The atheist bus

[Loredoctor]

That said, I think there IS truth in it.

Just because you think there is truth in something does not make it true. You seem to throw the term 'truth' around without really understanding what it means. But at least you admit here that there is some individual element, that your own mind is at play. But what do you mean by 'truth'? How can you prove that it is 'true'? If you think it is true, are you prepared to show some modesty and say that there is some error, thay it might be in your own mind or how you perceive the world. Or, if you if you think truth is something that can be shown to the world, can you? What are the standards to assess truth? What validities do your beliefs have? If you cannot answer these questions you should not be using terms such as 'truth' - it's unreasonable.

[rusmeister]

A charming fellow, your Mr. Chesterton. In one fell swoop, he has: insulted anyone who doesn't agree with Christian theology as "simple"; willfully misunderstood the concept behind immanent spirits (i.e., spirits of place); went totally off the rails in his description of Father Christmas (who is, btw, one of *your* saints); and blithely disregarded the possibility that Christian doctrine, like the mythology he derides, could, in and of itself, be a mythology -- and that, in fact, plenty of parallels have been delineated between Christianity and earlier religions/cults by "simple" anthropologists and folklorists (many of whom, speaking of paradoxes, know about those parallels and still choose to be Christian). In short, he has insulted and made fun of anybody who doesn't buy into Christianity.

Thanks for the excerpt.

I sometimes think (unfairly, no doubt) that people deliberately approach these texts with hostility and find things that are not there at all. They seek insult to them personally where insult is not offered. In your case, Ali, taking "simple" to apply directly to you is uncalled for. His use of the word "simple" is aimed at children (and is complimentary in nature), and essentially goes on to praise the simplicity of the child who sees that there are things behind things (what we see), and from there speaks of the imagination, as distinct from the imaginary. You have completely misunderstood the application of "simple" here.

The key points are here:

Yet the whole trouble comes from a man trying to look at these stories from the outside, as if they were scientific objects. He has only to look at them from the inside, and ask himself how he would begin a story.

It is strange that aesthetics, or mere feeling, which is now allowed to usurp where it has no rights at all, to wreck reason with pragmatism and morals with anarchy, is apparently not allowed to give a purely aesthetic judgement on what is obviously a purely aesthetic question. We may be fanciful about everything except fairy-tales.

In trying to simplify it, it's saying that invented stories are confused with fact: thus, all ancient stories and legends are to be treated with the gravitas of religion, and religions of gravitas are treated as merely stories.
If anything, THAT, not Chesterton's words, are the true insult to serious paganism. The fact that Christianity is rooted squarely in historical times with historical personages repeatedly referred to by multiple sources (didn't you guys ever hear of the Dead Sea Scrolls?) makes the charge of the stories being purely imaginary to be unsupportable. You can say that they are not proof positive, but neither can you hold up ideas like "the Jesus story" (as presented on Dromond's link) as plausible.

Now "going off the rails" re: Fr. Christmas is a strange charge. Our saint is Saint Nicholas of Myra en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Myra
The legends of Father Christmas, later Santa Claus, are, if anything, the paganisation of a Christian saint, and not the reverse - the referred to confusion of fact and fancy, above. But even here, Chesterton's idea is that there is something good and right behind the legend; something imaginative - but not merely imaginary.

Since Chesterton had come to the conclusion that Christianity is the Truth (in his own autobiography he describes trying to construct other 'truths' - his own religion - and discovering belatedly that it was orthodox (small 'o') Christianity), it would be illogical and inconsistent of him to also consider it as a mythology (in the sense of fancy), but he certainly did consider it in the sense of mythology as fact - and as the final justification of everything that was good and right in paganism and that mirrored/foreshadowed Christianity (the parallels you refer to).

No insulting or making fun at all (at least on the part of GKC or myself). You, Fist and Rob just misunderstood.

[rusmeister]

Given how often people here 'diss' Christianity, I could certainly claim the mantle of insult often enough.

"Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here."

