Nothing new from me today as I have a stomach strain and it's playing havoc with my creative module. As many of my friends are guaranteed to have a well formed and well presented argument on almost everything, perhaps some of you would like to get involved in this thread:
What did Thomas Jeferson mean.
I think Laura Cushing who owns the group has done a brave thing here in hosting a group for intelligent argument on questions of faith and religion and Tris. Russell who wrote the post has set out an intelligent challenge to the usual Christian assumptions about religion in the U.S.A.. Let's give them a bit of support.
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Comments: 88
Intelligent discussion is surely based on discovery of the world around us, the evolution of ideas. This cannot be done where 'ideas' are fixed and apparently explained by a collection of early texts written by people whose knowledge and intellect was fixed to those of their time.
That's just my opinion. But we live in a world full of differing ideas.
My post did not really invite comments as it said nothing of note, merely invited people to look ast another post and a group I support.
But you appear to fall in to the same trap as many fundie atheists. The ideas of "faith are not in fact fixed by a collection of early texts. Faith is an abstract concept. I have faith for example, that capitalism will be recognised as a fraud and socialism will bee seen to be the only workable way of organising society.
That does not mean it is going to happen any time soon.
My friend Graham however has faith that Manchester United will win the UK Premier League soccer championship. That is likely to happen in about ten weeks time.
Faith you see.
Religion on the other hand...
Follow my link to Tristram Russell's post and see how far off target you are. Attempts by certain groups to impose a narrow view of the Christian belief system as America's state religion are certainly worthy of intelligent debate.
Your opinion is always welcome but you should make sure it is actually relevant before posting.
Thanks, I hope you followed the link.
The article linked is a response to one which refers to jefferson and the "founding fathers" as Evangelical Christians without understanding that christianity in the late eighteenth century was very different to now.
To be continued I am sure ...
Hope you feel better.
Is this also what you taught?
Dictionaries of course list these meanings separately.
Arguing in a way that ignores these different meanings, treating them as one, would constitute the Fallacy of Equivocation.
I like the distinction The Chive makes between the world view of the Pilgrims and that of the Founding Fathers.
I wish people would just shut their mouths and learn the real facts before they speak.
Adding to the Chive's comment, I find it interesting that even here the religious right wants to silence any potential voice of dissent or open interchange of ideas even while the rhetoric they so clearly lack is demonstrated nicely at the end of the comment.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
ARGGGHGHGGHHH! And then they f*cking want to rewrite history to support their case!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When will this ignorance end? Okay, I think I'm going to go out for a martini lunch right now before I punch my computer screen.
When more people refuse to be intimidated by the religious and their empty cries of persecution, and speak openly the way people have on this thread.
Most of my life (I've past fifty), people without religious affiliation or belief shrugged their shoulders and said nothing about having Christianity inserted in their government and shoved down their throats in most every way possible. It didn't matter so much, because the non-religious are generally peaceful and generous.
The religious in this country took advantage of the easy-going spirits of those people and created a "we're better than you" sneer that infiltrated every aspect of society, forcing those who don't want someone else's religious beliefs to determine what they watch on television, who they marry or have sex with, how they celebrate holidays, etc. to become vocal. I think the Christians are in a state of disbelief that anyone has the nerve to question the way they have rewritten history and overstepped their boundaries. And they are reacting like spoiled children who have finally been told they must share the playground.
Their "you're picking on us" accusation is a bully tactic. They've depended on the nice guys to cave and give them their way for so long that they think they can control them by saying anyone who doesn't give in is not nice.
I don't want to be nice to selfish people who lie to control me.
I have read the Constitution. And I have read the oldest surviving facsimilie of the Mayflower Compact (find it here) In my reading, which is usually pretty accurate as I have a lot of experience reading legal documents, there is no reference to freedom of religion or to oppression in Europe, only to "setting up a "civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation" in order to achieve " ye glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith."
The Plymouth Bretheren were members of an extremist Protestant group and had left England with the intention of setting up a community inhabited solely by members of their group.
