Ship of Fools: Purgatory: Final Straws - why do religious moderates keep the faith?

Thread: Purgatory: Final Straws - why do religious moderates keep the faith? Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

People have compared Purgatory to a broken record. I think it's a lot like Saturday Night Live -- everybody remembers fondly the time when they first started watching it, and everything else after that is crap compared to "The Golden Days".

But apparently a lot of us feel somewhat similarly, at least enough to be asking the same questions. So let's skip those questions for a minute and get beyond them to a question that's been on my mind a lot over the past year or two.

Let's assume, for this discussion, that you or someone you know agrees with a majority of the following, even if they must be slightly edited:

The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.
PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.
Other religions contain elements of truth
Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd
Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity
Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound

If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

If your reasons have anything to do with why you actually disagree with any of the above premises, I'm less interested in discussing that because it's more of the same. What other reasons are there for self-identifying as Christian, and for maintaining belief in God?

[ 15. June 2016, 18:46: Message edited by: Belisarius ]

Posted by A Feminine Force (# 7812) on :

Because life in the Living Christ is just The. Best. Life. Ever.

I should know, I've lived a few hundred (or thousands)of lives. [Big Grin]

Love
LAFF

[ 17. June 2009, 04:52: Message edited by: A Feminine Force ]

Posted by Kid Who Cracked (# 13963) on :

Excellent question Jason.

I've been wondering about this myself. What it comes down to:

1. I love Jesus
2. I believe a resurrection experience (in some way shape or form) happened.
3. I haven't mustered the courage to take the leap into agnosticism, probably because religion gives structure and meaning (at least somewhat) to life.
4. My mother and family would think I was going to hell. This would be very hard on them.
5. I have already applied to a large scholarship that assumes my being Protestant. I wouldn't feel right accepting it (if I got it) were I not a Protestant.
6. I'm afraid if I leave I'll never be able to come back. And in the small chance hell is real I'd be kind of screwed.
7. Since I go to school in Texas, I see a lot of Christianity. I feel like if I left there might be a sore spot there - like an ex-girlfriend that's always around (that's not meant to debase Christianity).

I still often wonder why I stay a Christian. I often consider becoming an agnostic. I feel completely uncomfortable at church. I don't sense God like I wish I did. But for now, I linger, and hope I turn out the better for keeping the faith.

[ 17. June 2009, 04:58: Message edited by: Kid Who Cracked ]

Posted by Duo Seraphim (# 256) on :

That list does describe me as a liberal Catholic. But I'm not prepared to state my faith simply as "God exists".

Why? Well, for one thing the statement "God exists" is still an outrageous one in a secular world. For it means that there is Someone bigger than you, your family, your nation, your world, someone outside human life and outside the world as we know it. But given that we have to take "God exists" on trust, as something felt but not objectively provable then being able to say "God exists" is a matter of grace which is something God-given anyway. That grace is ineffable - I can't explain why I was able to believe after years of non-belief.

What then? To be meaningful the statement "God exists" must command a response - love,rejection,anger, hate or even indifference. Otherwise it is simply stating a neutral fact. That response is faith (which may indeed have those negative attributes mixed in) which is an ongoing living process of growing closer, sometimes farther but a "turning towards" God to walk his path.

Good. So faith is lived in this world and thus it has a public dimension, even for those known to be hermits.

In the end the faith I try to live involves loving God with all my heart, soul and mind and loving my neighbour as myself. That's quite hard enough to do without excluding those who don't share my ideals or my faith.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Because the Word Incarnated to bridge the gap between people and the Godhead. I'm grateful for that. I don't have to tie myself into knots over a literal interpretation of scriptures or fear of hell in order to feel that way or to feel God's act of reconciliation is of supreme importance to us.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

I don't see any meaningful connection between the list of beliefs and the question. All those things describe my beliefs, approximately. So why wouldn't I be a Christian? All those things are absolutely consistent with Jesus' message as I hear it.

[I don't mean that I don't understand the premise of the question, only that I don't accept it.]

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Because it still seems that there's Something there.

Because I made a commitment.

Because I don't know it's not true.

Because of fear of hell.

Because, in my own way, I love God, whether or not She exists.

Because I've managed to carve out a middle ground that lets me search out Christianity and other faiths and anything else that speaks truth to me--and have some fun doing it.

Because there are pieces of Christianity that are deeply a part of me.

Because many of the things that bother me in Christianity are rampant in other faiths, so it wouldn't do me much good to walk out.

Because it would rip me apart if I did walk.

Because I don't fully want to walk out.

Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :

Much Like Timothy, I don't see your bullet points as devaluing my Christian faith despite agreeing with most of them. To my mind there is no problem.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

What does PSA stand for please?

Posted by Qlib (# 43) on :

Because I love and trust in God and Jesus and believe the work of the Holy Spirit continues through all time and in all places.

Because I believe that the inner light is in each one of us, and my experience suggests to me that this is the light of Christ.

Because I believe God is too big to be contained within the constructions Man hss built for Him.

[ 17. June 2009, 06:42: Message edited by: Qlib ]

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

Um, I don't see a connection between the list and belief in God either.

Are you asking why believe in God if you're a liberal?

Answer, well, why not?

The flip would be why believe in God if your a conservative?

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
What does PSA stand for please?

Penal substitutionary atonement.

as in 'He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.'

and

'Bearing shame and scoffing rude
In my place condemned he stood,
Sealed my pardon with his blood;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!'

[ 17. June 2009, 06:54: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Because I see it all as an allegory or a parable - the details don't have to be believed in as complete and utter fact; the overall truths can and do matter.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I suspect Jason is getting at the fact that if you belive in the liberal mode, it looks very like the liberal mode of any of the major faiths and humanism - so why be Christian specifically ?

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

My guess is that that list describes the vast majority of Christians alive today. So why do we all stay? I haven't got time to describe the many reasons I have for my faith, but I would include a knowledge of the love of God (especially in Communion), and a conviction that Jesus' teachings are the best way to live (whether or not there is life after death - but I believe there is). Forgiveness, for example, although I find it hard increasingly seems like the way to live a happy life.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

What I think is unique about Christianity is its proclamation of grace and its even more daring proclamation that God is love. Which of course means that what is unique about Christianity is Jesus.

On the other hand, a belief simply that God exists is entirely consistent with a belief in karma. Some people of faith choose to believe in and live under karma. I don't know how they do that. It hasn't been my choice.

Individuals are free to integrate scripture, tradition, reason and experience in whatever way they find satisfactory. And on our own we find many different answers, and ask many different questions.

As a Christian I have lived for many years as part of a community and have discovered above all things the inestimable value of that journey within community. It's a learning, exploring community. It does not give itself airs, and does not think it has arrived. We're learners together. Together with them I've learned much and experienced much of what we call the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

I guess if you're outside the community you might describe those experiences as simply learning about kindness and it could all happen without the superstructure of ancient belief, whether reformed (in the wider sense) or not. I don't know about that. I know that belief and behaviour are much more intimately intertwined than that.

I've kept the faith because I have learned the abiding value of its best fruit, particularly when life's experiences have themselves been bitter. A very old hymn describes it as "a well spent journey, though seven deaths lay between". I agree with that.

[ 17. June 2009, 07:25: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by PhilA (# 8792) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
What does PSA stand for please?

Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Wiki has a short article that defines it better than I could.

Jason I. Am,
I would reverse the question. What is the point of believing something so demonstrably untrue as the YEC position or that Scripture is infallible? You have to jump through so many hoops and ignore so much evidence in order to do so that the image of God left is one of trickery and deceit.

To believe something that is informed by our senses, reason and experience (all God given I might add) seams far more sensible than to believe a literal interpretation of a translation of a translation of a collection of texts written over a thousand year period.

Lets look at the list:

* The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.

Well, unless you advocate that a great heavenly hand broke through the clouds, grabbed hold of the writers wrists and forced them to write those words and those words only, what is wrong with that statement? There are more differences in words throughout all the documents we have than there are words. For God to 'dictate' scripture and then allow so many changes to come in doesn't fit.

* PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.

Due to the fact that there are other ways to understand Christianity, this statement is self evident.

* Other religions contain elements of truth

Personally, I would go further than that and say that other religions contain as much truth as Christianity, but that is because I see nothing in Christianity that I would say is objectively 'better' than other religions.

* Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd.

Absolutely. Saying that people have to intellectually sign up to a set of ideas is just not what Jesus taught. Jesus taught about repenting for your actions and doing the right thing and very little on believing the right thing.

* Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity

The evidence is overwhelming. Why would God trick people like that?

* Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound

This is also true. There are questions that need to be answered about all moral issues. As we learn more about the biology of humans, it makes sense to use that to inform our moral arguments based upon these discoveries. If, for example, homosexuality is 'hard wired' in to someone in the exact same way of a heterosexual person, then a homosexual having sex carries the same moral implications of a heterosexual person having sex.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

Why not? This thread is confusing me a bit, as there seems to be an underlying assumption that Christianity = conservative evangelicalism. The OP could be paraphrased as "You're not a conservative evangelical, so why are you a Christian?"

Posted by dj_ordinaire (# 4643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:

quote:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

Why not? This thread is confusing me a bit, as there seems to be an underlying assumption that Christianity = conservative evangelicalism. The OP could be paraphrased as "You're not a conservative evangelical, so why are you a Christian?"

Yeah. I'm baffled. To me, the question makes about as much sense to me as 'You don't vote for the Conservative Party... So why do you bother to vote at all?'

I'm still a Christian because I happen to believe (in my better moments) that Christianity is true. The fact that *some* people think that Christianity necessarily includes Biblical innerancy, denial of evolution and a healthy dose of queer-bashing strikes me as neither here nor there. Either the Father created us, the Son redeemed us and the Spirit guides us, or not - what other people might believe the somewhat peculiar corollaries of these to be doesn't really concern me at all and I don't see why it should
[Confused]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

OK so what about it do you find more convincing than liberal Islam ?

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

That Jesus lad. There's just something about him I can't shake.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

Anyway to answer the question:

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?

I believe in it basically (incarnation, resurrection blah blah). Ideas like PSA, inerrancy and creationism aren't gold standards of orthodoxy by any means. Nor have they ever been. Christians have always had more than one way of understanding the atonement, salvation and the role of scripture. Most of the Christians alive now are either Catholic or Orthodox. Ditto most Christians who've ever lived. And they'd all probably find your list a bit odd. So I stay put because a) I'm actually a pretty bog standard orthodox creedal Christian b) it doesn't bother me that some people believe in inerrancy or whatever. I don't see the point in defining myself by what I don't believe (the number one problem with liberal Christianity IMO). Most people are Christian because they feel that they've met with the Christian God, not because they've weighed up the intellectual merits of rival atonement theories or whatever...

[ 17. June 2009, 08:06: Message edited by: Yerevan ]

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's assume, for this discussion, that you or someone you know agrees with a majority of the following, even if they must be slightly edited:

But why does anyone have to agree with the majority of that list at all? (even if slightly edited.)

Maybe I've missed something but it looks like you are drawing up your own list of 'anti-conservative' doctrines that you want people to sign up to?

My guess is that people will agree / disagree to all of those points to varying degrees ... are you trying to come up with some kind of consensus? If so, how is that any different from conservatives who try to 'sharpen' the boundaries between belief and unbelief?

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

I'm not going to answer point by point because doing so doesn't really describe where I'm at.

I detect - whether intentional or not - an underlying assumption that the most reasonable thing in the world would be to be an atheist and that there is no point in following a religion unless one chooses the most conservative form of it. Both are points that don't speak to me at all.

On 'the God thing'. I simply have a 101% (hyperbole) total inner conviction that God exists. I could no more believe that God does not exist than I could believe that the sky is purple or that grass is orange.

I have an inner attraction to liberal Judaism but I know in my heart of hearts that I could never not-believe in the divinity of Jesus.

I also have a strong inner conviction that moderation is almost always best in all things. Having grown up fundamentalist, I've seen the very destructive effects of the lives of people that the tenacious desire to control one's life, one's ideas and the minds of others has had. I believe this is a dis-ease of the mind and much hyper-conservative religion (of all faiths) seems to be more about this kind of illusion of human control than it is about anything spiritual. (We can know all the right ideas about God and so stave off chaos and save ourselves.)

I had a strong 'conversion experience' of God's love and I believe in it.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

Why a liberal Christian, and not a liberal Muslim or a unitarian?

Firstly, I'd say that I see most of that list as being about peripherals to Christianity. The great achievements in theological philosophy of the Fathers and the Scholastics stand apart from that list.
Secondly, I'd say it's the incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity.
The incarnation says of God that God emptied himself to enter creaturely existence and become a creature. That says something important about the relation between God and creation. For one thing, it suggests that God doesn't just wave an omnipotent hand and reorder creation how God wants. God has to get involved, which means that God respects creation as an other to God. That says something about how we should respect other people, and also suggests that the problem of evil isn't insuperable.
The Trinity also suggests that God's fundamental being is loving others as different. Arguably, the Western concept of a person as an irreducible source of autonomous value owes its existence to Trinitarian debates. And something apparently secular like Bakhtin's idea of language as dialogue in fact owes something to Trinitarian theology as well.

And of course, thirdly, Christianity is my own tradition: the tradition I've grown up in. The question as it presents itself to me practically is why leave?

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

Let's assume, for this discussion, that you or someone you know agrees with a majority of the following, even if they must be slightly edited:

The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.
PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.
Other religions contain elements of truth
Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd
Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity
Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound

If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

So, to be a Real Christian you have to agree with inerrancy, PSA, etc etc? That's what this question implies.

Why can't you be a Christian and agree with this list? Isn't Christianity something to do with Jesus? And nothing he said is incompatible with the beliefs in this list...

Posted by joris2 (# 11137) on :

I consider it inherently impossible for creatures to completely comprehend their Creator.
People who have inerrant knowledge of all things God, and make that knowledge the yardstick of Christianness, must therefore be self-delusionary and/or liars.

The question should not be why people who subscribe to the beliefs in the OP would bother to call themselves Christians.

The real question is whether people who tie themselves into knots, after bending over backwards, to trick themselves into believing things their God-given intelligence warns them about as unlikely or even impossible,
are any use at all in determining what makes anybody a Christian.

Of course I subscribe to the list in the OP.
I am reasonably intelligent, reasonably honest, and reasonably compos mentis.
What other honest choice do I have?

Do I consider myself a Christian?
In the sense that I'm convinced that God loves each and everyone of us more than we can comprehend, that She/He demonstrates that love as unconditional in the Person of Jesus Christ, and that the Holy Spirit works in me to help me grow into how God dreamed me, I do.

[ 17. June 2009, 09:53: Message edited by: joris2 ]

Posted by Hel (# 5248) on :

Because if it all (i.e. Christianity) turns out to be nonsense, at least I've tried to live my life in a 'good' way. Whereas if I rejected it all and it turned out to be true, I'd have missed out on a lifetime of relationship with God. And who knows about the rest of time after that?

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

This question - in almost identical terms - was put to me about three or four years ago by the person who led a home group / bible study I was attending. I'd been going along for several months, and never been shy about my theological liberalism. One day he confronted me (he's a conservative evangelical) with this very same ultimatum: reject this list of liberal beliefs (and others, like its ok to be gay), or stop "pretending" to be a Christian.

I give to JasonI.Am the same answer as I gave to this homegroup leader: "Who are you to insist that your narrow, unhistorical, 'biblicalist' view of Christianity is the only one? I sit on a three-legged stool of scripture (as myth and allegory), reason (in large doses) and tradition (in smaller doses); you sit on a spike."

Christianity is so much bigger, broaders, and more complex, than these brittle conservative evangelicals imagine.

That said, if the conservative evangelicals want to appropriate the term "Christian" for themselves, they are welcome to it. I'd sooner be associated, in a two-way fight, with Richard Dawkins than Ted Haggard, although I believe that both are inflexible and unsubtle in their thinking.

So I'll quite happily redefine myself as "an agnostic pantheist who is deeply inspired by Christian mythology and imagery as a way of giving poetic meaning to an essentially rationalistic understanding of the universe and a civic-humanist view of ethics", if that helps. "A rose by any other name", and all that.

Posted by joris2 (# 11137) on :

- Cont.

Most of the deciding arguments for the convictions mentioned in my last post are rooted in experiences that are -of course- not convincing to anybody but myself, because they were meant for me as an unique individual.
And there are also quite a lot of arbitrary decisions I made. The main one articulated in the post by Hel.

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

I came to Christianity through an Alpha course (dragged along by the OH) so while I was working through whether I wanted to be part of this all the above points were up for discussion. All was fine and dandy, I got confirmed and thought that it would be OK for me to believe the Bible is made up by people who wanted to express some kind of truth through nice stories. I completely rejected the OT as a nasty piece of work by people who just wanted a divine excuse for killing and general beastliness but I found a lot of inspiration and comfort in the NT as an allegorical tale. I decided to learn a little more so I enrolled on a theology course where I found to my amazement that a lot of my tutors and fellow students were staunch evangelicals, YECs and worse (shudder!). Within six months I had gone from being a liberal Christian to being essentially an atheist with favourable views on some of the teachings of Christ. I don't think there is a place in the church for me and I don't really think there ever was, just the assumption that my liberal tendencies could be argued out of me, my views were only tolerated with the proviso that I was on the way to changing them.

While I think that liberal Christianity has many admirable qualities I just can't see it surviving in the face of overwhelming influx of conservative pressure. This is what I see locally, I really hope it isn't more than a local phenomena but from here and other Christian sites it looks like my fears are probably confirmed.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

I don't usually self-identify as Christian, although I suspect there are situations where I might. I'm Church of England. My commitment, such as it is, is to that institution and to those who see it as a framework for working out in spirit and in truth what God is like.

The traditions, the Jesus story, what people happen to believe at any particular time in history, are just part of the fabric of the institution. They're there if needed, but they're not the essence of anything for me personally.

That's more the making reliable sense of reality as we experience it, which seems entirely consistent with what Jesus was about. So while I mostly see little value in saying I'm a Christian because it is such a broad label, neither in general terms does it seem correct to say I'm not.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that?

Jason I. Am, good post. I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"

If you don't believe that, I'm not sure that I recognise Christianity from Christian-inspired humanism/deism. If, OTOH, one believes in the incarnation (however expressed), then one believes in a God that actually gets involved. Without interventionism (revelation counts, btw), all you're left in is some sort of deistic God which has about as much relevance to human life as Russell's teapot.

I do note that the majority of answers so far have been couched in terms of experience, community and the like. Does that mean the ideas themselves are some sort of spiritual placebo?

- Chris.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

I'm not entirely on all fours with the OP's list, but I would answer the question with one word: Jesus.

Posted by joris2 (# 11137) on :

quote:
I do note that the majority of answers so far have been couched in terms of experience, community and the like. Does that mean the ideas themselves are some sort of spiritual placebo?

No.
But there no conceivable way to prove that [Axe murder]

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Jason I. Am, good post. I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"

If you don't believe that, I'm not sure that I recognise Christianity from Christian-inspired humanism/deism. If, OTOH, one believes in the incarnation (however expressed), then one believes in a God that actually gets involved. Without interventionism (revelation counts, btw), all you're left in is some sort of deistic God which has about as much relevance to human life as Russell's teapot.

I do note that the majority of answers so far have been couched in terms of experience, community and the like. Does that mean the ideas themselves are some sort of spiritual placebo?

- Chris.

I, too, observe, that the majority of the replies do not require Christianity in the traditional sense to be true. Not the meaning traditional Christianity gave to the phrase "Christ is God" anyway.

We are left with too vague and general statements / feelings that could well be valid even if Christ wasn't God in the traditional sense.

I will disagree though with your opinion that it boils down to whether God intervenes or not. All traditional monotheistic religions believe that God intervenes. All traditional monotheistic religions are grounded in revelation, in intervention, in God's actions in human history.

It's not just Christianity that speaks in those terms.

So, that can't be an answer to the question "why Christianity in particular?"

The only satisfactory answer to that question, in my view, would be "because this specific story about God is correct". Which, however, few are willing to accept, diluting the story with lots of niceness of their own making, to sweeten the pill and make it easier to swallow. Which is just arbitrary. And gives no answer. And leads us back to where we started.

Posted by joris2 (# 11137) on :

quote:
I don't think there is a place in the church for me and I don't really think there ever was, just the assumption that my liberal tendencies could be argued out of me, my views were only tolerated with the proviso that I was on the way to changing them.

You might be yielding there to a class of religious people similar to the ones that had Jesus Christ crucified in the first place, and wouldn't know how to act differently would the opportunity present itself again.

[ 17. June 2009, 10:57: Message edited by: joris2 ]

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
While I think that liberal Christianity has many admirable qualities I just can't see it surviving in the face of overwhelming influx of conservative pressure. This is what I see locally, I really hope it isn't more than a local phenomena but from here and other Christian sites it looks like my fears are probably confirmed.

Actually, I think we will survive. But survival is not the same as being big and loud and successful and having a lot of money and believing the myth that 'I have the right answers about everything'.

Our culture is about being 'successful' - in terms of having a successful marketing methodology, and seeing growth in numbers and money as success. The conservative evangelicals have this in spades.

Speaking very personally - because I can't generalize either about non-conservatives or non-liberals - I have the unshakable faith that God loves humanity; this is my passion. That kind of passion will never be extinguished and no money or 'success' will put out the flame of God's love.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
I don't think there is a place in the church for me and I don't really think there ever was, just the assumption that my liberal tendencies could be argued out of me, my views were only tolerated with the proviso that I was on the way to changing them.

While I think that liberal Christianity has many admirable qualities I just can't see it surviving in the face of overwhelming influx of conservative pressure.

This is a pity, but probably true. The world around us becomes increasingly polarised between two opposing camps: a sterile consumerist materialism on one hand, and a reactionary facile religion on the other. Where is the place for doubting heretics who care about the improvement of the human condition, care about beauty, truth, and love, but cannot buy into any religious system? A dwindling congregation of octogenarian Unitarians?

I'm reading Andre Comte-Sponville's "The Book of Atheist Spirituality" at the moment. He argues (I think quite convincingly) that we, as a society of human beings, can do without religious belief, but not without "communion" - some sort of shared mythology and ritual which binds us together. As a liberal I am worried, in part, by the totalitarian potentiality of that idea, if taken too far; but as a civic-republican I am convinced that it is the only way to recover the values of civic-virtue, holistic personhood, and community spirit in the face of dehumanising global capitalism and austere materialism. We need a new religion; but in the absence thereof, we must re-hash the old and put it to new uses. "New wine in old bottles"*.

* An example of how post-Christians can still use Christian imagery to enrich their civilisation.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

In reply to the OP:
(i) The Incarnation. That is an entirely sufficient ground.
(ii) Because I don't agree that the positions outlined in the OP are inconsistent with being a Christian, and because I believe that Christianity matters too much for it to be left to the kind of people claim that they are.

Posted by Anselmina (# 3032) on :

I guess, for me, as for others here, it's the person of Jesus. Even if only a fifth of what's recorded about him in the Gospels were true he would still be the most challenging human being to have lived; and his challenges would still require a response of some sort.

At the moment the only response I can, in all honesty, come up with is that he was right; that he is the way to the best relationship with God the Father and Creator, which is not to say that there aren't other ways of relating to God.

For me to drop the faith, I would have to reject the whole Christ/Incarnation event and come to the conclusion that he was a deluded fool. In which case, I would feel my only other option would be atheism.

Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :

Jason, I personally say "yes" to all of your bullet points, and I do indeed consider myself Christian. To me, Christianity is a way , in other words, a process. The issue of incarnation, well taken up by previous posters, leads to another, equally important one: co-creation. Man creates with and through God. That is what is meant when it says that God creaed man in His image.
If we have co-creation, then this must be a process, in other words, it cannot be one stagnant eternal truth that was written up once and for all.

To be fully human and free as God meant us to be means to continue asking and searching. It requires us to be critical and inquisitive. Faith is a dialogue with God (cf St Ignatius, St Theresa of Avila, to name but two).

So yes, a Christian must be very, very open minded. As the prologue of the rule of St Benedict says: AUSCULTA (listen).

God wants grown up men and women who think for themselves, talk to him as friends and look for Him everywhere -and that most certainly includes other faiths.

Posted by Blue Scarf Menace (# 13051) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?

I believe, and self-identify, as a Christian because I believe the Christian story ( as in creation/fall/redemption kind of thing) to be true. Perhaps this gives rise to the next question of what do does "being true" actually mean.

I struggle to see how any of the points in the OP list can be used as some kind of bench mark to work out what makes a "proper" Christian. While not wishing to dismiss them too flippantly, they do to me appear to be just "details".

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
I, too, observe, that the majority of the replies do not require Christianity in the traditional sense to be true. Not the meaning traditional Christianity gave to the phrase "Christ is God" anyway.

We are left with too vague and general statements / feelings that could well be valid even if Christ wasn't God in the traditional sense.

I will disagree though with your opinion that it boils down to whether God intervenes or not. All traditional monotheistic religions believe that God intervenes. All traditional monotheistic religions are grounded in revelation, in intervention, in God's actions in human history.

It's not just Christianity that speaks in those terms.

So, that can't be an answer to the question "why Christianity in particular?"

The only satisfactory answer to that question, in my view, would be "because this specific story about God is correct". Which, however, few are willing to accept, diluting the story with lots of niceness of their own making, to sweeten the pill and make it easier to swallow. Which is just arbitrary. And gives no answer. And leads us back to where we started.

§Andrew, you're right, of course: most monotheistic religions I can think of require an interventionist God. Not surprising really, as Deism is perfectly good as a belief, but not as a religion [Smile]

.

I suppose what I was trying to say was: if you do believe in an interventionist God, being an agnostic/humanist is no longer an option. To call yourself a Christian, you must also believed that Jesus was a "special case" of divine intervention.

If I may be a little personal, your comments about "this specific story" do remind me a little of my own "inner fundamentalist." Having associated with a particular sort of Christianity in my youth, the constant temptation is to react against it (it really used to make me angry, and still can), but also to secretly believe that that caricature of belief is "what Christianity is" - anyone who doesn't believe in what you reacted against can't be a proper Christian.

You don't own the word "Christian." Neither do I. My inner fundamentalist insists that he does, but he's wrong. We don't get to decide what the word means. Defining the only "valid" Christianity as a hardline position you can't accept in order to draw a line and put yourself on the other side of it seems unhelpful to me. It reminds me of Richard Dawkins' religion strawman, I'm sorry to say.

If (or iff) one believes that Jesus represents a unique instance of Divine intervention, then I think the label Christian is appropriate. Finding a church is a different problem!

- Chris.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
We don't get to decide what the word means.

[snip]

If (or iff) one believes that Jesus represents a unique instance of Divine intervention, then I think the label Christian is appropriate.

This is contradictory. First you say we don't get to decide what the word means, and then you go on and give your own definition of who is a Christian and who isn't.

You are right though. Christianity is not a blank check we can fill any way we wish. It does have specific content, exactly because it didn't come to exist yesterday, but it's already in use for two millennia.

And there have been and there are many kinds of Christianity. From the various groups of the early Church, which had their own gospels, and fought with each other, one of which was the proto-orthodox group whose gospels made it to the canon we know today, to the various groups of today's Church, from people like the Mormons and the Pentecostals, to Billy Graham and the Pope of Rome...

Sure, if one feels free to define Christianity the way they want, then being a Christian is essentially deprived of any specific meaning and content. It's all about what the individual or the group wants it to be.

In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.

Sure, the label of Christian can have any meaning one wants, but the content of the ecumenical councils, the groups those councils represented and their theology are very specific and not open to the individual's tastes or opinions.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
While I think that liberal Christianity has many admirable qualities I just can't see it surviving in the face of overwhelming influx of conservative pressure. This is what I see locally, I really hope it isn't more than a local phenomena but from here and other Christian sites it looks like my fears are probably confirmed.
Actually, I think we will survive. But survival is not the same as being big and loud and successful and having a lot of money and believing the myth that 'I have the right answers about everything'.

My brand of Christianity finds the obsession with survival truly foreign. My savior chose to die for me, and admonished His followers to not seek their lives lest they lose them. Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."

When I look at the flavor of Christianity that insists like David on taking census, I see a faith that has already perished. But maybe that's just me.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If this list (mostly) describes you

It does.

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?

Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.

quote:
Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

.

What other reasons are there [than the list] for self-identifying as Christian, and for maintaining belief in God?

I'm trying to decide whether you're genuinely asking why anyone should bother to believe in God at all if they subscribe to your list, as if that list is some kind of anti-creed, or if you're taking a subtle swipe at those fundamentalists who by their posts here make it look as if without their certainty about those issues there would be no religion for them to follow.

I'm kind of hoping it's the second, because otherwise you're saying that without biblical inerrancy, PSA, exclusive ownership of Truth, eternal torture for unbelievers, creationism and hatred for the homos and abortionists there's no reason at all to believe in God, never mind Christianity. Which is just hideous...

Posted by Scarlet (# 1738) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

This list does pretty much describe me.

I've recently answered why I stay in the faith on the I've Tried thread. As I said there, the only thing I can hang my faith on is that Some One is hearing and responding to my prayers and guiding my life. I have subjective evidence of that.

In addition to that, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'm not talking about the so-called "fire insurance" since I don't believe in a fiery Hell; rather what if I'm wrong. What if my rational intellectional reasoning is incorrect and I should have walked by faith and not by sight? Then I'll spend eternity apart from God.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

quote:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all?

Because your list doesn't represent the working definition of a Christian.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
Actually, I think we will survive. But survival is not the same as being big and loud and successful and having a lot of money and believing the myth that 'I have the right answers about everything'. Our culture is about being 'successful' - in terms of having a successful marketing methodology, and seeing growth in numbers and money as success. The conservative evangelicals have this in spades.

quote:
Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."

Evangelicals are "fixated on growth" because they genuinely believe that all Christians are called to try and bring others to faith in Christ. I don't understand how thats 'worldly', as Seeker seems to imply. Its been a pretty mainstream Christian idea since forever. At the risk of offending half the Ship, some the "growth isn't everything you know" stuff sounds suspiciously like special pleading.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
I guess, for me, as for others here, it's the person of Jesus. Even if only a fifth of what's recorded about him in the Gospels were true he would still be the most challenging human being to have lived; and his challenges would still require a response of some sort.

I guess this depends on which fifth we are talking about.

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
My brand of Christianity finds the obsession with survival truly foreign. My savior chose to die for me, and admonished His followers to not seek their lives lest they lose them. Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."

Well, that's one element of the Christian story. That savior did indeed die, but he also resurrect, and will come back in glory, and every knee shall bow before him.

That savior did indeed admonish his followers not to seek their lives lest they lose them, but he also commanded them to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them...

My point being that there are other elements to the Christian story, and that one can't legitimately just take one element and over-stress it, and ignore the others.

[ 17. June 2009, 12:43: Message edited by: §Andrew ]

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
We don't get to decide what the word means.

[snip]

If (or iff) one believes that Jesus represents a unique instance of Divine intervention, then I think the label Christian is appropriate.
This is contradictory. First you say we don't get to decide what the word means, and then you go on and give your own definition of who is a Christian and who isn't.

I was aware of this dichotomy, but didn't attempt to clarify as I thought I'd gone on long enough [Smile]

.

I am a great believer in language being a tool, not a battleground. On the one extreme, insisting on one's personal definition of a contested word in order to rule other points of view invalid is unhelpful, because it becomes all about semantics and the "right" to define the word in question. If persons exist that don't conform to my opinion, then I don't have the right to call them wrong ipso facto. I might ask them to explain themselves, as we would obviously disagree, but that's the start of a discussion, not the end of one.

On the other extreme, humpty-dumptyism ("a blank check we can fill any way we wish") is at least as bad, as it destroys meaning and the common ground that language is supposed to provide. You're right in that the word "Christian" is not arbitrarily defined, and right that the historical background of the church(es) is important in assigning meaning to that word. You're wrong to suggest that that is the end of the story, and wrong to restrict the definition of Christian to the strict orthodoxy you can no longer accept. As this thread has shown, there are plenty of people who don't fit your definition, but still self-describe as Christian.

quote:
In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.

But history hasn't come to an end, and battles are still being fought. To say that one can either engage with the Gospels through a traditionalist lens or not at all is wrong-headed. People can and do.

- Chris.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

Sure, if one feels free to define Christianity the way they want, then being a Christian is essentially deprived of any specific meaning and content. It's all about what the individual or the group wants it to be.

In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.

Sure, the label of Christian can have any meaning one wants, but the content of the ecumenical councils, the groups those councils represented and their theology are very specific and not open to the individual's tastes or opinions.

They were open to the councils tastes and opinions. Why are our tastes and opinions not valid today?

The scriptures aren't good enough? You have to resort to councils?

If the Holy Spirit worked through the councils, why can it not work through us today?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Wow, ask a question, go to bed, and wake up to 49 replies.

I want to respond to a lot of people, so pardon my upcoming post explosion. But first, to those who are confused by my OP's premise:

Timothy the Obscure said, "Those things are consistent with Jesus' message as I hear it," and Haydee said, "Nothing Jesus said is incompatible with this list."

But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then?"

Keep in mind I'm not arguing that it's a necessary cause, but I think it's more than sufficient, in logic terms.

Seb asked me, "Are you asking why believe if you're a liberal?" No, I'm not asking that. I'm asking about the eventual, potential consequences and conclusions that often arise out of the belief-path described, in part, by my OP list.

Yerevan and dj_ordinaire assume I was asking why be a Christian if you're not a conservative evangelical. That's not what I was asking, either. It's not about being a conservative evangelical, or a liberal, specifically. But as you accept or reject certain premises, the core of the argument starts to break down. My question was about how (and why) people re-bolster the argument.

Posted by A Feminine Force (# 7812) on :

I have read through the thread and would like to add a comment to my original post.

It does seem to me that Jason.I.Am's original question implies that he would like everyone whose beliefs fit the description to kindly fck off and leave the label "Christian" to those he can comfortably identify with.

Which reminds me of the other reason why I identify as a Christian: because if people like me don't own the label, then it gets to be defined in increasingly narrow terms.

Christ lives and reigns over all. That's a pretty wide net to cast, don't you think?

LAFF

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
Christianity is not a blank check we can fill any way we wish. It does have specific content, exactly because it didn't come to exist yesterday, but it's already in use for two millennia.

quote:
In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.

Yes, but you know what? That group of people changed over time. And they changed because they argued over what they meant, and over what made sense.
And they decided that some things that they thought were important were not. For example, they was a controversy early on over what the date of Easter should be. They thought that mattered. But after argument they decided that it didn't matter.

For centuries, the Oriental Orthodox churches were dismissed as orthodox for rejecting the Council of Chalcedon. Now that controversy is being revisited, even by the Eastern Orthodox, and people are coming to the conclusion that actually the division was mostly verbal.

I assume you no longer believe that Jesus dictated the Complete Works of Gregory Palamas to his disciples after the resurrection, with strict instructions not to write them down for twelve hundred years.

So do you believe Justin Martyr had any opinion on how many wills Jesus had? Of course he didn't. He neither knew nor cared. Nobody had ever asked him the question. It had never become controversial. Nobody had to think about what made sense, or what the implications would be of either answer.
And again, I don't know when the earliest mention of the use of icons by what you call traditional Christians is. I strongly suspect that it's after Constantine. Given that there are mentions of bishops apostasising by surrendering scriptures to the Romans rather than become martyrs, but no mention of bishops surrendering icons or refusing to do so, it seems clear that the practice of using icons evolved as well.
The apostles did not use icons. The apostles would have thought that the use of icons was idolatrous. But just as Peter thought eating unclean creatures was forbidden until Paul and the Holy Spirit convinced him otherwise, so the Church was convinced otherwise about icons several centuries down the line.

And like it or not, there are now lots of groups that call themselves Christian. And most of them have just as good a claim to the title as any other.

Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
To call yourself a Christian, you must also believed that Jesus was a "special case" of divine intervention.

Why?

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then"

Made up what?

Made up stories of experiences of God?

It's obviously not meant to be like the Koran and doesn't claim to be an infallible book of instruction. For goodness' sake, very orthodox Jewish people admit that there are different interpretations of the Old Testament and they've even - ironically - codified those interpretations; and these interpretations disagree with each other!

I'd have to assume that over thousands of years, the Jewish and Christian authors of these texts were all saying 'Well, we don't really believe in this God business, but let's sit down and write some texts that suggest that this non-existent God has touched us in some way.' L Ron Hubbard may have done something analogous when he invented Scientology, but I have trouble believing that such a thing happened with scripture.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
My brand of Christianity finds the obsession with survival truly foreign. My savior chose to die for me, and admonished His followers to not seek their lives lest they lose them. Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."
...That savior did indeed admonish his followers not to seek their lives lest they lose them, but he also commanded them to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them...

My point being that there are other elements to the Christian story, and that one can't legitimately just take one element and over-stress it, and ignore the others.

I agree entirely with your last point. Indeed, that is precisely the point I was trying to make. But I find it very interesting that the Church always quotes Matthew when they talk about the Great Commission. That is not at all the emphasis of Mark's Great Commission, for example. There, the emphasis is not on maximizing the number of folks who get into the club, but upon preaching the Word to all the nations and letting the chips fall where they might. Why do you suppose that Matthew is the tune that is always played?

--Tom Clune

[ 17. June 2009, 13:33: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then?"

I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.

So we don't have a divine guarantee of the inerrancy of the Bible. We get by in most of our lives without one. Instead, we assume that the Bible falls somewhere on the scale between divinely guaranteed and completely made up. We have to use our judgement as to where on that scale it falls. The question 'is it all made up?' arises. But just because the question arises doesn't mean that we're forced to reply 'yes'. We try to answer the question according to our best judgement. And my judgement of the arguments of scholars that I've read about it is that the gospels are good enough. The gospels no doubt fail by the standards of inerrancy. (Especially Matthew.) But on the whole, they're good enough.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Thanks to all of you who tried to engage with the OP. I saw several thematic responses that I want to pose some follow up questions to, en masse.

quote:
Because I believe in goodness, redemption, love, etc.

You can believe in these things without any belief in the person of Jesus whatsoever. That you may think the story of Jesus embodies these things doesn't really change that.

And this gets to a bigger point -- several of my OP bullets dealt with the complexity of moral issues, the uncertainty of Hell, and the accuracy of the Bible text. As soon as you set yourselves up to judge which passages are to be used for modeling your lives after, vs. the ones that are contextual, etc., you've recognized some other authority outside of text and tradition.

What reason do you have for calling that authority "God" or "revelation" or "the holy spirit"?

quote:
I don't know if it's not true

quote:
Experience...

So you've experienced God in your life or you know someone who has. Why shouldn't you treat that claim the same way you'd treat someone's claim that they have experienced Elvis, and they know he's still alive?

As an honest aside, it was Sam Harris's question about this particular point that got me thinking about this whole question in general. He often asks about a man who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard.

quote:
When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Source

The last reason I've heard quite a bit is

quote:
The Incarnation

I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?

If those of you who mentioned incarnation as your reason could expand on it for me, I'd appreciate it a lot.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
But history hasn't come to an end, and battles are still being fought. To say that one can either engage with the Gospels through a traditionalist lens or not at all is wrong-headed. People can and do.

Yes. But for the most part, they are unwilling to admit that they are no longer being inside traditional Christianity. They do not want to accept the fact that traditional Christianity teaches things different than what they believe.

I have no problem with people moving on and moving beyond traditional Christianity. I only have a problem with people moving on and pretending they haven't.

As long as we are open about the changes we propose and hold, I have no problem with that.

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
If the Holy Spirit worked through the councils, why can it not work through us today?

The problem with the Holy Spirit doing the talking is that it's rather unreasonable to attribute all the changes to him, because he would then contradict himself, and he would be more of a spirit of the age rather than the holy spirit.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.

I agree with that. There are two problems here though.

First, there is an issue of methodology.

While you are right, and they were indeed developing doctrine, this is not what they said they were doing. Those people and councils were very clear and adamant that what they were doing was to stay firmly in the tradition of the apostles and the previous councils.

The argument went like this:

"What we are saying is what those ancient fathers and apostles said as well, and what you are saying is not."

And they went to great pains to "show" from the earlier fathers that they [the previous fathers] held their views and not their opponents' views.

So, you are suggesting a different understanding of what they were doing, and a different way of doing that than what they used. This is a discontinuity that has no legitimacy in the traditional framework.

And secondly, there is an issue with the content of the teachings.

Even though there were differences among the fathers, there was one common body everyone agreed on. What are the practical implications of Jesus being God, issues pertaining to man's salvation and eternal loss, what the "one baptism" of the creed means, etc, the content of that faith is different than the content of the faith suggested today by many.

So, modern people also have a problem with the content of the faith, along with a problem in methodology.

Yes, the modern way you suggest might be better, and even truer, but this doesn't make it compatible with traditional Christianity!

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PhilA:
Jason I. Am,
I would reverse the question. What is the point of believing something so demonstrably untrue as the YEC position or that Scripture is infallible? You have to jump through so many hoops and ignore so much evidence in order to do so that the image of God left is one of trickery and deceit.

First off, you act as though nobody believes any of this. Many, many do. I'm not saying that should make anyone else believe it, or that it necessarily defines Christianity, but I wouldn't write it off so easily as you seem to do.

Second, if you've then decided to "believe something that is informed by our senses, reason and experience," and if you use that as a starting point, how do you get all the way back to Christianity? (Especially when you go on to say later that you think all religions have the same amount of truth?)

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"

Why believe that?

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

[*]The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.

Many creative people (artists, inventors) speak of receiving inspiration, for which they thank God. The inspiration is sometimes in complete form, the human merely records it, but USUALLY in the form of an idea to be worked out through the human creative effort. Why would the inspired Bible be different? Some bits quoted from God (and we see "thus sayth the Lord") much of it ideas received and carried to us through the human agent's personality and manner of expressing, like when you write down one of your dreams you are using YOUR words to describe the images you saw.

"Inspired" and "written by humans" are not mutually exclusive categories. An evangelical parallel might be - is someone attracted to God through a preacher's words or through the action of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it sometimes one, sometimes the other, usually both together?

quote:
[*]PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.

God is a good parent even moreso than human good parents are good. What good parent rejects his wayward children who want to return into relationship, offers only conditional forgiveness? First the kid has to die or kill something? The blood-thirsty anti-loving anti-forgiving character of the Father in PSA kept me distressed for years about who is this Christian God and how is he different from any blood-thirsty demon?

Then I discovered PSA is a minority view in Christianity. Jesus died "for" us doesn't necessarily translate to "instead of" us. There are other, gentler, more loving meanings of "for."

quote:
[QB][*]Other religions contain elements of truth{/QB]

How could they not? "Even the devil cites scripture" - if even the devil can point you to truth (intentionally or not), of course the efforts of wise people of all cultures to observe the nature of reality will result in their discovering some truth. Don't all major religions have similar ethics, for example? Does "thou shalt not steal" become untrue merely because Buddhism teachs "do not take anything from anyone unless it is willingly given"? Or is that Buddhist teaching somehow untrue and unloving merely because it uses different words to say "thou shalt not kill"?

Whether Christians can find any spiritual truth in other religions that cannot be found in Christianity is a whole different issue, but to say all other religions teach only nonsense about all spiritual matters is to demonstrate total ignorance about their teachings.

I'm trying to budget my time so I'm not responding to the rest, but yes it is possible, even common, for someone to be vibrantly God-aware, desiring to know God more and live in tune with God, delighting in God, confident that Jesus is the physically resurrected Son of God, and heaven is our destination thanks to God, without agreeing with some or all of that list.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
For me to drop the faith, I would have to reject the whole Christ/Incarnation event and come to the conclusion that he was a deluded fool. In which case, I would feel my only other option would be atheism.

Thanks. I think this is what I was getting at with my addendum of "Why would you even believe in God at that point?"

However, I don't think you'd have to believe he was a deluded fool. He could have been honestly mistaken, or people could have made up things about him. There are probably other possibilities as well.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

Missed the edit window, partly due to a slow connection here. Y'all will figure out the details I should have corrected.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.

But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.

At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?

quote:
I'm trying to decide whether you're genuinely asking why anyone should bother to believe in God at all if they subscribe to your list, as if that list is some kind of anti-creed, or if you're taking a subtle swipe at those fundamentalists who by their posts here make it look as if without their certainty about those issues there would be no religion for them to follow.

I don't think I'm doing either. I wasn't being snide and saying there are no other reasons, I was asking people what reasons they had, and was trying to ask people to not say "Because it says so in the Bible".

I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
The Incarnation
I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?

If those of you who mentioned incarnation as your reason could expand on it for me, I'd appreciate it a lot.

I didn't use the 'I'-word directly but that's part of what I meant by 'Jesus': the unique, God-breaking-into-history-by-becoming-Man event that, for me, were I to be as liberal as your OP suggests, would keep me 'Christian' as opposed to '(mono)theist'.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so".

This is just faulty reasoning. Folks who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God are no better able to answer the question "Why?" than MtM may be at answering why he believes that Christ is the son of God.

The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?" There are some beliefs that are predicated on believing other things, but for the most part belief is not a game of derivation.

That is one of many things wrong with systematic theology -- we just don't work that way, and there is nothing particularly wrong with believing things that, as expressed, appear to contradict each other. It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory. Walt Whitman seemed to have it pretty much right on that score. Or so ISTM.

--Tom Clune

[ 17. June 2009, 14:02: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

To answer the question "why", I would reply: "by choice." I choose to believe. Now we can argue the old Calvinist -v- Arminian canard about the extent to which that choice is entirely my own as opposed to the Holy Spirit guiding and directing my path, but that's essentially what it boils down to.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The OP seems to be surprised that there is any point to remaining a Christian once one stops believing the list bullet-pointed.

I see it the other way round - I am a Christian precisely because I DO NOT believe those childish statements.

If they were a description of mainstream Christianity, then I would STOP being a Christian.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
This is just faulty reasoning. Folks who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God are no better able to answer the question "Why?" than MtM may be at answering why he believes that Christ is the son of God.

It's actually rather sound reasoning, it's just the premises that are up for debate. If the Bible really is the inerrant Word of God, then certain beliefs necessarily follow.

And of course it matters why you believe something. Most people believe what they believe because they think there are good reasons to do so. As the reasons begin to disappear, so do the beliefs. Unless other reasons begin to take their place, of course.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If your reasons have anything to do with why you actually disagree with any of the above premises, I'm less interested in discussing that because it's more of the same. What other reasons are there for self-identifying as Christian, and for maintaining belief in God?

I don't remember anyone in a position of authority in my church ever asking or expecting me to believe any of the propositions you listed. How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years? What parvenu upstart has substituted these other criteria as yardsticks?

On a more positive note, one reason I remain a Christian is that, on purely material and cultural grounds, I wouldn't want to trade places with anyone outside of Christendom. The church built the civilization that we enjoy.

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

And this gets to a bigger point -- several of my OP bullets dealt with the complexity of moral issues, the uncertainty of Hell, and the accuracy of the Bible text. As soon as you set yourselves up to judge which passages are to be used for modeling your lives after, vs. the ones that are contextual, etc., you've recognized some other authority outside of text and tradition.

What reason do you have for calling that authority "God" or "revelation" or "the holy spirit"?

There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.

At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?

Based on faith?

Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).

Different conclusion, same process…

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.

Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?

I think it would be quite possible to believe that the dubious and biased New Testament has some basis in reality while not believing any traditional Christian claims. If people say, "I don't believe that the Bible is inerrant but I do think that Jesus was God because of what I read in the Bible", I think it's appropriate to ask "Why, of all things, would you believe that part of the Bible?"

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?

Spot on!

I think Christians are so focused on the beautiful things Christian theologians say about the incarnation, that they often miss the fact that the world and the human civilization went on for ages before the idea of the Incarnation was put forth!

People lived happy and fulfilling lives without imagining God could or would become Incarnate.

In my view, the Incarnation solves a problem of purely Christian origin!

quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
For me to drop the faith, I would have to reject the whole Christ/Incarnation event and come to the conclusion that he was a deluded fool. In which case, I would feel my only other option would be atheism.

The problem is that we don't have Jesus' verbatim words available. We don't have books he wrote. We have books about him, written by various groups (the canon by no means represents all groups that wrote gospels!), serving various purposes, several decades after the events.

It's not Jesus making claims about himself, but other people making claims about Jesus and putting things in his mouth in books they wrote decades after Jesus died.

Perhaps he was just a rabbi, and he knew that. Then his disciples thought he was the expected messiah. There was nothing unique in that. There were many messiahs in that period of time. Then Paul made the connection between the Jewish messiah and the savior of the cosmos, connecting Judaism with Hellenism. And someone else drew the connection between Jesus and the Word Philo was speaking about... The rest is history...

My point is that what Jesus said and what Jesus is portrayed to have said in the canonical gospels is not necessarily the same.

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?"

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. It's not silly at all to ask why one believes what he believes. There are so many religions and so many ways of life. Why choose this and not another? Why does this group believe this and that group believe that?

It's not a fight of assertions. This would make them all meaningless.

I think the real issue is the role between faith and reason. In antiquity, when the view of the world the people had was very limited, it made sense to believe in Christianity. Today it seems to many that it doesn't. And sometimes we are left with the faithful dropping the issue of reason, in favor of a faith that cannot be explained, that cannot be justified. And this is a problem.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…

I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".

quote:

quote:
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.

At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?

Based on faith?

Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).

Different conclusion, same process…

The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?

[ 17. June 2009, 14:31: Message edited by: Jason I. Am ]

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?

I think it would be quite possible to believe that the dubious and biased New Testament has some basis in reality while not believing any traditional Christian claims. If people say, "I don't believe that the Bible is inerrant but I do think that Jesus was God because of what I read in the Bible", I think it's appropriate to ask "Why, of all things, would you believe that part of the Bible?"

Why, of all things, do you believe the Bible is inerrant?

Posted by fireforgedxtian (# 14514) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:

quote:
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.

At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?

Based on faith?

Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).

Different conclusion, same process…
The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?

Essentially, yes.

There's nothing sillier about believing the Nicene Creed a priori than believing that the Bible is inerrant a priori and deriving the creed from there.

Edit: It might be more convenient to have "the bible is inerrant" as one's a priori (since it's arguably more concrete than an ephemereal "belief system"), but it's just as silly (insofar as silly is an appropriate term to use).

[ 17. June 2009, 14:44: Message edited by: fireforgedxtian ]

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
Why, of all things, do you believe the Bible is inerrant?

I don't.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years?

The creeds do not stand on themselves. They come with tons of theological baggage. What did the "one baptism" in the creed mean to those that wrote the creed? Why does it remit sins? What is the reason for our needing remission through baptism in the first place? What does it mean for Christ to come "for our salvation"?

And so on and so forth.

The creeds are not blank cheques, but they have a very specific content. So, no, I don't agree that just reciting the creed makes one part of the same group with those that created the creed.

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?"
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. It's not silly at all to ask why one believes what he believes. There are so many religions and so many ways of life. Why choose this and not another? Why does this group believe this and that group believe that?

It's not a fight of assertions. This would make them all meaningless.

I think the real issue is the role between faith and reason. In antiquity, when the view of the world the people had was very limited, it made sense to believe in Christianity. Today it seems to many that it doesn't. And sometimes we are left with the faithful dropping the issue of reason, in favor of a faith that cannot be explained, that cannot be justified. And this is a problem.

I agree that the role of faith and reason is a key issue, but I don’t see it as either/or. Even reason/logic requires a basic set of premises that cannot be explained rationally/logically, some fundamental beliefs about how the world works, on which you construct a logical framework.

Examining why you believe something is good up to a point, but at some point all you can say is ‘I believe because I believe’. That applies to the most rational atheist as much as anyone else.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".

No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?

Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.

Posted by fireforgedxtian (# 14514) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years?
The creeds do not stand on themselves. They come with tons of theological baggage. What did the "one baptism" in the creed mean to those that wrote the creed? Why does it remit sins? What is the reason for our needing remission through baptism in the first place? What does it mean for Christ to come "for our salvation"?

And so on and so forth.

The creeds are not blank cheques, but they have a very specific content. So, no, I don't agree that just reciting the creed makes one part of the same group with those that created the creed.

Oh goody -- the battle between ideas and the language used to express them.

The point of having a "creed" and not a "library of ideas" is that the language used in the creed is sufficient to communicate the necessary ideas behind it. Otherwise, they could have said Yabba-Dabba-Do 25 times in a row (or indeed any other mnemonic device) and simply taught the catechumens "The first 'Yabba' signifies our belief in One God...," etc.

[ 17. June 2009, 15:02: Message edited by: fireforgedxtian ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
the world and the human civilization went on for ages before the idea of the Incarnation was put forth!

People lived happy and fulfilling lives without imagining God could or would become Incarnate.

Yes, and human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.

Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?

Posted by Ynot (# 14620) on :

The OP list describes me fairly accurately and the questions “Why do I still stay a Christian?” and “Why believe in God at all?” I have thought about often, over most of my life. These are my conclusions as of today –

Why God?
• Quantum theory is the best we have concerning matters tiny. Newtonian physics is the best we have concerning things on earth. The theories of relativity are the best we have concerning the universe. God provides the best theory we have concerning the creation of the universe and things beyond, and the Bible provides the best clues (perhaps the only clues) I’ve come across regarding the nature of God.
• The universe starting with a Big Bang I can understand as a theory, but an atheist theory of a universe emerging from nothing and a mythical God of human creation strikes me as silly, I just can’t get my head round it.

Why stay Christian?
• I was born C of E, educated C of E, and grew to love C of E literature, architecture, music, art and culture. No reason to believe God was a Christian but good enough to keep me on board.
• English translations of the New Testament give me good reason to stay Christian.
• Yes, I’m a ‘cherry picking’ Christian – I pick the bits I like, and I push aside the bits that don’t fit in with my prejudice. But isn’t every Christian a ‘cherry picker’?
• I didn’t go to theological college. I don’t understand the detail of the Christian faith, so I’m not qualified to judge the merits of one theory against another. All I can do is take a simplistic overview, and go where my instincts lead me.
• I come into contact with lots of people either atheist or faithless. A few have thought about, and deliberately chosen their viewpoints, but most use lack of faith in an established religion as an excuse for a morality of their own invention, to their own standards. I don’t want to be a member of this club.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".

No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.[/qb

What do you mean by that? If it's not about reason, why don't you accept, by faith, all of the Bible, word for word? If you do choose to think about it and decide which parts are relevant and which aren't, then it is, in fact, about reason, at least in part.

Where that line is drawn is pretty much the thrust of this whole thread, for me.

quote:
Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.

So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by fireforgedxtian:
The point of having a "creed" and not a "library of ideas" is that the language used in the creed is sufficient to communicate the necessary ideas behind it.

That it was sufficient then, when it was composed, and inside the framework under which it was composed does not mean that it is sufficient now, unless the framework remains the same.

Moreover, the creed is not self-explanatory. It was intended to make sense within a particular framework; it was not an intellectual achievement that was supposed to make sense in all frameworks at all subsequent ages.

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?

The dignity of the physical world and of man can well be part of humanism. True, humanism can be Christian, but it's found outside Christianity as well.

And the converse is true. Lots of anti-world and inhuman views have been part of Christianity and characterized many Christians.

Nobody has a monopoly on supporting the dignity of the world nor on opposing the dignity of the world.

quote:
Originally posted by Ynot:
Why God?
• Quantum theory is the best we have concerning matters tiny. Newtonian physics is the best we have concerning things on earth. The theories of relativity are the best we have concerning the universe. God provides the best theory we have concerning the creation of the universe and things beyond, and the Bible provides the best clues (perhaps the only clues) I’ve come across regarding the nature of God.

It's one thing to say that God explains much, and another thing to say that the Christian version of God explains much.

Often people confuse between the two, and assume Christianity has a monopoly on the divine. This, however, is not the case.

God can well be the explanation to the religious experience of people from all cultures all over the globe and throughout the ages, and to the existence and emergence of all the diverse life forms that exist, but this does not mean that an all-loving all-powerful personal God who has a Son and a Holy Spirit that sends his Son to become human in order to save mankind from the Fall of an imaginary first couple is a good explanation.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so".

They merely defer your "but why" question, they don't clearly answer it at all. Believing that the Bible is inerrant is still more than worthy of a "but why?" as well.

quote:
You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.

At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?

1) I don't justify my faith based on the Bible. Or not solely on the Bible, anyway.

2) I base my faith on revelation, which certainly incorporates the witness of the writers of Scripture but is not limited to them. I've learnt more about God, Jesus and Christianity from devout members of my Church than I ever have from reading the Bible.

quote:
I wasn't being snide and saying there are no other reasons, I was asking people what reasons they had, and was trying to ask people to not say "Because it says so in the Bible".

I think people have done you proud on that front.

quote:
I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.

I don't push the brake. I question everything I believe, and guard constantly against becoming certain of those beliefs (I'm only human, and more than capable of error!)

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".

No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.[/qb
What do you mean by that? If it's not about reason, why don't you accept, by faith, all of the Bible, word for word? If you do choose to think about it and decide which parts are relevant and which aren't, then it is, in fact, about reason, at least in part.

Where that line is drawn is pretty much the thrust of this whole thread, for me.

quote:
Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.
So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.

But as Marvin the Martian pointed out, inerrancy also leads to the question ‘but why?’. The same with atheism. We all reach a point where the answer to 'why' is 'just because I do', we all have faith in something.

