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The Forum > Article Comments > 'The Plumb Trilogy' and the modern world > Comments

'The Plumb Trilogy' and the modern world : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 25/11/2008

Such is the economy of religious thought that most seeming escapes from it lead back to it by another name.

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so, "the reality of the Church" is at heart "the People of God here, firmly, on planet Earth" ?
hmm.

http://www.graveyardofthegods.org/deadgods/graveyard.html
Posted by bushbasher, Monday, 1 December 2008 12:27:09 AM
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Not so, boxgum.

>>What Pericles fails to acknowledge is the reality of the Church<<

Far from it, in fact.

I fully acknowledge that the church - or rather, the multiplicity of churches spanning countless different religions - is real.

If I didn't, I wouldn't spend nearly the amount of time that I do, trying to understand the people who follow them.

Sorry. It.

>>The adherents to the rationalist, secular movements across the last three hundred years, the "enlightened" centuries, have little to show of their own<<

Galileo might disagree. So might Darwin. Many significant scientific discoveries have had to fight their way into existence against the blind resistance of the church. Who, by the way, were never shy to recruit the forces of superstition to crush those whose theories diminished their power over the weak.

Ah yes. The weak.

>>Pericles, you talk of power, control and exploitation of weak mindedness as being the Church's attributes. Let us apply some reasoned thought. This is hardly the behavioural properties for institutional success in the long term.<<

Your "reasoned thought" is merely the unsupported assumption that I am wrong.

I would use precisely the longevity of the church to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that fear and superstition may be used to enslave the weak-minded, indefinitely.

In fact, I would suggest that control over the weak-minded is an infallible means to exert power and control, as tyrants have proved throughout the ages.

>>Notwithstanding the obvious and acknowledged blots of wrong, unjust and at times perverse behaviour across time, a reasonable person would have to make some acknowledgement of such fact and evidence of long existence, and the goodness that has flowed within and from the Church to the human project of life. Truth.<<

If you are trying to say, hey, we're not all bad, I will gladly and sincerely agree with you.

But I would also point out that there are good people in the world who do not attribute their goodness to a church.

So religion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the "human project of life".
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 1 December 2008 12:50:44 PM
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"It is the arrogance of modernity to dismiss a tradition that has refined itself over such a long time span, and has fought off heretical attacks that would corrupt the truth it seeks to enunciate."

It is the same arrogance that motivated Galileo to suggest the earth was not the centre of the solar system. Calling it arrogance does not make the earth the centre.

Human beings are an evolving species. We have rejected many traditions over the centuries as we have come closer to understanding ourselves and our world. We cannot maintain integrity as human beings and deny all the evidence that our senses provide to us through scientific analysis. If we do not trust our senses then we can trust nothing including theology. How do we know that our eyes do not deceive us when we are reading the bible?
Posted by phanto, Monday, 1 December 2008 1:18:43 PM
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Pericles. Whilst your namesake in Ancient Greece was promoting himself and populist ideas in the Golden Age of Athens, the last of the Hebrew biblical texts were being written. Text that became fulfilled in the suffering-servant Jesus of Nazareth 400 years later. Long, long after the collapse of Pericles's Athens as a power. A power based on dominance and control.

Ancient Greece came and went. Its legacy of reasoned thought and civic development was absorbed into the early Christian theology ( faith seeking understanding) and later into its civic developments under Roman authority acceptance of it. Be mindful that Aristotle considered monarchy as the ideal form of civic government, though the matter of succession saw problems that brought them undone through assassination or revolt.

As well, Pericles, you confirm the point from my first post. You state that the Church has been a controller of weak minds through power and control, as has been the behaviour of tyrants throughout the ages. Here is the proof of your error and the crowning of my point. Tyrants do not last. They never have, as they bring about their own misery. They are a perversion of Aristotle's ideal monarchy. Therefore the goodness of what you agree exists in the Church must be something beyond the rational, emotional and contrived. It has to be real.

So what is this substance that enlivens such an institution as the Church that alone holds together our story to be related again in this new age of pessimism, despair and folly? Our story, from the time of Abraham, which has absorbed the unfolding truths uncovered through the sciences yet still links us to the origins of revelation that proclaim our human dignity in "imago dei". Our story that reveals a God of promises. That inspires and underpins the faithful to live the "good life" in fine Aristotelian tradition.

PS Phanto... Do read some Aquinas. It'll inform you.
Posted by boxgum, Tuesday, 2 December 2008 1:03:59 AM
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Boxgum said -
"PS Phanto... Do read some Aquinas. It'll inform you."

Now that is what I call arrogance!
Posted by phanto, Tuesday, 2 December 2008 8:28:36 AM
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boxgum, you will continue to alienate your audience if you insist upon using impenetrable circumlocutions.

It is generally the indicator of someone who has read a great deal, but understood little.

>>Text that became fulfilled in the suffering-servant Jesus of Nazareth 400 years later<<

Prophecies may be fulfilled. People who are successful at some venture may feel fulfilled. Texts cannot.

And what, precisely, is a "suffering-servant" (complete with its smug hyphen), if not a meaningless pseudo-biblical soundbite?

This is not communication, boxgum. It is the worst form of preaching - platitudinous, coyly-coded nonsense.

>>civic development was absorbed into the early Christian theology (faith seeking understanding) and later into its civic developments...<<

Babble.

How can civic development be "absorbed" into anything? Particularly into a theology? If you are trying to tell us that civic development became inseparable and indistinguishable from Christian theology, I would beg to differ. Particularly as you provide no evidence for this.

Or did you mean something else entirely? It isn't easy to tell.

>>You state that the Church has been a controller of weak minds through power and control, as has been the behaviour of tyrants throughout the ages. Here is the proof of your error and the crowning of my point. Tyrants do not last. They never have, as they bring about their own misery.<<

Poor logic.

Tyrants control weak minds. The Church controls weak minds. Therefore the Church is a tyrant (and tyrants don't last).

Strawberries are red. My car is red. My car is a strawberry.

Being a tyrant demands more than the ability to control weak minds. It is an attitude. I did not suggest the Church is tyrannical, merely that it sets out to control the weak.

>>Therefore the goodness of what you agree exists in the Church must be something beyond the rational, emotional and contrived. It has to be real<<

"Therefore", boxgum?

"Must?"

In the same helpful spirit that you suggest to Phanto that he read Aquinas, I commend that you begin to think a little for yourself, and resolve to eschew cut-and-paste argument that you clearly do not understand.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 3 December 2008 7:58:13 AM
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