Though the official history is not incorrect it is misleading. The Pilgrim Fathers were not "Puritans" (I have explained earlier that misunderstanding common among modern American Christians) they were followers of Calvin or possibly the even whackier Ulrich Zwingli, they wore only black, did not permit women to eat with the men and were not adverse to haranguing the wives, daughters and servants of their neighbours should those entirlely innocent women venture into the garden with their hair uncovered, sing a non religious song or be caught in possession of a pair of breasts.
In other words these people were not poor, oppressed victims, they were bastards and nobody wanted to live near them.
The terrible oppression of state religion is overstated too. Because Church and state were politically bound, the parish was the basis of local government. While the Lord or Squire was usually magistrate and dispensed justice in the name of the King, among the Vicar's duties were the dispensation of alms to the poor and sick; it fell to the Church to organise the care of orphans and the aged and supervise a hundred or so other matters that can now be left to the state of municipal authority.
Freedom of religion would have meant living outside that system, becoming a state within a state in other words.
It is necessary to understand how society was organised in King James' reign to realise the complaints of the poor persecuted Chistians were totally unreasonable. Had the King abdicated in order to make God head of state as the nutters wished, who would have performed the duties of The King, his Court or The Chuch.
Not God, God never DOES anything.
History is easy if made up as you go along. When truth intrudes things get more difficult.
And let's not forget how, when the Pilgrims were starving, the friendly locals turned up with abundant food.
True to Christian form, the Pilgrims gave thanks to God for the supplies then killed the natives and stole their land.
Pleasure to promote an article like yours
I see someone already gave you the link, thanks for reading.
I hope Anne's teaching was more accurate than the stuff her teachers taught her.
Demanding freedom of religion in Renaissance Europe was akin to people demanding freedom from taxes today. And nobody would be so absolutely stupid as to think that was a realistic aim.
Ooer, I think I got that wrong.
We can have faith in almost anything, God, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, science, the curative powers of Chivas Regal, the oojah you bought from a shamam at the Glastonbury festival, kerma, The Soup Dragon. Its personal and subjective.
Religion however requires hierarchies, creeds, dogmas and punishments. Lots of punishments.
Gramma alert! Recently, I sat down to dinner with my granddaughters. The five-year-old recited a worn-out, insincere thank you prayer. Oh boy. I knew she hadn't learned that at home and really hated that she looked so proud.
I said, "I was going to thank you for this meal. You did the work. And I bought the food." (I told her parents, so they could deal with my reaction however they wanted.)
At Thanksgiving, the first grader told the backward pilgrim story. I can't believe they are still teaching that in our schools. We straightened her out too, and I used that when a friend complained during black history month that she thought it was time to stop "giving people special treatment" by giving them a month. I told her I might agree after our schools teach a couple generations of inclusive, TRUE history year round.
The question is, how many people in my groups read it?
Posting to a lot of groups is really a question of internal links. I guess no matter how many groups I post to, the people who need to read articles like Tristans are the ones who will just skip it.
Language has much to tell us about the parts of our history for which documented evidence has been wilfully destroyed. I guess the hijacking of the word "faith" by religious extremists will be noted when guture historians study the Cultural Wars of the 21st century.
I love the evolution deniers claim that "evolution is only a theory" but "The Bible is fact."
They are obviously confused about what constitutes a fact.
Religious deception is not new, in Athens and Rome the elite created religious fairy stories in order to control the poor while the Abrahamic religions of the middle east are wholly based of the suppression of women.
With such pedigree is it any wonder modern versions of Christianity is corrupt and dishonest?
It's hard to imagine coherent writing on Gather let alone to read some.
Thanks to Ian and The Chive for describing the ideals of the Pilgrims on religious freedom.
The genius of the US, such as it is, is the Enlightenment principles that informed the Constitution. It was a scary time when people respected reason and usually spelled it with a capital R. Unfortunately people went back to ignoring reason and associating it with evil.
Gibbon was more or less a contemporary of the Founding Fathers.
