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We need a new picture. That one's been used before :)

And let's hope we get some new arguments Paul :)

In all seriousness, this could become "Greywiz/Rodden, continued..." from last discussion, so I'm largely going to sit this one out, apart from saying: I agree, but I would do, wouldn't I?

I really look forward with interest to reading everyone else's posts on this issue, although the 'take' on it is slightly different, and I might want to look at what is meant by 'institutional', but I think you definitely know what I'd say!

Hello, polly.

To give new arguments, I'd have to start yet another new church, so what do you think about tradition and institutions? I was looking forward to at least one post by you, and scarthin nick.

All the ususal suspects!

However, my comments will be brief! Of course, we need institutions to mediate community. In western culture churches have tended, for good historical reasons, to hold the monopoly on community, and in many places, Christian communities do much good in the communities they serve, as well as, through the larger church, throughout the world.

At the same time, as people drift away from the churches, not necessarily because they are seeking a spiritual path apart from their neighbours, but often because they no longer find the churches spiritually meaningful, and even sometimes find the telling of the Christian story directly contrary to their own sense of what makes for human flourishing, it is unfortunate that other opportunities for developing community have not taken their place.

I have no immediate suggestions as to how to do this, and, as a matter of fact, this is one place where I find fault with Dr. Ritchie's essay. I doubt very much whether Jesus did actually set up an institution, with the appointment of leaders and structuring of relationships. As Schweitzer, I think, rightly said, Jesus was an apocalyptist, and expected the end to come quite soon. Clearly, since James (the brother of Jesus) played such a prominent role in the early Jerusalem church (and there is no sign that Jesus appointed him to this place), the organisation of the early church probably developed as necessity demanded. It began to reflect, very soon, the civil structure and organisation of Roman administration. Perhaps necessity will play its part again, and new forms of community will arise not immediately dependent on religion or religious beliefs.

So, in answer to the question -- Do we need the institutional church? -- my answer would certainly be yes, we do, but we should be actively seeking new ways of forming community. The church clearly cannot do this for everyone. The story may no longer convince, and joining in the liturgy may seem an act of dishonesty. I know many unbelievers who still go regularly to church for the sake of the community it provides. This is an uneasy compromise, and we should be able to achieve something better. But, for the time being, the church is the main community mediating institution that we have.

I have no answers, but I do have a lot of questions!

Greywizard- I don’t think Jesus was an apocalyptist, but rather knew that life in the world he was leaving his disciples in would be difficult and they would face trials and persecution. For the believers who became part of it, the church was a refuge and support network in a world that had rejected the Christ they followed. In other words, it was a long-term strategy, put in place by Jesus himself to encourage the spread of the gospel through building meaningful relationships that would uphold and strengthen believers in a world that was persecuting them.

Just as families exist for human flourishing, the institution of the church exists for its members and remains today God-appointed and essential. It is no surprise that it doesn’t sit easily in our culture: it was never meant to.

I think Christians need to reaffirm their faith in the church, flower rotas and all!

I think the question 'do we need institutional religion' is a bit of a misnomer because it depends on whether we are talking about the fellowship of believers or the church as an institution, which is involved in the state and has a say in affairs.

In the New Testament it is clear that the latter did not exist, the believers were persecuted and beaten for their faith, and for refusing to take part in pagan customs which took place around them. Yet they remained faithful to the revelation they had received.

However, if we are talking about the fellowship of believers then it is clear that this is needed for the Christian. As the relationships that are centred on Christ help us to encourage and affirm each other to live in the world but not of it.

The instituional Church is not necessarily a bad thing and can point to the great hope and the great commission that Christ has given us. Moreover, it can demonstrate the good works of social action that Jesus commanded, especially in Luke. However the necessity of it I would question.

I'd hate to disappoint you Paul... I agree with Angus that 'It is in religious institutions that we see the intentional nurturing of relationships, local leadership and vision'. It's not possible for any institution to be morally or theologically neutral, even if that morality or theology is one which seeks to allow for plurality. Institutional religion, like cultural religion, has an important role to play in shaping communities and enabling human beings to flourish. The religion in question should both promote the common good and, as part of that, allow significant freedom, including the freedom to dissent from the religion or step outside the institution. Of course, there will inevitably be limits to this. If someone refuses to sign up to the principles of democracy in a democratic society they will be excluding themselves from the society in question, or they may need to be excluded (e.g. if they resort to violent means to impose their will). In terms of tradition, that is our shared story and it is important that we are shaped by tradition and respect it without being hostage to it. I'm Burkean on this. We are all shaped by traditions. We should avoid either rejecting tradition too lightly or being subservient to it unquestioningly (and that goes for Hobbes, Mill and Kant as much as the Pope!).

Well said, Polly!

Londonlady. I'm not sure why you disagree with me. The gospels certainly protray Jesus as an apocalyptist. The lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead are raised! It's all apocalyptic stuff. And the idea that he was to return shortly to usher in the kingdom is also part of the apocalyptic pattern of thought. Of course, it is possible to argue, and some people like Dominic Crossan do argue, that this apocalypticism is a later addition to the story. The historical Jesus was more like a wandering Cynic like Diogenes, bubbling with pithy sayings and a compassion for the working poor. I don't know who's right on that particular front, but the gospel Jesus is a figure straight out of Jewish apocalypticism.

As to the question of the necessity of community, the following words from John Stuart Mill's "The Utility of Religion" are a bit challenging, I think:

"If religion, or any particular form of it, is true, its usefulness follows without other proof. If to know authentically in what order of things, under what government of the universe it is our destiny to live, were not useful, it is difficult to imagine what could be considered so. Whether a person is in a pleasant or in an unpleasant place, a palace or a prison, it cannot be otherwise than useful to know where he is. So long, therefore, as men accepted the teachings of their religion as positive facts, no more a matter of doubt than their own existence or the existence of the objects around them, to ask the use of believing it could not possibly occur to them. The utility of religion did not need to be asserted until arguments for its truth had in a great measure ceased to convince. People must either have ceased to believe, or have ceased to rely on the belief of others, before they could take that inferior ground of defence without a consciousness of lowering what they were endeavouring to raise. An argument for the utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers, to induce them to practice a well meant hypocrisy, or to semi-believers to make them avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief, or finally to persons in general to abstain from expressing any doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down."

Plangent words, no doubt, but do they not echo something that troubles one about the essay before us?

Well first of all, who's the "We" in Do we need institutional religion? The individual with a natural propensity for religion, as discussed in an earlier topic - or the nation as a whole? The latter poses the question that we need a national religion - as typified by those who are vocal in the claim, "This is a Christian county!" as though such a thing is set in stone, any kind of religious or non religious diversity in the public sphere purely being down down to the tolerance and munificence of the host religion.

Greywizard hit the mark when he mentioned that some people join their local Church for reasons of community rather than spirituality. Community spirit makes all the difference to your neighbourhood - but a sense of community is not the sole preserve of the Church. The reason we all get along on our street, hold each others house-keys, feed pets, take parcels, ect, owes more to the local pub and just being neighbourly. Our garden, such as it is, was formerly a temperance chapel (which fell down) There are four houses that used to be non-conforming methody chapels. All on a street maybe a couple of hundred yards long. Did people get along better when these buildings were used for their original purpose? Not being around at the time, I can't say but the fact that there were five chapels plus two regular churches elsewhere in the village would suggest that there was more division than unity, perhaps not in an unpleasant sectarian way - but it does make you wonder why a community who believed in more or less the same religious focal point could not come together. Perhaps this is something we could look at in this discussion.

The point raised by Scarthin Nick is particularly important in a context in which there are other than Christian religious insitutions. Obviously, denominational boundaries have a way of dividing communities, though churches can, and sometimes do, work closely together. It is a bit more difficult with regard to other religious groups whose beliefs are (implicitly) an outright denial of the beliefs of others. And, in some cases, this would make pubs difficult places to foster community too.

I don't know, and I hope someone who is listening in can tell us, but are there other, non-religious efforts being made to encourage community? Does the National Secular Society, for instance, have any programmes that provide surrogate communities using an institutional model somewhat like the church?

Very interesting questions, GreyWizard.

I don't think the National Secular Society attempts to foster Good Works. I don't doubt that some religious congregations are vocal and effective in London Citizens, but that doesn't show that we 'need' institutional religion. The prime movers in the report on low wages were Unison, Oxfam, and Ken Livingstone.

