Just got released from an evening quiz on the virtue of prudence. Easy stuff, but it was worthwhile, if only because I came away with a new understanding of proportionalism. Proportionalism may seem to be the opposite of casuistry--it emphasises the uniqueness of every single situation, and subjectivizes moral judgement so much that no objective standard of action is acceptable, whereas casuistry makes past cases the absolute norm.
They're both basically the same, in that they ask this basic question: What is the minimum I can do, and still call myself a "good person." Doggon sinners... if only I didn't rationalize things the same way myself all of the time.
Today was very strange, emotionally. I began with a powerful--powerful--resignation to the failure of both my 'Special Moral' quiz and the 'Reformation' midterm, especially the latter. I hadn't studied for it at all the night before, because I had spent all the time studying the wrong section of our textbook for the 'Special Moral' quiz.
Thanks be to God on two counts: the quiz was a take-home, and beyond all explanation, I had crammed enough factual material in my head to be able to answer most of the questions on the midterm in a decent way, even if I can't remember hardly anything any more. This style of studying is really dangerous. I mean, not just to me--and certainly, apparently, not to my academic scores--but to the whole of seminary formation. Cramming isn't studying. It's the opposite. You forget things so quickly after cramming, it's almost as if you haven't been taking the class at all...
Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I can't help but feel like a fraud, doing well on an exam that I spent only the three hours before memorizing facts for.
See, here's what I've been preoccupied with today: last night, a friend suggested to me that I might be 'addicted' to academic success. Not to academics, per se, but to the sucess of it. Grades and scores. Now, on the surface of things I know that's not true. I don't cry over B's, though a C might make me sour for a day. But I began to think today: what if it all just came crashing down? What if I never got an 'A' again, ever, in any class? What if I lived with studies occupying a few hours of each day, and not whole nights and futile afternoons? What if my sense of the quality of my studies lied in way I lived my life outside of class, rather than the wash of relief at seeing a report card of straight A's? What if I could join friends in evening recreation, instead of being imprisoned by the cycle of catch-up/perfectionism?
The idea was so tantalizing, I zoned out in 'Special Moral' for a few minutes, just to write the following:
"I will be crucified by my own incompetence. My feeling of impending doom will be realized. I will not despair - I hope in God. He will make something of me, which will save me and bring others to salvation... but I will not be able to rescue this smooth path through the seminary from utter destruction. I will stand with the hope of God while I am immolated by the fact of unsustainable academic success. This giant will fall--it is too top-heavy. It will become helpless and unhelpable. My hope is that it will die quickly, so as not to feed upon the pity and help of others, and so continue to hinder my own union with God. Destroy me, God--strike me down. Break me, demolish me, starve me, kill me, rob me, only do not fail to act in me."
Blast from the Past - Oct. 11th, 2004
A Firey Polemic Against Religious Pluralism
Pluralist: "If all names lead to the same thing (Yaweh, Deo, Allah, Brahma, Buddha-Nature, Tao), does it matter which name we use?"
Me: "Those names you referred to do not refer to the same thing."
Pluralist: "That is a matter of opinion, much like anything to do with definitions or naming when discussing religion. And actually, if you were of Islam, you would believe "Allah is One", and to that person, all those names would refer to the same thing. Words may sound different, be in different languages and spoken by different people, but they still point toward the same meaning."
Me: "Opinion has nothing to do with what those words mean; those words have concrete historical origins and infinitely nuanced meanings which arise out of particular contexts, all of which you are ignoring for no other reason than it's convenient for you to do so. Your tolerance is a fake tolerance; your non-dogmatism is equally fake (it pretends to rule over ALL religions)--your religious philosophy is a common, shallow, postmodern, lazy response to the plurality of religions which lets you stroke your faux mystical ego like Dr. Evil's hairless cat. Allah cannot be collapsed into the Christian God; the Trinity has nothing to do with Buddah, and your theory unwittingly and wantonly mocks the religious faith of simple believers all over the world. Religious pluralism is ignorant, hegemonic, and dripping with greasy dishonesty about the fact that you're just another agnostic with a weak stomach for confrontation."
