Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Skip]

You seem to say, in so many words, 'there is no redeeming features'.

I didn't say that. Michelangelo, Bach and the pretty cathedrals - maybe even the Gutenberg Bible. And, as I mentioned, an education and a written language common to all of Europe.
What i said was, i see no reason why that great art, literature, architecture and science could not have happened without Christian domination. It might, in fact, have happened a lot sooner, since the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians had laid such excellent foundations - which were effectively "bombed back to the stone age" by HRC and its anointed feudal kings. But then again, without the Roman conquest, those pagan warlords might have remained primitive even longer. Or, if Rome hadn't been converted, the empire might have fallen apart sooner and the Mongols or somebody might have overrun all of the continent.....
There are any number of alternative histories: not necessarily better; not necessarily worse.

there exists and there moves a 'general attack' against some part of the core that makes up the Western Canon.

That, too was bound to happen. Ideas are proposed, debated, embraced, imposed, questioned, attacked, hijacked, defended, rejected, corrupted, amended, replaced, distorted, discarded, resurrected...
It's an idea. Or rather, a cluster of related ideas. It - or parts of it - will survive as long as it/they adapt/s to the needs of a large enough population.

Civilizations also rise and fall. I see no exceptional merit in this one that would inspire me to keep it on life-support. I think it may already be past its prime, and I have no problem letting it be supplanted by the next thing. (In fact, I have a very faint, barely flickering hope for a global civilization that bases its authority on consensus rather than conquest.) The Western Canon, having held such enormous sway during a technological boom period, can't be erased from history: will inevitably be a formative aspect of the next phase in human civilization.
You can't lose it.

Though it is true that other cultures had engineering skill and other skills no one of them stumbled into this radical methodology known as 'experimental science'.

All science has always been experimental - long before it could be called theoretical. Codification of a system doesn't create the system; it merely describes the system that already exists. There was a confluence of minds, materials and opportunities in 16th century Europe that resulted in heavenly and hellish inventions. Palm-pilot and napalm; MRI and ICBM. Maybe it couldn't have happened anywhere else, under any other circumstances. Maybe it shouldn't have happened at all. Maybe it was inevitable and must have happened somewhere, sometime.
I don't know.

I appreciate the benefits. I fully appreciate having lived most of my life in a privileged bubble, better off than 90% of the world's human population. And I regret that this prosperity, this liberty and progress were bought with the suffering of that 90%. I didn't have any control of the process. But I won't idealize it.

Kindness, respect, co-operation and creativity have always existed in humans, just as cruelty, power-lust, greed and stupidity have always existed. If you put all the wise men of all the different civilizations in a room, they'd soon settle down to amicable games of Chess and Go and Mahjong: they always had the same idea: be sensible and polite.

Social organization is a constant struggle among needs, wants, interests and proclivities. Cultures express this struggle; rulers take advantage of it; shamans manipulate it. I really don't see the Euro-Christian version as superior... except in that it produced wonderful, incomparable us.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Thinking...

[Skip]

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

[Skip]

I've been thinking a bit more, too. It seems to me there may be a distinct thread in Western Canon (if i'm understanding that concept correctly) that runs through all of our connected philosophies and goes back to the Tigris-Euphrates civilizations.
That idea would be the primacy of the individual. Personal responsibility, personal culpability, personal liberty, personal dignity, personal relationship with a god; personal, unique identity and soul. The worth of the individual. I don't know whether it's really so different from the Eastern perception, but i do see it reflected in every political idea from Ur to classical Greece to revolutionary France to the American colonies and even to Marx.

The religious component - or rather, its application - has varied greatly among European nations. Perhaps we can dispense with power-obsessed RC; perhaps we can bypass US fundamentalist bullying, and move toward a modern Nordic attitude to the individual in society.

But it will still need - and very soon! - to reach eastward, palm up.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I don’t consider the early animists to have been superstitious. Rather, I think they lived in a world that was very much more alive than ours. Without means of gathering scientific data, it’s perfectly logical to assume that other species, trees, grass, water, clouds and wind have a consciousness like our own: they move; they change; they appear purposeful. In fact, it’s taken science a long time to overcome the religious prejudice against recognizing the kinship between humans and other animals, which primitive people (and modern dog-owners) always recognized.

