@Riss
Some of the laws about cleanly practices in the book of Book of Leviticus could be seen as healthy practices in light of a germ theory, but that’s really just a side note to the main issue.
Well, you could see those laws as a just partially effective effort on the part of Iron Age people who didn’t have science but did have some vague notions of contagion. Or you see those laws as the incompetent intervention of a knowledgeable god that did comprehend germ theory but nevertheless gave pathetic advice. Ask anybody in public health and they will tell you that it is important to explain what is going on with an issue and not just tell people do this and don’t do that. So, no, I don’t think this is a side note to the main issue. Instead you have offered yet another example to show that there was not a capable competent god in the bible.
I strongly suggest you read John 6
Yeah, I read that. And not knowing anything about the author of that text, I looked around a bit to see what information there is about the Johannine works. The author, of course, is unknown. There are multiple theories of where it was written, but at least there is a strong consensus that it was written well over a half century after the demise of the purported founder of this religion. What struck me most strongly about the passage is that it looks like a really classic case of a bait-and-swap. By the end of the first century the christians would be well on their way to building this new religion, and the earliest group would all be dead. So if they had a bunch of stories of Jesus-as-a-miracle-worker, then they had kind of a dilemma. On the one hand, miracles could be trumpeted as establishing Jesus’s credentials as divine. On the other hand, the church couldn’t produce any miracles. And some sorts of miracles are particularly dangerous like telling desperately poor people about a magical power to create unlimited amounts of food. The church couldn’t produce magic food, and they didn’t have the material means to feed everyone who was hungry either. So they ran a swap where they offered something immaterial (and thus very easy to produce) instead of food. This story seems to be a con where the church is saying but of course Jesus could conjure up mountains of food without even breaking a sweat, but forget about all that. Instead, focus on this other thing that is even better than not starving! That’s right, you too can have eternal salvation! Now I suspect that the person or persons who wrote John probably bought into the con themselves, so this wouldn’t have had to be a deliberate fabrication and most likely wasn’t.
Anyway this “bread of life discourse” strikes me a very nasty business in that it disparages the immense and crushing effort that is needed to provide for basic human needs in a preindustrial setting.
Have you ever seen a video of the wonderful Hans Rosling? He is a Swedish doctor and statistician who has done a lot on economic development, poverty, and health. He has great skills with an audience (and can swallow a sword). But a Jesus with actual magic powers would be (should be) ashamed of himself if he watched this:
And here is a PBS segment on Rosling that talks about some of his work and finishes with the sword swallowing:
I’m a little late to the discussion. In order to not repeat past posts, can someone catch me up a little bit on where the discussion is at this point? Maybe a summary of where it started and where it’s going so that I can chime in appropriately?
Well Ben, it’s been a fairly wide ranging discussion, so I’m not sure I can give much of a recap. Early on there were several people posting, but more recently it has been largely Risselada as a promoter of a particular strand of christianity, and me, as a critic of all things supernatural. There are some lurkers who pipe up from time to time. It’s been pretty loose and surprisingly friendly.
So anyway, if you don’t want to read nearly 900 posts, just jump in. Have your say, ask questions, whatever. I don’t think anybody would mind if you repeat something that has already been said. And, if you wish, we can refer you back to earlier spots as needed.
Oh, the only thing I would add is that Risselada set himself the task of considering and/or responding to everything everybody has posted. And he is going through post by post. So his comments are replies to things people said many pages back. My replies are almost always to very recent comments. This has created a somewhat odd dynamic, but it seems to have worked out ok.
Anyway, just dive in with whatever interests you about this broad subject and I’m sure you will get some worthwhile responses.
@Downbylaw thank for the welcome! I appreciate the invite to be free, open and friendly.
What is everyone’s interest in the relationship between cinema & theology? It looks like there’s a pretty specific discussion going on about Christianity, American Christianity. And, just glancing at the past couple pages, did I really see an exchange in which morality is attributed to being valid ONLY in the realm of Christianity?
@Ben
There’s another thread floating around on film and spirituality/religion. You could look for that.
Did I really see an exchange in which morality is attributed to being valid ONLY in the realm of Christianity?
Well Risselada subscribes to several beliefs that I find bizarre and more than a bit disturbing. If you take him on, I’m sure he will give you a response as he works his way through the thread.
It looks like there’s a pretty specific discussion going on about Christianity, American Christianity.
Well my criticisms are directed to everything supernatural. But, yeah, a lot of the discussion has centered on distinctively American forms of religion. Broaden it out if you have other things you think we should talk about.
@RISS
You quote me saying:
But I would go further. When we have pluralistic societies, we should exclude religious ideas from discussions of social arrangements, politics, and what not. Being so subjective, we should treat all these differing religious ideas as mere ungroundable opinions. These ideas are not worthy of respect but are instead unworthy of being part of discussions that have consequences for real people.
Actually I’m modifying that. I’ll say instead that religious ideas should be excluded in all societies. But there is no near term hope of that in societies dominated by a single religious ideology. Those societies are well screwed. In pluralistic societies, however, there is hope. Some of the population will be able to realize how ridiculous religious ideas are and thus how unworthy they are of consideration when something serious is at stake. Others will realize that, at the very least, religious social conflicts are intractable—one side has a revelation, the other side claims an opposing revelation. That cannot be resolved, so the pressure will be to drop such claims and instead approach social and political problems from a practical and empirical perspective. This will lead to more productive outcomes.
A lot of those people who see opposition to gay marriage as religious bigotry have different religious reasons for seeing it as religious bigotry. What if people have religious reasons for agreeing with you? Do you still oppose their agreement? What if people have religious reasons for opposing laws that try to force religious mandates on people that don’t agree with them? Do you really want to restrict those people from the discussion?
If someone is opposing this bigotry because they are convinced that a god wants them to, then I’ll thank them for any worthwhile work they do, but also tell them that are doing it for bad reasons. For all I know they will go off and have a few really intense prayer sessions and then come back and say sorry, I misunderstood my religion and the god actually wants me go support the bigots instead. Bye bye.
Oh, and I’m not for restricting people in the sense of prohibiting them. Instead, my idea of a healthy polity is that anytime somebody gets all goddy, most everyone else says yes yes we’ve heard all that before, now let’s get back to the real issues before us. In order to get to such a state of affairs, people generally will have to realize how ungrounded and detached from reality all this various religious think is.
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/are_progressives_harming_the_cause_by
_attacking_organized_religion_and_people_of_faith_salpart/
@Rohit
I am not sure how many of you are familiar with Swami Vivekananda, but I read a book on his lectures recently and I was thoroughly impressed by his rational views on religion. He makes me proud of what my religion stands for. You can find his complete works here http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/complete_works.htm
Thanks so much Rohit. I just read the Wikipedia article on Vivekananda. Very interesting. I didn’t get to read any of his works from that complete works link, but it’s going on my list to read. And also going on my list are his two favorite books Bhagavad Gita and The Imitation of Christ.
