"Nonsense" about Christianity

[rdhopeca]

That, or the "you haven't done enough personal research into our religion to understand where we are coming from" argument.

See my response to Vraith. Your presenting the argument in a denigrating way does not invalidate the argument. I think you really DON'T understand where we are coming from, Rob. It takes a really anti-intellectual attitude (at least regarding this one thing) to summarily dismiss the need to know the things I have been talking about and still claim understanding.

I've said it before, I don't feel the need to shut myself away in a library for years to claim that what I understand to be my truth to be correct and relevant. You are the one who presents this as a way to deny that my truth is true. I merely accept that my truth is good for me, and yours is good for you, and we're all going to be just fine in the end. Personally I'm fine with that.

I was not intending to denigrate, I was merely suggesting that it was another option presented when Christians decide to cast us all to hell for not following their beliefs. I'm glad you validated my prediction.

[iQuestor]

The trouble with this as a rationale is that it takes random and poor samplings of people who claim the label "Christian" and uses that as an excuse to write it all off. It is simply not a reasonable examination of what Christianity is.

No. When the majority of Christians one meets respond as the person iQuestor dealt with, and when the majority of people who have such encounters meet with this kind of response, it is not a random and poor example, it is a representative sample. They may not represent "true Christianity" in the sense that you mean, but they do represent a true relationship between Christianity and society.
YOU, as a Christian who examines his faith closely, takes care to be as true to it as possible, engage your beliefs and others beliefs thoughtfully are a 'random and poor sampling' in a statistical sense, though [as far as I can tell] a representative of what 'true' Christians could be. [though personally, I won't be persuaded unless the Christian God, or any other, sits down in my living room for a chat]
Of course, it is also worth noting that as far as I can tell the majority of Christians don't adopt a "you're all going to hell" stance/attitude in their daily lives/personal relationships, except when religion itself becomes an issue/topic for discussion. An interesting separation.

Here I can say, "No." You can't claim to understand Christianity just because you have met (even) a large number of people under various Christian labels in North America. If you don't know the history (and I mean well) then you can't understand why these divisions arose. If you don't know the various theologies - if you only know Calvinism, or fundamental Baptist views - and especially if you don't know the bases they have for having them, you are ignorant of the both the causes and nature of the divisions. You have come in on a movie late in the film where you have only seen one side of the story, so to speak. You can't from that claim to understand the film. Chesterton put it better, and evidently it bears repeating:

entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.

I've said this before on other threads, but it gets summarily dismissed as if irrelevant - although if I applied it to a similar claim of any other humanitarian study, I would be instantly derided for being 'unscientific'. I guess it's only in religion that one need have nothing but personal experience to know what they are talking about. This is what I see as nonsense.

I think Malik made the point that Christian Faith is just that -- you can't apply logic to it and come up with the right answer. Or it wouldnt be faith. It would be science. I personally would love to be able to apply logic and come up with God. I would be all over that. But then, faith wouldn't be required. And faith is a fundamental component of any religion I have ever heard of.

I think having to study and know the entire history of the christian religion and its roots back to Constantine would qualify as applying logic to validate faith.

And how do you know the version of your history you are using to determine the validity, the rightness of your faith and belief is correct? History is relative to the viewpoint of those who write it, and that is typically conquerers, who are biased. If you weren't there at the critical points where the church divided, there with Martin Luther, There with Calvin, then you dont know what actually happened. You arent researching facts so much as the implications of events as translated by those who were there. For instance, Indulgences. Need I say more? The Catholics are very well documented as being selective in how they portray history, and much of the history of Christianity is tied up with them.

[Loredoctor]

Excellent post, iQuestor.

[Cybrweez]

I understand that there are apologist arguments for faith. But at the core, they are apologist arguments for something which you admit above can’t be proven scientifically. So, it seems you are the one confused about what you’re defending, not me. How do you rationally argue for something that is impossible to prove scientifically?

Is the definition of rational something that can be proven scientifically? I didn't know, that's a new definition. When I go to dictionary.com, it says exercising sound judgement, good sense, reason. Based on that definition, you are actually wrong above. Scientific proof and rationality are not hand in hand. Sound judgement, good sense and reason are.

But maybe there is a new definition. So, how does science prove rationality?