Their downfall came when a sect of fundamentalist Muslims rose up and insisted that their religious laws superceded the governmental rule of law. This lead to what we now call the Dark Ages in history....a period of relative ignorance and lack of material progress. I can see the potential for that same thing happening in America if we continue to hold up religious precepts over rule of law, and claim faith and biblical teachings to be fact over science.
The problem with giving religionists freedom of worship is that, as opposed to belief systems, religions are totalitarian and so, one freed, the followers of a religion immediately try to use their freedom to curtain the fredoms of others, particularly those who choose to have no religion.
I have never know a leader who was willing to explain the difference between religion and faith. In my experience they are more eager to explain why their religion is right and everyone else's wrong. I except Gandhi and Winston Churchill, the latter only for this comment; "Whenever I read The Bible I can't help but think God, what a shit God is."
Religions have always been good at bullying.
The last pagan emperor of Rome, Justinian, said: There is no wild beast so dangerous to man as Christians are to each other.
You could teach your Grandkids to give thanks to the third world peasants who work for 10c per hour to bring us our food. Credit where its due I say.
Evil associated with reason? Its worse than that, they associate evil with any level of thinking for ourselves.
When the Western Empire failed that distinction passed to the Pope, God's Vicar on Earth - the earthly personification of Jesus.
In that role the Popes claimed ascendancy over Kings until weill into the Medieval era and that was what England's long running dispute with The Vatican was all about. The King of England was not allowed in law to cede suremacy to anybody, not even a God on Earth.
Suspicion of reason:
always a good one for creating controversy is the debt our modern civilisation owes to Islam Our Debt To Islam without which all the wisdom, science, architechtural skills and philosophy of the ancient world, including the basis of mathematics, would have been lost to us thanks to the religious fanaticism of the "Dark Ages" in Europe.
We also owe a lot to monastic Catholicism, very different from the Vatican version. The monastries of Britain (until Henry VIII did his stuff), Ireland and Northern Europe resisted Vatican inspired attempts to control all knowledge and restrict advance that was not to the advantage of the Church.
I wish schools would teach the basics of logic and reasoning, as well as philosophy, in the lower grades. Children are being raised (and society supports this in many ways) to believe that there are no real facts - that EVERYTHING is a matter of opinion and viewpoint.
"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. ...Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion."
What writings of which Founding Fathers is he looking at? Does he think someone just pulled "separation of church and state" out of their ass one day? And, "replete with references to God"? There's no mention of "God" anywhere in the Constitution, except the date--which was simply the standard dating convention of the time. The Declaration of Independence isn't a legal document and it didn't set up the laws of this country.
Back when he first started campaigning, I was on board. He claimed want to get the nation back to the Constitution. Then the whole evolution thing and wanting Creationism taught in school, and some other crazy shit....and now this?!
I would say (probably again) that IF you pull the word "philosophy" out of that statement it would become very true from an "objective" perception only ...
The problem then becomes when one adds in philosophy, one then goes into the areas of subjectivity, epistemology and ontology ... where you would then find that all things ARE but relative ... facts then, only being what is agreed upon as being so by those that share the concept ... really nothing more from the perspective of transcendent truth ...
IMnsHO.
The state mostly didn't care about religion that much. Some senators got upset over the popularity of Egyptian religion and some of the mystery cults in Rome but there was almost no religious persecution except under Nero and Diocletian. The A lot of people thought the Christians were nutjobs because they refused to recognize the validity of any god but theirs.
The Romans weren't anything like Egypt or Babylon where the priesthood ran the state.
And that's spitting in the face of our founding fathers if anything does.
Just my thoughts.
Denial of documented facts? You got there before me. But this is an old thread now and there is plenty of mileage in the topic.
But though I respect anyone's right to believe in anything they wish in the absence of concrete proof, Bible fans merely show their lack of background reading. The "Hebrews" (literally, residents of the rather small town of Hebron) never ruled a middle eastern empire from the Nile to the Euphrates, the fact that the great civilisations that did at various times rule the area do not even mention a Hebrew client kingdom tells us all we need to know about Biblical "history."
