Christianists and their quest for "Dominion"

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Most religion think that it is not easy and takes some effort. So religious prohibitions, rules, fasting etc. are not petty prescriptions by an invisible über-policeman but they are to help humans to become how they are meant to be.

Some are, some aren't (it's very obvious some rules are totally outdated). At any rate, this is where intelligence becomes important. A smart person will understand what the purpose of a given prescription is or was. Another person might take religious rules literally and even become a danger for their fellow humans.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

41 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Some are, some aren't (it's very obvious some rules are totally outdated). At any rate, this is where intelligence becomes important. A smart person will understand what the purpose of a given prescription is or was. Another person might take religious rules literally and even become a danger for their fellow humans.

But heres where I have a lot of trouble with that concept. That you can pick or choose doctrine based on your own 'intelligence' means you are essentially going against the word of God because you deem his word to be incorrect or outdated. 

If its only some of the doctrine you agree with, then why are you even attempting to believe in a higher power. You are already halfway to admitting the invalidity of sacred texts, why don't you go the whole hog and just admit it was all made up, and live your life in a way you see fit.

[Jo498]

It's not that revising rules (like fasting etc.) is unknown in the history of religions. The most famous and obvious case is christianity compared to judaism. Or later protestant vs. catholic or orthodox. This is usually not simply picking and chosing parts of doctrine but a complex process that contains arguments and discussions.

But I think the main point is that most religions completely disagree that one should "live your life in a way you see fit". Socrates disagreed as well, so this a fairly old idea that most persons will "automatically" not lead a good and virtuous life but rather be ruled by passions, delusions, wrong goals and hurt others and ultimately themselves. (Where "hurt oneself" is usually taken to mean hurting one's immortal soul but that's not even necessary.)

[Ormond]

On 5/8/2017 at 7:23 AM, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

But heres where I have a lot of trouble with that concept. That you can pick or choose doctrine based on your own 'intelligence' means you are essentially going against the word of God because you deem his word to be incorrect or outdated. 

 

You are accepting a fundamentalist definition of "the word of God" when you object to this. Most modern liberal Christians do not have a "dictation" theory of scripture. They believe that the Bible was written by human beings who were inspired by God, but that inspiration does NOT mean that what they wrote down was infallible and they always completely revealed God's intentions, and that what they wrote was of course affected by their individual personalities and by the beliefs of the culture of their time and place. For non-fundamentalist Christians, to take all the words of the Bible literally is NOT taking the Bible seriously. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, Ormond said:

You are accepting a fundamentalist definition of "the word of God" when you object to this. Most modern liberal Christians do not have a "dictation" theory of scripture. They believe that the Bible was written by human beings who were inspired by God, but that inspiration does NOT mean that what they wrote down was infallible and they always completely revealed God's intentions, and that what they wrote was of course affected by their individual personalities and by the beliefs of the culture of their time and place. For non-fundamentalist Christians, to take all the words of the Bible literally is NOT taking the Bible seriously. 

It seems daft no matter how you look at it. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

It seems daft no matter how you look at it. 

And you are certainly entitled to that point of view.

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

It seems daft no matter how you look at it. 

I don't think so. It means that many people who identify as Christians are actually closer to agnosticism. Given the humanism at the heart of Christ's message, I believe this is a very good thing.

In fact, I have several friends who are just that: they say they are Christian, but I believe them to actually be agnostic. Every time we talked about religion they stressed the fact that they believed in Christ's message but that they had doubts about whether the entire "divine" aspect was real or not, and were content to keep an open mind.

I'm perfectly fine with people who are actually far less religious than they realize. I'm tempted to say I truly love these guys for that.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I don't think so. It means that many people who identify as Christians are actually closer to agnosticism. Given the humanism at the heart of Christ's message, I believe this is a very good thing.

In fact, I have several friends who are just that: they say they are Christian, but I believe them to actually be agnostic. Every time we talked about religion they stressed the fact that they believed in Christ's message but that they had doubts about whether the entire "divine" aspect was real or not, and were content to keep an open mind.

I'm perfectly fine with people who are actually far less religious than they realize. I'm tempted to say I truly love these guys for that.

I can understand that. There is clearly a lot of wisdom to take from relgions , in the same way there is wisdom in self help books. 

Im still not sure why people would identify as Christian if they couldn't really put their money on the fundamental belief of Christianity .. the resurrection of Jesus Christ being real. That shows an extreme lack of faith, or even worse , a lack of deep thinking.

