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How is it logical or rational to frame the summation of your argument in terms of a grossly generalized ad hominem attack?

I take it you've never heard of fundamentalism.

In that case you've contradicted what you said before: the study of irrational opinion is not the same thing as the study of nothing. And of course the study of "irrational opinion" can lead to conclusions. You can conclude that the irrational person certainly had this opinion.

Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, to assume that all the people studied in theology are or were irrational is itself a pretty irrational thing to say, and really little better than playground abuse. It puzzles me when people are unable to tell the difference between rightness and rationality (or, conversely, wrongness and irrationality). I think Aquinas was wrong, at least when it comes to theology. But I don't think he was irrational because of that - on the contrary, he was one of the most rational people who ever lived. I also think that Dawkins is right on a lot of matters. But I don't think he's rational, at least when it comes to philosophy and religion - on the contrary, he's a fundamentalist as extreme as any Bible-basher.

Doesn't matter to me who's doing the arguing. If the premise is based on unfounded notions, it's still irrational.

I take it you're referring to questions like the famous trolley car problem (it's going to kill five people, but you could change its direction and have it kill just one, so what do you do etc). I think you misunderstand the point of these "thought experiments". Of course they could never really happen, at least not with such limited possible outcomes. But the whole point of trying to see what you would do if they happened is to shed light on the moral values that guide you in the real world. For example, if you said that you would change the course of the trolley car to kill only one person, although that person would have lived had you done nothing, then that suggests that you think it of overriding importance to minimise loss of life even when that necessitates actively causing some loss of life in order to prevent a greater loss elsewhere. And that tells us something about how you think morality works.

No it doesn't for 2 reasons:

1) People will usually just say what they think is expected of them, for social reasons, and this is not necessarily the truth. Actions speak louder than words. I have found that people will do surprising things in the right circumstances.

2) The scenarios presented are so outlandish that they never happen in real life, so they don't actually simulate anything.

It's even clearer in the kind of "thought experiments" that philosophers of mind talk about. For example, we can imagine that someone has a cell in their brain replaced with a tiny artificial device that works in exactly the same way: it receives signals from the cells around it and sends out signals just as the original neuron would have done. Is that person still the same person they were before? Now imagine that, every day, another neuron gets replaced in the same way, until eventually there are no biological cells left in the brain and it is entirely artificial. It still functions in precisely the same way and the person has never felt any change. Are they still the same person? Are they human at all? Suppose that all the cells, when taken away and replaced, were reassembled somewhere else and you now had a functioning human brain in a jar. Would that brain be the original person? Has a new person come into being? Or what? All this is completely impossible, but that's not the point. The answers you give to these questions show how you think about matters such as personal identity and the nature of the mind.

This has nothing to do with theology.

I don't know what you mean by "outarguing illogical premises within their own sphere" - that's just a collection of words that don't mean much to me. However, once again, your assumption that the more religious someone is the less rational they are is quite unfounded. Presumably most people would agree that the archbishop of Canterbury is a particularly religious person; yet Rowan Williams is certainly not irrational. On the contrary, he's extremely learned and sensible.

What I mean is that it's pointless to argue stupidity with an idiot. As far as the archbishop is concerned, I really have no idea whether he's religious or not. As I said, people will often lie.
 
Going back to the topic, as I pointed out above, different parts of the Bible contradict each other, so no-one could consistently believe in the whole thing, even if they were the most extreme fundamentalist. I should point out that I have never studied the Bible very much anyway. I don't find it very interesting, especially the Old Testament.
How can you be a theologian of Christianity without studying the Bible?
 
How can you be a theologian of Christianity without studying the Bible?
I think it is plausible that a theologian with a limited knowledge of the bible can indeed be a theologian.Is there a rule saying that inorder to be a theologian that you must read and recite the bible fully?
 
Moderator Action: These threads are not meant to 'argue with' or 'attack' the person who is offering to answer questions. They are meant to be able to ask questions to try and gather more of an understanding of the viewpoint of someone else that may not otherwise be readily available.
 
To side step in a different direction.

What got you into theology?
 
I think it is plausible that a theologian with a limited knowledge of the bible can indeed be a theologian.Is there a rule saying that inorder to be a theologian that you must read and recite the bible fully?
You shouldn't have to memorize it, no. But if you expect to understand Christianity or it's traditions or theologians, you should be at least familiar with the Bible.
 
Theology to most people(of the present day) who are interested in some obscured esoteric and sacred realm the encompasses a particular worldly dimension are fools to believe that it have any significance for cultural and general life of our present day.

It is funny to me to see others firstly grasp the meaning of "theology" as literally the study of God,man,the world,salvation,and eschatology.This is a sickness of a person not seeing and grasping that theology of today as it once was in anitquity is merely Chrisian metaphysics.

Of course,then,the above indicated diffuculty becomes apparent since i just did a switcheroo of taking theology and replacing it for Christian metaphysics.The reason i do so is not in fact that i just want to for the sake of being subversive in your precious thread but to undermine theology as an art that have no relevencies of today as it once has been in the olden days of the beginning and the decline of scholasticism(probably during the time of the 12th century all the way to the secularization of most Universities in the Western world).

It still seems to me that you're confusing the two senses of "theologian" that I gave in the OP. On the assumption that there is no God, which I suppose is your assumption, then of course theology in the first sense is pointless or at least misguided. But that doesn't apply to theology in the second sense, which is simply the study of what theologians in the first sense have said, and (more widely) the study of church history in general. I don't see why the history of the church and the ideas of its thinkers should be any more pointless than studying any other kind of history.

CartesianFart said:
1.Theology

A concept by convention that its origin is derived by the tradition of the Greeks(theos-"God") but in time change of its meaning during the evolution of its method and content whithin the rise of Christendom after Constatine.A spiritual or religious attempt of "believers" to explicate their faith against the laities,later the so-called Mohammendans, and etc.

