The God Fuse

[rusmeister]

I honestly think that most of the Christians today, if they had been born as members of the Mayan civilization, they'd be performing human sacrifices. The need for a supernatural belief system is nearly universal. But the fact that people can't make up their minds about what to do with this yearning shows that it's perhaps our single biggest weakness. Unless every single religion on earth is correct simultaneously, then this is the single most misleading yearning in the history of mankind, because given this "universal" yearning, we pursue it in a 1000 different ways. And according to most of these different sects, all the other guys are wrong.

Well, I don't think the yearning is the weakness, but rather the stopping at point B in thinking about theology, and not having any curiosity about C, D, E, F, etc. Understanding C, D, E, F, etc. goes a long way in not only advocating one's beliefs, but in avoiding the potential misapplications.

Well said! (Where's the 'rep' button?)

[Brinn]

Great discussion guys. Very interesting. I'm a non-practicing catholic and I'm becoming very interested in the Orthodox point of view. Thanks for the eductaion Russ. I've always had a hard time reconciling my religious views with my logical mind but it appears that Orthodoxy may help bridge that gap. Keep up the great work.

[Tjol]

Great discussion guys. Very interesting. I'm a non-practicing catholic and I'm becoming very interested in the Orthodox point of view. Thanks for the eductaion Russ. I've always had a hard time reconciling my religious views with my logical mind but it appears that Orthodoxy may help bridge that gap. Keep up the great work.

I'd be very interested as well in any record of Rome and Byzantium's theological debates. They had to have been pretty sophisticated debates, even with the politics that played upon the debates from time to time, when you see how sophisticated some of the thinkers on the two sides became. I just don't know how much of their letters and meetings from the first thousand years are around to be examined.

[emotional leper]

Great discussion guys. Very interesting. I'm a non-practicing catholic and I'm becoming very interested in the Orthodox point of view. Thanks for the eductaion Russ. I've always had a hard time reconciling my religious views with my logical mind but it appears that Orthodoxy may help bridge that gap. Keep up the great work.

I'd be very interested as well in any record of Rome and Byzantium's theological debates. They had to have been pretty sophisticated debates, even with the politics that played upon the debates from time to time, when you see how sophisticated some of the thinkers on the two sides became. I just don't know how much of their letters and meetings from the first thousand years are around to be examined.

Alot, if I recall correctly. Dig up an unabridged version of 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' A good bit of that is devoted to the Church, and IIRC (to my shame, I never 'finished' the unabridged version,) it discusses the differences between East and West and some of the politics that went on.

[Avatar]

However... in the case of those who on some level HAVE been exposed to the Gospel, and deliberately reject it, that makes such salvation less likely. Scripture does indicate the necessity of faith - of making a conscious choice to 'let go of the branch' - when you become aware of this, you take on the responsibility for it.

Ah well, I'm outta luck then. I deliberately reject some of the teachings, beliefs and actions of the church because they're incompatible with my moral sense.

Whether that's because of a failure of understanding, or a flaw in the church is open to debate.

--A

[rusmeister]

Great discussion guys. Very interesting. I'm a non-practicing catholic and I'm becoming very interested in the Orthodox point of view. Thanks for the eductaion Russ. I've always had a hard time reconciling my religious views with my logical mind but it appears that Orthodoxy may help bridge that gap. Keep up the great work.

I'd be very interested as well in any record of Rome and Byzantium's theological debates. They had to have been pretty sophisticated debates, even with the politics that played upon the debates from time to time, when you see how sophisticated some of the thinkers on the two sides became. I just don't know how much of their letters and meetings from the first thousand years are around to be examined.

It's good to keep in mind that until the Great Schism of 1054, there was only one Church - it was both Catholic (universal) and Orthodox (right/true worship/faith). For the first thousand years of its history, the struggles between orthodoxy and heresy* were internal. People like Nestor, Arius, the iconoclasts, etc came up with interpretations that threatened the foundational theology of the Church - as a tiny simplified example, the idea that Christ was not really a man - just God in a human shell, or vice-versa - that He was just a being created by God like the rest of us. If either of those were true, then Christianity ultimately would make no sense. So dogma was hammered out - things previously not spelled out, that used to be understood by everybody - to define exactly what the nature of God, Christ and the Faith is. This is where the Nicene Creed came from.

THE SYMBOL OF FAITH (The Nicene Creed)
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible.
And in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made; Who for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man. And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; Whose Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets.
In one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

This is stuff that people fought for, and sometimes were tortured for and/or died for, and for the same reasons that Christians refused to worship the Roman emperor and chose instead to die in the arenas.

Your point on the level of sophistication is excellent. One of the most popular myths of our time, fueled by how history is presented in our schools, is that people before the "Enlightenment" (notice that word!) were backward, ignorant and barbaric, (and by implication, now we are so much wiser and better than they!) In fact, they accepted such things as tradition and dogma - accumulated wisdom passed down from father to son, so to speak, so as to not have every individual re-inventing the wheel. Compare with our time, where we pride ourselves on accumulating knowledge of the material world, but every individual has to figure out the meaning of the universe on their own (from only their own 20, 30 or 50 years of accumulated knowledge and experience) and we sneer at the idea of learning from our ancestors, imagining them to be savages.

There's a ton of stuff preserved from those times. We have reams of history - you can learn that people knew about the Gospel of Judas 1800 years before Dan Brown found out about it, and why it was rejected as tabloid junk by the Church, while the Gospel of Matthew was given 'the thumbs up' and included in the canon of Scripture. You can read St John Chrysostom ('golden tongue" loosely translated), one of the wisest men of the AD period or any of the early Church fathers, from Augustine to Iraneus. Here is enough to rock your socks off - I have only scratched the surface myself: www.ccel.org/fathers.html

For a good history (although to Emotional Leper - historians should always take a back seat to first-hand accounts - historians describe history through their own philosophical lenses) try "The Orthodox Church" by Timothy Ware (aka now Metropolitan Kallistos) www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Church-New-Timo ... 0140146563
Here are some online excerpts:
www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/englis ... ware_1.htm

*Another much-maligned word. It means mistake, or error - the kind that people's lives/souls depend on; a vital difference that is wrong.

[rusmeister]

Oh, no! Duplicate post! Aaaaggggh!

[Tjol]

Great discussion guys. Very interesting. I'm a non-practicing catholic and I'm becoming very interested in the Orthodox point of view. Thanks for the eductaion Russ. I've always had a hard time reconciling my religious views with my logical mind but it appears that Orthodoxy may help bridge that gap. Keep up the great work.

I'd be very interested as well in any record of Rome and Byzantium's theological debates. They had to have been pretty sophisticated debates, even with the politics that played upon the debates from time to time, when you see how sophisticated some of the thinkers on the two sides became. I just don't know how much of their letters and meetings from the first thousand years are around to be examined.

It's good to keep in mind that until the Great Schism of 1054, there was only one Church - it was both Catholic (universal) and Orthodox (right/true worship/faith). For the first thousand years of its history, the struggles between orthodoxy and heresy* were internal. People like Nestor, Arius, the iconoclasts, etc came up with interpretations that threatened the foundational theology of the Church - as a tiny simplified example, the idea that Christ was not really a man - just God in a human shell, or vice-versa - that He was just a being created by God like the rest of us. If either of those were true, then Christianity ultimately would make no sense. So dogma was hammered out - things previously not spelled out, that used to be understood by everybody - to define exactly what the nature of God, Christ and the Faith is. This is where the Nicene Creed came from.

