>> Readers must understand that I use the term “liberal” not in the usual sense ...

sellick is a tendentious moron, in the usual sense.

The author says:
"The ethics of liberalism is the line of least resistance. This is why harm reduction is the favoured excuse of governments who legalise abortion to reduce the deaths from backyard operators, prostitution to reduce disease, drugs to reduce the criminality of the drug culture. Harm reduction takes the place of morality and the evils that we seek to control quickly become industries that are to be respected.

Abortion, prostitution and drugs have been traditionally managed by the informal and/or criminal sectors of the economy. It seems to me that the author is referring to these activities as throwaway examples of behaviour that are widely regarded as risky and/or undesirable, and yet government interventions prior to developing and implementing "harm reduction" policies have had no effect on the traditional economic structure.

The traditional economic structure, with its law enforcement approach to abortion, prostitution and drug sales and distribution, involves transactions which I consider corrupt and corrupting. Corrupt police and legislators gain rewards for attending and defending the system as they have for centuries - and well before what the author describes as "the implosion of Christianity".

If the author takes these three social problems seriously, what does he propose to do about them beyond theorising on the topic of liberalism?

Right life is ecstatic mindless participation in unboundless feeling-radiance.

Poor Sells-stuck in the 19th century--or rather the premodern world of medieval superstition---or even in his case the ancient "world" of Israel, wherever and whenever that was.

There is zero spiritually informed intelligence in any of his writings (rantings)

Neuhaus was essentially a proponent of catholic fascism. If you check out the journal he was associated with they dont have much tolerance for anyone who doesnt accept their right-thinking interpretation of the "authority" of the "magisterium".

Indeed they assert that there is NO truth to be found outside of the "catholic" church. Which obviously includes Sells too.

It also had strong links with Opus Dei too.

Anyone for sado-masochism?

1. http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/htmlpage7

Evangelicals are a dangerous joke. They are very much a product of modernism or the culture formed in the image of scientism, or rather left-brained LITERALISM. Just like Sells. And have nothing whatsoever to do with Reality, Truth or The Beautiful.

Anyone for a theocratic state?

1. http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/144

And what has theology got to do with Reality, Truth or The Beautiful? It is all just pretentious and manipulative mind-games. Its fundamental asana is doubt of the Divine Radiance that IS Alive as quite literally everything.

Left-brained towers of babble/babel---ashes and dust.

In contrast the Process that IS True Religion only begins to begin when the left brained mind that wants to do theology (and thus control both the Living Divine and other people) falls away.

Real Spiritual Intelligence is tacit, silent and wordless.

And isnt it completely obvious that most of the Bible should be thrown away with both hands.

1.http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

Especially the genocidal bits of the "Old Testament". And the bits that advocate execution for various social "sins"!

It (the Bible) is claimed by right-thinking religionists to be the infallible word of "god", and by extension applicable and binding on ALL human beings, in all times and places.

Either ALL OF IT IS BINDING, or which bits?

What kind of fact based evidence does one need?

The emperor of traditional religiosity really has no clothes

Peter, unfortunately for you, you are about as convincing as a Mormon on my door step interupting my otherwise "liberal" enjoyment of the Sabbath watching grown men chase a football.

The term that keeps coming to mind is "prolix". You are an uneconomical user of words and this always rings alarm bells for me.

Hiding behind verbosity is usually someone who is not at all convinced of their own position.

Put simply your thesis appears to be that post-enlightenment, we really have lost our way and should be thankful our creator has not laid waste to our undeserving souls, so get down on your knees and start praying for salvation you heathens.

...or words to that effect.

Peter, why don't you just allocate some of your personal time (you appear to have plenty to spare) to getting your hands dirty and actually do some (secular) community work.

The cure to your obvious frustration with the modern world may be that simple.

Sir Vivor
Good post. I was conscious of using my three examples as throw aways and that each deserved a treatment of its own in more depth. The point I was trying to make is that liberalism has left an ethical vacuum at the centre of our society which means that we can no longer hold, as a community, that prostitution, abortion and drug taking are injurious to all concerned. Harm minimization automatically gives these activities a legal and hence a moral status and the ethical sense of the community is further blunted. Any solution to this dilemma that I would suggest must sound fanciful, it entails the broad sharing in the community of a common story that truthfully articulates the content of what "human" means. Obviously I regard the Christian tradition as being that common story. My suggestion may provoke derision, given the low stocks of the church in our society, but that does not stop me believing that it is true.

Bushbasher.
What is the point of your post? You have reached the lowest level of childish abuse. Do you think you might be admired for it?

Ho Hum,
Pushing your old and tired bandwagon again at the cost of my discussion space. Would you please desist, no one is interested.

Peter Sellick

<<Liberalism is not so much an ideology but the vacuum left after the implosion of Christianity.>>

Christianity (the church kind) has imploded because it had no substance. The vacuum was always there.

<<Liberal Christianity has been aided by modern biblical criticism because it robs the text of its authority and power.>>

The text never has had any authority. It only had the illusion of authority of those who claim to have the ability to speak on behalf of God.

If there is a God it will not be found following the Sellick system. That is nothing and always has been. The real problem of the Sellick system is that it blocks and side-tracks people who are genuinely seeking. It creates an illusion of authority where there is none.

What is Liberalism? You say:
"The point I was trying to make is that liberalism has left an ethical vacuum at the centre of our society ..."

Sells,

You may be interested in Noam Chomsky's "Understanding Power". The topic of liberalism and its use (as both an element and a target of propaganda) is insightfully discussed in several places.

You assert that, as a result of liberalism,
"Harm reduction takes the place of morality and the evils that we seek to control quickly become industries that are to be respected."

My core point is that the industries of prostitution and of drug sales and distribution are long-standing industries, marginalised into the informal and criminal sectors of the economy by the law and a punitive law-enforcement approach to health issues, and kept there at least in part by those whose profits would be lost, were these industries to be legitimised.

Chomsky is also highly critical of the mainstream press, and offers a nuanced view of its workings. The book is well worth your time, if you wish to gain a wider perspective on "liberalism". He has been working directly on social issues in a so-called liberal society for many years, and is in addition an interesting theorist.

There is truth in what you say. Thanks for putting it out there.

...with God comes responsiblity...but His burden is light compared to the burden of unending desires.

What a revelation it is to discover God in the heart....to worship...I am struck by it too....the profundity of its import can not be lost on one who has begun to experience it.

I have to wonder sometimes, at the wisdom of seeking to replace one ideology with another. In the face of such irrational thinking we used to comment in footnotes, "this person has reached rock bottom.... and started digging"

Before you get too uspet with Bushbasher or Ho Hom, you need to understand that if you wish to be out there with fairies, pixies and aliens, you might, just might be considered as an agent provocateur.

I particularly liked your response to Sir Vivor when you said "I was concious of using my three examples". I don't think you were, "concious" that is.

If you don't like posters commenting in your "discussion space", don't post.

>> Bushbasher. What is the point of your post?

Sellick, what is the point of your writing, for the twenty-fifth time, your ignorant and divisive and pointless, special-pleading claptrap?

i have addressed your posts seriously in the past. but you are not the slightest bit interested in genuine dialogue. you are only interested in preaching. and you are an excruciating bore.

i gave your piece exactly the disrespect that it, and you, deserved.

Dear Sells,

Ho Hum's first reference contained 14 points defining fascism.I find liberalism the best antidote to fascism. Before the word fascism was invented Calvin ruled Geneva.

A master of the art of organization, Calvin had been able to transform a whole city, a whole State, whose numerous burghers had hitherto been freemen, into a rigidly obedient machine; had been able to extirpate independence, and to lay an embargo on freedom of thought in favour of his own exclusive doctrine.

Calvin held sway over the printing presses, the pulpits and the professorial chairs; as wax in his hands were the various authorities, Town Council, university and law-courts, priests and schools, catchpoles and prisons, the written and the spoken and even the secretly whispered word.

It was Protestant proto-fascism.

The url Ho Hum referred to mentioned four Catholic fascists - Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet.

It was only with the separation of Church and State which meant the removal of the oppressive hand of Christianity and its relegation to acceptance by choice rather than by compulsion that we could achieve a democratic society.

You wrote: "Mounting an argument against liberalism is a big ask. It is like arguing against common sense or motherhood."

I agree that mounting an argument against liberalism is like arguing against common sense.

Sellick wrote: Ho Hum,
Pushing your old and tired bandwagon again at the cost of my discussion space. Would you please desist, no one is interested.

Dear Peter Sellick,

Your discussion space? It was your article but hardly your discussion space.

I disagree. I see you as pushing an old and tired bandwagon. You are wrong that no is interested in Ho Hum's writing. I find Ho Hum most interesting and possessing the common sense of liberalism.

You have the narrowness of many religionists. You want to have your say and others to shut up. I prefer the liberal tradition of free expression.

I always try to get through a Sells piece. Sometimes I succeed, but I fell pretty much at the first fence on this one.

My roadblaock was:

"Liberalism is not so much an ideology but the vacuum left after the implosion of Christianity. It consists of the detritus left over from that implosion, more negative than positive, a fall-back position that defends the nihilism that exists in its centre."

Followed immediately by...

"Liberalism stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfilment. It stands against doctrine, discipline, self sacrifice and discipleship."

My brain conflated this to form...

"Liberalism is the vacuum left after the implosion of Christianity, and stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfilment"

All I could think was, hey, isn't it a really good thing that Christianity imploded, if that's what it created.

Freedom? Tick

Tolerance? All for that.

Fairness? Yep.

Self-expression? All good.

Choice? Yes please.

Fulfilment? Absolutely

Unfortunately, this interpretation turned out to be inconsistent with the remainder of the piece. Apparently, my approval of all the things I believe we should value as human beings, make me a thoroughly bad lot.

Most disturbing.

But if these are the values Sells despises, no wonder I continue to have difficulty discerning how his world works.

I once thought that Sells might have something to offer to mankind. Alas, this last piece has wiped any such thoughts from my mind. What an utter piece of *&$Rt

David

Without liberalism, Sellick would never have the opportunity to publish (every few weeks) one of his interminable sermons.

BTW, since when did "harm reduction" become immoral?

The opposites of liberal are:

Small minded,
biased
prejudiced
insular
intolerant.

Hey you're right, this does describe the church previously (and the catholic church today.)

For all its imperfections, liberal democracy has at least provided freedom. As another poster rightly noted, without liberalism, views could not be freely exchanged in this forum. Freedom is only worth anything when it is extended to people whose views one doesn't agree with, so we just have to grin and bear the endless sermons from the author.
The whole tendency of this piece, and others like it, is to imply that liberal types - atheists, that is - have no guiding ethics and morality and are adherents of some sort of "anything goes" school of thought. It is a moth-eaten notion but still doing service for those who really have nothing else to offer. Of course, it goes without saying that it is deeply offensive to those of us who cannot believe in anything supernatural, and therefore cannot be christians, and yet have ethical, moral and respected lives. We do a whole lot less harm than people who go around spuriously telling people how unethical they are.

Welcome to OLO Miranda - your post made excellent points.

The brevity in post my is that I have long since become quite jaded with the lack of respect Sells applies to non-believers and given up on any meaningful exchange.

Which is a shame.

I can well imagine lively discussions with the likes of Father Peter Kennedy, Shelby Spong or Father Bob Maguire all of whom are tolerant and inclusive of everyone irrespective of religious beliefs or lack thereof. But we rarely get articles from the spiritual just the sanctimonious.

Dear Fractelle - thanks so much for your welcome, which is much appreciated. I completely agree with your take on "Sells". I personally think that Father Bob Maguire is excellent value and I can well imagine having a rollocking conversation with him, coming from a position of mutual respect. I have similar respect for Father Frank Brennan, whom I have had a bit to do with in the past. Also, when I was quite young, I had an exchange of letters with an Anglican minister who presided over the funeral of someone I loved. It was a respectful exchange that in the end we ended on a point of fundamental disagreement but still managed to not abuse each other. It is not valid for religious types to insist that they hold the monopoly of ethics and morals. Plenty of evidence could be presented for the contrary case, in fact.
And I return to a point I have made before - why should the capacity to believe in the supernatural say anything at all about that person's capacity for morality? They are not related. Douglas Adams said that religious types are just simply showing off their believing credentials. The capacity to believe in invisible father figures supervising the lives and monitoring the behaviour of human beings (who have only been on this billions-of-years-old planet for less than 100,000 years) qualifies people for nothing except a gold star for credulity.

Sells--why do you think Jesus was executed?

Because he was a threat to the worldly power on the then religious establishment.

Do you think Jesus would have been welcome or even recognised in Calvins fascist mini-state?

At the Vatican?

At the "world-youth-day" circus that was held in Sydney?

At Opus Dei?

At anything that was sponsored or endorsed by Neuhaus?

At any of the rallies or conferences put on by USA evangelicals?

At a Billy Graham crusade?

At your local church?

Plus Jesus was not in any sense a theologian.

The authenticity of ones religion is always demonstrated by what one actually does--no exceptions. By ones applied politics and the company one keeps.

"Therefore, we must judge our religion in psycho-physiological terms, in factual terms, real, actual, living, human terms. That is how you tell the difference between true teachers or prophets or practitioners and mere believers.

What is the quality of their existence? What do they do? If you see people practicing some religious path and they look happy, and they are healthy, and they are sane, and they are also intelligent, and their experience is real and also extraordinary, then naturally they are attractive and there is value in listening to them and talking to them......

....But if you see a group of crazy self-divided fanatical people, who call themselves true believers but who have no clarity, no humanity, no love, no ability to inspect and transcend themselves and their "righteous" dogmas, then you can know that they are doing nothing but mumbling the usual belief in the Myth of long-ago Jesus."

And their dark self-possession will be written all over their faces and bodies---and by extension their inevitable dreadful politics---the piety of pain dramatised on to the bodies of their inevitable scape-goat victims

When I saw Sellick's article this morning and the large number of post that came in immediately I wondered why we all give him so much time?

So I have formed a hypothesis based on his article.

Liberalism (combined with the separation of church and state) as reached the stage where I can say 'Peter, your article is total garbage' without being dragged outside to be burnt at the stake. I can say 'Christianity is a lie' and the worst thing that can happen is David Boaz will threaten me with the Victorian police and vilification laws.

Isn't the freedom lovely? I can live with my partner without being married and not live in constant fear of being sapped from above for doing naughty things with our genitals. We can watch footy on Sunday without feeling guilty about not being at some ridiculous ceremony where poor old Jesus gets his again and we eat his flesh and drink his blood. If we want to name our children with un-Christian names and wait till they are old enough to decide for themselves if that want to be Christened.

Christianity imploding? It was only the fear that kept it going for so long. I have no idea why the earliest Christians started it in the first place, but whatever their reasons it was soon replaced by the Jewish fear based teaching of Paul the Pharisee.

Years ago there was a religion called Wicca that had central to its core beliefs 'If it harms none, do as you will.' Now Sells is lamenting that the idea of 'harming none' has arisen again in the form of liberalism.

Maybe Sells you have been born several hundred years too late. I can imagine you riding along side Guzman the Butcher killing Cathars in their thousands. Or sticking a torch under some poor person tied to a stake on a bonfire.

That world has gone, and I hope it will never to return.

So my theory is that we write and tell Sells that his articles are garbage for no other reason than we can.

Peter, Your post rings absolutely true. Disregard the anti-Christian abuse from humanists, relativists, nihilists, those who deny the actual or even desirable existence of anything outside themselves. Your posts are welcome fresh air.

I agree absolutely with the main proposition advanced by John Carroll (La Trobe University) in his 2004 book The Wreck of Western Culture - Humanism Revisited. His thesis, as you summarized in your book review at the time, was that humanistic rationalism has robbed Western culture of the deep insights about humanity provided by faith. "How can a culture survive when its guts have been torn out?"

Western civilization is in decline because of its denial and now ignorance of its own roots. Political correctness and 'tolerance' are no defence against militant Islam, for example. Thomas Mann is right in saying "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil."

The bloggers who abuse you, and Christianity, have no idea of the difference between good and evil, of what is really important.

I'm with Ivan (The Brothers Karamazov) when he tells his brother "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." That's where 'liberal' present culture has brought us.

Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) says wisely "There can be no proof of the existence of God, but it is all our interests to behave as if he exists."

You are right in criticising liberalism's deification of radical individual freedom. Theodore Dalrymple (excellent UK writer) says in his essay "The Frivolity of Evil" (in 'Our Culture, what’s left of it') that the apologists for 'harm minimization' believe "not only that it is economically feasible to behave in an irresponsible and egotistical fashion, but also that it is morally permissible to do so. ... There has been a long march [of this idea] not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as “nonjudgmental”. For them, the highest form of morality is amorality." Lamentable, dead-end copout!

I loved your article on "The problem with modern art" (August 2008) at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7702&page=1 . Said it all!

Glorfindel wrote: "Disregard the anti-Christian abuse from humanists, relativists, nihilists, those who deny the actual or even desirable existence of anything outside themselves."

Dear Glorfindel,

Nobody in this string has denied the actual or even desirable existence of anything outside themselves. You exist. Sellick exists. However, Sellick wants us to accept the existence of entities on the basis of belief when there is no proof of the existence of such entities. Socrates was executed in part for denying the existence of the Gods. To believe in their existence was the fashion in ancient Greece. Now Sellick is in fashion in maintaining the existence of the Christian God. There is no more reason to believe in such a god than there is to believe in the Greek pantheon which is no longer fashionable.

You and Sellick are actually accusing some of the posters on this thread of being out of fashion. However, fashion is ephemeral. Someday, the Christian God and his humanoid representation will be regarded in the same way as we regard the Greek pantheon. Both are merely legend.

If anyone has been abusive it has been Sellick. Nobody else has told those who disagree to be silent.

Daviy,

It is obvious you get your religions mixed up. You write 'I can say 'Christianity is a lie' and the worst thing that can happen is David Boaz will threaten me with the Victorian police and vilification laws'

I think you mean that the worst thing that can happen to a Christian in Victoria is those who worship self will threaten Christians with vilification because they expose the lies of the secularist. Your god denying philosopher might allow you to live enslaved to your lusts and guilt free for the time being but the end fruit of this belief is obvious to anyone with a brain.

Daviy's reference to "the Jewish fear based teaching of Paul the Pharisee" perplexes me.

What is it in the following from Paul that you see as fear-based?

* Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

*Do not repay anyone evil for evil ... Overcome evil with good.

*If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal...

*But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control ...

*Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry...

*Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.

*Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Paul also says “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

And he says that in the last days “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good…”

Don’t you think he was spot on in relation to our own times?

As I was reading I was looking for a point – this sleuthing ensued from the non qualification of the 'Liberalism' Peter confers on us - and yes, unfortunately there was no point as most of the commentary here agrees. Rather than blaming liberalism Peter should Google or similar the term ‘fascism’ and use that as inspiration in his next superior lament. For the term ‘Fascism’ is a closer approximation to our reality than ‘Liberalism’ has, is, and ever will be under the auspices he describes.

Glorfindel said: "Western civilization is in decline because of its denial and now ignorance of its own roots."

Here is where is choose to diverge from religious types, as a rule.. this whole "we'll all be ruined, we're going to hell in a handbasket" (a theme prominent in Sells's original post) stuff really irks me, who says Western civilisation is in decline? Based on what metrics is this statement supported? When, pray tell, would be a better time to have been alive in a Western civilisation? I am pretty happy to be alive right now, with access to such wonders as the internet, modern medicine, and a relatively good justice system etc.

And this "I'm with Ivan (The Brothers Karamazov) when he tells his brother "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." That's where 'liberal' present culture has brought us."

Rubbish I'm afraid. Nowhere in secular humanism is a "no holds barred, anything goes" doctrine advocated. You talk of Western society's ignorance of its roots - how about the (likely in my view) hypothesis that all religions have appropriated self-evident ethical truths from a secular humanist base? I am an atheist (bad word but unfortunately used prevalently) yet I don't act as if anything were permitted. Not because the great sky-daddy will smite me with lightning bolt tomorrow or bin me on judgment day, but because it is SELF-EVIDENT that living in such a way maximises happiness, over the long term (c.f. instant vs delayed gratification).

And this "Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) says wisely "There can be no proof of the existence of God, but it is all our interests to behave as if he exists.""

I guess I do act as if He exists, just not for your reasons.. the challenge is to encourage people to live fulfilling lives, not under threat of eternal hellfire, but by educating them as to the benefits of so doing. Then again threatening people with damnation if they don't buy your message is a lot simpler, isn't it?

Don't worry, Glorfindel, he will.

>>Disregard the anti-Christian abuse from humanists, relativists, nihilists, those who deny the actual or even desirable existence of anything outside themselves.<<

You fail to mention those of us who ask him civilised questions about his sermons.

We are disregarded too.

You don't refer to those who are devout Christians who take up the cudgels against some of his more tendentious pronouncements - usually Catholics, by the way.

They are totally ignored too.

But I'm sure that you will get a warm response.

You also deliver the classic generalization that religious people clasp to their collective bosom, the mantra that appears so often, that it conceivably justifies their entire existence.

>>The bloggers who abuse you, and Christianity, have no idea of the difference between good and evil, of what is really important<<

This is of course the automatic defence deployment that has at its root a complete failure of logic.

Only if you narrowly define Christianity as "good", and non-Christianity as "evil", can this statement possibly be true.

>>I'm with Ivan (The Brothers Karamazov) when he tells his brother "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted."<<

The first problem with this statement is, of course, that Ivan did not actually say this.

The second problem is that Ivan does believe in God - he tells Alyosha so. Given that he would not support the first premise, that God does not exist, the succedant "everything is permitted" is null.

What you have is pure Dostoevskian irony.

But I expect that you and Sells share the purist Christian's contempt of anything logical

Harm minimisation is not lacking in morality, just the opposite. A friend once said she felt hard done by, as a diabetic, for not being able to access free syringes, and if she signed up as a drug user she would be better off.

It was not until a friend's child stabbed herself with a syringe found in a playground that she realised that there was some merit in the needle exchange program. The program does not imply approval of illicit drug use but in a complex world morality sometimes just means bowing to the greater good and taking pragmatic measures to inhibit the spread of a deadly disease.

Hardly anything immoral in that.

Several posters have asked what the "point" of Sells' article is. Granted, its a bit hard to find, buried as it is in an avalanche of discursive verbiage. Sells sets up a strawman argument on the nature of liberalism in the first 1,300 words of his article until he reaches his point,

which is <<It comes as no surprise that liberalism has infected the church, particularly in what has come to be called “Liberal Protestantism">>

So, to sum up:

Liberalism=Nihilism

Liberal Protestantism=Liberalism=Nihilism

So, any "Liberal Protestants" out there like to debate Sells on this?

Sells,

How do you define “Liberal Protestantism”? In everyday denominational terms, which are the Liberal Protestant churches?