Indeed there were theologians of the Christian faith(whether it be Catholics,Arians,pre-Catholics,or other faiths that was later stamped out due to competion) before Constantine.I do however just want to state that during the time of Constantine and later that the pre-organized Christians got what they needed-that is,the right to regulate the masses by way of the Christian World-View for all citizens in the Romanized world and the adminstratorial authority to do so.What great place for the Vicar of Christ and clergys to call his home?-Rome that is.

After the Dark-Ages till probably the Carolingian renaissance,the reformation of the monastic orders and the church government give birth to the institution of education that gave the clergy and the lay aristocrats(under the guidance and regulation of the Eccuemunical Church) an open debate which in fact monopolized by Dogma and revelation instead of reason for inorder to incorporate the secular lay intellectuals into the church fold.-Which is the Ideal of Christendom run by the clergy beuracrats.

To understand "theology" especially during its intellectual golden age of the 12th century to age of Reformation(just a guess) and rise of Science;one must look at the competition of clergy and laities(Emperor/Kings vs. Pope/Ecclesiates princes) as an ideological battle on how to define the activities and purpose of theology of its day and age.

But who would deny any of this? All you're doing here is describing part of the history of theology. To do that, of course, you have to know some theology in a broad sense. In other words, in these paragraphs you're doing precisely what you said is pointless.

This is what is,i think, what confuse modern theologians when reading texts of medieval thinkers of long forgotten post.We just don't know fully on how to know and think as a Medieval intellectual or scholars and we defer its meaning of theology based on our conditioned modern-oriented sense of the world.Our essence of our day and age precede on how to know the medieval man essence on what theology is.

So...I must conclude that whenever an individual of present day claim to be an theologian or mastered in the degree in theology is a fine line of a joke and a nut.Especially the ones who study the Great such as Aquinas,Abelard,Ockham and many others.:lol:

So you're saying that hermeneutics is impossible? That there is no way we can hope to understand a text from long ago, and that even to attempt it is a waste of time? If that is so, why would it apply only to theological texts? If you can't hope to understand a medieval theologian there's no way you could understand an ancient philosopher. To put it another way, is there anything you say against the study of theology that wouldn't also apply to the study of classics?

Also, the only "greats" you mention are medieval. Do you think it is equally impossible to comprehend Schleiermacher, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, or Moltmann?

It is as they are validating themselves in secret before reading these texts with some extra-advance literary criticism of their day as better explanation of the meaning of theology and how people think days long forgotten.These teacher of theology(of what i've gathered in books i've read) or student of theology of antiquity such as the medieval age or before ,subvert the meaning of theology of the medieval man himself.Pure conjectural nonsense!

I think you need to give some examples of this sort of thing to show exactly what you mean, otherwise it's just vague generalisation.

2.Christian Metaphysics

Christianity had affected the activity of philosophy as in other aspect of human life.It is true that these Christianized medieval thinkers or later probably in most cases have read philosophical of antiquity as an essentially pagan phenomenon and refused(or just cautious)to allow the propriety of subjecting Christian dogma to philosophical scrutiny.-Which is deductive reasoning that in fact contrast the truths rested on revelation and traditions.

Again, I don't think this is particularly true. Of course some medieval theologians were rather suspicious of the use of philosophical techniques; for example, people such as Rupert of Deutz or, more famously, Bernard of Clairvaux when faced with Abelard. But I would dispute that this was true of "most cases". The idea that deductive reasoning would contrast with the truths resting on revelation would have been an extreme one, associated with Averroism.

Even if they called themselves theologian as what was understood(i am speculating) amongst their fellow contemporaries of their day and people who teach and study it today is still wrong to infer that the subject being contemplated is theological at all.It is an activity of a wrong label to dissassociate pagan metaphysics from Christian metaphysics.It is misleading that happen to be changed because of the very fact that the institution itself changed overtime.One have to look at the fact that there is a difference of law,custom,practice,system,administration policies,and etc. in relative time and place such as the Academy,Lyceum,monasteries,Univeristy of Naples after Frederick II,La Fleche(where Descartes have learned),Oxford(an example of many universities that was originally scholastic in its beginnings and later secularized and departmentalized),Harvard and all the way to present day such as M.I.T. to name a few.

Again, I'm not really clear on what you're arguing for here. Are you simply saying that theology is always done in a historical context, which influences it? If so, then what's so world-shattering about that? No-one would deny it.

Theology in what i make sense of it,is merely a branch of metaphysics with its own sub-branches (Thomism and Avorroists to name a few) and subject oriented doctrines.It is not a independant subject having the notion of a systematic subject categorized of being the study of God and the relations of God and the Universe.It is a basterization of a marriage of deductive reasoning from first principles and the problematic question of Ultimate realities into the study of Christian doctrines and matters of divinity which in fact divinity(God) is a word replacing the ideal of first principles and question of ulitimate reality into doctrines that of a christian one.

You're taking far too narrow a view of what theology is. It's no more just metaphysics than philosophy is. Theology also deals with ethics, history, liturgy, practice, all kinds of things. And there are many theologians today who think that theology needs to be purged of all metaphysics if it's going to make sense. But even if we are talking only about metaphysical theology, I still don't understand what your criticism is. You call it a "bastardisation" of Christian doctrine and deductive reasoning. But what on earth is wrong with that? Why shouldn't people apply deductive reasoning to Christian doctrine? Do the ancient Greek pagans have some kind of intellectual property rights over philosophical methods? Would you prefer the Christians not to have tried to think critically about what they believed?

I take it you've never heard of fundamentalism.

Of course I've heard of fundamentalism. But you didn't simply refer to irrational religious people - you claimed that the more religious people are, the more irrational they are. In other words, fundamentalists are the most religious people in existence. That is not evident at all, and in my opinion is in fact false. I'd say that Rowan Williams is far more authentically Christian than the average fundamentalist. If you think otherwise you must provide a definition of "being religious" and show why fundamentalists fit it better than anyone else.

Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Well, they are not the same thing, no matter what you think. To study X is obviously not the same thing as to study someone who studies X.

Doesn't matter to me who's doing the arguing. If the premise is based on unfounded notions, it's still irrational.

