighs often dogmatic, invariably superstitious, appeal to purported wisdom and guidance handed down from some divine source.

Clearly, the Christians disagree. As they would.

It's like the X-Files - "I want to believe" - isn't it?

Reiba.

I'm sorry to tell you this but the Christian religion is based on fear, misogyny, intolerance and totality of thought. There is no room for diversity at all. 'Believe what we tell you to believe or you'll go to hell.'

This sort of stuff scares the bejesus out of children and primitives. Just read Paul's letters.

And it all started with God so loving the world that he drowned everyone, except Noah and his family ... and Moses murdering 3000 of his parishioners.

If that's tolerance and diversity I'm a monkey's uncle.

It's all about control. The truth will definitely set you free from this nonsense, but you won't hear it from many pulpits.

UncleFrank... to be 'blunt'... mate.. you need to read the scriptures, without the baggage of some haunting childhood bad religious experience,
or..some 'moral' reason for your way of describing faith.... I think if you thought a bit deeper.. it might become clear.

Pericles :) you don't like it when u get picked on do you?

You are too free with your one liners and 2 worders mate.. almost to broken record level.

But rest assured..there is always hope for you while there is life.

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

That can be your experience too... let's all hope and pray that it will be not just for you, but for all here who do not yet know Him.

Why not plumb the depths of that couple of verses.

-Justifed....though faith. (The sourece of the reformation)
-Peace...with God.
-Through.... the Lord....Jesus..(of Nazareth)..the Christ.
-through whom.."we" have gained..'access'...
-Grace.. in which we stand.

So rich.. so deep.. so profound.

CJ Morgan,
Thank you for your kind words, and for reading my OLO comments. So, after all, it would not have been so bad to have you in my class :-) (yes, in the 80s I was still teaching). I just do not understand what you mean by religionist. My dictionary says that religionism is a pejorative term (excessive religious zeal). I do my best not to sound excessive.

I am not sure Sellick maintains that the two things you mention are indeed “equivalent“, he just claims that the one should not replace the other. There are things he says that I agree with, and others I see differently, but his contributions enrich our understanding of a non-trivial topic like this, which one cannot say of those who just deride and abuse points of view (beliefs, if you like) that clash (or they think clash) with theirs.

As mentioned, I believe the 21st century Christian perspective (way of looking at reality) is COMPATIBLE in principle with a 21st century scientific perspective, which does not mean that there are no theists and atheists, who are looking for contradictions by misinterpreting either or both, or whose mind is a captive of, say, 19th century.

As for your “gorilla”, that is a different animal. One thing is the above compatibility of the two perspectives - that belongs to the realm of philosophy - and another thing is the problem of “abortion, euthanasia, ... etc“, where not religion or Christianity as such but concrete persons, often Church representatives, participate in the public debate displaying too forcefully - intentionally or not - their Christian identity. But so do many ardent secularists with their world-view. Until recently, all such debates were conducted on the background of shared Christian values. The problem is that some people cannot accept that this is not the case any more. Here the issue is not theoretical COMPATIBILITY of two or more world views, but practical TOLERANCE for the views of others in the public debate. Jürgen Habermas, an atheist, put it nicely in his recent paper on the “post-secular society” (http://www.signandsight.com/features/1714.html.).

On the contrary, Boaz, I relish it.

>>Pericles :) you don't like it when u get picked on do you?<<

Especially when it is you who do the picking.

To borrow Denis Healey's observation on Geoffrey Howe, being attacked by you is like being savaged by a dead sheep.

You may dislike my use of "one liners and 2 worders", but their virtue is that they tend to be meaningful as well as concise. Which is far more than may be said for your scattergun application of biblical quotes.

Let me see if I can explain without resorting to one-liners.

Sells suggests in his opening remarks that secularism has displaced religion, "the replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science has been a disaster".

Most posters here have agreed that there is ample room for both to live side by side. One is based upon belief, the other upon testable hypotheses.

Neither is in any way complete.

Science will never be complete, since its scope - to understand the working of the universe - defines a task that will endure far beyond any possible span of human existence. Similarly, religion will never be complete, since it requires the application faith in order to complete its structure.

This is probably the single greatest obstacle to the two concepts coming together. Man can live happily with either or both, since they are in no way mutually exclusive. But until there is a scientific breakthrough that finally validates one of the thousands of religious stances available - which, as I said before, simply ain't going to happen - one will remain subjective, the other objective.

Hence, your choice of biblical quotes, Boaz, will only ever have meaning to you and your fellow travellers, not to me.

"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand."

It really doesn't cross your mind, does it, that the above sentence is entirely devoid of meaning to a non-Christian?

The creation story in the Bible is not a Christian myth. It is a Jewish myth that Christians incorporated in their Bible. Then they proceeded to persecute, exile and massacre the creators of the myth because they would not accept the Christian mumbo jumbo.

The myth of a psychopathic God who subjects his own son to torment, the son who was born of a virgin like the pagan Gods, Mithra and Osiris, and the Holy Ghost who impregnates human females ala Zeus and other pagan gods are myths that hordes of the gullible choose to believe..

Since these myths are part of our culture like the other myths of antiquity they should be taught as the other myths are taught. However, they should not be taught as anything other than myth which people may choose to believe in as people may choose to believe the sun is really Apollo racing around the earth in a chariot.

Frank,
In any religion, including the Christian one, some use fear, misogyny, intolerance and totality of thought – you’ll need to cast a little wider to see the diversity created from a dissident, if not heretical, Jewish sect.

Your comments on Paul of Tarsus form some degree of accuracy. Pauline Christianity forms the basis of many Christian theological beliefs such as the ‘atonement’ and ‘original sin’. Paul was a Hellenist or Diaspora Jew with no personal knowledge of Jesus. The philosophies and theologies that he created were conceived within a Hellenistic world, colored by his education as a Pharisee, and the pagan religions which surrounded him. His writings evidence these influences in his dogma viz, concerning, 'calling,' 'chosen,' 'predestined,' 'pre-existence,' and 'election'. These are concepts that have kept the world's philosophers and scholars debating for thousands of years.

The content of his conversion can be seen to have been a fit of epilepsy (perhaps, medically, quite likely) or as others see it, a ‘genuine’ visionary experience. Close scrutiny of Paul's writings often bear what we’d call an irrational or pathological element (perhaps related to his ‘condition’) – an element which could not but repel the Jewish Rabbis. Maybe his pessimistic mood was the result of his physical condition as he suffered an illness affecting both body and mind. Nevertheless, his fiery temperament and controlling manner were intimidating. Paul’s view was where "the whole creation groaneth" for liberation from "the prison-house of the body" from this earthly existence, which, because of its pollution by sin and death was intrinsically evil – dismal stuff producing a lasting theological effect.

Paul believed in supernatural powers, in fatalism, in "speaking in tongues” and in mysteries or sacraments, a term borrowed solely from heathen rites. He was an overbearing man of his time, to be sure, and through a strange irony or quirk, enabled the relatively obscure Yehoshua of Nazereth, who saw his mission as being for the Jews by the Jews, transported into history. Jesus’ basic tenet was one of love and tolerance – he didn’t describe Hell as an actual ‘place’ of punishment.

george, you say that the issue is not one of compatibility but of tolerance. i would agree.

i think the trouble (well, one of the troubles) with this thread is that it has been set up by sellick's straw man: the purported replacement of the christian story with science. you also seemed to gently (i would say too gently) point out the strawness in your first post in this thread. i think sellick is the one who has actually, and needlessly, raised the issue of compatibility.

given sellick's premise, i don't know what he's trying to explain. and to the extent he's not introducing straw men, he is genuinely being insulting.

as for the posts by you and reida and others, i've appreciated them in the past and appreciate them here, though much of your discussion is beyond me.

a last brief comment. it is silly to regard christianity as a single-belief monolith. but the holding on to willfully ignorant anti-scientific nonsense is hardly confined to a few religious backwaters. there's enough religious literalism around to still cause plenty of concern.

George

The link you provided was a wonderful and comprehensive look at the complex issues of belief, tolerance and reason.

In light of Bushbasher's above post, I think the following paragraph from the article is very relevant and it would behoove Sellick to read in its entirety and do a little reflection on his communication skills.

>>>""Tolerance" is of course not only a question of enacting and applying laws; it must be practiced in everyday life. Tolerance means that believers of one faith, of a different faith and non-believers must mutually concede one another the right to those convictions, practices and ways of living that they themselves reject.

This concession must be supported by a shared basis of mutual recognition from which repugnant dissonances can be overcome. This recognition should not be confused with an appreciation of an alien culture and way of living, or of rejected convictions and practices.

We need tolerance only vis-a-vis worldviews that we consider wrong and vis-a-vis habits that we do not like. Therefore, the basis of recognition is not the esteem for this or that characteristic or achievement, but the awareness of the fact that the other is a member of an inclusive community of citizens with equal rights, in which each individual is accountable to the others for his political contributions."<<<

I thought I’d relax with a cup of tea and read through some of the comments. I only got as far as the first line of the thread’s first comment before I thought I’d respond.

Bushbasher - “the problem with non-Copernican religious cosmology is that it, figuratively and literally, put Man at the centre of the Universe. it's long after time to accept that this just isn't true.”

Our teachers told us that mankind is the pinnacle of all there is. We are at the centre. What is more important than us children of the Enlightenment? But who was Copernicus? I thought he was a monk. (Someone might correct me here.) As a monk, I’m guessing that even if he did think that the earth revolved around the sun, he would still be affirming that God is at the ‘centre’ of his universe.

Lately I read somewhere that there are some lines of evidence from astronomy to suggest that we, meaning our galaxy, is roughly speaking at or near the centre of the universe. The simplest of these was to see a similar number of stars when you look out one window as when you look out the other.

bushbasher,
I did not want to imply that the question of tolerance is more important than that of compatibility - they are just two different things. Much of the controversy, also on this OLO, is based on the assumption - on both sides of the debate - that the religious and scientific outlooks are not compatible (unless the first one is reduced to the subjective realm of psychology). I tried to defend this compatibility - that one can accept the existence of a reality accessible only through religious experience and religious (mythological) models as a part of his/her world view, at the same times as one accepts the validity of scientific models of a reality accessible only through senses, instruments and these models.

You say that Sellick's article is insulting to you. Well I participated in this discussion as well as in the discussion of an article by Brian Holden (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7684), that some narrow minded Catholic mind also find insulting. I think both articles have lead to some worthwhile comments, (never mind the worthless ones) that could enrich the outlook of those participating in the discussion. I think they both serve a good purpose irrespective of whether you like what the article itself says.

It has been claimed that the "the right to offend, to insult" is one of the basic rights in a free democratic society, although in practice mostly adherents of some religion have been targeted or felt as if they had been targeted. I do not subscribe to a "right to insult", but I have to admit that what is insulting to whom is a rather subjective matter.

I certainly agree that there is plenty of "willfully ignorant anti-scientific nonsense", as there is also a lot of willfully ignorant anti-Christian/anti-religion nonsense. We just have to live with these, and try to keep our dialogue above them.

Fascinating stuff.. here's some relevant Australian-made reflection fodder..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOHPQusSc5Q

This cute though powerful comment on creationism and apparent human need for religion in general is titled "Why Don't Bees Go to Heaven?" John Safran saw fit to play the song a couple of weeks ago on his Sunday JJJ programme.

It all lives at my website..

http://www.renaissanceofreason.com

..with lots of Oz comment here (including Kevin's recent self-outing as a creationist)..

http://www.renaissanceofreason.com/current.html

I feel sorry for the author.

He assumes that all Christians are good and intelligent people.

Not so, unfortunately.

One only has to come to Toowoomba to see how dangerous these people can be.

Education Queensland allows complete nutters into our state schools to run Religious Instruction. In the main these people are not 'teachers' and not trained at all in dealing with school students.

They are in fact missionaries, intent on converting our children to their 'faith'.

On top of that we suffer from Scripture Union 'chaplains' forced onto us by Julie Bishop and John Howard.

Gillard is in charge of wasting $165 million of ATO monies, yet her staff at DEEWR make no effort whatsoever to police how the money is spent or what 'chaplains' do in the schools'

Here in Toowoomba, we suffer from a group of extremists, very similar to those that Chris Masters exposed the other week, who, as well as filling our schools with missionaries for RI are also allowed by Premier Bligh to fill our schools with 'mentors'.

A visit to the Toowoomba Church 'healing room' webpage will give readers some insight into the thinking of our 'chaplains' and RI instructors here. Do read the story about the 'serpent' and her eggs right at the bottom:
http://toowoombachurch.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=277&Itemid=1

Now, our author must have no experience of this sort of 'Christian' but let me assure him and all other readers that they are like a cancer on our community.

Not only do they impose themselves on the school system, they also impose their dullwitted thinking on the business community here and distort the ability to have some half decent community discussion.

None of this has anything to do with the Bible?

Well, they believe every single word of it and that rather impacts their actions.

No doubt they are 'well meaning' but, frankly, that is no excuse for the stupid and dangerous world they would have us all live in.

Sellick clearly states that:

“The theory of evolution tells us that we are here by accident, we are not the product of an intentional creator.

Now all of this is true, but taken as an existential framework it is a wonder that we don’t all just lie in our baths and slit our wrists. If this is the only framework that we give the young then it is no wonder that they become shallow, hedonistic materialists, what other option do they have? The scientific existential framework is a recipe for despair and suicide and drug use….

What we need is an educational program that teaches the two realms just as literature is taught alongside natural science. But this must be done so that the historical/imaginative construct of Christian theology is given equal weigh for being “true” as it does that of natural science.”

OK. Sellick wants the mystical taught at school as a valid part of education. I don’t have a problem, in fact the subject of religion – ALL RELIGIONS – should be taught as part of the human experience.

But Sellick wants only Christianity taught. WHY?

Sellick, your prejudice and hypocrisy is showing, time for some reflection on your continued disparagement of the multitudes of humanity who do not believe exactly as you do.

Rather an amusing video Ronnie (‘Why Don't Bees Go to Heaven?'). Kevin Rudd’s sophism concludes (and as you quote), “…so I think there is an intelligent mind at work” is lazy.

A pervasive idea that appears to have taken hold is that science tends to be materialistic – a purely philosophical position where nothing can exist beyond matter. Pure empiricism suggests this also, where, if it can’t be measured it therefore cannot exist – another false priori.

Confusing the whole issue are those who propose the teaching and endorsement of intelligent design alongside of science as legitimate (President Bush is also one of these). To be consistent to this therefore, and in the words of Francisco Ayala , “we should [therefore] teach astrology with astronomy, and alchemy with chemistry, and witchcraft with medicine.”

On the paternalism of Catholic hierarchy one should note that in the second century, the force of ancient marriage tradition - the Septuagintal, New Testament pastoral, Greek, and Roman alike, had not successfully pressured all Christians to conform to the familial status quo in which father knows best and the husband is the head of his wife and children. The irony is here, for if ‘man’ is simply animal (by ‘soul’ and instinct) , “Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us. With view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire which neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God´s decree......” - Epiphanes, the son of the Gnostic teacher Carpocrates. Destroy a familial religion and again, we subjugate the ‘fairer’ of our species.

fractelle, very very good question. why only the christian story, indeed.

george, in fact i do subscribe to the right to insult. and i'm not fussed by sellick's insults, i'm merely pointing out the fact. in terms of sources of nonsense, and respect or the lack of it, i'm not convinced there's the symmetry you seem to imply. but that question can wait for another day. as for silly articles being the source of good discussion, that's much more a comment on you and reida and fractelle and others, than it is of sellick.

dan, i'm not sure what point you're trying to make. are you suggesting that the idea of the earth being or not being at the centre of the universe is devoid of serious theological origins or theological implications

Bushbasher,
It is a limited perception of Dan’s, through also his simplistic illustration, that we are at or near the centre of the universe by saying, “ [it is to] see a similar number of stars when you look out one window as when you look out the other." Bit like saying, “the earth is flat for as far as I can see... therefore the earth is flat.” Both analogies illustrate a bad conclusion drawn on the basis of narrow observation. It is perhaps worthy noting also that the modern notion of there once being a medieval belief in a flat earth, especially in Christianity, is a fallacy and is commonly referred to as “The Myth of the Flat Earth.”

In speaking of myths, another is the one ‘social scientists’ celebrate with their secularization thesis, despite the fact it has never been consistent with empirical reality. This notion rests on contrasts between now and a so called bygone ‘Age of Faith’, a pure nostalgia. A lack of religious participation was, if anything, even more widespread in medieval times than now. The idea the world is becoming more secular is an illusion, despite what we’d like to believe. If we are to expand the ‘secularization doctrine’ to non-Christian societies we can see that not even the highly magical 'folk religions' in Asia have shown the slightest declines in response to quite rapid modernization.

Peter Berger (1968 ) told the New York Times that the by "the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture. He said "the predicament of the believer is increasingly like that of a Tibetan astrologer on a prolonged visit to an American university." Amusing as his statement is, it just simply ‘ain’t’ true.

I think George alluding to the ‘glass-jaw’ is excellent in terms of how we might take offense at some-other’s ‘non-sense’. I would also say, whatever is said (and by whom), we take it on the jaw – but always with reserve and the right of a return.

Peter's idea of Darwin's theory of evolution:-

"The theory of evolution tells us that we are here by accident...."

I'm sad to see Peter, a "man of science", trip over himself on this one. The theory of evolution does not say we are here by accident. This is ignorant commentary perpetrated by Christian fundamentalists that have not read "The origin of species" or, if they have, then by these utterances have completely failed to understand the concepts behind one of the greatest pieces of scientific reasoning of all time.

I quote Peter's enemy, Richard Dawkins( a real scientist) :-

"Natural selection is quintessentially non-random, yet it is lamentably often miscalled random. This one mistake underlies much of the sceptical backlash against evolution. Chance cannot explain life. Design is as bad an explanation as chance because it raises bigger questions than it answers. Evolution by natural selection is the only workable theory ever proposed that is capable of explaining life, and it does so brilliantly."

Interesting site, Ronnie,

What struck me in Rudd’s response was this...

“If you were to reduce that to mathematical probabilities, I’ve got to say it probably wouldn’t have happened...”

Yet if you were reduce to mathematics the concept of something as infinitesimally complex as God coming into existence from no simple beginnings, then the probabilities would be infinitely smaller.

Of course, Theists simply get around this by declaring that God cannot be explained in terms of the physical world – which of course, answers nothing.

Each to their own, I guess.

What I found frightening though, was the thought of the stickers for science textbooks. I can’t find anything about that though. Where did you hear that from?

Here’s another video you might want to link to, Ronnie. It’s a message from comedian Marcus Brigstocke to the three Abrahamic religions of the world...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-ZrwFwLQg

Dan,

<<Lately I read somewhere that there are some lines of evidence from astronomy to suggest that we, meaning our galaxy, is roughly speaking at or near the centre of the universe. The simplest of these was to see a similar number of stars when you look out one window as when you look out the other.>>

The ‘looking out the windows’ example is simplistic in the extreme (like Relda’s ‘Flat-Earth’ analogy). Even with no light pollution, virtually everything we see in the night sky is within our own galaxy.

The universe is expanding like dots on a balloon as it’s being blown-up. Only the galaxies (represented by the dots) wouldn’t expand like they would on the balloon since they are held together by gravity.

So in effect, there is no physical ‘center’ as such.

I would suggest that whoever wrote what you were reading didn’t really know what they where talking about.

Oooops... I meant "Infinately as complex as God".

And to clarify...

"...virtually everything we see in the night sky with the naked eye is within our own galaxy."

Hello AJP,

Thanks for the comments and the link.. it's precious!

I must clarify though, the bit about the warning stickers is a satirical comment. An earlier post has pointed out the abhorrent state of affairs in Queensland regarding the usurping of our State Education system by Charismatic/Pentecostal Christians. The trouble began in 1910 when the word 'secular' was deleted from the Queensland Education Act, never to return. Within Australia, Queensland is unique in this regard (I'm not absolutely certain about WA).

The absurdity we encounter can often only be commented upon in a 'National Enquirer' tabloid manner. Hence the fake warning sticker story. A gander at the Renaissance of Reason associate site The Fourth R will give an indication of how hard it is attempting to achieve a secular State education for one's kids when residing upon the buckle of the Qld Bible belt.

http://www.thefourthr.info

AJ,
I never said anything about looking with a naked eye. Others seem to have clearly understood this implied in what I wrote. I would suggest that you are mistaken to think that the author of the book I was reading didn’t know what he was talking about. He is a reputable scientist with the ability more than most to think outside the box.

Relda,
You say my suggestion was based on a simplistic illustration. If you read it again, you would see that I said there were a few lines of evidence, and the one I raised was the only the simplest. I’ll explain further using an analogy. If the world was flat (and those that can’t grasp analogy might now accuse me of saying that I believe it is) then one simple supporting line of evidence would be that it appears flat as far as I can see. This line of reasoning would be consistent with reality. But after that you would need to search for more evidence to look into the matter more deeply.

Bushbasher,
I believe you’re asking me a question, but you’re not using the usual punctuation or a question mark at the end. Is there something wrong with your keyboard?

“dan, i'm not sure what point you're trying to make. are you suggesting that the idea of the earth being or not being at the centre of the universe is devoid of serious theological origins or theological implications”

I was attempting to question the certainty in your opening statement, in which you state that man is not anywhere near the centre of the universe. When theologians make certain statements, they sometimes get accused of arrogance (especially here at OLO). Occasionally this is warranted. Yet brash statements are not the monopoly of theologians. Can you state for certainty that we are not near the centre of the universe?

To answer your question a different way, nothing (not even modern science) is very far from theological origins or theological implications.

dan, forgive me? that was unbelievably brash of me? suggesting that man is not at the centre of the universe, merely because there's not a scrap of evidence for it? and there's evidence that the concept of the centre is probably geometrically meaningless? but of course i can't prove it? oh, what a thin little limb i find myself stranded upon?

No, bushbasher, forgive me. Your statement wasn’t particularly brash, perhaps just a little insular. Now don’t go accusing me of not stating evidence when I did so, albeit just a small preliminary piece.

bushbasher,
well, as far as the RIGHT to insult is concerned I must strongly disagree. Do you mean it as one of the human rights the West wants other cultures to accept as universal? Any violence, physical or verbal, is counterproductive. See relda about the ensuing right to return, which I do not subscribe to either: insults are best ignored, provided you have a thick enough skin. Since I abhor insults I do not want to give you concrete examples of insults, though it would be easy to construe some, addressed at all sorts of groups or individuals (including some participants of this OLO), not only at Christians and Muslims, whom as addressees most of the advocates of this "right" apparently have in mind.

Let me repeat that what is insulting to whom is a subjective matter, and somebody can claim to have been insulted by something that others see only as criticism: It makes a difference whether I hit (physically) a wrestler or an old lady, and both of them can claim they were hit when in fact it was just a slight push. The same about "hitting" verbally, where the situation complicated by the fact that what is and is not an insult depends not only on how it is received, and how it is seen by uninvolved "outsiders", but it varies also with time and culture: what was insulting to a Christian in the Victorian era could be an innocent remark today, whereas today we have all sorts of groups - not only religions - who feel insulted by this or that abusive representation of what they are or stand for. As I said, I refrain from examples.

Sellick is hard to understand or even to agree with, including myself. But I would like to hope I am not the only one here who was not insulted by his critical article.

relda,
I think it is fair to add that Peter Berger had corrected himself a couple of times, and now he sees the present as characterised not by secularism but by a pluralism of beliefs.

The replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science has been a disaster for the spiritual but not for the existential.

Since the Christian story has resulted in the Inquisition, Crusades, the enslavement of the indigenous Americans justified by Christianity, the Holocaust resulting from the years of hatred promoted by Christianity and other atrocities the destruction of much of Christian spirituality is a step forward for humanity.

It has been a step forward for the existential as natural science has enabled humanity to see the world as it is.

The Christian Bible has furthered:

1.religious bigotry ("No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6), This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A veritable renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.

2. anti-semitism (And the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children'" (Matt. 27:25)), sexism (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man." (1Cor. 8-9),

3. homophobia ("...the men of Sodom...to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.'" (Lev. 18:22) This story that portrays all of the men of Sodom as eager to gang-rape two heavenly visitors has been used to condemn faithful and loving homosexual relationships.

4. corporal punishment "Do not withhold discipline from a child....If you beat him with a rod, you will save his life from Sheol" (Prov. 23:13, 14)),

5. environmental degradation ("Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth" (Gen. 1:28)).

The above and other examples of biblical justification for atrocity can be found on the website of Bishop Spong who is trying to rid Christianity of some of its evil.

Relda,
On the issue of secularism, Charles Taylor asks the question as to why in the 15th C it was impossible not to believe in God but in the 21st it is almost impossible to. He frames secularisation as the failure to see horizons other than those immediately available to us, that is, the almost complete absence of the transcendent in modern society. This explains why our culture has become increasingly bland and introspective and the flatness of human life. Secularism is not just about church attendance it is an orientation of the heart and mind that leaves empiricism as the only test of truth and the self as the only basis for morality.

Bushbasher.
You should read these pages from my perspective! One of the reasons that I do not participate that much is that I face a flood of insult and disparagement and am grateful that others have taken up my defence and in the process have added more things to think about. As for those who are fervently against what I write I find most of them can be categorised as the same old rants that do not deserve a reply. Occasionally there is a genuine question that may elicit a response.

Peter Sellick

George,
Sure, there are times anything stands to be corrected - Berger included, and might I add, papal decree. History portrayed often gives good retrospective view, where the culmination of an error may seem all too obvious. Our idea on ‘progress’ seems to suggest, errors do not repeat or perhaps, do they simply wear a different suit? The “right of return” for an insult, as you allude to, need not be taken up – far better to ignore it in the exercise of something decent, if not, moral.

