Why the "Obama a Christian?" discussion matters

I'm upset (in an intellectual way) at your definitional distinction between traditionalist and progressive, Rod. Quoting to show separation:

"Progressives think that religious truth is indefinite and subjective, and can change according to the perceived needs of people in a given time and place."

"Traditionalists believe that religious truth is definite and objective, and can be known with some degree of certainty."

There is nothing wrong with those statements, per se. Together, they beg the question: when two people of sincere faith disagree, are they disagreeing on a "religious truth" or are they disagreeing on the impact that "truth" has on their lives?

From my POV, a traditionalist mindset defines life in terms of religion. Religion is definitional, proscriptive, prohibitive and dictatorial (please, that last term is not meant to carry negative connotations). A progressive mindset observes life as being informed by religion. Religion is contributive, referential (as in setting boundaries and comparison points), a guide and mentor rather than a task master.

I think that you are mis-characterizing progressives, they are not in my experience mere spiritual dilettantes, but are people who struggle greatly with their faith and how it should be expressed in their own historical and social context. Traditionalists (or conservatives) on the other hand have tend to transplant their traditions into their own context where it often no longer makes sense. Much of what passes for "traditional" Christianity today is really the product of the Enlightenment and Victorian England. And I don't know of any post-modern Christian who is scandalized by the idea of doctrine, they may be scandalized by the idea of ripping a doctrine or teaching out of its historical context and misapplying it in our time, but real postmoderns care deeply about truth. In general postmodern Christians don't reject the idea of truth but they reject a foundationalist epistemology and since moderns so strongly equate foundationalism with truth, they are unable to imagine someone rejecting one without also rejecting the other, but it is very doable. Post-moderns, post-modern Christians at least, also tend to embrace an epistemic humility, but this is not about the ultimate nature of truth but about our limited ability to apprehend it.

IK, the difference between "there is no truth" and "we cannot know the truth" is irrelevant in practice. Trads believe that the truth exists and that we can know it because God chose to reveal it to us. Progressives, however you choose to define them, don't.

As a non-traditionalist secularist, obviously I can't see why it would matter at all. The whole discussion, while entertaining to watch and make an occasional snarky comment about, really just sort of leaves me twiddling my finger around my ear.

I mean, I can understand why a traditionalist might consider this stuff important, but it does little to impress me with their grasp on reality.

It's an interesting thread, Rod. It's not at all unique to Christianity. The orthodox in every religion like to define the beliefs/traditions by which all must adhere, and if they don't, then they aren't part of the group. It seems to be more of a problem in our media driven age because people don't like others saying/doing things that conflict with their beliefs while sharing the same label. That's why you tend to see people add on to the label so as to try to differentiate the group.

This is why I think that the "Is Obama a Christian?" debate does NOT matter. If we were to pick out all of the presidents who had heterodox beliefs of some sort, we would have to automatically throw out 20 of the men who have been president of the United States. This includes all the presidents who were deist or had deist leanings, Unitarian Christians, Quakers, and the irreligious or presidents (like Abraham Lincoln) who didn't seem to have any religious affiliation whatsoever. We might have to add to the list if we examined all of the religious beliefs of all the Presidents we've had so far.

I think this is where the Religious Right goes too far and their agenda should effectively be rejected. Furthermore, the heterodox Christians who were also deists, effectively believed in a metaphysical reality that conflicts with the traditional judeo-christian model. So do the Unitarian Christians. It's not like "Liberal" Christians did not have a metaphysical outlook, it's just that theirs is different. Progressive Christians look to Matthew 25 for their soteriology, while conservative Christians turn to John 14 for theirs.

I am a progressive Jew. I believe in truth in the sense that there is a metaphysical reality, it just conflicts with the metaphysical reality espoused by traditionalist Christians (Obviously I don't believe that God is triune, to me that's soft Polytheism, nor do I believe that Jesus is the way, the life, and the truth and that the only way one can see the father is through him).

Thanks, Todd. I accept and endorse your clarification. :-) And, while others have expressed similar views, I particularly like Larry's take on post-modernism.

The other term I submit for consideration is "experiential". A traditionalist has expectations. A progressive has discoveries. I offer neither explicit nor implied value judgment for either or both together.

This leads me to another point: my feelings are not a validation of the religious belief per se, but a validation of my experience. I wonder (as opposed to assert) whether the cliched "crisis of faith" is a valid comparison point. The following is intended as speculation, and nothing else:

A progressive questions his feelings, a traditionalist questions his expectations.

Christians should think hard about how they would like it if another religion's beliefs became the basis for civil laws because that is what they are doing to others.

Don't be silly, somebody's "religion" is going to be used as the basis for our laws, there no such thing as a truth that doesn't rest on faith, there is no "objective, secular" spot on which one can stand in judgment of other beliefs, and those who claim that there is such a thing are usually just engaging in a power-play by getting the other side ruled out-of-bounds.

"Don't be silly, somebody's "religion" is going to be used as the basis for our laws"

True, but while those laws may be inspired or informed by religion or faith...they should be formulated and advanced by reason, not references to religious dogma or appeals to religious authority.

Mike

True, but while those laws may be inspired or informed by religion or faith...they should be formulated and advanced by reason, not references to religious dogma or appeals to religious authority.

There is no such thing as reason apart from a faith-based understanding of the way the world is. Reason is useless without material on which to work, it needs a "narrative", to use a word popular with post-moderns, to work within and these narratives are all adopted as a matter of faith. If you dislike the word "narrative", you can substitute "axioms" or "presuppositions". There is no appeal to naked reason apart from faith, it simply does not exist.

