The churches should not have to dig too deep to find the real cuase of a constipated theological discussion. I would suggest the causes of stifeld debate lay in thier own back yards.

It is far too easy to externalise the blame for failing institutions on cultural relativism or secualr rationalism which Peter seems to be doing here when the real cuase lies within the churches themselves.

In the tradition of each of the three mainstream religions it was their nature to lay claim to the debate - theological discussion was limited to those in positions of power - and the so called truths were dispensed down to the masses. Church leaders were sceptrical about printing the bible for the masses.

The other church based reason that stifles debates was the threat of compliance/blind faith versus damnation and the the third is rooted in the claim each of the three biggies , and latterly others, laying claim to exclusive knowledge of the truth when it comes to matters godly.

Not a great deal has changed in the 21st century.

The rise of science might have provided a few explanations of phenomenon Church leaders used to shore up their position and secular rationailism offered others alternative ways of thinking - but the concept of people being free to engage in theological discussion died a long time ago if it ever existed at all.

Any analysis of the corporate world, organisations big and small, into failures will invariably find mismanagement at the top; the same can be said of features of religions that are faltering - just like fish, religious organisation usually start to rot from the head down.

What a strange piece. Being quite readable for a change, it starts to provide me with a clue why Mr Sellick and I can so very frequently be looking at the same object, but see it quite differently.

For example, the questions "Is there a God" and "Am I religious" seem to me to be the distillation of many centuries of thought. To Mr Sellick, they appear to be the starting point of intellectual anarchy, and ultimate impoverishment.

He argues that as soon as individuals started to become aware that there was more than one means by which to express ones faith, the purity of that faith became diluted. Hence the appearance of the concept of religion, which, he asserts, automatically fell prey to the Enlightenment's tendency to question anything that wasn't tied down.

His rhetorical flourish, "How could theology be taken seriously after such a move?" enables him to tell us how "if we get our theology wrong we see only a distortion of reality, the consequences of which will blight our lives". Naturally, this leads to "...National Socialism in Germany and ... Communism in the West and in Asia, where it still holds fast in China and North Korea."

All well and good (or ill and bad, presumably) if you accept the first premise. That replacing blind faith with religious reasoning was a mistake.

In my view of history, the Enlightenment saw the re-birth of man as a thinking being. Mr Sellick believes this was an error; we shouldn't think, we should simply have faith.

His faith, that is. Any other manifestation of what an individual might describe as "my faith" is merely religion, susceptible to interpretation therefore merely relativistic. And being relativistic is, of course, automatically a bad thing.

But it all sounds to me so very "post hoc, ergo propter hoc".

The position here can only be sustained by an individual who has chosen *not* to think about theology, but instead simply excoriates beliefs that diverge from his own as "relativism". Seems altogether very self-serving to me.

It's not clear to me just how Mr Sellick proposes that this parlous state of affairs should be remedied. Does it involve returning the clergy and theologians (united in heart and mind as to the true nature of reality) to their previous exalted state so that we lay people can then hang on their every word as to how our lives should be ordered? And do we also take steps to remove from society those whose views are deemed heretical?

Organised Religion is died, Long live reality!

Thanks Peter for your article. There are different forces in society that subtlely erode and corrupt that which is good and wholesome. We cannot blame science for this. The religous need to understand that what has been handed down and proved to be good needs to be preserved. The church needs to continue to proclaim and hold on to what is good so that society does not lose its bearings. We are called to be light at all times. What has happened is that other forces and voices have eroded the sense of meaning and purpose that religion offers. It is time that the church rose up and begins to counter these forces and restore what has been lost. The church needs to continue to be salt and light to the darkness around us. God is alive and well and those who know Him can and will prevail. God is spirit and we are spirit beings and without Him we grope in darkness. Let those who have eyes to see and ears to hear be encouraged.

I pretty much agree with the above posts.

From the ending:
"All of this is aided by the separation between church and state which has restricted faith knowledge to the private sphere.
"Where to from here? It seems that our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called “secular rationalism”. This movement will have to produce even more absurdity before we will see it for what it is."

Okay so what's your unity model then?

Currently, the biggest influence on world events are Islamicist terrorists and their absurdist theatre (who are taking up more political real estate than they are worth IMHO) and who believe, not just in a reunion of church and state, but a complete submission of all human activities to a particular religious belief.

Another unity option is for the church to totally submit to the state. Still popular in Orthodox Christianity, this was Constantine's idea, who curiously, was a Roman Emperor, a statist with a dream of a monothesitic state, which I suppose you can call unity. I assume it is this late early Christian period that the writer refers to in the middle of the article:
"The unity of the church, established in the unity of the person of Jesus was destroyed, leaving a heritage of relativism in religious matters."

However, this unity (and it did not last long at all) was destroyed not as the writer suggests by secular relatavism but a bunch of uppity Greek monks who thought the then current Byzantine Emperor was too pagan, and they scurried off to Rome, forged the Donation of Constantine and advocated for the submission of disunited proto-states in Western Europe to the Vatican. IE it was broken by power hungry priests with their own agenda, a vision of a trans-generational corporation selling crown franchises to selected warrior-kings, usually offered through female fiances.

Which of these options does the writer envisage?

I don't know that there is much to be gained from dancing on what some might assume to be the grave of organised religion - or disorganised religion for that matter - and as for reality Kenny religion is very real - whether it is doing any one any good is another question. If a gozillion people believe in religion then it is very real indeed.

The underlying principles behind the three main religions Chritianity, Judaism and Islam are so common as to be funny - and it is a strange paradox that it is the apparent differences as minor as they might be that give rise to such vehement animosity - usually stemming form the religious leaders who in turn infect the followers.

The common threads also tend some to believe that there is something in this thing called religion - if nothing else apart form a search for a mate, food and shelter it is the only other continous cultural theme that has been with us virtually since the year dot.

Whether really there or not the construct of God has been a dominant social theme. Some times he has been portrayed as benevolent and kindly and at others vengeful but always omnipotent.

Peter yearns for a theological discussion I guess - and he might get one amongst his peers - but he will be hard pressed to get one in mainstream Australia; Partly because religious leaders have excluded followers from the debate, partly because they preferrred to train rather than educate and partly because there is so much choice about - once there was none - and now we have a smorgasbord of options with which to seek eternal salvation or alternatively just to fill in the time between womb and tomb in the best way we see fit

Sellick's opinion is typical of what the deluded nature of religious thinking can do to an otherwise intelligent mind. Theology is indeed the proper study of psychologists. He is right to criticise cultural relativism, (and moral relativism) but he proposes to replace it with a version of Christo-facism, presumably his version.

Sellick feels threatened by secular rationalism and with good reason. That is because secular rationalism, rather than his cherished sectarianism, actually provides the only viable antidote to his so-called impasse. It is only by embracing universal values such as compassion, honesty, freedom and justice, that unity can be achieved.

The widespread adherence to primitive religious mythologies, such as embraced by Sellick, is no trivial matter. This deluded mind-set, reproduced worldwide, is threatening the future of civilisation as we know it. For a real non-duping alternative see http://www.secular.org.au where secular rationalism is given a real purpose.

I guess there are three main points to make here:

To the author, another interesting article, but not one without its qualms. One must remember that before the Treaty of Westphalia, and before the 30 years war, there was a truce between Protestant and Catholic forces in Germany. This in no way allowed for relativism: what it said was that there is one objective reality, but that there was a disagreement over some part of it. Much like the Orthodox/Catholic split, and the Coptic schism, none of these brought on relativism, which involves a step beyond tolerance or drawing zones of influence, to embracing anything.

Perseus, for a person who I consider to often be full of conservative logic, the "Enlightenment as the rebirth of thinking man" line is a doosie. Surely Edmund Burke, who spoke only against 'Enlightment' and its revolutionaries, and spoke of the necessity to preserve parochialism, sound prejudice and that which feels homely, was a thinking man, and as the father of British (and early Australian) conservatism should be considered a thinker even though he did not worship the god Reason!

Sneekeepete, being monotheistic, there are many similarities between the different groups. That being said, the differences are stark: the Jews are waiting for the saviour, Christians are busy building the kingdom of God on earth (or they should be) on an example gained from the saviour, and Muslims are asked to be submissive completely to the will of God as recieved by a man about 1500 years ago. There is much to unite religions, as there is much to unite people of different cultures, but there is also enough to mean that they are different. Just as an Italian, a Greek and a Dane can be all considered European, they are very different when it comes to their own culture and values, and so it is with religion.

That’s right DFXK! Bow down to the god (small G) of Reason (big R)! Then all will be well.

Seriously though. Any individual who claims the market on best practice with regard to religious belief, values and morals is as deluded as those we incarcerate for the safety of society. No individual has the right answer for anyone else – except themselves. The best they can do is practice for themselves and maybe – maybe! – they may sway one or another to follow their way.

It is simply hubris to say ‘follow me and my way, I have the right way and know what God wants.’ How many do we hear say that daily? How on this weird, beautiful, horrific earth is any individual to know whether the speaker is right, deluded or simply manipulating the less sure?

Practice what you believe and let the observer decide. Speak and they should all turn away in pity…

Most of the focus of this article was on the process and not the conclusion, that of the danger of "secular rationalism". The disagreements are over historical occurances. I'd like to focus on the conclusion.

As I alluded above, one can use one's rational faculties and not embrace "secular rationalism", take Edmund Burke. The most obvious difference between the acheivements of Christendom and those of secular rationalism is this... Christendom preserved and took to heart the culture of the ancient world, and did so because it saw in it true expression of part of our nature, and and expression of the great things to which mankind can aspire. This was not difficult, because the Christian message was inherantly global and universal, whilst not trampling on the particular in each culture... unfortunately, as Peter Sellick pointed out in case of missionary activity, it has not always been applied so. Christianity took classicism, and combined it with what can only be described as Charity, and in that achieved the greatest things in music, art, literature and thought ever seen (the Renaissance)... Christianity not only enriched but was also enriched by the classical world.

Secular rationalism, because of its assertions about cultural relativism, and its attempts to "reinterpret" the world and history, can not achieve such a betterment of mankind and his view of the world. The equality of cultures would have meant that the classical world was "an option", not a claim to higher knowledge, and we wouldn't have had the renaissance as we know it. Students put through year 12 are told of equality of "texts", and duly leave Shakespeare, comforted by the BOS's relativistic call to mediocrity. It's like killing God and reverting back to being an animal. Christianity's acceptance of the spark of the divine in man, rather than the depression of nihilism, is why it is ultimately a force for the bettering of man. The change is slow because the spiritual capital of Christianity is very strong, and lives on for a limited time without faith itself... a sure sign of its power.

Peter, it is hardly a "silly question" that "asks if there is a God or not", because how can you have theological anything without one? Describe your God that you seem to know so well.

Nor is it a silly question to ask how this Harper stoooopid is going to get his teddy (god) to set the minimum wages in Australia.

Professor Ian Harper, an Anglican lay preacher and financial markets expert, and now the head of the proposed new body to set minimum wages in Australia (the Fair Pay Commission) says ..... "For me as an individual, I will be resting on my faith and my belief in God in helping me reach balanced decisions."

For my tupence worth - the first schism in the Christian Church was between the Jamesian and Pauline Christians. Paul one James nil.

James = the "Lord's brother"

“This analysis is a triumph of secular academics who steadfastly ignore many good results of European Christian mission and labelled such efforts as cultural imperialism.”

Name one good result of European Christian mission, that hasn't resulted in indigenous cultural collapse

“Where to from here? It seems that our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called “secular rationalism”. This movement will have to produce even more absurdity before we will see it for what it is.”

Name what absurdities secular rationalism has produced, except for tolerating monotheism for so long

DFXK , Sneekeepete, being monotheistic, there are many similarities between the different groups.

Very true DFKK, war, torture, suppression, psychological assaults, indigenous cultural slaughter, lying, deception, plagiarism on a huge scale, material power and control. The only thing monotheists lack, is truth.

Sell's, is grasping at straws and trying to change reality. One of the biggest affronts to our intelligence, is monotheists, constantly trying to change history to suit themselves, when all evidence shows to what depth they will go to gain control

Sells, your flipping out because reality is catching up with your delusions, naturally you don't like it. Trying to say that secularism and our modern society derive from the belief in god is another attempt to change and hijack history. What monotheists fail to realise and accept as they cling desperately to the past, is the human race has evolved and has an intelligence far more advanced than those trapped in monotheist fear. We subjectively look at all aspects of life, making determinations according to the reality that exists. Unlike the believers in god, who can but cringe in fear of the future as the final curtain falls on god

[What a strange piece].... is all I had to read before even seeing the name to know it was 'Pericles' :)

You are becoming identifiable mate.. predictable.. but.. I think I'm feeling a bit of a plank in the old eyesocket on this one......

For me, I just rejoice with unutterable joy, that we are grappling with such worthy subjects. Good on you guys...

How lamentable is the almost all pervasive 'apathy' to Biblical spirituality which characterized my generation. (son of the 60s)

Can't say too much this time, except that I embrace all of you, even the 'foes' :) in the noble persuit of truth.

Will finish with bank statements and reconciliations by end of 2night, then might have more to say. (er..thats for 05 of course.. *sigh*)

blessings to all.

Dxfx
Quote "Christendom preserved and took to heart the culture of the ancient world". Yes Christendom preserved classical texts for it's own purpose but it NEVER took classical philosophy to heart!

The 4th Council of Carthage (398 CE) forbade bishops to even read books on philosophy. Jerome, a church father & early monastic (4th century CE) rejoiced that classical authors were being forgotten. His younger monastic contemporaries often boasted that they were ignorant of everything except christian literature. John Crysostom proudly declared "Every trace of of the old philosophy & literature is disappearing from the Earth".

Does any of that sound remotely like Christianity was taking classical learning to heart?

But those classical works were only preserved by christian monks copying them. Right? Yes except they ONLY did this because manual labour was considered necessary to "fight the devil" NOT because they thought the works had any intrinsic worth, according to Cassiodorus.

In fact the low esteem classical works were held can be seen from these instruction from Cluni [at one time the most influential monastery in Europe.
"If a monk wishes a [christian] book during the hours of silence he is to make a sign of turning the leaves; if he wishes a classical book, he is to scratch his ear like a dog."

This is showing respect to classical philosophy & taking its work to heart? Funny ways of showing respect.

The first point of understanding is to understand that you do not understand.

Sells, you seek debate, but so often fail to hear what is said to you. I agree that “cultural relativism”, which perhaps originally sought to help understanding between cultures, has thrown the objective baby out with the bath water, leading for some to “denial that a real world exists and that we exist under the auspices of its necessity.” But while claiming that reality is immutable, a given, you continue to subject it to your own interpretation. For example, you say that “It is obvious that a culture that places so much emphasis on life after death will tend not to take this world seriously. Likewise, in Buddhism, detachment will produce a similar result.”

You’ve raised this before, but have ignored responses to it. You can’t experience reality in the past – you can only have memories of it. You can’t experience reality in the future – you can only have thoughts of it. You can experience reality only in the present, and the whole teaching of the Buddha was how to experience reality, as it is, without distortion, by choiceless observation of the reality of the present moment in one’s own mind and body. Everything we observe is within this framework, our interaction with the world is through our sense doors, eyes, ears, touch etc. So the Buddha taught the necessity of living in the present moment, of observing with detachment, like a true scientist, so that you can observe reality and in so doing, develop wisdom and purify yourself.

Your frequent denial of this in your references to Buddhism suggests that you have a mental block to understanding and accepting something outside of the framework in which you feel comfortable. Don’t demand of people that they accept “reality” when you are not prepared to examine it yourself, not prepared to develop your own wisdom but instead relying on “received truth”, which is no truth at all

Religion always has and still tries to claim credit, for all sorts of things to justify itself.

Fact is, its not those doing the praying that have made the difference, but the innovators, inventors and freethinkers,
many of whom defied religious dogma, some who were burnt at the stake by the religious.

Lets not kid ourselves. Religion evolved to quell some peoples
anxieties, so it serves a role, just like astrology or fortune tellers. But if examined with any kind of critical scrutiny,
its no more valid then Grimms Fairy Tales.

Western society evolved despite religion, not because of it.

Sellick says:

"Where to from here? It seems that our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called “secular rationalism”. This movement will have to produce even more absurdity before we will see it for what it is."

I say: what could be more absurd than religion, especially organised religion?

Eg:

Silly men wearing silly outfits saying silly things, especially about contraceptives, gays and women; groups of men knocking their heads against walls in religious ritual; a belief in heavenly virgins and commiting to memory mediaeval nonsense.

Peter, when will you learn that it is you religious nuts who have been duped, and not the rest of us?

Sellick says:

"Where to from here?"

Sure, currently we are living in a culture where materialism is king and spirituality is lost in a void. But is religion the only provider of spirituality? I don't think so. We are seeing more and more people downsizing and making the sea and treechange. Of course this is a recent trend and we are discussing cultures that took centuries to form. Sadly I don't have a crystal ball to see where we are going but history rarely shoots off on a tangent. I am sure that the current materialistic trends will be reversed, perhaps the destruction of the environment will make it "uncool" or impossible to have too many worldly possesions.

What about the questions:

"The first is the question that asks if there is a God or not. The second is whether one is religious or not."

Has religious debate really boiled down to those two questions? Perhaps it has, unless both parties answer yes and yes to both questions, debate might be limited to "how can you take the bible literally" or "Why are the different protestants squabbling over seemingly trivial points of interpretation?" (I grew up in Holland) These are more information gathering questions than an informed debate created out of believe and conviction.

I think a "religious" debate can only be held among those knowledgable about that particular religion. With the plethora of religions practiced in our heterogenous society encounters between persons with a shared believe will be less like than a generation ago and so such debates will be less common.

That is not to say that debates about values and spirituality will be a thing of the past. With the national identities of the West coming under question after a period of sustained immigration during a time of multiculturalism, I can see plenty of debate about values in the near future.

Similarly the destruction of the environment and the emptiness (decadence?) of materialism without a communist counterpole will lead to plenty of debate on spirituality.

Oops the crystal ball is overheating, time to give it a rest.

Bosk.. clearly quite a bit of research there unless u have a photographic memory :).. well done! *clap*..

You may well have a point on the attitude to classical writings. Not that this deflects from the central import of the Gospel.

There are alway dangers of trying to justify the 'Church' by its works. For every positive, there will be some historical 'cringe' factor negative from a period or place or group which had the wrong idea about true Christianity.

Having said that, it is worth noting the central position of the Gospel in the rise of the civil rights movement in the USA.
Rosa Parks, one of the luminaries of the movement, said of a group of believers at a Bible school in the Appalachian mountains "Finally I've found white people I can trust". The movement was led by...who ?
REV... Dr...Martin Luther King.. 'reverend'.... a Christian pastor.
Not a bad effort when you think about it.

