Radorth

Then I can say that one is not a fundy, according to you, who believes the things I listed. Is that correct? A straight answer would be nice.

Rad

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by Radorth
Then I can say that one is not a fundy, according to you, who believes the things I listed. Is that correct?

What you described are some vague Christian beliefs. I expect there are people that accept all of those and everything Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking ever wrote.

Originally posted by Radorth
A straight answer would be nice.

Read this then. There are 30 pages from The Fundamentalism Project's first volume online at amazon.

Fundamentalisms Observed

lpetrich

In my thread on Massimo Pigliucci on Science and Religion, I note that he uses Michael Shermer's taxonomy of different possible relations between science and religion, and also correlates them with a taxonomy of different kinds of deities.

Same World
Coexisting Worlds
Conflicting Worlds

Personal, Intervening Deity
Naturalistic Deity (Prefers Natural Laws)
Deistic (Mostly Indifferent) Deity to None

Those claiming that there is no conflict between science and religion generally belong to the same-world or coexisting-worlds camps. Many well-known Xtian apologists seem to belong to this school of thought, and in this thread, Bede seems to also.

The Galileo/Gould position of Non-Overlapping Magisteria, however, is a coexisting-worlds view, in which science and religion are two separate worlds. That implicitly recognizes a conflict by keeping the two separate.

The conflicting-worlds view may be described as the view that the two tend to conflict, and that one or the other must take priority.

Gurdur

Oddly entertaining, but perhaps this thread could use a bit of calming down.

lpetrich

Seems to me that what Bede is doing is saying that anything he likes is "Christianity"; he leaves out Biblical literalism, miracle-mongering, cults of saints, and other such embarrassments. What he describes might better be called Bedianity.

Yes, Bede gets upset when anyone mentions present-day fundamentalists; to me, they are at least as worthy of the label Xtian as he is.

So the next question is how common Bedianity had been in the medieval Church, and whether it was a universal opinion among Church decision-makers and philosophers. The historical record suggests a mixed record.

There is also some additional questions:

Although some people did seem to believe in at least some of Bedianity, there is the question of how much it was a way of making scientific curiosity seem theologically acceptable and not some impudence on the level of second-guessing God or building the Tower of Babel. It would thus be something like the long tradition of allegorical interpretation as a way of explaining away awkward parts of the Bible.

Also, I believe that it is difficult to derive Bedianity from the Bible; I mention this because it's The Great Xtian Sourcebook. In particular, I note that the central personality of Xtianity, Jesus Christ, was not known for great scientific curiosity.

Finally, several aspects of many forms of Xtianity are contrary to Bedianity -- and are practically recipes for science-religion conflict:

Biblical literalism
Miracle-mongering
God's alleged inscrutability
Faith being superior to reason

Jack the Bodiless

If Christianity is supposed to be "scientifically superior" to other worldviews because it presupposes an orderly Universe with stable "natural laws"...

...Superior to what, exactly?

The Chinese had somewhat similar beliefs. The Greeks developed an obsession with mathematics and geometry. And various cultures came up with forms of occult wizardry which place emphasis on precisely-conducted ritual magic: as if even supernatural spirits obeyed a complex set of inviolate "laws".

lpetrich

Jack the Bodiless:
If Christianity is supposed to be "scientifically superior" to other worldviews because it presupposes an orderly Universe with stable "natural laws"...

The answer here is that Bede is talking about Bedianity, a theological concoction created by extracting certain theological views and labeling them "Christianity", as if they are somehow typical of Xtianity.

In fact, Bedianity seems much closer to 18th-cy. Deism than to most forms of Xtianity.

Radorth

Nah, Gurdur. This is just your normal, everyday, II sanctioned off-topic Rad baiting by two of the masters. Nothing unusual.

Rad

Radorth

Which only means one thing. He's been on II too long.

The generally accepted definition here is "anyone who says so," although a better definition has been offered by Christians. Skeptics claim they cannot or ought not venture to make distinctions, and claim confusion as to NT comments on the subject.

We see this claim of ignorance and confusion selectively and completely abandoned here, causing my brand new irony meter to short out again.

Rad

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by Radorth
Nah, Gurdur. This is just your normal, everyday, II sanctioned off-topic Rad baiting by two of the masters. Nothing unusual.

1) It doesn't happen every day; 2) it has nothing to do with II officially; 3) I specifically acknowledged veering from the topic* on at least two occasions in this thread; and 4) it is hardly "baiting."

It's called keeping Radorth honest, and correcting him when he tries to put words in people's mouths.

* This is your thread, and this post is in response to your accusation of "baiting."