The conversation or the task that I broached here [Christian apology by a non-Christian] is, I think, maddeningly complex and labyrinthian because it deals so intimately with ourselves, the people that we are, the culture and society we are products of.

There are culture and value-wars on-going right now in which people do battle to 'enforce' their particular view of these questions, and anyone with some experience on Internet forums comes across a seemingly unlimited number of different personalities spouting their various theories about ... well, about everything! Honestly I think that most of it is valueless, just junk. I read somewhere that the Internet is both a positive medium because it allows for any and all people to meet on a plane of communication, but also decidedly negative because so much of it [these opinions and ideas] are 'mediocre'. Anyone with a few spare moments and a connection, and that peculiar drive to make some Statement, can effectively opine on anything under the sun. And of course they do just that. And here I am too of course.

And while I suppose in some corner of myself I appreciate the notion of democratic opinion-sharing, in truth I am aware that I hold to very aristocratic (in the original sense) notions especially when it comes to higher learning. There are people who have spent their whole lives in study---for example of the origins of Christianity, or the value of the so-called Western Canon and knowledge-system---who seem to me qualified to offer opinions that have weight, or in any case they have weight for me and convince me. But then even among those qualified there is not universal agreement and there is also prejudice and self-reference.

In my case I am aware that I have a somewhat pre-defined position (stated earlier in other posts) and also that I have a strong feeling that the 'core doctrines of Judeo-Chritianity' are uniquely valuable though hopelessly interwoven with fantasy, mythology, and a special form of 'lying' which is mankind's most universal trait (!). Meaning special, worthy of understanding and preservation, and also 'fundamental to ourselves' in the sense of in the formation of our Self. So, I seek out platforms where I encounter opposition and then try to build a case. Who am I attempting to prove this to? I have never been unaware that I do it for my own purposes. It has indeed consumed me, or perhaps inspired and engaged me is a better way to state it. But the deeper I go into the more complex and difficult the whole thing becomes. There comes a point where one's knowledge increases, and where one has a certain advantage if only in a general over-all understanding, which represents a stark division where communication with a 'believer' is not possible. That is certainly so of a fundamentalist believer and fundamentalism in this sense is a 'disease of thinking' for some huge part of Internet culture. We know that fundamentalism functions in the believing Christian community, and we know that this fundamentalism has percolated into thinking processes unconnected with religious fundamentalism, and knowing this (I think) we can take it as given that most people use fundamentalistic tools in the organization of their ideas about life. Is this so? Or am I exaggerating? I really think it is so. I have spent something like 10 years writing in various places and encounter all sorts of forms of 'fundamentalism' and in unexpected places. But if that is true how would one go about defining non-fundamentalistic thinking? What is it? The reason I say this is because, but I have not worked out the 'proofs', there is a current of so-called 'atheistic' thinking that has many fundamentalist tones. And this camp seeks to go to battle with the Religious Camp and utterly wipe it out, like the Israelites wiping out Canaanite idolatry, which is of course quite fitting to a fundamental battle!

This is another level of preamble. I hope it is not too boring.

But responding to what you wrote above I am forced to ask: Isn't what we are really concerned about, ultimately, and isn't man's delirium in these specific senses, what causes us concern when we speak of 'superstition'? In this sense isn't the atheist's argument against the monolith of Christianity an attack against irrational superstitiousness? And is it not in this sense justified? How could we then defend one level of 'superstition' ('animism') when condemnation of all of them and any of them may be the 'road of truth'?

On another level, what we refer to as 'Christianity' is, if it is anything, a huge pastiche of diverse and antique modes of viewing Reality precisely of a non-scientific age. There is no element in it that cannot be subject to our modern 'acids'. But as you seem to say, if this is true, then we are dealing specifically just with modes of description of reality. And these are always in flux. And even the lens of view we now possess and which we imagine is one allowing 'accurate view of reality', is just one more level of essentially the same intentionality*. To define the world in some way so that we can operate in it sensible, intelligently, or 'to our advantage'.