I’ll take your point Sells. The scientific empiricism you mention has almsot certainly led to, inter alia, beliefs in a ‘life-force’, a ‘power of spirit’ and this has also gradually promoted agnosticism and atheism, perhaps explaining the long-term decline of religious practices. Research literature, however, on "believing without belonging" adds further dimension.

In 1914 the American psychologist James Lueba sent questionnaires to a random sample of to ‘American Men of Science’. Each was asked to select one of the following statements "concerning belief in God" :

1. I believe in a God to whom one may pray in the expectation of receiving an answer. By "answer," I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer.
2. I do not believe in God as defined above.
3. I have no definite belief regarding this question.

He wanted to show that men of science were irreligious. Leuba found that 41.8 percent of his sample of prominent scientists selected option one, thereby taking a position many would regard as "fundamentalist." Another 41.5 percent selected the second option (many of whom, as Leuba acknowledged, no doubt believed in a somewhat less active deity), and 16.7 percent took the indefinite alternative. In 1996 Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham (1997) replicated Leuba's study exactly. 39.3 percent of eminent scientists selected option one, 45.3 percent chose option two, and 14.5 percent took option three. Over an 82 year period, there has been no real decline amongst the most empirical of observers in a literal belief in God. The religious decline, noted by you, lies on the surface.

Peter: "Secularism is not just about church attendance it is an orientation of the heart and mind that leaves empiricism as the only test of truth and the self as the only basis for morality."

Here is the heart of your problem Peter. You fail to consider that a basis for morality can reside anywhere other than where you personally find it.

If it is The Book that gives you a morals then good for you. You have made a mistake(for reasons I am happy to debate) but in any case how dare you suggest non believers don't have a moral frame work other than "self" simply because we don't kneel before your ancient holy book.

Yes I agree with you that cultural and moral relativism are questionable philosophies (for a different reason) but that doesn't just leave us with your god-given revelation as the only source of "truth".

It is not a binary choice. It is an analogue shade of grey. Your argument reminds me of the old over used quote from C.S. Lewis that Jesus was either a liar, mad or God (conveniently leaving out any other alternatives like deluded, mistaken, a cultural relativist or a Jewish preacher/politician on a scripture-inspired mission.
A number of studies have indicated that religious belief is not an indicator of moral outlook and behaviour. You have failed abysmally to show that belief in any kind of literalist religious superstition actually benefits anybody. You have failed to indicate that religious authority even exists (apart from the authority you have chosen to give it which is of course a concession to "self".)

You also seem to consider secularism as some kind of a movement, as you do atheism, whereas these things are simply a way of conducting the affairs of state that is shown to work(in the case of secularism) and living life without a god or gods (as in atheism). I'm sorry society is moving in a way that doesn't suit you but you lot have have it your way for far too long.

How about giving us some more evidence Peter ?

Ronnie,

I can't believe I missed the satire in the 'Creationist sticker' bit! Don't I feel like an idiot now! Especially since that's just my kinda satire.

I was at work at the time and was attempting to be inconspicuous while skimming through this thread and the website – hence the mistakes in my post and the typo in my correction post – and I missed the joke entirely.

That's my excuse anyway... And I'm sticking to it. :)

Dan,

<<I never said anything about looking with a naked eye.>>

At the risk of sounding pedantic... You didn't actually mention a telescope before – which I would have thought was a crucial aspect to what you were saying. Using a telescope indoors really isn’t much of an experience though. Or did you also forget to mention switching off the lights?

C’mon Dan. Admit it… You meant “with the naked eye”, didn’t you?

I mean, who would actually be running around their house with a telescope in their hands without being instructed to?

But even still, that's not evidence at all, and if this “scientist” actually said to “look out the windows” as an example of our galaxy being at the center of the universe, then I would seriously question what his/her motives were in trying to prove this, as it is simply an invalid example.

Take the balloon analogy of the universe that I used as an example... The rubber skin of the balloon in the analogy would’ve been much more 3-dimentional (thick with galaxies) compared to the thickness of the rubber skin of a real balloon in relation to it’s empty space. Therefore, even with the telescope (that you forgot to mention), we would still appear to be in the center of the universe.

<<I would suggest that you are mistaken to think that the author of the book I was reading didn’t know what he was talking about.>>

No.

I would suggest that this scientist is a Creationist doing the unscientific thing of trying to twist the evidence to fit a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Continued...

...Continued

<<He is a reputable scientist with the ability more than most to think outside the box.>>

I'd doubt that.

Because if his/her hypothesis had any credibility at all, hundreds of scientists would be trying to help build on it in order to share a piece of the Nobel Prize.

You wouldn’t be talking about Dr Russell Humphreys by any chance, would you, Dan?

Just wondering, because Humphreys' hypothesis about the Milky Way being at the center of the universe has been dismissed by the entire scientific community as totally flawed – even by some Creationists…

http://www.trueorigin.org/rh_fackmcin1.pdf
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/unravelling.shtml?main

Tell me, Dan... Has this scientist ever presented his hypothesis for an official peer review? And if so, by whom?

<<If the world was flat (and those that can’t grasp analogy might now accuse me of saying that I believe it is)...>>

You're confused, Dan. You included the word “If”. But before, you didn't include the word “telescope” in your earlier piece of “simple supporting line of evidence” – which as I've shown, still would've been irrelevant anyway.

<<…nothing (not even modern science) is very far from theological origins or theological implications.>>

Nothing?

Then, aside from the hundreds of examples provided in my posts and links, how do the ‘Theological origins’ explain the fact that we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and that our 46 chromosomes are the same as 46 of their 48 chromosomes, with chromosome pair number 2 in humans appearing exactly like a fused version of the two in chimps that we’re missing?

Or is God just testing our faith?

I think you would be rather surprised about most scientists and their perspective; agreed in most instances everyone has an open mind, but I have to tell you, once you have reports that has not reached the hands of The Bureaucrats, that have the audacity to alter and modify for their own purposes ; have corrupted and near destroyed the Institutions ; If you in general terms wish to know what damage a Bureaucrat can do ; Just Listen the Rudd/ Wong Propaganda adds about Global Warming . These clowns would tell you Nephilim were a cartoon show from the Flat Earth society.
And if you are into a bit of Astrophysics (Real Hypothesis) not garbled junk, then you would be familiar with a recent discovery of nothing, but known as Dark Matter; Quantum particle physics is starting to pay off.

The theory of the ever expanding Universe is the proverbial Myth. Like Global Warming , whatever model gave them an answer they wanted was the model they adopted ; and Now a new Hypothesis is in order in light of our new findings. And avoid spurious idiotic junkets
How many dimensions do you wish to name?

Priscillian,
>>Peter: "Secularism is not just about church attendance it is an orientation of the heart and mind that leaves empiricism as the only test of truth and the self as the only basis for morality." ... You fail to consider that a basis for morality can reside anywhere other than where you personally find it. <<

What Peter gave is a DEFINITION of secularism that you might or might not like (then you should suggest an alternative). It certainly does not STATE that “a basis for morality cannot reside anywhere other than where Peter personally finds it.” Maybe he made that statement somewhere else, then you should quote that statement. before you condemn it.

As to the definition of secularism he gave, I could accept it as a working definition, provided the “self” is understood as not only the personal self (determined by genes and environment) but also the communal or societal “self”, i.e. the above environment. At least this is how I understand morality without God anchored in biological evolution.

(A morality with God, as I understand it, is not something completely different only something that ADDS to the above an abstract - or transcendent - “ingredient“ that is independent of the personal, societal, cultural and temporal determinants of the secular version. However, I am not a an ethicist, so please do not take this too seriously.)

George,
Holyoake invented the term "secularism" to describe his views of promoting a social order separate from religion, without actively dismissing or criticizing religious belief.

Secularism is NOT the enemy of religion it is the protector of it. It is what stop religious nuts killing each other in the street (e.g Protestants vs Catholics, Sunni vs Shia, Muslim vs most others, Scientologists vs everybody)

Peter treats this instrument as if it is another religion. It is not. Secular governments work. All I can assume is that Peter would like us to live in a theocracy like Saudi Arabia or Iran. If not, what is it he is suggesting? How can we organise this country in a way that would make him happy. A state religion?

Peter did not actually say that the sentence you mentioned in my post but he certainly promotes the idea in article after article that without his god there can be no basis for moral reference or authority. This is why he detests moral relativism (I do too) and feels uncomfortable in a secular society even though it gives him the freedom to express his ideas without fear of reprisal.

As to the source of our moral/ethical outlook without including a god I would invite you to investigate this yourself and tell me what you think. I remain open minded about the source of our morals but am sure it doesn't come from any ancient book.

Priscillian,
>>Holyoake invented the term "secularism" ... without actively dismissing or criticizing religious belief.<<

There are many definitions of secular, secularism, secular humanism etc., but in principle there are only two different meaning to it that often get confused:

One thing is a secular system (the French call it laicité) and another thing is a secularist world-view (if you do not like the term religion), sometimes called secular humanism. Holyoake is about the first meaning, Peter about the second. Something like the term democratic: one thing is when you speak of a democratic political system (parliamentary democracy), and another thing is a particular political party that carries “democratic” in its name. A politician criticising e.g. the Social Democrats usually does not want to criticise the democratic system as such. I think the same is true about Peter’s criticism.

When the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor criticises the “secular age” (http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220531328&sr=8-1) he is saying essentially the same thing as the already mentioned atheist philosopher Jürgen Habermas with his “post-secular” society (http://www.signandsight.com/features/1714.html). Of course, neither of them wants to return to a society where, say, the Christian outlook was dominant, but neither do they want a society where the secularist (in the sense of Peter’s, not Holyoake’s definition) world view dictates to others. Taylor calls the tendency the excesses of which he wants to correct secularisation, Habermas expressed his reservations by the very term “post-secular”. Of course the two adhere to two different world-vews, and, yes, I am aware they had a discussion and agreed to disagree on some details. This is like two coaches agreeing on the rules of fair play, although each one of them supports his own team.

A do not understand the reasons why Peter - or anybody else - should not be allowed to “promotes his idea (about what is the correct way of looking at things) in article after article. It would be strange if he changed his opinion from article to article.

As to your invitation to investigate “the source of our moral/ethical outlook“ I just have to repeat that I am not an ethicist.

Jacques Derrida recounts Jakob Freud placing two circum-inscriptions on his son Sigmund: the first, on the newborn's fore-skin, when he handed Sigmund over to the mohel, and the second, thirty-five years later, in commemoration of the first, when he gave, or returned, to Sigmund a childhood Bible, in a new binding (or skin) with an inscription: Son who is dear to me, go read the Book, the Book of Books, which is presented to you as a memorial and as a reminder, both mneme, anamnesis and hypomnema, of your father who loves you with an everlasting love.

Derrida strongly indentified with Freud asking, was he also the son of his father’s tears? The son, of whom his father was afraid to ask, do you still believe in God? The son who also rightly passed for an atheist? In a strange and truthful irony Derrida sees that deconstruction is for bastards for, “Who is my mother and my father?"

Beyond irony, it is tragic that the prophetic and ethical core of Jesus' thoroughly Jewish message was turned against the Jews. As A. N. Wilson put it: Were Jesus to contemplate the fate of his own people at the hands of the Christians, throughout the history of Catholic Europe, culminating in Hitler's Final Solution, it is unlikely that he would have viewed the missionary activity of St. Paul with equanimity.

He (Jesus) was killed, not because the Jews were so spiritually coarse as to be incapable of recognizing the infinite in the finite, but because Rome understood the message as politically explosive and subversive – one that was to empower the powerless, a point that Marx missed entirely, and chased away one ghost too many, a prophetic one. Nietzsche did see this, but he sided with Roman power and decided, “the powerless should stay put in their slavish impotence, keep to their smelly hovels, and let the forces fire, let the will to power glow in all its shining Schönheit among the few and the best."

sellick, i have some sympathy with you and other christians, when "christian" is effectively defined by some as e.g. "thoughtless biblical literalist"? but, here you started it, with the same kind of conveniently vague labelling of people you never actually identify.

you talk about the replacement of the christian story with science being a disaster. who does this? in what way? if your article is more than strawman nonsense, i'd like to see the real men, in numbers sufficient to warrant the article.

and, once again, why are you making it "christian story versus science"? why not "religious stories versus science"? or "spiritual stories versus science"? you honestly feels this needs no comment?

it is interesting seeing the philosophical discussion your article inspires. but i still don't know why your actual article isn't a vacuous attack on an imaginary enemy.

george, though i think there is a right to insult, it doesn't mean i regard it as wise or as an obligation! all i mean is that one should not have, or fake, a precious disposition, claiming insult in order to duck the substance of criticism. the real question is who is sellick attacking (and/or insulting)? honestly, i have no idea.

Bushbasher.
The command that Christians should love their enemies presumes that they will have them aplenty. My latest article attempts to describe one particular kind of enemy, those who have accepted that the only way to truth is the empirical method, all sons of John Locke. The thing is that these people, mostly scientists with whom I work, have friends and wives and children to whom they relate in a way that does not rely on the kind of rationality that they use at work. As Pascal said “the heart has reasons that reason does not know.” We all the time trust other people, what is that but faith? We have no evidence that this is a worthwhile thing to do, but it is the only way we can be social. My target is the ultra rationalist that must see a reason for everything. This is reason gone mad. It edges out all other kinds of knowing that is the essence of humanity. To criticise this kind of rationalism is not to abandon reason and resort to magic and superstition, it is to recognise that empiricism is not the whole story, it may be useful when investigating he natural world but it will not heal a broken relationship.

You criticise me for only talking about Christianity. What else can I do? I do not think that religion in general is a good thing. As I am tired of saying, Christianity is the end of “religious man” the man who seeks to exercise religion for his own purposes. As far as I know, Christianity is the only faith that has an inbuilt criticism of religion understood as the desire to manipulate the divine. Of course religion has a bad name, who can escape that conclusion reading these pages. However, more discernment is needed here. Mere prejudice will not cut it. Nobody that I know will refuse the idea that the church is full of sin. The primary confession of Christians is that they are miserable sinners. Secular humanists seem to be not so sure.

Cont..
My other enemies are in the church, those who have settled down in the comfort of liberal democracy and believe that they can work within that system to bring about a better world. There is a timely quotation from Stanley Hauerwas: http://vox-nova.com/2008/09/03/quote-of-the-week-stanley-hauerwas/ It is increasingly obvious that secular government cannot address the most pressing social ills. Liberal democracy thinks that these ills may be addressed apart from personal virtue. It is laughable to see the Rudd government trying to ban alcopops without addressing the anomy that makes alcohol so attractive to the young. It is here that the separation between church and state has done the most damage because it isolates government from the only help available.

Liberal democracy has told us that we may choose our own stories but the stories that are available do not sustain life. We live among the stories that capitalism would tell us, and what the science gurus would tell us and what those who believe in endless progress would tell us. But none of these stories tell the truth about what it means to be a human being, they all have hidden agendas. Christianity is the truth because it tells a truthful story among all of the lies. I know this is not obvious because of the false assault on behalf of rationalism and science, it was one of the aims of this article to address that, but I do believe that Christianity is not a response to need but a response to a truth that invites us to a new way of viewing the world.

One thing that interests me is the ferocity of my detractors in these pages. If Christianity is so false why does the discussion of it raise the blood pressure so much? The reason the church has enemies is that it destroys the idolatry the we use to make sense of our lives, could that be the reason people get so angry?

Peter Sellick

Peter Sellick wrote:

"One thing that interests me is the ferocity of my detractors in these pages. If Christianity is so false why does the discussion of it raise the blood pressure so much? The reason the church has enemies is that it destroys the idolatry the we use to make sense of our lives, could that be the reason people get so angry?"

Astrology is false, but it has not inspired the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust, the replacement of the spirit of enquiry by blind faith after Rome became Christian, the plunder and slaughter of the non-Christian inhabitants of the New World, the wars of the Reformation etc. Christianity is simply bad news for humanity. The problem is not that Christianity is false but that belief in it has resulted in horrors.

Religion is only a cure for extreme insecurity.

When the roman solders marched by, the people all huddled together in the fields, (ironically next to a heard of sheep) and praying for anything to come and help them. And nothing ever did!

But back in those times, religion held the sanity of the people quite well and man-kind would not of made it without it. But as we can see, religion is no longer a useful tool for humanity and nor is it believable as for the oregon of man. If people still need a god, I think the Inca,s were right on the ball with the sun-god! at leased you can see it and you do get a productive out-come from the whole affair.

Just like a phrase from my favourite SBS show, and I will finish with saying

THIS MYTH IS BUSTED!

Sells,
I believe you’ve provided some clarity in your last post. There are some here who would identify with the idea of ‘love’ as so revealed in the anthology of John Carey’s, The Faber Book of Utopias, it says, 'Anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all want our loved ones to live free of suffering, injustice and heartbreak'. The problem is, when we try to create utopian societies we tend to break far more than we heal. Today, this is easily identified with a type of social activism, impatient for change.

The “end of religious man” is an interesting phrase because whilst a religious sect is not quite synonymous with a religious utopia they share similar monistic type values and social framework, separating them out from the ‘rest’. The ‘polis’ of this framework promotes the singular common good whose life is ordered by a hierarchy of coherent and non-contradictory virtues (Platonic and Aristotelian concepts). When religions mimic the utopian ideal, they fail because little or no account is taken of the pluralistic character of social reality at its fundamental level. In understanding the incommensurability of values, Isaiah Berlin writes, 'to sacrifice some ultimate values to others turns out to be a permanent characteristic of the human predicament'.

From this it can be easily seen that conflict is inevitable as individuals representing different cultures, and indeed as entire societies (often made up of diverse communities), come into contact with one another. This conflict needn’t be either destructive or violent – but the act of mere toleration will only imply certain disrespect. What lies at the core of Christianity can, I believe, be held to be the truth, and if western culture in some way ignores this basic relationship, even if so as to avoid conflict, we totally disrespect something deep within our own identity. As Carl Jung puts it, “From this basic fact all ethics are derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality” (The Undiscovered Self).

Peter has written what I think is a great reply to his detractors (including me).
It is actually comprehensible.
Let me first say that Peter asks why his detractors get so ferocious (angry). Well we shouldn't get angry and ferocious . We should try to argue our case without anger and I take his point. I will try and behave better.
Peter thinks us non religious have no faith. This is not so, we of course have faith it many things (love, democracy, rational thought, stop lights) but not, alas, in religion.
The faith of the non religious is tempered by the realisation that we can often be disappointed. Don't let me get started on this one!
The problem with me is not Peter's belief system but how his type of belief system impacts my life, the life of my loved ones and the conduct of the government of my country.
For instance:-

I have just heard our new Governor General being sworn in on the radio and her final words were "......so help me god". Secular government?

Churches (businesses based on faith) pay no tax because they simply have a belief in spirits and god/s.

In court we have to embarrass ourselves by asking to make an affirmation instead of swearing on an ancient book.

We are continual reminded to respect other peoples religious beliefs....why? If we show no respect we are "bigoted" and possible" racist".

We are reminded by believers regularly that the unfaithful are devoid of morals. (contradicted by many studies)

We are continually accused of having no basis or framework for our lives. (could there be a greater insult?)

In our so called secular state school system we have to opt out of religious instruction and our kids are often treated like second class students for not participating in religious activities. Secular education?

Official committees considering moral issues are stacked with professional religious apologists.

Continued................

Maybe my thanks is rather late, Relda, but really appreciate your expression of a Kantian hope.

Must say since the death of my darling wife over two years ago, while in tears I get with my sorrow also feelings of gladness, wondering whether it is the Comforter that as a political scientist I should discount?

And yet it is history that tells that both Aquinas and Kant were scientifically minded as well as spiritual?

Regards, BB.

This is possibly the most fruitful thread I can remember being attached to one of Peter’s articles! Thank you to those posters who have been taking part with a genuine effort to put aside prejudice, refusing to exchange insults and, whether or not they disagree with the article, trying to come to some greater understanding.

Relda: Now that you’ve brought Jung into the discussion, let me say something that’s been in the back of my mind for a long while as I read these posts. Jungian psycho-types may be partly at the root of much misunderstanding and hostility about Peter’s articles. The intuitive personality probably grasps a lot of his ideas much more easily than the sensate type, whose knowing is based on empirical data. The appreciation of symbols (rather than signs), thinking through analogies, the perception of multiple possible meanings in stories and events are very much the intuitive’s cup of tea. Unfortunately most of our educational institutions don’t understand intuitive thought these days and so it isn’t nurtured in those that way inclined.

Priscillan,

I think it is nice of you to admit that your objections (or frustrations) are personal perceptions (impact your life). So are my comments on them which are mostly an acknowledgement of the fact that Australia is still traditionally a Christian country, and the majority of Australians are, at least nominally, still Christians. There are other minorities that have to accept that some customs reflect the “taste“ of the majority as long as these customs are not forced on the minority.

>>her final words were "......so help me god"<<
That means that she apparently believes in God and wants thus express the seriousness of her intention (I assume this appendix is not compulsory for atheist candidates; if it is, then it is an unfair leftover from the past).

Churches pay no tax because they are supposed to do also a job that otherwise the state would have to do (they teach also maths, provide service to the sick, needy etc). In a democratic system those who find this untrue or unfair have legal ways to try to change the legislation or regulations.

You apparently have to ask to make an affirmation in court because the majority are still happy with swearing on the bible. This is a right, not an embarrassment, the same as you have the right to ask for an interpreter if your English is not good enough, and should not be seen as an embarrassment.

>>We are continual reminded to respect other peoples religious beliefs....why?<<
Because showing respect is, I hope, still part of our culture. For my generation there were words we would use when talking to our peers but not when talking to our grandma. I could exclaim “are you blind?” when frustrated by somebody’s slowness to comprehend, but that would be disrespectful, if that person was actually blind. A civilised person should not be disrespectful to anybody: knowing the difference between disrespect and criticism is one of the things that makes one civilised. (ctd)

George,
I didn't suggest you should not show respect for people. I am talking about their beliefs. I find it quite easy to be polite to people who, I think, have quite silly and sometimes dangerous belief systems.
Obviously we have to get along together in society and remain silent at times to avoid uneccesary conflict.
Yes, I am part of a minority (at the present).

Let me test you George. Do you respect these beliefs?

The magical power of crystals?
Male and female genital mutilation?
The belief in a "chosen people"?
The claims of Scientology?
Cannibalism and blood drinking?
Animal or human sacrifice?
Polygamy?
etc. etc.

I guess there are a few there that revolt you. Beliefs for which you have absolutely zero respect.
Because someone has a belief does not follow that we must bestow respect on that belief. You may very well respect the right of a person to hold a belief and respect the person them self but why are we compelled to respect their beliefs?

As far as Christianity is concerned I do respect some beliefs but not others. I would love to expand on this but alas, I would over run my 350 word limit.

I hold you and Peter forever in my respect.

(ctd)
>>We are reminded by believers regularly that the unfaithful are devoid of morals<<
This unfortunately happens: clichés like unbelievers are immoral and believers are irrational (or even illogical) appear frequently also on this OLO, especially the second one.

>>We are continually accused of having no basis or framework for our lives<<
Ditto, happens both ways.

>>We have to opt out of religious instruction and our kids are often treated like second class students <<
This follows from the fact that you belong to a minority (if that is the case) so you have to opt out from something taken by the majority. I do not know the situation now in Australia, but there are countries where a subject called ethical education is compulsory, but you, or rather your parents, have options, one of them being secular humanism. Something like the subject “foreign languages” consisting of a few options.

If you are worried too much about being in the minority, just reread the contributions on this and similar threads to realise who is getting the short end of the stick, for instance, here.

I had to wait before I could post this continuation. Now as to your comment on “respect“, you are right that my examples concerned rather respect for a person as such, that you never questioned (one of the meanings of “respect” in my dictionary is “have due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of “). You questioned “respect for other peoples religious beliefs“. Here the problem is what belief can be regarded as religious (hence firmly entrenched in the identity of the holder of such belief) in our society, and that is not easy to answer. I would take beliefs that are part of one of the - six or so - so-called higher religions plus secular humanism to cover serious non-religious. Of your examples only “chosen people” is a symbol that belongs to such a higher religion (Judaism and Christianity, although they interpret it differently). However, I agree that it is hard to define what is a “respectable” religion, and in what context.

George wrote: >>We have to opt out of religious instruction and our kids are often treated like second class students <<

We had a six year old Chinese girl staying with us who knew no English. We enrolled her in the local school so she could learn English. The school system was good in the respect that had a Chinese speaking teacher visit her and talk to her twice a week. She rapidly integrated with the other students and learned English. We allowed her to be enrolled in 'religious education ' (actually it was called education, but it was actually indoctrination.) as our not wanting her separated from the other children overrode our objection to having religion pushed on an innocent child.

She came home one day singing 'Who is Jesus?' I taught her 'Yes sir, that's my baby' as an antidote. She is now a delightful 22 year old woman with a good job. 'Who is Jesus' has long been forgotten, and she is uncontaminated by Christianity or any other religion. When she visits us we still have a duet of 'Yes sir, that's my baby'.

Relda; you clearly mentioned Derrida previously, and it is without any error that these philosophical antitheses Contributors are , and is a part of the post Structuralism and Post- modernism - Freud and Lacan- Foucault-Deleuze-Guattari-Cixous in femonazism. : Loytard-Baudrillard ; Plus many more brainless contributions ; and seemingly that equates to Secularism ;
A whole list of psychobabling psychopaths that have clearly entered the realm of , and are certifiably insane.
And that is construed now as a normal cognitive expression of normality.
Not.

peter:

1) "My target is the ultra rationalist that must see a reason for everything."

yes, yes. but WHO are they? what influence do they have? i'm very happy for you to target such people, i'm just not convinced that such people exist, or at least exist in numbers and influence to warrant your fear-mongering.

