Catholicism reverts (again)

[Avatar]

Moral systems are not things which intellectuals think up somewhere, and they existed long before intellectuals existed. They spring from what all of us inside ourselves know to be right and wrong.

And how do we know this thing?

I don't believe any sort of morality is inherent. If it was, then this:

...that small children do not need to be taught to lie, to hit others...

would not be true.

Rather, the fact that children have to be taught not to lie or hit others suggests that "morality" is very much a function (and product) of society, rather than vice versa.

--A

[Menolly]

I think my own personal objections are to the smug intellectual attitude that I see ALL the time that, "We already know what Christianity is and we have 'outgrown' that. We are so much wiser than our ancestors because we happen to be living today. They were all so ignorant and we are so intelligent." Basically, that most people who object to it have either grown up and left Christianity without learning about it from an adult perspective, or have experienced a primitive version of it far removed from the original. (I call the former 'a second-grader's version of Christianity)

*nod*

This is the basis of the ba'al teshuvah movement within Judaism as well. I have not gone so far as to become ba'al teshuvah myself, particularly since I am intermarried and that...gets in the way. But many who do join the movement say they had no idea of the hidden Truths and Wisdom contained within beyond strictly rabbinical Judaism, and which is why they strayed from it in the first place, searching for something more, which was actually there for them to grasp all the time.

[rusmeister]

Moral systems are not things which intellectuals think up somewhere, and they existed long before intellectuals existed. They spring from what all of us inside ourselves know to be right and wrong.

And how do we know this thing?

I don't believe any sort of morality is inherent. If it was, then this:

...that small children do not need to be taught to lie, to hit others...

would not be true.

Rather, the fact that children have to be taught not to lie or hit others suggests that "morality" is very much a function (and product) of society, rather than vice versa.

--A

Hi Avatar,
I think what you missed in what I said earlier is that Christianity acknowledges a contradiction between what we want to do, and what we feel we should do. When they contradict, the former is understood as 'sin'.
But let's try this instead:

C.S. Lewis; "Mere Christianity" (under copyright, but I think I can claim fair use of a few paragraphs here for the sake of the argument)

1. The Law of Human Nature

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"-"That's my seat, I was there first"-"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"- "Why should you shove in first?"-"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"-"Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man
very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law-with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.

We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several different sets of law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses.

This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

But this is not true. There have been differences between their
moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total
difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.
People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next point, ...

Of course you may disagree, but then it will be very difficult for us to go on. Does that help clarify my thoughts?

[rusmeister]

I think my own personal objections are to the smug intellectual attitude that I see ALL the time that, "We already know what Christianity is and we have 'outgrown' that. We are so much wiser than our ancestors because we happen to be living today. They were all so ignorant and we are so intelligent." Basically, that most people who object to it have either grown up and left Christianity without learning about it from an adult perspective, or have experienced a primitive version of it far removed from the original. (I call the former 'a second-grader's version of Christianity)

*nod*

This is the basis of the ba'al teshuvah movement within Judaism as well. I have not gone so far as to become ba'al teshuvah myself, particularly since I am intermarried and that...gets in the way. But many who do join the movement say they had no idea of the hidden Truths and Wisdom contained within beyond strictly rabbinical Judaism, and which is why they strayed from it in the first place, searching for something more, which was actually there for them to grasp all the time.

Thanks, Menolly. I would agree that it is far better that we be able to acknowledge that we may not fully understand a theology than to feel that we know it and don't need to find out if our understanding is correct or not. I suspect that people growing up in any society may feel that they understand everything about a dominant faith of that society, particularly if they were brought up in it - and never examine its foundations from a mature point of view. In the West, certainly Christianity suffers this fate, and the splintering of Protestant groups and contradictory theology does not help the situation at all (never mind the cult of the individual, but that's another can o' worms). I can say the same for Orthodox Christianity that you do of Judaism.

I once did a comparative poll on people (accepted any stories) who converted to the Protestant faiths from Orthodoxy, and vice versa. What I came up with was that many converts to Orthodoxy left various Protestant faiths as adults, with full knowledge of what they left. The converts to the Protestants from Orthodoxy, on the other hand, had pretty much all had childhood experiences only and generally did not know much about Orthodox theology.

[Lord Mhoram]

russmeister,

Unfortunately, this crashes right away on the simple fact that Chesterton wrote most of this stuff BEFORE the 1st World War, and died in 1936. Heretics was written in 1905, Orthodoxy in 1908. Chesterton predicted a lot of that stuff, and it was the ideas of his atheistic arch-opponent, George Bernard Shaw that were actually put into practice by the Nazis (Eugenics, the efforts to produce superior men, etc.) - not that Shaw supported them - he didn't, but this was the practical fruit of his theoretical philosophy.