I would focus on the question of 'advantage'. Even an imagined projection that is---to us---'untrue' may be very advantageous to individuals. It is I suppose a Nietzschean question but can we live without some level of 'lie' and self-deception about the true nature of the reality we live in? Or, with another inflection, can we ever really know in what Reality we exist and have being?
___________________

*Because perception involves intention, will and choice.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I question what constitutes ‘maturity’ in a belief system. Codification of laws? Coherent plot-line? Organization of ritual? Child sacrifice replaced by goat?

I can think of numbers of examples. I might suggest that aspects of Gnostic theology are 'mature' versions of the naive 'myths' of Judaism and Christianity, even though---to us perhaps---the Gnostic interpretation would appear 'immature'.

I think it possible to contradict your view that there could be no Christianity if the foundation were undermined, for in reality this is almost exactly what has or is happening. Take for example a quote from Rudolf Bultmann:

• "It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work". (Rudolf Bultmann)

When one considers the degree to which people, and people in the gospel era, are capable of 'mystifying' themselves, and when you consider the effort it takes for one to demystify oneself and actually see things without a veil of delirium (my term), it is not hard to conceive of immature and mature systems-of-belief.

If we do not at some level accept the idea of 'maturity' in every and all fields of human activity, what purpose is there really to any work of improvement? There has to be some notion that such an improvement is possible for us.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Or [that] drinking the symbolic blood of God’s son is so different from cutting the heart out of an Inca warrior?

To be a little more accurate and 'intellectually just', you'd have to include the notion of a God who becomes manifest in a triune manner and who, as a gesture to man and as God Absolute, offers to man the means of redemption through a group of operative symbols.

The most notorious examples of human sacrifice in the Americas are Aztec human sacrifices and, at least in my mind, it would be hard to equate them. Though at the base there is indeed the notion of sacrifice. Still with the right application of will it could be done...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I don’t know what an exegete is, but he won’t be welcome in Rome or Mississippi.

To be more accurate, Roman Catholic theological work has made enormous progress and in its sophisticated forms cannot be describes as mere fundamentalism. It surely has its doctrinal base but as I have understood it, it is more a very sophisticated conversation at a quite high level with various belief-systems which, in the best cases, it does not demean but seeks to understand. And Catholic theology at its best, even if it is based in fables and emerges from a fabulous fog, is very practical and quite sane.

It is true that even when there are radical strains of ideas put forward at the fringes by some Catholic thinkers that it has to be then 'cleared' by Roman headquarters, and some of unmovables we might not like or accept (contraception, abortion, euthanasia, etc.), yet still it is sophisticated, higher-level thinking.

Now Mississippi. Don't get me going on Mississippi...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

The prelates have never cared about fact or tenability. They themselves didn’t need to believe whatever propaganda they used to control the masses. And, since the objective is still control and power, logical argument will have no effect on it.

It simply is untenable to retrofit any of our modern views and tools of analysis to the pre-scientific past. 'They' most certainly cared about facts as they had them available to them. And to be fair many of them really and truly believed they were doing good by enforcing their understanding, whatever it might have been (just as any of us now do).

By not appreciating the notion of 'good faith' (in any of these men who turned their beliefs and visions of reality into systems of action in the world), you are not actually seeing them either fairly or accurately. It is probably more accurate to describe these early men as 'doing the best they could with what they had' on one hand, and also working against others who, in their view, dod not have access to all the information or the right information. I also see your accusation of 'control of the masses' as a sort of Marxian projection. Any culture is a system of channeling, or 'controlling', the human beings who are subject to it. Any civil system is such a 'control-system', and the better ones are those we acquiesce to because we too share the basic predicates of those who rule or administer the system.

[Skip]

But responding to what you wrote above I am forced to ask: Isn't what we are really concerned about, ultimately, and isn't man's delirium in these specific senses, what causes us concern when we speak of 'superstition'?

Not me, because I don't understand that sentence and because I'm not concerned about superstition.

In this sense isn't the atheist's argument against the monolith of Christianity an attack against irrational superstitiousness?