Is there claimed to be any evidence at all that Jesus "appointed" disciples? Bit like The Apprentice, was it?

Where's the evidence that groups are better at long-term aims than individuals? Euripides wrote plays that are still read. I know a gardener whose garden won't be at its best till after his death. And there are plenty of examples of groups pursuing short-term folly.

Nicholas. I agree, I don't think we need institutional religion. But I do think that institutional religion probably provides something that we do need.

Do you remember the last discussion but one? The one with David Hay? He spoke about something that he had studied at the Religious Research Unit at Oxford which he called 'relational consciousness'. Now, it may very well be that religious communities provides a context in which that consciousness is facilitated. I'm beginning to suspect that there may be something in that, and that that is important. Religion is really a kind of superstructure to all that, but the really important things are taking place at a different level, a very ordinary, human level..

And no, I wasn't talking about good works either. It's important for us to be involved in helping others, and churches as well as other organisations do that. Part of the justification of religion in the last two hundred years, as Mill pointed out, is its utility. But the real point seems to be getting together. Lots of people do it. Some only do it at Christmas time. Others do it every week. And they do it all around the world. It's not about long term aims at all. It's about community. I've had dozens of people say it to me over the last couple of years. "Oh, I don't believe all that stuff. It's the community, don't you know?".

About Jesus and the appointment of the disciples. That's just a part of the myth. There is no plausible evidence to show that he did any such thing, especially the twelve, and that sort of thing. They didn't need organisation anyway. He was going to be right back..

So, I guess my question is: Can we provide for what seems a fairly obvious human need to gather purposefully in groups (not for good works but for the rush they get from being a part of a community), without the religious trappings? Just, perhaps, to celebrate life? Or as Don Cupitt might say, solar living?

Yes, the best-run Christian churches brilliantly tap into the pack instinct. They genuinely welcome all ages, new arrivals are greeted, there's shared rejoicing at births, and shared grief at deaths (this last inconsistent with the mythology, but never mind). In the leading protestant brands, the spooky ritual cannibalism is downplayed, and the rusks and wine are almost as enjoyable as the coffee and biscuits in the church hall after the service. In times of trouble, genuinely good people will be round with casseroles and shoulders to cry on. And you get to sing some great tunes, and hear (but surely not normally tell?) some enthralling stories. You can (though most churchgoers don't) delude yourself that life as a preparation for heaven or hell is a "a wider narrative of meaning and of value".

I can't think of other clubs or organisations which are as consistently good at all this. If that's true, then it's interesting to wonder why. Maybe, most don't appeal to all ages and sexes. Most aren't in walking distance of home. Many (eg football clubs?) have too many members, and too narrow a delusion, too visibly refuted (our team is the best).

I couldn't agree more, Nicholas, to the first part of your post. In the article by Dr Hay, I expressed my misgivings at length about his research, making a very similar point to yours. That is, how can one know an experience is 'religious', and isn't just psychopathology, groupthink, etc., or as you say, 'pack instinct'. And it wasn't really addressed.

I am surprised at the level of assent given to this current article, and I'm finding myself concurring with an awful lot, including polly's :) apart from not understanding why people want to dissent, when they can just leave and go elsewhere. After all, there's nothing stopping them! My understanding is that dissent arises from pride, not charity. Therefore, having difficulties in matters of doctrine is different from dissent. But, as polly also moots the possibility of 'democratic excommunication', then I think we're roughly on the same track.

However, for me, Sarah's post should not be glossed over so easily, as I think it raises some very important points.

Firstly, Sarah's comment, 'I think the question 'do we need institutional religion' is a bit of a misnomer because it depends on whether we are talking about the fellowship of believers or the church as an institution, which is involved in the state and has a say in affairs.', which is what I was thinking about in my first post in this thread about what we really mean by 'institutional'. There have been comments here which think Bishop's should keep their noses out. But this, for me, would be exactly what an institutional church should be doing.

But secondly, I think her comment about 'the Great Commission', is a very significant one. I certainly believe in it, but I wonder whether, Rev Angus Ritchie, by writing in a rather cordial manner, has encouraged us to lapse into a false sense of security? That is, the 'institutional church' he portrays, despite all the excellent work being done in his area, does seem to be rather benign, like a dear old maiden aunt, with little of a 'Great Commission' about it (although I would see the Great Commission more in his terms). What if that 'institutional church' had a definite agenda to evangelise, if not proselytise?

Lastly, GreyWizard's questions, and Nicholas' response are very important. Why should people want community? Why should people care about it, if it's not in their own best interests, or what's the value of a community, if the only purpose it serves is a utilitarian one? Why get married, or stay married, if this person might/has stopped meeting my needs? That is, having community for the expediency it serves, not for the sake of merely being together, and learning about what that means, although some non-Christian people might meet for such purposes, there seems to be little obligation apart from it serving some purpose or meeting a need, and if neither of these are required, then why community? Sartre said hell was other people, and I think many would agree, especially if the decline in manners and general politeness is anything to go by. Again, theologically, this is linked to the 'Great Commission', irrespective of needs or purposes it serves.

I wouldn't use the term 'apocalyptic', and would agree more with London Lady. I think the term 'apocalyptic' is too emotive, and smacks too much of proselytising cults, but I would say that there is an eschatological dimension to community, and the purpose of being together - from a Christian perspective - is that a. it's commanded, b. it gives us insight into the Divine life of the Trinity, and c. it prepares us for our life together in heaven. Although I take your comments on board, Nicholas, and know you wouldn't agree!

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the institutional religion currently underpinning our education system. I think I have mentioned in other topics that a significant proportion of advertisements for teaching posts carry the rider: "Must be sympathetic with the Christian ethos of the School." I would question this even (or perhaps especially) for a teacher of RE and it has no relevance at all for teachers of other subjects - and yet the candidate with no religious inclination is left with the choice sticking to one's principles and excluding oneself from somewhere between a third and a half on the jobs on offer - or going through the motions, getting the job and being included in one of Theos's many Christian headcounting polls.

It also institutionalises children in that most of the people they encounter in the literal meaning of the word "teacher" appear to them to be Christians, thus perpetually authorising the Church as an essential partner in the educational system.

Apologists will no doubt point out there are Sikh, Hindu and Muslim teachers in schools - indeed there are, and they are noticeable by their difference, rather than being merely another teacher on the role. Again it poses the question, will any religion rather than none at all, do? This corresponds with the opinion of a work colleague who is a reasonably senior bod in the Scouts and Guides movement. "Well we all believe in the same God at the end of the day." she responded to a conversation about multi-faith/ multi-culturalism within the Scouts. Not a foolish person at all, but quite unable to see that non-Christian members of the association might think differently. And as for non-believers, well they don't even get in.

Many of the evangelically inclined schools take part in inter-faith exchanges (a) to show what "other people" (in the sense of outsiders to the norm) believe, and (b) because the chances of anyone being won over enough to be converted are low. There used to be a handout for Schools printed by the Evangelical Alliance that magnanimously gave consent for children to visit other places of worship provided they did not have to touch or bow to the religious artifacts. Given that the church has very little fiscal input into the the running of a school (Creationist sponsor, Peter Vardy only raised a couple of million for the £18 million Emanuel Schools project) but nevertheless still want to call all the shots - we have what amounts to: Jesus on the Rates.

Having read David Aaronovitch here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article3648835.ece

where the Bishop of Durham is quoted as asking this question: "What makes me [Aaronovitch] think I “can reduce the function of religion to the provision of "comfort and companionship'” instead of seeing it as a “public truth”?", I am prepared to withdraw my suggestion that the insitutional church might have some legitimate public functions. It is clearly a public menace, so long as it thinks of itself in this way -- viz., as a public truth -- and should not be given any room in a democratic society to influence government or its agencies directly. Nor should I like to lend comfort to such a thought. So long as it offers relational experiences of comfort and companionship, churches may indeed perform a useful function in society, and may respond to a need in the nature of many human beings for the kind of community they provide. Along the way these gatherings of human beings may do some good. But to suppose that they have any public function to perform apart from this is, it seems to me, an offence against freedom and human rights.