[iQuestor]

I understand that there are apologist arguments for faith. But at the core, they are apologist arguments for something which you admit above can’t be proven scientifically. So, it seems you are the one confused about what you’re defending, not me. How do you rationally argue for something that is impossible to prove scientifically?

Is the definition of rational something that can be proven scientifically? I didn't know, that's a new definition. When I go to dictionary.com, it says exercising sound judgement, good sense, reason. Based on that definition, you are actually wrong above. Scientific proof and rationality are not hand in hand. Sound judgement, good sense and reason are.

But maybe there is a new definition. So, how does science prove rationality?

Reason and sound judgement mean that the thought process is clear and applies the facts and logical thought processes to reach a reasonable conclusion. Reason implies that logic was used to reach a conclusion.

counterpoint that with words like unreasonable and bad judgement - those terms imply the opposite -- that the concusions reached are not logical, don't make sense and are unsound. They dont make sense. they are faulty, illogical.

Therefore, I disagree that rationality and science arent hand in hand.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I understand that there are apologist arguments for faith. But at the core, they are apologist arguments for something which you admit above can’t be proven scientifically. So, it seems you are the one confused about what you’re defending, not me. How do you rationally argue for something that is impossible to prove scientifically?

Is the definition of rational something that can be proven scientifically? I didn't know, that's a new definition. When I go to dictionary.com, it says exercising sound judgement, good sense, reason. Based on that definition, you are actually wrong above. Scientific proof and rationality are not hand in hand. Sound judgement, good sense and reason are.

But maybe there is a new definition. So, how does science prove rationality?

Reason and sound judgement mean that the thought process is clear and applies the facts and logical thought processes to reach a reasonable conclusion. Reason implies that logic was used to reach a conclusion.

counterpoint that with words like unreasonable and bad judgement - those terms imply the opposite -- that the concusions reached are not logical, don't make sense and are unsound. They dont make sense. they are faulty, illogical.

Therefore, I disagree that rationality and science arent hand in hand.

I think Cybrweez's saying that science is based on reason but reason is based on, or grounded in, nothing.

If one tries to claim to the contrary that reason is grounded in reality then that is circular argumentation since reasoning was being employed in said grounding, e.g., Aristotle's metaphysics.

[Fist and Faith]

Here I can say, "No." You can't claim to understand Christianity just because you have met (even) a large number of people under various Christian labels in North America. If you don't know the history (and I mean well) then you can't understand why these divisions arose. If you don't know the various theologies - if you only know Calvinism, or fundamental Baptist views - and especially if you don't know the bases they have for having them, you are ignorant of the both the causes and nature of the divisions. You have come in on a movie late in the film where you have only seen one side of the story, so to speak. You can't from that claim to understand the film. Chesterton put it better, and evidently it bears repeating:

entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.

I've said this before on other threads, but it gets summarily dismissed as if irrelevant - although if I applied it to a similar claim of any other humanitarian study, I would be instantly derided for being 'unscientific'. I guess it's only in religion that one need have nothing but personal experience to know what they are talking about. This is what I see as nonsense.

I cannot claim that the Theory of Evolution is false without learning what the Theory of Evolution is. I would have to read a good deal about it, and really understand it, before I could dismiss. At the very least, I couldn't dismiss it until I started reading it, and ran across some obvious flaws early on.

The thing is, the ToE is something I might put that kind of effort into, for the simple reason that things exist, things that it cannot be argued don't exist, that indicate life on the planet was not always as it is now. Fossils exist. Fossils of plants and animals that do not exist in the world today. Different fossils are found at different depths of rock, strongly suggesting the different fossils are of different ages, which allow us to see a progression. Radiation dating confirms ages. If I'm interested enough to wonder how all this happened, and if it's still happening, I might get some books, look up some websites, etc. Then I could accept or dismiss various explanations.

Christianity, otoh, does not have that starting point. There is no reason to get started in the kind of reading you often talk about. That is, no reason but personal experience. Of which I have none. Why on earth would I devote such a huge amount of time and effort to something that I have no reason to suspect is real? I don't dismiss your beliefs, because I don't know what they are. I don't have the first reason to dedicate my life to learning them.

[aliantha]

And how do you know the version of your history you are using to determine the validity, the rightness of your faith and belief is correct? History is relative to the viewpoint of those who write it, and that is typically conquerers, who are biased. If you weren't there at the critical points where the church divided, there with Martin Luther, There with Calvin, then you dont know what actually happened. You arent researching facts so much as the implications of events as translated by those who were there. For instance, Indulgences. Need I say more? The Catholics are very well documented as being selective in how they portray history, and much of the history of Christianity is tied up with them.