What was the book you read on his lectures?
Ah, so many interesting things to read!
@ Riss — I noticed you are commenting on a post from Rohit, but I can’t find it on the thread, I think I went back 2 months. Did I miss it, or is it older or other? I too am a reader of Swami Vivekananda, and considering he wrote over 110 years ago, his ideas are refreshing to me. Though like many thinkers, his ideas are also not always easy to pin down as having one easy organizational schematic. This thread seems often filled with people unwilling to view anything without bias, what did Herbert Spencer call it, “contempt prior to investigation?” In any event, at some point, I hope you do read some Swami Vivekananda as a proponent of Vedantic thought.
@Downbylaw
How can this be tested? By standard methodologies using a double blind trial, of course. These include standard statistical methods to isolate confounding variables. It’s not hard to do—it’s just expensive to do at a scale that is big enough to produce definitive results. If any god acts in the world then these actions can be studied by science just like anything else that really happens can be studied by science. The only god who could not be studied is one who did nothing detectable. That is, a god whose existence was indistinguishable from its non-existence.
Well for most people expensive means hard. But you say you can conceive of it being done if you had the funds to pay for it. In that case supposing you were able to aquire the funds and the time to perform the test, can you describe more specifically the details of what the trial would like like ideally?
This, and your next paragraph, are nothing but argument from ignorance. You first state that we don’t know something, and then you toss out some random speculation. This is very weak. For instance, it might be important that I go out right now and buy that $50 bottle of rye whiskey I looked at in the store, if I don’t, my neighbor’s house might burn down. Now I’m absolutely clueless as to why that might be the case, but who’s to say it is not? Arguing from ignorance isn’t worth your time.
In that first statement you referenced I wasn’t trying to argue that because there’s no difinitive testable evidence using the scientific method that intercessory prayer doesn’t improve medical outcomes that it either proves your assertion that intercessory prayer does not improve medical outcomes to be untrue or that it proves my asssertion that intercessory prayer can bring about good overall. What I was saying is that neither of us can know either of these things based on the scientific method because it has not been and cannot be tested. (however you did later say it could be tested so I’m interested to hear about that)
The argument I am making is not an argument from ignorance but an argument from the Bible. I know you don’t see any reason to believe in what the Bible says about God, and this is not an argument for you to believe in what the Bible says about God. But I’m just showing what the Bible does say about God in relation to this issue so that you can understand the perspective on this matter from someone who does believe in the Bible on these matters. Thus the next step would be to have a discussion about whether the Bible should be trusthworthy on these matters if that’s what you would like to do.
@Brother
I noticed you are commenting on a post from Rohit, but I can’t find it on the thread, I think I went back 2 months. Did I miss it, or is it older or other?
It’s on page 25 of this thread.
@Riss — I noticed that you were responding to a post by Rohit, but I couldn’t find it. I went back a few months, perhaps I missed it. In any event, I too read Swami Vivekananda and recommend him as a proponent of Vedanta philosophy.
I can’t speak for Rohit obviously, but interesting lectures of Vivekananda can be found in THE COLLECTED WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA VOLUME 1 (there are 9 volumes in total). The single volume should be fairly easy to find on Amazon etc.
@Downbylaw
I read that story, Riss, and I’m glad the child suffered no lasting harm. But here’s the part I genuinely don’t get. Is the mother praising and glorifying her god for shocking her little girl, or only for not killing her?
I think she’s praising God for being good no matter what difficulties are going on in our lives. But more specifically for giving her strength, and faith, and hope, and love. And maybe for growing her in love a reliance on him through difficult times and showing our human frailty.
@Rohit
I am surprised with the claims the person makes about things being unique to Christianity.
Let me try to list these points:
1> Christianity believes in getting salvation on the earth rather than thinking that this world is an illusion and salvation comes after this life.
This is an excerpt from Swami Vivekananda’s lecture on Hinduism:
Let me tell you again that you must be pure and help any one who comes to you, as much as lies in your power. And this is good Karma. By the power of this, the heart becomes pure (Chitta-shuddhi), and then Shiva who is residing in every one will become manifest. He is always in the heart of every one. If there is dirt and dust on a mirror, we cannot see our image. So ignorance and wickedness are the dirt and dust that are on the mirror of our hearts. Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first. He who thinks, “I will eat first, I will have more money than others, and I will possess everything”, he who thinks, “I will get to heaven before others I will get Mukti before others” is the selfish man. The unselfish man says, “I will be last, I do not care to go to heaven, I will even go to hell if by doing so I can help my brothers.” This unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of this unselfishness is more spiritual and nearer to Shiva. Whether he is learned or ignorant, he is nearer to Shiva than anybody else, whether he knows it or not. And if a man is selfish, even though he has visited all the temples, seen all the places of pilgrimage, and painted himself like a leopard, he is still further off from Shiva.
Thanks for the comment. I know very little about Hinduism so this is a good start for me to look into this aspect of it. I’m surprised though that when Keller made this point he used a quote from Vinoth Ramachandra who is from Sri Lanka and you would have thought would be familiar with Hinduism, but I guess we shouldn’t make any assumptions.
2>Jesus loves those who don’t love him the most.
Here is another story from the Purana’s
A rich man had a garden and two gardeners. One of these gardeners was very lazy and did not work; but when the owner came to the garden, the lazy man would get up and fold his arms and say, “How beautiful is the face of my master”, and dance before him. The other gardener would not talk much, but would work hard, and produce all sorts of fruits and vegetables which he would carry on his head to his master who lived a long way off. Of these two gardeners, which would be the more beloved of his master? Shiva is that master, and this world is His garden, and there are two sorts of gardeners here; the one who is lazy, hypocritical, and does nothing, only talking about Shiva’s beautiful eyes and nose and other features; and the other, who is taking care of Shiva’s children, all those that are poor and weak, all animals, and all His creation. Which of these would be the more beloved of Shiva? Certainly he that serves His children. He who wants to serve the father must serve the children first. He who wants to serve Shiva must serve His children — must serve all creatures in this world first. It is said in the Shâstra that those who serve the servants of God are His greatest servants. So you will bear this in mind.
I don’t see how this is a story about someone loving someone who doesn’t love him. It seems like the opposite. It seems Shiva only loves the person who loved him first.
3>The exclusiveness of Christianity makes it the most inclusive of all religions.