True faith does not discriminate against or ill treat those of another color simply because of that color or race.
Where you see those things happening, you are not seeing true faith. It's as simple as that.

Yabbs.. religion might be about controlling people.. when it becomes organized and 'socially desirable' to be a part of the 'Church', but knowing Christ is not about that. Lets be clear though, in the fellowship of the saints, there is such a thing as discipline, and a reading of the 1st letter of Paul to the Corinthians will show why.

The Christian faith is about knowing Christ, in your own heart, about God reigning as King in you, in your family, in small groups in your homes, and yes, in 'Churches' and in all of that, those who truly know the Lord are 'The Church'.

Never forget, there will be those like Alexanda the coppersmith, who 'did great harm' to Paul, because of vested financial interest in idolatry. We will always face such people who misconstrue true faith to bolster their own agenda's.

As it was in the beginning..is now and ever shall be.

Sells, I’ll try and help out here.

Is there a God? – probably not and most certainly not the christain God.
Am I religious? – you appear to be. I have been but I’m getting better. Putting away childish things so to speak.

Humanity has been duped by theistic irrationality for far too long, maybe about time that secular rationality had a run at it. Later well move onto something better as we learn more about ourselves and the nature of the universe we live in (if the theistic irrationalist’s don’t kill us all first in their squabbles for one 'truth' to be dominant).

R0bert

Peter is wrong in his definition of karma when he states:"ones's fate is determined, no matter how one acts."

Karma is a Sanskrit term for the logic of cause and effect.
Positive karma is the result of positive thoughts, words, or actions; negative karma, the opposite; neutral karma is the result of neutral words, thoughts, or acts. Everything that you do results in an effect.

This principle of cause and effect is well illustrated by Newton's Third Law: "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Unarguable.

Your fate is determined by YOU, not some mythical supernatural deity.

Perhaps Peter would benefit from some study of the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha.
"Faustino" and "Yabby" appear to have, and gained an appreciation of reality.

There you go again, Boaz, being sneakily selective in the examples you use to support your position.

>>it is worth noting the central position of the Gospel in the rise of the civil rights movement in the USA...<<

... and you go on to cite the support for Rosa Parks of a group of believers at a Bible school in the Appalachian mountains.

It is also "worth noting" that the Ku Klux Klan too are driven by the Gospel. Under the heading "Ideology", the Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network (the US agency that trains their finest) describes KKK as having "Some Christian fundamentalist beliefs, Christian Identity, white supremacy"

My point is that if you genuinely believe that "True faith does not discriminate against or ill treat those of another color simply because of that color or race..." and "The Christian faith is about knowing Christ, in your own heart..." etc etc, then evidence of the Gospel's influence on this or that is entirely irrelevant.

You cannot on the one hand claim that "the Gospel" does good works through Martin Luther King, but conveniently ignore the works that it performs through David Duke.

So as far as I'm concerned, you can choose a position that faith is sufficient unto itself, and doesn't require reinforcement from outside forces such as churches, religions etc., which appears to be Mr Sellick's position.

Or you can subject your religion to a rigorous examination of its tenets and behaviours, and be prepared to explain them.

After all, one is judged by the company one keeps.

"Religion" is simply another ism. Like communism,naziism etc it is fading becuse it supplies very little in return for what it takes.
The questioning began when the common man learned to read and use his mind.
One can only hope Islamism goes the same way. There is very little in religion that is positive.
Quite a different matter to faith.

Pericles, the KKK is so obviously heretical, based more in the science-based ideas of racial superiority which have sought to find expression through a distortion of religion... hardly a good example ot use.

Yabby, if religion were just about "controlling people", as the Critical Theories would say, seeing as they boil down everything to a simply power relationship, why would people invent a religion which was in itself an inherantly subversive thing? Christianity - at least Catholic, Lutheran and Anglo-Catholic circles, but many others - have the primacy of a well-formed conscience, which means that disorder is actively encouraged. For as much as Christianity teaches a submission to the will of God, the expression of that will in world in a state of constant change will therefore change constantly. That is where there are a myriad men who were uncontrollable who made the Christian world more Christian by challenging it. One of the most important of these was St Francis of Assisi, but he is just one of the visible thousands of Christian reformers. Compared to Islam, which has a set idea of what the law should be, Christianity, by willing itself into perpetual flux, challenge and change, can hardly be called "just about control".

Sure, those people praying might not register in your eyes, but their prayers were a process of betterment which manifested itself in their everyday life, in their families, work, communities and so on. Studies comparing the life of believers to non-believers always show that Christians do more charity, give more money away, are more involved in their communities, commmit fewer crimes, have stabler and happier families, and are more likely to be employed in jobs of public service (emergency services, the military (fitting as Roman soldiers were some of the fastest converts), health, public service). The fact is, they arn't doing this only because they are told to, but because they have been changed by their faith into people who are more likely to... so don't discount those people praying.

DF, I wish that religion would give up on trying to control people and their lives and just preach to their flock. Only that way will we land up with a tolerant society.

Look at the enormous power and wealth that the Vatican has, achieved by controlling the minds of their followers from a young age. They dream up all sorts of things in Rome, then expect everyone to follow
obediently. They can't burn us at the stake anymore, like they used to if we disagreed.

If the Vatican is not about control, why do they try to proscribe exactly what couples or anyone else does in bed and then go out of their way to try and enforce it through various Govt legislations?

Religion should be a lifestyle choice and no more.

I have no problem with people praying, if it satisfies their needs.
I do have a problem if they try to get me to take them seriously.
I respect their right to believe anything that they want, not what they believe.

Hundreds of millions prayed for the last pope, the old fella still fell off the proverbial perch, despite the prayers. Millions prayed for miners in the US caught underground, they still died. Our 2 Aussie miners were rescued by a great team and fortunate circumstances. Why should I now believe that prayers mattered, apart from for those who need religion to cope with life?

I have no problem with freedom of religion, but I also demand freedom from religion for the rest of us, which some corporations like the Catholic Church, simply will not accept.

So the war continues sadly.

Religion perverts people's quest for spirituality since those at the apex seek power for it's own sake.

The truely spiritual people seek knowledge and truth with no rewards in the here after.Our present consciousness ends with death and I'm not vain enough to presume eternal bliss with some imaginary diety.

Pericles.. I wasn't being 'sneaky' I actually made the point that using such things in support of The Church is pretty much a no legs affair, for reasons outlined in the post. But I feel there is value in making the point that the Civil Rights movement had some noteworty sub plots and themes, which would unlikely make it into the mainstream media.

The thing about Rosa Parks, I only heard that a few weeks back on ABC at night, in the context of a story about "Hillbillies and Appalachian mountains"..

Poor old Yabby :) so paranoid about 'being controlled' c'mon mate.. you are a free man. Pity you use that freedom as an opportunity for the flesh ... (as you have explained in other posts)....

2night at Bible study, one of the questions was about "How does love produce growth in the Christian" based on Ephesians 3. Well, the point is, that if growth is not based on love, it will be by 'law'.. i.e. A person might become a more 'obedient' Christian, but unless that obedience is from the heart, and grounded in love, its just a shallow grave, a whitewashed wall, an empty vessel.

David, I commentend about control, as I was asked about it. To my knowledge I had actually not mentioned it on this thread.

Regarding your posts, at your age you should know, that the heart,
which you mention so much, is no more then a pump. If David's heart packed it in, we could shove a pig's heart in there to do the job,
you would keep ticking and keep posting nonsence no doubt :)

If you want to impress people David, you will have to move forward a few hundred years in science and knowledge. People used to think that where the heart is, was in fact the brain, but we have learnt a bit since then. Perhaps you should catch up with the real world

I am constantly amused by the writers to this forum who are afraid that the church is going to force its view of things on others. Have you had a look at the church lately? Is it conceivable that it could force anything on anyone? Why is it that when Christians seek to explain their faith it is interpreted as forcing their ideas on someone but when secularists write blatant propaganda it is all in the spirit of free speech and honest enquiry? The gospel cannot be forced down anyone’s throat, it lives by argument and persuasion like anything else.

The other thing that amuses my is this preciousness about culture. Cultures come and go, some leaving little trace of themselves except for some foundations. It has always been thus. Evolution has something to say about this, the fittest survive. Those cultures that nurture life, that have a good hold on reality survive. Those that practice human sacrifice are crippled by grief. Is it not a good thing that cannibalism is not almost extinct because of Christian missionaries? There are native cultures that are centred around scaring woman and children. We must remember that the culture of classical Greece was the native culture of the time of the rise of Christianity and that it failed because it was already tottering. Its mythology of the pantheon of gods was already a laughing stock and its philosophy, while being the ground of much Western thought did not address the meaning and purpose of life. Just so Roman religious culture.

Cultures fail for a reason, and mostly that reason is theological. They fail because they get the theology wrong, they misunderstand the nature of the world and the place of human beings in it.

Sells are you being serious when you when you claim to be amused by writers complaining about religious doctrine being forced upon them?

It is when Coach threatens with hell and damnation for not believing exactly as he does.

It is BD constantly exhorting one to 'come into Jesus' (a bit homo-erotic that one) and who claims that non christians don't have any sense of right or wrong.

It is Philo telling me that I have no sovereignty over my fertility - I am a woman apparently that makes me a baby machine.

And then there are the christian holy rollers who come knocking, uninvited at my door - no other religion does that. I tell I am happy to discuss their beliefs provided they give me their address and I can just lob in anytime unannounced. Thus far, no-one has given me their address - a bit one sided don't you think?

I could go on, but I hope you are getting the message.

Strange how one never see groups of athiests wandering the suburbs, leaflets in hand ready to spout an nauseum about their beliefs.

Also, Sells, I would like to apologise for the absence of theology in my post - I know how much you do enjoy a theological discussion, which makes me wonder why you don't stick to theist websites. OLO embraces all people not just the extremist christian. This could explain why you receive so much scepticism.

Oh and like or not, Sells, we owe a great deal to the Greeks and Romans for philosophy, politics, art, science and much more.

Besides we don't even know that JC ever actually existed. There is nothing that really substantiates in historical tetxt - only the word of gospels that were written 70 odd years after christ was supposed to have existed.

I think it is this shaky foundation that makes some christians so defensive, what if JC never existed at all? What a house of cards is christianity.

Peter thinks that there are two fundamental (but, in his opinion, silly) questions: Does God exist? & Is one religious or not? But they are not so silly really because if the answer to the first question is that the existence of God (and a supernatural realm in which He and various other beings exist) is both unproven and unprovable then the answer to the second question reduces to asking how and why such beliefs came into human brains and why they hold such sway?

Those questions require extensive research into the development of human society. Undoubtedly much of that has been done and, when understood, the answer is that the content of our brains is strictly determined by the chemical structure of our bodies and its interaction with the physical world around us.

The spirit world, like that of the fairies and hobgoblins, is a creation of the dreamworld of our minds. The sooner we recognise that our lives are determined by the physical world, over which we might exercise some control, the sooner we can effectively solve the problems we face.

On "silly questions" or otherwise that "asks if there is a God or not", there is this relativism that says there would not be a non-theist without the belief that there is a teddy (god) of some sort (even if just a figment of one's imagination). From Popes to Pells to Peters we have these Xtians who are hard wired to have only the absolutes. However, this is relativism once again anyway because in order to have absolutes there needs to be non absolutes.

If the postmodern from the late 1950s represented learning as a move from the centre, a move to deny a centre, a move from the grand narrative, a move from the linear ...........AND to consider the relativism of culture, identity, environment, etc then it says that learning is inherently nomadic rather than homogenous, ....... that learning relies on relevance and curiosity far more than memory or the system.

e.g.
When quite young, I can remember looking at modern art where it was said literally that form was the content. This gave us, through the system of reductionism, the object. e.g. Ad Reinhart with his black square on black paintings. It was at that time that my thoughts were more with an environment than a system hence artists like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys offered relevance and curiosity beyond the lineal. Mostly I considered this post-object rather than the ubiquity of the lateral ‘postmodern’ that floats free and seemingly today is appropriated to stand in for everything and anything. From 1995, with the birth proper of the www it now makes sense that "postmodern" has mutated the modern to reflect a change into the movement it always wanted to be ...... i.e. a hyperlink to the 360 degrees of an infinite meta-narrative with its global network of moderators and always connected. (lateral plus lineal and neither a system but an environment)

Problem is that most of the time people find some relative truth, but many believe and act as if it is the TOTAL truth.

Oh dear, pour Scout is pestered by the odd roving SDA, Mormon or J Witness. I agree that they are pesky but they are hardly proof that the church seeks to control what we think and force belief down our throats.

My point about the existence or non-existence of God is that the present debate, determined as it is by natural science, can only ask after the existence of God in the category of being. It is rather the case that the God referred to in the Judeo/Christian tradition is understood as belonging to the category of event. This necessarily involves history. Nor is this a case of a supernatural agent causing an event but the truth that that event draws attention to. This is the why the history of Israel is important and why theology can be judged by its fruits, its outcomes and also why this tradition cannot be tied to other theistic traditions. So we can answer, yes God exists but not in the category of being.

John Warren is right about our minds being attracted to certain constructs and that this goes some way towards explaining some religious ideation. However the result is nativist religion that is similar to untutored theology that we find in common belief but a far cry from the developed Christian position. I have an essay on my OLO home page whose link is broken at the moment. I will restore it tonight

To understand Christ should be the focus of Christianity not the study of history of those that claim to follow him. Human behaviour gives little resemblence to his message in most of history, so to understand his message we need to study his words.
___________________________

Scout you love to take a directly opposite position. I have made no such statement or implication as: "It is Philo telling me ... I am a woman apparently that makes me a baby machine." Beside that I have not met a man who has been pregnant, or has delivered a baby. As far as I know only women give birth, so stop degrading the role of a woman in the procreation of our species. It rather reflects on your attitude toward childbirth, and children.

Scout you ought to get out more the atheists are there spouting their atheism at every opportunity [visit your local university during orientation]. "Strange how one never see groups of athiests ... spout an nauseum about their beliefs."

Your preference for ignorance of historical fact is appalling. Read the record of the Jewish historian Josephus, the letters of Pilate to Ceasar etc. The first century martyrs of christianity tell their story they certainly believed he existed and changed societies beliefs without threat or coercion.

Quote, "Besides we don't even know that JC ever actually existed. There is nothing that really substantiates in historical tetxt. I think it is this shaky foundation that makes some christians so defensive, what if JC never existed at all? What a house of cards is christianity.

Yabs.. were you on the turps when u did that post mate ? :) quite a few sloppy constructions and spellings etc.. unlike your usual self.

OK.. Time to deal with SCOUT .. *grrr*
hey.. Diane, can you quote me accurately if ur going to use quotes...
I do not call people to 'come into' Jesus, I speak of people "In Christ" and invite people to have FAITH in him, but you will have to leave aside the homo-erotic imagery please.. its not appropriate for the subject.

So, I say "non Christians don't have any sense of right and wrong" do I ? Not a chance. I've often said that apart from divine revelation, all morality is culturally or socially relative, and I've said that without a moral anchor such as we have in the scriptures, people will 'make-it-up-as-they-go' and surprise surprise.. Alistair Nicholson .. family court judge has come out with the idea that Marraige being between a man and woman is a peculiarly 'Christian' idea ? thus, same sex marraige is ok... well.. thin end of the wedge I say.. but more like a blunt object in reality. The man needs to get out more and see if there is ANY culture in the WORLD (apart from trendy modern western nations) where 'marraige' is anything other than male and female....

Scout.. u need to actually read what I write and not impose on my writings your predetermined biases about what I stand for.

p.S... I'm getting into the swing of a decent round house back kick... check this link out.. it will blow yor mind.. have a real close look at how it does down. (Taikwando)
http://media.putfile.com/Moon-Tae-Kwon-Do-Korea-vs-Greece
I reckon its about the best kick I've seen.

and check out this one too....
http://media.putfile.com/knockout_girl

Brain is too tired to engage on the topic tonight.

There is one positive aspect of religion,it had a lot of people scared in the past and honesty was really good for the growth and success of an economy,by producing drastic reductions in both crime and corruption.It this respect,it is going to be hard to replace.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/stories/s1517040.htm

David H. Lewis opens debate on the historicity of Jesus, arguing that New Testament and contemporaneous writings give very little evidence that Jesus actually ever lived.

“Under such an avalanche of ecclesiastical information, we should now all be extremely well-informed about Jesus and Christianity. But we’re not. And the reason we’re so ill informed…………….. they all draw their portrait of Jesus almost exclusively from the gospels.

……………….. But the problem that no-one seems to appreciate is that the gospels are not our very earliest Christian records. Just as we would expect an archaeologist to dig down to the deepest levels to give us a true picture of an ancient scene or event, so we should also expect historians or theologians to consult the earliest written records of Christianity. However, almost without exception they become fixated on the gospels and virtually ignore the very earliest or independent Christian evidence from Paul and others. This gives us a very distorted and inaccurate picture……”

This article is refuted by William Loader at:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/stories/s1517046.htmhttp://www.abc.net.au/religion/stories/s1517046.htm

I did not find that Loader offered any real proof of JC’s existence. No doubt there are many who will disagree with me and that's fine, for a religious to doubt their religion would mean the entire crashing of their belief system. I understand that this would be terrifying.

However both articles make for an interesting read. At least Loader doesn’t take Lewis’ critique PERSONALLY.

Philo & BD – I admit I did not quote you EXACTLY merely the meanings I have extracted from your posts. Perhaps you should be more succinct if I have misinterpreted you.

Sells - the J.W’s et al are more than pesky they violate my privacy. You frequently display such a double standard – vilifying atheists for having their opinions and excusing Christians for thumping on and on about theirs.

But thanks for the entertainment people.

So gods now an event, not a being. How do you talk to an event, describe this event if its only a happening.

“This is the why the history of Israel is important and why theology can be judged by its fruits, its outcomes and also why this tradition cannot be tied to other theistic traditions. ”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the outcomes, the constant wars, invasions, destroyed indigenous cultures, inter-religious conflict, fruits of the events works. Judaism and your event are tied to other theistic traditions by the events of history, are you denying that connection.

Sells you all have this habit of self-righteous indignation and the belief your entitled to change your interpretations to suit yourself any time you like. Explain the event, god, without personifying it as you have been doing until now.

“Duped by secular rationalism”. How can being rational deceive you. Secularism is the acceptance of all beliefs, wheres the deceit in that. The again, your not talking about free choice are you, but the fact that secularism has taken away your beliefs ability to control.

Arjay, Christianity had nothing to do with the formulation of decent laws. It has a lot to do with the formulation of restrictive and vengeful laws. As well as implementation of many despotic, barbaric and cruel laws throughout its history. Its been non believers who have pushed for decency in law and the removal of personal choice restrictive laws.