2) "Christianity is the only faith that has an inbuilt criticism of religion understood as the desire to manipulate the divine."

well, gee. in advocating the humility of christianity, you're not short of a little pride. nothing like throwing away a few thousand years of eastern religion and philosophy with an absent-minded flick.

did it occur to you that we non-religious folk may have the mechanisms of self-reflection and self-criticism? and that we can do this without the need for the inbuilt criticism of a religion we can do without? and that we can do this without the debasing characterization of ourselves as "miserable sinners"?

3) "If Christianity is so false why does the discussion of it raise the blood pressure so much?"

gee, i dunno. and i guess jews get upset by the protocols of the elders of zion because it's speaking the truth?

maybe it's just that non-religious folk get tired of faith being used as an excuse for lazy thinking and moral grandstanding.

Bushbred,
I understand grief as something intensely personal… two years ago, for you, undoubtedly seems like yesterday. Over 30 years ago… for me, I felt an awful tragedy – and still highly cognizant of that time… time ‘pastes’ over but does not remove. As a ‘tough’ old bushy, your instincts would have been seldom wrong, your intuition, I suspect, is not so far behind.

Crabsy,
Jung’s attachment to the symbolic is important when considering the early Christian creeds, he says that our “denominational religions with their archaic rites and conceptions – justified enough in themselves – express a view of the world which caused no great difficulties in the Middle Ages but has become strange and in intelligible to the man of today.” A superficial reading of this might be to embrace some of the nihilistic and apocalyptic fantasy of the ‘New Age’. Jung insisted that the human must withstand her or his ground in the face of the ‘archetypes’. Not just sort of marry the dragon, but in fact engage the dragon in combat – he would wish to avoid the mush and promiscuity of the New Age.

Practicing a creed blindly, without true examination at an experiential level of the validity of the creed for oneself may in fact lead to a fanaticism so far removed from its origin as to bear little resemblance to the experience which birthed it. Driven by an innate spiritual urge, the fanatic may have great zeal but attaches it blindly to whatever is available to fill the void. Fundamentalism, which can move to fanaticism, is easy to adopt as it deals in the ‘concrete’, rather than vague symbols which challenge us to decipher a meaning.

All,
Derrida is certainly not ‘easy’. In ‘The Gift of Death’, he intends to free us from the common assumption that responsibility is to be associated with a behaviour that accords with the general principle of being justified in the public realm (ie. liberalism). As he says, "Abraham is at the same time, the most moral and the most immoral, the most responsible and the most irresponsible"

George,
You are quite correct to question what I actually meant by the word "respect"
I should have been more precise as the word, of course, can mean a number of things,

Here is one online dictionary definition I agree with.

re·spect (r-spkt)
tr.v. re·spect·ed, re·spect·ing, re·spects
1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
2. To avoid violation of or interference with: respect the speed limit.
3. To relate or refer to; concern.
n.
1. A feeling of appreciative, often deferential regard; esteem. See Synonyms at regard.
2. The state of being regarded with honor or esteem.
3. Willingness to show consideration or appreciation.
4. respects Polite expressions of consideration or deference: pay one's respects.
5. A particular aspect, feature, or detail: In many respects this is an important decision.
6. Usage Problem Relation; reference. See Usage Note at regard.

I meant "respect" as:-
To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem:
The state of being regarded with honor or esteem:

Of course there are varying degrees of respect ..... qualified respect.
I personally respect many Christian moral conclusions. e.g. Love your neighbour, Treat others as you would have them treat you etc.
I have no respect for the authority on which they base the moral conclusions (a god/s concept) and minor respect the literal source of this authority (an ancient book). This of course is only my opinion which any comment about religion amounts to.

If you choose take the path of unqualified respect for religion (any religion) you run the risk of cultural relativism and worst still, shock, horror..... moral relativism. Peter does not like this and I agree with him.

While on the subject of word definitions, could I ask Davidf,

in the context of a six-year-old, what is the difference between education and indoctrination? Is the difference in the emotive quality of the word, or is it technique, philosophical approach, or is it only a matter of content?

david f,
The story about the Chinese girl whom you saved from being indoctrinated into Christianity (and religion in general) before she could critically think is - sort of - interesting.

I must confess to you that I was also indoctrinated, not only into a Christian outlook but also to three languages (that I allegedly spoke at the age of five), into counting apples and bunnies before I have developed critical thinking about mathematics, languages, religion etc.

However, I am grateful to my parents and the school for having given me these skills at an early age when one is not yet critical, but easily learns new propensities. [It is much easier for a child to learn to swim than for an adult. The adult who never learned to swim can observe a swimmer, can analyse his/her movements but will never have the “insider knowledge” of how it actually feels to swim.] Today I speak more or less six languages, have a decent knowledge of mathematics, can understand what Christians claim (although I agree only with some of them) and enjoy learning about all sorts of other religious and non-religious world-views.

I also know many people who have remained “uncontaminated“, have a very naive understanding of what Christians believe, or are monolingual, or have a very modest knowledge of mathematics. But do you know what? I do not envy either of them.

Priscillian,
So we agree that we had different meanings of “respect” in mind. As mentioned, mine made sense only with reference to the holder of a belief that is part of him/her being what he/she is, not as a religious belief on itself which I can only share or not share, although mostly my agreement or disagreement depends on how one understands (interprets) the symbols that a religious belief is usually based on. Most holders (or deniers) of such beliefs have only a naive understanding of symbols involved, and - if they take these symbols too literally - like to clash them with opposite, mostly equally naive, understandings.

For instance, I agree with the statement “God exists” when it stands for the adherence to a certain world view (or rather a family of world views) but I would not enter into philosophical discussions about the truth or falsehood of it without first clarifying what the terms “God” and “exists” are supposed to mean. A discussion of in what extent Newton or Einstein were right would not have made sense to a medieval thinker, because he would not understand most of the concepts involved. This is why I prefer Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding” (and today one should add “and unfaith” to account also for those who sincerely seek an understanding for their unbelief) to looking for “proofs” of God’s existence or non-existence.

For instance, there are many manifestations of Islam that I do not like, to say the least, but I have to accept that there must be something more to Islam than just these negative things, since it attracted a billion adherents. And that “more” might not be that much different from something that is already part of my world-view. There are non-Christians who think similarly about Christianity. Call it whatever you like, respect or not. This has nothing to do with cultural or any other relativism.

Dan S de Merengue asked:

in the context of a six-year-old, what is the difference between education and indoctrination?

Dear Dan: For any age:

Religious education tells about the beliefs that various religions encompass with no value judgement made or implied as to the validity of those beliefs,

Religious indoctrination tells about the beliefs of one religion as though they are valid.

George wrote:

"I also know many people who have remained “uncontaminated“, have a very naive understanding of what Christians believe, or are monolingual, or have a very modest knowledge of mathematics. But do you know what? I do not envy either of them."

Dear George,

“Uncontaminated“ does not mean ignorant. In the case of the girl I wrote about she accepts no religion but is quite aware of the content of various religious beliefs. One can be aware of the beliefs and claims of various religions and either subscribe or not to those beliefs.

Two of my grandchildren were fluent in three languages at the age of five. Their parents spoke French, English and Brazilian Portuguese to them and had children's books in those three languages read to them. Their ability in languages has been fostered.

In contrast my mother spoke French and Yiddish at the age of five . She only learned English when she entered school in the United States. That was the era when the melting pot was the ideal, and she was taught to look down upon the non-English languages she knew. She lost the ability to use those languages.

In my opinion my grandchildren have had a much better start.

My son, father of the trilingual grandchildren, was an inquisitive child. Somewhere around the age of five he said to me, "Daddy, no matter how high I count there is always a bigger number. Is there a biggest number?" I encouraged his questioning and tried to lead him to answers and learning in that area. Although he is now a professor of anthropology he has a good knowledge and feeling for mathematics.

I do not envy ignorance of religion, languages or mathematics, either.

A bog on Christian-indocrination. It speaks for itself..
http://blogpond.com.au/2007/08/31/christian-indoctrination/

You may have known that there were Christian Buddhists in history –Bushbasher ; you can clearly answer your own question to the reasons why that may be if you have an understanding of Anthropology and demographics.

You would also know that the Protocols of Zion were and are an elaborate fraud and are but propaganda proliferations – No matter how you choose to know and explain it – the negative thoughts of what we know as the Left absolutely despise success ; but draw on such success to fund their own ineptitude; consider it an Irony .
The closes Jewish sect that ever came close to such protocols was in Israel after the Second World War – and collapsed because of Egocentrism. And I cannot recall the name of the sect at the moment; someone may be able to assist.

In good humour it is a laugh , consider that the Christian theologies had be infiltrated by the left , and a great many graduates had been indoctrinated with Leftist philosophies , and in a separate argument it is well known that this in itself had sown the seeds of its own implosion ; We have had more anti Christians dressed in clergy clothes and worshiped the evils of such Idiocies than their own doctrine ; So I consider it an absolute Irony that some still see it as a threat and still continue on the plane of Ignorance , but do not consider that they have already , and are in advanced stages of their own antitheses and intellectual decay ; Causing a mutation in the simple doctrine of Christianity ; You and others do not see that?

Interesting link, Relda.

I can relate to it a lot of that having gone to a Christian high school myself.

Dan,

The difference between 'education' and 'indoctrination' is clear:

- Indoctrination appeals to emotions and exploits naïvety;
- Education appeals to thoughtfulness and reason, and reduces naïvety.

But I know you well enough now to know that your question about the difference between 'education' and 'indoctrination' is a stalking horse for your claim that “evolution is a religion”, or that 'teaching evolution' is no different to 'religious indoctrination'.

Every time you think you've spotted a definition that may provide you with a loophole to prove your argument, you grab it by the horns. Doesn't the fact that you need to rely on such trivial technicalities to attempt to prove your arguments tell you something?

If this is in fact the road you were about to go down, then you will fail this time for the same reason you've failed every other time you try to make evolution sound like a religion – You're position is based on flawed logic.

But perhaps I'm being too presumptuous here.

Tell us why you needed the clarification, Dan?

One additional point I should make (extending on what Davidf said), is that many Theists would view their indoctrinating of children as being consistent with my description of 'education'.

This is not so.

In the context of a six-year-old:

'Religious education' is objectively teaching children what religion is; the different kinds of religions; and their different beliefs. Teaching children about religion is important because religion is a very big part of our world, and so they need to be aware of it and the effects it has/had – both the good effects on societies and individuals, and the devastating.

'Religious indoctrination', on the other hand, is exploiting the naïvety of children and abusing their absolute trust, faith and belief in their parents every word, by telling them that the one religion they just happened to be born into pure chance, is the one and only true religion – even when the parents can't possibly know this. Really, really believing something, is not the same as knowing it – no matter how convinced someone is of their beliefs.

Abusing a child's trust and labeling them with the religion they were born into, before they've even had the chance to make-up their own mind, is wrong. A child is no more a Christian than they are a member of a political party. If someone were to go around describing their child as a "Marxist child", or a "Republican child", we'd look at them as though they were mad. Yet this same mad behaviour is excused when it's done in a religious context. I suspect this is just a leftover from the old-days when religious belief was widely assumed to be the absolute truth – and by 'truth', I mean a fact that has been verified, not this flimsy, tenuousness and adulterated take on truth known as 'Religious Truth'.

There are countless examples of the 'appeal to emotion' in regards to the religious indoctrination of children; the most obvious being the instilling of the idea of eternal consequences.

Religious education for children is sensible and necessary.

Religious indoctrination of children is child abuse.

Davidf
I don’t subscribe to your view of value free education. I suspect it would be valueless. Our state government has been trying to bend over backwards lately to insert more perceived values into the education system.

But value free education doesn’t really exist. It’s part of the myth of neutrality. Nobody is neutral (except those in a coma). I don’t expect my kid’s teachers to be that neutral. I doubt they ever could be.

I can’t imagine a teacher standing in front of a class explaining plainly that we’re going learn a body of facts that might or might not ever have any practical application for you later in life. You will be tested on it in two weeks, and then it’s up to you what you do with this knowledge.

When I teach my kids maths or language or music or faith or philosophy, I hope they’re sensing a bit of the passion I have for these interests, and understanding why they’re important. If my kids learn French, it would be best if they learned it from a native speaker, or at least a competent speaker that appreciated its usefulness. If they learned maths, be it from someone who loved numbers and manipulated them regularly. If they learned about the Christian faith let them hear it from a Christian. If they were being taught about the fasting month of Ramadan, let them hear it from a Muslim who knows what he’s talking about.

Dan S de Merengue wrote:

"Davidf
I don’t subscribe to your view of value free education. I suspect it would be valueless. Our state government has been trying to bend over backwards lately to insert more perceived values into the education system."

I never advocated value free education. I am in favour of inculcating a love for learning, analytical ability, democracy, regard for the rights of others and many other values. I advocate education as a value in itself.

An important part of education is to learn what motivates people. People are motivated by religion, but a religious believer may not know the history of his or her religion and may not know the similarities and differences of that religion to other religions. A person who has studied comparative religions would be better able to put a religion in context.

People believe in many different religions or no religion. To teach any of those ideas as truth is almost certainly spreading error.

Therefore, indoctrination in a particular religion is not education.

I favour the value of critical thinking in religion as in other areas. Religious indoctrination sets forth a particular set of unprovable propositions as truth. That is not education.

Relda. Preternatural has to be questioned. An open mind can only see.

EVO

EVO,
It has always been a part of my tradition where it is important to question the preternatural, the other side of this tradition is that I get an answer - now, that surely contends, the mind must remain open.

Re. "People will convince themselves of absolutely anything", if it is, as how its put in its right context.Its funny that imaginations controls what we are.

But what is new! nothing! the same circle keeps going around and around.

EVO

david f,
Thanks for sharing your and your family's personal experience with languages and mathematics though I am sure you understand that I used these only to illustrate my point about RE for small children. Also, I am well aware that you yourself did not invent the term "indoctrination" to describe RE offered to small children, and also that the analogies I suggested can go only that far. Nevertheless,

>>One can be aware of the beliefs and claims of various religions and either subscribe or not to those beliefs.<<
True, but, again, we were talking about small children, c.f. my reference to having had to start with counting apples and bunnies before I was aware of various ways of doing algebra. Also, you can know a lot about swimming techniques, but unless you actually swam you would have an outsider only knowledge of them.

>>Religious indoctrination tells about the beliefs of one religion as though they are valid.<<
Education in a child's mother language usually tells the child about how to speak properly without reference to other languages, and if, then only as “foreign“. A child is taught about geometry as if Euclidean geometry was the only one "valid", and one would not introduce a child to physics by discussing the difference between Newton and Einstein, etc. All these examples are regarded as legitimate ways of teaching, not indoctrinating, a young child. The emphasis here is again on "child". Of course, an adult can be informed, instructed or brain washed.

>>she is uncontaminated by Christianity<<
I would not call contamination any extra knowledge, insights or skills I gained, even if it was against my or my parents' wishes. The same analogy: I had to learn Russian, everybody had to, but now I have the extra skill of enjoying e.g Lermontov's poetry in its original instead of relying on translations, which with poetry (as with religion) is never the same

relda,
An interesting link. It indeed speaks for itself. It says
(a) that the author is a bright young man whom the Baptist school failed to “indoctrinate” into uncritical thinking (if indeed that was their aim) but also possibly failed to make him understand that feature of the Christian message that goes beyond the “love your neighbour”;
(b) that he had very incompetent religious educators, who were not only poor at teaching but also at grasping what Christianity is all about themselves. (The only explanation would be that they forgot they were in the 21st century.) He called this deficiency “indoctrination” because that has become a fashionable word for it.

The consequence of being exposed to such RE teachers is often the “loss of faith” or even aversion to any religion (see e.g. the above posts by AL Philips). To become a religious fanatic you need to be brain-washed either at a later age as well or within a society that is very different from ours.

There are also many bad maths teachers who reduce maths to mechanical drill, to external formalities without conveying to the student what mathematics is all about, and how to understand it (except that we do not call it indoctrination). The outcome are many otherwise intelligent adults who have problems with, or even aversion to, any non-trivial mathematics. Similarly with incompetent language or music teachers.

Irrespective of this, I still maintain that if you want your child to be instructed and feel at home with the world-view his/her parents adhere to - and this should be the right of every parent - the sooner you and/or the school start, the easier it is for the child. (Again, the same holds for learning to swim, playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language.) Of course, you can err by choosing the wrong school, or the school (the Church) by hiring the wrong teacher, but this does not justify the sweeping statement that exposing a child to ANY RE at an early age prevents it from learning to think critically at a later age.

George wrote:

>>she is uncontaminated by Christianity<<
I would not call contamination any extra knowledge, insights or skills I gained, even if it was against my or my parents' wishes. The same analogy: I had to learn Russian, everybody had to, but now I have the extra skill of enjoying e.g Lermontov's poetry in its original instead of relying on translations, which with poetry (as with religion) is never the same.

Dear George,

I would not call contamination any extra knowledge, insights or skills either. She probably knows more about Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism than most Australians. She is uncontaminated by religious belief. In my opinion religious belief usually but not always deadens the critical facilities.

There are cases where religious belief has not deadened the critical facilities. http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/ is the website of Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Anglican church. Bishop Spong is capable of looking at his own tradition, maintaining his Christian belief, maintaining his critical facilities and expressing a warm humanity. That is not possible for most religious believers. Many Christians who are aware of his views are most upset by them.

EVO,
It was certainly a lack of imagination the churchmen involved in the 1616 ban on Copernicanism, who believed that Copernicus's theory was contrary to common sense, would never be proved. They were disinclined to allow research on a theory that they found "false and absurd in philosophy" and "contrary to [the] Scripture" which they felt the Church alone had the right to interpret. Darwin, through imaginative process, broke free of the accepted way of 'doing the science' urged by Francis Bacon two centuries earlier. He (Darwin) followed to a large extent the so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ method, as is now used in much of modern science. Darwin’s fellow scientists wanted proof - not a process which involved a crucially the well-informed imagination creating a hypothesis and then deducing the tests of its validity.

Logical positivism, with its analytic/synthetic distinction and the verification principle has been rigorously challenged and found wanting. This once fashionable epistemic view in its demand for ‘proof’ sidelines much of the metaphysics, ethics and theology now prevalent. It is a distinct lack of imagination which fails to see the vital connection between the tradition of Hermetic ‘magic’ in the Renaissance and the emergence of early modern science.

George,
I agree there should be a distinction made between ‘brain-washing’ and ‘indoctrination’. The latter is perhaps more a professional methodology where one is imbued with learning. In attending university, for the purpose of learning a particular ‘discipline’, I must accept (even if not always uncritically) a partisan viewpoint. This distinction is perhaps not clearly understood - people generally relate, whether instinctively, intuitively or consciously, to the views of another and ‘choose’ to follow them. The psychology, as applied by the perhaps well meaning Baptists, is more akin to brainwashing (mistakenly called indoctrination) - a dismally inept technique if any ‘true conversion’ is to occur.

Bushbasher
I know ultrarationalists exist because in my brave scientific atheist career I was one of them. There are also quite a few scientific colleagues that fit the bill. Christianity is more about seeing the world in a way that is at first counterintuitive. We have to be taught that we are miserable sinners; that are a realization that is not ready to hand because we will always make excuses for the evil that we do. This is not groveling before the deity but a realization of the truth, that the good that we would do we do not. This is fundamental to the promise that we might escape from the cage of the self. This does not mean that we live more righteous lives than non believers. Indeed the ultrarationalists are far more concerned with keeping the rules that I will ever be.

The early Christians were accused of antinomianism because they did not see the law as a way to a righteousness that penetrated to the heart. I have never said that Christians were necessarily more moral than others. If we have any advantage it is that we see the world and us in it in a more truthful light.

George made a good point a few posts ago when he talked about what the existence of God means. For too long the existence of God has been tied up with what happened in the 17th century when theology and physics were mixed and God became an actor in the universe. Much of the debate at the time was about the body of God, its ubiquity and how it fitted into space. But whether God exists or not is related to whether the truth of our existence is revealed in the history of Israel and in the man Jesus. If Christianity is not a truthful story that reveals who we are then it can be rightly said that God does not exist.

Peter Sellick

Sells, you were never one of "them".

Peter says:- "If Christianity is not a truthful story that reveals who we are then it can be rightly said that God does not exist."

Now first of all Peter I would like to assure you I'm not one of those atheists that argues that god does not exist, however what has always bothered me about most of your posts is that you have "hung your hat" so to speak, on the Gospels as a "revealed" truth.
You have never explained to us (as far as I know) whether you are a Literalist (100% of the NT is true) or a quasi Rationalist (some of it is true but some is not to be taken literally), or a Psychic Gnostic ( the NT contains an unfathomable high level spiritual "truth" without needing to be literally true in any respect).
From what you have said you seem to fit into category 1. i.e. a Literalist but on the other hand your somewhat reasoned approach to many topics suggests that you are more of a free thinker than a red-necked born again Creationist and you could be category 2. (a Uniting Church stance) or even 3. (a follower of the real Paul).
I really wish you would drop the intellectual stuff and simply tell us where you stand. I know Jesus spoke in riddles but do you actually have to follow suit?

yes, i think he does. it's sleight of hand, with one hand and no sleight.

The failure of Christianity is failure to acknowledge that the bible is intended as a guide to belief and morality, and not a factual record.

The cleaving of the church to the literal values of the bible has resulted in its ridicule as science undercuts this position.

Faith need not be in conflict with reason. If it is then reasoned people will reject it.

Must say that the Excerpts above have given one much food for thought, and thus could well be kept and compiled.

Further, as one who has only become a historian and political scientist owing to his wife reminding him in retirement that staying too long in the golf club was not fulfilling a wish to make up for the earlier lack of schooling - only helped by specialist courses in the military.

However, must admit that the most appealing apart from the hard grind of study was the story of the Young Jesus.

His Sermon on the Mount very much included.

And if the Story never does prove true because it is somewhat like other similar stories, such as of Buddha and Such, because they contain early simple themes like sharing the blame and loving our neighbours, surely they should be good for a child to grow up with.

Regards, BB, Buntine, WA.

Bushbasher.
The bible is testimony. That is it consists of human witnesses who write that which they believe to be true. So it has a similar status as a friend or spouse or child that you trust telling you something that they believe to be true. So the content of the bible has a different status from that which we can see, hear and smell or that we can figure from cause and effect. These may be certain to a degree, they are empirical, experienced. For some there is no guarantee of certainty only a probability and in that case what is asserted lies in the realm of opinion.

Belief in knowledge based on witness is called faith. I have faith that what my wife tells me about her day is true. There are no universal guarantees of certitude, she may be lying to me. But because I trust her I give assent to what she says. Likewise there is no universal certitude about the truth of biblical story, but as we learn to think in the language of the bible we begin to see the truth of it, that tug of the heart and mind that Augustine talks about.

Christians come to trust the words of the bible to tell them the truth, however it depends on what we understand what truth means. If we mean that the sea of reeds did really stand in heaps so that Israel could cross on dry land then we must say that the event was more symbolic than an actual historical event because it contravenes what we know of how the world works. If on the other hand we look at the crucifixion then we can say with some certainty that Jesus did suffer such a death at the hands of Pontius Pilate. That makes me not a fundamentalist. I hope this helps.

Peter Sellick

Peter Sellick wrote:

"If Christianity is not a truthful story that reveals who we are then it can be rightly said that God does not exist."

The above implies that the only way of seeing God is through Christianity. That is utter nonsense and a put down of the many people who believe in God and are not Christian . Non-Christians see God as a single entity rather than split into three parts. I'm not sure there is a God. However, if there is one I think the Christian story has almost nothing to do with God.

Consider the Christian story. The psycopathic God who condemned his son to torment is not a God to believe in. The son born of a virgin like the pagan Gods, Mithra and Osiris, is not a God to believe in. The Holy Ghost who impregnates human females like Zeus did in the form of a swan is not a creation to be believed in. Rather than responsibility for one's sins our sins can be displaced on a sacrificial entity in the form of Jesus. This is a pagan concept which Judaism had once accepted but abandoned when they ceased the practice of putting sins on a scapegoat.

Christianity added elements of paganism to Judaism. This mix was accepted by the Roman Empire, and Christianity became the official religion. However, In my opinion the Christian story has little or nothing to do with belief in God.

"Love thy neighbour as thyself" along with other injunctions in the New Testament is taken from the Jewish Bible. One can say of the new Testament: What is new is not good, and what is good is not new. To this mix of Jewish morality and paganism was added magical tales of changing water to wine and bringing the dead back to life.

The Christian story should be avoided if one seriously seeks God.

Quite so Bushbred, the Gospel stories have a genuine appeal – they are the first theological writings with a narrative about the life and teachings of Jesus, with John (a mystic) being the most perceptive.

Sells,
For the Western Church Fathers like Augustine, sex and sin became inextricably entwined for reasons that were personal and peculiar to the time and place. Therefore it becomes problematic if the doctrine of Original Sin becomes a starting point for religion (Christianity in particular). Original Sin is anthropocentric – more a human design. This is not to deny any existence of ‘evil’ or ‘sin’ or that the human psyche suffers flaws. Scholarly criticism (given, e.g. by, Archbishop Hunthousen, Hans Kung and Leonardo Boff etc.) leveled at the Catholic hierarchy becomes justified against the doctrinal thesis on sin along with the continued and archaic idea of Papal infallibility and the Vatican’s obsession with sex, where it actually became scandalous and dare it be said, reflects some psychic imbalance within the Church. Ireland referred to this as the “pelvic morality” of the Catholic Church. With theology aside, Thomas Aquinas for instance believed that deviation from the 'missionary position' was worse than intercourse with one's own mother. If the Church is to maintain any credibility to ‘outsiders’ it must listen firstly to its internal critics, rather than to merely silence or muffle them – i.e. get its own house in order before attempting to ‘fix’ an ‘outsiders house’ or another’s ‘deviant’ nature.