I've read a brief description of the events between Rome and Byzantium before and after the Nicean (Convention), including Nestor and Arius, but there wasn't a lot in the way of the specific cases presented.

(What I'm reading is a condensed one book version of Julius Norwood's three volume set on Byzantium, which has the advantage of covering a century in less than 400 pages, as well as the disadvantages. I wasn't sure how interested I would be in the subject matter though, so I didn't want to make a big initial investment of reading time)

Which is, I meant to say that I know of the debates and the two or three sides of them, I just haven't read the actual arguments. I'll look into the suggested references.




*warning warning I'm going way off the original topic by now*

There's a ton of stuff preserved from those times. We have reams of history - you can learn that people knew about the Gospel of Judas 1800 years before Dan Brown found out about it, and why it was rejected as tabloid junk by the Church, while the Gospel of Matthew was given 'the thumbs up' and included in the canon of Scripture.

I think anyone who has read some of the gnostic gospels, or even knows their general themes, knows that Dan Brown's a hack when it comes to history. Which is fine because he writes fiction, but he seems to at the same time try to present his fiction as having some historical credibility which it doesn't.

For example, one need only think about the gnostics and catholics as historical groups (not as specific doctrines, but rather the people who were running each group when they co-existed) and it would be the gnostics who would make the greatest effort to hide the existence of a "holy blood line" because it would have challenged their notion of universal access to divinity, and the catholic church of the same time period would have been pretty excited about revealing a divine nobility.

That and his writing really isn't that good.... but I have a feeling a lot of SRD readers have higher standards after reading SRD, so maybe it's not awful, just not nearly as great as advertised.

[Zarathustra]

Well, I don't think the yearning is the weakness, but rather the stopping at point B in thinking about theology, and not having any curiosity about C, D, E, F, etc. Understanding C, D, E, F, etc. goes a long way in not only advocating one's beliefs, but in avoiding the potential misapplications.

I'm not sure that even makes sense. How could a Mayan priest sacrificing humans have any curiosity about CDEF? What is CDEF? Is the plethora of conflicting religions just a case of people not having enough curiosity about the (unspoken, unnamed) principles CDEF?

This is just another way of saying your religion is right, and all the 1000s of others are wrong. Meanwhile, they're saying the same thing about your religion. And they have their own CDEF, about which they accuse you of not being curious enough. Which is my whole point. Have you really researched every CDEF of every single religion out there, made a line-by-line comparison, and still decided that one particular religion makes more sense than all the 1000s of others? I doubt it. No one is that curious. This accusation of "not enough curiosity" is disingenuous, in this light.

The plethora of (supposedly, according you guys) incorrect religions can't merely be the fault of not enough theological research. No amount of theological research could possibly reveal the correct religion. If it were that easy, there wouldn't be so much debate among educated theologians. And it ignores the FACT that 99.999% of all people who practice a religion do so by default: they fall into it because of where and when they are born, not from an exhaustive study of all the possible alternatives. If the people who fall into the "correct" religion do so without studying CDEF, then how can those who find themselves in the "incorrect" religion for exactly the same reason (accident of birth) be blamed for not having enough curiosity, when their theological research is the same as most people who work for a living? Is God really going to send billions of people to Hell simply because they don't have the luxury of devoting 40 years to uninterrupted study of every religion which has ever existed in the history of mankind?

What about stupid people? Are they just fucked?

No, this is a cop out. You can't place the blame for the existence of all these religions--every single one incorrect except for yours--on the lack of curiosity or devoted research of individual people. A Mayan priest didn't have a choice. Christianity wasn't available.

The problem is that people long for superstitious explanations for reality because the things they don't like about this world are impossible to change. Therefore, they require belief-systems which include supernatural intervention to save them from the unattractive truth. Theological research is just a product of cognitive dissonance--smart men being confronted with their own irrationality.

[rusmeister]

Well, I don't think the yearning is the weakness, but rather the stopping at point B in thinking about theology, and not having any curiosity about C, D, E, F, etc. Understanding C, D, E, F, etc. goes a long way in not only advocating one's beliefs, but in avoiding the potential misapplications.

I'm not sure that even makes sense. How could a Mayan priest sacrificing humans have any curiosity about CDEF? What is CDEF? Is the plethora of conflicting religions just a case of people not having enough curiosity about the (unspoken, unnamed) principles CDEF?

This is just another way of saying your religion is right, and all the 1000s of others are wrong. Meanwhile, they're saying the same thing about your religion. And they have their own CDEF, about which they accuse you of not being curious enough. Which is my whole point. Have you really researched every CDEF of every single religion out there, made a line-by-line comparison, and still decided that one particular religion makes more sense than all the 1000s of others? I doubt it. No one is that curious. This accusation of "not enough curiosity" is disingenuous, in this light.

The plethora of (supposedly, according you guys) incorrect religions can't merely be the fault of not enough theological research. No amount of theological research could possibly reveal the correct religion. If it were that easy, there wouldn't be so much debate among educated theologians. And it ignores the FACT that 99.999% of all people who practice a religion do so by default: they fall into it because of where and when they are born, not from an exhaustive study of all the possible alternatives. If the people who fall into the "correct" religion do so without studying CDEF, then how can those who find themselves in the "incorrect" religion for exactly the same reason (accident of birth) be blamed for not having enough curiosity, when their theological research is the same as most people who work for a living? Is God really going to send billions of people to Hell simply because they don't have the luxury of devoting 40 years to uninterrupted study of every religion which has ever existed in the history of mankind?

What about stupid people? Are they just fucked?

No, this is a cop out. You can't place the blame for the existence of all these religions--every single one incorrect except for yours--on the lack of curiosity or devoted research of individual people. A Mayan priest didn't have a choice. Christianity wasn't available.

The problem is that people long for superstitious explanations for reality because the things they don't like about this world are impossible to change. Therefore, they require belief-systems which include supernatural intervention to save them from the unattractive truth. Theological research is just a product of cognitive dissonance--smart men being confronted with their own irrationality.

Malik, isn't it rather obvious that tjol is not talking about Mayan priests, but about you? The fact is, you DO have the opportunities the ancient Mayans didn't have and you don't want to think further than point B.

This is just another way of saying that no religion can possibly be right.

I really don't think you paid any attention to my earlier answers to you, because you're still asking questions that they already answered.
What about stupid people?
What about people that don't have 40 years of luxury?
(Never mind the whole 'God sends them to hell' concept)

I wonder if you are familiar with the argument posed by JRR Tolkien that (ultimately) convinced Lewis to become a Christian? It's about all the myths of the world - including Mayan ones, and how Christianity is the one myth that happens to be true.

I think you might find this extraordinarily interesting - even though you will certainly cheer for Freud (the Tolkien/Lewis moments are covered here, as well):
www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/

[Tjol]

Well, I don't think the yearning is the weakness, but rather the stopping at point B in thinking about theology, and not having any curiosity about C, D, E, F, etc. Understanding C, D, E, F, etc. goes a long way in not only advocating one's beliefs, but in avoiding the potential misapplications.

I'm not sure that even makes sense. How could a Mayan priest sacrificing humans have any curiosity about CDEF? What is CDEF? Is the plethora of conflicting religions just a case of people not having enough curiosity about the (unspoken, unnamed) principles CDEF?

Religion is not the reason that Mayan priests stopped at point B. I do not mean C, D, E, F as principles as much as I mean them about details, nuances, etc. Some people are fine to have any answer, and others would like to find the most accurate answer. Granted, the most accurate answer is in the end unacheivable. Before you blame that on religion as well, consider that philosophers have to admit the same as well, they seek after a perfect answer with better and better approximations but never acheive the true accuracy they seek for.

