the_grip on 14/9/2007 at 04:22
Hey, ya, i'm eating my words by stepping back into the discussion.
fett, that was a great post. Regarding why people are Christians in America, i think you are right to a large degree. There are quite a few people in Americana culture who fit the description you describe. i don't blame them, either (i know quite a few), but i do want to make one obvious point - you come from a Protestant background. It's been a long time since i looked at numbers, but something like 75% to 90% of Christians around the world are Catholic... at least to some degree or another (perhaps Eastern Orthodox or Anglican). However, the picture of Christianity derived in the US comes from a large culture movement beginning with the Reformation, travelling through the Church of England, through the Puritan colonies, etc. etc. The cultural Protestant underpinnings are so strong that their religious aspects in many ways have dissolved away.
Anyways, i want to be as brief as possible here, but i have studied to some degree many of the things you reference (although i'm absolutely certain not as thoroughly as you) and i went to a Protestant seminary for a year (before dropping out, lol). All that said, a few years ago i contemplated leaving any form of religious system simply because of the severe disconnect and dichotomy that Protestant Americana Christianity offers in view of historical Judaism and Christianity. i don't mean to sound divisive or harsh, but modern day US Christianity does not look like the Christianity of Ireneus, Augustine, Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, etc. etc.
Since then i have moved into the Catholic world, and this brings me to my real point - the Bible is one piece of the puzzle. Judeo/Christian tradition and history complements what you are saying to an astounding degree. i'm not trying to convert you back to Christianity or anything of the sort, but i do recommend you check it out if you are so inclined.
And, with that, i'm out... i have beat this dead horse a thousand times in other threads and other forums, and i don't want to repeat myself a thousand and one times ;)
At any rate, it is very refeshing to have your perspective, fett, and it is very rare indeed that folks are being really nice about such a sensitive topic (on all sides of the fence).
Vivian on 14/9/2007 at 08:45
Quote Posted by paloalto90
I'm thinking of starting a construction company called Random Acts Construction.We bring all the materials to the site and sit around and wait for random acts to build a higher order structure called your house.Better get a Motel 6 cause it ain't happening for a long time.
Is this a wierdly put version of the watchmaker criticism? Do I really have to explain how much of a straw man that thing is? 'Yah, but if you shake a bunch of lego in a box it don't make a spaceship, know what I mean?'
Yes, but if you allow a simple imperfectly self-replicating system to undergo billions upon billions of generations in conditions that favour preferential survival of those better suited to the environment, then you will get complexity.
Rogue Keeper on 14/9/2007 at 08:56
Quote Posted by Stitch
In this you would be incorrect, and the fact that you are incapable of grasping this doesn't move your misconceptions any closer to truth.
I wasn‘t the first one who has spontaneously, and without preparation, challenged someone else over his personal belief. I stated them as a response to a third person but you saw it as an excellent opportunity for laying and unsophisticated bait. Suit yourself, it speaks a lot about your character.
Do not engage into philosophical or scientific debates if you don't have „Monkeysee's patience“ and you aren‘t able to put together reasonable arguments in respective fields.
Anyways, finally some reasonable and intellectually challenging partners have appeared.
Quote Posted by Vivian
BR, I have been an anthropologist, I am now an evolutionary biomechanical whatever scientist, I always enjoy discussing questions of religion and evolution. Basically, you are saying that god may have designed DNA (I'm presuming you mean not just dna but the whole hideously hard-to-understand complex of things which determines inheritability) to be the basis of a nice, adaptable system of life that was likely to throw up some interesting consequences for His satisfaction (in whatever sense), is that right?
Essentially right.
Quote:
Well, I don't agree with that, but at this stage that is just a matter of belief.
I can respect that and that was exactly the point I tried to explain certain less intellectually developed individual here before - empiric science and personal belief do not mix. Problem is when certain belief persists despite that empiric proof says otherwise. But! There will be always something new to discover. People like me seek a way how to find place on Earth for both science and philosophical beliefs, whether atheist or theist, and I believe these can coexist in peace and mutual inspiration. There is nothing wrong with supposition that science may eventually scrutinize creations of an inteligent plan. Many scientists in their privacy do philosophically speculate about superior intelligence behind the origin of things. Science can explain how things work for us to understand, but it will never kill beliefs, because belief is inertial part of a human.
Quote:
I think that eventually there will be a satisfactory explanation of how dna, rna and all that stuff came about by chance and the laws of physics, but at the moment all science has in that regard is pretty well a stab in the dark based on the belief that it
must have happened like that.
But then how were the laws of physics came to be - spontaneously or were they created by an inteligent mind? There will be always something to discover, there will be always something. It is somehow naive to think that one day we are going to know everything the universe has to offer. But if we eventually do, by the way - we become Gods ourselves.