This is a very extreme thing to say and one that would undermine pretty much all thought and action. If by "unfounded notions" you mean beliefs that are not themselves rationally justified on the basis of other beliefs, then everyone must have some of them if they are to have beliefs at all. We rely upon "unfounded notions" all the time - for example, the belief that our senses are mostly reliable, or the belief that other people have minds like our own. These beliefs cannot be rationally justified. By your argument, that would make any activity which assumes them simply irrational. But then "irrational" would apply to absolutely everything and become meaningless. You certainly couldn't single out theologians for special finger-pointing on that score.


1) People will usually just say what they think is expected of them, for social reasons, and this is not necessarily the truth. Actions speak louder than words. I have found that people will do surprising things in the right circumstances.

In rational debate, where people are genuinely interested in establishing their views, they will say what they think.

2) The scenarios presented are so outlandish that they never happen in real life, so they don't actually simulate anything.

As I tried to explain at some length, whether they could happen in real life or not is neither here nor there. They are supposed to be extreme cases because they test your views without distracting or qualifying factors. That then sheds light on what your views are in normal cases too.

This has nothing to do with theology.

No, but you brought up thought experiments and I was trying to explain what the point of them is.

What I mean is that it's pointless to argue stupidity with an idiot. As far as the archbishop is concerned, I really have no idea whether he's religious or not. As I said, people will often lie.

If you have no idea how religious the archbishop is, then how can you claim that the more religious someone is, the more irrational they are? Wouldn't you have to conduct quite an extensive study of religious people (or irrational people) to be able to conclude that? And if you don't trust what people say in the first place, how could you conclude it even then? In which case, how can you be justified in making the assertion in the first place?

How can you be a theologian of Christianity without studying the Bible?

The Bible is only one element of theology. As I said, I specialised first in the church fathers and later in the seventeenth century. Now of course theologians in both periods talked about the Bible a bit, or at least quoted from it an awful lot, but you don't have to be an expert in the Bible to cope with that. Of course you would have to have a fairly basic working knowledge of it, but I think I do.

It puzzles me when people think that Christianity is just about the Bible. That's like saying that England is the Magna Carta.

To side step in a different direction.

What got you into theology?

When I was doing my A Levels I wanted to study philosophy at university, since I was sick of the subjects I was doing (it is unusual to study philosophy at school in Britain). You can't do philosophy by itself at Oxford and I wanted to apply there. So I thought that philosophy & theology was the most interesting combination, and that's what I eventually did. In the event I was better at philosophy than theology, but I still liked theology, and I haven't been able to make my mind up which one to do ever since, which will make it very hard for me to get a university post!
 
The notion of contra-causal free will really goes back to Platonism, I think. You can certainly find it in the Middle Platonists, who were writing in around the first and second centuries AD. They were typically engaged in polemics with the Stoics, who were determinists. The Platonists responded that if determinism were true then there would be no morality, since to perform a morally significant action demands the possibility of not doing it.

Can you explain the kind of determinism that the Stoics proclaimed, and maybe compare/contrast to the kind of determinism associated with Newtonian physics? Also, how did the Stoics' determinism imply the impossibility of not doing a specific action?
 
It still seems to me that you're confusing the two senses of "theologian" that I gave in the OP.
Didn't read it.

On the assumption that there is no God, which I suppose is your assumption, then of course theology in the first sense is pointless or at least misguided.
It is not my assumption since i've never even assumed that there is no God....:confused:but you are right,that it is your assumption and not mine ,of course you are not shy of telling me from the assumption that you just supposed that i was assuming.;)

But that doesn't apply to theology in the second sense, which is simply the study of what theologians in the first sense have said, and (more widely) the study of church history in general. I don't see why the history of the church and the ideas of its thinkers should be any more pointless than studying any other kind of history.
I find it in all narrative writing on the subject of history just plainly as what it is-a narrative of the author who have constructed it.

But who would deny any of this? All you're doing here is describing part of the history of theology. To do that, of course, you have to know some theology in a broad sense
Well,you are right.If one conduct on the investigation of the history of theology and write it down,prepare to write for alongg timmme.Of course it was incomplete.:)



I was in short,writing a brief overview on the conventional meaning of theology in a particular way.

In other words, in these paragraphs you're doing precisely what you said is pointless.
Well,the whole purpose is to put the meaning of theology in multi-array of points and then in turn later in convert its meaning into Christian metaphysics;which in fact i did a few paragraph later.Sorry that i was misleading you.I should of made my intention more fully transparent for you but i didnt foresee you taking it out of context.:sad:

So you're saying that hermeneutics is impossible? That there is no way we can hope to understand a text from long ago, and that even to attempt it is a waste of time? If that is so, why would it apply only to theological texts? If you can't hope to understand a medieval theologian there's no way you could understand an ancient philosopher. To put it another way, is there anything you say against the study of theology that wouldn't also apply to the study of classics?
I wouldn't say hermeneutics due to the fact that concept is not attractive to me but i have to concede your point that you brilliantly executed.-that is,yes,i believe that any attempt to understand authors (the medieval man)from a completely alien culture that is substantially different than ours is not possible.