I don’t accept all of the Bible, literally and word for word, because I see internal inconsistencies. But I do see ‘truth’ in what I read when I see themes that fit with my experience of the world.

We can test whatever worldview we’re born into against our experiences, against what we learn from others, and from ‘inspiration’, however you conceptualise that. And then we have to find our own understanding of foundational beliefs, which will probably change as we have further experiences and learn more.

Posted by fireforgedxtian (# 14514) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.

There are always reasons. They may not be useful for convincing someone else, but they're always there. For some people, it might be that the little voice in the back of their head that tells them "this is true," or "that is false," happens to tell them that Christianity is true. For others it might be that they knew/saw a Christian, thought to themselves, "I like the way she seems to be living, let me try that." But there is no trump card. If you find yourself torn between wanting to believe and not-believe, then there's nothing anyone can say that will be guaranteed to flip your switch. That's a place you have to come to, and a choice you have to make.

If the belief in an inerrant scripture and/or fear of hell was the only thing "keeping you in the fold," so to speak, then it's unsurprising that you're finding yourself re-examining your beliefs. But for many of us, Christianity (or belief in God) aren't the "final straws," rather they were the first straws -- and any flirtations (if any) with inerrancy, psa, hell, gay-bashing, etc. were simply experiments in looking for a proper expression of that underlying belief.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
They merely defer your "but why" question, they don't clearly answer it at all. Believing that the Bible is inerrant is still more than worthy of a "but why?" as well.

Possibly. But here's the question, before we get too far off course:

1) What authority do you use when deciding if pieces of theology or scripture or revelation are "really from God*" or not?

2) Why does that authority accept miracles, resurrection, and other fantastic events that most people here still claim to believe on little to no evidence?

*substitute "really from God" with "true", "believable", etc.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
I don’t accept all of the Bible, literally and word for word, because I see internal inconsistencies. But I do see ‘truth’ in what I read when I see themes that fit with my experience of the world.

If you don't mind me honestly asking, which experiences of the world have led you to see 'truth' in the story of Jesus coming back from the dead?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?" There are some beliefs that are predicated on believing other things, but for the most part belief is not a game of derivation.

This is quite the wrong way around.
The basic question is 'what is the case?'

From 'what is the case?' we move on to 'why do you believe that?' or 'how do you know?' These are the questions that open the distinction between 'what is the case' and 'what I believe is the case'. We ask somebody to give their testimony to what is the case. When we ask them to give testimony, we take what they say to be the case. Only once we have asked whether their testimony is reliable, do we start to treat it as a fact about them.

So we move from 'what is the case?' through 'why do you believe that?' to 'what do you believe?'

The child's question 'why?', far from being silly, is vital in order to understand.

quote:
That is one of many things wrong with systematic theology -- we just don't work that way, and there is nothing particularly wrong with believing things that, as expressed, appear to contradict each other. It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory.

It is impossible to state or believe things that actually contradict each other. By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing. If they are only apparent contradictories, then in order to be understood it needs to become clear that somehow your apparent contradictories are not actually contradictory.

What cannot be meaningfully asserted by you to other people cannot be meaningfully believed by you either. Wittgenstein showed us that much.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
...human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.

Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?

Aside: I'd love for you to start a thread about that, because I don't see how the two are even remotely connected.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.

It depends what you mean by foundational. Our initial beliefs are the result of our experience as a child of becoming aware of the environment in which we exist. They very soon become tangled in the culturally-influenced interpretations our carers and others place on those experiences, and only then lead to the kinds of beliefs I think you mean.

I've found that as I've hit problems with the various cultural beliefs I've adopted during my first thirty or forty years of growing up, it's only been the process of unlearning those interpretations, of returning to verifiable reality as the basis for my beliefs, that has allowed me to continue to have confidence in my capacity to make sense of the world.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.
And they went to great pains to "show" from the earlier fathers that they [the previous fathers] held their views and not their opponents' views.

So, you are suggesting a different understanding of what they were doing, and a different way of doing that than what they used. This is a discontinuity that has no legitimacy in the traditional framework.

When you argue like this, you're presupposing the truth of what you argue. That is, you're assuming that in order to accept traditional Christianity at all we have to accept all of it, including this methodology. But that's precisely where we disagree with you.

And that's granting that the Fathers gave this methodology the degree of prominence that you give it.
I believe that it's part of Eastern Orthodox theology to say that what is done in worship is of primary importance, rather than what is said in books of theology. Theology results from practice and is governed by practice. So if the Fathers argue by one method, but say they are arguing by another, then it is what they do that takes precedence and defines what is traditional Christianity, not what they say they are doing.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
To call yourself a Christian, you must also believed that Jesus was a "special case" of divine intervention.
Why?

Because this seems to me to be a unique identifying point to Christianity. Without Jesus, there is no Christianity, and without some "above and beyond" to his position he just becomes another moral teacher - you can find the golden rule elsewhere (everywhere, in fact). Your position may well differ: I'm really just saying what I think it would take for me to self-describe as Christian. Unfortunately, the less conventional your usage of the word, the more the burden is on you to explain yourself.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"
Why believe that?

Why indeed. My point was that, personally, I couldn't call myself a Christian if I didn't (it's probably the major point I struggle with, and usually lose). But I can see that if one did believe this, and furthermore believed on the basis on the (non-infallible) Biblical evidence that Jesus was a case in point, then one would be/remain a Christian.

Your point (made elsewhere) "why believe the Bible on this, if you don't think it's infallible?" is a good one, but I think it's a bit black & white to say one either believes all of the Bible or none of it. You will doubtless say that to believe the least "likely" bit of it seems to preclude disbelieving any of it. I find words like "likely" or "improbable" to be weasly in this context, as they carry an a priori judgement of what is or isn't likely, which is very likely to be naturalistic. The argument becomes circular at that point, as you disprove miracle accounts by assuming miracles never happen.

I'm no expert in faith, but ISTM that part of the point is to suspend judgement on what is "likely" based on trust that God (what/whoever hesheit is) is capable of making unlikely things happen. Circular as well, but a different circle.

- Chris.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
...human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.

Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?

Aside: I'd love for you to start a thread about that, because I don't see how the two are even remotely connected.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But here's the question, before we get too far off course:

1) What authority do you use when deciding if pieces of theology or scripture or revelation are "really from God*" or not?

*substitute "really from God" with "true", "believable", etc.

My own (albeit God-given and [hopefully] Spirit-driven) conscience. Which is why I gleefully proclaim the possibility that my belief is in error.

And in the end, can any of us really say we do differently? Even those who delegate all moral decisions to the Bible are subject to the same fallibility of decision and interpretation as me. As, for that matter, were the writers of the Bible in the first place.

quote:
2) Why does that authority accept miracles, resurrection, and other fantastic events that most people here still claim to believe on little to no evidence?

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Jason, than are dreamt of in your philosophies [Biased]

. Or to put it another way, why wouldn't it?

But all of this is pretty peripheral. At the end of the day I choose to believe, and that's really all there is to it.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It is impossible to state or believe things that actually contradict each other. By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing. If they are only apparent contradictories, then in order to be understood it needs to become clear that somehow your apparent contradictories are not actually contradictory.

What cannot be meaningfully asserted by you to other people cannot be meaningfully believed by you either. Wittgenstein showed us that much.

There are so many confused and false assertions in your short post that I have decided to limit my response to just the above. I think it may reflect the underlying problem with your entire post.

First, you confuse the ability of a natural language to express something with the limitation of a formal system with respect to inference rules. The notion that the two conform to the same set of constraints is truly bizarre for anyone living after Frege.

You compound the strangeness by including what I presume is a reference to the closing of the Tractatus. But Wittgenstein himself, being a philosopher, was unable to remain silent. The entirely of the Philosophical Investigations is an attempt to keep talking after reaching the impasse you seem to think is final.

The reality that Wittgenstein seems to have come to is an appreciation of the plasticity of natural language. We can express things in it that we have a very hard time unpacking.

But that is a limitation of formal tools, not of natural language. So we find ourselves unable to find any "essential" meaning of game, to take his famous example.

This does not make "game" meaningless, and it does not mean we need to analyze harder. It means, as W properly indicated, that we need to learn to stop doing the idiotic analytical enterprise.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Evangelicals are "fixated on growth" because they genuinely believe that all Christians are called to try and bring others to faith in Christ. I don't understand how thats 'worldly', as Seeker seems to imply. Its been a pretty mainstream Christian idea since forever. At the risk of offending half the Ship, some the "growth isn't everything you know" stuff sounds suspiciously like special pleading.

At the risk of offending the other half of the Ship....

Again, personally speaking, I believe (although I can't know until the crunch) that my faith will help me on my deathbed. I don't believe the so-called-knowing-that-passes-for-faith will help me or anyone else on their deathbed. I fully accept that many people who call themselves 'Evangelicals' have that kind of faith; but I doubt that many of them think it has anything to do with all the trappings of 'success' that Evangelical churches claim prove that they are right and I am wrong.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
The creeds do not stand on themselves. They come with tons of theological baggage. What did the "one baptism" in the creed mean to those that wrote the creed? Why does it remit sins? What is the reason for our needing remission through baptism in the first place? What does it mean for Christ to come "for our salvation"?

And so on and so forth.

The creeds are not blank cheques, but they have a very specific content. So, no, I don't agree that just reciting the creed makes one part of the same group with those that created the creed.

Thank goodness the creeds are not blank cheques. If they were, all we'd really need would be the clause "I believe one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church," which would bind one to innumerable ideas brought in through the back door.

Of course my brief post was an oversimplification. There are other points in the Lambeth Quadrilateral: scripture, sacraments, historic episcopate. In general, we hardly turn our backs on tradition.

I absorbed the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement in my youth by osmosis-- I can't say now from what source(s), but probably not from preaching, Sunday school, or confirmation class in my parish. One could assume from the environment that this were the only possible explanation. It is an arguable view, even on the part of Anglicans (C.S. Lewis seemed pretty comfortable with it); but it is not the only one consistent with the creeds, as witness the fact that you do not hold it (right?). It's a relief latterly to discover that at least one venerable alternative exists which is also more attractive.

Likewise, one can't deny that many of one's fellow churchmen consider homosexual relations to be inherently sinful; but I have a bone to pick with any who call this a "basic teaching." Historical evidence and practice don't support that emphasis. Is it recited in initiatory rites? No. Is it repeated in the Sunday liturgy? No. Is it somehow implicit in appreciating what the liturgy is about? No. When one considers how many other tenets are presented in these situations, one wonders how anyone who insists that something unmentioned is "basic" defines that word.

We must note that, although the creeds mention scripture, they do not commit themselves to "inerrancy" or the view of divine inspiration that underlies it. We can conclude from Saint Augustine's comments, probably directed at the young-earthers of his own day, that he found a literal reading of the Genesis creation story just as absurd as we do. So the idea that everyone believed the Bible word-for-word in the good-old-days, when they had "that old-time religion", and any more nuanced reading were just so much modernist revisionism and backsliding, presupposes a general lack of respect for history.

Furthermore, many of those who insist on the points in the O.P.'s list reject the creedally affirmed efficacy of Baptism in any form.

Posted by Ynot (# 14620) on :

quote:
Yes, and human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.

And then, around 70 years ago in the bosoms of 'World war' and 'Nuclear brinkmanship', it really took off!!!

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?

I think it would be quite possible to believe that the dubious and biased New Testament has some basis in reality while not believing any traditional Christian claims. If people say, "I don't believe that the Bible is inerrant but I do think that Jesus was God because of what I read in the Bible", I think it's appropriate to ask "Why, of all things, would you believe that part of the Bible?"

Well, from the China book, I am learning some things about the history of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, and other secular ideas that might have some slight effect on my evaluation of ideas from those sources.

For one thing, the author points out that the Chinese practice of female footbinding has probably caused more pain to more people than any other single practice. The practice was pretty much entirely secular. So much for religion is the root of all evil... Or even for religion is the root of all pointless evil... The history of China doesn't incline one to believe the more optimistic claims of secularists.

Do I base moral decisions on the gospels? Well, yes. But then I base them on reality outside the gospels as well. I interpret reality through the gospels and the gospels through reality.

And just how dubious are the gospels? Well, this book argues that eyewitness testimony was accepted as the basis of teaching among early Christians. And it argues that the canonical gospels (except Matthew) intended to be understood as based on eyewitness claims. There was no role for anonymous communal memory as was widely thought in the middle of the twentieth century. Based on my evaluation of the arguments in the book, I think we can say that the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels are what he actually taught, even if they're not word-for-word what he actually said.

Now, of course, the basis of belief in the Incarnation can never be derived from reports of what Jesus said and did. That kind of claim has to be based upon reasoning about the significance of what Jesus said and did. We need philosophical-style reasoning about historical data, not history itself.
The thing is not so much that the Incarnation is just a nice idea. It's that it's a nice idea that turns out to fertile of further ideas. And some of those ideas, derived from the Incarnation and the Trinity, turn out to be used by the critics of those ideas.

Because we aren't talking about this or that fact in the world. We're talking about how the world as a whole can be understood.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I believe that it's part of Eastern Orthodox theology to say that what is done in worship is of primary importance, rather than what is said in books of theology.

Arguments from liturgical practice took very little space during the theological controversies. For the most part, the discussion revolved around what passages of fathers more ancient to the ones of the debate actually meant when they wrote what they wrote in their works.

Sure, after a couple of centuries when Orthodox lands were occupied and education dropped to near zero, liturgy was the most important thing that was left to the faithful, but during the theological controversies it was always what the previous fathers wrote that was at the center of the debate.

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory.

I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to engage in the philosophical discussion that followed that, but I want to make a short comment about it.

In my view this is just one step away from "I believe because it is absurd". And I find both approaches, believing things that are contradictory and believing despite it not making sense, to be problematic.

The way I see it, it's a sign that something goes wrong with a certain faith, when its believers believe things that are contradictory or say they believe despite what reason might say.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But all of this is pretty peripheral. At the end of the day I choose to believe, and that's really all there is to it.

In this case one could have well chosen to believe Mohammad, or the Buddha, or Dawkins or whoever.

If it's as arbitrary as that, then it doesn't make sense at all to believe. And it doesn't make sense to expect others to believe as you do. It doesn't make sense to go making disciples or baptizing the nations or whatever.

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Thank goodness the creeds are not blank cheques. If they were, all we'd really need would be the clause "I believe one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church," which would bind one to innumerable ideas brought in through the back door.

But you do have that clause in the Creed.

And this phrase, the "one holy catholic apostolic church" of the creed had a specific meaning in the minds of those that composed it and promulgated it...

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

(replying to Ynot)

Yeah, complete with a horrible slaughter on the Feast of the Transfiguration 1945, and a later proposal on the part of some knucklehead in the Pentagon to name a nuclear submarine the Corpus Christi.

Your mileage may vary, but to repeat: all things considered, I'm thankful (i.e., thankful to God) to be alive here and now rather than as a random person at any other place or time outside of Christendom. And I daresay that if the world does go boom someday, a devout Christian is particularly unlikely to be the one who pushes the button.

[ 17. June 2009, 16:43: Message edited by: Alogon ]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory.
I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to engage in the philosophical discussion that followed that, but I want to make a short comment about it.

In my view this is just one step away from "I believe because it is absurd". And I find both approaches, believing things that are contradictory and believing despite it not making sense, to be problematic.

The way I see it, it's a sign that something goes wrong with a certain faith, when its believers believe things that are contradictory or say they believe despite what reason might say.

I can certainly appreciate your discomfiture. But things really aren't that opaque. It's just a philosophical way of saying "Now we see through a glass darkly." We grasp something important, and express it in whatever way we can. Words are as analog as the rest of the world, so we grab onto whatever end they present and make do.

I first was struck by this when I was a young man. A recent aquaintence was trying to differentiate two lifestyles, and called one "AM" and the other "FM." Now, this had nothing to do with encoding information in radio waves. It was, however, quite expressive. We have this strange tool, language, and use it in all kinds of ways that defy extrapolation -- we can't quite predict what the next sentnece will be, or how it will manage to capture what we need to communicate.

When we then try to apply the rules of formal systems to such a beast, we are really diving into the deep end of the pool. If you step back and think about it, it is kind of strange that we ever imagined that logic would apply to language at all.

I imagine that, when the definitive history of linguistic philosophy is finally written, we will learn that this was just another error of over-reaching that we inherited from the amazing success that physics had in making their subject fit into mathematics. But that is a huge tangent...

--Tom Clune

[ 17. June 2009, 17:14: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
this phrase, the "one holy catholic apostolic church" of the creed had a specific meaning in the minds of those that composed it and promulgated it...

Of course. But it does not follow that every individual who lacks the intelligence, scholarship, and whatever else may be required to read their minds is outside the church.

Your point can be said of every word in the Creed, e.g. "Father." For everyone who has lived for years with a father, the first-hand experience crucially shapes the meaning of that word. It may be inevitable that someone whose own father was unremittingly stern, punitive, even cruel will grow up with a mental image of God the Father as being likewise. (Father's Day is approaching. An appropriate sermon might discuss this cosmic significance of a father's role in instilling either true or false pictures of God in his children by means of how he lives with them.) This is one reason why creeds can go only so far in nailing down beliefs held in common, but isn't it better to live with the situation, which is probably not as problematic as it appears, than to pile still more verbiage onto one's shoulders?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

I believe that one of the measures of the quality of a thread is the diversity of the people upset by it. Well done, Jason. [Big Grin]

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.

As I moved from the conservative religion of my upbringing and early adulthood toward the more liberal beliefs in your list, I experienced the momentum of which you speak. I sensed that the path led somewhere other than Christianity. I intentionally "pushed the brakes" for several years out of sheer unwillingness to go where I was headed. At the time I called it caution, but now I see that it was based on fear, and maybe a little sentimentality.

Eventually, the discomfort caused by my cognitive dissonance exceeded the discomfort caused by my fear, and I let up on the brakes. I'm still not sure where the road ends, but I'm not going to pretend anymore that I'm not going anywhere at all.

Posted by malik3000 (# 11437) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
[QUOTE] This thread is confusing me a bit, as there seems to be an underlying assumption that Christianity = conservative evangelicalism. The OP could be paraphrased as "You're not a conservative evangelical, so why are you a Christian?"

Yes! Thanks, Yerevan, this was the thought nagging at me as I read this thread. Such phenomena as biblical literalism in the face of contrary verifiable facts, and PSA, et al., have made their presence felt only in the last 1/4 of Christianity's approximately 2000 year history.

Not to say this is not a good thread, as indeed illustrated by the diversity rof responses

[ 17. June 2009, 18:08: Message edited by: malik3000 ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
The dignity of the physical world and of man can well be part of humanism. True, humanism can be Christian, but it's found outside Christianity as well.

Certainly it is found outside of Christianity nowadays, but where? Don't such values in practice have Christian (as well as some ancient Greek) parentage just as science does? It appears to be a western phenomenon.

quote:
And the converse is true. Lots of anti-world and inhuman views have been part of Christianity and characterized many Christians.

Yes, notwithstanding all the strenuous efforts of the church to discourage gnosticism-- which efforts I trust the Eastern Orthodox particularly appreciate. It seems to be a hardy perennial, as Phillip Lee has elaborated.

quote:
Nobody has a monopoly on supporting the dignity of the world nor on opposing the dignity of the world.

Does any other major religion support the dignity of the world as strongly as Christianity does? Perhaps only Judaism comes close.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I believe that one of the measures of the quality of a thread is the diversity of the people upset by it.

What leads you to think people are upset? Challenged, I'm sure, but I haven't read anything that made me think someone was upset.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.
As I moved from the conservative religion of my upbringing and early adulthood toward the more liberal beliefs in your list, I experienced the momentum of which you speak. I sensed that the path led somewhere other than Christianity. I intentionally "pushed the brakes" for several years out of sheer unwillingness to go where I was headed. At the time I called it caution, but now I see that it was based on fear, and maybe a little sentimentality.

Eventually, the discomfort caused by my cognitive dissonance exceeded the discomfort caused by my fear, and I let up on the brakes. I'm still not sure where the road ends, but I'm not going to pretend anymore that I'm not going anywhere at all. [/QB]

How about some defense of this? The passage from conservative/evangelical to liberal (what happened to the moderates of the OP?) to agnostic or otherwise non-Christian seems inevitable to the two of you, but that isn't self-evident to me. Quite clearly a lot of people here haven't had your experience, and I doubt they're all standing on the brakes -- most of them seem to have comfortably come to a rest and aren't barely holding themselves back from careening down the hill.

So why are you guys on a hill that others aren't?

[ 17. June 2009, 19:10: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Certainly it is found outside of Christianity nowadays, but where?

You haven't heard spiritual figures of other religions speak about the dignity of man and the dignity of the world?

quote:
Yes, notwithstanding all the strenuous efforts of the church to discourage gnosticism-- which efforts I trust the Eastern Orthodox particularly appreciate. It seems to be a hardy perennial, as Phillip Lee has elaborated.

I think you have misunderstood.

It's not only some gnostic groups and platonists who thought the world was bad.

Christians believed that as well.

The difference in that debate was that Christians postulated that the world was created good by God. Not that it was good the way it was.

For Christianity this is a fallen world.

Do you think the Orthodox left the cities and went into the desert because they viewed creation to be good? All this austere ascesis Orthodoxy prescribes, is it because creation is very good?

Of course not.

It was very good once, but it has fallen. Now it's a fallen creation, a fallen world, a fallen humanity. In need of the washing of regeneration. And exorcisms. And sanctifications.

Don't fall into the trap of assuming all those theological phantasies about how great the world is and how great man is ever applied to average people! This isn't the historical teaching of those ancient orthodox Christians.

In fact, I will revert your argument and say that it is Christianity that holds the world in a very low view that it took a lot of movements antithetical to Christianity for the Western world to reach to the sublime values it has reached today.

[ 17. June 2009, 19:14: Message edited by: §Andrew ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
There are so many confused and false assertions in your short post that I have decided to limit my response to just the above. I think it may reflect the underlying problem with your entire post.

So what if they're false assertions? That doesn't mean that they're not true does it? [Razz]

I'll concede that my post was rather compressed. And perhaps I shouldn't have thrown in the reference to Wittgenstein. Still I'm not sure that the amount of condescension in your post, or the post that I was originally replying to, ("silly kid's game") was altogether justified by the necessities of your argument.

By the way, the reference to Wittgenstein was to his private language argument. Do try to get these things right. And I think you may have missed the allusion to J.L. Austin in my post. [Smile]

Hmm... if I'm alluding to J.L. Austin, maybe I'm not coming from where you think I'm coming from.
For example, I kept talking about 'assertions'. you can't make assertions in a formal system. An assertion is a speech-act; assertion is a type of illocutionary force. Likewise, 'testimony' is a form of language in use. There's not such thing as testimony in a formal system.
Gosh! Maybe you're arguing against a straw man? Do you think that's possible?

Terms like 'true' and 'false' do not only apply to formal systems. They also apply to natural languages. As you demonstrate by calling the assertions in my post 'confused and false', terms that you shouldn't really have any use for if what you're saying holds water. Indeed, 'contradictory' is a term from natural language as well. People needed to use these terms well before anyone tried to use a formal system.

You say that natural language can express far more than we can unpack. But you're wrong to imply that whereof we cannot unpack, thereof we must be silent. There are more forms of explication than unpacking.

I'm not asking you to consider the properties of formal systems. I am asking you to reflect upon the basic activities of believing or disbelieving what other people tell us, of disagreeing with other people, and so on. These are examples of language in use, not formal systems.

For example, a real situation of language in use.

Parent: Where are your shoes?
Child: Upstairs. (Parent starts upstairs.) Or downstairs.
The child, by conveying contradictory information, has succeeded in not conveying any information at all.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Wow, ask a question, go to bed, and wake up to 49 replies.

I want to respond to a lot of people, so pardon my upcoming post explosion. But first, to those who are confused by my OP's premise:

Timothy the Obscure said, "Those things are consistent with Jesus' message as I hear it," and Haydee said, "Nothing Jesus said is incompatible with this list."

But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then?"

I didn't say "read," I said "hear." And I used the present tense. As George Fox said, "Christ is come to teach his people himself" through the Inward Light. The book is secondary and supplemental, testimony to the source, but not the source itself--that's the Spirit.

So I guess the most direct answer to the OP is that the Bible is not the foundation of my faith--the Light is.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

Do you think the Orthodox left the cities and went into the desert because they viewed creation to be good? All this austere ascesis Orthodoxy prescribes, is it because creation is very good?

Many of them went into the desert for the same reason Our Lord did: they wanted a challenge, to do battle with the devil as spiritual warriors or athletes. He was felt to inhabit the wilderness particularly. What does this motive imply about the desert's being either better or worse per se than the city? If anything, it suggests that people tend to become lazy and sloppy in cities precisely because they are so good.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

I know very secular people who go to wilderness areas entirely to get back to nature (which is as close as they care to get to words like "creation"), not to escape it.

Asceticism is a way to get back to the realness of reality. It's hard to appreciate the food you have when it's there every single time you get even mildly hungry.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Terms like 'true' and 'false' do not only apply to formal systems. They also apply to natural languages. As you demonstrate by calling the assertions in my post 'confused and false', terms that you shouldn't really have any use for if what you're saying holds water. Indeed, 'contradictory' is a term from natural language as well. People needed to use these terms well before anyone tried to use a formal system.

...

I'm not asking you to consider the properties of formal systems. I am asking you to reflect upon the basic activities of believing or disbelieving what other people tell us, of disagreeing with other people, and so on. These are examples of language in use, not formal systems.

For example, a real situation of language in use.

Parent: Where are your shoes?
Child: Upstairs. (Parent starts upstairs.) Or downstairs.
The child, by conveying contradictory information, has succeeded in not conveying any information at all.

I did not say, nor do I believe, that "true" and "false" are inapplicable to natural language. For what it's worth, they aren't particularly applicable to formal languages. You have that exactly backward. What formal language systems do is preserve truth value through transformations within that system. That is, they provide rules for writing WFFs that have the same truth value as the WFFs from which they were derived. What that truth value is doesn't matter to the formal system.

WRT formal systems, I was responding to this in your OP:

quote:
By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing.

That is an artifact of formal systems only. It is not the case that, from the child saying "Upstairs." "Downstairs." we have demonstrated anything about, say, trees falling in the woods. Contradictions in natural language are at the very least self-limiting because natual language is not devoid of content. We derive new sentences in natural language in a completely different way than we do in formal systems. And, however we derive them, they need not be truth preserving -- as we all have painfully demonstrated to ourselves in our own lives.

Second, it is far from obvious to me that the child in your example is failing to communicate anything. The most likely thing, to my mind, is "I don't know." But it is certainly not the case that this linguistic construct is meaningless, let alone that the truth of every natural language sentence follows from its utterance.

--Tom Clune

[ 17. June 2009, 20:12: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Lou Poulain (# 1587) on :

I'm late to the thread and confess that I've not read all three pages of posts, but I find the question compelling.

I experienced a sea-change in my life between my 50th and 60th birthdays. I had become thoroughly unhappy and disillusioned in my RC parish, but I continued to attend Sunday eucharist weekly. I began to read Spong, Armstrong,Borg, etc. (you'all know the list) and then finally Don Cupitt (Sea of Faith and Taking Leave of God). Intellectually I thought I had swung to the "non-theist" camp. I left the Roman Catholic Church and found myself in a center-left Episcopal parish The thing that swung me back is an experienced I've tried to describe as being in a state of intellectual doubt but emotional/physical faith. Dispite all the intellectual turmoil I discovered that I absolutely love Jesus. The Jesus Seminar synthesis became increasingly unsatisfactory and I found myself much more comfortable with traditionalal credal language to describe my / our understanding of Christ. I once told my priest that even though my mind doubted, my body always believed. I think that actually comes close to stating the truth for me. I don't think FAITH is reduceable to intellectual assents to doctrinal assertions. Faith is a STANCE toward God and the world. I never lost that. I temporarily lost the tradition, but found I have regained it, and I treasure it deeply. I have a friend who's mid-life faith crisis paralleled mine. The difference was that he really did lose that core faith, that stance toward God and world, and he did the intellectually honest thing and became a Unitarian Universalist. For him, it's important to "not to have to believe anything." That doesn't work for me. No relationship with Jesus, and the UU is the most attractive alternative.

One problem with the list in the OP is there is an implicit assumption that "liberals" think one way and "conservatives" think another. I would be really surprised if I learned I was the only person on this board who favors gay marriage, but considers fidelity in relationship to be a key value, and sees casual sex as a distructive force in people's lives. Liberal or conservative? Personally I've come to loath those two words.

Short answer to the OP question: Jesus.

Lou

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I believe that one of the measures of the quality of a thread is the diversity of the people upset by it.
What leads you to think people are upset? Challenged, I'm sure, but I haven't read anything that made me think someone was upset.

Ruth, the fact that you're pretty much always upset might impair your ability to discern the subtleties of the issue. [Biased]

quote:
The passage from conservative/evangelical to liberal (what happened to the moderates of the OP?) to agnostic or otherwise non-Christian seems inevitable to the two of you, but that isn't self-evident to me. Quite clearly a lot of people here haven't had your experience, and I doubt they're all standing on the brakes -- most of them seem to have comfortably come to a rest and aren't barely holding themselves back from careening down the hill.

So why are you guys on a hill that others aren't?

That's pretty much a restatement of my original question. To me, it seems inevitable. As of yet, I've only heard reasons like "I believe what I believe just because I do, and it's no worse than believing in inerrancy" or "I believe because I experience God, and somehow that experience convinces me specifically that the Christian story is true". Forgive my arrogance when I say that both of these positions are two feet slamming on the brake, if you ask me.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lou Poulain:
One problem with the list in the OP is there is an implicit assumption that "liberals" think one way and "conservatives" think another. I would be really surprised if I learned I was the only person on this board who favors gay marriage, but considers fidelity in relationship to be a key value, and sees casual sex as a distructive force in people's lives. Liberal or conservative? Personally I've come to loath those two words.

I didn't mention either of those words and I don't self-identify as either. I can't help it if the positions I listed happen to be more closely related to the liberal label, but that is far from equating the two.

quote:
Short answer to the OP question: Jesus.

Could I trouble you for a longer answer?

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Many of them went into the desert for the same reason Our Lord did: they wanted a challenge, to do battle with the devil as spiritual warriors or athletes. He was felt to inhabit the wilderness particularly. What does this motive imply about the desert's being either better or worse per se than the city? If anything, it suggests that people tend to become lazy and sloppy in cities precisely because they are so good.

Never heard of the Prison?

(I speak about the monastic community described in John Climacus' Ladder of Divine Ascent)

How can you say those things in the light of the ancient sources about monasticism and church ascesis is beyond me.

[ 17. June 2009, 21:17: Message edited by: §Andrew ]

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?

Oh boy!

But of course, we should base our morals on the History of Israel book (with an addendum about some weird mystic cult that sprung up). That's because the personal God who created billions of galaxies in one day, but couldn't defeat folks with iron chariots, has a particular preference for the Jewish people.

Posted by Lou Poulain (# 1587) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Short answer to the OP question: Jesus.
Could I trouble you for a longer answer?

I actually tried further up in my post. What I discovered in my middle-age oddysey what that I do in fact believe that Jesus is the Incarnation of God into human experience. I am deeply compelled by the image of God who suffers with the suffering of humanity and redeems this world. I am reading scripture (almost) daily and experiencing my life changed and continually reorienting in regular prayer and introspection, and Christ is the center of that. So let me amend my poor one word answer: I have found a personal relationship with God through Jesus. Better?

BTW, I wasn't casting any particular aspersions with my comment about my feelings about "libeal" and "conservative." I am assaulted daily in the media with oversimplified charactures of values and political positions under those tattered banners! I'm rather sick of it.
Lou

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

RadicalWhig, what are you talking about?

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

Jason.IAm,

I'd like to respond to this from a very different angle, now that you have clarified some aspects of your original question.

It seems that your question is this: "Conservative evangelicalism is a closed system, self-reinforcing, stable, rigid, and has an assured answer for everything. If one does not accept this closed system, even when it is blatantly absurd or debunked by modern science, then why remain within a fussy, loose, open-ended, Christianity at all? Why not just jump to the closed, stable, rigid system of total non-belief? Why would anyone want to live with ambiguities, compromises, unanswered questions, and dynamic contradictions?"

If so, this reveals something very interesting about the relationship between character and belief. Ted Haggard and Richard Dawkins are closer than they might each think, since both have a certain, fixed, simple view of the world, in terms of their ontology (TH: "Jesus is God" vs RD: "There is no evidence for a God") and epistemology (TH: "The bible tells me so" vs RD: "look for evidence in nature"). Neither seems capable of coping with the poetic, creative, confusing ambiguities with which liberal theologians such as Richard Holloway and John Shelby-Spong are comfortable.

So, as an answer to the question of "why stay in the faith if you don't believe X,Y,Z", I'd say, "because we just happen to be the sort of people who are happy wading through ambiguous and conflicting understandings, rather than demanding a cut-n-dried answer which is internally consistent and therefore not emotionally and intellectually unsettling".

[ 17. June 2009, 22:02: Message edited by: RadicalWhig ]

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Ruth, the fact that you're pretty much always upset might impair your ability to discern the subtleties of the issue.

Smiley or not, there's no need to take cheap shots. I frequently express myself in strong language; that doesn't mean I'm upset.

quote:

quote:
The passage from conservative/evangelical to liberal (what happened to the moderates of the OP?) to agnostic or otherwise non-Christian seems inevitable to the two of you, but that isn't self-evident to me. Quite clearly a lot of people here haven't had your experience, and I doubt they're all standing on the brakes -- most of them seem to have comfortably come to a rest and aren't barely holding themselves back from careening down the hill.

So why are you guys on a hill that others aren't?
That's pretty much a restatement of my original question. To me, it seems inevitable. As of yet, I've only heard reasons like "I believe what I believe just because I do, and it's no worse than believing in inerrancy" or "I believe because I experience God, and somehow that experience convinces me specifically that the Christian story is true". Forgive my arrogance when I say that both of these positions are two feet slamming on the brake, if you ask me.

To you it seems inevitable, but since others' experience is different, it plainly isn't. A number of other people have said they in fact not been putting on the brakes, so you're wrong in your characterization of their experience. The implication that they are intellectually dishonest is also quite unfair.

How about you stop trying to describe other people's experience and start explaining your own?

[ 17. June 2009, 22:19: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Jason.IAm,

I'd like to respond to this from a very different angle, now that you have clarified some aspects of your original question.

It seems that your question is this: "Conservative evangelicalism is a closed system, self-reinforcing, stable, rigid, and has an assured answer for everything. If one does not accept this closed system, even when it is blatantly absurd or debunked by modern science, then why remain within a fussy, loose, open-ended, Christianity at all? Why not just jump to the closed, stable, rigid system of total non-belief? Why would anyone want to live with ambiguities, compromises, unanswered questions, and dynamic contradictions?"

If so, this reveals something very interesting about the relationship between character and belief. Ted Haggard and Richard Dawkins are closer than they might each think, since both have a certain, fixed, simple view of the world, in terms of their ontology (TH: "Jesus is God" vs RD: "There is no evidence for a God") and epistemology (TH: "The bible tells me so" vs RD: "look for evidence in nature"). Neither seems capable of coping with the poetic, creative, confusing ambiguities with which liberal theologians such as Richard Holloway and John Shelby-Spong are comfortable.

So, as an answer to the question of "why stay in the faith if you don't believe X,Y,Z", I'd say, "because we just happen to be the sort of people who are happy wading through ambiguous and conflicting understandings, rather than demanding a cut-n-dried answer which is internally consistent and therefore not emotionally and intellectually unsettling".

Not to mention that life itself is not a closed system that is self-reinforcing, stable, rigid and where one answer fits all.

The closed system is actually pretty useless when trying to deal with real life problems and it leads to absurd answers.

I agree that Ted Haggard and Richard Dawkins are simply flip sides of the same coin - of the same ideological paradigm. And - at the risk of sounding like a Purgatorial broken record - I think that many of us simply don't accept that paradigm and we're operating in a different one entirely. Which is perhaps why atheists see as as naive deistic idiots (yeah, we know you do) and fundamentalists see us as unbelieving heretics (yeah, we know you do).

I believe - I don't know why. But, given that I believe, I need a faith that is actually going to make sense in the context of real life. I'm late middle-aged woman. I need a faith that helps me when friends die and when friends' children die, when people suffer terrible unrelenting pain due to illness. I don't need a religious system built for a 20-year-old that tells me if I only push the right buttons I'll be Champion of The World.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
RadicalWhig, what are you talking about?

You asked why someone would trust the bible at all if they did not believe it to be "The Word of God" (TM). Dafyd made a comparison to the history of China, a book which he regards as sufficiently accurate as history without any pretence to divine relation. He was critiquing your view that there is no middle ground between "totally made up" and "inerrent divine revelation", and exposing this view as a false dichotomy.

I was laughing (and I actually semi-snorted tea through my nose, which wasn't a pretty sight) because rather than grappling with this argument, you went straight into a tangent about "but would you base your morals on this book?". Your implicit assumption here is that nothing short of divine revelation is suitable as a source for morality. This is a variant on "if you don't believe in God you can't have any morals!" - an argument which doesn't stand up to much scrutiny at the best of times. It is funny, though, because you are basing your morality on a history book, it's just the history of the Jews rather than that of the Chinese.

Well, as they say, goyim annoy 'im - but it takes a very skewed view of the universe to think that of all the life forms on all the planets in all the galaxies, in all the untold dimensions, one particular group of desert tribesmen should be the source for all our morality and law, just because they worked out, in common with every other human civilisation, that killing is generally bad (unless you are smiting Cananites, when it is ok).

From your question and responses, it seems that you are clinging to certainty at every turn. Why do you need a book to base your morals on? Have you not a brain, a conscience, a sense of self, a theory of mind, an awareness of consequences?

So that's what led me to the post above.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Evangelicals are "fixated on growth" because they genuinely believe that all Christians are called to try and bring others to faith in Christ. I don't understand how thats 'worldly', as Seeker seems to imply. Its been a pretty mainstream Christian idea since forever. At the risk of offending half the Ship, some the "growth isn't everything you know" stuff sounds suspiciously like special pleading.
At the risk of offending the other half of the Ship....

Again, personally speaking, I believe (although I can't know until the crunch) that my faith will help me on my deathbed. I don't believe the so-called-knowing-that-passes-for-faith will help me or anyone else on their deathbed. I fully accept that many people who call themselves 'Evangelicals' have that kind of faith; but I doubt that many of them think it has anything to do with all the trappings of 'success' that Evangelical churches claim prove that they are right and I am wrong.

I'm not sure that really addresses my point (apologies if I'm missing something!). I guess the non-evangelical 'growth isn't everything' line sounds a bit like a man arguing that 'speed isn't everything' while trying to sell you a Ford Cortina [Biased]

.

Anyway, this is a total tangent (my fault)...

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

(DT tries again to get at the OP.)

For those of you saying the incarnation is important - why is it more meaningful in Christianity than in the liberal traditions of the Hindu faith ?

For those of you simply saying Jesus had good ideas about how to live - why not liberal Islam or the Bahai tradition ?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
As I moved from the conservative religion of my upbringing and early adulthood toward the more liberal beliefs in your list, I experienced the momentum of which you speak. I sensed that the path led somewhere other than Christianity. I intentionally "pushed the brakes" for several years out of sheer unwillingness to go where I was headed. At the time I called it caution, but now I see that it was based on fear, and maybe a little sentimentality.

Eventually, the discomfort caused by my cognitive dissonance exceeded the discomfort caused by my fear, and I let up on the brakes. I'm still not sure where the road ends, but I'm not going to pretend anymore that I'm not going anywhere at all.
How about some defense of this? The passage from conservative/evangelical to liberal (what happened to the moderates of the OP?) to agnostic or otherwise non-Christian seems inevitable to the two of you, but that isn't self-evident to me.

I did not intend to suggest that the passage from conservative to more liberal Christianity is inevitable. It obviously is not, considering the number of conservative Christians in this world. That was, however, the direction of my own religious journey.

I found it necessary to reconsider and eventually reject my conservative roots when I found them to be in conflict with my own experiences and morality. Thus, I arrived in a moderate position already engaged in an aggressive internal challenge of my own beliefs. Had I been born and raised as a liberal Christian, my worldview may not have clashed with my experience, and I may not have found it necessary to dig so vigorously into the reasons, or lack thereof, for my beliefs.

As I continue to critically examine the tenets of liberal (or moderate, if you prefer) Christianity and adapt my worldview in accordance with my observations and conclusions, I am driven gradually but surely to non-christianity.

quote:
Quite clearly a lot of people here haven't had your experience, and I doubt they're all standing on the brakes -- most of them seem to have comfortably come to a rest and aren't barely holding themselves back from careening down the hill.

So why are you guys on a hill that others aren't?

I can only speak to why I stand where I stand, not why others stand elsewhere. If you are asking me why my examination of liberal Christianity makes me need to move down the road, I can answer, but I don't think that discussion is really the intent of this thread.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Smiley or not, there's no need to take cheap shots. I frequently express myself in strong language; that doesn't mean I'm upset.

True enough, but it does seem that you are unnecessarily taking offence at my somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation that Jason's OP hit nerves with both the more liberal and more conservative contingents, resulting in nearly equal and opposite objections.

quote:
How about you stop trying to describe other people's experience and start explaining your own?

When I did exactly that, you challenged me to explain other people's experience. You can't have it both ways.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
I'm not sure that really addresses my point (apologies if I'm missing something!). I guess the non-evangelical 'growth isn't everything' line sounds a bit like a man arguing that 'speed isn't everything' while trying to sell you a Ford Cortina .

Anyway, this is a total tangent (my fault)...

No, it's more like a man telling you that an automobile isn't everything and wouldn't it be better if our mode of transportation provided exercise and no worries about pollution whilst trying to sell you a bicycle.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Smiley or not, there's no need to take cheap shots. I frequently express myself in strong language; that doesn't mean I'm upset.
True enough, but it does seem that you are unnecessarily taking offence at my somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation that Jason's OP hit nerves with both the more liberal and more conservative contingents, resulting in nearly equal and opposite objections.

I'm not offended.

quote:

quote:
How about you stop trying to describe other people's experience and start explaining your own?
When I did exactly that, you challenged me to explain other people's experience. You can't have it both ways.

That question was put to Jason I. Am, not you.

[ 17. June 2009, 23:17: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
(DT tries again to get at the OP.)
For those of you simply saying Jesus had good ideas about how to live - why not liberal Islam or the Bahai tradition ?

(i) Cultural familiarity. Not just for me personally, but for the culture surrounding me. I know what to do with an easter egg or a christmas pudding, but haven't the faintest idea which end of the Ganges to jump into. Even the Westminster Confession, with which I can hardly find a word of agreement, has a certain cultural ring to it which is strangely comforting (I might not share the theological views of a 17th century presbyterian roundhead in Cromwell's army, but I can share a bizarre sense of cultural affinity, which I cannot feel with a sufi mystic).

(ii) Have you ever met a "liberal Muslim"? An MA in Arabic, three long stints of working and studying in the Middle East, and several Muslim friends, and I've yet to come across a Muslim who is, in any way we would recognise, theologically "liberal". The term just does not compute in Islam, as far as I have experienced it. And Bahai? No thanks. My friends think I'm weird enough as it is.

(iii) Christianity has a more humane side to it than most religions - at least, it is capable of being interpreted in a humane way which is not incompatible with my civic-humanist ethics, especially if you focus on the sermon on the mount stuff and the later jewish prophets, and skim over the nastier bits of the bible.

(iv) I like Christian Democracy as a political ideal (see: Jim Wallis - Seven Ways to Change the World, for a good explanation of what Christian Democracy might mean in the early 21st century ). It combines a search for justice and the common good with a robust defence of liberty and democracy. That said, the Christian Right as a religious-political movement scares the living sh*t out of me, and the idea of living in a state governed according to the ideas of Jerry Falwell is only marginally less unappealing than living in a state governed by sharia law or by the teachings of Confucius. Still, the good thing about Christianity is that it is, at least, compatible with liberal-democracy. Even Catholicism has cottoned-on to this one.

(v) Jesus. Overrated by people who call him "god", but a splendid fellow all the same. A sort of Jewish Socrates, really, asking all the difficult questions and exposing the hypocrisies of religious and political elites.

(vi) The music. From "This is the Feast" played on an organ in Berlin, to "Power in the Blood" on a banjo in Tennessee, I'm a sucker for it all.

(vii) There's a nice strand running through Christianity about hope, resurrection, restoration, which I think speaks well to the needs of the human condition.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Jason, here's a little excerpt from the Sam Harris you quoted earlier. It made me chuckle.

quote:
Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself—of which every religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

Don't you think that last statement is remarkably dogmatic? A trick to elevate reasonableness (whatever that means) above dogma, by positing an ideal society which has never existed. Essentially Harris is making reasonableness a supreme axiomatic value. I wish I knew what the heck he meant by reasonableness.

Anyway, if we're going down that road, I'd prefer the Categorical Imperative. That's a moral choice, but not entirely a reasonable one.

[ 17. June 2009, 23:55: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Elephenor (# 4026) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing.
That is an artifact of formal systems only.

And, for what it's worth, not even all formal systems. There exist paraconsistent logics where ex falso quodlibet does not hold, and which arguably may, in some respects, better model belief revision.

Even if it is hard to see the point of asserting direct contradictions (tea and no tea?), it seems to me common to make assertions which imply derived contradictions. On the other hand, pointing out these contradictions is a standard method of argument, so the acceptance of `true' contradictions remains more controversial! (The logician Graham Priest is one particularly insistent defender of such `dialetheism'.)

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
(DT tries again to get at the OP.)

For those of you saying the incarnation is important - why is it more meaningful in Christianity than in the liberal traditions of the Hindu faith ?

I'm not sure I'd say that the incarnation is more meaningful in Christianity than in the liberal traditions of the Hindu faith (in an objective sense), although it's certainly more meaningful to me, since I'm a Christian and trying to understand the meaning and implications of our story occupies enough of my time.

quote:
For those of you simply saying Jesus had good ideas about how to live - why not liberal Islam or the Bahai tradition ?

Because I'm not Muslim or Bahai?

This sounds a bit like the arguments from agnostics and atheists that if you're going to abandon all reason and be religious, you might as well throw a dart and pick any religion.

Which simply isn't true. I wasn't particularly raised Christian, and yet Christianity and the Christian story shaped me - because it shaped the people around me, and the stories and fairy tales I read when I was little, and the literature I read when I got older. Whether I love it or hate it, struggle with understanding the beliefs and the way we tell ourselves and each other the story of G-d, roll my eyes at people who tell the story differently or emphasize different parts, etc. Christianity is mine (and I am its) in a way that no other religion can be.

I don't particularly think that belief in an abstract deistic G-d is particularly sustainable for most people; religion needs form. And all paths may lead to the top of the same mountain, but you're likely to spend a lot of time wandering around the bottom of the mountain if you keep jumping from path to path. And trying to combine bits and pieces from different religions tends to lead to a religion that's so bland it's tasteless or has so many contradictory parts everyone spits it out.

For me it wasn't a matter of putting on the brakes before a certain line of thinking led me away from Christianity, it was more a matter of coming home when I got tired of playing around.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

quote:
We must note that, although the creeds mention scripture, they do not commit themselves to "inerrancy" or the view of divine inspiration that underlies it. We can conclude from Saint Augustine's comments, probably directed at the young-earthers of his own day, that he found a literal reading of the Genesis creation story just as absurd as we do. So the idea that everyone believed the Bible word-for-word in the good-old-days, when they had "that old-time religion", and any more nuanced reading were just so much modernist revisionism and backsliding, presupposes a general lack of respect for history.

I lost track of who wrote this, but... [Overused]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

What an exercise in shifting goalposts this thread is. First it's why do people who don't sign up to a laundry list of conservative beliefs stay Christians. Then it's why don't people who don't sign up to just one of the points -- inerrancy of Scripture -- keep the faith. Now it's about why they have faith to begin with. What next?

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

I think most people who've posted have stated their personal answers to the question. Those answers satisfy us, the responders. If Jason I. Am doesn't like them, tough shit.

[ 18. June 2009, 02:37: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
It seems that your question is this: "Conservative evangelicalism is a closed system, self-reinforcing, stable, rigid, and has an assured answer for everything. If one does not accept this closed system, even when it is blatantly absurd or debunked by modern science, then why remain within a fussy, loose, open-ended, Christianity at all?

I think I'm mostly with you up to there.

quote:
Why not just jump to the closed, stable, rigid system of total non-belief? Why would anyone want to live with ambiguities, compromises, unanswered questions, and dynamic contradictions?

And here you completely lose me. It seems to me if you're going to be fussy, loose, and open-ended, and if you want to live with ambiguities, compromises, unanswered questions, and dynamic contradictions, then what need do you have for any uniquely Christian subtext?

Even if, say, you believe in the central tenets of the Christian faith, why do you need to believe them within the context of Christianity? If you lose the virgin birth and the literal resurrection, aren't you just left with love, compassion, and redemption on their own?

quote:
So, as an answer to the question of "why stay in the faith if you don't believe X,Y,Z", I'd say, "because we just happen to be the sort of people who are happy wading through ambiguous and conflicting understandings, rather than demanding a cut-n-dried answer which is internally consistent and therefore not emotionally and intellectually unsettling".

I think you may have romanticized your situation a bit. There are plenty of emotionally and intellectually unsettling beliefs to be had that involve no Christianity.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
How about you stop trying to describe other people's experience and start explaining your own?

I'd actually love for people to disagree with how I'm describing their experience, because I'm interested in why they would describe it differently. I wasn't aware that they all needed you to swoop in and defend them.

I'm confused about what you're asking as far as my experience is concerned.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Even if, say, you believe in the central tenets of the Christian faith, why do you need to believe them within the context of Christianity?

This makes no sense at all to me. If you believe in the central tenets of the Christian faith, then you ARE in the context of Christianity, by definition.

quote:
If you lose the virgin birth and the literal resurrection, aren't you just left with love, compassion, and redemption on their own?

If you lose the literal resurrection then you are outside the central tenets of the Christian faith.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
It is funny, though, because you are basing your morality on a history book, it's just the history of the Jews rather than that of the Chinese.

You've made some sort of strange assumptions about me, I'm not sure what they're based on. I don't base my morality on the Bible, if you want to know, and I definitely don't cling to certainty.

quote:
Why do you need a book to base your morals on? Have you not a brain, a conscience, a sense of self, a theory of mind, an awareness of consequences?

Good question. I would go a step further and ask, "Why do you need a book?"

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Mousethief -- exactly.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Exactly what? The resurrection isn't on your list in the OP.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Don't you think that last statement is remarkably dogmatic?

I actually don't see that at all. I think it's a pretty interesting rebuttal to the claim that "atheist regimes" are responsible for more murders than all religious regimes combined, etc. But that's probably for another thread, eh?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Mouse thief, many people have said (and are currently saying even on this thread) that they believe in the central tenets of the Christian faith, and that those tenets are redemption, incarnation, love, compassion, etc.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Ah. I'm one of those fools who tends to think of the central tenets of Christianity as being contained in the Creed, all of which I subscribe to. And yet I accept all of the points in your OP. So I don't understand what brakes I am meant to be stepping on.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Then carry on with your life, Mousethief. You don't seem to have much interest in trying to understand or engage with these questions.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I do. That's why I asked what brakes I was meant to be stepping on. But carry on. Clearly you don't want to hear the answers that have been given so far on the thread; and you don't want to explain yourself to me.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

1) What authority do you use when deciding if pieces of theology or scripture or revelation are "really from God*" or not?

What authority did the evangelists use when writing the New Testament?

1) The OT
2) Their experience/culture/reason

What authority did the early church fathers use when compiling the canon?

1) Beats me. Theoretically what was closest to the 'truth' of Christ. Whose truth? Beats me.

We all cherry pick what we want and how we see things. Its the nature of the human mind.

Previously, authority was based in The Church. The Rule of Faith.

That authority crumbled a bit with Martin Luther, then much more so with the more radical reformers.

We were encouraged to read Scripture purely with the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Church tradition was no longer necessary.

Unfortunately, reading the scriptures for themselves using the Holy spirit, people disagreed. SHOCK HORROR. This must mean they were not guided the the spirit!

Just cos "one" truth was promulgated by the "Church" on how to read scripture, doesn't mean they got it right. They may have, they may not have.

Authority is arbitrary and depends on your interpretation. It was so from the very beginning

Someone that believes the Bible is the innerant word of god for all time and all places and cultures is still stuck with differing interpretations from his neighbor that believes in the same innerancy.

Makes no difference whether you believe in an innerant word of god or not.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Mousethief, I feel like I've explained my questions well enough, but if you still don't understand, then this is the best place I can think to start.

Why do you believe what's in the creeds? What's their relationship to the Bible, which you don't believe is inerrant?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I believe the creed because I believe in the resurrection and I believe the creed makes the most sense of Christ's life. I believe in the resurrection because I think it best explains the explosive growth of the early church, and because of the experiences of many who have encountered the risen Christ. What does this have to do with brakes?

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Jason, it seems you are saying that if you don't accept the Bible as inerrant, it's irrational to be a Christian. That seems to me like a complete non sequitur. But apparently it bothers you that there are people calling themselves Christian who don't define it exactly like you do. That's the part I don't get.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I believe the creed because I believe in the resurrection and I believe the creed makes the most sense of Christ's life. I believe in the resurrection because I think it best explains the explosive growth of the early church, and because of the experiences of many who have encountered the risen Christ. What does this have to do with brakes?

If you have critically examined your reasons for believing in the creed, for believing that the early church growth was uncommonly explosive, and for believing that such growth is best explained by a supernatural event, and if you have concluded that your reasoning is solid and that Christianity contains a unique truth, then the brakes metaphor may not apply to you. (At least not as I have used it. I wouldn't want to answer for Jason.)

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I believe the creed because I believe in the resurrection and I believe the creed makes the most sense of Christ's life. I believe in the resurrection because I think it best explains the explosive growth of the early church, and because of the experiences of many who have encountered the risen Christ. What does this have to do with brakes?

Wow you're fixated on the brakes metaphor.

I said I'd heard two explanations for believing, and both sounded like slamming on those metaphorical brakes. Your explanation, here, is a little different, so the metaphor may not necessarily apply.

It does sound like a slight variation on "I believe it just because I do," though. Believing that God came to earth, was killed, and then raised from the dead and ascended up into heaven--because it's the "best" explanation for why people formed a religious sect--seems to fly in the face of Occam's razor and reason in general.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Jason, it seems you are saying that if you don't accept the Bible as inerrant, it's irrational to be a Christian. That seems to me like a complete non sequitur. But apparently it bothers you that there are people calling themselves Christian who don't define it exactly like you do. That's the part I don't get.

First, that's an extreme oversimplification of what I'm asking. My question is really about whether or not certain concessions and compromises in belief can stand on their own, or whether those concessions are then applicable to a wider range of beliefs that makes the whole house fall down eventually.

Second, I have no idea how to define Christian, and for what it's worth, people can identify as Christian for any reason they want. I'm just asking why some people do.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

It does sound like a slight variation on "I believe it just because I do," though. Believing that God came to earth, was killed, and then raised from the dead and ascended up into heaven--because it's the "best" explanation for why people formed a religious sect--seems to fly in the face of Occam's razor and reason in general.

Oh I agree that's a ludicrous notion. I'm a Christian. Just not that sort [Snigger]

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

FWIW:

I don't think Jason started this thread to insult anyone, push conservative Christianity, or any of the other things he's been accused of.

I think he's really *asking* what it's like for those of us who come from conservative backgrounds but have...shifted, and why we keep connected to Christianity (if we do). Several of us found it a useful OP.

Perhaps he's doing some searching of his own?

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Don't you think that last statement is remarkably dogmatic?
I actually don't see that at all. I think it's a pretty interesting rebuttal to the claim that "atheist regimes" are responsible for more murders than all religious regimes combined, etc. But that's probably for another thread, eh?

Maybe, Jason. You imply a rebuttal of a strawman anyway. But I agree that might be better discussed elesewhere.

But the issue of how far reason and reasonableness take you in consideration of faith seems to me to be pretty central. Within the domain of reason, I guess I am personally arguing that grace and the benevolence of God are axiomatic for me. But my belief in those axioms is not ultimately a matter of reason, more a matter of revelation and its outworking. That's not a utilitarian argument either. I can give a reason for the hope which is in me. I cannot demonstrate that hope is reasonable.

Feel free to pick your own axioms! Personally, I don't like Sam Harris's axiom of reasonableness. There's a scary line in Blatty's "The Exorcist" where the demon cackles at a priest, saying, "I love reasonable men!"

Bertrand Russell, in Why I Am Not a Christian, gives voice to our situation in these terms:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

You want to go there, or something like there? Or perhaps you might consider that some kind of brake might have a value before you hit those buffers. Or as the old Bill put it in Macbeth

"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Thanks, but I'd rather not go there.

Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :

I'm a Christian because my parents were, and I think that non-theological reasons like that are behind most people's faith. It really is very rare for someone to evaluate the world's main faiths and come to a decision to follow one that is culturally distant from them.