All well and good. But GBS inherited an intellectual tradition from Nietzsche, for example, but postmodernism (which Chesterton was indeed "predicting") did not really become a European phenomenon until after the Second World War. But you're right, Christianity was already on the decline in Europe. But that says more about Christianity than about secularism, doesn't it? (By the way, you conveniently left out of your analysis the presence of Christianity in Nazi dogma. That's a "practical fruit" of Christianity, too, along with a lot of almost-as-bad stuff over the millennia.)

Christian dogma opposed the evil and wrong-doing engaged in in the war periods. (Oh, and selfishness is individual, really, not cultural. That is what selfishness means.)

On the first you're right (but as I said above, not always. Not even close, actually. Actually, Christianity has such a tattered human rights record that that statement is all but meaningless). On the second, that's a sweeping statement. What I meant by "cultural selfishness" is the idea that "my culture is better than yours." As I've been arguing throughout this thread, and I have not yet been sufficiently refuted, this is an idea inherent in Christianity, and inherent in nearly all of the world religions. This Manichean viewpoint leads to international conflict and has, in my view, bred nationalism.

You have been trained to think of dogmas as something exclusive to traditional Western religious culture, aka Christendom.

Actually, I haven't been. But apparently you've been trained to think that all secularists have been.

To say that there is no way or there is no truth is just as dogmatic as Hitler's dogmatic statements.

I agree to a point. But Judeo-Christian dogmatism broaches no alternative. Postmodernism preaches all alternatives. I am forced to throw in my lot with the latter, even if it is not perfect by any means.

Any serious study of the traditional morals - which if you really read Lewis and Chesterton you will discover are really universal with very little variance regardless of the location or time of the culture - will reveal that Hitler's dogma was wrong.

Firstly, I haven't read any Chesterton. But I have read an enormous amount of Lewis. In fact, I was the one that created the Lewis forum on danlo's boards. I think he's a very imperfect thinker. (I also think that given how much you're quoting those two exclusively, you need to broaden your horizons. Read some Nietzsche, read some Foucault, read some Derrida, read some Kierkegaard. It's nice to see the opposite view from time to time.) I know full well that often in theory Judeo-Christianity flies in the face of a Hitler. But that doesn't really prove much.

1) our reason, and
2) our common sense

to decide which dogmas are right and which are wrong.

Oh I agree. I've used my reason and my common sense and have come to reject Christianity wholly. As have many other people. In fact (anecdotal evidence coming up) I've always been more struck by the reason of the agnostic than the reason of the Christian. The Christian relies far too heavily to my liking on tradition when defining their faith. Agnosticism is inherently based on reason, on the other hand.

Moral systems are not things which intellectuals think up somewhere, and they existed long before intellectuals existed.

True, but events and thinkers are the only way in which we can gauge intellectual development.

(This, by the way, is why it is SO popular to debunk Christianity, because it's always reminding us of this, and gosh, I want to do what I want to do.)

Really? Wow, and here I was thinking that God's will had something to do with it all...

I think my own personal objections are to the smug intellectual attitude that I see ALL the time that, "We already know what Christianity is and we have 'outgrown' that. We are so much wiser than our ancestors because we happen to be living today. They were all so ignorant and we are so intelligent."

I feel the same way. Just reverse it. I see the C.S. Lewises and the Joseph Ratzingers as poor opponents for the secular humanists, who have made in my view a convincing case against Christianity (one that I have interpreted, by the way, not on the basis of the "second-graders' version of Christianity" or on immaturity, thank you very much). They're smug opponents of "intellectualism" and "philosophical liberalism." I mean really, is there anything more arrogant than a 2,000-year old intellectual tradition that views itself as the road to salvation?

[danlo]

I think rus, or we, needs to start a seperate topic because all this argueing is not only confusing but it deviates from this topic. OK so it doesn't deviate at all. It's just too big a ball of wax and will probably get lost here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that rus adheres to orthodox Christianity, as opposed to mainsteam Christianity as opposed to Fundamental Christianity as opposed to Catholicism. What are the differences? Is it wrong to heap this all together? Seems like many people do. This heaping has something to do with Christ right? Orthodoxy is like the Hinayana vs the Mahayana right? The little wheel that thinks it upholds the true teachings of the movement and practices direct experience with God(s).