Also, the only "greats" you mention are medieval. Do you think it is equally impossible to comprehend Schleiermacher, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, or Moltmann?
I was only using the example of my limited knowledge of authors before the Italian renaissance.Probably later(hopefully maybe from your enlighten endorsement) I will find the inspiration to learn these said authors that you mentioned.:)

I think you need to give some examples of this sort of thing to show exactly what you mean, otherwise it's just vague generalisation.
Ok.How about i introduce you a particular essay from Thomas Nagel "What is it like to be a bat" to demostrate in more better and sophisticated manner that i am trying to make:
Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications.-Thomas Nagel
So in conclusion of what Mr.Nagel is saying and what i am try to provide is a method on how we can know what a medieval man really is?-What is it like for a medieval man to be a medieval man,not what me or you to be what these authors are in days that are long forgotten?

link:http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html

Again, I don't think this is particularly true. Of course some medieval theologians were rather suspicious of the use of philosophical techniques; for example, people such as Rupert of Deutz or, more famously, Bernard of Clairvaux when faced with Abelard. But I would dispute that this was true of "most cases". The idea that deductive reasoning would contrast with the truths resting on revelation would have been an extreme one, associated with Averroism.
If i can image of myself being placed in the medieval world and happen to be fortunate to be a scholars amongst these great thinkers,i can imagine how attractive Avveroism can be to me.-of course i am only "imagining.":rolleyes:

Again, I'm not really clear on what you're arguing for here. Are you simply saying that theology is always done in a historical context, which influences it? If so, then what's so world-shattering about that? No-one would deny it.
I was just suggesting what i think of the role of institutions can do to individuals who inhabit in it(that of the medieval man all the way to our time).I guess it is sensible to you but sometimes i get the impression that most people in this very thread are blind to this.Good thing you got it or somewhat.

You're taking far too narrow a view of what theology is. It's no more just metaphysics than philosophy is.
I beg to differ.It is metaphysical,it is just that the language of its form that have been modified but it is still the same.

Theology also deals with ethics, history, liturgy, practice, all kinds of things. And there are many theologians today who think that theology needs to be purged of all metaphysics if it's going to make sense.
Interesting.Care to share on some of their points on how to do that?:scan:

But even if we are talking only about metaphysical theology, I still don't understand what your criticism is. You call it a "bastardisation" of Christian doctrine and deductive reasoning. But what on earth is wrong with that?
That it is silly to me.I can't help thinking of that.It is just what i instinctively feel that it is wrong all-together.

Why shouldn't people apply deductive reasoning to Christian doctrine? Do the ancient Greek pagans have some kind of intellectual property rights over philosophical methods?
They did started the practice,or do you beg to differ?

Would you prefer the Christians not to have tried to think critically about what they believed?
I can't expand on that supposition due to the fact that they already did it.
 
Didn't read it.
ALWAYS READ THE OP!

(Plot, I have not forgotten our debate, at some point I will make a more suitable venue where we can delve into this interesting mess)

Wild question:

Did any Islamic religious ideas ever diffuse into Christianity?
 
Can you explain the kind of determinism that the Stoics proclaimed, and maybe compare/contrast to the kind of determinism associated with Newtonian physics? Also, how did the Stoics' determinism imply the impossibility of not doing a specific action?

I don't know much about the Stoic understanding of determinism. As far as I know, it was not so different from the post-Newtonian one. That version was given its definitive version by Laplace, who said that if there were a being capable of knowing, in every detail, the state of the universe at a given time, then that being would be able to predict its state at every subsequent time. In other words, the state of the universe is always simply a function of its previous state (and the laws that determine how it moves from one to the other).

Now as far as I know the Stoics didn't produce a definition quite like that; but they did think that the future is "fixed", as it were, by the present and the past. Human actions are simply part of the causal network of the universe and cannot act upon it from outside, as it were. So we are fated to do what we do and we couldn't do otherwise. Someone used the image of a dog tied to a cart that is rolling downhill; the dog can run alongside the cart willingly, or it can try to resist and be dragged down; but that dog is going down the hill no matter what it does. So the lesson is to embrace your destiny and learn to be happy with what you've got, not try to change things. Of course, your own efforts are part of the system of causes that bring about the future. The idea isn't that you can just sit back and do nothing and let fate do its thang. That's the "lazy reason" which some people deduced from Stoicism. But in fact the idea isn't that fate is some kind of determining thing distinct from your own actions; rather, your actions are an important cause of what will happen to you in the future, but your actions are themselves determined just like everything else.

Now the Platonists argued that this destroyed morality, on the assumption that, for an act to be morally significant, you must have had the ability not to do it. I don't think they ever really argued for that assumption. And even if we grant it, I'm not sure that it really works. Because a Stoic could reply that, whatever you do, you always have the ability not to do it; it's just that you are predetermined not to exercise that ability.

Didn't read it.

Well, as Perfection says, you should always read the OP. It's rather rude to say disparaging things about the subject of a thread without even bothering to see what the opener of the thread actually says!

I find it in all narrative writing on the subject of history just plainly as what it is-a narrative of the author who have constructed it.

It's not just that though. To say that the writing of history is nothing other than the writing of the author's prejudices is as extreme as to say that no historical writing ever involves the author's prejudices. It's an engagement between the author and whatever events they purport to describe. No historian can ignore reality any more than they can fully escape their own prejudices. If you don't see that then you have no means of distinguishing between the writing of history and the writing of novels. And it seems from what you've already said that you don't really believe that all history is nothing but the prejudices of its author. You talked about the Carolingian renaissance, reformation of the monasteries, etc. Presumably you got your knowledge of these events from reading historical accounts that you consider to contain some sort of historical truth, otherwise you would dismiss them as pure fiction.

I wouldn't say hermeneutics due to the fact that concept is not attractive to me but i have to concede your point that you brilliantly executed.-that is,yes,i believe that any attempt to understand authors (the medieval man)from a completely alien culture that is substantially different than ours is not possible.

If you really think that the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, Caesar, Augustine, Dante, and all the rest are really completely incomprehensible, and that we have no chance whatsoever of understanding or appreciating a single thing that any of them ever said, then I'm not sure how to respond to that except that it seems to be blatently false. There is, for example, a massive quantity of scholarly literature today devoted to understanding and explainig Aristotle. Are all those scholars completely wasting their time simply because you've ruled, as a sort of inviolable principle, that ancient authors cannot be understood at all?

This is quite apart from the fact that hermeneutics is a perfectly respectable discipline in its own right. I think that just ruling it impossible as a matter of principle is demonstrably wrong, given that there are plenty of people who do it.

Of course ancient or medieval culture is different and we have to understand that culture in order to sympathise with their outlook to the extent necessary to understand them on their own terms. But that's not impossible, even though sometimes it may be hard. You talk of a "completely alien" culture, but neither ancient nor medieval culture was completely alien. They were still human beings and the fundamental similarities between them and us remain even when the cultures are very different.

