How the roots of modernity has clothed our ideals relates to our Western view and Christian tradition. It is an accepted and well-worn dogma that human beings were created free by God and intended to be free and independent. However, in early Christian, medieval and Renaissance thought, this freedom was lost when Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man" was written in 1486, a time where 'Humanism' was not anti-Christian as it has come to mean in some quarters of modern discourse - late medieval and early modern 'humanism' is just the opposite. In traditional, Platonic Christianity, humanity occupied a middle position in the hierarchy of the universe: as both physical and spiritual, humanity sat dead center between the spiritual and physical worlds. Pico unhinged humanity from that position. Humans could occupy any position whatsoever in the chain of being. A human being could become as low as an animal or, though intellect and imagination, become equivalent to God - at least in understanding. In paraphrasing God at our conception, Pico says, "... you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you neither of heavenly nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine."

500 years later, the International Academy of Humanism tragically loses the dignity of medieval dogma through its rationalisation of 'human cloning'(1997), "As far as the scientific enterprise can determine, Homo sapiens is a member of the animal kingdom. Human capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humankind's rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover." Tragedy surely awaits.

George,

"You are entitled to interpret the OT and the NT your way, but so are people who accept the authority of this or that specialist rather than relying on their own speculations. This is true not only when interpreting the bible but also when interpreting (understanding) findings in branches of science where one is not a specialist."

But who is the specialist? I would expect you would not accept sect establishing itself in the a piori belief that only mathematics before Newtown is correct; we don't listen to Dirac, Penrose, Chandrasekhar, Heinsenber, Einstein and Gell-Mann: Our authorities prohibit calculus and pure mathematics. Cosmology or QM, well exploration here is mortal sin. We just start with a priori propoositions, without induction and indwell in self-confirmation.

Clerics do learn an in-house brand of comparative religions, yet I would posit that Richard Leakey is a better "specialist" paleo-anthropolist than any cardinal or bishop in the world. So who do you go to understand the orgins of humanity. Same for, other specialists regarding history or civilization or religions plural? Leakey or a true subject specialist, or, someone whose dogma is built on the Hellenisation of Jesus' teachings a generation after a generation of oral lore, Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople.

If one student of 400 in an audience intellectly, critically questions what I have said, I go home with a warm fuzzy feeling, even though I a subject specialist. But if I were stand up midst a Christmas Mass and point out to priest that Herod was dead when Jesus was born, at best, it be seen to extremely rude, and, most clerics I have come across would attack me and maybe even expel me from the group. If we do accept the Anno Domini calendar [some don't linking it to an earlier Jewish lunar calendar], who is the specialist here the historian or priest

-cont-

Likewise, Pilate according historians was Praefectus of Judea, hereafter, proconsular powers were imposed thirty years subsequent to Pilate's removal[c. 36]. According to historians, it wasn't until 60s when Rome clamped down on the Jews [zealots?] that Proconsular powers were available. Herein, I agree one can choose the historian's or the minister's account. It is a matter of choosing who is the best specialist and whose methodology apt?

George, I think we both look towards specialists. You, towards a closed system, perhaps? Me, towards, an open system, definitely.

Further, I am sure we can respect each's views, while in opposition.

Kuhn:

I want say much here, because we are drifting off-topic again...

If I recall, it was Lakatos who said that Kuhn was inclined towards mythical "paradigm shifts", whereas Popper was more empirical. Kuhn's academic papers in the early 1960s, seem to deal more with the theory of disciplines, distancing theory from practice and a definite field of knowledge, while demoting quantification.

Best wishes.

Relda,

Do you have a position on religious specialist [authorities] versus academic specialists [authorities]?

Cheers.

Oliver,
Whilst respecting its premise, I'm fortunate to feel free of most authority - certainly any extraneous religious 'authority'. Currently, as a mature student, I must bind myself to academic authority - if I'm to succeed. Morally and spiritually, my attainment depends on something similar (as my posts should reveal) - any discipline should require this positon.

Relda,

In academe some degree deference remains even after a PhD. One can be isolate jumping out of a discipline. Because my interest is the commercial applications of the influence of cultural antecedents on knowlegde discover, I sometimes have issues with reviewers who are adequate speialist on a toic, say, product innovation in sixteenth China. Business studies usually does test historty much before the Great Depression, with a rare comment perhaps from Harper's in the nineteen century. In a similar, "adopting" specialists from other disciplines I have requires explanation time, being a bit of a nuisance in a 20-30 session. It can be frustrating and rewarding; herein, after cutting pieces out my delivery to fit the slot, in the of a talk to essentially business academics, a Professor of History, stood, applauded, and cried, "At last! At last!

George,

"The historiographical tradition Kuhn attempts to assimilate in his theory of scientific revolutions is thus by no means unitary and uncontentious. On the contrary, it is characterized by a deep philosophical opposition between a mathematical idealist tendency taking its inspiration from Kant and a more realistic, substantialistic tendency taking its inspiration - via the thought of Meyerson - from a mixture of Platonic, Cartesian, and Hegelian ideas. The former tendency, following Kant, renounces the ambition of describing an ontological realm of substantial things subsisting behind the empirical phenomena in favor of a rigorous mathematical description of the lawlike relations among the phenomena themselves. It differs from Kant, however, in recognizing that no particular mathematical structures (such as those of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics) are necessarily instantiated in the phenomena, and, accordingly, it portrays the rationality and universality of scientific progress as a historical evolution marked by a continuous unfolding and generalization of the powers of mathematical thought."

"The latter tendency, by contrast, maintains precisely an ontology of substantial things, and, accordingly, it emphatically rejects the attempt to reduce the task of science to the formulation of precise mathematical laws." Citation : Title: Thomas Kuhn. Thomas Nickles (2003), p.33 - biographical editor. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England.

Sells,

Dogma, Etymology: [a 1600 HOOKER Eccl. Pol. VIII. ii. §13 [tr. D. Stapleton] Power to proclaim, to defend, and..to preserve from violation dogmata, very articles of religion themselves.] - OED

Did not Luther and the Protestant movement breach the dogma of the Holy Roman Catholic Church? Do you believe the Pope is infallible? What do think about Christians for various denominations taking the Holy Eucharist in each other's churches?