See if we read as much Chesterton as we can, and the authors Mhoram suggested, we can get confused unless we really break down the terms. Now I know what Manchinean means, but I had to look up postmodernism. As a sociology major I should never forget what it means, but after being brunt out by all these arguements earlier in my life it's easy to purposefully forget.

Obviously you have to go over and over Chesterton to fully understand him...it's the same with many religious thinkers and philosophers. I think the first time I ever tried to figure out what a priori meant I realized these guys were all spouting a bunch of hot air and wasting a bunch of pages to elucidate fairly simple concepts. That's, sorta, the way my first reading of Chesterton's stuff goes-he seems to be contradicting the hell out of himself, on purpose, but I see what he's getting at.

Postmodernism can use some tweaking too...it's a grand idea on paper, but like socialism can be liked to communism by fundamental forces. Now we have to define fundamentalism...see this goes on and on. I truly believe in progess and postmodernism has truly made some great strides, but let's face it fundamentalism (at least in America) has invoked the horrible head of fear over the past 20 years or so and set postmodernism back on it's ass.

See how dangerously close this is getting to politics? (one subject I'm lacking in is Christianity's effects on Nazism, or maybe it's too complex). I'm like Furls, as she stated in the beginning of "What is it you believe", I can believe in science on one hand, and "God" on the other, and can see where quantum physics and intellegent design can eventually merge. It's the semantics and fear that keep everyone at each others throats.

I don't have a Manchinean veiwpoint and I don't believe in black and white. The again I don't believe in "classical" hell either-I believe it's a state of mind right here on earth invoked by ignorance, fear and social factors (population growth and power struggle, for instance). So in proffessing 'progess' I may not be a turnip afterall. And in some sense Chesterton agrees with me. To me the enemy is fear, ignorance and ennui the solution, as Christ the teacher and Fist might agree, is love and cooperation.

Emo is right, as well, just hang out in a neonatal nursery or practice true alturism, for small examples, and keep yourself open and miracles will and do happen.

[rusmeister]

Actually, Danlo, what you say is pretty reasonable and I follow you! I will say that (to answer your question) it IS wrong to heap all brands of Christianity together - my position (expressed in extreme simplicity) is that there is a Church established by Christ which has faithfully passed down the Faith, and a lot of churches formed by breaking off from other churches that broke off from a big Church called 'the Roman Catholic Church' that had gone wrong by breaking off from the Orthodox Church in 1054.

One point Chesterton defends well is the fact that progress is impossible without iron clad standards or absolutes to measure the progress by.

As a complete aside, my faith has caused my passionate interest in politics to cool, as temporal politics do fade in importance if the eternal destiny of the individual is what truly matters.

The only thing I would take major exception to is your reference to Christ the teacher.
It is true that Christ taught, and that it was part of His ministry. However, most people tend to see Christ as primarily a teacher, and worst of all, just a good man. It is very popular to imagine Jesus as just another moral teacher, like Confucius or Siddhartha, or a prophet like Moses or Mohammed. (Maybe you don't intend this, but it's how it came across)

Anyone who actually takes the trouble to read the Gospels and see what Christ actually said is probably in for a shock.

What you actually find are thundering and blasphemous statements by a Man who says "Hey, I was here before the world began. I created all of you. I forgive your wife for committing adultery against you. A Man going around forgiving the sins of others against 3rd parties and identifying himself as the Lord of all creation could be only one of three things:

1) a liar and swindler
2) a complete lunatic
3) exactly who He claimed to be

(This is commonly referred to as 'the Trilemma')

The one thing He couldn't be is just a nice man and great moral teacher.

[danlo]

I was refering to Christ in the role of a teacher. I understand that he might be as close to God as anything we have seen, he might be God for all I know, but that we are mortal and soul part of God as well. If we progress as a species be it by constant fluidity or even the iron absolutes of dogma it must be because God is trying to discover something about itself through us. I believe in the former.

Here is what little I've written about my own way at the Hangar:

I prefer the term 'spiritual awareness' to religion. I have no need for past tenets, constructs, or belief systems. I feel that the individual is free to determine his/her own path and that spiritual belief and awareness is too personal to even adequately express and should never be forced upon another. My life motto, so far, is that if you are not learning you're not living. I am always in search of answers but since this is an ongoing process I realize I am far from any answers. Is this the essence of an 'open-mind'? I surely hope it is.