I predict that rus's next comment will be along the lines of, "Ah, but Orthodoxy split with the Catholic Church well before the indulgences. We don't like the Catholics either; in fact, we are the One True Wing of the Christian faith."

Good posts, everybody.

[rusmeister]

Evidently all posts here are good posts, as long as they work to deny Christianity. That certainly seems to be the spirit of the responses. Ignore what is good in your opponent's arguments, and only praise the (perceived) strengths of one's own.

[aliantha]

Evidently all posts here are good posts, as long as they work to deny Christianity. That certainly seems to be the spirit of the responses. Ignore what is good in your opponent's arguments, and only praise the (perceived) strengths of one's own.

I *did* say "everybody".

[Lord Mhoram]

rus has a very legitimate point there. There's a great deal of cheerleading going on in these threads. Even if you don't agree with the opponent's arguments, it's good form to at least acknowledge the strength of their posts. I don't do this nearly frequently enough but I think it's a point more than worth making.

[rusmeister]

Is the definition of rational something that can be proven scientifically? I didn't know, that's a new definition. When I go to dictionary.com, it says exercising sound judgement, good sense, reason. Based on that definition, you are actually wrong above. Scientific proof and rationality are not hand in hand. Sound judgement, good sense and reason are.

But maybe there is a new definition. So, how does science prove rationality?

Reason and sound judgement mean that the thought process is clear and applies the facts and logical thought processes to reach a reasonable conclusion. Reason implies that logic was used to reach a conclusion.

counterpoint that with words like unreasonable and bad judgement - those terms imply the opposite -- that the concusions reached are not logical, don't make sense and are unsound. They dont make sense. they are faulty, illogical.

Therefore, I disagree that rationality and science arent hand in hand.

I think Cybrweez's saying that science is based on reason but reason is based on, or grounded in, nothing.

If one tries to claim to the contrary that reason is grounded in reality then that is circular argumentation since reasoning was being employed in said grounding, e.g., Aristotle's metaphysics.

(Please note that the following comments should be taken in the spirit of "If the shoe fits, wear it." There are some thoughtful people here that I think they do not 'fit'. It is not aimed specifically at you, Worm, or at any one poster.)

This is where I would want to post the third chapter (preferably without skipping the 1st and 2nd chapters) of Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" but all of my past experience here is that most will refuse to read it, which is, of course, the hallmark of the rational, scientific enquiring mind.
Not.

The whole point of all of our posts is that many here (not all, but many, and my impression is most) do NOT seek to understand the people they disagree with. I and other Christians here try to offer explanations and apologies (OK, apologetics) but they nearly always get dismissed out of hand. Here we would be quite happy with understanding, even if people disagreed, but the fact is that they continue to trot out tired old arguments that we already responded to a hundred times. It's as if we'd never said anything. If you were familiar with any of the arguments that we personally advanced, or linked directly to, three-quarters of the things said here would no longer be said, because everyone, no matter what they believe, would see how those arguments are refuted. (It would be a matter of agree/disagree, whereas as it stands, it is knowledge vs ignorance.)

Malik's comments on reason, for example, are dealt with amply in ch. 3 of Chesterton's "Orthodoxy". A sum up would be GKC's famous quote:

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

But obviously, that needs context to be understood properly. But most here refuse to read the context. Even when I personally type things out, they get ignored in whole or in part - so I am less and less willing to type any explanations out. How can you explain anything to people who don't really want to understand the people they disagree with?

Maybe all of this is just a waste of time. I give up on trying to find any agreement - I would be happy if people here REALLY understood the thing I would defend.

One personal comment. Fist, I do like reading your comments, but the concept of personal experience is the one thing where you do, wittingly or not, promote ignorance. There you are certainly mistaken. (I think that most parts of that shoe don't fit you, but here it does.) I say this in affection, inasmuch as it is possible to experience it in this format.

iQuestor. read Orthodoxy, ch 2 and 3. 4, too if you can. That will help you to understand.
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/orthodoxy/

I will be happy to respond to people who do want to understand!

(Edit) My thanks to you, Aliantha and LM, for your comments!