Rod: What the discussion really centers on is this question: "Does religious orthodoxy matter?"

Shouldn't you have phrased it that way, then? I mean, whatever else one thinks of Obama, he has been pummled mercilessly about his religion for months in a way no other candidate in recent memory has. According to his detractors, he's a covert Muslim, or an ex-Muslim who refuses to admit it, or a hypocrite who joined a church for political reasons, and on and on. Meanwhile, as many have pointed out, plenty of Presidents (including, as Steve pointed out on his blog, the current one) have questionably orthodox beliefs. So, don't you think that using Obama as a jump-off point for a discussion that really is independent of his beliefs was a little out of line?

Regarding progressives and traditionalists, I think it's a spectrum. It's not just about rules and traditions--you have to apply the timeless to your own life. On the other hand, it's not just about context and feelings--you have to have guidelines. There is a danger of sterotyping progressives as loopy, wooly-headed relativists and traditionalists as hide-bound, dictatorial martinets. There are plenty of each, but they're not representative, either.

John E. - Agn Stoic: Are you saying that the relative speeds of Superman and the Flash aren't relevant to our lives? What kind of heretic are you? ;)

Rod!

You'll get much farther with your goals here if you strive to understand progressives better.

Start here: Progressives DO believe in absolute truth, they just do NOT believe that anyone can be very certain about very much of it!

Learn that, absorb that, and then you should see that there is no inconsistency at all in them being sure about some things once in awhile. However silly or sex craven they may be, they aren't inconsistent.

I'm a devout Catholic and about 90% orthodox. I firmly believe in absolute truth and take the magesterium very seriously, even if I'm not wholly convinced 10% of the time. I don't mind if you call that progressive, but I very much mind if you call that relativism.

Realtivism is a tired canard that too many conservatives fall back on in a self-righteous huff. Rod, you're made of better stuff than that.

Now I often disagree with them, but most progressives very much believe in absolute truth. That's precisely why they can have some convictions. They just staunchly reserve the right to decide for themselves what to believe.

Moreover, progressives don't think it is very important to be right, because otherwise, the vast majority of us are going to hell for sure (the logic of that one is pretty good I must say.)

Me? I'm hopin' for purgatory where I can straighten out all kinds of problems.

I agree with JKitten, JRandom, and Watsy, btw, and my contribution is perhaps only slightly different than what they've already said well.

I am puzzled by the whole idea that there is some set truth that all must believe in any religion. I read a book 'History of God' by Karen Armstrong which can be summed up by saying "Who/what God is and why it matters and what we should do about it have changed with the times according to the society since the very beginning". From reading the Bible about the early church in ACTS, I see nothing of the Nicene Creed. I guess I am missing something but if we were going to define some set of beliefs as orthodox the question would be which ones. The Nicene Creed was formulated to unify the many versions of Christian practice in existence at the time, seems more political than spiritually defined.

Several people have already pointed out that the definition of progressive is wrong here. It's not that progressives don't believe in truth, at least not religious progressives as a rule. As others have pointed out, they are trying to reconcile the world around them with their religion. Which ought to be work that all people of faith do. The problem that I see with the way progressives go about it is that they are too willing to simply discard things which don't fit with what they know or believe. Traditionalists could be contributing to this entirely appropriate and valuable work of figuring out how to reconcile their faith with the reality of the world they now live in. In good traditionalist fashion, they could do this by search deeper for truth - which will often mean coming to find out that our understanding of truth has been off or not deep enough or too simplistic. It is holding onto what we know, just in different ways and making judicious decisions about what we think we know which might be grounded in habit rather than truth.

I hate to see you think about the divide this way, Rod. I think of myself as a conservative and a traditionalist. Unfortunately, many traditionalists seem not to be able to tell the difference between rejecting truth and in being willing to consider if our understanding of truth is wrong. One of the most frustrating things about dealing with my fellow religious traditionalists is that they can hold a belief (and pretty much always one not as deeply rooted in historical, orthodox Christianity as they like to think) which is objectively wrong - unbiblical even. But the actual truth doesn't matter because they are absolutely convinced that their faith requires them to believe something which simply isn't so. One woman I know told me once, "I'd rather be wrong than change my mind." And she was quite serious. Unfortunately, when we simply dismiss progressives as unwilling to deal in actual truth rather than as going about finding truth in sometimes misleading ways, we are impoverishing the faith for ourselves and others who come looking for something to believe in.

The names traditionalist and progressive strike me as being not quite opposites, at least as I use them. Traditionalist, to me, means someone who thinks we should believe what has traditionally been believed - not because it's objectively better, but precisely because it is traditional. I don't denigrate that. There's a lot to be said for more ancient people, who actually knew the culture Paul wrote in and Jesus taught in. The opposite of a traditionalist would be a liberal Christian, someone who wants the freedom (liber, as in liberty) to take a new interpretation if it's more convincing and consistent with the Bible.

Rod: Traditionalists believe that religious truth is definite and objective, and can be known with some degree of certainty.

