MarcyWatson
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There are several ways of defending the christian faith. First, it is very important to read the Bible regularly, both the New and the Old Testament. Understand how they fit together.
Defending The Christian Faith With Apologetics
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IowaGuy
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One was written in Hebrew, one in Greek. How do you understand their fitting together?
Saltmeister
The Dangerous Dinner
It's not like it's a machine with gears, shafts and wheels.
Greetings Marcy — welcome to the forum ...
In rtesponse to comments on reading the Bible, in the Christian Tradition there is a classic methodology — Lectio Divina:
Lectio
Read the passage slowly and attentively several times.
This is a far from simple step. There's an old story:
A master asked a student, 'when was the last time you saw a tree?' and the answer was 'this morning.'
'I doubt it,' came the reply, 'The first time was the last time, every time since then we reference the memory of a tree, rather than look at the one in front of us' ... I heard in a lecture a guy saying he's studied a text for 15 years, then something he'd never realised before popped into his head when he glanced at a line he'd copied on a piece of paper.
Meditatio
Sit with the words ... it is the Holy Spirit who will unveil it to the heart.
Oratio
Augustine spoke of capax dei — the capacity for God — and this capacity is realised nowhere more profoundly and in no greater reality than in prayer. Schuon paraphrased human nature as “I am, therefore I pray; sum ergo oro." Prayer is a dialogue with God.
This mode of dialogue is also a consecration, the Word illuminates and purifies, purifies and illuminates, the two are the same, the Word in the head becomes a memory at the moment of its utterance, but when the Word is taken to heart, It lives there ...
Contemplatio
Beyond words, beyond images ... peace ... presence ...
God bless,
Thomas
In rtesponse to comments on reading the Bible, in the Christian Tradition there is a classic methodology — Lectio Divina:
Lectio
Read the passage slowly and attentively several times.
This is a far from simple step. There's an old story:
A master asked a student, 'when was the last time you saw a tree?' and the answer was 'this morning.'
'I doubt it,' came the reply, 'The first time was the last time, every time since then we reference the memory of a tree, rather than look at the one in front of us' ... I heard in a lecture a guy saying he's studied a text for 15 years, then something he'd never realised before popped into his head when he glanced at a line he'd copied on a piece of paper.
Meditatio
Sit with the words ... it is the Holy Spirit who will unveil it to the heart.
Oratio
Augustine spoke of capax dei — the capacity for God — and this capacity is realised nowhere more profoundly and in no greater reality than in prayer. Schuon paraphrased human nature as “I am, therefore I pray; sum ergo oro." Prayer is a dialogue with God.
This mode of dialogue is also a consecration, the Word illuminates and purifies, purifies and illuminates, the two are the same, the Word in the head becomes a memory at the moment of its utterance, but when the Word is taken to heart, It lives there ...
Contemplatio
Beyond words, beyond images ... peace ... presence ...
God bless,
Thomas
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
I would emphacize the Meditatio... the sitting in silence waiting for the Holy Spirit. But Thomas has pretty much captured the essence of Christian Spitirtual thought. It is very hard for me to make the connection between OT and NT unless I openly approach them in this manner. All the modern and post-modern chatter (I consider most Protestant preaching modernist... coming after the Renaissance and changing the tradition) just confuses me. How can one rely on just the word? With the fact that the OT was 1,200 or so years in the making and the NT 200 (and probably the pace of life and change makes them comparable in real age) and the many languages (Hebrew to Greek, Aramaic to Greek, Greek to Latin, ad infinitum to English) the word is not the real word that was really experienced. So I try to recapture what was intended by relying on the Holy Spirit and Tradition and a good deal of hard work and a good deal of research.
This chatter hides the essence.
This chatter hides the essence.
Sola Scriptura is a complete con. It was a trick to escape from one tradition, and simply instituted another in its place.
The Quakers might be one of the few to escape that, but Luther, Calvin, Zwingli et al simply took God out of the picture, and put themselves firmly in His place.
God bless,
Thomas
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
oh! I knew I liked you. You will see in other posts that I consider all of the above mere variations on the Millerite-Eddy-Moon ongoing chorus of "new traditions". I believe that Protestantism is an inevitable outcome of modernism and that the "modernist-fundamentalist" crisis is just a post-modern ripple of the same process. Unless you can trace your understanding as a Christian back to a pre-1054 (or thereabouts source), give it up (I say), you are clearly outside the Tradition.
