On religion (in particular Christianity), rationality, and this forum - are we allowed to discuss it?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Bruce?

[Beastro]

Well, I can kind of agree with that. The world is not made good. But part of the thing about breaking out of the monotheist mindset is recognizing that the supreme deity and the demiurge are separate roles.

For me it isn't a simple matter of either or, which gets into the Trinity and the thing that confounds so many over the Three that are One. In this case, the Word which spoken by the Father to bring things into being.

I have to differentiate over the goodness of the world. I find too many focus on aspects like pain and suffering which have their place (as does sheer misfortune). We not liking them are intrinsic parts of raison d'être - they are there to drive us in ways nothing else would (people can deny almost anything in life, meaning, happiness, love, anger, but cause them pain and they'll respond).

I am a polytheist because I don't see the cosmos we exist in as part of one unifying purpose. I can't. It's all different goals, different ways, striving together and against each other.

That comes down to the matter of complexity and how limited we are as beings.

This actually ties into a very significant element of the Bible, that is the reoccurring symbol of the mountain and people coming to them. Within it is the symbolism of heaven and earth meeting, while at the same time the wide breadth o the mountain narrows down to a single point at the top which sits at the fulcrum of where heaven and earth meet, but separate. For Abrahamic religions, that spot is God and the spot from where all complexity arises from and eventually comes to join together at.

As for Dawkins, I have so many intense disagreements with him it's hard to know where to start. Maybe a good beginning part is that he is guilty of war crimes against the concept of fun and missed his calling as the cruel master of a Dickensian orphanag

He's a taboo breaker and gets his jollies that way. I ultimately find his bent nihilism cloak in enlightenment thinking, as he seeks to attack anything of substance that doesn't go with his Newtonian way of thinking. His beating on about how synthetic human flesh should be made food is a good example of that.

Steve Pinker in some ways is the same way. I see it most of all in his reasons for not having children, which in his words is "telling my genes to go jump in a lake", which raises my questions as to what he finds ultimately of importance and value in the world.

I'm fairly certain that the general understanding is that atheists really are just arguing about the scientific efficacy of the cosmos theory of a supreme being. That and the ritual practice, though I don't think many people understand how intuitive the principle of faith is.

I think the scientific mindset has made us very blind to the matter, and that includes almost all religious people, at least in the West. That isn't to say to turn our backs on it, but it needs to balanced with other aspects of the human condition. Reason shouldn't be king, and the past 200 years is a testament to it. The ideologies we've been dealing with between then and now are a good example of that fact, as they define the borders of the world they approve of, then seek to eliminate anything that stands outside of their nice, ideal box.

I've personally come to loath ideology in general and look on them very much as predatory gods ever demanding sacrifice. If one finds that odd, see how people in movements are so quickly turned on and attacked by their comrades on social media if they even stray and inch from what their cause approves of.

What other disputes are there?

Dawkin's was speaking of each individual god as a dispute. Being monotheists, Christians only had one thing atheists objected to as opposed to the countless ones of a religion like Hinduism. From what I've seen of some dialogues between Christians and atheists, God is often the least major dispute they have, though. The major ones usual involve things like meaning in life and the participatory aspects of life. We as the experimenter are locked in the experiment and have to realize we have to live it rather than be arrogant enough like some to think we can become supremely objective and removed from the matter of existence, effectively the position God is in.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Calling Dawkins a "taboo breaker" is missing the point. He's the atheist equivalent of your creepy fundamentalist great-aunt who burns Harry Potter books. He's somebody who thinks that rainbows, bird song, and the laughter of children contributes to anti-scientific thinking.

The goodness of the world is something I will dispute, because that implies one singular Good that everything is working towards. Again, that's why I'm a polytheist. Any divine plan is patchwork, overlapping, agencies pulling in multiple directions instead of a grand unifying straight line.

[Beastro]

The goodness of the world is something I will dispute, because that implies one singular Good that everything is working towards. Again, that's why I'm a polytheist. Any divine plan is patchwork, overlapping, agencies pulling in multiple directions instead of a grand unifying straight line.

Such a straight line is secular thinking which has strayed from an understanding of time in Christianity and certainly not something within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Linearity is an aspect of the world, but it isn't the whole. Neither is the cyclical element of it.

It is both, and as a result, neither.

Things like time and the paths of the world run their course, but loop back on themselves. An example of this is seen in what Christ says to the Thief on the Cross "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.". That last word isn't flippant, it's speaking of the Garden of Eden (Paradise meaning literally "walled garden") and how things will come back to it after the course of the Fall has ended.

There are many things within the Judeo-Christian tradition that are paradoxical like this. I use "Judeo-Christian" mainly because I don't know Islam enough to include it, and from what I know, it completely lacks them. An example of that is the omnipotence of God; J-C tradition on the face of it agrees with Islam, but the making of Covenants in it is unthinkable to Islam because God's omnipotence is unrestrained. For Him to actively limit Himself goes completely against the grain of Submission to him. Islam holds God can change the rules whenever He wants and we have to suck it up, because He can do whatever He wants; the J-C tradition holds that He's capable of doing that, but He chooses not to and enters into contracts with men that both are expected to uphold (The Ten Commandants are framed very much like a marriage contract; it wasn't the Commandants on two pieces of stone as Protestants like to present now, it was two copies of the Commandants with one being for the Hebrews and one being for God).