Pluralist: "1. I have been studying religions, its kinda a lifetime project of mine, comparative religion study, and it helps that I have access to a large University library. 2. As for opinion, how about the council of Nicea, where the idea of the trinity was settled with a vote, and a close one at that. 3. I am definatly not an agnostic, at least as far as Buddhism is usually not considered a religion based on doubt, if there is a such thing."
[Continued in another thread...]
Pluralist: "Excuse me, may I please interject something into your conversation?
Your arguments seem to be getting nowhere, not unlike arguements of the past which have taken up similar discussion. In fact, this disscussion is futher cementing the beliefs of the oposition. The more you argue, the more your mind closes to posibilities. You anger increases because others are trying to influence your beliefs, and their anger increases because you are trying to influence their beliefs. It is territoriality on a mental and spiritual scale. The results cannot be good. Therefore I will not joint the fray, I will only supply some information I have found to be helpful. You may criticise (nicely, please) and comment all you wish. These ideas have worked for me, and may be helpful to others, but will likely not apply to everyone.
In my spiritual "travels" somethings seem to stand out for me:
~How where ever I go, what ever I do, all things and events seem to be connected in some way, no matter how distant they may look from first glance.
~That, somehow, there are forces in the universe that are unseen, unheard and unfelt, and yet they somehow they guide the universe towards balance.
~That when you divide the smallest particle, you find that all matter is energy, plasmatic and dynamic.
~If all things are energy, then maybe all things are one.
~That consious beings tend to wonder about how the present moment came to be.
~These consious beings need answers to their wonderings.
~So religions is created to try to answer these questions, although they often fall short.
~Even though there are many, within each lies Truth, but you must search for it.
~The Truth that you find will lead you not away from, but towards, inner peace.
~Intolerance and hatred always move you away from inner peace.
~In bringing inner peace, you will become close to the "Base of all Things".
~That which I call the base of all things has many names, but they all refer to the same.
~All religions point to this Base.
and one more that I find particularly important to me...
~To heal the world, you must first heal yourself."
[Suffice to say, I wasn't going to have any of that. I had heard too much of this claptrap already. Time to bring out the big guns. I was pretty merciless, and although I later cooled off, I want to post here my more 'interesting' response.]
Me: "Saying that all religions have a little truth is tantamount to saying they're all equally wrong. If I had a dime for every self-styled mystic who "invented" this "great new idea" that solved the world's religious problems, I could probably bribe God to send people who annoy me to hell. Starting with the self-styled mystics."
Pluralist: "This term, Mystic, it seems to annoy you much! I have never considered myself a mystic up until this point. A Mystic would be someone who believes in mystery by definition, I guess. I have also heard of mystics from certain religions, like Sufi.
So, I guess I could consider myself a Mystic. Thanks for the push!"
Me: "I'm being sarcastic. I have profound respect for mystics, even of other traditions. I regard your philosophy of religion a counterfeit mysticism.
Pluralist: "BTW: Im a Buddhist. A Zen Buddhist, to be more precise."
Me: "You can be a Zen Buddhist then, and stop talking like the world religions are your spiritual smorgasbord. (Yes that makes me angry)."
Look, I apologize for my tone; it's late and I'm about to get some much needed sleep. But if you only understood how frequently I've had post-modern teenagers who knew nothing about religion get all gooey about how all the religions contribute to each other and all point to the same truth--you would understand why I have no tolerance of your philosophy. I'd rather discuss such things with a guy who believes, firmly, that my Church is the great abomination or the whore of Babylon, than a wishy washy hippie who has the audacity to make every ancient tradition a mere vanity bumper sticker on their imaginary spiritual vehicle.
You'll notice that this is the Hard Questions room [the name of the forum], and you know what? The question of religious truth is a hard question; your religious philosophy tries to shoehorn it into an easy question, but it only does so at the expense of taking seriously what every earnest believer understands about their faith: it is the truth. Religious pluralism tries to overcome disagreement, not by reason, but through vacuous sentimentalism. And to me that will always evoke images of flaming bags of..."
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Must.... write... paper!!!
But first, a blog post. "Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'." Yeah yeah, goofy atheist misrepresenting a sloppy sociology experiment. Here's what I just posted in the Megatokyo forums:
"On one hand, the story is irrelevant from a strictly Christian perspective; if the Gospel is true, then to heck with whatever correlates with belief in it. Nobody ever found faith by examining which religion decreased murder rates or increased the nation's GDP.
