Charles Darwin to receive apology from the Church of England

[Avatar]

You were the one who said "You seem to have no trouble accepting this concept in science..." I was pointing out that the concepts are not analogous between the two.

As for consensus, it depends very much on external factors...the consensus for example that the earth was flat, or the centre of the universe, was overturned by the work, (and interpretation), of individuals.

Mere consensus alone is irrelevant. It has to be supported by demonstrable and repeatable evidence. Where there is no evidence, any opinion has a similar weight to any other.

I am sure that you are right on one score at least, and that is that it's unlikely any individual could grasp every possible theological (or anything else) question. But that is not the issue at discussion. For any given question, any given interpretation has as much chance of being right as any other, under conditions of lack of evidence either way.

Still, although I'm not claiming to be able to grasp every issue, I have no problem admitting the arrogance of the assumption that my interpretation is better or more accurate or whatever. I do tend to suffer from a minor megalomania. But I don't really insist that I'm right. Just that my interpretation has as much chance of being right as any other. (Although of course I like to think that it's more, but that's just that megalomania I mentioned. )

--A

[rusmeister]

You were the one who said "You seem to have no trouble accepting this concept in science..." I was pointing out that the concepts are not analogous between the two.

As for consensus, it depends very much on external factors...the consensus for example that the earth was flat, or the centre of the universe, was overturned by the work, (and interpretation), of individuals.

Mere consensus alone is irrelevant. It has to be supported by demonstrable and repeatable evidence. Where there is no evidence, any opinion has a similar weight to any other.

I am sure that you are right on one score at least, and that is that it's unlikely any individual could grasp every possible theological (or anything else) question. But that is not the issue at discussion. For any given question, any given interpretation has as much chance of being right as any other, under conditions of lack of evidence either way.

Still, although I'm not claiming to be able to grasp every issue, I have no problem admitting the arrogance of the assumption that my interpretation is better or more accurate or whatever. I do tend to suffer from a minor megalomania. But I don't really insist that I'm right. Just that my interpretation has as much chance of being right as any other. (Although of course I like to think that it's more, but that's just that megalomania I mentioned. )

--A

At heart, it appears that you question the validity of reason itself. If that is so, then your thoughts have no validity whatsoever. They are random movements in your brain, a random piece of flesh without meaning in a world without meaning. Even the word "valid" comes to mean nothing - although I think in practical terms that what its use actually boils down to is to replace the word "true" and thereby deny truth.

It's nearly criminal to cut out excerpts from this book - it ought to be read in its entirety and in context. There are introductory thoughts, and chains of reasoning that lead up to conclusions. Nevertheless, I'll offer this piece in the hope that you may follow up and read the whole book. Bear with the first paragraph; it gets to the point quickly enough, and this excerpt ties in with the OP:

It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything -- even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation: that what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs defence. The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels.

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. They are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful assertion that a door is not a door. The modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion not only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never been any reason for it. Apart from seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H. G. Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all -- the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps desirable, though dull, to run rapidly through the chief modern fashions of thought which have this effect of stopping thought itself. Materialism and the view of everything as a personal illusion have some such effect; for if the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting, and if the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about. But in these cases the effect is indirect and doubtful. In some cases it is direct and clear; notably in the case of what is generally called evolution.

Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am." The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, "I am not; therefore I cannot think."

www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/orthodoxy/ (ch 3, The Suicide of Thought)

[Avatar]

At heart, it appears that you question the validity of reason itself.

What on earth gives you that impression?

--A

[rusmeister]

At heart, it appears that you question the validity of reason itself.

What on earth gives you that impression?

--A

Well, it's an accumulated impression from quite a few things you've said.
The specific one that triggered the post was:

But I don't really insist that I'm right. Just that my interpretation has as much chance of being right as any other.

That definitely seems to level the playing field of knowledge and experience.

I use words like seem and appear because one thing I am not dogmatic about is other persons' meaning and intent.

In the specific case, it seems that you may be ready enough to accept dogma regarding science, but not regarding other areas of human experience. Certainly I get a strong impression from you that reason is helpless.

In any event, that fragment of Chesterton's is an interesting read. I'm always more interested in what people have to say to him than to me, because I acknowledge his genius to be, on these questions, unquestionably superior to mine. Yes, I believe him to be in error on a some things (in his main points), but they are few and far between. In all of my experience (and I have an MA in lit - something some might value more than I) the man had, without exception, the greatest mind of the 20th century. The odds that a better one existed that I have yet to encounter are vanishingly small.

