The New Pope and 'Relativism' - Page 3  

First you start with God as the creator.

You may wish to assume this, but let's not pretend it's a logical necessity to start with a god/creator being. Imagining that you solve the mystery of where the universe and its complexity came from by simply asserting the existence of yet another complex entity of unknown and unexplainable origins is hardly compelling logic.

In physics nothing breaks the rules. That's why the rules are called rules. If something appears to break the rules, then the problem lies in our understanding of the rules. If you let go of a rock and it doesn't fall to the ground, then either forces other than gravity are acting on the rock, or there's something about gravity we haven't quite grasped yet. One would not generally assume that the rock had made an independent moral decision to disobey the Law of Gravity. Bad rock! Bad, evil, naughty rock!

If we're going to talk about "systems", let's not blur the very important distinction between "law" in the scientific sense and "law" in the moral sense. The former cannot be broken at all, the latter is broken innumerable times on a daily basis -- albeit presumably with negative consequences of some sort. In physics there is no disobedience.

This kind of blurring appears to be going on in other parts of this discussion. Moral relativism is somehow lumped in with "scientism", and consequently the provisional nature of scientific truth is somehow twisted into implying a terribly dangerous "anything goes" moral free-for-all.

The problem with the above is (at least) twofold. The first major problem I see is whether there's any practical basis for concern over the distinction between a religiously derived morality and so-called relativistic morality. Since one is free to choose one's religion, one is free to choose one's own favorite set of "absolutes". Cry all you like about this and that not being "true religion" whenever examples of religious failures are brought forward, if your reason for decrying relativism is that it supposedly opens up the floodgates to moral chaos, it can hardly be said that religion has done a very good job of ensuring morality either.

Hypothetical goodness brought about hypothetical adherence to hypothetical moral absolutes, written up in someone's moral treatise or encyclical, does the world no more good than the imagined hypothetical licentiousness of relativism does the world harm.

At best it might be said that religion turns morality into a "package deal" when you're shopping for a set of moral principles. If one further discounts the amazing human capacity to rationalize any set of rules into an excuse to do as we please, one might claim that moral package deals perhaps keep the citizens more in line than the "a la carte" morality that relativism supposedly leads to -- even then, that's just hypothetical, it's hardly proven.

The second major problem I see here is confusing the quest for truth with the quest for values. Consider these assertions:

A) The Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance from the Sun of approximately 150,000,000 kilometers.
B) Murder is wrong.

Assertion A is very clear in meaning. The truth of the assertion can be tested by many means and matched against plenty of available data.

Assertion B is not at all clear. Even though murder is widely taken to be wrong across many culture, faiths, philosophies, and personal beliefs, the meaning of "murder is wrong" is still not clear, because "murder" and "wrong" are not concrete words. What one calls murder, another calls a justifiable execution. What one calls murder, another calls "unavoidable collateral damage". We could go on and on about what "wrong" means to different people.

I think the scientific mind can be applied to moral questions. It can be used to seek logic and consistency, it can be used to evaluate the real-world consequences of moral decisions, to clarify causes and effects, to distinguish causation from correlation. But just as mathematics relies on fundamental postulates, morality relies on fundamental values, and those values cannot be discovered as if they're "out there" to be found, they cannot be deduced, they cannot be proven or disproven.

Any statement of moral truth must ultimately be rooted in fundamental values which one simply either accepts or does not accept. I see no way to escape the personal, individual element in this. If you say "murder is wrong", I can always say "So what?" I can even believe you're right that murder is wrong, but simply not care about being right or wrong. I have to choose to value the lives of others. I have to choose to adhere to a moral vision and to care about how well I adhere to it.

Religion offers no way out of this ultimately personal element of morality and ethics. All it does it offer unproven incentives and disincentives in an effort to persuade one to care about one's moral choices based on these asserted consequences... like offering up Eternal Salvation as a reward and Eternal Suffering as a punishment for not "getting with the program". As humans are free to chose among many religions (and even invent new ones whenever it suits them) there's not one reason to suppose that religion offers any way at all out of the open-ended nature of values choices, nor any reason to believe religion offers any magical, mystical access to those things the human mind can't find certain answers for on its own.

Yet more niggling details of mostly non-existent events from past, present and future.

Rewrite the past, deny the present and force the future to happen as you have forseen it...the classic Christian method.

