Thread: Who lit the fuse, under the bum of Christendom? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
Irving Layton's 1976 poem C'est Fini starts
"Three Jews, three Jews
lit a fuse
under the bum
of Christendom"
He goes on to blame Spinoza for introducing logic and criticism, Marx for explaining how Christians got rich, and Freud for subversively explaining our dreams and myths.
I think we must admit that Christianity is indeed in decline. What do you think are the reasons? I have thought that the focus on the material, by this I mean the physical reality, coupled with selfishness and profanity masquerading as the sacred are pieces of this. What do you think?
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Irving Layton's 1976 poem C'est Fini starts
"Three Jews, three Jews
lit a fuse
under the bum
of Christendom"
He goes on to blame Spinoza for introducing logic and criticism, Marx for explaining how Christians got rich, and Freud for subversively explaining our dreams and myths.
I think we must admit that Christianity is indeed in decline. What do you think are the reasons? I have thought that the focus on the material, by this I mean the physical reality, coupled with selfishness and profanity masquerading as the sacred are pieces of this. What do you think?
My personal admiration for Spinoza not withstanding, can he really be credited with "introducing logic and criticism"?
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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No, Layton had a axe to grind about Jews and Christians: Paul is a Hellenized sod, he wonders about The Virginal Clean Mary who lived among people called dirty Jews in later centuries. Perhaps I shouldn't have decided to riff a thread from my Canadian brother Irving, but he is one of our best poets.
I still wonder about all the firecrackers lit under Christianity. There appears to be no bomb or sudden thing, like another crucifixion to overturn it. Just little pops and farts as the thing degrades.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
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It is the old farts in the hierarchy that contribute to the problem
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on
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It's more than a silent fart outside Europe.
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I think we must admit that Christianity is indeed in decline. What do you think are the reasons? I have thought that the focus on the material, by this I mean the physical reality, coupled with selfishness and profanity masquerading as the sacred are pieces of this. What do you think?
A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking about the evangelisation of towns in the UK in the Industrial Revolution. We both came round to thinking that perhaps they weren't evangelised much at all (at least by small-e "establishment" churches): the factory owners built churches, and the working class went to them, because if they didn't go to church (or chapel) on Sunday, they didn't have a job to go to on Monday. Church wasn't so much the opium of the masses, as a mechanism of social control in the hands of the privileged.
Do that for a few generations, we thought, and when the coercion is finally removed, it's hardly surprising that the next generation doesn't go to church at all. You've not only built up generations of resentment, you've also allowed the working class to see the moneyed class parading its hypocrisies in public.
So my suggestion for "Who lit the fuse" would be - the capitalists who conscripted the Church as a means of social control, and the Church that was more than willing to go along for the ride.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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It was in The Gravedigger File that I first read the line by G.K. Chesterton: quote:
At least five times the Christian faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died
Let's not write any obituaries too soon.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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I'm not sure your portrayal of the Industrial Revolution is entirely accurate, Adeodatus.
People didn't always attend the same chapel as the bosses.
I once went to a fascinating lecture about the history of Methodism in the Huddersfield area by a pukka Methodist historian.
Despite their proximity, Leeds and Huddersfield were entirely different in the way their religious and intellectual or philosophical life and institutions developed.
In the 18th and 19th centuries Leeds was seen as far 'freer' because people had more say in what went on. Huddersfield - 'the town that bought itself' - was effectively owned by a small number of industrialists - and essentially the only real 'choice' that people had was which church or chapel to attend.
This led to a bewildering plethora of churches and chapels - far more than in Leeds - because people would attend different ones in order to assert some kind of independence or individuality.
Sure, there were some mill towns where everyone attended particular chapels or churches because the bosses expected it of them ... but the situation was far more varied than the 'trouble up't mill' mythology might suggest.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Also, according to the 1850 (51?) Religious Census, there were vast swathes of the working classes who were completely unchurched.
About half the population of the UK attended church or chapel in the 1850s ... roughly evenly divided between the Big E Establishment Churches (CofE and Kirk) and the various non-conformist chapels.
That left another half which didn't have anything to do with organised religion at all.
The 'lower' working classes had effectively been 'lost' to organised religion by the early 19th century ...
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
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Given the options you mention, the RCs simply weren't counted as "church people".
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I'm not sure about Spinoza, but I agree that Marxism and depth psychology have been like acids eating away at religion; also post-modernism as well.
I wonder if religion has been too hierarchical and too undemocratic really; today is the age of pluralism.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure about Spinoza, but I agree that Marxism and depth psychology have been like acids eating away at religion; also post-modernism as well.
I would say that, as alternatives appear, religion is no longer considered the only answer.
And prosperity is the enemy of religion, for the masses at least.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I wonder if religion has been too hierarchical and too undemocratic really; today is the age of pluralism.
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Church wasn't so much the opium of the masses, as a mechanism of social control in the hands of the privileged.
Protestantism did not spread merely on on the whim of the masses, but also for the benefit of their masters.
Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on
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quote:
And prosperity is the enemy of religion, for the masses at least.
Not according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life which produced a report referenced in this article. To quote from it
Demographically speaking, the religiously unaffiliated are simultaneously unusually diverse and strikingly homogenous. The Pew survey reported that the increase in “nones” transcends income bracket, education level, and geographic region, dispelling the stereotype that people abandon religion because of higher education, increased wealth, or urbanization.
Charles Murray in his survey of white America from 1960 to 2010 - reviewed here - more or less says the same thing. Although I believe the numbers he has shows the upper income brackets have shown stability in religious observance with some decline during the forty year period studied. The rate of religious observance among the lower income brackets dropped precipitously along with a general disengagement in civic life. Something also shown I think in the Pew survey.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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Please let me know if I am being spectacularly dense, but I read that article as supporting my statement.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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The biggest drop offs in church attendance happened fairly universally in the western world around the 1960's.
Some people think it might have something to do with the government taking over the role of welfare.
This journal article says:
quote:
...we argue and empirically demonstrate that state welfare spending has a detrimental, albeit unintended, effect on long-term religious participation and overall religiosity.
Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The biggest drop offs in church attendance happened fairly universally in the western world around the 1960's.
Some people think it might have something to do with the government taking over the role of welfare.
This journal article says:
quote:
...we argue and empirically demonstrate that state welfare spending has a detrimental, albeit unintended, effect on long-term religious participation and overall religiosity.
I'm sure that some churches in the USA (and other places) believe this - which is why they are so against what they misrepresent as "socialism". If the state provides a decent minimum level of support there's less reason to fund the church you used to rely on in the hope of food parcels etc.. That, the scientific method, the desire for, and availability of, consumer goods, the multiplicity of entertainment options and their ease of access, and, of course, education probably all contribute.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I think we must admit that Christianity is indeed in decline.
My understanding is that the decline in Europe and America is more than offset by the growth in Africa and Asia.
So, maybe in change rather than in decline.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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The equation of increased welfare with declining religion seems to have some credibility, and explains the anomaly of the US, but I think that in England, the working class became less religious after 1800.
But here you could describe increased affluence (compared with the rural poor), and urbanization.
Yet the middle class hung on to religion; so class seems to be a factor, hence the reference to Marx in the OP.
The reference to Freud is interesting, as therapists sometimes talk about therapy as secular confession.
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
It is the old farts in the hierarchy that contribute to the problem
And clearly lighting a fuse under the bum of an old fart isn't going to end well...
Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on
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Callum Brown's The Death of Christian Britain argues that there has been a precipitious decline in churchgoing in Britain since 1963, although there had been a disparity between Christian observance and Christian belief since the early nineteenth century. Brown argues that the decline in church-going is associated with social changes such as the decline of deference and the rise of individualism, legislative changes such as the Abortion Act of 1967, the growth of secular morality centred upon such things as freedom of sexual expression.
For Brown the decline of Christianity isn't so much located in urbanisation or social class as the decline of religiosity in women.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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@Horseman Bree - apologies, I should have mentioned the RCs. They were included in the mid-Victorian church census - and there were a lot of them too - particularly in the growing industrial areas with an influx of Irish.
I think it's right that there was a divergence between religious belief and church attendance from about 1800.
Poorer people, it was said, couldn't afford the pew rents and also didn't want to be 'seen' as poor ... they would have stuck out like sore thumbs among respectable or better-dressed church and chapel congregations.
Church and chapel attendance was largely a more middle-class thing ... although there were groups like the Primitive Methodists and later the Salvation Army which did a lot of work in poorer working class districts.
As far as it is possible to tell, converts in the Wesleyan revival tended to be from the ranks of the skilled artisans upwards ... although people of that 'rank' and upwards were more likely to be able to read and to leave records of their testimonies and so on. I'm thinking of guys like John Nelson the stone-mason who was Wesley's 'adjutant' in West Yorkshire.