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Whoa there, buddy.

I'm gonna ask that you speak to Christian tradition, because if you don't know Islam well enough you probably don't actually know Judaism well enough. The term "Judeo-Christian" is a very recent innovation, largely brought about in the wake of WWII by American Christians who felt bad about leaving the unwanted Jews out to die. Yes, technically Christianity sprang from a Jewish sect, but that was a long ass time ago, and there's a great many Blood Libels, Easter Pogroms, and various attempted genocides between then and now. The average Jewish fellow is not too fond of being lumped in with Christians.

As for the Islam covenant comparison, I'd argue that actually that's a case where Islam has more in common with protestant Christianity, especially Evangelical Christianity.

[Beastro]

Whoa there, buddy.

I'm gonna ask that you speak to Christian tradition, because if you don't know Islam well enough you probably don't actually know Judaism well enough. The term "Judeo-Christian" is a very recent innovation, largely brought about in the wake of WWII by American Christians who felt bad about leaving the unwanted Jews out to die. Yes, technically Christianity sprang from a Jewish sect, but that was a long ass time ago, and there's a great many Blood Libels, Easter Pogroms, and various attempted genocides between then and now. The average Jewish fellow is not too fond of being lumped in with Christians.

As for the Islam covenant comparison, I'd argue that actually that's a case where Islam has more in common with protestant Christianity, especially Evangelical Christianity.

It's use doesn't negate those actions, but it does help to encourage a look at commonalities, something I'd think is a good thing. There's the common use of the term and then there's using it to relating to the strict similarities both religions have. The fact it wasn't of use beforehand doesn't preclude that fact, and I'd say its lack of use previously is a sign of the a problem in the first place that should have been amended.

There's a lot both Christians and Jews don't like about one another I find lamentable. From the opposite end, I dislike the assumption of many Jews that see Evangelical/Fundie support for Israel being a simple means to an end to bring about the End Times when, if that is the case, it's from a very small minority and certainly not the mainstream opinion. That sentiment of support is genuine and honest. I find it so sad that it could be possibly taken the wrong way.

I applauded the serious look at their prejudice at least Anglospheric Christians took after WWII. I have spent the past 20 years odiously observing the closing of that window that tried to be opened, at least online with how common anti-semetic humour has shifted over that time.

Protestantism, especially Evengelism/Fundamentalists are actually the opposite. Their mentality is very modernist and scientific in outlook, and no surprise, the Scientific Revolution was spawned from the same currents in Western culture that triggered the Reformation. I know that sounds contradictory to how they act, but what many insist is from a mentality that effectively sees all of God's actions through the lens of materialism and conforming to the rules of the world. See the Young Earth Creationists trying to come up with the exact way God could've enacted Noah's Flood that fits with physics, effectively demanding God obey scientific laws and finding offense at people seeing a more symbolic, transcendent event in it (See the Polish Deluge; it wasn't a literal one either). Even their concept of the supernatural is materialist in that it presupposes that scientific laws must be violated for something to be supernatural, like miracles.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I seriously suggest you talk to some real life Jewish people and see how they feel about this.

[Beastro]

I seriously suggest you talk to some real life Jewish people and see how they feel about this.

I certainly like to, if only to demonstrate to them that at least some Christians aren't what they'd like to fear us to be.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Whoa there, buddy.

I'm gonna ask that you speak to Christian tradition, because if you don't know Islam well enough you probably don't actually know Judaism well enough. The term "Judeo-Christian" is a very recent innovation, largely brought about in the wake of WWII by American Christians who felt bad about leaving the unwanted Jews out to die. Yes, technically Christianity sprang from a Jewish sect, but that was a long ass time ago, and there's a great many Blood Libels, Easter Pogroms, and various attempted genocides between then and now. The average Jewish fellow is not too fond of being lumped in with Christians.

As for the Islam covenant comparison, I'd argue that actually that's a case where Islam has more in common with protestant Christianity, especially Evangelical Christianity.

From wikipedia btw:

"Historian K. Healan Gaston says that the term emerged as a descriptor of the United States in 1930s, when the US sought to forge a unified cultural identity to distinguish itself from the fascism and communism in Europe. The term rose to greater prominence during the Cold War to express opposition to communist atheism. In the 1970s the term became particularly associated with the American Christian right and is often employed in political attempts to restrict immigration and LGBT rights.[7]"

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, today I learned something new.
Beastro, if you talk with them it would be so you can learn something, because there is no way they have passed through this world without encountering your arguments a dozen times over.

If you want to talk about the shared heritage of monotheistic religions dedicated to Yaweh, then you can talk about Abrahamic religions and acknowledge Islam as part of the fold. "Judeo-Christian" is only a thing from the Christian perspective.