Within Christianity, I've moved to a particular place on the spectrum. The OP's bullet points are all fine with me, but they're very much taken for granted. I'm much further off still.

Now, this searching within Christianity seems to me to be the important bit. I assume that if I was a Hindu or a Muslim, I would have undertaken a similar journey and gravitated towards an equivalent point within those faiths.

I deeply mistrust systems and structures, and people that get their identity from them. So I avoid monolithic, powerful theologies such as you find in some readings of the more organised denominations . I fear anything that crushes the lone individual, so I don't like the implacably logical versions of faith, such as hyper-Calvinism. I want a religion that offers me a little, close intimate love, that comes inside my secret world and recognises me for who I am, and joins me to others, and I want this for reasons that are more to do with my childhood experiences than anything else I can see.

So I end up with a theology that is existentialist, that wants no authority other than the conveniently vague person of Christ, and no God other than the lovably compromised one that an Incarnational theology gives you. I relish the scope for interpretation within faithfulness that I find in Protestantism.

If I'd been born in Chitrakoot to Hindu parents, no doubt I'd have found somewhere similar within Hinduism that would have enabled me to express myself reasonably comfortably.

Of course, the journey is dynamic. The constraints of Christianity have shaped me along the way, so I would probably have become someone else if I'd done my stuff within a different religion.

Not being sure whether I want to stay within Christianity is, as you might guess, part of where I am; it's not a worrying defect in my position, it's something I value.

Why do I stay? For the time being I stay because Christianity is an environment that I can explore and find resources in. What I really believe in isn't Christianity, though, it's love, grace, the importance of becoming real, the joy of giving and receiving deep attention, the healing that comes with understanding, and the importance of beauty (and other stuff, and other ways of putting this stuff that hasn't come to mind this morning). I can find these things that I really believe in, this g-d, in Christianity. But in other places, if I had to, no doubt. (Or perhaps they would find me.)

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
I'm not sure that really addresses my point (apologies if I'm missing something!). I guess the non-evangelical 'growth isn't everything' line sounds a bit like a man arguing that 'speed isn't everything' while trying to sell you a Ford Cortina .

Anyway, this is a total tangent (my fault)...
No, it's more like a man telling you that an automobile isn't everything and wouldn't it be better if our mode of transportation provided exercise and no worries about pollution whilst trying to sell you a bicycle.

But a bicycle is actually some use (although not if you want to go anywhere further than the next village, to push the analogy further [Razz]

). Not so an empty church. There's something ironic about simultaneously criticising evangelicalism while embracing a path that means evangelical churches will be the only ones left in many UK towns in a generation (and that people who make the same journey out of evangelicalism in thirty years time will have nowhere to go). But anyhow, this is a tangent.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Respect, hatless. That's a great post.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I suspect Jason is getting at the fact that if you belive in the liberal mode, it looks very like the liberal mode of any of the major faiths and humanism - so why be Christian specifically ?

The motif of Christ coming down and living as one of us, living alongside us and being part of our humanity, is very special.

Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on :

In the Western World, many people seem to have examined & in some cases, embraced nonChristian religions: Buddhism of various sorts; Hinduism (including the Hare Krishnas); Islam ('Fundamentalist'; Moderate & Sufi versions of Sunni; Shi'ite & Ahmadiya); Judaism and various offshoots of them as well as various New Age concoctions.

Many decent people, whether considered 'moderate'; 'conservative' or 'fundamental' have, despite gross malfeasance in the various Christian denominations - including that hydraheaded often denied one: paedophilia, have grimly clung to the seeming wreckage.

In the 60s an Irish-American professor at Notre Dame made the statement 'A Christian view of man makes sense.' I concur. Note he didn't say the Pope's; Zappa's; my or any other individual's take on and/or failure to live up to the message.

Real Christianity isn't endangered. It is not afraid of other religions nor secularism. It cannot die. We can.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Jason, it seems you are saying that if you don't accept the Bible as inerrant, it's irrational to be a Christian. That seems to me like a complete non sequitur. But apparently it bothers you that there are people calling themselves Christian who don't define it exactly like you do. That's the part I don't get.
First, that's an extreme oversimplification of what I'm asking. My question is really about whether or not certain concessions and compromises in belief can stand on their own, or whether those concessions are then applicable to a wider range of beliefs that makes the whole house fall down eventually.

Second, I have no idea how to define Christian, and for what it's worth, people can identify as Christian for any reason they want. I'm just asking why some people do.

Jason, at the risk of paraphrasing you, what I'm getting from the above is: conservative evangelicalism may be self-referential and circular, but at least it's internally consistent. Liberalising removes that consistency, leaving you with a belief system that doesn't actually make sense - that lacks self-consistency. It must therefore be unstable, and the only way that people stay in that position is by not thinking too hard or "putting on the brakes." The stable point that incorporates the liberal beliefs outlined in the OP lies outside of Christianity.

Is that a reasonable way of re-stating your point?

The infallibility of scripture seems to be key here (at least for the evangelical version of the argument). Can I ask why it's less consistent to have belief in God, or the Incarnation, as axiomatic rather than belief in the infallibility of the Bible? The latter is at least as arbitrary as the former, and (IMO) harder to justify.

It also seems to me that you think that, in rejecting Christianity as a foundational belief, you are in a "purer" position. I would see it more as moving from one set of foundational beliefs to another set - there's no such thing as neutrality. Naturalism has a lot of things to commend it, but it's still a world view, an assumed metaphysic.

- Chris.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I think most people who've posted have stated their personal answers to the question. Those answers satisfy us, the responders. If Jason I. Am doesn't like them, tough shit.

Problem is that those people who believe because it works for them and can't explain the reasons for their faith, believe in a faith that makes claims of objectivity and ecumenicity.

If they dropped the idea that their faith was objective truth, and that all should become Christians, then nobody would have minded that these people believe because it works for them.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Believing that God came to earth, was killed, and then raised from the dead and ascended up into heaven--because it's the "best" explanation for why people formed a religious sect--seems to fly in the face of Occam's razor and reason in general.

Plus, the same could be said about Islam, or Buddhism or whatever. Why believe Paul's experience and not Mohammad's?

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I'm a Christian because my parents were

And they say the young Greeks (/Italians/Jews) are too attached to their parents.

[Killing me]

Sorry, had to say that! [Big Grin]

[ 18. June 2009, 09:05: Message edited by: §Andrew ]

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I believe the creed because I believe in the resurrection and I believe the creed makes the most sense of Christ's life. I believe in the resurrection because I think it best explains the explosive growth of the early church, and because of the experiences of many who have encountered the risen Christ. What does this have to do with brakes?
If you have critically examined your reasons for believing in the creed, for believing that the early church growth was uncommonly explosive, and for believing that such growth is best explained by a supernatural event, and if you have concluded that your reasoning is solid and that Christianity contains a unique truth, then the brakes metaphor may not apply to you. (At least not as I have used it. I wouldn't want to answer for Jason.)

Yep. That kind of sums up where I'm coming from too: I find it more rational to believe that what's in the Creed(s) is true and that as a result of that the Church grew exponentially, including a healthy proportion who were prepared to die quite grisly deaths for believing what's in the Creed(s) to be true, than to believe that the Creed is not true and yet all that still happened.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
But a bicycle is actually some use (although not if you want to go anywhere further than the next village, to push the analogy further ). Not so an empty church. There's something ironic about simultaneously criticising evangelicalism while embracing a path that means evangelical churches will be the only ones left in many UK towns in a generation (and that people who make the same journey out of evangelicalism in thirty years time will have nowhere to go). But anyhow, this is a tangent.

I think what I was trying to criticize at the beginning of my tangent was the idea 'Our reading of Christianity is correct because we have big wealthy churches.'

As a non-conservative Christian, I don't agree with that take on things. I see conservative Christianity to be mainly about them-and-us-ism, which I think is not only deeply sinful but also worldly. I appreciate that people are deeply passionate about converting outsiders into 'us'. But I also think it's wrong.

I think it's quite attractive to say to people: 'We have all the answers and if you join us, then God will be on your side.' It's not so attractive to say to people 'We believe that God is in the mess with you, but we can't pinpoint precisely how. Come join us visiting the housebound and the elderly'. The first approach is the best marketing spiel of the two and IMO it's the furthest away from the heart of the Gospel.

So, your view may be that the lack of enthusiastic response to our message means that we are wrong about the Gospel. And my view is that we are trying to be faithful to the message of the Gospel as we see it. We can understand why our message is not particularly attractive until the Holy Spirit converts an individual's heart.

This might be something of a tangent, but I think it still addresses some of the core of the OP's question.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:

I'm not asking you to consider the properties of formal systems. I am asking you to reflect upon the basic activities of believing or disbelieving what other people tell us, of disagreeing with other people, and so on. These are examples of language in use, not formal systems.
WRT formal systems, I was responding to this in your OP:

quote:
By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing.
That is an artifact of formal systems only. It is not the case that, from the child saying "Upstairs." "Downstairs." we have demonstrated anything about, say, trees falling in the woods. Contradictions in natural language are at the very least self-limiting because natual language is not devoid of content. We derive new sentences in natural language in a completely different way than we do in formal systems. And, however we derive them, they need not be truth preserving -- as we all have painfully demonstrated to ourselves in our own lives.

It's interesting that you assume that I'm referring directly to the logical argument that everything follows from a contradiction.
In a natural language 'everything' means 'everything relevant'. What I was saying is that by asserting contradictories you assert all relevant possible states of affairs. Not all possible states of affairs whatever.

Now the interesting thing is that you argue that there's a watertight bridge distinction between formal systems and natural language. And yet, faced with an utterance 'By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing' in natural language, you immediately interpret it as a reference to formal systems.

How is it possible for you to confuse natural language with formal systems?

Indeed, earlier you were wondering

quote:
If you step back and think about it, it is kind of strange that we ever imagined that logic would apply to language at all.

I imagine that, when the definitive history of linguistic philosophy is finally written, we will learn that this was just another error of over-reaching that we inherited from the amazing success that physics had in making their subject fit into mathematics.

(Slight tangent: your proposed explanation doesn't hold up. Aristotle, the closest thing in the ancient world to an ordinary language philosopher, was codifying logic, and the medievals were exploring and extending logic, well before physics had any big success adopting mathematics.)

You're quite right. If you're right about the hard distinction between formal language and natural language, then nobody would ever have imagined that you could apply logic to language. Yet, they did imagine that. And do that. How could they have made such a strange mistake if you're right? They couldn't. How could you have made such a strange mistake as to interpret my natural language utterances as transformations in a formal system? You couldn't have.
So perhaps the mistake is not so strange. Perhaps you're wrong. Perhaps natural language contains elements that are already incipiently formalisable? So that logic does apply, only largely and only up to a point.

quote:
Second, it is far from obvious to me that the child in your example is failing to communicate anything. The most likely thing, to my mind, is "I don't know." But it is certainly not the case that this linguistic construct is meaningless, let alone that the truth of every natural language sentence follows from its utterance.

It's a commonplace among people who draw strong distinctions between natural language and formal systems that 'I believe the cat is on the mat' is not the same type of statement as 'he believes the cat is on the mat'. 'He believes the cat is on the mat' is used to describe the other person's state of mind. 'I believe the cat is on the mat' does not describe the speaker's state of mind; it is used to assert that the cat is on the mat. (Hence there is a problem with the statement 'I believe it but it's not true' that can't be captured in any formal system.) Likewise, 'I know' differs in the same way from 'he knows'.
So if you hold to the strong version of the distinction, then you're required to assume that 'I don't know' doesn't communicate anything. Which is what I said. Now if you think it does communicate something, you're actually beginning to break down the distinction again: you're interpreting natural language as if it has formal features within it. And that is because, up to a point, language does.

Logic and violations of logic are equally tools within the repertory of natural language. Natural language relies on logic, especially when violating it. When it violates it in assertions, it does so not with the purpose of asserting contradictories, but with the purpose of expressing something indirectly - and it uses the violations of logic precisely to flag that this is going on.

[ 18. June 2009, 10:22: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Yep. That kind of sums up where I'm coming from too: I find it more rational to believe that what's in the Creed(s) is true and that as a result of that the Church grew exponentially, including a healthy proportion who were prepared to die quite grisly deaths for believing what's in the Creed(s) to be true, than to believe that the Creed is not true and yet all that still happened.

This is still begging the question.

Why do you believe these things happened the way you believe they happened? Why, for example, don't you believe God revealed His eternal Word to the Prophet? After all, Islam grew exponentially, including a healthy proportion who were prepared to die for believing what's in the Koran to be true!

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

If they dropped the idea that their faith was objective truth, and that all should become Christians, then nobody would have minded that these people believe because it works for them.

I think there is justice in this observation. Proclaiming faith as transmittable in its entirety as objective truth, (rather than a species of attempted communion with the transcendent) seems to me to be an error. Carried forward in the Tradition is that notion that apophatic and kataphatic approaches can and should work together. Which kind of indicates that whatever Truth there is must at least in some sense transcend human standards of objectivity.

There is something weird about an evangelical saying these things I suppose. The tradition I come from has hardly made a lot of the via negativa. I'm grateful to the Celts, the Catholic mystics and the Orthodox for helping me to understand better. But I think that even in the parts of Christianity which stress kataphatic approaches, we know that all our riches of understanding are a long way short of the whole thing.

Of course there is poverty in our understanding and of course we should not give ourselves airs. There is actually a value in applying the via negativa to any kind of understanding. Here is a very old view.

quote:
Let us invoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible, invisible and unknowable; let us avow that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

Yes, Barnabas, this is all very true, but Christianity, even in its most apophatic forms, still made huge claims about objective reality.

God was not just inexpressible and incomprehensible. He was also triadic. Jesus was not just someone who inspires us to come closer to God, or who shows us God. He was actually God. His salvation-giving crucifixion and resurrection is not just an archetypical image that gives meaning to our lives, but actual historical facts, and so on and so forth.

Go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is part of the Christian story.

Which is why "I find inspiration in Christianity" is not enough a reason to believe those stuff.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Yep. That kind of sums up where I'm coming from too: I find it more rational to believe that what's in the Creed(s) is true and that as a result of that the Church grew exponentially, including a healthy proportion who were prepared to die quite grisly deaths for believing what's in the Creed(s) to be true, than to believe that the Creed is not true and yet all that still happened.
This is still begging the question.

Why do you believe these things happened the way you believe they happened? Why, for example, don't you believe God revealed His eternal Word to the Prophet? After all, Islam grew exponentially, including a healthy proportion who were prepared to die for believing what's in the Koran to be true!

Because, in addition, no other 'system' adequately deals (IMNSVHO) with bridging the unbridgeable gap between God's perfection and Man's imperfection.

[ 18. June 2009, 11:03: Message edited by: Matt Black ]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Fair point. I'm just off out, will post tomorrow.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
My question is really about whether or not certain concessions and compromises in belief can stand on their own, or whether those concessions are then applicable to a wider range of beliefs that makes the whole house fall down eventually.

Ah right. See, for me they're not concessions or compromises. They're what I believe to be true, and consistent with the overarching Christian theme of love for (and from) God and loving one's neighbour.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

quote:
My question is really about whether or not certain concessions and compromises in belief...

Jason.I.Am: That is a con-evo, eisenenic and if I may say so hostile gloss on the fact that other Christians do not share your assumption about biblical inerrancy et al. THey're not "concessions" or "compromises"; they're attempts to honor the integrity of Scripture and tradition by mindful, prayerful study and group discernment using the best tools we have. You are creating a false dichotomy of "Maintain a literalist/fundamentalist understanding" or "Throw it all under the bus."

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Bertrand Russell, in Why I Am Not a Christian, gives voice to our situation in these terms:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

You want to go there, or something like there? Or perhaps you might consider that some kind of brake might have a value before you hit those buffers.

B, I think this is a really honest explanation for "hitting the brakes". Thanks for that.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Jason.I.Am: That is a con-evo, eisenenic and if I may say so hostile gloss on the fact that other Christians do not share your assumption about biblical inerrancy et al. They're not "concessions" or "compromises"; they're attempts to honor the integrity of Scripture and tradition by mindful, prayerful study and group discernment using the best tools we have. You are creating a false dichotomy of "Maintain a literalist/fundamentalist understanding" or "Throw it all under the bus."

No, I'm not. Where are people getting the idea that I am on the literalist side of this issue?

In any regard, I use the words "concession" and "compromise" on purpose, not because they're concessions with regard to "the Truth" but rather with regard to traditional Christianity.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
See, for me they're not concessions or compromises. They're what I believe to be true, and consistent with the overarching Christian theme of love for (and from) God and loving one's neighbour.

Let me see if I can wrongly rephrase what you're saying, so you can correct me.

You believe in love, and loving one's neighbor, and you at some point recognized that Christianity has overarching themes that align with what you believe, so you think, "I might as well be a Christian then."

Or else, you started out a Christian for contextual, societal, etc. reasons, but you haven't left because you do believe in some of the overarching themes of Christianity like love and loving one's neighbor.

In either case, the point I'm making is that it's possible to believe in love and loving one's neighbor while not believing in Jesus's literal resurrection from the dead. Most people who have believed in Jesus's literal resurrection from the dead have done so because the Bible, God's word, has said it was so, and because of the witness of the traditional Church.

But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell. Now, I sympathize with those like LutheranChik who say there are many who use the best tools they have to discern the truth of Scripture and Tradition, and find that many things that Scripture and Tradition have seemed to say may not be true, they may have been misinterpreted, or misunderstood, misused, or even mishandled from the start.

I think that's admirable, honestly. But my question is... what stops you from then considering if maybe even the literal resurrection is in the same category of misuse, misunderstanding, etc.

I hope that makes sense.

Posted by Jon G (# 4704) on :

There is no mention on the original list of the Kingdom of God.

Which is a major omission because that it what Jesus taught about, and what his healing and his miracles where signs of.

Christians are called to celebrate the presence of the Kingdom of God at the heart of their lives.

Where else can they do it - if not at church.

Just doing it by ourselves is not enough.

[cross posted with Jason]
(Before I became a Christian, as a socialist I had a lot of sympathy with Jesus' life and teaching, but I didn't believe in the resurrection, literal or otherwise.
I became a Christian because I believe in the resurrection.)

[ 18. June 2009, 12:47: Message edited by: Jon G ]

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
No, I'm not. Where are people getting the idea that I am on the literalist side of this issue?

In any regard, I use the words "concession" and "compromise" on purpose, not because they're concessions with regard to "the Truth" but rather with regard to traditional Christianity.

You sure? I don't see anything in the creeds or such saying you must believe God created the earth in SEVEN DAYS nor that one interpretative method of the bible is that which is divinely ordained.

In fact part of Saint Augustine conversion is a change from taking the bible literally (which he could not stomach way back then) to taking it allegorically. For western Christianity you cannot get more mainstream than that.

Jengie

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Here we go. The Golden Age of Christianity, when nobody believed in Hell, nobody believed anything nasty from the Bible, everybody loved and respected all other religions, and there were free hugs for everyone. What happened??

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
No, I'm not. Where are people getting the idea that I am on the literalist side of this issue?

In any regard, I use the words "concession" and "compromise" on purpose, not because they're concessions with regard to "the Truth" but rather with regard to traditional Christianity.

If you are not "on the literalist side of this issue" in terms of your personal beliefs about what is "true", then you certainly appear to be on the literalist side in your interpretation of what "traditional Christianity" is. Traditional Christianity goes back a long, long way before the flinty outpourings of "The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth".

I'm not a traditional Christian. I'm probably not even a liberal-Christian anymore, since I deny a literal incarnation and resurrection, and do not believe in a personal or directly interventionist god. I'd prefer the term "post-Christian" or "post-Theistic Christian" to self-identify with. But I do see traditional Christianity for what it is - a broad dialogue of developing understands emerging in the centuries after Christ and embodied in the teachings of the ecumenical councils. As many people on this thread have pointed out, one can be a traditional Christian, in the sense of affirming the Creeds, without being a conservative evangelical.

You seem quite dismissive of liberal Christians (as well as "traditional" Christians who are not conservative evangelicals). I've encountered this lack of understanding from some conservative evangelicals who have little understanding of church history and theology, and who think that a liberal Christian must somehow be a half-hearted (or worse, sinful) Christian (or probably a non-Christian in denial). If this is the case, hopefully this thread has cleared up your misunderstanding.

But what is your motivation for asking this question? It seems to me that you are either:

(1) Setting up a very brittle straw-man of Christianity in order to knock it down more easily.

Or:

(2) Really confused as to what Christianity is, such that you cannot understand someone who is a Christian but not a conservative evangelical type of Christian.

Or:

(3) Have such a psychological need for certainty that you cannot imagine anyone willingly sacrificing that certainty to sail on a (this is corny, I know) tempestuous and uncharted "sea of faith".

1, 2 or 3 - which is it? If we could understand your motivation, we could probably address your question more helpfully.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's assume, for this discussion, that you or someone you know agrees with a majority of the following, even if they must be slightly edited:

The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.
PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.
Other religions contain elements of truth
Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd
Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity
Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound

If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

Because I honestly believe that to require a Christian to believe that

The bits of the Bible about people marrying giants and tattoos being an abomination came straight from the mouth of God and are required to be believed by all people in all places, forever
God put his Son to torture and death because he couldn't get over how angry he was with the world
God refuses to speak to non-Christians
God will sentence me to the pain of fire over every inch of my body for ever and ever and ever, just because I wake up in a bad mood one morning and then die before I can do some grovelling
God spent the nth day of creation burying fake dinosaur bones
God expects us to debate morality like infants, not grown-ups

... is just plain silly.

Will that do?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Jason, at the risk of paraphrasing you, what I'm getting from the above is: conservative evangelicalism may be self-referential and circular, but at least it's internally consistent. Liberalising removes that consistency, leaving you with a belief system that doesn't actually make sense - that lacks self-consistency. It must therefore be unstable, and the only way that people stay in that position is by not thinking too hard or "putting on the brakes." The stable point that incorporates the liberal beliefs outlined in the OP lies outside of Christianity.

Is that a reasonable way of re-stating your point?

I think I'm with you right up until "the stable point that incorporates..." I'm not sure such a point exists. But if you're going to be in an unstable state, I just can't see the point of insisting that Jesus rose from the dead, and insisting that other people believe that too.

Honestly, that was the real killer point that I got to. I had really searched out truth as best as I could, a lot like some people on this thread have talked about, and come to some conclusions about Hell and God and the Bible, and just decided that I didn't believe a lot of it, but I still believed in Jesus, his work of grace, etc. But I knew I wasn't entirely sure of that either, and started wondering why I would ever want to try to convince someone else to go to church, or to consider believing in Jesus. It just didn't make sense to me why I would tell them that, as opposed to talking to them about grace or love directly. Sort of ... get straight to the point instead of involving this other aspect that isn't necessary.

Once I came to the conclusion that it made no sense for me to convince other people to believe it, it was a short drop to realizing that I could stop convincing myself to believe it too.

quote:
The infallibility of scripture seems to be key here (at least for the evangelical version of the argument). Can I ask why it's less consistent to have belief in God, or the Incarnation, as axiomatic rather than belief in the infallibility of the Bible? The latter is at least as arbitrary as the former, and (IMO) harder to justify.

Belief in the infallibility of the Bible requires Christianity. It sets apart the Bible as unique among all other texts as the one word of God, and serves as the foundation point for all conversations about that God.

General belief in God has no such foundation, and allows a lot more room for questions. That's a very, very good thing, if you ask me. But it leads to everything else I've said in this thread, that I won't repeat here for fear of becoming even more incredibly dull.

quote:
It also seems to me that you think that, in rejecting Christianity as a foundational belief, you are in a "purer" position. I would see it more as moving from one set of foundational beliefs to another set - there's no such thing as neutrality. Naturalism has a lot of things to commend it, but it's still a world view, an assumed metaphysic.

I don't know what you mean by "purer", but it sounds like the whole "you have faith too" argument.

Let me put it this way. If I had been born to a family of astrologers, I might have believed strongly in astrology. I would have learned about their beliefs, their structures, their tradition, possibly even some star-gazing rituals.

At some point, though, I might have started to doubt pieces of the astrology whole. Certain things didn't seem to make much sense, and so I stopped believing them. But I knew that parts of astrology were about hope in humankind, and about the wonder of nature, and I believed those parts, so I still believed in astrology, overall.

There would probably come a time when I might think, "Can't I have hope in humankind, and appreciate wonder in nature, without any of the assumptions that count uniquely as astrology? And if so, in what way do I really 'believe in astrology'?" And at that point, I might stop believing.

If I did, would I become some sort of "purer", dogmatic non-astrologer? Borrowing again from Sam Harris, there's no such thing as non-astrologers. It's not considered arrogant or faith-based or dogmatic to say, "Erm, there isn't much evidence for astrology, it seems unlikely, so I don't believe it." When the question is about God, or Christianity, it should work the same way.

It seems to me that many people (not all) who begin to have beliefs outlined in the OP eventually end up at a point where they're asking, "Can't I have believe in xyz without any of the assumptions that count as uniquely Christian? And if so, in what way do I really 'believe in Christianity'?" And if they're like me, they stop believing.

I don't think that's necessarily a purer, arrogant, dogmatic position.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

Serious question (not that my previous post was anything like entirely unserious) -

Which of the bullet-points in the OP are required by the Nicene Creed?

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Because, in addition, no other 'system' adequately deals (IMNSVHO) with bridging the unbridgeable gap between God's perfection and Man's imperfection.

There are many logical leaps here.

First, you assume that a perfect God the way you imagine him exists.

Then you assume a gap exists between God's perfection and mankind.

Then you assume this gap is unbridgeable.

Then you assume this is a problem.

Then you assume Jesus solved that problem.

It takes all those steps to go where you went. (Let alone that Jesus or not Jesus you are still, by your own thoughts, imperfect, so I can't see at all how that gap you are talking about is bridged at all, except in some people's imagination)

And I repeat, why do you believe those stuff?

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
... is just plain silly.

Will that do?

No, it won't.

You don't get to ignore the parts you think are silly and retain the rest and assume they are the truth. Not legitimately, that is.

Again, what is the legitimacy for your choosing and picking which bits you are going to follow and which not?

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Here we go. The Golden Age of Christianity, when nobody believed in Hell, nobody believed anything nasty from the Bible, everybody loved and respected all other religions, and there were free hugs for everyone. What happened??

Exactly.

We have reached a point where history is re-written so that the collapse of today's faith is avoided!

But historically speaking Christianity was not like those beautiful, but imaginary, descriptions people make here.

I could say even more beautiful words about Christianity without ever setting foot on planet Earth!

This reminds me of an incident...

Zizioulas was making a speech about how great eucharistic communions are, and he used his usual big words that impress people....

And then someone asked him, in private, where did all those beautiful things take place, which actual eucharistic community those words described.

And his reply was that he is doing... theology, and that this would be a question for historians...

In other words, people make up beautiful images in their minds without being concerned about the relation of those images to reality! And this is just disappointing.

If this is where Christianity ended, it's no surprise most people have moved beyond Christianity in the West!

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's assume, for this discussion, that you or someone you know agrees with a majority of the following, even if they must be slightly edited:

The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.
PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.
Other religions contain elements of truth
Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd
Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity
Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound

If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?
Because I honestly believe that to require a Christian to believe that

The bits of the Bible about people marrying giants and tattoos being an abomination came straight from the mouth of God and are required to be believed by all people in all places, forever
God put his Son to torture and death because he couldn't get over how angry he was with the world
God refuses to speak to non-Christians
God will sentence me to the pain of fire over every inch of my body for ever and ever and ever, just because I wake up in a bad mood one morning and then die before I can do some grovelling
God spent the nth day of creation burying fake dinosaur bones
God expects us to debate morality like infants, not grown-ups

... is just plain silly.

Will that do?

But, to use your patronizing and insulting tone, believing that God dressed up in human clothes, walked around, made some friends, drank some wine, died, magically rose from the dead, and flew back up to heaven -- that's not silly at all? It seems to me that once the standard for "silly" is set at that level, it wipes out more of Christianity than you admit.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But, to use your patronizing and insulting tone, believing that God dressed up in human clothes, walked around, made some friends, drank some wine, died, magically rose from the dead, and flew back up to heaven -- that's not silly at all?

No, that's just nicely silly. The other stuff is too silly.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Because, in addition, no other 'system' adequately deals (IMNSVHO) with bridging the unbridgeable gap between God's perfection and Man's imperfection.
There are many logical leaps here.

First, you assume that a perfect God the way you imagine him exists.

I guess we're back to circular definitions here but, for me, there's no point to believing in an imperfect God; an imperfect God would be just like me only with power to really fuck things up big time.

quote:
Then you assume a gap exists between God's perfection and mankind.

That's pretty self-evident; a brief sideways glance at me (never mind anyone else) instantly confirms that.

quote:
Then you assume this gap is unbridgeable.

Except through Jesus, that follows, yes; for the perfect to mingle with the imperfect, the imperfect must somehow be made perfect or else it will make the perfect imperfect.

quote:
Then you assume this is a problem.

Yes. A massive one. Why isn't it?

quote:
Then you assume Jesus solved that problem.

I believe that, yes. And I believe that that was and remains the only way to solve the problem.

quote:
It takes all those steps to go where you went. (Let alone that Jesus or not Jesus you are still, by your own thoughts, imperfect, so I can't see at all how that gap you are talking about is bridged at all, except in some people's imagination)

My imperfection is hidden within and transformed by His perfection.

quote:
And I repeat, why do you believe those stuff?

Short answer: it's reasonable, it makes sense, it works. Long answer would require way too much time.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

At one point in my Christian journey I was taught the junk in the OP (and some related additional junk), which turned me off to Christianity as anything to gladly embrace (even if worshiping that "god" was somehow a "necessary duty" for eternal survival, not that I wanted to live with such a "god" but the alternate was supposedly worse.)

Exposing myself on purpose to lots of different Christian literature taught me that the OP list is a tiny minority view in Christianity, that most Christianity believes in a truly loving forgiving God who has confidence in us and joins us in our daily lives and walks with us through difficult times and can bring stunning good out of bad situations if we will allow God to work in our lives.

But I had to overcome what I was taught before I could start seeing some of what the Bible really says instead of what I had been taught it said. taught by people who claimed, and probably believed, that they took the Bible at face value but in fact left out "insignificant" words (that actually change the whole meaning of a passage) and "historical purposes only" passages (that in face speak of God today and always not just in the past or future), etc.

Funny how much of the Bible almost any group of Christian dismiss or ignore, even while claiming to embrace the whole thing. Different bits ignored by different groups.

A killer for me was the conference at which the leader said each Bible verse has one and only one meaning, our job is to find that one meaning and reject all others. I protested that the sun has multiple purposes, it provides us with heat, and also with light, and also with gravity holding us in orbit, and probably some functions we haven't yet discovered, why would God's creation of the Bible be less multi-purposeful that God's creation of the sun?

Stone-faced he said each Bible passage has one and only one meaning.

I walked out of the meeting, and over the next year walked out of that view of God, and into a view of God as a person endlessly explorable, like is any human being, so God must be even more endlessly explorable.

Getting free from the OP list is what set me free to enjoy God and look forward to getting to know God better. "Compromise"? That's the wording of those clinging to that list, not a true analysis of the growth into knowing God better that is going on.

Different personalities see different aspects of God, so we should expect some to see beauty in that list and others to see beauty in a whole different list, and somehow it will all come together in the end when we see clearly instead of darkly. But that "clearly" will not be limited to that list!

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.

Where in the bible does it say that?

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yerevan:
[qb] But a bicycle is actually some use (although not if you want to go anywhere further than the next village, to push the analogy further ). Not so an empty church. There's something ironic about simultaneously criticising evangelicalism while embracing a path that means evangelical churches will be the only ones left in many UK towns in a generation (and that people who make the same journey out of evangelicalism in thirty years time will have nowhere to go). But anyhow, this is a tangent.

I'm not actually making strong value judgements about evangelical V non-evangelical gospels in this case (for the record I don't identified as evangelical). Its not about simplistically equating size with success, but suggesting that maybe we non-evangelicals should start asking hard questions of ourselves as we watch our congregations age and dwindle. Your post assumes that people are only converted to evangelical Christianity for bad reasons (them v us etc etc). I hear that assumption all the time and I don't think its true, yet we cling to it because we're afraid of the alternative.

quote:
I think it's quite attractive to say to people: 'We have all the answers and if you join us, then God will be on your side.' It's not so attractive to say to people 'We believe that God is in the mess with you, but we can't pinpoint precisely how. Come join us visiting the housebound and the elderly'.

This is a total caricature. You know as well as I do that evangelicals visit the elderly etc etc. I've seen way more sacrificial living amongst evos than amongst liberals.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

My non-evo church is growing. Just sayin'.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
My question is really about whether or not certain concessions and compromises in belief can stand on their own, or whether those concessions are then applicable to a wider range of beliefs that makes the whole house fall down eventually.

This is one of the questions that bothered John Henry Newman and eventually drove him into the Roman Catholic Church. There, a relatively large number of tenets have been emitted as dogmas and the view is that they form a unified whole which cannot be compromised piecemeal. When we look by contrast at the welter of eccentric and squabbling organizations known as Protestantism, most of whom have abandoned one or more tenets of the ancient creeds and are in the process of going soft on others, this starts looking empirically like a powerful claim.

But there are also a few ideas on your list, e.g. biblical inerrancy a la fundamentalism, that the Roman Catholic church never taught and can therefore not be said to have "compromised."

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

I've been staying out of this because it's interesting to see how it goes, but I'd like to pick up on this point.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
It does sound like a slight variation on "I believe it just because I do," though. Believing that God came to earth, was killed, and then raised from the dead and ascended up into heaven--because it's the "best" explanation for why people formed a religious sect--seems to fly in the face of Occam's razor and reason in general.

I think this is a fair objection as far as it goes, but aren't you shifting the goalposts? If Occam's Razor is a valid objection to a belief system, why do you object to the various reasoned and grounded liberal* positions which have been outlined so far, but not the conservative* ones who believe the same, but also accept any number of Occam-defying events recorded in their Magic Book as literally true?

If you're applying Occam's Razor in this way, the question (and thread title) should surely be "Why do any religious people keep the faith?" As you seem to be exploring the question of whether liberal faith is a genuinely robust and internally consistent belief system or merely an intermediate point between conservatism and atheism, I don't see that Occam's Razor has a place in the discussion.

* - for want of better words

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

"Why do any religious people keep the faith?"

Damn good question indeed.

I think Occam is a perfectly reasonable way to check things. Like my "Diax's Rake" quote below. They seem like reasonable measures of investigating the world and religious belief is certainly something that needs investigation.

Posted by Scarlet (# 1738) on :

That would be me, then. I now see what I am doing. I believe Orthodox Christianity because I want it to be true.

I fled all sorts of wacky Protestant groups (including the praying for gold-dust crowd). I came to Orthodoxy because I believed it to have kept the faith of the church Fathers and guarded the tradition of the earliest Christians.

I stay because I want it to be true.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
I think this is a fair objection as far as it goes, but aren't you shifting the goalposts? If Occam's Razor is a valid objection to a belief system, why do you object to the various reasoned and grounded liberal* positions which have been outlined so far, but not the conservative* ones who believe the same, but also accept any number of Occam-defying events recorded in their Magic Book as literally true?

Great question. The reason Occam and reason become relevant is because the OP list seems to typically be derived from reason. So the point is, once you take out the razor, why do you choose to stop cutting at some rather arbitrary point? The conservatives are more than likely not willing to cede to Occam at all -- it's in the Bible, it's true. God said it, I believe, that settles it. It's a completely different argument.

Posted by Choirboy (# 9659) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
In any regard, I use the words "concession" and "compromise" on purpose, not because they're concessions with regard to "the Truth" but rather with regard to traditional Christianity.

Formal statement of Biblical inerrancy, as such, is a rather recent doctrine, as is PSA. Must have been tough on all those ersatz Christians for the first millenia post-resurrection or more. What has been stated as 'traditional' isn't so traditional, and is fairly specific to certain Western strands of Christian thought.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Choirboy:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
In any regard, I use the words "concession" and "compromise" on purpose, not because they're concessions with regard to "the Truth" but rather with regard to traditional Christianity.
Formal statement of Biblical inerrancy, as such, is a rather recent doctrine, as is PSA. Must have been tough on all those ersatz Christians for the first millenia post-resurrection or more. What has been stated as 'traditional' isn't so traditional, and is fairly specific to certain Western strands of Christian thought.

Choirboy, the gist of your point is exactly right. My only quibble is that the doctrines in question are much more recent than you suggest. PSA is less than 300 years old, and inerrancy is not much more than 100 years old. As with all such things, they can tease out strands of history that would be compatible with their views that are considerably older, but the doctrines themselves aren't much older than the people who currently hold them.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Or else, you started out a Christian for contextual, societal, etc. reasons, but you haven't left because you do believe in some of the overarching themes of Christianity like love and loving one's neighbor.

Bingo. Though you miss out the parts of my journey where I genuinely felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life, which is another big reason why I haven't left...

quote:
In either case, the point I'm making is that it's possible to believe in love and loving one's neighbor while not believing in Jesus's literal resurrection from the dead.

It sure is [Smile]

. I don't need to believe in the resurrection to believe in love, but I believe in it nevertheless.

quote:
Now, I sympathize with those like LutheranChik who say there are many who use the best tools they have to discern the truth of Scripture and Tradition, and find that many things that Scripture and Tradition have seemed to say may not be true, they may have been misinterpreted, or misunderstood, misused, or even mishandled from the start.

I think that's admirable, honestly. But my question is... what stops you from then considering if maybe even the literal resurrection is in the same category of misuse, misunderstanding, etc.

Nothing. It's something I have considered, and considered in depth. But unlike some of those other parts of the Bible, my considerations on this front have lead me to the conclusion that it is true.

After all, saying something is open for consideration isn't the same as saying it's not true.

quote:
(from a later post)
But if you're going to be in an unstable state, I just can't see the point of insisting that Jesus rose from the dead, and insisting that other people believe that too.

I don't insist that Jesus rose from the dead, I insist that I believe He did. Big difference.

Similarly, I don't insist that other people believe it too. If they come to me with questions about faith I will answer them honestly, and that may include an invitation to come to church. But I'm as far from the caricature of a "thou must believe what I believe or burn!" Christian as it's possible to be while remaining Christian. When it comes to other religions (or none) I say live and let live - they worship their way, I'll worship mine, and if God wants either of us to convert He'll let us know [Smile]

.

Which is, of course, the only honest way for me to be given the conscious uncertainty of my beliefs...

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Choirboy:
Formal statement of Biblical inerrancy, as such, is a rather recent doctrine, as is PSA. Must have been tough on all those ersatz Christians for the first millenia post-resurrection or more. What has been stated as 'traditional' isn't so traditional, and is fairly specific to certain Western strands of Christian thought.

We shouldn't hide behind our fingers and we should be very open about what it is we are talking here.

The extent of attributing scriptural passages to flawed human thoughts about God that goes on today is unprecedented in orthodox Christian history. It resembles the ideas of non-orthodox Christian groups that rejected the God portrayed in the Old Testament as bad, because of the nasty things he is portrayed to have said.

In fact, the very first verse of the Creed, where God is proclaimed to be the Creator, is a reference to than ancient debate between the proto-orthodox and various groups (Marcion included).

True, the orthodox might have employed all kind of interpretational methods, but the divine inspiration of the Scriptures was never questioned, and even the nasty sounding bits were considered to be divinely inspired and were not attributed to human flawed ideas about God.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Though you miss out the parts of my journey where I genuinely felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life, which is another big reason why I haven't left...

There is a distinction to be made, between experience and interpretation of experience.

In other words, how do you know it was the holy spirit that you were experiencing? I take it there was no sign saying "the holy spirit is present at the moment". That was your interpretation of that experience that you had. But your interpretation isn't self-evident.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.

A way of living based on... what?

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
That was your interpretation of that experience that you had. But your interpretation isn't self-evident.

Maybe not, but it's good enough for me.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
It seems to me that many people (not all) who begin to have beliefs outlined in the OP eventually end up at a point where they're asking, "Can't I have believe in xyz without any of the assumptions that count as uniquely Christian? And if so, in what way do I really 'believe in Christianity'?" And if they're like me, they stop believing.

So the glib answer is that we're not all like you!

Not everyone who has the beliefs outlined in the OP came to them because they started questioning what you've set up as traditional Christianity (whether that really is traditional Christianity, which I doubt, is a whole nother question). I was brought up in a conservative/evangelical tradition, and threw it all overboard all at once and went straight to atheism overnight. Almost ten years later, I came back to Christianity through a door on the opposite side of where I went out, so was a thorough-going liberal from that point on. I've since then worked off and on toward a somewhat more orthodox stance -- right now more off than on.

I think Bullfrog hit the bullseye for me, though:

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.

And Jason I. Am asked, "based on what?" My answer:
A way of living based on orientation toward the divine.

I honestly don't think it matters what religion someone chooses to follow. I don't care whether the truth claims Christian theology makes turn out to be valid or not; what's important is that they speak to me about God. Other religions do the same thing for other people, but for personal and cultural reasons, it's harder for me to understand what they're saying.

When after a decade of atheism I decided that I needed a religion, I had something I can only describe as a waking vision of standing at a starting line from which multiple paths stretched out before me leading into the distance, all going to the same place. I stepped onto the path immediate in front of me.

The point is not which path you take up the mountain. The point is that you make the climb.

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

Based on trying to make sense of the world around you.

The question in the end that most people ask is closer to "Does this work here, now?" than "Is this true?".

Most people hold discordant beliefs with ease, see this book. You only get a sense of uneasiness if they actually come into conflict.

The other thing is people today don't take a package whole with faith and all you are outlining is one package version of Christianity which is as I indicated earlier hardly the central plank.

Now here is one to confuse you. Ask me if I believe in the Virgin Birth and the answer is yes. If you ask into the historical veracity of the event I will allow anyone's doubts as justified, in all fairness I have to it is historically unverifiable.

However I still maintain I believe it. For me the important bit of that doctrine is that it proclaims the human-nature of Christ. He is not a god who has temporally put on human form like many of the Greek Gods did in their legends, but has become truly human and unlike them had therefore a human birth. I begin to understand what to be "truly human" is through the story which is not a denial of the flesh but a discipline to it.

In other words I take the greater truth that I see encapsulated in the story and because I understand that to be the case I accept the statement as true.

In other words often when someone says something is true when talking of faith they mean I sense a divine mystery behind this so I assent to this proposition or does it do epistemological work for me at this moment.

Oh and by the way my congregation when I was a kid taught that the virgin birth didn't happen but was a nice story condition by the times it was written in.

Jengie

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I think Bullfrog hit the bullseye for me, though:

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.
And Jason I. Am asked, "based on what?" My answer:
A way of living based on orientation toward the divine.

I honestly don't think it matters what religion someone chooses to follow. I don't care whether the truth claims Christian theology makes turn out to be valid or not; what's important is that they speak to me about God. Other religions do the same thing for other people, but for personal and cultural reasons, it's harder for me to understand what they're saying.

When after a decade of atheism I decided that I needed a religion, I had something I can only describe as a waking vision of standing at a starting line from which multiple paths stretched out before me leading into the distance, all going to the same place. I stepped onto the path immediate in front of me.

The point is not which path you take up the mountain. The point is that you make the climb.

So, in essence, you live under the assumption that God exists because it provides benefits to you, including a way of life, that you don't believe can be found outside of religion, and you've chosen Christianity as the religion that works best for you.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, for the record, but I'm trying to make sure I understand what people are saying.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
So, in essence, you live under the assumption that God exists because it provides benefits to you, including a way of life, that you don't believe can be found outside of religion, and you've chosen Christianity as the religion that works best for you.

I never thought about whether there would be benefits when I decided to pick a religion, actually. What happened was that it was pointed out to me that I worshipped something quite inadequate, and I realized that I couldn't help but organize my life around something, so I'd better find something deserving of that.

I originally decided I had to live under the assumption that God exists because I, like many (most?) of the people who have walked the earth over the millenia, have a spiritual impulse I can't deny or get rid of and because I had a profound spiritual experience. I continue to believe that God exists because that makes more sense in my experience than believing that God doesn't exist.

I chose Christianity because I already knew the stories, the vocabulary, the ideas. I knew if I picked another religion -- Buddhism would have been the first alternative -- that because it is culturally foreign I would probably have undertaken a big research project, learning all those new concepts, instead of actually practicing the religion.

Posted by Kid Who Cracked (# 13963) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.
A way of living based on... what?

I can't help but think this is a somewhat irrelevant question to many forms of Christianity. There are no empirical facts on which we can check and verify any of our beliefs - that's what makes it faith.

But we do have the experience of the early Christians to base our faith on. They found God through Jesus. If pressed, that's what my faith is based on - the experience of early Christians.

Did I just contradict myself? [Ultra confused]

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
I'm not actually making strong value judgements about evangelical V non-evangelical gospels in this case (for the record I don't identified as evangelical). Its not about simplistically equating size with success, but suggesting that maybe we non-evangelicals should start asking hard questions of ourselves as we watch our congregations age and dwindle. Your post assumes that people are only converted to evangelical Christianity for bad reasons (them v us etc etc). I hear that assumption all the time and I don't think its true, yet we cling to it because we're afraid of the alternative.

The would be an original idea if I wasn't hearing it at least once a week. As far as I know, no one has come up with the magic wand yet. Not that that means we should stop trying to be disciples, but I know that I respond better to encouragement and I don't see the point of constantly bashing ourselves - which I think we're in a very real danger of doing.

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:

quote:
I think it's quite attractive to say to people: 'We have all the answers and if you join us, then God will be on your side.' It's not so attractive to say to people 'We believe that God is in the mess with you, but we can't pinpoint precisely how. Come join us visiting the housebound and the elderly'.
This is a total caricature. You know as well as I do that evangelicals visit the elderly etc etc. I've seen way more sacrificial living amongst evos than amongst liberals.

I attended conservative evangelical churches from 1957 to 1999 and the big difference to me in joining the mainstream church I joined was that there was actually a pastoral visiting programme in place AND it came without strings. Visiting was done for the benefit of the people being visited, not for the church's benefit.

In my personal experience of conservative evangelicalism, all the activities came with a string attached of 'being a real Christian' - either conversion of those whose ideas we didn't like too much or snuffing out the questions of regular attendees with The Right Answers. I'm sure not all conservative evangelical churches are like this, but I'm quite sure that the churches I belonged to were doing that.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.
A way of living based on... what?

I find the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, if bit cliched, sums it all up decently well. That, and faith.

And note, by "faith," I don't mean faith in the rightness of my doctrine, or in some codified set of beliefs (though such things have their place), but a shared relationship with God and the universe. It's more of a way to relate to the world than a set of ideas about the world...more of a conocer than saber, if you will.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I think Bullfrog hit the bullseye for me, though:

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog:
Religion isn't about verifying epistemological truth claims. It's about a way of living.
And Jason I. Am asked, "based on what?" My answer:
A way of living based on orientation toward the divine.

I honestly don't think it matters what religion someone chooses to follow. I don't care whether the truth claims Christian theology makes turn out to be valid or not; what's important is that they speak to me about God. Other religions do the same thing for other people, but for personal and cultural reasons, it's harder for me to understand what they're saying.

When after a decade of atheism I decided that I needed a religion, I had something I can only describe as a waking vision of standing at a starting line from which multiple paths stretched out before me leading into the distance, all going to the same place. I stepped onto the path immediate in front of me.

The point is not which path you take up the mountain. The point is that you make the climb.
So, in essence, you live under the assumption that God exists because it provides benefits to you, including a way of life, that you don't believe can be found outside of religion, and you've chosen Christianity as the religion that works best for you.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, for the record, but I'm trying to make sure I understand what people are saying.

Per my previous post, which you responded to, it's not about the logical assumption (at least for me). I'd feel incredibly arrogant to think that my logical construct is the same thing as God. It'd be sort of like a scientist going around saying that current model of evolution is exactly how the world must work all the time without any exception. Everybody knows that's crap science. Why is it considered sound theology to do the same thing with God? Mine tries to be a forward-looking faith, not an attachment to the present reality or nostalgia for a dead past.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
My non-evo church is growing. Just sayin'.

As is mine, although all our growth comes from cradle Christians church hopping (which doesn't count IMO...we can't keep fishing from that every dwindling pool). A sister church of ours is seeing really impressive growth thanks to a leader who combines informal modern worship and evangelical enthusiasm with an open, post-evangelical theology. We've even had...gasp...non-Christians show up. IMHO its the way forward, but anyone who posts regularly in Ecclesiantics will hate it [Biased]

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Ruth, thank you for your very clear answer to the core questions from the OP:

Why believe God exists at all? Personal spiritual experience.

Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Because Christianity provides you with a culturally appropriate, accessible, and familiar context in which to engage with your spiritual experience.

I don't have a similar personal experience. Or, maybe more accurately, I don't have a similar personal experience for which I have not arrived at a naturalistic explanation. Do you think you would have arrived at where you are now if you had not had a profound personal experience?

The replies to the OP have generally appealed to either personal experience or a deliberate decision to believe. These may be perfectly valid reasons to be Christian, but they are not applicable to me. My experience doesn't compel me to believe and my inherited beliefs, where not well supported by evidence, have not held up well to rational examination. Occam's razor has a central place in this discussion, at least for me.

Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
I don't see the point of constantly bashing ourselves - which I think we're in a very real danger of doing.

In my IRL experience we're really not bashing ourselves at all.

quote:
As far as I know, no one has come up with the magic wand yet.

That line would work if all churches were struggling, but all churches aren't. I can think of several examples in my locality of struggling churches almost side by side with thriving ones, so some people have obviously come up with approaches that appeal to large numbers of Christians (and non-Christians).

quote:
I attended conservative evangelical churches from 1957 to 1999 and the big difference to me in joining the mainstream church I joined was that there was actually a pastoral visiting programme in place AND it came without strings. Visiting was done for the benefit of the people being visited, not for the church's benefit...

Thats your experience, fair enough. Its not mine or many other peoples. I married the black sheep in a family of independent evangelicals and my father-in-law's an evangelical minister, so I'm speaking from experience too. I've seen a lot of evangelical churches and individuals care for others to a truly sacrificial level, in most cases with no strings attached that I can see. I could list scores of anecdotes from two countries to prove this (ie the two evo families I know of who've adopted very severely disabled children). I might find their theology irritating (don't start me on headship!), but I can't accuse them of being unloving.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Ruth, thank you for your very clear answer to the core questions from the OP:

Why believe God exists at all? Personal spiritual experience.

Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Because Christianity provides you with a culturally appropriate, accessible, and familiar context in which to engage with your spiritual experience.

I don't have a similar personal experience. Or, maybe more accurately, I don't have a similar personal experience for which I have not arrived at a naturalistic explanation. Do you think you would have arrived at where you are now if you had not had a profound personal experience?

The replies to the OP have generally appealed to either personal experience or a deliberate decision to believe. These may be perfectly valid reasons to be Christian, but they are not applicable to me. My experience doesn't compel me to believe and my inherited beliefs, where not well supported by evidence, have not held up well to rational examination. Occam's razor has a central place in this discussion, at least for me.

Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

It depends on what you're looking for (to give a very brief answer to an excellent question). I guess I can say that I've found a lot of good in the church communities I belong to (including a more conservative one). Rationally, whatever a person thought of the various dogmas and doctrines in play, it's a healthy community bounded more or less by the Christian tradition as interpreted by its members. Reasonably, I may not agree with everything that's preached, but there is something there among the people that's really cool and I want to be a part of it. I suppose, with sufficient work, one could work out the things that make church work. That sort of pragmatics wouldn't be pure science, and I imagine that dogma about the resurrection, etc., while relevant, would not be the central thing (though I think it helps), but there are probably ways to do it.

Of course, that kind of research isn't generally as lucrative as studying pathologies (people tend to take normalcy for granted), but I'd bet it could be done and that there are church consultants who will do it (for a fee).

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Thats your experience, fair enough. Its not mine or many other peoples. I married the black sheep in a family of independent evangelicals and my father-in-law's an evangelical minister, so I'm speaking from experience too. I've seen a lot of evangelical churches and individuals care for others to a truly sacrificial level, in most cases with no strings attached that I can see. I could list scores of anecdotes from two countries to prove this (ie the two evo families I know of who've adopted very severely disabled children). I might find their theology irritating (don't start me on headship!), but I can't accuse them of being unloving.

Agreed. I think there's a weird presumption that "con-evo" churches are unhealthy while "moderate-liberal" churches are always healthy.

The last church I served at (as a student pastor) was a bit more conservative for me, but I thought the people would be very gracious to someone if they were in need, regardless of their lifestyle. I'm also sure that there are liberal churches that don't do nearly as much as they could. This is probably one reason I think that it's really not just about epistemology or the usual litmus tests people make so they can blow people off as either "liberal" or "conservative" or those-people-we-disagree-with du jour.

Posted by Mr Clingford (# 7961) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
The replies to the OP have generally appealed to either personal experience or a deliberate decision to believe. These may be perfectly valid reasons to be Christian, but they are not applicable to me. My experience doesn't compel me to believe and my inherited beliefs, where not well supported by evidence, have not held up well to rational examination. Occam's razor has a central place in this discussion, at least for me.

Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

Well, the argument for the existence of God as a first cause works for me - it is not compelling but is very reasonable IMO.

The 'willingness' of the apostles to die is best explained imo by the fact that they believed there was something about Jesus - if they knew it was a lie then why die for it? Not compelling again, but strongly worth consideration.

The best interpretation for my religious experience imo is that I wasn't making it up - if science is able to show conclusively that it is made up then I would have to take note of it, but this is very far from the case.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.
Where in the bible does it say that?

I'd still like an answer.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Clingford:
The 'willingness' of the apostles to die is best explained imo by the fact that they believed there was something about Jesus - if they knew it was a lie then why die for it? Not compelling again, but strongly worth consideration.

There are a lot of things that bother me in this oft-repeated apologetic. One of them is that there is no evidence that the apostles were given a choice on whether they lived or died. Much, much later Christians were given the choice of recanting and sacrificing to the emperor or being martyred. I am aware of no evidence that such an option was available to the disciples.

As far as I can see, it was a dangerous thing to be under Roman rule at all. Do we then say that people "chose" to be under Roman rule, and did so because they believed that the Roman emperor was a god?

--Tom Clune

[ 18. June 2009, 19:08: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:

quote:
As far as I know, no one has come up with the magic wand yet.
That line would work if all churches were struggling, but all churches aren't. I can think of several examples in my locality of struggling churches almost side by side with thriving ones, so some people have obviously come up with approaches that appeal to large numbers of Christians (and non-Christians).

OK, then what do you think are the concrete steps that we can take? It gets unbelievably disheartening to hear people complain but never to suggest anything concrete. And yes, we do hear this all the time. What makes people on the Ship think that they are the first to notice a decline that's been going on for over 30 years? It's easy to tear people down. Now offer me a tangible process or vision that outlines a doable way forward.

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Thats your experience, fair enough. Its not mine or many other peoples. I married the black sheep in a family of independent evangelicals and my father-in-law's an evangelical minister, so I'm speaking from experience too. I've seen a lot of evangelical churches and individuals care for others to a truly sacrificial level, in most cases with no strings attached that I can see. I could list scores of anecdotes from two countries to prove this (ie the two evo families I know of who've adopted very severely disabled children). I might find their theology irritating (don't start me on headship!), but I can't accuse them of being unloving.

To which I can only say 'That's your experience, fair enough.'

I have no idea where you got the idea that I think that evangelicals are unloving.

[ 18. June 2009, 19:14: Message edited by: Seeker963 ]

Posted by WearyPilgrim (# 14593) on :

I just joined this discussion. I agree with Fletcher Christian: "There's something about that Jesus lad . . .". I think old Harry Emerson Fosdick said it well: at first, people said [of Jesus] that God sent him. After a while that sounded too cold, as though God were the bow and Jesus the arrow. So they went on to say that God was wirh [Jesus]. That went deeper, but still they found that as their experience of Jesus progressed, it wasn't sufficient. God was more than "with" Jesus. Finally, they concluded that God CAME TO US in Jesus --- "the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, full of grace and truth." That clinches it for me. I have lots of questions about Christian doctrine; some of my beliefs are pretty fluid. But I can't let go of the central proposition, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world.

I also firmly believe in the Resurrection, because in experiencing Jesus I've experienced the Resurrection myself. "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!" An old chestnut of a song, perhaps, but it expresses a reality that, to me, is compelling.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Agreed. I think there's a weird presumption that "con-evo" churches are unhealthy while "moderate-liberal" churches are always healthy.

Sorry, I'm not assuming that.

I'm probably getting too enthusiastic about disagreeing with the idea that big con-evo churches are always 'doing Christianity correctly' and that smaller moderate churches don't actually care about the Gospel.

One of the churches that I serve (I'll call it the XYZ church) is in a small town with two other larger churches; funnily enough, these two other churches are also moderate. The XYZ church tends to attract a steady stream of people who feel lost in the other churches and who simply want the closer fellowship of people who know each other.

The XYZ Church is one of the most behaviorally functional churches I know. If you have never experienced a 'no blame culture', this is the place to experience it. I'll be the first person to recognize that none of that is down to me and this culture has , I'm told, been in place long before I got there.

