Relda,
Blumenberg in his "The Legitimacy of the modern age" Chapter 2 throws much doubt on theories that extrapolate the secularization of Christian ideas such as your example of progress. His argument is too extensive to reproduce here but it is certainly worth a look.

Dear Relda,

The concept of a beginning, creation and linear time predates both Judaism and Christianity. From part of “Gilgamesh, Enkiddu and the Nether World” translated from the Sumerian clay tablets by Samuel Noah Kramer:

“After heaven had been moved away from earth,
After earth had been separated from heaven,
After the name of man had been fixed,
After the (the heaven-god) An carried off the heaven,
After the (the air-god) Enlil carried off the heaven …”

Kramer in “History Begins at Sumer” p. 83 continues:

“1. In a tablet which gives a list of the Sumerian Gods, the goddess Nammu, written with the pictograph for the primeval “sea,” is described as “the mother, who gave birth to heaven and earth.” Heaven and earth were therefore conceived by the Sumerians as the created product of the primeval sea.”

The Bible cannot be understood in isolation. It is the product of middle eastern cultures which embody the myths and social practices current at the times that it was written.

“The Sacred Books of the Jews” by Harry Gersh estimates that the books of the Jewish Bible were written starting in 1200 BCE with “The Song of the Well” (Numbers 21:17-18) to Daniel in 160 BCE. Canonization at Yavneh in 90 CE accepted certain books and rejected others.

The books of the New Testament were estimated to have been written between 45 CE and 140 CE. Canonisation came much later and reflected the practices of the various parts of Christianity. Catholic canonisation was at Trent in 1546, Church of England in 1563, Calvinism in 1647 and eastern Orthodoxy in 1762.

Biblical morality included slavery, polygamy and the right of a father to decide who his daughter should marry. Honour killings where a girl is murdered because she decides on a mate are biblical morality. Some biblical morality is not applicable in current society.

The statement “The Bible interprets the Bible.” made by messianicmatt means, “The Bible is so because the Bible says it is so.” It isolates the Bible from the milieus in which it was written.

Dear Relda,

I agree that in our ‘developed’ society we no longer have a sense of community. That has been a concern of mine. I felt I had little in common with my workmates in most places I have worked. I don’t share the interest that many men have in sports. I stopped listening to popular music at the time that Elvis and the Beatles emerged. My neighbours appear and disappear as their dwellings change occupants. People who work together and live near each other really do not make a community.

Years ago in the United States I was involved in setting up an intentional community in Durville Island between North and South Islands in New Zealand. One might be able to build community in a joint enterprise. We built up a membership through advertising in magazines such as “The Nation” in the United States. We finally met each other at a state park in New Jersey. We appeared to have one thing in common. Most of the women including my wife were bosomy, leggy blondes wearing black stockings. However, when we started to talk we were at odds. One person asked, “If we produce something in our free time that makes money what obligation do we have to share it with the community?” Another person responded, “What free time? The community is going to direct us and give us purpose. We will be working together and share our lives.” It turned that the great majority of those present were looking for a community such as B. F. Skinner described in Walden II. Eg. In voting the community would get together and decide how people should vote. Then all the people would vote as a bloc. That definitely was not what I wanted.

However, a lot of people in Australia have formed intentional communities. The last I heard there were 60,000.

As the song from “Connecticut Yankee” goes:

“You can count your friends on the fingers of your hand.
If you’re lucky you have one.”

Dear Mechanicmatt:

Welcome to the list. I heard of Brickner only because you mentioned him

david f,
>> Irish Catholics have become Jews. They remain ethnic Irish, but they are no longer Catholic. <<
Exactly. Like “Lustiger has become Catholic. He remains ethnic Jewish but he is no longer Jew in the religious meaning of the word.” Nevertheless, I accept your dislike of the term “ethnic Jew”, and am greatful for your insiders’ view of what is a Jewish identity. If I understand you correctly, it is only community rules and tradition that connects an Irishman who converted to Judaism with a Jew, who “lost his faith” and became an atheist.