On the other hand, this sort of schlock shouldn't be simply ignored. Bad for evangelizing all you agnostic types. :) It couldn't possibly be scientific in the strict sense of the word, because you would need a scientific definition of "religion," which either doesn't exist, or else it corresponds so little to the complex reality that it has no meaning.
Here's the crux: Psychology and sociology are sciences only insofar as they measure predictable human behavior. Yet Christianity, in all of its tradition, demands growing in freedom through the rule of reason over the passions--the things that make humanity most predictable and ridiculous. Moreover, this reason (unlike rationalistic 19th century 'reason') is centered and organized by an extra-worldly revelation from an Ultimate Ungraspable Beyond--placing the Christian behavior even further outside the scope of science. If the "scientist of Christianity" presupposed a closed natural system, in principle fully explanable by finite laws (as he should), he would be limited to operating with a Durkheimian parody of Christianity--but not Christianity itself.
If there were actually a real correlation between lived Christian faith and violent crime, vs. 'peaceful' Western irreligion, I would attribute it to that Christians are actually struggling against the division between good and evil that runs in their hearts--and this is a violent struggle. If the agnostics are peaceful and passive, one may just as freely see it as a "going quietly into the night" of a dying world of temporary pleasures, rather than the success of a secularized Ghandi-esque ethic of peace."
Blast from the past - Oct. 9th, 2004
Why were people forbidden from reading the Bible in the 16th century?
"Here's the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Scripture--if you go to "VI. ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE VERNACULAR", you'll see a concise history of the issue.
The overriding concern of every single decree that limited private ownership or vernacular translation of the Bible was that of erroneous interpretations. This would have been especially true after Protestantism asserted that individuals could interpret Scripture without error through the Holy Spirit, even apart from the Church, contrary to the early Fathers, even contrary to the people interpreting scriptures around them. (Incidentally, wasn't part of Joseph Smith's first prayer an expression of disgust with the sheer number of Christian churches?)
Now I understand that the LDS and some forms of Protestantism believe that mainstream Christianity went to shit almost the moment the last of the Twelve apostles died--so, there's no way I'm going to be able to address that point here. But for the Catholic Church, fidelity to the Fathers, like Irenaeus, Augustine, Justin Martyr, etc.--was fidelity to the Scriptures.
That's why you see in the article, "Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors."
I mean, if you don't think erroneous interpretations are possible, or that they just don't matter and the hierarchy just had a bug up its ass--just look at the situation today. People who don't know anything, just pick up a Bible and read something (say, one of Isaiah's visions, for example), and they think, "shit, this's here's crazier than all git-out!"
So "Dominici Gregis" took the sporatic regional restrictions on Scripture ownership/translation/reading and put the authority in the Bishops' hands.
Upon reflection, I think it's really sad that such a powerful regulation was in place universally for a full 250 years. The fortress mentality of the Church during and after the Reformation did a lot of damage to theology, and we still feel the effects of it today. But at the same time, even in the thick of those centuries, Catholic spiritual life wasn't dead, nor did Catholic belief change significantly even from the first 1200 years, when vernacular translations were the norm and popular scripture reading was encouraged."
If God knows what we will do, then we cannot do differently. Belief in God is incompatible with free will!
"Not to mention the equivocation of the word "can". It has two very distinct meanings--either it describes someone's ability according to their circumstances; or else it's used as a prediction of what they "will" do.
There's a huge logical snafu when people try to collapse "will" and "will not" with "can" or "cannot". Why? Because predicate logic, by itself, does not have time variables--statements about the future do not fit into predicate logic without modification. Such exercises in logic are not valid without the right variables.
I never got beyond predicate logic in my studies, so I can't reconstruct the dillema according to proper formula.
There's also the point that such arguments always fallaciously treat God as merely one actor among others within the world. It ignores centuries of philosophy which has consistently held that God, as first principle, is prior to time, space, dimension, whatever. Thus, the orthodox doctrine, that God is perfectly free, is impossible to refute by references to 'created' worldly principles like time and knowledge.