Perhaps the Catholic Church will ‘bottom out’, as any institution might, but as Jung writes, “Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticise the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria…[which] leads to an abolition of liberty and terrorisation” (Psychological Reflections).” I would suggest this to mean, the Church will continue to attend to a deep human need – even if at times it is severely inadequate, where people will inevitably turn to ‘other things’. Karl Rahner is perhaps a little more on the money when he says, ‘The future Christian will be a mystic, or he or she will not be at all.’

Shadow Minister,
I agree that Christian faith need not be in conflict with reason.

However, I’d challenge the opening line in your post. Many Christians and atheists are agreed (though speaking from different sides of the fence) when they say that if the Bible is unreliable when it speaks of history, then why should it be trusted when speaking about faith, ethics, and morality?

Compare this with what Jesus himself said (in John 3:12.)

Relda,
Sells was mocked and pilloried when he suggested that imagination was a key ingredient in understanding the Bible. Let’s see if the same knives come out for you after your explanation of the role of imagination involved in the Darwinian hypothesis. However, I kind of agree. The river of imagination must flow freely when transforming the microbe into the microbiologist.

If imagination is such a key, where can we squeeze some in along the continuum from contamination, to education, indoctrination, and brain-washing?

david f,
Thanks for the link to Bishop Spong’s homepage. It is an interesting reading. I did not know about this link, though of course I knew of the maverick bishop long before the internet. There are tens of Christian denominations and perhaps thousands of scholars (and would-be scholars) who explain the bible this way or that way, or just explain it away. I am not an exegete, but my first impression was that the good bishop belonged to the latter.

In my earlier post I wrote

"there are many manifestations of Islam that I do not like, to say the least, but I have to accept that there must be something more to Islam than just these negative things, since it attracted a billion adherents. And that “more” might not be that much different from something that is already part of my world-view. There are non-Christians (let me now add “including Jews”) who think similarly about Christianity."

Indeed, there are Jews who can think of Christianity in terms of what Judaism and Christianity have in common, leaving aside Christian extensions of ancient Judaism that they cannot accept or understand. And there are Jews who prefer to see it the other way around. Your last post shows that you obviously belong to the second group.

>>she is uncontaminated by Christianity ... She is uncontaminated by religious belief.<<
I have a niece (in California) who married a Jew and converted to Judaism. My brother (her father) tried to understand her, I did not have the opportunity to talk to her. But it never occurred to me, nor to my brother, to think of her Judaic faith as contamination!

Dan,
In our ancestral environment it didn’t cost anything to have a false positive, to assume there's a force behind lightning or a spirit in a rock – it actually didn’t require much imagination to continue believing in this. The science that broke not only religious tradition, but scientific tradition also, came at a cost – for a time, as with Copernicus, Darwin was ostracized by many because, from a grounded knowledge, he dared to imagine. The widespread belief in alchemy, and its supposed transformative process, stood to be corrected by something seemingly quite natural.

If you wish to better understand the natural world, you need to know evolution – not believing this certainly doesn’t take you out of the gene pool. However, there’s a serious problem if you are forced by your faith to reject one of the most well supported theories currently in science.

Dear George,

You expressed fellowship for people of different faiths and, for that, I am grateful.

Religion has comforted the oppressed but has also been an instrument of control and oppression. In using the locution, contaminated, I think of the sentence in Gibbon's DAFOTRE.

"The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people."

Whether religion has done more harm than good in the course of human events I cannot say. However, I feel that, at this time, religion is a source of much more harm than good. It has in many cases encouraged a sense of righteousness justifying atrocity. I would go farther and say that faith in unprovable propositions also justifies atrocity even though the faith is in a secular ideology.

The killing fields of Cambodia and the other instances of Marxist mass murder are the outcome of a utopian faith. The horrors of the twentieth century were to a great extent a consequence of wars of ideology. However, I will confine my further remarks to Christianity.

I believe the ascendancy of Christianity has blighted humanity.

Christianity destroyed the spirit of enquiry in the classical world and brought on the Dark Ages. "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Charles Freeman tells about the process after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

"The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity: 371-1386" by Richard Fletcher. In 371 Christianity became the official Roman religion. In 1386 Lithuania was Christianised. Except for Ireland the process was an ugly and violent one.

"Constantine’s Sword" by James Carroll, a former Catholic priest, tells how the intolerance promoted by Christianity led to the twentieth century display of applied Christianity, the Holocaust.

Possibly the greatest tragedy in history is the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

I will respond more to you in future remarks.

david f,
Thank you for your essay which does not tell me much about Christianity that I have not heard already (I went through Communist schools, where all sorts of arguments against Christianity and religion in general were on the daily menu). However, it tells me something about you. If I were a psychologist, which I am certainly not, I would probably understand your posts better, but even then I would not call your zeal “contamination“.

I know, you are not the only one who blames Christianity for almost everything that is, or was, bad in our civilisatiojn, like there are those who blame Jews for all sorts of evils, and there are even people who blame theoretical physicists for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You can prove that this or that ingredient gives a bad taste to the dish somebody cooked by preparing the same dish again leaving out only the suspect ingredient. You cannot do that with history and its “ingredient” that you wish to blame.

Dear George,

The logic behind your last post seems to be:

Some people blame Jews and some blame theoretical physicists falsely for various wrongs. I have blamed Christianity for many of humanity’s ills. Therefore I must be blaming Christianity falsely.

However, that does not really speak to my contention.

I cite several historical happenings – the conversion of Europe to Christianity by violence, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Wars of the Reformation and the Holocaust. These events are a matter of historical record.

While Christianity was not solely responsible for these horrors it is my contention that Christianity was prominent in bringing about all of them.

These were all complex events. For any or all of them why do you think they happened?

Dear david f,
>>Christianity was prominent in bringing about all of them.<<
Christianity, as an important contribution to our civilisation, was prominent in many things, good and bad. As said before, you cannot prove your statement by recreating the two millennia of history in a laboratory, leaving out Christianity, thus showing that things would be better.

My "logic" was that people who blame Jews or theoretical physicists (or some other groups they dislike for this or that reason) are also convinced that they are right, though, of course, I agree that different beliefs have different degrees of credibility (and numbers of adherents), and different arguments have different persuasive strengths.

You are certainly not the only one who sees the negative contributions of Christianity as outweighing the positive ones, neither am I who see it the other way around. Both interpretations of history have heaps of books by scholars and would-be scholars to support them. The issue here is not who is right and who is wrong but who can be more tolerant, and can formulate his position in such a way as to broaden the perspective of the holder of the opposite beliefs. Let us leave it at that.

George,
You bring to mind the original Aristotelian idea:
"The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed."

In the absence of intellectual power, knowledge is not reflexive. Only man knows and, at the same time, knows that he knows. The sense cognition in animals, unlike sense cognition in man, is unaccompanied by reflexive awareness – herein lies the uniqueness of man and his original ‘sin’. Whilst it's insipid and inadequate to view of humans as merely blank books and in need of an outside influence to ‘stuff’ things up, most appear to accept that humans are all frail, fallible, occasionally weak-willed and inclined to be selfish. It is also recognised there is often a gap between conscience and action. What we often fail to recognise is how we arrive at these notions, through our culture, and the importance of their continuation.

The big negative of Christianity, throughout history, has been the evangelical zealotry practiced based too much on the antithesis of an Aristotelian idea - an idea which in itself was quite correct. From Aristotle’s ‘The Doctrine of the Mean’, the questions naturally arise, what is a “good” and, what is the difference between technical goodness and moral goodness? The ‘positive’ of Christianity is that the question was answered. Christianity has the ‘theory’ but unfortunately, all too often, not the practice – this certainly doesn’t supply, in principle, any reason for which a theory should be abandoned.

"The replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science has been a disaster for the spiritual and the existential"

Natural science is not replacing nor attempting to replace the Christian story or anything else.

Natural science is a discipline that seeks to understand and explain the physical world - it is not a religion.

Natural science asks questions. It does not assume that the Christian story is 'truth' just because we are told it is so. What a disaster for science if that is how our great medical, physical and engineering mysteries were approached.

Natural science does not claim to be all-knowing or perfect. Natural science is happy to change on the basis of new evidence.

Natural science merely states the obvious - show me the evidence.

Natural science cannot argue with rhetoric like "you must have faith" in the face of no evidence.

The truth of the Christian story is that it is only true to those who have that faith ie. belief without evidence.

The Christian story is not the only story.

(It is interesting how some religious folk try to denigrate science by referring to it as a religion as if the label that they are themseles supporting is so shaky as to be used against its detractors)

Pelican
Do you not see the crusading evangelicalism of the new atheists? They would make natural science the only story and are far more intolerant to other world views because they limit the validity of those views to those which describe the physical world. You seemed to have missed entirely the point of my article. I indicated that science has broken its bounds, that of enquiry into the physical world, and has become a total world view. That is not, as you point out, its purpose. If you read some of the excellent comments in this thread you will find out that we are not attacking science but its usage to promote a totalitarian view that cancels views on humanity that are not empirical.

Faith is not, or should not be, an exercise in closing your eyes and gritting your teeth in order to believe something that is comforting to you. Faith is simply, for example, to believe that your wife will tell you the truth. It is to give credence to a testimony that you trust. By trying Christian theology at the bar of empiricist reason you make a category mistake, Christianity was never about the nature of the physical world, but of the nature of our place in it as sentient beings threatened by death and idolatry.

Peter Sellick

DSM,

The parables are not treated as factual, rather as a moral guide. Likewise genesis follows the path that the universe was created as explained to nomadic tribesmen 4000 years ago, skipping the quantum mechanics and bio chemistry.

Many Christians have no issues combining the guidance of the bible with scientific reality. Those that claim that faith can only be demonstated by ignoring reality are not getting their guidance from the bible but rather from dogma generated by church leaders.

George wrote:

The issue here is not who is right and who is wrong but who can be more tolerant, and can formulate his position in such a way as to broaden the perspective of the holder of the opposite beliefs. Let us leave it at that.

Dear George,

I would rather not leave it at that. In discussing history as you pointed out we cannot replay the scenario adding or subtracting factors to absolutely determine causes. However, we can try with the evidence we have and our powers of analysis to determine what happened. Tolerance and broadening perspective are virtuous concepts but may reduce the explanation of what happened to a propaganda exercise. It is difficult to determine what happened in history, but we will get no closer to it if we impose moralistic constraints on the narrative.

Peter,
A bit cruel of you to use the term "Crusading Evangelism" when referring to atheists.

These two terms are for use exclusively when referring to Christians.
From Wikipedia:- "Evangelism is the Christian practice of proselytization. The intention of most evangelism is to effect eternal salvation to those who do not follow the Christian God."

So, in fact, you are the evangelist. Not us.

The Crusades are to to be blamed exclusively on Christians. Us atheists rarely kill people who disagree with them simply because of their religious belief. (yes, Stalin was a pig of an atheist)

I think you probably meant the terms in a metaphorical way but even then you are simply pointing out that some rational atheists are passionate about contradicting the silly inconsistancies, myth, lies, misunderstood ancient concepts and legends that religious believers have held as "truth" for thousands of years because it is all jumbled together in a book. One wonders if your "truth" would be found in the pages of the Q'ran had you been born in Indonesia. What about an ancient Aztec? Would you have seen "truth" as someone's heart was cut out?

Your time and energy could be better spend in trying to convince us that your "truth" as described in an ancient book has validity in fact. That you have simply nominated your beliefs as "truth" is simply not good enough for many people. I'm still puzzled as to what this "truth" is but accept that if you see something in the theological meanderings of people like Paul of Tarsus then good on ya. Please don't blame us if this "truth" can't seem to dawn on us great unwashed heathens and we simply speak out.

Sells, looking at your view of how science is trying to supersede religion I would point out science is purely one way of interpreting the physical world. "Science" is a verb, the process by which one obtains knowledge, not a body of knowledge per se. If empiricism is not your thing then so be it, but it's what modern civilisation is built upon.

Faith is the flipside. Not much point in having this knowledge without the wisdom how to use it.

Or as Einstein suggested, "Religion without science is lame; science without religion is blind".

Note Wikipedia entry re: Einstein:-

In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[53] Einstein also stated: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth." He is reported to have said in a conversation with Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."[54] Einstein clarified his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[54][55] In his book The World as I See It, he wrote: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

david f,
>>Tolerance and broadening perspective are virtuous concepts but may reduce the explanation of what happened to a propaganda exercise. <<
Exactly. Therefore I do not see any point in discussing sweeping statements like “Christianity is bad“ or “Christianity is good“ (which is different from discussing particular events like Inquisition, Enlightenment, Galileo’s trial, Scholasticism etc. which is best left to specialists that I am not one of). I just object to calling Christian faith, or any other world-view, a contamination.

relda,
The question of “truth” as such is indeed not simple. The simplest is formal logical truth (e.g. if A implies B then it is true that non B implies non A, where the actual “truthfulness“ of A or B is irrelevant). A bit more complicated, but still formal, are mathematical truths, mathematical theorems. Next to it are scientific truths e.g. which physical/mathematical model best describes which part of physical reality. Much more complicated is the concept of truth where the human experience is involved, e.g. when evaluating historical events, interpreting a text, etc. The further on this scale of complication you go, the more important is the philosophy you subscribe to when considering what is truth, and the more misleading could be the naive idea of truth of the “man in the street”. An absolute truth, or Truth, is directly unattainable, and its mentioning makes sense only in a metaphysical or religious context. This is the Truth that Pilate asked Jesus about but received no answer (John 18:38).

Aristotle’s distinction between hard and easy truths that you quote is here very relevant, where the latter is what I called the naive idea of truth. The rest of your Aristotle quote resembles the story about the elephant and six blind men. I think this indeed is one valid way of looking at the “multidimensionality” of the true interpretation and appraisal of historical events that occurred in a past context we cannot recreate. (ctd)

(ctd)
>>Christianity has the ‘theory’ but unfortunately, all too often, not the practice<<
This was emphasized by Kierkegaard and it is true to a point. Jesus did not provide a timetable according to which humanity would in, say, two millennia achieve his ideal of the KIngdom of Heaven on Earth (I agree with those who believe that this is an ideal that will never be achieved only - hopefully - better and better “approximated“).

Jesus gave us just a nudge, leaving the rest to the evolution of ideas and approaches playing out the thesis-antithesis-synthesis game throughout our history. I know, there are many who would not see it this way; they just play the role of antitheses to Christianity on which it can better itself to a syntheses closer to the ideal. The same antithesis role is played also by “unworthy” clergy and Church dignitaries.

Of course, there are others whose theses are often what the Christians take as antitheses, and vice versa. They all arrive at their own syntheses to use them as new theses and the game continues. And there are those, individuals or groups, Christian, non-Christian or anti-Christian, who at a certain stage get stuck in their thesis, unable to utilize the constructive elements in the antithesis offered to them, thus failing to further develop/improve their original position.

George wrote: I just object to calling Christian faith, or any other world-view, a contamination.

Dear George:

We still differ. I regard any world-view that mainly depends on faith as a contaminant.

The Holocaust was a conjunction of two world-views based on faith, the part of Christianity which regards Judaism as superseded by Christianity and has persecuted Jews for years along with the Nazi doctrine of Aryan superiority which supported subjugating or eliminating non-Aryan people. The Nazis could reprint Martin Luther’s Jew hating sermons in the Volkischer Beobachter to support their faith. The Vatican and Hitler signed a Concordat, and the German Lutheran churches mostly supported Hitler.

The elimination of possibly 100,000,000 people by various Marxist entities was furthered by the world-view that elimination of the class enemy was a justifiable act in pursuit of the eventual classless society.

There were other atrocities during human history, but those twentieth century atrocities were furthered by world-views encompassing faith in unprovable propositions.

I regard acceptable world-views as those that involve questioning or critical thinking. This can be found in religion. Buddha recommended that people doubt all words even his. He recognized that what he was saying applied to his time and place and might not be valid in the future. This questioning attitude is found in science where any theory or conjecture is subject to re-examination.

Faith can breed atrocity. World-views that mainly depend on faith have potential for causing human suffering. I call them contaminants.

Peter

Apologies if I did miss the point of your article but I am not sure that I have. I guess what I am arguing is that science does not do this - atheists might use scientific argument to refute religous claims but science is really minding it's own business and getting on with the business of the pyhsical world. There are branches of science that explore areas like the paranormal and there are scientists who hold religious beliefs.

I personally don't aspire to join organisations like the Atheist Foundation because they could become just another form of crusading evangelism (that you mentioned). Although I am not sure one can use the word evangelism to describe the non-religious but it is useful for descriptive purposes. I cannot see the point in forming a group that exists purely to refute the presence of the supernatural but in a secular society we have to acknowledge the right for different belief systems and the right to form groups of the like-minded.

Globally, I don't see athesists preaching or undertaking the cause with the same zeal or missionary purpose as various religious groups. Even Dawkins writes his books and makes a few appearances but it is hardly a global cohesive group.

Respect is important. However, let's be honest the very views held by some religious folk (not just Christians) makes assumptions about the morality or values held by those who are different to them as though somehower religious values are held to a higher moral standard. To be fair religoius people are probably also tired of athiests implying they lack intelligence for blind faith. I've oversimplified but there is validity in both views.

Continued....

George,
Your, “An absolute truth, or Truth, is directly unattainable..." basically aligns with the sentiments as expressed by Einstein, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate...". I think Einstein has much to offer as does Buddha on some of the basic approaches to religion – no doubt you’d agree (to a point..). We do tend, perhaps, to make things more complicated than we ought – e.g. many people, including Einstein, are attracted to a simple rendition of the Gospel story. Although can been read on varying levels of sophistication, there is a straight forward morality expressed most can identify with (even if not practice).

The second part of the Aritostilan idea, as we’re both agreed, cannot refer to the directly unattainable ‘truths’ but more to the modern educational notion of a ‘body of knowledge’, or a discipline such as sociology, economics or theology. In this context it is far from being naïve.

Becoming a generally educated human being also involves some grasp of the history of history and of philosophy, and some understanding of the philosophy of history and philosophy. Not everyone is not called on to be a lawyer, a physician, an accountant, or an engineer - nor for that matter to engage in some field of historical or scientific research. But, certainly everyone is called on to philosophise – philosophy is everyone’s business.

As opposed to opinion, dialectical writing certainly abstains from making judgments about the truth or falsity of the philosophical views or doctrines it surveys. To be a philosopher, one must make up one's own mind about where the truth lies on the great issues that have filled the pages of philosophical controversy. The dialectic existing between Christianity at its very inception and the manifestation of it now continues. David f correctly points to some of the anomaly as shown in history, albeit with the vantage point of a more objective review. The German Lutherans specifically separated biblical teachings (morality) from its teachings of the State and thus legitimized the Nazi State ideology. Undoubtedly, the perversely anti-Semitic writings of Martin Luther didn’t help.

continued ...

Peter you said: "I indicated that science has broken its bounds, that of enquiry into the physical world, and has become a total world view. That is not, as you point out, its purpose. If you read some of the excellent comments in this thread you will find out that we are not attacking science but its usage to promote a totalitarian view that cancels views on humanity that are not empirical."

I appreciate why you might hold this view. There are certainly events that we cannot always explain but until recent years (perhaps because of Dawkins) there was no real open debate about religion.

Is it reasonable to be asking about the role of religion in the larger public domain? Or to question some of the long held 'truths'? Religious thought has always been allowed to occupy a large part of the public domain so it is perhaps understanding why it might not want to share this space with a newer more public opposing view. Is it valid to ask if religion is a positive or a negative aspect of human interaction and cohesiveness? This might be more a philosophical debate than a scientific one.

World-views not based on faith also have the potential for causing human suffering. However those not based on faith can be questioned and possibly corrected as one looks at the results.

It is in the nature of faith that it can neither be subjected to examination nor corrected. One can only keep it or lose it. If one loses faith there is a void in one’s life. Often it is filled by another world-view that relies on faith. When the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door I sometimes ask them to tell me about themselves. Those who decide to do so often tell a story of traipsing from one fundamentalist faith to another. It is better to depend on critical thinking and doubt in the first place.

In a multicultural society the damage due to faith is usually limited as one generally has to reach a modus vivendi with those of competing faiths. The Cronulla riots are an example of the failure of the modus vivendi.

However, it is still a danger. I am quite concerned that the present candidate for vice-president on the Republican ticket is a creationist and speaks of the Iraqi war as ‘God’s will’.

If she becomes president I do not trust her to make decisions on the application of force that are sensible, wise or compassionate. I do not trust her to allocate funds for science or education in the best interests of the people of the United States.

World-views based on faith are contaminants. Respect the sanctity of doubt.

Pelican

I agree with you that until relatively recently religion was spared close scrutiny. Unaccountable and tax-free, religion as an organisation has held an elite position.

Therefore, since the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and our own inimitable Phillip Adams have had the temerity to question and call to account religion via the public sphere, we have seen many religious promoters attacking what is a democratic right to critique an organisation that has no basis in fact; which relies purely upon special dispensation by government and faith by its adherents.

For too long, non-religious and other religions such as Buddhism (which can be classified as atheist as it does not worship a single deity) have been maligned as less moral, less worthy. This is discrimination at best and perpetuation of hatred at worst. It is why many of us take offense, knowing we are decent, worthy beings who have no need to resort to the dubious philosophies and stories of a text from another time, another culture. We have been judged by the religious for long enough, now it is the turn of the religious to be judged.

For this reason children need to be taught about religions (all of them) instead of being indoctrinated into the religion of the culture into which they happened to be born. I can understand that DavidF feels religion can be a contaminate when it is foisted upon children to young to discern between fact and myth. If we teach our children to reason and not hate others for the most superficial excuse (religion) then this world may have a chance at peace.

Davidf, your continued use of the word contamination is nothing more than emotive language. The persuasive power in debate of such language is only good for those who get sucked in by such words.

You talk about world-views that are based on faith and world-views that are not based on faith. I’m wondering if you could give me an example of one that is not based on faith. (I doubt there is one.)

Even for scientific methodology, the propositions which must be true for science itself to work (the orderliness of the universe, and the non-capriciousness of the natural law, for example) must be accepted by faith as axioms. Its Christian theological underpinning is one reason why science flourished so much in Western civilization due to its belief in an orderly God, true to his Word and following predictable laws, who imposed his character onto his original creation.

You speak in horrific terms about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis and the millions eliminated by Marxist regimes without mentioning that the faith assumptions underlying Hitler’s and Marx’s philosophies were heavily contributed to by the emerging ‘science’ in the form of Darwinian selection. Or did the Nazi doctrine of Aryan superiority which supported subjugating or eliminating non-Aryan people have nothing to do with Hitler’s reading of Darwin, influencing his belief that non-Aryan races were less advanced?

Don’t think extermination of undesirables can’t happen again. This month in the Victorian LA they will be voting on overturning the current abortion laws to insure that abortion is totally available freely on demand. This is nothing short of redefining what it is to be a human being, despite everything we know about genetics and every other branch of true science (except for evolutionary science) telling us that those developing in the womb are totally human (this is apart from the legal technicality about them having yet to obtain birth certificates).

You speak of the Lutheran and other churches succumbing easily to the lies of Hitler. That was indeed a terrible tragedy. Today’s church will not roll over quite so easily.

Dan,
No you are wrong about science. Faith has nothing to do with it. If it did it would not be science it would be alchemy and magic.
Axioms? what are you talking about? Christianity assisted science?..rubbish! An orderly god? Read Exodus.....then read a history book.

You are arguing like the typical theist who begs the question by using an underlying assumption that religious belief and moral behaviour are somehow related, which of course they are not. Even worse, your arguments also try to suggest that a world of secular science inevitably leads to immoral action. Your argument consists of pointing out some bad godless people. This is the "My cup is yellow, canaries are yellow ergo: my cup is a canary" type of logic.

You also miss the point of law reform in Victoria. The legislation in the parliament is to decriminalize abortion. It does not justify it on moral grounds. Before you get too hot under the collar though, I must tell you that I too would be inclined to define a human life as starting at conception. This of course is only a personal moral opinion made about a situation that defies moral absolutism, like many other ethical and moral issues we face in this modern world.

Anyway all this is irrelevant as you , like all theists, are great at condemning us godless heathens but fail entirely to provide a clear, concise, logical argument as to why we should consider sharing your memes.

The author is far more interested in the story of the Church than he is in the story of Christ. Modern Christianity lost its way when the Christina community (in the media) was portrayed as wholeheartedly supporting the war in Iraq.

david f,
You are right, we do differ. You regard my world-view as a contaminant received through indoctrination, whereas I refuse to use such terms to describe your world-view although there are also things you say (though not everything) that I strongly disagree with.

relda,
Again, thanks for interesting insights. I think before Einstein it was Kant with his Ding-an-sich who spoke of "something we cannot penetrate".

When speaking of “the vantage point of a more objective review“ in connection with the role played by religion, especially Christianity, in history, one has to keep in mind that there are always outsider views and insider views. The one should be seen as complementing the other when looking for an “objective evaluation“ of this role, although often both the insider and the outsider see their view as the only true, objective one. Of course, I am talking about evaluating the role, not about documented historical facts.

This is not the case when dealing with objects of scientific enquiry, e.g. cosmology, nuclear physics, where usually the outsider can only learn from the insider (by trying to understand the popularised exposition). This is different in the case under consideration: neither can the outsider teach the insider how to “properly“ look at things (or vice versa), nor can the insider make the outsider see things the way only a committed insider can (or vice versa).

By “naive truth” I did not mean anything pejorative, but a "common sense" approach to everyday truths that does not need deeper philosophical scrutiny.