When I say: I have no need for past tenets, constructs, or belief systems what I really mean is that I haven't and will not subject myself to such without a hell of a fight. I do try to study such to the best of my ability and I can see the beauty, logic and usefulness of certian parts. These I may decide to incorporate into my own system..so far attempting to be nice, working to curtail my own anger, being non-hyppocritical, trying, trying, trying not to judge another, attempting to put myself in anothers shoes, advocating and practicing non-violence and leading by positive example have been my goals.

Accepting responsibility has always been a sticking point with me. I do believe that Jesus is the son of God, but I also believe that all of us are the sons and daughters of god equally. I also see no difference between humans, animals, plants and matter-I have no idea how we came to seperate ourselves. I believe that Jesus died for the sins of the old world and that we are, now, responsible for our own. When Jesus said "I am the truth the light and the way" what I really believe he was saying is "You are too, if you can find it in yourself."

Leading by positive example, having unconditional love for everything, embracing the gift of life and fellowship. Taking the aspects of all religion, beliefs and creative endeavours into your soul and processing them until you find something that is comfortable, that gives back, that lends a helping hand to those less fortunate than you..ah then we may have a start. I'll continue to believe in a loving God as long as these thing are possible.

Cause if it's an accident, plan, mass hallucination or intelligent creation I'm happy to believe in whatever's responsible for that. Pick and choose, it's up to the individual-I have yet to encounter the arguement that will convince me that something isn't responsible for the glorious gifts found among this chaff. (I'm not afraid to compost my brain in this, potentially useful chaff-we don't know the stinking power of even anything we call chaff...) I can't put my finger on it, and it might not even choose to identify itself by it...but for now I'll call it God.

As a complete aside, my faith has caused my passionate interest in politics to cool, as temporal politics do fade in importance if the eternal destiny of the individual is what truly matters.

Personal developement such as this is 'orthodox' in many religions and 'ways' such as Zen Buddism, Toltec, Way of the Peaceful Warrior and, believe it or not AA (thou it professes to be a-religious>however personal growth toward truly recovering from an addiction requires such discipline) to name just a few. In order to first find the path to the eternal, or whatever, we must deprogram ourselves, and penetrate the fog of gossips, lies, useless information and envy.

I am still stuck between these worlds as, for some reason I am still concerned more about the whole than myself. I wish you good luck, I haven't resolved enough of my sins yet and don't have the discipline you do. Are you familiar with Father Valdimir and Valaam?

[Menolly]

danlo...I Love you.

*tell Tam it's cool though*

[danlo]

there's more that I just edited in...

I also see no difference between humans, animals, plants and matter-I have no idea how we came to seperate ourselves.

Actually I do! I blame Aristotle! See I'm a heretic to both science and religion! Does this make me a pagan? Maybe, but all the pagan groups I've ever tried to join told me I was too crazy for them.

[Menolly]

I still Love you...

G-ds..the above says it all perfectly for me.

[Avatar]

Of course you may disagree, but then it will be very difficult for us to go on. Does that help clarify my thoughts?

I understand the position, what I'm asking is for you to defend it. Specifically the idea that there is some sort of universal standard which not only is inherent in us from birth, but which exists independantly of us.

--A

[rusmeister]

Of course you may disagree, but then it will be very difficult for us to go on. Does that help clarify my thoughts?

I understand the position, what I'm asking is for you to defend it. Specifically the idea that there is some sort of universal standard which not only is inherent in us from birth, but which exists independantly of us.

--A

I did offer a defense (see above). As to proving that it exists independently of humans...that seems impossible to me. Not everything can (or needs to be) empirically proved.

The defense Lewis offered is based on our own experience.

[Avatar]

Unless I'm missing it, I saw an example rather than a defence. (I could well be missing it though.)

*shrug* Anyway, it just seems to me so obvious that by socialisation we instill those values, rather than that they are inherent.

Would we expect somebody who was raised with no allusion to abstract values at all to understand the necessity of sharing? Of not taking something that was somebody elses? I doubt it.

--A

[rusmeister]

Sorry about not getting back on your post sooner. Take it as a complement, but your post required more time and thought...

The first thing that I would like to say is that I do not set as my goal “proving Christianity to be the Truth”. I DO set as my goal that of establishing that there is a rational basis for believing it; that faith, while not a product of or dependent on reason, is not incompatible with reason.

Unfortunately, this crashes right away on the simple fact that Chesterton wrote most of this stuff BEFORE the 1st World War, and died in 1936. Heretics was written in 1905, Orthodoxy in 1908. Chesterton predicted a lot of that stuff, and it was the ideas of his atheistic arch-opponent, George Bernard Shaw that were actually put into practice by the Nazis (Eugenics, the efforts to produce superior men, etc.) - not that Shaw supported them - he didn't, but this was the practical fruit of his theoretical philosophy.