What I mean by people stopping at point B, is that they stop as soon as they find an answer, rather than seeking after the answer. Both aspirations seem very common in humanity (red pill? blue pill?) the weakness of stopping at point B is in stopping at the first answer, and not seeking to find an even better one, and an even better one after that. Moving on to C,D, E, F, etc. is to keep thinking about it.

This is just another way of saying your religion is right, and all the 1000s of others are wrong.

Are you a relatavist now? But I would say that accepting a relatavist philosophy is stopping at a point B, believing in the existence of an absolute truth is the very thing that brings people to examine further and further to arrive at better and better approximations. Consider theology as similar to philosophy, and maybe my A, B, C, D diagram might make a little more sense. It is the stopping at the first answer that is a human weakness, not stopping at the first answer in religion, or the first answer in philosophy, or the first answer in aesthetics.

Meanwhile, they're saying the same thing about your religion. And they have their own CDEF, about which they accuse you of not being curious enough. Which is my whole point. Have you really researched every CDEF of every single religion out there, made a line-by-line comparison, and still decided that one particular religion makes more sense than all the 1000s of others? I doubt it. No one is that curious. This accusation of "not enough curiosity" is disingenuous, in this light.

I don't think I made characterisations of my religion or anyone else's. I don't know which words of mine inferred that meaning to you, but that is not at all what I intended to communicate. You're speaking of heirarchy, which doesn't seem to interpret even from my choice of progressing letters. The illustration was meant to be of further and further curiosity and refinement. I did not equal the letters with any specific religion, I did not prepare some chart with a legend of which letters this religion or that religion starts at.... so I'm a bit...puzzled by the inference that I was suggesting that people are wrong simply because they don't know what I know, or that they simply haven't developed as good an approximation as I have.

I don't think exposure to every religion is necessary to develop such a curiosity. The curiosity into divinity in general, I guess what would be called 'magic' to an atheist, is enough, wherever you start from, so long as you don't stop at the first answer in my opinion. That is all I believe I was suggesting in my illustration.

The plethora of (supposedly, according you guys) incorrect religions can't merely be the fault of not enough theological research. No amount of theological research could possibly reveal the correct religion. If it were that easy, there wouldn't be so much debate among educated theologians. And it ignores the FACT that 99.999% of all people who practice a religion do so by default: they fall into it because of where and when they are born, not from an exhaustive study of all the possible alternatives. If the people who fall into the "correct" religion do so without studying CDEF, then how can those who find themselves in the "incorrect" religion for exactly the same reason (accident of birth) be blamed for not having enough curiosity, when their theological research is the same as most people who work for a living? Is God really going to send billions of people to Hell simply because they don't have the luxury of devoting 40 years to uninterrupted study of every religion which has ever existed in the history of mankind?

I imagine you've engaged in enough debates with any number of apologists, and I imagine that you've seen this argument before....

But if you suggest the lack of an exact answer, renders the answer non-existant, or any approximation of such an answer as dubious, you have to explain how theology is unique in this way. Afterall, do you find medical science to be relatively reliable? Is philosophy a sham? Is economics a hoax? Better and better approximations of absolute truth in all these fields become more an more useful as we strive for better and better approximations. That there is debate in any of them, is not due to their all being utterly fallable, but rather due to a humility that they are only dealing in approximations of some unobtained absolute truth.

What about stupid people? Are they just fucked?

No, this is a cop out. You can't place the blame for the existence of all these religions--every single one incorrect except for yours--on the lack of curiosity or devoted research of individual people. A Mayan priest didn't have a choice. Christianity wasn't available.

First, I don't think curiosity requires brilliance. Second, I don't think anyone's expected to arrive at absolute truth by their religion's God or gods, save for buddhism, and any similar religions that are near non-theistic. This is where I think phenomenology is very useful in theology. It allows that God might have created entirely different existences and possibilities within those existences, it allows for the possibility of a concurrently relative reality and an absolute reality. But that's a different tangent.

Last, I think I see what was inferred now, and why. I don't mean to be making comments about the superiority of my faith over others, or discuss whether or not faith is more important than works or vice versa. I was simply addressing your comment that man's aspiration for the divine was a weakness. My response was only that said pursuit was only a weakness when you stopped in it.

The problem is that people long for superstitious explanations for reality because the things they don't like about this world are impossible to change. Therefore, they require belief-systems which include supernatural intervention to save them from the unattractive truth. Theological research is just a product of cognitive dissonance--smart men being confronted with their own irrationality.

As said above, the problem is not that mankind believes i the supernatural, but rather when he accepts the first answer, or any answer for that matter, as the last and final answer on the matter. When someones confuses an approximation of the truth with the truth itself, it's a problem in any intellectual endeavor.

[The Dreaming]

If human sacrifice is morally as justifiable as taking communion on Sunday, why did every civilization stop doing it once they left the Stone Age? (the American civs never did). You are forgetting the fact that we don't do it anymore for a reason, philosophy and theology advanced. You cannot continue to justify human sacrifice when more advanced ideas about the nature of the universe come into view.

There are universal principles of morality and Ethics. Most of the trouble comes when deciding whom to include in the blessed and "equal" group. At last some people have come to the point where we can say that every person in the world has the same right to life, liberty, and property. At least some of us can. We always find a way to exclude someone though; the group we identify with has merely been expanding through time. (Guh, now I'm regurgitating Starship Troopers, how long before Av replies?)

[emotional leper]

I'm filling in for AV.

We're not all equal. Tell that to a child of Thalidomide. We're all different. We all have different physical and mental capabilities. However, we make a decision based on our morals to try to treat each other as if we're equal. However, in many circumstances, this cognitive dissonance shows through.

[Zarathustra]

Malik, isn't it rather obvious that tjol is not talking about Mayan priests, but about you?

I'm not the subject here. Religious belief in general is the subject. If Tjol was talking about me specifically (which I doubt), then his response to my quoted comment missed the point. When dealing with religious belief in general--and that yearning which causes us to develop religions in the first place--anything directed to me should also apply to a Mayan priest.

My point was that religious yearning has got to be the single most misleading yearning in the history of mankind, since it has lead to so many "wrong" dogmas. And they are dogmas, even your own. Curiosity has no place with in dogma, because dogma doesn't leave room for self-correction. Belief is the death of curiosity, because once you believe a particular belief, you no longer question it. Questioning itself is doubt, which is a lack of faith, which is a sin in many forms of Christianity.

I really don't think you paid any attention to my earlier answers to you, because you're still asking questions that they already answered.

Giving a response is not the same thing as settling a problematic issue. Obviously, I feel that your answers are wholly inadequate and nonsensical.

My point about the Mayans, which I fear you all have missed, is that you underestimate the vital role your society, family, and place/time of birth "preselected" your religion for you. If you had been born in a Muslim family, it's extremely likely you'd be Muslim. If you had been born Mayan, it's extremely likely you'd be sacrificing humans. And you'd do so for exactly the same reasons which cause you to believe little pieces of bread are the body of Christ, or wine is his blood. (Or, pick whatever supernatural belief your particular denomination endorses. Talking serpents, or whatever.)

Religion is not the reason that Mayan priests stopped at point B. I do not mean C, D, E, F as principles as much as I mean them about details, nuances, etc. Some people are fine to have any answer, and others would like to find the most accurate answer. Granted, the most accurate answer is in the end unacheivable. Before you blame that on religion as well, consider that philosophers have to admit the same as well, they seek after a perfect answer with better and better approximations but never acheive the true accuracy they seek for.