I also agree that "philosophy is everyone’s business" although I would rather call it “seach for purpose or meaning of one’s life”. That, however means that also the intellectually unsophisticated Christian looks for answers, which he/she can find only in a form (e.g. “simple rendition of the Gospel story”) that indeed looks naive, or childish to use your Einstein‘s expression. Here by naive I indeed mean something intellectually unsatisfying for a more sophisticated Christian or non-Christian. However, these expressions of faith are also legitimate, because the Christian message is not intended for intellectuals only.

Dan, you're making a number of assumptions that are factually and philosophically incorrect.

The reason scientific theory has been so successful is because it rejects axioms in the search for accuracy. Fundamentalists only like to say that evolution is a faith because it gives them comfort to believe that apocryphal scripture has the same weight as testable, observable data.

The caricature of scientists praying at the altar of Darwin is pure indulgence. In reality, scientists fight like rabid dogs over each new hypothesis or research finding. It's only after many years and thousands of failed attempts at falsification that a theory becomes accepted as proven.

Anyone who tells you that Hitler's program of eugenics had anything to do with Darwin's theory of natural selection is either woefully misinformed or has an agenda to push. It's just another example of the "canary cup" argument Priscillian identified above. Human beings have exercised selective breeding since before the Bible was even written. Purebred dogs and horses? Selective breeding. High-yield food crops? Selective breeding. Inbred noble families with ancient bloodlines? Selective breeding.

The Nazi eugenics program never used any scientific principle that was unknown in the centuries before Darwin's birth, but Hitler did invoke Christianity as justification for his atrocities. He didn't need Darwin to realise that breeding blue-eyed blondes with each other would produce more blue-eyed blondes.

In regard to the abortion bill, what is the current definition of a human being, and who makes that definition in the first place? Are you sure you're not just assuming that your personal definition is the commonly accepted one? If opinion polls are to be believed, the vast majority of Australians disagree with your definition of a human, so the bill is simply bringing the law into line with that.

And, like Priscillian, I have to disagree with your contention that Christianity helped science flourish in the west. Rather, Christianity has fought tooth and nail throughout the ages to suppress science, because it undermines religious authority. I'd be very interested to see some historical evidence to the contrary.

I find many of George’s attitudes humane and sensible.

Dan Wrote:

"You speak in horrific terms about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis and the millions eliminated by Marxist regimes without mentioning that the faith assumptions underlying Hitler’s and Marx’s philosophies were heavily contributed to by the emerging ‘science’ in the form of Darwinian selection. Or did the Nazi doctrine of Aryan superiority which supported subjugating or eliminating non-Aryan people have nothing to do with Hitler’s reading of Darwin, influencing his belief that non-Aryan races were less advanced?"

Dear Dan,

Unfortunately you are repeating common myths.

The Communist Manifesto citing the class struggle as the engine of human development was published in 1848. Darwin published in 1859.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm#myth1 debunks myths about Hitler. His ideology predated Darwin. Hitler in Mein Kampf does not mention Darwin, natural-selection or even the word "evolution" (in the context of natural selection). Regarding Aryan superiority and Jewish hatred, Hitler describes in Mein Kampf how he changed his mind about the Jews influenced by the anti-Semitic movement of the Christian Social Party. Hitler was possibly not even aware of Darwin. Christian supersessionism maintains that Christianity replaced the covenant of God with the Jewish people. Jews became superfluous and could be eliminated. Racist anti-Semitism arose when the Spanish Inquisition persecuted Christians descended from Jewish converts.

Some in both the Catholic and Lutheran churches have recognized the role of their religions in setting the stage for and participating in the Holocaust.

In 1965, Catholic clerics composed a statement that changed the bitter, bloodstained 2,000-year relationship between two peoples: Nostra Aetate, ("In Our Time"). Nostra Aetate repudiates the ancient Christian charge against Jews as "Christ-killers" and reaffirms God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people.

Mother Basilea, a German Lutheran, leader of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, made it her life’s work to repent for Germany's cruel treatment of other nations, especially the Jews. She recognised Lutheran guilt.

Christians of good will have recognized the role of Christianity in the Holocaust. To correct bigotry it is necessary to recognise it.

George,
I can only but essentially agree with your last post. You may be interested to view the ‘Dolhenty Interview’ (http://radicalacademy.com/dolhentyinterview.htm) on the prevalence of the “intellectual insanity” within society – an insanity Dolhenty believes is affecting all the countries of the world which are within the Western tradition. Subjectivism, relativism, scientism, politicism and determinism are named as the pillars of this insanity.

George wrote:

"For instance, there are many manifestations of Islam that I do not like, to say the least, but I have to accept that there must be something more to Islam than just these negative things, since it attracted a billion adherents."

Dear George,

Islam is a religion of laws rather than creeds. That means they can be more open to new ideas and are not constrained by a requirement for orthodoxy. There was no counterpart in early Islam to the Christian Inquisition. One could let one's mind speculate.

Mohammed opposed compulsion in religion. That contrasts favourably with the injunction expressed in the New Testament that one should spread the Gospel. There is no consideration as whether the Gospel is wanted. Unfortunately Muslims don't always follow that injunction.

Chemistry, navigation, astronomy and other sciences still use the the Arabic words such as alembic (a type of flask), Deneb (a star), apogee (a high point in orbit). Islamic universities had Buddhist, Jewish and Christian scholars while Christian universities were restricted to Christians. They took many things from other cultures and developed many things themselves.

Computer programming rests on the concept of the algorithm named from Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed it around 825. Islamic mathematicians developed the sine theorem of spherical trigonometry, studies of cubic and quartic equations, reform of the calendar, developments in non-Euclidean geometry and iterative methods to solve equations.

Islamic Spain had a Golden Age in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars participated. There is no counterpart in Christian history.

Unfortunately in the fourteenth century a rigid faction of Islamic scholars closed 'the gates of ijtihad': independent reasoning on matters of religion was effectively outlawed.

This devastated Muslim society. Muslim culture lost its dynamism and degenerated, while the Muslim community was transformed from an open to a closed society.

At about the time Islam entered their Dark Ages Europe was coming out of theirs with the Renaissance.

However, Islam for the most part retained a greater tolerance than Christianity. Jews expelled from Christian Europe from the eleventh century on often found refuge in Muslim lands.

relda,
Thanks for the link to Dolhenty, a young “classical philosophic realist” as he calls himself, i.e. a Thomist I did not know about. I sort of grew up with neo-Thomism of the 1930s and 1940s (notably Jean Maritain) that I found in my father’s library because nothing non-Marx-Leninist was then available in the bookshops of a Communist country. Later I found out that there was also something called “transcendental Thomism“ (Joseph Maréchal) inspired by Kant.

In 1971, John Macquarrie, an Anglican theologian and philosopher, wrote that “the dynamic intellectualism of this new Thomism is important as a corrective to the dangers of subjectivism and sentimentalism to which some forms of existentialism can lead” in his book ‘20th Century Religious Thought‘ that became my “bible“ of what I know about modern Christian theology. Perhaps not yet “insanity” - nobody called existentialism insane - but already an early warning that now Doherty expresses more forcefully.

Personally I think neo-Thomism - sometimes called Existential Thomism, which has nothing to do with existentialism - can be taken as a good starting point or background of a philosophy or world-view, adjusted to account for recent findings of neuroscience, biology, physics and cosmology. This adjustment is somehow missing in Doherty’s interesting, and mostly justified, critique of what he calls “intellectual insanity”. Also, Doherty could have been a bit more open-minded towards philosophical perspectives he criticises.

Basically, however, neo-Thomism is a good position from where to criticise modern (and postmodern) thinking, offering us a mirror, albeit situated in the past, showing the good (and the bad) that got lost. However, without being constructive, without showing how to use the “intellectual insanity” as an anti-thesis that could lead to a more promising, but still realistic, synthesis.

I think, if such a new synthesis, a “second renaissance” of “sane” Western thinking is possible, it will not come from the traditional West (like the first one did not come from Greece). Even if it came from the outside, that would be one outcome of globalisation that we should welcome.

I think also Peter might like Doherty’s criticism.

Priscillian,
You critique my post saying that it is not concise while also saying I don’t give enough examples of the axioms. (Some people are hard to please.) And I must convince you of sharing my world view in 350 words. You set quite a challenge.

You spent a lot of your 350 words trying to put words in my mouth. I don’t see where I was ‘condemning the godless heathen’. I never said since my cup is yellow then my cup is a canary, or anything resembling that type of logic. That belongs to you. I never said that ‘a few bad people’ such as Hitler and co. give Nazism a bad name.

My contention was fairly straight forward, and that was, right thinking leads to right conduct, or conversely, poor thinking leads to poor conduct. If the basis of our thinking is that some ‘races’ are more evolved than others, then it is only natural that ideas of superiority will be justified and acted upon.

When people are continually told that they are only slightly upgraded apes and not too far removed from pool scum rather than creatures made in the image of God, it will affect decision making and conduct. It certainly makes the unwanted a bit easier to dispose of.

You say the law decriminalising abortion does not justify abortion on moral grounds. Actually, the proposed law justifies abortion on any or every ground.

You seem inclined to come to the defence of this law decriminalising abortion, yet also say you’re willing to define human life as starting at conception. If so, it must be that you feel okay about the lives of the innocent being terminated dependent upon the will or whim of another.

Sancho,
That stuff you said about selective breeding has little if anything to do with the concepts of microbe-to-man evolution.

Most Victorians share a good essential grasp at recognising a human being. When the family come to the hospital and watch the ultra-sound of the little tyke up on the big screen, discuss family resemblances, and naming possibilities, they know.

Dan,
I haven't got too much to say about your post because I think we can all see where you are coming from.

I did however have a little giggle when you said:-
"When people are continually told that they are only slightly upgraded apes and not too far removed from pool scum rather than creatures made in the image of God.............."
The only people saying this are ignorant fundamentalist Christians. Anybody who knows anything at all about the theory of evolution would not claim this. Read a book called "The Origin of Species" by a fellow called Charles Darwin then maybe we can discuss his theories. It's only fair after all because I have read your holy book a number of times, cover to cover.

I don't require you to explain your world view in 350 words, I can just go to any fundamentalist web site and read it for myself. Mind you it wouldn't really need 350 words anyway would it?

Battle lines between Christian theology and Science are but fabricated paradigm shifts;
http://cpds.apana.org.au/Teams/Archive/philosophy.htm#Design

The presumptions to instigate this little secularist myth are devoid of any logic – (Fact) - then change language meanings to suggest otherwise: Chomsky was good at that.
Expounding the virtues of subversive and divisive linguistics is a continuum to instigate further presumptions that are devoid of any logic and deductive reason, so it is mere speculation that is then accepted by some as their fact; when it become clear that it is devoid of any fact in its entirety ; it is simple to distinguish and it simpler to dispel mythical assumptions.

Interesting All, Your link suggests weak states also threaten liberty and not just ones that are oppressive. Our avenues for critical thinking are important – this suggests the type of analytical criticism (dialectic) applying equally to any area of discipline – economic, scientific or theological. Nietzsche and Derrida gave an often unpopular, if not controversial, critique in the area of theology - but their goal was to “uncover the unconscious assumptions built into one's own culture”, a heightened perspective on ‘freedom’ resulted, a legacy of western civilization. Our contentment however may breed the laziness that weakens us. This applies equally to our religious institutions, which incidentally are no longer in need such of a dominant class of clerics, I do not suggest an absence of guidance – but people necessarily need seek it.

Interestingly, the power of the clerical class has been broken everywhere but in Islam… the process is happening, albeit slowly occurring, as the extremists of this religion are brought to task. I spoke of the myth of ‘The Age of Faith’ in an earlier post, so too is there a myth in the “Golden Age" of Islam. The "interfaith utopia" or better, the "myth of an interfaith utopia", in Spain and under Islam, in general, challenged supposedly enlightened Christians to live up to the promise of emancipation and grant the Jews rights and privileges. Not quite so. Tolerance, at least as we know it in the West since the time of John Locke, was not considered a virtue in medieval monotheistic societies. Exclusive by nature, monotheists declare(d) all others (including other monotheists) to be infidels. If medieval Christianity "tolerated" Judaism, that is, permitted Jews to live and practice their religion, it was because Christians generally believed that God wished Jews to be preserved as witnesses to Christian triumphalism. Some interpretive rigor is also certainly needed to discover common ground between the modern Western ideal of democratic pluralism and the praxis of various pre-modern Muslim societies – this is not say the seeds of this pluralism didn’t exist (for in fact they did)

Dan Wrote:

"You speak in horrific terms about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis and the millions eliminated by Marxist regimes without mentioning that the faith assumptions underlying Hitler’s and Marx’s philosophies were heavily contributed to by the emerging ‘science’ in the form of Darwinian selection. Or did the Nazi doctrine of Aryan superiority which supported subjugating or eliminating non-Aryan people have nothing to do with Hitler’s reading of Darwin, influencing his belief that non-Aryan races were less advanced?"

Dear Dan,

I pointed out that Marx published his theory before Darwin published, and that Hitler in Mein Kampf does not refer to Darwin or his ideas so there is no indication that he had even read Darwin.

You are not alone in rejecting Darwinism, but you don’t withdraw your charges when they are shown to have no basis. It damns Darwinism to connect it w the crimes of Marxism and Nazism.

You wrote; "When people are continually told that they are only slightly upgraded apes and not too far removed from pool scum rather than creatures made in the image of God" I find the idea that we are in the image of God and apes and pond scum are not can lead to heedless destruction of the other living beings we share the planet with. One can spend a productive life studying the wonder of pond scum.

You might find out what Darwin wrote.

Dear George,

Although I think in general religion has done more harm than good and reject any belief in the supernatural I cannot prove my contention. I can show no hard evidence for my belief. We cannot rerun history without religion. For some individuals religion has added meaning and has done more good than harm.

I apologise for my use of the word, contaminant. It ended any useful discussion we could have had on the matter. Our views seem so far apart that I don't think we could have any useful discussion, anyhow. However, my intemperate, insulting and inflammatory language regarding your beliefs only contributed bad feeling. You were good not to respond in kind.

I am not certain relda how anyone can explain and articulate successfully the notion of some suppositions as are in totality ; ridicules- juxtaposed to a supposition of deductive logic in topical or in science .
But then again, if it is a result of a deductive notion ; then it eliminates the obvious faults and does so in perpetual momentum;
It had been presented to me that Einstein’s theory E=MC2 was considered Law (Deliberate word association), and just as it has appeared here ; the Charles Darwin evolution theory was , and is by some people considered Law;
and it would be quite reasonable to assume that those people expounding such notions have never read Darwins publications, nor ever would understand that Darwin’s thoughts and works were based on his philosophical assumptions , devoid of scientific notions in total- but has become secular Law by default ; Darwin also confirms this notion and admission himself ;It is a premise based on his philosophical assumptions.

But where do we ever read or hear that?

Einstein did not ever have the advantage of, and the knowledge of Quantum Particle physics, so it is by definition of science , it would have been an incomplete hypotheses, as is any Hypotheses of deductive processes.
People have been conditioned to believe; in Freudian ways to consider the paradigm shifts to be law and nothing else exists outside of that paradigm other than what they are told.
That has to ring loud alarm bells.

Relda wrote;

Exclusive by nature, monotheists declare(d) all others (including other monotheists) to be infidels. If medieval Christianity "tolerated" Judaism, that is, permitted Jews to live and practice their religion, it was because Christians generally believed that God wished Jews to be preserved as witnesses to Christian triumphalism.

Dear Relda,

The preservation of the Jews as witnesses to Christian triumphalism was only one factor in preservation. Other factors were economic and class.

Christians were forbidden to engage in finance due to the prohibition against usury. Therefore Jews were compelled to be the moneylenders. This was a perilous occupation as they could be squeezed, massacred and expelled. They provided a useful buffer between the anger of exploited peasantry against the ruling classes. With their contacts with Jews in other countries Jews could serve as useful conduits in trade. The few rich Jews contributed to the welfare of the poor Jewish masses.

In Poland the position was somewhat different. The Polish szlachta or nobility wished to create a middle class. However, they wished to keep a distance from the peasantry. They invited Jews in en masse to fill the functions of merchants, artisans, estate managers, doctors, teachers etc. The peasants were kept out of such occupations, and the nobility remained the warrior class. This was a great situation for the Jews and lasted until the partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia and Austria in the eighteenth century. This accounted for the over 3,000,000 Jews in pre-WW2 Poland most of whom were wiped out by the Nazis.

Islam treated other religionists differently from Christianity. They declared Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians ‘people of the book’. As such those particular infidels had a status that they did not have in Christendom. The ‘people of the book’ could rise to positions of great power. The warrior class remained Islamic.

Lithuania until 1386 was a non-monotheist, medieval, multicultural society. The pagan ruler made no distinctions as to ethnicity and religion in regard to entry into the noble ranks. After a series of damaging Christian crusades against Lithuania the country submitted to Christianisation ending Lithuanian multiculturalism.

Exactly All, paradigm shifts are not law but more a 'theory' and once 'falsified' can also become that which exists outside of the paradigm ...

Yes, David F, certainly it was the naughty French monk Peter Abelard who after mixing with Muslims who pretty well expressed at the time that faith was dangerous without reason.

However, it is historically true that it was St Thomas Aquinas who dared to support Abelard, his philosophies not only making him a Saint but also his new reasoning helping to begin what is now our universities or Schools of Humanities.

It is also historical much later that Immanuel Kant saw the urgent need for Christian faith to be tempered by reason, meaning that he certainly would not agree with our G W Bush and his view about bringing freedom to Islam by faith alone, when Islam itself is also mired down and misusing its own faith through lack of reason similar to Mr Bush.

Certainly sound reasoning should tell us that if we correctly used our historical insight to guide our foresight we could all be much happier.

Cheers, BB.

david f,
I really appreciate your conciliatory words.

>>Although I ... reject any belief in the supernatural I cannot prove my contention.<<
Well neither can I, which is perhaps one thing where "our views" would not seem to be "so far apart". The ambiguity here is not only with the verb "prove" (which is unambiguous only in a logical or mathematical context) but also with the term “supernatural“.

As mentioned on a different thread, one thing is the "supernatural" that occultists, ghostbusters, seance mediums and the like try to contact, another thing is the "divine" that serious Western or Eastern mystics talk about. The latter can be seen as that part, or rather aspect, of Transcendent Reality (Kant) that is not accessible through senses, instruments and mathematics, i.e. not knowable by science IN PRINCIPLE, irrespective of what future developments in our knowledge of the physical world might bring. (Of course, many believe that such an “extra-scientific” dimension of Reality does not exist.)

To confuse the two is like confusing alchemy with chemistry or astrology with astronomy.

Your last post about Jews within a Christians-dominated Europe shows that one can present a view of history that does not attack those who look at history from a different angle. On the contrary, it can enlighten or broaden those other views.

I wonder what would be your take on this: Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the former archbishop of Paris - whose mother died in a concentration camp, and who always insisted that he had remained a Jew after his conversion to Catholicism - always emphasised the difference beween anti-semitism (persecution and killing of members of a race) and Christian anti-judaism (forced conversion or isolation, expulsion etc of those who did not convert). The Church was guilty of anti-judaism (religious intolerance and supremacy) but not of anti-semitism (racism), and if the Holocaust can be seen as being influenced by past anti-judaism - which I do not think is as simple as some people like to think - it certainly was unintended. Edith Stein or Lustiger would have been accepted even during the darkest Middle Ages.

David f,
Whilst I have no reason to doubt the historicity of your last post, the underpinnings of the Christian triumphalism are important, even if to focus on this tends to create somewhat of an oversimplification. Literally speaking, anti-semitism means "opposed to Semites," which technically also includes Arabs and other Semitic peoples. However, in practice and as widely acknowledged within academia, anti-Semitism refers only to an opposition or hatred of Jews and or Judaism. The origins of anti-Judaism or Christian anti-Semitism can be traced back to the growing estrangement between the early Christian communities and the Jewish leaders of formative Judaisms.

A literal reading of the Gospels, without any contextual reference, clearly demonstrates how this narrow interpretation of Matthew and John's Gospels distorts original meaning. Matthew's community, in particular, predominantly consisted of ‘Jewish Christians’ who kept the Law and were at odds or in conflict with other notable forms of Judaism. An eventual theological disdain grew within early Christian thought – basically derived from the Jewish rejection of Jesus as ‘The Messiah’. In the classical era, many prominent theologians and church leaders revealed their disdain for Jews and their religion by attacking "Judaisers" and reiterating the charge that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death. The charge of Justine Martyr and Tertullian was basically “…because the Jews had rejected Jesus and the prophets, the entitlements of Judaism should now be transferred to Christianity.” Two of the most influential classical Christian scholars and church leaders who harbored anti-Semitic views were St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine of Hippo. "If it is requisite to despise individuals and the nation so do I abhor the Jews an inexpressible hate." – St Jerome.

Persisting within Islam, is the parallel – it is a religion to basically supersede both the Judaic and Christian one, an idea founded on the same error. Around 620 C.E. the Jews, not surprisingly, rejected the ‘new faith’(Islam) and its prophet; and if the Qur’an is to be believed, they were contemptuous and sarcastic.

Dear Relda,

Wilhelm Marr invented the word, Antisemitismus, in 1879 to mean hatred for Jews not other Semites.

Dear George,

I dig neither the transcendent reality of Kant nor the reality of the astrologers. Kant examined the proofs of the existence of God and found none of them valid. There have been no new proofs of the existence of God since Kant. He recognised that one cannot defend religious faith by rational means but declared himself Lutheran. An “extra-scientific” dimension of Reality postulates a concept for which, by definition, there is no evidence.

Hitler’s definition of Jew depended on ancestry, as does Lustiger’s. I define a Jew as one who regards himself or herself as a Jew and is regarded as a Jew by the Jewish community.

Lustiger ignored history. Edith Stein or he might have been persecuted in the fifteenth century.

Limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood) referred to being ethnically pure “Old Christian” without Jewish or Muslim ancestors. Christians who reconquered Spain despised the New Christians, and called them Conversos. Cleanliness of blood depended on ancestry not on personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood in Toledo, 1449, barred Conversos from most official positions.

The distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism is Christianity distancing itself from Hitler. In Mein Kampf Hitler said the anti-Semitic movement of the Christian Social Party influenced him. Hitler admitted Christian roots to his Jew hatred. Racial theorists later supported that hatred. Hatreds reinforce each other and cannot be neatly separated.

Nazi papers printed Martin Luther’s anti-Judaist sermons verbatim to stoke up feeling against Jews. Jews might abandon their faith under pressure of anti-Judaists to live a precarious existence. Jews condemned to death by burning could sometimes buy a more peaceful death by hanging if they would convert. Christians become martyrs for their faith. Jews become corpses for theirs. I find the difference between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism specious.

Christian religious bigotry is no more acceptable than racism. Jews or anybody else should not be murdered due to religion or due to race.

Dear Relda,

Christian triumphalism is important, and your recounting of the history of early Christianity and Islam seems correct to me. However, Christians have a tendency to ignore what has happened since then. To me it is as though one claimed knowledge of Christianity while ignoring the Arian heresy, the Reformation, the Orthodox-Catholic Schism and all the other important events that have happened since the early church.

To really gain a feeling for the matter it is necessary to know about Jewish-Christian interactions since the early church and the influence each faith has had on the other. That is a long and complex history, but I can suggest a good source.

David Vital’s A People Apart, 1789-1939, Oxford: OUP, 1999 is possibly the best book to deal with the present state of the Jews. 1789 was the date of the French Revolution. It liberated the Jews as well as others. Napoleon opened the ghettoes. He also sparked ethnic nationalism in reaction to his carrying the banner of revolution. The various ethnic nationalisms were based on a unity of ethnicity and religion to form new nation states. This left no place for the Jews who created their own ethnic nationalism called Zionism. There are other books dealing with earlier and later history. However, we are still dealing with the fallout of the French Revolution.

In the United States at this time fundamentalist Christians have formed Christians United For Israel (CUFI). The movement is extremely dangerous since they seem to want to hasten the ‘end days’ at the cost of Middle East peace. They oppose any steps for peace the US or Israel may make and support the most aggressive elements in Israel and the United States. I suggest that they are far more important at present than Christian Triumphalism. Their head, Reverend Hagee, endorsed McCain for president. McCain rejected that endorsement because of extremely bigoted statements by Hagee such as calling the Catholic Church ‘the whore of Babylon.’ However, they are still working for a Republican victory which I fear.

O.K. David, you correctly point out the term ‘anti-semite’ as being coined by the German anti-Jewish polemicist who used it as a replacement word for judenhass or Jewhatred. It is a phenomenon that has repeatedly occurred well before the 19th. Century. Let’s not then reduce it to the vacuous, as John Pilger has done, through its technical meaning – but use the term as used by Marr originally. Understand how it has manifested throughout history, and continues to do so.

Sancho,
Evidence abounds for the positive influence Christianity has had on science. The following type of comment from Paul Davies is quite common in academia, although I wouldn’t agree with it totally:

“If you look back at how science originated, it rests upon twin pillars. The first is Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on the ability of human beings to understand their world through the use of rational reasoning. The second is monotheistic religion—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—with its emphasis on a created world that is ordered by a Designer in a rational and intelligible way. Those were the dominant influences that gave rise to science in seventeenth-century Europe.”

Earlier there was discussion on Einstein’s thoughts and views of religion. If we dig a little deeper and look at some other famous scientists, which of these did not overtly state a Christian testimony: Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur ….? And this list could be many times longer.