[Avatar]

Actually, I'm very much in favour of reason. My own and everybody else's. And we're talking about interpretation, not knowledge. Indeed, in an earlier post I specifically said that that only area in which I would concede other people an advantage would be in one of study. Science's dogma on the other hand is far more open to reinterpretation. Something religious dogma tends to be opposed to. Reason however is a tool that can be wielded by anyone.

As for Chesterton, that's all very well, but he can't reply to my criticisms, especially since I would never expect you to answer for him. So I prefer addressing your opinions to his.

--A

[rusmeister]

Actually, I'm very much in favour of reason. My own and everybody else's. And we're talking about interpretation, not knowledge. Indeed, in an earlier post I specifically said that that only area in which I would concede other people an advantage would be in one of study. Science's dogma on the other hand is far more open to reinterpretation. Something religious dogma tends to be opposed to. Reason however is a tool that can be wielded by anyone.

As for Chesterton, that's all very well, but he can't reply to my criticisms, especially since I would never expect you to answer for him. So I prefer addressing your opinions to his.

--A

There are good reasons why religious dogma tends to be opposed to reinterpretation, as you put it. Religion is not science - religion offers answers to the question of "Why?", not the question of "How?" Thus, it is not experimental in nature at all. Christianity doesn't even pretend to know what it claims via human ability and experimentation. It freely admits that its claims of knowledge come from special revelation - that things external to the universe are impossible for us to know unless specially revealed from outside, much like the characters in a play could not know anything about an "Author" unless the Author inserted a character into the play who told them about the Author...which is exactly what He did.

I would hope that it is obvious by now that I share Chesterton's view on an order of 99%. Since he has already expressed it, and admittedly (by me, at least) done so far better than I could, and because I can't spend 16 hours a day at my computer typing, it is infinitely more sensible to read what I'm referencing rather than to expect that I should spend gobs of time in an attempt to rephrase, in a largely inferior way, what has already been said so well. It IS what I myself want to say. Where something is not clear I will try to interpret, clarify, or even disagree with GKC, though. That is my challenge to your thoughts, which are by no means new and have been thought before (and been defeated before - but keep coming back when a new generation forgets or doesn't learn the lessons of the old.

[Avatar]

There are good reasons why religious dogma tends to be opposed to reinterpretation, as you put it. Religion is not science - religion offers answers to the question of "Why?", not the question of "How?" Thus, it is not experimental in nature at all. Christianity doesn't even pretend to know what it claims via human ability and experimentation. It freely admits that its claims of knowledge come from special revelation - that things external to the universe are impossible for us to know unless specially revealed from outside...

So it's actually the church that is opposed to reason?

--A

[rusmeister]

There are good reasons why religious dogma tends to be opposed to reinterpretation, as you put it. Religion is not science - religion offers answers to the question of "Why?", not the question of "How?" Thus, it is not experimental in nature at all. Christianity doesn't even pretend to know what it claims via human ability and experimentation. It freely admits that its claims of knowledge come from special revelation - that things external to the universe are impossible for us to know unless specially revealed from outside...

So it's actually the church that is opposed to reason?

--A

Sorry, I don't understand how this inference could be drawn from what I said. Some things may not be provable by reason because they are only known through special revelation, but if accepted can be found to explain things about our nature and experience - iow, be compatible with reason. It is a choice to accept or reject those things.

[Prebe]

Some things may not be provable by reason because they are only known through special revelation, but if accepted can be found to explain things about our nature and experience - iow, be compatible with reason.

That's the key argument used by intelligent design proponents.

Religion is not science

Then stop pushing it as such.

[rusmeister]

Some things may not be provable by reason because they are only known through special revelation, but if accepted can be found to explain things about our nature and experience - iow, be compatible with reason.

That's the key argument used by intelligent design proponents.

OK. There I happen to agree with IDers, regardless of any errors in their scientific method. I call it common sense.

Religion is not science

Then stop pushing it as such.

I'm not pushing religion as science. (Although I'll push theology as a science, and have backup from major public universities around the world in doing so). I'm insisting that some forms can be accepted by a reasonable man.

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

(Although I'll push theology as a science, and have backup from major public universities around the world in doing so).

