Beware the decline of Christianity

[Skyweir]

Happy Life of Brian Day to all .. and to all a good night

Happy Easter
Happy Passover
Happy Eostre

[Skyweir]

We all became better people, not just the Christians. Put a modern human into those times and he'd likely be just as bad. Our societies remade us. We have the luxury now of not being brutal because our lives are so easy. When you are desperate, you are more open to brutality.

Freedom of thought, speech, movement, and trade not only made us more prosperous but also more virtuous. Rather than casting us into an amoral chaos, breaking the shackles of dogma did the opposite. Humans in Western societies have more protections, rights, freedom, tolerance, and justice than any time in human history. We have not only made secular society more virtuous, but we've also cleaned up most of the barbarism of Christianity, too.

Surely this is one of the deepest ironies of history. Not only is God unnecessary to achieving a virtuous society, but society's move away from God is what ended up pulling Christianity out of the Dark Ages into a more virtuous stance.

None of us can take the credit for it. It's a new set of memes that have altered our firmware. We all have a new operating system, a baseline worldview that now includes shooting ourselves in spaceships to touch heavenly bodies. Stepping onto the moon was a giant leap for mankind, but it was also mucking about in moondust. The moon is not a heavenly light, it's a pile of rock as dark as charcoal. We've transcended our folly with a mundane reality.

Transcendence in the mundane. That's reality. That's the 'miracle.'

Potent summation .. kudos .. a really enjoyable read.

[Rawedge Rim]

He has indeed risen!!!!

[Skyweir]

Yay for him

[Rawedge Rim]

What I suspect Z is getting at is that it is insufficient for God to have become more tolerant and less vicious. God should not have become better; turned over a new leaf. This is rather convincing evidence that the God of this specific belief system does not exist. The reason any religion that has a problem with slavery, wife beating, etc, but did not have a problem with it at any time in the past, is not because the divine being at the head of that religion changed its mind. It is because the followers of that religion became better people over the generations.

Yes, well put.

We all became better people, not just the Christians. Put a modern human into those times and he'd likely be just as bad. Our societies remade us. We have the luxury now of not being brutal because our lives are so easy. When you are desperate, you are more open to brutality.

Freedom of thought, speech, movement, and trade not only made us more prosperous but also more virtuous. Rather than casting us into an amoral chaos, breaking the shackles of dogma did the opposite. Humans in Western societies have more protections, rights, freedom, tolerance, and justice than any time in human history. We have not only made secular society more virtuous, but we've also cleaned up most of the barbarism of Christianity, too.

Surely this is one of the deepest ironies of history. Not only is God unnecessary to achieving a virtuous society, but society's move away from God is what ended up pulling Christianity out of the Dark Ages into a more virtuous stance.

None of us can take the credit for it. It's a new set of memes that have altered our firmware. We all have a new operating system, a baseline worldview that now includes shooting ourselves in spaceships to touch heavenly bodies. Stepping onto the moon was a giant leap for mankind, but it was also mucking about in moondust. The moon is not a heavenly light, it's a pile of rock as dark as charcoal. We've transcended our folly with a mundane reality.

Transcendence in the mundane. That's reality. That's the 'miracle.'

Think you have that backasswards. It was the Church that helped pull the world out of barbarism. It was the Church who built universities and taught philosphy and science.

Catholic Church and science


.....It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals, and many clergy have been active in the sciences. Historians of science such as Pierre Duhem credit medieval Catholic mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Roger Bacon as the founders of modern science.[1] Duhem found "the mechanics and physics, of which modern times are justifiably proud, to proceed by an uninterrupted series of scarcely perceptible improvements from doctrines professed in the heart of the medieval schools."

OTOH, various political philosophies such as Communism, which profess no God, or Nazism which only paid lip service at best to religion, killed more people than all the religious war in all of human history combined.

[Zarathustra]

The Enlightenment had nothing to do with Communism and Nazism. Organized religion may have encouraged scholarship, but not a revolution in thought that was antithetical to dogma.

[Rawedge Rim]

The Enlightenment had nothing to do with Communism and Nazism. Organized religion may have encouraged scholarship, but not a revolution in thought that was antithetical to dogma.

Might want to look again at the catachism of the Church:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts: "Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."