I'm not willing to agree that, on an objective basis, this congregation is doing something wrong because if they were doing something right, they'd be bigger. I think that part of what they are doing right - for them and in their particular context - is 'being small'.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I don't have a similar personal experience. Or, maybe more accurately, I don't have a similar personal experience for which I have not arrived at a naturalistic explanation. Do you think you would have arrived at where you are now if you had not had a profound personal experience?

Possibly, but it's really hard -- impossible? -- to know. I might have arrived at the same position more gradually without that experience (and others since), but it really would depend on what happened in its absence. For instance, if someone had introduced me to Christian meditation early on, that might have supported belief. I did start going to church before my first real experience of God, and I was certainly open to belief -- perhaps I would have found my way towards it in any case. But maybe not. Either way, it's experience that would have been key for me.

quote:
The replies to the OP have generally appealed to either personal experience or a deliberate decision to believe. These may be perfectly valid reasons to be Christian, but they are not applicable to me. My experience doesn't compel me to believe and my inherited beliefs, where not well supported by evidence, have not held up well to rational examination. Occam's razor has a central place in this discussion, at least for me.

Which is -- of course! -- fine. The key words here are "for me." The OP and some subsequent posts said a slide toward atheism or agnosticism seemed inevitable, when really that's only inevitable for some people.

quote:
Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

To me the OP looks like pretty vanilla Christian thought heavily influenced by scientific rationalism. And I'm guessing that it's the heavy influence of scientific rationalism that makes you and Jason and others say, "hey, just keep going!" But no, I don't think there is such a way. That's asking one belief framework (lib/mod Xianity) to fit inside another (scientific rationalism), and that just doesn't work.

Scientific rationalism is indeed a belief framework. Lots of people organize their lives around their trust in external observations and reason, and it's working just fine for them.

So why not just go with that? Why keep coming back to the God question?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Scientific rationalism is indeed a belief framework. Lots of people organize their lives around their trust in external observations and reason, and it's working just fine for them.

I don't think you can define scientific rationalism as merely trust in external observations and reason. It's not as if the rest of us don't trust them.

For that matter, I haven't had any kind of religious experience. At least I've had nothing that seemed to be obviously not hyperventilation or something of the sort. I'm willing to take other people's reports of religious experience on trust as providing some kind of reason for me to believe. That wouldn't be reason for believing on its own, and I'm sceptical as to what religious experience establishes in the absence of publically communicable experience.

What I think makes scientific rationalism is that it places the dignity of man (or woman) in the ability to reason. There was a quote from Bertrand Russell earlier in the thread about starting from a solid bedrock of despair. It's that kind of evangelical acceptance of despair that makes the scientific rationalist. The sense of sneering down one's nose at everyone else who believes only because they want to. Of course, one doubts that many scientific rationalists have really confronted despair personally, just as one doubts that many Christians really love their neighbour as themselves. But valuing that kind of courage in rising above one's emotions, the awareness of nobly rejecting comforting illusions, is what is definitive of rationalism.

Now Christians can and do believe that wishful thinking is no basis for belief. But they might differ on what counts as wishful thinking. The fear of death, certainly. But does the sense of meaning or human value count as believing only because you want to? Really? The rationalist will take an austere hard-headed tone and say, yes. The Christian will wonder if the rationalist is really being consistent. Is the rationalist not sweeping meaning out the front and letting it in again at the back? Can the rationalist really do without it?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by WearyPilgrim:
I have lots of questions about Christian doctrine; some of my beliefs are pretty fluid. But I can't let go of the central proposition, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world.

I also firmly believe in the Resurrection, because in experiencing Jesus I've experienced the Resurrection myself. "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!" An old chestnut of a song, perhaps, but it expresses a reality that, to me, is compelling.

This is something I'd really like to dig into a little more, because it's partially representative of a lot of answers throughout these last 5 pages.

Let's say you meet someone who says, "I believe that Elvis is alive, and that he lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house." There may be some evidence here and there for such a claim, but when you press him a little harder, he says, "I just can't let go of this proposition, that Elvis lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house. I can feel him in my heart. Besides, I wouldn't want to live in a world where Elvis didn't live with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house."

I'm not comparing the two beliefs 1:1 by any means. But in that situation, the reasoning may be "good enough" for the believer, but it wouldn't stop us from raising our collective eyebrow and wondering just what the hell was wrong with the guy. Somehow, when these same basic reasons are brought out to describe why people believe in Christianity, we act as if it's perfectly normal.

What does it mean when people say Jesus lives in their heart, or that they just know that the incarnation was special, or that they've felt the Holy Spirit? I don't question that it's possible for people to think or feel these things, but I think it's strange that we don't question them in the same way we'd question someone who feels the presence of Elvis or leprechauns or extra-terrestial space probes and flying saucers.

I don't want to sound like I'm discounting the possibility of spiritual events, mysterious experience, etc. But why should those events necessarily be co-opted by a religious framework (especially one that some people admit to choosing simply because they were born into it, or because it's familiar), when they could stand on their own and remain mysterious?

These are some of the questions that make me get very little work done on some days.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
... Christianity, even in its most apophatic forms, still made huge claims about objective reality.

God was not just inexpressible and incomprehensible. He was also triadic. Jesus was not just someone who inspires us to come closer to God, or who shows us God. He was actually God. His salvation-giving crucifixion and resurrection is not just an archetypical image that gives meaning to our lives, but actual historical facts, and so on and so forth.

Go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is part of the Christian story.

Which is why "I find inspiration in Christianity" is not enough a reason to believe those stuff.

I'm not sure how to answer your perfectly valid point, since any answer involves me trying to explain something I don't fully understand myself! But, as my wife would say, when has that ever stopped me.

I'll try to be a bit more objective but where I'm at tonight is a picture of a man hopping. If he is hopping on the apophatic foot, he's not really walking by faith, he's hopping around trusting in mystery. If he's hopping on the kataphatic foot, he's not really walking by faith, he's hopping around trusting in the Kerygma. I think the old divines taught us that in order to walk by faith we've got to stop hopping about!

I'm sure this is very unsatisfactory! It's kind of work in progress. After I've slept on it, I may get more analytical.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's say you meet someone who says, "I believe that Elvis is alive, and that he lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house." There may be some evidence here and there for such a claim, but when you press him a little harder, he says, "I just can't let go of this proposition, that Elvis lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house. I can feel him in my heart. Besides, I wouldn't want to live in a world where Elvis didn't live with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house."

I'm not comparing the two beliefs 1:1 by any means. But in that situation, the reasoning may be "good enough" for the believer, but it wouldn't stop us from raising our collective eyebrow and wondering just what the hell was wrong with the guy. Somehow, when these same basic reasons are brought out to describe why people believe in Christianity, we act as if it's perfectly normal.

What does it mean when people say Jesus lives in their heart, or that they just know that the incarnation was special, or that they've felt the Holy Spirit? I don't question that it's possible for people to think or feel these things, but I think it's strange that we don't question them in the same way we'd question someone who feels the presence of Elvis or leprechauns or extra-terrestial space probes and flying saucers.

I don't want to sound like I'm discounting the possibility of spiritual events, mysterious experience, etc. But why should those events necessarily be co-opted by a religious framework (especially one that some people admit to choosing simply because they were born into it, or because it's familiar), when they could stand on their own and remain mysterious?

These are some of the questions that make me get very little work done on some days.

So, can I ask you what the idea of "I just can't let go of this proposition, that Elvis lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house. I can feel him in my heart. Besides, I wouldn't want to live in a world where Elvis didn't live with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house." tells you about human nature or about what it means to be human? Do you think that this story is imbued with great wisdom that hints at inexpressible things about being human? Because I don't.

Now, see, the resurrection is not just a stand-alone proposition. It is one 'scene' in an entire narrative that says God is 'about' justice and that he cares for the underdog.

Our society says 'Whoever has more toys wins'. And the great secret of 'Me First Ism' is that if you are genuinely prepared to kill people for what you want, you have a very good chance of grabbing lots of toys.

Resurrection - which stands in this whole narrative about God's imperative for justice - says 'If you are genuinely not afraid to die, you can dare to do no end of good by standing up to the bullies of this world.'

You might think that sounds like a mad-man spotting Elvis, but I don't.

(Disclaimer: I'm not trying to write a complete exposition here of Christian doctrine; just give a flavour of why 'resurrection' is not totally mad and bad.)

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
I guess I can say that I've found a lot of good in the church communities I belong to (including a more conservative one). Rationally, whatever a person thought of the various dogmas and doctrines in play, it's a healthy community bounded more or less by the Christian tradition as interpreted by its members. Reasonably, I may not agree with everything that's preached, but there is something there among the people that's really cool and I want to be a part of it. I suppose, with sufficient work, one could work out the things that make church work. That sort of pragmatics wouldn't be pure science, and I imagine that dogma about the resurrection, etc., while relevant, would not be the central thing (though I think it helps), but there are probably ways to do it.

Being part of a healthy community is certainly a good goal. If someone lives within a strong community that happens to be a church, does that make them a Christian? I wouldn't think so, but this may be a case of differing definitions. Either way, I'm not convinced by my experience or observations that church communities are more likely to be healthy than other type of community.

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Clingford:
The best interpretation for my religious experience imo is that I wasn't making it up - if science is able to show conclusively that it is made up then I would have to take note of it, but this is very far from the case.

I am quite unconvinced of God as the unmoved mover and Tom already addressed the question of the disciples' willing martyrdom. Your final reason is an interesting one.

You say that you would take note if science could show that your experience was made up. What if science showed that your experience could reasonably have been subjectively genuine while originating inside your brain without supernatural involvement? I suspect that you would not accept the scientific explanation, but this is where we likely differ. There has been a significant amount of well-publicized research in the past few years that demonstrates "God experiences" as neurological phenomena. In the absence of external validation of my internal experience, I am inclined to credit the naturalistic explanations over the supernatural ones.

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
The OP and some subsequent posts said a slide toward atheism or agnosticism seemed inevitable, when really that's only inevitable for some people.

quote:
To me the OP looks like pretty vanilla Christian thought heavily influenced by scientific rationalism. And I'm guessing that it's the heavy influence of scientific rationalism that makes you and Jason and others say, "hey, just keep going!" But no, I don't think there is such a way. That's asking one belief framework (lib/mod Xianity) to fit inside another (scientific rationalism), and that just doesn't work.

The idea that a slide from liberal Christianity to atheism is inevitable for some people while others are anchored by personal experiences of the divine has rather profound implications. Are the Mormons right that I should wait for a burning in the bosom? Or maybe Calvin had it right and I'm just predestined to slide away from the faith.

quote:
Scientific rationalism is indeed a belief framework. Lots of people organize their lives around their trust in external observations and reason, and it's working just fine for them.

External observations and reason aren't all there is to life, but I don't believe that non-rational truth contradicts rational or observed truth. I may trust my gut, but only until data prove my instinct to be wrong.

quote:
So why not just go with that? Why keep coming back to the God question?

I come back to it because of a lifetime of religious indoctrination. I come back to it because people who I respect have arrived at a different conclusion. I come back to the God question because it's a big question with significant consequences, whatever the answer. It's important to me that I don't come to the wrong conclusion.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

(Cross-posted with Scot)

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I don't question that it's possible for people to think or feel these things, but I think it's strange that we don't question them in the same way we'd question someone who feels the presence of Elvis or leprechauns or extra-terrestial space probes and flying saucers.

But people do question them, all the time. Maybe we just run in different circles. Or maybe the questions we get are different.

The difference as far as I'm concerned is that belief in Elvis living in the backyard with leprechauns isn't interpretable as anything other than a need for psychotropic medication. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the belief that Krishna was an incarnation of Vishnu are both interpretable as pointing to God.

quote:
I don't want to sound like I'm discounting the possibility of spiritual events, mysterious experience, etc. But why should those events necessarily be co-opted by a religious framework (especially one that some people admit to choosing simply because they were born into it, or because it's familiar), when they could stand on their own and remain mysterious?

My experience is that people who have such experiences outside of religious frameworks don't really know what to do with them. You might think that's fine, that it's great if they just stand on their own and remain mysterious, but I wonder what the point is in that case. Religious experiences are life-changing events, or should be. The disciples experienced the Risen Christ and were never the same. Buddha sat under the bodhi tree and was enlightened and was never the same. And they went forth and changed the world.

[ 18. June 2009, 21:55: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
There are a lot of things that bother me in this oft-repeated apologetic. One of them is that there is no evidence that the apostles were given a choice on whether they lived or died. Much, much later Christians were given the choice of recanting and sacrificing to the emperor or being martyred. I am aware of no evidence that such an option was available to the disciples.

As far as I can see, it was a dangerous thing to be under Roman rule at all. Do we then say that people "chose" to be under Roman rule, and did so because they believed that the Roman emperor was a god?

--Tom Clune

Granted, but on the whole, they had a huge choice over whether or not to preach this new gospel thingy.

Life expectancy was short enough; but life got shorter and more painful if you wandered around the religious powder keg of C1 Israel saying that this Jesus person was God's chosen way of doing religion. The more robust members of both the Pharisees and Sadducees had ways of expressing their disagreement.

The Romans took a pretty dim view of a group of people declaring allegiance to this new king while stirring up trouble in the Empire.

The pagan religions got aggressively unhappy about customers choosing to help the poor rather than spend money on the various “benefits” of the temples.

You wouldn't have found insurance companies falling over themselves to provide life or injury cover to those stupid enough to insist on shouting their mouth off about how Jesus was “The Way”.

Best to stay home and keep quiet.

Posted by Full of Chips (# 13669) on :

Christianity grows conceptually as well though - this is what is meant by a living faith - and after 2000 years it has become ana enormously rich and varied structure with many branches. That's why neither the Bible nor Jason I. Am's list can provide a fixed set of rules for, or test of, Christianity.

For what it's worth I have little problem with, or much interest in, the list.

Posted by Carys (# 78) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
I'm not willing to agree that, on an objective basis, this congregation is doing something wrong because if they were doing something right, they'd be bigger. I think that part of what they are doing right - for them and in their particular context - is 'being small'.

Indeed. I'm part of a small (but growing) church and for some people its small size is important. In a bigger church they'd get lost on the edges, but we notice them because in a small church it's hard not to!

In terms of Jason.I.am's brake analogy, the thing is for me, I wasn't brought up believing the things in the OP so for me there hasn't been a movement away from them to need to brake. I went through a time (as an undergrad) where there was pressure towards a number of the points in the OP and that was difficult, though also a time of growth.

For me, a large part of what convinces me about Christianity is its realistic grasp of human nature. We're messed up but redeemable, though not in our own strength. I went to a couple of sessions at Greenbelt last year about Christianity and Buddhism and it was that 'in our own strength' that struck me as being the biggest difference between the two. There was a Buddhist convert from Christianity who liked the fact that in Buddhism one had to do it oneself without grace. But to me, that's what's real about Christianity -- the recognition that we can't do it ourselves. The danger is that thinking we can do it ourselves leads to pride and dismissing others. Humility and Grace are key to me. Yes, religion and religious people mess up (but Christianity tells us to expect this) and those of us who follow Jesus end up behaving like those he criticised most (the Pharisees) and excluding others, but when we accept grace and really follow Jesus good things happen.

In how many belief systems is humility a virtue? It ain't in our secular society where success is key and confidence (and even arrogance) are prized.

Carys

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
Life expectancy was short enough; but life got shorter and more painful if you wandered around the religious powder keg of C1 Israel saying that this Jesus person was God's chosen way of doing religion. The more robust members of both the Pharisees and Sadducees had ways of expressing their disagreement.

The Romans took a pretty dim view of a group of people declaring allegiance to this new king while stirring up trouble in the Empire.

The last point first: it simply isn't true that the Romans had it in for Christians at this time. The first Christians were viewed as Jews by the Romans. Jews were given many privileges in Rome that other groups did not have. Included in them was the special right to not sacrifice to other gods. Romans thought that showing respect to other traditions' gods by offering sacrifices was just common courtesy, and everybody except the Jews were required to do so. But they knew that Jews had a thing about that, and let it slide. Christians got in under the Jewish exemption, and so were also not prosecuted for not offering sacrifices to other gods.

If memory serves, it was Nero who first killed Christians because they were Christians. He blamed the fire in Rome on the Christians. Some folks think there may be something to this. The apocalyptic views of some Christians suggested that Christ would come again when Rome was destroyed, and speculation is that they may ahve wanted to lend a hand. Whether that's true or not, apparently it was understood that some Christians had such views, and that was at least a convenient basis for Nero to blame them.

The important thing about this is that the fire in Rome was three decades after Christ's crucifixion. So the disciples would have been well along their chosen path before any particular danger from Rome applied to them. Paul was in trouble, not because he was a Christian, but because he was Paul. He was always rubbing people the wrong way and getting beaten up or arrested. It is a mistake to think that this reflects the common lot of Christians.

Stephen was martyred in a particular incident of Jewish nationalism. We tend to forget that "Judean" meant both "Jew" and "person who lived in Judea." But the native Judeans were not happy with all the immigrant Jews coming to Jerusalem. There was a violent expulsion of the Hellenistic Jews (those not born in Judea) from Judea as an act much like the anti-immigrant riots that we have experienced in our past. Thinking of that as predominantly an anti-Christian thing would be a mistake.

There were Jewish people who were opposed to the Christian Jews of the day. But there were Jewish people who were opposed to any Jewish group you care to name. That's just the way the Jews were. Many people would say it continues to be a national trait. The point is that there was no particular danger in being a Christian, and certainly vis a vis the Romans there were real advantages at the time of the disciples.

The plain fact is that the argument put forth in the apologetic is either ignorant or dishonest.

--Tom Clune

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
What does it mean when people say Jesus lives in their heart, or that they just know that the incarnation was special, or that they've felt the Holy Spirit? I don't question that it's possible for people to think or feel these things, but I think it's strange that we don't question them in the same way we'd question someone who feels the presence of Elvis or leprechauns or extra-terrestial space probes and flying saucers.

I realize I'm echoing Ruth here, but who are these people that don't question people who think or feel those things? Because I do get those questions* - but unlike people who think Elvis is living with the leprechauns in their backyard, I have a lot more tangible evidence that I can point to and others can see.

*I've also been thanked by more than one atheist for not completely destroying their beliefs about how the world works, which is generally an interesting conversation to try to have...

quote:
I don't want to sound like I'm discounting the possibility of spiritual events, mysterious experience, etc. But why should those events necessarily be co-opted by a religious framework (especially one that some people admit to choosing simply because they were born into it, or because it's familiar), when they could stand on their own and remain mysterious?

It's odd to me that you think the spiritual events, mysterious experiences, etc. are co-opted by a religious framework; I'm not entirely sure those experiences can exist without some kind of religious framework (although different religious frameworks will probably make sense of them in slightly different ways). I'm not sure the experiences can stand on their own, and they remain somewhat mysterious even within a religious framework.*

*Seriously, the only thing scarier than Protestant Christians who try to exorcize the demons that are causing your illness (or whatever) are the frickin non-Christians who think evil spirits have attached themselves to you. People who believe in odd supernatural entities and don't have any framework or way of checking their beliefs with the beliefs of others tend to be weird and dangerous.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Being part of a healthy community is certainly a good goal. If someone lives within a strong community that happens to be a church, does that make them a Christian? I wouldn't think so, but this may be a case of differing definitions. Either way, I'm not convinced by my experience or observations that church communities are more likely to be healthy than other type of community.

Belonging to a healthy community is to my mind vital, but you can find this outside of church, and you all too often don't find it inside of church.

quote:
You say that you would take note if science could show that your experience was made up. What if science showed that your experience could reasonably have been subjectively genuine while originating inside your brain without supernatural involvement? I suspect that you would not accept the scientific explanation, but this is where we likely differ. There has been a significant amount of well-publicized research in the past few years that demonstrates "God experiences" as neurological phenomena. In the absence of external validation of my internal experience, I am inclined to credit the naturalistic explanations over the supernatural ones.

Preferring natural explanations to supernatural ones is, it seems to me, based on belief in a scientific worldview. I don't happen to find it adequate to explain my experience, but I can certainly see why others do. The point is, it's a particular view of the world, with its own assumptions and biases. It's not inherently preferrable to others, though of course it works better than others for some things.

Spiritual experiences almost certainly are neurological phenomena, at least when explained by science. That doesn't mean they're only neurological phenomena, and it doesn't mean they aren't meaningful in other frameworks. If I have spiritual experiences because my brain is wired a certain way, that doesn't necessarily mean there is no God. My brain is wired for sight, but that doesn't make me think the things I see are simply the products of my brain.

Also, scientists still have a long way to go before they have a complete explanation for how the brain works -- this area of science seems to be changing a lot -- so I'm not going to do anything but watch from the sidelines at this point. Making important decisions about my spiritual practice based on a science that seems to be in its infancy seems rather foolhardy.

quote:
The idea that a slide from liberal Christianity to atheism is inevitable for some people while others are anchored by personal experiences of the divine has rather profound implications.

It does indeed. It makes me wonder why some people have experience of God and others don't, and I wonder what that says about God. But of people who haven't had such experiences, I always ask if they've taken up any form of meditation for an extended period of time.

quote:

quote:
Scientific rationalism is indeed a belief framework. Lots of people organize their lives around their trust in external observations and reason, and it's working just fine for them.
External observations and reason aren't all there is to life, but I don't believe that non-rational truth contradicts rational or observed truth. I may trust my gut, but only until data prove my instinct to be wrong.

Why shouldn't non-rational truth contradict rational or observed truth? (Serious question -- I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.) Do all truths need to fit together? Isn't it possible that all the truths available to us are partial and therefore at least apparently contradictory?

quote:

quote:
So why not just go with that? Why keep coming back to the God question?
I come back to it because of a lifetime of religious indoctrination. I come back to it because people who I respect have arrived at a different conclusion. I come back to the God question because it's a big question with significant consequences, whatever the answer. It's important to me that I don't come to the wrong conclusion.

Fair enough. After 20 years of religious indoctrination, time spent away from the God question turned out to be very useful for me, but as always YMMV.

One other thing I'd add to all this: Not believing in some kind of divinity is a relatively new phenomenon; people have through the ages in general to one degree or another subscribed to a belief in something beyond us, and every human culture has developed some kind of spirituality. To me this means that either most of the people who walked the earth have been pretty deluded, or there's something really there.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
I realize I'm echoing Ruth here, but who are these people that don't question people who think or feel those things? Because I do get those questions* - but unlike people who think Elvis is living with the leprechauns in their backyard, I have a lot more tangible evidence that I can point to and others can see.

Of course people ask these questions. Sometimes. But the reaction of confusion and disturbance toward the Elvis claim is so standard that people will think long and hard before they accept "I feel it in my heart" as an explanation, even to themselves, for why they are starting to believe Elvis is alive again. It's not that way with the very same reason, when given for why someone believes in Jesus.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but: what are you calling "tangible evidence"?

quote:
It's odd to me that you think the spiritual events, mysterious experiences, etc. are co-opted by a religious framework; I'm not entirely sure those experiences can exist without some kind of religious framework (although different religious frameworks will probably make sense of them in slightly different ways). I'm not sure the experiences can stand on their own, and they remain somewhat mysterious even within a religious framework.

I'm trying to cut you some slack here because I assume you don't know how this is coming across, but to implicitly say that any non-religious people who have a spiritual experience "tend to be weird and dangerous" is breathtakingly presumptive.

I say co-opt because I mean it -- not that there can't be authentic religious spiritual experience (I have no idea), but there's no hard and fast monopoly. What you know is that you had some sort of unexplainable experience. Perhaps you choose to believe it was something to do with the specific religion that you happen to believe in. Others wouldn't.

I could sit next to you and watch a shooting star, and we could both have very moving experiences of awe. I imagine you might think about how wonderful God is at that moment, and I might think about how unfathomable space is, or something. The point is, spiritual experiences don't require spiritual frameworks. But many, many people, including yourself, mistakenly believe the two are inseparable.

Assuming that mistaken belief, there may be more hesitance to leave Christianity behind for fear of losing out on deep, meaningful experiences.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Spiritual experiences almost certainly are neurological phenomena, at least when explained by science. That doesn't mean they're only neurological phenomena, and it doesn't mean they aren't meaningful in other frameworks. If I have spiritual experiences because my brain is wired a certain way, that doesn't necessarily mean there is no God.

I agree. My statement was written in response to an earlier suggestion that science didn't really explain spiritual experiences. My point was just that having such an experience doesn't necessarily require one to accept supernatural explanations.

quote:
But of people who haven't had such experiences, I always ask if they've taken up any form of meditation for an extended period of time.

I did, and it changed my life in a number of ways, all for the better. I never said that I haven't had a transcendent experience, or even that I never encountered anything that I interpreted at the time as God. I have had those experiences. In every case, later experience or observation has led me to believe that my experience was neurological or emotional in origin.

quote:
Why shouldn't non-rational truth contradict rational or observed truth? (Serious question -- I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.) Do all truths need to fit together? Isn't it possible that all the truths available to us are partial and therefore at least apparently contradictory?

I guess it depends on what you mean by truth. In some cases (Tastes great! Less filling!) different truths can coexist. In other cases, (I love him, I hate him.) different truths might even contradict each other. Contradictory truths, it seems to me, are always subjective in nature. Competing objective claims, on the other hand (a man returned to life after three days of death vs. dead people stay dead), cannot both be true.

quote:
One other thing I'd add to all this: Not believing in some kind of divinity is a relatively new phenomenon; people have through the ages in general to one degree or another subscribed to a belief in something beyond us, and every human culture has developed some kind of spirituality. To me this means that either most of the people who walked the earth have been pretty deluded, or there's something really there.

People have believed a lot of things throughout history. That doesn't prove that those things are true or healthy. If every culture has developed some kind of spirituality, it may only mean that human brains are wired a certain way, not that there really is a god.

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's say you meet someone who says, "I believe that Elvis is alive, and that he lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house." There may be some evidence here and there for such a claim, but when you press him a little harder, he says, "I just can't let go of this proposition, that Elvis lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house. I can feel him in my heart. Besides, I wouldn't want to live in a world where Elvis didn't live with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house."

I actually think Jason is on to something here.

The long term impact of the Enlightenment (ISTM) on British and Australian culture has been the retreat of religion into the private sphere.

The perception has been that Science and Textual criticism has put Christianity under attack in the public realm and so many lock it away in their private subjective experience where it is nice and safe.

Even though I come out in totally the opposite position to Jason I too reject this total public / private + subjective / objective distinction.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
People have believed a lot of things throughout history. That doesn't prove that those things are true or healthy. If every culture has developed some kind of spirituality, it may only mean that human brains are wired a certain way, not that there really is a god.

Why are they wired that way? Because there is God [Big Grin]

Chicken or the egg? Science doesn't disprove or prove God. Like RuthW said, different worldviews.

quote:
Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

Sure. The best possible for the most possible. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
But then you reduce religion to ethics. And that's BORING [Razz]

Posted by Kid Who Cracked (# 13963) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.
Where in the bible does it say that?
I'd still like an answer.

I, too, am still curious about what you're referring to here, Jason. [Confused]

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Let's say you meet someone who says, "I believe that Elvis is alive, and that he lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house." There may be some evidence here and there for such a claim, but when you press him a little harder, he says, "I just can't let go of this proposition, that Elvis lives with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house. I can feel him in my heart. Besides, I wouldn't want to live in a world where Elvis didn't live with a family of leprechauns in the forest behind my house."
I actually think Jason is on to something here.

The long term impact of the Enlightenment (ISTM) on British and Australian culture has been the retreat of religion into the private sphere.

The perception has been that Science and Textual criticism has put Christianity under attack in the public realm and so many lock it away in their private subjective experience where it is nice and safe.

Even though I come out in totally the opposite position to Jason I too reject this total public / private + subjective / objective distinction.

And I'm in a very different space than you are, theologically, but I also agree about the dichotomies.

Of course, publicly making objective truth claims is, in some parts of this culture, the equivalent of painting a big sign on your chest saying "hit me as bloody hard as you can!" That's probably one reason people like to lean more toward personal/subjective.

The result of hard public/objecitivist stance is, IME, either atheism or some form of fundamentalism. I might argue that some strands of atheism are a form of fundamentalism (using empiricism or the scientific method as a fundamental and applying it to everything), so it's kind of the same in a sense. Modernist post-enlightenment thinking taken to its logical extreme: "There is one truth value for the universe, and this must be it!"

This might be one reason why there's been a trend among some (but certainly not all) theologians toward post-modernism. It's easier to maintain one subjective reality (within its own context) while still respecting the validity of others when you can admit that nobody (excluding God, I suppose) really has a monopoly on the truth.

Of course, too much private/subjective and you end up with a bunch of navel gazers who spend too much time in their own heads, and it gets harder and harder to engage the outside world, or perhaps even the community. The whole thing becomes narcissistic and inward-looking, and will probably die in a generation or so since there's no outward communication. It's also really hard to motivate people externally (and Jesus seemed to do a lot of that) when everyone is focused on their internal state.

Practically, I think most churches are somewhere in between these extremes, which is why I also dislike conversations (and theologians, liberal and conservative alike) that try to draw a hard line between "objective" and "subjective."

Even with allegedly pure science or textual criticism, as soon as a scientific discovery enters the common consciousness, it takes on all sorts of subjective forms. No matter where you are, the place where you sit will skew your perception of reality. That's not necessarily a bad thing (actually, I think it's one of the most beautiful things about people), but it's always there and I personally have a hard time with folks who fail to acknowledge that in some form or another.

And on that long-winded note, I'm going to bed. [Big Grin]

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Preferring natural explanations to supernatural ones is, it seems to me, based on belief in a scientific worldview. I don't happen to find it adequate to explain my experience, but I can certainly see why others do. The point is, it's a particular view of the world, with its own assumptions and biases. It's not inherently preferrable to others, though of course it works better than others for some things.

I understand this point of view, and I think there's a lot to it, but I really don't know if it's true. In every other part of our lives we require natural explanations for everything, don't we? We're all scientific rationalists when we make decisions about the food we eat, the safety precautions we take, the medical procedures we elect, etc.

quote:
Spiritual experiences almost certainly are neurological phenomena, at least when explained by science. That doesn't mean they're only neurological phenomena, and it doesn't mean they aren't meaningful in other frameworks.

I agree with this. Just because a miracle can eventually be explained by science doesn't mean it's not a miracle. On the flip side, just because you think it's a miracle doesn't mean it won't someday be explained by science. Sort of a self-fulfilling circle of tautology.

quote:
Also, scientists still have a long way to go before they have a complete explanation for how the brain works -- this area of science seems to be changing a lot -- so I'm not going to do anything but watch from the sidelines at this point. Making important decisions about my spiritual practice based on a science that seems to be in its infancy seems rather foolhardy.

I agree with this -- I think I just find that the sidelines are in a different place. I suppose MMMV.

quote:
One other thing I'd add to all this: Not believing in some kind of divinity is a relatively new phenomenon; people have through the ages in general to one degree or another subscribed to a belief in something beyond us, and every human culture has developed some kind of spirituality. To me this means that either most of the people who walked the earth have been pretty deluded, or there's something really there.

I think Scot already pointed this out, but I suspect you know what a bad argument that was. A quick look at women's rights should be enough to demonstrate why.

Posted by Choirboy (# 9659) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Choirboy, the gist of your point is exactly right. My only quibble is that the doctrines in question are much more recent than you suggest. PSA is less than 300 years old, and inerrancy is not much more than 100 years old.

I'd agree, but was being generous to forestall any tangent along these lines (too late [Big Grin]

quote:
Originally posted by Andrew:
We shouldn't hide behind our fingers and we should be very open about what it is we are talking here.

The extent of attributing scriptural passages to flawed human thoughts about God that goes on today is unprecedented in orthodox Christian history. It resembles the ideas of non-orthodox Christian groups that rejected the God portrayed in the Old Testament as bad, because of the nasty things he is portrayed to have said.

Apart from the fact that there are many liberals that don't take such a position, there is still a big difference between 'inerrancy' as understood by Western evangelicals and what 'divinely inspired' might mean in (big-O) Orthodox thought.

For example, there would be those who say that the Bible is inerrant on all matters, not just those of faith, and hence are young earth creationists. I doubt that is the (big-O) Orthodox position on the matter.

Some conservatives are quick to say liberals discount the Scripture in the face of what is merely a different interpretation. To characterize liberals as universally dismissive of those parts of Scripture they do not like is both an error and, on the part of many, quite hypocritical.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
Why are they wired that way? Because there is God

Chicken or the egg? Science doesn't disprove or prove God. Like RuthW said, different worldviews.

For the record, science doesn't prove much of anything. It deals in probabilities. As in, if you jump off of a building, the law of gravity says it is extremely probable that you will fall to the ground below.

Yes, perhaps people are wired to believe in God because there is a God. But perhaps not. So the fact that people believe in God tells us nothing about whether a god exists. And it most certainly tells us nothing about which god exists, if one does.

If someone claims that they jumped off a building and didn't fall to the ground below, but rather floated across to another building a few blocks away, I think we'd all suddenly become "dogmatic scientific rationalists" in our demand for some quite extraordinary evidence, or else we'd dismiss the claim.

I assume you see where I'm going with that.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

(crossposted with Jason)

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:

quote:
People have believed a lot of things throughout history. That doesn't prove that those things are true or healthy. If every culture has developed some kind of spirituality, it may only mean that human brains are wired a certain way, not that there really is a god.
Why are they wired that way? Because there is God

Or because of natural selection. Either explanation might be possible, so it is up to us to determine which is more likely and which fits the known facts better. People can go on about different worldviews or non-overlapping magisteria or postmodernism, but ultimately this question is about evaluating conflicting hypotheses on the basis of observed data.

[ 19. June 2009, 03:53: Message edited by: Scot ]

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

Bullfrog [Overused]

to the whole post!

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:

Of course, too much private/subjective and you end up with a bunch of navel gazers who spend too much time in their own heads, and it gets harder and harder to engage the outside world, or perhaps even the community. The whole thing becomes narcissistic and inward-looking, and will probably die in a generation or so since there's no outward communication. It's also really hard to motivate people externally (and Jesus seemed to do a lot of that) when everyone is focused on their internal state.

To that bit in particular.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
(crossposted with Jason)

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:

quote:
People have believed a lot of things throughout history. That doesn't prove that those things are true or healthy. If every culture has developed some kind of spirituality, it may only mean that human brains are wired a certain way, not that there really is a god.
Why are they wired that way? Because there is God
Or because of natural selection. Either explanation might be possible, so it is up to us to determine which is more likely and which fits the known facts better. People can go on about different worldviews or non-overlapping magisteria or postmodernism, but ultimately this question is about evaluating conflicting hypotheses on the basis of observed data.

I don't think its about evaluating conflicting hypotheses on the bases of observed data at all. Its not a Maths or Science project. [Big Grin]

The reason this stuff is so hard is because ultimately, God is mystical and unknowable via the brain, but each of us has a mystical and unknowable part within ourselves that recognizes that.

But hey, I'm ultimately a mystic, don't shoot me.
[Smile]

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
Why are they wired that way?

Patternicity and Agenticity

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

OK Jason, you've made me think about this, for which I thank you. Why am I a Christian (or more specifically, a Quaker) instead of a "liberal Muslim," Buddhist, Taoist, or nonspecific theist? In part it's cultural conditioning--I was raised with it and I know the language--but it's also that Christian scripture and tradition provide a context in which my experience of the Inward Light fits. The Koran (to the extent I know it, which is superficially) doesn't provide much of a framework for God as immanent and directly, experientially present (some of the Sufi literature does, but it seems almost external to Islam). Buddhism has the direct experience piece, but it's direct experience of emptiness, which while not nihilistic nothingness as Westerners often assume is not a personal presence either, which is what my experience seems like to me. When I was dragged back from my excursion into agnosticism it was by something I can only describe as a personal encounter with someone, not something, and to me that makes sense only in a Christian context (I did flirt with Reform Judaism very briefly, but it didn't quite fit somehow). Jesus spoke of our relationship with God as personal, loving, and immediately present. The Kingdom of God is within and among you. That "fits"--it's as much an aesthetic judgment as a logical one.

Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
So, in essence, you live under the assumption that God exists because it provides benefits to you, including a way of life, that you don't believe can be found outside of religion, and you've chosen Christianity as the religion that works best for you.
I never thought about whether there would be benefits when I decided to pick a religion, actually. What happened was that it was pointed out to me that I worshipped something quite inadequate, and I realized that I couldn't help but organize my life around something, so I'd better find something deserving of that.

I originally decided I had to live under the assumption that God exists because I, like many (most?) of the people who have walked the earth over the millenia, have a spiritual impulse I can't deny or get rid of and because I had a profound spiritual experience. I continue to believe that God exists because that makes more sense in my experience than believing that God doesn't exist.

I chose Christianity because I already knew the stories, the vocabulary, the ideas. I knew if I picked another religion -- Buddhism would have been the first alternative -- that because it is culturally foreign I would probably have undertaken a big research project, learning all those new concepts, instead of actually practicing the religion.

Out of curiosity, do you then see Christianity as having the inside track on the truth, or does it have an overarching truth - that God exists in some form - but it's not necessarily any truer than religion x, y or z?

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Is there a way in which the liberal/moderate Christian belief framework described in the OP be sustained by external observations and reason?

There is if you find a framework that not only offers rational explanations for external observations, but also for internal observations, and even makes predictions that can be confirmed by internal observations. In this regard, I identify with what A Feminine Force has said in other discussions in that she describes her faith as being based on what she has seen in a clear vision, only my vision is the much more mundane kind - i.e. a mental image built up over a long time, but a vision none the less. Yes, it was easy for me to adopt because it was what I was taught from childhood and I don't think it's the only possible such framework, but the reason I keep it now is because it explains (for me) so much of what I have observed directly and learned indirectly. I need it to fit with my external observations and with science, but I embrace it primarily for how it fits with my internal observations.

However, even a comprehensive, rational framework can't be compelling because it isn't proof. Instead, it comes down to the fact that it is easier for me to believe that it is true than to believe that it is fundamentally wrong or simply made-up.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
I don't think its about evaluating conflicting hypotheses on the bases of observed data at all.

Oh, but it is. When we discuss differing ideas about reality, and we offer our own explanations for what we believe, and we consider what other people have to say, we are using data to evaluate hypotheses.

quote:
The reason this stuff is so hard is because ultimately, God is mystical and unknowable via the brain, but each of us has a mystical and unknowable part within ourselves that recognizes that.

That's easy to say, but can you offer any evidence that it's true?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by wehyatt:
I need it to fit with my external observations and with science, but I embrace it primarily for how it fits with my internal observations.

Does your framework include a virgin birth and a bodily resurrection? If so, how does it fit with science or your external observations of how human life works? If it doesn't include those, it must be a very loose interpretation of Christianity.

quote:
However, even a comprehensive, rational framework can't be compelling because it isn't proof. Instead, it comes down to the fact that it is easier for me to believe that it is true than to believe that it is fundamentally wrong or simply made-up.

By "easier for me to believe" to you mean that you consider it more likely or that believing so is more comfortable than the alternative? If the former, then I wonder how you determined that the existence of a deity is more probable than a group of people being mistaken about religion.

Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jon G:
There is no mention on the original list of the Kingdom of God.

Which is a major omission because that it what Jesus taught about, and what his healing and his miracles where signs of.

Christians are called to celebrate the presence of the Kingdom of God at the heart of their lives.

Where else can they do it - if not at church.

Just doing it by ourselves is not enough.

[cross posted with Jason]
(Before I became a Christian, as a socialist I had a lot of sympathy with Jesus' life and teaching, but I didn't believe in the resurrection, literal or otherwise.
I became a Christian because I believe in the resurrection.)

Mille fois bravo! (A thousand times Bravo!)

'Doing it on your own' is, if you will excuse the expression, a sort of empty spiritual wanking.

The Western churches these days, with the odd honorable exception - Michael Ramsey; Michel Quoist; Thomas Merton; The Berrigan Brothers; Stavretz Sophrony (& he was an Orthodox) etc. - seem to be full of empty wankers ever ready to shoot from the lip.

Christianity - centred on the Resurrection - is something glorious. It's a celebration.

I fear many contemporary 'social' Christians have very little to celebrate. It is not, as I continually point out to my wife, about that great Anglican institution, Cup of Tea Time.

I do not think an arid intellectual Christianity of the Modernist variety (Spong; Holloway etc.) would've survived the early persecutions.

Many of the earnest posters on this thread, like so many others, seem metaphorically to be trying to look up their backsides to see the stars.

Heaven is, emphatically, not there.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
The long term impact of the Enlightenment (ISTM) on British and Australian culture has been the retreat of religion into the private sphere.

And all those precious 'traditional Protestant doctrines' want to keep it there! You (plural) are the first people to scream when 'liberals' like me start talking about community and about helping others being important and necessary parts of the Christian faith.

Where is the 'running screaming from the room' icon when you need it?

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd):
I fear many contemporary 'social' Christians have very little to celebrate. It is not, as I continually point out to my wife, about that great Anglican institution, Cup of Tea Time.

I think it's always been that way to some extent. And yet Christianity has kept going. Perhaps we need armies of these 'ordinary' people, as well as the fired-up keenies, to keep the show on the road so that the faith can continue long enough for the next generation to experience it.

If you are continually pointing it out to your wife, does she throw her cup of tea over you?
[Big Grin]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

I have much less time today than I thought - an emergency call last night means I'll be spending much of the day with a very seriously ill man and his family.

Some of the more recent posts have highlighted the distinction between looking out and looking in, which strikes me as being in the same sort of ballpark as the point §Andrew raised re the claims of Christianity to be rooted in real events.

I think that's the way the Kerygma works for me. Much of the Bible is story (we can argue about how much of it is history). The story and experiences of my own life connect me to the Kerygma, and vice versa. The inner places of prayer and contemplation seem to provide much needed places of reflection and inner strengthening.

Re the Kerygma. At bedrock do we have a true and faithful witness to these massive claims. My answer to that is "yes". Not an infallible witness. And I use my critical and analytical skills such as they are in coming to terms with what it might mean. But I do believe it is a faithful witness, whose apostolic bedrock comes from folks who had no deceptive intent.

My faith does not stand on that answer. To refer back to my previous answer, I might be saying no more than I believe in a rumour that God forgives! Without the inner life, I might be no more than a parrot. With only the inner life I might be no more than a navel-gazer. The two work together. That's how I walk by faith. I believe in God, not propositional truths about him.

[My sense of humour just got the better of me - I got this vivid image of a navel-gazing parrot! Not even sure if parrots have got navels ...]

[ 19. June 2009, 08:26: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
The reason this stuff is so hard is because ultimately, God is mystical and unknowable via the brain, but each of us has a mystical and unknowable part within ourselves that recognizes that.
That's easy to say, but can you offer any evidence that it's true?

Evidence as in empirical proof? No. Can you that it's not true? No. [Big Grin]

Isn't faith fun [Cool]

I agree with Johnny S. Bullfrog's Last Post was [Overused]

Sir Pellinore, you are [Killing me]

[ 19. June 2009, 08:41: Message edited by: Seb ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Why shouldn't non-rational truth contradict rational or observed truth? (Serious question -- I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.) Do all truths need to fit together? Isn't it possible that all the truths available to us are partial and therefore at least apparently contradictory?

Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Contradictory truths, it seems to me, are always subjective in nature. Competing objective claims, on the other hand (a man returned to life after three days of death vs. dead people stay dead), cannot both be true.

This is a point where I think Scot is closer to an argument for God than RuthW is.
Belief in God, as opposed to belief in gods - belief in monotheism as opposed to belief in henotheism - comes about just when we believe that all truth does fit together. Historically, whether in China, India, Greece or Judea, the idea of the unity of truth comes into being with a transcendent/immanent ground of unity. Monotheism (whether referring to a personal God or an impersonal way as in China) pushes towards logical consistency and the use of analogy to describe God; logical consistency pushes us towards analogical thinking which comes to rest in God.
Believing in multiple conflicting truths is polytheism, not monotheism.

This is the difference between believing in God on the one hand, and believing in fairies or Elvis or a giant diamond on the other. You can't use Elvis as the lynchpin of a philosophical account of a coherent world. Elvis doesn't endorse the consistency of truth. Elvis doesn't do anything for the unity of the world.

Modern atheists, impatient of metaphysics, want to do away with it, and rely on empirical observation. But science itself relies on metaphysics and tends towards metaphysics. Anyone who thinks physics is just an amassing of observations, like a glorified stamp collection, is missing the point. Physical laws are abstracted analogies. Mathematics is inherently a discipline of analogy. And analogy is the pattern of thinking of which God is the keystone.

So rationalist atheism essentially takes the unity of the world and the unity of truth for granted. It assumes that it can treat these as givens that don't have to be justified and that don't have to be thought about or thought through. But why should we take them for granted?

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

Jason I. Am, the Great Gumby, Scot: I been thinking about your Occam's razor point, and just wanted to share a personal anecdote in the little time I have today:

When we were preparing for our wedding, I was discussing with my wife how many ushers we should have. I ended up getting quite distressed because it seemed to me that we were in danger of asking far too many people to do it, and it seemed to me that the job only needed 3 at most.

What I eventually realised, through my wife's forbearance and gentle prompting, was that I was being wrong-headed about the whole thing. I was thinking using the principle of parsimony - how many ushers is the minimum we can get away with? What is the optimum number for the job without wasting effort?

In short, I was unconsciously applying Occam's razor: do not multiply ushers without necessity. And, of course, I was wrong.

It's a good thing to have more ushers than necessary because people like to be asked, it gives everyone something to do, and - importantly - weddings aren't about efficiency or the minimal use of resources. It's not a logistics problems to be solved (well, it is but that's not the main point). If you think about weddings in purely those terms, you will be "correct" and could doubtless argue your corner (as I shamefully tried to do before I realised what I was doing), but the big picture, the main point of a wedding will completely escape one if one only looks at the necessities, the logistics, the least that one can get away with.

In other words, Occam's razor is a great tool, but it's not universally applicable, and trying to use it in the wrong situation can lead to some major missing of the point.

Any application beyond laughing at my stupidity is left as an exercise to the reader [Big Grin]

.

- Chris.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
My experience is that people who have such experiences outside of religious frameworks don't really know what to do with them. You might think that's fine, that it's great if they just stand on their own and remain mysterious, but I wonder what the point is in that case. Religious experiences are life-changing events, or should be. The disciples experienced the Risen Christ and were never the same. Buddha sat under the bodhi tree and was enlightened and was never the same. And they went forth and changed the world.

This is very true. And I'd say it's natural that religious experience can lead people to the already developed framework of organized religions.

But that's no reason for choosing one over the other religions and believe that this particular religion is actually true.

As far as I can tell, many people in this thread expressed their sense that the divine exists, and their need for entering some sort of relationship with it, and said that engaging with the Christian religion gives them the framework to do so.

I understand that, but it's not enough for Christianity to actually be true. It seems to me more like deism operating under the Christian ways, rather than actual Christianity. Not that that's bad, mind you! Still, it does show how far away society moved from Christianity, and how, even Christians, have moved beyond the Christian claims.

And I think this is worth thinking about.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kid Who Cracked:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.
Where in the bible does it say that?
I'd still like an answer.
I, too, am still curious about what you're referring to here, Jason.

Yes - hello Jason? Are you there?!

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Yes - hello Jason? Are you there?!

If you think it can't be argued from scripture, or that it isn't argued from scripture, or that the traditional belief in Hell is made up completely separate from any scriptural influence, then I assume you're just being deliberately thick, and I therefore ignore the question.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Yes - hello Jason? Are you there?!

You are hiding behind your finger.

Does the bible have to spell it out explicitly for it to be the case?

Well, sure, if you believe that that would be a horrible thing, and you would like Christianity to be true, then you would have to resort to there being no explicit passage that says so.

Yet the Bible is very clear about Christians and non-Christians, and about the fate of the orthodox and the heretics.

Taking a liberal stance and assume the gospel is about hugs and passing the love cannot be justified from the bible.

quote:
7Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. 9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 11Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.

That's from 2 John, but it represents the apostolic stance on heresy.

And if you want something harsh from Jesus, how about this:

quote:
48There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.

The nice image of people getting in heaven en masse of liberalism simply does not exist in the Scriptures.

quote:
13Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. 15Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

"Only a few find it" isn't the liberal vision of humanity, is it?

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
The long term impact of the Enlightenment (ISTM) on British and Australian culture has been the retreat of religion into the private sphere.
And all those precious 'traditional Protestant doctrines' want to keep it there!

Er, no they don't. I wouldn't been arguing against that otherwise.

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
You (plural) are the first people to scream when 'liberals' like me start talking about community and about helping others being important and necessary parts of the Christian faith.

Oh, now I see - by 'you' you mean a completely fictitious group of people who don't actually exist.

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by wehyatt:
I need it to fit with my external observations and with science, but I embrace it primarily for how it fits with my internal observations.
Does your framework include a virgin birth and a bodily resurrection? If so, how does it fit with science or your external observations of how human life works?

It does include both. I have no trouble believing that the creator of the universe can arrange a couple of singular events to suit his purposes. What my framework provides for me is an explanation about why he actually did and about how it is entirely consistent with him being the essence of love itself.

quote:

quote:
However, even a comprehensive, rational framework can't be compelling because it isn't proof. Instead, it comes down to the fact that it is easier for me to believe that it is true than to believe that it is fundamentally wrong or simply made-up.
By "easier for me to believe" to you mean that you consider it more likely or that believing so is more comfortable than the alternative? If the former, then I wonder how you determined that the existence of a deity is more probable than a group of people being mistaken about religion.

I mean that the framework provides what I find to be a much more believable explanation than the alternative. The idea that a group of people were entirely mistaken about religion is one explanation that is consistent with much of what I know about the world. I just find it to be a much weaker explanation. Neither explanation resolves everything, but between the two, the "religion is made-up" theory leaves me with more holes.

Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

The last point first: it... <snip>

The plain fact is that the argument put forth in the apologetic is either ignorant or dishonest.

--Tom Clune

Firstly, the fire of Rome (AD 64) was highly unlikely to be the point of departure of Roman persecution. Tacitus comment was, “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians”. It seems fairly obvious that Nero picked on a group that was already getting attacked from the Roman end. Paul was arrested by the Romans. There is evidence that Peter was crucified by the Romans. And so was Christ…

The use of “Christ”- translated “king”, and the claim that Jesus was king of the world, would go down very badly with a power structure based on the emperor. It took time for the Romans to twig that this was the claim- as you say they couldn’t distinguish Christians from Jews for a while- but anyone preaching a message of Jesus as King would know that trouble from the Romans wouldn’t be long in coming. And before AD64 it had.

Secondly, the evidence from the NT is that it was Paul’s message that got him into trouble. An uncompromising evangelizing style probably didn’t help; however there had to be something sufficiently anger making about his message. There are enough people on SOF who crusade aggressively and obnoxiously on topics we don’t care about. We ignore them, and save our effort for things we regard as important.

Thirdly, although YMMV on the accuracy of the account of Stephen’s trial, the reasons given are very clearly religious in nature, with the claim of blasphemy on the use of Jesus as “Son of Man” being the trigger. Exactly the same fate was awaiting the disciples, for the same reasons.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
I realize I'm echoing Ruth here, but who are these people that don't question people who think or feel those things? Because I do get those questions* - but unlike people who think Elvis is living with the leprechauns in their backyard, I have a lot more tangible evidence that I can point to and others can see.
Of course people ask these questions. Sometimes. But the reaction of confusion and disturbance toward the Elvis claim is so standard that people will think long and hard before they accept "I feel it in my heart" as an explanation, even to themselves, for why they are starting to believe Elvis is alive again. It's not that way with the very same reason, when given for why someone believes in Jesus.

We obviously know very different people. I suspect we may be having some difficulty communicating because we're coming from such different places - you (I think) are coming out of a very (possibly conservative) religious background, and it seems that many of your friends and other people you know have a similar background.

I, on the other hand, have friends who joke about whether or not they'll be able to attend someone's wedding because they're afraid they might burst into flames if they set foot in a church; some of my friends occasionally talk about how disappointed they are in people when they discover that they're religious (although some of them do make a point of telling me that I qualify for some exception to the you're-obviously-a-sheeple-moron clause, although no one's ever particularly clear on why exactly that's true).

quote:
I'm almost afraid to ask, but: what are you calling "tangible evidence"?

Generally speaking, having certain information (often received through dreams and the like) about other people that logically speaking I just shouldn't have.

quote:

quote:
It's odd to me that you think the spiritual events, mysterious experiences, etc. are co-opted by a religious framework; I'm not entirely sure those experiences can exist without some kind of religious framework (although different religious frameworks will probably make sense of them in slightly different ways). I'm not sure the experiences can stand on their own, and they remain somewhat mysterious even within a religious framework.
I'm trying to cut you some slack here because I assume you don't know how this is coming across, but to implicitly say that any non-religious people who have a spiritual experience "tend to be weird and dangerous" is breathtakingly presumptive.

How many non-religious people do you know who have had a spiritual experience? Seriously. People who have had a profound religious experience but have no religious background and/or haven't then scurried into some sort of religious framework? IME, those sorts of experiences are hard for people to handle without being able to talk to other people who can provide a check on any beliefs that get too weird or dangerous (as in, the Holy Spirit may be leading you to do something, but if we look at scripture and tradition, I'm not sure the Holy Spirit is leading you to do what you seem to think...)

I only know a couple of people like that* - and for the most part it isn't that they don't have any religious background, but that they have a hodge-podge collection of beliefs that have been cobbled together from the bits of religions they find appealing. And I stand by my claim that they tend to be scary and dangerous, because there is no structure to stop them from insisting that a demonic or evil spirit has attached themselves to you and is causing the problems that are generally being caused by much more mundane things and they're just generally annoyed that you happen to disagree with them. Yes, Christians sometimes get this wrong, too, but at least there's usually some sort of accountability towards each other and scripture and tradition.

*and I have the misfortune to be related to them.

quote:
I say co-opt because I mean it -- not that there can't be authentic religious spiritual experience (I have no idea), but there's no hard and fast monopoly. What you know is that you had some sort of unexplainable experience. Perhaps you choose to believe it was something to do with the specific religion that you happen to believe in. Others wouldn't.

Again, I suspect because of your experience, you're getting this the wrong way around when looking at my experience - the inexplicable experience came first and made it impossible for me to sustain the scientific materialism I had been desperately trying to believe in.

quote:
I could sit next to you and watch a shooting star, and we could both have very moving experiences of awe. I imagine you might think about how wonderful God is at that moment, and I might think about how unfathomable space is, or something. The point is, spiritual experiences don't require spiritual frameworks. But many, many people, including yourself, mistakenly believe the two are inseparable.

I'm hoping that I just hadn't explained myself properly before and that's why you're telling me what I think, but I'm curious: how do you know that spiritual experiences don't require spiritual frameworks? Without a spiritual framework of any kind, why would someone even describe an experience as being spiritual?

quote:
Assuming that mistaken belief, there may be more hesitance to leave Christianity behind for fear of losing out on deep, meaningful experiences.

If I thought abandoning Christianity would lead to a decrease in the amount of weird shit in my life I'd drop it in an instant.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Yes - hello Jason? Are you there?!
If you think it can't be argued from scripture, or that it isn't argued from scripture, or that the traditional belief in Hell is made up completely separate from any scriptural influence, then I assume you're just being deliberately thick, and I therefore ignore the question.

You have NOT UNDERSTOOD the question or you are deliberately changing your statement to avoid the fact that you were wrong.

You are now trying to say that Hell is in the Bible. That is not in dispute. What IS in dispute is where you said: if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.

Where, in the Bible, does it say that?

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
I'm probably getting too enthusiastic about disagreeing with the idea that big con-evo churches are always 'doing Christianity correctly' and that smaller moderate churches don't actually care about the Gospel.

Then you're getting too enthusiastic about disagreeing with a straw man, as I haven't argued that at all [Confused]

In fact the number of people on these boards who would argue that could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand...

quote:
To which I can only say 'That's your experience, fair enough.'

But why do you consider your experience to be normative and not mine?

quote:
I have no idea where you got the idea that I think that evangelicals are unloving.

Its very hard not to take that implication from your posts ie the evo pastoral care is crap thing.

quote:
OK, then what do you think are the concrete steps that we can take? It gets unbelievably disheartening to hear people complain but never to suggest anything concrete. And yes, we do hear this all the time. What makes people on the Ship think that they are the first to notice a decline that's been going on for over 30 years? It's easy to tear people down. Now offer me a tangible process or vision that outlines a doable way forward.

Quite happily. It'll take a long, thought out post though and I don't have time to do write that for the next few days (IRL work deadline), so I'll get back to you on Monday. I've already given one example I know of a church thats growing (by nicking all the evangelicals' good ideas).

[ 19. June 2009, 18:08: Message edited by: Yerevan ]

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
]"Only a few find it" isn't the liberal vision of humanity, is it?

And the rest go to hell, for matters that are not their fault? A deity like that would hardly be a moral paragon for the world, or a being that I, for one, could worship with any enthusiasm.

The fallacious character of Pascal's wager is hanging over this conversation like a sword of Damocles. As you must be aware, anyone, however totally obsessed with a desire to avoid everlasting punishment and to do God's will, would receive very different advice on how to do this, depending on whether he consulted you, or Pope Benedict, or Jerry Falwell-- none of whom is a "religious moderate."

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You are now trying to say that Hell is in the Bible. That is not in dispute. What IS in dispute is where you said: if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.