The same had been true of Puritanism in previous centuries ... self-employed, tradesmen, small shopkeepers and merchants etc.
The 1960s saw the cataclysmic decline, but this process had been building up for decades before.
I've read a fascinating account of religious observance in Huddersfield and it's clear that church and chapel attendance dropped off dramatically as soon as public transport increased, as soon as the cinema provided an alternative to Band of Hope meetings and so on and as soon as there were other options available as to how one could spend one's time.
The decline in formal religious observance from 1920 onwards was very marked indeed - even if people still sent their kids to Sunday School.
In the mid-1960s a lot of us kids were still sent to Sunday School even though our parents stayed at home. This trend had largely disappeared by around 1970-1972 where I grew up.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The decline in formal religious observance from 1920 onwards was very marked indeed - even if people still sent their kids to Sunday School.
In the mid-1960s a lot of us kids were still sent to Sunday School even though our parents stayed at home. This trend had largely disappeared by around 1970-1972 where I grew up.
Also, don't forget that the Sunday School movement itself had been started on the backs of a much an earlier decline in church attendance (among other things) a century or so earlier.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
starts
"Three Jews, three Jews
lit a fuse
under the bum
of Christendom"
Interestingly no mention of Darwin.
In each case however the fuse lighters became significant for the enthusiasm with which their views were taken up - suggesting that the time was right (in some vague sense) for such ideas.
Marx's 'religion is the opium of the people' could be read is the sort of attack that Jewish prophets regularly made against wealth and power. And indeed Marxism with its messianic undertones was influential in Liberation Theology. Perhaps others of those seen as destroying Christianity might be seen as more attacking religion as an institution and ideology than for its essential content.
And the religious wars of the 16-17th centuries weren't a great advert for peace and love. I think they deserve a mention.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Good point about Darwin there. Freud used to say that there had been 3 great decentrings in human thought - the disappearance of geocentrism (Copernicus); the loss of anthropocentrism in evolution (Darwin); and the dethroning of the ego, and the undermining of reason (Freud). Modest, eh?
It's been called species narcissism.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
starts
"Three Jews, three Jews
lit a fuse
under the bum
of Christendom"
Interestingly no mention of Darwin.
Because faith and science and education are not incompatible. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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One of the interesting things about Marx is that he both criticized religion, and also copied its messianic longing for a new world. Unfortunately, as with most utopian schemes, it crashed and burned.
But it seems to show that utopian or messianic longing is somehow inherent in humans, although it can be secularized. In fact, you could say that it is a very dangerous human predilection, easily manipulated; as citizen Robespierre was wont to say, 'terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible'.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Indeed they aren't, but people think they are incompatible.
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
It was in The Gravedigger File that I first read the line by G.K. Chesterton: quote:
At least five times the Christian faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died
Let's not write any obituaries too soon.
I thought I'd look up the quote and see which the five times were:
"At least five times, therefore, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died. How complete was the collapse and how strange the reversal, we cars only see in detail in the case nearest to our own time."
The first time, the Arians, we can easily see how well the Arians did at Nicea. Now I could make the case that the Faith went to the dogs at Nicea - and never recovered - but I'm sure that's not what he means. But his example of choice is Darwin, "killed" by the Tractarians who brought conviction back to the Church.
Which is in part an analogy for the problems the Church faces today - better illustrated by a particularly famous and almost cliched quote from Yeats' The Second Coming. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity" Which is exactly the problem lighting a fire under Western Christianity. What does Western Christianity stand for?
The stereotypical liberal Christian does indeed lack all conviction and is one step away from benevolent deism - a message that inspires very few.
As for the stereotypical conservative Christian? Who frequently are full of passionate intensity - and so vastly more inspiring than the John Shelby Spongs and Rowan Williams of this world? Their main public cause is advocating homophobia, frequently with a side order of sexism. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland are all campaigners against equal marriage. This is what they put their reputations on the line for. In America the largest Protestant denomination is the SBC - who are homophobic and were founded on a pro slavery platform (and let's not get into George Whitefield, star of the Great Awakening and Slavery Advocate).
So from my perspective the problem is not about what lit the fire. Things fall apart. The centre can not hold. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Indeed they aren't, but people think they are incompatible.
Lack of education and a misunderstanding of the scientific method.
[ 04. September 2014, 11:29: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Further to the point about human narcissism receiving multiple shocks, here is Freud describing the final one:
"But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the ego of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind."
Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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'Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are these words out
When a vast image out of 'Spiritus Mundi'
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert ...
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Further to the point about human narcissism receiving multiple shocks, here is Freud describing the final one:
"But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the ego of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind."
Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis.
I believe it was Marx, Nietszche and Freud that were responsible for the "hermeneutics of suspicion" in theology.
Important contributors but not unassailable odds for the thoughtful.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
So from my perspective the problem is not about what lit the fire. Things fall apart. The centre can not hold. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity.
The best do not lack all conviction: they acknowledge ambiguity while still proclaiming Christ.
But perhaps that's not sexy.
But if you're proclaiming the truth, you can't worry too much about sexy: it's the way of the world after all.
We are called to be faithful to the truth. If that means the decline of the church so be it.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Incidentally, on post-modernism, it simultaneously undermines religion as an authoritative narrative concerning truth, while also rehabilitating it, since in the 'multiple narratives' recommended by pm, the religious narrative is as valid as any other. Thus quite a number of post-modern thinkers have become interested in Christianity, e.g. Derrida and Zizek.
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
So from my perspective the problem is not about what lit the fire. Things fall apart. The centre can not hold. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity.
The best do not lack all conviction: they acknowledge ambiguity while still proclaiming Christ.
But perhaps that's not sexy.
But if you're proclaiming the truth, you can't worry too much about sexy: it's the way of the world after all.
We are called to be faithful to the truth. If that means the decline of the church so be it.
Conviction in this case is about the confidence with which you move. To take the obvious example of the CofE, at an institutional level is made up of a mix of homophobes and people more worried about upsetting the homophobes than those the homophobes are hurting. That's what "Lack all conviction" means.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here. As a kid, and afterwards, it struck me that s/he was.
Anyways, I could manage that paradox for a long time, but eventually it cracked open.
But many of my friends say the same thing, so I don't know how much this has contributed to the decline; maybe not all that much, since I am talking about people who think about such things, and maybe today, many people don't.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Conviction in this case is about the confidence with which you move. To take the obvious example of the CofE, at an institutional level is made up of a mix of homophobes and people more worried about upsetting the homophobes than those the homophobes are hurting. That's what "Lack all conviction" means.
Ah I see. Conviction is about decision making? How very corporate businessy and bourgeoisie an idea.
Thankfully the CofE has not succumbed.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Well, the C of E has succumbed to homophobia, at an institutional level. Do you think possibly this might repel people? Bet your sweet bippy it does.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here.
You wha......???
The Christian conviction is precisely the opposite. God is here in the incarnation and the risen Christ.
"I will be with you always - till the end of the age".
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here.
You wha......???
The Christian conviction is precisely the opposite. God is here in the incarnation and the risen Christ.
"I will be with you always - till the end of the age".
Hang on. I think you are misconstruing me. I didn't say that God is here in the incarnation. I said God is here. There is quite a big difference.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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And the risen Christ that has promised to be with us always...? That means God is here. Now.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
And the risen Christ that has promised to be with us always...? That means God is here. Now.
Fair enough; so there is no need for Christ, because God is here now. I agree.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
And the risen Christ that has promised to be with us always...? That means God is here. Now.
Fair enough; so there is no need for Christ, because God is here now. I agree.
Not sure how to you came to that conclusion. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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It seems to me that Yoga and using electronic gadgets have replaced liturgy and contemplation. But that's a very recent trend, so merely the newest set of absorbing activities.
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Conviction in this case is about the confidence with which you move. To take the obvious example of the CofE, at an institutional level is made up of a mix of homophobes and people more worried about upsetting the homophobes than those the homophobes are hurting. That's what "Lack all conviction" means.
Ah I see. Conviction is about decision making? How very corporate businessy and bourgeoisie an idea.
Thankfully the CofE has not succumbed.
Lack all conviction in the case of the CofE means starting a "listening process" in the hope the problem goes away. The CofE has succumbed and the consequences are obvious.
As I pointed out on the linked thread, the average age of congregations is over 60 - and just under half of CofE congregations have fewer than 5 members under 16. That's not a healthy demographic profile - and it's boosted by people forced through the door to get their kids into a good school.
[ 04. September 2014, 13:56: Message edited by: Justinian ]
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here. As a kid, and afterwards, it struck me that s/he was.