I hope Theos will soon come out with very strenuous reasons to oppose the recent resolution of the UN Human Rights Council regarding the suppression of freedom of speech on the pretext of protecting the religious from offence. These are perilous times for the freedoms for which so many people have died. This has been my constant theme ever since I joined discussions on this site, because I see in Theos' principles a palpable threat to our freedoms. In the present climate I think they may now be in danger of leading us seriously astray.

At least on my machine, the above link to David Aaronovitch's column gets truncated. Greywizard is right: the claim that any one (and it can be at most one) of the big religions is any kind of truth, let alone 'public' truth, is evil. And the claim in the UN resolution that a religion can be defamed is both absurd and dangerous. No idea can ever be defamed, and all ideas must be open to question and ridicule.

Greywiz, you and Nicholas provide lots of criticism, but I don't find you offering any solution which woos me or even remotely attracts me. What are you offering? tell me something really attractive about what you believe.

Paul. Since nothing that you have said so far about your beliefs seems remotely attractive to me, do you really thing swapping beliefs is going to achieve anything of value at this point?

Thanks for correcting the link, Nicholas. I keep forgetting that this site doesn't do anything on its own. I'm not quite sure how to do it, but I do try it below. If this turns out badly, perhaps Nicholas, you would give it another go.

As an interesting addition to my earlier comment, it might be wise for everyone to read the document The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. This gives a very clear idea of the kind of hubris to which religions are given, and which we have in the Bishop of Durham's question to David Aaronovitch. My first response Angus Ritchie's essay did not take into consideration the arrogance of religions. I had taken it for granted that he meant to speak only of religion as an avocation for the interested. It becomes far more disturbing when totally unsustainable intellectual claims are superadded to the the cozy community qualities of religious institutions.

Your link works fine, Greywizard, and makes terrifying reading.

Well, since the topic appears exhausted, here, Paul, is what I find attractive:

1. All living organisms on this planet are capable of reproducing themselves many times (seven cygnets every year, a million acorns, ...). But they can't, on a finite planet. The premature death and suffering that results, on a continual and colossal scale, is inconsistent with the existence of any benign super-powerful entities. It is consistent with the existence of callous super-powerful entities. I find it more attractive to believe that there are no super-powerful entities.

Despite Daniel Dennett's provocatively titled book, it's not clear what human consciousness is. But it does appear to be linked to a functioning brain. Therefore, consciousness does not survive death. 'This life is all you get; do your best with it' is more attractive than 'This life is an antechamber to eternity; spend it grovelling to the alleged ruler of that eternity.'

3. 'Moral choices can be difficult. Do your best to choose kindly, taking account of what earlier great thinkers have thought' is more attractive than 'Obey some of (it's always only some of, even in Islam) the alleged whims of the alleged supernatural entity of your choice.'

'Forgive yourself for your mistakes, but don't make the same mistake twice' is more attractive than 'You can only be forgiven for your mistakes because a god in human form died (briefly), in the reign of Tiberius/ because you go on an expensive journey to Mecca / (etc).'

4. I don't have to read anything by Ratzinger or Rowan Williams. I can read Middlemarch, or play Haydn, instead.

Discussion of this topic seems a mite subdued. Tell me it's because all of you have had a case of bad conscience after the UN Human Rights Council made it an offence to speak freely about religion. Please. That should make anyone think twice about the need for institutional religion. Indeed, it should make all of us sit up and take notice at what is happening in our world, and how religion is threatening, once again, to disturb the peace of the world.

So, is it all pessimism, Nicholas and Greywizard? Whatever, there doesn't seem to be anything attractive about secular humanism from what you've said, and certainly nothing really to work towards together, then. Or is it that you have not been graced with the gift of evangelism, and if Richard Dawkins was at Wembley Stadium...?

Greywizard, if we swapped belief, you would believe and I wouldn't, so that's pointless. But I wasn't asking that. I was asking what made your point of view attractive, and both of you haven't really come up with anything. You don't have to be a secular humanist to appreciate and enjoy Middlemarch, Haydn, or any other art. But you do have to be a religious believer of sorts to enjoy real hope and see a 'finite planet' in the context of something infinite.

Isn't 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die', the leitmotif of secular humanism? And isn't that what we get on the streets of our (secular) cities most evenings, when people haven't got work to distract them? Is that what's attractive?

Today, I think the secular humanist would condemn Kopernicus and Galileo, not because they detracted from a theocentric view of creation and the universe, but because they would be detracting from the cosy geocentric, anthropocentric utopia man believes he can create for himself. Secular humanism projects on to religion it's own foibles, and makes the same mistakes. Where religion and humanism go wrong is when they believe they can create a heaven-on-earth: a utopia. Which is, in reality, a denial of one's humanity, and the assumption of one's own deity. The difference between me and you, is that I believe the problem's on both sides of the equation to an equal extent as we share a common humanity. With what you've both said in the past, you imply only one side of the equation's faulty.

Lots of people find Christianity attractive, but that's why I think the main agenda of secular humanism is to be 'not-religious', and very little else. That's why it's not attractive and depressing: no hope. This is all there is. A culture of death.

Nicholas says that he doesn't believe in any super-powerful entities, but what about super-powerful people? Are they a force for good or evil? Noam Chomsky has a lot to say about this...

How do you explain horrendous evil when it's so self-defeating? If it's a 'survival instinct', then surely, any talk about morality, especially of the caring kind, is meaningless isn't it? Surely, morality is reduced to utilitarian pragmaticism - whatever works - for me? Surely, community or any form of community or institution becomes merely an expediency for attaining those things for myself which I do not have the resources to provide for myself, but if that need ceases, then community is meaningless. A 'coterie of egos', I think FR Leavis called it.

This is where I think 'institutional' religion has a part to play: it is a commitment to move out of the egocentric position, as a community, driven by love rather than mere utilitarian pragmaticism (love being an other-regarding principle). There is no mandate or 'great commission' in secular humanism, beyond assuming man is the super-entity: it is a reversal of the incarnation.

The religion I believe in, despite the behaviour of its adherents, is about incarnation and community, secular humanism is the polar opposite: anthropodeification through the cult of celebrity and ego.

The Gospel is attractive to those who think life is about more than self-gratification, and unattractive to those who think self-gratification is what it's all about. Therefore, any institution that shows people up for being the hedonistic narcissists they are, is open to attack isn't it? After all, who wants to admit who they really are? Christians, for a Catholic perspective, as I can't talk for others, are people who are not moral, but repentant. Kantianism can't save you because it puts down universalisable laws which are impossible for you to achieve but, as it's humanist, there's no redemption. Some Christians have universal laws which cannot be achieved either, but there's the possibility of forgiveness and redemption, but only if there's genuine repentance. Unfortunately, many Christians today are spiritual hedonists, constantly searching worship experiences and churches that 'suit them' - those that say what they want to hear - where there are no rules, apart from whatever they want to read into selected bible passages which aren't too challenging to themselves, but utterly condemning of others, and have a god which is more in the form of a vending machine than the Lord of the universe... They are as anti-institutional as the secular humanist, because they both have a mercenary, utilitarian view of persons, life, and god.

As you said, Greywiz, "My first response Angus Ritchie's essay did not take into consideration the arrogance of religions.", neither did it take account of the 'Arrogance of Humanism' (see David W. Ehrenfeld's book of the same title - and he's not a religious believer, but an ecologist).

Damn, damn, damn. I broke my New Post's resolution....

Greywiz, you say: Discussion of this topic seems a mite subdued. Tell me it's because all of you have had a case of bad conscience after the UN Human Rights Council made it an offence to speak freely about religion. Please. That should make anyone think twice about the need for institutional religion. Indeed, it should make all of us sit up and take notice at what is happening in our world, and how religion is threatening, once again, to disturb the peace of the world.

And I quote form a (religious) Canadian journalist:

----

"You are lucky, down there in the United States, for you can still discuss such things. Up where I am writing in Canada, we now have laws criminalizing open discussion of the institution of marriage, designed to prevent the worst thing that the liberal mind is capable of imagining: namely, hurt feelings.

It was to clear this minefield that Canadian Liberal and left politicians, in the course of ratifying "gay marriage" in our Parliament (after it had been legislated by an Ontario provincial court), created "hate" laws, which they then embedded in the "genocide" provisions of our Criminal Code that they had previously created -- to make journalists and others extremely wary of criticizing what the government had done. Canadian "human rights" tribunals have meanwhile established that merely quoting the Bible publicly on the topic of homosexuality, without any further comment, is actionable, and may be successfully prosecuted through those tribunals, wherein due process is denied to the defendant, along with every other protection of the old common law, and conviction rates are 100 percent." from insidecatholic.com

----

Isn't this the same thing in your own country against us, Greywiz?