I anticipate someone will say, "that's a circular argument". I don't deny it. But circular arguments are not wrong--they only contain no information; they are tautologies. But we should look at this as Anselm did: any anti-theist argument that detracts from God's perfection is only arguing against a demiurge, which itself is not God, being that one can always think of that-which-is-more-perfect than an imperfect being.
So to the accusation of "circularity," the theist returns the counter-accusation of "equivocation!"
One last point is that God is not confined nor defined by the classical descriptions of "omniscient", "omnipotent", "omnipresent", and "omnibenevolent". These are more poetic than scientific; if they are treated as exhaustive, they become prisons rather than praises. Moreover, the perfections of God are not seperate nor truly distinct. God is perfect simplicity (and even that doesn't pass muster as a definiton).
It's an important element of monotheistic faiths in general that God is unspeakable, indescribable, inexhaustible mystery. In an equivocal sense, God is unknowable. I say "equivocal" because, from the believers viewpoint, God is self-revealing; i.e. we know nothing of God except that which he has desired to show us, via creation, via revelation, via reason, and for Christians, via his Son."
On whether the medieval Church conspired to keep people ignorant of science, vis-a-vis Galileo...
"This was not about science or power, but the earnestly held belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. You can't be a dastardly conspirator if you hold the same beliefs that you have been comissioned to teach the whole world."
"On one hand, the story is irrelevant from a strictly Christian perspective; if the Gospel is true, then to heck with whatever correlates with belief in it. Nobody ever found faith by examining which religion decreased murder rates or increased the nation's GDP.
On the other hand, this sort of schlock shouldn't be simply ignored. Bad for evangelizing all you agnostic types. :) It couldn't possibly be scientific in the strict sense of the word, because you would need a scientific definition of "religion," which either doesn't exist, or else it corresponds so little to the complex reality that it has no meaning.
Here's the crux: Psychology and sociology are sciences only insofar as they measure predictable human behavior. Yet Christianity, in all of its tradition, demands growing in freedom through the rule of reason over the passions--the things that make humanity most predictable and ridiculous. Moreover, this reason (unlike rationalistic 19th century 'reason') is centered and organized by an extra-worldly revelation from an Ultimate Ungraspable Beyond--placing the Christian behavior even further outside the scope of science. If the "scientist of Christianity" presupposed a closed natural system, in principle fully explanable by finite laws (as he should), he would be limited to operating with a Durkheimian parody of Christianity--but not Christianity itself.
If there were actually a real correlation between lived Christian faith and violent crime, vs. 'peaceful' Western irreligion, I would attribute it to that Christians are actually struggling against the division between good and evil that runs in their hearts--and this is a violent struggle. If the agnostics are peaceful and passive, one may just as freely see it as a "going quietly into the night" of a dying world of temporary pleasures, rather than the success of a secularized Ghandi-esque ethic of peace."
Blast from the past - Oct. 9th, 2004
Why were people forbidden from reading the Bible in the 16th century?
"Here's the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Scripture--if you go to "VI. ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE VERNACULAR", you'll see a concise history of the issue.
The overriding concern of every single decree that limited private ownership or vernacular translation of the Bible was that of erroneous interpretations. This would have been especially true after Protestantism asserted that individuals could interpret Scripture without error through the Holy Spirit, even apart from the Church, contrary to the early Fathers, even contrary to the people interpreting scriptures around them. (Incidentally, wasn't part of Joseph Smith's first prayer an expression of disgust with the sheer number of Christian churches?)
Now I understand that the LDS and some forms of Protestantism believe that mainstream Christianity went to shit almost the moment the last of the Twelve apostles died--so, there's no way I'm going to be able to address that point here. But for the Catholic Church, fidelity to the Fathers, like Irenaeus, Augustine, Justin Martyr, etc.--was fidelity to the Scriptures.
That's why you see in the article, "Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors."
I mean, if you don't think erroneous interpretations are possible, or that they just don't matter and the hierarchy just had a bug up its ass--just look at the situation today. People who don't know anything, just pick up a Bible and read something (say, one of Isaiah's visions, for example), and they think, "shit, this's here's crazier than all git-out!"