The article does not have much goin for it as the assumption it is based on is pretty shaky- " Christianity has imploded ". It is because Christianity is expanding more rapidly in Islamic Countries, Africa and Asia that we have the powers that be is those areas feeling exactly the same as those Roman rulers of yore in tryin to supress it unsuccessfully. Perhaps liberalism is the creation of a corrupt Chritianity, just like Marxism and Islam

Crabsy,
I think liberalism infects most denominations and it would be inaccurate to name any one. Liberalism is such a slippery fish that it is hard to pin down. I am tempted to say that you can spot liberalism by the opening of worship. If the leader/presider says "good morning" then you are likely to be in the presence of liberalism. But, on the other hand, if the traditional opening is present (We meet in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit) then that may be but not necessarily, is a sign that things are taken seriously. It at least tells us under whose auspices we are there.

Perhaps it is the content of the preaching? Last Sunday the gospel told us "Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out." Did the preacher take this seriously? Did he/she stand in fear and trembling at this announcement?

Or perhaps it is the internal state of the presider at the Eucharist. Does he really believe that "This is my body"? Does the Eucharist "strike at his life"?

We find limp theology and worship in all denominations. I singled out the Romans and the Evangelicals who may have escaped through their own devices but that is not to say that those devices bring them closer to faithfulness.

Behind all of this is the idea that the gospel will make its way in the world whether we like it or not or even whether we aid it or not. It is not our possession, it has a life of its own and it will overturn all of our most cherished assumptions.

I am sure from your previous posts that this will make sense.

Peter Sellick

Sells, you've gotten heated responses here. This is largely because, as you acknowledge yourself, liberalism is a very broad 'church' and as such, when you have a piece which insults a worldview many people hold and put your own view on a pedestal, you effectively insult the views of these people and dismiss them as little more than misguided immoral fools.

Hence the negativity.

I imagine you wouldn't take too well to a piece entitled 'the trouble with Christianity' which proceeded to outline all the ridiculousness which many people view as an inevitable corollary to ritualism (Baptism? You wet the baby's head? How's that different to a moon-dance?).

I understand the core of your piece - an attitude of 'anything goes' leads to anything going.

I concur, liberalism is imperfect. We're human. It's inevitable. It's simply better than any of the alternatives.

It doesn't preclude people from objecting to things on societal grounds.
For example, I don't need god to state that alcohol and cigarettes kill more people than the illegal drugs combined. Naturally, people disagreeing can point out the futility of drug enforcement.

It's possible to make debates via reason, provided the individual has the right to comment -thanks to liberal ascendancy- which permits your attack on our liberal society.
You condescendingly dismiss liberal christians. What of those who bucked the Catholic church on issues such as the earth being round and the heinousness of burning women as witches?

Stances such as yours, which assert the authority of autocratic, god-given societal models, are rightly rejected.
There are many brands to choose from and none are as pleasant as our society.

Although I don't think you deserve the harsh responses this piece garnered, I don't think this piece shows 'tolerance' for other views.

Seeing as tolerance is the foundation of liberalism, perhaps that makes sense.

The alternative to tolerance is "I'm right, you're wrong, god says so."

Would you prefer "I'm right, you're wrong, Allah/Buddha/Ganesh/Thor says so?"

No? Then it's eternal conflict or liberalism.

More people each day reject "I'm right because my god says so."

Mr Sellick has the worst case of verbal diarrhea I have ever seen.

And what exactly do you mean by this?
"The freedom of the Christian is won with blood;"

Runner

The comment about Victorian laws was a gentle little nudge for David B and related back to a discussion we had in a previous Sellick post. That would have not been obvious to you because obvious is a word used by the desperate to imply a connection between facts where none exists.

I do not have God denying philosophies. I just do not support the manufactured Christian image of God.

You come straight in on 'lust' but totally ignored Guzman the Butcher and the burnings. Are these the Christian priorities? Throw you hands up in horror at 'sex' but pass off the crimes against humanity carried out in the name of Jesus even though Jesus had nothing to do with it. This is the worst kind of blasphemy imaginable.

You have no idea about the kind of relationship I have with my partner and yet you come in with the old damnation bit. A very Christian attitude. Even if there is a God you are not it. So when do you get over making god like judgments about things you know nothing about? You talk 'love they neighbour' but act bigotry, damnation and judgement.

If 'the end fruit of this belief is obvious to anyone with a brain' then I am not surprised haven't got it yet.

Glorfindel

Paul was a Pharisee and remained one all his life. Paul imposed the severe pharisaic structure on the Christian church, and it was only the question of circumcision for gentiles that stopped Christianity continuing as a minor sect of the Jewish religion.

Basically Paul turned Christianity into everything that Jesus opposed.

You quote the bits of the bible to prove your point. I quote the bits of the Bible I want to prove my point, and it all goes round in circles. Totally pointless so I will give the bible quoting a miss this time thank you

Great article, finally the tide is turning against liberalsim and the secular-progressives.

Keep it up and spread the word that liberalism doesn't reproduce itself. This message needs to be taught in schools and covered in the media.

I don't like the idea of theocracy, but they're gonna be around a lot longer than liberal democracies.

mkk
I also paused a minute on that one: I would have thought that the freedom of liberalism was equally blood-drenched given historical context.

As many have pointed out, it is impossible to achieve dialogue when one's opposition commences from a point of moral superiority. The repeatedly voiced opinion that those who do not identify as Christian have no strength of character, are immoral, unethical and licentious puts those who would oppose this view on the back foot.

While many may dispute this I say that those who do not present as Christians show an inordinate amount of faith: faith in humanity.

The idea that humans are an intelligent species who are capable of working out why certain behaviours are "evil"; why brotherhood is important; how the interdependence of all living things is threatened by irresponsibility and why love is a more positive force than hatred is expressive of this faith.

Also, Peter, I think you have the idea of the tabula rassa slightly skewed...as you do its genesis. Locke did not "invent" it.

ps. to the poster who mentioned it: Though I adhere to no religion myself, Wicca is alive and well, you know, and gaining more adherants.

Romany,

That is an obvious ccontradiction. Wicca is a religion albeit a pagan one it is stilla religion

Foxydude

Romany never said whether it was a religion or not, he just said he himself (herself?) didn't adhere to a religion...

It seems to me, Sell, that you might admire Australia’s Exclusive Brethren, who seem to strive toward the sort of religious commitment that may remedy some of the ills you lament; at least on a local community level.

And there is also the Quiverfull sect, in the USA:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/134000/christian_fundamentalist_group_preaches_patriarchy_and_women%27s_fertility_as_weapons_for_spiritual_warfare/

Christian Fundamentalist Group Preaches Patriarchy and Women's Fertility as Weapons for Spiritual Warfare
By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash. Posted March 30, 2009.

excerpt:
“Mark Karlin [interviewing Kathryn Joyce]:
You wrote the book called Quiverfull, Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. In the beginning of the book, you give an overview of what the Quiverfull movement is. Can you describe it to us?”

Kathryn Joyce:
“Quiverfull itself is a movement and a conviction among deeply conservative, theologically conservative Christians and pro-life purists who believe that you should accept as many children as God will give you based on Psalm 127, which reads: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies at the gate." So it's kind of a dual emphasis on accepting as many children as God will give you, both as a demonstration of radical trust and obedience in God and also a really concerted effort to win the culture wars demographically.”

Davity

One minute you are boasting about your definition of 'freedom' and the next minute you complain when I point out to you that your god denying philosophy leads to misery for many in this life and hell in the next. You then lecture me on being judgemental when you claim not to believe in the Judge. You no doubt would complain bitterly if I said your views were the same as other Securalist such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot and then you equate Christians with people doing things totally in opposition to the head of the church Christ.

Seems to me you are happy to give out but not take.

Hi all,

I just need to correct some earlier posts. Adolf Hitler was a ardent Christian and made many public statements affirming this.

Here is just one quote sourced from the following website:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

Another point related to belief systems and genocide is that the "global war on terror" which is being orchestrated in the name of "freedom and liberal democracy" appears to mimic the Crusades (Iraq invasion) and the Inquisition (Renditions, waterboarding and "Gitmo") in its ruthlessness towards civilian populations. Perhaps it is useful to seperate the beleif systems from the actors when it comes down to debating the merits of liberalism, christianity and other belief systems.

Hitler was devoutly Christian, runner. You know that from myriad debates here on OLO. In case you'd genuinely forgotten: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8210&page=0#129896

However, since you lie continuously to shield yourself from unwelcome truths, I doubt it.

Which brings me to the real trouble with liberalism, which is that it forces each of us to face arguments and ideas which are clearly true but which we wish were false. For Sellick, runner, Glorfindel et al, that argument is "there is no evidence that god, if there is one, is anything like you claim. There is no evidence that your adherence to dogma provides you any protection or reward that is unavailable to nonbelievers. Further, it is evident that nonbelievers most frequently live moral, pro-social lives free of the fear and punishing moral restrictions which you accept as the price of your faith."

Unable to contradict that argument with any evidence, the religious fall back on strange double standards and unsubstantiated accusations, as we see in the article.

Cue 'Not a true Scotsman' fallacy...

Runner

Did you read my response to your post? If you did how come you came back with a post that bears no resemblance to either of my post? No correlation what so ever.

All I can suggest is that you as a good Christian, and not understanding what I am writing, should love me anyway as your neighbour and turn the other check.

Sancho

You write 'Hitler was devoutly Christian, runner'

Then why did he act in such an secular manner? I can just see Jesus telling Hitler to kill the Jews can't you? Devoutly Christian you say. Like the Salvos feeding the poor or Mother Theresa doing her stuff in India. It sounds a lot more like the extermination of unborn babies than devoutly Christian to me. You could not be a tad dishonest could you? then again if you don't believe in absolutes why not, as everything is relative.

Dear runner,

Hitler acted in a devoutly Christian manner. Christians have been slaughtering Jews for a long time. Catholic Crusaders slaughtered Jews. Lutheran Swedes slaughtered Jews. Orthodox Christians slaughtered Jews in pogroms and other Christian activities. Hitler followed not a secular tradition but a Christian tradition.

Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew, and Christians have a tradition of slaughtering his co-religionists. I can't see Jesus telling Hitler to slaughter Jews, but Hitler was not a Christian.

Murder is much more a Christian than a secular tradition.

Dear runner,

Excuse me. I wrote, "I can't see Jesus telling Hitler to slaughter Jews, but Hitler was not a Christian."

I meant to write, "I can't see Jesus telling Hitler to slaughter Jews, but Jesus was not a Christian."

Jesus was not a Christian but a Jew, and you do not follow the religion of Jesus.

Right on cue.

I think even so prominent a churchman as Peter Sellick has lost sight of the fact that Christianity is a form of government. Liberalism is the reduction of that form of government to a vote every three years. Because the Church is shy about its governmental function, it has been replaced by a communist State, that has all the characteristics of a Church, but none of the intellectual underpinnings.

It has not helped that the mainstream Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches are sometimes at loggerheads, but since nature abhors a vacuum, there are some churches that are thriving and growing exponentially. In Sydney on the 29th March 2009, one such church recorded an evangelical service with song and dancing, that will be heard and played all over the world. They took over the Sydney Entertainment Centre, which holds about twelve and a half thousand people, and there was not a spare seat in the place.

The governments we currently have in Australia are all out of whack with the fundamentals of Christianity. Christians believe that there can only be one Almighty God. Governments have created about a thousand of them, and called them Judges and Magistrates. Most if not all of these quasi gods, are not humble men and women. Most of them have been let down by their alma maters, their schools, where they should have been taught Christianity is a form of government, but instead have been taught that the government is democracy.

If the students at Roman Catholic and Anglican schools were taught that Christianity is a form of government, and shown why this is so because the Bible sets it out clearly, then they may not leave the Church is such numbers. They say that nine out of ten students never regularly attend church after leaving a church school.

A liberal has no higher being than himself or herself. He or she cannot accept that an account must someday be taken. He or she has never been taught that the Holy Spirit is present when twelve disciples decide a case. Juries are truly Christian and awesome

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life provides some background for a more nuanced view of the relationship between individual believer, Christian church, and state.

A brief biography prefaces the posthumously published collection of DB's prison writings, the Americn edition of which is available at:
http://www.archive.org/details/prisonerforgodle009969mbp

Prisoner For God Letters And Papers From Prison (1959)

Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Publisher: The Macmillan Company
Language: English
Call number: 9969
Book contributor: Universal Digital Library
Collection: universallibrary

AdamD, you're absolutely correct, Hitler was definitely not a true Scotsman.

Still no comment from any "Liberal Protestants"? Just the atheists and runner et al going around in circles.

Unbelievable. Absolutely freaking unbelievable. The future of Australia is in grave danger, if all the nuts on this forum are any indication.

Hitler was a devout Christian, was he? Until when? Was he still a "devout Christian" in the 1940's? More importantly, what were the goals of his party in relation to religion? They were completely atheistic. He banned all seminaries in about 1937 IIRC. Sounds like a religious agenda, doesn't it?

So really, who cares about a quote made in 1922. Look at his later life, and look at his party's overarching goals

According to David F, "Murder is much more a Christian than a secular tradition".

This gets us into a bit of a dilemma, because it shows that poor old David is either completely ignorant, or is deluding himself to a point few have ever reached. My accumulative experience reading his work suggest that the latter is more likely. The other alternative of course, is that David is stuck in some bizarre twenty dimension time warp and has never read a thing about the twentieth century. However his ability to use a computer rules this third and unlikely possibility out.

In conclusion, I have a recommendation to other OLO users: in the interests of prioritising your time towards things which are actually worthy of your time, I suggest you ignore any future posts by David F.

I once upset a former Mormon by describing our present governments as the churches of Satan and the latter day demons. However that description fits Hitler, it fits Stalin, it fits Mugabe, and it probably fits the government of Bashir in the Sudan. I may even upset you.

However as the mob in Chicago used to say, you cannot make an omelet without cracking an egg. I was intrigued to see a poster set out three criminals, One robs a bank because he is a professional, one because he has a starving family, and a third because he is a cop. In the Satanic mode, all three go to jail. How many of you know that in Protestant Christian Scotland, a man who stole a sheep to feed his family, was never convicted! They had 15 man juries in Scotland, and even if a jury convicted a murderer by an eight to seven majority, he went free because the verdict was not unanimous.

Jews used to have 25 man juries. If a man was convicted unanimously, he was acquitted because the Jews believed if 25 Jews agreed something was wrong. Holdsworth in the History of English Law, details how Protestant Christianity government started to flow in the Tudor period. In the time of 46 Edward III 1372, the Parliament took up the Biblical damnation against lawyers, and banned them from Parliament for 492 years; 1372-1870. In 1472, one hundred years later Henry VII had the parliament ban Judges from deciding criminal cases. Only a jury could acquit an accused criminal, but a fine was always offered instead of jail.

The Satan Church steals, and has continued to steal since the lawyers crept back into the parliament. It has no justice mechanism, because once a person is convicted a lawyer shoots him off to jail or bankrupts him. Satan in his temptation of Jesus, said: Matthew 4:8, after showing Jesus all the Kingdoms of the world: All these things I will give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

By default all atheists and liberals are worshipping Satan

I have often been fascinated by posters who deign to comment on an article, while professing not to have actually read the article.
I have to say I'm a little more sympathetic to these posters now. The comments here are much more entertaining than the article was.
I don't have much time for the Christian God, as he (it? she?) is self evidently not a Christian. I think the same largely applies to most Christian churches.
The legendary Jesus, on the other hand, would I think have made a very good liberal.
As to the comments concerning our current predicament, and the decline of western 'civilisation' (is that an oxymoron?), and the alleged Christianity of Hitler, et al., may I point out that virtually all our current -and recent- leaders, Bush, Howard, Obama, Rudd, etc., are all avowed Christians?
As are many bankers and stock brokers, strangely enough.

Peter the Babbler: << By default all atheists and liberals are worshipping Satan >>

Give it a rest, Peter. You're even sillier than Peter the Bombastic (the one who writes these interminable sermons).

Romany

I thought Pagan came from the Roman for Pagoni, or countryside, so pagans were followers of the Roman countryside earth religions, and whilst Wicca was an earth religion it did not originate in the Roman country side and was not pagan. There seems to have been many differences as well as similarities.

Unfortunately the Christians have destroyed both and our supposed knowledge is often really only the Christian lies used to discredit both. Although I think it would be beneficial to the human race to revive the earth religions it seems impossible. Christianity as usual was very clinical in eliminating any opposition.

The Alexandrian book of shadows shows the lengths the followers of Wicca went to try to keep Wicca alive without giving much insight into what Wicca was. There is so much that Christianity has destroyed that can never be re-built.

Apart from the assertion that Wicca is alive and well I generally agree with the tone of your post.

Trav.

The murders, genocide, depravity and the general unimaginable crimes against human race carried out by the Christian religion only stopped when the church was separated from State. It must never be forgotten what Christianity does when it has the power.

A little reminder for the 21st Century was what happened when Christianity regained a little power through George W Bush. It went straight back to its old murderous ways.

<<This gets us into a bit of a dilemma, because it shows that poor old David is either completely ignorant, or is deluding himself to a point few have ever reached.>> This is not debate but good old Christian abuse. This says nothing about David, but plenty about you.

Vigorous debating Yes. Abuse No.

PtB

<<I think even so prominent a churchman as Peter Sellick has lost sight of the fact that Christianity is a form of government.>>

The day has come when I agree with something PtB wrote. Alleluia, It is a Miracle.

Grim

Bush and Obama both Christians? Isn't that just the American way? To satisfy the Bible belt you have to be a Christian.

Not quite, Daviy, but close.

>>I thought Pagan came from the Roman for Pagoni, or countryside, so pagans were followers of the Roman countryside earth religions<<

Its root is indeed paganus, Latin for a rustic, or country bumpkin.

But its most common application was by soldiers, who used it to describe their incompetent brethren, as it also had a "civilian" connotation. Which to a soldier was pretty much a term of derision.

Its attachment to the non-Christian element, it appears, was most likely developed by Christians themselves. As we know, they saw themselves as "milites", or "soldiers of Christ", and would have used the non-soldier connotations of pagani (plural of paganus) as an antonym.

In this sense, Wicca is most definitely pagan, as the term would apply to all non-Christian religions.

>>"I think even so prominent a churchman as Peter Sellick has lost sight of the fact that Christianity is a form of government." The day has come when I agree with something PtB wrote. Alleluia, It is a Miracle.<<

Peter Sellick, a prominent churchman?

That's news to me.

Prominent in which church, might one ask, since he seems to despise so many of them.

Peter The Believer:

Yo stated that Churches have lost sight of their government function.

They have no government function. One point on which I vehemently agreed with BOAZ-david/polycarp (who now appears to have departed) was that the Church does not have a role in government. "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's".

If you're planning to respond with biblical prose, I can assure, it means nothing to me, I say that because perhaps it means something to you.

The Church hasn't really been an institutional government since the dark ages.

... Thank god for that. There's a reason why they were the 'dark' ages. Your comments about judges being little gods are absurd. Yes, they can be pompous with an over-inflated sense of their position. But that's about it.

Finally, I'm an agnostic.

I don't give a damn about your satan. If you want to scare yourself silly with tales of hellfire, go for it, but don't tell me what I worship because clearly, you have no clue.

Sells,

Liberalism has its origins in a time earlier than you mention. Liberalism as a youngster breaks from Feudal society, which allowed the State and the Church to dominate the individual. In the discipline of Economics, the Church had a major stake alongside the landed aristocracy. The Church presided over the right of private conscious. So presumptuous was the early Church, it supposed, the common person must not themselves interpret scripture. Later, humanist scholars, such as Erasmus, set the foundations wherein the rights of the individual flourish. The Enlightenment and the Great Divergence were its worthy children.

Moreover, Liberalism is seen in the Protestant Reformation. Luther's own persona was powerful in overcoming the authoritarian Christian church. Many OLO posts show we have evolved far beyond Luther. We can independently, study ancient documents, without a religion, and,we now make own interpretations. This progress: The very nature of Liberalism.

O.

Trav wrote: “Hitler was a devout Christian, was he? Until when? Was he still a "devout Christian" in the 1940's? More importantly, what were the goals of his party in relation to religion? They were completely atheistic. He banned all seminaries in about 1937 IIRC. Sounds like a religious agenda, doesn't it?”

Dear Trav,

The German army had Christian chaplains, and Christian seminaries were not banned. Nobody claimed Hitler was devout. You added that.

Hitler ordained school prayer and despised secular schooling. A quote from Hitler after the Nazis took over:
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." - Adolf Hitler, Speech, April 26, 1933

Christians still try to deny that Hitler was a Christian. In doing so they tell lies about him being an atheist. You have misinformation. Hitler did not ban all seminaries in 1937. The Gestapo shut the last Jewish seminary in 1942 according to the following.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1528866/Germany-to-ordain-first-rabbis-since-Hitler-shut-seminaries.html

"The three men, who began their training at the Academy of Judaism in Potsdam five years ago, will become the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since 1942 when the Gestapo closed the last Jewish seminary."

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.
Three years later he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church, and the church never left him. Great literature was banned, but Mein Kampf never appeared on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

The Holocaust followed the tradition of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms and the many other instances of Christian murder of Jews. Hitler was, if not devout, a true Christian.

david f,

Hilter believed in Jesus, with a passion, as is evidenced by his writings and speeches. On the other hand, Hitler seems to have held the Christian church to be highly devious, as is clear from History.

For me, the latter is hypocrical, because instead of hunting and killing witches and heretics, Hilter did the same thing against Jews and Communists. Moreover, the teutonic discipline and "hardness" of the SS, is modelled on the Jesuits.

Like the Christian church, Hitler's National Socialism was authoritarian. The rights of the individual are subordinated, as in a theocracy. Manic fourth century Christian theocracy, immediately post-Nicaean, was much like today's Taliban: Christians rampaged and destroyed things.

Hitler though being a Catholic was mostly influenced by the occult as well as Darwinism. Over one of the gas ovens Hitlers words were inscribed 'I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.' Hitler believed the destruction of the weak is a good thing for the survival of the strong which he took from Darwinism. The deceit of the secularist on this matter defies belief. Hitler like today's secular humanist have introduced their own perverted base of morality that does not value all human life. That is why they can murder the unborn without conscience by the truckload. NO doubt like Hitler the Secularist argue that nature intended it that way.

The idea that somehow Hitler was a Christian is totally deceitful. Next we will be seeing the blinded secularist declaring Pol Pot and Stalin as Christians. Hitler himself personally presented the writings of Nietzche to Stalin and Mussolini.

Keep rewriting history guys with your warped interpretation but one day you will need to face the truth.

It seems to me that there has been a great reversal. It used to be that Christianity was the dominant force in society and which defended its position against the atheists and agnostics. Now the dominant position has become liberalism which, in its turn defends itself against those who would impugn it, the Christians! Christians are now the counterculture that seek to tear down the current orthodoxy. The heat that my articles generate comes from the perception that I am attacking the commonly held religious position, which I am. My purpose is to expose liberalism for what it is, a façade of good intentions dressed up in the clothes of values: freedom, fairness, tolerance, choice, human rights. The problem is that values are window dressing unless they are founded in virtue, which liberalism deems an unnecessary imposition on the freedom of the individual.

Dear runner,

I don't think you want the truth. Religious belief, no matter how strong, is not truth.

Possibly, you may be open to history:

Christianity, like all other religions, is a human invention as is God. The Christians copied the pagan religions and invented a humanoid God in Jesus. The invisible God of the Jews did not have great appeal to the pagans. However, Christians incorporated the Jewish tribal legends along with the fairy tales of the New Testament to compose their Bible.