The King James Bible (the only one with which I am familiar) is a very badly presented mash up of myths from Assyria, Phoecia, Sumeria / Babylon, Persia, Egypt and Greece.
To me the most despicable lie of Christianity is: Jesus died on the cross to atone for your sins.
The only response that deserves is "That's tough but what do you want me to do, I didn't ask him to.
The crucifixion myth is a misrepresentation of the Hellenic Christ (anointed one) myth which was a calendar myth about the symbolic sacrifice of the old "year King" to make way for the new. Winter solstice marks the birth of the new king, spring equinox the moment he gains ascendancy over the winter king. The symbolism is self explanatory.
Do 'ee think 'ee can hijack a thread crewed by me, Cap'n Blaack Jaack Smaartarse, the most ruthless pirate of reason to sail the Spanish Main? Heave to matey, or Oi'll splice yer mainbrace :-)
Three sheets to the wind mateys and let's show these lubbers the way to Devil's Island.
You will be very welcome in my threads,I'll look forward to your post.
You need to be clear on the difference between a fact and a "religious fact."
A fact is an undeniable truth confirmed by evidence, a religious fact is anything they choose to make up to help their argument.
So don't expect the "facts" as related by religionists to bear any relation to the actuality.
But if we all stay on the case we will wear them down.
Philosophy is by definition objective.
Much of what passes for religious philosophy is not so much subjective as supporting an agenda. And that agenda is world domination.
The problem is that religion is addictive. As the oldest philosophy still extant, the Rig Veda says (from memory this, but I have the essence)
If we become attached we cannot be objective.
If we sacrifice objectivity we become addicted.
Once we become addicted we lose our ability to discriminate.
Religion is an addiction for many which is why they cannot discriminate between the rational and the irrational.
"The Romans weren't anything like Egypt or Babylon."
Very true, but the gods of Egypt and Babylon were abstract, representing energies and concepts. There was a protector and deliverer god for warriors, a lawgiver god, a god of learning, a god of music and art.
So knowledge and learning were sacred and so scholars, lawyers, artists etc. had priestly status.
Again it is a question of understanding how those societies organised themselves and viewed their religion.
As usual your comments are lucid and well argued.
So long as we keep on supporting the articles like the one linked in the main post, we are helping the dark forces of superstition to keep on hitting the self destruct button.
Being well read in British poetry I can tell you The Bible is dross. Thus as it does not stand against Marlowe, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Mallory or Spenser in poetic merit and there is no evidence to support it as a work of history, in fact all the evidence proves otherwise, we must read it as a work of fiction. Yeuch.
Give me Harry Potter or His Dark Materials trilogy any day.
Most "translators" and interpreters, be it of the Bible, or, the Rig Veda, do so most often "pridefully" from an "objective" perspective ... that is why we have so many "problems" in this world ... there is too little trust of subjective INtuition. Of course that is because too few demand TRUTH.
IMnsHO.
In my opinion, that there are historical events depicted in the Bible is probably true, though, since other contemporary documents might have been based on whatever served as the source for the Bible (or many other explanations), I don't think even that could be "proved". However, even if that was taken as a given (and I'm not saying it should be), it doesn't "prove" the veracity of the Bible any more than "The Iliad" "proved" the existence of Zeus and Aphrodite, Ajax and Achilles.
Heck, even in far more modern times, like the 16th century, contemporary historical documents are chock full of bias, prejudice, and distortion depending on the author and the audience. That doesn't make them valueless, but you'd better bring your skepticism with you.
Here's an example: want to bet Bush' view of the historical events of the last eight years jibes with the average citizen's? Those of other world leaders? Hussein's? Someone taking the trouble to write it down doesn't "prove" veracity or mean the reader needs to turn off his or her brain.
What you say is true in almost all respects. Unfortunately the respect in which your very reasonable view is not true is in relation to The Bible. There is no historical truth in it whatsoever.
I think this thread has run its course now so we will come back to the topic I am sure and when we do I will show, with links to source material, how it cannot be true. I will show this in very great detail for though Bible fans insist all such evidence is forged, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Babylonians had no reason to lie, they didn't give a damn about the Jews or their God.