To put the point a different way, do you think that people from different cultures today are capable of understanding each other? Modern Japanese culture is no less different from modern European culture than medieval European culture is. Does that mean that I don't have the slightest chance of understanding any Japanese book or film, or that I can never talk to a Japanese person without complete incomprehension?

I was only using the example of my limited knowledge of authors before the Italian renaissance.Probably later(hopefully maybe from your enlighten endorsement) I will find the inspiration to learn these said authors that you mentioned.:)

No doubt, but that doesn't really answer the point, which is that even historical theology isn't devoted solely to the work of people from many centuries ago.

Ok.How about i introduce you a particular essay from Thomas Nagel "What is it like to be a bat" to demostrate in more better and sophisticated manner that i am trying to make:
So in conclusion of what Mr.Nagel is saying and what i am try to provide is a method on how we can know what a medieval man really is?-What is it like for a medieval man to be a medieval man,not what me or you to be what these authors are in days that are long forgotten?

link:http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html

Now if you'd read the OP then you'd know I'm doing a PhD in philosophy, so it's just a tad insulting to suggest that you're "introducing" me to one of the most famous papers in modern philosophy... But Nagel's musings on bathood are meant to illuminate the mind-body problem, and are based on the fact that bats are fundamentally alien creatures with a totally different way of sensing and interacting with the world. That is not true of ancient or medieval human beings, who are biologically identical to us. The only differences between us and them are cultural. Thus, what Nagel says about bats is totally irrelevant to the point at issue.

I beg to differ.It is metaphysical,it is just that the language of its form that have been modified but it is still the same.

I'm afraid you're just wrong. Theology is not just about doctrine.

Interesting.Care to share on some of their points on how to do that?:scan:

Probably the most well-known figure to attempt this is Don Cupitt. Here's something I wrote on Cupitt and the background to his views recently:

In 1994, an Anglican priest named Anthony Freeman lost his job when the bishop of Chichester withdrew his licence. The case made the national headlines – for the reason for Freeman’s dismissal was that he had written a book arguing that God does not exist as an objective being. Rank-and-file church members were not the only people to be shocked: even those outside the church who heard the story were puzzled – for what sort of vicar doesn’t believe in God?

Freeman enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the only priest to be dismissed in the Church of England on doctrinal grounds in the twentieth century. But he was not alone. “Christian atheism” may seem an oxymoron, but it has been a small but vocal presence within the church for the past half a century.

Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead in the 1880s; but it was only in the 1960s that people really took notice. This was the decade when a number of trends and ideas came together to form the movement of radical theology within the church. In particular, three German theologians wielded enormous influence during this time. The first was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been executed by the Nazis in 1945. In his prison cell, Bonhoeffer had mused upon the role of the church in the world, and the nature of its faith; he had suggested that Christianity needed to engage with contemporary culture at its heart rather than skulking on the sidelines in a world of its own. He used the intriguing phrase “religionless Christianity” to express this idea. Equally important was Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most prominent German theologians of the twentieth century, who achieved the rare distinction of pre-eminence in both biblical studies and doctrinal theology. Bultmann believed that the message of the New Testament was of enduring value, but the language and ideas in which that message was expressed were not. He argued that we have to distinguish between the message and the medium. For example, people in the first century lived in a mythological framework: they believed in angels and demons, and in a heaven above their heads as well as a hell below their feet. People today do not believe such things. But the Gospel, preached by the first-century Christians, does not depend upon the existence of such things, even though the first Christians inevitably spoke about them. The task of theology is therefore to “demythologise” the New Testament, to look beyond the mythological trappings and extract the real message, which can be translated into terms that modern people can understand. Bultmann believed that the language of existential philosophy provided the best way of doing this. This was a view he shared with the third major German theologian, Paul Tillich. Like the other two, Tillich had clashed with the Nazis in the 1930s; he had fled to the United States, where he did most of his important work. His Systematic theology, published between 1951 and 1963, was one of the most influential Christian books of the twentieth century. Like Bultmann, Tillich sought to express Christianity in language taken from existentialism. He argued that God himself is simply pure Being. On this view, it is wrong to say “God exists” since that would make God out to be just one existing thing among others – rather, God is existence itself, what makes possible the fact that anything exists.

In the 1940s and 50s, these ideas remained the preserve of experts. Few people – especially in the English-speaking world – were in the habit of reading the works of German academic theologians. But this began to change when Bonheoffer’s Letters and papers from prison was published in 1953: people read his book because of the moving insight it offered into the mind of a man doomed to die for his principles, but they also read his views on how the role – and perhaps the belief – of the church had to change. Ten years later, the views of Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, and Tillich became widely known with the publication of John Robinson’s Honest to God. This small book, mostly a study of these theologians’ ideas together with suggestions about how traditional Christian doctrines should be modified in the modern world, was enormously popular and controversial. Its author, an Anglican bishop, became a notorious celebrity, and the book itself was probably the most widely read work of theology of the twentieth century. Many were shocked that a bishop could say such things, but many others were inspired too. For these ideas became widespread at a time when the church itself was experiencing something of a crisis throughout the western world. For a variety of reasons, the 1960s was a time when many people questioned the old religious verities: church attendance began to drop, and it continued to do so throughout most of Europe and Canada in the decades which followed. If any single decade saw the transformation of the west from a predominantly Christian society to a predominantly secular one, it was the 1960s. Little wonder than many Christians felt that Christianity itself had to change or perish. And many other Christians felt that such an attitude was extremely dangerous, a symptom of the dangerous times in which they were living. So there was a series of theological controversies, where theologians and other Christians called for the re-interpretation of traditional doctrines, and their conservative opponents denounced them. The huge row over Honest to God was one; another revolved around Lloyd Geering, a biblical scholar and minister in the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. He suggested that Jesus’ resurrection was not a bodily one, and found himself called to what was in effect a heresy trial before the General Assembly of his church. The charges against him were dismissed, but the controversy continued to rumble on.