Paul, how come you get to use the 'D' word, but I can't use the 'F' word?!

I find your grotesque idea of humanism rather amusing. Do you really think it takes something beyond the human to have hope? And isn't that hope rather egocentric? After all, we are all going to die, and before we leave we can hope that our children and our children's children will have a peaceful, hopeful world to live in, full of good things.

But the supposition that the humanist must take the attitude: 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,' is really quite sad. Do you think there is nothing in this life except preparing for the next one? One of the reasons I have chosen to address myself to this group is because I find the premise of it dangerous. I would rather not have a world in the future in which religions and religious groups have direct input in public policy and decision making. I cite the recent UN Human Rights Council resolution as the kind of danger that is posed by this kind of religious intervention in public life. It is a grave danger to our future, and I would like to do what I can (small as it may be) to see that that future is not as destructive as it may well be, if religions continue to intrude like this in our lives. Do I have only pessimism? No. I have hope, otherwise, I wouldn't bother with this discussion at all. I have a conviction that reasonable people everywhere will see that this is no way to govern ourselves well or wisely.

You seem to think that, because you belong to a community of faith, there cannot be an egocentricity in your motives. Only humanists can be a coteries of egos? Is that it? Well, it is quite clear, from the responses of religious groups around the world, and, to take but one instance, the response of Anglican and Catholic bishops over the stem cell research bill, that there's a lot of ego riding on the decisions that are being made, quite sufficient to cause an alarming outbreak of dishonesty from the benches of bishops, both Anglican and Roman Catholic. Religion is not at all, as you say, 'a commitment to move out of the egocentric position.' Not at all. And there is absolutely no reason to suppose that it is. People who have eternity in their future can plausibly be thought of as ravingly egocentric; and as for the religious craving for power, there is perhaps no group in the world so concerned about power and influence as religions. Look what a few books by atheists have done. Religious people publish thousands of books of religious propaganda yearly, and yet let three or four atheists write books opposing religious belief, and what do we see? It's a calamity. Even the Saudi king is trying to get a coalition of monotheisms to oppose atheism and save mankind. It's risible.

As to a culture of death. Well, my, my. A representative of a religion whose central symbol is a man dying on a cross has the audacity to speak about a culture of death! One of the things that Uta Ranke-Heinemann says in her book, Putting Away Childish Things, is that Roman Catholicism puts death right at the centre of its belief system. She even quotes the Vatican's spokesman for the family as saying, having given the bad news that husbands who are HIV positive are still forbidden to wear a condom when having sex with their wives -- and why? -- because, he says, there are values here which are more valuable than life itself. Boggles the mind, but it was said. And you speak about a culture of death, because -- well, because of what, precisely? Because we die, and we acknowledge that? Or because we don't think there's anything else? How does this make for a culture of death?

I notice you carefully steered clear of speaking about the human rights issue. Is that because you don't think that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is something that should be preserved and protected, or what? That was my challenge to you, and you seem to have so carefully avoided it that it's almost palpable. Why?

Life and the world is a marvelous, beautiful, wondrous thing. It is something to be celebrated and enjoyed. It is something to be reverenced. It's something, too, to take seriously, with thought and care. We have duties to each other, duties of kindness, and duties of respect, but we also have duty to the truth, and a duty not to shirk our duty to think carefully about things, not simply accepting something because it comes at the end of a long tradition, but trying our best to see that life is as full and flourishing as it can be. Religion is not the only way to fulfil these duties. In fact, very often, religious people simply ignore those things that tend to go against their beliefs, and simply hold on for dear life to something passed on authoritatively from one dubious source or another. This is not the way we flourish, in my view. We can do better.

As you can see in the post above yours, I did get round to it...

Paul, I posted my note before I got a look at your second one. Do you think that is an adequate response to the question of the endangered Universal Declaration of Human Rights? I don't know the status of the law in Canada with respect to the discussion of gay marriage. However, despite your quotation, it is still widely held, and said, that gay marriage is opposed to Christian belief. The Roman Catholic Church still says it without qualification, and so do many evangelical churches. The Anglican Church of Canada is in a parlous state because of disagreement on this point. What the Human Rights Commissions may limit is what is known as hate speech, and if you've ever seen that crazy Baptist group from the US who protest all over the country (can't think of their name at the moment), anti-gay speech can get very hateful indeed. Not only hurt feelings are involved here. The safety of gay people to come and go as they please, to work at an employment of their own choosing, and their freedom to live according to their understanding of themselves, is seriously threatened by some expressions of anti-gay beliefs and feelings. Not only feelings at all. Just ask any gay person that you know how difficult life can be, and how much more difficult it can be where deliberate hate speech (and I think this probably has to do with a case in Alberta) can directly impinge on the freedoms and rights of others. This is poor response to the question of the endangered Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This is not tit for tat. This is a question of enormous historical importance, whether we are going to have, in the future, freedom of expression, or if we are going to have thought police governing the expression of ideas. That is not what was in question, despite your quotation, in the case reported by the reporter you quote. It is typical religious hysteria, and is widespread in Canadian religious journalism, a spinoff from our closeness to the United States.

Of course GreyWiz, as always, your example is more important, more realistic, unbiased, better reasoned, not stupid, blah, blah, blah...

No Paul, you miss the point. Your example was a tit for tat. What I would like to hear from you, as well as from other Christians, is some concern about the endangered Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the clear indication that freedom of speech will no longer be protected. In fact, in some cases, freedom of expression will not be a reportable activity. You may recall that the origin of freedom of belief and expression lay in the outcome of a long period of European warfare and social unrest brought about by the Reformation. When it was clear that neither side could compel the other to believe in their way, they agreed to differ. The right of freedom of belief and expression followed from this compromise between believers, and was later extended to unbelievers as well. I think the fact that this settlement is now in serious jeopardy should be of concern to you and other religious people, and yet all you respond with is a fairly doubtful case reported by a religious journalist in Canada. The report from the UNHRC is clear and without ambiguity. There are more important things here to be concerned about than questions of hate speech in Canada, I think, and I would have expected you to think so too. Was this hope misplaced?

Sorry, bad proofreading. 'In fact, in some cases, freedom of expression will now

Turned italics off.

Paul. It is as I thought. Your views are a serious danger to freedom. Though you have drawn me out once more, it is quite clear that you are incapable of reasoned dialogue. You cannot see the possibility of reasoning which escapes from your narrow institutional limits. Everything outside that is individualism and Babel. You have baited me for the last time. I shall not be drawn into this again.

Oh yes you will. You'll just pick on someone else.

I think your epistemology is hollow, Paul. If an alleged magisterium teaches something, that makes it less, nor more, credible. If this magisterium had evidence for its teaching, it could state that evidence, and that evidence would convince all reasonable persons. If it waffles about its self-given 'authority', we can deduce that it has no convincing evidence.

There is a corner of Ratzinger's mind, not yet destroyed by years of terror of the Vatican thought police, which yet knows this. If Ratzinger really believed in transubstantiation (for example), he would arrange evidence for it. There could (for example) be a double-blind trial that showed that a statistically significant proportion of the faithful can tell the difference between (1) a wafer that a proper priest has incanted the approved spell over, and (2) a wafer taken straight from the packet - and maybe (3) a wafer that the impostor Rowan Williams has fooled about with.

Ratzinger will arrange no such test, because a corner of his mind knows that it would demonstrate that transubstantiation is bonkers.

Unfortunately, the minds of the Theos team appear to be totally destroyed, leaving no corner of rationality. They can come up with evidence-free rubbish like this: "Surprisingly, 13% of people claim that Jesus never existed, despite the fact that respected historians unanimously agree he did." Got a complete list, have they, of 'respected historians'? And every single one of them agreed (a) what the claim 'Jesus existed' means and (b) that it is a true?

"In the reign of Tiberius, in Judaea, lots of people called Jeshua claimed to be the Messiah?" Very plausible, but not documented in detail. "The four 'canonical' gospels are historical records?" Plainly false.

