Metacrock

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Meta =&gt; Secular does not mean "scientific." It does not mean "anti-Christian." It does not mean "naturlaistic." It means that There is a space in public discourse for non-religious ideas or insititutions. A netural space. That means it's not anti-Christian any more than it is pro-Christian The concept and the term "secular" came from the chruch.secular presits (yea, they called them that) where those who worked outside the monestry in society with everyone else.

Over time this came to be used of government when, in the reformation they could not agree upon anything betweent the relgious factions.they had to create netural ground which would not be favorable to either protestant or Catholic. that's how the secular was born Modern science was born when monks in monestaries began to explore the learning brought back from spain. IN the 15-16the centuries this was enhanced by Anglican Divines in england and by private citizens with an interest in knolwdge, but they almost always were Christians, and devout ones such as Robert Boyle or Issac Newton.

You can't find a sinlge major contributor to science in those centuries who was not a Christian!

For info on birth of secularization see The Secular City by Harvey Cox (circa 1964) and Flight From Authority by a guy named Stout circa 1989.

Meta =&gt; The word in academic history for the last dozen years is "the enlightnement is overrated." That was the watch word of the Postmodernists.


Meta =&gt; Science is not an ideology. It's a procedure. When you attach an ideology to it it's no longer science.

Metacrock

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Meta =&gt; Yea, like I said, If you mean the rise of modern secularization and science in the enlightenment, I'm doing my Ph.D. dissertation on it. that does entail a lot of reading.



Meta =&gt;Have you ever studied what came before the dark ages? Have you ever compared the period before that to the dark ages? The reason there as a dark age is becasue the previous civilzazation and social project fell apart (called "Fall of the Roman empire"). These ideas we take granted about democracy and so forth are not very old.They didn't really come about in the form that we know them until relatively recently, like say the late 18th century. That's why there weren't around in the dark ages. Because they hadn't been developed yet!


Meta =&gt; Who was a Christian which would seem to support my point!

Meta =&gt; wrong! First of all, there were no "liberal chrisians" as we know them. That was a 19th century invention. SEcondly, they still count as christians. Now there were almost no atheists involved in the declaration of indepdenence. When Franklin went to France he argued a lot with atheists from D'Holbach's school. He thought they were stupid. Jefferson thought so too! All those Diests would define themselves as christians --as I pointed out already. Their main thinker was John Toland, he wrote Christianity not Mysteirous he called himself a "Christian." "Deist" is not a euphamism for "Atheist."


Meta =&gt;I am a liberal christian. Also I have a Masters degree in Theology from a liberal seminary.Liberal christiainity really didn't get going in its present form until the 19th century. There were some that might be called "liberal" in the 16th and 18th but they really were not liberals we know them today.


Meta =&gt; so do I!

Here are some reasons they did not like him:


quote:
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In his NOTES ON VIRGINIA:
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured,fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.


Meta =&gt; That doesn't mean tortured by christians, it means tortured for being chrisitian.

In arguing for using reason and persuasion instead of religious laws:

Let us reflect that [the earth] is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the nine hundred and ninety-nine wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practical instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?


The priests have so disfigured the simple religion of Jesus that no one who reads the sophistications they have engrafted on it, from the jargon of Plato, of Aristotle, and other mystics, would conceive these could have been fathered on the sublime preacher of the Sermon on the Mount. (as quoted by Edward L. Ericson, THE FREE MIND THROUGH THE AGES, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985)


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Meta =&gt; So what? That just proves that it is not history with which you are concerned but your battle with the fundies.


Sojourner[/QB][/QUOTE]

There are many stupid people around. Fundies have their share, that doesn't have anything to do witht he historical quesiton or the truth of the Gospel. YOu don't like fundies, don't be one. Be the liberal kind of smart Christian like me!

Just go to a smart chruch, don't go to the dumb chruch.

You aren't sojourner who posts on the egalitarian board are you? Egalitarian alliance?

Metacrock

I don't think that's very logical or fair to equate abortion with rule of law. Just becasue one is against abortin doesn' make one a theocrat. I am agaisnt abortion, I think it's wrong, that doesn't mean I'm for legislating the 10 commandments or anything. We do have laws against murder you know. that's a secular concern itsn't it?

Metacrock

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Meta =&gt;Why should I do that? I believe my faith represents the truth, and I already see history far clearer than most people (cause it's my profession).


Meta =&gt; I don't credit "everything" to Christianity. But you try to say that Christianity destorys everything, that's absurd. Christianity indirectly fed into seculariztion, science, democracy, and Western civilizatin in general. It didn't invent any of these as a speicial project of the chruch, but it led to influences that fed into them. It did not destroy them or hold them back.

Meta =&gt;True and a good point, except for one thing; those men were devout, their committment to science was directly related to their faith, and in many cases the doing to science and secularziation were directly connected to chruch instituions (the doing of science in monestaries in middle ages--the need for a secular space to settle the religious wars ect ect).

lpetrich

Very convenient ethical relativism.

