Theology IV

[Coffeehouse]

Yeah you're right, my bad.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I thought it best to disabuse you of the illusion that Catholicism might have produced something/someone which/who wasn't monstrous.

[GrayMouser]

Actually Coffeehouse I agree with you more than not on the intolerant nature of the monotheistic religions- my main disagreement, and it's one I argued against Lief, is that I don't think the great expansion of the West was driven by ideological/theological concerns.

I tend to be a bit of a materialist when it comes to history. While Lief feels it's all due to the collapse of the Catholic worldview in the face of aggressive humanism, you seem to take the opposite pole and view it as evil monotheism attacking the gentle spiritualists of the other cultures.

Me, I take a more cynical approach- I think the West ruthlessly exploited others simply because they could; and that other cultures before that tried to do the same thing with less success only because they didn't have the material means to do so.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

I thought it best to disabuse you of the illusion that Catholicism might have produced something/someone which/who wasn't monstrous.

Impossible, sir- being brought up in a very broad tradition of the Church of England, I learned at my Grandmother's knee that Catholicism stands for Bloody Mary, the Armada, the Spanish Inquisition, Guy Fawkes and the destruction of all Liberty.

Protestantism, OTOH, is Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Elizabeth I, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, and Freedom ( basically defined as whatever's good for England)



"Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

"Ho, for Prince Billy and the Protestant Wind."

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Actually Coffeehouse I agree with you more than not on the intolerant nature of the monotheistic religions- my main disagreement, and it's one I argued against Lief, is that I don't think the great expansion of the West was driven by ideological/theological concerns.

I tend to be a bit of a materialist when it comes to history. While Lief feels it's all due to the collapse of the Catholic worldview in the face of aggressive humanism, you seem to take the opposite pole and view it as evil monotheism attacking the gentle spiritualists of the other cultures.

Me, I take a more cynical approach- I think the West ruthlessly exploited others simply because they could; and that other cultures before that tried to do the same thing with less success only because they didn't have the material means to do so.

I see. But I think you've misunderstood some of my arguments then, because I too, am a bit of a materialist when it comes to history. I don't believe that that the West's expanionism is only due to "evil monotheism attacking the gentle spiritualists of the other cultures".

The reason I give examples in history where Europeans of Christendom so often make a great deal of their faith and kill in the name of it, is to show to Lief that more often than not, it was not the Europeans who were merciful, but unprovokedly mass-murdered 'heathens' whom were supposed to represent the opposite of Christianity's right and good.
To show that the notion that the world became better of by Christianity's sword-sweeping 'conversion' is crazy. To show that many of the peoples that were put to the sword for not being Christian or Christian enough, had followed religions and cultures that were in many ways more peaceful and less expansionist than the 'peace' that Christianity brought upon them. To show that the moral righteousness and the truth that is supposedly held only by the Catholic Church is shown to be utterly false by the Catholic Church's own actions in the era of colonialisation of the world (beginning in the 1400s): a peaceful welcoming of trade and new prosperity was almost never practiced by the intruders (Christians or Muslims in their expansion) but by the receivers.
To show that if the Portuguese and the Spanish were truly serious about converting the peoples of the planet to Catholicism in the name of love and peace and a just God, then why did they do what they did. And why did the Catholic Church, headed by a string of corrupt Popes, issue such ignorant and murderous decrees and statements in support of the lunacy that was the Portuguese and Spanish conquests.

But that is in answer to the arguments I disagree with, and we are discussing Theology.

You write "I think the West ruthlessly exploited others simply because they could." and I couldn't agree more

[brownjenkins]

Theology is simply a tool of control people use where logic does not work. It says more about humans than it does about any "greater truths".

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Theology is simply a tool of control people use where logic does not work.

Don't you mean theism rather than theology?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Theology is simply a tool of control people use where logic does not work. It says more about humans than it does about any "greater truths".

As far as logic goes, I'm not sure I'd like to lock horns with the "the Dumb Ox" , or engage in a duel with Friar William of Ockham and his razor.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Theology is simply a tool of control people use where logic does not work. It says more about humans than it does about any "greater truths".

You might object to the principles of theology, but once they are granted, in a number of cases the logic itself can be quite impeccable.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

You might object to the principles of theology, but once they are granted, in a number of cases the logic itself can be quite impeccable.

Principles of truth should be self-evident. 'Granting them' reaks of conscious self-denial..

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Oh, get off your high horse, Coffee. EVERYONE grants certain principles without them being immediately evident. The only thing that makes people different in this respect is which ones. Anyway, that's irrelevant; BJ spat up a sound bite objecting to the logic of theology. I was pointing out that the logic isn't so much problematic, as are the principles upon which it is based (and coming to first principles and using them to derive conclusions are two very, very different things).

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Oh, get off your high horse, Coffee. EVERYONE grants certain principles without them being immediately evident. The only thing that makes people different in this respect is which ones. Anyway, that's irrelevant; BJ spat up a sound bite objecting to the logic of theology. I was pointing out that the logic isn't so much problematic, as are the principles upon which it is based (and coming to first principles and using them to derive conclusions are two very, very different things).