I've heard such arguments, yes, often. I don't make them myself. My problem with Christianity is not the belief-system (Though, obviously, it has unsavoury aspects, they're no worse than other belief-systems - they all have nasty bits to satisfy the nasty side of human nature.) but the political application. Not what they think, but what they do.

And is it not in this sense justified?

Sure, and the persons who make the arguments justify themselves very well; they don't need my help.

How could we then defend one level of 'superstition' ('animism') when condemnation of all of them and any of them may be the 'road of truth'?

I defend what I think works or has worked for a society. In the case of animistic belief systems of early hominids, it's not a question of defense or attack; merely an observation of the different perception of our lifestyle and theirs. I do not condemn anyone's description of their inner world, nor their relationship to the universe, nor their method of 'finding flow'. I only condemn destructive behaviour.
And i have little interest in The Truth or any exclusive truth about unverifiable subject matter.

On another level, what we refer to as 'Christianity' is, if it is anything, a huge pastiche of diverse and antique modes of viewing Reality precisely of a non-scientific age. There is no element in it that cannot be subject to our modern 'acids'. But as you seem to say, if this is true, then we are dealing specifically just with modes of description of reality.

I don't think the hierarchical, Big Book religions are an attempt to describe reality. I think the mythologies of related settled and herding peoples was incorporated, over time, into the Hebrews' oral history of their own tribe and adopted as their own a deity of the (?)Sumerian pantheon. Over time they superimposed their own then-prevailing social organization onto the legends, adding events and characters along the way. Once they settled down, this accumulation of stories formed the basis of their written books. Up to this point, Judaism grow organically in the culture of its people.

Packaged for export - at least twice: by Paul, then the Council of Nicea - it became a made-up religion. It was was utterly divorced from anyone's perception of reality and turned into a political instrument, to displace the organic belief-systems and cultures of the empire's subject peoples. In order to give brand new Christianity a tradition (roots; authenticity) many of the Hebrew stories were incorporated into the Bible, but adapted, interpreted, refitted, and in some cases invented - to suit the RC leadership and its European patron kings.

And these are always in flux.

These are also constantly re-tailored by successive empires who continue to use it as a tool to dismantle conquered peoples' belief, identity, self-esteem, history and cohesion.

And even the lens of view we now possess and which we imagine is one allowing 'accurate view of reality', is just one more level of essentially the same intentionality*. To define the world in some way so that we can operate in it sensible, intelligently, or 'to our advantage'.

That is one motive, certainly, but it's never the triumphant motive.

I would focus on the question of 'advantage'. Even an imagined projection that is---to us---'untrue' may be very advantageous to individuals.

Who benefits?

It is I suppose a Nietzschean question but can we live without some level of 'lie' and self-deception about the true nature of the reality we live in?

"We" are not a single, simple entity with a single, simple requirement, capability and desire. Can mankind? I don't know, but have wished it would try a little harder.

Or, with another inflection, can we ever really know in what Reality we exist and have being?

Which - reality or Reality? Again, reality is multi-faceted and vast: each of us only needs to know a little portion of it at any one time. We move through the landscape of whatever reality we happen to inhabit and cope as best we can, from minute to minute. I suppose there are quite a few humans whose lives are so easy that they can invest effort into seeking an ultimate Reality. I consider that a harmless occupation - so long as it doesn't end up as the next blueprint for an ultimate world order.

think it possible to contradict your view that there could be no Christianity if the foundation were undermined, for in reality this is almost exactly what has or is happening.

Well, yes, at least to the negation of Jesus' teaching. Entire caravans laden with gold are gaining access to heaven these days. What I meant by foundation was the bare-bones central story: God is miffed. Man has no sacrifice that will mollify him. God provides something really precious to kill. Man kills the young god. All is forgiven.
(I think this is immature.)

By not appreciating the notion of 'good faith' (in any of these men who turned their beliefs and visions of reality into systems of action in the world), you are not actually seeing them either fairly or accurately.

Maybe so. I don't much care for how their part of the world worked under their rule. And it's not true that that was the best they had: they suppressed a good deal of available knowledge. Still, I allow that some of them meant well.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Why do you think this particular unfolding of history was better than the alternatives would have been?

