A courteous, intelligent and informed discussion about religion

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...it takes more than a lifetime eighthO .....

[eighthobstruction]

Better stick to Spinoza then eh??....

[vinteuil]

Still holding out for a thread about Gabriel Marcel, though. :

... well, yerss....

But I think time is better spent with Kierkegaard rather than with an epigone such as Marcel...

[cavatina]

Vinteuil: I can think of one eminently practical way to prove some people are more sensitive and skilled at deception (and detecting it) than others: may I challenge you to a cordial game of heads-up poker? Bring plenty of money.

Though I suppose a large part of the reason I absolutely kill at poker is I have such a baby face and soft voice, nobody would ever suspect me of being a ruthless aggressive b**** who has the mathematical ability to calculate odds in the middle of a hand. I suppose once you know that, I lose some of my edge, but hey! I'm game.

[amateur51]

I think if a person goes into a discussion thinking about "winning," he's already lost.



How about a social anthropologist? We're monkeys with better thumbs.

Just checked my rear view and I'm an ape with better thumbs, me

[Serial_Apologist]

Vinteuil: I can think of one eminently practical way to prove some people are more sensitive and skilled at deception (and detecting it) than others: may I challenge you to a cordial game of heads-up poker? Bring plenty of money.

Though I suppose a large part of the reason I absolutely kill at poker is I have such a baby face and soft voice, nobody would ever suspect me of being a ruthless aggressive b**** who has the mathematical ability to calculate odds in the middle of a poker hand. I suppose once you know that, I lose some of my edge, but hey! I'm game.

Er.........

[doversoul1]

What about the Pāli Tipitaka?

Sorry, I should have said ‘in Japan’.

Buddhism came to Japan as a gift to the emperor in a form of scholarly volumes and not a set/series of teaching. There is no one book to which common/ordinary people can refer to. There was already well established Shinto then (can’t remember, 6 or 7th century) and now things are co-existing or mixed-up, depending on the way you choose to look at it. Either way, it is a very different way of existing from that of Christianity.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry, I should have said ‘in Japan’.

Buddhism came to Japan as a gift to the emperor in a form of scholarly volumes and not a set/series of teaching. There is no one book to which common/ordinary people can refer to. There was already well established Shinto then (can’t remember, 6 or 7th century) and now things are co-existing or mixed-up, depending on the way you choose to look at it. Either way, it is a very different way of existing from that of Christianity.

[Don Basilio]

That’s a useful reminder, ds, that the protestant model of scripture is not the only one (and indeed I could argue at length it is neither the authentic nor helpful Christian one – for most of Christian history the majority of believers did not have their own printed copies.)

I would suggest that to say “Buddhism isn’t a religion, it’s a spirituality” is a cop out, like saying “heritage” instead of “history”. Normative religion isn't necessarily evangelical protestantism (which only developed in the late 1600s.)

I’ve been talking about individual religious experience, but there is also a communal aspect, which implies commitment to a community. This is where the power bit comes in so appallingly, as membership of the religious community becomes a means of coercion. It is tempting to call the communal thing with the possibility of control “religion” and the personal thing “spirituality”

Religion can cut both ways: it can be a way of maintaining the status quo which it can symbolise. It can also empower the oppressed to stand up for their dignity, and defy the Prince of this World. Think of the of the parliamentarians in the English Civil War, the Tolpuddle Martyrs (good Methodists all), William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Ghandi or Lech Walesa. (Most of those examples are protestants.)

[Nick Armstrong]

FF - Please feel free to remove if considered not quite appropriate.

http://flowingdata.com/2011/08/05/fl...-the-internet/

I love it

Why haven't I looked at this thread before today?! It's a riot

[StephenO]

the protestant model of scripture is not the only one (and indeed I could argue at length it is neither the authentic nor helpful Christian one – for most of Christian history the majority of believers did not have their own printed copies.)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the Protestant model of scripture". The first full English translation of the Bible was carried out by William Tyndale using the original Hebrew and Latin texts. He wanted to make scripture accessible to ordinary lay people rather than leaving it as the preserve of an increasingly corrupt Church. He was condemned by both the Pope and Henry VIII. He was forced to escape abroad where he was arrested and then strangled and burned at the stake in 1536, making him one of the first Protestant martyrs.

Later translations of the Bible, including the King James Version, drew heavily on Tyndale's. 85% of the KJV comes directly from his version. Most Bibles used in churches today, like the New International Version, are heavily indebted to Tyndale. If anything, his translation is probably the most accurate and reliable source of Christian scripture and the closest to the original writings.

[Anna]

For anyone interested in William Tyndale there are two books readily available

God's Secretaries by Adam Nicholson and William Tyndale by Brian Moynahan. I think Nicholson did some religion programmes for BBC4

[Richard Tarleton]

The short answer? Read Schopenhauer.

I haven't read Schopenhauer, only about him, but understand (from Bryan Magee) his drift was that "the nature of things before and beyond the world is open to no investigation." (The World as Will and Representation, i.82) With the sensory and intellectual equipment at our disposal, we would be incapable of knowing God even if He existed. Furthermore, we cannot explain the known in terms of the unknown, or the knowable in terms of the unknowable - "...we must face the full implications of the fact that our human powers of apprehension are limited: whether or not there is anything that is permanently inaccessible to them is permanently unknowable to us" (Magee). Wittgenstein, in Tractatus, also quoted by Magee, concludes "What we cannot speak about we must remain silent about".

In other words God is not knowable to us, nor could He ever be. Rowan Williams, by definition, does not "know" any more about God than I do. It's all down to faith, and belief. You can't choose to have faith.

With a bit of luck cavatina can expand on this when she gets back from the Prom

[Don Basilio]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the Protestant model of scripture".

That the Bible is the inerrant word of God and is literally true, or at least its historical meaning is the one that matters.

The orthodox view is that Jesus Christ is the incarnate word of God. The Bible is the authoritative witness to him, but it took some three hundred years before the Christian community agreed which books constituted the canon, reflecting their experience.

The pre-protestant view was that scripture worked on a number of levels as well as the literal. Indeed the literal level wasn't that important. Whether or not there was a man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves is irrelevant to whether we should care for strangers in need.

[french frank]

The pre-protestant view was that scripture worked on a number of levels as well as the literal. Indeed the literal level wasn't that important. Whether or not there was a man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves is irrelevant to whether we should care for strangers in need.

That seems to be where the atheist Dutch pastor is going. Except (perhaps?), that he doesn't believe in life after death or, of course, 'God'.