Rather than respond to the comments of the people you listed, LM (who I have no doubt ARE intelligent), I would merely say that intelligence does not exclude ignorance. If a person takes a statement like Christ's (above) and simply extrapolates its meaning on his own without reference to the Church that formulated Scripture (see my postings to Rob, above), he might come up with something like what you said. but I would not consider it a mark of special intelligence, particularly if he is ignorant of what the Church has to say about those words.

Just because you think there is truth in something does not make it true. You seem to throw the term 'truth' around without really understanding what it means. But at least you admit here that there is some individual element, that your own mind is at play. But what do you mean by 'truth'? How can you prove that it is 'true'? If you think it is true, are you prepared to show some modesty and say that there is some error, thay it might be in your own mind or how you perceive the world. Or, if you if you think truth is something that can be shown to the world, can you? What are the standards to assess truth? What validities do your beliefs have? If you cannot answer these questions you should not be using terms such as 'truth' - it's unreasonable.

Fortunately, I did not say "because I think there is truth in something that makes it true."
You are asking a variation of Pilate's question, "What is truth?"
This is the best answer I can offer you, since you are prejudiced against my faith:

What modern people want to be made to understand is simply that all argument begins with an assumption; that is, with something that you do not doubt. You can, of course, if you like, doubt the assumption at the beginning of your argument, but in that case you are beginning a different argument with another assumption at the beginning of it. Every argument begins with an infallible dogma, and that infallible dogma can only be disputed by falling back on some other infallible dogma; you can never prove your first statement or it would not be your first. All this is the alphabet of thinking. And it has this special and positive point about it, that it can be taught in a school, like the other alphabet. Not to start an argument without stating your postulates could be taught in philosophy as it is taught in Euclid, in a common schoolroom with a blackboard. And I think it might be taught in some simple and rational degree even to the young, before they go out into the streets and are delivered over entirely to the logic and philosophy of the Daily Mail.

Much of our chaos about religion and doubt arises from this--that our modern sceptics always begin by telling us what they do not believe. But even in a sceptic we want to know first what he does believe. Before arguing, we want to know what we need not argue about. And this confusion is infinitely increased by the fact that all the sceptics of our time are sceptics at different degrees of the dissolution of scepticism.

Now you and I have, I hope, this advantage over all those clever new philosophers, that we happen not to be mad. All of us believe in St. Paul's Cathedral; most of us believe in St. Paul. But let us clearly realize this fact, that we do believe in a number of things which are part of our existence, but which cannot be demonstrated. Leave religion for the moment wholly out of the question. All sane men, I say, believe firmly and unalterably in a certain number of things which are unproved and unprovable. Let us state them roughly.

1. Every sane man believes that the world around him and the people in it are real, and not his own delusion or dream. No man starts burning London in the belief that his servant will soon wake him for breakfast. But that I, at any given moment, am not in a dream, is unproved and unprovable. That anything exists except myself is unproved and unprovable.
2. All sane men believe that this world not only exists, but matters. Every man believes there is a sort of obligation on us to interest ourselves in this vision or panorama of life. He would think a man wrong who said, "I did not ask for this farce and it bores me. I am aware that an old lady is being murdered down-stairs, but I am going to sleep." That there is any such duty to improve the things we did not make is a thing unproved and unprovable.
3. All sane men believe that there is such a thing as a self, or ego, which is continuous. There is no inch of my brain matter the same as it was ten years ago. But if I have saved a man in battle ten years ago, I am proud; if I have run away, I am ashamed. That there is such a paramount "I" is unproved and unprovable. But it is more than unproved and unprovable; it is definitely disputed by many metaphysicians.
4. Lastly, most sane men believe, and all sane men in practice assume, that they have a power of choice and responsibility for action.

Surely it might be possible to establish some plain, dull statement such as the above, to make people see where they stand. And if the youth of the future must not (at present) be taught any religion, it might at least be taught, clearly and firmly, the three or four sanities and certainties of human free thought.

www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/philosophy.html

[rusmeister]

Now as to contradictions, again, you have a point - but if I have discovered apparent contradictions that turn out not to be contradictions at all, or even resolvable as paradoxes, then they are not actual contradictions (which IS the case).