One problem I have with this statement is that there is no agreement among many traditionalists as to what the "truth" is. Is Jimmy Swaggart a traditionalist? He is certainly not a progressive. Yet I saw him on TV saying that all Catholics are going to go to hell. Some of those Catholics are what Rod would define as traditionalist. Many of the people who posted yesterday were traditionalists, yet not all agreed with each others theology. Are the religious truths of the Amish, American Orthodox and Evangelicals all the same? What is the religious truth of transubstantiation? Doesn't seem to me that that religious truth is known with any degree of certainty among traditionalists. Yet, that was a religious truth for centuries. If there is religious truth, then why aren't all Christians Catholics?

The Bible contains a lot of arguments about what is religious truth. What about that whole argument as to whether men had to be circumcised before they became Christians? Wasn't that the first argument between progressives and traditionalists? Rod himself says, "Before the advent of the postmodern consciousness, progressives and traditionalists could argue about religious truth, but both had confidence that there was such a thing," which contradicts the basic premise that it is objective and can be known with a degree of certainty.

Larry
November 18, 2008 1:34 PM
Why? Do you have a higher authority? The point is that everything comes down to statements just like this. Either "some arbitrary authority says so" or "this is just what I believe", you are still insisting that "reason" can be used to arbitrate between competing narratives and it cannot, without assuming that there is some superior narrative, a meta-narrative, on which the reason is based.

Eh? Seems to me that reason was quite useful in determining between the narratives of whether or not the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice versa.

Eh? Seems to me that reason was quite useful in determining between the narratives of whether or not the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice versa.

That is, in truth, just a matter of perspective as well. All that is really meant by "the earth revolves around the sun" is that the mathematics works out a little simpler that way. But why value simple mathematics over other things?

I guess you are being deliberately obtuse about this, Larry. Or when you're discussing questions of morality with other adults do you never say anything more than "God says so"? Yeesh.

I might say other things, but in the end all of the arguments are going to end up as subjective statements of the type "I just believe this is the way things are". The problem isn't my obtuseness but your uncritical acceptance of modernist, foundationalist thinking. You seem to lack the imagination, or the will, to follow your arguments past a certain point to see where they are, in fact, coming from.

If more people lived by the five tenets described in the article, the world would be a better place. Maybe for most people, that's all they can handle. Rod, you are going to have to accept the fact that some people are just fine with their Christianity, even if it is different than yours.

The first sentence quoted above is just wrong.

No it isn't. It would be quite possible to restate the mathematics that describes the motion of the solar system to make the earth the center. There is no preferred frame of reference in science, there are just some that make the math a little easier, and the math is a little easier if you make the sun the center of the solar system.

I apologize, Larry. You are not obtuse but you are also not rational.

Thanks for proving my statement about the modernist difficult of separating foundationalism from truth (or rationality). Since the foundationalist project was started by Descartes, I guess nobody who lived prior to him was rational either. Of course I don't expect that you realize that you are engaging in the foundationalist project, you just regard it as intuitively obvious. But you are merely taking "intuitively obvious" to mean "something I learned before I was 12".

The Earth revolving around the Sun is a matter of "perspective" and valuing mathmatics over "other things"? Wow.

Absolutely, although I said valuing _simple_ mathematics over other things. As I said above, there is no preferred frame of reference and saying what goes around what depends entirely on where you are standing.

Erin, I always enjoy reading your posts. That said, you make me wonder about your understanding of some basics.

Symbolic logic is the mechanical expression of logic, not logic itself. Mathematical logic is a subset of symbolic logic, math being the symbol set.

Science says "empiricism can necessarily have nothing to say about God" and stops there. Scientists, or rather human beings, will append "therefore God does not exist" as an expression of their personal conclusion. The premise is valid, and the conclusion is invalid because it is a false application of the premise, not because the premise is false.

In gardening, there are two tools that are based on the same premise: a specifically-shaped blade, a spade, on the end of a handle, is the most efficient tool for digging in and moving soil. The false conclusions that a shovel is better than a trowel for digging around living plants, or that a trowel is better than a shovel for digging a trench, does not make the spade premise false.

Larry will take note, I hope, that my gardening analogy illustrates precisely why we no longer assert that the sun revolves around the earth. Perspective has nothing to do with the empirical evidence of movement and position, just as it cannot deny that a shovel will kill the plants without an inordinate amount of effort from the gardener, or that a trowel will take ten times as long digging the trench. The premise of "most efficient" is not a matter of perespective.

So much of what constitutes as "reason" from a progressive point of view is in actuality a particular world view that is filtered through an enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophical grid. It is this distinction I think that helps define a "traditionalist". In other words a traditionalist is someone who has more of a pre-modern (16th century and before) philosophical way of looking at reality. IE: Reality is a shared reality and we can know truth propositionally. We can know these things through an understanding of the story of mankind's relationship with God as revealed in the grand narrative of scripture as superintended through the Holy Spirit. All of this was a pre-enlightenment epistemological understanding of reality. If you are still convinced that this view was still influenced by enlightenment thinking I suggest that you go back and read Aquinas or Calvin and you will see that they wrote from this perspective some years before the enlightenment.

Progressive thought and postmodern thought are hinged on two very important assumptions. Progressive: Rousseau (Man is basically good and can perfect his nature) and if that is true, why do we need God anyway? if we don't need to be saved from anything, there must be no God. Therefore there is no good or evil Nietzsche, (Even though science with the plain eye shows objective truth doe exist) But even still we have come this far, so we might as well create our own understanding of reality. IE: the current post-Modern epistemology.

All of this to say that I think this is the historical context and progression that went into why Rod and the other guys came up with their definitions, and I think they are correct.

But even still we have come this far, so we might as well create our own understanding of reality. IE: the current post-Modern epistemology.

