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.