But the Mayan priest thinks that B is "the Truth." So why should he keep going? That would imply that B is not the truth, which would undermine his entire religion. And it's the same for all other religions out there. Christians don't question B: "the divinity of Christ." I could equally accuse Christians of not going on to CDEF, and stopping with that "divinity of Christ" hypothesis. Your criticism presupposes an absolute truth which is missed by most (all?) religions. But that hypothetical absolute is even more dubious than the intermediary As and Bs of the current religions. Just because there is a quest doesn't mean that its goal is real. That's a presupposition. And given that so many people are so wrong about their claim to have found the goal, then there's no way to even set the criteria by which we know when the goal is found--or even if we're going in the right direction. That's a pointless, absurd quest without any reason to continue. If you can't EVER tell when you've reach the goal (or even if you're still going in the right direction), then why start that particular journey into the supernatural?

What I mean by people stopping at point B, is that they stop as soon as they find an answer, rather than seeking after the answer. Both aspirations seem very common in humanity (red pill? blue pill?) the weakness of stopping at point B is in stopping at the first answer, and not seeking to find an even better one, and an even better one after that. Moving on to C,D, E, F, etc. is to keep thinking about it.

But your characterization of religious searching runs so entirely counter to the idea of religion itself, I can't imagine such a quest ending anywhere but in atheism. Religion is not self-correcting. Religion isn't tentative. You're describing science, not religion. Theological study is a way to back up already-held beliefs with more and more footnotes, not to discover better beliefs.

Are you a relatavist now?

Absolutely. (Irony intentional.) Seriously, I thought that was obvious.

But I would say that accepting a relatavist philosophy is stopping at a point B, believing in the existence of an absolute truth is the very thing that brings people to examine further and further to arrive at better and better approximations.

No, a relativist philosophy doesn't stop at any point and declare an absolute truth. Science itself is a "relativist philosophy." And it never ends; it's continuously correcting itself and chasing down that approximation. I don't know any religion that operates the way you've described. Care to name one?

Consider theology as similar to philosophy, and maybe my A, B, C, D diagram might make a little more sense.

Theology is nothing at all like philosophy. I've studied the history of philosophy extensively. I got my degree in philosophy. Theology is more similar to fairyology (thank you, Richard Dawkins). The study of mythological beings is no more a real science just because millions of people believe in the particular mythology. Yesterday's religions are today's literary entertainment. (Thank you, Ralph Waldo Emerson).

But if you suggest the lack of an exact answer, renders the answer non-existant, or any approximation of such an answer as dubious, you have to explain how theology is unique in this way.

That's not the implication I was making at all. It's not the lack of an exact answer which is the problem. You're right; science proceeds exactly like this. But religion doesn't. The problem with religion isn't the lack of an exact answer, but rather the multiplicity of exact, "final" answers--all which contradict one another. For a Christian, the divinity of Christ, and his prescribed method for salvation, are final answers. No Christian is looking for a better way to get into Heaven. This is The Way. If you're suggesting that Christians are in the process of revising this fundamental "answer," then you're going to have to clue me in, because I've never heard of such a movement.

If you're talking instead about people who haven't yet picked a religion and are examining many of them to find the right one--or develop a better one which doesn't yet exist--then you're talking about a very small minority of Truth Seekers. And the fact that they haven't settled upon a particular superstitious belief system doesn't really win any points with me. Their inability to choose should present an obvious conclusion: perhaps you're looking in the wrong direction altogether.

Afterall, do you find medical science to be relatively reliable? Is philosophy a sham? Is economics a hoax?

If you think religion is anything like philosophy and economics, then you're talking about something completely different from the rest of us. Please explain.

The lack of an absolute answer isn't religions' problem. It's the plethora of "absolute answers" which is the problem.

I was simply addressing your comment that man's aspiration for the divine was a weakness.

Okay, finally, we reach the fundamental confusion, the point at which we are talking around each other. I don't think our aspiration for the "divine" is our greatest weakness. I think that our assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" is our greatest weakness, because it assumes that the source of that divinity won't be found in this world, this life, at all. It robs this world of its "divinity" by seeking a source or explanation beyond this world. Why isn't this world enough???

The aspiration for the "divine" produced science. Assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" produced the plethora of dogmatic, conflicting religions. There a big difference between those two directions, but both originate in our awe and wonder for our being in this world.

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?

[Tjol]

Religion is not the reason that Mayan priests stopped at point B. I do not mean C, D, E, F as principles as much as I mean them about details, nuances, etc. Some people are fine to have any answer, and others would like to find the most accurate answer. Granted, the most accurate answer is in the end unacheivable. Before you blame that on religion as well, consider that philosophers have to admit the same as well, they seek after a perfect answer with better and better approximations but never acheive the true accuracy they seek for.

But the Mayan priest thinks that B is "the Truth." So why should he keep going? That would imply that B is not the truth, which would undermine his entire religion. And it's the same for all other religions out there. Christians don't question B: "the divinity of Christ." I could equally accuse Christians of not going on to CDEF, and stopping with that "divinity of Christ" hypothesis.

That's a bit absurd though. What is divinity? How is divinity? Where is divinity? Those, and other questions still lie after the question of 'Is Jesus divine?' as well as many others I am sure. Divinity is a supposition in order to further explore other things. A kind of 'If X then Y' kind of thing.

Your criticism presupposes an absolute truth which is missed by most (all?) religions.

I said nothing less than absolute truth being missed by any and every possible human intellectual endeavor. Was that not clear?

What I mean by people stopping at point B, is that they stop as soon as they find an answer, rather than seeking after the answer. Both aspirations seem very common in humanity (red pill? blue pill?) the weakness of stopping at point B is in stopping at the first answer, and not seeking to find an even better one, and an even better one after that. Moving on to C,D, E, F, etc. is to keep thinking about it.

But your characterization of religious searching runs so entirely counter to the idea of religion itself, I can't imagine such a quest ending anywhere but in atheism. Religion is not self-correcting. Religion isn't tentative. You're describing science, not religion. Theological study is a way to back up already-held beliefs with more and more footnotes, not to discover better beliefs.

All intellectual thought springs from seeking an explanation and an evaluation for a feeling. Theology is an extension of philosophy. Science is an extension of philosophy. Philosophy is an effort to define and approximate absolute truth..... including the defining of absolute truth as a non-existant entity as relatavism does.

Are you a relatavist now?

Absolutely. (Irony intentional.) Seriously, I thought that was obvious.

Ahhh... I always thought you were a more an absolutist. Granted I see people in general operating from an abslute set of beliefs, and only retreating to relatavism when they are not confident in their advocacy of their own ideas... which I don't find to be the case with you.

But I would say that accepting a relatavist philosophy is stopping at a point B, believing in the existence of an absolute truth is the very thing that brings people to examine further and further to arrive at better and better approximations.

No, a relativist philosophy doesn't stop at any point and declare an absolute truth. Science itself is a "relativist philosophy." And it never ends; it's continuously correcting itself and chasing down that approximation. I don't know any religion that operates the way you've described. Care to name one?

If there is no absolute truth, then the whole scientific method is a sham. If truth is relative and due to perception rather than actuality, observed and recreated events are only coincidental perceptions and really have no validity beyond the two people who end up having the same perception of the events they've witnessed.