Hehe, naw I think I understood perfectly well what you meant the first time

[Curufin]

If you believe in God (or whatever particular diety you like) and the principles of the Bible (or whatever particular holy book you like), then I see very little 'illogical' about theism. It fits nicely into its little world, once that faith exists. Unless I'm misunderstanding totally (which is completely possible), I think Gwaimir is referring to this faith, to the acceptance of the core principles of the religion.

And I think, in that case, that he's right.

He's also right that everyone, religious or not, makes presuppositions. Nobody bases everything on empirical knowledge and experience. Just isn't possible.

And I also think that writing off all of 'theism' as social control is a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are some religions I like more than others (and I'm not going to give details on which ones), but there are certainly some that are very individualistic and have nothing to do with social control at all.

I consider myself to be very spiritual, but I haven't been to 'church' or practiced my religion with others in nearly ten years. How exactly is that 'social control'? My religion is a very personal thing between myself and my dieties, and what I get out of it is a very personal thing as well. Nobody's controlling me except myself.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Curufin

If you believe in God (or whatever particular diety you like) and the principles of the Bible (or whatever particular holy book you like), then I see very little 'illogical' about theism. It fits nicely into its little world, once that faith exists. Unless I'm misunderstanding totally (which is completely possible), I think Gwaimir is referring to this faith, to the acceptance of the core principles of the religion.

This is quite simple; And why I would shake in fear if ever the principles of morality and right were founded on a particular religious faith:
Core principles, or should we say, the moral principles, that are supposed to lay a foundation for the Christian faith, contradict one another. They have shown themselves to not be absolute, but subject to wide variations in understanding and priority. And if moral principles are contradictory they are of little use. Likewise, they provide little truth.
If you base your moral principles on your faith, and that your moral principles require that you do have that particular faith, then moral principles will be defined, viewed and practiced differently according to different faiths. What you get is a myriad of moral principles, often in variation with one another; the New Testament Ten Commandments versus Sharia Law.

And then we have the principles defined under the United Nations' Human Rights Charter.
They require no faith. They only require that you exist.

[Curufin]

If you base your moral principles on your faith, and that your moral principles require that you do have that particular faith, then moral principles will be defined, viewed and practiced differently according to different faiths. What you get is a myriad of moral principles, often in variation with one another; the New Testament Ten Commandments versus Sharia Law.

How is having a myriad of moral principles a problem?

Moral principles have only to be justified to the person who holds them. I do not have to justify my moral principles to you, nor do you have to justify yours to me.

You reference the ten commandments and Sharia Law. How are these contradictory? They are from two completely different faiths.

Sorry, but I'm more than a little confused by your line of reasoning.

[Jon S.]

Here's my theological thought of the day:

Jesus Christ was a community organizer.

Pontius Pilate was a governor.

Think.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

And then we have the principles defined under the United Nations' Human Rights Charter.
They require no faith. They only require that you exist.

Of course they require faith . If you believe those principles are just, that's your faith. Any opinion is faith. Name me one opinion you can have that is not faith based!

Do you believe you exist? You can't know you even exist. You can't know that you have hands and eyes and a brain- you might live in the Matrix . You live in faith that you aren't in the Matrix, but you don't know you don't. You don't know you aren't insane or wandering in a hallucinatory dream. You don't think you are and the evidence around you may strongly suggest you're not insane.

How do you know you're sitting in front of a computer right now? Your eyes might be playing tricks on you. You have faith in your eyes.

You have faith in your eyes, in the functionality of your brain, in your hands and arms, in your legs. You don't have faith that they'll always work the way they do now, but you trust that they work pretty well at the moment, that you aren't completely deluded as to their capacity. You don't believe you're in a bank handing out thousand dollar check notes right now, and your mind is playing tricks on you. Why don't you think that? Faith, based on evidence, probably.

Everything is faith, when it comes down to it. The world is built on faith. Your 21st century Western civilization ethical opinions of the Human Rights Charter are opinions, faith. They're beliefs about justice and right or wrong, beliefs other people in the world disagree with.

It's impossible to avoid living without faith. Everything is faith outside of mathematics. Not BLIND faith, hopefully. Seeing faith. Faith that is an opinion based upon available evidence. Come to think of it, even math can be based upon "postulates," and those are all about faith.


Don't delude yourself into thinking you've escaped faith. Everyone lives in a world consumed by faith. Everyone, including you, is engulfed in it. Religion is one facet of the faith that fills the world, a belief system that in the case of several major religions is supported by evidence.

Atheism is one of the most notable belief systems for the fact that it has zero evidence supporting it. It is the blindest blind faith outlook I've ever seen, because all its adherents have only their own opinions that there is no God, and not the tiniest shred of evidence that there is no God. They never can have any evidence at all that there is no God, because it is impossible to prove a negative.

You were saying earlier, Coffeehouse, that we assume something is not true unless it's proven to be true. And thus, since God is not proven to be real (in your opinion), we can validly assume He's not real.