This is a caricature of what post-moderns say. You are assuming that your own understanding of reality is epistemically privileged over others when it is just as much a creation as any other. There is no such thing as an (human) objective observer, and even if there could be such a thing it is arrogant in the extreme to think that you are the one who possesses that objectivity.

And just how, exactly, does science prove that objective truth exists?

And just how, exactly, does science prove that objective truth exists?

It doesn't, Larry. It never makes the attempt. Theories can be unanimously accepted for centuries and still be stricken by a theory that explains something better or more completely: Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics, q.e.d.

For what it's worth, Larry has yet to say anything with which I disagree.

Also, while the Flash can surely run faster than Superman can fly, the real question is who is smarter, Gorilla Grodd or Brainiac.

Larry, take a closer look at your statement to which I objected:

Larry
November 18, 2008 1:53 PM
All that is really meant by "the earth revolves around the sun" is that the mathematics works out a little simpler that way.

When you say 'all that is really meant' is the mathematics of the situation, you are just flat wrong. What is also meant is that there are two physical things, one of which orbits the other.

There is an objective reality out there and in that reality the Earth orbits the Sun.

As for the sophomoric "And just how, exactly, does science prove that objective truth exists?" I ask you the equally sophomoric question of just how, exactly, do you prove that you are not just a brain floating in a nutrient solution and that what you think of as your sense perceptions are not simulated by nerve stimulus induction in a laboratory?

Just idly examining some past, current, and future presidents' religious affiliations here:

Kennedy - "that church isn't going to tell me what to do" Catholic
Johnson - Disciples of Christ (non-credal, btw)
Nixon - Quaker (non-credal; many do not consider themselves traditionally Christian)
Ford - Episcopal, I think? (i.e. "progressive," most likely)
Jimmy Carter - Baptist (no idea whether he was "progressive" or not. But Baptists are also non-credal)
Ronald Reagan - Presbyterian (not the Dominionist kind, IIRC) Also divorced-and-remarried, which to some puts him on par with gay partners
George Bush I - Episcopal (probably "progressive" - after all, he *did* appoint Souter to the high court.)
Clinton - "progressive" Methodist ... very progressive.
George Bush II - born-again, probably closest to Rod's definition of Christian
Obama - United Church of Christ (progressive)

Actually the Clinton's belonged to a Baptist church in Little Rock, Hillary was brought up a Methodist. George Bush (the Dumber) attended a Methodist church in Crawford.

Larry, re your cosmic math problem, i.e. the mathematics being simpler in a heliocentric rather than a geocentric solar system: that's nonsense. The Ptolemaic model is far simpler than the Keplerian. Even with the epicycles thrown in to account for retrograde motion.

Of course, neither model is "objective truth", is it? They are both wrong.

Erin, it would be helpful if you could give us some axioms and postulates for a geometric approach to theology. But I warn you, I live on an oblate spheroid and my ideal triangles have three right angles.

A useful mathematical expression that relates to God (in the Platonic sense) is:

e^(i * π) + 1 = 0

which states that the Transcendental raised to the power of the product of the Imaginary and the Irrational when added to the One yields Nothing. That's even more mysterious than the Trinity and it is objectively true.

Larry, I don't really mind your refusing to respond directly to my posts, especially the ones addressed to you in personal voice, but I do mind you referring to one of my posts in an out-of-context fashion to support a point which, if you read the post to which you refer, its context refutes that very point.

Please acknowledge my protest.

BTW: sophomoric 1 : conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature

It is an unflattering label for your assertions, but one with which I can agree. It is not, however, name-calling. YMMV, of course.

Now if I used this plane to track the sun across the sky for a full 24 hours, would you deny that the plane had orbited the earth?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I would deny that the plane had orbited the earth.

An orbit is a path of an object that is moving around a second object or point under the influence of gravity.

The plane in your example is not moving around the earth because of the influence of gravity, but rather because of the plane's engine thrust. As proof, turn off the engine and observe the result.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I would deny that the plane had orbited the earth.

An orbit is a path of an object that is moving around a second object or point under the influence of gravity.

Then you may substitute the words "go around" for "orbit", or you can go on attempting to evade the obvious. (Although "orbit" is commonly used in many situations when gravity is not involved.) Alternatively you may substitute satellite or spacecraft for airplane.

Okay, Larry. I will clarify:

Franklin Evans
November 18, 2008 3:37 PM
And just how, exactly, does science prove that objective truth exists?

It doesn't, Larry. It never makes the attempt. Theories can be unanimously accepted for centuries and still be stricken by a theory that explains something better or more completely: Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics, q.e.d.
=========================

Larry
November 18, 2008 5:05 PM
[snip]
As for the sophomoric "And just how, exactly, does science prove that objective truth exists?"

Hardly sophomoric, but do keep up with the name-calling, it aids your case immensely. Science, in fact, does no such thing, as some one above pointed out. Science is just another self-validating game we play, at the end day the scientist has to say that he believes science works because of what he believes about the nature of the universe, beliefs that he accepts on faith.
=========================

The way I read it, you are referring to my post, and directly contradicting it with your "self-validating game" statement. If you can point out what I'm missing, I'd be grateful.

I was merely stating that you agreed with the statement that science doesn't prove that objective truth exists. Whether or not you agree that science is a self validating game, I do not know, and I did not state or imply anything about the subject. The phrase "as someone above pointed out" refers, of course, to "science, in fact does no such thing", which in turn answers "does science prove that objective truth exists", which you answered "It doesn't". I still don't see what you are upset about.