I wouldn't know how to define my own belief system by a perfect name by which what I call myself, and wat you understand it to believe being the same. It's a semantical problem.

I think if you're honest with yourself though, and person who approaches their religion intellectually (as I indeed believe God would intend).

I think perhaps though, you are tangling up religion, and the religious, with organised religon and churches, temples, et al. While all things can fit into a group, they are not the same things. It does seem that you are asking what religion as a whole forces all it's people to vigorously pursue a deeper and deeper understanding of their faith. No religion forces such a thing. Ecclesiastes and Proverbs suggest a person should seek wisdom, Job suggests that man can debate God's benevolence, his will, etc. even if in the end he knows better. Lot questions God several times before Soddom and Gomhorra (what if there is one good person there, will you destroy the cities at the cost of one good person's life?). Abraham questions God whether he is really supposed to kill his first son. Likewise, I'm certian the Quran has passages suggest that wisdom is something to seek after. I can't sight them specifically, but I know I have heard them.

Whether you give credit to it or not, theology, especially christian and muslim theological thinking, are what even made arriving at atheism a possible conclusion. They refined philosophy to the point where humans could go back and re-examine the first suppositions and start all over again in trying to descibe what they saw as reality. The enlightenment was a next step after theological refinement, not a revolution against it.

Consider theology as similar to philosophy, and maybe my A, B, C, D diagram might make a little more sense.

Theology is nothing at all like philosophy. I've studied the history of philosophy extensively. I got my degree in philosophy. Theology is more similar to fairyology (thank you, Richard Dawkins). The study of mythological beings is no more a real science just because millions of people believe in the particular mythology. Yesterday's religions are today's literary entertainment. (Thank you, Ralph Waldo Emerson).

You fail to provide substance to go with what you find to be clever quotes. To say something, does not make something the truth, or even an approximation of the truth. Philosophy does not move past Aristotle if not for Theology. You seem to have a very simple minded definition of theology though, you perhaps scratched your head about my prior theological questions in relationship to the actual nature of agnostic belief and atheistic belief, maybe if I called Theology by it's secular name Metaphysics, you might not be digging through more books looking for more clever, yet empty, quotes?

But if you suggest the lack of an exact answer, renders the answer non-existant, or any approximation of such an answer as dubious, you have to explain how theology is unique in this way.

That's not the implication I was making at all. It's not the lack of an exact answer which is the problem. You're right; science proceeds exactly like this. But religion doesn't.

Again, you provide a declaration without any supporting argument.

Afterall, do you find medical science to be relatively reliable? Is philosophy a sham? Is economics a hoax?

If you think religion is anything like philosophy and economics, then you're talking about something completely different from the rest of us. Please explain.

The akin-ness of the schools of thought described is that none of them presume to arrive at a final answer, all come to admit that they work on better and better approximations. They may in one place, say, 'This is the way this works,' but they never say, 'I know how it all works!!!' If you credit religion as doing this, you mischaracterise any religion I have ever heard of, no matter how orthodox and strict, you will find discussion of this and that item, and whether one can be certina that it is as they've first approximated it.

The lack of an absolute answer isn't religions' problem. It's the plethora of "absolute answers" which is the problem.

I think that is wherein your misunderstanding of religion lies. Granted, your seaming zeal for atheism probably does not allow anyone of religious belief to acknowledge their doubt of this doctrine or that doctrine, your zeal likely does not allow you into the actual ongoing theological development of any given religious person.

You mistake a multiplicity of approximations for a multiplicity of final answers. If theology was as dogmatic as you seem to believe it to be, there would have been no reformation of the christian church, nor would their be differing sects.

You see, you've laid it out for yourself, but you're not seeing it. If many approximations come from one original approximation, it is not a sign of people coming to final answers, but the very opposite. If religion was about final answers, there would not be this multiplicity of them in existence today, the theological thinking would never have moved beyond the original beliefs if they were in fact final.

I was simply addressing your comment that man's aspiration for the divine was a weakness.

Okay, finally, we reach the fundamental confusion, the point at which we are talking around each other. I don't think our aspiration for the "divine" is our greatest weakness. I think that our assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" is our greatest weakness, because it assumes that the source of that divinity won't be found in this world, this life, at all. It robs this world of its "divinity" by seeking a source or explanation beyond this world. Why isn't this world enough???

The aspiration for the "divine" produced science. Assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" produced the plethora of dogmatic, conflicting religions. There a big difference between those two directions, but both originate in our awe and wonder for our being in this world.

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?

Outside of semantics, there is very little difference between seeing divinity in nature, and seeing divinity in nature.

Sophisitication is why it is not enough to simply say that we see beauty. I can see any multiplicity of beautiful women, all beautiful for different reasons, all beautiful in different ways. I can simply accept they are beautiful, but the aesthetic pleasure is even more exaggerated if I can say that she is beautiful to me because her eyes remind me of this, which in turns reminds me of youthful days where I was surrounded by that this. And that this was so pleasant because......

That is why the mind, heart, soul seeks after more than simply accepting the beauty of this world we exist in .... in my opinion anyways.

[rusmeister]

My point was that religious yearning has got to be the single most misleading yearning in the history of mankind, since it has lead to so many "wrong" dogmas. And they are dogmas, even your own. Curiosity has no place with in dogma, because dogma doesn't leave room for self-correction. Belief is the death of curiosity, because once you believe a particular belief, you no longer question it. Questioning itself is doubt, which is a lack of faith, which is a sin in many forms of Christianity.

I'll let GKC answer for me on this one. Bear in mind that while a dogma can based on blind faith, it can also be a definitive conclusion arrived at by reason. Modern use of the word generally presupposes blind faith and thus treats it like a dirty word.

Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been in the past, or will be in the future, such a thing as a growth or improvement of the human mind itself, there still remains a very sharp objection to be raised against the modern version of that improvement. The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, last chapter

I really don't think you paid any attention to my earlier answers to you, because you're still asking questions that they already answered.

Giving a response is not the same thing as settling a problematic issue. Obviously, I feel that your answers are wholly inadequate and nonsensical.

My point about the Mayans, which I fear you all have missed, is that you underestimate the vital role your society, family, and place/time of birth "preselected" your religion for you. If you had been born in a Muslim family, it's extremely likely you'd be Muslim. If you had been born Mayan, it's extremely likely you'd be sacrificing humans. And you'd do so for exactly the same reasons which cause you to believe little pieces of bread are the body of Christ, or wine is his blood. (Or, pick whatever supernatural belief your particular denomination endorses. Talking serpents, or whatever.)

Actually, your point makes great sense, for the religion you were born into. This is by no means determinant for an adult making a conscious choice about religion. I was raised Baptist. So what? I then went on to spend 20 years as a lazy agnostic that mostly didn't want to think about these questions. I found Orthodoxy as a thinking and mature adult, and it is (unfortunately) well-removed from my culture of birth and childhood. Your point doesn't say anything about using one's reason to come to definitive conclusions.

One little comment. You've spoken as if knowledgeable about theology. I wonder exactly how you have learned what you know about theology. My brother-in-law, a seminarist/biologist, would be amused at your comparison to fairyology. It would be good to learn about the discipline and scholarship involved in it before condemning it dogmatically without any basis of genuine research into the matter.

I was simply addressing your comment that man's aspiration for the divine was a weakness.

Okay, finally, we reach the fundamental confusion, the point at which we are talking around each other. I don't think our aspiration for the "divine" is our greatest weakness. I think that our assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" is our greatest weakness, because it assumes that the source of that divinity won't be found in this world, this life, at all. It robs this world of its "divinity" by seeking a source or explanation beyond this world. Why isn't this world enough???