Where, in the Bible, does it say that?

I can't understand the point of your question unless you have completely misunderstood everything I've said throughout the entire course of this thread. Which is why I ignored the question like I did.

However, I don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, and I very much don't believe in Hell, so I can assure you that I never said what you're accusing me of saying.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
The reason this stuff is so hard is because ultimately, God is mystical and unknowable via the brain, but each of us has a mystical and unknowable part within ourselves that recognizes that.
That's easy to say, but can you offer any evidence that it's true?
Evidence as in empirical proof? No. Can you that it's not true? No.

Isn't faith fun

No, I mean evidence as in something that someone without your personal experience can observe or rationally consider that will support the truth of your assertion. Otherwise, there is no more reason to suspect that there is a mystical and unknowable God interacting with a mystical and unknowable part of us than there is to believe that Elvis is living in the forest with leprechauns. I see only evidence that both propositions are highly unlikely.

Even when I was deep in the heart of Christianity, this particular brand of faith struck me as more disturbing than fun.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
This is the difference between believing in God on the one hand, and believing in fairies or Elvis or a giant diamond on the other. You can't use Elvis as the lynchpin of a philosophical account of a coherent world. Elvis doesn't endorse the consistency of truth. Elvis doesn't do anything for the unity of the world.

Neither does an unobserved and unexplained God. It seems to me that using God to account for the observed features of the world without explaining the deity himself makes God into the ultimate deus ex machina.

quote:
So rationalist atheism essentially takes the unity of the world and the unity of truth for granted. It assumes that it can treat these as givens that don't have to be justified and that don't have to be thought about or thought through. But why should we take them for granted?

One of the beauties of science and rationalism in general is that a hypothesis about a phenomenon can be accepted and used on the basis of repeated observations even if the phenomenon is not fully explained, although the hypothesis must remain subject to revision based on later observations.

A working hypothesis of the "unity of truth" (by which I assume you mean that, all things being equal, one true thing won't directly contradict another thing that is true) may be adopted simply because that is how we see the world work. If it were otherwise, we would probably be seeing more magic and less technology.

quote:
Originally posted by wehyatt:
I have no trouble believing that the creator of the universe can arrange a couple of singular events to suit his purposes. What my framework provides for me is an explanation about why he actually did and about how it is entirely consistent with him being the essence of love itself.

You framework sounds somewhat different than what was presented in the OP, particularly with regard to biblical literalism. We still have plenty we can discuss, but it a different conversation.

quote:
The idea that a group of people were entirely mistaken about religion is one explanation that is consistent with much of what I know about the world. I just find it to be a much weaker explanation. Neither explanation resolves everything, but between the two, the "religion is made-up" theory leaves me with more holes.

There are a multitude of examples of cults that we would probably agree were made up. I guess I'm having a hard time seeing one more such event as being especially hard to believe. Obviously we are looking at it differently.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
In other words, Occam's razor is a great tool, but it's not universally applicable, and trying to use it in the wrong situation can lead to some major missing of the point.

Absolutely true. Occam's razor is a poor tool for planning social events. That doesn't lessen it's value in arriving at reasonable explanations of the world we observe around us.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
We obviously know very different people.

[snip]

I, on the other hand, have friends who joke about whether or not they'll be able to attend someone's wedding because they're afraid they might burst into flames if they set foot in a church; some of my friends occasionally talk about how disappointed they are in people when they discover that they're religious...

I don't understand what relevance this has at all. Yes, you know some people who question Christianity. Yeah, there are plenty of people who do it.

My question isn't for them, it's for anyone who accepts or uses "I feel it in my heart" or any similar variation as proof for belief in incredible, unbelievable claims. Unless you can say (with a straight face) that people are just as hesitant to use this defense about Jesus as they are about Elvis, I don't think you've shown anything to the contrary.

Ruth and someone else gave some interesting ideas about the nature and effect of belief in God making it susceptible to different kinds of arguments, which at least is a much more interesting argument than "I have friends and family who don't believe in God, so there."

quote:

quote:
I'm almost afraid to ask, but: what are you calling "tangible evidence"?
Generally speaking, having certain information (often received through dreams and the like) about other people that logically speaking I just shouldn't have.

It'd be interesting to hear more about that, only because you presented it as the kind of evidence that "others can see".

quote:
How many non-religious people do you know who have had a spiritual experience? Seriously. People who have had a profound religious experience but have no religious background and/or haven't then scurried into some sort of religious framework?

You've done such a good job of conflating the two ideas in your mind that you can't even separate them in one sentence. You go from "spiritual experience" to "religious experience" without even realizing it.

Scot and I have both, on this thread, claimed to have had profound spiritual, mysterious experiences that we don't attribute to any religious framework, and we've both actually moved in the opposite direction--out of religious frameworks--without (I'm assuming for Scot but saying definitively for myself) discounting the reality of those meaningful experiences.

As for how many people I know who have had them, I'm not sure it's something that people talk about a great deal. Especially when even the words "spiritual experience" have been held hostage by religious frameworks for so long, as your own vocabulary demonstrates.

quote:
IME, those sorts of experiences are hard for people to handle without being able to talk to other people who can provide a check on any beliefs that get too weird or dangerous (as in, the Holy Spirit may be leading you to do something, but if we look at scripture and tradition, I'm not sure the Holy Spirit is leading you to do what you seem to think...)

Thank you for demonstrating exactly why these kinds of experiences can be so dangerous -- when they're co-opted into a religious framework that contains a whole list of assumptions that can then be easily built upon the real experience that a person may or may not have just had. The point is, you have a mysterious, unexplainable experience, if you can't explain it or attribute it to a God or a "Holy Spirit" then there's very little reason to think that the experience gave you any Holy Directive to go and do something crazy or dangerous.

Now before you go off on a story about how your atheist cousin punched a bunch of children because of one of his weird quasi-spiritual experiences, yes, I'm sure it happens. But there's no reason that the "checks" you talk about are the monopoly of a church or religious framework, either. And reason would certainly come into play, yet again, in determining whether or not any serious decisions should be made based on these mysterious, unexplainable experiences.

quote:

quote:
I say co-opt because I mean it -- not that there can't be authentic religious spiritual experience (I have no idea), but there's no hard and fast monopoly. What you know is that you had some sort of unexplainable experience. Perhaps you choose to believe it was something to do with the specific religion that you happen to believe in. Others wouldn't.
Again, I suspect because of your experience, you're getting this the wrong way around when looking at my experience - the inexplicable experience came first and made it impossible for me to sustain the scientific materialism I had been desperately trying to believe in.

The "you" was a general "you". But you, the specific you, just told us that you had an "inexplicable experience" that you now explain as being Christian in nature. That sounds like a pretty good example of what I was talking about.

quote:
I'm curious: how do you know that spiritual experiences don't require spiritual frameworks? Without a spiritual framework of any kind, why would someone even describe an experience as being spiritual?

Spiritual is a fuzzy word, isn't it? Mysterious, inexplicable, transcendent, these are all words for the types of experiences that seem to happen -- even if as Scot and Ruth pointed out, they probably do have neurological explanations.

All it would seem to take is one or two atheists who claim to have had such an experience, while disbelieving in God and not taking part in any religious framework, to show that these experiences don't require religious frameworks.

Again, though, you've confused and mixed up the words "spiritual" and "religious" as if they're identical. If you believe that, then I can see why you're confused.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
In other words, Occam's razor is a great tool, but it's not universally applicable, and trying to use it in the wrong situation can lead to some major missing of the point.

Absolutely true. Occam's razor is a poor tool for planning social events. That doesn't lessen it's value in arriving at reasonable explanations of the world we observe around us.

...which I would not for one minute deny. You'll have noticed that I'm enough of a fan to try to apply it even when inappropriate [Smile]

. I think you're right.

It struck me a while ago that I was denying solipsism for reason that weren't very logical: it was more that it wasn't a terribly interesting or satisfactory viewpoint. I can't prove that the rest of the universe exists as I perceive it, and that I'm not some brain in a jar. I chose to trust my sense data and have some sort of realist view of the universe because it's a much more helpful position to hold in everyday life - I tend to behave like the world exists, so believing it (tentatively, if you like: it makes no difference in practice, just like tentatively believing the sun will come up tomorrow doesn't stop you setting your alarm clock) seems like a good thing to do.

I've just postulated that the universe exists when I don't absolutely have to. That breaks Occam's razor, if one is feeling pernickety.

Now I'm a huge fan of methodological naturalism (and IMO so is everyone who looks for their car keys rather than accepts that the fairies have stolen them), but reductionism ultimately demands that I, and all the processes that make me up, are just physics. Materialists believe this, but they still act as though this fiction they call a personality has some sort of objective existence, because disbelieving in oneself for any length of time is tricky.

I'm doubtless explaining this badly - mostly because I'm not sure of it myself - but I feel there a point somewhere. That I can understand people who venture to believe that the dabs of pigment we see on the canvas of reality make up a painting, in the same way that I dare to assume the universe has objective reality. I personally have almost insuperable difficulties believing in the miraculous, and agree wholeheartedly with yourself and Jason I. Am about Elvis and his forest dwelling, but I wonder if, by sticking to my corner of reality with its objective tests and parsimonious beliefs, I'm not missing the bigger picture.

Are there situations in which you think that being wholly rational would not be desirable?

- Chris.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I don't understand what relevance this has at all. Yes, you know some people who question Christianity. Yeah, there are plenty of people who do it.

My question isn't for them, it's for anyone who accepts or uses "I feel it in my heart" or any similar variation as proof for belief in incredible, unbelievable claims. Unless you can say (with a straight face) that people are just as hesitant to use this defense about Jesus as they are about Elvis, I don't think you've shown anything to the contrary.

Ruth and someone else gave some interesting ideas about the nature and effect of belief in God making it susceptible to different kinds of arguments, which at least is a much more interesting argument than "I have friends and family who don't believe in God, so there."

I wasn't trying to say "I have friends and family who don't believe in God, so there." My point - which I obviously failed to make - is in your previous paragraph; that I know quite a few people who do look at/ talk to anyone who says that they had an experience of G-d or the Holy Spirit as if they had declared Elvis was living with the leprechauns in the forest and say so to people's faces.

Now, I understand that if I moved in more charismatic/ evangelical circles, I would probably be more used to hearing people say that "they just feel it in their heart" and not being questioned about it. But the Piskies at my church don't tend to say things like that. You're asserting that your experience of people remaining unquestioned about their beliefs in unbelievable things is more common than mine. This may be true. However, it is not the only experience people have, and I'm not sure I know anyone who would find "I feel it in my heart" sufficient justification for belief in the impossible although in the end if you question them enough that may be what it comes down to (so they have lots of reasons that others don't necessarily find convincing but in the end they realize they can't persuade you).

quote:

quote:

quote:
I'm almost afraid to ask, but: what are you calling "tangible evidence"?
Generally speaking, having certain information (often received through dreams and the like) about other people that logically speaking I just shouldn't have.
It'd be interesting to hear more about that, only because you presented it as the kind of evidence that "others can see".

I'm not sure what else to say about it. Sometimes I know things that there is (as yet) no rational explanation for my knowing. Others can see (or hear) that it's true. I once had a very amusing conversation with some police officers who insisted that I couldn't possibly know something; I eventually got tired of arguing with them and admitted that since it wasn't possible for me to know that, then I hadn't actually known it, and therefore I hadn't said it. At which point they all yelled at me that they had heard me. Sometimes you just can't win.

quote:
Scot and I have both, on this thread, claimed to have had profound spiritual, mysterious experiences that we don't attribute to any religious framework, and we've both actually moved in the opposite direction--out of religious frameworks--without (I'm assuming for Scot but saying definitively for myself) discounting the reality of those meaningful experiences.

You're missing my point. You admit that both you and Scot used to have a religious framework, but have been moving out of them, therefore neither of you qualify as not having a spiritual or religious framework and/or not moving into one as a result of those experiences.

Let me see if this example helps: one of my friends was raised as a Christian. He was a musician and frequently performed in church, where the feelings he got when performing and the harmonizing of different people etc. was attributed to the Holy Spirit. As he got older, he started to realize that he had such experiences outside of church, and he started to attribute those feelings to more naturalistic causes (adrenaline, brain chemistry, etc.) He is still fairly annoyed at the fact that for so long he thought this was the Holy Spirit at work when obviously people who do aren't even Christian also have those experiences, although he still finds those experiences meaningful.

Now, I recognized the feelings he was talking about - I wasn't a musician, but I acted, and I had similar feelings (for example) being in the mosh pit at a Nine Inch Nails concert. But because I had no religious or spiritual framework or language, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to describe those experiences as spiritual or religious, although they were certainly meaningful in their own way.

quote:
As for how many people I know who have had them, I'm not sure it's something that people talk about a great deal. Especially when even the words "spiritual experience" have been held hostage by religious frameworks for so long, as your own vocabulary demonstrates.

I admit that I tend to conflate the language of religious and spiritual experiences because for me they're the same thing and therefore I don't find making the distinction particularly useful. But I still don't understand how a person would have a religious experience without having a religious framework (or, alternatively, how they would have a spiritual experience without having some sort of spiritual framework). They might have deep meaningful experiences, but why would they then describe them as religious or spiritual?

As for even the words "spiritual experience" being held hostage by religious frameworks for so long, I disagree. "I'm spiritual, but I'm not really religious" is an incredibly popular way for people to describe themselves and has been for at least 30 years.

quote:
Thank you for demonstrating exactly why these kinds of experiences can be so dangerous -- when they're co-opted into a religious framework that contains a whole list of assumptions that can then be easily built upon the real experience that a person may or may not have just had.

Funny, but I find the experiences being co-opted onto a religious framework less dangerous than leaving people with no workable explanation for a profound and disturbing experience. Your mileage obviously varies.

quote:
The point is, you have a mysterious, unexplainable experience, if you can't explain it or attribute it to a God or a "Holy Spirit" then there's very little reason to think that the experience gave you any Holy Directive to go and do something crazy or dangerous.

Well, unless the experience pretty much consists of G-d or the Holy Spirit (who you hadn't previously believed in) telling you to go and do something crazy or dangerous. Which happens to some people and is one of the reasons having the checks in place is important. Getting rid of Christianity does not automatically make people intelligent and reasonable, it tends to just mean that they're the same stupid and mean people but now believe in different weird things.

quote:
Now before you go off on a story about how your atheist cousin punched a bunch of children because of one of his weird quasi-spiritual experiences, yes, I'm sure it happens. But there's no reason that the "checks" you talk about are the monopoly of a church or religious framework, either. And reason would certainly come into play, yet again, in determining whether or not any serious decisions should be made based on these mysterious, unexplainable experiences.

Of course there's no reason why the church should have a monopoly on the checks I'm talking about. The point is, the church already exists and has those checks and any number of people (myself included) aren't particularly interested in reinventing the wheel, especially since a number people seem oblivious to the fact that the wheel is a really good idea. I believe the question that started this thread was why, if one is going to be a liberal Christian, one doesn't just chuck the whole church and just say G-d exists or even toss the whole G-d idea. I'm just trying to give you my answer.

And yes, reason certainly comes into play in determining whether or not any serious decisions should be made on the basis of these mysterious unexplainable experiences (although, again, the church already has reason, tradition, and scripture as a basis for making those decisions). But you seem to be assuming a world in which these unexplained experiences aren't really that unexplained; ie, they can "reasonably" be explained with a neurological explanation, etc. That explanation stopped working for me at some point.

quote:
Spiritual is a fuzzy word, isn't it? Mysterious, inexplicable, transcendent, these are all words for the types of experiences that seem to happen -- even if as Scot and Ruth pointed out, they probably do have neurological explanations.

What types of experiences are we talking about here? Are we talking about the awe one feels at seeing a shooting star? Because I agree, there's probably a neurological explanation. Although just as a real experience of something does necessarily mean that it is an experience of a real thing, the opposite is also true, and just because we're capable of sensing certain things doesn't mean that those things aren't real. Thinking about being a brain in a vat may be an interesting intellectual exercise but I don't find it's a particularly useful way to live one's life.

quote:
All it would seem to take is one or two atheists who claim to have had such an experience, while disbelieving in God and not taking part in any religious framework, to show that these experiences don't require religious frameworks.

And if those atheists then turned around and described those experiences as being experiences of G-d, or described them as spiritual experiences despite not having a spiritual framework or described them as religious experiences despite not having a religious framework then I would be very surprised. Mostly my guess is that they're just going to describe them as the experience of performing, or listening to a profound piece of music, or standing under the stars, etc.

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:

quote:
I'm probably getting too enthusiastic about disagreeing with the idea that big con-evo churches are always 'doing Christianity correctly' and that smaller moderate churches don't actually care about the Gospel.
Then you're getting too enthusiastic about disagreeing with a straw man, as I haven't argued that at all In fact the number of people on these boards who would argue that could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand...

OK, well then I'm confused and frustrated. As a moderate, I can't be anything other than I am. And I don't think that moderate Christianity is going to die out. And I don't know what else to tell you.

You say we 'need to do something different' and, early on in this discussion, you made the very pointed suggestion that the reason why is 'bums on pews'. So if it's not bums on pews, then what the heck are you talking about?

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
But why do you consider your experience to be normative and not mine?

If you look up the thread, I tried to say several times that I'm sure that there ARE congregations as you describe. I threw in the towel, so to speak, because it didn't appear to me that you were hearing that.

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
]Its very hard not to take that implication from your posts ie the evo pastoral care is crap thing.

I don't think I said that. In my experience, evangelicals do care about people and they are very worried that people are not going to go to heaven. And all of that is out of genuine love. But, speaking personally, I don't want someone coming round when I'm ill or in hospital asking me questions designed to suss out whether or not I've been saved - even if that 'sussing' is gentle and kind. Maybe having one's antennae up in that manner comes from being born into the evo faith; maybe other people don't notice it. I know it's genuinely loving. But I don't want it when I'm ill; it's exhausting to have to deal with the visitor's 'stuff'. I just want someone to pray with me.

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Quite happily. It'll take a long, thought out post though and I don't have time to do write that for the next few days (IRL work deadline), so I'll get back to you on Monday. I've already given one example I know of a church thats growing (by nicking all the evangelicals' good ideas).

Great. That would be refreshing and helpful.

Posted by Jude (# 3033) on :

i couldn't be bothered to read through all the replies, but one reason I think Purgatory still exists is that humans will always want to discuss things. Those relgious bodies where people tell us what to believe are now, thankfully, few and far between. We want to find out for ourselves.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Jude, I couldn't be bothered to read your post, but your signature exceeds the four-line limit.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I wonder if, by sticking to my corner of reality with its objective tests and parsimonious beliefs, I'm not missing the bigger picture.

Are there situations in which you think that being wholly rational would not be desirable?

You raise interesting questions. I'm not sure how to respond to your point about solipsism, so I'm going to cogitate on it for a while.

I don't think there's any reason why our experience of reality should be sterile, rational, and strictly parsimonious. As Jason pointed out, an atheist may be filled with wonder at the beauty of a shooting star or, to add my own example, delirious in love.

It is when we turn to understanding, rather than experiencing, the world that reason becomes sacrosanct and Occam becomes more appropriate, in my opinion. I realize that I am betraying a certain worldview of my own and that some kinds of understanding come through experience. I think that we have to apply reason when we interpret our experience if we are to avoid credulousness and gullibility.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

I don't think I said that. In my experience, evangelicals do care about people and they are very worried that people are not going to go to heaven. And all of that is out of genuine love. But, speaking personally, I don't want someone coming round when I'm ill or in hospital asking me questions designed to suss out whether or not I've been saved - even if that 'sussing' is gentle and kind. Maybe having one's antennae up in that manner comes from being born into the evo faith; maybe other people don't notice it. I know it's genuinely loving. But I don't want it when I'm ill; it's exhausting to have to deal with the visitor's 'stuff'. I just want someone to pray with me.

<tangent>

Yes. And I'm with you about how to behave as well. With some poignant and also wonderfully humbling very recent experiences in mind, I think I'll start a thread on this issue in a week or two. I need a bit of time to digest the experiences.

</tangent>

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:

I don't think I said that. In my experience, evangelicals do care about people and they are very worried that people are not going to go to heaven. And all of that is out of genuine love. But, speaking personally, I don't want someone coming round when I'm ill or in hospital asking me questions designed to suss out whether or not I've been saved - even if that 'sussing' is gentle and kind. Maybe having one's antennae up in that manner comes from being born into the evo faith; maybe other people don't notice it. I know it's genuinely loving. But I don't want it when I'm ill; it's exhausting to have to deal with the visitor's 'stuff'. I just want someone to pray with me.

Agreed. As a great Australian Primate once said, "Don't come saving your soul on me mate"

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

I understand that, but it's not enough for Christianity to actually be true. It seems to me more like deism operating under the Christian ways, rather than actual Christianity. Not that that's bad, mind you! Still, it does show how far away society moved from Christianity, and how, even Christians, have moved beyond the Christian claims.

And I think this is worth thinking about.

I agree. Seems to me that the apostles were deists (of Judaic persuasion) following the Jesus way, or ways. So I think that's how it all got started. Jesus death didn't stop that, rather the movement seems to have got a huge boost as a result (whatever folks make of the resurrection). I'm also inclined to accept the view that there was a good deal of variation, which may have increased once the Way got dispersed. I'm not sure whether there was a golden age of unity of belief, certainly not in any developed sense. The movement's understanding of itself also developed.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me for someone with your background to point to protestant diversity and general scruffiness of ideas and say that's not Traditional Christianity&trade and so want to call it something else! I'd say there is both continuity and discontinuity of belief. As I said on another thread, movements move. And in the process this one has given rise to some squabbling children of varying legitimacies.

But is God still in it? Oh undoubtedly! [YMMV!]

[ 20. June 2009, 06:24: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
This is the difference between believing in God on the one hand, and believing in fairies or Elvis or a giant diamond on the other. You can't use Elvis as the lynchpin of a philosophical account of a coherent world. Elvis doesn't endorse the consistency of truth. Elvis doesn't do anything for the unity of the world.
Neither does an unobserved and unexplained God. It seems to me that using God to account for the observed features of the world without explaining the deity himself makes God into the ultimate deus ex machina.

We're not using God to account for any of the observed features of the world. We're using God to account for some of the unobservable features of the world. And not even all of the unobservable features. For example, time and space are unobservable features of the world. But we're not using God to account for them.

Actually 'account for' is probably the wrong phrase to use. It implies that we're using causal notions of explanations.
We explain why the ball landed just inside the line by stating that Andy Murray hit it just so and invoking the laws of physics to the effect that if Andy Murray or any other tennis player hits the ball just so then it follows such and such a trajectory.
Now God doesn't explain in that sense. You can't propose a law that starts 'if God...'. God is not an empirical entity.
But there are other forms of explanation. If a teacher explains to the class why the three angles of a triangle add up to pi radians, it's senseless to object that the explanation is no good because he hasn't explained Euclid's fifth postulate.
What all explanation has in common is that it help us to understand: it thinks through the implications.

For example, God helps us think through the consistency of the world. Law-like models of explanation, such as gave rise to the scientific enterprise of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, arose out of this thinking through the implications of God.

quote:

quote:
So rationalist atheism essentially takes the unity of the world and the unity of truth for granted. It assumes that it can treat these as givens that don't have to be justified and that don't have to be thought about or thought through. But why should we take them for granted?
One of the beauties of science and rationalism in general is that a hypothesis about a phenomenon can be accepted and used on the basis of repeated observations even if the phenomenon is not fully explained, although the hypothesis must remain subject to revision based on later observations.

That's not really a beauty. That's actually just throwing up your hands and saying we don't care so long as it works. Now if all you care about is whether something works you might as well fold science into a department of engineering, and get rid of anything that holds out no immediate prospect of practical application. But I don't think you want to do that.

You're also rather taking for granted the relationship between phenomenon, hypothesis, and observation. It seems to me that the idea that observations can give rise to a hypothesis is unintelligible (why should you want them to?) without some governing model of truth and full explanation.

quote:
A working hypothesis of the "unity of truth" (by which I assume you mean that, all things being equal, one true thing won't directly contradict another thing that is true) may be adopted simply because that is how we see the world work. If it were otherwise, we would probably be seeing more magic and less technology.

It's not how we see the world work, though, is it? We do see a lot more reports of magic than we would predict, given that we predict no magic whatsoever. We have plenty of reports of apparent contradictions. The thing is, we assume that under certain circumstances the observations are not accurate. For example, we assume that repeatable observations trump singular observations. But why should we privilege repetition in that way? Only because we allow axioms about reality to trump our direct observation.

I assume that if I remember leaving my watch in one place and I find it in another, and my partner hasn't touched it, that my memory is at fault. I don't construct a hypothesis that it was the fairies or that objects can transport themselves from place to place. I allow the axiom that objects stay where we put them to override my remembered observation that the object wasn't put where it is now.

[ 20. June 2009, 10:16: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
originally posted by Scot:
One of the beauties of science and rationalism in general is that a hypothesis about a phenomenon can be accepted and used on the basis of repeated observations even if the phenomenon is not fully explained, although the hypothesis must remain subject to revision based on later observations.
That's not really a beauty. That's actually just throwing up your hands and saying we don't care so long as it works. Now if all you care about is whether something works you might as well fold science into a department of engineering, and get rid of anything that holds out no immediate prospect of practical application. But I don't think you want to do that.

It's a beauty because it allows us to start making valid statements about a phenomenon without needing to completely understand it. It means that we can have Newton's law of gravitation without an appreciation of general relativity. We still don't really know how gravity works, but we can still send Pioneer to the outer reaches of the solar system using what we do know. That's beautiful.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
We do see a lot more reports of magic than we would predict, given that we predict no magic whatsoever. We have plenty of reports of apparent contradictions. The thing is, we assume that under certain circumstances the observations are not accurate. For example, we assume that repeatable observations trump singular observations. But why should we privilege repetition in that way? Only because we allow axioms about reality to trump our direct observation.

I assume that if I remember leaving my watch in one place and I find it in another, and my partner hasn't touched it, that my memory is at fault. I don't construct a hypothesis that it was the fairies or that objects can transport themselves from place to place. I allow the axiom that objects stay where we put them to override my remembered observation that the object wasn't put where it is now.

The funny thing is that the "magic" tends to evaporate when put under the microscope, leaving us with a lot of claims that don't stand up to scrutiny (not religion btw).

Your argument seems to be that we should somehow be less dogmatic about non-repeatable observation. I don't see that this is the case. The thing is, humans are absolutely terrible at seeing things that aren't really there, believing things that aren't really true, and fooling themselves with all sorts of cognitive biases that the universe is how we think it is or would like it to be.

Science is hard, because ridding ourselves of these biases and trying to be objective about what's actually there is really difficult. In short, we're right to be sceptical about our own unverified experiences, perceptions and memories because we're good at fooling ourselves. We are right to priviledge repetition for repeatable occurrences because it's the way we learn what can be depended upon to happen in a given set of circumstances. Physical laws are just mathematical statements of what can be observed to happen repeatably. Why shouldn't we be sceptical about phenomena that disappear when you try to measure them?

- Chris.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
If the Holy Spirit worked through the councils, why can it not work through us today?
The problem with the Holy Spirit doing the talking is that it's rather unreasonable to attribute all the changes to him, because he would then contradict himself, and he would be more of a spirit of the age rather than the holy spirit.

So who decides whether the Holy Spirit was with the councils and not with us today?

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
So who decides whether the Holy Spirit was with the councils and not with us today?

Are you saying he wasn't with the councils, but is with you today?

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You are now trying to say that Hell is in the Bible. That is not in dispute. What IS in dispute is where you said: if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell.

Where, in the Bible, does it say that?
I can't understand the point of your question unless you have completely misunderstood everything I've said throughout the entire course of this thread. Which is why I ignored the question like I did.

However, I don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, and I very much don't believe in Hell, so I can assure you that I never said what you're accusing me of saying.

To quote you in full, then p.4 of this thread, your post no.3906 :

Let me see if I can wrongly rephrase what you're saying, so you can correct me.

You believe in love, and loving one's neighbor, and you at some point recognized that Christianity has overarching themes that align with what you believe, so you think, "I might as well be a Christian then."

Or else, you started out a Christian for contextual, societal, etc. reasons, but you haven't left because you do believe in some of the overarching themes of Christianity like love and loving one's neighbor.

In either case, the point I'm making is that it's possible to believe in love and loving one's neighbor while not believing in Jesus's literal resurrection from the dead. Most people who have believed in Jesus's literal resurrection from the dead have done so because the Bible, God's word, has said it was so, and because of the witness of the traditional Church.

But the Bible, as well as the witness of the traditional Church, have also said a lot of other things, like if you don't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, you go to hell. Now, I sympathize with those like LutheranChik who say there are many who use the best tools they have to discern the truth of Scripture and Tradition, and find that many things that Scripture and Tradition have seemed to say may not be true, they may have been misinterpreted, or misunderstood, misused, or even mishandled from the start.

I think that's admirable, honestly. But my question is... what stops you from then considering if maybe even the literal resurrection is in the same category of misuse, misunderstanding, etc.

I hope that makes sense.

Posted by malik3000 (# 11437) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Why do you believe what's in the creeds? What's their relationship to the Bible, which you don't believe is inerrant?

They both come from the church sitting in ecumenical councils. The creeds came first i think, and were the expression of the church's understanding about the nature of God and the nature of Christ. The church's understanding was based on apostolic tradition. Then the church, sitting in ecumenical council, decided which of the parts of the writings being handed down, both Jewish and early Christian, were in accord with that apostolic tradition. The tradition concerned supernatural matters (for want of a better word), not scientific matters, so i'm rather sure the church fathers of the time would not have had much use for the inerrancy theory that popped up in Europe over a millenium later.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
originally posted by Scot:
One of the beauties of science and rationalism in general is that a hypothesis about a phenomenon can be accepted and used on the basis of repeated observations even if the phenomenon is not fully explained, although the hypothesis must remain subject to revision based on later observations.
That's not really a beauty. That's actually just throwing up your hands and saying we don't care so long as it works. Now if all you care about is whether something works you might as well fold science into a department of engineering, and get rid of anything that holds out no immediate prospect of practical application. But I don't think you want to do that.
It's a beauty because it allows us to start making valid statements about a phenomenon without needing to completely understand it. It means that we can have Newton's law of gravitation without an appreciation of general relativity. We still don't really know how gravity works, but we can still send Pioneer to the outer reaches of the solar system using what we do know. That's beautiful.

I think that there's some difference between saying 'I don't care about whether it's true or not just so long as it fits the observations; it works well enough anyway' on the one hand, and on the other, 'we may not understand fully, but this at least is a valid statement as far as we can tell.'
One is provisionally satisfied with partial understanding; the other is giving up on understanding altogether.

I'm ok with partial understanding. It's arguing that science doesn't aim at any kind of understanding or truth, but only at making useable predictions, that I'm bothered about.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
We do see a lot more reports of magic than we would predict, given that we predict no magic whatsoever.
The funny thing is that the "magic" tends to evaporate when put under the microscope, leaving us with a lot of claims that don't stand up to scrutiny (not religion btw).

Your argument seems to be that we should somehow be less dogmatic about non-repeatable observation. I don't see that this is the case. The thing is, humans are absolutely terrible at seeing things that aren't really there, believing things that aren't really true, and fooling themselves with all sorts of cognitive biases that the universe is how we think it is or would like it to be.

My argument is rather the opposite. It's that we need to be dogmatic about non-repeatable observation.
If I say that my argument is a rather long-winded reductio ad absurdum, would that make it clearer what I'm arguing?
We both agree that magic should be rejected and repeatable observations given priority. The argument is that there's no way to justify doing that using Scot's philosophy of science. So Scot's philosophy of science is inadequate.

The point is that you're privileging, quite rightly, the repeatable over the singular. You're quite rightly using that to identify cognitive biases. But you can't privilege those without making assumptions about the stability of reality.
Let's assume no dogmas about reality. You have a heap of observations. Some types of observation are more frequent than others. However, just on the basis of frequency you have no grounds for saying that some of the observations are due to cognitive bias or are cases of seeing things that aren't really there. In fact, merely on the basis of empirical observation alone you can't define seeing something that isn't really there.
There are four cases:
Seeing something that is really there. Not seeing something that is not there. Seeing something that is not really there. Not seeing something that is there.
Merely on the basis of observation, only the first two cases are coherent. The latter two just don't make sense. Something is either observed or not observed.

The point is that in order to make the distinction between what is observed and what is really there, you require a dogma that by definition you cannot derive from observation. And it is only by postulating that that you can begin to make the distinctions between observations that are reliable (because repeatable, not due to cognitive bias) and observations that are not reliable (not due to cognitive bias or not repeatable or...).

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
We both agree that magic should be rejected and repeatable observations given priority. The argument is that there's no way to justify doing that using Scot's philosophy of science. So Scot's philosophy of science is inadequate.

I was attempting to communicate the same idea that sanityman presented. I don't think I said that it doesn't matter whether a hypothesis is true or not, but evidently that's how I was heard. I'm pleased that sanityman was able to do a better job of communicating than I. Now, instead of figuring out how to clarify my meaning, I can just say, "What he said!"

quote:
The point is that you're privileging, quite rightly, the repeatable over the singular. You're quite rightly using that to identify cognitive biases. But you can't privilege those without making assumptions about the stability of reality.

quote:
The point is that in order to make the distinction between what is observed and what is really there, you require a dogma that by definition you cannot derive from observation. And it is only by postulating that that you can begin to make the distinctions between observations that are reliable (because repeatable, not due to cognitive bias) and observations that are not reliable (not due to cognitive bias or not repeatable or...).

I think I follow you, but I'm not sure where you are going. Are you suggesting that God is the basis of our presumptions regarding the stability of reality?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
I wasn't trying to say "I have friends and family who don't believe in God, so there." My point - which I obviously failed to make - is in your previous paragraph; that I know quite a few people who do look at/ talk to anyone who says that they had an experience of G-d or the Holy Spirit as if they had declared Elvis was living with the leprechauns in the forest and say so to people's faces.

Now, I understand that if I moved in more charismatic/ evangelical circles, I would probably be more used to hearing people say that "they just feel it in their heart" and not being questioned about it. But the Piskies at my church don't tend to say things like that. You're asserting that your experience of people remaining unquestioned about their beliefs in unbelievable things is more common than mine.

First, you keep making broad, sweeping assumptions about the circles I run in, when I haven't said anything about any circles.

Second, I keep telling you that I don't care that you "know quite a few people who" etc. That's not the point -- I know there are a lot of people who question it. But not enough people, obviously and demonstrably in this thread alone, to make the argument completely invalid in the same way that it's completely invalid in all other scenarios.

quote:
You're missing my point. You admit that both you and Scot used to have a religious framework, but have been moving out of them, therefore neither of you qualify as not having a spiritual or religious framework and/or not moving into one as a result of those experiences.

If this is your point, congratulations, it's unassailable. It requires people who have never had any religious or spiritual involvement of any kind, which has very little to do with what I've been talking about on this thread.

quote:
...

But because I had no religious or spiritual framework or language, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to describe those experiences as spiritual or religious, although they were certainly meaningful in their own way.

Then all you're really arguing is that people wouldn't know to call them specifically "spiritual" if they had never had any religious involvement. The fact that you think they are "meaningful in their own way" is exactly what I've been saying.

quote:
I admit that I tend to conflate the language of religious and spiritual experiences because for me they're the same thing and therefore I don't find making the distinction particularly useful. But I still don't understand how a person would have a religious experience without having a religious framework (or, alternatively, how they would have a spiritual experience without having some sort of spiritual framework). They might have deep meaningful experiences, but why would they then describe them as religious or spiritual?

Again, the point was that one does not need a religious framework to have a spiritual experience. As to whether or not they would describe them using the exact word "spiritual" is irrelevant.

quote:
Well, unless the experience pretty much consists of G-d or the Holy Spirit (who you hadn't previously believed in) telling you to go and do something crazy or dangerous. Which happens to some people and is one of the reasons having the checks in place is important.

Again, the problem you describe is with the person explaining the experience as being from God or the Holy Spirit.

quote:
Getting rid of Christianity does not automatically make people intelligent and reasonable, it tends to just mean that they're the same stupid and mean people but now believe in different weird things.

I agree. The point isn't to just blindly get rid of Christianity, it's to be reasonable when it's appropriate to be reasonable.

quote:
Of course there's no reason why the church should have a monopoly on the checks I'm talking about. The point is, the church already exists and has those checks and any number of people (myself included) aren't particularly interested in reinventing the wheel

You've reworked this argument around from the other side. I never said that people should get rid of their Christian beliefs because I think they should find better or different checks on their spiritual experiences. But when answering why people should retain those beliefs, you said it was because they need the checks. We've now both agreed that this isn't a good reason, because the checks aren't monopolized by the Church.

quote:
Although just as a real experience of something does necessarily mean that it is an experience of a real thing, the opposite is also true, and just because we're capable of sensing certain things doesn't mean that those things aren't real. Thinking about being a brain in a vat may be an interesting intellectual exercise but I don't find it's a particularly useful way to live one's life.

What?

quote:
Mostly my guess is that they're just going to describe them as the experience of performing, or listening to a profound piece of music, or standing under the stars, etc.

And yet, those experiences still exist. They don't stop or go away just because people don't describe them as "from God" or "religious" or using any specific words, necessarily.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

leo, what's your point?

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
So who decides whether the Holy Spirit was with the councils and not with us today?
Are you saying he wasn't with the councils, but is with you today?

No. But ascribing the work of the Holy Spirit to a particular time/place/bunch of people and saying this is the bastion of Christianity is problematic.

No-one but God knows who the Spirit resides with, therefore I abhor the notion that one cannot be called a Christian if one doesn't agree with the creeds. [Disappointed]

Posted by The Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

In response to the OP, I ignore the philosophical complexities of previous discussion, which to me are irrelevant. I can only say why I am where I am, and consider how I got here. Isn’t this one of the values of the Boards: to make us examine what we may have taken for granted, and see ourselves more clearly?
I have always been ‘in the church’ and, I suppose, taken what I need from it; I haven’t made decisions about being Christian, being Presbyterian, but have made my own personal way within that framework.
Of childhood churchgoing and Sunday School I remember nothing. At boarding school I was uncomfortable when some of the girls in church services fidgeted and played; it was obviously a special time for me. Then there were years of Presbyterian Bible Class (we had great summer conferences – and I remember being woken in the morning to the strains of Bach on the loudspeakers) and the Student Christian Movement, which was proudly liberal in response to the piety of the Evangelical Union.
For the next half century it has been a matter of discarding what is unhelpful or unnecessary: accretions of dogma, assumptions about the status of scriptural writings and the times and cultures that produced them. It has often felt like peeling off the skins of an onion, to come closer to the mystery of God and to the realm of God as exemplified in the life and teaching of the Galilean.
Iona has had its influence, as has Taizé – for decades I’ve been a NZ contact for the Letter from Taizé, and I facilitate Taizé worship. Writers like Borg and Crossan have made sense to me. I’ve been blessed by belonging for more than 40 years to a congregation in the city, and a similar one when I’m at Matarangi that exemplifies Christian love and unity at the same time as being a place to follow one’s own personal path. Surely the Spirit is among us. It is saddening to read of experiences of spite, bullying, backbiting and self-service that some have come across in Christian churches. Yet we have such problems as the gay leadership issue in the institutional church, which makes me suspect that in the absence of congregations like ours we may finish up finding our own faith communities elsewhere. I’m a regular at the Sea of Faith conferences, at which a show of hands indicated that about 70% belong to a church, and atheist speakers tend to provoke muttering between friends of ‘I’ve never heard such a load of rubbish’. I’m also part of a long-standing discussion group in my own parish of older, liberal/radical faithful folk who have developed close ties of faith and friendship.
I know I’ll never get to the centre of the onion! But I trust in God (‘trust’ is a word that can often be used helpfully in place of ‘faith’).
What I don’t know is how this kind of trust would help me through vicissitudes that I haven’t had to experience.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Galloping Granny:
I know I’ll never get to the centre of the onion! But I trust in God (‘trust’ is a word that can often be used helpfully in place of ‘faith’).
What I don’t know is how this kind of trust would help me through vicissitudes that I haven’t had to experience.

Yes. That is a kind of sticking point in these discussions. It is very hard for anyone else to understand why we trust and who we put our trust in. They have not been through our vicissitudes.

I was at an extraordinary party at my local church last night, requested by a very good friend who has a terminal diagnosis and has not been given very long by medical advisors. He wanted to thank folks in our church, and family and friends, for the riches and value of their love and friendship. I guess there were about 200 of us there. It was a remarkable, poignant and happy occasion, heartwarming, funny and tearful all mixed up together. A Celebration with a capital C. As I said goodbye to my friend and his wife at the end, they both talked of trust and love.

It was a very human occasion, but it also seemed to be a lot more than that. I can describe it, but of course you don't know our friend and his wife, so it's hard for you to enter into its meaning for us all. A strange place where the very natural elements of life and the inexplicably mystical met and got kind of mixed up together. What the Iona community might refer to as a thin place.

Nigel M has just put up a really good post in Keryg here. Transcendence, immanence and thin places and how they work together in our lives. Getting to the heart of that is something we may explore in trust, or without trust, but cannot possibly exhaust.

Posted by Makepiece (# 10454) on :

In response to the OP I disagree with most of the comments on the list but I am concerned that the OP seems to assume that there is a link between doctrine and faith. Jesus taught at one point that the pharisees teaching was often correct but it was the way they lived that was a bad example.

For example, I believe it's important to teach PSA because it is the theory most in line with the Bible and it simultaneously draws together three of the most important themes in the Bible: The evil of sin, the love of God and God's deliverance. These themes are seen throughout the Bible and corroborate PSA.

Nevertheless I do not think that the test of faith is whether or not someone agrees with PSA. I think that both conservatives and liberals are in danger of losing sight of God in a mist of intellectualism.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I think I follow you, but I'm not sure where you are going. Are you suggesting that God is the basis of our presumptions regarding the stability of reality?

Historically, I believe that's so.
It might be better to say that 'God' is historically the basis for taking the multiple experienced realities as one unified reality. 'God' is what draws experience into a whole.

I've just put '' round God because the personal God of Israel is only one basis: Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophers also posited a basis of unity, which was not necessarily personal.

So, not exactly the stability of reality. More the unity of reality, although I think they amount to the same thing.

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
No. But ascribing the work of the Holy Spirit to a particular time/place/bunch of people and saying this is the bastion of Christianity is problematic.

No-one but God knows who the Spirit resides with, therefore I abhor the notion that one cannot be called a Christian if one doesn't agree with the creeds.

So, no... but yes?

If the Holy Spirit speaks with those who anathematized the heretics of their times, or those who wrote the creed and thought everyone should abide by it, then he doesn't speak through those that say otherwise.

If he didn't speak through the ancient councils, then he might speak with those that say otherwise, but then one would have to ask oneself why he was silent when the ancient councils took place.

If we go down that road, we will end up with the Holy Spirit saying whatever we are saying in the present, and continuously re-evaluating the past so that Truths of the Faith (TM) of the past can now easily be ignored and changed because the Holy Spirit speaks to us today...

Anyway.

Off on vacation.

See you all in a couple of months!

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
leo, what's your point?

That you have still not substantiated your claim that the bible says that people go tom hell if they don't believe in literal resurrection.

Also that you claim never to have said this - hence i quoted your entire post to prove that you did.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It might be better to say that 'God' is historically the basis for taking the multiple experienced realities as one unified reality. 'God' is what draws experience into a whole.

Perception of a stable reality would offer significant advantages by allowing an organism to anticipate features of the world around it. Natural selection easily explains why we expect a certain consistency in the world. Since we are all interacting with the same stable reality, one would expect that our multiple experienced realities would be generally similar. That humans have a tendency to attribute this unity of reality to a deity might say more about human psychology than about the likelihood that God exists or that he makes the physical world work in a predictable way.

In other words, I think we can get to the same understanding of the importance of repeatable observations through a naturalistic process as through religious philosophy.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Perception of a stable reality would offer significant advantages by allowing an organism to anticipate features of the world around it. Natural selection easily explains why we expect a certain consistency in the world. Since we are all interacting with the same stable reality, one would expect that our multiple experienced realities would be generally similar. That humans have a tendency to attribute this unity of reality to a deity might say more about human psychology than about the likelihood that God exists or that he makes the physical world work in a predictable way.

In other words, I think we can get to the same understanding of the importance of repeatable observations through a naturalistic process as through religious philosophy.

I think your argument falls down in three ways:

Firstly, the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal. It seems to have arisen semi-independently in a number of different places, in the middle of the first millennium BC, but it's a cultural achievement. The faculties behind it can be explained by natural selection, but cultural advances can't.

Secondly, you're confusing two things. The sense of sight has arisen through natural selection, but the reason sight is useful is not explained not by natural selection. It's explained by optics.
Given that there is a single unified reality, natural selection favours those entities that interact with it in that way - up to a point - and therefore explains why entities tend to see it in that way. So natural selection explains why our psychology is fitted to reality where it is fitted to reality. But that still leaves why reality is that way open to question.
If reality were not unified, natural selection would favour something different.

Thirdly, on any account natural selection gives rise to cognitive errors as well as cognitive achievements.
Unscientific thinking and other cognitive biases obviously offer significant advantages to organisms. If they didn't, organisms wouldn't continue to use them. So your naturalistic philosophy justifies the use of unscientific thinking and cognitive bias. If natural selection explains why we are interacting with the same stable reality, then it also explains the "tendency to attribute this unity of reality to a deity". If you're going to justify the unity of reality through natural selection, you're equally justifying belief in God through natural selection.
In fact, everything humans do is in some way a result of natural selection, so your argument would justify every human cognitive bias. Everything we are evolves through natural selection. So if natural selection justifies any way that we think, then it justifies every way that we think.
As cognitive biases and unscientific thinking are not justified, your argument does not work.

[ 21. June 2009, 20:22: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
leo, what's your point?
That you have still not substantiated your claim that the bible says that people go tom hell if they don't believe in literal resurrection.

Also that you claim never to have said this - hence i quoted your entire post to prove that you did.

I still haven't been able to make heads or tails of what point you're trying to make in the context of this thread. If you're just hoping to engage me in a tangent hobbyhorse of yours, I'll gladly continue to (mostly) ignore you.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal. It seems to have arisen semi-independently in a number of different places, in the middle of the first millennium BC, but it's a cultural achievement. The faculties behind it can be explained by natural selection, but cultural advances can't.

What do you mean by "single unitary reality"? I thought you were referring to the consistency of the universe, and the very things that allow us to say that what comes up must come down, etc. The laws of the universe, so to speak. And I'm not clear on your argument about why God is a better "reality unifier" than, well, than almost anything else, for that matter.

quote:
Secondly, you're confusing two things. The sense of sight has arisen through natural selection, but the reason sight is useful is not explained not by natural selection. It's explained by optics.

I disagree. Optics is about how sight works. Natural selection is precisely about the usefulness of things, so long as they are useful to survival in some way.

quote:
But that still leaves why reality is that way open to question.

Is this a variation of the "Science answers how, religion answers why" non-overlapping magisterium argument?

quote:
If natural selection explains why we are interacting with the same stable reality, then it also explains the "tendency to attribute this unity of reality to a deity". If you're going to justify the unity of reality through natural selection, you're equally justifying belief in God through natural selection.
In fact, everything humans do is in some way a result of natural selection, so your argument would justify every human cognitive bias. Everything we are evolves through natural selection. So if natural selection justifies any way that we think, then it justifies every way that we think.
As cognitive biases and unscientific thinking are not justified, your argument does not work.

But perhaps the tendency to attribute things to a deity was useful? Which is an argument people give all the time for remaining in faith -- what would we do about ethics? How would we appreciate art, music, or architecture? How would we know right from wrong, etc. etc. So maybe this kind of belief/faith/trust is a product of natural selection (quite obviously so, I'd say), which speaks nothing of its truth but only of its usefulness. And who's to say when it will stop being useful?

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Jason, this is a a long thread and I haven't digested all of it, but has there yet been any real discussion on the issue of the dimensions of truth. Facticity and meaning? For example, here.

"If you hold to my teaching, you really are my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free".

Or the simpler "Now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them".

There are probably loads of examples like this. I think what they amount to is that following Christ is not essentially about the prior acceptance of truth statements as facticity. It is that their real meaningfulness (truth as meaning) is found in the following and the doing.

Now of course you may see that as just another way of me (and others) saying "we have found this useful". And that is undoubtedly true! But it does not go far enough. What actually happens is that we find this following to be meaningful - and if there is any sense at all to be found in the idea of truth as meaning we have found this to be a truth which has been both meaningful and liberating. Being an adult convert, I can say with complete truthfulness that being a Christian has given my life a vivid and purposeful meaning which it did not have before. Which I guess is why I find Russell's observation (and Macbeth's) so sterile and hopeless.

Where I think you are at is that the corpus of understanding and experience contained within Christianity no longer gives you that kind of meaning - and the struggle to preserve that became for you in the end a meaningless struggle. Am I right? For if I am, one of the reasons why you started this thread was to explore how and why "moderates" continued to find meaning to live by when you could not? Truth as meaning strikes me as very significant for you.

Maybe there is something to discuss there?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal. It seems to have arisen semi-independently in a number of different places, in the middle of the first millennium BC, but it's a cultural achievement. The faculties behind it can be explained by natural selection, but cultural advances can't.

Human cultures don't operate independently of the physical, mental, and emotional characteristics of humans. Those characteristics are related to natural selection and so, by extension, are cultural advances related to natural selection.

One can easily imagine a process of memetic natural selection that parallels genetic natural selection. I don't see any reason to think that adaptive cultural features wouldn't be favored in some sense.

quote:
So natural selection explains why our psychology is fitted to reality where it is fitted to reality. But that still leaves why reality is that way open to question.
If reality were not unified, natural selection would favour something different.

If the fundamental parameters of the universe were different, then we wouldn't be here having this discussion. Our presence here shows only that the universe does feature a stable reality, not that there is some special reason why it is so. There is indeed an open question to be explored, but we don't need God to fill the gap in our knowledge.

quote:
If you're going to justify the unity of reality through natural selection, you're equally justifying belief in God through natural selection.

Perhaps, but that wouldn't make the belief accurate, only adaptive. A tendency to believe in a deity could also be a side effect of some other adaptive trait. Human children rely on parental example and instruction for learning survival skills. Maybe the traits that drive us to seek parental teaching hang on into adulthood in the form of god-seeking. Maybe not, but my point is that you don't need an actual god to explain why humans might want to believe in one.

quote:
In fact, everything humans do is in some way a result of natural selection, so your argument would justify every human cognitive bias. Everything we are evolves through natural selection. So if natural selection justifies any way that we think, then it justifies every way that we think.
As cognitive biases and unscientific thinking are not justified, your argument does not work.

Individuals and groups can have all sorts of traits that are not favored by natural selection. If the traits are neutral relative to reproductive sucess, then natural selection won't have anything to say about the matter. If the trait is detrimental to reproductive success, it will eventually become less common, but it won't necessarily vanish overnight. And, just because a trait improves reproductive success in one environment or at one time, it may not always be so. Magical thinking may have been adaptive sometime in our tribal past, but it isn't anymore.

I said it above, and Jason said it before me, but it's a critical point so I'm going to say it again. Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.

Posted by Anselmina (# 3032) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:

quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
So who decides whether the Holy Spirit was with the councils and not with us today?
Are you saying he wasn't with the councils, but is with you today?
No. But ascribing the work of the Holy Spirit to a particular time/place/bunch of people and saying this is the bastion of Christianity is problematic.

No-one but God knows who the Spirit resides with, therefore I abhor the notion that one cannot be called a Christian if one doesn't agree with the creeds.

I basically agree with this, myself. I don't see that every single word, doctrine, injunction, anathema etc, of the ancient councils or Churches, is guaranteed to have been the work of the Holy Spirit just because some of it was.

IMV, it's likely it was the same then as it is now. They got it right some of the time, and therefore they got it wrong some of the time. In the meantime, in the world of the real, we make do with what we believe is best and work with what we've got; while continuing to seek the ongoing revelation of God's Spirit.

Seb, I think we can be a little more optimistic about recognizing where the Spirit does reside, however. Scripture gives us a good list to identify the fruits of the Spirit - peaceable, persevering, loving, long-suffering, patient etc, etc. It would seem to me that where we see these things in evidence we can be sure the Spirit is at work.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:

Seb, I think we can be a little more optimistic about recognizing where the Spirit does reside, however. Scripture gives us a good list to identify the fruits of the Spirit - peaceable, persevering, loving, long-suffering, patient etc, etc. It would seem to me that where we see these things in evidence we can be sure the Spirit is at work.

Agreed to an extent. Was just baiting Andrew on a post modernist hermeneutic. [Big Grin]

"Truth", even in a Christian sense is problematic.

But he's gone on holiday. Coward [Snigger]

No just kidding. He's a great bloke, deserves a holiday where he's not thinking.

I'm a big believer in the power of scripture to guide.

The only thing than niggled me about his post was that if the councils were wrong, why didn't the Holy Spirit intervene? Can't go down that road....where was the Holy Spirit during the Holocaust? (e.g)

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

(I'm attempting to summarise rather than quote at length. Hope I don't sacrifice clarity..)

Dafyd, you said "the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal." I think our perception of it follows almost inevitably by its existence, via the sense organs that have evolved because they give us valuable data about that unified reality. You might as well say that gibbons "perceive unified reality" when they do the calculus necessary to catch the next branch! Cultural expressions come later.

Actually, I think your next point agreed with this, when you said "natural selection favours those entities that interact with [reality] in that way." Personally, I don't think anything like human cognition or reason could have evolved in a "non-unified" or non-causal universe. Such a reality would be non-rational, so could not give rise to rationality (who can say what it would have given rise to?).

I am wary about privileging the "rational universe" as being evidence of an external designer. We are a product of that universe, and our rationality grows out of it's rationality. To say that the universe is rational is like the puddle saying "see how the hole I'm in fits me exactly." As Scot said, "Our presence here shows only that the universe does feature a stable reality, not that there is some special reason why it is so." However, there is an argument here if you take the view that there's something transcendent about rationality, mathematics and logic. Is that what you're saying, Dafyd? I do think the " rational God => rational universe" position is reasonable, but saying that it demands a rational God seems to me to be a step too far. "Demands that any God be a rational one" seems to me to be closer to the mark.

quote:
Posted by Dafyd:
Unscientific thinking and other cognitive biases obviously offer significant advantages to organisms. If they didn't, organisms wouldn't continue to use them. So your naturalistic philosophy justifies the use of unscientific thinking and cognitive bias.

Explains is not the same as justifies! I think we're all agreed that cognitive biases are liable to give false results, and therefore should be countered. What we have to show is that a rational world could give rise to non-rational ways of thinking, and I believe natural selection does this.

Evolution didn't set out to make us right-thinking animals, it just selects for better survivability. As I understand it, the two traits that are very evident in human thought and behaviour are

cause-and-effect reasoning, and
pattern matching.

Cause-and-effect reasoning is only valuable in a causal universe, of course. But our minds seem hard-wired to look for cause and effect everywhere, even where it isn't. Hence the little child's "It's raining because I'm sad." Hence rain dances and cargo cults. The defect is not in the way of thinking, it's that we have a hammer and want everything to look like a nail.

Pattern-matching is a great strength, as people who recognise sabre-toothed tigers tend to be less likely to get eaten [Biased]

. It was an advantage to run away from a pattern that might be a tiger, rather than concluding that it was unlikely (the downsides were looking stupid and being out of breath, and being dead, respectively). However, the evolutionary bias in favour of false positives has left us with a legacy of seeing faces on Mars and the Virgin Mary on a toasted sandwich, not to mention conspiracy theories and a very bad intuition of probability.

These both posit humans evolving in a rational, unified and causal universe, yet explain how humankind claim to be blessed with a couple of big non-rational ways of thinking. I believe similar arguments can be made for other cognitive biases.

Scot, I'm not replying to your points as we seem in broad agreement here. Please forgive me if I go over the same ground as your last answer! I would comment on

quote:
Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.

I wonder if you put too much weight on this argument that it will break, and take our ability to make any valid truth claims with it. "Just because natural selection produced rationality, doesn't mean that rationality is valid" seem to be the reductio ad absurdum here. If it were true, we'd never know it, and all discussions are futile.

Barnabas62, I'm interested in your last point. In reminded me of CS Lewis' Meditation in a Tool Shed, where he made the distinction between looking at and looking 'along.' Have I understood you right? If so, I'd like to ask how you think "finding meaning" in the process corresponds to finding objective truth.

Best wishes,

- Chris.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

Barnabas62, I'm interested in your last point. In reminded me of CS Lewis' Meditation in a Tool Shed, where he made the distinction between looking at and looking 'along.' Have I understood you right? If so, I'd like to ask how you think "finding meaning" in the process corresponds to finding objective truth.

- Chris.

Pretty close, I think. I'd never seen that bit of Lewis before. Something Pirsig wrote in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" seems relevant here. In his semi-autobiographical appreciation of the word quality, he points to our tendency to analyse and categorise experiences so quickly that the analysis becomes the experience. Of course it's very subjective to say that one has to allow the experience to happen to us in its appreciation. But then I think that's what we do first of all. That phrase "looking along" kind of embraces Pirsig's insight as well.