I don’t believe this simply because there was a lot of blood shed to spread or rather enforce Christianity throughout the word. The Crusades, colonization etc
Keller does address the dangers of religion to have people slip into pride and hate those other than themselves. Jesus Christ’s own teachings and warnings are about how we are sinful and people will take good things and turn them into selfish and prideful things. It’s not an argument against the actual religion. If anything it’s evidence of the validity of the religion since it’s exactly what it predicts would happen.
Isn’t it true that there has been a lot of blood shed to enforce every other major religion as well?
I am also surprised that the person actually ridicules a secular viewpoint that every religion is true arguing that only Christianity has seen the whole truth(the elephant) compared to the other faiths. So, on one hand he says that we must not be intolerant of other religions but at the same time pointing out the uniqueness(which isn’t unique at all) he tries to justify how Christianity is the true religion.
He’s just saying it’s impossible NOT to be exclusive. Do you deny that based on his reasons?
Did he ever use the word “intolerant”? I don’t think he did. And what exactly does it mean to tolerate? Isn’t it better to love than to tolerate? Also what if a mandate of a certain religion is for certain people to hurt other people in a way that you think is bad. Would it be loving to tolerate that?
I am quoting a lecture by the Swami about what the sermon giver is talking about. He claims Hinduism( Vedantism) is the universal religion as a rebuttal to Christianity’s claim. You can read the whole lecture here
Click on the link “Vedantism” that appears on the left hand side of the page to take you to the lecture.
I’m not seeing that link. I’d like to read the whole thing. But I’ll comment on a few of the passages you quoted.
I have become used to hear all sorts of wonderful claims put forward in favour of every religion under the sun. You have also heard, quite within recent times, the claims put forward by Dr. Barrows, a great friend of mine, that Christianity is the only universal religion. Let me consider this question awhile and lay before you my reasons why I think that it is Vedanta, and Vedanta alone that can become the universal religion of man, and that no other is fitted for the role. Excepting our own almost all the other great religions in the world are inevitably connected with the life or lives of one or more of their founders. All their theories, their teachings, their doctrines, and their ethics are built round the life of a personal founder, from whom they get their sanction, their authority, and their power; and strangely enough, upon the historicity of the founder’s life is built, as it were, all the fabric of such religions. If there is one blow dealt to the historicity of that life, as has been the case in modern times with the lives of almost all the so-called founders of religion — we know that half of the details of such lives is not now seriously believed in, and that the other half is seriously doubted — if this becomes the case, if that rock of historicity, as they pretend to call it, is shaken and shattered, the whole building tumbles down, broken absolutely, never to regain its lost status.
Every one of the great religions in the world excepting our own, is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them; and now and then the names of these sages are mentioned — just their names; we do not even know who or what they were. In many cases we do not know who their fathers were, and almost in every case we do not know when and where they were born. But what cared they, these sages, for their names? They were the preachers of principles, and they themselves, so far as they went, tried to become illustrations of the principles they preached. At the same time, just as our God is an Impersonal and yet a Personal God, so is our religion a most intensely impersonal one — a religion based upon principles — and yet with an infinite scope for the play of persons; for what religion gives you more Incarnations, more prophets and seers, and still waits for infinitely more? The Bhâgavata says that Incarnations are infinite, leaving ample scope for as many as you like to come. Therefore if any one or more of these persons in India’s religious history, any one or more of these Incarnations, and any one or more of our prophets proved not to have been historical, it does not injure our religion at all; even then it remains firm as ever, because it is based upon principles, and not upon persons. It is in vain we try to gather all the peoples of the world around a single personality. It is difficult to make them gather together even round eternal and universal principles. If it ever becomes possible to bring the largest portion of humanity to one way of thinking in regard to religion, mark you, it must be always through principles and not through persons. Yet as I have said, our religion has ample scope for the authority and influence of persons. There is that most wonderful theory of Ishta which gives you the fullest and the freest choice possible among these great religious personalities. You may take up any one of the prophets or teachers as your guide and the object of your special adoration; you are even allowed to think that he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets, greatest of all the Avatâras; there is no harm in that, but you must keep to a firm background of eternally true principles. The strange fact here is that the power of our Incarnations has been holding good with us only so far as they are illustrations of the principles in the Vedas. The glory of Shri Krishna is that he has been the best preacher of our eternal religion of principles and the best commentator on the Vedanta that ever lived in India.
I’m certainly more interested in hearing about Vendata, and I’m curious about what the principles are.
I think it’s true and a very good point that historicity of Christ’s life as described in the Bible is critical for the truth of Christianity. But I don’t think as he seems to that there is good grounds for strongly doubting that historicity. And I think the fact that Christianity is rooted in the life of a real person who actually lived makes it even more potent and universal, especially considering that unlike other founder of religions it’s not just what Jesus said but what he actually did that is so crucial. If what he said and did are true, then it most certainly has universal implications.
The second claim of the Vedanta upon the attention of the world is that, of all the scriptures in the world, it is the one scripture the teaching of which is in entire harmony with the results that have been attained by the modern scientific investigations of external nature. Two minds in the dim past of history, cognate to each other in form and kinship and sympathy, started, being placed in different routes. The one was the ancient Hindu mind, and the other the ancient Greek mind. The former started by analysing the internal world. The latter started in search of that goal beyond by analysing the external world. And even through the various vicissitudes of their history, it is easy to make out these two vibrations of thought as tending to produce similar echoes of the goal beyond. It seems clear that the conclusions of modern materialistic science can be acceptable, harmoniously with their religion, only to the Vedantins or Hindus as they are called. It seems clear that modern materialism can hold its own and at the same time approach spirituality by taking up the conclusions of the Vedanta. It seems to us, and to all who care to know, that the conclusions of modern science are the very conclusions the Vedanta reached ages ago; only, in modern science they are written in the language of matter. This then is another claim of the Vedanta upon modern Western minds, its rationality, the wonderful rationalism of the Vedanta. I have myself been told by some of the best Western scientific minds of the day, how wonderfully rational the conclusions of the Vedanta are. I know one of them personally who scarcely has time to eat his meal or go out of his laboratory, but who yet would stand by the hour to attend my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they are so scientific, they so exactly harmonise with the aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which modern science is coming at the present time……..
What are these specific scientific conclusions that he felt the teachers of Vendata at previously discovered?
………It seems to me, that such an attempt at tribal self-assertion in religious matters might have taken place on the frontiers and India also. Here, too, all the various tribes of the Aryans might have come into conflict with one another for declaring the supremacy of their several tribal gods; but India’s history was to be otherwise, was to be different from that of the Jews. India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality; and therefore the fight between tribes and their gods did not long take place here. For one of the greatest sages that was ever born found out here in India even at that distant time, which history cannot reach, and into whose gloom even tradition itself dares not peep — in that distant time the sage arose and declared, — “He who exists is one; the sages call Him variously.” This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence. For throughout the vistas of the centuries of our national life, this one idea — — comes down, gaining in volume and in fullness till it has permeated the whole of our national existence, till it has mingled in our blood, and has become one with us. We live that grand truth in every vein, and our country has become the glorious land of religious toleration. It is here and here alone that they build temples and churches for the religions which have come with the object of condemning our own religion. This is one very great principle that the world is waiting to learn from us.