Also different teaching, since I've never heard that God is not here though I'd put it differently than Evensong does. I'd say that two of the persons are not here, but the Holy Spirit assuredly is supposed to be here. Bad teaching perhaps?
[ 04. September 2014, 14:03: Message edited by: Gwai ]
Posted by IconiumBound (# 754) on
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The one factor of earlier church decline that has not been mentioned is the popularization of the automobile by Henry Ford. In its time the Sunday church was the only thing to do on a Sunday but the auto gave the family a new choice.
Has there been a similar technological development that brings the new church decline into being?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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TV
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here. As a kid, and afterwards, it struck me that s/he was.
Also different teaching, since I've never heard that God is not here though I'd put it differently than Evensong does. I'd say that two of the persons are not here, but the Holy Spirit assuredly is supposed to be here. Bad teaching perhaps?
I'm not saying that vicars get up in church and announce that God is not here! But isn't it a presupposition? Otherwise, if God is here now, then there is no need for Christ, no need to go to church, or pray, or believe in Jesus?
For example, my oldest friend was a Sufi, and he used to say that God is here now. He was not a Christian, of course, although he liked Christian imagery and narratives (as I do). But they are not required, to be with God (in my opinion, of course).
My wife is a kind of New Age pagan, and she thinks that God is here now, but she does not ... anyway, you get the message.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Lack all conviction in the case of the CofE means starting a "listening process" in the hope the problem goes away. The CofE has succumbed and the consequences are obvious.
Not at all. What they're trying to do is make the best of an impossible situation. I call that (as I said above) "acknowledging ambiguity while still proclaiming Christ."
I think they did "succumb" to some decisions in the 1998 Lambeth however so maybe I should eat my own shorts.
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
As I pointed out on the linked thread, the average age of congregations is over 60 - and just under half of CofE congregations have fewer than 5 members under 16. That's not a healthy demographic profile - and it's boosted by people forced through the door to get their kids into a good school.
I don't think that has much to do with the gay issue. The decline began around the 60's in most western civilisations.
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here. As a kid, and afterwards, it struck me that s/he was.
Also different teaching, since I've never heard that God is not here though I'd put it differently than Evensong does. I'd say that two of the persons are not here, but the Holy Spirit assuredly is supposed to be here. Bad teaching perhaps?
I'm not saying that vicars get up in church and announce that God is not here! But isn't it a presupposition? Otherwise, if God is here now, then there is no need for Christ, no need to go to church, or pray, or believe in Jesus?
Definitely not a presupposition I have, or honestly one I understand. Jesus doesn't exist to fill in for a missing God. He exists to be a human God we can relate to among many other things. (I'm sure that summary is heretical because I didn't cover other important things.) Besides some of us think the Holy Spirit communicates with people or with the Church now, so that part of God-on-earth would be a reason to pray all by itself, not a reason not to pray.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Well, I must be explaining this badly. It just seemed clear to me as a kid and later, that God is here now. I wasn't interested in Jesus.
Well, eventually I was a Christian for a long while, but for some odd reason, I have reverted to that position - God is here now. Jesus is irrelevant.
Anyway, I am probably beating the poor horse to death.
Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on
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The opening poem reminded me of a claim I heard many years ago in a sermon that, if you chose the six people who have most shaped modern western society, they would all be Jewish: Moses, Jesus, Paul, Freud, Marx and Einstein.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
... Interestingly no mention of Darwin.
Because faith and science and education are not incompatible.
As Gamaliel says "Indeed they aren't, but people think they are incompatible". In the UK my impression is that some accepted Darwin as compatible with faith, others (older perhaps, more conservative) didn't. Some, like poor Phillip Gosse (responding to Lyell more than Darwin), tried to compromise and upset everyone.
None the less, Lyell and Darwin provided rationalizations for many to reject Christianity.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Niminypiminy:
For Brown the decline of Christianity isn't so much located in urbanisation or social class as the decline of religiosity in women.
I was just going to mention Brown myself when I saw your post.
I think he is onto something, but as I remember he does not tackle the question of why female religiosity declined - it was a little bit early for second wave feminism to be a factor.
A reason for the decline of Christianity which has not been mentioned so far is theodicy ie the issue of suffering.
This appears a massive barrier to faith today, but in the past it does not seem to have had much purchase.
Voltaire's Candide,which dealt with the Lisbon earthquake, and was written in the eighteenth century, is the first example I can think of which uses suffering as an argument against traditional Christian faith (Voltaire, of course was a deist rather than an atheist).
Until medical developments(such as the discovery of anaesthetics) along with agricultural, scientific and industrial developments, held out the possibility of a relatively comfortable life for all humanity, shaking one's fist at Heaven over the existence of pain, disease, starvation and lifelong backbreaking toil must have seemed as pointless as complaining about the weather or the laws of physics.
Now, it is the thinking person's most cogent argument against faith, and the greatest source of doubt with which believers have to grapple.
[ 05. September 2014, 06:02: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Yes, I think the attitude to suffering changed at some point. I read the diary of an 18th century clergyman (forgotten his name), and the usual awful things happened to him - for example, his young daughter died - and he accepted it, not as directed by God, but as somehow providential.
But this attitude changed; I'm not sure when. Possibly after the Enlightenment. There is such a thing as 'anti-providential' thought, but I know nothing about it. It is linked to changes in Puritan thinking in the 17th century.
Anybody know any more?
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, I think you've highlighted an important point here, Kaplan, and it's not unconnected, I don't think, to the rise of more 'therapeutic' forms of Christian belief ... on both the liberal and conservative sides.
I'm going to be starting a new thread about the Toronto Blessing thing 20 years on and have noted that one of the essays by Martyn Percy about revivalist Christianity in the 1990s was entitled 'City on a Beach'.
Now, I've not read his essay but it's a clever title and represents what might well be a paradigm shift ... from Christian faith as a 'given' or an issue of life and death, heaven and hell - to one where it's concerned with 'lifestyle choices' and vague forms of 'spiridewealidy' ...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Thinking more about providence, it's interesting that it's been secularized, for example in depth psychology. Here we get the idea that some kinds of suffering are brought about by the unconscious, in order to crack open the defences (or the ego, if you like), so that you become more open.
For example, this is often described as the route to compassion, which increases when your defences are breached. In fact, love itself increases, as your narcissism is broken.
A lot of this is curiously like religious views of providence, but it has become 'internalized', I suppose. God loves a broken heart, really.
I am only paraphrasing Leonard Cohen, 'there's a crack in everything; it's how the light gets in'.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Damn and blast, I was going to finish with something about secularism nicking the best bits of religion; so ideas such as confession and providence found their way into depth psychology.
Even the idea of a higher power is found here, in figures such as Freud and Jung, who saw the unconscious in many ways like that.
But many people have pointed out that Freud, while furiously rejecting religion, absorbed many of its ideas, rather inevitable I suppose.
Jung of course, actually incorporated ideas such as the numinous and transcendence into his psychology. But Jung was not hostile to religion.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, eventually I was a Christian for a long while, but for some odd reason, I have reverted to that position - God is here now. Jesus is irrelevant.
.
The Christian story certainly says God is here now. But Jesus is not irrelevant because Jesus is the lens through which we discern how and perhaps when God is with us.
Jesus provides the interpretive framework and communal structure of what "God is here now" looks like, tastes like and feels like. It provides the lens through which we interpret our various experiences of what God is.
Other people may believe that God is here now but they will use different lenses to make sense of that experience. They will use their different lens to discern the nature and character of that presence.
They may call themselves "spiritual but not religious" but it is impossible form them to be "spiritual" without some kind of interpretive framework that creates meaning.
For the overtly religious, the framework is obvious. For the "spiritual but not religious", the framework is often mostly unconscious and usually less communal.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
OK, but Christians talk about a loss of relationship with God, don't they? Or a separation.
Well, they are not unique in that, obviously, since humans have often commented on the paradox of being with God, and not being with God.
A friend of mine says jokingly, God is here, but I am not. But you can turn that round - God is here, but is obscured by my narcissism.
[ 05. September 2014, 11:02: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Thinking more about providence, it's interesting that it's been secularized, for example in depth psychology. Here we get the idea that some kinds of suffering are brought about by the unconscious, in order to crack open the defences (or the ego, if you like), so that you become more open.
For example, this is often described as the route to compassion, which increases when your defences are breached. In fact, love itself increases, as your narcissism is broken.
A lot of this is curiously like religious views of providence, but it has become 'internalized', I suppose. God loves a broken heart, really.
I am only paraphrasing Leonard Cohen, 'there's a crack in everything; it's how the light gets in'.