Just to repeat a point I made on the other thread: the Church has never been the guardian and protector of the word "Christian". It is most likely that the term didn't even originate within the Church at all:

"And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch."
Acts 11:26

There is no doubt that Barack Obama is not a member of the Orthodox Christian Church, the Catholic Church, or any other communion understood by her members to be "traditionalist", as that term is most commonly used. This fact has very specific theological consequences, from the perspective of these communions.

But this is a very different question from whether or not he is a "Christian", a term that in our modern, fractured, multi-faith Western civilization is perhaps best thought of as a census category.

Bless,
Doug

Larry, re your cosmic math problem, i.e. the mathematics being simpler in a heliocentric rather than a geocentric solar system: that's nonsense. The Ptolemaic model is far simpler than the Keplerian. Even with the epicycles thrown in to account for retrograde motion.

If that is the case, and realizing that "simpler" is somewhat subjective, why did the post-Copernicus books that featured heliocentrism all have a disclaimer (inserted at the behest of the church) that the heliocentrism was merely a mathematical assumption to make the mathematics simpler, and wasn't "really" true?

The reason we no longer believe the sun orbits the earth is because the mathematics do not fit with with observable, and replicable data. You cannot prove that the earth is the center with all the available data. Gravity, mass and velocity will not allow this. You would need to have different explanations for the moon orbiting the earth and the Sun orbiting the earth. The sun needs a much smaller mass to make it work. You are then left trying to fit in the orbits of the other planets. Does not work.

Having said the above, if you have a citation from a physicist or mathematician who has tried to do what you claim, I would love to see it. Would be fun to run it past the physics department.

Steve

"My understanding of orbital dynamics is probably as good as any non-specialist in the field. Just for background I have Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering with of course the background in Physics and Mathematics that this implies."

A very scarey thought coming from somwhoe who doesn't understand the difference between earth's rotation and earth's revolution.

What are your thoughts on stellar parallax? A figment of the sun's imagination, I suspect.

Obama's donations to his own church (whether or not you approve of R. Wright) far exceeds the Palins' donations to their church in Alaska. I base my conclusion solely on the total amount of charitable donations reported by the Palins on their tax returns for 06 and 07 as released to the media. Perhaps they donated more and failed to include such donations in their itemized charitable contributions. Obama's donations are based on the representations above.

Yes, that’s what I thought: you don’t need to mention Obama to raise this issue. This is a much more title and post! [Rod blushes because he doesn’t get compliments from me very often.] :}

I think a useful distinction between progressive and traditionalist religionists and their approach to religious truth is as follows. Progressives think that religious truth is indefinite and subjective, and can change according to the perceived needs of people in a given time and place. Traditionalists believe that religious truth is definite and objective, and can be known with some degree of certainty.

It may be ‘useful’, but let’s recognize that you’re imposing a conservative [aka traditionalist] frame on how you perceive a progressive [aka liberal] to think. In other words, you’re using a straw-man, especially with the “and can change..” part. As JFK used to say: “Let me say this about that”.

Is there a ‘religious truth’ that a human beings can ‘know’ in a shared way? Can I know/believe something and be sufficiently assured that it is the same thing that another believer knows/believes? Is there something ‘there’ and can we humans ‘know’ it with fidelity.
Much of the discussion of knowledge has focused on the ‘thing to be known’ and (as far as enlightenment understanding goes) an abstract intellect (a faculty to know, reason and understand) in each person. But if you really look at the literature and research of the last twenty years or so, the idea of you and me having this abstract thing called an intellect is becoming more and more untenable as science has begun to fill in lots of the abstractness with concrete mechanisms in the human brain.

This is probably the crucial question: is human nature completely embodied...or not? At the moment there is no definitive proof to answer one way or the other, but there very well MAY be within the next forty years or so. It would be great to say that the burden of proof lies on one side of the other -- and, in a way, it does. I don't think one could ever definitively prove that there is a non-embodied aspect to humanity because it's impossible to prove that we know enough about our physiological beings to prove that there is some aspect that is NOT physically embodied. However, it would be possible to come very close to proving that human behavior can be explained by physical processes. If, for example, scientists are able to reverse-engineer the human brain and such human thought/consciousness duplicated with human built technology, that would be very close to proof.

I think most here would agree that our biology is much, much more complex than we knew even fifty years ago. We know that biological life is determined by programming in our genes with protein sequences providing part of the mechanism. Further likely advances in bio-tech, nano-technology, computing (including quantum computing) and 'artificial' intelligence could quite possibly work together to produce technologically/biologically life that would go a long way toward making the case that we are entirely embodied beings.

As to general characteristics of progressives versus conservatives, it's quite possible that much is dependent on the way our brains become 'wired' with knowledge and what emotions are linked with our experiences. Neurosciece has shown that we are naturally empathetic. Cognitive science posits that we think via metaphors and that how these metaphors are strung together and prioritized can push one in the direction of being basically progressive or conservative (cf. George Lakoff and Steven Pinker writings for example).

(Aside: I'm 60 now, but if I were 20 again I would absolutely be trying to learn everything I could about neuroscience and cognitive science. That's where the story of our humanity resides, and we probably know a very small part of what there is to know. I find this very, very exciting!)