Sadly the believers in god can't conceive of how non believers think, free thought isn't a part of the theology, repetitive thought is its backbone.

John Warren may like to read my article on evolutionary psychology and religion. You may find it at:

http://petersellick.nationalforum.com.au/data/Evo%20herm.htm

However interesting and explanatory this material may be, it does not as Boyer and the likes of Tooby, and someone who should know better, Daniel Dennett would have it erase the significance of religion as a cultural phenomenon. None of these authors understand that culture cannot be explained entirely by nature and thus reduce all religion to nature.

"I am constantly amused by the writers to this forum who are afraid that the church is going to force its view of things on others. Have you had a look at the church lately? Is it conceivable that it could force anything on anyone?"

Umm Sells, you clearly need to broaden your thinking beyond Australia's borders and look at history and what is happening elsewhere in the world. Yes, in Australia the church has largely been neutered, but mention abortion or euthanasia and notice how politicians with an agenda turn up from everywhere, even here.
It is not without reason that the Vatican is considered as one of the major political lobbying forces on the planet. They spend huge resources to enforce whatever they can. An example just in Europe:

http://www.population-security.org/cffc-97-02.htm

The right to a divorce, use of contraception, abortion, gay rights,
euthanasia, etc, all all rights that the church would ban, given half a chance. In Nicargua for instance, Catholics are still trying to force 9 year old rape victims to have their babies, which IMHO is pretty close to child abuse. In Chile, the right to a divorce has only just been granted, the church fought it all the way.

Why people are religious is easily explained. Learn a little bit about neuroscience. The natural state of the brain is homeostasis,
or balanced brain chemistry, neither happy or sad. If you walked through a forest 2000 years ago and the guy 6ft ahead of you was struck by lightning, you would be terrified that it could happen to you. Any explanation would make you feel better, what you want is perceived certainty. Wether its really true or not doesent matter, as long as it makes you feel better. Religion provides easy answers to complex questions, ie. god did it, now burn 3 goats and it won't happen to you. People feel better, they have an answer, no more anxiety. Note how the religious fanatics on here, all have their simple answer, which makes them feel better.

Yabby,
Talk about simple answers. How is this for a sample of a simpleton?

"Why people are religious is easily explained. Learn a little bit about neuroscience. The natural state of the brain is homeostasis, or balanced brain chemistry, neither happy or sad. If you walked through a forest 2000 years ago and the guy 6ft ahead of you was struck by lightning, you would be terrified that it could happen to you. Any explanation would make you feel better, what you want is perceived certainty. Wether its really true or not doesent matter, as long as it makes you feel better. Religion provides easy answers to complex questions, ie. god did it, now burn 3 goats and it won't happen to you. People feel better, they have an answer, no more anxiety. Note how the religious fanatics on here, all have their simple answer, which makes them feel better"

I trust that in this statement your hostile emotions have now been released. FEEL BETTER? Stop talking nonsense and learn where God is revealed, if you are to understand the spiritual mind. God is not a being. God is not a vengeful being up in the sky. God is spirit revealed in his artfull work of creation. Because the design principles of the physical Creation have been put in place from the beginning, Gods primary role today is with relationship with man and man's behaviour. As Christians believe, Jesus demonstrated the very heart and mind of God in relationship; forgiving, reconciliation, serving each other, even enemies, with love and devotion to bring about the order of God on Earth.

Yabby the fact that Sells offers (to further his own argument) a link to his own work says all that need be said about Sells. Reminds me of something Elle McPherson said once, "I only ever read what I have written".

I've taken the time to read Sells “Evolutionary Psychology: A New Hermeneutic”, it uses evolution as a basis for the argument, then tries to refute it with semantics. Its very narrow in its conceptualisation, a perfect example of a primitive mind trying to use semantics to justify a contradictory illusion

A child that's in a household where many languages are used, learns them all equally yet adopts as its first language, the one thats used the most. A sign of learned behaviour, just as animals learn things with the right approach. Life is a learning experience, not a forgone conclusion

This one statement by sells says it all. “However, how does the child learn to distinguish cats from dogs etc “. Sell references for his theory is the bible.

“God therefore thinks, regrets, feels, plans, is angry and is merciful. God also has a ?strong right arm? and a face” Hang on, isn't god an event, not a being.

How can use use secular rational, to support your theory that secularism has duped us. Isn't it the belief in monotheism thats duped monotheists. Doesn't the original letters of Paul mean more than the accepted historical understanding that the new testament is at least 3rd hand knowledge, not written by the attributed authors. Doesn't the evidence that the old testament is heavily plagiarised from earlier works, mean anything, or is rational thinking wrong.

The difference between whats in the bible, attributed to Paul and the actual letters written by him. Surely shows how far from reality the irrationality of believing the bible to be a work of god, and event, spirit, not being, is. But then we are made in the image, isn't there some blatant contradiction and hypocrisy is these statements.

This may seem a bit disjointed, but you should read Sells for a dislocation from reality.

Lol Scout, I read his link and IMHO there are various flaws, but that’s another long story. Evol. Psych will not threaten religion, because people are religious for different reasons to those studying how the mind works. Religion fulfills a need for those who need it in their lives, to take away their fears of death, to give them hope, to give them purpose, to help them deal with anxiety.
So the perceived truth is all that matters, the rest can be rationalized away, people do it all the time in their lives.

Philo, your particular interpretation of your particular religion,
is just that and no more. You are absolutely convinced of your spirits etc, but if we look at global patterns, they tell us something. Every tribe discovered anywhere has had some kind of god or gods. All religions around the world believe with equal conviction that theirs is the one and only and people believe that their particular interpretation of that religion is correct.

So it comes back to how the human mind works. Perhaps you’ve had your head too deeply in religious books to care, but if you really want to understand people, you’ll find that much of the
claptrap about so called free will is exactly that, the brain is far more complex then that.

Emotions matter hugely, those structures of the mind evolved for good reasons. But the stronger an emotion, the less our ability to reason, often we aren’t even aware of it.

If in your old days, you’d like to make a start and learn a bit about your own brain and how it works and why it works that way, here is a good little spot to start:

http://staff.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

We certainly get some spooky beliefs like what someone here said that "God is spirit and we are spirit beings". Then Peter says that his teddy is "not of the category or being" but "understood as the category of event." Just seems that teddy spookspersons should only spook when spooken to, or else think again if that is possible.

How are we to understand some magical, hippy notion of this teddy where there is an event that is an unexpected occurrence of some sort, unfore-seeable and unpredictable, without causality. For most people this is not at all unusual unless you are someone who has never had any surprises in your entire life. e.g. The Swans winning the Holy Grail last year would certainly be such an event that surprised many because it did not respect the previously in place chain of cause and effects. But to leave it at the unexplainable is to deny reason. So it is whence did this surprise event manifest. What was its cause? What events previously determined this outcome and will this determine its future status?

Many people will take the old way, the mind-first way, and endorse an unexpected occurrence with another particular being like a teddy of superior intelligence. This is the top shelf teddy found in the Bible.

Because an unexpected occurrence only brings into the present in our consciousness, then of itself it require a causal explanation. There is no teddy here at all. There is only a learning opportunity to exercise some testable implications and rational functions of the mind to understand and to avoid any hasty conclusions. Before concluding that we need something more like a magic unveiling, or a transcendence, or gratuitousness, or a mystery of disclosure, or a need to be loved, then just intentionally study what is already here because it is an orderly place. We just need to find a correlation by trying some tests to see the reality of our relationship to the environment, our bodies, and our emotions.

If teddy is to be "understood as the category of event" then teddy don't exist.

The great gift that the Enlightenment gave to society was the separation of the Church and State. This political change ultimately leads to relatism because the State no longer controls the religious mind of the public. Once people are free to choose their own brand of religion they will choose the one that is the most convenient to them based on their own understanding, conscience, and happiness.

So, why are there many brands of religion? Because no particular brand can point to definitive proof to back up its theology. The lack of hardcore evidence is tantamount across all the major religions including monotheism and the mystic religions.

Those people that demand definitive proof and hardcore evidence end up as atheists and agnostics. Within this group there is no relatism because they base their knowledge on the tangible and the physical. That is, scientific experiment. This comparatively small group has most benefitted from the Enlightenment and the resultant political separation of the Church and the State because they are no longer hounded or persecuted by the various theocratic bureaucracies.

An interesting and relevant quote from Darwin turned up in to-day’s Sydney Morning Herald, in an article by Don Watson, it is: “It appears to me that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science”.

It is so in this discussion. The attempt, by those who think that words should relate to things and the relation between them, to guide the discussion towards something meaningful in our life sinks in the face of a fluff of emotionally based concepts which have no other base than the internal workings of the individual brains.

For Darwin's public read Sells and his sympathisers.

Sterile entertainment.

You have some interesting things to say here Peter, Most of it is based on your myopic Catholic dogma but you, of course, have a right to express it. What bothers me is that these discussions are mostly relegated to forums such as this and are not argued on a wider stage. Take 'Compass' on the ABC. We are subjected to the philosophical meanderings of football players and other such theological giants but have almost no discussion about the big questions such as these. Secular rationalists seem to be completely banned from appearing in shows like this and therefore have little opportunity to discuss the issues that occupy your attention. An article in yesterday's Melbourne 'Age' had a lengthy discussion about the merits (or lack of) of the 'Da Vinci Code' movie with input from a variety of religious believers. Not a word from a secular rationalist.
If you want to debate theology with secular rationalists then please suggest to the ABC and other madia that they stop ignoring us.

Ooooops! Sorry Peter.

"....He has held various positions in the Uniting and Anglican churches, and several Western Australian universities."

I called you a Catholic. My mistake. Some of us secular rationalists find the distinction a little difficult to comprehend. I could have gone to the block for that mistake in Tudor England. Thankfully our secular state will protect me.

Priscillian says: "please suggest to the ABC and other madia that they stop ignoring us"

I agree completely with you, and I have requested the ABC to give time on religious programs to atheists. They claim that existing programs, such as Late night live are the counterweight, to the many religious programs on radio and Tv. What bulldust!!

Maybe this should be the debate: why doesn't the ABC give time to non religious views - could it be fear of their political masters and their minority mates?

So we find ourselves near the end (I hope) of yet another string of posts about my articles. With the exception of DFXK, who demonstrates real thought and consideration of what I have written, we have been treated to the usual blind abuse pretending to be debate. I find that Darwin is held against me, and me a Darwinist who has written on the evolutionary origin of religious thought! I find that I am accused of believing in fairies and such and me a working scientist! Everything I say is sneered at without any intellectual engagement. I think the more vicious posters protest too much. They damage their credibility with their lack of consideration of the articles and their compulsive reiteration of old arguments that miss me completely.

TR the separation between church and state was not instigated in the Enlightenment, it arose initially between David and the Nathan , or perhaps previously between Saul and Samuel and endured during the whole of the following history. Please read some history.

I draw one consolation in all of this and that is I must be getting up some noses if they are willing to spend so much energy trying to refute me. I am glad I am such an irritant.

Sells I am completely mystified by what your agenda is by posting here. OLO is indeed a pluralist forum, yet when you are disagreed with you react with insinuations that OLO posters are incapable of intelligent debate with you. When you overtly insult the intelligence of others on this forum, don't fake surprise when aspersions are cast in your direction. I can only surmise from your most recent post that 'debate' for you means everyone in agreement with your article. Again I ask, why do you bother submitting articles here?

In your link you stated that the human brain does not have a 'god' spot. I agree. However, you do have a blind spot to secular rationalism. After all it is the very application of scientific inquiry which led Darwin to his Origin of the Species theory which you claim to believe. I found your link a convoluted mix of fact and the supernatural (religion) - hardly convincing to the lay person.

Try connecting with OLO posters on an equal playing field instead of claiming the intellectual and moral high ground. WHY? Because you currently present as arrogant and it is this which "gets up people's noses".

Yes, Sells, it has been another interesting journey, hasn't it? But before you disappear to think up some more religio-trivia questions for us, I'd appreciate just one further piece of clarification.

You conclude the first stanza of your article with the observation "[t]heological relativism has subverted all theological discussion", suggesting that this leads to deeper and darker forms of relativism, like competing religions and the rise of Pol Pot.

To this, you offer the antidote of "theological rationalism". Sounds good, as always. But you limit our ability to relate to this concept by describing it as "theological formulations [that] do not float in midair, unconnected to the reality that exists around us, but ... describe that reality in deeper and more accurate ways than we can experience".

Tying it to realities that we cannot experience gives you a great deal of license to say “that's not it!”, but is ultimately unhelpful to the rest of us.

Fortunately, later on we are in more familiar territory. "It seems that our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called 'secular rationalism'"

But hold your horses there, mister. Where do “theological rationalism” and “secular rationalism” differ, except in the eye of the beholder?

Secular rationalism, you imply, already has a thick overlay of relativism, with all the evils that relativism brings.

But how come you do not apply the same rules to theological rationalism? After all, you earlier made a convincing case for the appearance of theological relativism in the guise of organized religion.

Surely, if it is possible to have theological rationalism that is a good thing (i.e. untainted with relativism) it is possible to have secular rationalism, equally untainted with relativism? What rules are different when putting these concepts next to each other for examination?

I suspect you are actually getting very bored with writing articles for this audience, and boredom inevitably gives rise to glaring logical inconsistencies like this.

Maybe it is time to call it a day, eh?

Pericles.
On the contrary, I am not bored with writing these article, I am just bored with the responses on this page. I will persist for some time, I am, after all, an official correspondent for OLO.

But to give an honest answer to your query on the varieties of epistemology. As a scientist I use secular rationality all the time. I would say that my list of publications in prominent scientific journals is a good track record. This kind of rationality is what we use in dealing with the objective world, the world of nature.

However, when dealing with questions of the orientation of human life this kind of rationality leads to a reduced understanding of the human. Can Dawkins and Dennett and the others provide an explanation of culture? Theology is part of culture, it does not pretend, or should not, try to provide an explanation of the mechanisms of nature. That was the great mistake the church made against Galileo.

The orientation of the human is contained in story, the Christian story being only one of many. Even secular rationalists who think that their epistemology embraces all of life subscribe to a story that includes the power of the intellect, progress etc. What I am saying is that the Christian story has deep roots in the experience of men and as such contains deeper truth than the simple assertion that we can work it all out on our own.

As Clement of Alexandria said: The Christian can do anything the Romans could do, only better, because we are rooted in truer doctrine. Replace the Romans with those who restrict their thinking to secular rationalism and you get my point.

So, what do we get from you? More sneering, or a genuine engagement in the argument?

Pericles, although I agree with most of your arguments the suggestion that Peter should give up posting articles fills me with horror. Peter provides me with insight into the mind of the educated believer. I don't agree with most of his ideas but the make me think and that is more than I can say for most other believers. Peter, keep it coming, challenge us, abuse us, test us......we love it. As for Peter's article - I am having trouble with the title "Duped by Secular Rationalism" which is suggesting that secular and rationalaism have any more relationship that say... eggs and bacon. Sure they are served up on the same plate but are completely unrelated things. Secularity as "the view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education"... is simply a way of running systems without considering different religious points of view, a situation brought about by centuries of sectarian conflict. Secularism is not atheism and is the natural consequence of theocracy. e.g the middle east will have no peace until secular goverments develop and predominate.
Rationalism is a method of argument. Secular systems are not always rational and vica versa. Religion is irrational making rational thought a real bother to the believer..... please don't blame secular systems for this.

>>So, what do we get from you? More sneering, or a genuine engagement in the argument? <<

If you were to trouble to answer the questions I put to you, we might have a chance of "engagement", as you put it.

As it stands, I queried your logic, and you simply avoided the question with the politician's trick of reiterating our own point, but from a different angle. If you don't think the question is valid, say so, and give your reasons. If you think the question has merit, address it directly and courageously.

I'll try again, unsneeringly.

Where do “theological rationalism” and “secular rationalism” differ?

I suggested that since both are capable of being tainted by relativism, surely, equally, both are capable of being unsullied by it?

If you disagree with this possibility, can you explain why?

You have tried to set up a completely one-sided argument. While you are able to admit that there can exist both theological rationalism and theological relativism, you deny the possibility that there can equally be secular rationalism and secular relativism.

Claiming that theology is part of culture without accepting that "a-theology" is also part of culture is to set up a preposterously loaded proposition.

I put it to you that theology is neither necessary nor sufficient for culture to exist, simply one possible component.

Peter says in his article ........ ".......... What is revealed in revelation is the grain of the universe and our place in it and we ignore this to our peril" and further "........ if we get our theology wrong we see only a distortion of reality, the consequences of which will blight our lives."

If we are to understand Peter's reason for "theology" then take particular note of his use of the word "revelation". Most people would understand that "revelation" anything is some uncovering or disclosure via communication from the divine that has been partially or wholly hidden or unknown. Perhaps and in Peter's case is he not concluding that "revelation" is some magic unveiling of a gratuitous nature that is given to humankind by a divine personality? Isn't this how the Jewish people have understood God's will throughout history where consciousness is a religious evolution with a theology? (I take it that consciousness and culture are interrelated where the first implies the second,)

As if this mindset isn't enough, we next get what he said today ........."As a scientist I use secular rationality all the time". In a further conflicting statement, he follows it up with "However, when dealing with questions of the orientation of human life this kind of rationality leads to a reduced understanding of the human." Exceptionalism at its best.

This is all the more confusing because, wearing his scientist cap, Peter in his "Evolutionary Psychology: A New Hermeneutic" starts out with a view that consciousness is a biological phenomenon realized in brain structures. e.g. "Such a suggestion has been blocked in the past by our insistence that culture exists in a realm that is separate from our biology." However from this point on he becomes enmeshed in teleological argument.

Just seems that Peter's philosophical issues conflict to the point where it is not possible to approach the scientific questions intelligently. e.g. He treats the mental and the physical as two distinct metaphysical realms ....... i.e. dualism with teddy magic in there somewhere.

Sells, you might be a scientist, but as one swallow does not make a summer, one scientist could well be flawed in his thinking. One thing about science is that it is fairly specialized. So you might know a great deal about specific fields of knowledge, but there could well be other areas of knowledge about which you know very little, even though they could be critical to human understanding. Simply fobbing off those
who do not agree with you is not answering the questions.

You wonder about culture. Now if you were interested in primatology,
you would know that De Waal, Wrangham and others talk of what could be called chimpanzee culture. Things that chimps learn from each other as part of living in tribes, as a social species, much like
humans do. So what do you want explained about it?

As a scientist, you would know that there are no parts of the human brain that chimps don’t have, its more a question of size. As our
brain evolved to be larger, we got to think more, to wonder more about the world. All those questions produced many answers, but also many anxieties about what we did not know or understand.