I presented possibilities I believe. I didn't state that anything MUST have happened this or other way.
Quote:
All that stuff about 'evolutionary levels', though - that doesn't really mean anything.
It's a legitimate philosophical theory. Can science prove the opposite right now? Will it disprove in the future? For now, you can only believe.
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
I'd still like to hear a Christian explain to me how they would know God if not for the Bible. Because at some level it seems it all boils down to faith in the complete (or near-complete) veracity of a book which is accepted to have been written by several people over many years, and which has been translated back and forth dozens of times. Mind you, I'd usually like to hear how someone of
any religion would know their faith / God / Whatever without resorting to a set of pages in a book somewhere. I have come to the conclusion that what everyone has is a rabid conviction that a particular book is telling the truth. Which doesn't set them all too far from Star Wars nerds who write "Jedi" on their census, in my view.
The idea that there might be a „God“ in sense „a higher intelligence behind the universe“ can be also reached by philosophical contemplation without knowledge of religious texts. In my case I have Christian origin in my family, but there was time in my life when I didn't care about Christianity almost at all. However, I got back to the concept of God it later from more philosophical ends. I rarely visit the church, it must be an occassion. Some of my more conservative Christian fellows would despise me for it. Still I don't have bad attitude to church services, if the pastor is a resonable, open-minded person. Then it can be quite refreshing and uplifting experience for me.
Bible, like many books can be interpreted in several ways. Some people rely on religious preachers to explain it for them. The others make their own conclusions and speculations, they compare religious texts and apocryphas from different sources and times, find their common points and differences. Theologists (who are not oriented on lithurgy, therefore they are not vicars or pastors) operate on this level.
There would be differences among how is the Bible being officially interpreted by Roman Catholics, Greco-Catholics and Protestant groups. As I am a Lutheran Protestant I don't feel competent to speak for Catholics, but Evangelical religion emphasizes individual inspiration by Christ's life instead of pushing the members to believe what some high religious authority feels to be the official truth. There is not even a visible high religious authority for protestants. Lutheranism leaves space for philosophical speculations for it's individual followers - that may somehow explain why there are enough protestants in circles of left-wing intelligentsia for example. Some humanists are interested in Christian Existentialism which takes a philosophically existentialist approach to Christian theology. ((
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_existentialism)).
I would suggest you look around for these kind of people if you'd like some explanations without hitting religious fanatism.
In the end it depends only on individual and his personality, what he takes as an inspiration from the Bible. I will leave the discussion about what is truth and what is not in the religious texts to more competent theologists. I am not that kind of Christian who waves Bible in front of everyone's face, I don't know Bible that well - I have read it thoroughly just once and I don't think I'm an expert on it. What is important for me though, as a Protestant, is Christ's preaching in The New Testament as guideline for how people shuold treat each other. Even if Christ was a complete virtual character, his words are a worthy inspiration for life. Christ's preaching and traditions of European humanism have so much in common and not only that. Ancient Roman school of Stoicism (which I admire as well) was a notable premise to Christianity on continental Europe.
Theism itself is not dangerous. Atheism itself isn't dangerous. Human stupidity, closed-mindedness, hatred for the different ones and cathegorical refusal of peaceful dialogue between groups are!
ilweran on 14/9/2007 at 09:08
Quote Posted by Dia
Not unfair in the least and not as small a minority as you'd like to think.
I was talking about my comments on Irish Americans, the IRA and the feeling that the US was outraged that anyone had dared do this to them, but not so bothered about people in other countries being blown up. I might have phrased it badly, but I hope that perceived attitude isn't true of everyone.
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
Mind you, I'd usually like to hear how someone of
any religion would know their faith / God / Whatever without resorting to a set of pages in a book somewhere.
I have come to the conclusion that what everyone has is a rabid conviction that a particular book is telling the truth.
Not all religions have holy books. I'm Wiccan, and I may have got a set of practices from books, but my opinions on the nature of god/ess are my own and I've not seen my precise opinions in any book I've read so far, although I can't deny that they may have been influenced by things I've read in many different books.
I don't think any book is telling THE TRUTH.
Kolya on 14/9/2007 at 13:07
Quote Posted by fett
believe it or not
Comparing old books is all fine and dandy, I like to do it myself, but when people start talking about prophecy I start to feel a little queasy.
Here I wanted to ask you, how you came to know "to the exact penny" what happened at the crucifixion, and if I made up a long line of names and looked up their meanings ... tunnel view, etc.