[Cut out a bit on Thomas Altizer here, since he is a metaphysician of sorts.]

One of the most influential radical Christians since Thomas Altizer has been the Cambridge theologian Don Cupitt. In his 1984 BBC TV series and book The sea of faith, Cupitt argued that a non-realist view of God was actually the most authentically Christian one. He took his title from the poem Dover beach by Matthew Arnold, which likened Christianity to waves breaking on a beach: it alternately advances and retreats. In his book, Cupitt traced some of the ways in which traditional Christianity had been forced to retreat in recent centuries – and suggested the way in which the religion might advance once more. In his view, belief in an objective God has little to do with true religious character. He cites the example of Descartes and Pascal: Descartes had no doubt that God objectively existed, and even provided several proofs that he did – but he did not live in a notably religious way. Pascal, by contrast, sought the God of the heart, not of the head: he believed in a God who is lived rather than known. Belief in God isn’t about accepting that a certain set of statements (such as “There exists an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being”) to be true; it is about living in a certain kind of way.

In recent centuries the factual or descriptive elements of belief have been steadily whittled away, until nothing serious is left of them. When the purge is complete, we see that spirituality is everything. Doctrines that used to be regarded as describing supernatural facts are now seen as prescribing a supernatural mode of existence. Disagreements between different religions and philosophies of life are not disagreements about what is the case, but disagreements about ways of constituting human existence, disagreements about forms of consciousness and moral policies. The sea of faith p. 263

His conclusion is simple. Religion – including Christianity – is fundamentally about ethics. The other elements of religion, such as doctrine, are actually reflections of this basic concern.

The way we construct our world, and even the way we constitute our own selves, depends on the set of values to which we commit ourselves. Our preferences reveal what we are, and are reflected in the world we establish around ourselves. The outer world reflects the inner, and the constitution of both is ultimately ethical. In many world-views metaphysics comes first, and then ethics finds a place as best it can: but the truth is rather the other way round. Ethics comes first; and religion is our way of representing to ourselves, and renewing our commitment to, the complex of moral and spiritual values through which we shape our world, constitute ourselves, gain our identity and give worth to our lives. The sea of faith p. 269

Rather than believing a set of propositions, and then behaving as they tell us to do, we behave in a certain way and then construct the propositions to reflect this. For example, it is not the case that we behave in a loving way because we have been taught that “God is love” – rather, we say that “God is love” because we believe we should behave in a loving way. In fact, that is what the statement means. In other words, the word “God” does not refer to some entity floating about in the sky. It is a symbol that reflects what we most value. As we saw earlier, the logical positivists rejected theism partly on the basis of Wittgenstein’s early theory of language. But Cupitt rejects the traditional interpretation of theism partly on the basis of Wittgenstein’s later theory of language – for Wittgenstein came to believe that the meaning of a word is simply a matter of how we use it. If we apply this to religious matters, then the real question, Cupitt suggests, is not whether we believe that God exists; it is what the word “God” means to us.

God (and this is a definition) is the sum of our values, representing to us their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative power. Mythologically, he has been portrayed as an objective being, because ancient thought tended to personify values in the belief that important words must stand for things... The view that religious belief consists in holding that a number of picturesque propositions are descriptively true is encouraged by the continuing grip on people’s minds of a decadent and mystifying dogmatic theology. In effect I am arguing that for the sake of clarity it should be discarded entirely, and replaced by the practice of religion – ethics and spirituality – and the philosophy of religion. Then religion can become itself again, with a clear conscience at last. The sea of faith pp. 269-270

In The sea of faith, Cupitt hints at a position that he would work out more clearly in his later books, one of quite radical non-realism. On his view, it is not only God who exists solely as a construct of human language – so does everything. We live in a world made of words, and the way that these words function is solely determined by how we use them. So if “God” is just a word, there is nothing surprising about that, because so is everything else.

Cupitt’s ideas seem not to get discussed much in academic theological circles, but they have proved popular in some quarters: indeed, there is a “Sea of faith” movement which draws its inspiration from him and other radical theologians. Like Anthony Freeman, they tend to be well-educated priests and laymen rather than academics.

That it is silly to me.I can't help thinking of that.It is just what i instinctively feel that it is wrong all-together.

So you're saying that it wrong for people from one intellectual or cultural tradition to adopt ideas or methods from another? Why? Doesn't this happen all the time?

They did started the practice,or do you beg to differ?

I think the Chinese and the Indians would certainly beg to differ. However, this is completely irrelevant. So what if the philosophical method was first devised by pagan Greeks? It doesn't follow that pagan Greeks are the only people allowed to use it. English was invented by the English but I see plenty of non-English people writing in it on this very forum, and I don't mind.

ALWAYS READ THE OP!

(Plot, I have not forgotten our debate, at some point I will make a more suitable venue where we can delve into this interesting mess)

That's good - give me the link when you do so I don't miss it.

Wild question:

Did any Islamic religious ideas ever diffuse into Christianity?

It's very hard to tell. There was certainly some diffusion the other way, though the details are not clear. Muhammad himself seems to have been influenced, to at least some degree, by Monophysite Christianity, which was the dominant form of Christianity among the Arabs in the seventh century. There are other intriguing similarities: for example, the title "Seal of the prophets", applied by Muslims to Muhammad, was first used by the Christian theologian Tertullian to refer to Christ.

There are only two major possible influences of doctrine from Islam to Christianity that I can think of. The first is iconoclasm. The caliph Iezid II, who reigned from 720-724, ordered the destruction of all Christian images in his domains – not because they were Christian, but because they broke the Koran's prohibition of all representational art. This was immediately before the beginning of the iconoclasm controversy in Byzantium, which began in 724, when two Anatolian bishops complained to the patriarch of Constantinople that icons were idolatrous; in 725, the emperor Leo III proclaimed himself in favour of this view (for unknown reasons) and proceed to have icons throughout the empire destroyed. Now it's not known if Christian iconoclasm was influenced by the Muslim attitude towards images in general, but certainly the dates are suspiciously close together.