Meanwhile people worship a vulva-like erosion in a concrete slab in Illinois seeing it as the Virgin Mary.

I love it.

Tell that to Titus and Josephus.

There were Jews and Romans, sure, just no Christ or Mary (or James).

Excellent, excellent post.

Hear, hear, ditto.

Now then, DMZ:

Given some of the particulars you've shared in re your faith, I'd like to ask a question I've asked before, again.

How do you generalize from your particular faith to Faith?

I'm asking it like that because, again, in post after post, you seem to be at some pains to imply that you are presenting us with a stark choice between faith and (one of any number of terms that keep getting updated, let's say "scientism", since it seems pertinent in light of shetline's post above).

But the world doesn't divide up like that, as I've mentioned quite a few times now. I think that's self evident, no need to elaborate.

So what you're left with is not the contrast between some kind of generalizable "faith" and some kind of generalizable "scientism", but rather your faith in your God buttressed by your ur-text in opposition to some very specific social and intellectual trends that you consider to be the result of insufficient fealty to this very particular God of yours.

Now if you would like to assert that your God is the one true God and that all other faiths are false faiths, that's just fine by me. You certainly have lots and lots of company.

But what you cannot do, with any intellectual honestly, is continue to imply that your faith is simply Faith, one clearly defined pole of a faith/not faith bipolar world.

This holds even within the Christian tradition, as your almost comical parsing of Biblical meaning suggests.

The idea that there is one God that speaks in one true voice to those that would care to listen, and that that one God is entirely a creature of your particular flavor of the already highly particular Christianity, and that further more this particular faith system is what (and only what) stands in opposition to secularism/intellectualism/relativism/scientism/post-modernism/etc. etc.etc. is not a stance that can be argued from a coherent philosophical stance, as you have attempted.

It obliges you to simply declare "I believe what I believe" and leave it that.

I would note that there is a philosophical argument to me made concerning human endeavors and, let's say "transcendentalism"; however it obliges one to steer clear of declaring allegiance to any particular faith system.

Post of the year.

No, "they shall see the Son of man coming". Read the verse.

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

First the sign, then the son. That's what it says.


What in that verse is confusing?

"they shall see the Son of man coming"

(The only thing I miss about being a Christian is Bible thumping. What fun!)

Actually it's the ONLY logically consistent position -- I would be happy to lead you to the point you would have to admit that, if you are willing to be consistent.

Actually lots of things break the rules -- are black holes possible this week? -- what does not change is the irrational belief that the universe can be logically constructed from primeval chaos.

Your being grossly inconsistent here, by your own standards, the concept of morality is not possible. Why does this discussion have to take place in a vacuum? You're running about willy-nilly running together terms that are the creations of several antithetical presuppostions.

Agian this is a mess, you cannot have connectedness except as illusion, and trying to pile a social construct of morality on top of that is blue sky.

You must be confusing Christianity with pantheism, there is a way for this to be more than Ghost in the machine. You have the person of Christ that solves this problem.

Okay, groverate, and God also went down to Egypt on a cloud. Sounds good.

Actually and I respect the people who believe in god (my wife included) nobody demonstrated this.

Pascal who believed in god, and was a great mind of his time, only made a bet " better believe in god, than not believing in it : you have nothing to loose".

Believing in god is a matter of faith : you have the faith or you don't have. Remember that Jesus said after appearing to Thomas " happy the one who believe without proofs (sorry for my silly translation).

Wait wait wait... I'm supposed to be incredulous at the idea that Bible God went down to Egypt on a cloud?

I'm familiar with the rhetoric, but the Bible is quite clear about God literally visiting many places in the OT (where Isiaiah, my absolute favorite book of the Bible, resides).

And this isn't JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD talking in Isaiah, it's Isaiah.

Whether or not it's on a cloud, Jesus Christ said that the people would see the son of god; that the second coming would come before their generation passed. And even beyond that, an angel told the disciples after Christ's ascension that He would return the way He left. Clouds are in the sky, and remember, Christ went up into the sky. If you're going to mock the imagery of the Bible, go ahead and mock the whole damned thing.

Apologetics, of course, have had centuries to explain all of this away, but it reads how it reads and all the apologizing in the world can change the text (though changing the text can change the text).