I'm not so sure of that. For one, theology itself has been in a long, inexorable decline in the West since around the Enlightenment. For another, I would wager that even the remaining serious theology departments (Boston College, for example) would no more call theology a science than philosophy departments would call themselves scientific. In other words, practically not at all. Think of it this way: religious studies isn't a science either, and that deals with the exact same subject matter. Calling theology science (the so-called "Queen of the Sciences" in the Dark Ages) is a bit like continuing to call alchemy a science.

[rusmeister]

rusmeister,

(Although I'll push theology as a science, and have backup from major public universities around the world in doing so).

I'm not so sure of that. For one, theology itself has been in a long, inexorable decline in the West since around the Enlightenment. For another, I would wager that even the remaining serious theology departments (Boston College, for example) would no more call theology a science than philosophy departments would call themselves scientific. In other words, practically not at all. Think of it this way: religious studies isn't a science either, and that deals with the exact same subject matter. Calling theology science (the so-called "Queen of the Sciences" in the Dark Ages) is a bit like continuing to call alchemy a science.

On "theology being in a decline": if that means being universally held as the most important study- the thing which establishes ultimate truth through which other sciences may also reveal truth, then I would agree. if it means that it is becoming 'less valid' then I sharply disagree.

On this matter we are likely to disagree. I would say that the likely position of unbelievers on theology is comparable to the position of IDers on science. It is as uninformed on what theology is as evolutionists claim that IDers are on what science is (I cheerfully assume for sake of argument that the evolutionists are right).

The study of Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, Judaic, Islamic or Buddhist theology requires scholarship quite as much as the hard sciences (or history or whatever) do. That their initial premises assume a given world view - does not change the fact that "if...then...". Just as the hard sciences make assumptions about the nature of reality and then work from them. That you disagree with those assumptions does not invalidate the scholastic nature of the theology.

For some odd reason we still hold the PhD as the highest academic honor. But if State universities succeed in replacing them with DA's or DS's then it will be a clear sign of a similar decline in philosophy (which I believe has already taken place).

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

if it means that it is becoming 'less valid' then I sharply disagree.

On validity, we won't convince each other of anything. I agree with you that theology is less important, and therefore I would posit less relevant, in Western academia and in Western culture quite generally. I applaud this.

The study of Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, Judaic, Islamic or Buddhist theology requires scholarship quite as much as the hard sciences (or history or whatever) do.

I agree with that. But you're missing something important. We don't have to study religion from a religious standpoint, which is theology. We can do it from a secular point of view, which we call in Anglo-American academia religious studies. Not sure what other cultures call it. In any event, what I mean to say is that we can still study religion with a high degree of scholarly rigor without resorting to religiosity. I would wager to say that the more neutral and balanced secular method of the study of religion is of a higher scholarly caliber than the theological one, which has an agenda which is even more flagrant than that of most scholars.

But if State universities succeed in replacing them with DA's or DS's then it will be a clear sign of a similar decline in philosophy (which I believe has already taken place).

I don't agree with this. Cf. New York Review of Books, Vol. 55 No. 15, 10/9, "A Rescue of Religion." Unfortunately not available online, but see this abstract:

Contemporary philosophy is a discipline in which religion hardly figures. A subject called philosophy of religion exists and has some devoted practitioners, but in the discipline as a whole inquiry into religion is a marginal activity. No doubt many circumstances have contributed to this state of affairs, some of them lying outside philosophy, but a part of the explanation lies in the recent history of the subject.

Religion and philosophy have diverged. Philosophy has become intertwined with science to a degree that I do not like very much. But nevertheless, this keeps it relevant. To say nothing of traditional metaphysics, political theory, philosophy of language, aesthetics, and a myriad of other important topics to which we still look to philosophy.

[Avatar]

Sorry, I don't understand how this inference could be drawn from what I said. Some things may not be provable by reason because they are only known through special revelation, but if accepted can be found to explain things about our nature and experience - iow, be compatible with reason. It is a choice to accept or reject those things.

Sorry, I was largely joking...you had just suggested I was opposed to reason. In your reply to my defence, you said

It freely admits that its claims of knowledge come from special revelation

.

In other words, not as a product of reason.

Hence my suggestion that the church opposed reason, with perhaps a hint of the thought that reason may be an antithesis to special revelation, which of course relies on faith rather than logic.

--A

[rusmeister]

rusmeister,

if it means that it is becoming 'less valid' then I sharply disagree.