Essentially it means that if a conflict arises between doctrine and science, such as whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth, then doctrine is changed to reflect provable phenomena.

OTOH, abstract ideas, such as government,bravery, love, God, hate, etc. are not disprovable, or provable by science.

[Vraith]

if a conflict arises between doctrine and science, such as whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth, then doctrine is changed to reflect provable phenomena.

Really? Maybe some Popes and some Cardinals SAY that...when it is CONVENIENT.
And maybe they SOMETIMES generically promote that.

Yet...

Kids with gay parents are just kids that grow up like "normal" kids.
But the entirety of your church is spending a fuckton of tax-free and/or gov't-given money to avoid giving good kids good parents.

That's one of the least hypocritical things.
Don't get me started on confession and sins.

Also, Republicans used to be anti-racist and pro-union. Shit changes.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

In the last decade, creation's resistance to allowing itself to be manipulated by humanity has emerged as a new element in the overall cultural situation. The question of the limits of science, and the criteria which it must observe, has become unavoidable.

Particularly emblematic of this change of intellectual climate, it seems to me, is the different way in which the Galileo case is seen.

[…]

Curiously, it was precisely [Ernst] Bloch, with his Romantic Marxism, who was among the first to openly oppose the [Galileo] myth, offering a new interpretation of what happened: The advantage of the heliocentric system over the geocentric, he suggested, does not consist in a greater correspondence to objective truth, but solely in the fact that it offers us greater ease of calculation. To this point, Bloch follows solely a modern conception of natural science. What is surprising, however, is the conclusion he draws: "Once the relativity of movement is taken for granted, an ancient human and Christian system of reference has no right to interference in astronomic calculations and their heliocentric simplification; however, it has the right to remain faithful to its method of preserving the earth in relation to human dignity, and to order the world with regard to what will happen and what has happened in the world."

[…]

… He [Paul Feyerabend] writes: "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism."

From the point of view of the concrete consequences of the turning point Galileo represents, however, C.F. Von Weizsacker takes another step forward, when he identifies a "very direct path" that leads from Galileo to the atomic bomb.

To my great surprise, in a recent interview on the Galileo case, I was not asked a question like, 'Why did the Church try to get in the way of the development of modern science?', but rather exactly the opposite, that is: 'Why didn't the church take a more clear position against the disasters that would inevitably follow, once Galileo had opened Pandora's box?'

It would be absurd, on the basis of these affirmations, to construct a hurried apologetics. The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation and from being inscribed in a still greater form of reason …

Here, I wished to recall a symptomatic case that illustrates the extent to which modernity's doubts about itself have grown today in science and technology.


[Full Text]

[Skyweir]

Couple of false presumptions ..

1. Creations resistance to manipulation

When was that a thing. Humans manipulate, change and abuse the earth all the time. Maybe not all that effectively but the industrial revolution changed the shape of the environment and has continued to do so since.

2. This discussion on Galileo and heliocentricism and geocentricism seems ... a little outdated. And at the time of Galileo the church held that the whole universe revolves around the earth .. or something to that degree of inconsistency.

3. I disagree that the verdict placed against Galileo was rational or just. He was condemned for stating the earth revolves around the sun. Criticising that stance even in retrospect is not politically opportunistic.

4. The remainder of the article is .. ridiculous. Its not even logical .. nor is it a logical progression of thought. Referencing Pandoras Box is not a little obtuse. Really Pandoras Box contained all the troubles of the world .. and THAT is a myth ..

I believe you could have provided much better set of quotes than this.

[Fist and Faith]

"Ridiculous" is being charitable. I checked the link, hoping it was published on April 1st.

[Rawedge Rim]

2. This discussion on Galileo and heliocentricism and geocentricism seems ... a little outdated. And at the time of Galileo the church held that the whole universe revolves around the earth .. or something to that degree of inconsistency.

And Galileo thought, that the Sun was the center of the universe, and he was wrong there. Yes the Church erred, and has done so on a number of occasions, but it comes around in time.

[Zarathustra]

Christianity is not just the Catholic church. It also includes all the Protestants who object to evolution being taught in school, and the fundamentalists who think the earth is 6000 years old based on a literal reading of the Bible.