Well, you just quoted two parts of the Bible that seem to contradict each other. Care to explain how they do not? Step-by-step? It can't possibly be that I have to read everything you've read about the history of the Church in order to understand it. If that was the case, then there would only be a few dozen true Christians in the world, eh?

The best I can do in extreme short (if you pick too deeply, I'll have to refer you elsewhere) is to draw a picture, which is not a chain of reasoning, but a mosaic - so there is no necessary order of 'steps":
If a father has a child, wants to raise a good, rather than a spoiled, child and wants to give the child a good thing, he is constrained to require that the child behave in certain ways. He expects the best the child can do. But being the father, he can accept the child's best effort, even stumbling baby steps or the most unintelligible drawing as if it were an act of flying, or a piece of art worthy of display in the Louvre.
Put simply, there is no way we can really merit our own salvation - we have no idea (OK, the saints have a fairly good idea) how bad we are and how little we actually merit it*. Especially if the only way to merit it on our own is perfection - if any sin means separation from God, just as a nasty word spoken to the parent (or nasty act) creates a break between the child and parent. However, God condescends to accept our best efforts - our 'dirty rags', so to speak - which we must make (if we don't make those efforts at all, there's not much He can do) and so in that sense, the apparent contradiction is resolved - we must do things to show that we do have faith - that it is not mere intellectual acceptance, but something true that we act on, but that in the end, it is God's grace - His condescension - that saves us. (Edit - it is the realization of just what the standard is and that we are really unworthy of that standard that keeps us humble - no matter what good deeds we may do, we can't "earn" our salvation. Another (and worse) analogy - owing a man a million dollars. If he sees that we can never pay and accepts the $150 that we can pay and cancels the debt, then we can hardly say that we paid off the debt. But we do need to pay what we can.
Sorry that is so stream-of-consciousness - I hope it makes sense on a basic level.

On your last comment, I agree wholeheartedly. As I said earlier, it would be a gnostic religion that required knowledge for salvation. Salvation (if you like, given our conditioned responses to words like that I would offer the idea of being saved the way a computer program or file is saved) is available to all regardless of knowledge or intellectual level - and to whom much is given, much is required - all it takes is to say "I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!" Make that simple, conscious choice, regardless of what you feel or perceive. It's simple - but often it isn't easy.

*

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

CS lewis, MC www.philosophyforlife.com/mc14.htm

This is why the saints, who did more to 'clean their slates' than anyone, could honestly say, "I am the worst of sinners", and mean it. They could see how bad they were. But we don't even want to admit there is such a thing as sin.

[aliantha]

You have completely misunderstood the application of "simple" here.

I have not. I suggest that *you* read the excerpt again. Chesterton compares mythology to fairy tales, and dismisses them both. True, he does not directly come out and say "pagans are as ignorant as children", but that's exactly what Rod was talking about -- Chesterton makes the comparison indirectly so that his condescension is not blatant.

As to the Father Christmas thing, where GKC went totally off the rails was in his comment about Father Christmas being an allegory of snow and evergreens. Huh? I can only assume that he was responding directly here to some theory of Santa Claus that had recently been propounded at the time he wrote -- a theory that has now been lost to the mists of time. (And btw, I gotta tell you that the tradition of giving gifts at Yule predates St. Nicholas. )

I get now why Fist refused to debate you on Chesterton. It's because Fist is too nice a guy to tell you that the author you've chosen to speak for you is condescending and insensitive. Rus, I would suggest that if people like Fist and Rod and me (and, I would suspect, others on whom you have urged Chesterton) react the way we do to the guy, maybe *you're* the one who's reading him wrong. Just a thought.

[rusmeister]

You have completely misunderstood the application of "simple" here.