Is it really true that India has always historically been so devoid of any kind of destructive fighting between religious groups? Wow. I’d love to visit there some day.
@Rohit
To impress upon you the greatness of inclusiveness, this is another excerpt from his speech:
…..This our sages knew, and, therefore, left it open to all Indian people to worship such great Personages, such Incarnations. Nay, the greatest of these Incarnations goes further: “Wherever an extraordinary spiritual power is manifested by external man, know that I am there, it is from Me that that manifestation comes.” That leaves the door open for the Hindu to worship the Incarnations of all the countries in the world. The Hindu can worship any sage and any saint from any country whatsoever, and as a fact we know that we go and worship many times in the churches of the Christians, and many, many times in the Mohammedan mosques, and that is good. Why not? Ours, as I have said, is the universal religion. It is inclusive enough, it is broad enough to include all the ideals. All the ideals of religion that already exist in the world can be immediately included, and we can patiently wait for all the ideals that are to come in the future to be taken in the same fashion, embraced in the infinite arms of the religion of the Vedanta.
Oh and just to clear any misconceptions, the Swami was not at all self righteous. He also had praise for the Western world and other religions and criticism for the Indian people including himself. I encourage people to go through his lectures to get a better insight into the working of this great mind who indirectly influenced the Indian freedom struggle through his philosophies.
I still haven’t been able to go through any of the Swami’s lectures yet. I plan to, and maybe what I’m saying next will be addressed there (although I don’t see any hint of it here).
The Swami says that all great spiritual teachers can be woshiped and are equally good paths to lead to God. He includes Jesus Christ in that. In fact he seems to have particular reverence for Christ. But then how does he rectify the fact that all of Christ’s teachings are based on the fact that there is no other path to God other than through him? To say that all paths are equal including Christ is to either misunderstand what Christ actually teaches or to be inherently contradictory.
I really like Greg Boyd and just heard this talk from him which gets into some of these ideas:
@Brad
Wow, Riss, you really are going in order! The way you describe it is very close to how I felt when keeping the traditions. It’s why Judaism is so filled with customs and rules. The risk though, it that eventually these practices can cease to be a reminder of God’s presence and become more a force of habit. That’s what happened to me and once the practice (a modified version of keeping kosher as well) ceased to be meaningful, it became something I let go of as I chose to search for meaning in different ways.
Yes, I am. Taking my good sweet time. ;)
Actually coming back to this was a good reminder since I haven’t done any fasting in a while.
There is a huge risk of these things becoming force of habit to lose their meaning, or for them to even becoming more meaningful than the thing they were supposed to remind you of. Again I think this risk is central to Christ’s teachings. He points out where people are making the rituals more important than God.
@Polaris
Ha! I know right?
Like, 90% of the content covered here is not interesting to me, but I’ve been lurking for the spectatorship and for what it’s worth, it’s not to say I won’t find something that will interest me here. And I have — when things have started going off in the direction of, say, inquiry or certainty as epistemological or scientific confrontations, or reminds me of some other concept that I am interested in. And that’s largely how my participation on this entire Mubi forum works — there are a few discussions I avoid for the purpose of waiting for them to either go in a direction I would like to discuss, or just get buried.
So somehow we stumbled on the limits of human knowledge I went off on information theory tangents. The theological significance of information theory isn’t really my forte.
Fair enough. ;) I’m glad to have you lurking. Feel free to jump in whenever you want.
I’m really interested in the fascinating business of matching up archaeolgical finds with Biblical writings. I think you would find this interesting Riss if you have time to watch it, looks like it’s only “live” for seven days. I watched it last night (screened here on TV).
“A fascinating two-part series that explores the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Old Testament. This archaeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? And how did the worship of one God – the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – emerge?”
^Great! Thanks Meg. I’ll try to check that out.
Polaris
Also, one thing I keep around in my mind is the fun idea of the Bible as “The Word” and all that is written about words and capitalized ‘Word’ in philosophy from Plato to Derrida and onward, but I never find it sufficiently scrutinized in critical analysis — the Bible has its fair share of ‘reading it as a text’ or ‘reading it as literature’, but as I said in a conversation with some other people recently, I’m still waiting to get pointed to a McLuhanite Biblical scholar.
Do you mean “Word” as translated from “Logos” in Greek?
It is an interesting idea that seems to encompass quite a lot.
Wow page 26 was almost entirely posts from myself! Just two from Polaris.
The head of NETWORK, a Catholic nun group, goes on Colbert Report and talks about protecting marginalized people, how the rich should give, and speaks out directly in opposition of Rand Paul’s budget submission.
w00t!
@Downbylaw
I listened to those two sermons by Tim Keller, and I’m puzzled why you find them useful. In the first of those he is conflating several distinct ideas and mostly arguing against rather silly strawmen.
Can you give some examples?
It is very trite observation that you cannot do everything—if you spend some time doing this, you don’t spend that same time doing all the other things you could have done then instead. Likewise, your potential talents won’t develop unless you spend some of your time and effort developing the potential. And that means giving up other potentials. You don’t master everything, only a few things. Who doesn’t know this?
Everyone may know it in theory, but not everyone seems to keep it in mind regularly in practice. Just because something would be known and confirmed by everyone doesn’t mean that to state it is trite. Especially if it is something as important as this and something that people have trouble with. A lot of people just live for the moment or they live for a future they dream about but end up just fantasizing about it and not actually working towards it.
He’s refuting the argument that if you believe in absolute truth that you are somehow less free because you must hold yourself to that truth. He’s just showing every day practical examples where being unaware of or denying a truth actually are atually going to experience less freedom.
And it does seem trite to me, but obviously there are some people who use that argument against the idea of absolute truth. And there are times when we may know something at the forefront of our minds sometimes, but we have conflicting beliefs that don’t like the idea of discipline now for greater freedom later.
He is similarly shallow in invoking Nietzsche and Foucault who didn’t argue the way he thinks they argued. Keller’s problem here is largely the result of tossing around the term “truth” and assuming it means something clear and obvious. If he is going to mention Nietzsche and Foucault, he ought to at least study what they had to say about that (which was quite a lot).
Can you elucidate on what you feel Nietzche and Foucault specifically meant? Or else if it’s too much to explain can you point me to which of their writings surround the particular quote he was using?
Also, even if this is not what Nietzsche and Foucault were specifically saying, I think it still is a sentiment that many people possess. So despite it may have been someone else who made this assertion other than Nietzsche and Foucault do you think he had a good response to it?