Anxious humans make for unhappy humans. As there is hardly a tribe on the planet which did not invent some kind of god to explain what they did not understand about the world, I put it to you that religion
evolved to quell human anxiety and explain the things that various tribes
and cultures did not understand about the world. It satisfied their emotional needs and emotions matter hugely, as any good neuroscientist will tell you. So point out where my hypothesis is flawed.

Dear Sells,

The path between the politics of ancient israel and modern societies is a long and convoluted one. We can learn from the Bible but the world has moved on since the days of parochial Jewish tribalism. Far more relevant is the following letter by Thomas Jefferson. It was written in 1802 during the formation of the American constition and still remains an inspiration to Western secular goverments. Its ideals could not have been framed without the free-thought of the immediateky preceding Enlightenment period.

'Gentlemen, — The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.'

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.'

Amen.

TR,

you seem to think that the US constitution's refusal to establish a State religion, and Jefferson's thoughts are made in a Godless vacuum.

Did the founding fathers of the US make such arrangements independent of a belief in God? No, they were men of faith, Christian Gentlemen, but, freed from the shackles of Europe they sought to practice their faith in the absence of older rites and continue to this very day to reinvent the Christian (and other) message in more & more guises.

Unlike Yabby and others, I do not see the Pope as someone who controls my behaviour, but, I see the Church of Rome & its teachings as a reference point that, like or unlike other philosophies or belief systems, I can embrace or reject.

To give one's assent of faith is a serious matter and to compromise such an important decision for the sake of fashion, political or economic expediency is unfortunate.

Reality check
Quote "Did the founding fathers of the US make such arrangements independent of a belief in God? No, they were men of faith, Christian Gentlemen, but, freed from the shackles of Europe they sought to practice their faith in the absence of older rites and continue to this very day to reinvent the Christian (and other) message in more & more guises." Sorry Reality but you are wrong!

The founding fathers were men of faith but they were deists NOT christians. They were also people who wanted complete separation between church & state. To protect those with any religious views OR NONE!

Please don't believe me. Click on the link & read it for yourself.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/12/original_intent.html

Bosk gets it right. Emerson was a deist and no Christian. His desire for a dividing wall between church and state was motivated by a raw grab for power. We see the same thing In Europe with the rise of the nation state. This is the way secular power removes the faith from competition, it isolates it to the personal and removes it from the political. But the trial and murder of Jesus was a political event, among other things, and the gospel cannot be kept out of the political. This is why politicians complain when the church gets involved with politics, they hate it, because they think they have the field to themselves.

Posted at 4:36am.. Peter...get a life!
Anyway. The history of the Diests in America is an interesting one in itself but to give them the base motivation of "a raw grab for power" is a bit rich and insulting to the last set of truly great men in American politics (in my humble opinion).... Have to disagree with you on that one Peter.
To state that "secular power removes faith from the competition" also shows a complete misunderstanding of the development of secular government. As I stated earlier in this forum, secular government is simply a logical result of the failure of theocracy. The founders of the USA did not want to propogate the divisive sectarian power structures of Europe and felt that there must be a better way. Strangely enough Constantine did the same thing by allowing all religions to flourish and NOT instituting a state religion.
To say that the secular state isolates religion from the political and removes it to the individual is also drawing a long bow, this assumes that there is no organized religion within the state and no religious influence on government...e.g Pell's man in Parliament - Tony Abbot.
You state "the gospel cannot be kept out of the political". I ask why do we need the confused amalgam of ancient Hellenistic, Paganised Judaism to become a basis for government? Sure the churches have a well earned right to participate in the hurly burly of politics as do Atheists, Scientologists, Communists and Muslims et al. The "Gospel" as you put it has never been demonstated as being the basis of good governance. Theocracy nevers works and a state based on a literalist religious belief struggle because of it.
You are right in stating that the trial of Jesus, as told, was a political event - that's all it was. The whole of the New testament is a political document...a raw grab for power.

A characteristic of these teddy infected types is an obvious and complete lack of imagination. The simple notion that Peter puts forward ... i.e. "....... desire for a dividing wall between church and state was motivated by a raw grab for power", speaks more of his own need for coercion (i.e. religious coercion) than any thought for life, liberty, happiness, religious toleration, equal rights before the law and creating a democratic government that can rule equitably as many of the United States' founders agreed to.

Often overlooked in the conception of the United States is an understanding of the indigenous aspects and the early influence of Roger Williams. For some enlightened reading with the indigenous aspects at http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/ and Roger Williams at http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/EoL/chp5.html.

Take note of some of William's writings e.g. "Forcing of conscience is soul-rape," and pointing out that even Jesus Christ "commands tolerance of anti-Christians." In Europe one Edwin Poteat commented about Williams ......"The enthusiasm and much of the political idealism of John Milton and Oliver Cromwell were derived from their personal contacts with Williams . . . in so far as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Sir Henry Vane, and others were inspired by Milton and Cromwell, they too are intellectual heirs of Williams. "

Peter,
A request....and I think I speak for a number of us.
Please, please, pretty please could you please write us an article on how you think this country should be governed if it is not too much trouble. If you want "faith" in governent does this mean you want a theocracy based on your version of reality? How about a generic type of Christianity in the lower house with an upper house full of Protestant clerics? Do other non-Christian religions get a gurnsey in your Christian Theocracy of Australia?
Do you envisage a Christian King of Australia claiming authority from a Jewish God?
Will Atheism or secular thought or expression be banned?
Should I stop writing the stuff I write? Have I something to worry about or will you keep me in a state of high anxiety but refusing to answer this plea?

Priscillian,
I thought I had written just such an essay:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3086

I have never advocated a theocracy and give good reasons for not doing so. I think Christianity functions under a variety of political systems but is constrained to call for and work for justice in those systems. Chrisianity is not a politics but a transformation of politics.

Peter Sellick seems to yearn for the days of absolute religious truth. Of course there was never such: even prior to the great split in Christianity there were Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. It boots nothing to say that some of these were largely unknown to the west (tho how one could ever assert this about Islam, I don't know). Humans have always been fabulously inventive when it comes to matters religious, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The rise of secular rationalism (largely, the scientific method as strictly defined) was successful because it provided two things: results, in the form of advances which made life less "nasty, brutish and short"; and a sense of certainty tempered by testing. That is, its claims were always subject to testing via observation and experiment.

Naturally some of the gloss has gone off science courtesy of mistakes made along the way - especially in the application of discoveries (Hiroshima, indistrial pollution, overuse of antibiotics, etc). Nevertheless its fundamental methodology is sound.

Sellick (or anyone else) can make any religious claim they want and it cannot be tested. His problem is that he has no way of demonstrating the truth of whatever faith he holds. If however I make a scientific claim (eg, that the world is flat) it can be tested and (in this case) disproved.

Relativism is a religious curse precisely because we have no reliable way of distinguishing between the assertions of the Pope, Peter Sellick, the Prophet Muhammed, the Buddha or a tribal shaman somewhere in Siberia. We do know, because they contradict each other, that most of them are certainly wrong. One may be right, but as for which, you takes yer pick.

Indeed, as Sellick himself wrote in an earlier column: "Given the lack of contemporary evidence for a supernatural agent, most have sensibly opted for the non-religious option and have turned their back on the church which is seen to be hopelessly backward and retarding of the human spirit."

(Link: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4359 )

Pity he doesn't show the sense he recognises.

Sells, I’ve read your other article and will make a few comments: Yes, people are concerned about the Religious Right. Their vote brought George Bush back to power after all!
That’s the price we all have to pay, for religious fanaticism and its potentially powerful effect on politics.

A tolerant secular democracy, with religion as no more then a lifestyle choice, is in today’s world the only way to achieve social
harmony and tolerance. The world has changed from what it was.
Neither people nor their beliefs are homogenous, as they were.

Active church going Christians make up maybe 10% of our society. Our nation is now a potpourri of nations, races and beliefs. Government needs to deal with them all, not just with 10%.

Your article seems to imply that religion has some kind of patent on morality. I would argue with that. Rather I suggest that morality is grounded in biology, as we can show that various
species pair-bond, display empathy and altruism, share food
with others etc. Social species evolved to get on with one another, for the benefit of the species as a whole.

I really wish that the churches would stick to proclaiming the Gospels etc, as you suggest. The reality is quite different.
Look at the enormous effort of the Catholic lobby, operating
quietly behind the scenes, to try to enforce their agenda on
Govt policies around the world. If they had their way, divorce would still be banned, so would condoms, other forms of contraception, abortion, euthanasia etc. Why should I pay any attention or notice of what that church would like to dictate to me
by law?

Yes our society is based on what is rational. Our courts, our political systems etc all depend on it. If I went to court and made a claim based on the fact that I heard voices from heaven or whatever, they would not take me seriously, which is fair enough.
If you believe things further then that, that’s your business, or at least provide some substantiated evidence for your claims.

Mhoram
What an absurd proposition you make. Have you not heard of the humanities? When universities have a department of theology they are situated in the humanities alongside history, languages, philosophy etc. They are not in the science faculty as you seem to assume. As such they are not open to proof as the sciences are. Rather they rely on the sort of rationality that is applied to the other humanities.

Your statement betrays the narrow thinking of modernity in which the only truth is scientific truth. But a poem can be true, so can a painting or a novel or a piece of music. Our problem is that we have reduced the arts to the function of entertainment so that they are removed from their essential place in our lives.

This is also the result of the pragmatic philosophies of the century before last in which everything had to have a purpose, be useful. But art can only be art if it denies all uses, denies all programs for its effectiveness. It is only when all agendas are scrapped, when the art is truly useless, that it approaches the truth. What use are the psalms of Israel, or the book of Job, or the gospels?

You would have just one faculty at the university, science. What an awful narrow group of nerds we would produce with university degrees. Would they know who they were, would they know anything about what it means to be human?

My apologies for going on so, but I live with scientists and some of the more fanatical ones are also the most boring people I come across.

This is getting more and more surreal.

On the one hand relativism in both its theological and secular flavours is lambasted, in line with the usual mantra “anything else is simply making it up as you go along”

Now Mr Selleck condemns “...the narrow thinking of modernity in which the only truth is scientific truth. But a poem can be true, so can a painting or a novel or a piece of music.”

The challenge of this to most of us mortals is that it undermines our understanding of art, or truth, or both.

Is the suggestion that all poems contain truth? Obviously not. So which poems can be true? Good ones, surely, but aren't we now in the realm of personal choice, where subjectivity and relativism rule?

Also, does a poem that was much admired for its veracity in, say, a Victorian drawing room, retain its truth indefinitely? Is truth-in-poetry a forever thing, or is it somehow relative to time and place?

Like those magnificent Van Goghs. Ignored in their own time, now regarded as ouevres de genie. But... are they “true”? Perhaps they are simply popular. How to decide?

A novel can be true too, apparently. But which ones? Is it only possible to recognize the truth in a novel if you happen to be a devoutly faithful Christian – a theological rationalist, perhaps?

And music – ah, music! Truth in music. Is it a truth recognizable by us all, or only by a chosen few? What of those famous first night audiences who booed music that was later loved – Bizet's Carmen, Mahler's Fourth, Tchaikovsky's D Minor Violin concerto – were they unable to recognize the truth? Or maybe, again, the quality of a piece is not sufficient to render it “true”. Is Wagner's Ring more or less true than Palestrina's Kyrie? Or is this dangerous relativism?

I think I know what you were trying to say, Mr Selleck. I even agree with what I think you mean. But I do also think that it is contradictory of so much that you have written before.

"As such they are not open to proof as the sciences are."

Religion certainly is open to proof. Claims of being in touch with the Almighty itself are either right or wrong. The rest is just
philosophical navel gazing. If there is no proof, then thats all its worth to most of us.

Your last post highlighted exactly why we need a secular Govt, with freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion. Your truth is your perceived truth. Your wonder about gospels etc, you might find interesting, lots of us find it all terribly boring and irrelevant.

The Jesus philosophy is simply that, a philosophy from some guy of a long time ago. You are free to worship it, others can reach our own philosophical conclusions about life and the world we live in, based on our ability to reason and feel.

Problems arise when politicians try to impose their religious philosophies on the rest of us. If Govt was loaded with people who happened to be JWs, who tried to ban blood transfusions, there would be an outcry. If Govt was coloured with people who shared the views of the Taliban and tried to impose those views on us, once again an outcry. Similarly if Catholics try to impose their dogma
on us, it is only fair that we shout very loudly about it, to protest about religious interference in our lives.

Religion should be a lifestyle choice and no more. If some want it to be more, then you'll need some evidence to justify your claims.

Yes, I agree somewhat with Sells when he writes;

'Your statement betrays the narrow thinking of modernity in which the only truth is scientific truth. But a poem can be true, so can a painting or a novel or a piece of music.'

Science does contain truth, but most, if not all of science is made up of facts. What's more, the vast majority of scientific facts are verifiable.

The same CANNOT be said of any religion. Religion illuminates truth but not through facts. Virtually none of the 'facts' contained in religious literature can be verified. To do this we would need other secular sources from non-biased witnesses. This we don't have in any great measure. This is especially true of the Bible, Koran and Hadith.

Also, it is not only religious historical data that cannot be verified. Supernatural claims are also beyong verification. There is simply no way of gathering meaningful facts about the nature of God, angels, miracles, so called prophetic visions, creation ex nihilo, Noahs flood, or even Daniel in the lions' den.

TR
Agreed. But does that mean that we have to do away with legends, gospels, histories etc? If we relied on undisputed fact we would have a very mean life. I believe I love my wife and I act as thought I love her but is it a fact? We do know that Jesus lived and as the creed says, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, a known figure in history. We have much less reliable information as to what he said and did. The gospels are not histories, they are the church’s proclamation. You cannot expect them to live up to some modernist idea of the facts of history.
BTW there is no such thing as an un-interpreted fact. All facts fit into stories, by themselves they make no sense.

Hi again Sells,

'But does that mean that we have to do away with legends, gospels, histories etc? If we relied on undisputed fact we would have a very mean life.'

I agree with the first sentence. The stories as related in the Bible are extremely important to our society. But we do well not to be overly literal or 'fundamentalist' about them.

I totally disagree with the second sentence. 'Fact minded' scientists get enormous joy delving into nature. Speaking from personal experience I get great meaning from uncovering the raw facts of the world around me. It all depends on your personality and how your brain is 'wired'. Some people have esoteric brains and some people are scientifically minded.

Sells

O dear we are touchy today aren't we? How U arrived at yr interpretation of my remarks is beyond me. Point of fact, I have an Honours degree in HISTORY (1971) & am not a scientist, tho I do read people like Hawking, Davies, Pagels and Greene.

A poem or great work of literature is not "true" in any objective sense. It can move one, cause one to contemplate any number of aspects of the human condition, and is certainly not to be chucked out with contempt. Likewise the study of history is important - Santayana vs the odious Henry Ford.

Certainly I have no objection (quite the contrary) to the study of religion & theology. They are very important aspects of human life and history and to ignore them is indeed narrow-minded. [Ironically, I won the "Christian Doctrine" prize in senior RC high school (longer ago than I care to admit) while on the way to agnosticism. I treated the material as just another subject, and did well.] But I would make this point: such studies require a degree of detachment. This doesn't mean U must be a non-believer to pursue them (absurd notion) but it does require a "suspension of belief" (like the literary notion of "suspended disbelief" needed to read eg, the Lewis or Tolkien fantasies).

You are deliberately conflating such studies with the wholly different studies pursued in eg, theological colleges which train ministers of religion, priests, etc. There belief is not only not suspended, it is required or at least assumed. The sort of stuff you peddled in the column under discussion is appropriate for such an institution, but it's intellectually bankrupt to market it to a wider audience under the guise of a "theological study".

It seems as if we have forgotten society here. It is all very well for learned ones to get their rocks off on fact and measurable truths, and scoff at we “weaklings” who carry a faith; what about those amongst us who just get on with life as good souls who are struggling with life's journey across barren country in their lives for whatever reason.

We need joyful and comforting words in our stories, which as a whole carry an intrinsic challenge to each listener. The words of rationalists are so intelligent, though frightfully barren. There is of course a place for them; but not in the public discourse of human affairs.

I feel that much of what Peter writes is towards freeing up people caught in the 'old time religions' that are on their knees after 500 years of Reformation and Counter-Reformation antics. Formulaic salvation, doctrinal dreariness and unreflective babble.

As a society we need the freedom for us to feel okay about referencing our "of Godness" in the public square whilst eschewing the style and language of a pulpit. And if we reference back ( not preach) to Jesus Christ and the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of his Church on matters human in the exposition of some public policy, then that is as valid as someone quoting Freud, Darwin, Marx or Adam Smith. And there is plenty to reference back to.

The paucity of the human spirit in the public square today demands we draw on our story, our deep roots of Christian culture, even in the light of its overstated faults. After all, is not the story about a path to live life to its fullness? Has it not been the wellspring of all that is good in our western culture? The rightness of learning and the systems for it to blossom. (continued)

Soren Kierkegaard wrote of the Absolute Paradox: that of Jesus the man being God - you accept it in faith or you reject it as an affront to reason. We of faith support that it is okay for others to adopt the rejection position. It is after all a personal choice in life. Yet, we have not cast off reason. It needs to be present in our understanding of things as they are within the faith realm which encompasses all of life and its wonderful stage.

And so when it comes to development of public policy, then we will again put up our stories as being the undercurrent to true civilization in which human flourishing is assured.

There is no real surprise that in the world of politics there seems to be a review of many social and economic policies set in place in the last 50 years. Their excesses or straight foolishness are coming to account. They sounded so rational and full of intelligent goodness at the time.

It is a fact that the vast majority of our population ascribe to the Christian “stories” rather than being bitterly opposed - the latter position being well represented in this Forum; much to Peter’s bruising. There is a yearning for something of more substance; there are ears to hear our civilisation’s stories. Those of secular rationalism had sounded so rational, so right, so intelligent, so cool. But in the end they have been as empty as a resounding gong and cymbals clashing. They lacked something essential

Boxgum,
The problem causing the rejection of Jesus Christ being God is that many espousing this truth base their definition in a false premise. That Jesus was born God on Earth, and Mary was the mother of God.

God is never defined as a spatial being, though personified images of him having hands, arms, a breast, a right and left side are meant to give us mental pictures of things in our spatial world. Those that define God as trinity endeavour to place the human Jesus into Godhead. This is where they come undone. God is not a creature man: and creature man is never God.

The spirit [the presence] that is God is manifest in Christ, even as it should be in our lives. God is spirit, not a spirit or ghost. God is that eternal spirit that was manifest in Jesus Christ character, attitudes, actions, and wisdom. To reject God or the existence of God is to reject the character, attitudes, actions, and wisdom as expresed by Jesus Christ as the template of human behaviour.