One characteristic that I find convincing is that progressives tend to be more tolerant (eager and able to process) ambiguity that do conservatives. (Note: this is a tendency along a continuum not a binary law of behavior.) That's why conservatives prefer binary choices (black/white, true/false, one-of-us/one-of-them) and progressives resist such dichotomies because they force reality into often-not-useful (and certainly not exhaustive) categories. That's why progressive Christians find the command to love more attractive than conservative, who prefer a set of rules. (It's interesting that seldom does one see the golden rule commemorated along side the ten commandments.)

Over the years I've verbalized a couple of criteria that I think would have to be met in order for me personally to give definite credence to 'religious truth'. One is that this truth would have to be available to be learned by every human that has ever lived (or at least lived among others). This is why I think something like the golden rule (based on compassion) is about as close to a universal law of living for self-aware beings such as ourselves.

One thing I have never really understood is how believers can have confidence that their version of truth is the real one when the primary determinator of which version of truth one embraces is the culture that one is born into. It seems to me that a believer simply defaults to belief in the version dominant in their own culture. How do you traditionalists reconcile this?

By the way, how many of you have read Stages of Faith by James Fowler? He discusses the major stages of belief that many of us (maybe even Rod) go through as life progresses.

Then there's this from Rod's post: "religious truth...can be known with some degree of certainty". The real difficulty here is how to quantify the level of certainty without being TOO certain. History is filled with stories of those who believed so strongly that they ended up bending the ethical foundations of their belief in their zeal to enforce truth on unbelievers. I'd like to hear how those writing hear balance this as individuals and as citizens in a democratic republic.

In the end, I find it better for myself to know what I can and admit that there are many things I don't and cannot know. Conservatives tend to want to fill in the unknowable with religious revelation. Is that a fair description?

Ahhh, just trolling, as I thought. Broad assertions and no substantiation. Will remember to not respond.

Steve

No, I'm not trolling, at times I just like ram to my head into brick walls. Trying to convince a science-head that reality might not fit into the neat little box that he's assigned to it is usually a frustrating and unrewarding task, but occasionally you see a light go on. But having said that there's no reason that the kinematic equations describing the motion of the planets could not be reformulated to put the earth at the center. Algebraically very messy, of course, and I don't really feel the need for the mathematical exercise, so I think I'll pass on doing it.

And you still didn't respond to my challenge, if the spacecraft orbits the earth, then why doesn't the Sun?

Larry, the earth is rotating on its axis and the sun is not moving.

The airplane circumnavigates the globe because it must travel in a direction opposite to the rotation of the earth in order to stay in the same position with reference to the sun.

And you never responded to my challenge - how can you prove that you are not a naked brain in a box being stimulated by sensory inputs to make you believe you are walking breathing, full - bodied human?en why doesn't the Sun?

Look Larry, if you are saying that the equations can be written from either a heliocentric or geocentric point of view, then that is all well and good.

But if you are saying that since either set of equations are useful, then, therefore, there is no reason to choose between a heliocentric or geocentric explanation - and that, furthermore, there is no objective reality in which one or the other is true - well then all I can say is that you are delusional.

John, he is just having fun. You cannot write those equations using existing knowledge. If you leave out lots of stuff, you can make up some equations to describe just the movement. If you acknowledge gravity, mass, the moon and planets and velocities it wont work. Walk away.

Steve

Nixon - Quaker (non-credal; many do not consider themselves traditionally Christian)

Nixon's church in Whittier was affiliated with California Yearly Meeting of Friends, a body whose doctrine was pretty close to mainline Protestant. They had churches (i.e. worship buildings with steeples) and programmed worship (if I recall the particulars correctly) with organs, hymns, sermons, paid preachers, collective petitional prayer, predetermined Bible readings, and a Protestant Christocentric theology. Of the two groups terming themselves Quaker in California at the time, it was definitely the conservative and Christocentrist one and on course to converge with conventional Protestants.

California Yearly Meeting has since morphed into Friends Church Southwest, an evangelical church body that doesn't call itself Quaker, has a hierarchical organization and a formal theology and a creed, has a seminary and affiliated college, does "church planting", has long term expansion plans, actively seeks converts, baptizes infants, etc.

People who identify as Quakers in California today tend be affiliated with Pacific Yearly Meeting, which existed as the organizing body of liberal/nonChristocentric Quakers in California throughout Nixon's lifetime. Joan Baez was raised in that branch.

Nixon's personal beliefs seem to have been substantially molded by his mother, who became something of a fundamentalist in the wake of the Aimee Semple MacPherson phenomenon in Los Angeles. If commentary I've seen is correct, he remained skeptical of Christology in many respects throughout his life (which is quite Quaker) but embraced the traditionalist or conservative churched Christian interpretation and dogma of the ordering of life from the Bible more generally (which is not so Quaker).

Jimmy Carter - Baptist (no idea whether he was "progressive" or not. But Baptists are also non-credal)

The townlet Carter's family and much of his ancestors lived in for many generations in Georgia was founded and originally mostly inhabited by Quakers. Most Quakers left the South prior to the Civil War due to the disputes over slavery. Nonetheless, if you know something about historical Quakers, who mostly lived on the land, or the contemporary tiny group termed 'conservative Quakers', and the historical Quaker testimonies (concerning peace, simplicity, equality, integrity, community) he can seem a plausible fit to type. I suspect that elements of that old ethos, passed down within the Carter family, account for why Carter is such a peculiar figure overall, especially politically, and hasn't fit in very well as a Baptist.