Finally he tries to make an analogy between a relationship with a real person on one hand, and a conjectured supernatural entity that doesn’t show up on the other.
Well it’s an analogy because he doesn’t show up in the exact same way, but still in similar ways. You may have not recognized him showing up in your life, but many other people do, and for them the analogy makes sense and is helpful.
Firstly, nobody I respect would characterize a good relationship between adults in terms of constraints, submission, and surrender. That sounds like a disaster.
Well, I’m not sure if you respect me, but hopefully you do since we are having this conversation, and I would say relationships between adults could and should have those things. Think about your time for one. If you don’t constrain yourself to spend a certain ammount of time with or thinking about this other person then the friendship will die. If you are more concerned to spend your weeks spending all of your free time doing your own hobbies alone instead of surrendering that time to meet with friends then there won’t be much of a friendship. Or if every time you want to hang out with your friend you insist doing everything that you want to do and don’t ever submit to your friends ideas or suggestions then that doesn’t sound like you really care about your friend.
These things however would be even more important for a relationship with God. If it’s true that real freedom comes from submission to what is true, and if God is the source of all that is true, then you wouldn’t have a fullest and most free relationship unless you were submitting in the relationship in some way.
Instead, a good relationship will be built out of a dialog, reciprocity, and development of shared understandings, expectations, and obligations.
I don’t understand why those things are “instead” of constraint, submission, and surrender. These things aren’t the opposite of dialog, reciprocity, and development of shared understandings, expectations, and obligations. In fact some of them sound rather similar. An obligation sounds like a constraint to me.
You will, perhaps, notice that doing this requires that the other person in the relationship has to be really here and able to participate in the ongoing back and forth. This is also, rather obviously, not possible with a conjectured supernatural entity who never shows up.
Again, I contend that God does show up, but I think some people just don’t recognize him.
A lot of times human friends don’t just show up either. You need to go seek them out sometimes. Go over to where they live, or call them, or write them a letter. Sometimes you need to seek before you will find or even recognize. If you had a friend when you were a child, but you stopped talking to them eventually you may forget what they looked or sounded like and if you passed them by in the street many years later may not even recognize them. Or sometimes we don’t even both looking around to see. If you were staring at the ground or another person you wouldn’t even notice the other people passing by.
The best you can do is concoct a dialog in your head just like you did when you were three years old and had imaginary friends.
God can speak through a lot of ways. Through prayer, through scripture, through people, or through other experiences. They call the Bible the living word because it’s words and story are powerful and direct and real to people that they do create a dialogue when you immurse yourself in them.
Keller’s analogy fails. Adding the further conjecture that the supernatural entity briefly had human form a few thousand years ago doesn’t help. We are here now and have relationships with other people here now and not people who have been gone for thousands of years.
His analogy fails for you, but many people disagree and have a tangeable relationship that is real to them.
This is an important point, but ultimately it’s the second part of the topic. The first part of the topic is if we should shun the idea of absolute truth. The second part is a proposal of something that is absolute truth.
In the other sermon, Keller also has some problem with his concepts. One of these is religion. A useful notion of religion is that it relates to ideas of supernatural things and the beliefs and practices you might have as a result. This is how I have used the term on this thread. I have no religious beliefs because I have never encountered any evidence that supports the idea that there is anything supernatural. But Keller decides to apply “religion” to any views about ethics, structure of societies, and the like. Since his usage is unusual and likely to confuse people, and since we already have good language to talk about ethics and what not, I’m going to reject his redefinition and stick with sensible language.
Almost any definition of religion is tricky. And so many people use it in so many different ways. For instance you say religion relates to ideas of supernatural things and beliefs and practices one has as a result. But how do you define supernatural? You state that you don’t have religious beliefs because you don’t believe in anything supernatural, but you say that’s because you don’t have any evidence that anything exists that would be called supernatural. Now this may be a false assumption, but just based on our past conversations I’m assuming that if you did ever find evidence for something that you had previously labled as being supernatural the very fact that you found evidence for it would cause you to redefine that things as natural, since I’m assuming your definition of what is natural is anything for which you can provide evidence for. Thus the definition of “supernatural” would be anything you couldn’t provide evidence for. And thus by definition of course you would never discover evidence for anything supernatural.
But people who believe in Christianity do believe they have evidence to believe it. So technically from their point of view by your definition they don’t believe anything supernatural either. Everything in Christianity is natural because they have evidence for it. So from that logic from their point of view their beliefs shouldn’t be called any more religious than yours.
Keller here was trying to show how when people make arguments of why “religious” beliefs should be stricken from public discourse about laws it is because they are saying a person’s world view is dillusional because it’s not based in reality and not based on proper definitions of what kinds of things are good and what the purpose of society should be. But things like one’s belief in what is “good” or the purpose of society are based entirely on philosophical and by some defiinitions “supernatural” assumptions. Each person’s have beliefs about what kind of things are the most important things in life and those beliefs are very difficult to agree on by the vast majority to the point that we should be excluding most other beliefs. This is the very point of even having public discourse.
I’ll have more to say about some of Keller’s ideas when I respond to what you just said on the “veil of ignorance”. But let me finish this by pointing that Keller has his facts and history wrong. Christianity has been a very violent and oppressive religion. This long history is well documented, and we’ve already discussed some examples of this. Rather perverse for Keller to pretend otherwise.
Keller has never pretended that Christians or people claiming to be Christians haven’t been violent or oppressive. On the contrary I think he is very keenly aware of it and very critical of it and he points out the teachings of Christianity from Christ and the New Testament are also against such actions. Did you listen to the sermon of his I posted at the top of page 26?
Injustice: Hasn’t Christianity been an instrument for oppression?
Also, there is good documentation that there is a strong negative correlation between well-functioning societies and their level of religious belief—well-functioning societies have lower levels of religious belief. Here are a couple of easy to read posts from Jerry Coyne that talk about this. The focus is on income inequality. Since income inequality is closely linked to a wide range of other indications (like life expectancy, child mortality, crime rates, etc.), it is a useful marker of how well a society is doing.
Does-insecurity-promote-faith
Income-inequality-and-the-dysfunctionality-of-america
Sure there may be correllation, but it’s important to understand the causation. More imporatantly though in arguing against people having a relationship with God and following the teachings of Christ I think you have to distinguish that against any other kinds of religions including false Christianity.
Thank you for those links. The suspected causation of the correlation between religiosity and income inequality as being insecurity is an interesting one. One quote from the article was:
“Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next,” while “past values of religiosity do not predict future values of inequality.” In other words, the correlation between religiosity and inequality is driven by the former responding to the latter, and not the other way around. Unequal incomes lead to societies becoming more religious.