Due to an unfortunate event in history a Roman Emperor adopted Christianity. Although the Roman Empire disappeared as a political entity it has been preserved as a religious entity with the dioceses and bureaucracy of the Catholic Church that copies the administrative structure of the Roman Empire. Had Constantine not adopted Christianity the religion would either have disappeared or remained a minor sect.

The adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was the beginning of the Dark Ages and the end of the spirit of free inquiry in the western world. Charles Freeman in "The Closing of the Western Mind" tells the story.

Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001, tells how the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire changed Christianity to a religion of war. James Carroll was a Catholic chaplain in the US army and started to question during the Vietnamese War. He is a friend of Jim Noonan, a Catholic peace activist, who introduced me to his writings.

The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity: 371-1386 by Richard Fletcher, London: Fontana (HarperCollins), 1998, is a tale of great violence. Ireland is the only country during that period which became Christian peacefully. Christians could freely murder to correct the sin of not being Christian.

runner, what is your source for this claim?

>>Over one of the gas ovens Hitlers words were inscribed 'I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.'<<

Somewhere close to first-hand would be good, and the original German would be useful too.

I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but the two claims - a) that this was inscribed over a gas oven and b) that they were Hitler's words, are both individually and together most incredibly unlikely.

Which would make this claim of yours just a touch ironic:

>>Keep rewriting history guys with your warped interpretation but one day you will need to face the truth.<<

Face the truth, runner. Hitler's religion was Christianity.

Talking of rewriting history... good try, Sells.

>>My purpose is to expose liberalism for what it is, a façade of good intentions dressed up in the clothes of values: freedom, fairness, tolerance, choice, human rights<<

That is a nice little sidestep from your original claim:

"Liberalism stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfilment. It stands against doctrine, discipline, self sacrifice and discipleship."

First you state what you believe that "Liberalism stands for", now you wish to "expose [it as] a facade of good intentions"

Is it any wonder we are confused as to your intentions, Sells? You clearly share our confusion.

Pericles

Following on from your post, I thought Sells had out-contradicted himself entirely.

Further to him trying to rewrite the meaning of 'liberalism', he actually claims that 'virtue' is a quality belonging only to the religious, no doubt he means specifically 'Christianity' and probably as a further qualification his narrow version of the above mentioned religion.

As for his claim that the heat with which his articles are attacked is due to his attempt to show the 'true' Christianity.

No Sells.

You are attacked because you continue to denigrate anyone with a different belief or point of view. Being an atheist does not mean I am morally vacuous, greedy, selfish or any of the other insults you hurl at us with tedious regularity.

If you actually followed the philosophies of Jesus you too would be more liberal, inclusive, tolerant and if Foxy is an example of true Christianity, then a lot more courteous.

David f, How would you substantiate your assertion that "... Christianity, like all other religions, is a human invention as is God."?

It is your opinion that God is a human invention, but it is impossible to separate our conceptualisation of God (or Gods, Christian or not)from the world beyond our senses. The presence of an observer or other entity(of unknown attributes) which/whom we may or may not sense, can neither be confirmed or dismissed by rational argument.

I am reminded of flowers in a vase on a table in a library reading room. They would be unable (I bravely assume) to have any conscious awareness of each other or of the vase, the room, its contents or its occupants. Guppies in a fishbowl would fare somewhat better in the realm of awareness, but would they know much of the books or the relationships between the moving things beyond their invisible wall?

The question remains arguable: Did humans invent Gods, or did God invent humans?

An inability to perceive the invisible, or experience the spiritual, does not mean that neither truly exists, or that its existence is a human invention.

Pericles you ask

runner, what is your source for this claim?

Actually someone who has visited there. He writes

'I remember walking through Auschwitz some years ago when I was speaking in Poland; my host, who was medical doctor, took me to Auschwitz. I remember seeing the horrors of thousands of pounds of women’s hair, thousands of suitcases, little toothbrushes, little pairs of shoes. Teenagers were walking out of there with tears running down their faces. It was very sobering. And I saw the words of Adolph Hitler against the gas ovens there, “I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.” What happens when you unleash a generation like that—a generation of young people, imperious, relentless and cruel?'

http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/passionate-articles-details.php?articlesID=16

Dear runner,

Funny that the 'Darwinism' claim is made ad nauseum, yet Hitler never mentioned Darwin or evolution once in Mein Kampf. One would think that if evolution was such an inspiration to Hitler, he'd want to make a mention of it in his book.

If Hitler was inspired by evolution, then it was from a misunderstanding of what evolution is - a misunderstanding that shows just how dangerous the push of misinformation from creationists really is.

Yet again, runner, you are caught out lying. And you have the nerve to so frequently speak of 'honesty'.

Disgraceful.

Thanks runner, that's where I thought it came from.

>>Pericles you ask 'runner, what is your source for this claim?' Actually someone who has visited there.<<

Ravi Zacharias' address to a prayer breakfast in 2002.

You will find, runner, that this is the only place that you will ever find this little piece of nonsense.

I have also been to Auschwitz. Not only does no such inscription exist, but there is no mention of it in any of the records, either there or anywhere else.

Its most obvious flaw is that it is unlike anything Hitler is recorded to have said. He was fond of the declamatory, and very fond of the patriotic. But he was also a statesman, and unlikely to have said something this crude in public.

In private, perhaps. But inscribed on a gas oven in a concentration camp?

Hardly.

I'm afraid that you have allowed yourself to be carried away by your enthusiasm to mark Hitler's card, runner, and are using an ethically dubious and totally uncorroborated source.

It's a bit like Einfeld. Zacharias thought that no-one would ever check.

Which really puts this into perspective, doesn't it...

>>Keep rewriting history guys with your warped interpretation but one day you will need to face the truth.<<

Zacharias didn't actually rewrite history.

He simply invented it.

It is important to bear in mind that Zacharias is basically another evangelical, in the mould of Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, or Jim 'n' Tammy Bakker, making a crust out of spruiking "the gospel". Using him as a source, especially when you are basing an entire argument on it, marks you as gullible, I'm afraid.

Here's an opportunity to help your fellow-man.

If you can provide the evidence, something authoritative, showing the location, the inscription in German and verifiable proof that these were Hitler's words, I'll donate $100 to your favourite charity.

Or you can simply retract your claim.

Over to you.

The trouble with these sorts of articles is that there is nothing new. We go over the same old predictable and repetitive ground.

The bottom line is that Christians of runner and Peter Sellick's ilk will always claim that virtue is only achievable through Christianity. I can see that for them, it cannot be any other way. To remotely entertain the idea that virtue may be characteristic of another set of values, or naturally existing in mankind, would be to cast doubt on their own entrenched belief system.

That is the problem with religion overall. It is like a vast football league with all the teams vying for first place. First place in heaven. First place for virtuous behaviour. First place for allegiance to their particular brand of God. First place for obedience. First place for relevance.

It is competitive to the core and hardly humble or simple if the myth or fables of Jesus's humanity is to be used as the paragon of virtue.

As much as we think we might just ignore another Sellick demonisation or sermon, like moths to the flame or reaching for that last Tim Tam when you know you have had enough, we just can't help ourselves. :)

AdamD

<<If Hitler was inspired by evolution, then it was from a misunderstanding of what evolution is - a misunderstanding that shows just how dangerous the push of misinformation from creationists really is.>> posted by runner.

I have seen accounts of Nietzsche and his mate Wagner getting into Social Darwinism, which led through to the Prussian master race and Hitler. Certainly Nietzsche was mentioned at Nuremburg.

When the fundamentalist Christian movement was formed a little over 100 years ago it was to counter Social Darwinism but in error they went after Darwin. Runner still seems confused about the difference between Darwinism and Social Darwinism. The two have nothing in common.

Pericles and Oliver seem good on this sort of detail. Maybe they can add more.

>>Pericles you ask 'runner, what is your source for this claim?' Actually someone who has visited there.<<

Ravi Zacharias' address to a prayer breakfast in 2002.

Was this one of the prayer breakfasts run by the infamous ultra right Christian group 'The Family' that Bush, Blair and Howard used to attend? Marion Maddox gives a good account this in 'God under Howard.'

Davidf

<<Christianity, like all other religions, is a human invention as is God.>> Religion a human invention? Yes. God a human invention? Maybe.

Dear runner,

Christians, not secularists, persecute the weak. Christians burnt the mentally ill at-the-stake. Compare, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live (Exodus 22:18 KJV)” with “an individual should experience only unconditional positive regard” (Carl Rogers).

Humanists don’t kill the delusional. We help them. We care for them. Conversely, Thomas Moore and John Wesley, took the immoral path of Christian cruelty, rather than a path of compassion and treatment. Likewise, Christian jurist, William Blackstone (1765) would have withheld humane treatment saying, “to deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once to flatly contradict the revealed word of God”.

Hitler’s eugenics is the mirror image of God’s “chosen” people. Here, we have the notion of a “special” race claiming pre-eminence over the other races. Psalm 82, is all about the Hebrew tribal god asserting supremacy over other (existing) gods (here, read tribes too). As if by proxy, their God helps smite inferior races (e.g. the Hittites). Later, Jewish exclusivity was seen by the Romans as uncivil.

Arnold Toynbee observes, occupied Peoples mentally retreat into their golden past (archaism) or see a superior future (futurism). Here, we see Hitler in Germany, after its WWI humiliation and financial occupation, remembering a Teutonic past and, we learn of the promise of the Thousand Year Reich. Hitler’s burning of the Armistice Car was a variation of the same theme. The shame shall not be repeated. Likewise, in the Jesus era, we have the House of David (past) and a Messiah (the future saviour).

Hitler was influenced by Nietzcshe. Fascism is opposed to Liberalism by counter-posing reason and logic with “irrational forces, intuitive aspirations, heroic instincts … Truth is not objective and universal; it is an aspect of the self, that which is felt and willed to be so” (Wasserman, 1944). This NAZI philosophy is not Social Darwinism.

Christians kill their young. Pope Innocent VIII had three young boys killed to provide him with blood transfusions before he died (1492). Christians followed his murderous decrees!

The wanton mass killing of undesirables: The Flood and Sodom.

Sir Vivor stated “The question remains arguable: Did humans invent Gods, or did God invent humans?”

Dear Sir Vivor,

Which God are you talking about? In Genesis two inventions of humans by God are mentioned:

One creation story is from Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. Extensive analysis has led scholars of the Bible to conclude that the story was written in about the Tenth Century B.C.. That was around the time of King Solomon's reign and in a time when Israel was a powerful nation. In contrast, the story in Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 was written three or four centuries later and under very different circumstances.

Yahweh and Elohim, were the two inventors of humans in the stories above.

The pagan Norse have another story for the invention of humans.

On the sea shore, Bor's sons found two logs and made people out of them. One son gave them breath and life, the second son gave them consciousness and movement, and the third gave them faces, speech, hearing, and sight. From this man and woman came all humans thereafter, just as all the gods were descended from the sons of Bor.

There are many other creation stories. People who believe in creation stories accept the legends current in their society. Christians and Jews who say they believe in the truth of the Bible stories are oftentimes unaware that there are two different creation stories in the Bible.

St. Olaf, the patron saint of Norway, gave the pagan Norse the choice of Christianity, exile or an agonizing death. He was quite effective, and, as far as I know, nobody now believes that all people came from the two logs given life by Bor’s sons.

I see no more reason to believe in Yahweh, Elohim or Bor’s sons than I have to believe in the many other Gods that humans tell of in their creation myths.

The inventions that are accepted are often the beliefs of those able to exert greater physical force.

Hi Oliver.

<<Truth is not objective and universal; it is an aspect of the self, that which is felt and willed to be so” (Wasserman, 1944). This NAZI philosophy is not Social Darwinism.>>

Could you expand on this please? As an interested amateur in these areas I enjoy hearing from those who have more detail.

To my understanding Social Darwinism is built on a totally corrupt interpretation of one sentence from 'The origin of the Species'. The sentence that mentions 'the survival of the fittest.'

The basic tenant of the SD is 'If you find a poor person in the gutter starving leave him/her to starve. The reason they are there is because they are stupid and ignorant, and if you help them they will breed more stupid and ignorant people.'

I understand Nietzcshe was influenced by this. Nietzcshe also theorized that Greek Tragedy died out because the music was removed. His friend Wagner developed the idea of promoting the concept of uniting the Germanic states under the superior Prussian master race using music as a vehicle. This was after Wagner got over his little flirtation with Communism.

The idea of the Prussian master race developed to the point where the Prussian army were doing the world a favour by invading because they were 'the fittest' to rule the world.

This seems to get tied up with Hitler and the Nazi music and the Classical architecture of the Nazis.

Of course the whole concept of Social Darwinism has been around in one form or the other for many years. 'The survival of the fittest' only provided another excuse to promote the basic idea. The Christian church has been practicing it for 2000 years and there many others before that.

It seems a pity that 'runner' has confused Darwin with the Corruption of his work that Darwin was not party to.

If Liberalism can avoid the idea that they are somehow superior for being Liberal maybe there is hope for the world.

David F, you ask which God I am talking about. You may re-read my question if you wish, and appreciate its inclusive nature. Your reply does not address my assertion that:

"It is your opinion that God is a human invention, but it is impossible to separate our conceptualisation of God (or Gods, Christian or not)from the world beyond our senses."

Anyone who pretends to be strictly rational, on the topic of higher consciousness vested in entities independent from human consciousness, had best argue from an agnostic position.

I can almost hear the daffodils whispering to each other in their vase - "What's out there that we don't know about? Perhaps the guppies can tell us!"

Then again, if you want to believe tht humans are the ultimate flower of consciousness, you are welcome to engage in your faith and its accompanying myths.

But if you wish to be strictly rational, you had best hedge your bets as an agnostic.

Pelican

Our thoughts are in alignment here. What really annoys me (apart from Sellick's amazing knack for being the most published author on OLO) is that he is so easy to refute. The arrogance with which he treats others reveals more about the "virtue" of his particular religion and, in fact, religion in general, when he treats people with such utter condescension.

Meanwhile Godwin's Law has (yet again) descended to reign over this particular thread - 'heaven help us.'

Cheers

Fractelle,
I have been publishing a monthly article in OLO since August 2002 and I will continue as long as OLO keeps accepting my pieces. If I annoy you so much why to you read me? You call me arrogant but I only express an opinion that is counter to the prevailing view. I am amused why you all get so upset with me. However, I can assure me that I am read widely by people who find my contributions a breath of fresh air. These are the readers that do not contribute to the comments section. My despair about this section is that it reminds me more and more of a graduate seminar in which no one has read the material and there is so little to engage with. I do scan the comments for something meaty to get hold of and I respond if I do. But it is necessary for someone to at least meet me half way with a genuine question instead of the facile stuff that is printed here. I will not respond to sarcasm, abuse, gross ignorance, why should I?

Nice piece of defensive work, Sells.

An object lesson in the art of "up yours".

But there is a smidge of dissembling there too, isn't there?

>>You call me arrogant but I only express an opinion that is counter to the prevailing view.<<

The arrogance - as you should well know by now, given the volumes that have been written on the subject over the years - has nothing to do with the contrariness of your views.

It is the sneering swipes that you make, without the slightest attempt at properly analysing or assessing your target-du-jour, at the beliefs and ethics of others.

>>However, I can assure me that I am read widely by people who find my contributions a breath of fresh air.<<

As you can see, although you express some surprise at the fact, you are also "read widely" by people who think your contributions closer to the stench of rotting fish.

This illuminates another aspect of your character, which is to pretend as far as possible, that these latter have absolutely nothing of value to offer. You do admit that you "scan the comments for something meaty to get hold of", but - as you will be the first to admit - your perception of "meat", is simply an opinion offered by another academic, who has read the same books as you.

As I have mentioned before, I always make an attempt to read your pieces, as they provide an insight into a mind that, as a lifelong non-academic, I find totally fascinating.

Your views are so far removed from my own, as to have the potential to be from a distant planet. They are also so rock-solidly fixed in the idea that there are actually "answers" (and that you are privy to these), that I can only watch with fascination. In my world, there are far more questions than answers. And each new "answer" only gives rise to further questions.

I look forward to your next offering, with pencil sharpened, and the sneer detector switched to "oh goody, it's Sells again" mode.

Sells

Your defence is nothing more than I would expect from a bully. When asked to stop hurting (insulting) people, you claim you are just doing it for the betterment of all, next you'll claim it hurts you more than those you castigate.

As for the comment about your continued success at publication; this was more a comment for the Editor at OLO, when articles such as yours; from such an extreme religious position are regularly given public airing, I have to wonder why. There are many sincerely religious people who can write with compassion and tolerance for people, where are those articles?

pericles and fractelle nailed it.

>> I do scan the comments for something meaty to get hold of and I respond if I do.

this is a bald-faced lie. sellick is simply a dishonest, divisive, arrogant, insulting, self-aggrandizing two-bit preacher.

Hi Daviy,

Mussolini, said “Fascism is a religious conception in which man is immanent relation to a higher order, an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership in a spiritual society”. Here, the masses, via their own ignoble selves, are incapable of rising above their selfishness and will not achieve high destiny.

Fascist government does not exist for the People. Instead, individuals exist for the unity of the State. Sociologically, Fascism is opposed to Liberalism. Liberalism, unlike Fascism, holds self-evident the worth of popular government and engendering individualism: Progress is the product of emancipated individuals exercising their freedoms while securing egalitarian human rights.

Fascism maintains there are great thinkers, behind whom the masses find unification against threats to the spiritual society. The word, “Fascism” is derived from the Latin, “fascio,” meaning to group. In Roman history rods tied to a battle-axe represented strength and the authority.

The unity of the State directed state under stewardship of the Leader (Fuehrer) develops the myth of the State. Mussolini, states, having created the abstraction of the myth of the State; “it is not necessary that it shall be a reality. It is a reality by the fact that it is a goad, that it is hope, that it is faith, that it is courage”.

The Fascist State is “willed” into being by the great leaders and, the destiny of the masses is to, physically and emotionally share in the unity, provided under the leadership of the geniuses, whom guide history.

Germany and Japan were agrarian societies, entering the twentieth century. Thorstein Veblen saw the too rapid industrialisation of agrarian economies problematic. Veblen pretty much foresaw what happened in WWII, circa 1915. Agrarian societies were industrialised and militarised, before their people were liberalised. At the same time, the industrialists backing the Fascists did not want a Marxian style or similar class struggle.

Cheers,

Oliver

The responses by some posters remind me of barristers in court when they cannot answer a point. They descend into self righteous abuse and try and distract the judge from the substance of the argument.

The truth is Peter Sellick is pushing the cause of the greatest leader the world has ever known, a leader whose views brought down the murderous sadistic Roman Empire, in less than 300 years. Those views when adopted by the English, have led to the longest running republican government the world has recently known. From 1297-1970, is not a bad run for a radical idea. Six hundred and seventy three years.

Then the bleeding heart liberals thought they could come up with a better idea. They brought back the Roman model of government that has failed everywhere it has ever been tried. We have prisons bursting with people who are little less than slaves. We have sadistic warders who tolerate bashings and other cruel and inhuman conduct within prisons against anyone who has the gall to compete with the Police and Bikie gangs in the distribution of drugs. It also happens to any dissident small enough to be bashed once they get in there. It is a jungle.

We had Baxter detention centre, a horrible place where children were driven to suicide. We had Villawood in Sydney where mentally sick patients have been maltreated. We have Parliaments full of ignorami who have never learned to read and write the English language properly, and Peter Sellick has the message that this is intolerable.

The unpleasant truth to some is that Almighty God is a systems engineer, and he sent His son, to teach us the system that he devised. Sells is one of His advocates. He may have some flaws as we all have, but he loves Almighty God and wants the best for his country. He is not afraid to start discussions that run into hundreds of comments. He creates platforms where ideas can be shared.

Sells advocates a return to the Rule of Almighty God’s law that existed in New South Wales until 1970

Peter,

"We have Parliaments full of ignorami who have never learned to read and write the English language properly, and Peter Sellick has the message that this is intolerable."

We have Parliaments full of self avowed Christians. The examples you site are hideous, I agree.
All perpetrated by Christians.

Pericles

You slander and call a liar a man you don't know and then expect me to retract. Go Figure! I think if you knew anything about theology at all you would not be comparing Jimmy Swaggart and Ravi Zacharias.

Oliver

You rightly point out atrocities in the pass by those claiming to be Christians. It makes sense that if you are going to justify yourself you use the highest authority in the universe (the Lord Jesus Christ). You fail however to acknowledge that more atrocities have been committed by those who don't even acknowledge God than any other group. Stalin and Pol Pot are good examples. Today millions of unborn are murdered (the most vulnerable) by secularist. You really should open your eyes.

Quoting passages of Scripture out of context just reveals you ignorance of the Jesus Christ and His ways unless of course you are being deliberately deceitful.

You also write 'Hitler’s eugenics is the mirror image of God’s “chosen” people. ' No Hitlers eugenics is a mirror image of HIs Darwinian beliefs mixed with the occult.

You've had two opportunities to justify your statement, runner, and you have studiously avoided both, choosing instead simply to describe my assertion - that Zacharias invented the inscription for his own purposes - as slander.

>>You slander and call a liar a man you don't know and then expect me to retract.<<

The reality is, runner, that no such inscription existed, and the words are not a public statement attributable to Hitler.

You can squirm and wriggle as much as you like, but that's the size of it. I'm afraid.

It is instructive that you have not accepted my offer of $100 to your favourite charity - even if that is yourself - to provide the evidence that would support your/Zacharias' claim.

Or retract. Your choice.

>>I think if you knew anything about theology at all you would not be comparing Jimmy Swaggart and Ravi Zacharias. <<

I also included the Bakkers and Oral Roberts, don't forget. Am I to assume that you are comfortable with that comparison, but somehow not Swaggart? You might like to explain the subtle difference that you have spotted.

And to be frank, it has nothing to do with theology. All the above make a living from their evangelical spruiking, accepting donations from their followers, based on their ability to sermonize. Theology doesn't come into the equation. These are all market-place hawkers, preying on the gullibility of the populace.

Of which you would appear to be one, if you believe that hogwash about stuff written on gas ovens.

It's tosh.

And the sad thing is, deep down you know it's tosh.

Dear runner,

Hitler's views on atheists, homosexuals and abortion parallel those of fundamentalist Christians and apparently yours.

Freethinkers were amongst the first to criticise the Nazis during the 30s and because of this, Hitler banned freethought organisations:

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” - Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

Outlawing abortion was a Nazi Program!

"The woman has the task of being pretty, and of bringing children into the world. That is not such a crude and old-fashioned idea as it sounds. The female bird cleans herself for her husband, and cares for the eggs. And in exchange, the male bird takes care of bringing home dinner. He also stands watch and fights away all enemies." - Joseph Goebbels

"On May 26, 1933, two pieces of penal legislation . . . prohibit[ed] the availability of abortion facilities and services, . . . resulting in a 65 percent increase in yearly convictions between 1932 and 1938, when their number reached almost 7,000. From 1935 on, doctors and midwives were obliged to notify the regional State Health Office of every miscarriage. Women's names and addresses were then handed over to the police, who investigated the cases suspected of actually being abortions. In 1936 Heinrich Himmler, head of all police forces and the SS, established the Reich's Central Agency for the Struggle Against Homosexuality and Abortion, and in 1943, after three years of preparation by the Ministries of the Interior and of Justice, the law entitled Protection of Marriage, Family, Motherhood called for the death penalty in 'extreme cases'."