That isn't how science functions. It does not declare something to exist without evidence, but neither does it declare something to not exist without evidence. If a hypothesis extends beyond the realm of available evidence, scientists don't reject it automatically. They accept it as a possibility until it's shown by evidence to be an impossibility. Otherwise they would in a small minded fashion reject out of hand all new hypotheses that came up, rather than seeking more evidence to test them and find out if they are in fact real.

The scientists try not to assume either a negative or a positive. They collect data and find out what the data show. Does it indicate that something exists? Then they'll say it looks like it exists. Does it indicate that that thing does not exist? Then they'll say it looks like it does not exist. If they have no evidence for or against the existence of something, they'll say, "we don't have any way of knowing." They won't jump beyond their available evidence to say, "it does not exist." That would be absurdly small minded.

For this reason, they won't say God does not exist, if they don't have any evidence for His existence. They'll say that in the absence of affirmative or negative evidence, "We don't have any way of knowing." To jump to a conclusion that He exists or does not exist without evidence would be a blind faith jump, something out of accord with science and based on pure conjecture.

That's the absurdity of atheism. Just like the religious convictions of some people, it's 100% blind faith. No evidence whatsoever supports it. Any religion with any evidence at all, no matter how feeble, has more than Atheism has or ever can have. Anything makes more sense, because Atheism is pure irrationality, pure conjecture. Agnosticism, with its statement, "I don't know," makes a great deal more sense than Atheism.

The Human Rights Charter is one more faith-based opinion set. It has a lot of evidence and reason to support the legitimacy of each of its precepts. Your belief in its legitimacy is faith with evidence, though. Not evidence alone, for evidence alone contains no opinions. Opinions are faith. They are positions that come from human perceptions of the evidence, faith that a certain answer works well and best explains the data.

Everything rests on faith.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

The reason I give examples in history where Europeans of Christendom so often make a great deal of their faith and kill in the name of it, is to show to Lief that more often than not, it was not the Europeans who were merciful, but unprovokedly mass-murdered 'heathens' whom were supposed to represent the opposite of Christianity's right and good.

This was one of the things that caused me to stop responding earlier. You were saying all these things and often repeating them, but not citing any sources for your statements. So I had to dig up the facts for each of your assertions and prove them false, which I was doing frequently, and you'd make in response even more assertions without evidence. I was getting tired of doing tons of research without the debate seeming to get anywhere. It was a bother.

Originally Posted by Curufin

Nobody's controlling me except myself.

But doesn't that scare you at all? Because, you know, you define what causes "harm", which you avoid doing, yourself, if no one legitimately controls you. And many other people in the world define it differently. So many people feel they're not doing real harm when they are, like (and I know this analogy has been beaten into the ground a billion times for a billion purposes) the Nazis killing the Jews, feeling they were simply getting rid of nasty parisites "feeding on the body of the people." People define harm so differently, from one person to the next. How do you know what's good or bad?

You only wind up with your own opinion, which could easily be wrong. It's one opinion in a sea of billions, and there have been billions before you and there will be billions after you, and vast numbers of them will differ from you. So how can you possibly know you're right?

You can't- it's just your opinion. It's not an absolute. But that's scary, because it means it hasn't gotten a solid foundation and you might be the good guy or the bad guy. You just don't know. Ignorance about such important matters as evil is terrifying, for it is one of the key causes of evil.

To escape evil, its opposite must be revealed to us from a source outside of humanity. Because ideas about good that come from within humanity might well be wrong, and so might themselves be evil or in some way corrupt.

This outside source has to control our lives because we cannot save ourselves, as we are locked in our own relativistic ideas (on our own) of what's right and wrong, and thus risk sinking into evil and have no way of knowing if we're doing right or wrong in a real sense. We only have our own beliefs.

That's why the outside source, God, has to control our lives to bring us back from the lethal pit of relativism. We can't do it for ourselves. The absolute is the only thing that can really save humans from evil, because they don't know what it is when it's their own brains that rule. This is part of the reason why Jesus said we must completely give up ourselves and all our possessions, everything of meaning to us coming second to Him, so that He is first in our lives. Otherwise, we continue to rule and our relativistic, subjective thinking can lead us into becoming the world's evil rather than its good. Humans desperately need the absolute. And it must be revealed to them and come to control them from outside of themselves.

[Lief Erikson]

I don't know that I'll be here long. I'm getting less interested in debating, at least of late. There are happier things to do .

I probably will vanish soon.

[Coffeehouse]

"Opium for the people". So true.

[Coffeehouse]

Aristotle puts it well:
"But if life itself is good and pleasant (...) and if one who sees is conscious that he sees, one who hears that he hears, one who walks that he walks and similarly for all the other human activities there is a faculty that is conscious of their exercise, so that whenever we perceive, we are conscious that we perceive, and whenever we think, we are conscious that we think, and to be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious that we exist..."

This is 101.

"I probably will vanish soon." - Dramatic stuff Drop by a library and read up on some history while your at it. You'll come to learn some things that will amaze you