All well and good. But GBS inherited an intellectual tradition from Nietzsche, for example, but postmodernism (which Chesterton was indeed "predicting") did not really become a European phenomenon until after the Second World War.

When you say, “inherited an intellectual tradition”, what do you mean? I would think it far more concise and accurate to say, “He followed a similar train of reasoning.” The one is very vague and could mean anything. The other correctly points out dependence on a chain of reasoning, and subsequently, that the ideas can be correct or incorrect. A train of philosophical reasoning can be shown to be invalid if its first principles, the presumptions on which it is based, are unsound.

But you're right, Christianity was already on the decline in Europe. But that says more about Christianity than about secularism, doesn't it? (By the way, you conveniently left out of your analysis the presence of Christianity in Nazi dogma. That's a "practical fruit" of Christianity, too, along with a lot of almost-as-bad stuff over the millennia.)

Christian dogma opposed the evil and wrong-doing engaged in in the war periods. (Oh, and selfishness is individual, really, not cultural. That is what selfishness means.)

On the first you're right (but as I said above, not always. Not even close, actually. Actually, Christianity has such a tattered human rights record that that statement is all but meaningless). On the second, that's a sweeping statement. What I meant by "cultural selfishness" is the idea that "my culture is better than yours." As I've been arguing throughout this thread, and I have not yet been sufficiently refuted, this is an idea inherent in Christianity, and inherent in nearly all of the world religions. This Manichean viewpoint leads to international conflict and has, in my view, bred nationalism.

A central tenet of Christianity that distinguishes it from most other major faiths is that all men are sinners. In other words, it says that men are naturally inclined to break God’s laws. Therefore, any accusation of individuals breaking those laws comes as no surprise to Christians. From my standpoint, even the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church are flawed humans that are capable of screwing up, so even a major scandal would do nothing to discredit the Faith – on the contrary, it would demonstrate its accuracy.(Oh, and Manichaeism was a heresy rejected by the Church)

So while there is no doubt that you can find examples, and even outrageous ones, of Christians doing terribly wrong things, it only proves the Faith. Now it is a different question when the teachings of a faith espouse behavior that we can agree to be wrong.

You have been trained to think of dogmas as something exclusive to traditional Western religious culture, aka Christendom.

Actually, I haven't been. But apparently you've been trained to think that all secularists have been.

I did make a generalization and an assumption there (based on what you have said so far) that you are a graduate of a Western (US) public education system. I could be completely wrong about that.
I do have strong evidence and experience of American public education’s indoctrination of children in a denial of absolute philosophical or religious truth (if you like, of an inability to arrive at such) and made my statement based on that. But like I said, I may well have been wrong about you, and as it would require extensive proof (mega-long posting) examined by a mind open to the possibility that it could be true, I am willing to withdraw that statement in regards to you.

To say that there is no way or there is no truth is just as dogmatic as Hitler's dogmatic statements.

I agree to a point. But Judeo-Christian dogmatism broaches no alternative. Postmodernism preaches all alternatives. I am forced to throw in my lot with the latter, even if it is not perfect by any means.

Scientists have not yet found an alternative to oxygen to breathe, but that doesn’t stop you from breathing or accepting an absolute truth. I think you are only objecting to absolute truth of anything supra-natural; ie, not empirically provable by scientific method. Yes I know we can go into a debate on religious or philosophical truths vs scientific truths, but it all really depends on whether you believe that absolute truths are possible in both spheres and whether your conclusion is correct or not...

Any serious study of the traditional morals - which if you really read Lewis and Chesterton you will discover are really universal with very little variance regardless of the location or time of the culture - will reveal that Hitler's dogma was wrong.

Firstly, I haven't read any Chesterton. But I have read an enormous amount of Lewis. In fact, I was the one that created the Lewis forum on danlo's boards. I think he's a very imperfect thinker. (I also think that given how much you're quoting those two exclusively, you need to broaden your horizons. Read some Nietzsche, read some Foucault, read some Derrida, read some Kierkegaard. It's nice to see the opposite view from time to time.) I know full well that often in theory Judeo-Christianity flies in the face of a Hitler. But that doesn't really prove much.