When two of the great early civilisations contradict each other its safe to assume both accounts of an even are ubjective. When all five agree however, we have to take their word against a story written by an Englishman 400 years ago.
There is actually no evidence to support Biblical accounts, only the obessive rantings of people with a religious agenda. The only evidence of the veracity of The Bible is The Bible itself.
And unfortunately that was written centuries after the alleged death of Jesus by people who sought to secure their grip on power through the new official religion.
I will return to this topic because we must not tolerate the idea that this book has any historical relevance. It is a corrosive force in society. I respect everybody's right to believe what they like, but belief should never be confusedc with truth.
Give us a break, Ian. I would have thought you'd buy your food from local farmers using sustainable, organic techniques instead of from agribusiness middlemen who exploit third world labor and waste oil to transport food across the world.
As for thanks, I prefer and like Elizabeth Cady Stanton's prayer of thanks for the food on the table (with perhaps a change of word or two).
"Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all
the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful
of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread
our tables and prepare our daily food. For humanity's
sake, Amen." (A Thanksgiving 'grace' from
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902
"Philosophy" literally means "love of wisdom." It's not facts that we lack so much as wisdom. Schools teach facts ad nauseum, but it's a rare teacher who can impart a little wisdom. Look at politicial candidates--they use the same fact to "prove" different things. If facts were all we needed to create the good life, we'd just let computers dictate everything. Whose facts are you using to evaluate global warming?
And that brings up another anomaly with facts: who's facts do we use to answer a given question? How do we program those computers?
Wisdom comes into play, or ought to, when we decide what the facts mean, and especially when we decide what we should DO about them. "Should" or "ought"--therein lies the province of wisdom and, I supose, what Jerry is objecting to. We have to have some basis for evaluating facts, some way of deciding what we ought to do. Facts alone simply aren't enough. Most people use religion as a basis for determining values and actions. I prefer philosophy.
What is philosophy? It's a method, much like the scientific method (in fact, science is the child of philosophy). It's a way of achieving integrity, of making your facts fit together through a discipline of reason and consistency. Philosophy is a method of inquiry, just like science. It is short on absolutes just as science is (I was always taught that scientific facts are always subject to revision as the evidence and the systematic body of knowledge dictates. How is all of this integrated and evaluated? According to logic and reason--at least in my philosophy. At least that's the standard. Far be it from me to claim to have all the answers. In fact, anyone who cliams to have all the answers could never claim to rest his or her case on philosophy...or science, Only religion (and some teenagers) have all the answers.
I, too, think phisophy, i.e. the philosophical method, should be taught in school from the beginning. That would be clear thinking, questioning, logic, consistency. Thinking is our special human way of dealing with our world. Shouldn't it be a main object of our study, both generally and with great academic rigor?
The objective person of more "pure" logic and rationality will always place precedence
on the 5 sensory, that is relatively easy and "normal", that related to duality and divisiveness based upon the "philosophy" of (+=+) and/or (-=-) translated to (+/-) for all "practical" purposes ... good over evil etc. The so called "truths" and "facts" of "normal" people ...
But as I have been attempting to say, there are others of us, including many "philosophers" that go "deeper" ... into the epistemology and ontological ... the differences between the noumenal and the phenomenal, the a priori and the a posteriori ... always the objectified person will discount such "subjectivity" related more to the INtuitive ... but NOT I ... that is because I have come to find the value in the Spiritual and all of the good things it entails ... including the eternal ... just a matter of priorities of a personal nature ... to each their own though.
I have spent many happy hours in Churches myself, as well as in stone circles, fairy glens etc. Also - hey where did you get the idea I'm a history major, we don't work with major and minor in the UK system unless you are studying music :-) and my subject is literature. I'm just interested in ancient history - also, I understand the philosophical significance of the "sacred geometry" common to Christian Jewish, Zoroastrian and Hindu places of worship.
