Posted by George, Saturday, 1 April 2017 10:21:40 AM page 14.

"I do not think this deserves a dignified response from me. [I do not think you would react to a holocaust surviver’s personal experience by “You give no evidence of having been gassed.”"

Indeed, I would not. The reason why is a brutal truth that,imho, you should have realised before you took irrational offence. No person who entered a gas chamber survived to relate the experience. That you equate any assault on your intellectual commitment with the most horrible agonies and bowel-loosening fear suffered by those poor inmates is more a measure of your narcissism than it is a legitimate criticism of me.
When I wrote: "I applaud their commitment to the scientific method and its employment in a search for truth. You give no evidence of being intellectually harmed by it." I had presumed that any religious faith you may have espoused had survived the torment of communist dogma and you seem to have suffered no permanent impairment. If my presumption was incorrect then allow me to congratulate you on hiding the affects so well.
In any case, your personal and anecdotal experience has barely a peripheral relevance to the main points I was arguing.
You may regard this as a dignified response and thoroughly deserved.

Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 29 March 2017 10:49:35 AM page 12

"That the Bible offers some cover for slavery is certainly true. It was after all written in periods when slavery was ubiquitous and unquestioned."

This is a sleight of hand of unmeasurable smugness. Without going into details, the bible provides splendid detail, not only on slavery and who one can enslave but also their treatment, emancipation and their wives and children. The bible pronounces at length on unruly children, on the uncleanliness of women, on women as wives, in society and in places of worship and a host of other unpleasant and truly nasty things.

Did the christian god dictate the bible or not? Is it his inerrant word in entirety or not? Is that word eternal and unchanging or not?

The enquiring reader does not need malice to read and understand what is clearly recorded in the bible. Such a reader may ask questions as to the veracity of pronouncements from learned biblical scholars, again without malicious intent.

"All those 'rights' which we think of as being vital are western in origin and developed in socities based on Christian tenets."

Freedom of religious adherence? There are thousands upon thousands of "heretics" who would disagree quite vehemently. In England alone, hundreds and hundreds of catholics burnt by Elizabeth 1. Her catholic sister Mary 1 burnt as many protestants
Freedom of speech? Ask that of the English christians burned at the stake for owning or reading the bible in their own language and preaching thus.

It may be pertinent here to raise the issue of the Golden Rule, examples of which are found in philosophical and religious texts far older than christianity.

What of all those sincerely pious christians who, prior to the abolition of slavery, genuinely believed that slavery was approved of by the christian god? Are they condemned for honest error in believing the word of their god?

If you need to preface your dislike of criticism of religious faith by imputing base motives to the critic you've lost before you begin.

Loudmouth,

Thanks for the interesting post.

>> in terms of Aristotle's thesis - antithesis - synthesis <<

As I remember, Aristotle, and the old Greeks in general, are associated with the term dialectics which is more or less a debate. On the other hand the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectical method (of arriving at the “truth” of dialectical materialism) was used by Marx (and Stalin) who referred it to GWF Hegel although it was Johann Fichte who actually first used the scheme. It is a useful thought pattern even for those whose personal philosophy is not Marxist or Hegelian. You are right that the choice of antithesis determines the possible outcome of synthesis.

I take your last paragraph as saying Enlightenment was a correction of some aspects of “Judeo-Graeco-Christian foundations” of the West. I agree, although we might differ on what aspects needed a correction, hence an antithesis leading to a viable synthesis.

AL,
I could continue by nitpicking your nitpickings but as I wrote above, what is the point?

Pogi,

Thanks for illustrating why your personal attacks and insults do not deserve a dignified response.

George,

I am not “nitpicking”. To “nitpick” means to deal with details that are inconsequential, and the flaw in your logic that I have pointed to is not inconsequential. It is, in fact, so fundamental to your claim that it discredits it entirely, and that deserves a response even if that response is silence. What it does not deserve, however, is an uncouth dismissal that demonstrates no attempt to take the point, or the person who made it, seriously.

<<I could continue by nitpicking your nitpickings but as I wrote above, what is the point?>>

There is, by definition, never a point in nitpicking. Nor have I asked you to do such a thing, and to suggest otherwise is rude and offensive. A response that deals with the substance of what I have said would be far more preferable.

Thank you.

AJ

I thank you too.

I take it then, George, that you cannot defend your claim? Maybe another time then?

--

Hmmm. It doesn’t look like mhaze will be back. If it was all so axiomatic, then why do experts, who argue in favour Christianity’s allegedly vital role in the rise of Western civilisation, feel the need to argue for it in the first place?

‘Everything is what it is, isn’t what it isn’t, and nothing is neither or both.’

Now THAT is an axiomatic statement: the foundational laws on which we (ultimately) base all logic. Not some tenuous, non-descript causal link between Christianity and Western civilisation.

Christianity’s role in the rise of Western civilisation is only “axiomatic” to the extent that it had to play a role in some form or another because nothing exists in a vacuum. Just what exactly it did, to what extent, and how it did it, is highly debatable.

One example of a dubious appeal to Christianity’s influence is the claim that it provided us with universities. It didn’t. Universities evolved as purely academic institutions from the old Trade Guilds. The Catholic Church eventually hijacked the universities for political reasons and promptly limited their research to approved courses only.

In order to reliably credit Christianity for anything, one would need to demonstrate how an element of Christian doctrine necessarily results in that thing. Even if one could do that, however, it still could only ever be put down to dumb luck until the claim to divine (i.e. omniscient) authorship could be demonstrated.

From my observations, and speaking for myself as a former Christian, the dubious links between Christianity and all that is good are proffered, ultimately, as a round-about way of suggesting that there is truth in its more fantastical claims. When atheists make this claim, it is often influenced by nationalism. In a post-9/11 world, Islamophobia has become yet another motivation, as it allows us to separate ourselves further from the Islamic-other in the same way the US separated themselves from those godless communists in the ‘50s by unconstitutionally inserting “In God We Trust” into every imaginable corner.