I glance at the first reputable historian I find on my bookshelf: Norman Davies Europe OUP, 1996. "Apart from four gospels, whose evidence is partly repetitive and partly contradictory, few facts are known about the life of Jesus. There is no historical document which mentions him, and there is no trace of him in Roman literary sources. He did not even attract notice from the Jewish writers of the day such as Josephus or Philo ... When he died, he left no organization, no church or priesthood, ... just the enigmatic instruction ... whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." A death cult, indeed.

Instituions, and the groupthink they foster, are obstacles to the advancement of knowledge. And that includes the scientific establishment that wouldn't, at first, listen to Wegener on continental drift, and the current mentality in physics which takes string theories as the One True Way forward.

Nicholas. I said I would not be drawn out by Paul again, and I intend to stick to that. However, Paul's epistemology is more than hollow. It doesn't exist. It is a totalising system of belief, much like the totalising system that is becoming more and more evident from Islam. Neither has any basis in experience or history.

The Qu'ran, for instance, like the NT, is a text composed over a long period, and includes a number of contradictory traditions and garbled traditions. Nevertheless, there are people who are prepared to stake their lives on it, and the lives of others as well. Paul, apparently, is prepared to do the same thing, though I doubt very much whether he has read the UN Human Rights Council resolution. The outcome of clashing totalising systems of belief, that lack foundation, will be precisely the kind of thing that happened in the 16th and 17th centuries, only now weapons are a lot more powerful and will do a great deal more damage and cause more suffering. You would think, after all this time, we would have learned a lesson or two from the past, but it seems that we are heading down the same path again.

I thought, mistakenly, that Paul would have seen that the suggestion that we should no longer protect freedom of expression is one with great dangers for our society. His response was to refer to a disputed case in Canada where a Human Rights Tribunal -- acting under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- found someone guilty of hate speech. This is now a matter which is in dispute within Canadian society, and there are other cases -- one in particular that concerns freedom of expression itself -- that have been brought before the Human Rights Commission for decision. But then, based on this rhetorical gimmick, Paul goes on to make the absolutely bizarre suggestion that corporate decision making does not infringe human rights, having just indicated a case in which such a decision did in fact, in his view, infringe human rights!

As I say, I will not be drawn into discussion with him again, since it is pointless, as pointless as it would be trying to reason with the pope, since neither of them acknowledge the legitimacy of any system of belief other than their own, and do not think they are bound to provide evidence of their beliefs being true. This is precisely why I think the premise behind the Theos think tank is a very dangerous one, because it allows people like the Bishop of Durham, or the OIC states, to imagine that they are in possession of public truth, without needing to provide any basis for such a claim. The fact that these truths are contradictory doesn't seem to occur to either the Bishop of Durham or the King of Saudi Arabia.

There must be ways in which public discussion and dialogue of important issues can be carried out, and some acknowledgement of the basis upon which judgements are made. Without evidence, without a willingness to produce publicly shareable reasons for believing one thing rather than another, public dialogue simply cannot happen. The recent and increasingly prominent intrusion of religious voices in secular debate shows that this is so. Because it says in the Bible, or because the Magisterium says, or because the Muslim Ummah is God's example of the best society: none of these reasons is acceptable to any but those who hold beliefs regarding the inspiration of the Bible, the incorrigibility of the Magisterium, or the God endowed character of the Muslim Ummah.

What the churches (and other religions) seem to be saying now is that the Reformation compromise is not good enough. I hope they are aware that insistance on this point will play the events of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation backward, but with the added complication of other religions, not just divisions within Christianity. The result of this particular scenario could be very nasty for all of us. I hope Christians come to their senses, before they have gone so far they dare not turn back, and recognise that the secular compromise, while it does not give them everything they could desire in a society run on Christian principles, at least allows them in peace to live out their faith without infringing the rights of others who do not share their beliefs.

So, you thought you'd take over where GreyWiz left off, Nicholas? :)

Should I start with a GreyWizian, "No, no. Not so..."? Nah.

So, what do you think institutions are for? Control? Maybe, maybe not, but how does one govern without them? What makes a religious institution 'barmy', but any one to which you happen to subscribe, not? They are all based on traditions - even the scientific ones - they all have agreed protocols as their foundational methodology.

Science is not a meta-narrative. It is not a superior narrative or epistemological method. You just believe it to be so.

A society or institution which decided to ban all scientists is one as barmy as one which tries to ban all religions. A scientific one, an atheist one...who cares? It doesn't matter.

What you and GreyWiz fail to do is prove - beyond reasonable doubt - that we're the barmy ones, or that you're the sane ones.

I'm not offended by the petty stuff GreyWiz gets his knickers in a twist about, because I'm not trying to destroy reason or science, I see them as vital to modern life. What you and he don't accept, is that your measure is no better than ours. I see your point of view as complementary, and as I've said so many times, the secular is no enemy. What is, is individualism, and as a consequence, relativism. Relativism believes that everyone's entitled to their own opinions: until they affect mine. It's a form of intellectual solipsism and moral narcissism.

The dominant secular/atheist response to Christianity in the 20th Century was/is hegemony - which is just more of the same, if Christianity is actually as you paint it - and for which I hear you and GreyWiz arguing: replace the church with your own, autocratic, institution, but just with so-called 'science' as it's dogma. What you're arguing for is a One Dimensional Man.

It all seems more like a reaction formation, than anything positive or methodologically different, but one that's just mind, rather than heart and mind, body and soul. It's inhuman because it is utterly reductionistic. "Man is just X", whereas for the Christian, "Man is a mystery", and a mystery is something about which you can't say the last thing: beyond comprehension. 'Wisdom begins with wonder', as Socrates said. You want to cut down and restrict, we want to expand and grow.

If your view is so good, why do both of you sound so bitter against everything else?

I laugh at myself, and you both laugh at me, too. Mine's because I don't take myself too seriously, but I sense yours is constant mockery and disdain. Not the best advert for selling your product...

I'm probably a hedgehog, and you two are probably foxes. Foxes aren't superior just because they're foxes. You need both because they complement each other.

Greywiz, thanks for responding, through Nicholas. I knew it wouldn't be long. :)

Of course, people like Jurgen Habermas are inferior minds to you, aren't they, GreyWiz. He doesn't seem to think Ratzinger's an air-head, like a lot of other people whom I dare to say, might be a tidge brighter than you, Greywiz. So why do they bother? Or, are they just stupid, just like the rest of us?

Greywiz, I know the limitations of my own position, and no position is perfect. I know I can't prove it, and I know that many people in here, many Christians included, will see Catholicism as nodding-dog syndrome. Ubiquitous ignorance, like the idea that the ubiquity of a belief ratifies its truth, is no proof.

For me, it's not an act gullibility, but an act of obedience. Shouldn't we be obedient these days? Is it wrong to do something for the sake of the group than for self alone? It's not an institution if everybody's 'doing their own thing', is it?

What I'm hearing as the tacit and implied notion running under the arguments being put forward, is that anything which gets in the way of my own will to power, my own gratification, my own reasoning, is 'evil'.

You slander me and mock me, but you don't make your case through reason, because you can't. And the reason you can't is not because your stupid, but because what you think is a meta-narrative, just isn't. It's a faith, just like ours - in a tradition, an institution - if you like (or don't, but that's tough).

This article get's at the heart of what I've been bashing on about:

http://www.catholicexchange.com/en/node/68862

Just a note about the alleged suppression of freedom of speech in Canada. Since I did not know a lot about this case, it seemed to me important at least to address it here, since it has been raised as a concern. The case concerns a letter, written by a Christian Pastor in Alberta, Stephen Boisson, and published in a local newspaper in Red Deer, Alberta. This link should take you to the letter.

Stephen Boisson's letter

Stpehen Boisson was found guilty of hate-speech after a local gay youth was attacked shortly after the letter was published. Human Rights Commissions are extra-judicial bodies in which the rules of evidence do not strictly apply. Since Human Rights Commissions deal, to a large degree with discrimination in employment and sexual harassment, lower standards of proof seemed appropriate if human rights violations were to be dealt with at all, since these often concern the word of one person against the word of another. Human Rights Commissions are increasingly resorted to for settlement of cases concerning freedom of speech, and this is widely thought to be a risky extension of their mandate. Decisions of Human Rights Commissions can be appealed to the courts. Interestingly, in this case, the Attorney General of Alberta, a very conservative government, sided with the Human Rights Commission. However, there has been much discussion in the Canadian media about this case, and concern has been expressed about unjustified and dangerous limitations of free speech. I assume that, in time, this matter will make its way to the Supreme Court, and the hate-speech provisions of the law will be revisited. We will have to see the outcome of this.