Ronald Reagan - Presbyterian (not the Dominionist kind, IIRC) Also divorced-and-remarried, which to some puts him on par with gay partners

The way Richard Rhodes assembles the evidence in 'Arsenals of Folly', Reagan became (like Nixon) fairly firmly convinced of the traditionalist or conservative churched Christian interpretation and dogma of the general ordering of life from the Bible in midlife. With obvious exceptions, evidently. Rhodes shorthands or mislabels the view as fundamentalist, but if you see how Reagan apparently resorted to it in meetings with the Russians in his book, it isn't entirely off.

George Bush II - born-again, probably closest to Rod's definition of Christian

The Religious Right coalition that Bush assembled as his backing in 1999/2000 includes Mormons and the Unification Church. (Presumable fellow travelers and silent allies would be groups like Christian Science and Scientology.) The now invisible Marvin Olasky was a major Bush advisor and strategist. That is the company Bush was comfortable with or whose actions under mantle of religion he found acceptable and was willing to figurehead.

No doubt all the groups allied as the Religious Right are all socially conservative and desirous of less government restriction on their activities, and willing to take taxpayer money for things they do. But they also have similar doctrines of attaining and using power, and likewise knowledge, that could well lead one to wonder about their theologies. When Karl Rove boasted of having separated American society at large into faith based and reality based groups, that is pretty much an admission that the faith basis held in common is significantly gnostic.

Larry: why did the post-Copernicus books that featured heliocentrism all have a disclaimer (inserted at the behest of the church) that the heliocentrism was merely a mathematical assumption to make the mathematics simpler, and wasn't "really" true?

You answered your own question.

Doug Cramer: There is no doubt that Barack Obama is not a member of the Orthodox Christian Church, the Catholic Church, or any other communion understood by her members to be "traditionalist", as that term is most commonly used. This fact has very specific theological consequences, from the perspective of these communions.

Agreed. But Rod (who is now trying to wriggle out of the implications of his slur of Obama on the previous thread) is as unable to define the terms "traditionalist" and "progressive" as he is unable to define "Christian".

He, at this stage in his religious development, sees "traditional" as being "Orthodox" (capital O) with some indulgence (wrong word perhaps) for RC's and maybe Lutherans and Traditional Anglicans. His reference to the Nicene Creed says as much. (Though where he and Obama come down on the perpetual viginity of Mary is still problematic.) But given his apostasy from Roman Catholicism, he would have to reject the Immaculate Conception, purgatory, filioque, etc. If he is "traditional", those accepting those doctrines are "progressive" (which then seems to be a polite way of saying "suspected of heresy".) I predict that if he bolts Merton-like to Buddhism, either the Mahayana or Theravada will have to tremble before his inquisitorial scowl.

Erin's larger point is well taken: there is a lot of muddled thinking in Rod's treatment of this topic. He thinks "homoousios" means something but I'll bet he can't define that any more than he can "traditional", "progressive", "Christian", or indeed, "orthodox."

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in utrisque caritas.

In the end, there is only one comparison.

Absolute truth -- substitute synonymous qualifiers of your choice -- is a meaningless term in science. It has neither value nor application.

Objective truth -- again, substitute as you wish -- is precisely the realm of science, but our friend Larry and others are clearly making the mistake of thinking that objective and absolute are synonymous, let alone interchangeable by any stretch of logic or reason.

A religious believer states: this is what I believe. His conscious or unconscious motivations for that belief are completely and in all ways beyond the reach of science, therefore his belief (conclusions) are not in any way classifiable as science.

A scientist states: this is the best explanation for this phenomenon that we have at the present time. His conscious or unconscious motivations for that belief are completely and in all ways irrelevant to the strictures of the scientific method. If a person applies SM and complies with its rules and requirements, that person is a scientist. The person's beliefs are irrelevant to the process and results.

A believer and a scientist can, of course, reach the same conclusions by their different paths. That is a fact that offers no rebuttal to the differences between them. The believer still cannot cite science for his conclusion. The scientist still cannot site belief for his conclusion.

Larry, it took me a while to see it, but yours is a classic case of circular logic

No, you still don't see it. All of our knowledge is circular in nature, it is all completely self referential. Now it is generally considered bad form if your circles are too small, but circles in your logic are unavoidable. Consider a dictionary, what does it contain? Definitions of words. How does it define these words? Using other words! This is a fairly trivial example but the same holds true in mathematics and science and all other fields of human knowledge. They are closed, self-referential and self-validating.

A scientist states: this is the best explanation for this phenomenon that we have at the present time. His conscious or unconscious motivations for that belief are completely and in all ways irrelevant to the strictures of the scientific method. If a person applies SM and complies with its rules and requirements, that person is a scientist. The person's beliefs are irrelevant to the process and results.

Now this is a pure fairy tale. You aren't describing a human being here but rather an automaton. You expect knowledge without a knower, learning without a learner, observation without an observer. Even if we had the inhuman scientist that you are describing here, the scientific method is itself far from being ideologically neutral, it has a strong bias towards certain kinds of answers and is completely useless for large classes of problems. The scientist may say "this is the best explanation", but at the same time he leaves out the "assuming this is the kind of universe we live in, that it is a universe in which we can expect science (and remember it's self-validating) to work". As Polanyi correctly noted, when you get right down to it, the only reason that a scientist can give for his belief that science is effective is "because this is just the way I believe the universe is". Now our culture generally gives science a free pass on answering questions like this, a free pass that it doesn't give theologians and so the results of science are considered unquestionable while those of theologians is are thought of as unreliable. Somewhat ironic considering the track record of the two.