Now the overwhelming feeling of awe experienced by many people in such places is due to a trick of light and proportion. Simple. That is thanks to the sacred geometry.
Few people know that the first religious book committed to writing, the Zoroastrian Avesta, was also the first science book. The Rig Veda of the Hindus was the first religious book but was passed down through the oral tradition. The Avesta was written on clay tablets.
Now the obsessive rantings reference was a remartk aimed at modern Chistians who tell us The Bible is "the truth." The Medieval guys knew it wasn't ("For a thousand years this myth of Jesus has served us well," Pope Innocent III - reigned 1198 - 1216)
I can go on and on citing such things, the fact is the first version of Christianity we would recognise was that created by Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome 310 - 337 AD when he adopted Christianity as the official religion of his Empire.
Constantine's Christianity was vastly different to what had gone before it. The earlier Christians had not believed Jesus was the divine child (a concept attributable to the pagan Greeks) but merely a mortal, human teacher.
Constantine caused the first "Bibles" to be written, the Vulgates; there being four each tailored to the customs and traditions of a different flavour of Christianity. From memory I think Matthew was addressed to the Europeans, Luke to the Greeks and Byzants, John to the Nazarenes of Palestine and Mark to the Coptic Christians of the Nile Valley and Ethiopia.
Of the eightyish written "gospels" used as source material for these, very few had Jesus dying on the cross but Contantine wanted a version of the very potent Greek myth of the self sacrificing King (its actually a calendar myth that occurs in slightly different tellings all around the world) included in his Vulgates, literally his gospels of the common people. Et voila, Easter, named after Oestra, pagan goddess of the swelling corn, became the primary Christian festival.
In the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown calumnised The Vatican by saying it is secretive about the existence of the documents that prove all this. In fact The Vatican is very welcoming to accredited scholars. Obviously we cannot wander in off the street and demand access to these priceless and irreplaceable documents, but a letter from an accredited University provided in advance will open the vaults, just so long as your University is not The College of Send $2000 to a maildrop address.
Most protestant Christian preachers do not understand the first thing about their religion. An old African proverb I like goes like this: To not know is bad, to not want to know is unforgivable.
Now do you srtart to see things in a different light?
I was not talking about me personally.
I was taught philosophy at school and thus am trained in subjecting information I am presented with to critical examination.
When someone speaks to me of "the virgin birth" therefore, I know that virgins do not get pregnant. But because my edication was semi classical I can be sure that writers who tell us the "virgin" concept is a simple mistranslation. The scriptures were written first in Greek and referred to the "almah" (young woman) to whom the divine child is born. Finally the text made its was via Latin translations to Aramaic (there never was such a language as Hebrew) Aramaic had no word for a young woman. Girls were married at the onset of the menses and so a betulah (unspoiled female) was substituted for the young woman of the Greeks.
My main point in common with others who have contributed to this thread is that Christians demand that non believers supply all the answers before they will even consider our arguments. On the other hand when we challenge them we are told, "if you had faith you would understand the truth of The Bible."
It is hardly a philosophical argument is it?
If we are going to talk about the limits of knowledge or the nature of being, then surely we should base our discussion of facts rather than the superstitions of a bronze age tribe of goat farmers?
Could you actually produce a reasoned philosophical argument to back up your beliefs?
In the context of this thread I would say we have seen a conflict between reasoned argument supported by facts and irrational defence of subjective beliefs.
If we are to consider anything in a rational manner we must consider it in the light of what we know.
My view of current teaching differes from yours slightly. I think there is too much emphasis on information which can be interpreted subjectively rather than facts which are concrete.
I agree with that, too, Ian. I don't feel as thought our views are at odds. Perhaps you've heard of "No Child Left Behind", a wonderful Bush education initiative? It focuses on testing - multiple times a year - and testing basically to the lowest common denominator. Almost the entire school year in public schools now is devoted to practicing for these tests - focusing on the "facts" or "answers" required to simple, direct statements or questions. No critical thinking required. 2+2=4 type stuff.