Having said this, however, I repeat my concern about the limitations of free speech contained in the recent UN Human Rights Council resolution, and reiterate my former concern that such limitations can do serious harm to the freedoms that most of us in the West now enjoy. A cavalier and dismissive attitude towards such concerns is not in the interests of freedom or the respect for human rights. Certainly, if, in the outcome, it is found that free speech was improperly limited in Canada, in the Stephen Boisson case, then this is as serious a concern (locally, at least) as the UN Human Rights Council resolution is on a global scale.

There are doubtless proper restrictions on freedom of speech. Speech which is understood as a direct incitement to harm others may be properly restricted. Re-expressed as an opinion about the wrongness of certain actions, or the falsity of certain beliefs, there is no reason why restrictions need be placed on the expression of such opinions. In mitigation of Stephen Boisson's letter one Christian group in Canada points out that the warfare that Boisson refers to in his letter is spiritual warfare, and was not meant to be taken literally as an incitement to violence. Had it not been for the harm done to a gay youth, it is doubtful that the letter would have come to public attention, but once that harm was done, the wording of Boisson's letter became a matter of some concern.

There are hate-speech restrictions in Canadian law, and Human Rights Commissions are extra-judicial bodies that can adjudge cases of this kind and apply penalties. However, since the bar for proof is set fairly low, there is always the opportunity to take cases to the courts, where the bar is set correspondingly high. It is simply not true, as has been alleged, that Canadian law has determined that the reading of biblical passages without comment is contrary to law, though it might nevertheless be justly thought that some passages of the Bible do amount to hate speech.

Thanks for the link to Stephen Boisson's letter, Greywizard. With that level of hate, surely he must be a repressed homosexual? Poor chap. I wouldn't prosecute him, because he doesn't explicitly libel individual homosexuals, or directly incite assaults or murder. But I would prosecute someone who quotes Leviticus 20:13 without comment, for inciting the murder of homosexuals. Advocating an idea, however barmy or cruel, is not a crime. Inciting the arbitary killing of identiable people is a crime.

Institutions, Paul, are for pursuing objects which are best pursued in concert. These objects may be noble, eg Amnesty International, or evil, eg Buchenwald, or corrupt, eg the Vatican. The Vatican is barmy because it is based on tradition, hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and fear of women. But I agree with Mark Shea that Ratzinger can, with an enormous effort, appear to change his mind sometimes. The results are not impressive, as Joseph Hoffman pointed out.

Science is not a narrative of any kind. It is an organised body of knowledge about, and working models of, the physical world, always provisional, always subject to amendment in the light of new evidence. Science includes, for example, a good-enough understanding of some diseases for us to be able to prevent them. In contrast, the tradition that diseases result from 'devils' that 'prophets' can 'cast out', was mistaken.

'Relativism' can be of many sorts. All honest ethics is based on moral relativism, the knowledge that there is no absolute external code we can draw on. But cognitive relativism, as written about (I suspect only as an intellectual game) by the likes of Rorty, is just once-fashionable nonsense. See, for example, chapter 4 of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Fashionable nonsense (published as Intellectual impostures in the UK), and now reprinted in Sokal's new anthology Beyond the Hoax.

What you're saying, GreyWiz, is very relevant to institutions and their relationship to authority, law, and punishment within society - religious or otherwise - so what conclusions do you draw? Will a 'secular' institution always be better than a religious one? If so, how?

That is, how is a secular one going to be better, rather than how bad religious ones have been in the distant past. An appeal to 'reason' doesn't count as we both appeal reason - but from different perspectives - and you merely deny mine: which is like claiming the Toronto Maple Leafs are the best ice hockey team because you support them.

Let's get our terms right, again. A secular government, not bound to any one of the mutually annihilating big religions, will always be better than a theocracy. But the Salvation Army is better at helping the homeless than any gang of irreligious do-gooders I'd in practice be able to organise.

For arriving at ethical codes, or knowledge about the physical world, the application of reason to reproducible evidence is always better than any kind of tradition, and hugely better than reference to a book supposedly inspired by one or more of the mutually annihilating gods that humans so recklessly invent. Reason only claims that the Maple Leafs are the best if they consistently beat every other team. And it accepts that another team might be better next year. Religion claims Yahweh is better than Baal because of an unverified, and irreproducible, occasion when Yahweh was better at setting bulls on fire.

I said I would not be drawn out again, Paul, but here I am. What is the difference between secular and religious institutions? Very simple. Each religious institution represents one interest group with particular beliefs, which others may not share, including other religious institution.

There is no obvious reason why one belief system should be reflected in the way that society makes its decisions. I know that you think that the secular view is a unified belief system, but I do not think this is true. Secularism is a way of organising society that does not give preference to distinct belief systems, whether humanist or religious. Its primary concern is respect for human rights, areas in which individuals are held to be autonomous beings and able to choose for themselves. That's why freedom of expression is so important, because, without it, people are not permitted, publicly, at least, to think differently than those in authority have determined that they ought to think, and this is a grievous restriction on their rights as human beings.

Why should one person's thought be absolutely determinative of the way others should think? That's why I agree with Nicholas that probably Stephen Boisson should not have been sanctioned by the Human Rights Commission in Alberta. This was an error of judgement. It is interesting that there are gay rights groups in Canada who think likewise, and will not support an attempt to take this case to the Supreme Court to try to rule out this kind of expression in the future. They are aware, too, that the rights they protect also belong to them, and that limitations of free speech cut both ways.

Secularism is that form of social and political organisation that recognises the plurality of voices in any society, and the importance of protecting each one of them. And this is what I have been trying to stress all along, although I think you believe that I have only an atheist agenda to promote. This is not true. I will continue to maintain that religious institutions have no special role in public decision making, but they do represent part of the plurality of voices that exist in society. No one would claim that religious voices should not be heard. That would be a fundamental denial of human rights. But religious voices should not be privileged in social and public decision making.

Let me add one more comment for what it's worth. I have never said that the pope is not an intelligent man, nor have I suggested that you are not either. And I have not intentionally mocked you, though my comments may be slightly acidulated at times. My concern has been, all along, that, for all your intelligence and ability to think through complex theological ideas, you have not followed the train of the argument in this or previous threads, but have simply repeated your beliefs as to what, from a Roman Catholic point of view, would be a good society. Good for you. Promote that as much as you like, but do not presume to impose those beliefs on others. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, etc. etc. all have voices, and they arise out of different belief systems. Let them further their beliefs so long as they do not infringe on the rights of individuals to believe differently, and live according to their beliefs as faithfully as they can. Nothing that I have said, suggests a denial of this right. All I claim is that, in a secular democracy, others have a right to govern their own lives according to their own lights, and there should be no privileging of voices, so long as no harm is done to others.

You may suggest that harm is done to you if you live in a society that is not governed by your belief system. If that is so, nothing that I can say will likely change your mind, but I will fight against you with every resource at my disposal to make sure that my rights as an individual are protected against the kinds of oppression dictated by your world view.

So, if I read you correctly, Greywiz, you are arguing for individual autonomy (as in auto-nomos), so, how can you have any institution? Isn't it merely a recipe for anarchy?

But, more worryingly, whilst we're all going about being individual and autonomous, what about those who have corporate (read institutional) power? Oil companies have cartels - a form of institution. These are more powerful than any Pope in modern society, yet I don't hear a squeak of criticism against these... What about political (read institutional) power: Gordon and George?

What I have been arguing for in the past two discussions is tradition and what goes with that, not the Roman Catholic Church, of which, the RCC is merely a good example - but I have given secular ones, too.

Individualism and autonomy are incompatible with institutions, traditions, and most importantly, community, aren't they?

If not, how so?

Nicholas, you say:

For arriving at ethical codes, or knowledge about the physical world, the application of reason to reproducible evidence is always better than any kind of tradition, and hugely better than reference to a book supposedly inspired by one or more of the mutually annihilating gods that humans so recklessly invent.

