I have a piece in USA Today this morning in which I argue that people who maintain there's nothing wrong with the Republican Party that getting rid of religious and social conservatives won't fix are way off base. Excerpt:
John McCain didn't get his clock cleaned because of his ardent advocacy for unborn life or his stout defense of traditional marriage -- neither of which played anything but a bit part in the tragicomic McCain-Palin campaign.No, McCain lost because the economy is collapsing on the watch of an unpopular Republican president, and he had no idea what to say about it. McCain lost because his party is incompetent. McCain lost because his choice of Sarah the Unready cast doubt about his judgment. And McCain lost because Barack Obama ran a great campaign.
Where is Jesus in any of that?
Besides, was it the religious right that conceived and executed the disastrous Iraq war? Did preachers deregulate Wall Street? Did evangelical leader James Dobson screw up the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Hurricane Katrina? Jack Abramoff -- did he concoct his crooked lobbying schemes during long protest vigils outside abortion clinics? To be fair, religious conservatives didn't stand up to any of this. We own a share of the GOP's failure. But to scapegoat us for the Republican implosion is preposterous.
I go on to say that the coming generation of Evangelicals and orthodox Catholics could actually be the creative minority that renews the GOP. Read the whole thing.
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Uncommon, I think we have very different definitions/perceptions of life so it is hard to debate here. This seems definitely to be true of "empathy". By that word I mean a sort of primitive, quasi-psychic sense which most humans (and many animals, at least social animals) possess which allows them to "share" the experience of others. The analogy being the manner in which a vibrating tuning fork can induce sympathetic vibration in another nearby tuning fork. That phenomenon is not amenable to social reinterpretation any more than color vision is. We and the Russians both see the same shades of blue even if Russian has a common color term for light blue and English lumps all blues under "blue". On a larger topic, I mentioned my background in physics. This makes me a Baconian empiricist, so your Cartesian-style rationalism doesn't compute well for me. In matters religious I am, accordingly, a mystic (term used very broadly; I claim no special revelation or vision). Knowledge (Fr. connaitre) of God comes from our relationship with God and not from syllogisms. Mind you, the syllogisms may be interesting in their own way (when I had more time for such pursuits I used to read theology) but they are not vital or necessary to receive God's grace and live in Christ. Our Eastern Church indeed has a tradition of "Holy Fools", men and women whose ascesis was to let go of Reason itself to better humble the proud spirit and receive the Light. And I never said God was unknowable (though no finite creature will ever comprehend God in His entirety). But God is known in his works in our own lives, and in his Sacraments, and in his miracles. Religion for me is a matter of relationship, not logic.
i never said that you said that God is unknowable, I said that you are assuming that good is unknowable. That the dignity of man is unknowable and can not be informed by objective truths, it can only be "felt" by contextualized perceptions. if this is true there is no need for the ten commandments and they certainly don't need to be carved in stone. redemption by definition has to be a calling to something beyond yourself.
how can you say that seeking and doing good are not necessary to be a Christian?
Re: i never said that you said that God is unknowable, I said that you are assuming that good is unknowable.
God is the Good (in the full Platonic sense).
And again, you have not caught my point at all. We know (again: connaitre/kennen) God (and the Good) by direct experience in our soul, not by intellectual exercizes with our rational minds. Strictly speaking, even verbalization is beside the point: the true experience of God is ineffable, even rationalists like Aquinas acknolwedged that.
I am not denying the knowability of Truth/God/The Good. Rather I am rejecting what I take to be your epistomology of this knowledge. If I am wrong about what you are saying then I apologize for the error.
Re: how can you say that seeking and doing good are not necessary to be a Christian?
Where did you ever get that idea from anything I have said? It would seem that you are in some error here too vis-a-vis my views.
i never claimed a monopoly on truth. i am just saying there is a truth and that is knowable. And while that doesn't give a full experience of God, it is still of consequence. Intellect is a good and something we will be held responsible for.
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