This makes me want to ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
because I have been subject to so much of it in my training.
Thank you for your psychological insights. A lot suddenly makes sense of what I was subject to (by untrained people I might add).
The trouble is, I don't think God likes a broken heart. No wonder I've come to blows so many times with my superiors and tell em all they can stuff their psychology where the sun don't shine.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Evensong
That's a bit confusing actually. Do you mean that you were subject to being broken, or taught the idea that being broken leads to openness?
I think in many varieties of therapy, the idea is not that any individual smashes your defences down, but that life has a habit of doing it. But therapy can also do this.
But the added thing in depth psychology, is that the unconscious actually sets it up. However, this should be on a different thread really.
The idea of repetition is crucial here, and the idea that we repeat problems (unconsciously) in order to find a solution.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Voltaire's Candide,which dealt with the Lisbon earthquake, and was written in the eighteenth century, is the first example I can think of which uses suffering as an argument against traditional Christian faith ...
You could quote Bayle whose highly influential Dictionnaire Historique et Critique was one of the most read books of the C18 (Voltaire praised him very highly). While his beliefs were complex, one well known aphorism was "God is the good father who breaks his children's legs to show how well he can mend them".
Susan's Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought argues that dealing with theodicy is a (if not the) major theme running through philosophy.
The Lisbon earthquake was said to be more shocking than any event since the fall of Rome. It also highlighted a direct conflict between religion and Enlightenment values: between Pombal the Portugese prime minister ('What now? We bury the dead and heal the living.') and the Jesuit Malagrida (the earthquake was "God's punishment on Pombal's godlessness") who wanted everyone to drop everything and spend six days praying and fasting. Pombal won, the weekly paper didn't miss an issue, there were no epidemics and Lisbon was rebuilt in a year. Malagrida was later executed as a blasphemer and heretic after being tried by the Inquisition (headed by Pombal's brother ...).
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Thinking more about providence, it's interesting that it's been secularized, for example in depth psychology. Here we get the idea that some kinds of suffering are brought about by the unconscious, in order to crack open the defences (or the ego, if you like), so that you become more open.
For example, this is often described as the route to compassion, which increases when your defences are breached. In fact, love itself increases, as your narcissism is broken.
A lot of this is curiously like religious views of providence, but it has become 'internalized', I suppose. God loves a broken heart, really.
I am only paraphrasing Leonard Cohen, 'there's a crack in everything; it's how the light gets in'.
This makes me want to because I have been subject to so much of it in my training.
Thank you for your psychological insights. A lot suddenly makes sense of what I was subject to (by untrained people I might add).
The trouble is, I don't think God likes a broken heart. No wonder I've come to blows so many times with my superiors and tell em all they can stuff their psychology where the sun don't shine.
My experience is that defences are there because without them we would be overwhelmed. Love comes about when we feel secure. There are a few exceptions - notably the kind of Awe that arises in the face of utterly overwhelming forces (such as the Dresden firestorms).
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Interesting point that the red-light area of Lisbon suffered only minor damage, no doubt leading to much discussion about divine judgment. It still exists, the Alfama.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
itsarumdo wrote:
My experience is that defences are there because without them we would be overwhelmed. Love comes about when we feel secure. There are a few exceptions - notably the kind of Awe that arises in the face of utterly overwhelming forces (such as the Dresden firestorms).
Well, I agree, we need some defences, as you say, to feel safe, and to protect us.
However, they can become too thick and rigid, leading to a kind of emotional cut-offness, and love neither emerges nor gets in.
But it's inadvisable to try to smash them down; however, you find that life itself can do this in different ways, such as a breakdown.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
Alfama being the red light equivalent of an Alfamale?
Again, imo, fwiw, breakdowns do not necessarily get rid of the boundaries - they just alter the coping mechanisms and ideally give a greater cognitive understanding - the boundaries are more embodied, and the heart, in case you hand't noticed ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
is a physical organ. Opening the chest, heart, lungs in an unforced way so that physically, emotionally and behaviourally we become more open and capable of love - may happen through Grace, but I doubt that it ever happens through desperation or hopeless overwhelm (or "breaking" someone). wrt breaking horses, Seabiscuit is worth a read, as are the horse whisperer books. Something is encouraged to emerge - not trashed and cracked open.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
itsarumdo
I was going to say we are going off topic, but it's odd how a conversation like this can proceed both in psychological language and religious language. Maybe this partly answers the OP.
I don't agree about despair. I would say that over 30 years, about 80% of my clients came to therapy in despair. To quote Gramsci, from another field, the old is dying and the new cannot be born.
Well, it can feel that way; but quite often, there is a way for the new to be born. But certainly, not by smashing defences down, they are probably crumbling already.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
C.S. Lewis said, in "The Decline of Religion,"
quote:
Now it is quite true that chapels which were quite full in 1900 are empty in 1946. But this change was not gradual. It occurred at the precise moment when chapel ceased to be compulsory. It was not in fact a decline; it was a precipice. . . . The withdrawal of compulsion did not create a new religious situation, but only revealed the situation which had long existed.
And indeed I think this is a good thing. Honesty in general is a good thing.
He also said in 1954, in "The Great Divide" (De Descriptione Temporum):
quote:
... there is the great religious change which I have had to mention before: the un-christening. Of course there were lots of sceptics in Jane Austen's time and long before, as there are lots of Christians now. But the presumption has changed. In her days some kind and degree of religious belief and practice were the norm: now, though I would gladly believe that both kind and degree have improved, they are the exception.
I don't know if the kind and degree have improved--in the US there are some pretty scary people doing some terrifying things in the name of Christianity--though in the UK it does seem to be better, so perhaps kind and degree have improved even now.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
The metaphor of lighting a fuse suggests setting in motion a process that means it will all end in a bang. Maybe the answer is "not with a bang, but with a whimper".
Those church communities that do die out do so quietly, with a whimper, as the old fail to convince the young.
Youth culture, which also dates from post-WW2, may be part of the story. Children being better educated than their parents were may be part of the story. Pace of technological change and resulting social change ?
Maybe God as Father, central to received Christianity, ceases to mean what it used to when society looks at parenthood differently ? The more society sees children as people with rights who are owed the best care the parents can provide, rather than the almost-property of parents from whom obedience is owed, the less well God-as-father fits ?
Not saying that such a change is all-bad or all-good, just that perhaps there's a challenge that Christian thought hasn't really risen to ?
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure about Spinoza, but I agree that Marxism and depth psychology have been like acids eating away at religion; also post-modernism as well.
I wonder if religion has been too hierarchical and too undemocratic really; today is the age of pluralism.
Are the more democratic expressions of religion doing better than their less democratic counterparts? It would seen the opposite is true.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
The equation of increased welfare with declining religion seems to have some credibility, and explains the anomaly of the US,
So in short when the church stopped bribing the poor, they stopped coming?
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
It seems to me that Yoga and using electronic gadgets have replaced liturgy and contemplation. But that's a very recent trend, so merely the newest set of absorbing activities.
I'm having a hard time blaming a sea change that was visible in 1963 on yoga and electronic gadgets.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One thing that used to puzzle me is that Christianity starts with a negative premise, that God is not here. As a kid, and afterwards, it struck me that s/he was.
This puzzles the hell out of me. Paul says "in Him we live and move and have our being." Sounds awfully here to me.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
TV
This, at least, fits the time frame.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not saying that vicars get up in church and announce that God is not here! But isn't it a presupposition? Otherwise, if God is here now, then there is no need for Christ, no need to go to church, or pray, or believe in Jesus?
I don't see how this follows. God is in Hell, but that doesn't mean nobody there needs Christ.
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
... Interestingly no mention of Darwin.
Because faith and science and education are not incompatible.
As Gamaliel says "Indeed they aren't, but people think they are incompatible".
Yes, if we're talking about causes of the decline in church attendance, it doesn't matter a fig if there really is a conflict between science and religion, only if there is a perceived conflict.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The trouble is, I don't think God likes a broken heart.
Psalm 51 written by a rogue, ungodly psalmodist, then?
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
The character presently is yoga and electronics. It wasn't in the 1960s. There were other influences then, TV is mentioned above, and I'd also blame the pop psychology movements like TA, gestalt, and group therapies. Perhaps this was the first big missing of the boat: the adherence to traditions and ancient wisdom and refusal to sufficiently meet people where they actually are in the present.
Though to correct the time frame, the 1960s were growth years here. We were building new churches and having trouble accommodating everyone who wanted to come. The big changes came in the early 1970s, and by the end of that decade, it was static and beginning its long decline. I remember both decades rather well, and the excitement of being at church where everything happened it seemed every day of the week.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
It seems to me that by the time TA and gestalt therapy hit the big time, the decline had been underway for some time. I would guess their rise didn't cause the decline but may have been caused by whatever it was that caused the decline, if that makes sense.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It seems to me that by the time TA and gestalt therapy hit the big time, the decline had been underway for some time. I would guess their rise didn't cause the decline but may have been caused by whatever it was that caused the decline, if that makes sense.