FTR, I have read some Nietzsche. I hold a Master’s in Russian Language and Literature, and self-taught myself enough to be granted a license to teach English as a native as well as foreign language, so have read quite a range of philosophical views in literature.
I speak of Lewis and Chesterton often because I have found them to speak more of the truth that so thoroughly identifies the ills of the world than anyone else in the English speaking world. There was a good deal of truth that I already knew from personal experience.
Simply by way of explanation, if something is demonstrably false, then it is silly to examine alternate points of view about it. If one has discovered that objects do not fall up in our atmosphere, then it is pointless to examine an exposition that they do. Since I have found the concept of sin to be perfectly true, I am not interested in following the reasoning of people who reject that concept. Allow me here to offer Lewis's concluding comment from ch 1 (see the excerpt above) of MC:

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human
beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave
in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do
not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.
These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and
the universe we live in.

That’s why I have no hope of convincing you that Christianity is true. The only thing I could hope for is to dispel the illusion that the Christian faith is opposed to reason.

:
1) our reason, and
2) our common sense

to decide which dogmas are right and which are wrong.

Oh I agree. I've used my reason and my common sense and have come to reject Christianity wholly. As have many other people. In fact (anecdotal evidence coming up) I've always been more struck by the reason of the agnostic than the reason of the Christian. The Christian relies far too heavily to my liking on tradition when defining their faith. Agnosticism is inherently based on reason, on the other hand.

Reason is one of the ways we come to know the world –not the only one, but it is one of the great avenues to arriving at truth, when used properly. It’s fine to be in a state of not knowing, but agnosticism as a philosophy is merely a refusal or inability to use reason to come to definite conclusions.

Moral systems are not things which intellectuals think up somewhere, and they existed long before intellectuals existed.

True, but events and thinkers are the only way in which we can gauge intellectual development.

Not sure how that responds to my statement.

(This, by the way, is why it is SO popular to debunk Christianity, because it's always reminding us of this, and gosh, I want to do what I want to do.)

Really? Wow, and here I was thinking that God's will had something to do with it all...

I think this misses the basic Christian idea that I mentioned above. It states that God created us with free will and gives us the option to NOT do what He wants us to do; the option to reject Him.

I think my own personal objections are to the smug intellectual attitude that I see ALL the time that, "We already know what Christianity is and we have 'outgrown' that. We are so much wiser than our ancestors because we happen to be living today. They were all so ignorant and we are so intelligent."

I feel the same way. Just reverse it. I see the C.S. Lewises and the Joseph Ratzingers as poor opponents for the secular humanists, who have made in my view a convincing case against Christianity (one that I have interpreted, by the way, not on the basis of the "second-graders' version of Christianity" or on immaturity, thank you very much). They're smug opponents of "intellectualism" and "philosophical liberalism." I mean really, is there anything more arrogant than a 2,000-year old intellectual tradition that views itself as the road to salvation?

But you cannot claim the reverse - the view of history commonly held today to claim that “All of our ancestors (particularly in the last 2,000 years, were ignorant atheists. Isn’t it lucky that we are enlightened Christians?” This is NOT what is accepted in public discourse or taught in our schools. In public discourse, it is Lewis, Chesterton and if you like, Ratzinger that are under seige and whose views are not accepted today, not Russell or Shaw. Just look in any English class and see whose works are taught - Chesterton's, or Shaw's? Of course, Shaw's, and yet Chesterton's works are just as intelligent, just as witty - even more so. It is his philosophy that is barred from the public arena. (recommend you do a little research into the friendship and debates between these two geniuses)

You may be right about a smugness on the part of Christians who are anti-intellectual. There are such people, sadly, but again, they do not disprove the Faith itself.

There is nothing arrogant about the concept of salvation and a need for it if it happens to be the truth. But that is the real question. Why do Christians speak of sin, of a Fall from a state of perfection to our current state, etc.? But those are topics for someone who wants to really understand, as an adult, what the Faith is saying. Since I’ll only offer rational sources that I believe to be true,
www.oca.org/QAIndex.asp?SID=3

One final note - we cannot really debate anything if we do not share any common ground (much like Lewis's comment that you can't blame Nazis if they really had and obeyed a completely different moral system (assuming that such a thing were possible - but it would be like claiming that I exist on one kind of oxygen and you exist thanks to a different kind).

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

No problem regarding the slightly delayed response.

When you say, “inherited an intellectual tradition”, what do you mean?

All I was saying is that GBS did not come up with his theories in a vacuum. Rejection of Christianity by philosophers is part of a long dialectic. What I am saying is that the rejection of Christianity in the university and by a solid chunk of secular (but not necessarily secularist) intellectuals occurred after the world wars. By the way, after your comment about GBS's effects on Nazism, I looked him up again, and could only find information concerning his ties to European socialism, nothing about any ties to Nazism or even fascism.

