Cambo wrote:
Cambo wrote:His talk of the "gaiety" of Christianity makes me think of the quote that a religious man is happier than an atheist is no more to the point than a drunk man is happier than a sober one. My beliefs make me happy as well. That doesn't make them convincing to anyone else.
Quibbling over the definition of gaiety or happiness makes no difference, as you could just as easily say "it's no more to the point that a religious person is gayer than an atheist than a drunk man is gayer than a sober one." Although, modern uses of the word "gay" would change the meaning of this somewhat!
It's also not to the point that I'd struggle to find an atheistic society, or even if you could prove that religious societies have more gaiety than secular ones.
Gaiety isn't evidence for rectitude. I would've thought that would be something you'd agree with. Intoxication is as ubiquitous in society as religion. Does that say anything about the insights into objective truth alcohol can bring us?
One of the problems I note is that people focus on quotes without paying attention to context. GKC preceded the remark on gaiety by saying:
Before I give an outline of my view, there is one other thing to be said in which I cannot avoid the personal note.
...
Christianity is itself so jolly a thing that it fills the possessor of it with a certain silly exuberance.
Now, gaiety may not be proof of rectitude - nor was that the point being made - but it IS proof of joy - the ability to rejoice.
Cambo wrote:rusmeister wrote:But when you speak of "criticisms of Christianity", you need to be clear on what exactly those are. Then you have the problem of "what Church", as most criticisms in the West are specifically of Western Christian faiths, usually the Roman Catholic Church, which are inapplicable to any faith disconnected from them.
I'm gonna turn this one around- what criticisms were you thinking of when you said they were "stale?" I have many criticisms of Christianity. I don't have so many about Orthodoxy in particular as I don't know much about it- although the attitudes towards sexuality are one bone I have to pick (no pun intended
).
The stale ones can be seen in the papers almost every day. The New York Times and the Washington Post, for example. It is so boring to even write of them, because they are repeated so often - straw men easily defeated by triumphant rationalists. Yesterday it was the suffering atheist in the W.P.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do- ... story.html
It's one of a million out there, that assumes that believers are stupid, bigoted and unreasonable, that consistently sounds the trumpet for secular pluralism, the religion of our age. The main thing about articles like that is that people - esp. intellectuals - the most susceptible group - get bombarded daily with a steady diet of nonsense and assumption, so that they can hardly help holding those views, any more than the average citizen under Hitler could hardly help holding views that tended to support Nazism - it's what we're all bombarded with, unless we disconnect ourselves. There are too many falsehoods to name. One, off the cuff, is the idea and assumption that dogma is by definition unreasonable, and that only "religious people" have it. I'm prepared to accept that you don't hold that view, but if you say that view is NOT widespread, I don't think I could take you seriously.
But I don't even think I need to accept a turnaround. Bring on your objections. I'll bet that probably half really are stale (unfounded, based on false, biased, or no information whatsoever), and the other half reasonable with reasonable answers. On sexuality, for example. You may have objections founded in your worldview, but I can at least show that within the Orthodox framework, its stand on sexuality is entirely reasonable and consistent.
I see a coordinated campaign against the Christian faith. It is subtle, not overt, and relies heavily on "tolerance" of it (as long as its adherents do not act like their faith is actually
true, esp. in the public arena - and it is not such a big step from that arena to the arena of the Colosseum.
The main quote, the conclusion, the thing that I highlighted was not commented on here, although it is the essence of what he was saying at the very beginning of his career:
Why will many of you not accept my four explanations? Obviously, in mere logic, they are as logical as Mr. Blatchford's. It is as reasonable, in the abstract, that a truth should be distorted as that a lie should be distorted; it is as reasonable, in the abstract, that men should starve and sin for a real benefit as for an unreal one. You will not believe it because you are armed to the teeth, and buttoned up to the chin with the great Agnostic Orthodoxy, perhaps the most placid and perfect of all the orthodoxies of mean. You could sooner believe that Socrates was a Government spy than believe that he heard a voice from his God. You could more easily think that Christ murdered His mother, than that He had a psychic energy of which we know nothing. I approach you with the reverence and the courage due to a bench of bishops.
And at the end of his career, shortly before his death the following year:
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Well ... allows.txt
The context, of course, clarifies the remarks - in two words it is about how the Liberal Party of his time had adopted an extremely illiberal position regarding the Spanish Civil War - a fascinating account from a former party member:
Now that is a small and purely political point.
But to me it was very awakening. It showed me quite clearly
the fundamental truth of the modern world. And that is this:
there are no Fascists; there are no Socialists;
there are no Liberals; there are no Parliamentarians.
There is the one supremely inspiring and irritating
institution in the world; and there are its enemies.
Its enemies are ready to be for violence or against violence,
for liberty or against liberty, for representation or
against representation; and even for peace or against peace.
It gave me an entirely new certainty, even in the practical
and political sense, that I had chosen well.