And I suppose it’s not surprising that more people would try to turn to God for meaning instead of their neighbors if their neighbors are competing against them for wealth instead of sharing it.
The main thing these assertations of the health or well-functioning level of different societies seems to ignore though is that in this current age there’s hardly any such thing as an isolated self sustaining societies. Most of the societies listed on there as ones that are well-functioning like many Western European countries are well-functioning only at the expense of many of the poor-functioning countries. They export all of their dirty work jobs out of their country and pay them low for imports while they sustain their wealth through jobs that don’t provide anything back to those poor countries. So if we look at this as a global community then the sections that actually seem to be well-functioning are in some ways the cause of the poor-functioning of the rest of the society and shouldn’t necessarily be looked to as the best example to try to spread to the whole of the global community. Of course the whole thing is immensely complicated with factors as diverse as the varying factors that contribute to the individual beliefs and personality of each individual person that makes up each society.
I have no problems admitting that people who are living comfortable lives are going to be less likely to feel like they need anything from God. Of course people who are struggling every day just to meet their basic needs are going to be more aware of their depravity and look to God for justice. The issue is whether they look for God in a religion that falsely states they can somehow make themselves more holy by doing certain things or if they will find a relationship with Christ who has already done the work to reconcile them with God.
@Downbylaw
I’ve been arguing all through this thread that religious thinking is a bad way of thinking. And bad thinking leads to plenty of bad results. Particularly for women. The bad stuff from religion so often lands on women. Here is a christian woman giving truly horrible ugly advice to other christian women who are in abusive relationships:
Surviving Emotional Abuse Six Steps
You are being abused? Get a hobby to cheer yourself up. But she has even worse advice than that:
No one wants to be in an abusive marriage, but if you are a Christian woman the decision to leave or stay is not yours alone. The Lord has a plan for you and if you seek His wisdom, He will show you the way. Just know that if He leads you to remain in the marriage, He will be your strength. In “Our Daily Bread” by RBC Ministries, this sentence brings it home. “Assignments from God always include His enablement.”
I don’t have much use for the concept of “evil”, but perhaps that’s as good a term as any for the god-blinded promoters of suffering like this nasty woman.
Modes and results of religious thinking are as enormously broad as those of non-religious thinking.
That link you posted appears to be down, so I wasn’t able to read it. But if the article is purporting that women shouldn’t be active to resolve to end situations where they are receiving emotional abuse, then that is something I disagree with based on my religious thinking. And I haven’t read anything from anyone else posting in this topic that would suggest anyone else here would agree with it either, and many of those people also have religious thinking. So I do not consider the example you provided as good evidence to support the belief that all religious thinking is bad thinking. Just as similarly if I found an atheist who had bad thinking and whose conclusions were disagreed upon by other athiests, it would not be good evidence to show that atheist thinking is necessarily always bad thinking.
Also, in terms of usefulness and practicality for discussion in this topic, I’m not sure why you are posting examples of beliefs that no one here shares and then arguing against them. We already have enough contention that could result in interesting and useful discussion between the people who are actually present here to participate.
@Downbylaw
But can you explain to me how the mode of thinking that this woman uses when she advises that god might want you to stay with your abusive husband is any different from that used in dishing out other religious advice? Her conclusions might not be mainstream (around here anyway) but her way of thinking is generically religious.
I know you were talking to Brad, but just doing a quick web search found this article which seems to refute the mode of thinking the woman uses completely with specific and overall Bible verses supporting the Christian perspective. Unfortunately that article you posted is gone, so I’m not sure how it used the Bible. But here is a case where religious advice says exactly the opposite. So it wasn’t necessarily the fact that it was religious that made it wrong, it was the source of the religious thinking and how it was understood.
Here’s the article:
Leaving Your Spouse Because Of Abuse
It also briefly touches on “submission” in marriage which was an idea we had been discussing here too.
We have already seen that submission is voluntarily choosing to yield or surrender to someone. When God instructs wives to subject themselves to their husbands, He is asking them to surrender to their husbands’ love and God-given position. Nowhere does Scripture imply that the Lord expects a wife to accede to verbal castigation or physical assault.
Modes and results of religious thinking are as enormously broad as those of non-religious thinking.
Yep. Non-religious thinking is a bad way of thinking and has led to terrible results, particularly for German Jews and citizens of the USSR.
For every example you can come up with of religious thinking bringing about a bad result, I’m sure I can come up with another example of non-religious thinking bringing about a bad result. That doesn’t mean that either mode of thinking is bad.
@Riss
What was the book you read on his lectures?
I read his Lectures from Colombo to Almora which is part of volume three in that link I provided you on page 25. These were lectures he gave in India after returning from the historic Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
I don’t see how this is a story about someone loving someone who doesn’t love him. It seems like the opposite. It seems Shiva only loves the person who loved him first.
No. Read the story properly. It means even if you don’t love God or do not believe in the concept of God but at the same time you love all his creation then you are still loved by Him whether you care or not. That’s the reason I mentioned previously in this thread that even atheists can be great worshipers of God.
Isn’t it true that there has been a lot of blood shed to enforce every other major religion as well?
Yes. That’s where Hinduism and Buddhism are unique. At least there was an attempt to spread Buddhism outside India through missionaries. There was no concerted effort to spread Hinduism or even bring awareness of its existence until late 19th century.
He’s just saying it’s impossible NOT to be exclusive. Do you deny that based on his reasons?
Did he ever use the word “intolerant”? I don’t think he did. And what exactly does it mean to tolerate? Isn’t it better to love than to tolerate? Also what if a mandate of a certain religion is for certain people to hurt other people in a way that you think is bad. Would it be loving to tolerate that?
I heard that lecture long back so I may not remember the details but essentially the impression I got from the recording was that Christianity is the only religion that has seen the “elephant” and is the only true way to God. This is clearly a disrespect to other religions if not outright intolerance. I am not sure whom you are referring to when you talk about a religion that prescribes hurting others. I am sure none of the major religions advocate that.
And I think the fact that Christianity is rooted in the life of a real person who actually lived makes it even more potent and universal, especially considering that unlike other founder of religions it’s not just what Jesus said but what he actually did that is so crucial.
Well..as long as your religion is based on the historicity of an individual its bound to have people who will cast their doubts on the person’s existence. Nevertheless, if that makes some people feel stronger about their faith, its good for them.
What are these specific scientific conclusions that he felt the teachers of Vendata at previously discovered?
I am not sure but I think Vivekananda is referring to the discoveries in particle physics, thermodynamics as well as the creation and evolution of nature that go well with Hindu thought. Essentially, Hinduism never had difficulty in accepting concepts like big bang theory and evolution simply because the Vedas do touch upon several of these topics. It is well known that Swami had several admirers from the scientific community including Nicola Tesla and Lord Kelvin so I guess there is some merit in his claims.