>>You cited Geertz but didn’t cite the criterion or criteria he used to separate the ideas.<<
Well, I agree that religion can easily (and unfortunately often) degenerate into ideology or science (more exactly pseudo-science, like pre-Enlightment Christianity, or even today those who are pushing ID as scientific theory). So in this sense you might be right that there is only a soft difference between religion and ideology.

Now to Clifford Geertz. His definition of religion has become a much quoted anthropologist’s definition, and goes like this:

“(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (op. cit. p. 90).

He devotes a whole Chapter 8 to ideology but apparently offers a definition only indirectly:

“A concept that once meant but a collection of political proposals, perhaps somewhat intellectualistic and impractical but at any rate idealistic ... has now become, to quote Webster’s, “the integrated assertions, theories, and aims constituting a politico-social program, often with an implication of factitious propagandizing...” - a much more formidable proposition” (op cit. p. 193).

He seems to defend ideology against reducing the term to its purely negative connotations, like in Nazism or Communism.

I think these are two different concepts, although you might see the difference as only “soft”.

relda,
>>The concept of progress is of Western origin and is founded in the Christian understanding of history. This is all largely bound to a linear concept of time – a ‘reality’ which Einstein dissolved.<<

Einstein rather “dissolved” Newton’s notion of space and time as a priori given and independent of each other, because even for Einstein time progresses “linearly” although differently with respect to different coordinate systems (observers).

More to the point, Merriam-Webster gives two definitions of progress
(i) a forward or onward movement (as to an objective or to a goal), or
(ii) gradual betterment.

I think (i) without the brackets is obvious: history (human or cosmic) moves “forward or onward” by the very definition of history. Problematic is only whether it has a destination (as Marx in the first case, and Teilhard in the second case, thought).

One can also have a “forward movement” towards a destiny which is outside the realm in consideration (like in mathematics you can have so-called Cauchy sequences in a metric space which are not convergent within the space, but converge towards something outside the original space, in its completion - this is for david f, apologies to others). My reservations about Teilhard - or rather about some of his interpreters, like Tipler - are that they place their Omega Point within the “space of events“ that are within the observable cosmos (actually potentially “observable” through available theories about the physical cosmos). A theist can imagine a “completion” of this observable cosmos ... but I know these are just speculations of an unimportant theist mathematician on top of the much more important speculations of a theist paleontologist.

As for (ii) “gradual betterment”, this of course depends on how you define betterment.

I visualize progress as an upword movement along a vertical spiral: the optimist sees only its projection onto the vertical axis, and concludes that it is a steady movement upwords; the pessimist sees only its projection onto the horizontal plane and concludes that it is just a movement in circles.

david f,
The biblical morality you mention appears as chaotic, by modern standards – however, I don’t use that same ‘yard-stick’. Our community (or lack of) can conceivably revert, or evolve back to a similar chaos, although I hope not.

We interpret the bible but the lens we use for our focus becomes paramount for any meaning – I’ve found theology, with its counter-intuitive thought process to be quite helpful.

I’m at a stage in life where a close knit, small group of friends is all I require (my presumption is, they feel similarly) – I relate to others, I guess, from this ‘secure’ base, mindful of being open to others and their ideas so as to remain stimulated – and on occasion, inspired.

George,
Whilst it’s definitely true we all need to relate to a linear concept of time, it nevertheless remains counter-intuitive to conclude, as Einstein did in his later years, "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Also counter-intuitive is the second law of thermodynamics describing the universe as more ordered in the past and increasingly disordered in the future.

Related to the spiral concept is David Bohm’s idea of the two kinds of order in nature, what he called the explicate order and implicate order. Tension exists between the two orders and they combine to form a cooperative ‘entity’ creating the pattern of a spiral. Implicate order for Bohm was a way of acknowledging how quantum mechanics reveals a hidden order where our world is influenced by the whole of all possible states. Quantum theory, which eventually led to the theory of many worlds, went beyond Einstein’s belief in God not playing dice.

Gevin Giorbran, whose unexepected death ealier this year, has provided some interesting insight on the pattern of symmetry created between the disorder and order within the universe. The second law, as mentioned and according to Giorban, has led science to generally view the universe as an evolution of increasing disorder, and consequently our human interpretation of reality has been dramatically misled.