So "Dominici Gregis" took the sporatic regional restrictions on Scripture ownership/translation/reading and put the authority in the Bishops' hands.
Upon reflection, I think it's really sad that such a powerful regulation was in place universally for a full 250 years. The fortress mentality of the Church during and after the Reformation did a lot of damage to theology, and we still feel the effects of it today. But at the same time, even in the thick of those centuries, Catholic spiritual life wasn't dead, nor did Catholic belief change significantly even from the first 1200 years, when vernacular translations were the norm and popular scripture reading was encouraged."
If God knows what we will do, then we cannot do differently. Belief in God is incompatible with free will!
"Not to mention the equivocation of the word "can". It has two very distinct meanings--either it describes someone's ability according to their circumstances; or else it's used as a prediction of what they "will" do.
There's a huge logical snafu when people try to collapse "will" and "will not" with "can" or "cannot". Why? Because predicate logic, by itself, does not have time variables--statements about the future do not fit into predicate logic without modification. Such exercises in logic are not valid without the right variables.
I never got beyond predicate logic in my studies, so I can't reconstruct the dillema according to proper formula.
There's also the point that such arguments always fallaciously treat God as merely one actor among others within the world. It ignores centuries of philosophy which has consistently held that God, as first principle, is prior to time, space, dimension, whatever. Thus, the orthodox doctrine, that God is perfectly free, is impossible to refute by references to 'created' worldly principles like time and knowledge.
I anticipate someone will say, "that's a circular argument". I don't deny it. But circular arguments are not wrong--they only contain no information; they are tautologies. But we should look at this as Anselm did: any anti-theist argument that detracts from God's perfection is only arguing against a demiurge, which itself is not God, being that one can always think of that-which-is-more-perfect than an imperfect being.
So to the accusation of "circularity," the theist returns the counter-accusation of "equivocation!"
One last point is that God is not confined nor defined by the classical descriptions of "omniscient", "omnipotent", "omnipresent", and "omnibenevolent". These are more poetic than scientific; if they are treated as exhaustive, they become prisons rather than praises. Moreover, the perfections of God are not seperate nor truly distinct. God is perfect simplicity (and even that doesn't pass muster as a definiton).
It's an important element of monotheistic faiths in general that God is unspeakable, indescribable, inexhaustible mystery. In an equivocal sense, God is unknowable. I say "equivocal" because, from the believers viewpoint, God is self-revealing; i.e. we know nothing of God except that which he has desired to show us, via creation, via revelation, via reason, and for Christians, via his Son."
On whether the medieval Church conspired to keep people ignorant of science, vis-a-vis Galileo...
"This was not about science or power, but the earnestly held belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. You can't be a dastardly conspirator if you hold the same beliefs that you have been comissioned to teach the whole world."
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Geeking out on a Saturday
Ah, Saturday, how do I love thee. Sadly, it's yet another day I told myself I would spend studying, and another day I did absolutely none at all. Motivation? None. Am I depressed? Don't think so. I just have a flippant sort of disregard for learning. It's a big problem--I have exams and quizzes all over the place next week. I don't know how I'm going to prepare for them all tomorrow, especially if I goof off again.
Instead of working, I spent almost all of my time networking my pocket pc to the laptop. I can now gain exclusive access to select folders on my laptop's hard drive from any wireless access point on campus. That means that I can save typewritten documents to the shared folder right after class. On top of that, I no longer need to store any music or movie files on the pocket pc at all--having mounted my "music" and "movies" folders as network drives, I can stream them remotely.
If I had a portable access point I could plug in wherever I happen to be, I'd never have to go searching for wireless signals again. Hmmm...
I also learned how to ad-hoc connect the PPC to the laptop... and, usefully, how to ad-hoc connect any two computers, although I haven't tested it with any non-Windows XP PCs. That was something I tried to do over the summer with a friend's laptop, without success. It's actually not that difficult.
October 8th, 2004
More debate with the atheist...
Me: [Referring to the understanding bestowed by faith] "Yeah, well, sometimes you have to speak a language for a while before you can understand its poetry."
Atheist: "That metaphor... is completely inapplicable."