Replace 'book' with 'statute', and, 'the mutually annihilating gods that humans so recklessly invent', with 'the judiciary', and you have the basis of the Common Law, or to be more precise, Legal Positivism. This isn't based on reason but merely the positing of laws!

So, why not scrap the judiciary? It's methodologically similar to any traditional religion, and based on the whim of judges (read bishops or imams).

But, nobody questions one has to be obedient to the Law of the Land, however ill-conceived and irrational, but Canon Law? Well, that's just hocus-pocus, isn't it...

Secular legal systems are not based on reason, however much wishful thinking to the contrary you try to apply by the bucket-load.

What you say sounds good in theory, but you just don't find it in real life, do you?

You can reason yourself to your utopia, but you just can't get people to live like that without force or duress, can you.

I don't know about other Christians, but we call that gap between the real and the theory, sin, privation of The Good, as Augustine put it.

What I see in your thinking is a denial of that gap as if your 'reasoning' was real-isable.

I admit there is a gap, you don't: If only people would 'x', then utopia will be realised. That is, remove the impediment - and what is the impediment? Free will, not religion. So, how do you get everyone to 'x', without force or coercion?

You can't, unless they choose to do so. Hence, the Inquisition, gulag and gas-chamber...

Talk about autonomy! Paul, you have, perhaps, the most individualistic way of arguing or discussing that I have ever in my life encountered. It's almost like talking to a wall!

For instance, you take the word 'autonomy' and immediately gloss it as auto-nomos. Well, in that sense, if every person is establishing law for himself or herself, this is obviously incompatible with institutions, which require laws to govern themselves. That doesn't mean that persons, to the extent that does not conflict with establishing communities, and ways of living and working together, can't be, to that extent, autonomous. It's a common enough English word, and does not need to be glossed by its Greek origins. I have already quite clearly stated that individuals have autonomy to the extent that they do not cause harm to other individuals, and that inlcudes, clearly, harm to the society as the medium, if you like, within which reasonably civilised life (the life of autonomous individuals) is possible. And, of course, within those limits traditions will form, such as the common law tradition, systems of rights and obligations, and so on.

In the course of establishing community there will be many voices, as I have already said. Why should you suppose that I was recommending some kind of anarchic atomistic individualism? In anything I have said is there any sign that I think this would be a good way of living together? So, of course, no rights are absolute. I can't say anything I wish. I can't go about encouraging people to murder their neighbours who happen to belong to a minority group. This is not protected speech, and to that extent my autonomy is limited too by the conditions that make society possible.

Let's take the common law, for instance, which you speak of in terms of legal postivism. But the common law is a developing tradition. Its contents shift and change, as circumstances change. And reason can be brought to bear on case law to bring about such shifts. The judiciary is not, as you say in your response to Nicholas, 'methodologically similar to any traditional religion.' Religions are systems based on putative revelations, not on the shifting adjustments that we make in our efforts to live amicably together. Very different methodologically. There is no absoluteness about the common law, and changes are introduced as our needs as a community change.

You say, categorically, that 'secular legal systems are not based on reason.' Well, possibly not, since the common law tradition winds back a long way in legal history, though I daresay that the earliest case law was argued on the basis of reasons that were thought compelling at the time. And it is still responsive to reason, just as, I assume canon law is. The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church (or the Church of England) has not remained stationary over the centuries. In fact, there was, as I recall, a major revision of (Roman Catholic) canon law early in the 20th century. I assume that this revision was based on something -- but not reason, then? Someone had to go through the process of making the revisions, and giving reasons for making the revisions that were made. This doesn't look a lot like wishful thinking to me. If they didn't give reasons, why would they have thought it desirable to make revisions?

Nor is it a matter of seeking utopia. In fact, the very reverse is the case. Reasoning won't lead us to utopia, because those who reason know that reason is fallible, and that others will see and correct errors of judgement as we go along. There may be local improvements, and there may be reverses. Our laws will only be as reasonable as we can make them. No gap, not even a privation of the good, just a matter of being human. I can't speak for Nicholas, of course, but I'm sure he would agree.

Es tut mir Leid, aber.... that's what I mean by saying that arguing with you is like speaking to a wall. There's no give, just a fancied apprehension of what the other person is saying, interpreted to be as obviously silly as you can make it.

The strange thing is that you seem to think that utopia really is realisable. All we need is to get rid of free will, subject everyone to a tradition, train them in obedience, and we'll get there, or at least as close as we're likely to get. The secular point of view says precisely the opposite. We are human beings. That's why utopia is appropriately named. We don't expect to get there, since there is nowhere to get to. All we can do is to so order society that people enjoy the greatest freedom consistent with its (that is, society's) peaceful preservation. Where those freedoms are now denied, the secular answer is to affirm them where possible. This is not the way to the Inquisition, the gulag or the gas-chamber. Remember that in each of the cases you name, the effort really was made remove what you call the impediment of freedom. Within the secular system, this should not be possible.

It occurs to me, Paul, that you should reread, or read for the first time if you haven't already done so, Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan: A Moral God." Very similar to the kind of thing that you are proposing, designed to escape the awful consequences of anarchy, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Sorry, that should have read: A Mortal God.

Paul: You are mistaken about English law. Common law is law made by judges, not by whim, but according to precedent and according to ancient rules of natural justice (which in turn had evolved because they were rules that most humans wanted, such as Audi alteram partem, hear both sides of a case. One of its most famous exponents was Sir Edmund Coke, who insisted that the common law could curb arbitrary exercise of the royal prerogative. A quote much attributed to him, whose precise source I haven't checked, is "How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law."

Statute law, in contrast, is made by parliament. In principle, always after rational debate of the need for it; in practice, as Jon Hunt reminded us in a previous thread, sometimes in response to media pressure, or for cadging votes. But always revisable by a subsequent parliament.

I, and many others, would deny that one 'has to' be obedient to the law. On the contrary, one has the duty to flout unjust laws. That is one way that parliament can be persuaded to revise unjust laws (eg Margaret Thatcher's flat "community charge" levied independently of ability to pay).

I don't know how the canon law of the Roman 50% catholic church evolved, and can't usefully comment on it.

Meanwhile, over at The Grauniad, Grayling is back on form; and in other news, the Church in Wales decides that women are almost human, but not quite enough to be bishops.

Well said, Nicholas. Perhaps the following quote from the Wikipedia article on common law would be helpful to show how, in fact, common law is a constantly shifting body of law based on precedent and reason.

"In a common law jurisdiction several stages of research and analysis are required to determine what "the law is" in a given situation. First, one must ascertain the facts. Then, one must locate any relevant statutes and cases. Then one must extract the principles, analogies and statements by various courts of what they consider important to determine how the next court is likely to rule on the facts of the present case. Later decisions, and decisions of higher courts or legislatures carry more weight than earlier cases and those of lower courts.[4] Finally, one integrates all the lines drawn and reasons given, and determines what "the law is". Then, one applies that law to the facts.

The common law is more malleable than statutory law. First, common law courts are not absolutely bound by precedent, but can (when extraordinarily good reason is shown) reinterpret and revise the law, without legislative intervention, to adapt to new trends in political, legal and social philosophy. Second, the common law evolves through a series of gradual steps, that gradually works out all the details, so that over a decade or more, the law can change substantially but without a sharp break, thereby reducing disruptive effects."

Just google 'common law'. In other words, Paul is quite wrong about English common law, and about the laws of all those countries whose law descends from English common law. He is also very seriously in error in dismissing in so cavalier a fashion the ordinary exercise of reason, which is familiar to all of us, if we give it a moment's thought.

This is very important in the context of the discussion we are having here, for it shows clearly how different the methodology of the judiciary is from most religious institutions. Religious institutions are to a greater degree driven by the original 'deposit' of (supposed) revelation, and therefore do not respond in the same way to the corrective and refining operations of reason. Hence Hoffman's Vatican moonwalk. That is not to suggest that some theologians have not tried to make theology a rational discipline, but it is precisely this form of theology that Paul has so far shown very little affinity for.

Rather nice touch, that -- 'Roman 50% catholic church.' You will get thanks from the Orthodox and from some Anglicans at any rate.

Maybe I'm not a wall, but a mirror, GreyWiz?

You are a smart alec to be sure, Paul, but a wall is the image that comes immediately to mind. On the other hand, if you are the mirror, everything I see is backwards. Indeed it is.