Woman should not have control of their bodies as that might interfere with the production of soldiers and mothers of soldiers.

Secular humanists favour human autonomy, questioning of authority and critical thinking. Fascists and fundamentalist Christians do not like to be questioned or doubted. They both want blind obedience and unswerving faith.

Sells.

What questions are there to ask? To ask a question there has to be substance. Your articles have none.

I enjoy you articles because for some reason people start writing about all sorts of interesting issue that have nothing to do with your articles. This stuff about Hitler is interesting and I have learnt a lot from it. It is also interesting that I didn't learn anything from your article so I haven't asked you any questions.

I also like to see what sort of lame defence the few Christians who try to defend you.

And your dummy spits make for a little light relief. 'the arrogance to burst into print' and 'my discussion space' etc. etc.

<<I will not respond to sarcasm, abuse, gross ignorance, why should I?>> But you do give plenty of it.

As for the OLO publishing your articles? It good value to have someone who is continually dumped on but keeps coming back for more. Its like Richard Nixon. The papers couldn't get enough of him.

I will admit that as soon as I see Peter Sellick on an article I have to look to see what you are on about this time. As usual it is nothing, but you are a publishers dream.

PtB

Please don't forget that Baxter, Villawood, the over-riding of high court decisions by using retrospective legislation all came about by a devout Christian John Howard. Retrospective legislation was not new, but using it to overcome high court decision he didn't like was all Howard. If you think the Romans were murderous and satanic you should look at Jewish history.

Oliver. Thanks for that. I will have a deeper look at Mussolini.

Runner. If fundamental Christians (and some who call themselves mainstream) learnt the difference between Darwinism and Social Darwinism it would save a lot of agro. Also Runner, no group in this world has committed more atrocities than the Christian church. At one pint they where murdering 1 in 14 of the population under their control. That was the Christians, not those who say they are Christians

Daviy,

“At one point they where murdering 1 in 14 of the population under their control. That was the Christians, not those who say they are Christians.”

Well said. The good folk who shuffle off to Church each Sunday probably don’t identify with the deeds of the Christians. Yet, they call themselves by that name and venerate Christianity. People who otherwise would never think of joining brutal groups indwell (Polanyi) in the Christian performance, whilst knowing its ruthless history. It has a power over them. Surely, the devout of Jesus could respect and revere their god in other ways.

Sells,

I am unsure whether you truly debate points. (You might think you do.)

OLO posters cite serious scholars and tangible documents. Nonetheless, you never deny the existence of say; the Dead Scrolls or the behaviour of heinous Christians. Your silence on the substantive matters strengthens alternative interpretations.

runner,

Stalin and Pol Pot were mad autocrats, yet they were not secular humanists.

Autocracy finds a closer bedfellow in Church hierarchies than it does in humane lateral mutualism and egalitarianism. The Emperors, Popes, the Monarchs of Spain, France and England, often cited in OLO, were Christians. The Christian churches have too much baggage.

Jesus people, for want of a name, should start over, taking a more independent and forensic approach to their study, setting aside the centuries of doctrinaire accretions established by the Churches.

Regarding my quotes, I feel I appreciate Biblical contexts. The alleged Flood and destruction of Sodom involved the purging sin. But does this claim make the actions acceptable? The Bible dies claim there are witches. Relatedly, the Malleus Maleficarum challanges Mein Kampf in the detestable stakes. The Bible gives weight to the former book.

The Hebrews did see themselves as the “chosen” people.

Christian authority comes from the fourth century. Jesus lived in the first century. Much happened in between these times. Nicaea is more separated from Jesus, than we are separated from the First Fleet.

Daviy wrote: If you think the Romans were murderous and satanic you should look at Jewish history.

Dear Daviy,

Jewish history has to a great extent been a tale of persecution, expulsion and massacre by Christians.

From http://www.jamescarroll.net/Constantine.html

National Book Award–winner James Carroll confronts the long and dark history of antisemitism in the Church in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Houghton Mifflin; January 10, 2001). From the birth of Jesus to Constantine’s vision of the Cross, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, from the Jewish ghettos to the Dreyfus Affair, Carroll shows that the infamous silence of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust was not an aberration in Church history but a culmination of nearly 2,000 years of entrenched anti-Judaism. …. The result is a tragic history laid bare and a demand that the Church finally face this shameful past in full.

…..

One of Carroll’s main objectives is to show that antisemitism is not an impersonal force of history, but a consequence of choices made at pivotal moments down through the centuries. Beginning with the First Crusade in 1096, Pope Urban II defines violence as a sacred act; Jews are massacred in the heart of Europe or kill themselves rather than convert. Martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg in 1517; he defines the Jew as the born enemy of the German Christian. Gian Pietro Caraffa, the Grand Inquisitor himself, becomes Pope Paul IV in 1555; he ratifies blood purity laws and orders the Roman ghetto built. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Pope Pius VII immediately reestablishes the Roman ghetto whose walls Napoleon had demolished. Hitler comes to power in 1933; his first bilateral treaty is the concordat with the Vatican, negotiated by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who would become Pope Pius XII. The facts of history are immutable. What Carroll shows is that one person or event does not lead directly to the Holocaust. Rather, thousands of individual actions over the centuries, all rooted in a religious contempt for Jews, tilled the soil out of which grew the lethal antisemitism of the Nazis.

I don’t usually get upset at what anyone says to me but I cannot wear the statement that John Howard was a devout Christian. JH was a cunning manipulator of public opinion, but I cannot reconcile that with the statement that he was a devout Christian.

I am reminded of the passage from Mathhew 7:18 a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. I cite some of the fruit. I could spend hours citing the bad legislation enacted by the Howard government, and the way they manipulated the constitutions of the Federal Court , Family Court and High Court during the reign of Malcolm.

Fora like this give us an opportunity to debate the virtues or otherwise of various forms of government and when JH and KR went head to head in front of over 200,000 Christians in the final weeks of the 2007 campaign, the Holy Spirit moved and 23 seats shifted sides. The groans in my Christian congregation in 2004 when JH won, were palpable, but the consensus was that we could not follow an atheist. KR worked this out early in December 2004, and you will find the first shot towards leadership of the Australian Labor Party on this site.

KR is enormously popular but he has some lead in his saddlebags. JH stacked the Public Service with atheist lawyers, and they are probably practicing their deceitful ways upon him. Menzies should have been a bit more humble, and like Chiffley accepted the decision of the High Court instead of setting out to destroy it. When Fraser enacted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1981, and Hawke reenacted it in 1986, the Courts should have become courts again.

The liberal ( lawyers) Party fifth column in the Labor Party still refuses to accept the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was enacted in 1986, and that the punctuation of S 79 Constitution, which has court and judges without Capital letters, really means civil juries and jury/judges to set sentencing as a Christian right

Once again we hit the eternal stumbling block.
Millions of people call themselves Christians, and simultaneously reject every one else's right to do the same, as their interpretation of the word varies from every one else's.

"Before you attempt to remove the splinter from your brother's eye, first remove the plank from your own eye".

I agree that Howard, Bush et al do not exhibit many qualities that would be shared -or endorsed- by the legendary Jesus, but that is just my interpretation.
Sells and Peter the B. have their own interpretations, and both believe -apparently without question- that their interpretation is the absolutely right one; as of course, do the Howard's and the Bush's of this world.
They know they're right, because God said so.

JohnJ
"Still no comment from any "Liberal Protestants"? Just the atheists and runner et al going around in circles."

Whats to say?
"Liberalism stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfillment." and some evangelical Christians, like Sells, dont like it.

"It [liberalism] stands against doctrine, discipline, self sacrifice and discipleship." To the extent that we are prepared to challenge convention in these areas we are guilty, as charged.

Sells isnt too far wrong in his analysis, really. Perhaps he will sharpen his attack a little more in this discussion thread or future articles. I look forward to the challenge!

I'm inclined to agree with you Waterboy, but I guess my view is that Liberalism, per se, wasn't Sells' real target. His argument that "values are window dressing unless they are founded in virtue" (presumably faith, hope and charity/love) only has value in a Christian context. This invites the obvious (though possibly unhelpful) retort of "there is no God". I was hoping for something a little more nuanced.

I was interested to see whether any Christians would be interested in debating Sells on his own terms. I suspect that most of the people Sells refers to as "Liberal Protestants" would reject the label. Even Sells can't really define what he means, lamely adopting an "I know it when I see it" position when challenged. My own observation is that contemporary Christianity can't be subdivided in the way Sells does, there being a multitude of different theological positions on these matters.

Sadly, the only Christians who have seen fit to enter this thread have been Sells, runner, Peter the Believer, et al. Not much chance of nuance there. Oh well....

It is true that the human record associated with many religions contains much dross - intolerance, violence, obscurantism, misogynism, poverty and misery. Chrisianity’s reputation suffers for the Bad Popes, corruption, selling of offices and indulgences, callousness, sexual exploitation, hypocrisy (eg by tele-evangelists), you name it.

But the many on this forum who badmouth Christianity will find nothing in the teachings of Christ to justify these - quite the reverse. All these justifiable criticisms only demonstrate how far HUMAN NATURE is open to depravity. Paul writes very truly in Galatians 2:17: "If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!"

In reading the many anti-Christian postings I have been struck by the lack of interest of writers in what Christianity is actually about, their depressing ignorance of theology, and their preparedness to retail absurdities like the claim that Hitler was a 'devout Christian'. Tendentious invective unbacked by knowledge is a poor basis for debate (and yes, I take that in mind in writing my own posting.)

By Christianity I mean the actual teachings of Christ, as amplified by the greatest of his apostles, Paul. This is not the same as the veneration of church tradition and the edifice of power and culture: those things are Churchianity.

Sells slightly disconcerted me when he characterized as 'liberal' those Protestant denominations where the opening of a service might be "Good morning" rather than a liturgical formula.

Johnj took issue with this type of division, and I do too. I wouldn't describe the Salvation Army (for example) as liberal. Relatively informal in style, yes; but conservative evangelical in theological content, very strong on holiness teaching (which I think Jesus' message is all about).

Sells would be aware of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (term coined in the 1960s), which gives as the four main sources of Christian belief: 1. scripture, 2. church tradition, 3. reason, and 4. personal experience.

Modern Christianity falls into four mainstream strands:
A. Orthodox, B. Roman Catholic, C. Protestant (with numerous subdivisions), and D. Pentecostal.

Catholicism gives equal value to 1 and 2, and emphasizes also 3 (its Scholasticism was not matched in Orthodoxy).

Orthodoxy stresses 1 and 2, and sees little need for 3, as it regards all the issues of doctrine as having been settled by the seven great Councils from Jerusalem (Acts chapter 15) to Constantinople, AD 680-681.

Mainstream Protestantism stresses 1 and 3 most strongly, and 2 the least. Anglo-Catholicism falls outside mainstream Protestantism.

Pentecostalism stresses 1 and 4 (lots of emotion) but virtually rejects 3, often being fundamentalist and anti-intellectual.

From my perspective, a person is not a Christian because he SAYS he's a Christian (like Joh Bjelke-Petersen), but because he internalizes within himself Christ's sayings:
1. My kingdom is not of this world, and
2. The kingdom is God is within you.
Shorn of all the theological and denominational complexities, Christianity is fundamentally about personal transformation. It is NOT a purely cultural or power-structure thing.

The end of persecution of Christianity in the fourth century, and its subsequent establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire, was a catastrophe for the church in that it set individuals up to pursue personal and State agendas rather than spiritual ones.

In my view, 'national' churches like the Russian Orthodox Church have been more about fascism than about Christianity.

I agree with Peter the Believer in rejecting John Howard as 'devout'. The teachings of Christ, echoing much in the Old Testament, have much to say about social justice. When Tony Abbott still defends Work Choices, I recall Isaiah 10:1-2: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

JohnJ
"I'm inclined to agree with you Waterboy, but I guess my view is that Liberalism, per se, wasn't Sells' real target. His argument that "values are window dressing unless they are founded in virtue" (presumably faith, hope and charity/love) only has value in a Christian context."

Sells has maintained a steady critique of liberalism for as long as I have been reading his articles. In spite of his 'problem' with liberalism, his views, assuming his articles represent his views accurately, tend more to the liberal end of the theological spectrum than the evangelical although Im sure he would claim to be orthodox rather than liberal.

It is an interesting quirk of nature that we save our harshest criticism for those whose flaws most resemble our own. This, of all Sells articles, seems to me most self-revelatory although perhaps not intentionally so.

I cant speak for all 'liberal protestants' but I personally welcome criticism and I think Sells is well-placed to formulate some healthy criticism. I believe he is capable of articulating that criticism more persuasively than he has done in this article and I hope we will be forthcoming with that.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ spelt out the way his government would operate. As the King he would establish courts, and in those courts, the promise of Matthew 7:7 is given. Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened for you. The English took this to heart and devised a way that a person could formally ask Almighty God for what he wanted. The Form used was a Writ, issued in the name of the Ruling Sovereign, and tested in the name of the Chief Justice. Once issued, the Writ required an answer, and to not answer was contempt of court. The lawyers of course got into the act and unless a Writ was in a specific form, it would not be issued.

In England a Writ was replaced in 1873 by a Writ of Summons, and that is what Australian Courts issued in 1900. If a claim was made in a Writ of Summons, it could not be discharged by a Judge. It could only since 1472 be discharged by a jury trial with twelve men present. Men were the only ones entitled to vote back then. The jury trial was of higher rank than a Judge, and the judge could not do any private deals behind their back, because only a jury trial exercised the divine power of Almighty God.

In Matthew 18 Verses 15-20 further guidance is given in the ways of good government. In verse 20 Jesus promises to be there, when two or three are gathered together in my name. The English to be fairly sure they got it right settled on 12 disciples, all sworn on the Holy Bible to find the truth. They kept the promise of Jesus Christ in Matthew 7 :18 and 19, and courts with judges brought forth good fruit, while a Court with a Judge brings forth evil fruit. Pontius Pilate ran such a Court for Jews, but was obliged to convene a jury trial for Romans. That was why he offered Jesus Christ Roman citizenship

For many here, Sells presents a type of paternalism where freedom is suspended and the right of a differing opinion is rejected – the greatest imaginable tyranny to a liberal thinker. But, I’ll take Sells at his word - “You call me arrogant but I only express an opinion that is counter to the prevailing view..” I’ll take his preceding and proceeding statements as pretending no absolutes (despite an appearance to the contrary) and to be merely dialectic.

The theological understanding of liberalism needs to also note the connection of progressivism with Pelagianism – i.e. a liberal philosophy of history with a characteristically liberal understanding of human nature. We can perhaps rephrase this a little further and ask, is the attempt to secure ‘salvation’ through human virtue disastrously and patently false?

Liberalism is the political aspect of the Enlightenment, and thus a central and characteristic feature of modernity. Locke attempted to justify unlimited material acquisition through his theory of property, he was seen as heralding a new understanding of the relation of human beings to the world - the desire for and the pursuit of happiness, making natural rights the foundation of the law of nature. The rule of nature is replaced by the rule of convention, and human beings and their subjectively derived aspirations becomes the centre of the moral world. Locke also assumed the parameter of an ordered cosmos in which nothing was created in vain, and in which everything must serve the purpose of God implicit in its creation. Kant believed world peace would be achieved from the gains made from international trade and universal republican freedom, and because survival would be preferred to destruction by increasingly horrendous weapons - his belief in progress was ultimately governed by moral rather than theoretical considerations.

Our Western virtue, however, has been insufficient, for after three centuries of enlightenment and scientific rationality, this society (generally) asks to comforted. It feels abandoned, and like a stunted orphan hankers more after the little gods of astrology and fortune telling. The hunger for substantive truth, more than ever, appears unsatisfied.

Relda, Sells and others,

If we could put our discussion into music and pictures and dance and drama (and, perhaps even mathematics?) as well as words, I am sure we would come closer to what Relda calls “substantive truth”. Theology as usually practised is too intellectual and too verbally sophisticated for public debate: it is more likely to enrage than engage the general reader. I suggest that the forum threads attached to Sells’ articles clearly demonstrate that.

That is why liturgy is so important. Done well, it combines so many modes of cognition that it has the potential to give a wide variety of people at least a slight grasp of one “handle” or more on God. While theological debate is necessary, it is likely to be productive only when we drink frequently from the living water of liturgical worship. (The question arises, naturally, what makes for “good” liturgy.)

Regular worshippers may communicate more effectively with the unchurched and hostile by making language only one medium among many. Of course, that statement doesn’t help much in the OLO context.

I offer these thoughts from an Anglo-Catholic perspective – admittedly just one band in the spectrum that Glorfindel earlier painted for us.

Stickman (back on page 5 of this blog) asks "who says Western civilisation is in decline? ... When .. would be a better time to have been alive in a Western civilisation? … with access to such wonders as the internet, modern medicine, and a relatively good justice system etc."

I found this amazing. Are not the following signs of decline?

*Loss of civility, indiscipline in schools, indiscriminate violence and even judicial tolerance of it (swimmer Nick Darcy )
*Soccer hooligans in UK and across Europe
*Widespread alienation - Punk and Goth
*Rejection of the beautiful, fascination with the vile - Death metal
*Nihilistic, vulgar, mindless slogans on t-shirts
*Pervasive negativity - desire to pull down, carp, be destructive
*Atomistic individualism - destruction of community and family relationships
*Binge drinking, throwing up in the street
*Ladette culture
*Drugs - epidemic of methamphetamine, speed, cocaine, heroin, marijuana
*Loss of self-respect and self-esteem: bare midriffs, tattoos (living graffiti walls), multiple piercings
*Feral behaviour on public transport and in Malls
*Loss of public safety in the streets; home invasions, gatecrashing
*Mindless and irresponsible hedonism (Corey Worthington the party animal)
*Road rage, loss of personal restraint, callousness, loss of empathy
*TV and movies saturated with violence, depravity, decadence
*Desensitization to violence - confusion of the virtual with actual reality
*People no longer interacting face to face with others - earphones in ears, constant texting, virtual friendships - all superficial, not compatible with real relationships
*Postmodernist quicksand - denial of any absolutes, vacuum of values
*Political correctness rather than positively held and affirmed values
*Decline in belief in pursuit of excellence
*Denial of personal responsibility for one's own life choices; instead preparedness to blame social conditions and anyone except oneself
*Self-obsession and intellectual narcissism of New Age pursuits
*Epidemic of suicide and depressive illnesses.

Following Jesus gives a positive, wholesome foundation to your life that is firmly based; not subjective quicksand. "I came that they might have life, and have it to the full."

Grim

<<Sells and Peter the B. have their own interpretations, and both believe -apparently without question- that their interpretation is the absolutely right one; as of course, do the Howard's and the Bush's of this world.
They know they're right, because God said so.>>

Spot on. This has been the central theme of all my articles to OLO. 'Do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.' Do not get into right and wrong.

Glorfindel

Since the beginning of history every generation has blamed these things on the next generation. Our fathers said it about us, we say it about our children. And so on.

Glorfindel wrote: “Stickman (back on page 5 of this blog) asks "who says Western civilisation is in decline? ... When .. would be a better time to have been alive in a Western civilisation? … with access to such wonders as the internet, modern medicine, and a relatively good justice system etc."

I found this amazing. Are not the following signs of decline?”

*Loss of civility, indiscipline in schools, indiscriminate violence and even judicial tolerance of it (swimmer Nick Darcy )

Dear Glorfindel,

The above and many of the things you mentioned are only signs of decline if one ignores the reality of the past.

It is only in recent history that there has been general public education. Our schools must take in everybody. That is one way things are much better.

Violence in the schools is not new both from teachers and students. In the past the teacher was free to employ violence in the use of cane, strap and paddle. Most schools no longer allow corporal punishment. In many schools bullying was institutionalized, and lower classmen were expected to act as servants and cater to the wishes of upper classmen. “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” and other works of the period describe in detail the brutality in schools.

In the class system of a past age violence by upper class hoodlums could be excused as an exercise of high spirits. A rich Darcy would probably not have to face any sort of charges.

The above as many of the other items you mention are only signs of decline if one imagines a past Golden Age.

It is only in recent history that police forces have existed to protect citizens from random violence.

From http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/SirRobertPeel.htm:
The Peelers were the Metropolitan Police Force, which Sir Robert founded when he was Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool’s Tory Cabinet. Today it is hard to believe that Britain in the early 1800’s did not have a professional Police Force and that one had to be created.

Glorfindel wrote: “Following Jesus gives a positive, wholesome foundation to your life that is firmly based; not subjective quicksand. "I came that they might have life, and have it to the full."”

There is absolutely no evidence that Christians have a more positive, wholesome foundation to life than non-Christians.

The period of history before the formation of the secular state saw a Europe dominated by countries which had a firm union of church and state, and Christianity held the power. That period was known with good reason as “The Dark Ages”. Christians have exercised violence such as the Crusades with its massacres not only in the East but also in Europe of Jews, orthodox Christians and other non-Catholic Christians, Albigensians, pagan Lithuanians, etc., the horrible wars of the Reformation, the Inquisition and the Holocaust carried out largely by Christians.

There is a great deal of evidence that the followers of Jesus can be brutal, intolerant and murderous, and Christianity has often encouraged them in that exercise of power.

I generally like to avoid point-by-point rebuttals, but Glorfindel has provided so many statements to rebut that it's the most efficient way.

<< *Loss of civility, indiscipline in schools, indiscriminate violence and even judicial tolerance of it (swimmer Nick Darcy )
*Soccer hooligans in UK and across Europe
*Pervasive negativity - desire to pull down, carp, be destructive
*Atomistic individualism - destruction of community and family relationships
*Binge drinking, throwing up in the street
*Loss of public safety in the streets; home invasions, gatecrashing
*Mindless and irresponsible hedonism (Corey Worthington the party animal)
*Road rage, loss of personal restraint, callousness, loss of empathy
*Feral behaviour on public transport and in Malls
*Desensitization to violence - confusion of the virtual with actual reality
*People no longer interacting face to face with others - earphones in ears, constant texting, virtual friendships - all superficial, not compatible with real relationships >>

This is just the garden-variety fear of change that's been piqueing Christian paranoia for centuries. At any point in history you'll find them complaining that society is disintegrating before our eyes because of our godless ways, and yet Western civilisation has continued to grant greater freedom, prosperity and safety to each new generation.

<< *Widespread alienation - Punk and Goth
*Rejection of the beautiful, fascination with the vile - Death metal
*Nihilistic, vulgar, mindless slogans on t-shirts
*Ladette culture
*Loss of self-respect and self-esteem: bare midriffs, tattoos (living graffiti walls), multiple piercings >>

This selection makes me cringe with embarrassment for poor Glorfindel. It should have begun with the statement "I've never actually met any of these sorts of people, but in my judgement..."