Me: "It works more than you know. Like individual languages, or, for example, a piece of music, faith has an internal 'logic' or consistency. This is not to be confused with the logic of "modus ponens" and such; within Catholicism it's given the name "sensus fidelium" ('sense of the faithful')--John Henry Newman called it the 'illative sense'.
You'll surprise me if you don't simply scoff and jeer, "It all just means you're brainwashed and will believe anything!"
Languages are not wholly independent, but neither are they wholly accessible to each other. Expressions, ideas, distinctions, abstractions in some or one language may never be adequately translated into another; the process of learning the meaning of another language's word is deeply involved. Take Heidegger's "Dasein" for example. Well, ok, it means "Man." But it also means "Being." But to know it has Heidegger knows it, you have to trace his steps. Sometimes, it's not enough to trace the steps of the individual who coined the word; you have to trace the steps of an entire linguistic group. No shortcuts via dictionaries.
In a similar respect, non-Christians, while certainly open to some of the basic concepts of Christianity (enough that conversion has been desireable for a good number), should not expect to have the same access to understanding certain things as long-time, knowledgable Christians.
The significance of this is that only too many criticisms of Christianity are precisely of this nature. The French think that Dutch is an inferior language because it has no poetry; in fact the truth is that the French only think Dutch is inferior because its poetry isn't in French."
A year later...
Um, yeah... When I was writing this, I was kind of in the heat of battle, and now looking at it I see where it was sort of shallow. Oh woe are we Christians, so misunderstood. Of course, I couldn't say everything I wanted to say, given that the audience of the Megatokyo forums isn't going to be receptive to the notion of faith as a sense. For me at the time, I had no interest in convincing anyone that they were missing out on ultimate truth--rather, I just wanted my opponents to speak less infallibilistically about Christianity.
I like the last line, though. Anything that pokes fun at the French deserves to be preserved in the archives.
Instead of working, I spent almost all of my time networking my pocket pc to the laptop. I can now gain exclusive access to select folders on my laptop's hard drive from any wireless access point on campus. That means that I can save typewritten documents to the shared folder right after class. On top of that, I no longer need to store any music or movie files on the pocket pc at all--having mounted my "music" and "movies" folders as network drives, I can stream them remotely.
If I had a portable access point I could plug in wherever I happen to be, I'd never have to go searching for wireless signals again. Hmmm...
I also learned how to ad-hoc connect the PPC to the laptop... and, usefully, how to ad-hoc connect any two computers, although I haven't tested it with any non-Windows XP PCs. That was something I tried to do over the summer with a friend's laptop, without success. It's actually not that difficult.
October 8th, 2004
More debate with the atheist...
Me: [Referring to the understanding bestowed by faith] "Yeah, well, sometimes you have to speak a language for a while before you can understand its poetry."
Atheist: "That metaphor... is completely inapplicable."
Me: "It works more than you know. Like individual languages, or, for example, a piece of music, faith has an internal 'logic' or consistency. This is not to be confused with the logic of "modus ponens" and such; within Catholicism it's given the name "sensus fidelium" ('sense of the faithful')--John Henry Newman called it the 'illative sense'.
You'll surprise me if you don't simply scoff and jeer, "It all just means you're brainwashed and will believe anything!"
Languages are not wholly independent, but neither are they wholly accessible to each other. Expressions, ideas, distinctions, abstractions in some or one language may never be adequately translated into another; the process of learning the meaning of another language's word is deeply involved. Take Heidegger's "Dasein" for example. Well, ok, it means "Man." But it also means "Being." But to know it has Heidegger knows it, you have to trace his steps. Sometimes, it's not enough to trace the steps of the individual who coined the word; you have to trace the steps of an entire linguistic group. No shortcuts via dictionaries.
In a similar respect, non-Christians, while certainly open to some of the basic concepts of Christianity (enough that conversion has been desireable for a good number), should not expect to have the same access to understanding certain things as long-time, knowledgable Christians.
The significance of this is that only too many criticisms of Christianity are precisely of this nature. The French think that Dutch is an inferior language because it has no poetry; in fact the truth is that the French only think Dutch is inferior because its poetry isn't in French."
A year later...