Is it really true that India has always historically been so devoid of any kind of destructive fighting between religious groups? Wow. I’d love to visit there some day.
India is home to so many cultures and religions today primarily because of the inclusive nature of Hinduism.
The Swami says that all great spiritual teachers can be woshiped and are equally good paths to lead to God. He includes Jesus Christ in that. In fact he seems to have particular reverence for Christ. But then how does he rectify the fact that all of Christ’s teachings are based on the fact that there is no other path to God other than through him? To say that all paths are equal including Christ is to either misunderstand what Christ actually teaches or to be inherently contradictory.
Yes. I guess the Swami was naive to imagine that Christianity would be magnanimous enough to let people of other faith’s worship Jesus.
@Downbylaw
I don’t think you quite realize the point of a device like the “veil of ignorance”. The idea is to abstract away from the particular random chances that created us as the individuals we are, so that instead of considering our vested interests, we can consider something more like the general “human condition”. It is a thought experiment and the idea of the veil is just a way to go about the imagining.
I’m not convinced that such a distinction between what is inidvidual and what is general could even be made in that way. But if it were possible, it does not seem that the veil of ignorance that you have been describing would be the method to discern this. It doesn’t seem to abstract away the aspects that make people individuals in their beliefs, but rather it takes the most popular consensus of the multiplication of all of the aspects of belief that make up many people including what makes them individuals.
I’m not sure people would even have any beliefs that could be discerned at all if you took away the beliefs that makes them individuals because one of the things that makes people individuals is the specific language or languages they speak. If people didn’t have any language at all then there would be no way for them to communicate what their beliefs are.
Even if it were possible to clearly distinguish the individual and the general, why should the supposed particular random chances that created us as a species be essential in identifiying morality while the supposed particular random chances that created us as individuals be completely disregarded?
Here’s an example: your interest in the Bible is very much a consequence of the accident of your birth. If you had been born and raised in Lahore, Jaipur, Chongqing, or Kyoto, it is very unlikely you would know much about it or have interest in learning more. Even if you had been born and raised in Prague, Stockholm, or London, it is still fairly unlikely that you would consider it to have personal religious importance and it wouldn’t be what you turned to when considering these ethical issues. So this book, as well as the religious books from other cultures, is of random geographic interest. Arguments from “behind the veil” are not based on these sorts of parochial prior commitments.
Why would arguments from behind the veil not be based on these “parochial prior commitments”? I haven’t seen anything from John Rawls’ definition or your definition that excludes arguments from not being based on these sorts of things. Can you give me a more specific example of how the veil would stop people from using these beliefs as a basis? Maybe you could construct a fictional dialogue between the people behind this veil that would make it more aparent to me how the veil would stop arguments from being based on these things.
A perhaps related thought experiment is to imagine that your children will be taken away from you and raised elsewhere by strangers. You don’t get to pick by who, but you are given some either/or choices. Do you want them raised in a country with short lifespans, lots of disease, and subsistence living? Or a country where people live long healthy lives and devote most of their attention to other things than finding food? In a country full of violence and chaos, or one that is peaceful, stable, and people resolve their conflicts in accordance with the rule of law? In a country where there is a significant risk that they might be a member of a persecuted minority, or one where civil rights are respected for everybody? In short, you are going to want them raised in a country that flourishes socially and economically. And at least the broader strokes of what constitutes flourishing can be worked out just by considering what sort of animal we are.
I’m having a lot of difficulty responding to this section for several reasons.
For one, you set up a throught experiment for me to think about, then you ask me some questions, then you seem to try to answer the questions for me indirectly. I’ll go through my response to each of these sections separately because I don’t feel like they all go together very well. I’ll try to explain why I feel that as well.
First of all, I would need to know a lot more about the context of this scenario to know how I would react. What I’m picturing from your scenario is that one day my children become missing and I get a phone call or an email telling me the children will be raised by someone else and I can chose between these two different types of countries. Well in that kind of situation I wouldn’t even acquiesce to answer such a question. I would instead demand my children back and probably try to ask questions back to figure out who took the children, and I’d also contact law enforcement authorities and detectives to try to find the children. This doesn’t seem like what you meant by the experiment though. It seems to me you are just asking me which of these two countries I would think it would be preferrable live in. I don’t know why you had to convolute the question by putting in the imagined scenario about my children being taken away from me.
For the second part you ask several questions, and I’m not really sure if these questions are all alternatives to one another or separate sets of alternatives about different versions of the thought experiment.
These first two seem like a pair:
“Do you want them raised in a country with short lifespans, lots of disease, and subsistence living? Or a country where people live long healthy lives and devote most of their attention to other things than finding food?”
It seems like you are trying post two kinds of opposites based on three different qualities. In general I would say the latter. This is only a very small information about a country though. There could be other factors that are more important. I would not say that if I was aware of all of the other factors that I would always pick a country that had the latter qualities over the former as being altogether more desireable. For instance, if you consider it a noble and desireable thing to spend your time and energy working towards making people more healthy and providing food and subsitence for them, then you would need to live in a country that has those problems for you to make more of an impact.
These two also seem like a pair where you try to compare opposites:
“In a country full of violence and chaos, or one that is peaceful, stable, and people resolve their conflicts in accordance with the rule of law?”
Again, in general I would say the latter sounds like it would be preferrable to live in, but there is not enough information to make a confident decision. For instance, if there is a country where people are peaceful but lazy and stable but unproductive and obey the law but the law is unjust, then these things are not desirable. In some cases a country full of violence and chaos may be more desirable if it is indication of a revolution towards a more desireable kind of peace, stability, and law.
And here is the last question:
“In a country where there is a significant risk that they might be a member of a persecuted minority, or one where civil rights are respected for everybody?”
Again, just like before this isn’t enough information to know for sure which country is preferrable. But I would say the latter is more desireable, and in this case I can’t think of a situation where having civil rights respected for everbody rather than not would be any indication of anything else being less than preferrable.
Then you say:
“In short, you are going to want them raised in a country that flourishes socially and economically. And at least the broader strokes of what constitutes flourishing can be worked out just by considering what sort of animal we are.”
So now it seems like you are just repeating the original statement that you made previously that lead to this very issue. In my eyes you have not shown how you can define flourishing by the sort of animal we are. All you have done is ask what my personal preferences are, which I admit just like many people are capricious and don’t agree with everyone. I don’t trust myself to implement these definitions objectively based on my own whims.
Also it seems like the conversation keeps going in many different directions about what these thought experiments are supposed to prove. First the veil of ignorance was brought up in response to how we could know objective morality, or at least what morality should be best for people in the absense of objective morality (whatever that means). Then we started talking about what constitutes a just socieity, which I think is a bit of a different question. Now we are talking about social and economic flourishing. I think these are all different things and maybe we should try to get back to a focus.