I have not. I suggest that *you* read the excerpt again. Chesterton compares mythology to fairy tales, and dismisses them both. True, he does not directly come out and say "pagans are as ignorant as children", but that's exactly what Rod was talking about -- Chesterton makes the comparison indirectly so that his condescension is not blatant.

As to the Father Christmas thing, where GKC went totally off the rails was in his comment about Father Christmas being an allegory of snow and evergreens. Huh? I can only assume that he was responding directly here to some theory of Santa Claus that had recently been propounded at the time he wrote -- a theory that has now been lost to the mists of time. (And btw, I gotta tell you that the tradition of giving gifts at Yule predates St. Nicholas. )

I get now why Fist refused to debate you on Chesterton. It's because Fist is too nice a guy to tell you that the author you've chosen to speak for you is condescending and insensitive. Rus, I would suggest that if people like Fist and Rod and me (and, I would suspect, others on whom you have urged Chesterton) react the way we do to the guy, maybe *you're* the one who's reading him wrong. Just a thought.

Ali, I know Chesterton very well - I have by now read dozens of his books, well over a hundred of his essays, and I know what he means when he speaks of simplicity and children. (You perceive it as an insult aimed at you. It is actually a statement on how children do correctly perceive that something is behind something else.) See his essay, "In Defence of baby Worship" to get a glimpse of what he sees in childhood as complimentary and desirable. www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/The_ ... BY-WORSHIP

Chesterton does NOT dismiss mythology at all. A central idea that both he and Lewis held, one that I find compatible with Christianity, is that mythology was hints of the truth, mirrors of the Truth that was revealed in Christ, and therefore completely worthy of respect, even though in the face of revealed Truth it lost its relevance (ie, after the Incarnation and resurrection of Christ).

It is true that his statements undermine what ideas like Dromond's are founded on, and no doubt at least indirectly what you believe in. It is not a personal insult, anymore than Dromond's link is a personal insult to Christians. Someone is right and someone is wrong. It is not a matter for taking personal offense - it is a matter for asking who is right and who is wrong.

I encourage you to read these things in context - but as long as you refuse to, these misunderstandings are much more likely. It's the same kind of thing that has people like Adam Gopnik read a few passages out of context and conclude that Chesterton is an anti-Semite, something that anyone thoroughly familiar with him knows is nonsense.

[Lord Mhoram]

Come on, rusmeister. Your post amounts to: you don't like Chesterton? Keep reading him! Not effective.

[rusmeister]

Come on, rusmeister. Your post amounts to: you don't like Chesterton? Keep reading him! Not effective.

Hi, LM. I never said you have to like him (although I think a lot of sensible people will). It's a problem of people saying he is "insulting" simply from mistaken inferences from a text or two. Anyone who really learns about the guy learns that he was incredibly humble on a personal level; that his confidence was in his dogma, not in himself, and that he was the farthest thing from an insulting or rude person, so much so that his bitterest enemies admired him. He attacked the ideas of people like Wells and Shaw while deeply respecting their intelligence and genius, those men recognized it and they remained warm and lifelong friends. So when people here read the snippets that I post because they don't want to read the links, then draw wrong conclusions and mistakenly say that the man is insulting, what can I say, except that you ought to read more?

That people refuse to is a reflection on themselves, not on Chesterton.

[rusmeister]

Come on, rusmeister. Your post amounts to: you don't like Chesterton? Keep reading him! Not effective.

Hi, LM. I never said you have to like him (although I think a lot of sensible people will). It's a problem of people saying he is "insulting" simply from mistaken inferences from a text or two. Anyone who really learns about the guy learns that he was incredibly humble on a personal level; that his confidence was in his dogma, not in himself, and that he was the farthest thing from an insulting or rude person, so much so that his bitterest enemies admired him. He attacked the ideas of people like Wells and Shaw while deeply respecting their intelligence and genius, those men recognized it and they remained warm and lifelong friends. So when people here read the snippets that I post because they don't want to read the links, then draw wrong conclusions and mistakenly say that the man is insulting, what can I say, except that you ought to read more?

That people refuse to when the opportunity is made easy, free, and one click away is a reflection on themselves, not on Chesterton.