I almost fell for Christianity's oldest trick again. But I've seen it too many times now, when the friendly people ring at my door and they just want to talk and discuss why I don't believe what they do. The thing is: If you start to occupy yourself with religion, if you read the same shit in hundreds of variations again and again, then yes, no matter how atheistic you are, you start to think there might be something to it, you start to believe. It's a neurological trick that Christians figured out maybe in 400BC:
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.
fett on 14/9/2007 at 14:41
Quote Posted by Kolya
Here I wanted to ask you, how you came to know "to the exact penny" what happened at the crucifixion, and if I made up a long line of names and looked up their meanings ... tunnel view, etc.
.....It's a neurological trick that Christians figured out maybe in 400BC:
Exactly. It's very easy to get sucked in when you're around it a lot and realize that *some* of it does actually make sense.
As for the 'exact penny' I'm referring to Zachariah's mention of 40 pieces of silver in his Messianic prophecy (the exact text escapes me and I can't be arsed to look it up right now - you can probably google it). This is same amount reported by the gospels. BUT WATE!!!!! There is the obvious problem of the NT gospels writing to please the OT prophecies right? So you can divide prophecy into two groups really - things that could have been contrived to fit, and things that were beyond the control of the people involved (I'm speaking strictly of Messianic prophecy as opposed to political/military prophecy and such). Of the 400 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth, only about 15% of those were within his control. The rest have to do with things like the name of the Roman governors, the division of provinces, the language of the time, things introduced by Hellenism and the Romans that couldn't possibly have been historically contrived to fit Jewish Messianic prophecy. (This is where the idiots start popping up with 'BUT HOW DO WE KNOW JESUS REALLY LIVED LOL!!!' which is willful ignorance at best if you simply do the homework so I won't derail yet another thread with beating my head against the wall on this one.)
Moving on to more political/national/military/economic types of prophecy, about 90% of it would have been completely out of anyone's control. In other words, Nebuchadnezzar didn't decide when and how many times to invade Jerusalem based on Jeremiah's prophecy, yet he did it in exactly the way Jeremiah said he would years prior. This is the TRUE untold value of the Dead Sea Scrolls - they provide a way of substantiating when many of these OT books were written, and surprise surprise - most were written long before the events took place of which they speak. Prior to the DSS it was easy to think "Yeah - but those 'prophets' just wrote about the stuff AFTER it happened'). That argument doesn't hold water anymore for an immense body of prophetic writing. It gives you pause. I know guys like Randall Price and Tommy Ice who were hardcore atheists working on dating some of the DSS and now they're evangelical Christians. Like I said, it has a way of scaring you and sucking you in all at the same time.
grip - It's funny you bring up the Protestant/RC thing. I was about three weeks away from converting to Catholicism before I threw my hands up. I think the concept of apostolic succession has been horribly corrupted (the Dark Ages anyone?), but it's much more on the mark than what's going on in Protestantism today. Aside from the fact that it's not exactly 'Biblical' from an interpretive standpoint (IMO) I think it's a great idea - if it actually worked the way the RC dreams it should. Also, despite it's persecution of the Jews at various times, the RC liturgy resembles NT Judaism more than anything else going on right now. I pastored a church for a short time and taught heavily on the Jewish Feasts and early (read Catholic) Christianity.
Dia - I think I got the idea in your post that you thought Constantine somehow officiated and dictated at Nicene which was absolutely not the case. It's just something that's used to scare Bible believing people into thinking the Roman government created Christianity. And believe me, there are far more legitimate things to scare them with than that! But I do agree - the Bible was written by men. I used to believe in 'verbal plenary inspiration' - that it was 100% human and 100% divine. God using the personalities and quirks of real people to convey his perfect thoughts and wisdom. After repeatedly experiencing the Bible's failure to deliver on the majority of it's promises, I realized that it IS just written by men. But the fulfilled prophecy still gives me the willies sometimes because I know it wasn't written by luck or conspiracy.
Matthew on 14/9/2007 at 14:53
Quote Posted by fett
it's much more on the mark than what's going on in Protestantism today.
Just out of interest, what do you feel are the difficulties with Protestantism today? (If you think it's too much of a tangent, feel free to PM.)
paloalto90 on 14/9/2007 at 15:00
Quote Posted by Vivian
Is this a wierdly put version of the watchmaker criticism? Do I really have to explain how much of a straw man that thing is? 'Yah, but if you shake a bunch of lego in a box it don't make a spaceship, know what I mean?'
Yes, but if you allow a simple imperfectly self-replicating system to undergo billions upon billions of generations in conditions that favour preferential survival of those better suited to the environment, then you will get complexity.
What of complexity outside living organisms.There is no fitness test for non living organisms.The building of the periodic table of elements as an example.These are higher order structures.Does matter contain within itself the desire to create?Does matter contain the blueprint to form higher structures such as these?
Vivian on 14/9/2007 at 15:03
Are you taking the piss?
SD on 14/9/2007 at 15:04
He's religious. Oftentimes it's difficult to tell the difference.