Faith in Jesus Christ is not merely defending his existence, but that his life and character is very God. We are defending spiritual values, not natural chemistry. "We say love your neighbour as you love yourself"; this is a spiritual value that we believe as truth, it cannot be reduced to natural chemistry and still have the same meaning.

Quote, "Soren Kierkegaard wrote of the Absolute Paradox: that of Jesus the man being God - you accept it in faith or you reject it as an affront to reason. We of faith support that it is okay for others to adopt the rejection position. It is after all a personal choice in life. Yet, we have not cast off reason. It needs to be present in our understanding of things as they are within the faith realm which encompasses all of life and its wonderful stage."

Mhoram
First of all it is insulting to insinuate that I “peddle” anything in these pages.

In my theological training we were not just spoon fed doctrine. That may be the case in other denominations but certainly was not for where I studied. Theology must always begin over from the start, nothing must be just assumed, everything is up for grabs. However, a severe cynicism will not be helpful. If we began our chemistry studies with the cynical view that molecules are a figment of our imagination then we will not get far. All studies require some belief as a starting point. This is true of theology which is best described as “faith seeking understanding”. But that does not let us off from a critical and enquiring attitude to all things.

Monotheists like the wind, swing in whatever direction they hope is favourable for their theory.

Sells, its insulting when you peddle hearsay and unsubstantiated delusion. As we have theoretical and applied physicists, so it appears that Sells is a theoretical theological scientist. Unlike physics, the applied theologians can't repeat, apply or quantify the theological theory.

In chemistry, we can see the event, or molecules, with god we can see nothing. To equate the belief in an psychological illusion with a viewable physical event, then change the illusion to try and represent it as equal to the event and an event in itself. Surely is the act of infantile minds, not capable of understanding beyond illusional superstition.

I believe I understand where Sells, Philo and co are on the evolutionary path. They are between a primitive un-evolved mind set and the evolved mind which sees the past as the past and sees the future to be opened and experienced without prejudicial and restrictive fears.

Psychological evolution, can be seen in all its varieties, from very primitive understanding's, to those who view existence as an open challenge to constantly move forward in our understanding. That view, will free us from the restrictions our stature in the universe places upon us.

We see in children how they fictionalise life in an effort to support their lack of true understanding and come up with all manners of fictional situations and existences to verify their illusions. Its the same with monotheism, they continue to put forth changed illusion after illusion in a vain attempt to convince us of the unconvincible.

Against the evidence, they roll out the theory that a belief in god has been good for the planet and can't survive without god. The infantile mind does that, to avoid the reality of their misunderstanding.

I have had a delightful time in the last couple of days reading various views on the nature of religion, science, post moderism and the philosophy that underly these thought processes. I think most of it is interesting but unecessarily semantic. The sad fact about Christainism (and other literalist religions) is that the belief system is based on written "revealed truth". In the case of Christianism this "truth" is recorded in the New Testament (and to some exent Jewish scripture). It is ONLY from these sources and verifiable recorded history that the value of this "truth" can be assesed.

Unfortunately most "academic" theologians begin with belief as a starting point. They are already infected with the religious meme years before they even attempt rational investigation (Peter?).
(BTW. I wish someone would give me a fancy degree and title for the many years I have spent evaluating scripture.)

A critique or promotion of Christian beliefs cannot be made without reference to scripture and recorded history associated with those writings. It is encumbent on the believer to demonstrate, using scripture, the voracity of their claims. Peter does this to some extent but fails to convince me of anything about Christianism but more about what his particular world view is (as interesting as it is). I can't recall the scpriputes mentioning rationalism or the Post Modern concepts mentioned by Peter. "Give unto Caesar...."

Chistianism, although containing embarrasing elements of pagan Greek philosophy and religion, is not negotiable, it does not give the believer "wriggle room" because if it did it would not be something revealed but rather something that can be developed like politics or philosophy.

Forget comparisons with science. The two thought processes have nothing to do with each other.

"This is true of theology which is best described as “faith seeking understanding”. But that does not let us off from a critical and enquiring attitude to all things."

The thing is, if you start with flawed assumptions, then all critical thinking about flawed assumptions, is usually flawed.
So its interesting navel gazing at its best, but has little to
do with science. I suspect that some within theology would like to link it to science, for it to gain some kind of credibility,
but so far they have failed, for lack of any substantiated evidence.
We can show that theology is as much linked to geography, as to anything else.

Hey I am sure that religion keeps lots of people happy, satisfies
some of their emotional needs etc, so does art or poetry. Its their claim to represent the literal truth, their brainwashing of children etc, that really pisses me off. If they are going to teach it in schools, at least be honest with the kids, tell them that its mere speculation and no more. Stop lying to them.

Recently the Queensland Humanists tried to introduce an alternate
curriculum for kids in schools, who did not attend religious studies for various reasons. It was shot down in flames by the Xtians, who clearly want to keep the philosophical patch for themselves. How can kids be taught about the many wonders of the world, about ethics and morality beyond being threatened by hellfire etc, with that kind of
narrowminded attitude? If Christianity wants to lay a claim to morality and deny others the right to teach it in schools, perhaps its time that they provided some evidence for their claims

Sells conveniently neglects to recognise his revealing mistake in thinking I am some kind of scientist. In his universe if U R a rationalist U must be a boring scientist who hates the humanities disciplines. Alas, bro, it ain't necessarily so.

Incidentally, I have always opposed relativist historiography: if there is nothing against to which test someone's "history" than any piece of garbage (eg, the scribblings of Nazi and some Marxist "historians") is on a par with the best and most carefully sourced research. Not likely.

I make no apols for using the word "peddle": if U start with faith as an assumption and then apply logic to the consequences, U R still peddling faith, which (however sincerely held, and by no means to be attacked thru the power of the state) is not a rationally testable proposition.

A bit more good humour wd be welcome: remember St. Augustine's wonderful response to someone who asked him what God was doing before creating the universe? A: preparing hell for people who asked such questions. For all that I wd have disagreed with him, Augustine was a very human human being & I think I wd have liked him.

Priscillian: Amen to yr last comment.

Peter

You conclude that "our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called “secular rationalism”. This movement will have to produce even more absurdity before we will see it for what it is."

What do your "God-is-dead" critics have to say? Probably that our problems are no different to anybody elses...who are we to say that things are a problem... there is only a lesson when there is a fact to be learnt... that it is all a consequence of irrational, uneducated people... and life began in a pond and will end up in a ball of dust... it is all we can expect... who are you to say that there is a purpose to it all...

Recent news contribute to your lessons:

Adventurers bypassing a dying person to complete a "goal", their individualistic purpose.

Young people leaving a dying friend with severe reaction to an ingested party drug... from fear of being in trouble...

A classic this morning from Naomi Wolfe... ( reported in the SMH)

" Most disturbing, perhaps, is her discovery that the greatest, and growing, health problem for young women at some college clinics is anal fissures.
These girls were getting drunk and having anal sex with strangers on Saturday night. Why? … Because that is the premium kind of sex that pornography is representing right now. Like when you're bored of vanilla sex you go to anal sex. With strangers. Which seems kind of extreme to someone of my generation."

So what has happened to the great secular cause of HIV/AIDS? What was never said in the huge public scare campaign of te 80's, was that the single most human act to cause the HIV transfer was receptive anal sex. It isn't designed for a thrusting penis....Is this a "lesson" for feminism, as a classical secular movement with a worthy purpose? Young lasses, or even exploited lovers / partners /wives, enlivening blokes' porno fed fantasies with such a dangerous act

Mhoram,
I have obviously misjudged you, but you gave little evidence of who you where, you just came over as a narrow rationalist scientist like so many I know.

The gulf between us was begun by Descartes, the father of the modern age. His project was to produce a philosophy of undisputable argument. When you talk about “rationally testable arguments” you reveal yourself as his heir. The problem is that we do not live our lives that way. The ideology of rationally testable arguments has been found to be an abstraction outside of natural science in which the object under investigation is just that, an object. The reason that psychology has been driven into neuroscience is that conscious beings are far more complex and it is difficult to understand what kind of rationality may be applied to them. Theology is relational and does not fit into the mold of natural science.

I am glad to hear that you are a historian. As I keep saying in these pages, the unique aspect of Israel among the nations is that it took history seriously. That was its window onto God, how things happen in the world of human beings. My despair in these pages is that there is so much prejudice against the church that it is impossible to get even the simplest concepts across. I have to deal with all kinds of straw men.

My despair with the church is that it keeps on with the same old stuff. Its crisis is theological. My point is that there are theologians who do make sense and are worth reading

Thanks Boxgum, reliable comment as ever.

Peter, for once I almost agree with everything you have said here. You are, however, a grossly unkind to our scientist friends and cannot agree with your attitude to them and wonder what has happened to you to make you have this opinion?. Was Jesus anti-science? Early wall paintings of him have him holding a wand (an early piece of scientific apparatus). After his birth he was visited by Magi (early Pagan scientific boffins). He would use the inversion of natural laws to perform miracles (fantasy science/theatre).

You cannot effectively use scientific method on the Gospels because.
1. They are rife with politics originating from various power bases.
2. They derive from disparate and unknown sources.
3. There is little or no primarily material with which to reference them.
4. There is little or no archaelogical evidence of the claims.
5. The claims and beliefs are rarely placed in an historical context. (I insist on an "an" here)
6. Most ordinary people are ignorant of and don't actually care about biblical scholarship hence the lack of objective academic rigour in bilical study.

Peter, from my perspective you bring despair upon yourself because (as one of my heros Siddhartha Gautama says) "you have misery born of desire". You have a heartfelt belief system that you wish to reveal to us heathens but you have tied yourself up in Post Modernist clap trap. Again I say... revealed religion can only be discussed via the vehicle of that revelation.... in your case the Gospels (and associated writings). If you don't do this you (as a Christian) are straying so far from your source material that you end up simply giving us Peter Sellick's view of the world. If this is what you want to do then post under a different sub heading..politics or something...not religion.
BTW a Salvo guy just appeared at the door and I actually gave him money.......because of you Peter..your doing something right!

Sells
Quote "the unique aspect of Israel among the nations is that it took history seriously." Are you joking?

History as we understand it is a Greek concept. The jews at the time when the pentauteuch was written down [7-6th century BCE] had not the slightest conception of history as we understand it.

To the people from the middle east from that era history was the explanation of God's hand through events & was common to the Babylonians, Assyrians, & Egyptians, among many others. If they had to alter their description of an event to more accurately highlight the work of God they wouldn't have hesitated. Not exactly our understanding of history is it?

So given that this legend/history composite was so common a view [a view shared by Israel] by what stretch of the imagination can you assert that Israel was unique in taking history seriously?

Bosk, regarding the ancient Greeks and history. That early epochal and valuable civilisation is now history. Its bones have been picked dry. Israel and its Old Testament fulfillment in Christianity have been, and are, living it for millennia. Do you have no understanding of Peter's writings?

Priscillian, Your logic really is clogging.

Peter has expressed theology as "faith seeking understanding". Yes, it is a matter of a faith preceding the thought. Otherwise there would nothing to be understood.

However does that rule the thought and its outcomes invalid?

The understanding is in an ever changing context; time, place, society, experience, new knowledge from fact and theory.

The understanding does not remain as stored new knowledge for the Christian. Our underpinning faith, forever seeking renewal and further understanding, demands a response in life. That response is as varied as there are faithful followers of the Risen Lord.

And our faith is not static. The faith which enlightens my life is not that of the Catholic schoolboy for whom everything in his formation years in the 1950-60s, was prescribed or proscribed, and faith was expressed at "saying prayers", and being hustled along to Mass. My faith sought understanding early in a difficult marriage (now 30 years); there was an introduction to the Scriptures around a table led by a learned, grounded and faithful Priest. From there I have had my eyes open to the deeply rich heritage that spans all that is human. Including the crusty side of the institutional Roman church that I can accommodate in balance with my personal faith and acquired knowledge, most of which, but certainly not all, comes from it. I find the works of this Proddy essayist, Peter, rich in thought and spiritual insight.

In my faith there is great joy; but oh the discomfort. Now that is something those bound to the limited reason of human consciousness will never understand.

Bosk

“The Jews at the time when the Pentateuch was written down [7-6th century BCE] had not the slightest conception of history as we understand it.” I agree. Our conception of history is a recent development that is empirically based. It is focused on what actually happened, the factual basis, what we could experience if we had been there. The historical books of the OT are theologically interpreted history. This kind of history is still alive in modern nations. Gallipoli is understood as the forging place of the nation Australia. The French look back to Napoleon, the Italians to Garibaldi, the Americans to Washington and Lincoln etc. These are national history/myths. They are nationalistically interpreted history.

Just so with Israel except that whenever they projected nationhood onto historical event they came unstuck. Much of the history of Israel is about who was king, David or YHWEH, the old business of the separation of church and state. We revere the Bible because it means that we do not have to reinvent the wheel every time we turn around. Revelation is not a transfer of knowledge from the spirit world to the earthly, it is an everyday occurrence. Scientists are engaged in revelation, they reveal something that had previously been unknown.

Priscillian
No, I am not against science or scientists only the way they limit their epistemology. Jesus could not have been for or against something that only happened in the 16th century.
Serious biblical study occurs all over the world and is not influenced by whether people are interested in it or not

Peter, Of course you are right again about Jesus and science. I was being facetious in a misplaced attempt at humour. Jesus lived in days of superstition and ignorance and would have known nothing of modern science even though he was God (or the Son or whatever that infathomable Trinity thing says he was).
I have abjectly failed to lure you into a discussion of your original proposition in terms of your revealed truth. Theories of theological relativism did not exist in the time of early Chrisitian development and so I guess such a discussion would be a short one indeed. You are still one of the greatest "question beggers" I have met on this forum and I find it impossible to break your cyclical line of argument. A pity because I would like to have found out what you learnt in your years of theological study. eg. Who was Jesus, what was his message and how does it apply today.

Boxgum, "faith seeking understanding". We understand the plea, but not the logic.

“However does that rule the thought and its outcomes invalid” .

It doesn't, we all know the outcomes of your faith during the last 2000 years. Its history's there to be seen, as are the current outcomes of the expression of your faith. What you fail to understand is thats the reason your faith is rejected as loving, caring and beneficial to the world. I doubt any sensible person would doubt your faith, we see it in all aspects of society by its outcomes. Their not nice by any standards.

“In my faith there is great joy; but oh the discomfort. Now that is something those bound to the limited reason of human consciousness will never understand.”

Your right, we will never understand how someone can have faith in a failed, violent, psychologically destructive and negatively repressive belief thats contributing to the destruction of the world. Whatever you try to say, the outcome is according to the veracity of the faiths applications. That veracity is within its factual history. As Priscillian, Bosk, and others point out, the only veracity you have is in your unsustainable assertions of the books history.

What you Sells and other holders of the faith fail to understand and accept, no longer is the faith dealing with people who are unedcuated, steeped in superstition and fearful of those who appear to be superior in technology and illusion. The people of today are informed, can research, investigate and learn the true history of the world. The semantic waffle that Sells puts up, is fine for those impressed by illusional concepts that have no real or applicable substance backing them.

Irrelevant; as to how eloquently you may put it, you can't demonstrate it, point anyone towards any verifiable evidence, nor provide verifiable examples of the outcomes you so fervently express.

Sells did I read right, science only began in the 16th century. I hope I read wrong, logically it began when humans first used other than their hands to live.

It is generally accepted by historians that the dawn of science in Europe began in the sixteenth century with the Polish astronomer Mikolaj Kopernik (Nicholas Copernicus).

It goes without saying that science has been practised across many cultures but it is also true that science has ascendended to its greatest heights under the nurture of Western civilisation. During this ascendance we have seen the dismantling Christian fundamentalism.

In the present time it will once again be science and scientists that will tackle the new threat - Islamic fundamentalism. George Bush can rattle his saber all he likes, but science will take take Islamic fundamentalism apart piece by piece by using nothing more than rationalism and logic. What will be left will be Islamic moderates and a better world.

I've just spent an hour watching a David Attenborough documentary and once again learnt more about the world in that time, then in the many years when religious fanatics tried to brainwash me with their big sins, little sins, angels, devils etc, as a schoolboy.

Methinks there must be a genetic component here somewhere. Boxgum, you clearly need religion to cope with life. Hey thats fine by me,
each to their own. Some people yearn for a book of rules by which to live, we are all different.

However you are making a huge mistake, if you think that people need religion to do good or to be sensible about sex.

When HIV first became an issue, Philip Adams was one of those who made it quite clear that "buggery kills". Clearly that should be part of the curriculum of any good school sex education programme.
The Dutch have shown how effective that can be, if done well and if done in a pragmatic way. The Americans, with their religious influence, have gone down the " preach abstinance" solution, which has been shown to be a huge failure. Don't blame the secular movement if kids don't get a proper education about sex.

There are plenty of people doing good in the world, who do it because they are that way inclined, not because of the threat of fire and hell. Fiona Woods or our famous Aussie eye doctor and just two of many examples. Humans evolved as a social species and altruim is one of those charateristics that is part of that.

Ancient Greece is history, but we still study what their philosophers had to say. Ancient Israel is history, but we don't kill our neighbours anymore for working on the sabbath, as they suggested. They are history too.

Sells:

Yes U did misjudge me but credit to U for admitting the mistake.

Maybe U R right about Descartes being the source of our divergences: cogito ergo sum always impressed me, for all that strict logicians point out the argument is circular... the alternative is solipsism which is the great grandfather of relativism.

The Chinese, it must be noted, have a sense of history at least as deep as do the Jews...and a far greater body of material fleshing it out, too.

Consider if U will (not necessarily on these pages) some of the wierdness emerging from mod physics - esp quantum physics, which asserts the necessity of an OBSERVER for some phenomena to have validity. I myself am unsure just what implications such a conclusion might have: it (almost) harks back to the old chestnut about whether there is a sound when there's nobody there to hear it...

As to whether there R theologians worth reading, I'm unqualified to say. But I do wonder how one makes such a judgement independent of one's religious affiliation (eg, how cd I, an atheist, make such a judgement if I read up in the field?). Good science, we know, is strictly testable. Good history, whatever else, must rely on all available source material - incl archaeology, etc - and avoid the imposition of a writer's prejudices (that's why there's less of it than there shd be). Good theology relies on...?

Alchemist,
Note most of history is recorded by events that change societies, and that is how you have read history. Most history goes unreported, it is the daily lives of ordinary people living happily together.

This is evidenced by the news reports we receive every day, example Iraq, it is only the very local events of terror or death that gets reported, while most of Iraq goes on quietly and achieves a days work. Who reports the well achieved days work? It is obvious you study history by the wars. Most of life goes on not involved in wars. Most of the developments in science over 400 years have come from men and women of faith. Their faith enhanced their work, and their work did not destroy their faith.

Quote, "Whatever you try to say, the outcome is according to the veracity of the faiths applications. That veracity is within its factual history."