I think it may be too facile to say, for example, that meaning is something we choose. So far as Christianity is concerned, I think meaning was something I found, or it found me. I'm not all that smart about how meaning becomes for us truth. I see the postmodernism in my own personal journey! But Pomo doesn't capture it either!

[Spello]

[ 22. June 2009, 16:12: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
leo, what's your point?
That you have still not substantiated your claim that the bible says that people go tom hell if they don't believe in literal resurrection.

Also that you claim never to have said this - hence i quoted your entire post to prove that you did.
I still haven't been able to make heads or tails of what point you're trying to make in the context of this thread. If you're just hoping to engage me in a tangent hobbyhorse of yours, I'll gladly continue to (mostly) ignore you.

In which case you haven't 'been able to make head or tails' of something that YOU wrote.

Fundamentalists often preface dogmatic staements like 'The Bible says....' and then misquote scripture.

So it is no surprise that when their belief system begins to unravel they cannot see anything left in which to believe.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal. It seems to have arisen semi-independently in a number of different places, in the middle of the first millennium BC, but it's a cultural achievement.
What do you mean by "single unitary reality"? I thought you were referring to the consistency of the universe, and the very things that allow us to say that what comes up must come down, etc. The laws of the universe, so to speak. And I'm not clear on your argument about why God is a better "reality unifier" than, well, than almost anything else, for that matter.

I'm not referring to the laws of the universe. That's an even later development. It's a drive towards the thought that explanations of one phenomenon ought to be consistent with all other explanations of other phenemena. It's a belief that the world as a whole makes sense. Or to put it another way, that we can meaningfully talk about the world or the universe as a whole.
I'm not arguing that the Judeo-Christian God is a better reality unifier. All I'm arguing is that it's a candidate.
In fact, I think I said quite explicitly in an earlier post that I'm using 'God' to cover a variety of quasi-entities found in Greek, Indian, and Chinese thought, none of which quite count as personal.

quote:

quote:
Secondly, you're confusing two things. The sense of sight has arisen through natural selection, but the reason sight is useful is not explained not by natural selection. It's explained by optics.
I disagree. Optics is about how sight works. Natural selection is precisely about the usefulness of things, so long as they are useful to survival in some way.

I think that's just restating my point in a different way.

quote:

quote:
But that still leaves why reality is that way open to question.
Is this a variation of the "Science answers how, religion answers why" non-overlapping magisterium argument?

I don't think so. Certainly, I'm not attributing any purpose to the universe.
The distinction is between science and philosophy, with science embedded in philosophy. Philosophy is asking what is presupposed about the universe granted that science is getting under way successfully. In this case, I'm saying that the philosophy in question has to become theologised.

(An analogy for the type of reasoning I'm putting forward: suppose someone offers to prove that we have no reason to suppose space and time exist. We can't observe them. We have no reason to suppose that what we can't observe exists.
Counterargument: true, we can't observe space. But if space didn't exist, all our observations of objects would be collapsed together and we couldn't make sense of them. Space and time are the necessary presuppositions of all our observations, even though we cannot observe them ourselves.)

quote:

quote:

In fact, everything humans do is in some way a result of natural selection, so your argument would justify every human cognitive bias. Everything we are evolves through natural selection. So if natural selection justifies any way that we think, then it justifies every way that we think.
But perhaps the tendency to attribute things to a deity was useful?

Well, yes, but the point of the argument is that natural selection only explains whether a thought pattern has been useful in the past. It can't explain whether it's useful because true or useful for some other reason.
Yes, you (or Scot) can easily get off the hook of my third counterargument by this way. But, as far as I can see, you only do so by impaling yourself firmly on the second counterargument.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal. It seems to have arisen semi-independently in a number of different places, in the middle of the first millennium BC, but it's a cultural achievement. The faculties behind it can be explained by natural selection, but cultural advances can't.
Human cultures don't operate independently of the physical, mental, and emotional characteristics of humans. Those characteristics are related to natural selection and so, by extension, are cultural advances related to natural selection.

One can easily imagine a process of memetic natural selection that parallels genetic natural selection. I don't see any reason to think that adaptive cultural features wouldn't be favored in some sense.

Yes, I said all of what you're saying in the first paragraph.

Example: Orchestral music develops in Western Europe. It doesn't develop in India or China. That humans have the capacity to develop orchestral music at all must be somehow explained through natural selection. That Western Europeans develop orchestral music and Indians don't cannot be explained through natural selection.

I don't regard memetic selection as anything other than a poorly thought out metaphor. If you're arguing that societies with a unified perception of reality tend to do better (for some sense of 'better') than societies that didn't, then up to a point it's true. The perception of a unified reality arises to some extent with the first age of empire building across Asia and the Mediterranean. But the explanation would lie more in the affinity with a unified and centralized government than any direct veridical link. And even then, it's a bit shaky.

quote:

quote:
If reality were not unified, natural selection would favour something different.
If the fundamental parameters of the universe were different, then we wouldn't be here having this discussion. Our presence here shows only that the universe does feature a stable reality, not that there is some special reason why it is so. There is indeed an open question to be explored, but we don't need God to fill the gap in our knowledge.

Let me see if I've understood you? There is an open question to be explored. Just so long as any hypothesised answer isn't 'a special reason', and just so long as any hypothesised answer is Anything But God.

Anyway, you've misunderstood me slightly. The idea that 'the' universe that either features a stable reality or an unstable reality already presupposes that there is such a thing as the universe. And that's the move that really needs justifying. You can produce all sorts of logical errors by treating 'everything' as the name of a logical singular: without further justification, 'the universe' is just such a logical error.

quote:

quote:
If you're going to justify the unity of reality through natural selection, you're equally justifying belief in God through natural selection.
Perhaps, but that wouldn't make the belief accurate, only adaptive.

quote:
Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.

Yes. That was my point.

Your attempt to explain belief in a unified reality through natural selection only works if you assume that because natural selection predisposes us to believe in a unified reality that must necessarily make belief in a unified reality true. You admit it doesn't. Pop goes your argument.

[ 22. June 2009, 15:14: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Dafyd, you said "the perception of a single unitary reality is not a human universal." I think our perception of it follows almost inevitably by its existence, via the sense organs that have evolved because they give us valuable data about that unified reality. You might as well say that gibbons "perceive unified reality" when they do the calculus necessary to catch the next branch! Cultural expressions come later.

I am pretty sure gibbons don't consciously do calculus, and I suspect that their unconscious system uses rules of thumb instead.
Anyway, I'm not talking about the persistence of observed physical objects. However, I think it's pretty obvious that human beings have evolved to use a number of heuristic rules in our thinking that don't square with rationality. For example, our intuitions on probability are pretty much unreliable. And of course we come up with all kinds of beliefs that within the context of belief in unified reality must be labelled superstition. You yourself refer to these below in your post. The presence of superstition, and the difficulty of science, show that it's not really a cultural universal.
And it isn't. Anthropologists studying other cultures have come up with all kinds of claims that are incomprehensible if you try to make sense within a unified belief framework.

quote:
Actually, I think your next point agreed with this, when you said "natural selection favours those entities that interact with [reality] in that way." Personally, I don't think anything like human cognition or reason could have evolved in a "non-unified" or non-causal universe. Such a reality would be non-rational, so could not give rise to rationality (who can say what it would have given rise to?).

I put forward three separate counterarguments against Scot's argument. They're not supposed to be compatible. The third, as you noticed, was pretty much a reductio ad absurdum: I didn't agree with the premise at all. The second was granting something I only partly believe.

Anyway, I think that the argument that rationality couldn't have evolved in a universe without a unified rationality would only apply in a universe with unified rationality.
As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, there are people developing non-standard logics that include things like the possibility of affirming two contradictory statements. But even they're systematised.

quote:
I am wary about privileging the "rational universe" as being evidence of an external designer.

I'm not talking about evidence for an external designer, and I'm deeply unhappy with the fine-tuning argument, which is flawed in any number of ways. (Although the puddle counterexample seems to me to miss the point.)

quote:
However, there is an argument here if you take the view that there's something transcendent about rationality, mathematics and logic. Is that what you're saying, Dafyd? I do think the " rational God => rational universe" position is reasonable, but saying that it demands a rational God seems to me to be a step too far. "Demands that any God be a rational one" seems to me to be closer to the mark.

Well, I do think that mathematics and rationality are transcendent for some sense of that word. Whether that's the sense you're using I'm not sure.
I think it might be better to characterise my argument as something along the lines that 'what it is for there to be a rational universe, or something we can meaningfully call a universe, will turn out to involve positing God'.
I'm also aware that I'm so far arguing only that there's a hole where something needs to be put, so that 'God' is just a label for what goes in that whole. I'm more arguing that classical theism thinks of God far more as what belongs under that kind of label rather than as the external designer of Paleyite thought or young-earth creationism.
The Elvis and large diamond arguments only work at all against the designer argument (and even then they work best if the designer isn't external).

quote:

Scot, I'm not replying to your points as we seem in broad agreement here. Please forgive me if I go over the same ground as your last answer! I would comment on
quote:
Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.
I wonder if you put too much weight on this argument that it will break, and take our ability to make any valid truth claims with it. "Just because natural selection produced rationality, doesn't mean that rationality is valid" seem to be the reductio ad absurdum here. If it were true, we'd never know it, and all discussions are futile.

Absolutely.

[ 22. June 2009, 15:50: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by WearyPilgrim (# 14593) on :

I'm just rejoining the Board after a weekend away. It will take me all evening to read through all the previous posts. For now, however: a couple of you rightly challenged my belief in Jesus' Resurrection as appearing overlygh subjective (I had quoted the old Gospel song "He Lives": "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!").

I believe in the Incarnation because I believe in the Resurrection. It is a subjective belief in so far as it has transformed my life. Jesus Christ is a living presence to me. That having been said, it is also an objective belief: I hold that Christ was actually, literally, bodily raised from the dead --- that His post-Resurrection appearances were not merely subjective psychological or spiritual phenomena, but that they really happened. Paul certainly attests to this, as does Peter, and Paul further maintains that Christ appeared to five hundred people at once. The Book of Acts purports to be basically historically factual. It's clear that SOMETHING extraordinary happened, and that there was corroborative evidence of it.

Bultmann's demythologization of the Resurrection, which seems to have set in motion all kinds of woolly-headed ideas about what did or didn't happen on and after the day of the Resurrection, just doesn't wash with me. If I alone were to say that a deceased man appeared to me fully alive, you would have ample reason to doubt the veracity of my claim, as well as my sanity. But if a whole GROUP of people --- and a large group at that --- were to make a similar claim, and that that experience engendered a 180-degree spiritual transformation, you'd have to wonder.

There are some things in the New Testament about which I have some doubts. The Resurrection is not one of them. No Resurrection, no Church. It's as simple as that.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
...natural selection only explains whether a thought pattern has been useful in the past. It can't explain whether it's useful because true or useful for some other reason.
Yes, you (or Scot) can easily get off the hook of my third counterargument by this way. But, as far as I can see, you only do so by impaling yourself firmly on the second counterargument.

What I think I'm really confused about is why you want this "unified reality" premise to be taken as given and definitively explained. If instead we said something more simple, like: "From what we've seen, there is some consistency to the way things work, so we therefore expect that other consistencies might exist, and we look for them." -- of course the 'theory of unified reality' wouldn't have arisen until people began to make testable observations about their surroundings, and until they had the tools/intelligence/idea to test them.

If Newton had dropped an apple a second time and it had gone straight up into the air, science either wouldn't exist at all, or it'd be completely different, and we'd have very little sense of any unified reality, consistency, testability, trust in observable, repeatable tests, etc.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Anyway, you've misunderstood me slightly. The idea that 'the' universe that either features a stable reality or an unstable reality already presupposes that there is such a thing as the universe. And that's the move that really needs justifying.

You lost me here. Because the universe might not exist? Because there might be more than one universe? We observe that certain things are consistent, so we accept the consistency that we see and test if/how it applies to other situations.

quote:
Your attempt to explain belief in a unified reality through natural selection only works if you assume that because natural selection predisposes us to believe in a unified reality that must necessarily make belief in a unified reality true. You admit it doesn't. Pop goes your argument.

I know you're responding to Scot, but I'm trying to follow along and I'm lost again. I don't know why we need to be concerned about whether unified reality is ultimately true or not. Again: we observe, we process, we repeat, we make guesses about how consistency works.

If natural selection led to our belief in unified reality, it was because the ability to predict events based on our assumptions about consistency was extremely useful for our survival. And it continues to be!

[ 22. June 2009, 17:11: Message edited by: Jason I. Am ]

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
First, you keep making broad, sweeping assumptions about the circles I run in, when I haven't said anything about any circles.

I apologize. But we're obviously having trouble communicating, and I'm trying to figure out why; it seems like you're making assertions of the 'if you believe x, then logically you must believe y' sort which wind up putting words in other people's mouths. But I'm out after this...

quote:
I agree. The point isn't to just blindly get rid of Christianity, it's to be reasonable when it's appropriate to be reasonable.

Funny, I didn't get that from you asking why, if you accept certain liberal premises, you stay Christian at all. It seemed to me that you were pretty much saying the opposite.

quote:
But when answering why people should retain those beliefs, you said it was because they need the checks.

One reason is that they need the checks; it's not the only one, just one that seems significant in my life right now.

quote:
We've now both agreed that this isn't a good reason, because the checks aren't monopolized by the Church.

We have not agreed that this isn't a good reason. That's like saying that there's no sense going to a business that's been around for a long time and tends to be very good at what they do because they don't have a monopoly, or that there's no point being a democracy because it's not the only viable form of government.

quote:
And yet, those experiences still exist. They don't stop or go away just because people don't describe them as "from God" or "religious" or using any specific words, necessarily.

Erm, yes. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that they don't. But the point is that in order to communicate about them, we have to have some sort of shared vocabulary; this vocabulary frequently comes from a shared religious or spiritual framework, and a lack of a shared framework leads to more miscommunication etc...

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by WearyPilgrim:
I hold that Christ was actually, literally, bodily raised from the dead --- that His post-Resurrection appearances were not merely subjective psychological or spiritual phenomena, but that they really happened. Paul certainly attests to this, as does Peter, and Paul further maintains that Christ appeared to five hundred people at once. The Book of Acts purports to be basically historically factual. It's clear that SOMETHING extraordinary happened, and that there was corroborative evidence of it.

WearyPilgrim, I hope you'll excuse me if I use your post as a springboard. From a purely historical perspective, ISTM that the change of heart of the disciples after the crucifixion does require an explanation. If one doesn't take WearyPilgrim's view, one is left with

The events in the gospels/acts are not historical - it never happened;
Something else inspired them to found a movement.

Given that the early church is historical, and something got it started, it strikes me that the sceptics have a case to answer. If the former, how did the church get started at all? If the latter, what was responsible for their change of heart?

Cheers,

- Chris.

PS: Dafyd, Thanks for your replies - I admire the amount of work you're doing replying to 3 separate people about the same posts!

Posted by matthew_dixon (# 12278) on :

Please may I interrupt this discussion just to respond to the OP myself? Cheers.

"The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans."
I'd agree with that, to an extent. It's not literally true, but is very definitely divinely inspired

"PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good."
I don't like PSA as a simplistic concept - in the sense of Jesus died purely to save a subset of the population and not to save the others. There's so much MORE to Christianity than PSA!

"Other religions contain elements of truth"
Yes, I'd agree. I'd go so far as to say that I feel Christianity is largely right, and that in general the "elements of truth" in other faiths are where they coincide with Christianity.

"Hell might not exist or it might end up being empty, but the idea that people will be cast into Hell for believing the wrong things about God is rather absurd"
Absolutely agreed.

"Evolution is most likely true, and Creationism is an embarrassing byproduct of over-literal Christianity"
Agreed there as well.

"Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and other morality issues are a lot more complicated and nuanced than many more literal Christians try to make them sound"
Also agreed there.

So, why am I still a Christian? Well, because I feel there's something so much deeper to faith than the literal reading of the bible that is suggested.

Back to your discussions... [Biased]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
...natural selection only explains whether a thought pattern has been useful in the past. It can't explain whether it's useful because true or useful for some other reason.
Yes, you (or Scot) can easily get off the hook of my third counterargument by this way. But, as far as I can see, you only do so by impaling yourself firmly on the second counterargument.
What I think I'm really confused about is why you want this "unified reality" premise to be taken as given and definitively explained. If instead we said something more simple, like: "From what we've seen, there is some consistency to the way things work, so we therefore expect that other consistencies might exist, and we look for them." -- of course the 'theory of unified reality' wouldn't have arisen until people began to make testable observations about their surroundings, and until they had the tools/intelligence/idea to test them.

I'm thinking of a category of traditional religion as expounded by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (originally from Max Weber).
Traditional religion here refers to polytheistic religions and even less formalised systems. The idea is that in traditional religions we have a variety of concepts of gods, spirits, witchcraft, sorcery, and so on. Whenever we come across an event out of the ordinary, or that provokes questions of meaning (an unexplained death, a birth, suffering, or good luck) we draw on whatever of the above concepts seems most appropriate to the case. Whether we'd use the same concept in a different circumstance is entirely irrelevant: the concept comes out, does it's job, and goes back in. In one case, someone dies, and it's because his enemy is a witch. In another case, a spirit dislikes him.
In one such society, an anthropologist noticed that witchcraft was said to be hereditary (Evans-Pritchard, studying the Azande). It's passed on father to son. But the idea that if one man was a witch then his brothers were witches was just not accepted.
The point is that traditional societies can get on quite happily for thousands of years with just these kinds of explanation. And they still continue in the West. Some of the older strata behind the Bible must date from this kind of period.

But traditional religion also includes seeds of what we might call are also elements of rationalized theology, which in Judea takes the form of Jewish monotheism, and in Greece philosophy. (And in China and India we have developments that aren't easily categorised as either philosophy or religion.) This isn't happy with singular one-off explanations. Explanations are no longer ad hoc. If you use an explanation, you have to reuse it or drop it. You have to be consistent in the way you use explanations. The one-off explanations now come to require their own explanations.
If we're finding an explanation that will tie together two things we need to develop a concept that will tie together those two things, an abstraction from them both, that because an abstraction isn't directly observable. And if we want to tie together everything, we need some single transcendental abstraction that will license tying everything together. The point is that the single transcendental abstraction, whether Brahma, the Dao, YHWH, or the Greek logos or form of the Good, guarantees the possibility of stretching explanations from one area to another. Everything falls under the single domain. Because there's a structured set of abstractions organising everything, everything forms a coherent whole which we can talk about as a whole.
(See below about the difference between seeing everything as a mere aggregation and seeing everything as a universe.)

It's helpful here to note that while the identification of God with one of the Greek gods such as Zeus/Jupiter was always strenuously resisted by Jews and Christians, the identification with the philosophical logos or neoplatonic One was frequently accepted. Greek philosophical terms were readily taken up and used especially in Christianity. Rationalization was only an ongoing work and imperfectly done in the Biblical documents, but the pressure of belief in one God pushes beyond the Biblical categories and calls for the adoption of philosophical categories in all three monotheistic religions.

The process of making guesses and checking for consistency doesn't really make sense until we expect there to be consistency. And that doesn't really arise until we have generated the set of abstractions around a unified philosophical theology. On the one hand, we had people trying out ad hoc practical solutions to practical problems and sticking with what worked; on the other, we had people trying to explain reality using philosophy/theology. Science didn't really develop until the two united, as they did in Reformation Europe.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Anyway, you've misunderstood me slightly. The idea that 'the' universe that either features a stable reality or an unstable reality already presupposes that there is such a thing as the universe. And that's the move that really needs justifying.
You lost me here. Because the universe might not exist? Because there might be more than one universe?

Let's consider two sets. One of them consists of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury. The other consists of Mars, the star Algebaran, George Bush's left kneecap, and a dead lemur in Madagascar. The first set is united by similar properties. The second is just an arbitrary aggregation.
The universe is the set of everything that exists. The thing is that by calling it the universe we're suggesting that it's more than just an arbitrary aggregation. We're suggesting that everything has some similarity to everything else; we're suggesting that there's some kind of structure and order to it that makes it into a whole and not just the most arbitrary of arbitrary aggregations.

quote:

quote:
Your attempt to explain belief in a unified reality through natural selection only works if you assume that because natural selection predisposes us to believe in a unified reality that must necessarily make belief in a unified reality true. You admit it doesn't. Pop goes your argument.
I don't know why we need to be concerned about whether unified reality is ultimately true or not. Again: we observe, we process, we repeat, we make guesses about how consistency works.

The thing is, if you aren't concerned about whether something is ultimately true or not, you've lost the distinction you've made between modes of thinking ('science') that work because they reflect how reality is, and modes of thinking ('cognitive bias') that work only because they're adaptive for some other reason. You've just got one category of things that are adaptive.
You need the idea of truth to say that some things are adaptive because true and some things are adaptive despite being not true.

I'm also dubious about the motivation for adopting a program of observing, processing, repetition that has any grand universal claims that doesn't rest in an aspiration to discover the truth of things. Mere practical utility doesn't set its sights so high.

(Entirely by coincidence there's an article in last Friday's Church Times by a formerly atheist scientist arguing for belief in God for reasons closely related to the last paragraph.)

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

I'm not sure I see the connection with Geertz's view of religion (I've no doubt he's spinning in his grave at hearing that he got it from Weber):

quote:
A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting motivations in men[sic] by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods an motivations seem uniquely realistic.

For the Azande, part of the "general order of existence" is that there are no accidents; for many conservative Christians, it is that everything you really need to know is in the Bible (probably the KJV). The problem is how you represent this in a public, symbolic way (and for Geertz, thought is public, mediated in shared symbols--the creed, the shape of a gothic cathedral, the melody of "Shine Jesus Shine") that establishes those mood and motivations most effectively.

The problems arise when we encounter someone whose symbols formulate a different (and noncommensurate) general order of existence--which is what the OP is all about.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

Fundamentalists often preface dogmatic staements like 'The Bible says....' and then misquote scripture.

So it is no surprise that when their belief system begins to unravel they cannot see anything left in which to believe.

Well said leo [Overused]

Posted by The Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

Standing with matthew_dixon (hello.Brother) I admit I've enjoyed reading the deep thoughts of other contributors – grateful for mental stimulation.

I belong in the fellowship of those to whom God and the life in the Spirit matters.

[Tangent] But I suddenly felt the need to take out my beloved Omar Khayyàm:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Galloping Granny:

But I suddenly felt the need to take out my beloved Omar Khayyàm:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

"There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seemed--and then no more of THEE and ME."

That seems to me to be how he came in! There are different doors of course.

But I've always loved it, too.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I'm not sure I see the connection with Geertz's view of religion (I've no doubt he's spinning in his grave at hearing that he got it from Weber)

You're thinking of the definition Geertz gave in 'Religion as a Cultural System'. I'm thinking of his description at the beginning of his essay '"Internal Conversion" in Contemporary Bali'. RaaCS is no doubt his own formulation, but he explicitly attributes his distinction at the beginning of ICiCB to Weber.

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
WearyPilgrim, I hope you'll excuse me if I use your post as a springboard. From a purely historical perspective, ISTM that the change of heart of the disciples after the crucifixion does require an explanation. If one doesn't take WearyPilgrim's view, one is left with
The events in the gospels/acts are not historical - it never happened;
Something else inspired them to found a movement.
Given that the early church is historical, and something got it started, it strikes me that the sceptics have a case to answer. If the former, how did the church get started at all? If the latter, what was responsible for their change of heart?

I'm not exactly a sceptic, but ISTM that this is a question which could be answered any number of ways. For a start, I could observe that any number of churches, movements and the like have got started over the years, all with mutually contradictory messages. They clearly can't all be right. Care to apply your logic to (for example) Islam? How do you think the origins of Scientology will be reported in 2,000 years?

And of course, you appear to assume without justification that either every word of the gospels/acts is true, or none of it, leaving no room for pious misunderstandings, well-meaning hagiography, wishful thinking and any number of potential ways the truth could have become obscured. All of which brings us back to the point of the thread.

Jason, I'm still pondering your question about why, once Occam's out of his box, he should be put away again. I think the difficulty is in assessing the probabilities of metaphysical claims. Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all? (Serious question - I don't have a clue)

My guess is that experience is the primary driver in both any move towards liberalism and keeping liberals* within the church. Experience of the world suggests to liberals* that life's more complex than a simple, literal, black-and-white view held by some conservatives* (I don't know if this is strictly Occam at work, or just new information), but experience of the divine (however you define it) tells them that nevertheless, there's something in it.

If that's the case, it makes no sense to ask them why, having rejected conservative* beliefs, they remain in the church, as they remain in the church for the same reasons why they rejected conservative* beliefs - to adopt a position in line with their experience. (I'm aware that I'm in danger of conflating different types of "experience", but I think it's justified as the common thread in the thought process, due to the interpretation step between observation and conclusion. Feel free to disagree.)

* - For want of a better word

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Jason, I'm still pondering your question about why, once Occam's out of his box, he should be put away again. I think the difficulty is in assessing the probabilities of metaphysical claims. Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all? (Serious question - I don't have a clue)

My guess is that experience is the primary driver in both any move towards liberalism and keeping liberals* within the church. Experience of the world suggests to liberals* that life's more complex than a simple, literal, black-and-white view held by some conservatives* (I don't know if this is strictly Occam at work, or just new information), but experience of the divine (however you define it) tells them that nevertheless, there's something in it.

If that's the case, it makes no sense to ask them why, having rejected conservative* beliefs, they remain in the church, as they remain in the church for the same reasons why they rejected conservative* beliefs - to adopt a position in line with their experience. (I'm aware that I'm in danger of conflating different types of "experience", but I think it's justified as the common thread in the thought process, due to the interpretation step between observation and conclusion. Feel free to disagree.)

* - For want of a better word

Gumby, this is probably the best answer I've heard to this question, not just on this thread, but ever in my life, especially the part I bolded.

For me, at least, it explains a lot about why I moved toward the beliefs I did, away from inerrancy, away from hell, etc. -- they simply didn't match with any experience I had ever had or could conceive of with the type of god that I supposedly believed in.

For me, this led to me going to church and remaining in Christian community for a number of reasons: friendships, community, a place I could play music, involvement in various philanthropies, and a place to think and talk about metaphysical things.

But when I realized that I was constantly limited in how I could talk about those metaphysical things, that all the philanthropies were mixed with evangelistic desire, that music was limited by traditional morals, that community and friendships weren't monopolized by the church, and that my involvement in the church implied an agreement with some fairly arbitrary ethical positions -- it all came apart for me.

To put it in your words, Gumby, my experience became such that I found no use for the church. Which is really a lot of what my question was in the beginning. Because it seems that when you take away Hell, and the uniqueness of Christianity, and the supremacy of the Bible that inerrancy provides, etc., that you sort of lose a lot of the urgency or "big-dealness" of being a Christian. Those who hold those beliefs are able to easily describe why it's so important for you to stay in the church and to keep the faith.

So when I lost that urgency, I was left with just the usefulness (or lack) of those beliefs. I've loved this thread because it's extremely fascinating to me why so many people, when facing similar circumstances, have stuck with it. (Fascinating in a way that the "Why do conservatives believe in Hell?" question just isn't anymore.)

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The process of making guesses and checking for consistency doesn't really make sense until we expect there to be consistency. And that doesn't really arise until we have generated the set of abstractions around a unified philosophical theology.

That seems like quite a causal jump. I haven't seen anything to make me doubt that expectation of consistency arose when people started noticing consistency around them. Which seems like a far simpler, more likely explanation than going the lonnnnnnnng way around to say it was because they came up with "unified philosophical theology" and that led to people expecting consistency in the natural world around them.

quote:
The universe is the set of everything that exists. The thing is that by calling it the universe we're suggesting that it's more than just an arbitrary aggregation. We're suggesting that everything has some similarity to everything else; we're suggesting that there's some kind of structure and order to it that makes it into a whole and not just the most arbitrary of arbitrary aggregations.

Well it's a working assumption. And so long as it provides solid groundwork for the millions of things that we can test and understand, it continues to be a good working assumption. (It's with this type of working assumption that Occam really shines, in my opinion.)

quote:
The thing is, if you aren't concerned about whether something is ultimately true or not, you've lost the distinction you've made between modes of thinking ('science') that work because they reflect how reality is, and modes of thinking ('cognitive bias') that work only because they're adaptive for some other reason. You've just got one category of things that are adaptive.
You need the idea of truth to say that some things are adaptive because true and some things are adaptive despite being not true.

I think it's a micro/macro distinction though, as I explain below.

quote:
I'm also dubious about the motivation for adopting a program of observing, processing, repetition that has any grand universal claims that doesn't rest in an aspiration to discover the truth of things. Mere practical utility doesn't set its sights so high.

I think this is a uniquely theological problem, that you can't be concerned with the truth of anything if you're not concerned with the Truth of All Things. On the contrary, you can be very concerned about the truth of whether things fall to the ground when dropped without being too worried about the truth of whether ultimate reality is unified. I doubt it would have done much good if you had been there when Newton presented his findings to say, "That's all well and good, Isaac, but until we determine definitively whether or not ultimate reality is truly unified or not, your findings are just not that impressive or conclusive."

So maybe "God" is one explanation for the ultimate unification of all reality. Maybe it's a good explanation, maybe it isn't. Until we're able to test that proposition, I think the scientific position is to shrug and say, "So what?" and to get on with trying to understand what we can.

(Which, incidentally, has a lot to do with why I'm in the process of giving up a lot of Christian beliefs. At some point while wondering about the literal resurrection and the incarnation and whether God was ultimately true or not I suddenly asked myself, "So what? How about we get on with trying to understand what we can?")

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
when I realized that I was constantly limited in how I could talk about those metaphysical things, that all the philanthropies were mixed with evangelistic desire, that music was limited by traditional morals, that community and friendships weren't monopolized by the church, and that my involvement in the church implied an agreement with some fairly arbitrary ethical positions -- it all came apart for me.

I suppose the question is, can there be a community that doesn't imply some kind of identification with positions we don't personally
endorse?

I'm probably in a similar place to you as regards preference. There's certainly some church stuff as espoused by conservatives all across the evangelical, catholic, and middle-of-the-road traditions that I do not wish to associate with. But without a community of some kind through which to express both interests and dissatifactions, we're only ever going to be on the sidelines of public debate. Without the constraint of having to consider the effect of what we say on the rest of a community, we can let rip at the stupidity of some of the worst excesses of Christianity but we're eminently ignorable. However valid our criticism, its expression needs the lift of a recognised body of support in order to even be noticed above the noise of the traffic.

But I happen to have come across a community within the Church that includes people I feel I have something in common with and to which I can make a contribution. Without that, I don't know how long I'd bother with Church.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. There have been a number of interesting points and hard questions that I really want to discuss. I've just been too busy today until now.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:
Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.
I wonder if you put too much weight on this argument that it will break, and take our ability to make any valid truth claims with it. "Just because natural selection produced rationality, doesn't mean that rationality is valid" seem to be the reductio ad absurdum here. If it were true, we'd never know it, and all discussions are futile.

I would agree that rationality is not valid because natural selection produced it. Rationality is valid because it works. A rational approach, such as science, can be used to accurately and repeatably predict phenomena of the world in which we live. That rational thinking was favored by natural selection is a result, not a cause, of the validity of rationality.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
If the fundamental parameters of the universe were different, then we wouldn't be here having this discussion. Our presence here shows only that the universe does feature a stable reality, not that there is some special reason why it is so. There is indeed an open question to be explored, but we don't need God to fill the gap in our knowledge.
Let me see if I've understood you? There is an open question to be explored. Just so long as any hypothesised answer isn't 'a special reason', and just so long as any hypothesised answer is Anything But God.

No, not what I meant at all. I'll rephrase my statement to say that there is an open question to be explored, but we don't need to assert the presence of some unverifiable and untestable "other" outside of nature simply because science hasn't worked out a complete answer yet.

quote:
The idea that 'the' universe that either features a stable reality or an unstable reality already presupposes that there is such a thing as the universe. And that's the move that really needs justifying. You can produce all sorts of logical errors by treating 'everything' as the name of a logical singular: without further justification, 'the universe' is just such a logical error.

Would you prefer "a universe" or "this universe"? In any case, as far as we can observe the universe in which we exist does feature a stable reality.

quote:
Your attempt to explain belief in a unified reality through natural selection only works if you assume that because natural selection predisposes us to believe in a unified reality that must necessarily make belief in a unified reality true. You admit it doesn't. Pop goes your argument.

See my above response to sanityman regarding rationality.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd in response to sanityman:
I'm also aware that I'm so far arguing only that there's a hole where something needs to be put, so that 'God' is just a label for what goes in that whole. I'm more arguing that classical theism thinks of God far more as what belongs under that kind of label rather than as the external designer of Paleyite thought or young-earth creationism.

How is this not just another "God of the gaps" argument?

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd in response to Jason I. Am:
The process of making guesses and checking for consistency doesn't really make sense until we expect there to be consistency. And that doesn't really arise until we have generated the set of abstractions around a unified philosophical theology.

I strongly disagree. The expectation of consistency arises from the observation that there is consistency. The search for a unified theory results from both the observation and the expectation of consistency. You've got the causality backward.

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all?

I see it, not so much as unnecessarily multiplying entities, as either engaging in an endless regression or abandoning rational investigation. If the former, then you have to explain where God came from and why. If the latter, then you have no good reason not to accept God as the direct cause of all sorts of things rather than placing him at arm's length.

quote:
I'm aware that I'm in danger of conflating different types of "experience", but I think it's justified as the common thread in the thought process, due to the interpretation step between observation and conclusion. Feel free to disagree.

Experience of the world can be explained, verified, and shown to others as evidence. Experience of the divine cannot be verified or shown to others. You use the two interchangably, but they aren't the same thing at all, and certainly not to someone not starting from a position of belief in the divine.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
To put it in your words, Gumby, my experience became such that I found no use for the church. Which is really a lot of what my question was in the beginning. Because it seems that when you take away Hell, and the uniqueness of Christianity, and the supremacy of the Bible that inerrancy provides, etc., that you sort of lose a lot of the urgency or "big-dealness" of being a Christian. Those who hold those beliefs are able to easily describe why it's so important for you to stay in the church and to keep the faith.

So when I lost that urgency, I was left with just the usefulness (or lack) of those beliefs. I've loved this thread because it's extremely fascinating to me why so many people, when facing similar circumstances, have stuck with it.

Good explanation. I went through much the same process. I would add that, once you are no longer compelled to stay Christian by those conservative beliefs, you have to decide what to do with destructive features of the church. To be fair, some of the harm I saw done in conservative churches may be less common in moderate or liberal churches. I just couldn't come up with a good reason to stick around long enough to find out. I had momentum.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
But without a community of some kind through which to express both interests and dissatifactions, we're only ever going to be on the sidelines of public debate. Without the constraint of having to consider the effect of what we say on the rest of a community, we can let rip at the stupidity of some of the worst excesses of Christianity but we're eminently ignorable. However valid our criticism, its expression needs the lift of a recognised body of support in order to even be noticed above the noise of the traffic.

This assumes that public debate is the same as debate within the church community. I realize that I'm speaking from a US perspective, but I strongly believe not only that the two are different, but that they should be kept separate. There are plenty of communities with legitimate voices in the public debate through which I can be heard.

If you mean to say that one must be within the church community to influence it positively, that may be true. I have to question, however, whether I'm entitled to influence discussion within the church if I don't identify as Christian.

Posted by Laurie17 (# 14889) on :

Why do religious moderates keep the faith ?

I think that 'religious moderation' is an expression oroutcome of keeping faith, and the faith for many of us.

For me, it's that way round I've just realised...

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
To put it in your words, Gumby, my experience became such that I found no use for the church. Which is really a lot of what my question was in the beginning. Because it seems that when you take away Hell, and the uniqueness of Christianity, and the supremacy of the Bible that inerrancy provides, etc., that you sort of lose a lot of the urgency or "big-dealness" of being a Christian. Those who hold those beliefs are able to easily describe why it's so important for you to stay in the church and to keep the faith.

So when I lost that urgency, I was left with just the usefulness (or lack) of those beliefs. I've loved this thread because it's extremely fascinating to me why so many people, when facing similar circumstances, have stuck with it.

Religion with compulsion is no religion at all. You're just going through the motions because someone told you to or out of fear.

When that goes, then you get mature faith.

I think the "sticking" with it bit depends alot on if you make friends with the people at Church or not. We are very social animals unfortunately....

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
Religion with compulsion is no religion at all. You're just going through the motions because someone told you to or out of fear.

When that goes, then you get mature faith.

Ah, the patronizing pat on the head of "if you had stuck with it, you would've matured". I suppose the question that any of us who are concerned with such "maturation" is really whether or not the maturest faith of all is abandoning faith altogether.

Not that I or anyone else can definitely say that it is, but it has to be considered.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Ah, an accusation of being patronizing. Finally.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
Religion with compulsion is no religion at all. You're just going through the motions because someone told you to or out of fear.

When that goes, then you get mature faith.
Ah, the patronizing pat on the head of "if you had stuck with it, you would've matured".

I didn't say that. I said once you follow faith for your OWN reasons, not anybody elses (or society or culture or fear), then it becomes real faith.

I'm not into beating dead horses either.

quote:
I suppose the question that any of us who are concerned with such "maturation" is really whether or not the maturest faith of all is abandoning faith altogether.

Yes, I often wonder this too. Is faith just a crutch?

But I've realized, its actually much harder to have faith in many ways, than not to. So its not a crutch.

I also think abandoning faith altogether can sometimes be a good thing. Start again. Find god in a different way. This only works if you ask for God's help to lead you into a new journey of faith.

Mousethief [Confused]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I would add that, once you are no longer compelled to stay Christian by those conservative beliefs, you have to decide what to do with destructive features of the church. To be fair, some of the harm I saw done in conservative churches may be less common in moderate or liberal churches. I just couldn't come up with a good reason to stick around long enough to find out. I had momentum.

Do conservative beliefs compel folks to stay in church? I know a number of examples to the contrary; normally involving folks of perfectionist views who could not cope with the scruffiness they found in the visible church. You find a lot of church-hoppers with conservative views, looking for a perfect non-"liberal" environment. Of course they consider themselves to be Christian, which may be what you mean, but they don't seem to be very good at either belonging or tolerance.

Destructive features of the church. Maybe you and I could compare notes? I tend to think Philip Yancey nailed it by coining the term "ungrace". Ungrace can be very destructive.

Actually, I think ungrace is not at all a feature of any particular theological outlook - you can find it anywhere. It does make folks want to run away. I've met plenty of others with momentum (including me from time to time) but it doesn't have to be unstoppable.

The problem of belonging anywhere is that after a while rubbing up against folks the veneer wears off and you see the chipboard more clearly. That's a real issue of belonging anywhere. Familiarity doesn't always breed contempt; boredom can also be an issue. It's a genuine issue. Does it have anything to do with the universals of faith? I'm inclined to think that it does, given that faith has both individual and corporate dimensions.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:
Just because natural selection generates a trait in humans that predisposes us to believe something, doesn't necessarily make the thing we want to believe true.
I wonder if you put too much weight on this argument that it will break, and take our ability to make any valid truth claims with it. "Just because natural selection produced rationality, doesn't mean that rationality is valid" seem to be the reductio ad absurdum here. If it were true, we'd never know it, and all discussions are futile.
I would agree that rationality is not valid because natural selection produced it. Rationality is valid because it works. A rational approach, such as science, can be used to accurately and repeatably predict phenomena of the world in which we live. That rational thinking was favored by natural selection is a result, not a cause, of the validity of rationality.

Thanks for your reply, Scot. I'm pretty much in agreement with you here - I suppose what I was driving at was that natural selection enables us to live in the universe as it is, but does not in itself prove or disprove anything. Both rationality and belief must be justified by other means, not by examining their origins. That means it's not an argument against belief, of course (not that you were saying it was).

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all?
I see it, not so much as unnecessarily multiplying entities, as either engaging in an endless regression or abandoning rational investigation. If the former, then you have to explain where God came from and why. If the latter, then you have no good reason not to accept God as the direct cause of all sorts of things rather than placing him at arm's length.

But don't you get this problem even if you leave God out of it? Either you have to explain the universe, or you abandon rational enquiry and say it 'just is.' At least God is posited to be eternal, and therefore not needing a cause!

Regarding The Great Gumby and Jason I. Am's point about Occam's Razor: I think the word "necessity" is pivotal, as one person's definition of a wholly necessary belief to explain their personal experience may be another's unnecessary encumbrance, which will be discarded when they start thinking honestly. If everyone lived by Occam's razor I think we'd still have theists: it seems that a belief in God is necessary for some people to make sense of the world. I don't mean as a crutch, just that their experience makes more sense that way (subjective, of course). I'm inevitably reminded of Ellie Arroway in Contact where the following dialog takes place:

quote:
Michael Kitz: [standing, angrily] Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony, and concede that this "journey to the center of the galaxy," in fact, never took place!
Ellie Arroway: Because I can't. I... had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real!

I can understand faith as a valid response to that sort of experience. Parsimony will get you the bare bones of reality, the physics, and get them with a pleasing amount of objective certainty. But if you want to imbue reality - and ourselves - with some layers of meaning beyond the dance of subatomic particles, you might have to look elsewhere. As Barnabas62 said, experience can provide a difference sort of meaning.

I just have no idea how.

- Chris.

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all?
I see it, not so much as unnecessarily multiplying entities, as either engaging in an endless regression or abandoning rational investigation. If the former, then you have to explain where God came from and why. If the latter, then you have no good reason not to accept God as the direct cause of all sorts of things rather than placing him at arm's length.

I don't see it as either of those, but I'm prepared to be convinced. I certainly don't see it as abandoning rational investigation. However far we go back - to the Big Bang, supercharged particles, or whatever - the question of why anything exists at all appears to me to be outside the scope of even our potential knowledge. We can try to trace it all the way back, but it just displaces the question.

The infinite regression argument is a strong one, but I don't believe it's insurmountable. We look for a first cause because the universe, as we understand it, follows cause and effect, and sequential time. Everything has a beginning and an end. It seems natural that this should also apply to the universe itself, and if so, it must have been caused by something outside the universe. That first cause, being outside the universe, isn't bound by the same constraints of time, cause and effect as the universe itself, so looking for a cause of the first cause is unnecessary. (If you argue that the universe just is, and always will be, you end up defining the universe in exactly the same terms as the prime mover you reject.)

I'm not necessarily advocating this line of thought, although I find it interesting when I want to mess with my head, but I use it as an illustration of religious enquiry going beyond the limits of what Occam's Razor is equipped to deal with. Once we move into unverifiable metaphysical realms, it's a big stretch to say that it's much help in getting at the facts. This is a tangent, though.

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
I'm aware that I'm in danger of conflating different types of "experience", but I think it's justified as the common thread in the thought process, due to the interpretation step between observation and conclusion. Feel free to disagree.
Experience of the world can be explained, verified, and shown to others as evidence. Experience of the divine cannot be verified or shown to others. You use the two interchangably, but they aren't the same thing at all, and certainly not to someone not starting from a position of belief in the divine.

Yes, of course experience of the divine can't be verified, but I think there's a common thread running through both types of experience. Maybe "interpretation of experience" is more accurate, albeit less succinct. I'll try to explain my somewhat confused thought processes a little better, using the analogy of homosexuality (please forgive the lack of precision, but the fine points of that argument belong in Another Place).

Everyone accepts that there are people who self-identify as homosexual, and that they say it's how they are, and they can't change. That much isn't in doubt, but different people within the church will react to that in different ways. If they stick to the conservative line, they'll say such people are lying, evil or misguided sinners, because the Bible says so. If they're liberal, they'll say there's nothing wrong with gay sex, because it's ridiculous and cruel to condemn people for how they were created, and the Bible only sort of condemns it, a bit. The experience is the same, but the interpretation differs, with liberals allowing their interpretation to overrule the Bible where appropriate, while for conservatives, the Bible trumps everything. No one can prove objectively that one interpretation is better than the other.

So liberals base their theological position in large part on their personal interpretation of experience, and place a lot of weight on that. I think the same may well be true of why they stay - they get a feeling of peace, they have a feeling that there's something in it, and suchlike. They have some sort of experience, and give that experience a lot of weight when attempting to interpret it and determine its significance. If they have no such feeling, on the other hand, there probably isn't much to keep them where they are.

I'm sure I'm grossly oversimplifying here, and I can easily think of examples of liberal types staying within the church for quite different reasons, but I think this is a reasonable starting point for the sort of person Jason seems to have had in mind.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Ah, an accusation of being patronizing. Finally.

Yeah, finally. It only took 340 posts and somebody actually being extremely patronizing, too.

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
I didn't say that. I said once you follow faith for your OWN reasons, not anybody elses (or society or culture or fear), then it becomes real faith.

Yes, that's what you said. It's really quite magical how you can be so sure of something like that.

quote:
Yes, I often wonder this too. Is faith just a crutch?

But I've realized, its actually much harder to have faith in many ways, than not to. So its not a crutch.

Oh! Well that settles it then.

quote:
I also think abandoning faith altogether can sometimes be a good thing. Start again. Find god in a different way. This only works if you ask for God's help to lead you into a new journey of faith.

Well, asking for God's help to lead me anywhere isn't exactly what I would call "abandoning faith".

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
We look for a first cause because the universe, as we understand it, follows cause and effect, and sequential time. Everything has a beginning and an end. It seems natural that this should also apply to the universe itself, and if so, it must have been caused by something outside the universe. That first cause, being outside the universe, isn't bound by the same constraints of time, cause and effect as the universe itself, so looking for a cause of the first cause is unnecessary. (If you argue that the universe just is, and always will be, you end up defining the universe in exactly the same terms as the prime mover you reject.)

I haven't got round to replying to Jason.I.Am and Scot's objections just yet. It's going to take some time, and it's hard to make the point I'm trying to make clear.

But I would like to say that I think the above line of reasoning is a mistake.
We can extend causal reasoning about each of the entities that make up the universe backwards within the universe in time. But the universe itself doesn't have a beginning within time. Time-based causal reasoning doesn't apply to the universe as a whole any more than it applies to God.
Now I think it's true that we can only understand the relationship of God to the universe by analogy with our understanding of cause and effect. But it's still an analogy. It can't be viewed as an extension of our cause and effect reasoning. Or at least, if we do view it that way, it's a very special way of viewing cause and effect that requires comment.

Just some thoughts about 'the universe', for Scot.
Consider the following argument:

Every street leads to a place.
Therefore, there is a place (call it Rome) that every street leads to.

That's invalid.
Here's another invalid argument:

Every thing has a cause.
Therefore, there is a cause (call it God) of everything.

Again, an invalid argument as such.
A third invalid argument:

Every thing is made of some substance.
Therefore, there is some substance (call it matter) that everything is made of.

The reasons that the above arguments are invalid is that they're treating 'every x' in the premise as the name of a singular. But that's not equivalent. 'Every thing' is just a way of summarising a whole lot of separate statements. 'Everything' takes all the subjects of all the separate statements as being a subject we can talk about in its own right. It is, without further premises, a logical mistake.

'The universe' means exactly the same as 'everything'. It is a logical mistake. So does 'a universe', and 'this universe'. They're all, without further explanation, logical errors.
Note, however, that as soon as we take materialism as a principle of operation, we're committing that logical error. So we need to justify the logical move from 'every thing' to 'everything' somehow. Note that the justification has to be logical, not empirical.
Can non-empirical arguments tell us anything about the real world? Apparently. We don't arrive at the rules of arithmetic or geometry by induction from repeatable experiments.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
there is an open question to be explored, but we don't need to assert the presence of some unverifiable and untestable "other" outside of nature simply because science hasn't worked out a complete answer yet.

I don't see a need to assert God as a presence. As far as I'm aware it's not what classical theism does. God when separated from all the religious artifacts is by definition simply the cause of becoming, no more and no less. That's a philosophical statement that says nothing about what science does not yet know, but it is I suspect a necessary part of any comprehensive metaphysical framework for science.

quote:
This assumes that public debate is the same as debate within the church community. I realize that I'm speaking from a US perspective, but I strongly believe not only that the two are different, but that they should be kept separate. There are plenty of communities with legitimate voices in the public debate through which I can be heard.

Over here it's probably fair to say that religion still has a monopoly on informed and considered contribution to public debate in the area of practical metaphysics (for want of a better term). As individuals we have local and national politics, and there's plenty of private religious/spiritual interest groups, but still nothing I can think of with the institutional clout and access to public consciousness to match mainstream religion.

quote:
If you mean to say that one must be within the church community to influence it positively, that may be true. I have to question, however, whether I'm entitled to influence discussion within the church if I don't identify as Christian.

I think Christian identity is distraction. Christian is so broad a label as to be useless without qualification. But identifying with a particular institution rather than a set of beliefs inherently provides a separation between the personal and the corporate. It is if we choose for us as individuals to work out our corporate expression, not the other way round. Within the Church of England there are those who value a search for truth and whose company I would like to keep and learn from. So I self-identify as Church of England.

That the institution is largely a shambolic mess is something I doubt anyone is happy about. It's like the house of a busy family where tidying up just never seems important enough to miss doing more interesting and rewarding things. But for as long as there are real relationships, real debates, and the possibility of real change, it still feels like a viable framework.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Is it unnecessarily multiplying entities to posit a Prime Mover as a reason why anything exists at all?
I see it, not so much as unnecessarily multiplying entities, as either engaging in an endless regression or abandoning rational investigation. If the former, then you have to explain where God came from and why. If the latter, then you have no good reason not to accept God as the direct cause of all sorts of things rather than placing him at arm's length.
But don't you get this problem even if you leave God out of it? Either you have to explain the universe, or you abandon rational enquiry and say it 'just is.' At least God is posited to be eternal, and therefore not needing a cause!

Yes, we want to explain the universe! Just because we don't know part of the explanation doesn't mean we can't know. Unless, of course, we punt and attribute the mysterious part to an unknowable God. History has shown time and again that such a "God of the gaps" explanation is doomed to eventually be undone by advancing science.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
That first cause, being outside the universe, isn't bound by the same constraints of time, cause and effect as the universe itself, so looking for a cause of the first cause is unnecessary. (If you argue that the universe just is, and always will be, you end up defining the universe in exactly the same terms as the prime mover you reject.)

I wouldn't argue that the universe just is, and always will be, because there is strong evidence for when, if not how, it began. The cause of the origin of the universe is outside of our current knowledge, but I don't see any reason to assume that it is necessarily beyond our potential knowledge. If you label that cause as "God", then you are either implying unsubstantiated things about that cause or you are setting up deism.

quote:
So liberals base their theological position in large part on their personal interpretation of experience, and place a lot of weight on that. I think the same may well be true of why they stay - they get a feeling of peace, they have a feeling that there's something in it, and suchlike. They have some sort of experience, and give that experience a lot of weight when attempting to interpret it and determine its significance. If they have no such feeling, on the other hand, there probably isn't much to keep them where they are.

That's pretty much what I meant. As I noted a few pages back, this explanation implies some rather uncomfortable things about the divine purpose for those people who lack such experiences or feelings.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Every thing is made of some substance.
Therefore, there is some substance (call it matter) that everything is made of.

The reasons that the above arguments are invalid is that they're treating 'every x' in the premise as the name of a singular. But that's not equivalent. 'Every thing' is just a way of summarising a whole lot of separate statements. 'Everything' takes all the subjects of all the separate statements as being a subject we can talk about in its own right. It is, without further premises, a logical mistake.

If you are using "matter" in its common sense, i.e., anything with both mass and volume, then you are arguing against a strawman. Nobody is claiming that everything is made of simple matter.

If you are using "matter" in its broader sense, then I see no meaningful distinction between "substance" and "matter". This is just a tautology.

quote:
Note, however, that as soon as we take materialism as a principle of operation, we're committing that logical error. So we need to justify the logical move from 'every thing' to 'everything' somehow. Note that the justification has to be logical, not empirical.
Can non-empirical arguments tell us anything about the real world? Apparently. We don't arrive at the rules of arithmetic or geometry by induction from repeatable experiments.

I'm not sure what point you are driving at. I haven't claimed that empiricism is the one true way. Logic, reason, and observation are not unrelated. Science could be said be a logical process of discovering the nature of the world by making rational predictions which are verfied (or not) by empirical observations.

It seems like you are just taking a long road to saying that we can't prove that there is no God who exists (in some sense of the word) beyond the natural world. That is true, but we also have no verifiable evidence or logical necessity causing us to believe in such a deity unless we define him in such a loose way that "God" really just means "unknown".

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I'm not sure what point you are driving at. I haven't claimed that empiricism is the one true way. Logic, reason, and observation are not unrelated. Science could be said be a logical process of discovering the nature of the world by making rational predictions which are verfied (or not) by empirical observations.

In my experience the normal place this is asserted is at the start of a philosophy of science book which then spends the rests of its pages debunking it or for a change a sociological approach to science (more empirical but less logical than that of the philosophy of science bods) which does the same.

Jengie

[ 24. June 2009, 20:20: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
So liberals base their theological position in large part on their personal interpretation of experience, and place a lot of weight on that. I think the same may well be true of why they stay - they get a feeling of peace, they have a feeling that there's something in it, and suchlike. They have some sort of experience, and give that experience a lot of weight when attempting to interpret it and determine its significance. If they have no such feeling, on the other hand, there probably isn't much to keep them where they are.
That's pretty much what I meant. As I noted a few pages back, this explanation implies some rather uncomfortable things about the divine purpose for those people who lack such experiences or feelings.

It does, and this is troubling. Available responses -- Try harder! or, How great is the faith of those who have not seen but still believe! -- seem incredibly inadequate.

At the same time, though, categorizing my relevant experiences as neurological phenomena is extremely unsatisfying. If I had a more scientific turn of mind, maybe I wouldn't feel that way. I suppose I'm less screwed in a scientific rationalism framework than a rationalist is in a religious framework -- I simply don't understand certain things, whereas in my framework the rationalist is really missing out -- but I do wonder what happens within scientific rationalism to my (and others') persistent feeling that there must be more to our experiences than the explanations neurology can or eventually will be able give. Is it explained or regarded at all? Just something left over from an inadequate worldview that has since been superseded?

And I'm wondering what folks here think about Einstein's thoughts about science and religion:

quote:
At first, then, instead of asking what religion is I should prefer to ask what characterizes the aspirations of a person who gives me the impression of being religious: a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been described.
(Source)

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I do wonder what happens within scientific rationalism to my (and others') persistent feeling that there must be more to our experiences than the explanations neurology can or eventually will be able give. Is it explained or regarded at all? Just something left over from an inadequate worldview that has since been superseded?

I can't speak for scientific rationalism but isn't it the non-rational judgements that define our humanity? I likely walk where I do through fields by the river because it reminds me of where I used to fish growing up. No rational scientific judgement, just acting on a barely conscious impulse in a way that probably represents me more than any carefully considered thought.

The problem with rational-ism is that it focuses on one thing to the over-exclusion of others. It's the same kind of loss of perspective as emotional-ism or irrational-ism. What most often seems to go wrong is that someone assumes the balance in their personal perspective can be generalised into areas where either more appreciation of how people feel or a more rational analysis would be more appropriate.

There's nothing inadequate about me standing in the shade of some old tree watching the sunlight catch the river for half an hour just because I feel like it. But if it meant I missed a meeting I'd agreed to attend, a more rational approach to time management might have been better in that particular situation.

[ 25. June 2009, 00:57: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Einstein said and wrote many things about religion and God, things that on the surface are wildly contradictory. I don't believe that what he meant by "religion" or "God" is the same as what most Christians mean by those words.

Quotes like those below lead me to believe that although Einstein did not describe himself as an atheist, he did not believe in a supernatural deity.

quote:
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

(Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side quoted here)

quote:
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

(Einstein in a 30 March 1954 letter to Hans Muehsam. A partial version of this quote with a citation is here. The longer version is widely quoted online, but without the source.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

It seems this thread has morphed from "why do moderates keep the faith" to "why moderates shouldn't keep the faith".

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It seems this thread has morphed from "why do moderates keep the faith" to "why moderates shouldn't keep the faith".

No, I think its degenerated into "lets try prove or disprove God exists using our intellect".

Waste of time [Big Grin]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
As I noted a few pages back, this explanation implies some rather uncomfortable things about the divine purpose for those people who lack such experiences or feelings.
It does, and this is troubling. Available responses -- Try harder! or, How great is the faith of those who have not seen but still believe! -- seem incredibly inadequate.

I think that "Don't try so hard" is a pretty good response. The protestant work ethic has got a lot to answer for.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It seems this thread has morphed from "why do moderates keep the faith" to "why moderates shouldn't keep the faith".

Nah. More what does the faith look like if we lose the tradition-tinted glasses.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The idea that 'the' universe that either features a stable reality or an unstable reality already presupposes that there is such a thing as the universe. And that's the move that really needs justifying. You can produce all sorts of logical errors by treating 'everything' as the name of a logical singular: without further justification, 'the universe' is just such a logical error.
Would you prefer "a universe" or "this universe"? In any case, as far as we can observe the universe in which we exist does feature a stable reality.

Just to be clear here: 'stable reality' seems to imply to some of the people reading this things like apples never fly upwards. That's a much weaker constraint, and I quite concede that we don't observe that ever. Just to head off a straw man.