The aspiration for the "divine" produced science. Assignment of supernatural explanations to account for our recognition of the "divine" produced the plethora of dogmatic, conflicting religions. There a big difference between those two directions, but both originate in our awe and wonder for our being in this world.

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?

This here is the whole point. People generally discover at some point that this world is NOT enough. You can see all kinds of wonder, learn all kinds of amazing things about this world, and when you realize (somewhat like the last Romans at the coming of the Visigoths) that the attainment of all of this understanding is meaningless if it is to be destroyed. Nullified. Made nothing. That there is no ultimate meaning, and there must be meaning. This is what gives birth to what you refer to as religious yearning. The mistake is in assuming that it is the yearning that robs the world of its 'divinity', rather than a reaction to the fact that the world has already been robbed of its divinity.

[Zarathustra]

Tjol, I feel we are all over the map on this issue, talking around each other, and likely misunderstanding each other. That’s okay; it’s often the case between people of divergent world-views. And it’s especially understandable when we’re talking about something so fundamental as the nature of reality. The words themselves speak of universals—though our particular interpretations turn them into things specific to each of us.

By “relativism,” I mean several different things. On one hand, it’s a view of morality; namely, that there aren’t absolute, logically necessary nor intrinsically essential features of reality that can be called “good and evil.” There are no universal standards of good or bad. We choose that stuff ourselves, or have someone choose it for us (which still technically requires our choice, though not our authenticity).

There's another sense in which "relativism," means "there can exist no objective knowledge outside of the knower." This is only partially true. Certainly, there is knowledge of ontological structures of our being—those features of our being which are necessary constituent structures, structures without which we couldn’t exist (space and time, for instance). And there is the specfic ontic fact of our being in the world, which is known through living a specific life. However, knowledge of the physical properties of the universe is something we participate in “creating” by our act of observation, from the standpoint of either collapsing quantum proxy waves of possible states of actuality, to the standpoint of taking measurements of celestial objects from a particular reference frame. Quantum theory and relativity, respectively. Science began giving up a concept of an absolute solution over 100 years ago.

So perhaps this also explains our differing views of “science.” Science is looking for the Grand Unification Theory—but that’s not an absolute answer. It still wouldn’t give absolute, objective, certain knowledge of the world because intrinsic uncertainty and relativity will be necessary parts of that GUT. It will not, for instance, allow us to calculate the motions of every particle in the universe, past and future, even though it will (potentially) explain every phenomenon in the universe.

The curiosity into divinity in general, I guess what would be called 'magic' to an atheist, is enough, wherever you start from, so long as you don't stop at the first answer in my opinion.

Well, “divinity” is a tricky term. I believe an atheist can use it in a sense close to how Einstein used the word “religious.” Or how he used the word “god.” For him, it was metaphorical of the transcendent wonder aroused by deep knowledge of the world . In his famous quote, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” he didn’t mean a literal god any more than he meant literal dice. The entire image of a dice-throwing God was a metaphor which meant roughly, “Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.”

I think divinity can be used in the same way. The curiosity into “divinity” doesn’t have to lead one away from world into the supernatural, especially when it’s not the supernatural which arouses it in the first place. The supernatural can’t be observed. What we observe, is what arouses the curiosity. The beauty and complexity of the world. This can include how a woman’s eyes remind you of a fond memory--that’s not supernatural. Letting one’s imagination fly away from this reality altogether, in order to find an explanation for something IN this reality, is a retreat into fantasy whether you’re talking about Zeus’s lightning or Yahweh’s dirt sculptures (i.e. us). Supernatural explanations always make the world smaller and less wonderful, because it anthropomorphizes reality into a simple story, complete with bad guys, good guys, a central conflict, and a wonderful, fairytale ending. Surely we can do better than looking at the world and seeing fairytales. That’s not an appreciation of reality, that’s a retreat away from it. Supernatural is something fantastical added onto what we observe, and in no way contained within the observation.

I said nothing less than absolute truth being missed by any and every possible human intellectual endeavor. Was that not clear?

Much of what you have said here isn’t clear, which is surprising because your posts are razor sharp in the Think Tank. What makes your position unclear is precisely the way you talk about every possible human intellectual endeavor having an absolute truth it is seeking (as above). Certainly you don’t mean that there are separate absolute truths for each endeavor, not after spending so much time accounting for the differences in religion in terms of “approximations” of the absolute truth. So you must mean that science and religion—and every possible human intellectual endeavor--are converging upon the same absolute truth. This is quite literally impossible. You can’t understand science and religion and think they are just different approximations toward the same absolute. If so, you’ve got to say science and the Lord of the Rings are merely two different approximations of the same absolute. They are that much different. There’s no way they can end up at the same place, when science seeks a natural explanation and theology seeks a supernatural non-explanation.

The supernatural is no longer necessary as an explanatory model. It’s completely ad hoc. God as an explanation explains nothing. It merely removes the uncertainty to something even more improbable, inexplicable, and unknowable than the universe itself.

All intellectual thought springs from seeking an explanation and an evaluation for a feeling. Theology is an extension of philosophy. Science is an extension of philosophy. Philosophy is an effort to define and approximate absolute truth..... including the defining of absolute truth as a non-existent entity as relativism does.

This is a simplification of 1000s of years of history. Sure, temporally and perhaps even substantively, these intellectual endeavors followed from each other (though not as linearly as your simplification implies), but that doesn’t mean that there is nothing necessary about this progression. It was largely contingent and accidental. We could have skipped that religious phase and gone straight to science if factors had been different. Much of it was simply political. Like it is today, unfortunately.

Ahhh... I always thought you were a more an absolutist. Granted I see people in general operating from an abslute set of beliefs, and only retreating to relatavism when they are not confident in their advocacy of their own ideas... which I don't find to be the case with you.

So Einstein was not confident of his ideas? Nietzsche wasn’t confident of his ideas? The subtlety of your ad hominem ploy makes me smile. Relativism doesn’t necessarily mean lack of certainty. (And that’s not a contradiction, either.) Nor does my confidence mean I’ve stopped looking for an answer. You can be certain that your methodology is correct, even if your current reseach isn’t final—or even if your research indicates that no final answer can exist. Nonterminating series don’t stop mathematicians from mathematically manipulating infinite sets, for instance. And uncertainty in individual measurements don't stop physicists from being certain (and quite astonishingly accurate) in the statistical laws of quantum mechanics.

If there is no absolute truth, then the whole scientific method is a sham. If truth is relative and due to perception rather than actuality, observed and recreated events are only coincidental perceptions and really have no validity beyond the two people who end up having the same perception of the events they've witnessed.

Again, this is resolved by merely looking at real world examples. According to the view implied by these questions, the uncertainty principle is a sham. And general relativity is a sham. And yet, quatum mechanics and relativity are the two most accurately and frequently confirmed theories in the history of science.

And I’m sure you know these things. That’s why I suspect we’re using these words so differently. Because on another view, you do recognize relativity to some extent. At least, you don’t strike me as the type who thinks 20th century science was a sham.

And all the above explains our disagreement on an “absolute.”

Whether you give credit to it or not, theology, especially christian and muslim theological thinking, are what even made arriving at atheism a possible conclusion.