If Glorfindel actually spoke to a punk, goth, Death metalhead or bare-midriffed, multi-pierced "living grafitti wall", he'd be disappointed at how ordinary, cheerful and non-nihilistic they are.

...

<< *Drugs - epidemic of methamphetamine, speed, cocaine, heroin, marijuana
*TV and movies saturated with violence, depravity, decadence
*Postmodernist quicksand - denial of any absolutes, vacuum of values
*Political correctness rather than positively held and affirmed values
*Decline in belief in pursuit of excellence
*Denial of personal responsibility for one's own life choices; instead preparedness to blame social conditions and anyone except oneself >>

By this point it's easy to tell that Glorfindel's view of the modern world comes entirely from the mass media. If he read a bit more widely - or better, some actual research - he'd find that none of these statements are accurate or representative of our current society.

<< *Self-obsession and intellectual narcissism of New Age pursuits >>

Ironic, considering that this is in response to an article which is 100% Christian intellectual narcissism.

<< *Epidemic of suicide and depressive illnesses >>

Nope. Just increased rates of diagnosis and media coverage.

Thanks Glorfindel, I hadn't come across the Wesleyan Quadrilateral before and it seems a useful tool for comparing different "flavours" of Christianity. Not just different denominations, but different strands within them, like (for example) "Charismatic Catholicism" (tradition & experience?). I felt Sells' analysis was a little simplistic in this regard and this thread demonstrates a wide variety of opinions amongst the believers. Though I must take issue with your latest post, "Are not the following signs of decline?" All I can say is, "We'll all be rooned." Here I was thinking that you were someone who could debate sensibly, sad really.

As Relda points out, Liberalism is a political philosophy. Relda goes on to suggest that "the hunger for substantive truth, more than ever, appears unsatisfied." I'd suggest that if you're looking to Liberalism for the "truth", or "transcendence" or "meaning", then you're looking in the wrong place. Its not an end in itself, its a means of creating a society where you're free to create your own meaning.

Waterboy says "Sells has maintained a steady critique of liberalism ... his views ... tend more to the liberal end of the theological spectrum than the evangelical although ... he would claim to be orthodox rather than liberal." I must take issue here. Sells wants nothing less than the rolling back of the Enlightenment. I find his arguments entertaining, but that's only because there's no likelihood of the Sells Project coming to fruition.

Crabsy says "If we could put our discussion into music and pictures and dance and drama". I certainly feel my world would be poorer without gothic architecture and some of the sacred music I enjoy. Unfortunately, for the average evangelical such things are distractions to be shunned. I guess they just don't know what they're missing. Though presumably they think the same about me.

davidf

I don't regard the past as any sort of golden age. It was in 1651 that Thomas Hobbes (in Leviathan) called life "poor, nasty, brutish and short" !

But the Enlightenment project brought so many expectations. Sure, we've had huge technological and material advances, but the human animal, even in rich western societies, hasn't improved much, and despite a great lift in education levels, surfeit has brought ennui and postmodern attitudes have destroyed perceptions of the need for the type of self-restraint that makes CIVILIZATION.

I was much taken by your comment "There is a great deal of evidence that the followers of Jesus can be brutal, intolerant and murderous, and Christianity has often encouraged them in that exercise of power."

I've made it clear from past postings that in no way do I identify with the many sins of the historical church. I'm very sure Jesus wouldn't own them, and neither will I own them. Similarly I don't expect secularists and humanists in general to own the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc.

We are all responsible for our own actions. I've made it clear that I see Christianity as a matter of personal transformation, not pursuit of power, or besottedness with the cultural achievements and such aids to "mythos" - although I do certainly regard worship as requiring a sense of mythos, and I do love the sublime cultural achievements of music, architecture and the like. (So I am particularly unreceptive to Pentecostalism.) Man does not live by bread alone. Where is the soul in materialism?

However, your comment above is a CHALLENGE to Christians, and I accept it.

I agree with the statement by a UK pastor, Steve Chalke, who has said, of the church today, “The task of the church is to be the irrefutable demonstration and proof of the fact that God is love.”

“The task of the church is to be the irrefutable demonstration and proof of the fact that God is love.”

The implicit acknowledgement that they haven't been able to do it yet is interesting, is it not?

in glorfindel's case, i think it's a pretty explicit acknowledgment.

i certainly disagree with aspects of his/her posts, but i have some sympathy too. i don't find western civilization so wonderfully civilized. the posts certainly don't get up my nose like sellick's crap.

and i'm not sure that glorfindel should be getting too much heat, simply because Lord Sellick has laid his turd and then left.

Glorfindel wrote: I've made it clear from past postings that in no way do I identify with the many sins of the historical church. I'm very sure Jesus wouldn't own them, and neither will I own them. Similarly I don't expect secularists and humanists in general to own the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc.

Dear Glorfindel,

Some sins of the historical church come from the words of Jesus:

Anglican Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote “Sins of Scripture”. From his website:

RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY: "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6); This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.

Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were Marxist atheists not secular humanists. The Marxist belief in the original sin of private property and the classless millennium makes Marxism like Christianity rather than humanism in their belief in a historical process leading to an apotheosis. Marxism and Christianity are similar intolerant nonsense.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts. … Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation and as such views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin.

Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao did not affirm the dignity and worth of all people and were not humanists.

A secularist favours the separation of church and state. Religion is not the business of the state. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc. persecuted churches and their communicants. That is not secularism.

An interesting paragraph about humanism, David F, but have you made a selective quote?

"Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, ... without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts.[1][2] ... Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation and as such views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

read that last line again:
"Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.[3]"

Humanism and liberalism need distinguishing. At the risk of appearing to quote selectively, I offer the first para of the wikipedia article (in toto) on liberalism:

"Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophies that considers individual liberty and equality to be the most important political goals.[1]"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism"

These two viewpoints seem related on a fundamental level. What strikes me is the tension implicit between "the commonality of the human condition" and "parochial" approaches to human cultural and social problems.

Consider spearing, as a sanction in Aboriginal communities, vs long-term imprisonment for similar crimes, committed in a predominantly secular state. Or take the social structure of communities of Exclusive Brethren in northern Tasmania, contrasted to the social structure of urban Uniting Church communities. Plainly, "liberal" and "humanist" values are more evident in the typical judgements of the Supreme Court and the likely behaviour of urban protestants.

Do liberals and humanists (religious or not)take it on faith that their interventions in individual and community affairs are somehow to be preferred over the traditionalist structures and behaviours they label as discriminatory and/or inhumane?

Dear Sir Vivor,

I selectively quoted due to restriction to 350 words or less. I noted the omission by dots.

I objected to Glorfindel’s merging of humanism with atheism and using as an example Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao. That is analogous to seeing religion in terms of the fanatics who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center.

Many humanists believe there can be such a thing as an objective morality. I personally believe that a universal and/or an objective morality is neither possible nor desirable.

Such statements as the one I quoted have the same defect as the multiplicity of creeds of Christianity. All of the members of the group cannot accept all of the items.

I think it is good to try to minimize the number of things we take on faith. We must take some things on faith simply because we have to get on with life and do not have an infinite amount of time to question.

There is always a tension between the values of the larger society in which a smaller group is embedded and the values of the smaller group.

Regarding your question as to spearing vs. imprisonment I don’t know enough to make a value judgment. I have a feeling that if I did know more about the question and had to make a judgment it would have to be decided on a case by case basis.

In cases where there is a conflict between the rights of the individual and traditional values as in the cases of forced marriage, children’s education and female genital mutilation I would generally opt for the right of the individual.

Some traditional societies are themselves aware of the tension and allow members of the society to have a choice. Young people in Amish communities in the US are encouraged to live outside the community for a time before they make a commitment for the rest of their lives. Christian denominations that opt for adult baptism follow a similar line.

It is presumptuous to make hierarchies of values for other people. At times I am presumptuous.

I think we need to examine some of the polarities that we used to discuss these issues. For example, humanism is often used in opposition to religion. This polarity arises from the concern that religion is detached from the reality of the human i.e. religious morality has little to do with human flourishing and more to do with the superstitious conformity to arbitrary law. Of course some religious law does fall under this criticism. I would contend that human flourishing is at the centre of Christianity and its moral precepts are derived from an often hidden aspect of human life. It is utilitarian in a deeper sense. For example, the dim view of sex outside of marriage is not an arbitrary and joyless imposition but is founded on the knowledge of what marriage constitutes and how that is damaged by taking multiple sexual partners. Liberalism skips over any deep understanding of the reality of marriage and gives us a sexual free for all from which we have all suffered and are suffering still.

The other polarity is that of freedom which was the clarion call of the Enlightenment. Christianity is also concerned with human freedom, from idolatry and false religion, from family and clan and nation. It sees each individual as bearing the image of God. Liberalism again holds a superficial understanding of freedom as being about choice, freedom is the ability to do anything one wants “as long as no one gets hurt.” But this is an empty freedom that leads only to a void. This must be the significant mark of our society. In the midst of plenty and with all boundaries destroyed our lives are directionless, the boredom of which leads to most of our social ills.

Christianity is liberal in that it says to us “go and live out your lives in freedom.” However it acknowledges that life is not that simple, that we are naturally self seeking and will come to grief if left to our own devices. Christianity is the truth because it sees to the depths of the human soul.

Cont..
The difference between liberalism and Christianity is that the former is a superficial view while the latter is a deep view. Or in other terms liberalism relies on a thin narrative of human flourishing and Christianity provides a thick narrative.
The difference between the two is revelation. Contrary to the ideas of anti religionists, revelation is not a thunder bolt from the sky but the result of a searching analysis of human experience. This is the soul of Scripture, it is an analysis of the past. This is where the thick narrative of Christianity comes from; history. Of course it is often written in a traditional religious framework, the Ten Commandments are seen as an example of direct lawgiving from God. Here we must be sympathetic to the ancient context while continuing to take the law seriously. This is the tension in which the church in modernity must live.
Taken with a broad view, Scripture presents us with a map of the human heart that is grounded on human experience. It is revelation to us because such an experience cannot be had by an a-historical individual. This is why rationalism will always lead us astray, it is not based on many years of meditation on human experience in the context of a harsh criticism of religion. This is what distinguishes Israel from the nations and Christianity from secular humanism. In other words the individual cannot come to these truths on his own, he needs a community whose practice is one of listening to a deeper analysis that the individual can provide.
Bushbasher.
I really must protest at your posts. Some of the writers in this section manage to behave as gentlemen and it is obvious that this capacity is quite beyond you.

Peter Sellick

Sells wrote: The other polarity is that of freedom which was the clarion call of the Enlightenment. Christianity is also concerned with human freedom, from idolatry and false religion, from family and clan and nation.

Dear Sells,

Your statement is an example of Christian bigotry. When you write of false religion you are implicitly assuming non-Christian religions are false. Bigots of any religion call religions other than their own false religions. Why should we be free from family and clan and nation? Those define who we are.

With its intolerant humanoid God who allows entry to the Kingdom of Heaven only those who subscribe to his mumbo jumbo, belief in such improbabilities as a virgin birth and its propensity for violence manifested in massacre of different believers, Inquisition, wars of the Reformation etc. Christianity seems to me to be in the category of false religion if one makes such categories. However, I favour religious freedom and tolerance. Therefore, I think it is unreasonable to label one's own religion true if you subscribe to any and others false.

If one wishes to worship idols one should have the freedom to do so. Idolatry is as legitimate as any other religion.

sellick, you only pretend to be a gentleman. manners do not equal respect. you do not have any respect for the posters here. i am simply showing you the same disrespect, in a language you understand.

the effect i am trying to have upon you is EXACTLY the effect your posts have upon me. think about it.

Sells, it's a bit late in the day to set up yet another sequence of straw-men.

>>For example, humanism is often used in opposition to religion<<

This was your starting position for this article, except that you called it "liberalism". With the caveat that you "use the term 'liberal' not in the usual sense".

Your "Liberalism stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfilment"

Sounds a lot like humanism to me. Unless you intend to also use that word "not in the usual sense".

>>This polarity arises from the concern that... religious morality has little to do with human flourishing and more to do with the superstitious conformity to arbitrary law.<<

Again, a carefully worded straw-man that you can whack with your Christianity stick.

"Religious morality" contains many aspects of "human morality", necessary for the world to function. Religion is simply a communication methodology, which - as you yourself point out - will always contain some entirely arbitrary rules.

>>Liberalism skips over any deep understanding of the reality of marriage and gives us a sexual free for all from which we have all suffered and are suffering still<<

It is not "liberalism" that provides this freedom, Sells, any more than Christianity acts to prevent Christians from breaking its rules.

Often, as you would admit, in spectacular fashion.

Morality and ethics are the constraining factors, both inside and outside a religious framework.

Your propositions can only exist in an abstract sense, which is precisely why you need your cohort of straw-men. Here's another.

>>Liberalism again holds a superficial understanding of freedom as being about choice, freedom is the ability to do anything one wants “as long as no one gets hurt.”<<

You have used "freedom" here as an analogue of "anarchy".

These are tired arguments.

Religion can only ever make sense to the religious. Your articles fascinate, because they illuminate the fundamental narrowness of thought that is necessary in order to be religious.

Sells

I particularly like your thin/thick narrative metaphor. Christianity certainly provides a thick narrative that informs those who are prepared to make the effort to engage with it. The Christian 'narrative', however, can be engaged in depth or shallowly.
Biblical literalism, for example, is a particularly shallow form of engagement with the Christian story. It is so shallow that, in fact, it completely misses the point of the story. Popular evangelism, being so often associated with varying degrees of Biblical literalism, usually fails to tell the story faithfully.

Liberalism can be an excuse for mindlessly dismissing much of the story and becomes susceptible to the criticism you have made. But there is also a strand of 'liberalism' within Christianity that takes the story very seriously while recognising that it is a complex and often ambiguous story. It includes the Church's successes and its failures. It embraces the possibility (some would say the fact) that the Church is getting it wrong.

I would argue that, at its best, liberalism embraces the thick narrative of Christianity as part of the even thicker narrative of the totality of human experience. It is free to break from tradition and 'create' new realities that I would expect to be 'in continuity' with the great tradition without necessarily being a 'continuation' of that tradition. We have the freedom to stop making the same mistakes over and over and I believe this is the important contribution liberalism has to make. Liberalism, of itself, wont 'solve the worlds problems'. Society, as it existed under the Church, is gone. We have moved into a period of instability and change. You said liberalism suffers from the 'fault' of excessive optimism. It may well be a fault in some sense but it also the capacity to embrace the opportunities that this period of social change presents.

davidf

You quote Spong's citation of John 14:6 ("I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me" as an instruction to bigotry and murder. No it isn't. Jesus claims to be the exclusive way to the truth. He is not a relativist. But the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20): "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations ... teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..." must be read against the following from Matthew's gospel:

* "You are the light of the world. ... Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Convert by example, not violence.

* "Do not resist an evil person. ... Love your enemies."
* "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."
* "Watch out for false prophets...." Not 'kill heretics' !
* "Love your neighbour as yourself."

Spong underwhelms me. He follows benign but non-Christian HUMANISM, which you defined as ethics "that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts."

Yes, secular humanism is different from Marxist atheism. I consider the latter totally evil; the former potentially benign, but still open to pernicious moral relativism. Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment) justifies murdering the old pawnbroker as a bloodsucking parasite no one would miss; why should he, a potential Napoleon, be held back by poverty?

In Nietzsche's parable on the Death of God a madman screams the implications of life without a sacred [absolute] beyond:
“How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?"

Christianity is a firm foundation.

Sells

I read your posting on The Failure of Protestantism (7 Dec 2007) and was struck by the poverty of responses. No one belled the cat of theological differences - all the Mary stuff: "a tale which grew in the telling"; conflicts and gaps between church tradition and scripture; and now over 2000 items in the Cathechism purporting to know the mind of God in detail!

But as an evangelical Protestant, I see much to respect in the present Pope. His sermons to World Youth Day are relevant to your most recent postings:

"There is ... something sinister which stems from the fact that freedom and tolerance are so often separated from truth. This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made experience all-important. Yet experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead, not to genuine freedom, but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect, and even to despair."

He warned about the "exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the internet as entertainment". "I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation "explain" that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely entertainment?"

Today's liberals, supporters of unlimited "freedom", "choice", and relativism, have little constructive to say here.

John Carroll writes: "In England, the Anglican Church was ideally placed, with its moderate Protestantism and its Catholic tendencies, to provide an institutional basis for an integrated Christianity. In this it failed completely. After Milton, English culture produced no Christian theorist of distinction. In practice, the Anglican Church quickly degenerated into a bastion of upper-class complacency, sheltering within a blurred mental focus and half-hearted beliefs.”

Where do you stand within the Anglican Church in Australia? Aspinall or Jensen? :-)

Glorfindel wrote: "Spong underwhelms me. He follows benign but non-Christian HUMANISM, which you defined as ethics "that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts."

Dear Glorfindel,

It is standard for Christians or other people to cast out from the group those they disagree with. Thus, you refer to a person who was made a bishop of his Anglican church as following non-Christian HUMANISM. He is a Christian who is honest enough to examine how the texts were formed and the milieu in which they are formed. As a non-Christian I see that he is in good standing in his church so I see no reason not to regard him as a Christian.

He recognizes the moral bankruptcy of claiming that one has an exclusive truth as Jesus supposedly claimed in John 14:6.

It is the mark of a religious fanatic to claim that only his belief is truth.

It doesn’t how good a life you led or how considerate you were to other people. Spong recognizes the humanity of all people and rejects the hateful sectarianism of those who demand that all follow their ‘truth.’

He is a Christian who recognizes that humanity and goodness can reside in those who do not follow his faith.

I accept his church's judgment as to his Christianity rather than yours.

His Christianity is one that non-Christians can live with.

I have a Fundamentalist Christian cousin who tells that my grandmother who was the most loving and caring person I have ever known is suffering the torments of hell because she never accepted Jesus.

Do you believe that?

That sort of Christianity is despicable

The conversion of Constantine the Great assured the church a privileged place in society and from this point it became easier to be a Christian than not to be one. I was generally taught for this to have been a good thing – perhaps a type of Christian triumphalism, where winning the political battle (through a form of divine intervention) settled all the arguments. The Church then fostered and was identified with a civilization bound to ecclesiastical dogmatism and obscurantism.

Christianity may well have elucidated generous liberal feeling through saying, “go and live out your lives in freedom” but its institution lacked any real munificence – on the contrary, it authoritatively legitimised the advanced slave systems of medieval Europe. There was a re-enslavement to a god where Christianity would provide the intellectual and institutional support for social bondage. Iconically (and ironically), with the rise of the cult of the saints, the notion of enslavement to Christ, the redeemer of humanity, was extended to the saint, the imitator Christi par excellence, who, as healer and liberator of the stricken assumes, by that very fact, the role of master over those who receive his aid.

Christianity bore the contradiction of marginality and integration arising from the existence of slavery. The slave was part of the Christian community in which all were equal (integration) but on the social level he or she was a ‘non-person’ (marginality). This contradiction, however, had it resolution from outside of Christianity. Despite its ‘high points’ the Christian faith in the Middle Ages had been used to sanctify oppression. Liberalism (with its ‘warts and all’) intervened through its opposition to literalism and its demand for tolerance and served to free an enslaved Church

The threat of excommunication is the implicit understanding of the slave as a ‘non-person’. This punishment replicates on the religious level what occurs on the social level. For those who advocate, on religious grounds, resistance to their ‘masters’, they will suffer ecclesiastically what the slave experiences socially - exclusion from the community. Through their evangelical zeal, religious dogmatists and fundamentalists are often very good at this.

I think that pretty much says it all, Glorfindel.

>>Where do you stand within the Anglican Church in Australia? Aspinall or Jensen?<<

When religion is reduced - by an insider, no less - to the question "which sect leader within a major division of one particular religion do you follow", it lays bare its true nature.

Which is, clearly, nothing more than a series of man-made power structures, built upon the intensely narrow interpretation of events that may, or may not have occurred many centuries ago.

This self-importance somehow empowers its adherents to pontificate about the evil of others.

>>Yes, secular humanism is different from Marxist atheism. I consider the latter totally evil; the former potentially benign, but still open to pernicious moral relativism. Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment) justifies murdering the old pawnbroker as a bloodsucking parasite no one would miss; why should he, a potential Napoleon, be held back by poverty?<<

Such a superficial analysis of Dostoevsky's work would be at home in a suburban book club meeting, but doesn't bear a great deal of honest scrutiny. For starters, Glorfindel carelessly overlooks the deliberate confusion of Raskolnikov's motives, the guilt that pursues him, and his response to that guilt.

To suggest that this is an illustration of the moral vacuum that exists within in secular humanism is typical of the religionist. Coming to a conclusion that is not only wide of the mark, but that demonstrates a narrowness of thought that should, on reflection, be embarrassing.

>>Today's liberals, supporters of unlimited "freedom", "choice", and relativism, have little constructive to say here.<<

Oh, that sad old chant.

Liberalism equals unlimited freedom. So they must all be potential murderers, rapists and paedophiles. Oh, please.

"Little constructive to say" is a fair description, I suggest, of these trite, cut-and-paste accusations.

Pericles

You are at your best on religious forums.

"When religion is reduced - by an insider, no less - to the question "which sect leader within a major division of one particular religion do you follow", it lays bare its true nature.

Which is, clearly, nothing more than a series of man-made power structures, built upon the intensely narrow interpretation of events that may, or may not have occurred many centuries ago.

This self-importance somehow empowers its adherents to pontificate about the evil of others."

Given the small numbers that must, by Sells own definitions, constitute his particular brand of Christianity, the majority of us: humanists, liberals, libertarians and any other religion are, according to him, intent on selfish, immoral, greedy, anarchic behaviour.

Given that so many people are so potentially evil, it is truly a miracle (Hallelujah) that the world hasn't topped itself eons ago. I guess the big patriarch in the sky must care for all of us and not just a few dogmatists.

David F has raised an important issue. It's a pet peeve of mine.

Everyone hates it when someone claims to have "the truth". Or, THE truth.

But it's such a illogical complaint.

It's basically saying:

1. Do not say you have THE truth. It angers me. I hate people who say they have THE truth. How offensive.
2. No one should claim a monopoly on truth, because no one has THE truth! There is no such thing as THE truth.
3. I am the only one with THE truth- THE truth is that there is no truth.

Completely illogical.

So, why not let people believe whatever they want to? Why get so offended? Their belief is just that, a belief about truth, just like yours. So get over it

Dear Trav,

We have different pet peeves. I understand belief as something that cannot be shown to be true. I understand truth as something which can be shown to be true. A belief which can be shown to be true becomes truth and is not belief.

I object to using the words synonymously.

Trav

The trouble with the Church, and people like Sells, is that they believe they have access to some sort of absolute knowledge (THE truth) which they use to justify certain actions. It is fairly obvious how conflicts can arise between people or communities with diverse beliefs and values held as absolute truths. The Church's solution to this 'problem' is to demand that everyone conform to their system of values (and beliefs). Fortunately the Church is no longer in a position to make such a demand with any actual force.

Relativism 'solves' the problem for a diverse society by undermining everyone's confidence in their own particular belief/value system. This, of course, is anathema to the Church and naturally there are people whose beliefs are resistant to being 'relativised'.