There is a place for this, of course, and facts, I agree, form the foundation of learning, but unless we also teach critical thinking, logic and reasoning skills along with the facts, students are simply trained monkeys, repeating back exactly what they are taught to memorize without really analyzing the data and making important connections.
I don't mean to have a "its-all-hopeless-the-world-is-doomed" sound here, but it does worry you when you realize that a lot of people don't know how to know things. It's so common that one can even find it in the highest levels of government, as H.Res.888 shows.
Your reductio ad absurdum is, well...certainly absurd.
Ian,
How in the world did I come out as defending virgin birth? I think you have me confused with someone else (my name has sometimes been abbreviated as "Christ" by an unfriendly computer.) I don't get the point of the facts you present, anyway, which is exactly my point.
Why the hostility to philosophy? Ah, you say you were schooled in philosphy. That may do it. But philosophy (love of wisdom, remember) is not a monolith. There are different schools of philosophy, different philosoPHIES. That doesn't invalidate the method, and it doesn't invalidate the idea of integrating your facts into a consistent who, nor of using those facts to come up with a personal philosophy to guide your life (subject always to revision, of course, as new facts arise).
As to somehow casting me as a defender of faith, the Bible, etc., you haven't got your facts straight, son. How do you get that out of what I wrote? What I wrote is: "[Philosophy] is a way of achieving integrity, of making your facts fit together through a discipline of reason and consistency." Religious faith is the negation of reason, as I'm sure you know. Religion begins with dogma and demands belief. Religious faith treats believing in something fantastic--because there is no good reason to believe it--as a virtue. There is a categorical difference between religion and philsophy. And that's a fact.
For Sheryl, I also agree that our children should be taught more than they have been ,. including philosophy ... but they should also be taught about spiritual enlightenment which far transcends "mere" philosophy (both which transcend institutional religions) ... IMnsHO.
No Child Left Behind is an idea Bush took from the traitor and war criminal Tonly Blair (in case you're wondering, no I did not rate Blair highly) and the emphasis on testing. I think the idea has originated roughly simultaneously in Britain and America in the Thatcher Reagan era.
But it is older than that.
In one of Dickens' less well known (but better) novels, Hard Times, set in the front half of the nineteenth century there ia an industrialist and civic leader named Gradgrind who is pushing a "hard facts" policy. Gradgring beleved pupils in municipal schools should be trained in basic skills ready for the workplace, there is no room in his approach to education for reading novels and poetry, for art and humanities.
I was priileged to go to a school which provided the renaissance education, a broad grounding in English, maths, natural sciences and humanities the aim of which was to equip us to follow several paths in the course of our lives.
Eleven is much too early to be steering pupils in a specific direction.
I did not have you down as defending Virgin birth, but was demonstrating how the scriptures are unreliable if read literally and how if we apply academic rigour, religious beliefs does not have to be deconstructed, it just falls apart. In an oblique way (for the furtherance of the tread) I was agreeing with you.
"Don't know how to know things."
That sums it up brilliantly. The problem starts from confusing "I believe" with "I know"
I just reviewed my response to you and I think you saw the phrase "virgin birth" and jumped to an erronious conclusion without looking at the full comment.
My hostility is not to philosophy buy to the "cod philosophy" (cod = false, spurious) of self help book writers such as M Scott Peck, Stephen Covey and whoever wrote The Secret. Surely you are not defending such dross? When I speak of philosophy I mean Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Rousseau, Neitzsche etc.
It is worth remembering of course both Peck and Cover became born again Chistians - a cynical marketing ploy if you ask me.
Sorry mate but here you go again, talking about what you "know" and referring to the "ignorance of those who challenge you.
I ask again, what do you know? What is this great truth you keep talking about?
If you are not going to share it with us, but simply keep referring to this "truth" you know and nobody else does. As you are not familiar with The Book of Enoch and I have not sent you a link yet may I ask if you have read the works of William Blake?
Two links, you may want to compare the annotations.
The Book of Enoch (Cambridge version)
The Book of Enoch (reluctant messenger)
It is necesary to have read Enoch to make any sense at all of the NT. As Enoch was proscribed and all known copies destroyed in the medieval period, the whole of the protestant reformation was based of falsehoods and misunderstandings.