[Rippounet]

12 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Im still not sure why people would identify as Christian if they couldn't really put their money on the fundamental belief of Christianity .. the resurrection of Jesus Christ being real. That shows an extreme lack of faith, or even worse , a lack of deep thinking.

Well, when you grow up in a traditionally Christian country, it's far easier to reach humanism through Christianity than through philosophy. Deep thinking takes time and energy. Identifying as a Christian by contrast is very easy, especially if your parents raised you as such. Besides, if Christianity provides all the principles you need to function as a decent human being, why would you feel the need to dig deeper?

I'm not bothered by lack of faith. On the contrary, lack of faith reassures me. It's the ones who have too much certainty that scare me.

[Darzin]

On 5/10/2017 at 10:25 PM, Ormond said:

You are accepting a fundamentalist definition of "the word of God" when you object to this. Most modern liberal Christians do not have a "dictation" theory of scripture. They believe that the Bible was written by human beings who were inspired by God, but that inspiration does NOT mean that what they wrote down was infallible and they always completely revealed God's intentions, and that what they wrote was of course affected by their individual personalities and by the beliefs of the culture of their time and place. For non-fundamentalist Christians, to take all the words of the Bible literally is NOT taking the Bible seriously. 

I understand not taking the bible literally, but what is the rational for discarding the moral commandments of the bible? It's one thing to understand the creation of six days or the tower of Babel as an allegory those make sense. But when non-fundamentalist Christians begin discarding clear moral commandments they begin to lose me. I understand why they do so, because these moral commandments are ones that many people nowadays find repugnant, and people don't want to believe them. But why toss out some but not others? How can Christians talk about the bible as a moral guide if we can't trust it's morality? 

[Ormond]

On 5/12/2017 at 0:14 AM, Darzin said:

I understand not taking the bible literally, but what is the rational for discarding the moral commandments of the bible? It's one thing to understand the creation of six days or the tower of Babel as an allegory those make sense. But when non-fundamentalist Christians begin discarding clear moral commandments they begin to lose me. I understand why they do so, because these moral commandments are ones that many people nowadays find repugnant, and people don't want to believe them. But why toss out some but not others? How can Christians talk about the bible as a moral guide if we can't trust it's morality? 

What moral commandments are you talking about? I think everything in the Bible must be understood in the historical and cultural context in which it was written. One must evaluate "moral" statements in the light of such knowledge in the same way one must evaluate other parts of the Bible.

There is also a well-known theological position that one must interpret any Biblical statement in light of what one believes the overall message is. For a simple example, for Christians the most important "moral commandment" should be "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  as Jesus Himself said "’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  Any interpretation of any other passage in the Bible which interprets morality which contradicts those "greatest commandments" should not be followed.

 

[Jo498]

As has been pointed out, Christianity (the Church) existed before the biblical canon. That's one of the main problems for fundamentalism: The church picked the books that were to be the Word of God (scriptures). Because the Church as a spiritual community was founded by the incarnate Word (logos), namely Jesus, and therefore has the authority to establish a canon - it is not like a quran dictated by an angel. And the christian morality is not founded mainly on revelation (that is moral commandments in the bible - and see Ormond's post how these are put in perspective, even within scripture, there is a Jewish anecdote about a rabbi being asked to teach someone the law while standing on one leg and he condensed it in a similar fashion as Jesus) but at least for most of church history and for traditionalists also on "natural law" (which is, put very roughly, christianized Aristotelianism with some Stoicism and Platonism for good measure). This is what I tried to stress above with my (rough, ready and dubious) claim of considerable convergence among religions and traditions.

One of the core differences between all kinds of pre-modern religious and philosophical traditions and modernity (and the latter was strongly influenced my protestant christianity in this respect) is that modernity (at least "modern modernity", that is 20th/21st century, not 17th/18th century) holds an "Invent yourself" model of the good life whereas tradition sticks to a "Become what you are" model. Modernity holds with Hume that "reason is and only ought to be the slave of the passions, not its master" and there is really no debating about passions (like about taste). We need reason to fulfil them efficiently and to organize society that we do not hurt each other too much when trying to live our passions. But it is up to everyone what a good life is for him/her. (A corollary from this is that the state has no business ruling into private passions, unless they obviously disturb the public peace.)