In order to comprehend the world around us we need much of it to remain constant and/or predictable (which is a form of constancy) for long enough to be of practical use in ordering and conducting the way we live. Actually, everything can change provided most things take a long time to change. If too much changes too quickly then anxiety is inevitable. To accept this analysis is to embrace relativism. But to allow or effect too much change too quickly would be disastrous so while it is important that absolute truth claims should ring all our alarm bells it is also important to resist relativism to some extent as well.

For now, relativism has so taken over our conciousness that we are immediately sceptical of anyone claiming to have knowledge of THE Truth. Sells obviously laments this situation and yearns for a world in which his particular value system is universally accepted. There was a time when 'Christian' values were so widely held as to be virtually universally accepted. Thank God those days are gone! But now the world is changing so rapidly that anxiety is becoming an epidemic.

"The truth is that their is no truth" is more paradoxical than illogical.

" This is where the thick narrative of Christianity comes from; history." - Sells

Peter,

Except, Gibbon, Toynbee, Wells, McNeill and Caroll, all major historians, would see Christianity, as merely one of the many religions, humanity has adopted for anthropological and sociological reasons.

Has it ever occurred to you that Constantine and Mohammed shared the need unify a people behind a religion, owing to the circircumstances of their times? The decline of the Roman Empire and the encouchment of the Persians, respectively.

Especially, between 700 BCE and 700 CE, we have religions sprouting up everywhere. Within this population of faiths, Christianity is undifferentiated. Many of its characteristics appear in other religions: e.g, virgin births, saviours and trinities.

Moreover, your own preferred Christianity seems wedged between 325 (Nicaea) and c. 1750 (Great Divergence). This Christianity excludes first century documents offering alternative explanations about Jesus and rejects the modern era (1789-Present).

Liberalism and humanism forge emancipation. Modern egalitarian democracy and significant scientific progress are its children. Else, we would have submission to the Church and the Monarchical State. Recall, before the great French thinkers, liberalism has its roots denying the Feudal State (itself rooted in Roman slavery).

Without the emancipation of knowledge and the fostering independent thought, the measure of our technological progress would be small indeed.

Significantly, history and the behavioural scientists and, perhaps, even neurology, offer the forensic tools to examine religiosity-in-general, including the Christian faith. AS I have suggested to you before, "One can not see the face of the mountain from the inside". Herein, don't interpret the panorama of history from inside a small collected works (The Bible); rather, interpret said small collected works from the perspective of uncensored history and science.

On Good Friday, I will ponder, whether the Romans woud have crucified anyone on the Jewish Passover, risking a riot. Also, given the Roman occupation, whether the Romans would have allowed 5,000 people to gather to listen to a Jew. Especially, given its problems with zealots. Today, would Israel allow 5,000 Palestinians to group together in the Gaza Strip?

O.

DAVIDF: Why so bitter and angry? You make me an Aunt Sally, although you know almost nothing about my views within Christianity. I strongly reject the "Religious Right" and the narrow nastiness of some fundamentalists.

You, a non-Christian, claim Spong as a Christian although he was well and truly on the outer within the (tiny) Episcopal Church in the USA. Have you actually read his autobiography, "Here I stand"? I have, cover to cover. I approved of many of his attitudes of compassion and inclusiveness, but not his appendix of Twelve Theses which junk theism and some core beliefs which most denominations consider essential to Christianity.

You say "It is the mark of a religious fanatic to claim that only his belief is truth." NO. I'm not fanatical, I don't want to burn Spong (or Mormons or JWs) at the stake.

You seem to think that believing the teachings of Christ must make one a spiteful, murderous, bigot. Pitiable.

PERICLES: Aspinall versus Jensen has nothing to do with "power structures". It is about how Christians read the scriptures and what we consider important in worship.

One can't be deep in 350 words. I'm aware of the complexities in Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment - FYI, I *teach* Russian language, history, culture and literature. Since you're so keen to point to these complexities, do you dismiss as nonsense the grand tableaux of good versus evil in The Brothers Karamazov? Is Dostoyevsky, a profoundly Christian writer, just a crank?

Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago: "The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart." Is that meaningless crap to you?

I don't say that liberalism's "unlimited freedom" HAS TO mean liberals must pursue evil. Educated, thinking, and ethical secular humanists, like Buddhists, are benign, a social asset. But they're a privileged minority within society. There are far more ferally inclined types, in ALL socioeconomic classes, who abuse the freedom that permissiveness gives them, when they lack internalized moral education that is absolute, not situational.

DAVIDF: Why so bitter and angry? You make me an Aunt Sally, although you know almost nothing about my views within Christianity. I strongly reject the "Religious Right" and the narrow nastiness of some fundamentalists.

Dear Glorfindel,

I don’t think I am bitter and angry. To ask me why is a bit like, “When did you stop beating your wife?” I don’t know what an Aunt Sally is. Please tell me. I am arguing with the points you made. I am not making value judgments about your state of mind. I would appreciate similar restraint on your part.

Glorfindel wrote: You, a non-Christian, claim Spong as a Christian although he was well and truly on the outer within the (tiny) Episcopal Church in the USA. Have you actually read his autobiography, "Here I stand"? I have, cover to cover. I approved of many of his attitudes of compassion and inclusiveness, but not his appendix of Twelve Theses which junk theism and some core beliefs which most denominations consider essential to Christianity.

Dear Glorfindel,

I didn’t claim Spong as a Christian. He is a bishop in his denomination, and they have not unfrocked him. I wrote that I accept their judgment. Christianity like Judaism and other religions is not a one size fits all. Whether most denominations claim certain beliefs are essential to Christianity is not relevant if other branches do not agree. I have not read his biography but have read “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism”, “Christianity Must Change or Die”, “Sins of Scripture” and “Beyond Moralism.” “Beyond Moralism” contained much autobiographical material.

Glorfindel wrote: You say "It is the mark of a religious fanatic to claim that only his belief is truth." NO. I'm not fanatical, I don't want to burn Spong (or Mormons or JWs) at the stake.

Dear Glorfindel,

I said it was the mark of a fanatic. I still say so. We apparently define fanatic differently. One does not have to want to burn people at the stake to be a fanatic.

continued

Glorfindel, I don't think you understand Solzhenitsyn either.

Isn't it nice to be able to say that you've read him though?

Relda.
Well, yes. Robust liberalism began in the English church (I am not sure about elsewhere) partly as a response to relgious wars, burnings at the stake, persecution, and sectarian enthusiasm. Liberalism in Restoration England was a response to the extremes of high Calvinism under Cromwell. This produced the Latitudinarian Church of England,at least in the Episcopacy. Liberalism in the church occurs whenever our gaze lifts from the Lord and we pay attention to the other voices that press us with their needs. In the turn of the 17th and 18th C the need was to heal a nation torn apart by civil war and sectarian religious groups. Hence the search for a universal rational religion based on nature. In our day the other voices are still the voice of modernity that take naked rationalism as their chief method and would reduce doctrine to the lowest common denominator. As the comments in this section demonstrate, liberalism hides behind the horrors perpetrated in the name of God, that is why everyone is onside. It is also why the posts to this article are so hysterical. But one does have to look a bit deeper at what is going on. The secular still holds the horrors over our heads and would have us be deeply ashamed and to abandon the central core of the faith. To this we must not yield.

Peter Sellick

This discussion has exposed all sorts of ideas and many thanks are owed to Peter Sellick for starting it. How about this for a scenario. Under Roman Catholic allegiance, Queen Mary I a devout Roman Catholic burned numerous Protestant Christians at the stake, between 1553 and 1558, for printing the Holy Bible. The foundation of liberalism is found in the rules of the New Testament.

However Liberalism, of the capital L variety, a la political party, is a form of Roman Catholicism. It assumes, as an inviolable rule, that what Parliament says and does, is Gospel. But Liberalism also as a matter of legislation has returned Australia to the dark ages of the law. The catechisms of the New Liberal Regimes, are the Rules of Court made by the Priests of New Liberalism. To be a lawyer you must be catechized. That is you must know the Rules. Not the rules of the Gospels that Queen Mary 1 tried to stamp out, but the rules made by the State Priests appointed since Liberal Governments abolished Protestant Christianity, and appointed mini–Popes, to run the Courts of the State.

The tumultuous years between 1553 and 1640 are upon us again. Queen Mary I was followed by Elizabeth I, who restored Protestant Christianity. In 1640, the Parliament of the United Kingdom declared that any proceeding in any Court had without following the Protestant Christian Principles enshrined in the Magna Carta were void. The very essence of liberalism is grounded in a belief in a higher authority than any one man, King or commoner, and that higher authority is the Almighty God in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900. The judges of S 79 Constitution must be 12 liberals.

When a man oppresses you, you ought to be able to access Almighty God for a remedy. When Roman Catholic individuals were admitted to Parliaments after 1828, their allegiance remained with Rome. When lawyers were readmitted to Parliament after 1870, their allegiance was to their profession. Neither recognize the authority of the Holy Bible. That is what is wrong with Liberalism.

Peter the Believer,

Yes, the Christians burnt William Tyndale at the stake, because Tyndale translated the Bible from Latin into English. Moreover, the Christians pursued across Europe, after he fled.

Albeit, Tyndale was shown some mercy by the Christians, whom garrotted him, before throwing his dead body into the flames. His translations were later used as a basis for the King James Bible.

Aside: It is interesting, as James VI of Scotland, James sat lower than the alter in Scotland, yet, as James II, he sat above the alter in England.

Sells,

The liberal spirit goes back further than Cromwell. Liberalism was a response to Feudalism. Liberal emacipation was not only from the Chistrian church, but also from Monarchy and the divine right/rule of kings

Sells

<<Well, yes. Robust liberalism began in the English church (I am not sure about elsewhere) partly as a response to relgious wars, burnings at the stake, persecution, and sectarian enthusiasm. Liberalism in Restoration England was a response to the extremes of high Calvinism under Cromwell.>>

That sounds like a good enough reason for dumping Christianity to me Sells.

As Jesus told you, 'You are your father's sons.'

Glorfindel wrote: You seem to think that believing the teachings of Christ must make one a spiteful, murderous, bigot. Pitiable.

Dear Glorfindel,

Christians have gone on Crusades in which they have massacred not only Muslims but also Albigenses, Jews, Orthodox Christians, Lithuanian pagans etc., tortured and burned people at the stake in the Inquisition, enslaved the inhabitants of the Americas and brought slaves from Africa using the excuse that they were bringing them to Christ, murdered each other in the Wars of the Reformation and exhibited many other instances of violence including support for Hitler by Christian antisemitism. The Christian record of violence justified by their religion is appalling.

There are Christian sects such as the Quakers and Amish who are non-violent. Unfortunately they are a decided minority.

“Constantine’s Sword” by James Carroll tells how the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire made Christianity a religion of war.

“The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity: 371-1386” by Richard Fletcher is a tale of great violence. Christians could freely murder to correct the sin of not being Christian.

Whether Christians were spiteful or bigoted is moot, but they certainly were murderous.

In the NT Jesus encourages violence and conflict:

MATTHEW 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

MATTHEW 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

MATTHEW 10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

MATTHEW 10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

LUKE 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

The bloody Christian record exists, and one source is above..

Dear Davidf:

"The devil can cite scripture for his purpose." - Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.

Indeed. Try to have a good day. Not interested in any more dialogue of the deaf, dumb, halt and blind.

Sells,
I guess we need to understand the myriad of ways in which both Christians and non-Christians improvise their spiritualities, drawing freely and eclectically upon a range of spiritual traditions, often with relatively little attention to the way in which the established traditions set the terms of belief.

A comfort I take from the New Testament is its feature of koinonia or community (“not of isolation”) - albeit a non-hysterical community that is also widely diverse. The Christian dramatis personae of the New Testament strive for a likeness to the divine image, to Christ “the image of the invisible God” – here, this core struggle for a contemporary Christian remains.

I have little doubt the New Testament worldview was multi-dimensional. The authors of the New Testament lived in a dual world, a world of matter and of spirit, a world of created things and their creator. For them, the spiritual world, though unseen, was ‘real,’ and it exerted power and influence on the seen, material world. The secular, often seen as a pejorative, gives rightful distinction between the sacred and the temporal.

Jacob Neusner said we ought properly to speak of the Judaisms (plural) of the period. There was no monolithic Judaism - no one way to be a Jew in Roman Palestine. Likewise, there is no single New Testament spirituality, but many and varied New Testament spiritualities. The New Testament is bound by the religious and spiritual choices, practices, and language of its age. The world-view and concerns of its characters may not be ours. Nevertheless, students of New Testament are still exegetes (those who draw out the meaning that is in the text) and not eisegetes (those who read into the text what might or might not be there) - and (as you’d probably agree) we must allow them to speak for themselves and in their own voice.

The complex nature of how things evolve means a shift from a collective belonging as within medieval Christianity, to an individual autonomy, far less dependent on institutional approval - often resentful of ecclesiastical interference or anything resembling censorship.

Glorfindel wrote:

Dear Davidf:

"The devil can cite scripture for his purpose." - Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.

Indeed. Try to have a good day. Not interested in any more dialogue of the deaf, dumb, halt and blind.

Dear Glorfindel,

When one has no answer it might be better to remain silent than to call someone else names.

RELDA: Thanks for your interesting post. The "shift from a collective belonging as within medieval Christianity, to an individual autonomy, far less dependent on institutional approval" is a challenge for the institutional church today, especially the most hierarchical denominations.

Like the fragmentation of Protestantism, followed by the appearance of more and more distant sects, it can lead to theological anarchy. St Mary's Catholic Church in South Brisbane has been taken over by political correctness and feminist and liberation theology, leading to the dismissal of its priest, Father Kennedy. Another example is Spong and his theology. Both, in essence, have made God in their image rather than vice-versa.

I was interested at your contrasting of exegetes (those who draw out the meaning that is in the text) and eisegetes (those who read into the text what might or might not be there).

Reason (component 3 in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral) requires us, I think, to study and exegete the text. Going beyond this is more dangerous. We need to ask for guidance by the Spirit of Truth, as promised by Jesus (John 14:16).

DAVIDF: It's not that I have no answer to you. It's that I won't engage when you debate dishonestly. Jesus predicted that believers of his message would encounter hostility from others. So it is today - am I monstering you, or are you seeking to monster my belief? Jesus' prediction that Christians would encounter violence (as they did in nearly 300 years of persecution) is certainly not the same as his encouraging his followers to use violence and conflict. You know this but prefer to twist, distort and give gratuitous offence.

"Jesus predicted that believers of his message would encounter hostility from others".

Glorfindel, ANYONE with something contentious to say can make that prediction, and they'll always be correct.

Dear Glorfindel,

1. The persecution of the Christians was not unrelenting between Augustus and Constantine.

The fourth century Christians acted much like today’s Taliban by persecuting other faiths.

Before Constantine, “the Ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of the modern ages (written 1776) cannot give us any adequate notion” (Edward Gibbon).
The Christianity, which has grown-up since Constantine, is not the Christianity of the first and second centuries. Had Christian path disregarded Paul and leaped frogged Nicaea, Sells would say it would not be Christianity. Yet, it is the substitute the Churches revere.
Likewise, the significance of the Jews appointing a Latin bishop after Hadrian founded Aelia Capitolina on Mount Sion is not entertained by Sells at OLO, because here one sees Jewish Jesus groups transmuting into the proto-Christians.

2. Jesus appears as an emancipator. He, is an agent of the new covenant and struggles with Jewish authorities, preventing the Pharisees et al, from arresting the free minds of individuals. Mark 2:27 is illustrative. Man is put above the Sabbath in ways the OT would never countenance.

Albert Weisbord notes, “Liberals have initiated revolution and have fought against it”. Jesus the Liberal, in many ways an orthodox Jew, was also a change agent acting counter to orthodoxy.
Jesus places God’s creation above obsolete creed and doctrine. His liberalism is an ancient forerunner to the humanism of Eramus, wherein men were unwilling to accept theological dogma as the sole basis of their conduct” (Louis Wasserman. 1944.

3. Sells reminds me of the faithful OT Jew, elevating the Church above what the NT actually says. Here, I can see an ancient Sells upholding the zillion Jewish purity and other codes whilst fighting against Jesus’ deliverance from doctrine, as our contemporary Sells fights against the products of the Enlightenment today, e.g., liberty, egalitarianism and free thought.

4. Whether God exists or not, Church is a human contrivance. It is this shadow Sells' defends against, either God or history, which if one is true.

DAVIDF: It's that I won't engage when you debate dishonestly.

Dear Glorfindel. It still might be better to remain silent than to call someone else names.

Glorfindel wrote: Jesus' prediction that Christians would encounter violence (as they did in nearly 300 years of persecution) is certainly not the same as his encouraging his followers to use violence and conflict. You know this but prefer to twist, distort and give gratuitous offence.

Dear Glorfindel,

The quotes I cited encouraged violence. I distort and twist nothing. You took offense. I didn’t give it.

Some Christians such as Bishop Spong, the Evangelical Sisters of St. Mary and Pope Paul VI in Nostra Aetate referring to Muslims and Jews have admitted the ugly past of Christianity and tried to change things for the future.

In atonement for the Holocaust Mother Basilea Schlink founded the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Lutheran community, in 1947, Part of their statement at http://www.kanaan.org/international/israel/israel7.htm:

"Instead of being united in love for God, we as Christians have sinned grievously against God's covenant people. Two thousand years of Church history have left a trail of blood: contempt, hatred, hostility, persecution and wholesale slaughter.

Time and again the Jewish people have suffered at the hands of Christians. They have been humiliated, deprived of their rights, accused of murdering God and blamed for every imaginable calamity. During the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms and, most horrific of all, the Holocaust, millions of Jews have suffered flagrant injustice.

At the beginning of the third millennium we can only confess this terrible guilt in deep shame before God and the Jewish people, deploring the involvement of many Christians. We seek His forgiveness for all the anguish that Israel, His chosen people, have suffered. By the grace of God we resolve to turn from these ways."

Christians and Jews were intolerant of each other before the Empire became Christian. The adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire gave official sanction to Christian intolerance.

See http://www.cup.es/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052105057X for the attempt of scholars of both traditions to examine the period.

DAVIDF: You seem to be saying "Who's that trip-trip-tripping over MY bridge?"
Like Aunt Sally (she's on Wikipedia), Google that one too.

I don't wish to re-cover ground I covered in my previous posts.

All you prove is that the human animal, whatever cap he affects to wear, has a strong tendency to evil. Always did, still does. Jesus refers to "the one who is in the world" - the one who indeed has captured the institution in The Grand Inquisitor. But his time is limited.

I am motivated by a pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the holy.

What motivates you, David?

What a bizarre question, Glorfindel.

>>Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago: "The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart." Is that meaningless crap to you?<<

What on earth led you to think it would be?

It is a beautifully expressed view that we are all individually good and evil. Those of us who take responsibility for our own actions understand fully where that line is drawn. Religionists defer that responsibility to those who have arrogated to themselves the task to interpret the "laws" that apply to their unique view.

Which is why I pointed out that Jensen vs. Aspinall is just another power struggle between two men who would each like to be the one who defines those "laws". Each would prefer their flock to adhere to their specific rules, while ignoring all others'.

Solzhenitsyn himself would, I suspect, have been pretty unimpressed with both of these guys - his embracing of the Orthodox Church was pretty full-on, was it not?

All this is about, of course, is the age-old fear of religious folk that ordinary people can actually lead good lives without the emotional crutch of a church.

You appear to be of the mind that God is the creator of these laws. Which leaves open the question, who was it that described the laws to God? Or did he make them up himself, arbitrarily. Either way, there is nothing that particularly distinguishes them from the laws we make for ourselves, simply in order to provide a framework for civilization..

Glorfindel wrote: All you prove is that the human animal, whatever cap he affects to wear, has a strong tendency to evil. Always did, still does. Jesus refers to "the one who is in the world" - the one who indeed has captured the institution in The Grand Inquisitor. But his time is limited.

Dear Glorfindel,

I didn’t write of generic evil. I wrote specifically of Christian evil. Christians like Bishop Spong, Basilea Schlink and Pope Paul VI have looked at the beam in the eye of Christianity rather than the mote outside. They have confronted it and tried to change Christianity for the better. If we talk about humanity in general rather than our institutions or ourselves we don’t call ourselves to account.

The doctrine of original sin in Christianity holds that that the human animal has a strong tendency to evil.

We are born neither good nor evil. Whether we are good or evil depends on what we do. Evil and good lies in every human heart.

Pericles mentioned Solzenitsyn. Solzenitsyn, an Orthodox Christian, wrote:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Orthodoxy is less influenced by dualism than western Christianity that sees evil as external.

One can externalise evil by imagining a devil and think it is something outside of us. Judaism maintains that there is a yetzer ha tov, a spirit of good, and a yetzer ha ra, a spirit of evil within each of us.

If we believe we have a tendency toward evil we can excuse our evil by believing we were acting naturally. There is no excuse. We cannot put our sins on the shoulders of Jesus or imagine a devil and escape the consequences that way. We must confront our evil.

Thanks for not calling me names or impugning my motives in your last post.

Glorfindel,
Whilst your concern for conformity to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral may seem prudent and reasonable in terms of a theological reference point, the “Spirit of Truth” and biblical exegesis require the academia of a differing discipline. The Trinity, for example, is hardly supported by anything more than hypothesis and doubtful logic. From a purely scriptural view, greater minds than mine with accompanying Christian belief (e.g. Isaac Newton) reach this supposition. Trinitarian logic declares, If Jesus is (literally) God, and that if we will become just like him and bear his image when we are raised (literally) from the dead, then we will also (literally) be "God" - clearly a fallacious concept to the dramatis personae of the New Testament, as previously mentioned.

As far as St. Mary’s is concerned, I gave expression to my opinion here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8567#135503

To further add: “The community [at St. Mary’s] is engaged in full, conscious active participation of the liturgy; authority is exercised in service to the community; there is a deep, authentic and adult search for the presence of God in our daily lives; there is a sense of inclusivity; a deep concern and care for one another, especially those felt excluded from mainstream Catholicism. And blessed are those who are not scandalised by us.”

A question is, however, asked from the piety of many, “Are you an authentic Catholic community?” At St Mary’s, the homeless are housed, the poor are clothed and fed, the mentally ill are cared for, young mothers are supported, prisoners are visited, and refugees are welcomed – all of which, I fear, are generally politically incorrect.

Relda

"the homeless are housed, the poor are clothed and fed, the mentally ill are cared for, young mothers are supported, prisoners are visited, and refugees are welcomed..." and you could add, homeless animals sheltered and the environment maintained.

None of the above is politically incorrect, it is the decent and humane thing to do. It is civilised. What it is not is the exclusive preserve of any one religion, but common to all caring people irrespective of creed.

RELDA: You said "At St Mary’s, the homeless are housed, the poor are clothed and fed, the mentally ill are cared for, young mothers are supported, prisoners are visited, and refugees are welcomed – all ... generally politically incorrect."