The other possible influence, which I actually think is a lot less likely, is the fundamentalist attitude to the Bible. Muslims, as we know, are "people of the Book" and regard the Koran as quite literally divinely written, to such an extent that even the language in which it is written is believed to be holy in virtue of that fact. For most of their history, Christians have not had such an attitude to the Bible. But in the last two hundred years, Christian fundamentalism has developed a view of the Bible not unlike that of Muslims to the Koran. Thus we find, for example, west African Muslims and west African Christians saying exactly the same things about their respective holy books. However, I don't think this is really a matter of influence. I think that the development of fundamentalist biblicism can be understood wholly as the result of factors within evangelical Christianity and developments in western culture to which some evangelicals reacted. But I suspect that the increasing contact between Christians and Muslims, especially in areas like west Africa over the past century, has reinforced this development.
 
What in the world can you do with a degree with Theology? The only use that I can think of is if you're going to be a Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican Priest or a Protestant Minister.
 
Of course I've heard of fundamentalism. But you didn't simply refer to irrational religious people - you claimed that the more religious people are, the more irrational they are. In other words, fundamentalists are the most religious people in existence. That is not evident at all, and in my opinion is in fact false. I'd say that Rowan Williams is far more authentically Christian than the average fundamentalist. If you think otherwise you must provide a definition of "being religious" and show why fundamentalists fit it better than anyone else.

The most religious people are irrational, because they are fundamentalists who believe that the word of their religious text(s) is without error and not subject to doubt or judgement. Fundamentalists believe they are following their religion in the full strict sense of what it is, and that they are therefore the most religious. You may not believe that, but that's what they believe. Since there is no test of "correct" theology, there is nothing you can say or do to disprove the fundamentalist notion that they are the most religious. Your notion that the archbishop of Canterbury is "more authentically Christian" is therefore ridiculous because there can never be such a test of authenticity. He may not be the "most religious" in the sense of most fundamentalist, and he may not be therefore irrational.


This is a very extreme thing to say and one that would undermine pretty much all thought and action. If by "unfounded notions" you mean beliefs that are not themselves rationally justified on the basis of other beliefs, then everyone must have some of them if they are to have beliefs at all. We rely upon "unfounded notions" all the time - for example, the belief that our senses are mostly reliable, or the belief that other people have minds like our own. These beliefs cannot be rationally justified. By your argument, that would make any activity which assumes them simply irrational. But then "irrational" would apply to absolutely everything and become meaningless. You certainly couldn't single out theologians for special finger-pointing on that score.

It's a lot easier to prove the existence of eyes and ears than God.

In rational debate, where people are genuinely interested in establishing their views, they will say what they think.

Naive.

If you have no idea how religious the archbishop is, then how can you claim that the more religious someone is, the more irrational they are? Wouldn't you have to conduct quite an extensive study of religious people (or irrational people) to be able to conclude that? And if you don't trust what people say in the first place, how could you conclude it even then? In which case, how can you be justified in making the assertion in the first place?

As I said, there will never be such a study because there is no such thing as a test of "right" religious belief. Otherwise, it would be easy to prove which religion was "correct" out of the myriad that exist.
 
The most religious people are irrational, because they are fundamentalists who believe that the word of their religious text(s) is without error and not subject to doubt or judgement. Fundamentalists believe they are following their religion in the full strict sense of what it is, and that they are therefore the most religious. You may not believe that, but that's what they believe. Since there is no test of "correct" theology, there is nothing you can say or do to disprove the fundamentalist notion that they are the most religious. Your notion that the archbishop of Canterbury is "more authentically Christian" is therefore ridiculous because there can never be such a test of authenticity. He may not be the "most religious" in the sense of most fundamentalist, and he may not be therefore irrational.

Of course fundamentalists think they are more religious than other religious people. But other religious people would disagree. How do you know that the fundamentalists are right? You say that I have no reasonable basis for saying that Rowan Williams is more religious than a fundamentalist. But what is your basis for saying the reverse? Isn't that just as arbitrary?

It's a lot easier to prove the existence of eyes and ears than God.

We weren't talking about proof, we were talking about rationality. You claimed that any belief that is based on beliefs that are not themselves justified rationally is itself irrational. You haven't said anything to back that up or to address the obvious counterargument that all our beliefs are, ultimately, based on beliefs that cannot be justified rationally.

Besides, I don't think that you can prove the existence of either God or eyes and ears. It may be more rational to believe in eyes and ears than in God, or at any rate harder not to. But that's not the same thing.


Not at all. An enormous amount of contemporary philosophical literature is based upon this sort of reasoning, and it works because people try to express themselves honestly. We've already had a link to Nagel's famous bat paper. It's not naive to expect professional philosophers to attempt to express themselves honestly. Perhaps it would be naive to expect (say) every poster on CFC OT to do the same thing, but who would ever expect that?

I think if you take the time to read and try to understand a good selection of contemporary philosophy you'll change your mind about the value of thought experiments.

As I said, there will never be such a study because there is no such thing as a test of "right" religious belief. Otherwise, it would be easy to prove which religion was "correct" out of the myriad that exist.

I'm puzzled by this. We were talking about how one can judge whether one person is "more religious" than another. Now you're talking about judging whether one person's religious beliefs are more "right" than another. Clearly this is a completely different matter. Person X and person Y could belong to completely different religions, and person X could be far more religious than person Y; it wouldn't follow that person X's religion was right and that person Y's religion was wrong, or vice versa, or that they are both right, or that they are both wrong. Depth of commitment to a religion is a totally different matter from being right about that religion.
 
Of course fundamentalists think they are more religious than other religious people. But other religious people would disagree. How do you know that the fundamentalists are right? You say that I have no reasonable basis for saying that Rowan Williams is more religious than a fundamentalist. But what is your basis for saying the reverse? Isn't that just as arbitrary?