Acutally, if you look at the problems encoutered in modern philosphy, it takes Trinitarian doctrine to thread that needle. No other religion can do it. Islam breaks down essentially into pantheism, Hihduism, etc, is atomization, you know the rest. Like my signature implies, you can say you believe whatever you wish, but in the end you end up functioning like a Christian: overarching organinzing principles that can be good for all -- community that allows for morality -- hell, even the concept of music.

And don't blame me blame Sarte, or Kant, or pfflam.

But yes, it is Faith and nothing more that gets you to that belief, my 'comical' readings of scripture nothwithstanding -- I acutally had no idea that you could isolate that text into neat, travel-sized multiuse soundbites.

Another bit is bothers me is that you guys who stomp you feet at the thought of predestination, still shake your fist at the idea the God would allow mankind time to mature in it's understanding and relationship with him.

Are you making these arguments from the position of some generalizable notions of God or from your specific wing of your specific religion?

I'm just going to have to keep asking this.

(edit) I see your post above. Thank you for clarifying this.

It should only be bothersome if it is assumed that one or the other is true. It doesn't bother me at all that both ideas are extremely flawed because the whole idea of Bible God is extremely flawed in the first place.

The idea that mankind is evolving in its understanding of God is unsupportable. It's nothing more than a cheerleading statement meant to boost morale. On what basis can it be assumed that modern Christians are actually closer to understanding God than the children of Israel? Or Christians in 18th century America?

None.

The only way you would know if you were closer is if you already knew where God was. You don't so you can't. It's meaningless.

As usual you latch onto science's fluid and open nature and pretend it is a weakness compared to your completely closed, arbitrary dogmatic belief system.

You try to use concepts like chaos and randomness as weapons against science, yet you are not honest (or are ignorant) on those complex subjects.

You want to jump from Big Bang to 10^23 years from now and pretend that interesting complex systems (at all scales) can't happen in between (many times over).

A watch might imply a watchmaker but a human does not imply a God.

Given your own track record on asserting much and proving little, this could be wonderfully amusing.

The only rules broken by black holes are the mere admitted approximations we currently possess of the real rules, the real rules which we have yet to fully discover and understand. You clearly don't understand what a "rule", in the sense of a scientific law, means.

The data, as gathered by astrophysical observations, indicate that objects we call "black holes" are out there. They appear to be real. Therefore, whatever the rules of the universe are, those rules allow for black holes. By definition "the rules" are that which define what is and is not possible, and what causes what else, in the real world.

In fact, while black holes demonstrate limits to our understanding of the "real rules" behind the universe we observe, their existence also shows how good our understanding in some areas must be. How? Because our understanding, however limited, lead us to believe that black holes could exist -- even before physical evidence confirming their existence was obtained.

If you can't get your head around this simple an idea about what a physicist means by "the rules", and you imagine black holes to be an example of those rules truly, actually being broken (for-dramatic-effect voice-overs in episodes of Nova about rules being broken don't count ), I have to imagine that you're a long way from having the ability to demonstrate the logical necessity of a God.

Please, do be so kind as to point out specific inconsistencies, rather than just making vague assertions that somewhere inconsistencies exist.

Again, please be so kind as to point out exactly which presuppositions are antithetical. That's the only way I can possibly show you which gratuitous misunderstandings, oversimplifications, and unstated assumptions on your part lead to such claims.

Yadda yadda... just further rambling based on unsubstantiated assertions of the supposed weakness and inconsistency of what someone else has said. This seems to be a recurring favorite technique of yours. All hat, no cattle.

No. Where do you see this confusion? And finally... do tell.

You have your unproven assertions about Christ which you have yet to demonstrate in any convincing way, especially in any way that proves that your religious leap of faith is a leap in any truer direction than the leap another of another faith might make.

look at it this way, Christ talks in obvious imagery in the first part of the statement:

Mat 24:29
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

now, look at these passages, none of which are end times imagery:

Isa 13:10\tFor the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

Isa 34:4\tAnd all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling [fig] from the fig tree.

Eze 32:7\tAnd when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.

Joe 2:30\tAnd I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
Joe 2:31\tThe sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.

Now without ANY SEGUE WHATSOEVER he then goes COMPLETELY literal? AND some how isn't blurring things by using the sky imagery? AND makes a statement that is patently false? I can't see it.