I know that there were individual Christians who were also pioneers in science. But in terms of a cultural/political/economic/scientific revolution, the Enlightenment was a move away from superstition and dogma. Granted, the break from religion was not entirely clean. For instance, the political revolutions (especially in America) were driven in part by the desire for religious freedom. But the distinction between government and religion was not motivated by religion, but in opposition to religious mandates. It was the idea that man could order his society according to rational laws he wrote himself, rather than by a religious hierarchy with God at the top. This mirrors the same attitude in science, that man can figure out the laws of nature himself rather than relying upon religious dogma and religious texts.

This is a humanist attitude, one that directly contradicts the theocratic outlook that for so long dominated our societies. And that's why Christianity has become so different from Islam. It exists in societies that--while still respecting your individual right to worship--resist the theocratic, dogmatic role that religion has played for so long in our societies.

The distinction is real, and it didn't come about from the Church. It came from people resisting it.

[Rawedge Rim]

Christianity is not just the Catholic church. It also includes all the Protestants who object to evolution being taught in school, and the fundamentalists who think the earth is 6000 years old based on a literal reading of the Bible.

I know that there were individual Christians who were also pioneers in science. But in terms of a cultural/political/economic/scientific revolution, the Enlightenment was a move away from superstition and dogma. Granted, the break from religion was not entirely clean. For instance, the political revolutions (especially in America) were driven in part by the desire for religious freedom. But the distinction between government and religion was not motivated by religion, but in opposition to religious mandates. It was the idea that man could order his society according to rational laws he wrote himself, rather than by a religious hierarchy with God at the top. This mirrors the same attitude in science, that man can figure out the laws of nature himself rather than relying upon religious dogma and religious texts.

This is a humanist attitude, one that directly contradicts the theocratic outlook that for so long dominated our societies. And that's why Christianity has become so different from Islam. It exists in societies that--while still respecting your individual right to worship--resist the theocratic, dogmatic role that religion has played for so long in our societies.

The distinction is real, and it didn't come about from the Church. It came from people resisting it.

and where do you think that these laws came from originally, and the philosophy behind them? From religion.

And besides, the idea of a deity at the top doesn't sound any less crazy than, "well, the universe just simply happened on day".

[Fist and Faith]

It's either that or "A being capable of creating the universe just simply happened one day." Which is crazier? Neither seems possible. One or the other is actually the case.

[Vraith]

and where do you think that these laws came from originally, and the philosophy behind them? From religion.

And besides, the idea of a deity at the top doesn't sound any less crazy than, "well, the universe just simply happened on day".

On the first...no. Religion AND the explanation of the laws and philosophy are both RESULTS of people wondering. One kind of wondering ended up being better...because it KEPT being wondering...the other became ANSWERS! [big mysterious after death for puny humans, but ANSWERS!] Priests and Churches and shit.

On the second...no.
Simply happened is the dismissive crap of lazy people.
But even if TRUE...it's better than the other...cuz the other demands not just one crazy thing [the universe], but TWO...the universe and a diety that is even crazier and far more incomprehensible than the universe.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, a supernatural, infinite being is infinitely harder to explain than the natural universe. It's the craziest idea you can have.

I get how religious people look at our universe and think that it is so incredible that it requires a God to explain it, but why does their wonder stop there? Why does God not require an even greater explanation?

[Fist and Faith]

Indeed. One is a fact that can verified in every way facts can be verified. The other cannot be verified as a fact in any way that facts are verified. So which one should be assumed to have just happened one day - the one that is an incontestable fact, or the one for which there is no evidence suggesting its existence?

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Indeed. One is a fact that can verified in every way facts can be verified. The other cannot be verified as a fact in any way that facts are verified. So which one should be assumed to have just happened one day - the one that is an incontestable fact, or the one for which there is no evidence suggesting its existence?

Consciousness is not an empirically verifiable fact. You have to believe in it to know it. Or know it to believe in it.

Wow. A confluence of three threads. How meta.

[Fist and Faith]

Consciousness is not an empirically verifiable fact. You have to believe in it to know it. Or know it to believe in it.

Yes, I worded it with these things in mind. Just because we don't have empirical evidence something exists doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Regarding consciousness, I know it, therefore I believe in it. Regarding God, I do not know it, therefore I do not believe in it.

Wow. A confluence of three threads. How meta.

Nicely done.