All that stuff about The Light and sheep and goats will suddenly make sense - and when it does it all seems very mundane.
An apology is in order--mine. I thought you were mimicing what you see as philosophy, as a reductio ad absurdum, to show that philosophy has little worth. I freely admit that some philosophy and philosophers are so dense and obscure that they are practically nonsensical to anyone else. I guess I'm just a common sense (read Aristotelean), common language advocate of philosphy, and a grossly underemployed philosopher. I am not in the loop at all on the apparent discussion of "spirituality" so please don't take any offense on that account. I'm just trying to defend the ideal and practice of clear and consistent thinking. And I do think it's never to early for kids to start on that path.
I teach lower-level college writing (freshman comp., business writing, and such). Just about the first thing I do to advocate for writing and motivate students is talk about the advantages of writing over speaking in that we often speak without thinking much about what we're saying. What we say is immediately "out" there," and it's difficult to take it back, to know if our listener has heard what we we said (or meant), or even to be sure of what we actually said. With writing, we are more or less forced to think about what we put down on paper, we are able to "play with it" and get it right before we publish it, and there is a record of what we said. All of that should result in imroved communication and less misunderstanding.
It's remarkable to me, then, that there appears to have been so much miscommunication going on between me and Jerry and you and me. I've been away from Gather for some time, and I just got back into it through the new atheism group, which is how I got onto this thread. I'm betting that you and I agree on a lot more than we disagree, so I say "Peace, good sir" (and let the discussion rage on!)
Just wait until I wade into the pro-choice / pro-life debate with a history of contraception (It is somewhat older than God, having been around in the mesolithic era while God is an invention of the Bronze Age.
I'm glad you said you've been away, you will not be familiar with current trends in debate here. I'm an old fashioned debater in that I will often strike a position in order to wrongfoot the people challenging me.
One of the problems of the net of course is its instant communication tempts us to write as we speak.
Ian ... I am no intellectual, never claimed to be nor pretended ... I only have my intuitive "wisdom" to guide me ... and I have learned to trust it over other self-claimed "authorities" ... that does not mean that I disregard them, it just means that to me they do not always have the "final" answer ... everything short of a God concept is relative ... and even "that" would be based upon perceptions.
I have written here on Gather about things as I see them ... I value the subjective more than most people do ... thus my "reality" differs greatly from the "normal" objective oriented person ... that is what "spirituality" does to some of us ...
I wrote a book Spirit Calls ... about what I talk (write) about here ... you see, probably like the Book of Enoch, it cannot be explained with justice in a relatively few words ... I have many articles on Gather and countless comments of long length that explains the "truth" that I speak of ... in a nutshell, it is a paradox , I call it the BET (the Basic Equation of Truth) ... (+=-) ... so the normal objective people will not understand until they broaden their horizons ... I would be more than happy though to be more specific IF you need ... (I believe that E=MC squared, took more than a few words to explain also)
I also sense that you equate my spirituality as being somehow close to religion as you talk about the sheep/bronze age etc ... if you believe that, then you really do need more information ... :-)
Thanks for the links ... I will attempt to get to them before too long, I hope.
Basically the post was a promo for Tristans article and Laura's group. Nobody was more surprised than I when it took off.
BTW The British do not have a bananced education system in place, I was one of a privileged few. My contention on education here is that we have abandoned what I had in favour of traing for the workplace.
Oops, I meant training.
I'm not complaining; I didn't write for the gather points. And it's better that those who disagree say so on her thread, instead of all of us just agreeing off in the corner.
So, thank you for promoting my thread, Ian. I'm sure there'll be more challenges to throw down and I'm thankful that I have you all for backup!
Also when you speak of a couple millennia of churchs screwing up our thinking since Plato/Aristotle/Pythagoras et all ... I hope that you realize that "they" had it right and it was Augustine that screwed it all up ... again, it was hard for me to tell just what you were saying there ...