A central tenet of Christianity that distinguishes it from most other major faiths is that all men are sinners.

I would say that is a central tenet of all the Abrahamic faiths. Buddhism also acknowledges this ("There is a cause of suffering.."). I don't see it as exclusively Christian at all.

So while there is no doubt that you can find examples, and even outrageous ones, of Christians doing terribly wrong things, it only proves the Faith.

That's an interesting logic. But what it proves to me is that Christianity is no different from any other moral system on earth, or ever in history. It can be easily misused, its institutions have become at many points astoundingly corrupt, and it has utterly failed to meaningfully rectify any of the problems of the human condition.

But like I said, I may well have been wrong about you, and as it would require extensive proof (mega-long posting) examined by a mind open to the possibility that it could be true, I am willing to withdraw that statement in regards to you.

Heh, well since this is an aside, suffice to say that at this point in my education I've never attended public school. Only Catholic schools, which hasn't helped much.

I think you are only objecting to absolute truth of anything supra-natural; ie, not empirically provable by scientific method

Well, yes, moral relativism is what we're talking about here though, isn't it? Interestingly enough, postmodernist secular philosophers also sought to undermine basic tents of the humanities as well - Michel Foucault explored the fascinating question of "What is a book?" for example. That's what postmodernism is all about - questioning everything, with the mind open to all possibilities, with nothing taken at face value. Science cannot be attacked from such a point of view, as you point out.

I speak of Lewis and Chesterton often because I have found them to speak more of the truth that so thoroughly identifies the ills of the world than anyone else in the English speaking world.

Fair enough, but...

Since I have found the concept of sin to be perfectly true, I am not interested in following the reasoning of people who reject that concept.

That's unfortunate. What use is an intellectual position when you can't challenge it? In other words, your views could potentially only be strengthened by reading the opposition. For instance, I'm a US liberal, but I enjoy reading The National Review or The Economist when I can. I'm taking a class right now in Christian ethics. *shrug* It's good to get all points of view.

It’s fine to be in a state of not knowing, but agnosticism as a philosophy is merely a refusal or inability to use reason to come to definite conclusions.

That's a blatant misrepresentation of agnosticism. It has nothing to do with a refusal or inability to use reason at all. Agnosticism is a reflection of the failure of organized religion and theism in general to answer to reason. When that test is failed, agnosticism is the only viable alternative.

Not sure how that responds to my statement.

It seemed to me that you were considering intellectual traditions as abstract, metaphysical entities. Not so. We can only talk about intellectual traditions by talking about their proponents and the results of them.

I think this misses the basic Christian idea that I mentioned above. It states that God created us with free will and gives us the option to NOT do what He wants us to do; the option to reject Him.

But He created us in the first place, didn't He? We're predestined, then, to make one of two choices: to reject Him or to accept Him, as you say. I'm simplifying things, I know, but the inherent contradiction is still there. Free will is only realistic if a god is removed from the equation, otherwise all of our decisions are somehow incumbent upon the will of a god for us to be even alive and making the decisions at all.

But you cannot claim the reverse - the view of history commonly held today to claim that “All of our ancestors (particularly in the last 2,000 years, were ignorant atheists. Isn’t it lucky that we are enlightened Christians?” This is NOT what is accepted in public discourse or taught in our schools. In public discourse, it is Lewis, Chesterton and if you like, Ratzinger that are under seige and whose views are not accepted today, not Russell or Shaw. Just look in any English class and see whose works are taught - Chesterton's, or Shaw's? Of course, Shaw's, and yet Chesterton's works are just as intelligent, just as witty - even more so. It is his philosophy that is barred from the public arena. (recommend you do a little research into the friendship and debates between these two geniuses)

Again, the assault on Christianity in academia is a very recent event, comparatively. For nearly two millennia before the Second World War, Christianity was on top. Look at the Enlightenment, one beginning point for modern philosophy. Voltaire rejected Christianity, and everyone thought he was a whackjob. The reason Christian thinkers in the late 20th century and early 21st century are so disdainful of secularism is that for so long, secularism wasn't even a viable philosophical system. Besides, these aren't absolutes. Not everyone prefers Shaw to Chesterton.

There are such people, sadly, but again, they do not disprove the Faith itself.

True. But they nevertheless are the current intellectual champions of Christianity.

There is nothing arrogant about the concept of salvation and a need for it if it happens to be the truth.

But this is what I've been saying: an inherent truism of nearly any faith is that "My faith is the right way," implying somehow that other faiths are deficient. I see this as pure arrogance.