Though I am capable of imagining scenarios where an historical player is suddenly absented from the picture, I don't know if it more than a futile exercise. But still I do share your view at least in some areas as I am sure do many. What happened, happened, and the question is What are its redeeming features? What are we to conclude from it all?

But it does also open up the question in a different way, say with something we'd both recognize as utterly indispensable: the explosion in every possible area of Classical Greek culture. If it were possible to imagine this NOT occurring, as not having occurred, where would we be then? If we can imagine all good things happening in the absence of Roman Catholic civilization-building, would we still be able to see good things happening in the absence of Greek culture and progress? It was a very rare and perhaps even an *impossible* event. Something that had never occurred and might not have occurred. In the absence of it where would we be now? It is a mind-bending idea.

I have come to see things---of is it that I am choosing to see things?---about our own culture as being very special, very unique, and very uncommon. I do not have the certainty to say that without any specific element what did evolve in our systems would have in any case evolved. And I am also uncertain if it would have happened in other cultural and social contexts. In fact, it didn't.

Certain things did happen, though, and certain elements fed other elements, and *poof*, here we are. I have been reading material of late that suggest very strongly that 'we' are losing the common sense to know how to value our own structures, and the sacrifices made to gain knowledge. It is a kind of cultural chauvinism, yes. But one that makes a great deal of sense.

[Skip]

Or [that] drinking the symbolic blood of God’s son is so different from cutting the heart out of an Inca warrior?

To be a little more accurate and 'intellectually just', you'd have to include the notion of a God who becomes manifest in a triune manner and who, as a gesture to man and as God Absolute, offers to man the means of redemption through a group of operative symbols.

Redemption from what? The other mumbo-jumbo - "manifest" "triune" - does nothing for me intellectual justice-wise. Yes, the symbolic version is definitely more civilized than actually doing it every spring.

The most notorious examples of human sacrifice in the Americas are Aztec human sacrifices and, at least in my mind, it would be hard to equate them.

Yet, the Inquisition gave them a pretty good contest - and not to bring on life-sustaining rains; just to stop anyone saying the earth revolves around the sun.

[Skip]

would we still be able to see good things happening in the absence of Greek culture and progress?

Yes. The Persians would have had to come up with the same ideas, or someone else.
Aside from that, I can imagine alternate lines of development that didn't rely on engineering.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Redemption from what? The other mumbo-jumbo---"manifest" "triune"---does nothing for me intellectual justice-wise.

But this is an important point. The people who *do* believe that, say for example St Paul or any number of different believers, and even those who are not fundamentalist believers, are operating in good faith in relation to their available knowledge-base, and they both understand it and believe it. It functions.

Have you ever looked into the notion of 'episteme'?

What you are doing, it seems to me, is a sort of knowledge-revisionism. You are using a modern base of knowledge-assumptions, which likely have no concern with or knowledge of issues of transcendence, or faith, or theology, and are judging backwards as it were. You are certainly entitled to do this, but I suggest that one can only understand how a belief functions if one allows oneself to operate within it, at some level.

If all questions are 'reduced' to Skip's level of understanding (of all possible questions), I am not sure if Skip is doing a service either to *knowledge', to this present conversation, and in some sense to himself. (I mean 'Skip' as 'modern man'.)

The Persians would have had to come up with the same ideas, or someone else.

Is it not possible that some ideas have come into our world through unique and unrepeatable events? They say that human intelligence, the arising of creatures like us in historical biology is a singular and very rare event. Life, 'the world', perhaps even the universe, has no need whatever for life-forms like us. Our world existed for billions of years without anything like us. Might not knowledge of certain sorts be similarly rare?

I do not think that high ideas, the kind of ideas that really transform possibility for man, would automatically come on the scene. And correspondingly I think that we could lose just about everything and never recover it. And when I say 'it' I mean our consciousness in the highest sense possible. Just as in a man's life great and rare things are given to him and he does not take advantage of them, and even forgets that they are there, that they exist, so can this happen on other, macro levels.

