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» Ship of Fools   » Ship's Locker   » Limbo   » Purgatory: Final Straws - why do religious moderates keep the faith? (Page 3)

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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: Final Straws - why do religious moderates keep the faith?
tclune
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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

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Seeker963
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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.

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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)

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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
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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.

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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.

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Ynot
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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!!!
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Dafyd
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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.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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El Greco
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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...

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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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Alogon
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(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 ]

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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.

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tclune
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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 ]

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Alogon
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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?

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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.

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Scot

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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.

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“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” - Thomas Jefferson

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malik3000
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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 ]

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God = love.
Otherwise, things are not just black or white.

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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513

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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.

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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.

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RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
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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 ]

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El Greco
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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 ]

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Dafyd
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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.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Timothy the Obscure

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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.

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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
  - C. P. Snow

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Alogon
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# 5513

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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.

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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.

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Bullfrog.

Prophetic Amphibian
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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.

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Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God's a drunkard for pain
Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train. --Josh Ritter, Harrisburg

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tclune
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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 ]

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This space left blank intentionally.

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Lou Poulain
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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

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Jason™

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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.
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Jason™

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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?
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El Greco
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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 ]

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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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RadicalWhig
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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?

[Killing me] 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.

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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)

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Lou Poulain
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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

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Jason™

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RadicalWhig, what are you talking about?
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RadicalWhig
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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 ]

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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)

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RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
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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. [Biased]

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 ]

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Seeker963
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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.

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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)

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RadicalWhig
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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.

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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)

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Yerevan
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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)...

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Doublethink.
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(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 ?

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Scot

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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.

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“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” - Thomas Jefferson

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Scot

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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.

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“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” - Thomas Jefferson

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Seeker963
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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 [Biased] .

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.

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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)

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RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
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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 ]

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RadicalWhig
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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.

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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)

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Barnabas62
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# 9110

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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 ]

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Elephenor
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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'.)

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saysay

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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.

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I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."

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LutheranChik
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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]

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mousethief

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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?

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Lyda*Rose

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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 ]

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Jason™

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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.
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Jason™

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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.

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mousethief

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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.

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Jason™

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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?"
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Jason™

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Mousethief -- exactly.
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mousethief

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

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Jason™

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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?
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