Fundamentalists follow the tenets of their religion strictly, without hesitation, so that is my basis for making them the most religious. Since fundamentalism implies a lack of judgement of the validity of the religious beliefs that it entails, it is irrational. All other forms of religious belief, whether you like it or not, are less religious than that. You may argue that fundamentalism is itself a religious fallacy, but you can never prove this, because there is no test of religious validity. You see, so much of religion is about interpretation, and there is so much tradition to interpret, that any position could be right, but there is no way to prove it, or even come close, as it's little more than another opinion.

Besides, I don't think that you can prove the existence of either God or eyes and ears. It may be more rational to believe in eyes and ears than in God, or at any rate harder not to. But that's not the same thing.

Maybe not if you take such a solipsist approach, but you must admit it's a lot easier to believe in eyes and ears than god. At least I can see eyes and ears.

I think if you take the time to read and try to understand a good selection of contemporary philosophy you'll change your mind about the value of thought experiments.

Maybe, but that's a far cry from theology.

I'm puzzled by this. We were talking about how one can judge whether one person is "more religious" than another. Now you're talking about judging whether one person's religious beliefs are more "right" than another. Clearly this is a completely different matter. Person X and person Y could belong to completely different religions, and person X could be far more religious than person Y; it wouldn't follow that person X's religion was right and that person Y's religion was wrong, or vice versa, or that they are both right, or that they are both wrong. Depth of commitment to a religion is a totally different matter from being right about that religion.

And of course, there is no way to prove who's right and wrong, as there is no such test. Once again, when I say "more religious" I mean more devoted to the teachings of that religion. You may argue about the veracity of such a position, but not about its adherence.
 
CivGeneral said:
What in the world can you do with a degree with Theology? The only use that I can think of is if you're going to be a Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican Priest or a Protestant Minister.

Or an RE teacher. Those are really the only things for which a degree in Theology is directly relevant. Of course it is indirectly relevant to many other things; since it combines a study of history, hermeneutics, philosophy, and so on it's a pretty general humanities subject which would put you in a good position to go into law or something like that. I said earlier that the study of theology is in some ways quite like the study of law (and indeed the study of canon law would be a cross between the two). But then all this is true of pretty much all humanities subjects, or any that are not directly vocational. As they say, "What Can You Do With A BA In English?"

Fundamentalists follow the tenets of their religion strictly, without hesitation, so that is my basis for making them the most religious.

But that is not at all what "fundamentalist" means. In fact this word has rather a large range of meanings, but they are normally connected to what the person believes; that is, to be a "fundamentalist" you have to have certain beliefs. It's got nothing to do with how closely you follow the tenets of your religion. In a Christian context, "fundamentalist" normally means someone who believes the Bible to be infallibly, inerrantly true, and regards the Bible as the sole source of authority, agreeing with it where it disagrees with other authorities such as the church or science. It also is often taken to mean someone who not only has this belief, but regards Christians who do not share it as proper Christians. The real hard-core fundamentalists think that even other fundamentalists who nevertheless are friendly with non-fundamentalists aren't proper Christians: thus there are groups in America who think that Billy Graham isn't a real Christian, not because of anything he believes, but because he is prepared to be friendly with liberal Christians. Now that's taking it to extremes. But none of this has got anything to do with "following the tenets of the religion strictly". It's more about having weird, extra tenets of their own - and, perhaps, neglecting other tenets that people from different traditions would uphold. For example, most Christian fundamentalists have completely dropped any notion that Christians are called to embrace poverty (typically, Christian fundamentalists are from well-to-do backgrounds). But a Franciscan friar would regard this as a very slack approach to Christian faith. Similarly, many Christian fundamentalists do not engage in any charity work, because they think that material things are unimportant and one should only try to save people's souls (I once talked to a homeless person outside Holy Trinity Brompton - a big fundamentalist church in London - about this, and about how the ministers told the parishioners not to give money to the poor, but to preach to them instead). Many Christians from other traditions, such as the Social Gospel tradition, would regard this as a complete betrayal of what Christianity should be all about.

So you are on very shaky ground if you insist that fundamentalists adhere to the tenets of their faith more than their co-religionists do. That's certainly not how non-fundamentalist religious people would see it, and I would agree with them.

Since fundamentalism implies a lack of judgement of the validity of the religious beliefs that it entails, it is irrational.

I'm not sure that that follows, really. Someone could hold fundamentalist doctrines because they have carefully investigated them and concluded that they are probably true. Simply being a fundamentalist doesn't necessarily mean you haven't thought about your beliefs; on the contrary, there are fundamentalist theologians, hard though that is to believe.

All other forms of religious belief, whether you like it or not, are less religious than that.

That's still just an assertion. You're still assuming that "fundamentalists" are people who hold religious beliefs more strongly than other religious people, whereas in fact they are people who hold certain religious beliefs, never mind how strongly they do so (it's perfectly possible to be a doubting fundamentalist - in fact the intellectual shortcomings of Christian fundamentalist mean that although enormous numbers of people become fundamentalists all the time, enormous numbers of other people stop being fundamentalists at the same time, most of whom spend considerable time doubting fundamentalist doctrines before making the break).

Maybe not if you take such a solipsist approach, but you must admit it's a lot easier to believe in eyes and ears than god. At least I can see eyes and ears.

Of course, but what's ease of belief got to do with anything? We were talking about rationality and what makes a belief rational. I hope you don't think that things which are easy to believe are, because of that, rational.

Maybe, but that's a far cry from theology.

Well, why did you bring it up, then?

And of course, there is no way to prove who's right and wrong, as there is no such test. Once again, when I say "more religious" I mean more devoted to the teachings of that religion. You may argue about the veracity of such a position, but not about its adherence.

That may be a reasonable definition of "more religious", although I would say that it focuses too much on belief and not enough on action. Nevertheless, as I've argued, it does not at all coincide with any definition of "fundamentalist".
 
Why is sexuality such a hugely restricted taboo laden area in large parts of christianity? In particular, I'm interested in where (and why) the whole sexual taboo began - the Abrahamic religions are full of it.
 
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