Yes of course. I write only from my meagre experiences and knowledge. I think those things and the modern electronicalism are surface manifestations of the root issue, but naming the root issue seems to be difficult. Is it the progress of knowledge and its accumulation? Something about the excessive rise of individualism since the Enlightment? Excess focus on data and denigration of experience? What is the root of it all? This is basic question.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It seems to me that by the time TA and gestalt therapy hit the big time, the decline had been underway for some time. I would guess their rise didn't cause the decline but may have been caused by whatever it was that caused the decline, if that makes sense.
Yes of course. I write only from my meagre experiences and knowledge. I think those things and the modern electronicalism are surface manifestations of the root issue, but naming the root issue seems to be difficult. Is it the progress of knowledge and its accumulation? Something about the excessive rise of individualism since the Enlightment? Excess focus on data and denigration of experience? What is the root of it all? This is basic question.
I don't think there is one root. There are probably multiple causes which came together, including, as you say, the Enlightenment, scientific knowledge, individualism, post-modernism, the development of psychology, shifts in symbolism, the rise of the welfare state - and plenty more.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
Descartes, who justified thinking over all else.
Voltaire, who trashed a bundle of really important spiritual principles and left his readers laughing and at the same time empty and lost.
Marx - should we blame Marx? Maybe it was Freud.
The insistence of the late medieval Church in remaining steadfast by its dogmas far beyond the point that it was obvious that they were incorrect - especially re the solar system. By sticking to the dogma, the church became questionable and so what it taught also became questionable. Which is ironic considering that the dogma that was being adhered to was Plato's model of a perfect planetary system with circular orbits rather than anything in the Bible itself.
The adoption just before the above of the Aristotlean logical system. Which - True/False and the excluded middle is great as long as there are no questions asked about dogma. But if questions are asked, there is no middle ground - the only answer other than True is ... False. The Islamic scholars had realised what a trojan horse Aristotle was and had locked his books up in a small number of centres where they were studies but with very limited access.
And Jonathan Black in "Secret History of the World" points out that in the late 1700's the Masons were compromised by a faction who were not interested in spiritual advancement, but rather whose creed was " the secret is that - there is no secret" and who used the organisation for their own ends as a power base. Really, it's about this time and earlier that the rot started. Some official heads of church and other senior figures were also Masons - still are, and I wonder what power struggles and intrigues are still going on behind those closed doors.
Swedenborg could have reversed that if the Church(es) had taken the gift up of a science that was once more based on spirituality and a Bible with strongly symbolic as well as literal meaning - an alchemic marriage. But they didn't. Goethe was also rejected by both mainstream religion and science. Another gift ignored.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Descartes, who justified thinking over all else.
Voltaire, who trashed a bundle of really important spiritual principles and left his readers laughing and at the same time empty and lost.
Not meaning to pick on itsarumdo but why did the churches offer no good response to all these thinkers? David Hume for example (in letters and autobiography) bemoans the fact that no one of any stature challenges him from among the religious. Hume knew controversy would increase his sales but, William Warburton, his only consistent challenger wasn't really up to the standard needed.
By the time of Marx and Freud, I'd say it was too late. What percentage of the loss to Christianity was from people who actually knew what Freud (or Marx for that matter) said? Who was the last Christian apologist with a mass following who could have made a difference? Wesley?
I think the weakness of the responses to those who lit the fuse is as significant as the incendiarists' ideas.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Descartes, who justified thinking over all else.
Voltaire, who trashed a bundle of really important spiritual principles and left his readers laughing and at the same time empty and lost.
Not meaning to pick on itsarumdo but why did the churches offer no good response to all these thinkers? David Hume for example (in letters and autobiography) bemoans the fact that no one of any stature challenges him from among the religious. Hume knew controversy would increase his sales but, William Warburton, his only consistent challenger wasn't really up to the standard needed.
By the time of Marx and Freud, I'd say it was too late. What percentage of the loss to Christianity was from people who actually knew what Freud (or Marx for that matter) said? Who was the last Christian apologist with a mass following who could have made a difference? Wesley?
I think the weakness of the responses to those who lit the fuse is as significant as the incendiarists' ideas.
Not feeling picked on at all ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Isn't there a difference of some qualitative kind between intellectual debate and spiritual philosophy? It's all very well saying that there were no adequate challengers to Voltaire or Descartes or Hume, but they were speaking the modern language of intellect with no passion. Rationality and reason no longer had any emotion with it in the way that it had been understood for 2 millenia - it had become cold as a fish, purely based on thought, logic, mental process; and disembodied.
OTOH, rationality in the meaning used by the Greeks and everyone after them until the Age of Enlightenment (I guess there must have been a transition period, maybe form as early as 1300) included emotions and gut feelings, intuition, a sense of zeitgiest (and probably quite a few other geists as well).
It's true that to understand so-called modern trends in thought, it;s necessary to go back hundreds of years. A lot of the new age material came from Swedenborg, late 1700's. Many of the premises that our mainstream society runs on today arose before 1500.
[ 06. September 2014, 19:45: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Isn't there a difference of some qualitative kind between intellectual debate and spiritual philosophy?
I'm not saying they had to be defeated on their own terms, maybe in Germany the Pietist movement might have made a difference, maybe if the church of the C18 had been less supine. Why did no one of note arise to challenge Hume at any level. What were they all doing? Saying their prayers and waiting for a miracle?
When these discussions arise on SoF they usually take the form of "We're losing the game because the other side keep scoring goals". Why can't you score a few?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Isn't there a difference of some qualitative kind between intellectual debate and spiritual philosophy?
I'm not saying they had to be defeated on their own terms, maybe in Germany the Pietist movement might have made a difference, maybe if the church of the C18 had been less supine. Why did no one of note arise to challenge Hume at any level. What were they all doing? Saying their prayers and waiting for a miracle?
When these discussions arise on SoF they usually take the form of "We're losing the game because the other side keep scoring goals". Why can't you score a few?
A good point. I wonder if the churches underestimated the effect of people like Hume. I mean, ideas like his probably seemed quite separate from religious thought and practice, especially for ordinary people. But those ideas did percolate down, just as postmodernism has really become very prevalent, in a kind of popular form.
Actually, Freud's ideas were immediately adapted to religion - by Jung, which led to their rift. But Jung synthesized the idea of the unconscious, with the idea of the numinous and a higher power. However, his ideas have remained rather esoteric.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Isn't there a difference of some qualitative kind between intellectual debate and spiritual philosophy?
I'm not saying they had to be defeated on their own terms, maybe in Germany the Pietist movement might have made a difference, maybe if the church of the C18 had been less supine. Why did no one of note arise to challenge Hume at any level. What were they all doing? Saying their prayers and waiting for a miracle?
When these discussions arise on SoF they usually take the form of "We're losing the game because the other side keep scoring goals". Why can't you score a few?
My systematic theology lecturer taught me that philosophy and theology were peaches and cream (always together) as disciplines. They were the "Queen" of sciences. But something happened at the Reformation. They split and the churches were too busy licking their wounds to pull them back together and keep up with the Englightenment and Descarte that introduced mind/body dualism.
I believe only now is Aristotelian philosophy enjoying something of a resurgence and a Humean world view debunked. Edward Feser's The Last Superstition is a good example.
There is plenty of goal scoring on "our" side, but perhaps it's going to take a while to percolate down as quetz has mentioned above. It takes an entire shift in world view after all - and that doesn't happen overnight. Perhaps it's too late - I don't know.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
que sais-je: When these discussions arise on SoF they usually take the form of "We're losing the game because the other side keep scoring goals". Why can't you score a few?
I have the feeling that wanting to score goals against the other side has often been the problem. Copernicus was right. Darwin was right. If the church had agreed with them, history might have been different.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It seems to me that by the time TA and gestalt therapy hit the big time, the decline had been underway for some time. I would guess their rise didn't cause the decline but may have been caused by whatever it was that caused the decline, if that makes sense.
Yes of course. I write only from my meagre experiences and knowledge. I think those things and the modern electronicalism are surface manifestations of the root issue, but naming the root issue seems to be difficult. Is it the progress of knowledge and its accumulation? Something about the excessive rise of individualism since the Enlightment? Excess focus on data and denigration of experience? What is the root of it all? This is basic question.