And I do not think the Nazis were Christians, if that's what you were asking.

[danlo]

intellectuals occurred after the world wars

didn't read most of what you were saying (as I'm still waiting for rus to answer my question) but look at the Dadaists and neo-Furturists before making such a blanket statement.

[rusmeister]

Just to keep quote-itis down...

Shaw never supported the Nazis. However, his ultimate belief in creating the 'superman' (as it was called then), of creating a superior man through education and eugenics, among other things, were the tradition that the Nazis 'inherited'. Just look up Shaw and eugenics.

I should clarify my statement on sin to specify the doctrine of the Fall through the sin of Adam and Eve, and the subsequent need for a second 'Adam' and 'Eve' to make a reversal of the Fall possible.

I quite agree on corruption and the human condition. But here we have to abandon speaking about humanity in the abstract and speak about the personal betterment of you and me. (It follows from this that there is something in us individually that needs bettering.) You can't better others. You can only better yourself, and Christianity has performed astounding feats along these lines.

I acknowledge my error in assuming you were a product of public schools.

As Lewis points out, there are practical boundaries to even the imagination that accepts moral relativism.

Think of a country where people were admired for
running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the
people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a
country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what
people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or
your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men
have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have
always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

In understanding why it would be logical for a person to reject a person's point of view, it is sufficient to look at the common ground that is shared - what does NOT need to be examined. For example, a person who questions the validity of reason itself is already a turnip and there is no logical reason to follow his trains of thought. For me, sin is a first principle. Its existence is beyond question and to question its existence is as brainless as to question reason. That is not being open-minded. It is denying that which has already been established (a nice way of saying 'foolish').

Any debate has to be established on common ground. The differences must spring from what is accepted. As soon as you cut yourself off from common ground, you're like Wile E. Coyote who's just found himself off the edge of the cliff. I'm not going to debate someone who cannot see the existence of sin (selfishness, if you are allergic to the word 'sin').

I said agnosticism as a philosophy. The idea that truth really cannot be reached.

It seemed to me that you were considering intellectual traditions as abstract, metaphysical entities. Not so. We can only talk about intellectual traditions by talking about their proponents and the results of them.

Then I think I can agree with your statement. It seemed to me that you were considering intellectual traditions as abstract, metaphysical entities.

But He created us in the first place, didn't He? We're predestined, then, to make one of two choices: to reject Him or to accept Him, as you say. I'm simplifying things, I know, but the inherent contradiction is still there. Free will is only realistic if a god is removed from the equation, otherwise all of our decisions are somehow incumbent upon the will of a god for us to be even alive and making the decisions at all.

Precisely so. That is why God HAS removed Himself from the equation.

Again, the assault on Christianity in academia is a very recent event, comparatively. For nearly two millennia before the Second World War, Christianity was on top. Look at the Enlightenment, one beginning point for modern philosophy. Voltaire rejected Christianity, and everyone thought he was a whackjob. The reason Christian thinkers in the late 20th century and early 21st century are so disdainful of secularism is that for so long, secularism wasn't even a viable philosophical system. Besides, these aren't absolutes. Not everyone prefers Shaw to Chesterton.

Again, true. Comments:
I would speak of 'the Endarkenment' rather than 'Enlightenment'. It really does depend on your point of view!

If a philosophical system is not viable, then it does not matter 'when'. It is never viable. The 12th century or 20th century makes no difference.

I am not speaking of preferment - I am speaking of what and who is taught in public education. I assert that the reason for embracing the one and rejecting the other, practically to the point of censorship, is philosophical.

True. But they nevertheless are the current intellectual champions of Christianity.

With this I must disagree. They are merely the most vocal. I am not surprised that secular intellectuals are able to out-reason anti-intellectual Christians. Unless you are able to defeat the best champions, you are merely defeating straw men.

I agree that it does seem arrogant. But it is not - if it happens to actually be true. So that is the real question that must be faced.

No, I didn't think you were confusing Nazis and Christians.

Again, I am only asserting that the Christian faith is compatible with reason. Perhaps I should limit my definition of Christian to the Orthodox Faith, so as to not have to defend positions that I myself see as mistaken, even though there are characteristic common to other Christian faiths as well.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies!

Oh, and a fun link, with music and podcasts, just for the curious...

www.ancientfaithradio.com/

[Fist and Faith]

C.S. Lewis; "Mere Christianity" ...

Hey, I remember you, rus.

[Damelon]

I've found that the podcasts that can be found on this site gives a good overall view of the Orthodox Church perspective and doctrine.