Lord that sounds like my Father! Ick!
Lord that sounds like my Father! Ick!
Saltmeister
The Dangerous Dinner
I think it's inevitable that someone has to put themselves in God's place. In Judaism it's the rabbis. In Catholicism it's the popes and bishops. According to Jewish teaching and tradition, this is legitimate because "the Torah is on earth, not in heaven." (Deuteronomy 30:12) There is always some "authority" on earth to tell us what to think and do and it is those who have spent more time studying the texts than the rest of us.
Sola scriptura seems to come from a misinterpretation of a passage in Matthew. I can't remember which one it was but it seems to be Matthew 15:9.
The idea of "scripture alone" seriously handicaps a religion. There are so many things you are not allowed to think because you have to follow this rule. The words of God and the prophets would never have been enough by themselves. Very often, you need to "fill in the gaps" and in order to prevent the same question from being asked and same confusion from arising again you need to keep a record of whatever debate or deliberation took place. Sola scriptura leads to a religion that doesn't evolve or progress and is always stuck in the same primitive level of thinking as when it got started.
This is why Protestant Christianity has split into "two hundred sects." The level of sophistication doesn't increase. The founders of these sects nitpick relatively trivial details and talk past each other. They don't realise that they've never really understood each other and that their differences aren't really "deal-breakers." It's like a bunch of Stone Age tribes engaging in inter-tribal warfare. I am assuming Catholicism is more flexible than that and is able to manage differences in opinion much better.
I think what Jesus is really talking about in Matthew 15:9 is people hijacking a religion and promoting their own ideology and agenda. Having an ideology or agenda is fine, as long as this ideology or agenda really benefits the community as a whole. An ideology or agenda is "man made" and people are not under any obligation to follow it. Coercing people into following it is wrong and this is what Jesus is really addressing.
Well people are communal, and tend to organise themselves. I know many people here have a negative view of 'organised religion', but I tend to think it's more effective than 'disorganised religion' ...
That's in the nature of things.
It's not endorsed by Scripture, in fact it's refuted.
The whole thing is a fallacy, as this never meant 'each to his own interpretation'.
The purpose of sola scriptura was to reject tradition. That having been done, a new tradition was founded, but that tradition's interpretation of Scripture, like the one it replaced, was beyond question.
And often enforced with greater brutality than the one it replaced.
I woud agree. I might argue that the Orthodox (Greek and Russian, at least) are more flexible still, by preserving the notion of 'mystery' and thus something that cannot be fathomed, and therefore is beyond discussion.I am assuming Catholicism is more flexible than that and is able to manage differences in opinion much better.
The Orthodox are also schooled in the fact that theology belongs in the cloister, and is not really a suitable topic for the laity to pursue.
This seems tragic to me, as the Greek East led Christian thought for the first formative centuries. I think it's a result of the integralism that set in once the Eastern Emperors managed to get a control of the Eastern Church, something the East resisted, but eventually succumbed to.
There is a strong secular agenda in Europe that insists that everyone must be obliged to follow. They are willing to rewrite Europe's history suit, on a scale that matches anything 1984 came up with.
God bless
Thomas
Saltmeister
The Dangerous Dinner
As someone with a Protestant background, I decided I should comment on this in light of your most recent post. I no longer adhere to Protestant ideology and don't agree with a lot anti-Catholic rhetoric out there, but that doesn't mean I automatically accept Catholicism. The main gripe I have with both of them today is that they continue to cling to Greek/Roman theology.
I think it would be somewhat cynical to say it was a "trick." It asserts that this was a conspiracy and that the people who wanted to take people away from Catholicism knew the truth but decided to lie about it to push their own agenda. This assumes that the people who started the movement away from Catholicism didn't sincerely believe in the ideology they were promoting. The thinking seems to be "darn, it's those Protestant deceivers again!!!!!"