Perhaps the root of it all is the myth of progress that western civilisation has bought into.
quote:
Atheism has its own creation myth, writes Spencer, and it goes like this: non-belief is the love child of reason and science - a human advance arising from scientific and philosophical progress in Europe, particularly movements like the Copernican Revolution in the 16th Century, the scientific revolution in the 17th and the Darwinian in the 19th.
In an article for Politico Magazine Spencer describes this myth: "Gradually, wonderfully, the human race matured, with every confident scientific step forward pushing our infantile, crumbling ideas of the divine closer to oblivion," he writes. This myth is "true enough to be believable, (but) it is not true enough to be true."
Why does any of this matter? Because these days the foundation myth of atheism is widely accepted in the West, and has implications. Atheism, so the story goes, is rational, while religion is embarrassingly irrational; atheism represents clear thinking human progress, while religion is regressive, primitive superstition.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
This myth is "true enough to be believable, (but) it is not true enough to be true."
Which of course is exactly what I might say of the foundational myths of theism, socialism, capitalism, or what have you. And I'd say it of atheism as well. Most scientists would accept it as true of science - it may approximate to truth, be truth-ish but it isn't 'Truth' (I confess I've never trusted words with capital letters).
Isn't each denomination of Christianity true-ish in that sense: you seem to disagree about a lot so at best all but one of you know only some approximation to Truth rather than the thing itself. Hermeneutics, irony and all that jazz.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
Evensong:
Reading the responses to the review your post linked makes my heart sink (for both sides of the debate). SoF is an oasis. (Is a ship an oasis in an ocean?)
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
But as well as the myth of progress, which may exist in some atheists, there has been real progress. When I was a kid, we had coal fires, no bathroom, no garden, no fridge and so on. My parents ended up with their own home, with central heating, a garden, they had foreign holidays, and so on. I don't think they ascribed any of this to God!
I suppose some religious people might criticize this as rank materialism - well, when you're really poor, as we were, you quite fancy some of that.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I suppose some religious people might criticize this as rank materialism - well, when you're really poor, as we were, you quite fancy some of that.
If money is the root of all evil, poverty is one of its branches.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But as well as the myth of progress, which may exist in some atheists, there has been real progress. When I was a kid, we had coal fires, no bathroom, no garden, no fridge and so on. My parents ended up with their own home, with central heating, a garden, they had foreign holidays, and so on. I don't think they ascribed any of this to God!
I suppose some religious people might criticize this as rank materialism - well, when you're really poor, as we were, you quite fancy some of that.
Now that the middle class is regressing in many places, and kids start to recognize they can't possibly have the (relatively) cushy and secure lives their parents had, will we see a resurgence in religion?
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Perhaps the root of it all is the myth of progress that western civilisation has bought into.
A question. Are you claiming that there has been no progress in the past 300 years or are you claiming that correlation is not the same as causation?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But as well as the myth of progress, which may exist in some atheists, there has been real progress. When I was a kid, we had coal fires, no bathroom, no garden, no fridge and so on. My parents ended up with their own home, with central heating, a garden, they had foreign holidays, and so on. I don't think they ascribed any of this to God!
I suppose some religious people might criticize this as rank materialism - well, when you're really poor, as we were, you quite fancy some of that.
Now that the middle class is regressing in many places, and kids start to recognize they can't possibly have the (relatively) cushy and secure lives their parents had, will we see a resurgence in religion?
I've no idea. There seem to be so many variables in the decline of religion, and probably also its growth, that it seems difficult to make predictions.
For example, after 1800, it was the working class in England which began to stop church-going, and the middle class seem to have carried on.
But why? I think there are various theories to do with class structure, but it clashes with the view that poverty or lack of education leads to an increase in religion.
Posted by Sir Pellinore (# 12163) on
:
We did it all by ourselves I fear. Dawkins, Islam etc. are innocent. Until we get our individual and collective acts together the ship will keep sinking.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
That was about the time that populations were increasingly removed from nature and cooped up in cities. There was also a huge break - advances in technology were starting to radically change a way of living that - apart from periods of war & peace - had not changed very much or very quickly for hundreds of years.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
That was about the time that populations were increasingly removed from nature and cooped up in cities. There was also a huge break - advances in technology were starting to radically change a way of living that - apart from periods of war & peace - had not changed very much or very quickly for hundreds of years.
I think that's a good point. It's a kind of social dislocation. If a people who had been mainly rural, find themselves working in factories, and living in slums, would they see this as brought about by God? Well, they might, but they might also just see it as a human creation. They might also look for secular solutions, such as trade unions, socialism, and so on.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
Evensong:
Reading the responses to the review your post linked makes my heart sink (for both sides of the debate). SoF is an oasis. (Is a ship an oasis in an ocean?)
It is indeed an oasis. Mostly a well read and thoughtful oasis.
p.s. The article is wrong (IMV) in stating the myth of progress is an atheist myth. It is a myth that spans all of western society to an extent - believers and unbelievers alike.
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Perhaps the root of it all is the myth of progress that western civilisation has bought into.
A question. Are you claiming that there has been no progress in the past 300 years or are you claiming that correlation is not the same as causation?
Neither. Mainly that the myth is not a true one. And it is not an essentially Christian one even tho most of us have bought into it to an extent.
And that's okay. Progress is good. But the Utopia dreamed for is unrealisable IMO. The Christian myth says it is God that will create a new heaven and a new earth, not us. We do not bring about the Kingdom of God but we certainly work for it. And that work matters. But there is a distinction.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
This myth is "true enough to be believable, (but) it is not true enough to be true."
Which of course is exactly what I might say of the foundational myths of theism, socialism, capitalism, or what have you. And I'd say it of atheism as well. Most scientists would accept it as true of science - it may approximate to truth, be truth-ish but it isn't 'Truth' (I confess I've never trusted words with capital letters).
Isn't each denomination of Christianity true-ish in that sense: you seem to disagree about a lot so at best all but one of you know only some approximation to Truth rather than the thing itself. Hermeneutics, irony and all that jazz.
Yes. We all live by myths. It's how we make sense of our lives.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
We do not bring about the Kingdom of God but we certainly work for it. And that work matters. But there is a distinction.
Though at certain points in history, some Christian groups have felt that they are working to bring about the Kingdom of God - and certainly some forms of post-millenialism can be fitted within orthodoxy.
Historically, this group have probably been much more influential than their numbers may suggest - scratch a lot of the reform/utopian movements and you'll uncover founders (not many, but some) who had such beliefs.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
I think arguing about the 'myth of progress' obscures the real progress that has been made in people's lives, in Europe at any rate. Poverty has been reduced, health improved, many technological improvements made - of course, one might criticize that as purely material, and not satisfying the spirit.
And I don't think you can make a simple equation, material improvements leads to religious decline. It's not as simple as that, but it might be a factor.
And of course, there are many other factors, as already discussed, e.g. the rise in scientific knowledge, the shifts in philosophical approaches, and so on.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Yes. We all live by myths. It's how we make sense of our lives.
Does that imply that our choice of myth has the nature of a value choice? Or is there some standpoint from which a choice of myth can be evaluated?
quetzalcoatl (and others). Could we have a better definition of the myth of progress. I'm aware of:
a) A (mostly) C19 belief the white male was the 'top' of the evolutionary tree. Progress would be white males getting better and better. Eugenics could be used to stop the less evolved out-breeding the best. (see the first part of John Gray's "The Immortalization Commission" for a bizarre next step in evolution)
b) An economic belief that material plenty would spread and lead to greater happiness.
c) A political belief that rationality would lead to democracy throughout the world.
d) An ethical belief that humans would become more loving and tolerant (typically as they learnt the 'truth' about themselves, e.g depth psychology). No more pogroms, wars, ...
e) A scientific faith that all important, physical problems could be solved by science.
.... etc
Within all of these a was a conviction that, though temporary setbacks might occur, success was ultimately inevitable and would be benign and global in scope. Heaven built from the crooked timbers of humanity.
Or what?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
I was referring to Evensong's link to Simon Smart's article, which is basically outlining the myth that the delusions of religion have been dispelled by scientific knowledge and skeptical reasoning, and humans will now move forward to a bright future, untrammeled by 'fairy tales'.
I'm not sure how many atheists actually hold this view, if any!
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
... humans will now move forward to a bright future, untrammeled by 'fairy tales'.
Some earlier posts talked about progress in various forms, and whether progress was a myth. I didn't realise you were referring specifically to the one in Evensong's link. Sorry about that.
I think there many people who do believe the myth. My myth is that even if everyone abandoned their religious beliefs we'd still keep screwing things up because we'd still believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. When we go wrong we find someone/thing to blame - if we can't blame religion we'll find something else.