Dan,
This time you have used fallacy number 2. (i.e Argument from Authority)

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric

* Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
* Argument from "authority".
* Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
* Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
* Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
* Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
* Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
* Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
* Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
* Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
* Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
* Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
* Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
* Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
* Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
* Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
* Confusion of correlation and causation.
* Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
* Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
* Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

When the word Aryan and her racy are used in conjunction together, is a sure indicator of propaganda proliferation.
For a start Aryan is from the Pharisee language and it means Iran; apart from F N and his supermen, Iran in Pharisees (Persian); meaning is; Land of the Aryan- or for beginners; Zoroastrianism- Thus Spake Zarathustra – ring some bells.
Everything after that is concocted junk.
And Illuminatie is another topic perhaps you need to study up on.
And about beloved Islam; don’t start me on the ancient version of The Church of scientology. Volumes of facts and archaeological findings tell us it is a fake, and again your Aryans had a lot to do with it.

david f,
Kant or no Kant, as I said, terms like proof or evidence have an unequivocal meaning only within a formal context (logic or mathematics). Reality as such can be seen as the proverbial elephant, and we as the six blind men: some can "feel" its “extra-scientific dimension", some cannot; some can understand Einstein's ideas about its space-time features, some cannot, etc.

>>I define a Jew as one who regards himself or herself as a Jew and is regarded as a Jew by the Jewish community.<<
That is fine, but I think Hitler and Eichmann had their own definition based on race, (not on religion), and they certainly did not ask the Jewish community. Lustiger would clearly satisfy at least the first part of your criterion, and I think one should respect this, not the least because it helped 20th century Catholics better understand the Jewish position.

I have not read Mein Kampf but I would not pay much attention to what Hitler (or "Nazi papers") claimed in support of their crazy and criminal ideas. Here I trust more Lustiger, who never claimed that past Christian anti-Judaism did not influence the atmosphere that allowed the Nazi madness to thrive. As you know, there are also people who quote Genesis to support their anti-scientific ideas although the majority of Christians and Jews do not see the book of Genesis as a scientific textbook that contradicts e.g. neo-Darwinism.

Thank you for reminding me of the conversos. They indeed were discriminated, and so were those born out of wedlock, homosexuals, American blacks etc. So I admit, Edith Stein might have been discriminated against.

When you say that "Christian religious bigotry is no more acceptable than racism" are you not downplaying the uniqueness of the evil of Holocaust, to say the least? Religious bigotry, Christian or not, unfortunately existed throughout history (and still exists), but the killing of six million people - not because of their religion (which, in theory at least, they could change) but because of their race (which they could not) - was, in my opinion unprecedented in history.

DavidF,
Are you still trying to claim that Hitler’s horrors had nothing to do with Darwin’s influence? You say Hitler made no reference to Darwin or ever used the word ‘evolution’ in Mein Kampf. Did Hitler reference Martin Luther in Mein Kampf? Yet you are happy to put a fair share of Holocaust blame on the Lutheran church.

From my copy of Darwin’s book (Priscillian’s holy book), I see that it’s subtitled ‘Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.’ It has just a bit of resemblance to Adolf’s book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

So Hitler never referenced Darwin or used the word ‘evolution’ in Mein Kampf. Yet he claimed that the climax of history would be the survival of the fittest race – the Aryan race. The whole book is a natural conclusion of Darwinian philosophy. It could be that he felt no need to reference Darwinism when one can naturally assume (as so many do today) that the science supporting it has been unquestionably proven.

Evolutionary thinking had become widely absorbed into German society, firstly in educated circles through the writings of Ernst Haeckel, then to the masses after Hitler’s rise through the Nazi propaganda machine. One Nazi propaganda film showed a handicapped person and declared,

“Everything in the natural world that is weak for life will ineluctably be destroyed. In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven’t just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply! The descendants of these sick people look like this!”

The German people were being conditioned for the massacres to come.

The tragedy today is that people are still being influenced by Haeckel’s discredited embryo drawings. Our abortion clinics use them to explain how embryos go through the fish and other recapitulation stages on their way to becoming human.

Earlier you mentioned Jehovah’s Witnesses. They also suffered in the Holocaust for their unbending ‘ignorant fundamentalist’ stance (to use the Priscillian ad hominem) with their view of the sanctity of human life, made in God’s image.

DSM,

Eugenics, or the control of atributes of the children from the control of breeding of the parents, was known as far back as Roman times and used with cattle and producing slaves with the right atributes.

Darwin's theory of evolution was another layer on top of this to infer how if this was applied in a competitive environment over millions of years, the strongest would survive.

As Hitler also used the argument that the Jews killed Jesus, one could claim that the church and thus Jesus were also partially responsible for the atrocities.

There is a gaping flaw in your reasoning, Dan S de Merengue.

>>So Hitler never referenced Darwin or used the word ‘evolution’ in Mein Kampf. Yet he claimed that the climax of history would be the survival of the fittest race – the Aryan race. The whole book is a natural conclusion of Darwinian philosophy.<<

Yet his proposed solution was extremely non-Darwinian in nature.

>>One Nazi propaganda film showed a handicapped person and declared, “Everything in the natural world that is weak for life will ineluctably be destroyed. In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven’t just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply<<

This is extremely warped thinking, and entirely illogical.

If natural selection is what causes those that are "weak for life" to die out, how come they were simultaneously being "allowed to multiply"?

The Darwinian answer is, of course, that these people are somehow necessary for the survival of the race, not superfluous to it. Otherwise, Darwinly, they would indeed be rubbed out.

We can without too much difficulty postulate that the Darwinian purpose in evidence here that some form of nurture, or compassion gene is essential to the race, in order to be able to perpetuate its existence.

After all, it is perfectly feasible that without this characteristic, mankind would have ceased to exist a long long time ago.

It is easy to forget that "survival of the fittest" does not mean "survival of the strongest" or "survival of the most ruthless".

Dan,
This time your crimes against logic are:-

* Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
* Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
* Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
* Confusion of correlation and causation.
* Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
* Suppressed evidence or half-truths.

You just don’t give up, do you, Dan?

Earlier, Davidf said “...you [Dan] don’t withdraw your charges when they are shown to have no basis.”

Not one of your arguments has stood so far, and you don’t even have the courtesy to withdraw them when they fall. Instead, you simply repeat them with different wording. For example, I had already been through the whole ‘Social Darwinism’ bit with Runner in the previous thread (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7684&page=0#121766), and yet here you are again, pedaling the same misinformation.

<<I see that it’s [Darwin’s book] subtitled ‘Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.’>>

Darwin’s use of the term “races” simply refers to varieties of life. The book barely refers to humans at all.

Darwin was actually quite 'liberal' for his time. Despite the fact that he looked down on non-white European people (as all whites did in those days), Darwin staunchly opposed slavery and worked as a missionary to better the lives of the native Tierra del Fuegans.

So your deliberately misleading and disgraceful smear campaign has failed.

Using your flawed logic with the so-called (yet non-existent) “influence” that Christianity has on modern science, you'd think that slavery would now be more widely accepted in correlation of the widespread acceptance of evolution. Yet it’s not. Why is that, Dan?

The Bible Belt of the United States fought hard to keep slavery, yet you don’t link Christianity to racism.

<<So Hitler never referenced Darwin or used the word ‘evolution’ in Mein Kampf. Yet he claimed that the climax of history would be the survival of the fittest race – the Aryan race.>>

What Hitler was doing was ‘Selective Breeding’, not ‘Natural Selection’. That’s a point that Sancho was making earlier when you clearly demonstrated that you’d missed it completely, by saying: “That stuff you said about selective breeding has little if anything to do with the concepts of microbe-to-man evolution.” – Exactly!

Continued...

...Continued

If Hitler was trying to replicate/control evolution, and used the phrase “the climax of History” in regards to the survival of the Aryan race, then this is a good example of why people would need to be educated on what evolution actually is, (rather than remaining ignorant of it as you choose to) as this is a clear indication that Hitler didn’t have a clue about what evolution is – if that’s what he was referring to at all – because evolution has no climax. The species we see today aren’t finished products as Creationists think they are.

Evolutionary theory shows us that long-term survival is strongly linked with genetic variability. Social Darwinist programs advocate minimising genetic variability, thus reducing the chance of long-term survival in the event of environmental change.

Evolution teaches the very opposite of racism as it shows us that we are biologically all one race.

And besides, what does any of this have to do with the truth of it all?

<<The tragedy today is that people are still being influenced by Haeckel’s discredited embryo drawings. Our abortion clinics use them to explain how embryos go through the fish and other recapitulation stages on their way to becoming human.>>

Now that’s an outright lie. The use of Haeckel’s drawings stopped shortly after they were discredited. You have no idea of what you’re talking about, do you?

You’re trying to make it sound the Darwin’s hypothesis of the relationship between embryology and evolution was based on false drawings, yet Darwin referred to real embryos long before Haeckel even drew the pictures.

I'll await your nïave, logically flawed and over-simplistic response.

I won't hold my breath for a withdrawl of the falsehoods though.

Dear George,

I have been a physicist. I can understand and work with Einstein’s ideas. I have no feeling for mysticism of any kind.

The way Hitler defined Jews affected Jews. However, one must consider how Jews define themselves. Neither Hitler nor Lustiger were part of the Jewish community.

Some Christians regard Jews as unfulfilled because they have not accepted their revelation. They don’t understand that Jews have a religion, culture and tradition and don’t need their revelation. Most attendees in my synagogue’s conversion classes are Christians. When they become part of our community they have left Christianity. Lustiger left our community and perpetuated misunderstanding by claiming to be a Jew. In Jewish eyes he is no longer one of us.

I trust what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf about where his ideas came from more than I trust Lustiger to tell me where Hitler’s ideas came from.

I think it important not to regard the Holocaust as uniquely evil. It grew from ideas common in our society. The Nazis were human, and what happened with them could have happened anywhere given roughly the same social circumstances. One can externalise evil and think it is something outside of us. Judaism maintains that there is a yetzer ha tov, a spirit of good, and a yetzer ha ra, a spirit of evil in each of us. In each of us there is a little Hitler. In Hitler was a bit of good.

Solzenitsyn, an Orthodox Christian, wrote:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Orthodoxy is less influenced by dualism than western Christianity that sees evil as external possibly in the form of a devil.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

We don’t need devils to create evil.

Dear Dan,

You referred to Hitler’s reading of Darwin. I pointed out that there is no evidence that Hitler read Darwin. You wrote of other matters. There is still no evidence. Please address the point. You made a false claim and didn’t acknowledge it.

You wrote:

“Earlier there was discussion on Einstein’s thoughts and views of religion. If we dig a little deeper and look at some other famous scientists, which of these did not overtly state a Christian testimony: Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur”

Of course many of those scientists stated they were Christians. They had to profess Christianity to attend university.

Let’s dig deeper yet. Most knowledgeable people would agree that the three greatest scientists are Newton, Darwin and Einstein. For most of Christendom’s domination Einstein would not have been allowed in a university because he was a Jew. Darwin became an atheist. Newton denied the Trinity and was afraid of repercussions if he did so openly.

The Inquisition confined Galileo. It was only 400 years later that the church admitted he was right.

Remember Giordano Bruno. Bruno was born five years after Copernicus died. He thought of the Infinity of the Universe. He tried to spread the ideas of Copernicus. He wrote many books on many themes. He might have been the greatest scientist of all. He was kept in a dark dungeon for eight years and then taken out to a market place and roasted to death by fire. Bruno is a martyr to truth and science.

Charles Freeman's "The Closing of the Western Mind" tells how the adoption of Christianity as an official religion by the Roman Empire ended the spirit of free enquiry in the ancient world and brought the Dark Ages. It was only when the western world renewed contact with the spirit of the classical world in the Renaissance and threw off some of the constricting influence of Christianity that science could freely advance.

Christianity has in general opposed the free enquiry required for scientific investigation

david f,
Thank you for the David Vital’s, ‘A People Apart' recommendation’ – I’m sure it will be instructive and of interest. Obviously, you have a far greater understanding of what it means to be a Jewish than myself and most ‘outsiders’. I hope to learn more.

I think your timely quote from the “prophet of freedom” has a cutting edge. He was good, as he was able to offend both liberal and conservative. He also wrote, “[Western society] has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, and each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.” He was also particularly scathing of the American anti-war movement and accused them of complicity in the genocides that followed in Southeast Asia after the U.S. military withdrew from Vietnam.

Barack Obama is also, to some degree is a man of the moment, “... I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds. But the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world.” Obama’s depth may be greater than that of his rival but both wholeheartedly agree on the above premise.

Just when the posts to this thread were becoming civilized and polite out comes AJ Philips with his rude, arrogant, abusive rants. If he wants some engagement on these pages he should modify his tone, for who would want a conversation on his level?

Peter Sellick

I disagree with you Peter.
I don't think A J was being abusive or ranting.
He is maybe very frustrated with some of the illogical misinformed rubbish he has been reading here but I agree with you that we should keep the discussion as civilized and polite as possible.
I fail at this myself sometimes. I know you will forgive us all 'cause basically you are a nice guy.

Pricillian,
Sells is certainly a ‘nice guy’ and also diametrically opposed the views of Dan, but he has allowed him some room. Rather than force Dan into some sort of hari kari, an intraverted a form of ‘self-honour’, Sells instead has exercised a certain compassion. The reiteration of “nïave, logically flawed and over-simplistic” has been continual and therefore abusive. Once is enough then move on.

AJ Philips,
>> your flawed logic with the so-called (yet non-existent) “influence” that Christianity has on modern science<<

"Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology." (A.N. Whitehead in Science and the Modern World).

So instead of Dan you should address your accusation at Whitehead (or many other respected interpreters of history, though obviously not all, e.g. the mentioned above Charles Freeman). Whitehead and Russell differed in their world-views but they never accused each other of “flawed logic” because they both knew what logic was.

david f,
I never accused you of not understanding relativity theory, nor directly of not understanding what mysticism (e.g. Kaballah) and theology (not the same thing) are all about, though I perhaps could have. By the way, “feeling” means having a mystical experience which I have not had either.

There is obviously another thing where we differ: I appreciate people, Jews or Christians like Lustiger, who contribute to a better understanding of the two faiths (yes, here I am talking about faith not race: you cannot change your race by a religious conversion).

I do not want to enter into discussions about the uniquness of Holocaust. In Germany, where I now live, the "Zentralrat der Juden" looks very unfavourably at those who try to explain it away by claiming e.g. that "the Nazis were human, and what happened with them could have happened anywhere". They call it "Relativierung" and I can understand them. Besides, this claim is like playing down Einstein‘s contribution to our understanding of the physical world by saying that if it were not him, somebody else would have had the same ideas, a statement that is not falsifiable.

I don’t pretend to put the most intellectual of the opinions here in the room, but if we’re going to accuse each other of being naïve, and go to the trouble of putting two dots on top of the ‘ï’, could we at least put the ‘ï’ after the ‘a’.

George,

I don't know about the Jewish race. Most are Caucasian, like Hitler. It must be something else. Try Christian culture. It was inevitable that something like this would happen sooner or later. Hitler was one of the later versions.

The Christian culture of anti-semitism, bigotry, fascism and authoritarianism was right up Hitler's alley. They trained him and let him off the chain. That's how he got away with it. Here's a couple of guiding texts.

‘… the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men … But God’s wrath has come upon them at last.' (1 Thessalonians 2:15)

'You suffered the same persecutions from your own countrymen that they suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and persecuted us. How displeasing they are to God.' Thessalonians 2:14

And for the person who suggested I bone up on the Palestinian Book of Faery Tales, here's a couple more.

'Women should learn in silence and all humility. I do not allow them to teach or to have authority over men; they must keep quiet. For Adam was created first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived; it was the women who was deceived and broke God’s law.' 1 Timothy 3:5

'Rebuke publicly all those who commit sins, so that the rest may be afraid.' 1 Timothy 5:20 That's the recipe for terror.

(The antiscience) 'See to it, that no one enslaves you by means of the worthless deceit of human wisdom, which comes from the teachings handed down by men and from the ruling spirits of the universe, and not from Christ.' Colossians 2:8

Dear Dan,

Enjoyed your comment on naïve.

George wrote:

“you cannot change your race by a religious conversion.”

I agree with that, but I thought we were discussing Jews. I am blond, blue-eyed, have a very light skin and am pretty much like other white people. Velma married to my cousin Lenny is dark-skinned and pretty much like other black people. We are both Jews. We are not a race.

If all Jews became Christians that would end the Jewish people, Hitler would end them in his way. Lustiger in his.

Many Jews have chosen martyrdom rather than depart from the faith. Lustiger did it voluntarily.

I looked up Lustiger on the net and found the following:

‘In an early interview as archbishop, he said: “I was born Jewish, and so I remain, even if that is unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope, and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”
Reactions to his appointment were sharp. A former chief rabbi of Paris, Meyer Jays, told an interviewer that “a Jew becoming a Christian does not take up authentic Judaism, but turns his back to it.”’

I think the first paragraph is arrogant. Christianity is a missionary religion, and he was speaking as a missionary – not a Jew. It is the arrogance of, “I know the truth and will tell you what it is.”

I don’t think Lustiger has contributed to better understanding. There is nothing wrong in changing one’s religion. There is something wrong in wanting to push one’s beliefs on others. There are too many missionaries around.

I prefer the words of the late, great Jimmy Durante, “Why doesn’t everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?”

I agree with Rabbi Jays. Lustiger separates himself from his people and wants to identify with them. Chutzpah!

There is no central authority for Jews. There is nothing like a pope who speaks for all Catholics. The "Zentralrat der Juden" is entitled to its opinion, but no one else is obliged to agree with it.

Dear Relda,

I quoted Solzenitsyn for his insight on dualism not for his critique of the American anti-war movement.

I protested the Vietnamese War not because I was in favour of communism but because I thought my country was wrong in being there and was causing great suffering. I think the US had the capability to stay there by continuing to napalm peasants, killing all within free fire zones and keeping on with the havoc of war. Staying there would have continued the killing, also.

When I heard a fellow American say, “The Vietnamese don’t have the same respect for life that we do.” I thought of untermenschen.

In war it is common to accuse those who want peace as being in sympathy with the enemy. I recently visited a Catholic pacifist friend in Waterbury, CT and joined with him and other Catholics along with Quakers in Hartford, CT in a protest against the Iraqi War. We were a small number, and I felt good to be with them.

Commitment to freedom and a ‘noble’ cause can sometime be indistinguishable from self-righteousness.

I am not so sure that the preservation of a Jewish state is a just idea. I see no reasonable alternative at this time. If Australia where I live became a Christian state I would become a second-class citizen. Therefore I question a state where non-Jews are second-class citizens.

I hope that eventually the Jewish state will be part of a larger entity that will not discriminate among its citizens on the basis of ethnicity or religion.

I am a dual citizen of Australia and the US and will vote for Obama by absentee ballot. I see the commitment of Obama and McCain to Israel as an attempt to get the Jewish vote. I hope most American Jews will vote for president considering what is best for their country, the United States.

As to “prophets of freedom” I think it was Alex Comfort who asked, “When they talk of freedom who do they want you to kill?”

david f,
I wanted to know your opinion about Lustiger, now I know it. We indeed differ on this: I indeed prefer Jews and Christians who are not interested in keeping alive past animosities between the two faiths.

I also trust Lustiger's book (Choosing God - Chosen by God, Ignatius Press 1991) where he speaks about himself, his cultural background and what influenced his beliefs more than I trust what Hitler wrote about his.

Of course, I respect your definition of Jewish ethnicity (if you do not like the word race; there is no ambiguity about what is Judaism, the Jewish religion) which, if I understood it properly, you do not loose if you reject the God of Abraham and become an atheist, but you do loose it if you just change your understanding of Him and become a Christian.

On the other hand there are others things - e.g. your political preferences - where I do not think we would differ that much.

david f,
The reality, as you say, is there exists within Israel a second class citizen. The leom or “peoplehood” of Israel has not the inclusivity we might imagine. As nobody in Israel doubts, when any new housing developments are completed, only people with “Jewish nationality” need apply. There are privileges reserved for Jews as they are defined by Orthodox rabbinic courts. The degree of unrest by non-Jewish citizens is not simplistically and merely political. The “light unto the nations” is sometimes a little hidden.

Language as the principal bearer of culture strengthens the Jewish cultural identity of the state - 70 percent say that the thing that makes you Israeli is the Hebrew language. Polls, however, suggest nearly half of Israel's young people “do not feel connected” to the state, and a quarter of them do not see their future there – it is America which beckons. As someone outside of the Jewish culture I would have to agree, and ponder at an exclusive sounding justice a ‘promised land’ might herald for a select number. The secular and the religious have long been at war over what defines a good Jew – this does not however, obliterate an identity a culture or faith.

It is not only a dangerous polarization of our so called "war of civilizations" feeding a global frenzy, but, as Professor Aviezer Ravtizky has said, “both the good of the State of Israel and the future of the Jewish faith prohibit us from tying our fate and our image to fundamentalist leaders and Evangelical preachers who want to hasten the Jewish return to Zion as a salient means of bringing about the return of Jesus.” The more moderate may argue the imposition on every people the idea of the "will of the people," including those who have had no preparation for it, and without their choosing it. This was also the Iraq naiveté.

AJ,
Thanks for pointing out that I misunderstood Sancho’s point about selective breeding. It must have been a decent point too, as both you and Shadow Minister have brought it back to my attention. The point being, if I have it right, that the practice of selective breeding has been with us for a long time. And if the Nazis want to take things to extremes with their evil practices, including extermination of undesirables and forced sterilisation, then we shouldn’t blame poor old Charles. Perhaps we could even conclude that the impact of Darwin’s books on the 20th Century, including the Descent of Man, 1874 (which included his cousin Francis’ ideas about eugenics), were only minimal.

Relda,
Sells might be a nice guy but we can only work out what he thinks going by what he says. I wouldn’t want to guess what he’s thinking. While I wouldn’t agree with everything he says, I don’t see my views as ‘diametrically opposed’ to his. I think we’d agree much about the contributions of science in its proper context.

Science has been great at explaining how many things work, developing new technologies, giving us ease of travel, medical benefits, and comforts unimaginable in other centuries. However science is limited in its philosophy, in telling us who we are, how we got here, and what is our purpose.

To Sancho's earlier question, the definition of a human being, the current Pope of science, Richard Dawkins, tells us we’re corporal conduits for genetic material.

I offered that humans are creatures in God’s image. That is a totally non-scientific answer. Yet it is uplifting and useful in affirming each person’s worth and dignity. Likewise, in search of life’s other essential questions, putting science at the helm may leave the ship floundering without a compass.

This is not to be interpreted as me saying that atheists are immoral. However, I am yet to be convinced of their basis for moral conduct. I don’t think the principles derived from Darwin, Galton, and Dawkins are adequate to nourish the human soul.

Dan,
Whilst I don't pretend to give an estimate of Sell's faith or second guess his thought, I do know what he has said, and that is to leave science to the scientists - he has no problem with Darwinism or evolution per se. In this regard he does not take your view. What he objects to is the 'scientism' which relates only to the empirical, inter alia, as earlier mentioned - but I'm sure he's quite sympathetic to the similar aspect of a faith which he, you, I and others might share.

I found this in Pearson, "An Exposition of the Creed" published in 1659.

“There is no science taught without original belief, there are no letters learnt without preceding faith. There is no judgment executed, no commerce maintained, no business prosecuted without this; all secular affairs are transacted, all great achievements are attempted, all hopes, desires, and inclinations are preserved by this Human Faith grounded upon the testimony of man.”

There is very little new under the sun.

Peter Sellick

Interesting quote Sells.

But what does it mean?

Specifically, what exactly is "Human Faith grounded upon the testimony of man"?

To an outsider, it would appear to directly contradict the first sentence, where "original belief" and "preceding faith" are nominated as prerequisites for any human activity.

Are the faiths described as "preceding" and "grounded on the testimony of man" somehow one and the same?

Could somebody provide a translation?

DSM,

The purpose of science is as you said, to determine how things work, and how they occurred. It does not pretend to formulate philosophy.

However, in saying that, any philosophy that is worth considering is based on facts, those that aren't are no more than fantasy.

Likewise I am yet to be convinced that the bible has worth as a basis for moral conduct, certainly the Vatican has been a source of some of the world's worst atrocities.

If you want to believe that the earth is flat no one will stop you, but don't be surprised when no one takes you seriously.

George wrote:

I indeed prefer Jews and Christians who are not interested in keeping alive past animosities between the two faiths.

Dear George,

I also prefer Jews and Christians who are not interested in keeping alive past animosities.

For the animosities to die both Jews and Christians must know enough about each other faiths and history to be aware of the sensitive spots. Of course the animosities could also disappear if we both discarded our traditions. That might be a cure worse than the disease.

The Christian attempt to convert Jews to their faith is a very sensitive area. Jews have been forced to listen to Christian sermons, have been compelled to engage in ‘disputations’ and have even been given the choice of death or conversion. Sometimes the choice was between a quick, painless death after conversion and a slow, torturous death if refusing conversion. Christian missionaries who approach Jews aware of this history keep the animosity alive. Regarding Jews as unfilled vessels to be filled by Christian revelation also perpetuates the animosity.

Lustiger converted as a child and learned about Jews from studying under Christian auspices. Where would he have acquired a feeling for Jewish sensitivities?

Lustiger’s remark, “For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope, and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”, I find insulting.

That contains the Christian idea that Judaism is just preparation for Christianity rather than a religion and tradition with its own values and worth.

I knew little about Lustiger before you mentioned him. He grew up surrounded by a culture which denigrated Jews.

Lustiger escaped his Jewishness by converting. Present culture no longer denigrates Jews for the most part so he seemed to want to reclaim his Jewishness. He was irrevocably isolated.

Perhaps you have other insights from reading his book. I wonder at the title. Judaism is God-centred. He didn’t have to convert to choose God.

If you decide to leave us you may come back. If you don’t wish to come back please leave us alone. Don’t missionise us.