Well and good. But the Salvation Army does that and more, both in church and in its extensive social ministry, reflecting James 1:22 :"Do not merely listen to the word .. Do what it says" and 2:17: "..Faith itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

The Salvation Army demonstrates practical, altruistic Christianity *without* compromising on the essentials of orthodox-evangelical doctrine. I don't think anyone who's been to a Salvation Army service would consider them politically correct.

You say "The Trinity ... is hardly supported by anything more than hypothesis and doubtful logic." I don't agree. John 14:7-11 is one of several references that point strongly toward the Trinity. But all this is peripheral. What matters is whether you believe in Jesus, accept his sacrifice and seek personal transformation by him.

You say "if we will become just like him and bear his image when we are raised (literally) from the dead, then we will also (literally) be "God"" . That sounds like the wilderness of New Age and Gnosticism to me - Shirley Maclaine and all the "you are god" stuff. It's a sophistry and a distortion. I don't see that in the text.

Incidentally, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral doesn't actually *require* us to do anything. It is a descriptive encapsulation of the main sources of doctrine drawn on by John Wesley in compiling his theology.

Your posting to Sells talked about the "core struggle for a contemporary Christian". I see a contemporary Christian as someone who believes that the message of Jesus is just as valid and relevant today as it ever was; who wants to live by the teachings of Jesus despite the overwhelming tendency in contemporary culture to negate them; and who seeks out opportunities to spread the message of Jesus in today's world, even though this means being counter-cultural.

Fractelle,
“...it is the decent and humane thing to do. It is civilized..” True, and from where do these roots and feeling for and of “civilization” arise (as perhaps the ‘barbarians’ knock upon our door)?. . . Politicians perhaps used to decide, or at least believed they did but now it seems, they merely grope. Governing is now unquestionably more difficult. The ideals, as expressed in your opening sentence, appear increasingly beyond the achievement of any current government – i.e., it smells of a utopia beyond all of our 'dreamtime'.

Blandness exists amongst a ‘caring’ people for whom civilization has lost its religious root. Maybe there is a feebleness in the expression of the idea of God within the Anglo-Saxon language, but nevertheless, a universality exists. Perhaps unseemingly so but Christianity (taken in all of its forms) has been polycentric - almost from its very inception. Western or non-Western literature is a useful resource for revealing a multi-faceted nature of this ‘spirituality’. The West African lexicon of Fanti (Akan) “Wana so onyi Nyami se? Dasayi wo ho inde, okina na onyi, Nyami firi tsitsi kaisi odumankuma”, meaning:
Who says he is equal with God?
Man is to-day, tomorrow he is not,
I am is from eternity to eternity.
The Hebrew ‘I am hath sent me,’ is not a fanciful play on roots, for these Africans continue singing these words today.

Glorfindel,
I’ve no problem at all with the ‘Salvos’.

The philosophy espoused by Shirley McLean is indeed quite peripheral – in the final analysis, it really is just all about her, as with much of the 'New Age' superficiality.

Re-read my post. I didn’t just say, "if we will become just like him and bear his image...etc.” but instead, indicated the absurdity of taking the Trinitarian formula too literally. It is a primitive form of poetry and therefore defies logic, as with most poetry. And yes, the message of Jesus is “just as relevant today as it ever was” – it is just that I read him a little differently to you.

Relda

Long before religion and politicians, there were people living and cooperating together, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. But those that succeeded, were more likely to ensure that all members of the community were kept safe and cared for.

Formal religion as we know it today is very recent in terms of human history and evolution. Even now scientists are discovering more about the culture of Neanderthals who are found to be more thoughtful and intelligent than first surmised.

I see care and love in other animals too. Years ago, my dog protected me from the threat by two men while out camping. We hear stories all the time about animals aiding others not even of their own species.

I am sure we have much more to learn about the universe around us, if 'bad' or 'evil' teaches us anything it is to value the good and wholesome. I and many people like me do not need a god to be humane.

I do understand what you mean by 'politically incorrect' to strive for a cooperative caring community, I've been called a 'bleeding heart' many times. If religion helps some people to be more considerate of others, then that is a good, however it is not the only way. Religious people cast aspersions on agnostics and atheists at their own loss.

<< The philosophy espoused by Shirley McLean is indeed quite peripheral – in the final analysis, it really is just all about her, as with much of the 'New Age' superficiality. >>

Spiritual masturbation.

Christians (and Muslims and Jews) are every bit as ego-driven, narcissistic and superficial as the most cliched new-age hippy.

When modern spiritualists get self-righteous and sermonise on the evil ways of nonbelievers, that's branded self-serving. But when Christians do exactly the same, and with a substantially greater amount of ignorance, they dress it up as humble service to the Lord.

Religion meets the ego needs of the faithful. That is all, and that's how it survives.

"Christians (and Muslims and Jews) are every bit as ego-driven, narcissistic and superficial as the most cliched new-age hippy." _ Sancho

Good point. Last night on the National Geographic channel it was put the Christians invented Pilate washing his hands to differentiate the Christians from the orthodox Jews. Herein, placing the blame for the crucifixation on the Jews, rather than the Romans. In the first decades post-Nicaea, the Christians were every bit as good at persecuting non-Christians, as Nero was persecuting them. Seems as-much-to-do about politics as to do with theology.

Jesus as a teacher from the House of David would have ministered to the godfearers, Judaised Gentiles. After his death, the fall of the Second Temple and the appointed of Latin Pope post Hadrian's excile of the Jews, the underdog Jewish faction became dominant over the mother religion. Egos were supported by a revision of history in 80-120 CE and doctinaire instutionalisation in 325 CE.

Relda.
Your wrote; “The Trinity, for example, is hardly supported by anything more than hypothesis and doubtful logic. From a purely scriptural view, greater minds than mine with accompanying Christian belief (e.g. Isaac Newton) reach this supposition. Trinitarian logic declares, If Jesus is (literally) God, and that if we will become just like him and bear his image when we are raised (literally) from the dead, then we will also (literally) be "God" - clearly a fallacious concept to the dramatis personae of the New Testament, as previously mentioned.”
I was surprised at this since you have been coming across as someone who is theologically educated. To say that the doctrine of the Trinity has so little support is to denigrate the key concept of Christianity. The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism. The whole of the NT screams Trinitarianism, it is much more than a hypothesis resting on doubtful logic.
Your reference to Newton is unfortunate. His antitrinitarianism came from a rationalized and superficial reading of Scripture and was supported by an unchristian understanding of God as an agent in the universe responsible for the force of Gravity. Under his scheme the Son and the Spirit were subordinate divine beings. The Son became the exemplar of godly living and this ushered in a new kind of Pelagianism. Because Jesus was not God he could not die for the sins of the whole world, thus abolishing any idea of atonement.
This issue is especially close for me since Newton’s antitrinitarianism is the subject of my doctoral thesis.
There is also a strain in theology that does say that man is deified in Christ, that by him we become gods. I would have to do some research to find the source of this idea but it is certainly present and respected.

Peter

Sells
"The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism."

It is true that the Trinity works as an interpretive framework as you say. It is not, however, exclusive and you are quite wrong to dismiss non-Trinitarians as pagan. That is just plain offensive!
Liberalism may have its faults but in making an idol of a human doctrine you show yourself to be no more 'perfect' than any liberal.

The formulation of the doctrine of Trinity was a masterpiece of political compromise. Everyone was able to agree on the words while maintaining their own personal opinions as to what the words actually meant, let alone consideration all those Christians who were excluded from the discussion. Today, what Anglicans dismiss as heresy, Unitarians may hold as Gospel and both can be 'right'.

Sells obviously has a very narrow definition of Christian if it is limited to those who conform to his Anglo-Catholic form of doctrine. Personally, Im not convinced that Jesus was a fan of rigid doctrinal formulations. The arrogance of the Anglican Church with its privilege and propensity to judge rather than discern is hardly consistent with the Jesus of John 8:1-11.

In Constantinian Rome diversity was perceived as problem. Today we are able to embrace it as part of the richness of human experience and believe in a God who is big enough to encompass it all.

"There is also a strain in theology that does say that man is deified in Christ, that by him we become gods." -Sells

Peter,

FYI:

"Deus deum te vult facere, non natura sed... adoptione. ... Sic totus homo deificatus", i.e, "Not by nature but by adoption … the whole man is deified." St Augustine, Serm. 166, 4

"…you may become partakers of the divine nature" 2 Peter 1:4

“…no term less than ‘deification’ is adequate to describe the condition of the human being who has been taken by grace into the supernatural realm.” Mascall, 1958

(1) These theists seem to saying that the "deification" of Man is the promotion of Man from the natural to the divine realm. Man does actually become God. Man partakes of God's realm.

The division between the realms is significant for theists. As I have posted before, this division is why the Vatican scientists would not look through Galileo's telescope, as space was held literally to be the heavens.

(2) The Trinitarian propisition doesn’t sit well with the OT godhead and is contrary to Jewish monotheism.

Oliver

Sells wrote:

"The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism."

Dear Sells,

Do you really see Jews and Muslims as pagans

Sells,

David f is correct, Jews and Muslims are not pagans. In Roman times, persons, whom performed the act of a cult, but did not believe it, were pagani, civilians whom did not believe. Jews and Muslims believe in their rites, as might a Catholic Christian in substantiation. On this call, presumably you are a Pagan. But the pope is not.

Hollywood aside, Romans didn't require Christians to "believe", but only to act out their prayers for the safety of the Emperor. The deed sufficed. The Romans, however, were more likely, to link not acting the rite, whihin the context of "religio," meaning the the "observance of Roman ceremonies". Acta Cypriani I.I. in Fox 1986
Based on the Roman measure Christianity was not a religion, before Constantine.

If civilian Jesus acted as an orthodox Jew, while not believing in Judaic Law, say, over the Sabbath, he would have been a pagan. (Although, the word didn't exist in the first century)

Sells,
Although raised within Christian Orthodoxy, with certain Lutheran flavour, I’ve grown to see religion more an expression of reality through the symbolic. Hence, to some degree at least, I’ve a theological understanding - as you suggest. I don’t, however, tie myself exclusively to its genre. The creative works of Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr gave me some fascination and served as a springboard to explore my roots beyond the ‘outer’. Carl Jung (interestingly, another of Lutheran extraction) ‘seduced’ my thinking further.

The Trinity doctrine served to unify an ancient and medieval institution. Today, despite the fact of their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere 'monotheists'. The diversity of spirit emanating from the simple Nazarene, a Jew, created a wide diversity beyond mere dogma – this is certainly a qualified freedom.

Pufendorf's Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion (1687) claimed that the genius of the Christian religion was nonviolence ( not that I’d classify Jesus merely a pacifist, as david f would note), people's thoughts were not punishable, and that the civil authorities should control religion (i.e. a separation of Church and State where religion cannot ‘rule’).

Perhaps I identify a little with Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) - a Huguenot and refugee in the Netherlands. He was a self-pronounced Protestant and also a skeptic in theological matters. He developed the most sophisticated and most tolerant theory of the century. Bayle said, “In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him..” Also, "It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state" - a rather counter intuitive statement for a medieval Christian, but Enlightenment thinker.

Relda

Thank you for your erudite posts, your understanding and reading of theology clearly surpasses that of Sellick's, who researches only to endorse his own dogma. Thankfully most Christians are more open than he.

Sells

Your homework for the weekend it to write 100 times:

""It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state" - a rather counter intuitive statement for a medieval Christian, but Enlightenment thinker."

And then to meditate upon the above statement.

Relda,
I agree that most pew sitters are indeed practical monotheists in that the Son and the Spirit do not seem to them to be God. But that does not undermine trinitarian theology, it is just a manifestation of the failure of theological education at all levels. However, most Christians understand the Trinity at some level, they know that they pray to the Father, through the Son in the power of the Spirit. When the bible is read the Trinity makes some sense since all three persons are present. I do not deny that we still have problems with the doctrine that are not all left over from Aristotelianism or modernism and that theological work on the trinity is ongoing. But I would insist that the God Christian’s worship is incomprehensible without the doctrine. So much flows from it that theology would be greatly impoverished with its demise. When I spoke of paganism I meant by that , perhaps not judiciously, that Christianity would be reduced to a grovelling before an all powerful God similar to Islam or Deism, except in the latte there is no grovelling, only indifference. The Jews cannot be placed on the same footing as Muslims in this because their understanding of the analysis of history together with the presence of God in the present and his directing them to a new future is basically trinitarian. I have this argument with OT scholars, the doctrine of the Trinity did not spring de novo from the NT but was implicit in the OT as was most NT theology.
Islam, as I understand it, is a response to texts transmitted from God to the prophet. In this way it may be compared to the Mormons and their scriptures, God is not read from human history, the book is the result of supernatural transmission. Even the ten commandments that appear to fit the supernatural transmission of law are prefaced with an historical reference.

It astounds me how people can take a disagreement over detail, or substance, personally rather than as an issue for civilized discussion.

"Tribal" politics, as seen in so many newspaper blogs, and in OLO itself, is lamentable in how posters assume that someone from "the other side" is evil or demented. Stupidity and evil are not party-specific.

In religion you get people who are rude, intolerant and violent - like Islamists not interested in sharing the world, Hindu fundamentalists who monster Muslims and Christians, and a tiny number of egregious fundamentalists from the contemporary "Christian” religious right who have bombed abortion clinics. But speaking for Christianity today, I say there are many, many people who are truly motivated by a desire to use their faith to improve the quality of their own and everyone else's life, through the wholesome social relations it enjoins.

Why do people in this blog whose perceptions or understanding or indeed knowledge are different from Peter Sellick's, find it necessary to be so rude? You know who you are - this is to you: what do you think is his motivation, and what is yours? I said in an earlier posting of mine that I am motivated by a pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the holy. That doesn't drive me to give gratuitous offence to people whose views I don't share.

History and theology are VAST subjects. George Bernard Shaw wrote "What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say 'I know' instead of 'I am learning', and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity." [Preface to The Doctor's Dilemma, ‘The Latest Theories’.] This cuts ALL ways - including to those of you who have done a bit of reading and now see yourselves as experts equipped to pull down others whose understandings you don't share. How about a bit more civilized humility from EVERYONE, hey?

Sells wrote: When I spoke of paganism I meant by that , perhaps not judiciously, that Christianity would be reduced to a grovelling before an all powerful God similar to Islam or Deism, except in the latte there is no grovelling, only indifference. The Jews cannot be placed on the same footing as Muslims in this because their understanding of the analysis of history together with the presence of God in the present and his directing them to a new future is basically trinitarian.

Dear Sells,

In the above you have co-opted Judaism to Christianity. Unlike the multiplicity of creeds in Christianity Judaism has one statement of faith;

“Hear, O, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.”

The above statement of faith is completely incompatible with any trinity. Judaism is not basically trinitarian. There is no concept of God incarnate or a Holy Spirit apart from the Deity. The basic statement says it all.

There is also a tradition in the Jewish Bible of not groveling before God but of taking issue with him. Abraham argues with God against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 18: 22-33. In Genesis 4:9 Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper.

Sells wrote that Deists are indifferent to God.

Deists saw God as a Creator but not intervening in human affairs. They also deny the concept of the supernatural. Their God is a magnificent entity who created the earth which He rules by rational laws. Deists believe that men are rational creatures capable of guiding their lives by the light of reason.

I see the God of the Deists in the Bible:

Isaiah 1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? Saith the LORD; I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 12 When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? 13 Bring no more vain oblations; It is an offering of abomination unto Me; 14 New moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations- I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly. 15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; Your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash you, make you clean, Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 17 Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

The above is something that is possible. To Isaiah the rituals, the assemblies, the sacrifices, the observing of sabbaths and festival are empty in the sight of the LORD. He demands that we treat our fellow human beings well. He also recognises that we cannot always do the right thing even though we try and that we cannot always achieve justice. We can 'learn to do well' and 'seek justice'. If we do that we will sometimes do well and sometimes achieve justice. When we seek justice we should seek it for those denied justice, the oppressed, the fatherless and the widow. Don’t bother with supplications, ritual or prayers. Just act righteously.

Noble sentiments, Glorfindel.

>>...I am motivated by a pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the holy. That doesn't drive me to give gratuitous offence to people whose views I don't share.<<

So I wonder who wrote the following?

"What an ignorant, crapulently postmodernist, Marxist-doggerel article!"

Or this?

"I... despise today’s Socialist Alliance as Totalitarian Left scum."

or, indeed, this?

>>Islam is a boil on the bum of humanity, a perversion of man's search for the spiritual<<

Now I am sure that none of these remarks of yours, that took me nearly two minutes to find, could possibly "give gratuitous offence to people whose views I don't share", could they?

I think you have provided us with a classic moment of foot-in-mouth, Glorfindel, for which I thank you. Perhaps it will help spare us some of your sanctimonious cant in future, yes?

But you do ask an interesting question.

>>what do you think is his motivation, and what is yours?<<

I for one would love to hear some theories on Sells' motivation, since his pieces never fail to fascinate me for that very reason: what on earth does he get out of writing, what I can only describe as "specialist theology", to a generalist audience?

He is mentally incapable of joining with the herd, who ask simple - perhaps simplistic - questions, but he will occasionally react to the most obscure references from fellow-scholars.

The narrowness of his outlook is beyond description. He's like... the religious equivalent of an endodontist.

After specializing in the mechanics of root canal therapy for a few years, an endodontist can't see teeth as such any longer, since the focus is exclusively below the surface. So discussing braces for teenagers' teeth with them is utterly pointless.

As is discussing "religion" with Sells.

It's fascinating. He probably sees it - as it appears you do too - as casting pearls before swine.

Which is possibly why he thinks we occasionally behave like pigs.

"The Jews cannot be placed on the same footing as Muslims in this because their understanding of the analysis of history together with the presence of God in the present and his directing them to a new future is basically trinitarian. I have this argument with OT scholars, the doctrine of the Trinity did not spring de novo from the NT but was implicit in the OT as was most NT theology." - Sells

Sells,

1. The concept of the Christian Trinity developed over centuries post-Jesus.

2. The Jewish faith is a monothesitic faith. What you describe regarding their Saviour is referred by historians as "futurism". Its complement is archaism: i.e., there "once" was the great House of David, (with the third temple?) there "will be" a Saviour. These cultural devices avoid living in the present. I would refer you to Arnold Toynbee on the topic.

3. The OT Hebrew godhead differs from the NT. Search the OT for the multiple instances of gods with an "s". Besides the Babylonians had a Trinity too. Trinities are a component from the "god factories" (Wells) of the time.

You would have a better understanding of the people of Biblical times were to stand back from the Bible and read some history and archaeology. You have focused on one thread of the parquetry and can’t see the floor

"The Jews cannot be placed on the same footing as Muslims in this because their understanding of the analysis of history together with the presence of God in the present and his directing them to a new future is basically trinitarian. I have this argument with OT scholars, the doctrine of the Trinity did not spring de novo from the NT but was implicit in the OT as was most NT theology." - Sells

Sells,

1. The concept of the Christian Trinity developed over centuries post-Jesus.

2. The Jewish faith is a monothesitic faith. What you describe regarding their Saviour is referred by historians as "futurism". Its complement is archaism: i.e., there "once" was the great House of David, (with the third temple?) there "will be" a Saviour. These cultural devices avoid living in the present. I would refer you to Arnold Toynbee on the topic.

3. The OT Hebrew godhead differs from the NT. Search the OT for the multiple instances of gods with an "s". Besides the Babylonians had a Trinity too. Trinities are a component from the "god factories" (Wells) of ancient times. Trinities are also known to Haiiwain islanders' religion. A trinity as such is no unique or should that be trique ;-).

O.

My post of Monday, 30 March, expressed concern at the way Sells used the term "liberalism":

"The ethics of liberalism is the line of least resistance. This is why harm reduction is the favoured excuse of governments who legalise abortion to reduce the deaths from backyard operators, prostitution to reduce disease, drugs to reduce the criminality of the drug culture."

Mr Sellick could clarify their idea of liberalism: a term associated with political aims and biases.

My own association with Christianity is crucially based on the parable of the good Samaritan. While I am ever doubtful of the retold story (as all of the Gospels are), I put far more faith in this story than in storytellers representing the authority of churches and other organisations.

This matter of reliance on authority was explored by Stanley Milgram, about 40 years ago, and described in the book "Obedience to Authority".

While I share Glorfindel's and others' disappointment with many posters who are messy and abusive toward others' faiths, I appreciate the skepticism behind some of those comments: particularly when it comes to distinguishing between faith-based action and political action. In my opinion, The Exclusive Brethren have clearly crossed the line.

see:
http://lobbyocracy.org.au/?title=Exclusive_Brethren
and
www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds150806.pdf
A Speech by Senator Bob Brown about the EB. He states that:
"[The sect] has now existed for almost 200 years and has some 40,000 members around the world, slightly fewer than 15,000 of whom are in Australia."

" ... as the sect has become wealthy it ... [has changed toward] ... extreme right Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which says that Christianity must take over the governance of the world before the return of Christ. That means, of course, a theocracy."

Here is an upcoming video on Christian Fundamentalism in the US:

"Onward, Christian Zionists, a powerful half-hour Alternate Focus documentary, is showing next weekend on Dish TV Channel 9415 (Free Speech TV).

Onward, Christian Zionists
Dish TV Channel 9415
Saturday April 18 7:30 pm (EST)
Sunday April 19 8:30 am and 6:30 pm (EST)

see also http://www.alternatefocus.org/

Sells,
Clearly, we no longer live in the same intellectual, ecclesial and cultural world of Augustine and Aquinas. The Christendom that emerged to stand on the shoulders of Augustine Christendom is long gone. I think you’d agree, no amount of romantic longing can bring it back - its own inner tensions helped bring about its downfall resulting in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, modernity and now post-modernity.

A recent wit gave comment that the Western tradition on the Trinity could be summarised as, “five characteristics, four relations, three persons, two processions, one God and no proof.” Perhaps stripped of the intelligibility to be provided by any psychological analogy, the Trinitarian formula becomes an odd collection of almost ‘mathematical facts’. From this it can be said, Christian discourse then becomes just another religious mythology in a post-modern world - which is becoming a market place of competing mythologies. So I can agree, Trinitarianism certainly gives an all important formula (albeit an ‘illogical’ one), defining Christianity of its unique identity.

What needs certain emphasis is that religious language, particularly theological language as a specialised form of religious language, is always symbolic and metaphorical – Jung was perhaps helpful in this. As you suggest, appeals to the supernatural are particularly unhelpful, perhaps eventually leading to groveling to an ‘all powerful’ entity. The sundering of knowledge with reality, through Kant’s proclamation that reason cannot not reach the noumenal reality of things illustrates the ultimate ‘unreasonableness’ of any religion, theology or even poetry. Simply, does universal reason indeed provide a sure guide for all practical, ethical or moral matters?

The central organising principle of Aquinas’ Trinitarian work in the Summa Theologiae gave plausibility without proof. The medieval mind found belief in the Trinity as not completely unreasonable – authority was a substitute for proof. An appeal to authority, once so central to the Western tradition, has been lost and must now face suspicion in the glare of the hermeneutic. All truth claims, for many, are now nothing more that an exercise of the will to power, now needing to be unmasked, with mystery lost.

A simple typo from Sells is as irrelevant to his argument as his argument is to the modern world. However, "in the latte there is no grovelling, only indifference" is inadvertently brilliant. I want it printed on a t-shirt.