On validity, we won't convince each other of anything. I agree with you that theology is less important, and therefore I would posit less relevant, in Western academia and in Western culture quite generally. I applaud this.

The study of Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, Judaic, Islamic or Buddhist theology requires scholarship quite as much as the hard sciences (or history or whatever) do.

I agree with that. But you're missing something important. We don't have to study religion from a religious standpoint, which is theology. We can do it from a secular point of view, which we call in Anglo-American academia religious studies. Not sure what other cultures call it. In any event, what I mean to say is that we can still study religion with a high degree of scholarly rigor without resorting to religiosity. I would wager to say that the more neutral and balanced secular method of the study of religion is of a higher scholarly caliber than the theological one, which has an agenda which is even more flagrant than that of most scholars.

But if State universities succeed in replacing them with DA's or DS's then it will be a clear sign of a similar decline in philosophy (which I believe has already taken place).

I don't agree with this. Cf. New York Review of Books, Vol. 55 No. 15, 10/9, "A Rescue of Religion." Unfortunately not available online, but see this abstract:

Contemporary philosophy is a discipline in which religion hardly figures. A subject called philosophy of religion exists and has some devoted practitioners, but in the discipline as a whole inquiry into religion is a marginal activity. No doubt many circumstances have contributed to this state of affairs, some of them lying outside philosophy, but a part of the explanation lies in the recent history of the subject.

Religion and philosophy have diverged. Philosophy has become intertwined with science to a degree that I do not like very much. But nevertheless, this keeps it relevant. To say nothing of traditional metaphysics, political theory, philosophy of language, aesthetics, and a myriad of other important topics to which we still look to philosophy.

Sorry about the delay! (I have a few responses backed up - all this posting just takes too much of my time.

Not sure why you think one must be religious in order to study theology. Last I heard one is not required to be an adherent to learn about a discipline.

The other thing is asking what you mean by "relevant". If you mean "personally relevant" then it is clear. If you mean "what a lot of people like" then again, clear. But being "relevant" in those senses does not give any authority of truth. If one has gone down a wrong path, and departed from truth, then they would find everything related to the truth to be "irrelevant". But that would be their fault, not the truth's. In short, "relevance" here is a rhetorical weapon with no ammo.

I find your assumption of "flagrant agendas" in theology to be...flagrant. (No doubt that some departments and professors may well have agendas, even radical ones - but to broad-brush all of them is taking that too far. I will tell you that I saw and personally experienced a radical secular agenda in the Cal State Dept of Ed - one that was so radical that it drove this lazy agnostic back to faith. Just so we acknowledge that radical agendas can exist among the proudly irreligious as well.)
If you take a posit and develop ramifications from it, which describes how traditional thought and philosophy developed, then you have a valid field of study. You don't have to accept the religion - the impact on all other fields alone is worth the study. If something is held to be true, then 'x' follows, as well as the other letters of the alphabet.

By now you might have picked up that I get a kick out of busting on terms like "contemporary" or "modern", both of which merely mean "that which is now" - and since now is an ever-changing term, it can have no meaning of lasting value. It effectively means "temporary" but few people think that far, imo. In Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" there is a moment when the prince (later echoed by the king) refers to the 14th century as being modern. A joke to viewers, but also a profound (if unintended) truth.

To say that "religion and philosophy have diverged" is merely to say that there has been a growth in philosophy that rejects religion. All I'll say is that it's not the first time this has happened in history. Ancient Rome also saw that happen, within a century or so before this crazy sect appeared that talked about a dying God that came back from the dead and eating his body and drinking his blood...
I referred you to TEM. For me, it was a mind blower because it took what I "already knew"; learned from school books, etc and just connected the dots (and pointed out things that should have been obvious, but weren't - like the strangeness of the war with Carthage).

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

Not sure why you think one must be religious in order to study theology. Last I heard one is not required to be an adherent to learn about a discipline.

To be sure, Catholic theology is not done solely by Catholics. But theology is undoubtedly done from a religious paradigm. This is what I mean by a flagrant bias. A Catholic theologian works within a certain framework that favors the fundamental tenets of Catholic theology, to whatever degree. In other words, have you ever read an atheist theologian? Theology is a field that works to defend and prove itself. This isn't disinterested scholarship. It's polemicism.

If you mean "what a lot of people like" then again, clear.

Yeah, that is what I meant, and of course include myself in that lot of people.

In short, "relevance" here is a rhetorical weapon with no ammo.