Dear Relda,

I wrote “Self-Determination and Human Rights” which was published by the “Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies of The University of Western Australia. It makes the case that self-determination that is the formation of a political entity on the basis of an ethnic or religious identity is not compatible with other rights. Probably there is no place on earth where boundaries can be drawn that do not enclose people of diverse ethnicity and religions. If a state represents part of the people within its boundaries there is an inherent unfairness. I advocate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights eliminate the right of self-determination.

Generally the desire for self-determination is a reaction to oppression. The solution is to eliminate oppression on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Governments should neither encourage nor discourage religion. In the case of Australia the government should stop funding religious schools. If they continue funding those schools with taxes taken from the general public it should be the right of the general public to sit on the boards of those schools and determine policy.

Zionism is a consequence of the oppression of Jews. The Dreyfus case inspired Herzl to advocate a Jewish state. In some respects Israel is very different from the state Herzl envisioned.

He advocated a state like Switzerland with no common language. Jews from various areas would cluster together and maintain the culture of the places they came from. At that time Hebrew was only used as a liturgical language and for religious study. Most Jewish women did not know Hebrew. Hebrew became a modern language only later.

It seems ridiculous that a Jewish state differentiates between different kinds of Jews. Only Orthodox rituals are accepted for rites of passage. Australia and the US don’t care whether I am a Jew or not and certainly not what kind I am.

Actually it is much more complicated than merely a conflict between religious and secular. There are conflicts within the religious community and within the secular community.

It is a tragedy I can do nothing about.

david f,

Thank you for expanding your views on Lustiger. I am doing my best trying to understand them.

>> I knew little about Lustiger before you mentioned him. He grew up surrounded by a culture which denigrated Jews. <<
You indeed know little about him if you call “culture denigrating Jews” his surroundings at the Lycée in Orléans - where he was sent from Paris at the age of 13 to escape the Nazis - which obviously influenced his conversion a year later.

>> Lustiger’s remark, “For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope, and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”, I find insulting.<<

This is a personal belief and as such cannot be insulting to anybody. Of course, one can have a different idea of how to bring (or not bring) this light to the goyim.

>> Lustiger escaped his Jewishness by converting. <<
He certainly did not think of his Jewishness as something you have to escape from (neitherd do I). He saw his conversion as a continuation of his Jewishness. Of course, religious Jews cannot see it this way but most of those I know take a tolerant attitude towards conversions, the same as most of today’s Catholics towards opposite conversions.

From a review of his last book, The Promise, (that I have not read):
“Lustiger's book is a stimulating theological read related to Christianity's understanding of the Election of Israel. Non-Jewish Christians (Lustiger's Pagan-Christians) participate (not supplant or replace) in the Covenant of Israel through the Messiah of Israel, Jesus. For non-Jews to accept/follow Jesus' offer of salvation and participation in the Covenant of Israel as non-Jews, a prerequisite is to affirm the Election of Israel and see their own Election/Salvation as an extension of the Election of Israel.“

This sound as a call for a “conversion” of Christians, not Jews.

The “Choosing God-chosen by God” does not refer to his conversion but to him becoming a priest, and probably indirectly to the “chosen people“ whom he still regarded himself as belonging to.

George

"Generally the desire for self-determination is a reaction to oppression. The solution is to eliminate oppression on the basis of ethnicity or religion."

The solution is to ensure fair access to resources for everyone. People who control the minds of others usually control the basic resources necessary to sustain life. In doing so, they can get people to believe/support anything.

K£vin

I suppose I would agree, I just do not know where is the quote from, and how is it related to what I have been saying on this thread.

I cannot debate theology in the manner of Relda, Davidf, George or Sells. But I have enough of a christian background to know that I find my truth within myself. I see evidence of altruism in the behaviour of many different people around me and also in the animal-kingdom. Looking after one another simply makes good sense. Darwin's theory has been perverted by those who seek power - survival of the fittest does not mean the strongest, or most powerful. It means survival of those who are adaptable to their environment - that doesn't have to mean dominance.

Dan S claims: "This is not to be interpreted as me saying that atheists are immoral. However, I am yet to be convinced of their basis for moral conduct."

I am deeply concerned.

I, my family, most of my friends and neighbours are not at all religious, we behave with great empathy and compassion for each other - our desire to do so is from our natures, not from a book. If what Dan S says it true, we lack a moral-basis, where is the resultant bad behaviour? Do religious people commit less crime than non-religious? If so, which religion is the most 'moral' (commits the less crime)? By use of the word 'crime' I do not necessarily mean 'sin'. But actions which cause harm to others.

Is the highest morality not eating animal flesh?

Or is it in prostrating oneself in prayer?

Or helping a stranger?

Perhaps, Sellick should make as thorough study of the non-Abrahamic religions (he is so well-versed in Christian, could he not apply his considerable intellect to others, such as Buddhism?). He may find that there is as much moral guidance in other religions or philosophies as there is in his perception of the "christian truth" - whatever that is.

For myself, living a full and peaceful life is surely the best to which we can all aspire.

Live and let live.

And enough of this self-righteous pissing competition.

It is unseemly in and makes a mockery of those who claim to hold such high moral convictions.

Fractelle
I seem to remember answering a similar question in this thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7816#122733

Peter

Reckon the discussive material in the massive amount of the above threads should be preserved for posterity, but as a former farm lad trying to sort out the way we should be or behave, could say that dinkum Christianity and Hellenistic reasoning seem certainly meant for each other.

However, it is so sad that both contain the false intellectual pride of refusing forgiveness or sharing the blame as Maynard Keynes expressed at the Treaty of Versailles, and is said to have given a similar warning when he died not long before the end of WW2.

It could be well to ask if Global Warming or nuclear militarism means that neither young nor old really have not much time left, surely our world with increasing nuclear

Fractelle. Humane & sensible. Thanks!

K£vin, my quote, and I agree.

George, the Paris that Lustiger left to escape the Nazis was a culture denigrating Jews.

>>> Lustiger’s remark, “For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope, and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”, I find insulting.<<

>>This is a personal belief and as such cannot be insulting to anybody. Of course, one can have a different idea of how to bring (or not bring) this light to the goyim.

Jews do not regard their light as being found in another religion. It remains insulting.

>> He saw his conversion as a continuation of his Jewishness…. Most of those I know take a tolerant attitude towards conversions.

I am tolerant to conversion, but Christianity is not a continuation of Judaism. Christianity has elements of Judaism in it but contradicts Judaism and is therefore not a continuation.

>> “Lustiger's book is a stimulating theological read related to Christianity's understanding of the Election of Israel….

Lustiger expounded on the Chosen People nonsense. “Gott mit uns” is a variant. The word in a tribal language for themselves such as Inuit generally translates as ‘the people.’ The Chosen People is an equivalent out-dated Jewish myth.

The idea of a God who picks out a set of human beings and chooses them is like “Black is beautiful”. It raises the self-esteem of a people who feel beset by much more powerful groups.

I don’t think many current Jews take the idea seriously. The Chosen People idea means that the rest of humanity is not chosen. If there is a God he is for all and is not restricted to those who accept a particular religious belief.

One lesson that most Jews have learned from the Holocaust is we should live together in peace on this planet. To set up any group as favoured above others whether Jews, Christians, Aryans is a recipe for conflict and oppression.

Lustiger transferred a bad Jewish idea to Christianity. It remains a bad idea

Fractelle,
>>to know that I find my truth within myself<<

“Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi: in interior homine habitat veritas” [Do not go afar: seek within thyself. Truth resides inside of man.] (Augustine)

“Truth descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself, pre-formed, a mental space where the Truth may eventually lodge ... The Christian God is apparently transcendent to the world, but immanent in the “depth of the soul.” (Ortega y Gasset)

So perhaps - just perhaps, please do not get too excited about it - “the Truth” (that nobody really knows much about but without which human existence would not make much sense to many of us), and “your truth” are not that far apart.

As I wrote before, this Truth can only be understood as the proverbial “elephant“, and your truth (or my truth, or that of a Buddhist monk, etc.) just as what one of the “six blind men” can “see”, or rather feel.

david f,
>>Christianity is not a continuation of Judaism.<<
Right or wrong, I never claimed Lustiger said this. Please cheque what I wrote. Lustiger spoke of his PERSONAL journey from Judaism to Christianity.

Nevertheless, I have to respect your views on Judaism and Christianity, but you must excuse me if I stop trying to understand them. Luckily I - as well as many other Christians and Jews - do not find convictions sincerely held by people of different religions/world-views “insulting“, even if we strongly disagree with them. So, although I do not have to follow you, I thank you for expressing your sincerely held convictions about Christianity, Judaism, Lustiger etc.

Shadow,
Just last Monday, a few of us on this thread went through some soul searching as to whether or to what extent we should expend our energies on name calling. Accusing me of believing the earth is flat is not the same as calling me a ‘dropkick', but it’s on about the same level of mentality. No one here is claiming the earth is flat. And as for no one taking me seriously, I notice that you take me seriously enough to quite often respond after I post a comment.

Science is often good at determining how things work. It is less capable of explaining how they occurred or how they came to be. That’s the domain of historians. The reason for this is the scientific method’s reliance on repeatability. Unfortunately history can’t be repeated. For example, archaeologists may try and use scientific applications to investigating historic events and get into arguments with historians. Archaeologists spend most of their time in the humanities and classics departments rather than on the other side of the university where those are dealing with the hard sciences.

Relda,
Sells has no problem with Darwinism or evolution and says we should ‘leave it to the scientists’. But which scientists? Leave it to a majority vote? Gone are the days when anyone can claim (and it is usually the humanities types doing so) that no serious scientist accepts creation over evolution.

Fractelle,
You are willing to quote me but seemed to miss what I said.

I specifically did not say that atheists were immoral. I did not say atheists have bad behaviour or commit more crimes. I was questioning the basis of their moral conduct. Or in other words, when they do good works, what is their moral basis? Their nature inclining them towards empathy and compassion derives from what?

Here are a few suggestions: residue of societal customs based around a Christian heritage and the Ten Commandments, an intuitive sense of obligation placed into our conscience reflecting the moral nature of humanity’s Creator. Or is it something else completely?

Davidf
I am also a bit unclear about your basis for what you’re saying.

On one hand you seem to have given up belief in any God and are negative towards all religions or any systemised world-view. You spoke of the virtues of someone “uncontaminated by Christianity or any other religion.” And you say that, “People believe in many different religions or no religion. To teach any of those ideas as truth is almost certainly spreading error.”

On the other hand, you are devoted to some Jewish form of belief or adherence. You say, “‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ along with other injunctions in the New Testament is taken from the Jewish Bible. One can say of the new Testament: What is new is not good, and what is good is not new.”

So I’m wondering what is the basis of your views, and your yardstick for ascribing something as good or not good. Is it one taken from atheism, or is it a theistic faith? It is clear that you make certain value judgements for you declare that a God who condemned his son to torment is not a God to believe in.

On the topic of Christians blaming the Jews for Jesus’ death, Mel Gibson took criticism for his alleged anti-Semitism for his movie portrayal of Jesus’ death. But he made it clear that those who were to blame included the Jews, the Romans, and Jesus’ disciples; no one escapes blame, including Jesus himself.

George: >>Christianity is not a continuation of Judaism.<<
Right or wrong, I never claimed Lustiger said this. Please cheque what I wrote. Lustiger spoke of his PERSONAL journey from Judaism to Christianity.

Luckily I - as well as many other Christians and Jews - do not find convictions sincerely held by people of different religions/world-views “insulting“, even if we strongly disagree with them.

Dear George,

I fail to understand you. Why should the fact that a conviction is sincerely held prevent it from being insulting?

To quote you:

He saw his conversion as a continuation of his Jewishness.

Lustiger made a religious conversion. To regard a conversion to another religion as a continuation of his religion (from what I know of Lustiger by Jewishness he meant the Jewish religion) implies to me that religion B is a continuation of religion A.

david f,
OK, I should not have used the word “continuation”, Lustiger probably formulated it differently. By Jewishness he obviously did not mean the religion, since he changed it, but his Jewish ethnicity or cultural background he grew up in. I think it is accepted now that many, if not most, of the early Christians living in Rome, prosecuted by Nero etc., were ethnic Jews.

>>Why should the fact that a conviction is sincerely held prevent it from being insulting?<<
Nothing can prevent you from feeling insulted by other people’s convictions. What I meant was that different people find different things insulting (c.f. the Mohammed caricatures), and that I (and others) are not insulted by things that for honest people are part of their world-view (i.e. not just malicious remarks or mockery).

There are people that I would not consider honest - e.g. the Nazis - but those are extreme cases. Except for these, I and many others (including Jews and Christians) respect comprehensive world-views (please do not ask me to define them) we cannot share, and try to learn from the reasons given by people who convert or otherwise change their world-view.

I see now I should not have mentioned Lustiger to you. My apologies.

Dan,

It is possible to claim that the earth is flat if one simply ignores the contrary evidence.

Your assertion that science is not very good at working out how things happenned is false, and sole purpose of which is to discredit the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution. Thus the flat earth comparison.

Forensic science applied to criminal investigations is exceptionally good at piecing evidence together and to build a case beyond reasonable doubt. The requirement that a crime be recreated to be proved valid, would ensure a 0% conviction rate.

Likewise, the body of forensic evidence of fossil records while it will never be able to build a 100% perfect picture, has shown beyond reasonable doubt that man developed through an evolutionary process.

What remains is to work on the details.

George: There are people that I would not consider honest - e.g. the Nazis.

We disapprove of the Nazi beliefs, but they were honest about those beliefs. They were not taken seriously until too late.

Dan: “On one hand you seem to have given up belief in any God and are negative towards all religions or any systemised world-view.”

I am positive toward the systemised world-view employing the scientific method as the best way of knowing about the structure of our world.

Dan: what is the basis of your views, and your yardstick for ascribing something as good or not good. Is it one taken from atheism, or is it a theistic faith?

Supernatural belief or its lack has nothing to do with morality.

Morality evolved before humanity. Bees sacrifice themselves for the hive. Wolves help their injured and sick fellows. Humans invented God and connected that invention with morality.

One moral guide found in and out of religion is “What I would not like done to me don’t do to others”. Therefore I oppose torture. I also feel obligated to try to change things for the better. That involves actions against militarism, racism and environmental destruction. It involves opposition to any tyranny over the mind and body of humans along with promotion of critical thinking, education and a more equitable distribution of resources. Another moral guide is, “Be kind and question authority.”

Dan: “On the topic of Christians blaming the Jews for Jesus’ death…”

From Bishop Spong’s website (http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/):

“And the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children'" (Matt. 27:25)&#8232; No other verse of Holy Scripture has been responsible for so much violence and so much bloodshed. People convinced that these words conferred legitimacy and even holiness on their hostility have killed millions of Jewish people over history. Far more than Christians today seem to understand, to call the Bible "Word of God" in any sense is to legitimize this hatred reflected in its pages.”

The historical record exists. It doesn’t matter who Gibson blamed.

Says Dan – “Here are a few suggestions [inclining atheists towards empathy and compassion]: residue of societal customs based around a Christian heritage and the Ten Commandments, an intuitive sense of obligation placed into our conscience reflecting the moral nature of humanity’s Creator. Or is it something else completely?”

Something else completely I’d say. The basis of moral conduct for atheists is no different from yours Dan unless you’re motivated by fear of damnation. I would posit the ten commandments are based on the best of human nature and not the reverse. Or was the world an absolute orgy of total sin and corruption before Moses came along?

You frame every suggestion in terms of a divine influence. Self-determination doesn’t exist? Conscience did not evolve? Atheists are as much humanists as anyone else bar the otherworldly stuff.

Dan, bennie,
The Pope is trying to convince people around the world, including those with different or no religious beliefs, of the validity of the natural moral law theory of ethics, stating that there are immutable and universally binding moral norms, discernible by human reason, valid for all persons at all times and in all cultures (see e.g. his address to the General Assembly of the UN in April this year).

Whether you see this natural moral law (different from whatever additional "moral laws" could be prescribed by this or that authority, religious or not) as given to mankind by God, or as having naturally developed through evolution is here irrelevant, as long as the acceptance of its unversality can serve as a meeting ground for all of humanity on the background of which one can discuss the CONTENT (e.g. human rights) of this natural moral law. See also Hans Küng’s Weltethos (global ethics?).

The atheist needs to be told that all morality comes from the Christian‘s understanding of God as little as the Christian needs to be told that all rationality comes from the atheist’s understanding of reality.

Dan, I thought you might be interested in this: http://ncrcafe.org/node/2122.

david f,
I quite believe you when you say, “Supernatural belief or its lack has nothing to do with morality.” A problem may exist, however, if we are to call on the inherent dignity of all people without sufficient language to justify such a premise. There are quite simply those who aren’t at all interested in affirming the dignity of others – after all, and it logically follows, if ultimately humans are nothing more than complex bundles of atoms emerging from a blind and random process (which, incidentally, has little bearing on the basis of evolution) to face extinction on death – then on what foundation do we find “inherent dignity”?

The secular West has made the language of rights central to its social discourse and with it comes the irony of modernity which undermines the possible justification of such language. To simply exhort people to behave better is not going to persuade. Put simply, humans need reasons. Our “saving the planet” presents a compelling persuasion, but will ultimately prove insufficient as a 'body politic' used for coercive principle.

Undoubtedly, by the time of St. Augustine, around the fifth century, Christianity and politics had merged enough for him to develop a theological justification for war - the church became such a powerful institution it was bound to sanction violence in some ways. It is true that both theory and practice of non-violence was quite a marginal phenomenon in the Western church, the Roman Catholic Church certainly, from the time of Augustine, fourth, fifth century, until the Protestant Reformation.

It is also a Buddhist principle, “Be kind and question authority”, and has a valid basis. The thought of Immanuel Kant had an imperative showing us the way beyond the idolatry of self-interest, where we are given a ‘telos’ or reason to question authority. The Aristotelian sense of Eudaimonia, or human flourishing can be a source of happiness is revisited, where, in order to be worthy of becoming fully human, we obligate our life to be guided by moral law.
cont’d...

cont’d…
Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ had its basis resting firmly in the biblical language of Isaiah – here rests a fundamental principle upon which Jewish moral codes are expressed, “…God shall judge between the nations and impose terms on many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war ever again.” (Isaiah, Chapter Two, Verse Two).

The utopia sought in Isaiah is one which is universal, various forum bloggers partially (if not imperfectly) express it (Fractelle and Priscillian for instance). The idea of a totally moral world, a corpus mysticum, appears to exist only in our imagination and thoughts. It’s reality is only ever achieved by us meeting our obligation - not only to the moral law, but to each other and to creation. This is the basic morality found as in the cited Judaic expression - it gives a freedom but it is also ‘deontological’, or duty based. It is a freedom based not on the balance of power as found in the politics of political realism, but of the overriding cosmopolitan nature of human life. As Kant correctly understood the Biblical imperative, “war conducted for the sake of peace.. [is a] paradigm of legitimate belligerence...”

The Golden Rule is a fundamental moral principle that may be used to explain why particular moral rules apply (e.g., those of the Mosaic Law). Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” (1795) argued for the creation of a global confederation of nations that would use the rule of law to replace the rule of the sword, thereby elevating the shared interests of the common good above the competing self-interests of individual nation states. I find him basically correct in the affirmation of a core Judaic principle where Christian behaviour is defined on the basis of Jesus. And Jesus rejected the sword.

Relda: The only way we know Jesus is through the New Testament. Jesus did not reject the sword.

MATTHEW 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

MATTHEW 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her
mother in law.

MATTHEW 10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

Remember this when the religious right talks about family values.

MATTHEW 10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

This is a jealous, possessive love. A loving spouse would not demand making a choice between the children of your union and herself or himself, and a loving saviour would not demand that people make a choice between him and one's family.

LUKE 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him
take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his
garment, and buy one.

Here Jesus advocates an arms build-up.

Both Jesus and Joshua in the Bible were intolerant. Since Jesus was not a
military leader he could not create the havoc that Joshua did.

MARK 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to
enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire
that never shall be quenched:

That is far more vicious than anything done by Joshua. To be slaughtered is
horrible but everlasting torment is horror unimaginable.

I question Jesus and the New Testament as espousing a God of love. In the above Jesus holds out the promise of eternal torture.

I think one following the above words of Jesus could quite well be a murderer and a sincere Christian.

Relda: Humans do not emerge from a blind and random process according to Darwinian theory. Natural selection which is not a random process directs evolution. Natural selection directs changes which adapt species to the environment. Moral development is one of those changes. Wolves who help sick or injured members of their pack to survive have that behaviour as a result of evolution. Packs which care for their members have a better chance of surviving. However, the act is a moral act, and we humans have some of the same conditioning.

We do not need belief in God to support the inherent dignity of all humans. The civil rights movement in the United States that worked to eliminate discrimination against black people was an example of religious people and non-religious people working together to support the inherent dignity of all.

Martin Luther King Jr. remarked that the most segregated time of the week was in the churches. Of course atheists are not organised in churches, but I would not contend atheists were less biased than Christians toward people of other races.

I know of no evidence that supports the idea that religious believers are more respectful of the inherent dignity of all humans or better behaved than those who do not accept religious belief.

I think people who behave righteously may also be modest. Rather than take individual credit for a decent act people will sat they are carrying out the dictates of their religion or their ideology. I have heard a Marxist say that Marxism has been a force leading him to behave better. Generally a person who claims to be a good person is looked on as self-righteous.

A corollary is that people will avoid responsibility for an evil act by saying that that the devil made them do it.

I don’t believe there is an objective moral law which we all can agree on. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is not always workable. Others may not want the same thing done unto them that you want done unto you.

David f
I have had to preach on most of the readings you mention so I have given them some thought. There are several issues:

1. What was the point of Jesus placing the kingdom above all loyalties even the closest ones of family? I have always understood this as a guard against idolatry. If God is not placed at the center of heart and mind then something else will be and that will be destructive both of that thing and of the person. We witness today the idolatry of the family and of a disconnected freedom.

2. The warnings of trouble to come. This is a sober warning given that the kingdom that is announced in the person of Jesus will upset all worldly authority. There will be wars and rumours of wars etc. This is not a command to establish the kingdom by violence but a warning that the disciples of Jesus will suffer.

3. The kind of pacifism that Jesus stood for is illustrated in the way he went to his death. His disciples would have fought for him but he disallowed it. He walked resolutely to Jerusalem despite his disciple’s disavowal of that path knowing what would happen. He could have easily slipped over the back of the mount of olives to safety but he held his ground and allowed himself to be taken. This is a pacifism that is far from being passive.

4. It was part of the Enlightenment project to establish a universal rational morality. The history since the 17th C would suggest that it has been a failure. The point about the establishment of the kingdom is that it is not established on a new morality but a new way of being. The old law remains in force but it is not seen as the generator of a new reality in which the swords shall be beaten into pruning hooks etc. That new reality can only be established by following the in the way of Christ. i.e. placing our security and our fear below our devotion to him.

david f,
Your exegesis appears lacking as it neglects even basic rabbinic interpretation. Missing is a dialectic of formalism vs. instrumentalism (letter vs. spirit), and textualsim vs. contextualism. The narrow, strictly literalistic interpretation you provide will certainly lend itself to the view you give. The literary context, however, reveals truths you fail to touch on, and ones most certainly taken on by early Christianity. Their conduct reveals the spirit of early Christianity, and this is evidence of itself, without the need of exegesis, viz, serious scholars of church history generally agree that for the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians rejected not only emperor-worship and idolatry but also participation in the military. Obedience to the gospel, the Church held, was consistent only with a position of nonresistance and not serving in the military. Bishop Cyprian (C.E. 258) commented rather bitterly, “if a murder is committed privately it is a crime, but if it happens with state authority, courage is the name for it. Cyprian insisted that Christians "are not allowed to kill, but they must be ready to be put to death themselves."

The climate of the church on the subject of peace and nonresistance changed extremely rapidly after the conversion of Constantine (312), when he gave Christianity legal status in the empire.

The compromise on truth for the sake of peace is unjustified – this is the ‘sword’ that will divide, father against son, mother against daughter or friend against friend.

Religion is not synonymous with morality, I agree, but the legal positivism you suggest, where the Law is a posit without moral implication (natural law), has little claim on our obedience (is there a duty to obey?) It follows, and from the Ayn Rand Institute, Onkar Ghate defended the principle of killing innocent civilians in another country during times of war or other armed conflict. According to Ghate, “The government of a free nation is simply the agent of its citizens, charged with one fundamental responsibility: to secure the individual rights - and very lives - of its citizens through the use of retaliatory force."

david f,
When biologists employ random sampling and probability along with the nature of genetic mutation they say, “Mutations are random” i.e. they are not directed. Mutations provide the raw material on which natural selection acts and it is natural selection which is a deterministic process – as you suggest. Darwin, however, was unaware of this random process or, “genetic drift”. Studies of evolution at the molecular level have provided strong support for drift as a major mechanism of evolution. Strictly speaking, evolutionary biologists are no longer "Darwinists", and when anti-evolutionists equate evolution with “Darwinists” they place their argument in a 19th Century context.

“Packs which care for their members have a better chance of surviving. However, the act is a moral act, and we humans have some of the same conditioning” Your initial sentence here, David, describes something clearly observable. Your second one is conjecture and falls apart if animals are considered amoral through instinctive behaviour. A moral act is decidedly an act of choice, performed within a freedom enabling our separation from not only ‘base’ instinct but anything within our ‘natures’.

Contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Singer collapses the distinction between humans and animals and pleads consistency in being able to experiment, not just only on animals, but also on brain damaged babies etc.

A further danger lies in taking the absolutist position where any being that is the subject of a life has inherent worth, and the rights that protect such worth and all subjects of a life have these rights equally. Eating animals, hunting animals, experimenting on animals and using animals for entertainment, and work etc. therefore becomes ‘immoral’, irrespective of human need, context, or culture.