Larry, the biggest problem in science, informing every aspect of it, is the following question: how does the observer effect the observed? What bias is the act of observation creating in the recording of those observations? Because humans are not automatons, because we cannot (yet!) build a computer on which we can rely to take our place with the critical tasks and functions, the scientific method stands as the best way to mitigate our failings.

We can discuss the finer points of the abstracts until the cows come home and appear as guests of honor on our burger buns, and we can even enjoy it. I know I do. However, the entities science and belief are as I've described them. Calling it a fairy tale just means that this was never a discussion, just two guys throwing words at each other.

Trivial aside: recent research has offered the theory that humans think in metaphors. Language, syntax, definitions and semantics are all components of metaphor and subservient to it.

Larry, one more thing: your phrasing choices, exemplified by [n]ow this is a pure fairy tale, puts you exactly subject to the definition of sophomoric I provided above. I suggest you look to your own rhetoric the next time you think to claim ad hominem on accurate word choices for the reader's impression of you.

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

As to numbers 1 and 2, I think most religious people here would agree that these are correct. #3 is most questionable, and the contrary is taught by most world religions, in that a self-centered happiness, as a goal in itself, is pretty universally condemned.

#4 is a logical absurdity, given #1.

As to #5, we do not know the answer, though many here seem to think that they do, the answer being, I and those who agree with me are saved, everyone else not. The difficulty is that such folks cannot seem to agree amongst themselves.

So, these propositions are, on the whole, more right than wrong. But, most of our propositions about the Infinite, IF we are lucky, are at best more right than wrong.

Another religious war. One among many.

t's not primarily in the Torah. It's primarily in the Tanakh, largely in Isaiah and the Psalms.

For people who don't know how to read mystic writings, that assertion even seems plausible. It also requires they skew their translations of the Hebrew to fit the retconnings found in the Gospels.

Larry
November 19, 2008 3:42 PM
As Polanyi correctly noted, when you get right down to it, the only reason that a scientist can give for his belief that science is effective is "because this is just the way I believe the universe is".

You are leaving out the part where scientists test the process by making falsifiable predictions and seeing if they are correct.

Do the Hebrew scriptures foretell Jesus? Well, they can be read that way after the fact. It's not a definitive proof, but it's convincing once one believes in Jesus. Obviously Jews and Christians employ different interpretive strategies. The defining question is not "what do the Hebrew scriptures say about Jesus?" It is "who is Jesus?" Everything else follows from that.

The defining question is not "what do the Hebrew scriptures say about Jesus?" It is "who is Jesus?" Everything else follows from that.

And it was Barack Obama's response to that question that prompted Rod to start this thread and the earlier one.

Yes, that is THE question, isn't it?

Re: Would the Christians have just as easily been able to read Jesus Christ into the Old Testament if they had been working with the original Hebrew text instead of the translated Greek/LXX text?

There was no "original" Hebrew text. In the first century AD there were multiple texts, with variations both accidental (scribal error) and deliberate, floating around the Jewish synagogues. Recall that the ancient Jews were riven by sectarian disputes themselves. There was simply no agreement even on what constituted Scripture let alone on a single canonical text. The latter did not arrive in Judaism until the Middle Ages.
In a sense the Septuagint was an attempt to create a canonical version of Scripture, in the Mediterranean world's common tongue. The traditionalist Jews of Palestine, (who would soon reject Hellenism in the Maccabean revolt) never accepted it as such, but it was "the" Scriptures for Greek-speraking Jews elsewhere for a long time.

John E., Larry clearly rejects the scientific method in toto. There is no rational rebuttal to that.

Eric, No, it's not anywhere in our Tanakh. Only by what readers have correctly called a "skewed reading", wanting to see it there, can a Christian find it there. We can easily explain why that interpretation is so anethema to us, and David Wolpe has a column here on b-net that also offers a good explanation why we don't believe in Jesus. You need to understand that a blanket statement "it's in the Torah/Tanakh" is so offensive and off-base. Believe what you want about Jesus, but understand we have very good reason not to, and equally good reason to be bothered by such statements.

eastcoastlady:

Michael L. Brown has a four-volume series entitled Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus (Baker Books) in which he shows why seeing Jesus in the Old Testament is not so off-base. There is also Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible by Eugen J. Pentiuc, PhD in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard, ThD in Old Testament from Bucharest University, Paulist Press.

FWIW, I've in the past listened to Tovia Singer's anti-Messianic teachings and found them to be less than convincing or impartial.

Fair enough, Larry. My conclusion concerning your attitude was based on your posts on this thread, which obviously (now) do not reflect your true attitude towards the scientific method.

What is its place, then? Stipulating that it is a "worldview", what are the general mistakes being made by those who apply it in their pursuit of knowledge?

So far, what I've seen you state is that the SM is flawed by its inability to recognize that faith is a valid component in the pursuit of (insert qualifier of your choice, or none) truth. My view -- presumably, since it is that of the vast majority, the "science-head" view -- that faith by definition has no place in the SM is not sufficient rebuttal. Care to clarify? One request: If you continue to cite Polanyi, please at least summarize his views here instead of just naming him. I'm happy to follow up on the details myself, but I'm not familiar enough with his writings to understand you when you just name him.

Larry, I'm just acknowledging your last post, and that I read it. Life has intruded, and I may not be back for a day or more to post a response. Thanks.