The Catholicism back then (during the Reformation) was a different kind of Catholicism. It was a Catholicism whose authority had never been significantly challenged, a Catholicism that got away with abuses and misuses of its power and authority. The old Catholicism was like a beast wildly out of control. I see more merit in the new Catholicism than the old one. Secularism wasn't all that bad for Catholicism. Secularism kept Catholicism in check and made it reform.
I disagree with sola scriptura, but that doesn't mean I disagree with John Calvin and Martin Luther challenging the Catholic church's ideology. Their ideas had never been tested before. It is only now that their ideas have been tested that I can decide to disagree with their ideology. The results of the experiment have been obtained and now people can make up their minds on it.
My interpretation of the results is that the new Catholicism tends to be more stable. Protestant Christianity tends to be prone to "run-away movements" and like the old Catholicism, has become a beast wildly out of control. It's more prone to fundamentalism, extremism and unchecked and undisciplined zeal.
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
Salty, I'd totally agree. I characterize Protesteantism (on the whole) as a series of new churches with no tradition, merely an iterpretation. On the other hand, you should check out the relative stability of Ethiopian, Armenian, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Yeap, they have those nationalistic problems, but don't we all?
Do the Old and New Testaments even "fit together" when you examine each one separately on its own? They are collections of texts written by a variety of different authors. We do not even know who most of them were. They are not all consistent with one another either. For example, the modern concept of Hell doesn't get introduced until the New Testament.
D
Divos
Guest
The New Testement is Anti-Semitic literature written by the Flavians(Josephus Flavius/Arrius Piso/Pliny The Younger) to Prevent the Rise of Anti-Roman Judaic Literature or Judaism
Amergin
Well-Known Member
Belief in magic and idiotic mythology is one sign of the economic decline of America. 40% of Americans are incapable of rational thinking, critical analysis, and scepticism. At Liberty University which is not a real university where diverse views are presented. It is a brainwashing institution to substitute rubbish for knowledge in America’s young.
Creationism is belief in magical instantaneous creation, the first pair of humans created by a god conjuring them into existence by magic words. They think the Earth is only 6000 to 10,000 years old. They also think the idiotic idea that Earth was made before the Sun yet they had day and night. Many of them still think the world is flat and supported on 4 giant pillars. They believe the irrational idea that two humans could give rise to the great diversity of ethnic types in a mere 6000 years.
Science is seen as a threat to the major incentive of Christians to believe in scriptural rubbish, the Delusion of Immortality. Mankind fears death despite its inevitability, so they invented the fully imaginary concept of invisible spirits that move everything and even controls each human body. The Brain is just a lump of tissue to fill in the otherwise empty cranial cavity. This is like a terminal disease for America. Rome abandoned Greek Science and banned it as heresy. Romans were forced to believe the most irrational story ever told. Now America is doing the same thing.
The struggle is far from over, but half of Americans believe in Christian Cult mythology. Perhaps only 40% accept scientific knowledge. We are way behind Europe, Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Canada, and Australia. That means our decline from First World straight to Third World status, skipping the Second World level. More of American science is furnished by immigrant Ph.D. scientists, immigrant science graduate student, immigrants accepted in our Medical Schools with immigrant Medical Professors.
Amergin
Creationism is belief in magical instantaneous creation, the first pair of humans created by a god conjuring them into existence by magic words. They think the Earth is only 6000 to 10,000 years old. They also think the idiotic idea that Earth was made before the Sun yet they had day and night. Many of them still think the world is flat and supported on 4 giant pillars. They believe the irrational idea that two humans could give rise to the great diversity of ethnic types in a mere 6000 years.
Science is seen as a threat to the major incentive of Christians to believe in scriptural rubbish, the Delusion of Immortality. Mankind fears death despite its inevitability, so they invented the fully imaginary concept of invisible spirits that move everything and even controls each human body. The Brain is just a lump of tissue to fill in the otherwise empty cranial cavity. This is like a terminal disease for America. Rome abandoned Greek Science and banned it as heresy. Romans were forced to believe the most irrational story ever told. Now America is doing the same thing.
The struggle is far from over, but half of Americans believe in Christian Cult mythology. Perhaps only 40% accept scientific knowledge. We are way behind Europe, Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Canada, and Australia. That means our decline from First World straight to Third World status, skipping the Second World level. More of American science is furnished by immigrant Ph.D. scientists, immigrant science graduate student, immigrants accepted in our Medical Schools with immigrant Medical Professors.