'Ancient Greece is history, but we still study what their philosophers had to say. Ancient Israel is history, but we don't kill our neighbours anymore for working on the sabbath, as they suggested. They are history too. '

Well said Yabby. The irrational behaviour in the name of the monotheistic religions has a long history of using terrorism to get conformity within society.

We also see this example in Islam. This statement is taken from the Hadith;

SAHIR BUKHARI

Volume 8, Book 82, Number 806:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

'A man came to Allah's Apostle while he was in the mosque, and he called him, saying, "O Allah's Apostle! I have committed illegal sexual intercourse.'" The Prophet turned his face to the other side, but that man repeated his statement four times, and after he bore witness against himself four times, the Prophet called him, saying, "Are you mad?" The man said, "No." The Prophet said, "Are you married?" The man said, "Yes." Then the Prophet said, 'Take him away and stone him to death." Jabir bin 'Abdullah said: I was among the ones who participated in stoning him and we stoned him at the Musalla. When the stones troubled him, he fled, but we over took him at Al-Harra and stoned him to death.'

Fortunately, whenever the idealology of science, humanism and rationalism break through into monotheistic societies we see this sort of reprehensible behaviour modified and moderated. It simply becomes unacceptable to a more enlightened and compassionate society

Sells, “Jesus could not have been for or against something that only happened in the 16th century.”

Philo, “Most of the developments in science over 400 years have come from men and women of faith.”

Again we have the deluded monotheists trying to change history regarding science. Christian Europe may've only started to drag itself out of its despotic superstitious practises in the 16th century, but china had malleable cast iron, gunpowder and many other scientific techniques in common use as early as the 3rd century BC.

Read the "Katha Upanishad", (1700BC) for more scientific beginnings in India.

In the 5th century, Zu Gengzhi published the formula for the volume of a sphere from Li Chunfeng's lost book, "Jiu zhang suanshu" (Arithmetic in nine chapters), written before the 1st century. Liu Hui, third century A.D, the volume of a pyramid:

Iron artifacts have been found in Chinese graves dating before 500BC. Agriculture, shipping, astronomical observatories, decimal mathematics, paper money, umbrellas, wheelbarrows, multi-stage rockets, brandy and whiskey, the game of chess, compasses and navigation. The sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, seismology,technology, engineering, and mathematics can trace their early origins to China.

Archaeological facts, are far superior to historical illusion.

Philo, trying to support your fallacy by again changing the goal posts to gain an advantage, always fails when everyone sees you doing it. Ordinary people have always suffered under the wings of monotheism, even of not involved in war. The suppression of free thought by religion is well documented throughout every society, in its laws, courts, churches and enslavement. The churches were very involved in slavery.

If the monotheists had their way, we'd all be bowing down to god by force. They still force their children to go to church, bible study or religious instruction. No fee choice for kids there, just forced delusion.

Sells wrote: "The gulf between us was begun by Descartes, the father of the modern age. His project was to produce a philosophy of undisputable argument. When you talk about “rationally testable arguments” you reveal yourself as his heir. The problem is that we do not live our lives that way. The ideology of rationally testable arguments has been found to be an abstraction outside of natural science in which the object under investigation is just that, an object. The reason that psychology has been driven into neuroscience is that conscious beings are far more complex and it is difficult to understand what kind of rationality may be applied to them. Theology is relational and does not fit into the mold of natural science."

Sells, I appreciated your article and agree that we need more than "narrow rationalism" to live meaningful lives. A shared knowledge of the ancient stories - embodying our culture - provides us with a framework within which to communicate complex psychological ideas to each other in relatively few words - ideas which would be difficult or impossible to express in purely rational terms. However, there must always be a clearly understood division between mythological space and everyday reality. It should not, for example, be accepted that salvation, enlightenment or other religious concepts be discussed in the same context as the natural or social sciences. The "rationally testable arguments" Descartes insisted upon force us to acknowledge reality and in so doing, interact more successfully with it.

Alchemist,
It had become evident you are a bitter and twisted mind brainwashed by your atheistic father. You are totally dishonest and cannot accept that persons who do not hold your obsessive and primitive views of human behaviour cannot achieve any worthwile contribution to society. Your imagined perceptions that persons of faith are destructive indicates you know nothing of the lives of people of faith.

The greatest contributions to modern society have been the mechanical printing press, mechenical weaving, electricity, the combustion engine, the electrical wheel, penicillian and many other medicines that have been developed by persons in Western Christian educated societies who believed in a better world.

Now now Philo, you are going way out of your depth here!

Xtianity seems to have developed a habit of trying to claim
credit for anything positive that happened, whilst a few
of its disciples were part of the community. Fact is most
the relgiious were too busy praying to achieve anything useful.

Yup, China and Chinese culture thrived without Xtianity, face it!

Technology and progress happened despite religion, not because
of it. Reality does not change, when you close your eyes and wish it would...

I'm posting comment number 104 (obviously a successful article) and have little more to say on this subject other than to note that after all the interesting and fanscinating points of view that have been covered about Peter's article all I have to look forward to tonight on Compass (ABC TV) is "Opus Dei and the Da Vinci Code".... what a yawn! When are the producers of this programme going to get online to forums like this and find out what the real issues are. Come Peter...you have some influence I'm sure.
This show is a farce put together by the lazy and the timid. It claims to report on religious issues in Australia but either just propogates doctrine or covers things generically "spiritual" (like the spiritual outlook of some football player). It is so careful not to cause offence that it informs us of nothing.
Thank you Peter for at least presenting current topics with some kind of depth.

Gawwwd we've had a teddy debate this time where a real, top shelf, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient teddy (god), for strategic reasons best known to the virus writers, is unloved, dismissed and abandoned. Now what? Just seems these teddies if they could be real as in the Bible, couldn't knowingly invent anything and yep now we have a teddy as some other artifact to do with an historical event. One might conclude that this new teddy is information but that is problematic too. Ultimately, a teddy, if one could exist, needs logic but logic does not need a teddy. So what does all this actually mean? Well, just seems all this fuss is down to the fact that religion is fashion and any teddy is an artifact of fashion. Religious playpens change continually and can vary enormously depending on time and culture so can any really be grounded in absolute truth?

Well atheism is grounded in absolute truth because atheism is for those who transcend the facile whims of fashion trends and is forever the same concept. There is no extortion of your psyche here. Also, just seems that the more secular democracies all enjoy good social conditions never seen before in human history. In contrast no highly religious nation enjoys high levels of social health. In the US of A, for example, the most religious and strongly xtian states are a basket case with high homicide, juvenile and adult mortality, STD infections, abortion and teen pregnancy, and throw into the mix primitive gun laws and you see serious societal dysfunction.

Well there we have it! Opus Dei, sounds like a cult within a
religion, worth billions of $. All very kinky lol, with
whips and spikey chains. Now who said that I should ever
take religion seriously?

The Bagwhan clearly did well, by promoting his philosophies.
I must remember to start a cult sometime, push peoples
emotional buttons and they will flock in it seems...

As my old uncle used to say, "for every fool that dies,
another 10 are born". He really had a point it seems.

David W
Thank you for your comment. You had me rushing to my copy of M Buckley “
At the origins of modern atheism” to look up what he says about Descartes. Your statement “The "rationally testable arguments" Descartes insisted upon force us to acknowledge reality and in so doing, interact more successfully with it” does not hold. Descartes’ way of dealing with the world, of finding certitude about the world was entirely theoretical and not observational. His arrival at certitude was more a property of his consciousness than a property of the real world. He thought that mathematics was the key to certitude, however the world cannot be defined mathematically, ask any biologist. Descartes’ philosophy was a dead end for natural science.

Your other comment about keeping the real and the mythical separate is also interesting. We might say that the cross of Christ occurred within the horizon of human history while his resurrection was not. There are two different events here both of them real but a video camera would only record the first. The resurrection is legend (myth has other connotations) that points to the meaning of the cross. This Jesus, whom you crucified God raised up. The one we put to death is vindicated. This too is an event but an event unlike the cross. The modern problem of separation is that the legend comes off as unreal or not true. However, the biblical account would have it that the resurrection was more true than the cross in that it was an act of God.

Ah! theology Peter. That's more like it.
Let's investigate some of your terminology and concepts.
"Raised up" could me many things but does not necessarily mean resurrected, it could mean "get up" or "arise" as in what happened to Lazarus (who Jesus admits was not actually dead). If we accept Mark as the earliest gospel then we must contemplate the fact that early versions of Mark don't go beyond chapter 16 verse 8. The "Long Ending" containing the resurrection story has been obviously added later. This is the "Legend" you talk about.
You state "resurrection was more true than the cross in that it was an act of God." What you are suggesting here is a pure piece of Pauline "gnosis". It is clear from the 6 letters actually attributed by scholars to Paul that he was a Gnostic and that the resurrection was a pagan addition to the Jesus story. Dying and resurrecting would have been a natural thing for a godman to do in the mind of Paul. Being a Hellenized Jew from Tarsus he was well versed in Mithra and Dionysus as well as scripture. Let us call a spade a spade. Your belief system is based in Hellenistic 1st century myth (legend, if you like). That this myth has some deeper meaning to you and your ilk is not what I dispute and in many ways these myths gives positive spiritual meaning and understanding to those inclined that way, as do rainbow serpent stories to the Aborigines. I do however balk at you mixing myth and post modern concepts, secularism and rationalism to come to some conclusion about the way we govern ourselves. Your spiritual dreaming is your business but let us please seperate fact and fiction.

On 27th April TR claimed, as generally accepted, that the dawn of science occurred in the 16th century. That is a narrow, euro-centric view which was shown to be false by The alchemist on the following day with a few historical examples. But even that correction is, I believe, misleading. Science is an integral part of humanity’s response to its environment. From the very start of our ability to use our hands and minds humans have needed to manipulate the world in which they live and, in doing so, have studied and learnt the properties of the materials of that world. That is science. It has had a continuous evolution since then until its present astonishing ability to throw light on the workings of the world, both physical and mental.

The magical attempts to control the world started at the same time and was the precursor to modern day religion. It, also, has gone through an evolution but still retains evidence of its early beginnings. The semi-magical rites of the religious; their belief that biscuits and wine are somehow really body and blood are no more than racial memories of actual sacrifices; the gorgeous raiments which disguise the reality of our simple neighbours are no more than the evolved decorations of the witch-doctors.

If people do not try to understand the long evolution of to-day’s science and religion, they disarm themselves in understanding the role that those activities play in our present-day lives.

Hi John Warren,

This is what I actaully wrote;

'It is generally accepted by historians that the dawn of science in Europe began in the sixteenth century with the Polish astronomer Mikolaj Kopernik (Nicholas Copernicus).

It goes without saying that science has been practised across many cultures but it is also true that science has ascendended to its greatest heights under the nurture of Western civilisation.'

That is, European science took off in the sixteenth century. I did not discount other cultures at all. Indeed, European science from the Renaissance period is really an extension of science as practiced by the Byzantine Empire. And of course the Byzantines learnt from Muslim scientists who, in turn, had borrowed heavily from ancient Greek scientists.

John Warren,
You prefer to believe Roman Catholic doctrine applied to what Jesus said. This is not what Jesus said. He was alive in body with blood coursing through his veins when he instuted the new covenant. What was in the glass was wine and what was on the plate was unleavened bread with no magical properties.

In any sense it only became his blood and his body when he absorbed it. The whole picture created by their drinking wine and eating bread was to remind the disciples every time they shared wine and bread together to remember the covenant he instituted to forgive sinners by his death. When you hold up a picture of yourself you can say, "this is me" does not make it magically you. What was commonplace to the disciples drinking and eating was to become a constant reminder they were forgiven. The elements involved in their action was merely a reminder and had no magical properties.


Quote, "The semi-magical rites of the religious; their belief that biscuits and wine are somehow really body and blood are no more than racial memories of actual sacrifices; the gorgeous raiments which disguise the reality of our simple neighbours are no more than the evolved decorations of the witch-doctors."

There is a world of difference between technology and natural science. All cultures have technology, they all manipulate matter for their own purposes. Science is the formation of theories from testable data. It is directed towards how things are. Science therefore did arise as TR wrote with Copernicus in the 16th century.

Philo, again you display the true expression of monotheism. Can't cope with fact, so resort to abuse and damnation. People resort to rage, because they've nothing else to support their fallacies. Philo, read the true stories of how monotheists, always approach new science and technology. Even today, they jump on anything that may debunk their dictates.

“Science is the formation of theories from testable data.”

The Woomera, Boomerang, display “formation of theories from testable data”. As does a wheel, the formula for the volume of a sphere. What would you call the development of multi stage rockets, navigation, compasses. Non testable data, but formulated by the inferior intelligence of non monotheists, barbarians as they were described by monotheism.

Chinese invented psychics, engineering, astrology, mathematics, meteorology, not science. You persist in dismissing fact, replacing it with illusion, continuing to dupe yourselves with these infantile, fictitious statements. Your constant denial of reality in an attempt to change what is, shows how insecure your minds are.

Sells article reads like a child trying to prove the fairies they saw in the garden, were real and not just shadows. Monotheism's all about shadows, nothing real.

If your belief is the expression of a modern verifiable mental positive, prove it, don't resort to claiming a past, which isn't true, except within your minds. How irrational your belief is, especially when you fail to answer many questions or provide testable data, for any of your claims.

Peter again makes a very narrow interpretation. Why? Just ignorance or insecurity?

We sometimes should start with our best information by trying to forget about the philosophical history of a problem. Just remind ourselves of what we know for a fact. Well, this is what I came up with ..... "the what", "the how" and "the why" from our earliest evolving identity.

Art is creation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions have causal efficacy. "the what"
Science is investigation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions can describe a causal "how".
Philosophy is investigation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions can describe a causal "why".

We don't need to believe that, with the advent of consciousness, we can now step outside evolution, go under it, rise above it, or stop it.... all our actions are evolutionary. We are all artists, we are all scientists and we are all philosophers. Long before the 16th century people everywhere would have asked the "how" question and concerned themselves with cause and effect investigations. It's mind boggling stooopidity to believe otherwise but I guess this is "how" these teddy viruses can disable their hosts.

The birth of science: when one or more of the earliest human beings discovered that if they rubbed two bits of dry wood together vigorously for long enough they could generate a flame to light a fire they, at the same time, had achieved a technological advance and a testable theory. The theory was that rubbing two bits of dry wood created heat and they tested it in practice every time they did it. That scientific knowledge was passed down, orally, for thousands of years.

Of course there was a flowering of knowledge of the world, in Europe in the 16th century, after the development of writing to record the knowledge, codifying the testing techniques of science by people like Francis Bacon and stimulated by the technology of the industrial revolution. But the essential nature of science, a technique of gaining useful understanding of how the material of the world works has never changed. It has grown exponentially and now can throw light on every aspect of our existence. It can even reveal why some of us believe in a supernatural realm against all evidence.
It is, I believe, quite misleading to distinguish science from technology, they are both aspects of human understanding.

John Warren,
On the contrary, science differs from technology because it forms theories that describe relationships of cause and effect that are invisible to the observer. Those cave men who rubbed two sticks together did not work out that friction created heat and hence a fire. They lacked even the most primitive theory of why this worked. Copernicus is an apt example of scientific theorising that produced an understanding of the solar system that could not be arrived at by simple observation. To a naïve observer it was obvious that the sun revolved around the earth. It took Kepler’s observations and Copernicus’ mathematical description to tell us otherwise.

Technical knowledge cannot predict a new outcome while a scientific theory can. All technologists can do, without theory, is to repeat themselves. Also, technology without theory cannot extend understanding. I stick to my guns, natural science arose in Europe in the 16th century

I guess what really irritates scientific folk the most is that fundamentalist religions do not include an element of doubt. Indeed, conservative religions such as Islam have shunned this idealology all together. One vitually never hears words like "maybe" and "possibly", or phrases like "it seems to me" and "is indicative of" in a Muslim discourse. However, this SHOULD be the case as the historical data that gives the Koran its context is less than solid. For example the Hadith were formalised some three hundred years after the time of Mohammed.

On the other hand science embraces the idea of doubt by making probability, error bars, and statistics intrinsic to its makeup. This is important as it creates a more inclusive, flexible and tolerant culture.

So, would it be possible for religious folk to express themselves properly and therefore use catch phrases like, "...in my opinion there is a reasonable probability that Mohammed is a Prophet of Allah" or, "...it seems to me that the New Testament is a reliable source of historical data, although in reality this is far from certain."

Alchemist,
You so misrepresent the message of Christianity because it suits your brainwashed position that, "monotheism is about destruction of the infidels".

The Christian mission:
If in the Christian mission to win the world for God you must kill the enemy you have dismally failed, because you have not saved his soul from destruction. I state according to God you have failed. The mission is to win the allegiance of all souls for the kingdom of God.

In fact to follow Christ means to put one's own life at extreme risk to save a lost person. If it means giving your life for such a cause as to save the enemy you yourself have won. Our example is Jesus Christ himself.

Five unnarmed young men flew into the jungles of Equador in the 1960's landing on a sandbar in the river. The plane was found and their mutilated bodies after failing to return. Were they loosers? No! They were winners, because their wives decided to continue the mission to these primitive jungle people. Today there is a thriving community of people there who follow Christ.

The winners for Christ are those that sacrifice for the benifit of others - not warmongers.

Wow, just skimmed all that.. stick it to the fundies Yabby & Alchemist. Why can't you people grasp the really simple concept that your morals are not everybodies morals, and just because it would make you feel good to impose your world-view on everybody else doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do?

Before the die hard atheists get carried away you should remember that your idealogical position is also fundamentalist. That is, it is just as dogmatic as your average Cardinal or Imam. Or in other words atheists, Cardinals and Imams all choose to have the narrowest spectrum of knowledge and belief.

Real scientists however never the close the possibility to anything; even the counter intuitive.

pickledherring,
Building a relationship with God is not about imposing a set of morals on others. It is about understanding life and its purpose. I worry more that you want to impose your negative lifestyle and immoral values upon my children.

Christ never imposed morals upon people who rejected them, but they will reap the result of the life they sow.

Sells is right, of course. Technology and science are completely different. Technology says if something achieves your immediate purpose, then keep doing it. It may use principles and deductions that scientists have published but it does not aim to test them, modify them or produce new and better ones. It is applying given knowledge to everyday life.

Science is hypothetico-deductive. It studies known facts and theories, frames hypotheses based upon them, then sets out to test the hypotheses. As a result of such experiments it may confirm existing theories, modify them or abandon them.

This was not the approach before the renaissance, when what we now call science began.

Sells is also right to deplore the widespread attitude that holds the scientific method as the only rational approach to life. The approach of the humanities – especially literature and the arts – is terribly undervalued these days, much to our detriment. They are necessary if we are to grasp and understand reality more surely. And theology, as Sells says, is an essential, rational discipline which we ignore and deride at our peril. Dangerous fundamentalists of both the religious and atheistic varieties thrive where theology is shunned.