[lucimay]

i don't think its the kind of "cheerleading" you're implying mhoram. i think that people frequently simply are commenting on someone else either saying what they were gonna say or articulating better than they themselves could. at least that is the case with me.
i'm interested in the argument but not knowledgeable enough to contribute much, but i do have thoughts. sometimes fist or ali or even malik on occasion will articulate something i've not been able to come up with. so i like to chime in ever now and then and say good post.

if thats uncool i won't do it.

[Dromond]

Well, this forum has been quiet lately, so I thought it was time to start a new discussion.

Recently, in a locked topic in the tank, Cyberweez said(in an unrelated conversation) that he has to put up with 'nonsense' about Christianity in the close...

So to spark discussion, I ask: What 'nonsense' do you mean? Cyberweez, or anyone, of course. What has been said by 'Watch members that is 'nonsense'?

I rarely venture into the shark tank... er, sorry, think tank, so I only today saw that post.
Examples?

As an example of potential misconception - and the attempts to clear it up, I wonder, Dromond, if you have any comments on this post (which was a direct response to your inquiry) kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=683500#683500
If one begins to understand what Christianity is REALLY saying (instead of what they think it says, so many misunderstandings are cleared up...

Hi, rus.
I didn't respond to the post in question because, frankly, I saw nothing that would change my previous response.

I read your post many times and (maybe it's me) I just see the 'I believe it because it's a more preferable outcome, so I'll take it as true' that I saw in the Puddlegum quote. I'm not trying to belittle anything here. Just being honest. That's how I see it. No physical evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, I didn't ignore your post, just didn't want to respond.

[Dromond]

And Cyberweez, you did say perhaps nonsense was too strong a word, I thank you for that.
We fundamentally disagree on Christianity(I don't mean you and I, but Christians and Athiests here in the close) but always felt that we should try to be respectful of each others opinions.

[iQuestor]

But obviously, that needs context to be understood properly. But most here refuse to read the context. Even when I personally type things out, they get ignored in whole or in part - so I am less and less willing to type any explanations out. How can you explain anything to people who don't really want to understand the people they disagree with?

Maybe all of this is just a waste of time. I give up on trying to find any agreement - I would be happy if people here REALLY understood the thing I would defend.

One personal comment. Fist, I do like reading your comments, but the concept of personal experience is the one thing where you do, wittingly or not, promote ignorance. There you are certainly mistaken. (I think that most parts of that shoe don't fit you, but here it does.) I say this in affection, inasmuch as it is possible to experience it in this format.

iQuestor. read Orthodoxy, ch 2 and 3. 4, too if you can. That will help you to understand.
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/orthodoxy/

Rus, thanks for your posts and the obvious time and energy you put into them. I only comment on the one thing in your argument that I cant get around, ie the requirement for faith.

Saying that, I will try to read the link you have given me -- but it will be next week as I am leaving on vacation and wont have access to the internet.

I do respect your belief, but I think Fist and others makes a great point -- all religion is either introduced by personal experience , or you grow up with it to the pointr you dont question it. But at some point most people reach an age or life experience where they reach a conclusion about their faith or absence of faith.

So his point to me is valid -- unless we are blindly led, all we have to go on is personal experience. it can't be any thing else, like reason, or logic that leads us to that decision because faith requires the absence of those things.

[Fist and Faith]

I'm not sure what you mean, rus. As far as I can tell, I don't promote ignorance, I promote lack of experience. I've never had anything - from a BANG "religious experience", to a calm, sure feeling or knowledge of God's presence or existence - that gives believers reason to believe, much less to read the tens of thousands of pages of various sources that you think are necessary to understand True Christianity.

Nevertheless, because religion is among the most pervasive aspects of humanity, I have read many books on various religions. Including some on Christianity. Even what you consider to be True Christianity.

Although, to be fair, I have not read all of them in their entirety. The Bible is simply too boring to me. Like opera, there's some fantastic stuff scattered throughout a lot of terribly dull stuff. That's why there's cd's like Arias from Aida. Heh. Others, like Mere Christianity, I read a whole lot of, even though I disagree with some basic premise. Others were nearly unreadable for various reasons.

So, in what way do I promote ignorance? You have had a feeling - a feeling that, despite problems with various aspects of organized religion, made you go back again and again until you found a system that worked for you - that makes you see things that I disagree with as correct and true. That doesn't make me ignorant, it just means I don't agree. That being the case, continuing on for book after book after book is a silly notion.