[Fist and Faith]

Now as to contradictions, again, you have a point - but if I have discovered apparent contradictions that turn out not to be contradictions at all, or even resolvable as paradoxes, then they are not actual contradictions (which IS the case).

Well, you just quoted two parts of the Bible that seem to contradict each other. Care to explain how they do not? Step-by-step? It can't possibly be that I have to read everything you've read about the history of the Church in order to understand it. If that was the case, then there would only be a few dozen true Christians in the world, eh?

The best I can do in extreme short (if you pick too deeply, I'll have to refer you elsewhere) is to draw a picture, which is not a chain of reasoning, but a mosaic - so there is no necessary order of 'steps":
If a father has a child, wants to raise a good, rather than a spoiled, child and wants to give the child a good thing, he is constrained to require that the child behave in certain ways. He expects the best the child can do. But being the father, he can accept the child's best effort, even stumbling baby steps or the most unintelligible drawing as if it were an act of flying, or a piece of art worthy of display in the Louvre.
Put simply, there is no way we can really merit our own salvation - we have no idea (OK, the saints have a fairly good idea) how bad we are and how little we actually merit it*. Especially if the only way to merit it on our own is perfection - if any sin means separation from God, just as a nasty word spoken to the parent (or nasty act) creates a break between the child and parent. However, God condescends to accept our best efforts - our 'dirty rags', so to speak - which we must make (if we don't make those efforts at all, there's not much He can do) and so in that sense, the apparent contradiction is resolved - we must do things to show that we do have faith - that it is not mere intellectual acceptance, but something true that we act on, but that in the end, it is God's grace - His condescension - that saves us. (Edit - it is the realization of just what the standard is and that we are really unworthy of that standard that keeps us humble - no matter what good deeds we may do, we can't "earn" our salvation. Another (and worse) analogy - owing a man a million dollars. If he sees that we can never pay and accepts the $150 that we can pay and cancels the debt, then we can hardly say that we paid off the debt. But we do need to pay what we can.
Sorry that is so stream-of-consciousness - I hope it makes sense on a basic level.

On your last comment, I agree wholeheartedly. As I said earlier, it would be a gnostic religion that required knowledge for salvation. Salvation (if you like, given our conditioned responses to words like that I would offer the idea of being saved the way a computer program or file is saved) is available to all regardless of knowledge or intellectual level - and to whom much is given, much is required - all it takes is to say "I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!" Make that simple, conscious choice, regardless of what you feel or perceive. It's simple - but often it isn't easy.

*

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

CS lewis, MC www.philosophyforlife.com/mc14.htm

This is why the saints, who did more to 'clean their slates' than anyone, could honestly say, "I am the worst of sinners", and mean it. They could see how bad they were. But we don't even want to admit there is such a thing as sin.

See that? We can do this! You answered me without insisting I read several thousand pages of Church history and Chesterton. Heh.

Fact is, I didn't really see those two passages as contradictory. People act in accordance with their beliefs, eh? I know a tree by the fruit it bears. If you're going around killing people, I'm not going to believe you when you say you love everybody, even your enemies. You say you believe something? Show me. Regarding being saved, yes, its through faith. Your actions only demonstrate your faith to the world.


Now, if you care to, we can get back to the beginning:

The bases for my beliefs...hmmm... the uniqueness of man - the ways in which he is different from all animals (see TEM) the uniqueness of Christ as radically different from all other religion-starters (see TEM). the Trilemma (see Lewis, Mere Christianity) and of course the Gospels themselves. I was also personally driven by the necessity of meaning and have mentioned the man (or fish) dying in the desert (as evidence of the existence of meaning) often enough here. The universality of moral law - the fact that morals are far more alike across space, time and cultures than the ways in which they differ. From there, Mere Christianity traces the arguments that I accept. Alexander Schmemann and Victor Sokolov and how they died - the way I hope I will be able to die. (the latter was directly involved in my own conversion in 2003)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Schmemann
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Sokolov

All of that stuff requires context - which means reading.