Peter, please maintain your efforts.

Sells: I asked:

As to whether there R theologians worth reading, I'm unqualified to say. But I do wonder how one makes such a judgement independent of one's religious affiliation (eg, how cd I, an atheist, make such a judgement if I read up in the field?). Good science, we know, is strictly testable. Good history, whatever else, must rely on all available source material - incl archaeology, etc - and avoid the imposition of a writer's prejudices (that's why there's less of it than there shd be). Good theology relies on...?

U haven't responded (unless I missed it: easy to do on so big a page, if so, apols to U).

But in any case maybe there's a simpler & more pertinent Q than that. Do U believe that an atheist can approach theology as (just) another humanities discipline like history, literature or philosophy? If not, why not?

About ten years ago we took in this poor stray kitten. Over the years she has grown into a smart cat with some cute causal theories of her own. Early on she found that if the back door was closed she would simply knock over a small metal sculpture we had near the door. She found that this had the effect of getting someone up out of a lounge or from elsewhere to come to the door and let her out. We thought this was really cute so we placed a similar little sculpture near the front door and she now applies her theory to the front door. We have placed the sculpture in other places away from doors and she is not interested in applying her theory. Just thought I'd mention our little pet who is able to comprehend cause and effect and seemingly have a scientific theory that can be applied elsewhere to open doors.

But people will respond with ....... this is just cat manipulation or cat instinct or cat frustration or whatever. As a theory it may have little to do with the physical causality of door movement but we are talking about a small cat who cannot possibly open a large door although she is able to put her paw on small kitchen cupboards and pop them open. However it is hard to dismiss the fact that here is a small cat that purposely investigates cause and effect and has some theory that works to open the back door and has applied this theory to the front door with success.

I would put our cat's theory ahead of some big theories like "the big bang theory", the theory that gravity is an attraction and that theory of duality. Note also that Dawkins and Dennet share a belief in "the big bang theory" and we don't have the "how" in place when it comes to gravity. To my mind gravity has always seemed a push but that's another story.

Mhoram
It is symptomatic of the neglect of the theological sciences that you ask this question. Theology is a science, it is about knowledge and it does conform to the usual rationality used in the other humanities. It cannot make unsustainable arguments. The subject matter of theology is historical and it relies on a witness to this history found in what is now known as the bible. Here we must give an explanation in that this history is not the modern empirical history of what actually happened but an account of events given from a specific theological perspective, that of the nation Israel. Theology seeks an object, God as revealed in this history. This separates the study of theology from natural science which deals with objects in the present that are perceivable and open to testing.

Just as scientific data must be interpreted to yield theory so history is interpreted to yield a knowledge of God, often referred to as systematic theology. This is essentially a theory of God derived from the specific history of Israel and Christ.

Theological study involves biblical research (the primary witness), church history (the secondary witness that include ourselves) and systematic theology that puts it all together into a theory of God.

As I have asserted above one does need to believe that theology is about something in order to engage in it just as one needs to believe that molecules exist before we embark on the study of chemistry. This does not mean that we suspend critical judgment, we must always start from a clean slate. We must always dispense with sentimentality, or the desire to be healed, or any other agenda before we can become clear eyed theologians.

The end result of doing theology is knowledge about ourselves. This is the point of the incarnation, we see who we were “meant” to be. But doing theology is more dangerous than doing chemistry because our whole world may be turned on its head. The object of our study is not passive.

This explanation of theology may be found in Karl Barth “Evangelical Theology”.

Philo, Ecuador's a basket case, full of religious sectarian conflict. A typical outcome resulting from forced morals and conversion by monotheists. Currently there a isn't country in the world, forcibly converted to monotheism, not in some form of civil conflict.

Philo, Christianity is about suppression and destruction, fact, history, the future, you name it, you'll wreck it in some way. Where's the kingdom of god, if not in its provable results. Show me a country thats been converted to monotheism, not subject to internal violent conflict.

Sells, in 100-1000 years, people will look back on how primitive we were in our understanding of science, just like they have throughout history. As lifes an evolutionary process, both materially and psychologically, advances in understanding always make predecessors look primitive. Technology is applied science, theology is applied fiction.

Monotheists dupe themselves, first relying on creation, with no proof, so can't argue that, so you try to capture science, which is an evolutionary process. Can't argue that, because it defeats your previous stand. So being in touch with god, you should have access to all of his creation and be able to provide us with the next scientific understanding to improve our lives and the world of god.

Why isn't that working for you, batteries dead in your god communicator, god on holidays. How come you can't understand the basics of history, progressive evolution, learning and understanding.

Keiran, I agree with you, animals are very intelligent, when you approach them from a humble caring attitude. Instead of abusing and devouring them for your own god given gluttony. The followers of god place these being below them and on their dinner table, They do the same with indigenous, calling them primitive. However the expression of monotheism, towards these carers of nature, is always psychologically and physically violent and in the end destructive.

When you consider its taken less than 200 years for the belief in god to destroy the in harmony lifestyles of the world, truly gods work in action

TR Said:- "Before the die hard atheists get carried away you should remember that your idealogical position is also fundamentalist. That is, it is just as dogmatic as your average Cardinal or Imam...Real scientists however never the close the possibility to anything; even the counter intuitive."

I never call myself an Atheist for this very reason. The term "atheist has become to mean somebody who advocates the proposition that no god exists. This is not necessarily so. How many proselytizing atheists appear on your doorsrep Mr/Ms/Mrs TR?
I am open minded about god, little green men and those theoretical gnomes and fairies in my garden.
Sells also seems to indicate that there is a "rationalist secular" proselytizing movement getting the ear of government and propogating some sort of anti-theist fundamentalist secular state. Who are these people?

It is entirely encumbent on the theist to make a case for their beliefs as it is for the scientists to argue a theory. Peter has failed entirely in all his articles to make a case for his belief system - a theory based on literal biblical revelation and nothing else. A scientific theory that cannot be demonstrated to have sound logic and evidence will fail. Many do. So too must any "belief" system.
At the turn of the century the developers of early wireless communications, like Marconi, believed that radio waves were propagated on a thin jelly-like substance that pervaded the universe. They called this stuff "ether". The ether theory fitted well with the observed facts. Nobody could see the ether or explain it's presence, properties or demonstrate its existance - but it was obvious that it existed wasn't it?.
We now know about electro-magnetic radiation and giggle a bit about the theory of ether.
God is a theory of everything that has been around for a long time. The theory seems to fit the observable facts. Nobody can see god or explain his presence, properties or demonstrate his existance - but it is obvious that he exists isn't it?.

Hi Sells,

I'm not sure that I agree with your assumption that 'theology is a science'. I've always assumed it to be more in line with philosophy.

The reason I say this is because scientific theories are based upon laboratory experiments. Even the objective world of mathmatics is not enough on its own. As the great Richard Feynman once wrote;

'If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is - if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.'

So you see, science demands an observable scientific experiment and resultant data.

Now, my question is...if 'theology is a science' what laboratory experiment are you going to set up to test the hypothesis that a personal monotheistic God exists? Or that beings like angels and the devil are a reality

Sells:

Thanx for that. I really don't think U can call theology as U have defined it a "science": no more wd I call history as I know it one either. Seems to me your answer to my Q (can an atheist approach theology as a discipline like eg history?) is "no", because U say one must believe it's about something real. I know history is about real things (however muddied our view may be due to lost or distorted evidence): I have eg been to Rome, sat in the Colosseum, seen the Pantheon & the incomparable Vatican museums. If I studied chemistry I cd verify the existence of molecules, etc, by repeating the classic eighteenth/nineteenth century experiments. I can even see molecules via Xray diffraction imaging, or see tracks made by subatomic particles via a cloud chamber & similar devices. But the target matter of theology is I think wholly subjective, way beyond history. (I note yr different def. of history as used in theology).

TR: I think U R wasting yr time expecting a meaningful answer to yr Q given what Sells has said to me.

The gulf between those who follow the path of reason, experiment & observation & those who start with faith (maybe - like Sells - applying reason thereafter to the faith-based foundation) is as wide as ever. I am still no wiser as to why I shd rate Sells' vision any higher than that of my hypothetical Siberian shaman: both rest on the same insubstantial foundation - it's just that this foundation is differently defined by Sells and the shaman, but there's no way to test either for accuracy. U either believe it or U don't. There R reasons why people believe but I've probably been offensive enough to believers for one post.

TR
When I describe theology as a science I am using the original, pre Enlightenment understanding of science being any branch of human knowledge. Alas, the scientific revolution (should of course be called the natural scientific revolution) was truly a revolution in that it unseated the authorities that had held since antiquity and substituted the authority of empirical, testable, natural science. The modern project was to reach absolute certainty and it believed that that certainty could only be had through the methods of natural science. By the way, my research degree in auditory physiology is called a PhD, a doctorate in philosophy and is an echo of a different understanding about knowledge.

This is why I have to put up with comments in these pages that demand that I prove the existence of God, as if I could go into a lab somewhere and do the requisite experiments. The upshot of this article (remember that) is that a true theology will provide true outcomes just as a true scientific theory will produce valuable technologies. If a theology does not mesh with the realities of humanity in the world it will produce pain and suffering, not to say impoverishment and cruelty.

Our problem is that secularism has produced so much propaganda supporting its case that we no longer see what it is hiding. I heard someone on the radio tonight talking about the French revolution. I had no idea that it was so bloody. He said that this was the first secular religion and was the precursor to those other bloody secular religions, Fascism and Communism. And yet we still hear that it is religion that produces most of the world’s violence.

Dear Mhoram
if I may respond to your question addressed to Sells about "R there theologians worth reading" ? yep.. there certainly are.
It depends on what ur looking for.

If you want to get your teeth into a very solid scholarly approach with reference to all available sources, I recommend works by Joachim Jeremias and Oscar Cullman. They are considered 'Neo Orthodox' by most evangelicals (Like me) but nothing can take away from their obvious passion for truth
-'Christ and Time' (Cullman)
-'Jerusalem in the time of Jesus' (Jeremias)

Jeremias has a good work on the 'Lords Supper/Communion' but the title escapes me for now.

For solid apologetics coupled with a heavy duty academic pedigree, works by Francis Shaeffer and John Warwick Montgomery are worth a look.

Cheers

In the ancient world science theory and religion were one and the same. Their understanding of physical causes was based in gods or spirits effecting changes [rain, thunder, earthquakes etc] even within human behaviour with their evil spirits or the spirits of the evil deceased entering the human psyche. With the event of monotheism it removed the conflicting world of gods and spirits effecting chemical, phyche or natural events. Monotheism taught the world was a unity from the mind of one and natural causes originated from a predetermined point of its Creation. That every event was interdependent upon other created natural causes set in place from the original creation which was the design of one mind.

When the young Jewish boys with their monotheistic belief were taken into captivity in Babylon in about 600 BC they were taught the science of the Babylonians which was largely dualistic or Gnostic in its basis. That is that there was a Cellestial God who lived in remote light and a Terrestrial god of the Earth who conferenced with the remote god about his adminstration on the Earth. It is from this theology we arrive at post Exile Jews rewriting this conflict in the Book of Job. Job consistently denies there are two gods as he argues his case with his Gnostic counsellors. Job vehemently maintains that Yahweh is both the same remote El Shaddai and El [the satan an opponent of man]. He maintains that Yahweh both gives life and removes life, and it is not dependent upon one's morality or human justice.

The ultimate vindication of Job is that the sandstorm that took the life of his children attributed to the satan by his Gnostic counsellors was the same sandstorm in which Yahweh is revealed in the Earth; "Yahweh has given and Yahweh has taken away". There is no evil spirits or subordinate gods influincing human behaviour or natural events other than man appointed to manage the Earth.

Sells, can you follow this train of thought a little further for me please?

>>Our problem is that secularism has produced so much propaganda supporting its case that we no longer see what it is hiding<<

The most widely-used definition of secularism is "a doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations".

The problem with the use of the negative - in this case rejection - is that it only has relevance when standing next to its positive, in this case religion. It does not exist on its own. It has no life or relevance of its own. It is therefore quite difficult for it to be "hiding" anything, on its own.

The propaganda that Sells alludes to can therefore by definition be merely defensive. In the absence of religion, there would be nothing to propagandize about secularism. In fact, there would be no need for the word to exist at all.

Secularism cannot possibly have, by definition, any agenda save illuminating the flaws and fallacies in the concept of religion. It does not confer power, or provide any emotional or spiritual sustenance. It is simply the everyman defence against the dogma and emotional blackmail associated with theology, and against the creation of a theocracy.

Nice try Pericles. Are you really saying that the evils perpetrated by the secular French revolution was just the result of the absence of religion? What happened was that when we threw off the old regime in the name of freedom we adopted another secular religion that bore bitter fruit indeed. I get tired of pointing out that what followed the revolution was Nazism and Communism, both anti Christian. And all this time we are told it is the fault of religion! Well, it is in a way, but not the religion of Christ. If the blood letting is really due to the absence of Christianity, let us have Christianity back!

It is about time that you recognise that a large shift is occurring that undermines the old modernist project and your kicking against the pricks will result in nothing at all.

Philo.
Interesting take on Babylon and Job, do you have a reference?

Sells,
The only text I have is from my 46 years research into the original Paleo Hebrew text, its development as drama and historical background. How it's been misinterpreted by Christians since the Hellinistic Jews endeavouring to be true to monotheistic removed all the original names of God /gods in the Septuagent, which has subsequently led to the view presented by Catholic doctrine of Satan believed by the Church. This view was deeply influenced by Zoroastrianism and its dualistic world view.

I've written 160 page research commentary which I want to publish after theological critics have evaluated and commented. Though I am not a Hebrew scholar I've carefully with the use of lexicons and word studies and observation tried to be honest to the meaning of the text. I've included a translation of the text into English upholding the names of God and gods found in the debate.

I've sent a copy to my former lecturer, Professor David Cline of Biblical Studies University of Sheffield for his comments. He has written a two volume World Biblical Commentary on Job.

From my view David is merely staying with previous Gnostic thought written on the book, the book is far richer in thought and the defence of monotheism than modern commentators present. It is not about suffering it is about who is responsible for the nature of mortality, with the conclusion that not all suffering is attributable to sin; this Jesus clearly taught. Job denies this to his counsellors who accuse him of sin against El; however YHWH vindicates his purity in the last chapter.

Compare Elihu's defence of El in chapters 32 - 37 where El [god of the earth] is attributed with giving the wild beasts their nature with YHWH's more dramatic statement of his role in creation, chapter 38 - 42.

If you would like a copy of my research for criticism send your postal details to philolipos@bigpond.com and we can communicate directly. To print and post this would cost about $25 or on disc about $10. If you give critical comment on the text I'll wave the cost.

"And all this time we are told it is the fault of religion! Well, it is in a way, but not the religion of Christ. If the blood letting is really due to the absence of Christianity, let us have Christianity back!"

Well clearly that little theory is flawed lol. Just look at history!
Christianity has done its share of killing and still does. George W
is a prime example right now.

Yes, there have been secular regimes who killed. Usually however not democracies, but despots. There are plenty of nations with either secular or buddhist beliefs whatever, who are not into
bloodletting. Clearly religion is just another major reason why people go to war. If muslims and jews did not have religious differences, they would have little to fight about. Perhaps they could learn from those bonobos and make love not war :)

Did your Xtian popes not send their crusaders off to kill? Was Hitler not a Catholic?

Sells, your theories are seriously flawed lol.

If logic is the basis of all thought, it is the basis of all thought about the existence of a teddy (theology). Since theology purports to make rational statements, then theological statements are subject to rules of rational thought, as are any other statements.

So in that sense, perhaps Peter may like to examine this situation and make some rational comments.
i.e.
Professor Ian Harper, an Anglican lay preacher and financial markets expert, and now the head of the proposed new body to set minimum wages in Australia (the Fair Pay Commission) says ..... "For me as an individual, I will be resting on my faith and my belief in God in helping me reach balanced decisions."

Perhaps in Philo's case, because he seems to know this teddy very well, is this Harper joker going to enlist his teddy to fight mammon or as I suspect, his teddy is all for mammon?

ps
All this stuff about people and their need for an imaginary teddy is top shelf insanity.

Keiran,
Spot on! and a very good example indeed of religious belief scaring the rest of us out of our wits.
I was agog last night watching Lateline. Was this guy serious? are low wage earners now subject to the whims of the god of an economist?
I was waiting for Tony Jones to ask Professor Ian Harper if his god actually has a policy on low wage earners. I can't find a mention of it in the good book.
If Peter is worried about being duped by secular rationalism then he can rest assured that his lot are worrying us more.
I have yet to see a public official state that decisions will be made on the basis of secular rationalism.

Nice sidestep, Sells.

>>Are you really saying that the evils perpetrated by the secular French revolution was just the result of the absence of religion?<<

(Sells, 1 June 2006 11:59:35 AM)

>>I heard someone on the radio tonight talking about the French revolution. I had no idea that it was so bloody. He said that this was the first secular religion and was the precursor to those other bloody secular religions, Fascism and Communism.<<

(Sells, 31 May 2006 11:41:54 PM)

First of all, you might like to comment on the concept of a secular religion, which sounds horribly like a contradiction in terms.

Secondly, it is highly convenient for you, but entirely unconvincing, to attribute any and all evil to the lack of religion, given that there seems to be very little difference - not least to those killed - between a war waged on religious grounds and one waged for non-religious reasons.

The absence of something is not the same as the opposite of something.

Hi again Sells,

I'm afraid that I'll still have to disagree with your statement, 'theology is a science'.

There is simply no reason to follow an ancient interpretation of science that does not involve testable hypothesis and experiment. Why? Because it is inferior as a means for extracting truth from nature.

So, I say again, scientific theory must be preceded by experiment and hard data.

This doesn't mean that theology cannot contain truth. It plainly does as millions of happy well adjusted people will testify. But it's not the scientifc kind. It's the philosophical kind. That is, theological truth like philosophical truth is elucidated by logical deduction. Not in the laboratory with a pile of statistical data.

Religion works in the right context because it is the acquired wisdom of many hundreds of years. There is little doubt that religious figures of the past were brilliant men and women and are therefore worth learning from.

However, as the field of neuroscience slowly marches on we will eventually find the biological causes of happy and well adjusted people. These neurological and biological causes will be tangible unlike theology and will be just as humanistic, and possibly more so. Neuroscience and biology will also take over areas that theology had previously occupied. For example, scientists will define morality according to our evolutionary past. It will be a morality consilient with the true emotional needs of Homo sapiens - not the tyranical needs of Imams, Cardinals, and Rabbis.