Mat 24:30\tAnd then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

More sky imagery, more of the same paradigm of powers represented in heaven. I don't see the stretch.



Well, look at civil rights, look at English common law, look at Vatican II, Worldwide charities, Gorbachev kissing the Pope's ring to show the World the evil empire wasn't so bad, look at the march of philosophy, and it's parallel in apologetics, especially people like Francis Schaeffer, who put a very kind, very human face on it. Things are changing, we are all growing.

some of your objections go back to my earlier point:

....you can say you believe whatever you wish, but in the end you end up functioning like a Christian: overarching organinzing principles that can be good for all -- community that allows for morality -- hell, even the concept of music.

So without a framework to hang terms like 'morality' on there is nothing to work with in your system -- you end up borrowing like mad to fill the gaps between.

On Christ, that it is just [yes it's a mystery, but then so is the concept of uncreated being] the Incarnation breaks the cycle of pantheism/chain of being, gives Truth a active, working definition WITHOUT reducing order to some sort of mechanistic recipe. You can have Avatars, but they are created being, which you and I would share. In Christ you have a perfect representation of uncreated Truth manifested in created being.

Anyway I'm repeating myself -- and I've wizzed away another productive afternoon.

More later.

You can't quote a bunch of different scriptures as the segue to Matthew. You have to look at them all in context. Neither can you use old verses to prove that Jesus was talking in the same way. You can believe that if you want, but it's not just assumed knowledge.

Let's look at it again:
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:
33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.
34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

There are 6 verses in here, don't just focus on one phrase or two as mere fluff, look at them all, read them all one after the other. Also keep in mind that he specifically inserts a parable in verse 32. He breaks the flow to introduce a teaching fiction. Why would he do that if he was just being blusterous before?

How do you explain verse 31? You can't just say "oh someone else said something about 'trumpets' in the OT".
Included in the things they will see before they die are angels that will "gather together his elect from the four winds", what does that symbolize?
What is the symbolic difference between seeing "the sign of the Son of man" and seeing "the Son of man"?

And what the hell does "even at the doors" mean? It's been over TWO THOUSAND YEARS. How is that explained away?

Real Soon Now.


I didn't see any argument except the final sentence, "Things are changing, we are all growing."

What?

The framework is life, collected from every stretch of humanity. It hangs on its own framework, it's existence is the only justification it needs.

I say drowning someone else's baby is immoral because I can provide rational explanations for it.
If there is something I cannot provide a rational explanation for, it does not get put in any categories.

This is really really simple.

yes my spelling suffers more when I'm in a BIG FRELLING HURRY

groverat, do you think the He meant the sky would literally become dark, etc.? If not, then this is a nonissue, except that he is indicating a new change in 'heavenly powers' and and ussuring in of a new 'Gosple age', the trumpets are the sounding of a Jubilee (basically the only way that the disciples would have understood the use of a trumpet) and the gathering of the elect begins. But yes, with the destruction of Jerusalem, this all began -- it WAS at the doors.

It's either that or he really meant in the lifetime of those present that the sky would literally have these signs, and that, depending on your location and what power telescope you had, you could catch a glimpse of Him literally returning -- which again, is imagery that we never see literally in the Bible.

Can't go there.

But yes, we are all growing, if only by common grace.

Hey, so does my BBCoding


Is this not the same Godthing that flooded the entire damned world in 40 days?
Slaughtered thousands (tens/hundreds, millions?) of little Egyptian children in one night?
Created all of existence?

It's not really too much to assume He could put out the sun for a little bit, after all, he created the damned thing.


Would this not also apply those not in the area to see Jerusalem fall? Not everyone could see that either, right?

You really can't shrug this off by suggesting the idea of Jesus coming back on a cloud as ridiculous. For the love of Christ, He just floated away like Marry goddam Poppins.

If you're going to laugh at the idea of him coming back on a cloud, you might as well start laughing at Genesis and never stop until the 90 breasted whore of Babylon is slain by Jesus on a golden chariot in Revelations.


Just a statement. No argument.

What about American Christendom promoting a damn-near genocidal foreign policy? Growth!

Well anything is possible, I suppose -- except perhaps a fully coherent foriegn policy.

I have limited perception and understanding. I cannot know everything and I cannot know for sure.