Well, that’s true only in the sense that I couldn’t have been atheistic about Manwe in Tolkien’s mythology before I heard of Manwe. But that doesn’t mean I have to give Tolkien any credit for me arriving at my “Manwe atheism.” My stance toward this fictional character wasn’t agnostic or theist beforehand. In fact, not having a conception of his existence was the “default setting” or attitude—the same we have toward any hypothetical entity before we’ve heard of it. Adding a name to our list of concepts doesn’t significantly modify our stance toward reality, because nothing in the real world has changed. It only further populates the list of characters we’ve read about. My attitude towards the world would have been exactly the same as it is now if religion had never existed. I wouldn’t be any less atheist. In fact, I imagine I’d be quite a bit more, because then I wouldn’t have this nagging agnosticism which I’m beginning to suspect is incorrect. One thing’s for sure: I’d be a lot less bitter and angry about this subject. And humanity would have considerably less strife.

You seem to have a very simple minded definition of theology though, you perhaps scratched your head about my prior theological questions in relationship to the actual nature of agnostic belief and atheistic belief, maybe if I called Theology by it's secular name Metaphysics, you might not be digging through more books looking for more clever, yet empty, quotes?

While there is much in metaphysics which isn’t “true to the earth,” in Nietzsche’s terms, or must “be committed to the flames,” as Hume says, metaphysics can be done without any theological elements at all. Metaphysics can be purely logical, and avoid the supernatural completely.

And while theology contains its own metaphysical models, this in no way means that it partakes in the logic, consistency, or rigorous construction which philosophers engage in when constructing metaphysical models.

Metaphysics is NOT theology, and theology is NOT metaphysics, though there is confusing common ground. They both tend to deal with ideas which go beyond matters of fact. This single confusion is perhaps the foundation of our talking around each other, affecting all the other words we’re using in this conversation.

[Zarathustra]

One little comment. You've spoken as if knowledgeable about theology. I wonder exactly how you have learned what you know about theology. My brother-in-law, a seminarist/biologist, would be amused at your comparison to fairyology. It would be good to learn about the discipline and scholarship involved in it before condemning it dogmatically without any basis of genuine research into the matter.

If theology is defined as literary examination of texts with the aim to trace their stylistic, cultural, historic, context or their thematic content, then that is indeed scholarship. But it's not theology,anymore. Technically, that's literary analysis. One could do the same thing with the Lord of the Rings, and I wouldn't call them an "Elfologist." Only if they treated their literary texts (LotR) as factual accounts of existing entities would I call them "Elfologists." The study of mythological creatures as myth is perfectly legitimate scholarship. The study of mythological creatures as real creatures is just crazy. It's like the example of medival scholars arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's a nonsensical question.


If a university hired a "fairyologist" to start a department of fairyology to teach students the rich history of debate on the methods and culture of fairies as real, existing beings . . . wouldn't you hesitate to call this scholarship? How can you treat theology--as the study of real, existing supernatural beings--any differently? The only difference is that you believe in the entire hierarchy of angels, archangels, demons, and God. Your belief in an unprovable entity gleaned from historic mythological texts doesn't elevate the area of study into scholarship. No sane person would call a debate on the length of fairy wings, "scholarship." So why is a debate on the nature of the trinity any different? In both cases, we're talking about beings which are supernatural and undetectable, and then going on to debate their properties as if they were just as open to examination as the properties of real objects.

And yet, it's perfectly legitimate to teach Norse mythology or Greek mythology in a university. Why? Because they don't take it literally. It is only with theology that we allow "experts" to debate mythology as literal facts without calling them crazy. What accounts for this difference, in your mind? Well, obviously, it's your belief that God is real, and fairies are not. This is the only difference.

A delusion that one person holds is a psychological disorder. A delusion that millions hold is called religion.

This here is the whole point. People generally discover at some point that this world is NOT enough. You can see all kinds of wonder, learn all kinds of amazing things about this world, and when you realize (somewhat like the last Romans at the coming of the Visigoths) that the attainment of all of this understanding is meaningless if it is to be destroyed. Nullified. Made nothing. That there is no ultimate meaning, and there must be meaning. This is what gives birth to what you refer to as religious yearning. The mistake is in assuming that it is the yearning that robs the world of its 'divinity', rather than a reaction to the fact that the world has already been robbed of its divinity.

The world is not enough? That's exactly what I'm talking about!! Religion derives from a basic unwillingness to accept the world as it is, and demand that there must be something better beyond it. If the world appears to be meaningless, then, by our sheer unwillingness to accept this apparent truth, we conclude that an entire realm of being exists merely to have a place which rests comfortably beyond any potential evidence of meaninglessness. The only reason you can say "there must be meaning" is that you personally can't accept the alternative. Not because reality itself makes it necessary.

Reality is not determined based on what evidence you refuse to accept. THAT is the very definition of dogma which I was talking about earlier. Determining your world-view based on which evidence you absolutely cannot accept as true, and instead populating reality with entire realms which have no evidence whatsoever. That's entirely different from dogmatic scientists, who reach their dogmas because the evidence seems convincing--NOT because the evidence is personally unattractive. That's a a huge difference which you and G.K. Chesterton are ignoring.

The mistake is in assuming that it is the yearning that robs the world of its 'divinity', rather than a reaction to the fact that the world has already been robbed of its divinity.

With every post, you illustrate my point. Religion sees the world as a place which is fundamentally wrong, or flawed, or "robbed of its divinity." That's even worse than saying the earth is so wonderful, there has to be fairies at the bottom of every garden. No, you're saying that the world is so bad, there must be demons and devils at the heart of it.

This is the opposite of reverential wonder which motivates science. This is a turning-away from the world, rather than a rejoicing in it (how could one rejoice in something which has "lost its divinity?). Religion, specifically yours, teaches us to loathe the world we live in, and seek another beyond it which cannot be sensed. And to blame everything bad about this world on its lack of fairies--and, paradoxically, on the presence of demons.

That is delusional, inauthentic, and cowardly.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I LOVE IT how on this thread, we are totally subverting the purpose of David Wong's article... But I, too, thought that there was a rather empty purpose underlying it.

Honestly, I don't see how Christians can read the Chronicles and get anything out of it. A story built on the premise that you make your own meaning, that we redeem ourselves, and that life is about coming to terms with death (rather than finding an escape clause), and rejecting inauthentic Codes of Ethics (Oath of Peace) . . . it is an indictment of Christianity from an author who has vehemently rejected Christianity. Either Christians aren't getting it, or they're in denial about the meaning of these books. Honestly, what do you guys see in them?

I can tell you! Alot of ways!

1. Re-interpreting what SRD says - finding so much wisdom that we (Christians) deliberately put blinders on some of the ways that HE intends/interprets the reams of data he puts out there.

2. Worldview - his books have more of his parents' worldview than the belief system that he is going forward with would like to allow for... I think this is why SRD doesn't like people to make assumptions about him as a person based on his books. The stories probably flow from BOTH some of the worldview he grew up under (because I mean, seriously, you hear ppl speaking from that worldview every day for about 17 years - how can it NOT affect you?), and from the worldview he has sought out himself. It is really hard to fully kick a belief-system that you were raised in; I was raised agnostic-evolutionary-determinist, so I should know.

3. Understanding of the human condition (Christians have to agree that there is SOME truth there if this guy can get inside our heads that well.)

4. Beauty He finds incredible ways to use the device of fantasy to conceive and illustrate incredibly precious beauty; many Christians are explicitly lovers of beauty - SRD's "beauty" that he puts out there has alot more depth as opposed to the shallowness of today's world. People are LIVING that beauty, and LIVING IN that beauty. Some of that is really stuff Christians can relate to. Also, so MANY of the fragments of what he puts out there are really beautiful in ways a Christian can really identify with and enjoy, if we dislike the way he finishes putting the pieces together. I mean, he even needlessly uses language from the Psalms when he describes the oil lamps on the dromond because he finds something in it beautiful himself. (didn't find this particular example so profound for myself personally; just using it to illustrate the point.)