I said nothing about truth. You did. I said that theology is culturally irrelevant. It is. Your constant assertion of truth doesn't have much ammo from my perspective, either.

Just so we acknowledge that radical agendas can exist among the proudly irreligious as well.

I do indeed acknowledge that. Also I thought you were Russian, hence my comments about American academia above. My bad.

If you take a posit and develop ramifications from it, which describes how traditional thought and philosophy developed, then you have a valid field of study.

That's precisely why I don't think theology is valid. It takes as its presupposition a wildly controversial and far from a priori truth: God exists. No one who has set out to prove God's existence - from Anselm, to Aquinas, to Descartes - has started with the presupposition that maybe God doesn't exist. It's often a hidden presupposition, but take a look at their proofs. It's there. Particularly in, say, Anselm's conception of God's attributes, or Aquinas's irrational assumption that there is a unitary God. Those are just quick examples.

By now you might have picked up that I get a kick out of busting on terms like "contemporary" or "modern", both of which merely mean "that which is now" - and since now is an ever-changing term, it can have no meaning of lasting value. It effectively means "temporary" but few people think that far, imo.

I don't think "contemporary" or "modernism" are inherently valuable concepts. But I do believe in progress, and I believe I see progress in Western thought today, towards a more thoughtful, reasoned, nuanced, and at times beautiful conception of reality that always leaves room for faith, for spirituality, and for science. Not necessarily for religion.

To say that "religion and philosophy have diverged" is merely to say that there has been a growth in philosophy that rejects religion.

Yes. That's exactly what I meant. I think, then, that your prediction that philosophy will be left in the dust as religion has been is a non sequitur, because the two fields aren't even all that similar any longer. Philosophy, after all, was one of the fields that abandoned religion in the first place. To take an example of that, check my induction thread. (Good stuff, btw. Just sayin'.) Epistemology in the time of Descartes used God's existence and/or intervention to explain certain disparities or inconsistencies like the ones being discussed in that thread. Not so much anymore. God isn't even in the epistemological formula anymore.

[rusmeister]

I think the shortest answer I can give to all that is that you are operating from an assumption that rational thought can operate on its own; in a vacuum, as it were, separate from the human organism. I disagree. While I agree that the initial assumptions of theology do not come from the scientific method, neither do the initial assumptions of hard sciences. There is always an ultimate truth - such as that reason exists and is valid - that cannot be experimented on - it must be accepted as a given. It seems to follow from what I would call the basic material assumptions of science that you defend that there can be no truths that are not a product of the scientific method. Maybe you wouldn't say that at all, but that's what I read into it, and heartily disagree. Some truths about human existence cannot be known through the hard sciences. Modern philosophy (in the exclusion of the religious principle) is just a sophistic and vain effort to explain what religion had always explained.

It's more of a direct reference to politics, but even that springs from philosophy - only it was a wiser philosophy than the pitiful substitutes we have today:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

(No, it's not Chesterton - it's an American, evidently much wiser and better educated than the run-of-the-mill academician we have today.)
avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
That excerpt is usually deliberately edited from the school history books and replaced with three periods)

Oh, and progress is my next target. The shorthand is that you can have no progress unless you can define absolutes, and that if the progress is in the wrong direction, the most 'progressive' person is the one who turns around first. Lewis's "Funeral of a Great Myth" tears apart the common lay understandings of progress. Being under copyright, you can only find it in bits and pieces online.

As to Russia, I'm an American who knows more than the average bear about Russia (and yes, I do live there). If you have any questions, fire away!

Courtesy is like a drink from...

[Prebe]

The shorthand is that you can have no progress unless you can define absolutes

Only if you have an absolute definition of the word progress.

You need to define a point from (or toward) which development moves. But that point needn't be absolute. I.e. what's progress today is not necessarily defined as progress tomorrow.

You can accept the biblical moral definitions as an absolute. But you must remain focused on that it is a definition that is not based on observable data, and that it is a definition that does not sit well with everyone.

[Avatar]

The maintenance of morality is absolutely possible without religion. Otherwise all atheists would be immoral...or amoral perhaps, since morality is a value judgement.

--A

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

I'm tired of you assuming I don't believe in absolute truth when I've stated over and over again that I do. It's insulting. And calling modern philosophy "sophistic" and a knock-off of religion basically proves that you know nothing about contemporary or near-contemporary philosophy.