However, everything I feel and perceive shows me that there is an objective reality, a physical world with houses, trees and other people, and which my thoughts do not change. If this is not "true", too bad: this perception is all I have, and I have to act accordingly or not act at all.

The only thing I can do is to accept that reality as it is and stop confusing it with what I want to exist.

This is not an assertion against what is known as religion. I understand religious experiences can be direct and as true for believers that my perception of the physical world is for me.

Rather, this should be interpreted somewhat in "just be" zen philosophy mindset.

Moral and ethics are an alien concept to me. Like Shetline said, logic and other tools can be used to find inconsistency in a particular set of values. Try as I have, I have found no such absolute values or position to hold. I only have likes and dislikes, no right or wrong, no explanation. I actually admire the rare person who holds any logically consistent position, religious or philosophical, never mind what their premises are.

What good is it to debate labels of things?

DMZ : did you read my post ? (second post of page 4 with the default page setting).

I have to agree -- it is definitely Faith that gets you to that spot. Philosophy is not much more than a placeholder that lets us quantify how we approach all these heavy issues -- you can never prove/disprove what is basically 'uncreated being'.

I guess this means you must make your wife happy and go to Mass!!

That's a good point -- But I'm afriad you'll have to start going to Mass as well, segovious.

So, in other words, you claim that I'm being inconsistent and making antithetical statements, but you are unable or unwilling to point out any specific examples. You're just operating on the assumption that you've got this whole morality thing all worked out, that the rest of us would see you have it all worked out if we weren't so slow or so deeply in the clutches of Satan, and that it automatically follows that if what any of us says doesn't fit neatly into your paradigm, we must be steeped in inconsistencies -- otherwise we'd end up where you are, of course.

Ah, such dullards we all are next to your brilliance.

Um, yeah... whatever.

Will you please have the argument that we're having, rather than one you think you've already had? Please point out specific examples of where I'm "borrowing like mad to fill the gaps". Please describe what those "gaps" are. Please show where I'm trying to hang things on frameworks and finding a framework missing.

Wow. All of this borrowing and gap-filling and failed attempts at hanging things on other things that I'm up to... and I was totally unaware!

Sounds like you're a whole lot more concerned with how neat a ribbon you can tie around your philosophy than whether it corresponds to reality or not.

I'd call myself alot of things, brilliant isn't one of them. I've done too many 'brilliant' things. For instance, I will be reassembling a Linux server today that didn't have it's system partions backed up --- brilliant.

I've taken a very cursory look at the problems of 'rational' thought -- existentialism, postmodernism, bla bla bla, and I think if you do too, you'll see that one you release being, things, etc, from a revelational organizing principle, that you have to start doing so from your own presepective, and then you have to do it exhaustivley for it to make any sense. I wasn't kidding about blaming Kant or Sartre, this is a recognized problem when you try to put things back together.

(and I don't mean to be a prick -- at all -- and towards that end, I'm going to shut the hell up for the weekend.)

I agree with this fully.

I don't know why anyone would have it any other way. It seems like a waste of that magnificent brain in your head to do it any other way.

Personally, I blame Plato. That asshole.

Thanks but the answer is her, and for the second part it happens, but not so many

Sometimes I wonder if Gay people realize how there very existence grates on the nerves of the 'Right'. Guess the Jew's could relate... they were pretty hated also.

I think you're projecting your own need for "things [to go] back together" into other people's positions, and then asserting it's a flaw when that doesn't happen.

You also seem to be assuming that any explanatory mechanism which helps put things back together the way you like them put back together must, by virtue of that achievement, be true.

You talk as if merely attempting to address any issue without your handy-dandy "revelational organizing principle" is a foolish, inconsistent, and self-negating exercise, simply because without it -- God forbid! -- things in this life are a bit fuzzy around the edges.

Some of us, however, are quite happy to embrace the fact that life is full of doubt and uncertainty, and to accept that our provisional understandings -- while sometimes very good -- aren't necessarily complete or entirely correct and certainly don't form a Solid Bedrock of Unshakable TRVTH.

You aren't assuming, are you, that because a person doesn't bury every single sentence in layers of caveats and exceptions, wrapped with error bars, that they're making absolutist claims, are you? And then, based on such a foolish reading, attacking them as inconsistent and contradictory for not having absolute ground to stand on?