Personally, I blame the scapegoats.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
que sais-je
Well, I think it has got confusing, as there has been mission creep a bit on this thread about 'progress'. It did start off with the atheist idea of rationality dispelling medieval fairy tales, but this seems to morph into other kinds of progress, if such there be.
But maybe some popular atheists also conflate several kinds of progress? I suppose I should check in 'The God Delusion' but I can't be bothered.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
An interesting example is Pinker's book 'The Better Angels of our Nature' which argues that humans have become less violent. I don't think he really links this to atheism, but I think he links it partly to increased rationality, (but there are other factors).
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
An interesting example is Pinker's book 'The Better Angels of our Nature' which argues that humans have become less violent.
He may be right, though looking around the world at the moment it isn't obvious.
But most progress myths assume that at some point Utopia will be reached. Setbacks are temporary, Nirvana is just over the next hill and eventually we must reach it. I see no reason to assume that setbacks are always temporary. We could become more violent and maybe all there ever can be is a oscillation around some arbitrary state.
But returning to Evensong's example, the problem with Utopian myths is that the final point gets endlessly postponed. Each utopian myth needs its shadow myth of why success hasn't been achieved in order to rally the troops and convince them that one last push will get us there. The Jews prevent the Reich from reaching its full glory; when we have created the new Soviet man ...; when religion crumbles away we'll overcome all obstacles; Christianity would flourish again if it weren't for the likes of Richard Dawkins.
What all these shadow myths do is deflect attention from the precariousness of our goals (and the unlikelihood of their being attained) onto people who can be blamed.
We're a bunch of mutated chimpanzees, very little above the beasts and a very long way below the angels. About 50 years ago I read Koestler's "Act of Creation" - somewhere he suggests that maybe we are all (genetically?) prone to cock things up. Original sin?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
que sais-je
A very nice post. I also remember Koestler's gruesome 'Darkness at Noon', about the interrogation of an Old Bolshevik, who eventually submits to the remorseless logic that loyalty to party and country demands his confession to treason, although of course, it isn't true.
It's a bit like old Procrustes - you can pretend to get to your goal, if you chop off lots of people's legs, or I suppose, their minds.
[ 09. September 2014, 18:29: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Until medical developments(such as the discovery of anaesthetics) along with agricultural, scientific and industrial developments, held out the possibility of a relatively comfortable life for all humanity, shaking one's fist at Heaven over the existence of pain, disease, starvation and lifelong backbreaking toil must have seemed as pointless as complaining about the weather or the laws of physics.
Now, it is the thinking person's most cogent argument against faith, and the greatest source of doubt with which believers have to grapple.
It's strange, then, how Christianity is growing in parts of the world with a great deal of suffering.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon this lecture by Rupert Sheldrake. It is encouraging if not inspiring.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Until medical developments(such as the discovery of anaesthetics) along with agricultural, scientific and industrial developments, held out the possibility of a relatively comfortable life for all humanity, shaking one's fist at Heaven over the existence of pain, disease, starvation and lifelong backbreaking toil must have seemed as pointless as complaining about the weather or the laws of physics.
Now, it is the thinking person's most cogent argument against faith, and the greatest source of doubt with which believers have to grapple.
It's strange, then, how Christianity is growing in parts of the world with a great deal of suffering.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon this lecture by Rupert Sheldrake. It is encouraging if not inspiring.
The idea that medicine can replace a spiritual belief is slightly crazy. Though some people do believe in medicine, it's not infallible - regardless of the populist view, anatomy is still a growing science, physiology is still struggling to explain many aspects of how living organisms work, and despite all the "science" boo-ha, many pharmaceuticals do not have a known mechanism. Furthermore, our bodies grow, in a butterfly-like metamorphosis from a cell that has a continuity going back to the very origins of life, and then something happens and all that stops - in a physical level. The papers say "2000 lives saved by taking this drug or by not eating chips more than 5 times a week... saved? Extended by a small number of years. Not saved. The problem, if there is one, to be grappled with, is how popular culture can have hijacked people's sense of the numinous so much that they believe the pseudoscientific claptrap and mythology that now surrounds modern medicine.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
The idea that medicine can replace a spiritual belief is slightly crazy.
Quite right. But not because it is fallible, but because the means is being confused with the end. One day modern medicine may indeed have figured out all our physical needs. One day perhaps psychology will figure out the perfect recipe for happiness. This is all part and parcel of the myth of progress.
But without spirituality; without a sense of the numinous and the idea of salvation (wholeness) here and now, the bigger picture will always be missing, the deeper issues will never be addressed and we will remain incomplete. Our bodies and our minds are important and part of who we are. But we also have souls that require nourishment and attendance.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs I guess. We're confusing the lower needs with the higher ones. Same as confusing Aristotle's efficient causes with formal causes.
[ 13. September 2014, 02:56: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
An interesting example is Pinker's book 'The Better Angels of our Nature' which argues that humans have become less violent.
He may be right, though looking around the world at the moment it isn't obvious.
But most progress myths assume that at some point Utopia will be reached. Setbacks are temporary, Nirvana is just over the next hill and eventually we must reach it. I see no reason to assume that setbacks are always temporary. We could become more violent and maybe all there ever can be is a oscillation around some arbitrary state.
But returning to Evensong's example, the problem with Utopian myths is that the final point gets endlessly postponed. Each utopian myth needs its shadow myth of why success hasn't been achieved in order to rally the troops and convince them that one last push will get us there. The Jews prevent the Reich from reaching its full glory; when we have created the new Soviet man ...; when religion crumbles away we'll overcome all obstacles; Christianity would flourish again if it weren't for the likes of Richard Dawkins.
What all these shadow myths do is deflect attention from the precariousness of our goals (and the unlikelihood of their being attained) onto people who can be blamed.
We're a bunch of mutated chimpanzees, very little above the beasts and a very long way below the angels. About 50 years ago I read Koestler's "Act of Creation" - somewhere he suggests that maybe we are all (genetically?) prone to cock things up. Original sin?
Statistically we're actually living in one of the most peaceful times in world history, it's just that 24/7 news media makes us so much more aware of every single conflict happening.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
But the Pope thinks we are entering into World War 3
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the Pope thinks we are entering into World War 3
It certainly looks like Putin wants to do just that.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Until medical developments(such as the discovery of anaesthetics) along with agricultural, scientific and industrial developments, held out the possibility of a relatively comfortable life for all humanity, shaking one's fist at Heaven over the existence of pain, disease, starvation and lifelong backbreaking toil must have seemed as pointless as complaining about the weather or the laws of physics.
Now, it is the thinking person's most cogent argument against faith, and the greatest source of doubt with which believers have to grapple.
It's strange, then, how Christianity is growing in parts of the world with a great deal of suffering.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon this lecture by Rupert Sheldrake. It is encouraging if not inspiring.
I was not able to access the Sheldrake lecture for some reason, but yes, fair point.
The temptation is to suggest that those people in the parts of the world where there is more suffering than in the West, are turning to Christianity in greater numbers than in the West because they are also less knowledgeable and educated, and therefore more susceptible to “health and wealth” heresies, or a “pie in the sky when you die” (“opiate of the masses”) view of Christianity, but that would be patronizing and unfair.
To be frank, I really don’t know why this is the case, but from experience and observation I would still maintain that the problem of suffering is a significant element in many Westerners’ rejection of Christianity, at any rate.
Sure, good health and freedom from pain is not a substitute for a spiritual worldview which gives meaning to existence, but the experience (or even just contemplation) of suffering raises all sorts of questions about ultimate meaning – and goodness – in the universe.
Last night we visited a friend of ours from church who is in hospital, a young woman in her thirties, and the mother of two small kids whom she is now incapable of even picking up.
She has a problem with her lower back which has regressed to the point where she is in constant pain, is losing the capacity to urinate or defecate, and has lost all sexual sensation.
She is quite young in the faith and her husband, a really nice man, is not a Christian.
She is heroically clinging to Christ, but I am going through something of a cranky shaking-my fist-at- heaven phase.
And yes, I realize that there are, and always have been, worse cases than hers, but “sensation is sensation”, and abstract principles become far less important when issues involve concrete individuals whom one knows and loves.
[ 14. September 2014, 06:24: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
Out of curiosity, does anybody have a rough-and-ready timeline of the use of suffering as an antilogy* against Christianity? I presume it predates the Enlightenment, and postdates the writings of Paul & Co., but that's a lot of chronological real estate.
______
*my coinage for the opposite of "apology"
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
Tough question. Don't know the answer. But I'd flip the question. When did theodicy (literally justifying God in the face of suffering) become such a mainstream theological issue?
Personally I don't think suffering is justified or should be justified. That makes it immoral.