Amergin
Amergin
Well-Known Member
The mechanism you are describing is meme repetition. Reading the Bible repeatedly to mental exhaustion is the classical meme complex alteration of brain circuits. When the idea is irrational as Christianity most certainly is irrational, our rational-sceptical programme circuits rejects it. That resistence is overcome by parents and pastors forcing children to listen to bible stories on a daily basis. Later they are forced to read many chapters of the Bible endlessly and sometimes punished for expressing doubt.
This weakens the rational circuits and impairs the sceptical screening filter so that irrational Christianity is no longer recognised as crazy. The bad part is that it impairs many Christians in dealing with other non-religious ideas because of their weakened ratinality and leaky sceptical filter. I will explain more from my previous essay.
Amergin
Amergin
Well-Known Member
Memes criteria are:
All complex ideas acquired by the brain are memes
Complex ideas/information that physically alter brain circuits
Complex ideas that extend existing circuits with new axons and synapses
Complex ideas that divert and reduce extent of other circuits
Circuits so altered cause changes in cognitive behaviour.
Beneficial memes induce beneficial behaviour
Harmful memes block beneficial behaviour or induce negative behaviour.
The more entrenched (rehearsed and more firmly induced in circuitry) the more likely a certain behaviour is intensified.
Rational, sceptical, mathematical, and organisational memes intensify logical, analytical, sceptical, and organised thinking and behaviour.
Irrational memes damage rational, analytical, and sceptical circuits making the person gullible, weak in critical thinking, and lacking in sceptical filtering of myth and superstition including UFO's, Bigfoot, and Ghosts. Such people accept irrational religious beliefs without question.
Musical Memes such as learning to play violin, enhance right hemisphere circuits making it easier to learn other musical instruments, understanding music, and reaction emotionally to music.
Skilled motor memes such as carpentry intensify motor association and basal ganglia circuits making acquisition of new manual skills easy.
Many memes interconnect with affective circuits. The personal importance of the meme will often evoke strong emotions. Those who are educated in Science, Math, or Engineering are highly logical, rational, and sceptical, yet they experience positive emotional "thrills" at the Aurora Borealis, the structure of a fractal, or the discovery of the gene that causes a lethal disease. That same medical scientist/physician (me) can shed tears many times while working in East Africa in 1992-95, seeing mass deaths, starvation, brutality, and diseases. I don't think my emotions then and still to this day were irrational.
But the religious meme is introduced into most children long before the child has a real sense of mortality. Many small children cannot even conceive of death, let alone immortality. They must process the irrational religious meme first.
They are fed the following irrational concepts first. God made the Earth with magic words. He made Eve from a man's rib. He was just in ordering capital punishment for eating a fruit (of inquiry.) Noah's Impossible Flood is intuitively immoral with its killing millions of babies and trillions of non-human animals. Why? It was because some adults sinned. God impregnated a girl to produce a God-man hybrid for the explicit purpose of DYING for other people's sins. God-man goes to Hell for some absurd reason and then he resurrects. It does not make sense if you look closely.
All of those ideas defy common sense. When the child is coerced into incorporating those memes, he/she must force them to bypass the rational, analytical, and sceptical circuits. It may be a suppression of the rational circuits. This leads to disuse of those circuits.
He/she is not told that they are fantasy, but that they are absolutely true. The bypassed rational-sceptical circuits are underused. They get "leaky." Then new complex ideas, even irrational ones, are given a free pass by the Sceptical Filter. The "Infected" person then readily accepts miracles, Jesus in cloud formations, and UFO abductions.
But then the "irrational meme infected" person rejects highly rational and proven scientific facts (plate tectonics, 4.5 billion year Earth, Evolution, and biological Neurocognition) because their complexity escapes analysis. They also conflict with the entrenched meme....and also threaten the secondary irrational meme of immortality with its emotional baggage.
Amergin
PS It is my opinion that the power of irrational people based on Christianity and lack of scepticism is a major factor in America's decline to Third World Status. A majority of Americans are woefully ignorant of science.