To reiterate: scientific method requires us to assume that not all observations are equal. We can never reach the conclusion that all observations are equal based on observation alone. We need to rationally justify claims about consistency that cannot be rationally justified from observation alone.
We've established that we can't invoke natural selection at this point to justify the claim about consistency.

You assert below that we observe that there is consistency. But we don't.

We observe a lot of consistency and quite a lot of inconsistency.

We only observe that there is consistency once we have discounted the inconsistency by explaining it away as cognitive bias, faults in memory, imperfect observation, etc.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd in response to sanityman:

quote:
I'm also aware that I'm so far arguing only that there's a hole where something needs to be put, so that 'God' is just a label for what goes in that whole. I'm more arguing that classical theism thinks of God far more as what belongs under that kind of label rather than as the external designer of Paleyite thought or young-earth creationism.
How is this not just another "God of the gaps" argument?

quote:
I'll rephrase my statement to say that there is an open question to be explored, but we don't need to assert the presence of some unverifiable and untestable "other" outside of nature simply because science hasn't worked out a complete answer yet.

Rearranging your post to take the two points together.

I'm not happy with the phrase 'outside of nature', because the word 'nature' is multiply ambiguous, and 'outside of' seems incoherent as applied to it.
Do you find Platonism about mathematics comprehensible? That is the belief that there are mind-independent truths and matter about mathematics. e.g. does the description 'the smallest prime number greater than the number of particles in the universe' have a specific referent?
The question doesn't have a verifiable or testable answer. That doesn't mean that we can't use reason and logic to work out whether it has a coherent or incoherent answer.
If 'the smallest prime number greater than the number of particles in the universe' exists, it is presumably 'outside of nature'. (Although 'outside of nature' would seem to imply that it is some kind of thing that occupies a space, just not a space within nature, and whatever it is it's not a kind of thing.

A God in the gaps argument argues that a particular empirical question (e.g. irregularities in the orbits of the planets, or the origins of life) doesn't have any possible empirical solution.
What I'm arguing is not an empirical question at all. That doesn't mean it's not a question that can be answered. It can be answered by philosophical reason.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The process of making guesses and checking for consistency doesn't really make sense until we expect there to be consistency. And that doesn't really arise until we have generated the set of abstractions around a unified philosophical theology.
That seems like quite a causal jump. I haven't seen anything to make me doubt that expectation of consistency arose when people started noticing consistency around them. Which seems like a far simpler, more likely explanation than going the lonnnnnnnng way around to say it was because they came up with "unified philosophical theology" and that led to people expecting consistency in the natural world around them.

I'm referring to anthropological scholarship and to the history of science and philosophy. My scholarship might turn out to be dodgy and out of date, no doubt. I might retract it in favour of better scholarship. I'm really not going to retract it in favour of an assertion that there's a simpler explanation.
The whole point is that our intutions about what is simpler and more likely and what is looooong are not evidence. Scholarship is evidence. Intuitions are not. Especially when the scholarship explains them.

quote:
I think this is a uniquely theological problem, that you can't be concerned with the truth of anything if you're not concerned with the Truth of All Things. On the contrary, you can be very concerned about the truth of whether things fall to the ground when dropped without being too worried about the truth of whether ultimate reality is unified. I doubt it would have done much good if you had been there when Newton presented his findings to say, "That's all well and good, Isaac, but until we determine definitively whether or not ultimate reality is truly unified or not, your findings are just not that impressive or conclusive."

If I had said that to Newton, he would have said that unified reality was guaranteed by the goodness of God, seeing as he was a theologian of sorts.
So I'm pretty sure that, had the question ever been raised for him, he would have believed that 'reality is unified' is not merely a hypothesis but actually true. And I'm prepared to claim that that's one of the contributing factors to his success. Your rhetoric seems to be reducing Newton's achievement to the truth of 'whether things fall to the ground when dropped'. One of my points is that his ambitions were rather greater than that.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm referring to anthropological scholarship and to the history of science and philosophy. My scholarship might turn out to be dodgy and out of date, no doubt. I might retract it in favour of better scholarship. I'm really not going to retract it in favour of an assertion that there's a simpler explanation.
The whole point is that our intutions about what is simpler and more likely and what is looooong are not evidence. Scholarship is evidence. Intuitions are not. Especially when the scholarship explains them.

So far I've read a lot of words, but nothing that suggests that belief in unified-reality-theology is a necessary or even logical precursor to an interest in consistency and observation. In other words, I still don't understand what point you're trying to make, especially in the context of this thread.

The "I'm smarter so trust me and my scholarship" line isn't the strongest argument I've ever heard, either.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm referring to anthropological scholarship and to the history of science and philosophy...The whole point is that our intutions about what is simpler and more likely and what is looooong are not evidence. Scholarship is evidence. Intuitions are not.

In the fields cited, my sense is that "scholarship" is just intuition with footnotes. [Big Grin]

--Tom Clune

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

The thread appears to have moved to abstruse discussions which mostly make my head hurt. Here's my liberal doubting story...

I go to church because my life goes better when I do.

I call myself a Christian because I was baptized (as a young child).

During the 15 years I did not go to church, I didn't particularly think of myself as a Christian, though I didn't think myself as a non-Christian either. I just didn't think in those terms at all.

I think in those terms now because I'm engaged in seeking and trying to follow. So that makes the question "am I a Christian?" occur to me. But the fundamental reason why I say I'm a Christian is not because I seek or follow, but because I am baptised. (I happen not to have been baptized as an infant, but at four and a half it wasn't my seeking or affirming choice to be baptized either, much as I enjoyed it, and I am a firm believer in infant baptism.)

I became able to go back to church again as an answer to what I was seeking as a result of taking a Religion 101 course in which I was introduced to the concept of myth as "truths which are truer than fact." At that time I would have said I didn't think I believed in God, but that I believed completely in certain things for which I didn't have a better word than God.

My faith and understanding has developed and changed since then in some ways, though not entirely. It has included a crisis in which that bargain ("I don't really believe in God, but I don't have any other language for the things I do believe in") started to fail.

A catalytic start to my non-church-going 15 years was reading Walter Kaufmann's The Faith of a Heretic. That helped to give voice to a great many doubts I'd been having for a year already; let it be also said that the shock of going to college and trying to integrate into a new church community was also a huge blow to my ability to go to church and to my faith.

To what extent are the concerns raised in the OP relevant to my being either in or out of faith and practice at any point in time? Not much. I would say that those represent a particular take on Christianity, but there are many versions of Christianity, and not agreeing with one of them doesn't preclude one from being Christian.

A more relevant question for my own journey personally might be why, as a universalist (though not a unitarian), am I a Christian rather than some other faith, or pan-faith? And that would have several answers, including: it's how I was raised, and when I was hurting I returned to my childhood roots.

My faith is perhaps defined as much by practice as by belief.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm referring to anthropological scholarship and to the history of science and philosophy. My scholarship might turn out to be dodgy and out of date, no doubt. I might retract it in favour of better scholarship. I'm really not going to retract it in favour of an assertion that there's a simpler explanation.
The whole point is that our intutions about what is simpler and more likely and what is looooong are not evidence. Scholarship is evidence. Intuitions are not. Especially when the scholarship explains them.
So far I've read a lot of words, but nothing that suggests that belief in unified-reality-theology is a necessary or even logical precursor to an interest in consistency and observation. In other words, I still don't understand what point you're trying to make, especially in the context of this thread.

The "I'm smarter so trust me and my scholarship" line isn't the strongest argument I've ever heard, either.

I'm not sure I agree with Dafyd's point earlier, but I can see something here:

Science is a method for answering questions, but there are an infinite number of questions that could be asked. What questions are thought to be important or worthwhile can be influenced by sociological and cultural constraints.

If a society doesn't believe in X, then most people will not investigate questions of X, and if some do they are likely to be regarded as cranks or worse. If it is Dafyd's contention that historical studies show that evidence of empiricism is always preceded by evidence of "unified reality" beliefs (however defined), then that would be interesting.

Consistency is part of reality, and is there if you look for it - I think we all agree on this. Whether a certain set of beliefs have been a historical precursor is a matter for scholarship - although I would appreciate knowing what was actually found, rather than the bald assertion that "scholarship explains [our intuitions]." (I know, internet discussions longa, vita brevis).

Conceptually, I have no problem with empiricism arising independently of metaphysics. If it has never happened in history, I might have to change my view.

Whilst I'm here, Dafyd posted earlier:

quote:
To reiterate: scientific method requires us to assume that not all observations are equal. We can never reach the conclusion that all observations are [not ?] equal based on observation alone. We need to rationally justify claims about consistency that cannot be rationally justified from observation alone.
We've established that we can't invoke natural selection at this point to justify the claim about consistency.

You assert below that we observe that there is consistency. But we don't.

We observe a lot of consistency and quite a lot of inconsistency.

We only observe that there is consistency once we have discounted the inconsistency by explaining it away as cognitive bias, faults in memory, imperfect observation, etc.

Did you mean the "not" I put in in square brackets, or did I misunderstand? In any case, you seem to be arguing that we need a certain type of metaphysic to privilege repeatable observations over non-repeatable ones. I can't honestly see that this is the case. Once one starts asking these sort of questions (see above), one soon sees that we are good at fooling ourselves, and that only rigour in the way that we observe things will lead to results that we can all agree on. At the very least, repeatability comes about when someone else tries to do the same experiment and can't get the same results - it doesn't have to be part of any one person's mindset.

Also, you mention "explaining away" cognitive biases. To me this makes it sound like you think this is the result of hand-waving rather than more observation, assuming that some data are correct and others must be "explained away" on the basis of external beliefs. In fact, cognitive biases and the like tend to evaporate when looked at closely. For example, take this great optical illusion. Initially your colour perception tells you there are green and cyan spirals. On looking closer, you discover that the colours are identical (scroll down). No metaphysics required?

- Chris.

PS: This was going to be a short post. Oh well, apologies [Frown]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Science is a method for answering questions, but there are an infinite number of questions that could be asked. What questions are thought to be important or worthwhile can be influenced by sociological and cultural constraints.

One point about science that is often ignored is that it runs on grants. The questions that get asked are the questions that the person applying for the grant is confident can be answered within the timeframe required by the granting agency. And the grants that get funded -- the questions that get answered -- are the ones that the granting agency believes are within the grasp of the applicant to address within the granting timeframe.

In the popular imagination, science is an abstract enterprise cut free of practical considerations. Anyone who has worked in a lab is very much aware of the extent to which the question is conditioned by the pay check, just like in the rest of the world.

--Tom Clune

[ 25. June 2009, 15:11: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Chill (# 13643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
So maybe this kind of belief/faith/trust is a product of natural selection (quite obviously so, I'd say), which speaks nothing of its truth but only of its usefulness. And who's to say when it will stop being useful?

Ah yes, point taken but for a belief to be useful one must believe it. Your contention that its veracity should be brought into question seems to be very, for wont of a better phrase ‘un-useful’. Making an argument which by your on terms of reference is ‘useless’ would seem somewhat ill advised and not at all useful.
[Biased]

If you are right then the most useful action (or inaction) would be to remain silent on the subject as the insight you hold is corrosive towards the usefulness you perceive. But then silence on a discussion board may in itself lack usefulness. Even if silence is not the way forward just be careful not to disappear in a puff of logic while you’re making those arguments.
[Confused]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
The "I'm smarter so trust me and my scholarship" line isn't the strongest argument I've ever heard, either.

You're right of course, and I shouldn't have written it.
I gave my reference to Clifford Geertz earlier in the thread, if you're interested in pursuing it.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Dafyd posted earlier:
quote:
To reiterate: scientific method requires us to assume that not all observations are equal. We can never reach the conclusion that all observations are [not ?] equal based on observation alone. We need to rationally justify claims about consistency that cannot be rationally justified from observation alone.
We've established that we can't invoke natural selection at this point to justify the claim about consistency.

You assert below that we observe that there is consistency. But we don't.

We observe a lot of consistency and quite a lot of inconsistency.

We only observe that there is consistency once we have discounted the inconsistency by explaining it away as cognitive bias, faults in memory, imperfect observation, etc.
Did you mean the "not" I put in in square brackets, or did I misunderstand?

I did mean the 'not'. Thanks for the catch.

quote:
In any case, you seem to be arguing that we need a certain type of metaphysic to privilege repeatable observations over non-repeatable ones. I can't honestly see that this is the case. Once one starts asking these sort of questions (see above), one soon sees that we are good at fooling ourselves, and that only rigour in the way that we observe things will lead to results that we can all agree on. At the very least, repeatability comes about when someone else tries to do the same experiment and can't get the same results - it doesn't have to be part of any one person's mindset.

Try expanding on your points.
How does one see that 'we are good at fooling ourselves?' What steps does one have to go through?
Likewise, why does it matter whether you get results that we can all agree on? (Other than that disagreement leads to arguments, but why should it lead to arguments?)
Or why should it matter if somebody does the same experiment and not the same results? (And why do we take for granted that we can call a different event the same experiment if it's in a different laboratory at a different time using different items of apparatus?)

quote:
Also, you mention "explaining away" cognitive biases. To me this makes it sound like you think this is the result of hand-waving rather than more observation, assuming that some data are correct and others must be "explained away" on the basis of external beliefs.

No doubt some perceptual illusions go away when you look at them more closely, and I can't imagine a form of life in which looking at things more closely doesn't play a part. But not all perceptual misjudgements are resolved by focussing the same observation.

Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :

quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Quite happily. It'll take a long, thought out post though and I don't have time to do write that for the next few days (IRL work deadline), so I'll get back to you on Monday. I've already given one example I know of a church thats growing (by nicking all the evangelicals' good ideas).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Great. That would be refreshing and helpful.

I'm going to start from two assumptions. Firstly evangelism should be central to church life. We can't do without it anymore than we can without baptism or communion. Secondly liberal churches are almost invariably crap at evangelism, hence their steep decline. If liberal churches are going to turn things around they'll have to create a culture of individual and corporate evangelism. In my experience you just don't use the e-word in liberal churches. We love talking about outreach, but almost always reduce that to social action (which is more comfortable and social acceptable). The problem for liberal churches is that liberal theology is the main obstacle to a culture of evangelism. Our theology of salvation is all over the place. In practise most liberal churches teach a sort of vague universalism, underpinned by the idea that a) the important thing is being a good person b) almost all of us are good people really, so thats just fine. Given that we're implicitly and explicitly telling people that they don't need Jesus, its hardly surprising evangelism isn't our strong point. IMO we come up with all sorts of ways of dancing round this issue, because no one wants to admit that liberal Christianity may contain an inherent suicidal impulse. I recently read an interesting book on how political ideologies cope with inconvenient realities and liberal denial on this issus follows exactly the same pattern. IMO we either seriously question our theology or accept the status of a tiny urban, western minority.

What we are comfortable with is social justice outreach, which almost always ends up being about social work, because we find it more comfortable and its more social acceptable. Result – new Christians are as rare as hens teeth in our churches and we have no idea what to do with them (trust me on this). When we do grow our growth is often transfer growth. Why do we suck at evangelism? Two other points. First off: We are other uncritical of mainstream society – our criticisms are either blandly uncontentious (who isn’t against poverty?) or indistinguishable from secular left-liberal concerns (environmentalism etc etc).Second We are embarrassed to self-identify as Christians – my own experience – we ‘try to hard’. Third - We’re far too obsessed with not being evangelical. I’m sceptical of how much people care about intra-Christian navel gazing.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

Yerevan, you have certainly managed to repeat a pretty standard riff about liberal churches. The problem is that it's false. In the 1960s, liberal churches were growing apace, not unlike evangelical churches were a few years back (neither seems to be growing much at the moment).

Why is that? Were liberals more evangelical in the 1960s? No. Rather, there is a time for every purpose under heaven, and the 60s was their time. A decade ago was the con-evo time.

Like all humans, when "our side" is on the rise, we claim that we are very cleaver. If only those dumb others would become like us, they would prosper too. But the wheel turns, and we are no longer on the rise. Have we gotten dumber? No, we were never very bright. We were just in the sweet spot of the zeitgeist.

It is always appropriate to offer our testimony of how the Lord has worked in our lives. But the notion that the real difference between success and stagnation is to be found in PowerPoints or best-selling Christian self-help guides is vanity, says the Lord.

I get the sense that the pendulum is swinging back toward a more liberal style. I have the sinking feeling that there is a corps of Church consultants ready to take credit for the rebirth as proof of the power of their seven point plan for Church renewal, available for only $49.95 at better bookstores everywhere. I don't doubt that, when the pendulum swings back our way, we will declare the newly-filled pews proof of Divine favor and of our own cleaverness. What I do doubt is that we will be any smarter or more blessed by God's grace than we were when we were a faithful remnant.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :

Yeravan- I was under the impression you were going start a new thread; I almost didn't look at this one.

As to your first point, which I read as 'Conservative churches have a compelling and easy-to-understand narrative that liberal churches don't have' I totally agree with that. The problem is that I don't believe the conservative narrative. There is simply no way around this and it won't do to lie about what our theology is. I don't believe it's as simple as the kind of sound-bite that Steve Chalke and Jeffrey John argue against; I'm with them. That is not to say that I don't believe that Jesus is Saviour and Lord.

I also agree that 'liberal' churches are embarrassed about spreading the Gospel but the best antidote to that is practice. I was once embarrassed to even admit that I was a Christian. Now I have no problem displaying my Christianity appropriately in public or praying with complete strangers in public. But it's because (mainstream!) brothers and sisters helped me learn to do that.

As I said on another thread, there is nothing wrong with telling people about our faith and what it constitutes, but it's a matter of the way you do it. People can tell instinctively when a person is trying to sell them something and when that person is more interested in 'making a sale' than that the 'product' should be of benefit to the 'buyer'. If we really believe that the Gospel is Good News, why wouldn't we want to share it with others? But we also have to respect the fact that they will make their own decisions. I actually think that liberal churches could be ideally placed for this as long as we had practice and got over our shyness.

My analysis is that we want 'our group' in our congregation to stay the same and we don't want strangers interfering with our group dynamics. Although we'd quite like younger people drifting in, accepting things as they are and not rocking the boat as long as we get to call the shots. And that's not something that's going to happen.

I accept that conservative churches are motivated to bring in newcomers by the fear of damnation but I still believe that fear is the wrong motivation for following Christ.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

One of the great scientists of the twentieth century, J.B.S Haldane was quoted in an opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal today.

quote:
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

-- J.B.S. Haldane

The ever-pithy Haldane expressed succinctly what I've nattered on about with far less eloquence and brevity.

I feel like we are getting wrapped up in arguing over the details of positions which are becoming ever more vague. Haldane prompts me to restate my position relative to the OP.

In the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise, I am obliged to treat religious questions in a manner consistent with how I try to treat any other question. I remain open to reasons why I might treat religion differently, but I lack the sort of personal experience cited by so many of the moderate Christians on this thread.

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

Awesome quote.

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
One of the great scientists of the twentieth century, J.B.S Haldane was quoted in an opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal today.

quote:
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

-- J.B.S. Haldane
The ever-pithy Haldane expressed succinctly what I've nattered on about with far less eloquence and brevity.

I feel like we are getting wrapped up in arguing over the details of positions which are becoming ever more vague.

How does that quote bring any clarity?

Haldane just said that he assumed there is no God and acted accordingly.

His quote invites the question of what interference he expected from a god, angel or devil?

We could easily set up a hypothetical quote from, say, Polkinghorne to say:

quote:
My practice as a scientist is theistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that there is a God; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also theistic in the affairs of the world.

What does that prove?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

That your hypothetical scientist is going to have one hell of a time getting repeatable data.

More seriously, you changed the key phrase in the quote. Haldane didn't say there wasn't a God; he said that he assumed God, et al, wouldn't interfere with his experiments.

Where this bears on the discussion in this thread (or at least on my part in it) is that, like Haldane, I feel justified in discounting the potential existence of a God who has no observable interaction with the world as I experience it. YMMV.

[ 27. June 2009, 04:39: Message edited by: Scot ]

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
That your hypothetical scientist is going to have one hell of a time getting repeatable data.

More seriously, you changed the key phrase in the quote. Haldane didn't say there wasn't a God; he said that he assumed God, et al, wouldn't interfere with his experiments.

Read my post again. I didn't make that change at all. I left it in and it still makes sense, and the Scientist can still have plenty of repeatable data.

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Where this bears on the discussion in this thread (or at least on my part in it) is that, like Haldane, I feel justified in discounting the potential existence of a God who has no observable interaction with the world as I experience it. YMMV.

This is a circular argument. You are saying that there is no observable evidence for God because you haven't experienced any and you discount anybody else's.

Maybe you are stuck in Newtonian physics - which 'works' most of the time - and something will happen that will enable that Quantum leap ... c'mon join the 20th century (never mind the 21st!) [Big Grin]

[ 27. June 2009, 04:53: Message edited by: Johnny S ]

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I feel justified in discounting the potential existence of a God who has no observable interaction with the world as I experience it.

I can see this position coming from one of two assumptions (or both): a) if God exists, then he would have observable interactions with the world or b) the physical world/universe is all that matters (i.e. you are just looking for the simplest possible explanation to cover what you observe or learn about in the world around you). Does either of these come close to describing how you approach the question? Or do you perhaps have a different starting point? I get the sense from your posts that your statement above does not represent a starting axiom for you, but rather a conclusion based on other assumptions and I'm curious about what those assumptions might be.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Johnny S

I don't think it's as simple as that. Scientific exploration requires accurate consideration of natural phenomena. Patterns may be observed, thought about, hypotheses produced. As a result, natural phenomena become better understood. One can do that whether or not one believes that natural phenomena are all that there is. The validity of any scientific finding, and the conclusions drawn from findings, do not depend upon the beliefs or character of the scientist. Are the findings replicable? Is the conclusion consistent with findings? These things are testable by others. So I don't understand why Haldane brought atheism into his comment. I thought it was polemical.

But that is not the whole story. Traditional Christian beliefs include miraculous claims and posit a God who acts in time and space. How are these claims to be considered by someone who at present is not a believer? That's an underlying theme in this thread. How would you answer that theme? My goes up to now are personal witness statements, comments on community life, with a bit of Omar Khayyam thrown in for good measure! Maybe you can do better?

We were chatting at a Norwich Shipmeet last night and I remembered a quote from Dennis Nineham (I think) in the book "The Myth of God Incarnate" [IIRC]. The gist of it was that Christianity involves some sacrifice of intellect, but this should not be entered into lightly or ill-advisedly, but reverently and discreetly! Sitting reasonably comfortably on the four legged stool of tradition, reason, scripture and experience, I'm happy to acknowledge this. Actually I think what really gets sacrificed is ego rather than intellect. At its best (and the sociology of science is a given) scientific enquiry is ego free. It's the findings, not the funding or the ambition, that really matter. At its best (and the sociology of faith is a given) religious enquiry is also ego free. It's the Founder, not the funding nor the ambition, that really matters.

[ 27. June 2009, 06:08: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Johnny S

I don't think it's as simple as that. Scientific exploration requires accurate consideration of natural phenomena. Patterns may be observed, thought about, hypotheses produced. As a result, natural phenomena become better understood. One can do that whether or not one believes that natural phenomena are all that there is. The validity of any scientific finding, and the conclusions drawn from findings, do not depend upon the beliefs or character of the scientist. Are the findings replicable? Is the conclusion consistent with findings? These things are testable by others. So I don't understand why Haldane brought atheism into his comment. I thought it was polemical.

I obviously wasn't clear enough - I thought I said (the above) too.

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
But that is not the whole story. Traditional Christian beliefs include miraculous claims and posit a God who acts in time and space. How are these claims to be considered by someone who at present is not a believer? That's an underlying theme in this thread. How would you answer that theme? My goes up to now are personal witness statements, comments on community life, with a bit of Omar Khayyam thrown in for good measure! Maybe you can do better?

I'm not sure I can - because we're stuck with the fact that those who start with the assumption of materialism will only accept materialistic evidence.

I think it all comes down to the resurrection - either it happened or it didn't. It is a repeatable experiment - but only if you can re-create all the conditions (putting to death the son of God that sot of thing).

And then there's the question if there really is any such thing as a truly repeatable experiment? Variables such as time are always changing.

I'm not try to discredit the scientific method - I still hold to it - just wondering where this leads us on this particular thread.

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
We were chatting at a Norwich Shipmeet last night and I remembered a quote from Dennis Nineham (I think) in the book "The Myth of God Incarnate" [IIRC]. The gist of it was that Christianity involves some sacrifice of intellect, but this should not be entered into lightly or ill-advisedly, but reverently and discreetly! Sitting reasonably comfortably on the four legged stool of tradition, reason, scripture and experience, I'm happy to acknowledge this. Actually I think what really gets sacrificed is ego rather than intellect. At its best (and the sociology of science is a given) scientific enquiry is ego free. It's the findings, not the funding or the ambition, that really matter. At its best (and the sociology of faith is a given) religious enquiry is also ego free. It's the Founder, not the funding nor the ambition, that really matters.

I agree. And like you I think it is more to do with submission of intellect than sacrifice of it... does that make me a Muslim? [Biased]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Sorry Johnny, the "not as simple as that" was explained in the second of my paras, not the first. Not my cleverest bit of posting.

I agreed that there were good grounds for criticising the Haldane statement (para 1), but was trying to look wider at the science/faith "divide" (para 2). There is tension there, not necessarily division. I'm just exploring middle ground as usual!

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
I'm going to start from two assumptions. Firstly evangelism should be central to church life. We can't do without it anymore than we can without baptism or communion. Secondly liberal churches are almost invariably crap at evangelism, hence their steep decline.

You're making more than two assumptions, though. For a start you're assuming that baptism and communion are somehow central. You also seem to think that church has to be about people getting together to 'worship'.

But far worse is that your understanding of liberal seems limited to being socially liberal, illustrating a major problem with using the word 'liberal' at all. What you describe (and are in my view rightly critical of) are theologically conservative churches who can no longer in good conscience live by the logical consequences of various strands of orthodox Christian belief.

Evangelism implies a church that thinks it knows what other people need to believe. It implies a gospel of salvation, a need to repent or convert. A theologically liberal church will hopefully not be unnecessarily dismissive of tradition, but will more likely understand itself as a community that does not have answers, only a commitment to certain values and a desire to live by them. It may see the gospel as 'what Jesus was about', without going on tell all and sundry how they must interpret that. It may prefer to promote 'living as Jesus lived' without having to mention Jesus at all, because the point is finding what is true and making consistent sense of reality rather that making new Christians.

Although I'm probably more willing than most to completely rethink church, I don't doubt that theologically liberal Christianity has the potential to reinvent itself in a way that would be entirely consistent with the teaching and values of the man from Nazareth. The 'theologically liberal worshipping community' does no longer looks viable, if it ever was, but we're already participating in one alternative. The problem is that in order for Ship-like community to be recognised as such, the de facto service mark holders of Christianity, the institutional churches, will need to break with some traditions, especially that of telling people what God requires and only valuing community they can control.

Jesus in effect said 'here I am, are you with me?' Most of institutional Christianity is still stuck in a 'there he was, do what we say' mentality. That's not a problem with anything specifically liberal.

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm just exploring middle ground as usual!

More Anglican than Free Church you mean? [Biased]

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
One of the great scientists of the twentieth century, J.B.S Haldane was quoted in an opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal today.

quote:
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

-- J.B.S. Haldane
The ever-pithy Haldane expressed succinctly what I've nattered on about with far less eloquence and brevity.

Except as my Supervisor, a sociologist of Religion has it "The uncanny* does happen". There is growing evidence in ethnography that that which does not fit with materialistic record of the world has been written out of the record. The same sort of thing that happened when women were written out of the Biblical record due to having a male dominated society.

That is ethnography, a methodology that if anything is "open" towards such events and not as strict on them as more scientific subjects. Compared with medicine it is science-lite.

We of course cannot put it back, just as we cannot write women back into the biblical account but having positive proof this does happen, undermines Haldane's whole quote. If there was something that showed evidence of angels as a scientist he would have discounted as being non-scientific.

Jengie

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

Sorry forgot the footnote

*"uncanny" is not the word he uses, but it is word that is religiously neutral, but implies something that is outside the bounds of materialistic understanding. The things that "spook" observers.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Except as my Supervisor, a sociologist of Religion has it "The uncanny* does happen". There is growing evidence in ethnography that that which does not fit with materialistic record of the world has been written out of the record.

I think that this is an unfortunate wording for an important fact. There is a lot of evidence that we don't see what we don't have language for. I think that is a less accusatory way of making the point that is at issue.

As I have mentioned in the past, psychology experiements show that teaching a person more words for colors increases their ability to see differences in color samples, for example.

One of my all-time favorite anecdotes is from Bernard Malinowski. He was staying with a tribe of Trobriand Islanders who were crazy about the island's birds. They would name each of them individually and gossip about what "John" and "Mary" were up to.

One day, when he was walking along the beach with one of the islanders, he saw a bird fly overhead. He asked the native what the name of that one was. The islander replied that it was a cloud. Malinowski said no, and pointing at the bird said, "That!" The islander replied, more skeptically, "The sky?" This continued for some time until finally Malinowski got the islander to see the bird. He exclaimed with surprise, "Why, it's a flying animal!"

The bird was not from the island, and the natives only had words for the birds on the island. Strikingly, even the "same" thing as that which obsessed them on their island was invisible to them when not on their island and lacking a name.

The point of all this is that science, like the rest of human endeavor, tends to observe what it has already codified. When one asks for a scientific explanation for phenomena outside the realm of science, one is making a very loaded request.

--Tom Clune

[ETA: We have all seen the woodcut of the Church fathers turning their backs on Galileo as he beckons them to look through the telescope. Isn't it odd that scientists can feel self-righteous about the historical Church while at the same time refusing to look through the Church's lens.]

[ 27. June 2009, 14:17: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

Not really, I am talking about things like the light Evans-Pritchard saw moving around one night when he went to relieve himself and finally settled in a hut. The next morning a person in that hut had died.

Or the description of the "spirit encounter"* by Edith Turner which describes her participation in an exorcism and what she physically saw. It is very much at odds with her husband's (Victor Turner) early materialistic description of a similar exorcism. My supervisor believed it to be the same exorcism but closer reading indicated that they were split by about thirty years.

I think you'd find others of them in the book "Being Changed by Cross Cultural Encounters" edited by D.E. Young and J.G. Goulet.

Jengie

*the spirit looked nothing like what we in the west imagine spirits to look like.

Posted by Laurie17 (# 14889) on :

This is really interesting. thanks.

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Einstein said and wrote many things about religion and God, things that on the surface are wildly contradictory. I don't believe that what he meant by "religion" or "God" is the same as what most Christians mean by those words.

Quotes like those below lead me to believe that although Einstein did not describe himself as an atheist, he did not believe in a supernatural deity.

quote:
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

(Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side quoted here)

quote:
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

(Einstein in a 30 March 1954 letter to Hans Muehsam. A partial version of this quote with a citation is here. The longer version is widely quoted online, but without the source.

I am new here and ahve a proble. How do I find / return to thereads I have enjoyd and want to continue to follow ? I can't see anyway of ear-marking them or of being notified by email (or wahtever when another mesage isa dded. Can any one eavise me on this ?m I mssing something ? What do otherd do to retrace theirs steps here and to other threads >

(So many sections as well as threads on SoF)

Posted by malik3000 (# 11437) on :

Although, at one point, referring to quantum theory, with which he did not agree (at least initially), Einstein said, "God does not play dice."

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm just exploring middle ground as usual!
More Anglican than Free Church you mean?

Some of my best friends are .... But it's a useful skill amongst the Free. Means I choose carefully before I exercise dissent.

[You have to do that every now and again, of course, to be true to the Tradition. Even Baptist ministers (pace elders and deacons) get to play [Biased]

]

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Ah, an accusation of being patronizing. Finally.
Yeah, finally. It only took 340 posts and somebody actually being extremely patronizing, too.

quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
I didn't say that. I said once you follow faith for your OWN reasons, not anybody elses (or society or culture or fear), then it becomes real faith.
Yes, that's what you said. It's really quite magical how you can be so sure of something like that.

quote:
Yes, I often wonder this too. Is faith just a crutch?

But I've realized, its actually much harder to have faith in many ways, than not to. So its not a crutch.
Oh! Well that settles it then.

quote:
I also think abandoning faith altogether can sometimes be a good thing. Start again. Find god in a different way. This only works if you ask for God's help to lead you into a new journey of faith.
Well, asking for God's help to lead me anywhere isn't exactly what I would call "abandoning faith".

I gather you were rather upset by my post from your responses above.

I apologize. I did not mean to be patronizing. It's a great thread and has raised a lot of great issues to explore.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
In the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise, I am obliged to treat religious questions in a manner consistent with how I try to treat any other question. I remain open to reasons why I might treat religion differently, but I lack the sort of personal experience cited by so many of the moderate Christians on this thread.

OK, you don't have that personal experience, but loads of other people do. How is that treated by scientific rationalists?

Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on :

The words 'personal experience' preceded by the possessive pronoun 'my', to gain real credibility, would depend on the person speaking.

Whilst most sane Christians would agree that, based on his own life & devotion to the cause after the event, Saul/Paul did have something remarkable happen on the Road to Damascus, many of them would be sceptical about empty words from armchair 'mystics'; 'visionaries'; 'born again' or other seemingly terminally deluded twats.

For every St John of the Cross or George Fox there are a hundred Brother Alcoholios O'Blather or Barry Burpingstream.

Talk is cheap. Demonstrated life change costs.

I wonder how many of us, socalled Christians, living in safe, prosperous countries like Australia, would do as 'witnesses' in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia? [Cool]

'By their fruits you shall know them'. Yoda? [Killing me]

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Ruth _ not sure if I am a scientific rationalist but as someone who for over 30 years as looked for / been open to experiencing something / anything that might be termed spiritual and failed, here is my response.

1. Human experience seems fairly unreliable. There are spiritualists, druids, Islamists, Christian Fundies etc who all claim to have had experiences that are convincing. Do I believe them all?

2. If I went to a Mosque and experienced more than I have in church - would that mean that Islam is right?

3. I know quite a few people who had very powerful experiences within the Christian faith who now would claim to be atheists. How do I know those who presently claim to have had powerful experiences won't end up coming to similar conclusions.

4. I am totally convinced that as homo sapiens we are very prone to delusional thinking - why should I believe that the area of spiritual experiences isn't prone to this weakness.

I normally find myself in agreement with much of what you say but I don't understand why you, or others, find the spiritual experiences so trustworthy.

Finally if God can seemingly give other Christians (almost) experience on demand, why if he/she if interested in me can't God give me anything at all to cling on to. After all it seems to be the anchor for many people's faith.

Luigi

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

I am coming in quite a bit late to the show, but was asked to wade in, so here’s my two cents:

I can answer a lot of these questions in the past tense. Meaning I went through them on my way out.

Hi my name is Mad Geo and I am a Nontheist.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?

I stayed a Christian for a long time while trying to sort out my new worldview. The reasons I did were justified for a lot of reasons along the way.

1. Habit
2. Group/Cultural/Familial Expectations
3. Fear of what happens at death
4. A feeling that maybe SOME Christians had a point. That it had its redeeming people if not qualities. Jesus was a good example in many ways.

My personal journey out of Christianity occurred when the fundie church I came out of started to be pummeled to death by self-education and my getting to know a New Testament Biblical Literature Expert that educated me on the finer points of biblical criticism and not a little actual history, amongst other things. The more I learned, the easier it was to realize that the dividing line of truth and mythology is thinner and thinner the more one reads ABOUT the bible, much less the bible itself. Eventually the bible is realized as not much more or less than some other religions texts and beliefs. Sure, one can make an argument that it has its moments, but it also has its awful concepts. Horrible, actually.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?

Bingo. Why indeed? As the famous atheist says “I only believe in one less god than you!” Much of the debate that I have seen on this thread seems to hinge on “Why not believe in god?” the answer for me is “Which ONE?” “Why THAT one?” Is the Christian god all that? Or is he just favored by his people out of habit?

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
What other reasons are there for self-identifying as Christian, and for maintaining belief in God?

Fear of death.
Desiring something better than this life.
Using religion to improve ones cultural milieu.
Disowning by family.

Just to name a few. ;-)

I have been through all of that. Still am going through some of it. The problem is that I am pretty sure the genie has been let out of the bottle for all time for me.

I am pretty sure this run is all I’ve got, even though I wouldn’t mind if it were otherwise.
My morality is fine with or without religion (actually better now without it, go figure).
Family issues are what they are.

I tried being a religious moderate. I tried being a religious liberal. I even tried being with the religious while being a nontheist. I can't do it anymore, or at least not very often. I don't need to be told about sin, and I sure as heck don't need the bad ideas that religion often promulgates.

TClune:

We are pattern creating creatures. Why aren’t gods just another pattern, much like ghosts or dragons?

Your argument that scientists tend to observe what we have already codified seems to imply that scientists are missing something. Do we really want to fill that supposed hole in our knowledge with stories of ooglie booglies like demons, spirits (holy or otherwise), and other such mythological creatures? Or do we stick with what is observable/testable/verifiable with our senses regardless of where it takes us? If we can’t see the seagull and assume therefore that dragons are true, is that a good methodology?

Gods are NOT the only things that are unverifiable. If we don’t have language for ghosts does that mean they exist? Is astrology true because we can’t verify it due to language or whatever?

It seems to me that if open ourselves to things that are unverifiable due to inadequacies of language that we open ourselves up to EVERYTHING that is unverifiable. From Fung Shui to Flying Spaghetti Monsters.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:

TClune:

We are pattern creating creatures. Why aren’t gods just another pattern, much like ghosts or dragons?

Your argument that scientists tend to observe what we have already codified seems to imply that scientists are missing something.

Of course they are missing something. It would be an arrogant man indeed who would claim otherwise.

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:

It seems to me that if open ourselves to things that are unverifiable due to inadequacies of language that we open ourselves up to EVERYTHING that is unverifiable. From Fung Shui to Flying Spaghetti Monsters.

Your point is an interesting one. But I think it is really the flip side of that awful fundie view that the Bible has to be inerrant and obvious, or else we are on a slippery slope to "anything goes."

I don't know anything about Fung Shui. It may be that there is some substance there. If enough serious people have examined it closely and insist that there is, it would be arrogant to dismiss it out of hand. One may choose not to pursue it (just as one may choose not to pursue physics -- that hardly suggests that one dismisses it as an endeavor without value).

If you believe that a substantial number of serious people have examined the Flying Spaghetti Monsters phenomenon and find it credibile, and if meds don't help, then by all means pursue their study.

It is strange to me, though, that people can think of themselves as serious, thoughtful humans and dismiss what is perhaps the most widely-attested experience in all of civilization and has persisted for thousands of years as a delusion based on their own inclinations.

Certainly, the experience of the Divine has been expressed in a variety of ways and through multiple traditions, which one could declare to be proof that it is illusary. But that seems to me to argue just the opposite. The robustness of the underlying experience through multiple cultures and contexts seems to argue for the validity of the experience. Or so ISTM.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
.....It is strange to me, though, that people can think of themselves as serious, thoughtful humans and dismiss what is perhaps the most widely-attested experience in all of civilization and has persisted for thousands of years as a delusion based on their own inclinations.....

This is known as the "appeal to popularity". It does not logically follow that X is true because most people believe it. It also does not logically follow that because we occasionally fail to see seagulls, that dragons are therefore real.

Again by that rationale, astrology has experiential credibility, witchcraft, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, certainly ghosts, demons, any other god, or such things as Fung Shui, etc.

I can pick any belief system I happen to like, or be culturally raised on, apply the "Seagull Exemption" and there you go, Truth!

Doesn't seem very satisfying as a process. YMMV.

A lot of this really hinges, IMO, on process. How does one determine where the line between ooglie booglie and legitimate inquiry occurs?

My process has indicated that Christianity holds no more corner on truth than any number of other religions, or beliefs such as Fung Shui. It merely is more popular by vote in some areas, like pizza. And like pizza, it is not necessarily a satisfying meal every day or every week. In fact it's a pizza that occasionally has spoiled, and yet people seem to keep wanting to convince me it's all a matter of perspective, like seagulls.

<tangent>

If you ever want to see Fung Shui (or any number of other things for that matter) thoroughly debunked, I recommend the Penn and Teller television show "Bullshit".

Fung Shui is complete rubbish.

</tangent>

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
In the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise, I am obliged to treat religious questions in a manner consistent with how I try to treat any other question. I remain open to reasons why I might treat religion differently, but I lack the sort of personal experience cited by so many of the moderate Christians on this thread.
OK, you don't have that personal experience, but loads of other people do. How is that treated by scientific rationalists?

I can't speak for scientific rationalists as a class, but I am concerned with other people's truth claims, not their personal experiences. If someone claims that something is true, I would look at whatever evidence is available to support or dismiss the claim. I wouldn't necessarily discount evidence because it is uncorroborated personal experience, but I would weigh such a report against what we know of how the world works.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Much of the debate that I have seen on this thread seems to hinge on “Why not believe in god?” the answer for me is “Which ONE?” “Why THAT one?” Is the Christian god all that? Or is he just favored by his people out of habit?

I don't understand this. 'The Christian God' is not a description of one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Christians. 'The Christian God' is in essence one specific feature of scientific reality - the first cause - that by tradition has historically been referred to as God. That the same tradition often smothers the simple reality with uncritically evaluated interpretations of first or second hand experience is problematic. But we as individuals are free to ignore all that if we choose.

I happen to think that on balance there's still value and potential within the institutions of Christianity. Some time in the future I might come to a different conclusion, but the reality will remain. All I think authentic Christianity ever tries to do is incorporate this feature of ultimate reality, by definition beyond anything in our everyday reality, in a world view that makes sense of human experience. There's no choice of god involved, just lots of questions and a diversity of preferences about which story or theory works best.

Posted by TiggyTiger (# 14819) on :

Love that sentence, 'It does not logically follow that because we occasionally fail to see seagulls, that dragons are therefore real.'

That's like, cosmic man! I'm not sure I understand the logic of it, but there are a hell of a lot of seagulls round here and maybe I fail to see some of them. On the other hand, I've always hoped that dragons were once real.

I feel strangely stoned tonight...and doing a Chancy Gardener.

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Much of the debate that I have seen on this thread seems to hinge on “Why not believe in god?” the answer for me is “Which ONE?” “Why THAT one?” Is the Christian god all that? Or is he just favored by his people out of habit?
I don't understand this. 'The Christian God' is not a description of one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Christians.

Oh but it is. Actually technically it is one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Jews, then Christians, and I hear Muslims as well (in the case of the Big Guy, but not the Little Guy or Holy Spirit).

That you discard other gods, is quite possibly an arbitrary selection based on cultural influence. Had you grown up in India, you probably would be arguing elephant gods with me right now, almost without question, or perhaps you’d be Muslim, or maybe slight chance something else. But the odds would be against Christian.

The problem with gods as we have been discussing here is that they are almighty hard to test claims-wise, so one religions claim is not really objectively better than another, in my opinion, and observation.

quote:

'The Christian God' is in essence one specific feature of scientific reality - the first cause - that by tradition has historically been referred to as God. That the same tradition often smothers the simple reality with uncritically evaluated interpretations of first or second hand experience is problematic. But we as individuals are free to ignore all that if we choose.

Really? That’s interesting, because I hear Sikhs make much similar claims for their god. One can interpret their god as the Universe itself! As such, perhaps their gods claim is superior to yours? Maybe not. I really don’t know. There is no “scientific reality” of gods. It’s mixing apples and ghosts.

quote:

I happen to think that on balance there's still value and potential within the institutions of Christianity. Some time in the future I might come to a different conclusion, but the reality will remain. All I think authentic Christianity ever tries to do is incorporate this feature of ultimate reality, by definition beyond anything in our everyday reality, in a world view that makes sense of human experience. There's no choice of god involved, just lots of questions and a diversity of preferences about which story or theory works best.

Are you positing that all the other gods are your god? A kind of Divine Co-op? Otherwise there is choice of gods, why else would there be so many religions?

There may be some value in the institutions of Christianity. There is also damaging ideas in some institutions of Christianity, if not many.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
technically ['The Christian God'] is one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Jews, then Christians, and I hear Muslims as well (in the case of the Big Guy, but not the Little Guy or Holy Spirit).

No, in essence all three religions will hold that there can be only one God. They will reject the notion of gods because it is not philosophically tenable to posit more than one of what they mean by God/Allah.

Serious talk of gods is only possible if you mean an arbitrary selection based on cultural influence. That is not what thinking Christians (or Jews or Muslims) mean. It is the traditions and mythology surrounding the reality of God/Allah that varies. That this dominates the appearance of the religions and their expression by non-/anti-intellectual adherents will have parallels that are apparent across political parties and secular groups. It's how people are.

quote:
There may be some value in the institutions of Christianity. There is also damaging ideas in some institutions of Christianity, if not many.

Yes. Just like any other human institution. The only alternative I can see to engaging with at least one is individualism. Which has its attractions, but at the cost of limiting our scope for creativity.

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

I hope you take this the way I mean it, which is to say in a serious attempt to understand.

Your entire first half of your response made absolutely no sense to me at all. I literally have no idea what you were trying to say.

Can you unpack it a bit?

Posted by TonyinOxford (# 12657) on :

on the business of discarding gods, does this help -- at least as a story?

Once people thought there were lots of gods, sometimes different ones associated with different nations. There are plenty of traces of this sort of thinking in various parts of the Hebrew bible. So: big idea is there are lots of gods -- and the picture to go with it is, say, Mount Olympus: a lot of gods in a single space like people in a big room. Then the big insight comes: there aren't lots of gods, there is only One God -- monotheism. Now the big problem is what's the picture to go with is: just one person in a room? The real break with various fundamentalist views is to see that this can't be right either: there isn't 'one god', like there is one Mount Everest (but that's not a good example) -- there is just God.

pax
Tony

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

Not sure where to start. You were talking about gods as imaginary entities unconnected to scientific reality, their attributes defined by culture and perhaps unconscious personal preference. I'm suggesting that God as understood in the Christian tradition is an essentially different concept.

God (as opposed to a god) as a label refers to the first cause of our existence - an undeniable reality. When talking about God we are not (if we want to make rational sense) free to choose the attributes we or our culture happens to prefer. We have to look to reality for our basic information, and to philosophy, metaphysics, to make sense of it.

Of course the history of Christianity is littered with people who had other ideas. The politics of the time meant some of these attempts have stuck, for example the Greek/Roman idea of God incarnating as Jesus. But alongside such artificial attachments has always been the insistence that Christianity is about what is true, and that is its saving grace. It means that however loudly the traditionalists and the fundamentalists shout about the centrality of their beliefs and practices, they cannot dismiss what is real without acknowledging they are only worshipping a god, an idol of their own making.

I totally agree that listening to many Christians, there's sometimes little indication of any commitment to verifiable reality. But attempt to separate that cultural religion from God as, say creator and sustainer of the universe, and you get laughed out of court. That's only because underneath all the beliefism and sacramentalism (that I imagine closely parallel god worship in other cultures) Christianity is at core committed to the real God.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
'The Christian God' is in essence one specific feature of scientific reality - the first cause - that by tradition has historically been referred to as God. That the same tradition often smothers the simple reality with uncritically evaluated interpretations of first or second hand experience is problematic.

The problem is that your description doesn't fit Christianity as it is commonly understood and practiced by most real-world Christians. If the average believer saw God as simply a first cause, unsmothered with interpretations of first or second hand experience, we might be having a very different conversation.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
The problem is that your description doesn't fit Christianity as it is commonly understood and practiced by most real-world Christians.

Yeah. I ought to pack up and go home. Thing is, who else is interested in this stuff?

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Oh but it is. Actually technically it is one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Jews, then Christians, and I hear Muslims as well (in the case of the Big Guy, but not the Little Guy or Holy Spirit).

That you discard other gods, is quite possibly an arbitrary selection based on cultural influence. Had you grown up in India, you probably would be arguing elephant gods with me right now, almost without question, or perhaps you’d be Muslim, or maybe slight chance something else. But the odds would be against Christian.

I think the problem is that you are treating "the Christian God" as a single indivisible claim and "the Hindu God" as a separate single indivisible claim.

In reality "the traditional Christian God exists" encompasses a whole series of claims, such as:

There exists some kind of higher spiritual power,
who / which is the "focus of unity" that Dafyd was talking about earlier,
who / which is the First Cause and Unmoved Mover,
who / which is omni-all sorts of stuff,
who is personal,
who is Trinitarian,
who became Incarnate,
(insert remainder of Nicene Creed here)

Now point (1) is believed by the overwhelming majority of people, even in supposedly secular Europe. Points (2) - (4) are very common and held by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Taoism (when applied to the Tao), some African religions, all Ancient Greek schools of philosophy with the exception of Epicureanism, and probably many others that I don't know of.

Further down the list you are, yes, getting into flakier territory, but that doesn't undermine the universality of at least some of the claims made for the Christian God.

(ETA: pretentiousness.)

[ 30. June 2009, 18:10: Message edited by: Ricardus ]

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

Again, just because an idea is "overwhelming majority" popular does not mean that the idea is TRUE. Many ideas have fallen out of vogue over the centuries. Some ideas in the bible in fact. I would not propose to hold on to them because they were popular.

I also do not see complexity of argument as equal to veracity of argument.

As Scot pointed out, "your description doesn't fit Christianity as it is commonly understood and practiced by most real-world Christians". Much of Christianity, starts at #4, in the "flakier territory". In my observation.

You will probably say that I am jaded, or cynical, and you may be right, but I honestly see much of this debate as a form of obfuscation that has evolved as part of religion. Whenever I see discussions such as this, one can make a simple comment and immediately have people come in with concepts like "focus of unity" and "First Cause". Now granted, people are complex, and they come up with some pretty apparently novel and complex ideas, and maybe even some of the complexity MAY equal a good argument, but to be utterly frank, some of these seem to be rationalizing the irrational. Why not declare it a mystery, all of it, and have done with it rather than try to justify claims that are clearly unjustifiable?

Virgins don't have births. There I've said it. <gasp>

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
In the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise, I am obliged to treat religious questions in a manner consistent with how I try to treat any other question. I remain open to reasons why I might treat religion differently, but I lack the sort of personal experience cited by so many of the moderate Christians on this thread.
OK, you don't have that personal experience, but loads of other people do. How is that treated by scientific rationalists?
I can't speak for scientific rationalists as a class, but I am concerned with other people's truth claims, not their personal experiences. If someone claims that something is true, I would look at whatever evidence is available to support or dismiss the claim. I wouldn't necessarily discount evidence because it is uncorroborated personal experience, but I would weigh such a report against what we know of how the world works.

Fair enough, if you're just not interested. But it seems to me that the system you're dealing with should be able to account for religious experience, one way or another.

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
1. Human experience seems fairly unreliable. There are spiritualists, druids, Islamists, Christian Fundies etc who all claim to have had experiences that are convincing. Do I believe them all?

Their specific truth claims? No. That they had experiences? Yes. Some investigation into the nature of these experiences seems warranted to me.

quote:
2. If I went to a Mosque and experienced more than I have in church - would that mean that Islam is right?

To my way of thinking, no. It would mean that Islam suits you better than Christianity.

quote:
3. I know quite a few people who had very powerful experiences within the Christian faith who now would claim to be atheists. How do I know those who presently claim to have had powerful experiences won't end up coming to similar conclusions.

You don't. But in my experience most people who have had intense spiritual experiences find them meaningful, one way or another, and don't later decide they were baloney.

quote:
4. I am totally convinced that as homo sapiens we are very prone to delusional thinking - why should I believe that the area of spiritual experiences isn't prone to this weakness.

You shouldn't. But you carry the burden of proving that I or anyone else who has had a profound spiritual experience is delusional. Do you think people who have had spiritual experiences are more delusional that people who put their faith in science?

quote:
I normally find myself in agreement with much of what you say but I don't understand why you, or others, find the spiritual experiences so trustworthy.

Guess you had to be there. [Razz]

More seriously, I find the ones I've had trustworthy because they have born sweet fruit in my life, because what I felt like I should take from them fit with things that I already knew to be right and good, and because I have ultimately become more psychologically healthy as a result of trusting where these things lead, not less.

quote:
Finally if God can seemingly give other Christians (almost) experience on demand, why if he/she if interested in me can't God give me anything at all to cling on to. After all it seems to be the anchor for many people's faith.

What makes you think these experiences take place on demand? This certainly wasn't the case for me. But I don't have an answer for your question. I asked the same question when I quit religion.

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Virgins don't have births. There I've said it. <gasp>

No, no gasp. That virgins don't give birth is so widely accepted among moderate and liberal Christians that non-belief in the virgin birth wasn't even mentioned in the OP.

[ 30. June 2009, 23:46: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Much of Christianity, starts at #4, in the "flakier territory". In my observation.

And in mine. But I don't feel bound by anyone else's religion simply by identifying with some of it. I see the little bits of Church I'm involved with as opportunities to contribute, not any system or imposition to which I must conform.

That makes it hard to understand objections to Christianity in general. The essence, what Jesus was about, seems real and open-ended. I guess I've found a niche that suits me.

[ 01. July 2009, 00:40: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :

Crossposted

RuthW.

I give a fairly complete treatment of the topic and you address the throw away punchline?

I think your assertion that moderate Christians do not believe in the Virgin Birth is overstated, for the record. Liberals, yes. Moderates, no. The creeds, which have certainly been liberally used as a litmus test of Christianity in more places than this, assert it. Most churches assert it. It certainly doesn't seem to be lacking in Sunday School anywhere, especially around X-mas.

It IMO is one more demonstration of the OP. If one doesn't believe in Virgin Births, etc. why stay? At what point does one's deviations from such as the creeds become a punchline at the end of a post convince one to leave?

[ 01. July 2009, 00:37: Message edited by: Mad Geo ]

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
OK, you don't have that personal experience, but loads of other people do. How is that treated by scientific rationalists?
quote:
I can't speak for scientific rationalists as a class, but I am concerned with other people's truth claims, not their personal experiences. If someone claims that something is true, I would look at whatever evidence is available to support or dismiss the claim. I wouldn't necessarily discount evidence because it is uncorroborated personal experience, but I would weigh such a report against what we know of how the world works.
Fair enough, if you're just not interested. But it seems to me that the system you're dealing with should be able to account for religious experience, one way or another.

I didn't say I wasn't interested. Not sure where you got that, but maybe I misunderstood your original question. I thought you were asking how I would deal with the content of a personal experience that I haven't had myself. My answer is simply that I would evaluate those reports based on the reliability of the witness and how consistent the data is with better documented aspects of the world. If you were asking how I deal with the fact that people have religious experiences at all, I would point back to the earlier discussions about neuroscience, emotion, and pattern-seeking.

Here's a hypothetical example to (hopefully) clarify the distinction I'm trying to make.

If you told me that you were meditating and experienced a bright light and an ethereal voice telling you that a life well lived must be based on love, I would evaluate the claim that love is important in light of what I know of the world. This claim doesn't contradict anything I know about life or the universe, and it is consistent with my own less dramatic experiences.

If you told me that you were meditating and experienced a bright light and an ethereal voice telling you that a virgin gave birth to the son of God, I would evaluate the claim the same way. The assertion that a virgin gave birth is strongly contradicted by what I know to be true about the world, so I would consider it less likely that your vision contained truth. I would therefore tend to be skeptical about the son of God part, too.

In either case, whether the content of the vision seemed true or not, I would consider it most likely that the vision was the result of an altered state of consciousness resulting from deep meditation.

[ 01. July 2009, 02:14: Message edited by: Scot ]

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Crossposted

It IMO is one more demonstration of the OP. If one doesn't believe in Virgin Births, etc. why stay?

Because some people understand things metaphorically, not literally, and they have more meaning that way ( not less as some literalists assume).

quote:
At what point does one's deviations from such as the creeds become a punchline at the end of a post convince one to leave?

When you lose your sense of humour? [Razz]

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

It seems to me me that this thread has drifted so far from the OP as to become a really bizarre non sequitur--something like "how can moderates demand that everyone else believe the same things they believe, when they don't believe the Bible is absolutely authoritative?"

I don't know if I'm a moderate or what (it's not a word I would use to describe myself). I'm a Christian because of my personal experience, but I'm certainly not saying that anyone else should trust my experience. In fact, I'll say that more emphatically: Don't trust my experience, trust your own--but allow yourself to be open to experience, don't preempt experience with logic. Don't assume you know what the experience will be before you have it.

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
2. If I went to a Mosque and experienced more than I have in church - would that mean that Islam is right?
To my way of thinking, no. It would mean that Islam suits you better than Christianity.

I see what you're saying here, but is it all just a matter of personal preference, like flavours of ice cream?

For example, I'm presuming that you, as a Christian, reject the notion that the Qur'an was dictated by an angel to the Prophet and is therefore divine and inerrant. If you reject this based on your experience, and they reject Christianity's claims based on their experience, then all we seem to have established is that you disagree, and you can't both be right.

It seems to me that if you take objective truth claims out of religion, you don't have much left.

- Chris.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:

It seems to me that if you take objective truth claims out of religion, you don't have much left.

Religion isn't about objective truth claims. How do we know this? Because they all claim the truth (or at least historically - some religions are finally waking up to the 21st C).