Most of this would have seemed wrong or even absurd to almost every thinker (no matter whether pagan, christian, muslim, confucian etc.) before the 17th century or so. Despite many differences they all thought that there was an objective telos, an objective conception of what a good life was. And most generally this was to live in conformity with a pervading rational order of the universe (either ruled by God or some impersonal law). And to a large extent it was possible to know the morals by reason alone, the differences, especially among the monotheistic religions arise "only" when the role and specific content of revelation/scriptures are relevant. This change in morals, its meaning for modern moral philosophy and the relevance for communities, society and politics was the topic of McIntyres famous book "After Virtue".

It may seem a stretch but quite a few people today think that the strains our communities today experience, the factionism and the apparent inability for rational discourse among them all have their roots in the loss of such pre-modern ideas. The formal and procedural rules of modern democratic societies seem to "thin" to hold a community together. And the informal, semi-formal and traditional ties are finally breaking after several hundred years of modernity and about 200 years of capitalism (recall the famous Marxian statement about capitalism "dissolving" all traditional ties). The error some of the political fathers of modernity commited was to assume that the traditional ties (or some semblance of them) that were pre-supposed for a liberal democratic state to work properly would be more resilient than they are (Actually, it seems that some of these fathers, e.g. Adam Smith were well aware of this but they thought that universal "moral sentiments" and education would provide enough stability). So while I am wary of puritan (or other) "dominionist", I don't think that the modern idea of a supposedly "completely neutral" state is very plausible either.

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, Jo498 said:

It may seem a stretch but quite a few people today think that the strains our communities today experience, the factionism and the apparent inability for rational discourse among them all have their roots in the loss of such pre-modern ideas. The formal and procedural rules of modern democratic societies seem to "thin" to hold a community together. And the informal, semi-formal and traditional ties are finally breaking after several hundred years of modernity and about 200 years of capitalism (recall the famous Marxian statement about capitalism "dissolving" all traditional ties).

I'm not sure that all of them have their roots in this, but it is certainly a contributing factor. If you look at societies that deliberately tried to diminish the presence of religion (e.g. the Soviet Union, China, etc.), they were careful to replace both the overarching common purpose and the ceremonial components with their own versions. The latter exist to some extent even in capitalist societies... but the former is mostly missing and, in its absence, what defines right and wrong? The whims of the contemporary elite and thus the propaganda groups that influence them? The speeches of the latest populist? The resulting instability is not fatal in and of itself, but will almost certainly amplify social perturbations.

[Jo498]

The US has also some kind of "civil religion" and in the 19th and early 20th century nationalism took over some functions from the Church (or in protestant countries they were usually combined). But none of them is as universal and compelling as faith usually used to be.

The other point is that it takes decades or centuries for such developments. Nietzsche recognized more than 100 years ago the shallowness of contemporary religion and even more of contemporary morality that he claimed was merely a pale  conventional remnant of the old faith-based morality. If Nietzsche was right (in that analysis not in his suggestions of what should be the proper antireligious antimorality) it is utterly naive to expect that quasi-christian universal values like those mostly endorsed (or rather taken for granted) by modern liberals (and most modern conservatives are also liberals in that sense) will remain stable without their original basis/narrative). In a nutshell, this is one of the most obvious naive failings of the so-called new atheists, all of which should have read Nietzsche instead of arguing against Chick tracts level religious strawmen. But if Nietzsche is right, it is also the failing of great and subtle (moral) philosophers like Kant. People are not "basically decent" and only made to do bad things by religions and ideologies. People are people and have been "tamed" in millennia of civilisation and they are still not "basically decent" and will try a lot if they think they can get away with it.

Of course, this is complex and there are many factors involved that can keep societies "together". Japan is modern, westernized in many respects but also still quite traditional (including rituals, not sure about the actual religion(s)). But it is also ethnically homogeneous and has been open to the West only for about 150 years after centuries of isolation.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 5/10/2017 at 9:25 AM, Ormond said:

You are accepting a fundamentalist definition of "the word of God" when you object to this. Most modern liberal Christians do not have a "dictation" theory of scripture. They believe that the Bible was written by human beings who were inspired by God, but that inspiration does NOT mean that what they wrote down was infallible and they always completely revealed God's intentions, and that what they wrote was of course affected by their individual personalities and by the beliefs of the culture of their time and place. For non-fundamentalist Christians, to take all the words of the Bible literally is NOT taking the Bible seriously. 

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but it begs two additional questions:

1. What is the ratio of fundamentalist to non-fundamentalist?

2. Which of these two groups is actively trying to force their beliefs onto others.

I honestly don't know the answer to the first, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the second.