I like anti-theodicy these days. David Bentley Hart (orthodox theologian) introduced me to the idea with some help from Dostoyevsky.
I think the bible is pretty clear that suffering is not what God intends for humanity - so theodicy seems a weird theological practice.
Some more on the idea here.
[ 14. September 2014, 10:41: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I think the bible is pretty clear that suffering is not what God intends for humanity - so theodicy seems a weird theological practice.
On the contrary. It's the mere existence of suffering that needs theodicy, not God's intent. Whether or not God wants us to suffer, we do, and he allows it. Why? "But He doesn't want us to suffer" doesn't answer the question.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
I wasn't trying to answer the question. Traditional theodicy does that.
If you want an answer to the question of why God allows suffering then the traditional Christian metanarrative says it all started in the Garden of Eden where we lived in perfect communion with God but our ancestors chose to experience evil as well as good. Apparently they thought it would make them wise like God. And God doesn't mess with our free-will.
This of course relates to natural evil too ( Paul's groaning creation).
Kinda sucs as an answer tho. Why should we live with the consequences of our ancestor's actions? Dunno. Perhaps that's why God has promised to make it all right again with the new heaven and the new earth.
[ 15. September 2014, 10:45: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Now that the middle class is regressing in many places, and kids start to recognize they can't possibly have the (relatively) cushy and secure lives their parents had, will we see a resurgence in religion?
I think we very well may, yes. Because I think one of the greatest things religion has to offer to people is hope. Those living cushy and secure lives have little need for that hope, but those for whom life is an endless struggle need it in abundance.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
It's strange, then, how Christianity is growing in parts of the world with a great deal of suffering.
Given that those are the places that still lack the sort of medical, agricultural, scientific and industrial developments to which Kaplan refers, I don't find it strange in the least. I do, however, predict that as such advances become more widespread in those places we (or our descendents, depending on how long it takes) will see a commensurate decline in religious observance there.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I wasn't trying to answer the question. Traditional theodicy does that.
If you want an answer to the question of why God allows suffering then the traditional Christian metanarrative says it all started in the Garden of Eden where we lived in perfect communion with God but our ancestors chose to experience evil as well as good. Apparently they thought it would make them wise like God. And God doesn't mess with our free-will.
This of course relates to natural evil too ( Paul's groaning creation).
Kinda sucs as an answer tho. Why should we live with the consequences of our ancestor's actions? Dunno. Perhaps that's why God has promised to make it all right again with the new heaven and the new earth.
I can fully go with all of that, Evensong. Your last paragraph... I think on reason we're in a mess now because we are having to wade through much of the treacle that our ancestors left in their wake. I believe there is spiritual help to release that, but the free will thingy - separating who we are from what we think we are (which include the treacle) requires a lot of clarity. I'm curious about the "new Heaven and new Earth" - where is that mentioned, and what is said about it?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
I'm curious about the "new Heaven and new Earth" - where is that mentioned, and what is said about it?
Mentioned in scripture.
It's part of the grand metanarrative of salvation history in Christianity. We are created, something went wrong, God saved his people from Egypt, gave them the law to live well together, sent the prophets when they went astray and finally sent his son Christ. Christ is the "first fruits" of the dead that signals the beginning of the Kingdom of God. On the Lord's day when Christ returns the dead (both the righteous and the unrighteous) will be raised from the dead to be judged. Those judged to be righteous will live again in another creation of the world; a new creation of the earth. Where God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
In the new earth it is said:
quote:
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
Essentially it's something of a return to the Garden of Eden where there will be no more evil and suffering.
Most Christian folklore confuses this with heaven (where we go when we die and we will exist only as spirit and not body) but the scriptures talk of a different way.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Except that we now know there was no garden of Eden, no era of innocence without suffering. Humans have been killing each other, suffering, dying etc. since before they were actually humans.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Except that we now know there was no garden of Eden, no era of innocence without suffering. Humans have been killing each other, suffering, dying etc. since before they were actually humans.
I'm always surprised to hear that some Christians still believe in this, a literal garden of Eden, where 'something went wrong', as Evensong says.
Made a nice poem though:
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing heavenly muse. (Milton).
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
And it's not people who identify as yeccies either. It's actually quite an issue; there is no lost paradise to which we can be returned.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Except that we now know there was no garden of Eden, no era of innocence without suffering. Humans have been killing each other, suffering, dying etc. since before they were actually humans.
That's an interesting point I hadn't thought of before. How God's intention's for the world fits in with evolution originally. Might be another thread in that.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Except that we now know there was no garden of Eden, no era of innocence without suffering. Humans have been killing each other, suffering, dying etc. since before they were actually humans.
I'm always surprised to hear that some Christians still believe in this, a literal garden of Eden, where 'something went wrong', as Evensong says.
Not a literal Garden of Eden, no. But the intent from God, yes.
[ 17. September 2014, 11:23: Message edited by: Evensong ]
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm always surprised to hear that some Christians still believe in this, a literal garden of Eden, where 'something went wrong'.
And I tend to be surprised at myself for being able to meditate on Eden , given that I pretty much accept we've only come to be here by a concoction Cosmic collisions, cell changes , and sheer good fortune.
The 'something went wrong' theology just seems to connect with what I often see as the poetic tragedy of the human condition.
Re. the declining fortunes of institutionalized Christianity we need to look at how it came to be elevated from a determined band of followers to a state run religion in the first place.
Thinking about it I suppose Constantine ultimately lit the fuse, for it was he who conceived the idea that Christianity could be embraced by the state . So now as the state gradually dis-embraces it , (which is what is happening today), then that which was conceived is coming to the end of it's term.
That is not to say Christianity will die out completely , such a thing isn't possible.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Kinda sucs as an answer tho. Why should we live with the consequences of our ancestor's actions? Dunno.
My ancestors decided to go on a lot of vacations instead of saving a lot of money for me to inherit. I must live with the consequences of that.
We must live with the world as the world comes to us. How can it possibly be otherwise? That includes the consequences of whatever our ancestors have fucked up.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Not a literal Garden of Eden, no. But the intent from God, yes.
Exactly. Perhaps some truths can only be--or best be--apprehended through myth. Not so much "this is the only way those primitive people could grasp it without a more developed theological/philosophical language," but "this is the best way for us human beings to understand this concept."
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Even if the garden of Eden is a symbol or a metaphor, there are still problems *ith it, since it is really describing a perfection *hich is then spoiled. Or to use the *ords of Fulke Greville, 'created sick, and commanded to be *ell'.
This is different from saying that humans are a mi*ture of good and evil - hard to deny - but is giving a time a*is to it, and a kind of causation to it. In other, *e *ere good originally; and *e became bad via our o*n *ill-po*er.
Again, you can make sense of that for the individual - babies are usually reckoned to be innocent. But for humans as a *hole - does that mean that homo erectus *as a transitional form from good to evil?
* am interested in this, as in my profession (therapy), there has obviously been much speculation and argument about the source of 'evil' in humans. But humans are animals ...
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
Even babies are born sometimes already containing the fears of their ancestors,
and probably a fe* stray asterisks too.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Crap spouted by itsarumdo:
Even babies are born sometimes already containing the fears of their ancestors,
and probably a fe* stray asterisks too.
Well, if you follow some psychoanalysts, babies are evil little ******. But their evil is innocent.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Crap spouted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Crap spouted by itsarumdo:
Even babies are born sometimes already containing the fears of their ancestors,
and probably a fe* stray asterisks too.
Well, if you follow some psychoanalysts, babies are evil little ******. But their evil is innocent.
* don't think * 'd agree with those particular schools of psychoanalysis - since * work with babies regularly. And spiritually, the parents are the guardians of the children. There is a certain responsibility that goes back through generations. * 've come across one pre-teen child who * appeared to be running an evil agenda that had no apparent relationship to the immediate parents, but there are a lot of unanswerable questions around that one incident.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Well, it's only saying that since we are animals, we have the usual ration of envy, aggression and so on. Of course, we have more insight into them, well, occasionally we do.
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on
:
quote:
Crap spouted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, it's only saying that since we are animals, we have the usual ration of envy, aggression and so on. Of course, we have more insight into them, well, occasionally we do.
Animals want to survive - so the main agenda run by the body is a survival one. * agree that if this becomes strong, it can connate behaviour, and this is the basis for PTSD, and therefore probably bipolar and several other clinical conditions. But all that is based on fear - if a baby is in ideal conditions, it is not fearful - it has everything it needs, and so the animal doesn't get over-reactive and dominant. For that to happen, the parents also have to be more or less confident of themselves and their environment. It might be a tall order, but it's not impossible.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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Started a new thread on the question of the Garden of Eden, Original Sin and the Theory of Evolution.
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