Um, yeah... When I was writing this, I was kind of in the heat of battle, and now looking at it I see where it was sort of shallow. Oh woe are we Christians, so misunderstood. Of course, I couldn't say everything I wanted to say, given that the audience of the Megatokyo forums isn't going to be receptive to the notion of faith as a sense. For me at the time, I had no interest in convincing anyone that they were missing out on ultimate truth--rather, I just wanted my opponents to speak less infallibilistically about Christianity.
I like the last line, though. Anything that pokes fun at the French deserves to be preserved in the archives.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Not Noteworthy: The Blog That Gives You No Excuse For Wasting Your Time
Welcome to Not Noteworthy, the blog and 'Net posting respository of Jeff Zimmerman. What kind of repository, you ask? Well, years of being a Net addict haven't helped me develop social skills, but they have added pages and pages of my developing philosophical and theological thought to various diverse corners of the Internet.
Thus, not only will you see my up to date thinking here; every day, I will dump whatever essay, worth-while posts, and thoughts I have sprinkled throughout the Internet in years past. Yay--a veritable treasure vault of irrelevance!
October 7th, 2004
In a debate with an atheist...
Atheist: "...your belief in [Christianity] allows you to accept the double talk and imprecision that makes it seem to work on the surface."
Me: "Christianity involves numerous paradoxes, but these are not "double-talk". When you're deep into the tradition, this becomes evident in a way that outsiders won't understand (and will continue to laugh about while at the same time refusing to study). Yes, Christianity is about freedom, but this freedom is understood as inseperable from our social being which requires us to choose good rather than evil. That's a paradox. Yes, God seeks the salvation of the whole human race, but the gift of our freedom means that many will choose otherwise. That's a paradox.
Paradox is a sign of the authenticity of the Christian faith, not its failures. Why? Because the human person is a creature of paradox. Christianity is deeply humanistic for taking seriously the complex nature of our inner lives. To disparage Christianity because of certain tensions, is to demand an essentially anti-human univocal reality."
In a thread titled, "What Would You Die For?"
"Why are you people so damn conservative? I mean, police officers have to risk their lives all the time for people they don't know and probably don't even like. Are the only lives that are valuable the ones that give you comfort and the faces that you recognize?
If you saw a stranger whose life you could save at the expense of your own, do you mean to tell me that you would actually choose not to do so? I mean, hey, I know in most situations people get scared or don't think fast enough or whatever. But now, comfortably reading the forum posts, are you guys actually serious that you would let someone die (who didn't need to), because of the loss (or even the risk) of your own person?" (Sadly, the answer was yes, in most cases).
Thus, not only will you see my up to date thinking here; every day, I will dump whatever essay, worth-while posts, and thoughts I have sprinkled throughout the Internet in years past. Yay--a veritable treasure vault of irrelevance!
October 7th, 2004
In a debate with an atheist...
Atheist: "...your belief in [Christianity] allows you to accept the double talk and imprecision that makes it seem to work on the surface."
Me: "Christianity involves numerous paradoxes, but these are not "double-talk". When you're deep into the tradition, this becomes evident in a way that outsiders won't understand (and will continue to laugh about while at the same time refusing to study). Yes, Christianity is about freedom, but this freedom is understood as inseperable from our social being which requires us to choose good rather than evil. That's a paradox. Yes, God seeks the salvation of the whole human race, but the gift of our freedom means that many will choose otherwise. That's a paradox.
Paradox is a sign of the authenticity of the Christian faith, not its failures. Why? Because the human person is a creature of paradox. Christianity is deeply humanistic for taking seriously the complex nature of our inner lives. To disparage Christianity because of certain tensions, is to demand an essentially anti-human univocal reality."
In a thread titled, "What Would You Die For?"
"Why are you people so damn conservative? I mean, police officers have to risk their lives all the time for people they don't know and probably don't even like. Are the only lives that are valuable the ones that give you comfort and the faces that you recognize?
If you saw a stranger whose life you could save at the expense of your own, do you mean to tell me that you would actually choose not to do so? I mean, hey, I know in most situations people get scared or don't think fast enough or whatever. But now, comfortably reading the forum posts, are you guys actually serious that you would let someone die (who didn't need to), because of the loss (or even the risk) of your own person?" (Sadly, the answer was yes, in most cases).
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