Its about human responses to the divine.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I'm a Christian because of my personal experience, but I'm certainly not saying that anyone else should trust my experience. In fact, I'll say that more emphatically: Don't trust my experience, trust your own--but allow yourself to be open to experience, don't preempt experience with logic.

Not pre-empting experience sounds reasonable, but using experience alone, whether our own or someone else's, as an indicator of what is real or true seems a very bad idea. Experience is only trustworthy as a question-generating mechanism. Reason (logic) applied to a diversity of experience, ours, other people's, that written up in science journals, is the only way to determine if subjective assessments of any particular experience are consistent with how the universe is. If it's not, there's a strong possibility that experience was/is misleading.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
[If Christians] reject the notion that the Qur'an was dictated by an angel to the Prophet and is therefore divine and inerrant ... based on [their] experience, and [Muslims] reject Christianity's claims based on their experience, then all we seem to have established is that [they] disagree, and [they] can't both be right.

This illustrates the impossibility of establishing truth on the basis of (subjective) experience. I reject the claim that the Qur'an is divine and inerrant on the basis of lack of credible evidence, as I do similar claims for the Bible or any other religion's sacred texts. I don't need to compare them with some other unverifiable set of claims of my own.

quote:
It seems to me that if you take objective truth claims out of religion, you don't have much left.

What you would have left is what is worth saving. The values that a religion stands for would no longer be obscured. You might have a religion that could become a genuinely radical and cohesive force for good. What exactly would be lost?

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I didn't say I wasn't interested. Not sure where you got that, but maybe I misunderstood your original question.

Sorry, my misreading -- I got that you weren't interested in this question based on your statement about what you are actually interested in. And yes, the hypothetical makes your position much clearer for me, thanks.

I'd certainly concede that your position is more rational than mine. At this point it seems to me that I simply don't place as high a premium on reason as you do, for a couple of reasons, in large part because intensive study of 18th-century literature, philosophy and history, which is to say a lot of Enlightenment thinking, left me rather dubious about rationalism, its motivations and its aims.

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
If you told me that you were meditating and experienced a bright light and an ethereal voice telling you that a life well lived must be based on love, I would evaluate the claim that love is important in light of what I know of the world. This claim doesn't contradict anything I know about life or the universe, and it is consistent with my own less dramatic experiences.

If you told me that you were meditating and experienced a bright light and an ethereal voice telling you that a virgin gave birth to the son of God, I would evaluate the claim the same way. The assertion that a virgin gave birth is strongly contradicted by what I know to be true about the world, so I would consider it less likely that your vision contained truth. I would therefore tend to be skeptical about the son of God part, too.

This makes total sense to me, actually. I think the thing about private revelation that makes it so difficult is that it is just that: private. I don't think my spiritual experiences can underwrite any faith but my own, and I wouldn't make truth claims based on them -- just claims about faith, which aren't the same thing.

Mad Geo: Sorry you didn't like it, but the last line in your post is the only thing I had a reaction to. I sincerely doubt that there are lots moderate Christians who believe in the virgin birth; I only know one. You'd have to trot out some hard data to change my mind on that one.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I see what you're saying here, but is it all just a matter of personal preference, like flavours of ice cream?

Well, no, I think it's a bit more serious than preferring one flavor of ice cream. More like finding a form of exercise you can actually do when for whatever reason you can't do the exercises most of the people around you do.

quote:
For example, I'm presuming that you, as a Christian, reject the notion that the Qur'an was dictated by an angel to the Prophet and is therefore divine.

No, I'm pretty sure that the Qur'an is probably divine. Why G-d needed to reveal herself in that particular way in that particular place and time is the real question; I have my guesses, but I'm pretty sure I'm not capable of understanding everything about G-d.

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Finally if God can seemingly give other Christians (almost) experience on demand, why if he/she if interested in me can't God give me anything at all to cling on to. After all it seems to be the anchor for many people's faith.

Repeating Ruth again: what makes you think these experiences take place on demand?

I don't know the answer, but it's possible that the only kind of experience that you would accept would have to be so dramatic that it would disturb other people too much and completely throw them off the path. It's also possible that at this point in your spiritual journey you need to take a break from Christianity or even from G-d; I didn't believe in G-d at all until I was 23 and certain things happened that convinced me that G-d was the simplest explanation.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I see what you're saying here, but is it all just a matter of personal preference, like flavours of ice cream?
Well, no, I think it's a bit more serious than preferring one flavor of ice cream. More like finding a form of exercise you can actually do when for whatever reason you can't do the exercises most of the people around you do.

Exactly. Not everyone needs to be or can be a runner, but we all need exercise. The point is to walk a spiritual path; to my way of thinking it really doesn't matter which one you pick, as long as it's not coercive and crazy-making.

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Finally if God can seemingly give other Christians (almost) experience on demand, why if he/she if interested in me can't God give me anything at all to cling on to. After all it seems to be the anchor for many people's faith.
Repeating Ruth again: what makes you think these experiences take place on demand?

I don't know the answer, but it's possible that the only kind of experience that you would accept would have to be so dramatic that it would disturb other people too much and completely throw them off the path.

The other thing I'd add about spiritual experiences is that they are conditioned by our personal and cultural circumstances. The Virgin appears to Catholics, for instance. When I quit Christianity, one of the things I thought was that if there was a God, that God could damn well give me a road-to-Damascus experience if I was supposed to believe in God. Nine years later, I got as close to such an experience as I could handle.

I realize that saying that we get the experiences we expect to have sounds pretty circular, but I think the details -- whether one sees or hears the Virgin, a bright light, a loved one, angels, whatever -- are really not the point. The point is that people have transcendent experiences that to me are not satisfactorily explained by science. Maybe they will be someday; they won't be less meaningful. And they will probably still not be satisfactorily interpreted by science; science can tell us how something happens but can't assign meaning to it.

My transcendent experiences have taken place in a Christian context, so for that and other more prosaic reasons I'm sticking with Christianity.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I'm a Christian because of my personal experience, but I'm certainly not saying that anyone else should trust my experience. In fact, I'll say that more emphatically: Don't trust my experience, trust your own--but allow yourself to be open to experience, don't preempt experience with logic.
Not pre-empting experience sounds reasonable, but using experience alone, whether our own or someone else's, as an indicator of what is real or true seems a very bad idea. Experience is only trustworthy as a question-generating mechanism. Reason (logic) applied to a diversity of experience, ours, other people's, that written up in science journals, is the only way to determine if subjective assessments of any particular experience are consistent with how the universe is. If it's not, there's a strong possibility that experience was/is misleading.

For science, sure--but I don't believe there is any analogy between religion and science. People do not (if they are wise) accumulate spiritual data so they can devise an accurate theory about the nature of God. Faith and belief are not synonyms--the former is an attitude and act, the latter is intellectual assent to some particular set of propositions.

Beliefs may or may not be an aid to faith (when they are, it is probably only to the extent that they are malleable, subject to modification by experience). Experiences are not misleading--our interpretations of experiences often are. If I misinterpret an experience and wander off the path, my next experience (of stubbing my toe on a metaphorical rock, say) is corrective.

I'm not advocating an individualistic, purely subjective approach to experience--I can trust others' experience to the extent I trust them and can participate imaginatively in their experience. But my experience of your account of your experience is still my experience, not yours. And I'm not talking just about voices and visions--it can be so much more mundane than that.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Luigi:
Finally if God can seemingly give other Christians (almost) experience on demand, why if he/she if interested in me can't God give me anything at all to cling on to. After all it seems to be the anchor for many people's faith.
Repeating Ruth again: what makes you think these experiences take place on demand?

I don't know the answer, but it's possible that the only kind of experience that you would accept would have to be so dramatic that it would disturb other people too much and completely throw them off the path. It's also possible that at this point in your spiritual journey you need to take a break from Christianity or even from G-d; I didn't believe in G-d at all until I was 23 and certain things happened that convinced me that G-d was the simplest explanation.

I do find the line that it must be my fault line a little insulting. I am often told that people have had experiences that are so strong / distinctive that the experience has convinced the person that God is there. That sort of experience would do me fine. Apparently these other people have had experiences that haven't 'disturbed' other people. Frankly this line of reasoning is both patronising and presumptious.

Ruth - my point wasn't that just people who have spiritual experiences are delusional there is plenty of evidence that we all are very prone to delusional thinking. From what I have read and my experience of life, I have come to the conclusion that when people argue from experience it could be true, but it certinaly might not. I don't see why it is up to me to disprove it. Why? Unusual experiences could easily be down to some of the short cuts our brains take that mean our perceptions are often fooled.

So it is not that I distrust the person, it is more that I think of them as being every bit as human as I am.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
I don't know the answer, but it's possible that the only kind of experience that you would accept would have to be so dramatic that it would disturb other people too much and completely throw them off the path. It's also possible that at this point in your spiritual journey you need to take a break from Christianity or even from G-d; I didn't believe in G-d at all until I was 23 and certain things happened that convinced me that G-d was the simplest explanation.
I do find the line that it must be my fault line a little insulting.

I didn't say that it must be your fault; I suggested one possibility, which isn't even that it's your fault so much as the fault of the people around you.

quote:
I am often told that people have had experiences that are so strong / distinctive that the experience has convinced the person that God is there. That sort of experience would do me fine. Apparently these other people have had experiences that haven't 'disturbed' other people. Frankly this line of reasoning is both patronising and presumptious.

Look, I'm not trying to define your experience or tell you why exactly G-d doesn't give you these sorts of experiences when he does give them to others.

But I do think there's a neurological component. And I don't think many people would argue with the idea that for all the similarities, different people's brains are wired slightly differently (Aspergers, the fact that two people can have the same experience and one will develop PTSD and one won't, etc.) And there's a cultural component - I think I posted earlier on this thread about how a friend and I had very similar experiences of synchronicity which he attributed to the Holy Spirit working and I didn't. And again, I'm not saying that it's necessarily the case, but suggesting the possibility that given your particular situation, it might not be possible for G-d to give you that kind of experience without doing something really dramatic that would disturb the people around you.

And the reason I'm suggesting that as a possibility is because that was my experience. There was a thread a while back in which The Atheist insisted that it would be really simple for G-d to speak to him and the fact that he didn't demonstrated Her nonexistence.

Well, my mother had a lifelong struggle with having faith of any kind, and eventually G-d did speak to her in a Road-to-Damascus collapsing you kind of way. And shortly thereafter she died. Which, together with a whole bunch of other shit, was enough to convince me that G-d exists in the way that gravity exists.

But it wasn't the kind of experience that affected only me. It affected a whole bunch of other people who were unnerved enough that they needed to talk about what had happened a lot of the time (and some of them lost the plot). I keep running into people who've heard something about it (although right now I'm struggling to understand how the poor black underclass of Delaware managed to hear about it since I wouldn't have thought they talked to any of the people involved).

I remember thinking that the whole 'G-d's ways are mysterious' thing was a cop-out back when I was a militant agnostic (I had a button that read "I don't know and you don't either"). But, hell, G-d's ways are mysterious. I hope to comprehend them but I'm not sure I will.

quote:
Ruth - my point wasn't that just people who have spiritual experiences are delusional there is plenty of evidence that we all are very prone to delusional thinking. From what I have read and my experience of life, I have come to the conclusion that when people argue from experience it could be true, but it certinaly might not. I don't see why it is up to me to disprove it. Why? Unusual experiences could easily be down to some of the short cuts our brains take that mean our perceptions are often fooled.

So it is not that I distrust the person, it is more that I think of them as being every bit as human as I am.

Not to speak for Ruth here, but frankly I'm tired of all the scientific rationalists demanding proof in a form they understand and will take. I can't prove my belief, you can't prove your disbelief, so could we at least call it a draw and not try to discount the very real experiences others have?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Proof! I DEMAND PROOF!! Oh, no, wait... No, I just won't necessarily agree with you without corroborating evidence.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Proof! I DEMAND PROOF!!

Well at least you're not looking for wisdom or a miraculous sign.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't believe there is any analogy between religion and science.

Science and religion certainly work differently. Science sets out to describe what can be repeatably measured, religion to provide plausible explanations of human experience. But both (if followed with integrity) are essentially concerned with how things really are. I don't see 'the spiritual' as some kind of alternative reality to which the laws of nature don't apply. It's more the non-repeating patterns in our experience to which we happen to find our mind has attached meaning.

The question is how we assign value to that meaning. Do we prioritise the spiritual interpretation over a sceptical perspective when determining how to spend our time, for example.

It seems mostly a matter of choice, although I guess temperament comes into it. Do we assume an experience that looks/feels like (say) a powerful reassuring presence is from what we mean by God, entirely different in kind to any natural sensory experience? Or do we trust the knowledge that our mind is an electro/chemical machine of enormous complexity, with the capacity to generate dreams and the like as vivid as any actual experience of reality. If the latter, I think we'll conclude (perhaps reluctantly) that this is no evidence for any distinct 'spiritual reality'.

And as always our theological foundation is going to make a difference. If by God we mean some undefined 'out there' higher power, it may well make sense to assume spiritual experiences are God-related. But all this does is reinforce one ungrounded, speculative theory with another. If on the other hand by God we mean something like first cause of the universe, and our concern is to base our understanding on what is real and true, spiritual experiences simply add to our store of memories to appreciate, alongside those of (say) beauty acquired through regular sensory perception.

[ 02. July 2009, 13:26: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Proof! I DEMAND PROOF!! Oh, no, wait... No, I just won't necessarily agree with you without corroborating evidence.

Hey, it's only recently that I've gotten most people to stop telling me what I think and how I feel - because, you know, while temperature may be an objective measurable state feeling cold is not and while you may be completely comfortable at that temperature I really am freezing.

So you've probably got a while before I start insisting that your experience must necessarily be exactly like mine and that the things that convince me must also convince you.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Proof! I DEMAND PROOF!!

quote:
Oh, no, wait... No, I just won't necessarily agree with you without corroborating evidence.

No one's asking you to, or at least I'm not. The original question asked why we continue to believe; it didn't ask us to underwrite anyone else's faith. We've explained why we believe, and it turns out that the basis of our belief is something you don't accept. Which is fine.

It works both ways, too. You have elevated logic and reason far beyond a level I feel comfortable with, asking them to do something I don't think they can do: underwrite faith. Logic and reason are not for me the ultimate test of truth.

Posted by Chill (# 13643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Oh, no, wait... No, I just won't necessarily agree with you without corroborating evidence.

Given that:
A) Argument from experience is out due to some pseudoscientific notion of unreliability
B) All forms of corroborating evidence are based on someone’s experience (even if he or she is wearing the postmodern vestments of a lab coat)
C) It necasarly follows that no corroborating evidence can ever be obtained for anything let alone God.

Thus it follows that the sum of your argument striped of its scientific window dressing is:
You say you have experienced something that I have not. I don’t believe you if I can’t find it, it can’t be there ner ner ner ner ner and so forth.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Again, just because an idea is "overwhelming majority" popular does not mean that the idea is TRUE.

Of course. But if the overwhelming majority claim that some kind of spiritual power exists, then at the very least the burden of proof falls on those who doubt this claim to show why it is false or unfounded.

quote:
I also do not see complexity of argument as equal to veracity of argument.

As Scot pointed out, "your description doesn't fit Christianity as it is commonly understood and practiced by most real-world Christians". Much of Christianity, starts at #4, in the "flakier territory". In my observation.

So what?

If you mean that most Christians have confused and unsophisticated views, then I imagine the same is true of most atheists.

For example: a relatively common theme on the Ship is "Can atheism provide a sound basis for morality?" The overwhelming majority of atheists would say that it can. However, I doubt that many of them would be able to say how that basis works in a way that would satisfy a philosophy lecturer, or would quote Baron d'Holbach or Bertrand Russell at you.

Is that a reason for rejecting atheism?

quote:
You will probably say that I am jaded, or cynical, and you may be right, but I honestly see much of this debate as a form of obfuscation that has evolved as part of religion. Whenever I see discussions such as this, one can make a simple comment and immediately have people come in with concepts like "focus of unity" and "First Cause". Now granted, people are complex, and they come up with some pretty apparently novel and complex ideas, and maybe even some of the complexity MAY equal a good argument, but to be utterly frank, some of these seem to be rationalizing the irrational. Why not declare it a mystery, all of it, and have done with it rather than try to justify claims that are clearly unjustifiable?

I think that is kind of the point.

You will probably see this as more obfuscation, but as far as I understand Dafyd's argument, it is that scientific rationalism makes a whole series of unacknowledged faith claims, and it is far better to admit them openly and call it "God" than to pretend they're not there and that everything is explained.

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Ruth, I think you are mischaracterizing my position (although not nearly so grossly as Chill has done) while subtly revising your own.

A couple of posts back I explained that I wouldn't necessarily discount a personal experience reported by a respected person, so long as it wasn't nonsensical. You said:

quote:
I don't think my spiritual experiences can underwrite any faith but my own, and I wouldn't make truth claims based on them -- just claims about faith, which aren't the same thing.

Now, while asserting that reason cannot underwrite faith, you say that:

quote:
Logic and reason are not for me the ultimate test of truth.

It certainly looks to me as if you are suggesting that you canmake claims about truth based on faith and, by extension, your spiritual experiences.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't believe there is any analogy between religion and science.
Science and religion certainly work differently. Science sets out to describe what can be repeatably measured, religion to provide plausible explanations of human experience.

I don't think religion is particularly about providing explanations--it's about guiding actions. The core scientific question is "How do things work?" The core religious question is "How shall I live?" We do tend to construct explanations: "You should live like this because God is thus and such and says blah blah blah..." but this is secondary, and the correctness of the explanations is not critical, as it is in science. The map is not the territory--I don't need to know exactly where all the rocks are as long as I have a path that goes between them.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't believe there is any analogy between religion and science.
Science and religion certainly work differently. Science sets out to describe what can be repeatably measured, religion to provide plausible explanations of human experience.
I don't think religion is particularly about providing explanations--it's about guiding actions. The core scientific question is "How do things work?" The core religious question is "How shall I live?"

While there's a lot in what you say, I think you are still too limited in your view here. Yes, "How shall I live" may be a central aspect of religion. But sometimes it is a very different enterprise than that. It may be as simple as feeling the need to say "Thank you" for the bounty that has been poured out on you. It need not be a question at all.

--Tom Clune

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
Ruth, I think you are mischaracterizing my position (although not nearly so grossly as Chill has done) while subtly revising your own.

I haven't discussed these things in quite this way in a long time, and I probably don't have a firm and hard position. I certainly didn't intend to mischaracterize your position, though I'm sure it's possible that I did.

quote:
A couple of posts back I explained that I wouldn't necessarily discount a personal experience reported by a respected person, so long as it wasn't nonsensical. You said:

quote:
I don't think my spiritual experiences can underwrite any faith but my own, and I wouldn't make truth claims based on them -- just claims about faith, which aren't the same thing.

Now, while asserting that reason cannot underwrite faith, you say that:

quote:
Logic and reason are not for me the ultimate test of truth.
It certainly looks to me as if you are suggesting that you canmake claims about truth based on faith and, by extension, your spiritual experiences.

Sorry, I wasn't consistent in my use of the word "truth." When I said "truth claims," I probably should have said claims about objectively held facts, and when I said "truth" in that last post, it probably would have been more clear if I'd said "Truth" (imagine accompanying choirs of angels, maybe?).

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
if the overwhelming majority claim that some kind of spiritual power exists, then at the very least the burden of proof falls on those who doubt this claim to show why it is false or unfounded.

Only if we feel the need to justify a minority position. There is no evidence that any experience is caused by a 'higher spiritual power'. If the actual evidential value of a claim is zero, it doesn't matter how many people make it. It should still be disregarded in any rational decision making process.

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't think religion is particularly about providing explanations--it's about guiding actions.

Providing an explanation that makes sense, in order to achieve a coherent world view. Which we then use to guide our actions. Yes, if a religion provides a good enough life map without much rational consideration of how it's been produced, it's OK as far as it goes. But it may not continue to work if one or more life variables change.

[ 02. July 2009, 20:39: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Only if we feel the need to justify a minority position. There is no evidence that any experience is caused by a 'higher spiritual power'. If the actual evidential value of a claim is zero, it doesn't matter how many people make it. It should still be disregarded in any rational decision making process.

If 99% of people tell me "There is an elephant in Wenceslas Square", would it be more rational to believe or disbelieve them?

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
When I said "truth claims," I probably should have said claims about objectively held facts, and when I said "truth" in that last post, it probably would have been more clear if I'd said "Truth" (imagine accompanying choirs of angels, maybe?).

Ha! There's probably a discussion to be had about what is truth (or Truth), and whether there's any point to faith independent of truth (the ordinary kind, without angelic choirs), but I understand what you mean.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
If 99% of people tell me "There is an elephant in Wenceslas Square", would it be more rational to believe or disbelieve them?

We know elephants exist. Wencelas Square sounds like plenty of known geographical locations. A 'higher spiritual power' is an entirely imaginary phenomenon, a generic explanation for otherwise hard to explain experiences. That so many people claim belief in such a thing suggests a propensity of human minds to invent it, perhaps for good evolutionary reasons, not that the belief reflects any non-subjective reality.

Posted by Chill (# 13643) on :

Dave

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
if the actual evidential value of a claim is zero, it doesn't matter how many people make it. It should still be disregarded in any rational decision making process.

If this claim you are making is true then I assume you can provide it with some evidential value. Otherwise by the very logic of this apparently abstract and un-provable claim it must be dismissed from any rational decision making.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chill:
If this claim you are making is true then I assume you can provide it with some evidential value.

I made no claim, only stated a fact. Here's another one. You can assume whatever you like. Doesn't make for an interesting discussion, though.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Ha! There's probably a discussion to be had about what is truth (or Truth),

Yeah, lets talk about "Truth". Whose definition should we use?

Rationality and Reason have their limits. The Enlightenment thought they would be the end all and be all, but philosophy has moved on from there.

I like this quote from a Sparknotes summary of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1781:

"In effect, Kant tells us that reality is a joint creation of external reality and the human mind and that it is only regarding the latter that we can acquire any certain knowledge. Kant challenges the assumption that the mind is a blank slate or a neutral receptor of stimuli from the surrounding world. The mind does not simply receive information, according to Kant; it also gives that information shape. Knowledge, then, is not something that exists in the outside world and is then poured into an open mind like milk into a cup. Rather, knowledge is something created by the mind by filtering sensations through our various mental faculties. Because these faculties determine the shape that all knowledge takes, we can only grasp what knowledge, and hence truth, is in its most general form if we grasp how these faculties inform our experience. "

Or maybe this is too off topic
[Big Grin]

Reminds me of Pilate asking Jesus "What is truth"?

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
A 'higher spiritual power' is an entirely imaginary phenomenon, a generic explanation for otherwise hard to explain experiences.

It occurs to me that I, as someone who claims that we will all live an eternal life after death, have a distinct advantage over you if you claim that when you die, that's the end. If I am right, then I will eventually have the opportunity to track you down to say "Ha - told you so!" However, if you are right, then you will never have such an opportunity. [Razz]

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

I meant "you" in general, not you in particular, Dave - sorry. I realize that you are very careful about making any claims. [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't believe there is any analogy between religion and science.
Science and religion certainly work differently. Science sets out to describe what can be repeatably measured, religion to provide plausible explanations of human experience.
I don't think religion is particularly about providing explanations--it's about guiding actions. The core scientific question is "How do things work?" The core religious question is "How shall I live?"
While there's a lot in what you say, I think you are still too limited in your view here. Yes, "How shall I live" may be a central aspect of religion. But sometimes it is a very different enterprise than that. It may be as simple as feeling the need to say "Thank you" for the bounty that has been poured out on you. It need not be a question at all.

--Tom Clune

Oh, I certainly agree. That impulse to gratitude, or to overwhelming love, is like getting the answer without having to ask the question at all--as are most really profound spiritual experiences, ISTM. Systematic inquiry is not what it's about.

Posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd) (# 12163) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
... 'The Christian God' is not a description of one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Christians. ...

Well, Dave, sadly, I don't think that's the way many Nonchristians see it.

One of the problems with so many questionable proselytyzers around is that they do, often, reduce 'God' to some sort of snake oil, which, somehow, they claim to be able to use for various purposes. Distortion and blasphemy.

This 'I believe in God'; 'I don't'; 'Prove God exists'; 'Prove he doesn't' is IMO infantile.

When Jesus - the one who started the Christian Church - was around he didn't have to 'prove' anything like this. Atheism was rare in the Ancient World. Jews and Samaritans, like Muslims, believed in substantially the same God Christians do, what Jesus brought was the reality behind that belief. He went beyond temple sacrifices and 'buying' God's Grace. Things happened.

Buddha preceded Jesus by 500 years. You could make a case for Buddha being very like Jesus, but in an Ancient Indian context, without the Jewish belief in God and the Jewish angst.

Buddha - and IMO Theravada Buddhism in places like Sri Lanka is not that far from what Buddha was into - wasn't interested in wanky theologico-philosophic speculation. Hinduism in his time, like Judaism in Jesus' time, was solidified and intellectually and morally constipated.

Buddha was into teaching people into overcoming the pain and suffering of life. Transcending it.

Do you think Jesus was all that different? Forget the theological bullshit and clever phrases and take that question seriously.

It seems interesting to me that Christian monks, like the late Thomas Merton, with a practice of contemplation and meditation, can, without in any way compromising their Christian beliefs, understand what Buddhist monks, like Thich Nhat Hanh are attempting to do and realise that it is similar.

God is unimaginable. The genuine, nonwanky Christian mystics: Francis of Assisi; Dante Alighieiri; St John of the Cross et sim bear witness to it. God is calling us to depth, not wank.

I think Mad Geo has a point. [Cool]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd):

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
... 'The Christian God' is not a description of one kind of god that happens to be chosen by Christians. ...
Well, Dave, sadly, I don't think that's the way many Nonchristians see it.

Um, yes. Most of us seem agreed about that.

quote:
Buddha was into teaching people into overcoming the pain and suffering of life. Transcending it.

Do you think Jesus was all that different?

No, I don't think Jesus was all that different. He thought for himself, refused to be bound by the religious expectations of his time, made sense to and inspired those drawn to what he was on about.

quote:
It seems interesting to me that Christian monks, like the late Thomas Merton, with a practice of contemplation and meditation, can, without in any way compromising their Christian beliefs, understand what Buddhist monks, like Thich Nhat Hanh are attempting to do and realise that it is similar.

So what you're saying between the wank this and bullshit that is we should sit at the feet of the mystics you approve of and unthinkingly accept 'their Christian beliefs' like what you do?

quote:
God is unimaginable. The genuine, nonwanky Christian mystics: Francis of Assisi; Dante Alighieiri; St John of the Cross et sim bear witness to it. God is calling us to depth, not wank.

You think depth is bearing witness to what you don't have a clue about (if it's unimaginable)? Wank and bullshit all you like if that's how you make sense of life. Not much use to anyone interested in more than bodily functions, though, is it?

[ 03. July 2009, 12:51: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Dave, just because you wank when you meditate doesn't mean everybody does.

Posted by Chill (# 13643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Chill:
If this claim you are making is true then I assume you can provide it with some evidential value.
I made no claim, only stated a fact. Here's another one. You can assume whatever you like. Doesn't make for an interesting discussion, though.

So you get to arbitrarily decide what constitutes a fact without any evidence or reasoned argument that does not make for any discussion at all interesting or not it is just an assertion.

You asserted and claim factual status for the theory that evidence must be provided for a claim to have value in rational decision making.

You cannot or will not provide evidence for this claim/fact your augment is circular. i.e. your conclusion that X is true rests solely on your unproven assumption that X is true. If any evidence can be provide for this ‘FACT’ it would have to be on the basis of an appeal to experience which you wish to dismiss when religious people make the same appeal so your argument does not have a rational leg to stand on.

Chaz

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chill:
You asserted and claim factual status for the theory that evidence must be provided for a claim to have value in rational decision making.

Nope.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I don't think religion is particularly about providing explanations--it's about guiding actions.
Providing an explanation that makes sense, in order to achieve a coherent world view. Which we then use to guide our actions. Yes, if a religion provides a good enough life map without much rational consideration of how it's been produced, it's OK as far as it goes. But it may not continue to work if one or more life variables change.

Upon reflection, "map" was a poorly chosen metaphor. A guide, an immanently present companion who knows the way, is more like it.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
If 99% of people tell me "There is an elephant in Wenceslas Square", would it be more rational to believe or disbelieve them?
We know elephants exist. Wencelas Square sounds like plenty of known geographical locations. A 'higher spiritual power' is an entirely imaginary phenomenon, a generic explanation for otherwise hard to explain experiences. That so many people claim belief in such a thing suggests a propensity of human minds to invent it, perhaps for good evolutionary reasons, not that the belief reflects any non-subjective reality.

As it stands this is a completely circular argument. People's experiences of the supernatural must be delusional, because the supernatural doesn't exist. How do we know it doesn't exist? Because the only claimed experiences of it are delusional ...

OK, let me put it another way. Descartes once pointed out that, since we know the mind is deluded when we're dreaming, we have no reason to suppose the mind isn't equally deluded when we're awake. We have no independent confirmation of the existence of the awake-universe.

Most people regard this as Being A Smart-Aleck, and think the awake-universe is worthy of belief.

Now, in the case of the spiritual realm, plenty of people claim to have experienced it. Many people on this thread. Of course there are any number of reasons why they might be deluded and the spiritual realm doesn't exist. But I think you need to provide some reason why, in the case of the awake-universe, you prefer the explanation "Our impressions are, at least in part, accurate", and in the case of the spiritual real, you prefer the explanation "Our impressions are delusional, it doesn't really exist".

I may be gullible in giving credence to both sorts of impressions, but at least I'm consistent.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I may be gullible in giving credence to both sorts of impressions, but at least I'm consistent.

Though just to water my post down a bit - I'm not claiming to have presented anything like an insurmountable objection to atheism. All I'm attempting to demonstrate is that the burden of proof falls on those who deny spiritual experiences to explain why they do so.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I'm not claiming to have presented anything like an insurmountable objection to atheism.

I'm not arguing for atheism. I am though probably suggesting that defining theism in terms of 'the spiritual' is a mistake.

quote:

All I'm attempting to demonstrate is that the burden of proof falls on those who deny spiritual experiences to explain why they do so.

Where have I denied spiritual experiences? They are, or at least may well be, as real as sight or smell as experiences. What I reject, on the basis of lack of evidence, is the claim that such experiences reflect any non-subjective reality. I can't disprove such claims because we both know you can't prove a negative.

If you think this is unjustified, you'll have to point to evidence for 'the spiritual' that does not depend on individual interpretations of their own experiences.

[ 05. July 2009, 13:17: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Where have I denied spiritual experiences? They are, or at least may well be, as real as sight or smell as experiences. What I reject, on the basis of lack of evidence, is the claim that such experiences reflect any non-subjective reality. I can't disprove such claims because we both know you can't prove a negative.

That's precisely the proposition I was trying to counter, as a reading of my penultimate post should make clear.

My point is that, on the same argument, you can cast into doubt the universe I seem to experience when I am awake. But most people would regard that as self-evidently silly.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that, on the same argument, you can cast into doubt the universe I seem to experience when I am awake.

No, the universe we experience when we are awake is verifiable. We can go back to a bit we experienced yesterday and check it's still the same. We can ask someone else to describe their experience of it and compare notes. Even our ability to communicate at all (language) depends on the dependability of our common experience of this shared reality.

'The spiritual' is something else entirely, a vague formless idea built from individual (unrepeatable, unverifiable) interpretations of experience. Its only verifiable feature is the humanity of its proponents. I see no good reason to think it is anything more than a product of that experience.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
We can go back to a bit we experienced yesterday and check it's still the same. We can ask someone else to describe their experience of it and compare notes. Even our ability to communicate at all (language) depends on the dependability of our common experience of this shared reality

No, our memories of yesterday, the people we think we talk to, and the language we speak, are all part of the universe we think we experience when we're awake. They are not independent confirmation of the universe.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

For me it's about making consistent sense of my experience. If you found it made better sense to assume that all the 'other people' in your experience were only sockpuppets of your unconcious (rather than independent 'others like you') I guess you'd go with that. But I suspect you don't.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
For me it's about making consistent sense of my experience. If you found it made better sense to assume that all the 'other people' in your experience were only sockpuppets of your unconcious (rather than independent 'others like you') I guess you'd go with that. But I suspect you don't.

It depends what you mean by "makes consistent sense".

If you just mean "it feels right", then that's fine, but you can't simultaneously claim to represent the party of rational decision-making when you're basically appealing to gut instinct.

If you mean "the physical universe must be true because it's consistent", then that is simply not true, because the universe does not display uniform consistency. But we've had that argument already. The question is why you are prepared to accept seeming inconsistencies in the physical universe as having some explanation even if we haven't found it yet, while inconsistencies in the proposed spiritual realm mean that the spiritual realm doesn't exist.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

Making sense means something like imposing order. By 'making consistent sense' I mean avoiding contradictions between how I make sense in different contexts. Having a consistent, coherent world view, perhaps.

'Feels right' is only a short cut, but it's useful when for whatever reason it doesn't seem worth spending too much time on a question.

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
The question is why you are prepared to accept seeming inconsistencies in the physical universe as having some explanation even if we haven't found it yet

Que?

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
The question is why you are prepared to accept seeming inconsistencies in the physical universe as having some explanation even if we haven't found it yet
Que?

Sorry, trying to squash too many stages of argumentation into half a sentence.

I am assuming your underlying argument is something like "The universe is consistent and therefore real: the spiritual is inconsistent and therefore unreal".

We do not observe the universe to be consistent. We see that it has some consistency, and we observe some inconsistency as well. When we observe inconsistency, however, we assume our observations must be wrong, even if we don't know why.

So if Study X shows that a certain drug is effective, and Study Y shows it fails, then we assume one or both of the studies must have been flawed, or that there was some unknown variable they didn't control for.

The question is therefore why you would say "Observed inconsistencies in the physical universe must have some explanation really", but "Observed inconsistencies in the spiritual realm prove it doesn't exist, or is unworthy of belief".

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I am assuming your underlying argument is something like "The universe is consistent and therefore real: the spiritual is inconsistent and therefore unreal".

I'm only trying to make consistent sense of (my) human experience. If I wanted to describe that in terms of reality, I'd introduce the contexts within which reality seems to work.

Any experience is a subjective reality for the person involved. Verifiable experiences (and conclusions that logically follow) reflect our objective (shared) reality, what science aims to describe. Then there's ultimate reality, the context (that we have to imagine) within which objective reality, the physical universe, has its reality and within which God operates.

We can't know anything for sure about ultimate reality, only theorise. So the question becomes, if we're looking for clues about what might lie beyond this life (in ultimate reality), what is the most reliable source of information that we do have access to as the basis for a theory in which we can have faith: subjective reality or objective reality? It's a judgement call.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

But, as you yourself say, our only guide to objective reality, and the verification thereof, is through our subjective experience. So it seems to be something of a false dichotomy.

The question is why we should prioritise some subjective experiences over others.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Also, broadening the debate somewhat, from what empirical, verifiable grounds could you derive ethical statements like "It is good to help other people even when it's disadvantageous to yourself"?

("Empirical" being used here in contradistinction to "rational".)

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
our only guide to objective reality, and the verification thereof, is through our subjective experience.

No, it's not (unless you find the 'all other people are sockpuppets of my unconcious' theory credible). Objective reality by definition is, other things being equal, what can be confirmed by however many million different people are alive today.

For me anyway, that makes it vastly (multi-million to one) more likely to be a useful predictor of whatever ultimate reality might be.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Also, broadening the debate somewhat, from what empirical, verifiable grounds could you derive ethical statements like "It is good to help other people even when it's disadvantageous to yourself"?

I wouldn't. Ethics and morality are only about including the interests of others in choices that are ours to make (see past threads, Absolute Morality for example).

[ 05. July 2009, 17:13: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by wehyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Where have I denied spiritual experiences? They are, or at least may well be, as real as sight or smell as experiences. What I reject, on the basis of lack of evidence, is the claim that such experiences reflect any non-subjective reality. I can't disprove such claims because we both know you can't prove a negative.

If you think this is unjustified, you'll have to point to evidence for 'the spiritual' that does not depend on individual interpretations of their own experiences.

Personally, I don't claim that spiritual experiences reflect any non-subjective reality because I think that the universe of the human spirit is entirely subjective by its very nature. For it to have non-subjective properties that could be tested and verified, it would have to be part of the physical universe. It seems to me that insisting on evidence for anything spiritual as a non-subjective reality simply guarantees that you will never be convinced of it, and that your premise limits you to believing only in what has a physical existence or explanation.

Or are you saying that you would need a consistent, coherent world view that includes God and a spiritual aspect to life before you can accept it?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by wehyatt:
It seems to me that insisting on evidence for anything spiritual as a non-subjective reality simply guarantees that you will never be convinced of it, and that your premise limits you to believing only in what has a physical existence or explanation.

I'm only noting limits on the reliability of individual interpretations of experience that by their nature are inherently non-repeatable and unverifiable. Anyone is free to base their personal faith on unreliable evidence if they want to. I'd prefer influential institutions not to encourage it, but that's just me.

quote:
Or are you saying that you would need a consistent, coherent world view that includes God and a spiritual aspect to life before you can accept it?

I have what seems to me a consistent enough, coherent enough world view that includes God and a spiritual aspect. But the spiritual aspect is personal to me; it's just a part of my total experience of being human.

[ 06. July 2009, 10:44: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
our only guide to objective reality, and the verification thereof, is through our subjective experience.
No, it's not (unless you find the 'all other people are sockpuppets of my unconcious' theory credible). Objective reality by definition is, other things being equal, what can be confirmed by however many million different people are alive today.

Let me rephrase.

All of our impressions of objective reality, including the fact that other people often (though not always) verify our impressions, are mediated to us by our subjective experiences.

Both of us maintain that our impressions of objective reality are, broadly, true, and that the alternative sock-puppet hypothesis is unworthy of acceptance.

Whatever our grounds for this belief, we cannot hold it without assuming that our subjective experiences are, at least to some degree, reliable.

But having accepted that our subjective experiences are at least partly trustworthy, you cannot then just turn round and say "Oh, the spiritual realm can't be real, it's all subjective!"

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
All of our impressions of objective reality, including the fact that other people often (though not always) verify our impressions, are mediated to us by our subjective experiences.

I don't think so. As far as we accept the objective reality of some feature, a chair perhaps, any subjectivity involved in our perception of it has been accounted for in our reasons for giving it that classification - repeatability of observation, consistency of touch, similarity with items the world over referred to by millions of others as 'chairs'.

quote:
Whatever our grounds for this belief, we cannot hold it without assuming that our subjective experiences are, at least to some degree, reliable.

Some experiences are (for most of us) reliable: the one's where brain input comes from senses that detect what is objectively real. They'll mostly be the ones we identified as such by trial and error in our first few months of life. But they'll be no different in kind to the mass of other impressions our unconscious has learnt to disregard as not helpful to bring to self's conscious attention.

quote:
But having accepted that our subjective experiences are at least partly trustworthy, you cannot then just turn round and say "Oh, the spiritual realm can't be real, it's all subjective!"

It's not a question of 'subjective experiences being partly trustworthy'. As you've noted, our entire experience is mediated through subjective interpretation. It's the criteria we use to filter the raw impressions that are at issue. You want to give 'what seems spiritual' a free pass because, well... you like the idea of a spiritual realm? That's fair enough, a lot of people seem to do it. But without the objective reality check, you have no grounds for claiming it reflects any ultimate reality.

Posted by Laurie17 (# 14889) on :

Don't forget about non-theistic forms of christian belief. 'God' doesnt have to 'exist' as a being or even 'Being'.

Don't forget about

'God as depth.'

'God as your ultimate concern,

'the Ground of our Beseeching' etc etc

Don't forget 'Not this ! Not this'.

quote:
Originally posted by Scarlet:

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If this list (mostly) describes you, then I have a follow-up question. Why do you still stay a Christian at all? Why not say "God exists" and leave it at that? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why believe God exists at all?
This list does pretty much describe me.

I've recently answered why I stay in the faith on the I've Tried thread. As I said there, the only thing I can hang my faith on is that Some One is hearing and responding to my prayers and guiding my life. I have subjective evidence of that.

In addition to that, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'm not talking about the so-called "fire insurance" since I don't believe in a fiery Hell; rather what if I'm wrong. What if my rational intellectional reasoning is incorrect and I should have walked by faith and not by sight? Then I'll spend eternity apart from God.

[ 06. July 2009, 18:23: Message edited by: Laurie17 ]

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I sincerely doubt that there are lots moderate Christians who believe in the virgin birth; I only know one. You'd have to trot out some hard data to change my mind on that one.

If this is true (and I have no idea if it is), then these are the "moderates" I'm talking about. Moderate, in this case, is really just the opposite of "extremist", and doesn't necessarily align with any ideas of liberal/conservative etc.

The question I have, slightly rephrased, is at what point do you realize that you've removed all of the things about Christianity that make it necessary to think of yourself as a Christian at all, to believe most of the things you believe?

Ruth (and others), from what I can gather, your beliefs have a lot to do with love, respect, community, etc. Many of you don't believe in the virgin birth, in hell, in an inerrant scripture, etc. Can you still call yourself Christians in my opinion? Of COURSE you can -- who is anyone to say you can't? I'm not saying that you're not Christians by definition, I'm trying to understand why you would want to self-identify as Christians.

Actually, it might be better to ask whether you need to self-identify as a Christian in order to believe most of what you currently believe. If your reasons for remaining have more to do with the momentum of your life, your family traditions, the community you love at your church, your comfort with certain rituals, etc. then fine -- but the point there is that someone in your position could believe most of what you believe without identifying as a Christian at all.

And if that's true, then those of us who don't have those traditional comforts and connections aren't going to find that form of Christianity compelling at all. I understand you aren't trying to underwrite our faith, but the result is an implicit endorsement of atheism (or agnosticism at the least). Not a bad thing either, in my opinion, especially if it leads to more acceptance of the atheist position.

Posted by Seb (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If your reasons for remaining have more to do with the momentum of your life, your family traditions, the community you love at your church, your comfort with certain rituals, etc. then fine -- but the point there is that someone in your position could believe most of what you believe without identifying as a Christian at all.

True.

The clinching factor that makes me a Christian (as well as all those things above) is I believe the spirit of God through Christ looks after me, guides me to abundant life.

This is probably the difference between a moderate Christian and Humanist position

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

Seb, if you hadn't had the personal experience that leads you to believe that the spirit of God through Christ looks after you, would you still self-identify as a Christian?

Posted by The Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

quote:

Posted by Jason I. Am
If your reasons for remaining have more to do with the momentum of your life, your family traditions, the community you love at your church, your comfort with certain rituals, etc. then fine -- but the point there is that someone in your position could believe most of what you believe without identifying as a Christian at all.

There's also the focus on the figure of the Galilean, who seems to have had the awareness of 'god' to an extraordinary degree. And there's one's lifetime search for god, all taking place in a Christian context.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Jason, I can't cite specific language in your posts, but it still seems to me that you are operating under the assumption that to self-identify as Christian must mean that you somehow exclude those who don't from...something. A lot of self-identified Christians make the same assumption. But not all.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Timothy, I believe you. I'm not sure what I'm saying that's giving you that impression, but I don't think that I am saying that or implying it.

There just seems to be a point -- perhaps a vague, undetermined, possibly inexplicable or undefinable point -- where you've removed so many "Christian" beliefs that you are left with a set of beliefs that are good, worthwhile, and beneficial but don't gain anything from being called "Christian". I think many people at that point continue to identify with Christianity in a specific context because they've found a community that they are comfortable in, where they can believe (and not believe) in the things they've decided are important, and leave the rest. So the "Christian" part is more about community and some comfortable ritual and tradition.

I don't mean to argue that there's anything wrong or patronizing about that. I was hoping to explore the phenomenon, and try to better understand it.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
The question I have, slightly rephrased, is at what point do you realize that you've removed all of the things about Christianity that make it necessary to think of yourself as a Christian at all, to believe most of the things you believe?

Ruth (and others), from what I can gather, your beliefs have a lot to do with love, respect, community, etc. Many of you don't believe in the virgin birth, in hell, in an inerrant scripture, etc. Can you still call yourself Christians in my opinion? Of COURSE you can -- who is anyone to say you can't? I'm not saying that you're not Christians by definition, I'm trying to understand why you would want to self-identify as Christians.

Actually, it might be better to ask whether you need to self-identify as a Christian in order to believe most of what you currently believe. If your reasons for remaining have more to do with the momentum of your life, your family traditions, the community you love at your church, your comfort with certain rituals, etc. then fine -- but the point there is that someone in your position could believe most of what you believe without identifying as a Christian at all.

The transcendental spiritual experiences I have had have all had to do with the person of Jesus Christ, so I think it would be rather foolish of me to abandon Christianity.

It's interesting to me that so many people operate with a definition of Christianity that assumes belief in things like the virgin birth and inerrancy of scripture, things the apostles hadn't even conceived of. Some people self-identify as Christians today for reasons that are probably similar to the reasons shared by some of the people who followed Jesus when he walked the earth -- they found him a compelling figure, someone whose teachings made sense of the world and inspired them and who showed by word and deed the way to God.

I don't believe things I consider completely foolish -- the virgin birth, inerrant scriptures, PSA, that non-Christians are going to hell, etc. I do believe that Jesus is God incarnate, but I believe that on the basis of an experience that I know is not available to others, so I don't think that other people have to believe what I believe. I don't have any basis to make an exclusive claim to knowing what God is about. Maybe Krishna was also God incarnate; I don't know, and it doesn't matter to me. But I don't see anything in that that should make me want to abandon Christianity. Not believing in the virgin birth et cetera doesn't make Jesus Christ any less compelling for me or any less necessary for my spiritual life.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Jason--

Ruth said it very well. I would just add that I always believed all of those things in the OP--at least as soon as I was old enough to think about them. That was exactly the Christianity I was raised in, that I abandoned for a time, and then came back to. It was in the coming back that I first encountered most of the stuff you're characterizing as central. If I believed that PSA, or creationism, or inerrancy was essential to Christianity, I wouldn't identify as a Christian, because then Christianity wouldn't make sense to me.

But I didn't return to Christianity because of beliefs--it was because of an experience. Like Ruth, I don't offer that as evidence to anyone else (though it's sufficient evidence to me). I'm not sure what more I can

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

There I was going to post something I'd finally thought of, and The Galloping Granny, RuthW, and Timothy the Obscure have all gone and just said it already.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

Ruth and Timothy - thanks.

From what I can gather from you and others' responses over the life of this thread, it sounds like there are two main reasons why religious "moderates" keep the faith:

1. The comfortable momentum of tradition, and

2. Mystical, inexplicable, unrepeatable experience that is directly attributed to the person of Jesus Christ.

I think these go far in explaining the differences between some of you and some of us like Scot and I who have neither (1) nor (2).

Posted by Scot (# 2095) on :

I've been trying to come up with a response to Ruth and Timothy that amounted to more than, "Huh. Okay."

What you describe makes sense. I've got to say, however, that it is completely different than any form of Christianity (certainly anything identified as "moderate") that I encountered in nearly four decades in the church. Not saying that it's not real Christianity, just that it's quite uncommon in my experience.

I'm not left with any better answers for myself, but I think I have a better understanding of certain other people. That's a good day in my book.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
From what I can gather from you and others' responses over the life of this thread, it sounds like there are two main reasons why religious "moderates" keep the faith:

1. The comfortable momentum of tradition, and

I am another moderate, and I wouldn't agree with this at all. I've walked away from the church for years at a time, thirteen as a teenager and through my twenties. I have built other ways of living in those times and still got pulled back to church.

quote:
2. Mystical, inexplicable, unrepeatable experience that is directly attributed to the person of Jesus Christ.

Nope, not that one either - just something that pulls me back - nothing so definite as an experience of the person of Jesus Christ. And also the feeling of being off the rails, losing my focus, not being able to cope with the challenging things I do for a job* and voluntarily if I don't pray regularly and go to church.

* I work with challenging teenagers - the ones whose school placements have broken down.

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
1. The comfortable momentum of tradition, and

2. Mystical, inexplicable, unrepeatable experience that is directly attributed to the person of Jesus Christ.

You left out following Jesus. Sure, there will be some who identify "Jesus, great teacher, I'm not a Christian." Others who identify "Jesus, great teacher, I'm a Christian." The latter may well wrestle with what to think of Jesus' divinity and resurrection, (or interpret those in a variety of ways that your more literal-minded person might not accept). I don't know what causes one set to go one way and one the other way, in terms of identifying as Christian or not. "Comfortable momentum of tradition" doesn't explain it, because there are those who don't call themselves Christians who had all the traditional upbringing. And for those of us who do call ourselves Christians, it can be quite challenging and not as comfortable as your dismissive phrase has it.

There may be other things you've left out too; I don't want to imply that my addition exhausts the possibilities.

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

Something that occurs to me, Jason.I.Am, is that your questions seem focussed on movement away from a certain type of Christianity.

What answers might you get if you considered the question more fully the other way: what draws people back into Christianity after a time of not considering themselves Christian?

Posted by Chill (# 13643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Nope.

To which I respond Yes [Snore]

Is there an argument or even a rational thought on the horizon or are you planning to stick with the ‘I’m rubber your glue’ school of debate?

[ 10. July 2009, 11:56: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chill:
Is there an argument or even a rational thought on the horizon

Wise people here have pointed out to me in the past that debate works better if we ask our questions and explain our positions in a constructive, open-ended manner.

If you have good reasons for not disregarding a claim that has no evidential value, I'd be interested to know what they are. And although it's a different question, if you think there is evidence that any experience is caused by a 'higher spiritual power' (the claim I said has no evidential value), I'd also be interested.

Otherwise, perhaps go back to that school of debate?

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
I don't know what causes one set to go one way and one the other way, in terms of identifying as Christian or not. "Comfortable momentum of tradition" doesn't explain it, because there are those who don't call themselves Christians who had all the traditional upbringing.

That's irrelevant. Some people (even on this thread) explain their involvement with Christianity as a function of what they are comfortable with, what they know, what they understand, what is a part of their own culture, community, and even family.

quote:
And for those of us who do call ourselves Christians, it can be quite challenging and not as comfortable as your dismissive phrase has it.

It's not meant to be demeaning or dismissive. It's what people have said on this thread. Christianity is the most comfortable context within which to deal with their spiritual experiences, morality, etc. It's a part of the culture whether you grew up inside of a tradition or not. It makes sense. Whether or not it's actually challenging is a different argument, but even if it is, it might still be the most comfortable context, in their opinion.

As for your "you left out following Jesus", I can't make heads or tails of it. It sounds nice and might even get a "bow-down" smiley, but what does it mean?

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
As for your "you left out following Jesus", I can't make heads or tails of it. It sounds nice and might even get a "bow-down" smiley, but what does it mean?

AR can of course answer for herself, but I'd say that at the very least it means following his teachings. One of the interesting things about both the creeds and the lists of things that a lot of non-credal Christians say all Christians are supposed to care about is that there's a lot of attention to the beginning and end of Jesus' life and not so much about his ministry and teachings. But following Jesus could just mean trying to follow what he taught. Puzzling out the doctrine of the Incarnation and meditating upon what it means are good exercises for me, but ultimately trying to put into practice what Jesus said to do seems way more to the point.

And to stave off a potential question: why don't I just follow what seem like good teachings and not bother at all about the Incarnation, etc? Partly because the fact that something is a good idea isn't enough to make me do it, and partly because there are a lot of good teachings out there, and I need something to help me to choose which path to take. What the doctrine of the Incarnation says about the nature of our relationship to God speaks to me in a way that, for instance, Buddhist teachings about the nature of our existence don't.

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

Jason.I.Am, I've been mulling over your post for several days. I hesitate because I haven't got a perfect answer, and I wish I did. Here are my less-than-perfect thoughts, trying to articulate them. This post is long because I don't know have a final pithy summing-up way to put my mullings; if I did then it could be short.

In mulling this over, I've started noticing people's statements about where they are -- going to church, not going, hesitating, committed -- on other threads. Among other places, the Last Straw thread has some examples. I'm glad to hear you don't mean the reference to "comfortable momentum of tradition" as dismissive. And I hear now what you're saying about, it's what people on this thread have said about themselves.

I think the phrase I would tend to use is, it's because for many of us, Christianity is our culture. That I suppose could sound weak, but I mean it very strongly: these are the stories we've been raised with, so these are the stories that make sense of the world to us, and the stories to which we return seeking answers, turning them over and over like a prism.

I wonder whether there's a story behind the story people tell about themselves. The posts I've started to notice are the ones where people say something along the lines of, a tradition (or culture, or practice) they've been part of stops making sense any more. Sometimes slowly over time, waiting for the final event, sometimes sudden and sometimes a slow eroding, which causes them to cease church-going at least. I haven't yet noticed people saying if they stop identifying as Christian at that point or not. Though I think there must be another equally long process of non-church-going that may or may not end up in people at the end of it realising they don't call themselves Christian any more either.

In mulling over all these things, and thinking about how what I find curious is why people stay at any particular point on that spectrum, while other people keep sliding to the end of the spectrum and out of calling themselves Christian -- well, then I realized that finally I was starting to appreciate the question you asked to start with. Although I do think the bullet points in your OP were largely a red herring.

I think it works in the other direction too, and I think your questions haven't focussed on this, but it's important. It's a two-way spectrum: people not only slide off the spectrum, but also step onto the spectrum and move into Christianity. How that comes about surely sheds some light on the ways that people find resting places all along the spectrum.

I don't have a complete epistemology of my own faith, let anyone else's, much as for years and years I have wanted one.

quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
As for your "you left out following Jesus", I can't make heads or tails of it. It sounds nice and might even get a "bow-down" smiley, but what does it mean?

I didn't mean anything bow-down smiley about it. RuthW has described it well. People find Jesus an inspiring teacher, and are moved to try to follow his example of word and deed.

The curious point about this to me is that some of those people call themselves Christian, some don't, and I find it curious to wonder why that is.

For moderates who believe there are many paths up the same mountain (not saying the two things moderate and many-paths are coterminous), then our descriptions of why we call ourselves Christian will likely include the contingent history of how we came to be travelling the Christian path rather than another path. If one believes Christianity is the only path, then one's explanations will be more likely to include the uniqueness of Christianity as part of the explanation, even though culture and tradition may be as much explanations.

For me, I find it important to be within one tradition, following it deeply, so even though I can explain why I call myself a Christian, I can't deny that if I had had a different upbringing, or different events at key points in my life, then I would not be a Christian.

Posted by Jason I. Am (# 9037) on :

AR, thanks. I don't have much to say in response to most of what you said other than thanks for explaining your vantage point. I think it aligns mostly with the understanding I've come to through the course of this thread.

As for this:

quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
I think it works in the other direction too, and I think your questions haven't focussed on this, but it's important. It's a two-way spectrum: people not only slide off the spectrum, but also step onto the spectrum and move into Christianity. How that comes about surely sheds some light on the ways that people find resting places all along the spectrum.

Do you think there are many people who aren't Christians, who somehow begin to really believe in love, or the goodness of certain virtues, who then say, "Hm, I guess I should call myself a Christian at this point?" To me, the idea seems very bizarre, and yet that's what it would look like for it to be "going both ways" as you describe.

Yes, people become Christians just like people disavow the faith. But I'd say most people become Christians because of a specific experience, some kind of conversion that happened at a revival or during a conversation with a friend, some realization that certain precepts were true and a decision to identify as a Christian through some means or another.

Christians who leave the faith in this way exist, too, and there's a sort of ying and yang relationship to those occurrences.

But those who look around them and suddenly realize that the things they believe don't rest on anything uniquely Christian, and so therefore realize that their Christianity has become useless to them -- I'm not sure if there's a reverse to that, at least not a common one. There might be, but I can't imagine what it would realistically look like.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[QB] What I think is unique about Christianity is its proclamation of grace and its even more daring proclamation that God is love.

I don't see what's so good about the idea of grace as, as far as I can see, it refers to God deciding to either give people faith or not as he feels like it, which makes us powerless.

re. God as love being unique, there is a strand in Hinduism called bhakti, which says just that - take the way the Hare Krishnas see Krishna, for example. I would be amazed if it didn't exist in any other faiths too

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
I don't see what's so good about the idea of grace as, as far as I can see, it refers to God deciding to either give people faith or not as he feels like it, which makes us powerless.

That's a rather Calvinistic understanding of grace. I think you will find there are others.

Posted by Laurie17 (# 14889) on :

i have enjoyed this thread --interesting and useful to me

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

Two distinct points:

1) Gandhi famously said that, based on the Sermon on the Mount, he would be a Christian. Unfortunately, the behaviour of the Christians he had to deal with got in the way of that.

2) AR: I understand your point about our inherent cultural base speaks to me. My approach to church and Christianity is heavily coloured by my specific upbringing, despite having little or no contact with that history for over forty years. Expressing my Christianity in the Baptist manner, which would be the obvious thing to do where I am, simply doesn't work for me.

So I am left with trying to boil it down to what makes sense as I deal with the part of the world I am in - and that doesn't really work in relation to "church" as such, although there are elements I can use to illustrate an argument or presentation. Another part of that is the number of people who really have no religious practise that makes any sense to them, so we are starting from scratch. (Gandhi's comment actually applies to far too many of the people I meeet!)

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