Dear Sells,

I roused a beast of pray.

A god placing himself above family is not worthy of worship.

The disciples of Jesus for the most part have not suffered but have dominated the western world and have colonised much of the rest of the world with their missionaries, economic and physical slavery and cultural effusions. With the end of the colonial empires their power has been diminished. Unfortunately they have an excess of power in the US at this time.

The account of Jesus’ death is somewhat similar to the death of Socrates described by Plato. Both figures suffered themselves to be killed by the authorities. Both myths are unhealthy ones. In both the death of Socrates and of Jesus there is a submission to and recognition of arbitrary authority. Pacifism in the terminology of the Quakers ‘speaks truth to power’. It doesn’t cooperate with it. Both Socrates and Jesus were at fault in submitting. Gandhi advocated non-violent resistance. If that is not possible he supported resistance by violent means. Pacifism is not submission, and the submission of Jesus and Socrates is not pacifism. It is subservience.

You used the phrase ‘our devotion to him (Jesus)’ Please do not include me in the possessive pronoun. I have no reason to be devoted to a humanoid God. I will leave that sort of thing to the pagan religions with their pantheon of human like gods and Christians who worship a god made flesh. It is a primitive understanding of deity. Might as well worship idols.

I think there can be no universal morality as morality is the product of societies that differ from one another.

There is no evidence that Christianity has produced better behaviour or more consideration for our fellow beings and the planet we live on. It seems to have produced the Dark Ages when Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and killed the spirit of enquiry current in the ancient world. It also encouraged intolerance to those who don’t accept the Christian mumbo jumbo. The Enlightenment means human liberation.

Dear Relda,

I was just arguing to the point that Jesus rejected the sword. According to the New Testament he did not. Whipping the moneychangers from the Temple was unjustified violence. People coming to worship from afar would not have local currency. People needed the moneychangers to get lodging and food. Maybe regulation was needed not elimination.

Your first paragraph accurately describes Christianity prior to its becoming a state religion.

The sword that divides families is ‘truth’, but in religion truth is nothing more than belief. One cannot reasonably label any religious belief ‘truth’. A genuine proponent of peace would not divide families.

Certainly the law contains moral implications and a person of conscience must disobey an unjust law if the injustice is not trivial.

I just visited a Catholic pacifist friend in the US, and we, together with other Catholics and Quakers, demonstrated against the Iraq war in Hartford.

I have supported the Catholic plowshares project by participating with them in actions and giving money. http://www.prop1.org/protest/catholic_workers/cathwork.htm describes some of their work. The Jewish Peace Fellowship and Tikkun support non-violence from a Jewish perspective.

I don’t agree with the justice of retaliatory force. The atrocities of the Nazis did not justify the fire bombing of Dresden or the bombing of working class districts in Hamburg. I disagree with Ghate. Force should only be used where it is the only possible alternative – never for retaliation.

My pantheon of heroes includes those who have resisted unjust laws non-violently such as Thoreau, Gandhi, the Berrigan Brothers, Franz Jaegerstatter and the people who committed civil disobedience to work for civil rights. It also includes those who have resisted violently such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Brown. It also includes those who have disobeyed to protest injustice such as Edward Ellsberg who disobeyed the law to release the Pentagon papers.

I don’t know enough to engage in scholarly exegesis. Your criticism of my lack of mastery of any dialectic is justified. I cited those I admire to indicate my positions. I appreciate your posts and will answer the other one.

Davidf
What Gibson thinks does indeed matter. He is a gifted modern story teller capable of influencing the opinion of many. It also matters if your comments are going to remain consistent. For you claim that where the Gospel writer indicates that the Jews said they were happy to have the ‘blood of Jesus on us and our children’, this has been used to justify persecution of the Jews. So if that verse has caused problems, then the way it is read by the populace is of grave importance.

Remembering that the writer of that verse thought of himself as a Jew, I doubt he was calling for Jewish persecution. I’ve always read something in that verse as wishing a prophetic blessing in that Christians see blessing, symbolic if not direct, in the blood of Jesus. This is clear in the sacrament of Holy Communion where Christians appropriate the blood of Jesus to their own bodies as a vital spiritual act.

Shadow,
I fairly much agree with what you say about the usefulness of forensic science. But you highlight the problem. ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ is the standard for criminal trials. Whereas operational science using repeatable experimentation is capable of going further. NASA didn’t send people to the moon built on science beyond reasonable doubt.

Forensics won’t get it accurate 100%, but we know some cases where they appear to have really botched it (e.g. the case of Azaria Chamberlain). To take your courtroom picture over to the case of examining the fossil record, the conjecture would lead to many hung juries. The jurors would rarely all be in agreement.

George,
Thanks for the link to that conference, describing conference convener, Ravasi, as a ‘sympathetic partner in dialogue’. I don’t know how this squares with one spokesperson for the conference declaring that creationists and ID proponents will not be invited. When Ravasi says that he takes the evolution position a priori (not presently willing to look at the other case) he seems as hard boiled as anyone. As for using Genesis ‘as a science text book’, this is false as nobody uses it this way. Creationists take Genesis as an historical narrative.

I was interested that some see the conference as a balance to the sensing that the Catholic Church has moved towards the creationists or ID position in recent decades.

Dan,
The Church, at least since John Paul II, has nothing against the scientific theories of evolution, or relativity theory or quantum mechanics, string theory etc., because it is not her business to accept or reject scientific theories or act as an arbiter of competing theories. Neither of these theories can contradict anything that is in the bible for the simple reason that these theories did not exist when the bible was written.

It is a known fact that in the past this was not the case: the Church confused - like some people, theists or atheists even today - the scientific character of these theories with world-views built on them that denied the existence of God. Perhaps the last in this chain of confusions concerned Darwin’s theory, rejected by most Catholic theologians because of this mixing up of the scientific theory (that they mostly did not understand) and the atheist conclusions drawn from it. No such conclusions were drawn from Einstein’s relativity theory, or quantum mechanics, so the Church never objected to them. And even objections to Darwin were always only semi-official (e.g. his books were never put on index at times when all sorts of books were thus marked).

Creationism and ID are an unfortunate recent American addition to this confusion. As philosophical presuppositions they are nothing new, always accepted by the Church. However, if they present themselves as scientific theories, the Church has to accept the verdict of the community of specialists, as they accepted it in the case of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and will accept it in the case of string theory, loop quantum gravity or even Multiverse and “cosmic Darwinism“ when that verdict is available.

I can believe in God the Creator, and at the same time accept, say, neo-Darwinism as a description of HOW he made it. The same as I can believe that God created me, and at the same time share with my atheist friends the knowledge of HOW he did it (using my parents). Our world-view should not go AGAINST world-views based on science only; it should EXTEND them.

Dear Relda,

A mutation is a change to genetic DNA that lasts long enough to be transmitted to offspring. All changes to DNA are random. However our genetic DNA has a capability of repair so all changes are not mutations – only the irreparable changes. I don’t know how repair affects randomness.

I would call most if not all insect behaviour instinct. However, a wolf has a developed brain and the boundaries between instinct and choice are not well defined in either the wolf or us. What instinct is base and what isn’t base? Dawkins introduced the concept of a meme. A meme is a replicator transmitted by culture rather than DNA. Much of our behaviour is the product of memes we have received. As such behaviour may be no more a matter of choice than what is determined by our DNA.

It is a consequence of biblical theology that we are separated in kind from other animals. I agree with Singer on the legitimacy of experimenting on brain-damaged babies if we can conduct similar experiments on primates. We do not have to ignore human need, but we can weigh human need as against the suffering of other life. I don’t eat lobster because they have an extensive network of external nerve ending and may undergo great suffering if dropped into boiling water.

An adult non-human may be more aware than an immature human and may have a greater capacity for suffering.

The language of most if not all tribal people has a word for themselves meaning ‘the people’. The unity of the human species is a taxonomical and theological construct – not a natural one.

I don’t believe all life has a right to exist. The small pox virus no longer exists in nature. I favour its destruction. The problem exists that the entire virus might not be destroyed. It then becomes a potential terror weapon. If we grant all life inherent worth then we cannot use antibiotics that destroy life.

Dan wrote:

Remembering that the writer of that verse thought of himself as a Jew, I doubt he was calling for Jewish persecution. I’ve always read something in that verse as wishing a prophetic blessing in that Christians see blessing, symbolic if not direct, in the blood of Jesus. This is clear in the sacrament of Holy Communion where Christians appropriate the blood of Jesus to their own bodies as a vital spiritual act.

Dear Dan,

We don’t know that anybody ever made the remark cited in the Bible and how much of the Bible is fiction. Miracles and virgin birth are fiction. When one part is fiction we cannot be sure how much of the rest is also fiction. The Jesus figure may have never existed or may be a composite portrait of various wonder-workers. Possibly the crucifixion is merely crucifiction. Gibson’s remark is obvious nonsense. Even if the crucifixion happened nobody can be blamed except for those who were responsible.

We cannot really understand the Bible if we regard it as complete in itself. We must put it in a historical context.

The New Testament was written while Palestine was under Roman occupation. The person who put that remark in the Bible could have been trying to blame the Jews so as not to anger the Romans who were the crucifiers. They might have wanted to get the occupiers to come down on the Jews rather than the new sect who could have been regarded separately as they had attracted gentiles.

The Bible will continue to be a source of hate and discord until it is regarded the way we now regard the legends telling of the pagan Gods.

The history of the Manichean religion comforts me. It lasted from the third to the eighteenth century and existed from Spain to China. Most people have never heard of it, and nobody as far as I know believes in it any more. It disappeared.

Eventually Judaism, Christianity and Islam will also disappear. The Bible and Koran will exist as a source of legends and stories but as nothing else

I’m sorry David, but I can’t combat the impeccable logic contained in these consecutive phrases -
“We don’t know that anybody ever made the remark cited in the Bible and how much of the Bible is fiction. Miracles and virgin birth are fiction.”

Many and various people have ventured assigning (or wishing) the Bible to the place of historic relic. Every year their wish becomes more and more unlikely as it forever tops the Bestseller list.

George,
If it is not the role of the Church to act as ‘arbiter of competing theories’ then why is she having this conference and affirming a priori the theory of evolution?

The church doesn’t object to Einstein’s relativity because it never challenged any one of its major doctrines, such as the doctrine of creation. It is not that atheist conclusions are or are not drawn from Einstein’s theory. Rather it is the anti-Biblical implications inherent within the theory of evolution itself which prompts objection. Evolution establishes itself as an alternative creation myth. It challenges the Biblical doctrine at every turn. Its raison d’être is to make God redundant.

I would challenge your concept that worldviews are based on science. I think more often it is science (and ‘science’ falsely so called) which flows from worldviews.

If the Church “has to accept the verdict of the community of specialists,” as you put it, to whom should they turn? I also asked this of Relda. I know of plenty of highly qualified scientists, specialists in their field who don’t accept evolution.

When explaining ‘how’ God made mankind, the Bible states clearly that he took dust of the earth and formed it into a man. That is, he started from scratch. It was not a continuation or upgrade from another animal.

Also, creationism is not an “American addition”. It’s fairly healthy wherever Bible believers can be found. Some of the most novel creationist ideas are being exported from Australia.

How dare this writer use the words truth and Christian in the same sentence. The world's biggest fraud and Christian is precise.

The Bible is full of drivel and fairy tales, nothing else. All designed to hide any real facts and highlight all the rubbish man has used to control populations for so many centuries.

Absolute rubbish.

Someone here please tell us the Bible is God's word. That's the most inane statement you could make.

Think about the Christian God for a moment. There are, what, 6 or 9 billion people currently. Those of you who think this supposed deity looks after each and every one of us need to consider facts. How much time could such a being devote to looking after each person?

If it's 6 billion people then the rather busy deity would spend precisely 0.0000876 seconds a year planning your future. If it's 9 billion then halve that.

But of course that God doesn't look after all people does he? ust those that claim to be Christian, right?

Give me a break.

Dan,

Cases you quoted where "but we know some cases where they (forensic science) appear to have really botched it (e.g. the case of Azaria Chamberlain)."

Were traversties of justice simply because there was no forensic evidence to prove the case. This is not the fault of forensic science, only over zealous prosecutors manipulating evidence.

With evolution the evidence is overwhelming, against evolution there is only denial.

Dan,
>>why is she (the Catholic Church) having this conference and affirming a priori the theory of evolution?<<
Because she thinks there is still a need to explain why and how the belief in God the Creator is COMPATIBLE with what evolution theories have to offer. The fact that there are scientists who are also believing Christians, some even theologians (who do not think that “anti-Biblical implications are inherent within the theory of evolution”) is a strong argument for this compatibility in spite of the fact that there are others who believe these things are not compatible: for instance most atheists and others who interpret the Book of Genesis verbatim.

I suppose the Conference organisers did not invite “creationist scientists“ for two reasons: (1) because whatever their scientific credentials they are considered marginal within the mainstream scientific community, and (2) because they never draw conclusions that would clash with what the Church stood for, hence no need to clarify anything.

I never claimed that ALL world-views were based on science. By those whose “world-views are based on science ONLY” I was just describing people for whom the only Reality is that which senses and instruments can access and science can model.

>> the Bible states clearly that he took dust of the earth and formed it into a man.<<
The exact quote in KVJ is “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ...” (Gen 2:7) Do you have to take the dust verbatim? What about the nostrils? How else would you explain to people at that level of “scientific knowledge” and philosophical sophistication (including the author) that man is made of matter (the “dust”) endowed with consciousness (the image of God or soul) that no other creature has?

>> It was not a continuation or upgrade from another animal <<
No, there is no mention of an “upgrade from animal”, neither is there a mention of many other things, e.g. that our body is made of cells, that consciousness “resides“ in the brain, etc.

david f,
Whilst we both agree on the basis for “randomness” in the universe, our approach to its underlying implication appears somewhat different. Dan may feel the ‘deeper’ echelon of science to operate from within a vacuum, through his literal observation, but as George and others allude, "Faith is perhaps stronger than reality, for faith itself creates reality." Now, that can equally work for the fanatic or those who are peaceful. Our response to ‘faith’ can be tempered, where our ‘memes’ are certainly not the ultimate determinate for behaviour, as perhaps Richard Dawkins may have us mistakenly believe. DNA is a building block but cannot be considered the only ‘key’ for the repair of damaged ‘goods’.

I would also wonder at the distance you suggest separating us from the insect world – I would have thought a more pronounced hierarchy exists. Evolution reveals a process where the irreducibly simple flows on to the incredibly complex. Our introversion, however, often mistakenly places us further down the chain than we need. Perhaps a question for another day.

My mention of Singer and the Rand Institute is an illustration of pure utilitarian thought – rationalism at its considered ‘best’. Both examples illustrate current and persuasive thinking, both are powerfully influential. One idea, through the symbolic, is destructive – the other is the inevitable logistic, leading to a catastrophic change, and one which environmentalists clearly avoid, not because the risk isn't real but because it's too undefinable.

You state your Jewish heritage, or at least appear to have some affiliation with Judaic belief, so perhaps you realise, the pre-condition for Israel being an ‘or lagoyim’, a light unto the nations, depends on it first being an ‘or layehudim’, a light unto the Jewish people. If you advocate that the Jewish people become a 'goy kechol hagoyim', or a nation like all the nations, then you confound its history where its very basis is founded on ‘am segulah’, or ‘a distinctive people.’

My apologies for a lazy post that points to a past article but on reading the above I think it might help.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6951

Peter Sellick

Dear Relda,

I don’t think we have a distance separating us from the insect world. The boundary between reason and instinct is unclear. I cited the bee’s sacrifice of life for the good of the hive as moral behaviour though it could be categorized as instinctive.

Certainly memes are no more deterministic than genes. However, both genes and memes are factors in our behaviour.

Actually evolution does not flow from the irreducibly simple to the incredibly complex. It may flow in either direction. Evolution has produced parasites. All parasites descend from free-living ancestors who had to move around to find sustenance and mate. Their parasitic descendants in many cases are reduced to a digestive system with an apparatus at one end that attaches to the host and sexual organs for reproduction. Parasites adapted to their environment by discarding unneeded capabilities and reducing complexity.

Evolution can also result in fewer metabolic options for life forms. One-celled prokaryotes (cells without a nucleus - bacteria) existed for possibly 2 billion years until the nucleated eukaryotes appeared. There was another long period before multicelled organisms appeared. Bacteria can survive by aerobic respiration, aerobic photosynthesis, anaerobic chemicoheterotrophy (fermenting bacteria), anaerobic chemicoheterotrophy (sulfate-reducing bacteria), anaerobic chemicoheterotrophy (methanogenesis), anaerobic photoautotrophs and many other means. The ‘more complex’ animals and plants depend only on aerobic respiration and aerobic photosynthesis.

Evolution can occur through symbiosis. Two symbionts can form a permanent association as in lichen or the eukaryotic cell. Read Lynn Margulis’ Origin of Eukaryotic Cells for an account of the process.

Read http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/evolving-the-single-daddy/index.html for an account of a clam, a tree and a stick insect which only get genes from the male parent.

The common picture of creatures becoming more and more complex until they result in the culmination of humanity is simply an idea we impose on the process. Stephen J. Gould has written several essays on the subject opposing the view of evolution as a ladder. We can think of the various pathways as a bush whose branches may unite.

Natural selection can take so many paths that it is difficult to generalize about the process.

Dear Relda,

You wrote: “If you advocate that the Jewish people become a 'goy kechol hagoyim', or a nation like all the nations, then you confound its history where its very basis is founded on ‘am segulah’, or ‘a distinctive people.’”

I belong to a Jewish congregation in Brisbane.

As I indicated when commenting on Lustiger's book I think the idea of a chosen people is a very bad one. I think setting standards for other people is arrogant self-righteousness. I object to Christians sending out missionaries and telling other people what they should believe and Jews lighting the way to proper behaviour for others. We can’t know enough to decide what is right for others.

I advocate that we recognise reality. We Jews are part of humanity.

We are a diverse people with diverse opinions. We encompass ultra-orthodox who refuse to shake hands with women they are not married to, rabbis like Kamins who preside over same sex marriage, Karaites who reject rabbinic Judaism along with the Talmud and only recognize the Jewish Bible as a sacred book, atheists, extreme conservatives, Marxists, Zionists, those opposed to ethnic nationalism, for complete separation of church and state and non-discrimination according to religion or ethnicity etc. Which light should we beam?

Re confounding history. The Zionist movement had as a goal to set up a nation so that Jews could be like the others.

Shakespeare with his humanity:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Read pp. 231-243 in “The Death of Sigmund Freud”

david f,
As with 'natural selection', I think there is the danger for us to generalise too easily – our comments can be cheap, as they do not often require difficult thought. The clam article was interesting. The covert, or “kinky” asexuality, the article speaks of is short-lived, where “..traditional, female-only asexuality typically leads to a swift extinction.. [and].. Male-only asexuality is likely to lead to extinction too, but faster..." The generalisation it does make (and perhaps a good one) about all sexuality, however, is almost biblically intricate, “Genes are inherited only from the father, via his sperm (or pollen, in the case of the tree).” This is suggestive of an ‘order’ existing outside the bounds of mere ‘random selection’ – the generalisations we make about this ‘order’ are perhaps more the problem.

The reality you advocate, I’d enjoin and say all races, religions and cultures are a part of humanity. The Merchant (or Jew) of Venice is an example of Shakespearian complexity - from where you drew your quote. It is one of his so called ‘problem plays’. Is Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity a "happy ending" for the character? This ‘conversion’ redeems Shylock both from his unbelief and his specific sin of wanting to kill Antonio? This reading certainly fits in with the anti-Semitic trend of Elizabethan England, but a conversion translating to an ethos of “not to kill” cannot be all bad but even 'redemptive'.

I trust you don’t refer to the 'dark' Zionism of Theodor Herzl, the movement he founded by in 1896 whose goal was the return of Jews to Eretz Yisrael, or Zion, who also wrote is his diary, “So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt.” And written in the same vein, “one cow in Palestine [is] worth more than all the Jews in Poland.” - Yitzchak Greenbaum

Dear Relda,

Look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman. He argues that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result to some extent from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics.

If that is true evolutionary development is not random. I intend to read “Investigations” which he wrote describing the idea.

A Jew does not have to turn to Christianity to find an ethos not to kill. It is a trick of language to call not believing in Christianity unbelief. It is common usage to define believing in another religion as unbelief. Shakespeare could not ignore the prejudices of his time and place, but his Shylock is more complex and many sided than Marlowe’s Jewish creation. George Eliot almost three centuries later was attacked for “Daniel Deronda” in which an upper class Englishman became a Jew.

I find the mission of being a ‘light unto the nations’ not too different from the ‘white man’s burden’ and other constructs which assume one group of humans has a superior outlook which others should follow. Look up http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/opinion/25Cohen.html?ref=opinion for American exceptionalism.

A factor molding our character is the belief in an invisible God. More than belief in a God incarnate an invisible God promotes speculation and abstract reasoning. The pages I cited from “The Death of Sigmund Freud” promotes that idea. The resulting respect for learning has been a factor in producing Einstein and other thinkers.

Dear Relda,

Herzl founded the Zionist movement, and I did refer to him. I have never heard it called ‘dark’ Zionism. I am not a Zionist, but I think I would have been one if I had been living in Herzl’s time. It’s easy to be right using hindsight. I used to be a Zionist and gave it up when I saw the incompatibility of ethnic nationalism and democracy. At one time I thought they could be compatible.

Vladimir Jabotinsky foresaw the Holocaust and thought Jews could escape it by going to Israel. In retrospect he was right.

Zionism like any other nationalism contains a spectrum of views. Some like Martin Buber and Ahad Ha-am were very concerned over relations with the indigenous population of Palestine. Others saw a land where Jews could be free from the restrictions in the rest of the world. When serfs were fred in Russia Jewish farmers were forced off their land which was given to the former serfs. Occupations that were forbidden to Jews in parts of Europe could be practiced in Israel. That was possibly the main motivation for Zionism at the time. A Jew would be free to be anything he or she was capable of being.

The Dreyfus trial where a Jew was framed as a spy in democratic France inspired Dreyfus to advocate Zionism. In the democratic United States Leo Frank was lynched for a crime he didn’t commit. In Russia a czarist functionary saw Russia ridding itself of Jews by 1/3 converting, 1/3 emigrating and 1/3 being killed.

It is common for politicians to use threats, real or imagined, to unite their constituency. One of the factors in preserving the Jewish people, in my view, is antisemitism. An outside enemy which threatens but is not virulent enough to destroy promotes unity. In English speaking countries Zionism has been turned on its head. With the decline of antisemitism assimilation is regarded as a threat that Zionism counters. At present I feel that if our survival has a point we should be able to survive in a non-threatening democratic society

david f,
The morality in “not killing” certainly doesn’t need Christianity to uphold it (or invent it) – and especially not Pauline Christianity, whose teachings demonstrate a "long battle against Judaizing." Judaism, however, is equally disparate amongst itself (as you note) as are the many forms of Christianity, and morality is often more reflective of the age in which a religion is practiced, irrespective of belief. Shakespeare, for instance, may or may not have been anti-Semitic but he used the historical backdrop of anti-Semitism in Venice during the Elizabethan era to create a play with historical validation. He was probably quite careful to neither endorse nor subvert Elizabethan anti-Semitism – the latter, in particular, was certainly a precaution for self-preservation. I find any idea of eradicating the Jewish identity through assimilation, or a covert conversion (e.g. Jews for Jesus) to other forms of belief pretty unacceptable.

The Gaia theory contends ‘self-organisation’ operates through the coevolving diversity of living organisms - the most extreme form of this theory is that the entire Earth is a single unified organism; in this view the Earth's biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Many scientists deny the possibility of this view, however, such a view is certainly considered within scientific possibility. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and geologist, through his belief that evolution unfolds from cell to organism to planet to solar system seems to find a similar parallel.

I probably sounded a little tough calling the Zionism of Herzl “dark”, for he believed that the Jews, once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies. And it was quite a reasonable belief, given the virulent anti-Semitism of ‘Christian’ Europe - Herzl pessimistically came to believe that this would never change. The only redemption for the Jews, he thought, was to establish their own nation. The Jewish people would be sovereign, with a seat in the council of nations and be able to relate to other people as the separate nations they apparently were.
cont’d..

..cont’d
Eastern European Jews were inspired by Karl Marx, and the idea of the equality of all humanity. Moreover, Jews had always been prohibited from owning or working the land in Christian Europe, the only way truly to make a living. Most Jews, however, saw their future as Europeans and until the rise of Nazi Germany, Zionism was supported by only a small minority. Many Jews, especially in Britain and in Germany, were confident that "progress" and democracy would eliminate the need for a national home or refuge for the Jews, and that Jewish nationalist agitation would only exacerbate anti-Semitism (which, I guess, it did).

It’s ironic, the seed of religious intolerance has led to the formation of Israel as a secular Nation State. In 1961, the U.S. liberal and conservative rabbis alike condemned Ben-Gurion's theology as "erroneous." The American Jewish Committee declared itself "grieved and shocked" by the suggestion that Jews have an obligation to emigrate to Israel. The anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism said, "Our nationality is American; our religion is Judaism. Our homeland is the U.S., and we reject the concept that all Jews outside Israel are in exile." The spirit of this is, “We are a people, one people "— whether in Israel or the U.S.

On reflection, I find it a little ironic that the formation of Israel had it genesis in a messianic and Triumphal Christianity, demanding a total conversion, and the Zionist Jews needing a haven in finding for themselves a piece of real estate on which to retreat. In the midst of the deepest degradation of the Jewish people and at a time of the most disgusting anti-Semitism, they made a flag out of a rag and a people out of a decadent rabble, and were able to rally this people around such a flag.