It should not require reading here in the Close. That's not what this format is all about. If you're going to champion a cause/idea/belief, you should be able to give a basic rundown of it. You're in a discussion thread. Don't answer, "What do you believe?" with "Read ___ by ___, ___ by ___, and ___ by ___." That's not a discussion; that's a list of favorite books.

As for your points...

Regarding Lewis's ideas of morality, as I said in the thread I started about Mere Christianity, I disagree with him. Basically, he says all people feel an innate morality, then discusses why he thinks so many people act in opposition to that morality. I say there is no evidence that all people feel that morality. Indeed, the evidence is that many different people act in very different ways:
-Many of them only to benefit others at a cost to themselves.
-Many of them to benefit themselves as long as it doesn't hurt others.
-Many of them to benefit themselves without giving a thought to whether or not it hurts or benefits others.
-Many of them to benefit themselves, intentionally harming others in the process.
-Many intentionally harming others without giving a though to whether or not there is any benefit to themselves.

What is it about all of that that gives him, or you, the idea that all people feel a certain morality? We only have actions to base our belief on, and the actions are not anywhere near uniform.

This idea of Lewis', if it held water, is the type of thing I'm always looking for. Starting from the beginning. "Why do we see X?" Of course, I don't believe we do see X, and I'm interested in why Lewis and you do.

Regarding "the uniqueness of Christ as radically different from all other religion-starters," can you explain what you mean?

Actually, this isn't the same kind of thing. The uniqueness of Christ can't be a reason you believe in the uniqueness of Christ. Which is what Christianity comes down to, doesn't it? Believing he was more than a really good person whose teachings caught on more than the teachings of most people? What is it that made you believe Christ was unique; God come down in human form?

However, I wouldn't mind if you'd care to explain "the uniqueness of Christ as radically different from all other religion-starters."

Regarding the search for meaning. As I've said, different people have found very different answers to that search that have completely satisfied them. And we have not the slightest reason to assume they were not completely satisfied, or that plenty of them were not tested as severely as those who embrace your answers.

Again, if this held water, it would be a good one. But belief in the God you believe in - indeed, belief in any god at all - is not objectively superior to other answers many people have found to the questions of meaning. And saying "You may feel otherwise if sufficiently tested" is, to put it politely, a silly response. It would be silly even if: 1) there hadn't been people in the past who found other answers who did not feel otherwise when tested as sifficiently as anyone who believed in your God; and 2) there hadn't been people who did believe in your God, but did feel otherwise when sufficiently tested.

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

With due to respect to you and Chesterton, what he was like on a personal level is frankly irrelevant to a discussion like this. I don't mean to speak for aliantha, Fist, Loremaster, etc., but it seems to me that what they are saying is that Chesterton is philosophically offensive. In other words, he does not respect opposing ideologies and thought. He appears intellectually condescending, seemingly without respect for ideologies different from his own and therefore incapable to convert those with whom he disagrees. He is, in a word, radically dogmatic. This is why Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and GK Chesteron and other apologists and polemicists are repulsive to me. I think they can be fairly grouped together.

[lurch]

Chesteron writes for the Believer , not the non believer. And thats the way it is for most modern organized religions,,you have to accept a certain amount of dogma at some point or another. If it wasn't for the dogma then all religions would be inclusive of the others. Dogma is what keeps the followers in line and its enforcers, like Chesterton and those before and after him..will always have the smug sanctimonious aire about them. Accepting the Dogma gives them that. You want contradictory...the Mystic we now call Jesus is to have said.. Give onto Rome what is Romes..Yes, that does include the Dogma each modern religion insists on the faithful accepting.

[rusmeister]

rusmeister,

With due to respect to you and Chesterton, what he was like on a personal level is frankly irrelevant to a discussion like this. I don't mean to speak for aliantha, Fist, Loremaster, etc., but it seems to me that what they are saying is that Chesterton is philosophically offensive. In other words, he does not respect opposing ideologies and thought. He appears intellectually condescending, seemingly without respect for ideologies different from his own and therefore incapable to convert those with whom he disagrees. He is, in a word, radically dogmatic. This is why Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and GK Chesterton and other apologists and polemicists are repulsive to me. I think they can be fairly grouped together.