5. Sacrifice, Redemption (no elaboration needed - from your background, you know straight where these themes go for Christians)

6. Depth of the seriousness of sin (or is he just talking about guilt? I have been thinking of it as being sin all along.)

7. Having compassion on people who are rejected... While Jesus did speak of Hell and sin, He showed incredible tenderness towards and grace upon the people whose sin was the most "visible" - or people who were thought of by society as "especially cursed" because of physical illness.

And that #6 is probably where SRD's writing most helped me... you see, you probably know yourself that Christians often say, "Well, I am just as terrible a sinner as you, and am every bit as worthy of eternal damnation, if it weren't for Christ." But then... do they really seem like they believe that in practice, or were those just words?

I would say that reading SRD has brought that idea that I myself am truly wicked without God from a theoretical concept to full-on reality for me. I look at this or that character of his for long enough, and all of a sudden the character drops away and I see a mirror. "Oh? I am capable of that. Oh. Huh." (And then I have huge wrestlings and runnings-away from God for days or weeks and yadda-yadda... but eventually He catches me again.)

Okay, I'm still on page 2 of this thread playing reader-catchup!

[Edit: I should take that question out until I _actually_ READ what he said so far in the last 3 pages of posts...]

[rusmeister]

If theology is defined as literary examination of texts with the aim to trace their stylistic, cultural, historic, context or their thematic content, then that is indeed scholarship. But it's not theology,anymore. Technically, that's literary analysis. One could do the same thing with the Lord of the Rings, and I wouldn't call them an "Elfologist." Only if they treated their literary texts (LotR) as factual accounts of existing entities would I call them "Elfologists." The study of mythological creatures as myth is perfectly legitimate scholarship. The study of mythological creatures as real creatures is just crazy. It's like the example of medival scholars arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's a nonsensical question.


If a university hired a "fairyologist" to start a department of fairyology to teach students the rich history of debate on the methods and culture of fairies as real, existing beings . . . wouldn't you hesitate to call this scholarship? How can you treat theology--as the study of real, existing supernatural beings--any differently? The only difference is that you believe in the entire hierarchy of angels, archangels, demons, and God. Your belief in an unprovable entity gleaned from historic mythological texts doesn't elevate the area of study into scholarship. No sane person would call a debate on the length of fairy wings, "scholarship." So why is a debate on the nature of the trinity any different? In both cases, we're talking about beings which are supernatural and undetectable, and then going on to debate their properties as if they were just as open to examination as the properties of real objects.

And yet, it's perfectly legitimate to teach Norse mythology or Greek mythology in a university. Why? Because they don't take it literally. It is only with theology that we allow "experts" to debate mythology as literal facts without calling them crazy. What accounts for this difference, in your mind? Well, obviously, it's your belief that God is real, and fairies are not. This is the only difference.

A delusion that one person holds is a psychological disorder. A delusion that millions hold is called religion.

You seem to confuse personal faith in theology and the scholarship of theology. It goes far beyond literary analysis, although certainly that is involved. There are hundreds of departments of theology in secular as well as religious universities whose validity is recognized by those universities, who do not require faith in a given religion for the conferrance of a diploma. Perhaps you are not aware of this? (Your theory needs to take this into account.)

A knowledge of the teachings of a faith, how and why dogma developed, what exactly is the nature and understanding of heresy, the history of struggles in the development of a given faith, are just some of the things theology students have to learn, and defend dissertations on, regardless of their religious belief or lack thereof. While fairy wings themselves may be unproveable, an awareness of the doctrinal development that they do not exceed 20 inches would involve understanding all of the arguments for and against this, and why the “Fairy church” ultimately declared teachings to the contrary as heresy, and what documentation supports this and on what basis – explaining why this is such a critical matter to the Fairy church and millions of believers in fairies today.

If we used (what seems to be) your definition of ‘unproveable’, we would likewise have to dismiss psychology and other disciplines that study aspects of human existence that deal with the mind. So much for psychological disorders.

The world is not enough? That's exactly what I'm talking about!! Religion derives from a basic unwillingness to accept the world as it is, and demand that there must be something better beyond it. If the world appears to be meaningless, then, by our sheer unwillingness to accept this apparent truth, we conclude that an entire realm of being exists merely to have a place which rests comfortably beyond any potential evidence of meaninglessness. The only reason you can say "there must be meaning" is that you personally can't accept the alternative. Not because reality itself makes it necessary.

Reality is not determined based on what evidence you refuse to accept. THAT is the very definition of dogma which I was talking about earlier. Determining your world-view based on which evidence you absolutely cannot accept as true, and instead populating reality with entire realms which have no evidence whatsoever. That's entirely different from dogmatic scientists, who reach their dogmas because the evidence seems convincing--NOT because the evidence is personally unattractive. That's a a huge difference which you and G.K. Chesterton are ignoring.

Not going to go around in circles here. It does seem obvious that you haven’t actually read Chesterton (beyond, perhaps that one paragraph). Also, you missed the example of finding a man dying of thirst in the Sahara. Far from it proving an ‘unpleasant reality that water does not exist’, it proves beyond a doubt that water does exist – here is a creature dying from being unable to attain it!

You are also ignoring Puddleglum’s comment on your ‘meaningless universe’.

"All you've been saying is quite right. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So,... we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

With every post, you illustrate my point.

Why do I hear the Emperor (Palpatine)’s voice saying, “…with each passing moment you make yourself more my servant!” (evil cackle)

Religion sees the world as a place which is fundamentally wrong, or flawed, or "robbed of its divinity." That's even worse than saying the earth is so wonderful, there has to be fairies at the bottom of every garden. No, you're saying that the world is so bad, there must be demons and devils at the heart of it.
This is the opposite of reverential wonder which motivates science. This is a turning-away from the world, rather than a rejoicing in it (how could one rejoice in something which has "lost its divinity?). Religion, specifically yours, teaches us to loathe the world we live in, and seek another beyond it which cannot be sensed. And to blame everything bad about this world on its lack of fairies--and, paradoxically, on the presence of demons.

You’re seeing only half the story of Christianity, and missing the part where it insists on the divine origin of the world. “…and God saw that it was good.” The Fall is the source of the evil, but as SRD said, “…there is also love in the world”, and Christians know that as well as anyone. This is a source of the reverential wonder (where it exists) that you are referring to, which led great Christian men of science to make their discoveries long before atheism was in vogue. Newton, anyone?
My point is that you are painting the Christian world view as far more simple than it actually is.

That is delusional, inauthentic, and cowardly.

AHHH! AHHH! GET’EM OFF ME GET’EM OFF ME I HATE SPIDERS!!!

Oh, sorry, that was just the hallucinatory phase of my delusion.

As to the charges of inauthentic and cowardly, I see about as much relevance as in making charges that you are lazy and a glutton – while they may be true, I have no basis for such charges.

Also, I'll largely second Lina's post and agree that what we call sin is the same motivator that brings SRD to talking about guilt - however you care to describe the objective phenomenon which Christians call 'sin'. If you want to label it "engaging in acts of selfishness which are often later regretted, resulting in feelings of guilt and/or contrition in people who have a conscience", I'll just say that Christianity found a much simpler name for this long ago.