[danlo]

I'm not denying Christianity-I just like to cause trouble. Whatever works for you rus...have fun. If you want to be in some exclusive clique where the light shines on you constantly that's great (I like to get some sleep every now and then ).

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Rusmeister's post has literally left behind nothing to contend with, not because I agree with it wholeheartedly, but because there is nothing to agree, or disagree, with.

I do however find great food for thought in such works as Kant's attempts to bring rational critique to religion in works such as Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone (1793). The problem with religion (and yes, everything human has problems) is its tendency to further a dangerous fanaticism, but where faith becomes the handmaiden of reason fanaticism is then ameliorated.

Even the first paragraph of that Kant work leads me to pause and ponder, but such is, as I understand religion, quite detrimental to its
very undertaking and even the goals of the priesthood itself to foster intellectual ignorance and discourage individualized attempts at enlightenment unrelated to any association with the Church:

That "the world lieth in evil" is a plaint as old as history, old even as the older art, poetry; indeed, as old as that oldest of all fictions, the religion of priest-craft. All agree that the world began in a good estate, whether in a Golden Age, a life in Eden, or a yet more happy community with celestial beings. But they represent that this happiness vanished like a dream and that a Fall into evil (moral evil, with which physical evil ever went hand in hand) presently hurried mankind from bad to worse with accelerated descent; so that now (this "now" is also as old as history) we live in the final age, with the Last Day and the destruction of the world at hand.

That is Christian eschatology in a nutshell. Kant then offers his optimistic solution to religion's pessimistic and ever-present problem of evil:

In some parts of India the Judge and Destroyer of the world, Rudra (sometimes called Siwa or Siva), already is worshipped as the reigning God--Vishnu, the Sustainer of the world, having some centuries ago grown weary and renounced the supreme authority which he inherited from
Brahma, the Creator. More modern, though far less prevalent, is the contrasted optimistic belief, which indeed has gained a following solely among philosophers and, of late, especially among those interested in education--the belief that the world steadily (though almost imperceptibly) forges in the other direction, to wit, from bad to better; at least that the predisposition to such a movement is discoverable in human nature. If this belief, however, is meant to apply to moral goodness and badness (not simply to the process of civilization), it has certainly not been deduced from experience; the history of all times cries too loudly against it. The belief, we may presume, is a well-intentioned assumption of the moralist, from Seneca to Rousseau, designed to encourage the sedulous cultivation of that seed of goodness which perhaps lies in us--if, indeed, we can count on any such natural basis of goodness in man. We may note that since we take for granted that man is by nature sound of body (as at birth he usually is), no reason appears why, by nature, his soul should not be deemed similarly healthy and free from evil. Is not nature herself, then, inclined to lend her aid to developing in us this moral predisposition to goodness?

Yes, why not? Why can't a being, normally born of sound body, also be born spiritually hale? So much for Original Sin. Kant argues it is nothing more than a propensity, or natural inclination, for evil, a potential for evil is not the same as an evil which is ground into his very soul. Indeed, human nature contains the seeds of both good and evil. An attack on religion (as in Kant's remark about "priest-craft" in the quote above) is not an attack on faith. Faith is indeed required to foster the good, but only within the limits set down by reason. Faith and reason (or science) can co-exist within the same being, it is not necessary for faith to exist only where there is ignorance.

[Furls Fire]

Yes, why not? Why can't a being, normally born of sound body, also be born spiritually hale? So much for Original Sin. Kant argues it is nothing more than a propensity, or natural inclination, for evil, a potential for evil is not the same as an evil which is ground into his very soul. Indeed, human nature contains the seeds of both good and evil. An attack on religion (as in Kant's remark about "priest-craft" in the quote above) is not an attack on faith. Faith is indeed required to foster the good, but only within the limits set down by reason. Faith and reason (or science) can co-exist within the same being, it is not necessary for faith to exist only where there is ignorance.

Well said! I could not have put it any better than that.

As I have said before, I am not a "religious" person, I am a "faithful" person. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ, His Son. But, "church" is another matter. Too many religions are all about condemnation and guilt and power. I am of the ilk that God is Love. Jesus Christ is the Embodiment of that Love. For me, there is nothing else. I call myself "Christain", because I believe Jesus is the Son of God. No "church" taught me this, I just am this. And I live in the Light, (sorry danlo..LOL!!), because for me, darkness just isn't an option.