Thanks, LM. It is important to distinguish between the personally insulting and the insistence that someone can be right and someone wrong. But who are we kidding here? Is not offense personally taken? And is it not intellectually deceitful to take such an insistence personally? Otherwise, why use the word "insult", which IS personal?

Again, as soon as I apply your suggestion to the concept of teaching anything other than evolution in schools, (if I may assume your stand on the topic) your respect for opposing ideologies goes out the window. I believe you do believe someone to be right, someone to be wrong, and do not see that belief as insulting to those who disagree with you. A 'radical dogmatism' on the issue is revealed - because you really do believe something to be true. The fact that you appear intellectually condescending to creationists and ID'ers neither occurs to you or bothers you if it does. (If I have mistaken your position, please change the possessive pronouns to neutral forms.)

You cannot "convert" someone who disagrees with you if they do not accept the initial premise that there is truth and that it is possible to discover it, and to be mistaken or wrong about it. This comes back to my response to Loremaster and the GKC quote (his essay "Philosophy for the Classroom").

BTW, if you are right about what the others mean, then of course I would agree that the character of the author is not terribly relevant. But it is good to know in any event!

[lurch]

Again Rus.. You are trying to have it both ways..You are applying Spiritual, spherical , thinking and perceiving to Logical, linear matters. Rite at the start,, you are conflicted. Evolution is being taught in science classes due to its scientific validity. It meets logic and reason standards that are the thresholds to be a Theory. Geometry is taught in schools, Algebra is taught in schools. The theories and hypotheses covered in those math classes meet the same logic and reason thresholds. Logic and reason are for the physical, tangible world.

Your conflicted state allows you to go even further to say that the Joy, Love and peace that you know in your heart is somehow on a higher plain than the Joy, Love and Peace I know in my heart. I do not deny your experiencing Joy Love and Peace. Where do you and Chesterton get off denying my experience of Joy, Love and Peace? Yea,, you have accepted the dogma so that makes your Joy , Love , and Peace True...and my experience invalid..less than,, excetera. There is NO WAY you can prove Your Joy is of higher value, meaning, importance, than mine..but you avoid Logic conveniently on this and flip back to Spirituality.

[Fist and Faith]

For the record, I don't have a problem with Chesterton because he's offensive in any way. I hadn't run across any of that. But, again, I'm not going to get into why I don't like him. I have absolutely no interest in debating him with rus. I'll continue to debate religious ideas until the cows come home, and welcome Chesterton quotes that rus thinks support, or better explain, his position. That's fine. I expect some of them will have merit, and others not. We'll have to play it by ear.

[rdhopeca]

rusmeister,

With due to respect to you and Chesterton, what he was like on a personal level is frankly irrelevant to a discussion like this. I don't mean to speak for aliantha, Fist, Loremaster, etc., but it seems to me that what they are saying is that Chesterton is philosophically offensive. In other words, he does not respect opposing ideologies and thought. He appears intellectually condescending, seemingly without respect for ideologies different from his own and therefore incapable to convert those with whom he disagrees. He is, in a word, radically dogmatic. This is why Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and GK Chesteron and other apologists and polemicists are repulsive to me. I think they can be fairly grouped together.

Personally I find his tone condescending, for want of a better term. I know that if I were to ever get in a debate with him, respect for my opinions would be notably absent. He'd likely speak to me as if I were the simple child he references as opposed to someone with a fully thought opinion on the ways of things, most likely on the basis that I haven't read enough of his works to "fully understand" what he's saying. Which, of course, is meaningless in the extreme; perhaps I'll get to that after I've read enough L. Ron Hubbard to conclude that Scientology is / is not the truth of the universe.

I, on the other hand, respect him enough to allow him to think he is right as much as he wants. I'm sure his truth suits him well.