Another easy bit: would it be good to design a society where children are all highly isolated (perhaps because of concern about potential “bad influences”)? The answer is no. If the isolation is extreme enough, the children will suffer. But more broadly, children need interaction in order to socialize. Cutting them off deprives them of an important part of their development and the opportunity is then lost and cannot be made up later in life. We are a particular sort of social ape and cannot be raised in isolation.
It’s an easy bit for me because I believe in an objective morality on the basis of God, and I believe that he has revealed that it is good for humans to socialize and help one another. But in the absense of God you are making assumptions that have no basis. Your argument that children should not be isolated is that they will suffer. But it’s just an assumption that suffering is bad. I’m not saying that this kind of suffering is necessarily good, but I don’t agree that suffering is always bad. To what are you appealing to that can convince me that suffering is necessariliy bad? Also why is development good? Development in itself is an end? Or development towards a certain purpose? If it is towards a purpose then what is that purpose and on what basis are you declaring such a thing a good purpose?
Now a more challenging bit: consider what Keller said about divorce laws in that second sermon. As part of his misuse of the term “religion”, Keller claimed that everybody comes to the debate with “faith based” views. But he is wrong. His view is faith based, and his arguments are empty for those residents of Lahore, Jaipur, Chongqing, or Kyoto who didn’t get indoctrinated in his religion when they were young. My arguments about divorce would be based on what we are as humans and the notions of flourishing I laid out above. And those residents of Lahore, Jaipur, Chongqing, and Kyoto are all just the same sort of social ape that I am.
The main question he was getting at is what different people believe the purpose of marriage is. I’m not familiar with the residents of Lahore, Jaipur, Chongqing, or Kyoto, nor would I want to assume that everyone who lives in those cities all believe the same things. I’m sure they have a variety of beliefs and assumptions as much as people do in the town I live in, so I wouldn’t want to make a general assumption. But since you are referring to them, can you give an example in particular of what they believe about the purpose of marriage? Also, since you disagree with Keller, can you let us know what you personally believe the purpose of marriage is?
I can base my arguments on objective conditions available to us all while Keller cannot.
In what way is Keller not able to base his arguments on objective conditions available to us all. He has book on marriage that I’m reading right now that has a lot of objective and scientifically obtained data about psychology and sociology that he uses to support a lot of his proposals. But it’s not the objective conditions that you are referring to that are primarily the faith part of the argument. It’s the assumptions about the purpose of things that you disagree with him on. You find his arguments empty because of his assumptions of the purpose of marriage, but he may very well find your assumptions also empty.
And as to divorce? Well, women (half the population!) flourish best in societies where they are educated, autonomous, fully integrated in the workforce, and expected to be able to make their own decisions as to what is best for their lives. The only cultures like this are ones with low hurdles to divorce. The negative consequences of divorce are most significantly the result of women falling into poverty. So the best arrangement would be low hurdles to divorce coupled with full economic opportunities for women and a sound welfare system that can minimize poverty and help provide high quality childcare. There is nothing “faith based” about my argument.
Let me first say that I personally am fine with a government having laws with low hurdles to divorce. And my opinion on that one is a faith based one. I believe that God has revealed what things are good for us to do, but he doesn’t force us to do anything. He gives us freedom because good things mean a lot more if we are able to freely choose them rather than if we were forced to do them. If we were forced to do them we might even begrudge them. So I believe governements should work similarly. Even if a large section of the population believes something is not good for people to do, in many cases it doesn’t mean they should implement laws that force the other group of people to do that thing that they do think is good. It’s better to persuade people to do things freely than to force them to do it, or they will just rebel even further in the other direction. So although I feel that divorce is usually a bad thing I think it’s best for the people in the marriage to understand why it is a bad thing and freely work together to keep their marriage strong rather than them just keeping the marriage together begrudgingly because the government makes it too difficult for them to divorce.
Now there are several questions I have about your last paragraph
For one, can you give more specific definitions of what you mean by the separate terms of “educated, autonomous, fully integrated in the workforce, and expected to be able to make their own decisions as to what is best for their lives”? I just want to understand it better.
Secondly, can you provide some data on studies that shows that the presence of the things I just asked you to more specifically define always correlates to low hurdles of divorce? And can you also define “low hurdles of divorce”?
Ultimately I’m interested in looking into this, not because I don’t expect there to be some correlation but to see if there is actually a causal relation. I do not see what the causal relationship would be, so I think it would be more fair to look into the real causal relationship to find the solution.
I agree that a significant negative consequences of divorce often can be women falling into poverty. I would say there are many other significant consequences as well. One is the psychological strain of separation of a person once loved and made a committment too. Psychologist have said divorce is the most psychological traumatic thing that someone can go through, so we would also need a society where psychological treatment is available and encouraged. (And if you take a Christian point of view of the purpose of marriage then you believe if the person is a Christian then it would also be good for them to have a good supportive community that can walk through the divorce with them in love and Christ’s truths.) Then you mention child care. Again I would agree that child care is important, but specifically psychological care as well because divorce is also very traumatic for children. And the lack of a cohesive family unit can also be damaging in their development. I’m not saying that a marriage that stays together just for the children is always better than getting divorced. There could be situations where the parents stay together for the children but end up traumatizing the children because they react to each other out of hate and spite instead of love. The Christian perspective on the purpose of marriage is that it is a commitment to another person and a family. This is different from the purpose of marriage as a lot of secularists see it where it should be looked at by each individual to see what benefit they can personally get out of it and once they get sick of it they just try to get out of the situation.
This is different from the purpose of marriage as a lot of secularists see it where it should be looked at by each individual to see what benefit they can personally get out of it and once they get sick of it they just try to get out of the situation.
To be fair, I don’t think that that is at all the secularist view of marriage, if there is such a thing. I think that most non-religious people see it as a commitment to the other person and to a family as well.
DownByLaw
Ok, if there is an ongoing readership here, perhaps some of you would be interested in Tanya Luhrmann who I just discovered myself. She is an anthropologist and has done some interesting ethnographic fieldwork in religious communities. She is particularly interested in what is going on when people have an experience that something divine is talking to them. She looks at what is going on psychologically and even how people train themselves to have such experiences.
There is a lot on her website including some radio interviews and videos. She has posted a few of her academic papers as well as some more easily digestible writing aimed at a broader readership. I liked this essay:
The Art of Hearing God: Absorption, Dissociation, and Contemporary American Spirituality
Interesting stuff. Oh, and her recent book is the result of her fieldwork with a renewalist evangelical community. Here’s a link with info about it:
when god talks back