And in reality that idea is operative at the base of all I am attempting to write here. I have the feeling that in 'Christianity' there are rare and special ideas that must be held to, understood, valued. But to develop this idea is not easy.

[Skip]

But this is an important point. The people who *do* believe that, say for example St Paul

I'm not all that certain of his sincerity. From my reading of his [officially attributed] correspondence.

or any number of different believers,

I wonder how close to identical are these various understandings.

are operating in good faith in relation to their available knowledge-base,

Aquinas, probably. Falwell, probably not. Thomas a Beckett, almost certainly. Ratzinger, almost certainly not.

It functions.

To produce what?

Have you ever looked into the notion of 'episteme'?

Not until about two minutes ago. So far, stupefied and unenlightened.

What you are doing, it seems to me, is a sort of knowledge-revisionism. You are using a modern base of knowledge-assumptions, which likely have no concern with or knowledge of issues of transcendence, or faith, or theology,

It is a poor thing, but mine own.

and are judging backwards as it were.

Only by outcome. According to the available documentation of who did what when. Between the lines, I do some projecting and guessing. I cannot, with the very best of intentions and at the farthest stretch of my tolerance, imagine a man who believes that God knows all and judges according to a certain set of rules, acting so contrarily to those rules as many of the powerful kings and popes acted. I conclude that they did not really believe what they preached. I conclude the same of present-day USian fundamentalist leaders who preach love and enact hate.

You are certainly entitled to do this, but I suggest that one can only understand how a belief functions if one allows oneself to operate within it, at some level.

It's not a question of entitlement. I am incapable of believing what I find both implausible and repugnant.

If all questions are 'reduced' to Skip's level of understanding (of all possible questions),

Unfortunately, that is the only level on which I am competent to operate.

I am not sure if Skip is doing a service either to *knowledge', to this present conversation, and in some sense to himself. (I mean 'Skip' as 'modern man'.)

Thanks... I guess. But I must decline the honour of representing "modern man" - that poor punch-drunk entity!
If I cannot serve knowledge, knowledge will have to limp along without my help.

Is it not possible that some ideas have come into our world through unique and unrepeatable events?

It's possible; I just don't see it as necessary.

They say that human intelligence, the arising of creatures like us in historical biology is a singular and very rare event.

Who says this and how did they come to that conclusion? None of the planets we have so far seen are habitable, but there are so many more billions that we haven't seen and will never see, that it seems to me we have too small a sample from which to draw such a big conclusion. Maybe it only happened once in all the universe; maybe it's as common as quartz.

.... Might not knowledge of certain sorts be similarly rare?

It might, but I don't think so. I think intelligence - indeed, all life - seeks out what it needs. When survival requires a solution to a problem, a solution is found - invariably, because the species that didn't find a solution are no longer here. When advantage in competition requires a certain kind of idea, the idea occurs to somebody in a vital civilization - or it would be a defunct civilization.

I do not think that high ideas, the kind of ideas that really transform possibility for man, would automatically come on the scene.

I don't think ideas are high and low; I think they're written down or forgotten; practical or fanciful; fashionable or unpopular; timely or anachronistic; profitable or idealistic; elegant or crude... maybe even mauve or aqua. I don't think any of them transform the possibilities of man, which were in the DNA of a sexually attractive ape somewhere in Africa, 50 million years ago. The possibilities of a moment are limited by who is present and what their intentions and options are. Thought is not limited. We cannot know how many peasant boys and servant girls throughout history have had all the grand ideas and were slapped for trying to articulate one.

And correspondingly I think that we could lose just about everything and never recover it.

We can also all die. In fact, we will become extinct - hopefully not quite as soon as it increasingly looks as if we might.

I have the feeling that in 'Christianity' there are rare and special ideas that must be held to, understood, valued. But to develop this idea is not easy.

I can see that. And I hope you succeed.
To me, as a socialist, the saddest part is that the biblical Jesus (real or fictional; it doesn't matter) had much the same notion of how to live as I have, as some native tribes of North America had, as many communities of humans, both religious and atheistic, have had from the dawn of time to the present. The churches and their feudal and capitalist patrons have deliberately trashed that aspect of Christianity.