Luckily, we live in a world where my truth suits me equally well, and is equally valid, whether Chesterton likes it or not, recognizes it or not, respects it or not. For that matter, your truth suits you well, and it seems L.Ron's suits Mr Cruise quite well.

[aliantha]

I've been thinking about this, off and on, today. To be fair, I think it should be noted that Chesterton was a product of his time. It was fashionable in the mid to late 1800s to view pre-Christian civilizations as ignorant and childlike. This was the time of the Industrial Revolution, right? Nobody had ever come so far, created so much, etc.

Which plays right into what Rus is saying about those childlike pagans who had the germ of an inkling of idea, whose final and best flowering comes (of course) by way of Christianity. Because of course Christianity was the dominant religion of that best and highest expression of civilization. And so on.

I still think Chesterton is condescending. But I also think he couldn't help it, given when and where he lived.

And Rus, I ain't taking any of this personally. I'm clear that Chesterton is talking about little-p pagans -- those folks who predate "civilization". I'm a big-P Pagan.

I've also been thinking about the Father Christmas thing; I expect he was referring to the idea of the Wheel of the Year. Which is to say, at the winter solstice the sun seems to die (I know it doesn't *really* -- work with me here), and it's cold and dark and we get snow. But under the snow are the evergreens -- the promise that spring, and the sun, will come again. Not sure how that got wrapped around Father Christmas in 19th-century England, though.

[rusmeister]

Again Rus.. You are trying to have it both ways..You are applying Spiritual, spherical , thinking and perceiving to Logical, linear matters. Rite at the start,, you are conflicted. Evolution is being taught in science classes due to its scientific validity. It meets logic and reason standards that are the thresholds to be a Theory. Geometry is taught in schools, Algebra is taught in schools. The theories and hypotheses covered in those math classes meet the same logic and reason thresholds. Logic and reason are for the physical, tangible world.

Your conflicted state allows you to go even further to say that the Joy, Love and peace that you know in your heart is somehow on a higher plain than the Joy, Love and Peace I know in my heart. I do not deny your experiencing Joy Love and Peace. Where do you and Chesterton get off denying my experience of Joy, Love and Peace? Yea,, you have accepted the dogma so that makes your Joy , Love , and Peace True...and my experience invalid..less than,, excetera. There is NO WAY you can prove Your Joy is of higher value, meaning, importance, than mine..but you avoid Logic conveniently on this and flip back to Spirituality.

Hey, Lurch,

Rite at the start

Is this a pun?

I think you misunderstood my point, which was that if I challenge something that you or Lord Mhoram perceive to be true, your hackles could stand up just as much as mine on what I perceive to be true. There's been a lot of talk of insult; I won't even get started on how solar myth nonsense treats intelligent Christianity, as if the best thought of 2,000 years had not dealt with the arguments they bring forward. But I don't take offense, because I see it as a question of who is right and of genuine learning, particularly of the views of those we disagree with.

I make no attempt to claim proofs on superior inner states, so think you are misreading me there. Our attitudes may be based on truth or falsehood; once again, it is a question of where objective truth is amid subjective experience.

[Loredoctor]

I won't even get started on how solar myth nonsense treats intelligent Christianity, as if the best thought of 2,000 years had not dealt with the arguments they bring forward. But I don't take offense, because I see it as a question of who is right and of genuine learning, particularly of the views of those we disagree with.

Here's that tone again - I've bolded your words in emphasis. If I had said "that Christian myth nonsense" you would have been upset and claimed that "once again Christians are being persecuted at KW". If you want to earn respect for your beliefs, at least have the decency to show respect for the beliefs, or theories, of others.

Second, you can't just make claims without backing your arguments up. Why is the theory 'nonsense'?

This thread has been derailed perhaps a mod could lock it and maybe a new one more pertinent to the current topic?

[Dromond]

I too want to hear why it's nonsense, I would like to hear more than an excerpt from an essay that basically says it's wrong because in my opinion it's wrong.