Has anyone EVER heard of a lynch mob EVER behaving like that? I certainly haven't.

More likely they would have been angrily defensive about killing her.

Metacrock shows his historical illiteracy yet again. Persecution of the Church by pagans was pre-Constantine; the lynching of Hypatia was post-Constantine.

And took over 1500 years to figure that out. And although Greek "democracy" was limited to free male citizens, it was more than what one can find in the Bible.

By that standard, their opponents were all 100% Christian. And they had plenty of places in the Bible to look for support.

The Bible takes slavery for granted without a hint that slavery ought not to exist.

And the curse of Ham in the Bible has often been interpreted as supporting the enslavement of black people by white people.

The Bible nowhere supports anything like feminism. In fact, it contains some blatant sexism -- at least as bad as classical-Greek sexism.

And the <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wb/" target="_blank">Woman's Bible</a>, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is hardly a celebration of the Bible as a spotlessly virtuous book.

And there were plenty of civil-rights activists who did not see much religion in it. Were its Jewish supporters Christians?

lpetrich

Can anyone say: famous last words?

lpetrich

I'd like to see Metacrock tell that to all the fundamentalists, those who maintain that Adam and Eve had had a literal existence.

And an omnipotent being would have no trouble making itself known to all of humanity; there is no need to wait until the building of the Roman Empire.


Tell that to the fundamentalists.

I notice that the Bible itself nowhere states that the Adam-and-Eve story is an allegory.

A being who runs off and hides somewhere has no right to complain about others finding the hypothesis of its existence less-than-convincing.

Except that it did not happen that way. The closest they ever got to science was rediscovering a lot of ancient Greek philosophy, notably the works of Aristotle.

lpetrich

Radorth is being very literal-minded. I wonder if he wonders what is the mountain where Jesus Christ was shown all the kingdoms of the world.

Also, the early Christians were persecuted for denying the Empire's official gods -- something that Radorth seems to have no objection to when it is Christians doing the persecuting.

This means the rule of law as opposed to rule by the leaders' whims.

And Radorth has not told us how he is going to avoid creating a Saudi-Arabia-like government.

What does abortion have to do with anything?

An omnipotent being getting dragged around like that? Hoo!

And how is Mr. G. supposed to be doing that?

Cry me a river. You've been listening to too much right-wing propaganda.

He believed in the social-contract theory of government, which is grossly unbiblical.

If you call Unitarianism true Christianity, of course. And a version of the Gospels with the miracles edited out the truest version of them.

That may well be the case for Metacrockianity, but the historical churches have often believed in the Divine Right of Kings.

lpetrich

If you think that Unitarians are real Christians, that might well be so.

Also, I notice that King George III had considered himself a Christian. And he was the head of his nation's official Church.

That would not be apparent from the practice of much of Christianity, which is literalism pure and simple.

And I must say that I'd prefer honest fundamentalism to this dishonest defense of cafeteria theology.

Romans 13 suggests otherwise.

However, the whole of the Religious Right would thus qualify as the "lunatic fringe".

More like the failure of the Wars of Religion to determine which sect was right.

So Metacrock's idea of a "true Christian" is someone who believes that the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ is as convincing as similar stories from pagan mythology?

A rewrite of history that would make a Stalinist proud. Christianity has had a long and ugly history of persecution of not only other religions, but also other Christians.

Metacrock's complacency about fundamentalism is noted.

And if the more political fundies get what they want -- an American-Taliban theocracy with them the theocrats -- I won't feel sorry for Metacrock if he gets sent to some "re-education camp".

Ron Garrett

First I'd like to compliment NOGO for illustrating some of the issues from scripture with the Pauline and Johannine versions of Jesus as Messiah and atoning/propitiating sacrifice. I note Radorth has attempted to deflect and avoid any discussion of the substance and merits of that post, illustrating yet again that for some Christians scripture only matters when it can be used to proof-text the dogma and doctrine they have uncritically accepted on mere say so.

NOGO has laid out a serious and reasoned argument, but unfortunately is not in discussion with a person who is willing to acknowledge, let alone engage the specific difficulties with his position.

Since NOGO began this thread laying out his argument from scripture, and since Radorth seems unwilling (though my vote is incompetent) to engage the substance of the thread, what's the point of continuing? NOGO will not be led off topic into the amorphous realm of pure speculation and personal theological opinion that Radorth prefers, and Radorth will not respond to substantive discussions about the validity of his views, and the stalemate simply provides Metacrock yet another opportunity to take a thread down a dozen off-topic ratholes for the sheer auto-eroticism of it (the warden restored his internet access I see).

I vote we close what is yet another pointless discussion aimed at yet another theist mud puppy, take Radorth out of the discussion by beginning anew with a direct discussion of "God's Plan." Perhaps if we open the discussion up we might be joined by a Christian able and willing to engage the challenge presented by NOGO.