All complex ideas acquired by the brain are memes
Complex ideas/information that physically alter brain circuits
Complex ideas that extend existing circuits with new axons and synapses
Complex ideas that divert and reduce extent of other circuits
Circuits so altered cause changes in cognitive behaviour.
Beneficial memes induce beneficial behaviour
Harmful memes block beneficial behaviour or induce negative behaviour.
The more entrenched (rehearsed and more firmly induced in circuitry) the more likely a certain behaviour is intensified.
Rational, sceptical, mathematical, and organisational memes intensify logical, analytical, sceptical, and organised thinking and behaviour.
Irrational memes damage rational, analytical, and sceptical circuits making the person gullible, weak in critical thinking, and lacking in sceptical filtering of myth and superstition including UFO's, Bigfoot, and Ghosts. Such people accept irrational religious beliefs without question.
Musical Memes such as learning to play violin, enhance right hemisphere circuits making it easier to learn other musical instruments, understanding music, and reaction emotionally to music.
Skilled motor memes such as carpentry intensify motor association and basal ganglia circuits making acquisition of new manual skills easy.
Many memes interconnect with affective circuits. The personal importance of the meme will often evoke strong emotions. Those who are educated in Science, Math, or Engineering are highly logical, rational, and sceptical, yet they experience positive emotional "thrills" at the Aurora Borealis, the structure of a fractal, or the discovery of the gene that causes a lethal disease. That same medical scientist/physician (me) can shed tears many times while working in East Africa in 1992-95, seeing mass deaths, starvation, brutality, and diseases. I don't think my emotions then and still to this day were irrational.
But the religious meme is introduced into most children long before the child has a real sense of mortality. Many small children cannot even conceive of death, let alone immortality. They must process the irrational religious meme first.
They are fed the following irrational concepts first. God made the Earth with magic words. He made Eve from a man's rib. He was just in ordering capital punishment for eating a fruit (of inquiry.) Noah's Impossible Flood is intuitively immoral with its killing millions of babies and trillions of non-human animals. Why? It was because some adults sinned. God impregnated a girl to produce a God-man hybrid for the explicit purpose of DYING for other people's sins. God-man goes to Hell for some absurd reason and then he resurrects. It does not make sense if you look closely.
All of those ideas defy common sense. When the child is coerced into incorporating those memes, he/she must force them to bypass the rational, analytical, and sceptical circuits. It may be a suppression of the rational circuits. This leads to disuse of those circuits.
He/she is not told that they are fantasy, but that they are absolutely true. The bypassed rational-sceptical circuits are underused. They get "leaky." Then new complex ideas, even irrational ones, are given a free pass by the Sceptical Filter. The "Infected" person then readily accepts miracles, Jesus in cloud formations, and UFO abductions.
But then the "irrational meme infected" person rejects highly rational and proven scientific facts (plate tectonics, 4.5 billion year Earth, Evolution, and biological Neurocognition) because their complexity escapes analysis. They also conflict with the entrenched meme....and also threaten the secondary irrational meme of immortality with its emotional baggage.
Amergin
PS It is my opinion that the power of irrational people based on Christianity and lack of scepticism is a major factor in America's decline to Third World Status. A majority of Americans are woefully ignorant of science.
radarmark
Quaker-in-the-Making
While I agree with your analysis of Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity, I believe you are painting with too broad a brush. See, most of the problems with Christianity have no bearing on Traditional Christianity. There are plenty of Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant scientists.
The real problem is not Christianity, but Christian Churches that have no history or ties to tradition. The Churches which "poped up" to fight Modernity (applyting science to scripture and theology).
So focus your attention on them, not on Christianity in general. Talk, vote, campaign like the (not the only example, just the one I am most familiar with) Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Pax et amore omnia vincunt!
The real problem is not Christianity, but Christian Churches that have no history or ties to tradition. The Churches which "poped up" to fight Modernity (applyting science to scripture and theology).
So focus your attention on them, not on Christianity in general. Talk, vote, campaign like the (not the only example, just the one I am most familiar with) Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Pax et amore omnia vincunt!
So are yours for the made-up 'facts' that suit your narrative ...
I love the 'rationality' of people who declare themselves to be the infallible benchmark of what is rational, reasonable, logical, intelligible, etc.
God bless
Thomas