And you never know, neuroscience may one day find out the biological reasons as to why the worship of Jesus or Allah is beneficial to some people. And conversly, very harmful to others.

At the very beginning of this thread Sells posed the question “Does God exist?” No-one has attempted to answer that question directly, perhaps because Sells regarded it as silly.

The question might have more relevance if it is rephrased as: Does anyone believe that God exists outside the human brain?

There are things which exist outside (independently) of the body with its brain. There are also things which exist inside the brain and which are ideas or images which are derived from outside but are only immaterial reflections of the outside. The only way to tell whether an idea or image inside the brain is a true image of something outside, is to try to “handle” the image as if it is a true representation of something outside.

If you have an image of a chair in your brain but when you try to sit on it you fall to the floor then it proves that it was a false image. If you have an image of a God in your brain then the only way to tell whether it exists outside your brain is to try to test it. And, to establish that the perceived image is, in fact, a representation of something real outside the brain, the test has to be a physical connection. The stars present an image in our brain but, by predicting their movements and collecting their light, we establish that they are outside our brain.

Will Sells, or someone, try to answer directly the silly but basic question?

If God is only an image in the brain then all the struggles with that image will resolve themselves into emotional responses to social relations.

John Warren,
The fact is believers are not to endeavour to define God in spatial or scientific terms, because these are created human constructs. "Thou shalt not make [imagine, create] any graven [formulate] images". God is outside the scientic testable so we cannot reduce him into some physics / chemical formula. Science is the human definition of our understanding of the nature of the physical universe. God is the revelation of the creator mind and unified motive behind the purpose of the universe and all its forms.

The only images we have are 'God is manifest in love'; 'God is manifest in forgivness'; 'God is manifest in reconciliation'; 'God is manifest in absolute pure character'; 'God is transcendent of basic human thought'; etc. To meditate on God is to reflect on the absolute and pure nature of character and actions. We as creatures have been given mandate to reflect these character traits and actions. Sin is the opposition to reflecting purity of character and actions. 'Doing our own thing', 'having our own way', without thought or reference to the holy.

We can say that someone expresses love because their attitudes show love, but the selfless purity of acts that demonstrate pure love comes from the mind of God. We can say someone has forgiven me for the injury I caused, but the selfless purity of that forgiveness is a reflection of the nature of God.

Until you can contemplate God is not a being, as Kieren continually imagines with his 'teddy gods'; until then, you are not entering the realm of the spiritual.

TR
It is sometimes revealing to look at how disciplines were originally understood so as to understand what transformations have happened. This is why I insists on theology being a science in the original sense of a branch of knowledge. To limit the word science to empirical science is to affirm the hegemony of that discipline and to marginalize all other forms of knowledge.

I have an article on evolutionary psychology and religion at:

http://petersellick.nationalforum.com.au/data/Evo%20herm.htm

There is a great leap between neural mechanisms and the totality of the self. To assume that we may one day be able to describe particular selves in terms of neuroscience is a reductionist argument fraught with problems. For example, despite all that we now know about the visual system, which functions map onto which areas of cortex etc, we are still miles away from being able to describe how we experience the visual world. This may be a God of the gaps type argument but defining a particular self is orders of magnitude more complex than this. We will never be able to map each individual’s personal experience even if we get to the stage of understanding how that experience is laid down in memory. Mechanism does not automatically determine content.

John Warren.

I agree that the radical skepticism that is derived from the distance between the world and our perception of it falls down when you consider how accurately we manage to interact with that world. What I meant about the existence or nonexistence of God being a silly question is that this God is always posited in terms of being or a being and I remarked that this sort of question was not likely to be solved in the near or distant future. The real question about God is about the truth of God. If the concept of God does not lead to a more accurate interaction with the world then he is untrue. This is why John’s gospel insists that Jesus is the truth, ie true man, what we really are apart from the distorting influence of sin. So we must get away from speaking about God in terms of being and look to the bible to see its unique language about God as word event. When Israel says that God caused his Name to dwell among them, or when the prophet says “thus says the Lord” and when John describes Jesus as the Word made flesh we are introduced to a language about God that is not contained in the concepts of being but of event. Similarly, when John tells us that “God is love and those who live in love live in God”. This is not sentimental, it is a statement about the existence of God as event, the event of love. Thus Christians have a stake in classical atheism. There is no one “out there” who looks down upon us. Prayer is a different kind of conversation. The grounding of theology in being (ontotheology) was a mistake fostered by the Enlightenment’s obsession with the objective. Previous Christian writers (Augustine) had a different concept.

In the past I have despaired as the discussions of Peter’s articles deteriorated into repetitious flogging of old hobby horses rather than thoughtful consideration of the original text. However I believe this thread is actually beginning to bear fruit!

The last few posts prompt me to offer the following thoughts.

God does not exist, but God does insist. We tend to found the concept of existence primarily (though not solely) on visual perception. This applies perhaps more especially to the scientific-rationalist approach. The notion of insistence deserves far more attention as a type of reality different from the reality of existence. When I say God insists, I base my conclusion less on sight than on hearing. God speaks within my mind, within relationships, within events. To say God exists presents God as an objective, discrete entity as if the conclusion is based on in vitro observation and measurement with all variables controlled. This is the approach of the contemporary scientific-rationalist which is useless for theology. We need to start listening more widely and deeply– to history, to narrative, to music, to our conversations, to our own thoughts and dreams. The insistent Word then begins to reveal itself. Our civilisation is too heavily based on vision.

Sells,
Great couple of well defined posts.

The concept 'word' in the Apostle John's writings is so important in understanding the revelation of God, or should I say the incarnation of God. The character the life and the sincerity of the pure heart and mind of Christ expressed in his spirit we observe and conclude - Here is God!

He was not God because he was conceived a human God, but what was always and eternally God he declared by his living. The word is not verbal communication or ink on a parchment. It is the message typed out by life, and action of a pure mind. As a mother's intimate devotion to the care and needs of an infant, she does not need to use words, it is the communication of devotion and care that the infant is reading. It is living the truth of purity and devotion.

God exposes our heart to true purity and holiness and we can do nothing but confess the imperfection of the desires of our heart and the manipulative thoughts of our mind. Our innermost thoughts and motives are exposed to God, and by us not being willing to confess before God will affect the effectiveness of our relationships to God and others, as much as we might want to hide who we truly are.

One who is living in God and God living in them will not be one defined merely by a religious tag, but one known as pure in thought and character. This does not mean one who is not aware of the world and nature of sin, or immature and infantile in behaviour. It means one who recognises forgiveness in their own life and has the strength to forgive those that have injured them.

Many in society calls themself Christian, but their attitudes and behaviour does not reflect their relationship to God. It rather reflects they are following a peer value system, "as long as everyone is having a good time its OK". People ultimately get hurt and destroyed by doing whatever feels good at the time.

Sells & Philo,

Though our language in the last few posts differs I think we are more or less in agreement about the Word and relationship with God. Thanks for the opportunity to think through the matter in dialogue.

Philo, I commend your efforts in helping others overseas. However just like the religion, social and economic rationalism. Your beliefs caused the problems, so you blame others, then give lip service help to boost your ego.

"Thou shalt not make [imagine, create] any graven [formulate] images". The bible is a formulated image of god, as are churches, prayer books, ordained people. Every sermon, thought, word or action, is a formulated image and graven ones at that. Interpretations are formulated images. None of them are truly representative of your god unless you are god. As your not, you can only formulate, or create an image of the event. Totally against gods will.

So god is not a being, but is love. Yet the influencing events of those expressing gods purity, are violent and destructive, not love, but another false image.

“The real question about God is about the truth of God. If the concept of God does not lead to a more accurate interaction with the world then he is untrue.”

Sells, The truth of god, is in the application and results of gods work through its followers. Accordingly, the interaction of god with the world through its followers, is verification of its truth. Anything else is a concept and formulated image. The applied results can be seen in the state of the world and its interaction with gods followers, this truth is for all to see. Whilst the implied, formulated image of the followers, doesn't equate to the truth, its directly the opposite in truth

“He was not God because he was conceived a human God,”.

Differentiate a human god from god. If jesus was conceived by love, making him a product of the event, (god), then everyone else thats been conceived in love is a god. Irrelevant as to whether its within the moral constraints of an formulated christian image, marriage.

As Jesus, nor god wrote anything and the bible is mostly 2nd-3rd hand knowledge, then they are formulated images, not gods truth and never can be except, within a flimsy mind.

Sells & others: God is not a being but an event; God is manifest in love, forgiveness, reconciliation and pure character. These characteristics are all human and, I believe, emotionally-based human traits. It goes to confirm Feuerbach’s understanding that God is an event in the mind created by humans in their own image.

What of the millions who praise God every Sunday and thank Him for their very existence and ask Him for health and peace. Do you think that they think they are appealing to an event and not a being? Do you think that the suicide bombers would launch themselves so happily into an event if they had not been assured that some sort of paradise with a God, rather than an event, awaited them. These, also, might be regarded as silly and childish questions to advanced theological theorists but vast numbers of people are making decisions every day that those decisions are being guided by something more than an event.

The serious scientific question is: How did that image of God arise in humans?
I have attempted to outline my own understanding of that process from the thoughts of others who have approached it from a materialist viewpoint. I have set out that understanding in:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3252

If anyone cares to examine it.

John Warren,
I believe the human mind registers and recognises the happenings [the events] in the living out of our being, and how we respond / react to events in our lives. God is not a book: He is interpreted in the life lived.

The human mind is not a static computer just recording the keystrokes, it is evaluating the purpose and reasons for the keystrokes and their relationships to other keystrokes where no programme has been developed. We make observations and judgments upon things for which we have had no previous experience. We believe as frail humans if we delve into the mind of God for wisdom it will help us determine the way.

Israel always retraces the crossing of the red sea because it was a miracle in time based positioning. They were at the shore when the tsunami waters withdrew and then after they crossed pounded down on the pursuing Egyptian army. Similarly the collapse of the Jerico wall. It collapsed during the marching of Israel because of a land fault.

How we respond to events in our lives will demonstrate the nature of the our character. Just this morning we at Church received word that two of our beautiful Indian Australian women [mother and daughter] have agressive limph cancer. We pray for their healing, for their strength and grace to remain positive in the face of the unknown outcome. Do they panic, because the daughter has two infant children, they are distressed but we uphold them by emotional and prayerful support.

Why? Because we recognise that Jesus wept at the loss of a friend and the distress of two sisters. To care for the sick is in the nature of God, and he created us that we care for distressed persons. These all are events happening in living in a mortal world. God can be revealed inspite of the cancer and he does.

"To care for the sick is in the nature of God, and he created us that we care for distressed persons. " says Philo who believes in teddy the creator and in a different context says teddy is a non being. Must say this whole teddy milieu is contrived and confusing to say the least.

e.g.

If teddy is such a loving creator how come we have this belief ..... teddy invents pain....teddy invents humans who feel pain..... teddy comes to earth as a human son who really is teddy and gets nailed to a cross. Human son who really is teddy feels pain. Moral of the story ..... Teddy is a sadomasochist. Is this everyone’s idea of how a responsible teddy should behave?

Or perhaps a less contrived explanation is that no teddy exists and bad things inevitably happen in a neutral, imperfect universe

Some people prefer to be sadists and fatalists and concoct infantile rebuttals because they believe they hold superior intelligence and have the answers to all reality. Those believe there is no reality beyond their understanding of the universe. Eat, drink and be indulgently merry for tomorrow we die. Hopeless death! Impoverished fools!

As Christians we are idealists, opportunists to overcome and optimistics because we believe in a better society, a better world, a better future. It is this view that generates creativity to change bad behaviour, exchange the nature of evil and mortality for something better, and a hope that there is a soon emerging heaven on the horizon. Our perceptions of reality are that we need to renew our mind and fortify it with faith and hope. Faith and hope are spiritual qualities found in God, and imparted to us as his spirit lives through our humanity.

Phil I find Keiran's posts as infantile as you. While I don't hold any belief in the supernatural, I despair every time I read a post of Keiran's with his 'teddy' analogies. They are indeed offensive.

However, I do take issue with some of your sentiments also.

I too believe in a better world, a better future, a better society. I too am an idealist. The only difference is that I have these hopes and dreams without recourse to a book which has been written and rewritten by myriad authors with an equally varied number of agendas.

Christianity (or any other religion) does not hold the moral superiority in this world of ours. Claiming it does is an insult to many decent and good people who contribute positively to this world. This arrogance of religion is what divides us.

Live and let live, Philo.

Scout,
I am interested in learning of the moral superiority that is greater than the teachings of Christ. Please give me the sourse of this morality so I can learn. Or is this one of your typical fob off statements!

Philo, there is an well known answer to your question.

Find out for yourself.

There is no single source but rather a journey that is life.

When you start taking responsibility for your own life and how it is lived rather than expecting the answers to be served up from a single source you may understand some of the meaning of life.

R0bert

Scout, religion is a child's playpen and for an infected occupant (whatever age) who has never left this playpen the concept of the real world may be terrifying. To someone outside the myriad of playpens it all seems just a bit peculiar to say the least. Why do we have these divisive incubators that are quite limiting and, well, childish. Take away the playpen and what are you left with? A child? So I agree, we are talking of infantile concepts are we not?

Perhaps you may explain how "'teddy' analogies" can be offensive. Is it that teddies are so loveable that perhaps it is offensive to teddy bears? Well who knows, but what I do know is that belief stamping of babies and the vulnerable is false. It is systematic control and emotional blackmail that amounts to blind abuse through a crude extortion of an individual's psyche. e.g. We have had Philo try the offensive emotional blackmail effort out in a poor answer to a question a few posts back.

Keiran while I too find the concept of religion an immature response to the world I don't believe that making infantile posts does any credit to athiests and agnostics. You can make your point without being so offensive.

Philo, I am not claiming any moral superiority. I attempted to point out to you that many positive aspects that you ascribe exclusively to christians such as "To care for the sick ..." is simply human nature.

There is nothing supernatural in caring for others. Human beings with the exception of sociopaths, care for each other. We are and always have been social creatures, we would not have survived living in caves if we hadn't looked out for each other.

For you to suggest that only christians have altruistic abilities is very arrogant and insulting to the rest of us who conduct our lives in humane and exemplary fashion.

Scout,
If you had read my post carefully you might have recognised I made no such accusation against altruistic non-believers. I merely stated a Christ like position of faith and care in a positive attitude. Selfless care no matter who gives it reflects the nature of the divine.

Quote, "For you to suggest that only christians have altruistic abilities is very arrogant and insulting to the rest of us who conduct our lives in humane and exemplary fashion.

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted you, Philo.

In future you could say something like 'people who care for and help each other are doing god's work'. Then we'd all know that you were not just referring to christians.

:0)

Hi Scout....

You said: "myriad authors with an equally varied number of agendas."

I'd be interested to know about the 'varied' agenda's ?

I see only 2. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart". and "Love your neighbour as yourself" The historical information and poetic section also underline that major theme.

What was Pauls agenda ? Wait..I know this one :) "Enslave women"

Seriously, what was his agenda ?
and James ?
and Peter ?
and John ?

How did they differ between each other ? Could you state 2 major differences of agenda ?

Cheers.

"Seriously, what was his agenda ?
and James ?
and Peter ?
"How did they differ between each other ? Could you state 2 major differences of agenda ?"

Late us start with John, By John I suppose you meant John who was supposed to have written the Gospel John. If you mean John the disciple then we don't know as we don't know anything definitively about John's thought processes. The writer of the Gospel John wrote later than all the other Gospels,well after Paul and was most certainly not the disciple John.
James. By James do you mean the "brother of Jesus"? Who knows what James thought about anything? As Paul is the first writer to nominate James as Jesus' brother and the hand-picked Pauline synoptic Gospels confirm this but we can't be sure if he actually was or that Paul meant "brother" in another sense. Paul never confirmed that he believed in an historical Jesus so it would be strange if he thought he had a brother.
Peter. There is confusion about whether Peter (Simon Peter) mentioned in the Gospels is the same as Cephus mentioned by Paul so what his "Peter's" agenda was is anyones guess.
We do however know what Paul's agenda was because we have 6 or 7 writings atrributed to him by most scholars which show him as a Gnostic and Hellenised Jew. His agenda was to spread the idea of a dying and resurrecting god-man to the gentiles and start a new (although eclectic) religion.
You are right Boaz_David there is very little agenda difference in the New Testament writers because the whole thing is based on the religious meanderings of Paul. In the 4th Century any "Gospels" and writings that did not agree with Paul's agenda were discarded and included were writings of various unknown people with Pauline Christianity flowing through their veins.
What was Jesus' agenda.......whatever Paul said it was.

Priscillian,
What utter unresearched nonsense. Please give your sourse material. I suggest you at least read the New Testament and learn the vocabulary, language style and individual characteristics of each of the writers.

Sorry Philo I can't read ancient Greek so I can't comment on vocabulary, language style and individual characteristics of each of the writers. I'm glad to see people like you keeping the classics alive. I don't know what particular claim you are referring to but I dispute the term "unresearched" although you are completely within your rights to call it "nonsense" and I will keep your words in mind when I next reach for the NT.
I will of course study any evidence you can offer as to who wrote what in the New Testament but unless you can convince me otherwise I'm sticking solidly to my opinion.
Peace and Love

All the worlds religions came into being during an axial period in history, during a time of social change and reaction to what had been before religiously. These new faiths insisted people think for themselves, the truth had to be discovered by our own efforts and in our own hearts and minds.

We're facing the same problem now, the same resistance and reluctance by scholars and ecclesiastics refusing to examine the growing available evidence and change. Just Examining the roots of christian faith alone is ridiculous, as the sacred was crucial to all traditions and was an essential fact of human experience. When you consider that all the great sages of the past had insisted that transcendence was beyond definition, including jesus. This means that transcendence is beyond the neat confines of ecclesiastic orthodoxy and as such, beyond the supernatural and the personal.

As all sages have stated that god is within, then its monotheism that's duped itself into being guided by fear, not faith. Being unable to disentangle history from the stranglehold of theology, is where the fearful fall down.

Philo, you exemplify the traits of the fearful by negating what Priscillian says. Do you read and have personal knowledge of how that Greek dialect was written and interpreted. Relying as you do on dubious selective writings, again shows the amount of fear involved in having the reality of your belief exposed. The NT your read, is an interpretation, not the reality

As with religions in those days, monotheism has past its use by date in our evolutionary understanding. Humans have evolved beyond superstition and violent suppressive regimes. There's been psychological investigation's that determine religion as a gathering of sadomasochists, overlorded by the psychopaths of the belief. You see this in the works of the Sisters of Nazareth, St Vincent de Paul and the hundreds of thousands of convents and homes where children were psychologically and physically beaten and tortured by religious zealots over the centuries. Just watch Hillsong or any religious program to see psychopaths in action.