Pericles (sigh)

I had a long series of almost totally civilized exchanges with John Passant (Passy) on an article he wrote from a doctrinaire, jargon-laden Marxist-Trotskyist standpoint. I do NOT resile from my characterization of the Socialist Alliance. Those people, just as much as Islamists (for different reasons), would suppress YOUR and my "Enlightenment" freedoms quick as a flash, if they ever had the chance.

From 40 years study of the Russian and wider communist experience - its impact on social life, culture, creativity, freedom of thought and belief and the economy - I believe that Marxism, as practically applied, has been profoundly evil. Why? Because although many of its followers, including plenty of Australians back in the 30s to 60s, were motivated by altruism and pursuit of what they saw as good, the reality was that HUMAN NATURE fouled the nest. I am by nature tolerant BUT I agree with Thomas Mann's statement that "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil".

On Islam: to quote Theodore Dalrymple ('Our Culture, what's left of it'):
"The problem is that so many Muslims want both stagnation and power: they want a return to the perfection of the seventh century and to dominate the twenty-first, as they believe is the birthright of their doctrine, the last testament of God to man. If they were content to exist in a seventh-century backwater, secure in a quietist philosophy, there would be no problem for them or us; their problem, and ours, is that they want the power that free inquiry confers, without either the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that guarantee that free inquiry. They are faced with a dilemma: either they abandon their cherished religion or they remain forever in the rear of human technical advance. … The tension is resolvable for some only by exploding themselves as bombs."

True, the above quote says "so many" (not ALL) Muslims .... I have spent the last five years studying Islamic, Arab and Middle Eastern history and theology. But I won't sidetrack this blog into a discussion about Islam.

so,regarding the social implementation of Marxism,
"the reality was that HUMAN NATURE fouled the nest."

What a grand, sweeping generalisations. What does it mean, Glorfindel?

How does HUMAN NATURE foul nests? Does IT foul every nest, or is it only birds of the Marxist feather that cannot quite poop over the rim?

Nice dodge, Glorfindel, but pericles isn't talking about Islam. He's talking about your howling hypocrisy in pompously claiming to be "motivated by a pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the holy", which "doesn't drive me to give gratuitous offence to people whose views I don't share", even though your posting history is full of gratuitous, offensive attacks on people whose views you don't share.

"Sells obviously has a very narrow definition of Christian if it is limited to those who conform to his Anglo-Catholic form of doctrine." - waterboy

Yes.

I think Sells' Christianity begins with Nicaea and is terminated by the Enlightenment. Here, he likes creed and dislikes independent thought. At least this the picture I have gained over months of his submissions.

Dear Relda,

Your post of Friday, 10 April 2009 11:12:05 PM is beautiful. I also feel that there is something beyond us and see worth in the Bible which I occasionally read.

I appreciate what you said about community. However, in this complex world we will have conflict unless we avoid dehumanizing those outside of our community. Too often the love we have for those with whom we share community translates into hate for those not identified as part of our community.

Individual autonomy can translate to misanthropy toward others. It is difficult to regard all human beings, even those we don’t agree with or identify with, as having the same feelings and humanity that we have.

To some extent the conflict between Christians, Muslims and Jews is a civil war because we stem from the same tradition of deistic belief. Most of us in what are called the Abrahamic faiths equate atheism with lack of religious belief. A devout Buddhist may reject both a belief in a deity and a belief in the existence of a soul. One who rejects any belief in supernatural entities may have developed a well-defined sense of ethics.

david f,

I’m highly appreciative of your post and agree, there are dangers inherent in individual autonomy. Singularity precludes the possibility of interconnected plurality. A community of one is impossible - the achievement of community is possible only in the gap between idealised and real communities. If Sells were to ‘marry’ the imaginative Trinitarian Godhead concept with the nature of pluralism, a little more coherence might be found. Community as an ideal, however, either nostalgic or utopian, has not been achieved, nor will it ever be. Paradoxically, the more individualistic a people, the less varied its culture.

I’m aware that universalism occludes the specific needs of different groups where belonging is often emphasised at the expense of identity. Neutrality exists and actually serves to discriminate - communities are offered as substitutes for the impersonal institutions bequeathed by a democratic liberalism that has failed to create equality through universalism.

Dreams of community are generated by our contemporary experiences and inevitably reflect them. One can also perhaps transcend these experiences through the vehicle of imagination, and thereby stage an ‘intervention’ in contemporary life. Some have argued that our conception of community today is too weak, and this is why we feel alienated. Liberalism imagines us as independent entities, and hence we have become such. Religious communities of the past were based upon literal understandings of their uniting features. Mass was said in Latin because it was considered to be the actual word of God. Kings’ provided the corporeal representation of their sovereignty - expanding territory was accomplished through intermarriage and miscegenation - the biological merger of two royals was needed to legitimate empiric ambitions. Perhaps a parallel may be drawn between the ‘spiritual’ and the temporal.

If the imagined basis of the community is “more concrete,” the community itself will become stronger. George Kateb notes that “human beings have always been creatures who live in their imagination and who also refuse, when it suits them, to exercise their imagination. We have the inborn mental capacity to make the absent present (on one hand) and (on the other) the present absent”.

cont’d..

..cont’d

The conception of the modern and imaginative hedonism perhaps explains, to a certain extent, why visions of community provide us with a sense of dissatisfaction with the world as it exists. We hint at the possibility of social critique and change, while at the same time draw away from the commitment to changing the world necessary to achieve that vision.

What is the ‘material’ of our imagination? Are we totally free individual agents or are we hapless puppets of collective imperatives? Fractelle suggested that ‘under the idea of God’ we perhaps become mere ‘lab-rats’. If we dismiss collective life as illusory, however, the implication is that there must be something “more real” somewhere else. Through our imagination we’re allowed us to see an intricate process at work – albeit, not always entirely logical but certainly one where the individual and the social need not always be in opposition.

In our modernity, and here Sells could enjoin with valid critique, our consumer desire is never satisfied - its object is eternally unachievable. As consumers we are driven to work progressively longer hours in order to achieve the incomes to support our desires, keeping us away from families, neighbors, churches, and other groups. When we relate to community as we do to any other commodity, as a desirable object or feeling existing outside of ourselves, we relieve ourselves of responsibility for it, making it an entirely impossible goal. As Community is often the opposite of what we have, it becomes eternally desirable as the unknown. Consumption teaches us to desire, never expecting gratification.

“But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness” - Ludwig Feuerbach, 'The Essence of Christianity'.

Relda wrote: Paradoxically, the more individualistic a people, the less varied its culture.

Dear Relda,

I was once involved in setting up an intentional community. We were going to buy Durville Island between North and South Island in New Zealand and call ourselves “Philia.”

We carried on an intensive correspondence but didn’t meet as a group until we got together in a State Park in New Jersey. Most of the women including my wife appeared to be leggy, busty blondes wearing black stockings. Many of the men had beards of varying hues.

A discussion of the nature of the proposed community revealed a schism. A man from Indiana asked whether proceeds from items produced in our spare time would go to the community or the individual. Another countered, “What spare time? We are going to live as a community, and the community will give meaning and direction to our lives!”

It appeared that most of the people there were informed by Skinner’s “Walden II” and looked for a community that would minimise personal decisions (eg If they voted in a political election, following discussion or direction they would vote as a bloc.) To romantics like me community meant living in a natural setting in fellowship with complete freedom except for the obligatory actions to keep the community operating.

I had read Skinner’s “Walden II” and was repelled by it. It was a revelation that many people who I was like in many ways could find such a community attractive.

I had some trouble with the logic of this concept, relda, perhaps you could expand a little?

>>Paradoxically, the more individualistic a people, the less varied its culture.<<

It seems just a little too glib, to sit there on the page without being questioned.

And david f, if you thought Walden II was scary, try T C Boyle's "Drop City"

david f,
I guess I have similar romantic leanings to you but realise (as you undoubtedly do) many do not share my or your orientation. One's culture becomes one's paradigm. A culture is learned, shared and transmitted from one generation to the next - it organises life and helps interpret existence. Culture is the stuff that human paradigms are made of. People think through their paradigms and not about them – so we’re perhaps not as objective as we might think, especially when viewing another’s culture or background. Our inherent lack of objectivity will generally mean we perhaps elude the ‘ideal’ community or retreat from it.

I’ve belonged to various groups over the years – ranging from football/ sporting clubs, community organisations and Church groups etc. I’ve never been so brave as to attempt to organise my own group or something outside of anything already on offer. Apart from a small circle of friends and family, I feel happier to be ‘outside’ most of the groups I see – but know I’m ‘connected’ nevertheless.

Pericles,
As an example I’ll use the Hofstede and Triandis framework, Australians are described as horizontal (low power distance) individualists, i.e. they are highly autonomous and remain independent from their group with their own ambition taking precedence over any group ambition – behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’. As a counterpoint, Asians are classified as collectivistic, with high power distance – they have an emphasis on interdependence, group goals, obligations and duties. I’ll leave it to you to decide which culture exhibits the most variation.

relda,

Hofstede's studies though dated are informative. There are a few things to be aware of. Daat were collected within IBM only between 1968-1972 (if I recall). Placinging societl axioms into cultural dimensions in itself is a Western approach.

Of the related Michael Bond (nice) study involving the China Value Survey we have a Chinese perspective. The differences between Uncertainty Avoidance West vis-a-vis East Asia, reflect the Asian Taoist-like approach. The Asians are okay with "fuzzy", whereas Westerns like black and white, without any grey. Probably going back to Platonic atomism.

Triadis (also a nice guy) works more in the area of acculturation. The Hispanics in the US, for example. Harry is very aware of etic and emic approaches.

Relating etics and emics to Hofstede is problematic, owing to the Western paradigm-based culural scales being held to be univeral and etic. Yet, the alternative East Asian world-view being measued is not based on Western atomism. Emic phenomenology can wronly be labelled etic. When researching "cultures consequences" (Hofestede) one needs to avoid ascribing our methodology to measure others.

Simply put, we in the West is emphasize black and white in our research design and fail to see the shades of grey in the East Asian mindset. Journal models of inappropriately use Western tools. Its a leagacy of Western hegemony over scholarship.

I have just started Zizioulas' "Being as Communion". He traces the origin of the idea of personality through Plato and Aristotle and thence to the Cappadocian fathers and their work on the persons of the Trinity. He makes the point that this is the origin of our understanding of what a person is. At the centre of the ontology of the person is the community, indeed we cannot speak of personhood unless in the context of community. The individual, ontologically, can be said not to exist. So as the persons of the Trinity are defined in their opposition to each other, their relatedness to each other, so too is man.

relda,

Do we get to have a definition of cultural 'variation'? Do we get to have any data either? Even a hint as to how it could be measured or judged?

Or do we just pull things out of our almanacs?

Sells,

Not so.

Although, the Greek citizen saw their democracy in terms of the self, within the commununity, Western society, even in ancient its classical roots, would not have the self in relation to epsitemology or ontology, as you state.

Greek cum Western thought is reductionist and societies are broken down into categories and sometimes categorised into taxonomies.

The German (?) gestalt is about the closest thing I can think of in a five minute post, that is clos to idea of interralatedness being as important that the attributes themselves. (relationships in communion)

Taoism (as note in my comments to relda) has the the One in pursuit of T'e withdrawn from the self incorporated, as a part of a whole, which greater than its parts, as in communion. Here, knowledge and wisdom are dialectical.

Bugsy,
There’s a vast amount of literature available on the defining of culture and its complexity – so there’s plenty to read on the subject. It is paradigmatic and so not easily quantified or contained within any data. Needless to say I’ve indicated thae two main purveyors of culture – belief and tradition. Clearly, they vary and differ. Perhaps a Darwinian model applies where it is the ‘lasting values’ which give cause for a culture’s survival.

Oliver,
The paradox to which I referred relates to the values inherent within the current Westernisation ‘process’ (globalisation) we see occurring. Ironically, its individualism influences the diminishing of its own tradition along with the other cultures it ‘includes’ and influences. The main characteristics of Westernisation being economic liberalisation (free trade) and democratisation, combined with this is the spread of an individualised culture. A part of this Westernising process includes the legacy of a colonialism mixed with a Judeo-Christian background and tradition. This European culture has spread elsewhere in the world. Europe profoundly influenced the cultures of Africa, India, Israel, Australia, and other places colonised or settled by Europeans. A reaction to Westernisation can include the ‘black and white’ of fundamentalism and protectionism. Countries such as Japan and China tried to adopt isolationism, but they have been unable to resist the adoption of many aspects of Western culture.

Some view Westernisation as more a disadvantage, as for example Asian cultures who might lose much of their tradition with regards to their practices, diet and beliefs etc. The loss of the many cultures, through their Westernisation , however, would have to be viewed as a positive where they were formerly, on balance, a basis for repression.

Nope. Still don't get it relda.

>>As an example I’ll use the Hofstede and Triandis framework, Australians are described as horizontal (low power distance) individualists, i.e. they are highly autonomous and remain independent from their group with their own ambition taking precedence over any group ambition – behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’. As a counterpoint, Asians are classified as collectivistic, with high power distance – they have an emphasis on interdependence, group goals, obligations and duties. I’ll leave it to you to decide which culture exhibits the most variation.,,

I can accept that Australians "remain independent from their group with their own ambition taking precedence over any group ambition", and that this differs from, say, Japanese society's norms.

But I fail completely to make a connection between this and a "varied culture"?

You suggest that Australian culture is less varied than that of an Asian country, but then you baulk - "I’ll leave it to you to decide which culture exhibits the most variation"

Do your arguments hold true also for European countries? And how does the US rate on the scale of "behaviour... guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’", compared with your measure of "cultural variation"?

Maybe some examples would help.

"At the centre of the ontology of the person is the community, indeed we cannot speak of personhood unless in the context of community. The individual, ontologically, can be said not to exist."

huh?

I'm with pericles, I don't get it either relda. And don't tell me again it;s because I can't understand what you are saying. It's probably because I understand what what you are saying is BS.
If it's not quantifiable, then how do you get quantity statements like "less varied"? You pulled it out of your almanac didn't you? Clearly, culture tautologially varies and differs between peoples (duh), but have you have not established whether cultures are more variable within the culture than between cultures. I would hazard to guess that an individualistic culture varies much more within than it does betwen other cultures.

Perhaps your "Darwinian model" could do with a tweak too. Rather than "lasting values giving cause for survival", perhaps you should view it as a "culling of values that give cause for a cultures non-survival". These are not the same thing.

Paradigmatic? Nay, it's alimentary dear Watson!

I can understand Bugsy's concern

>>The paradox to which I referred relates to the values inherent within the current Westernisation ‘process’ (globalisation) we see occurring. Ironically, its individualism influences the diminishing of its own tradition along with the other cultures it ‘includes’ and influences.<<

Leaving aside for a moment the complete absence of irony, ask yourself what the second sentence is saying.

"...its individualism..."

Is the "it" here supposed to be the paradox? Not possible. Perhaps "the inherent values"? Nope, they're plural. Must be "globalization, then.

Globalization has "individualism", relda?

You see the problem?

The rest of the paragraph is equally unsound.

>>Europe profoundly influenced the cultures of Africa, India, Israel, Australia, and other places colonised or settled by Europeans.<<

Profoundly, relda? I'd suggest the exact opposite. Once the colonials retreat, the jungle rapidly regrows to hide any trace. How much of Belgium is still evident in Rwanda? Or Italy in Eritrea?

>>A reaction to Westernisation can include the ‘black and white’ of fundamentalism and protectionism<<

A reaction to peanuts can include death, relda.

This illustrates the problem nicely. On the one hand you propose that Westernization "profoundly influenced the cultures", while on the other you suggest the precise opposite. That they reacted to it by adopting fundamentalism and protectionism.

English can be a beautiful - and simple - language, relda, if you allow it to be.

What you have created here is mere word soup.

relda,

You make good points. Were Rudyard Kipling alive today, he would see serious attempts of the “twain,” East and West, meeting under the banner of globalisation.

Major contributions are evident in the literature, which categorise
societal axioms, build scales and identify cultural antecedents. Hofstede did the same (HERMES Project). The thing is, the process of categorisation itself, is of Western tradition. When the models are constructed, these models are built from the perspective of an individualist, liberal and historically androcentric society. There is little room for “fuzzy”.

East Asian cultures are good and “fuzzy”, because their world-view is on interconnectiveness, rather than hyper-qualification of the parts.

Regarding any theist “trinity,” I would posit an Eastern society would not look for examples of the subject and object. Alternatively, in the West, qualifying the objects is significant.

In the West, denominational schisms occur over the qualification of the objects. I quote Wells (1937);

“… Christendom retained at least the formal tradition of the general unity of the spirit until 1054, when the Latin-speaking Western church and the main and the original Greek speaking church, the Orthodox church severed themselves from the one another, ostensibly upon the question of adding two words to the creed. The older creed had declared ‘the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father’. The Latins wanted to add, and did add ‘Filique' (=and from the son), and placed the Greeks out of their communion because they would not follow this lead.”

When evaluating trans-society cultural transfers, anthropologists note; new technologies transfer very readily, societal idioms change slowly (eating habits), and ideology is entrenched.

"You suggest that Australian culture is less varied than that of an Asian country.. " No. I thought I was suggesting the opposite Pericles so indeed, the rest does become word soup.

Very few models are perfect Bugsy... the original biological Darwinian model was well and truly tweaked and I'd expect the current one to also evolve.

relda:"Paradoxically, the more individualistic a people, the less varied its culture."

"Australians are described as horizontal (low power distance) individualists, i.e. they are highly autonomous and remain independent from their group with their own ambition taking precedence over any group ambition – behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’. As a counterpoint, Asians are classified as collectivistic, with high power distance – they have an emphasis on interdependence, group goals, obligations and duties."

Pericles: "You suggest that Australian culture is less varied than that of an Asian country.. "

relda:"No. I thought I was suggesting the opposite...."

I don't think I have learnt anything here, except that I should have stuck with the original plan and not bothered engaging with you at all.

I bet you lament the lack of logic in others arguments don't you?

I’ll try to put it a little more simply. Collectivism or communitarianism is defined as roughly the moral and political priority the collective need has over that of the individual, as found generally within Asian culture. Individualism is opposed to collectivism, where communal, group, societal or national ambition etc. should take priority over the individual. There is also an opposition to tradition or any form of external moral standard being used to limit an individual's choice of actions. At its most extreme or rampant, individualism is therefore the exact antithesis of culture. Australia, currently, does not exercise such extreme individualism. We probably tend toward the Kantian doctrine, where the individual has a right to the fullest measure of freedom that is compatible with the equal freedom of other individuals – our “behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’”, as stated.

Extreme individualists oppose not only public enterprises and state institutions, but also restrictive measures such as factory regulations, laws governing the hours of labour; they discourage all associations - whether capitalist or labourer (union). In short, they regard any form of state intervention as an anathema. However, the reality is, state intervention, regulation or state ownership of certain utilities etc. becomes entirely a question of expediency for the public welfare - it is merely a fallacy to oppose such intervention on purely ideological grounds. There is no a priori principle, whether political, ethical, economic, or religious, by which it can be decided.

So yes, we are currently more varied than many of the restrictive monocultures surrounding us. Where, however, we lose our own heritage and tradition through rampant individualism, we lose also our freedom and ‘variety’ – that is the paradox. I’ll agree fully with Sells in this instance saying therefore, “The individual, ontologically, can be said not to exist”.

Individualism has two meanings in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

1. The interests of the individual are or ought to be paramount in determination of conduct.
2. The only value of a community or society lies in furthering the interests of the individuals composing it.

These are very different definitions. The first describes behaviour based on selfishness as opposed to altruism. A society based on selfishness is a society in which even those who have a great deal of wealth are not at peace, and a sense of security is lacking. That individualism is not one that I think good.

The other definition is opposed to collectivism. The first concern of all in Plato's Republic was the state. For example, the doctor has "no right to attend to a man who cannot carry out his ordinary duties; for such a man is useless to himself and to the state". That says we are of no use at all as individuals. Our only function is to serve the community. Just as a society in which everyone thought of nobody's interests but his own would be an uncaring society, a society that denies our worth or value except where it serves the group is also an uncaring society. Plato confused the two definitions of individualism. He equated individualism which is selfishness with the individualism that encourages us to be autonomous.

The collectivism of the Nazi and Soviet states destroyed millions of human lives. Human lives were secondary to the needs of the state. It was far worse than the individualism of economic rationalism. Should we oppose individualism to collectivism the way Mani opposed good to evil? We can all work together to build up the sides of the river bank to prevent the water from overflowing. To make a personal decision or get close to a person of the opposite sex we don't need a group. Rather than setting up individualism and collectivism as antitheses it seems more reasonable to do the things best done together in a group and those things best done alone by oneself.

(continued)

(continued)

Some organisations combine the individualism which is egotism with collectivism. Two examples are the corporation and the army. Both expect members of their organisations to put their needs second to the demands of the group. The army may make the ultimate demand of life. At the same time they encourage an intense competition for promotion which is individualism according to definition 1 in a collective setting. One of the toasts in the English officers mess is, "Here's to a long and bloody war". Those who survive get to be generals.

In my previous life I designed equipment for computers. I got an assignment to design a servomechanism. I was interested in how my work connected with the work of other people. I went to my boss, a former naval officer and asked him about it. He said, "What is your need to know?" In the military you generally are told no more than is necessary to perform your assigned duties. You cannot give out information if you don't have it. My need to know was that I am a human being who would get more joy from his work if he knew better where it fitted in.

I would prefer to live in a society where people rejected the individualism of everyone for himself or herself but accepted the individualism of wanting to develop oneself as much as possible and wanting society to care for that desire. Altruism means we care for society, and the second meaning of individualism means that society cares for us.

A Jewish sage over 2,000 years ago compressed all the above:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when? - Hillel

david f,

I think individualism, when manifest with self-actualisation, can co-habit with horizontal altruism. Eleanor Roosevelt being a case in point.

Yeah, I'm learning nothing of use or interest here, I think we'll leave it at that relda.

Ontologically, I as an individual, can be said not to exist, so don't bother replying. I probably won't be here, ontologically.

Of course, subjectively, meaning in this thread, ontologically can be said not to exist. That's a tortured sentence I can probably agree with.

Bugsy,

I suspect the main sources of relda’s research measuring individualism are the HERMES studies (1968 & 1972) by Geert Hofstede.

The studies were empirical, involving 117,000 questionnaires across 39 countries, evaluating Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism and Masculinity. The studies are widely cited in the literature and do rate a mention in several business studies and behavioural sciences university courses.

A problem with the studies is some academics have taken the ball and run with it, beyond the Hofstede’s original purpose. These were Human Resource Management studies conducted inside IBM. Even Hofstede (2002?), recognized the overgeneralisation.

Returning to the first paragraph, individualism was quantified.

Sells makes this amazing claim

"The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism."

Jesus makes this amazing claim

John 14:28 "...because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I".

and this

John 14:6 "No one comes to the Father but by me"

and this

Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

If Sell's theory is correct, does this make Jesus a pagan, as he didn't seem to believe in the trinity either?