As always, when I use illustrative generalisations, you become nit-pickingly pedantic, but when I'm being precise, backing up what I'm saying with quotations, you just poo-poo what I'm saying with no argument whatsoever.

You are as right about the mirror as I am...

Please, please, please don't now quote Rorty's book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, because it has the word, mirror, in it, like you did when I mentioned the word, 'paradigm'.

Paul, we could have a slanging match, shut up, or actually discuss something. Which is it to be?

Perhaps it is not a question of whether we “need” institutional religion, but rather that humanity shall remain lumbered with these wicked superstitions as long as 5.77 billion people on this miserable little planet, out of a total of 6.87 billion (increasing at the rate of 275,000 every passing day), believe in gods directing military operations, universal floods, immaculate conceptions, life after death, and a paradise flowing with rivers of water up in the sky.

Zak, that's a very good change of direction. Instead of asking whether we need institutional religion, ask what are the negatives that result from institutional religion. It's all very well to say that churches do good works, but what to they have on the deficit side of the ledger? Good question, and one that hasn't been asked on this thread with sufficient seriousness.

Greywizard: “The change of direction” came out of the frustration of reading the worthy comments from the contributions to this thread, without considering the fact that as far as the masters of the world are concerned, the masses of people (who do not matter a jot in world affairs) can believe whatever they damn well please, as long as they do what their masters tell them.

The masters of the people and those who play a major role in world affairs (kings, heads of state, military leaders, money-lenders, bank-robbers, rapists, mass-murderers, etc.) on the other hand, do not believe a single word ever scribed in a Bible (old or new testament), or a Koran, or any other “holy” book! For if they believed that they would burn in hell forever for committing crimes against their fellow man, we would never have had European crusaders, Spanish conquistadors, Roman Inquisitors, Persian Assassins and other religious fanatics of that ilk, usurers, rapists, child-molesters, or those who steal other people’s land, milk, and honey.

I believe Seneca put it rather well some two thousand years ago when he said: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful”.

BTW: I have read Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan” (too many words), but I must say that I prefer David Hume’s “The Natural History of Religion”. These words of his find echoes in my own mind: “No wonder, then, that mankind, being placed in such an absolute ignorance of causes, and being at the same time so anxious concerning their future fortune, should immediately acknowledge a dependence on invisible powers, possessed of sentiment and intelligence.

It was Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter 2: The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by

the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ... Such was the mild spirit of antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities.

Presumably Saint Tony is hoping to restore this Elysium through his 'Faith Foundation'. What madness. If Christianity is at all true, Islam is wholly false, and vice versa. Likewise any pair of the big religions. After 1500 years of 'theology', theologians can't even agree how many gods there are, let alone give an agreed description of any attribute of any of them.

But Gibbon was quoting Seneca the Younger, I think. And Gibbon changes it from 'religion' to 'modes of worship,' if the translation is correct -- I don't have a Latin Seneca to check.

Zak, I much prefer Hume as well. It just seemed to me that the kinds of powers that Paul appeared, at any rate, to give to some overarching social schema (whatever form he thought it might take) the role that the sovereign plays in Hobbes' Leviathan.

The tendency, since time began, almost, of religious people, is to think in terms of the ideal morality of their religion as reflecting the best society, and so to decry everything around them as irreligious and a declension from the perfect goodness that religion would prescribe if it had the power, is hard to escape. When you actually think you know the truth, then everything else will look tarnished. This, I think, is why Paul, and Benedict, for that matter, looks with such disfavour upon secularism, because it actually permits people to act in ways which, according to their beliefs, are repugnant or contemptible, and, not to put too fine a point on it, dangerous. The danger lies, not so much in what is happening now, but in what is anticipated later, and so the whole of life is placed under the overbearing rule of a life which is imagined, by many of the religious, to follow this one.

Even the apostle Paul said that if Jesus was not raised from the dead (although Paul uses the present tense, since if he was raised, he is raised, in Paul's understanding of what resurrection means), then we (viz., those who believe) are of all men (and women?) most miserable -- because we have staked our all on the resurrection, and the whole of life is coloured by that gamble. In other words, the decision tree of Pascal's wager would look very different from Paul's perspective, since, if we have bet on God, and there is no God, then we do lose something, we lose the way we might otherwise have lived our lives, if we did not believe. I don't mean by that, as some people seem to think, that unbelievers have no morality, so would be able to act as they please, but that unbelievers would live differently, with different priorities, and with a different sense of what living in the world is all about.

I find it interesting that my own view of the subject matter of this discussion, about the necessity of religious institutions, has changed significantly from my first response, under the pressure, I might add, of things that the religious have said and done.

Here's a 'sermon' for you, from Scientific American - unless you think that's religious, too.

Rational Atheism: An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens By Michael Shermer

Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list—Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (Hachette Book Group, 2007) and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)—that together, in Dawkins’s always poignant prose, “raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled.” Amen, brother.

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: “An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be.”

2. Positive assertions are necessary. Champion science and reason, as Charles Darwin suggested: “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science.”

3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people’s consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. As Carl Sagan cautioned in “The Burden of Skepticism,” a 1987 lecture, “You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.”

4. The golden rule is symmetrical. In the words of the greatest conscious­ness raiser of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his epic “I Have a Dream” speech: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrong­ful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.

5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

As King, in addition, noted: “The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion.

Scientific American Magazine - August 19, 2007

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I have asked you many times 'to set us an example', and have argued for all these points at one time or another. I have argued that you should use your methods to counteract our methods, if yours are so right.

e.g.,

I have made the point before that you definine yourself by what you don't believe in previous posts. Catholicism defines itself constantly by what it is. Other forms of Christianity and secualr humanist ideas have to define themselves by what they are not: not Catholic, not secular, not Christian, etc.. As I said in the discussion ' UK: Christian or secular?'(Point 1).

In an earlier post in this discussion I said: Greywiz, you and Nicholas provide lots of criticism, but I don't find you offering any solution which woos me or even remotely attracts me. What are you offering? tell me something really attractive about what you believe. (Point 2)

Point 3, as I said, "Of course GreyWiz, as always, your example is more important, more realistic, unbiased, better reasoned, not stupid, blah, blah, blah...", in response to your supercilious attitude.

Point 4, is what I meant by 'the mirror'.

Point 5, is about the only one you address, but somewhat ambiguously, at times.

As I said in 'Are We Naturally Religious": Greywiz, as I've said before here, I try to be an exemplar of my philosophy - I try to live it out - so I try to make my posts fit what I claim, as much as possible. I don't claim empiricism as the only valid epistemological model, so I am free to use other approaches.

You, however, claim empiricism as your benchmark, and whack Christians over the head with it, but hardly ever use it when you post. You use hearsay, speculation, and stereotypes. And nearly all your examples are from (very selective) historical data, which, is not a scientific, but an interpretive discipline. The New Atheists do the same. They don't use the very methods they champion. What sense does this make?

First of all, Paul, thank you for the 'sermon' from Michael Shermer, a very respected sceptic, and editor, if I am not mistaken of Skeptic Magazine. Very useful piece of work.

First of all, I want you to notice this:

"Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance."

I am not necessarily supporting the rather blunt instruments that people like Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens wield. I am surprised to find Dennett in the group, because Dennett, in his book, Breaking the Spell, actually does show considerable respect for religion. That he wants to subject it to scientific and philosophical investigation should not be taken (although it has unjustly been taken) as negativity or irrational exuberance, to use Shermer's word. When Dawkins book first came out, I did say, in a couple places, that I thought he came on a bit strong, and did not seem to recognise the value that religions and religious belief and ritual have for many people. Notice, please, that I began on this thread with comments like that.

And then came the UN Human Rights Council resolution on respect for religions and threats to freedom of expression, and in connexion with this some of the absolutely absurd things that the Scottish cardinal and the Bishop of Durham and the Archbishop of Canterbury were saying came to mind, and I began to take back the positive things about religion that I had said, and I decided, as Shermer says we should, that, freedom being at issue, I should respond with aplomb.

Now, if you like you can keep saying things like, "Of course GreyWiz, as always, your example is more important, more realistic, unbiased, better reasoned, not stupid, blah, blah, blah...", but I'm not sure why you think this. I know you disagree strongly with me. That's been evident all along, and I have found it very hard to understand why anyone would take the kind of traditionalistic, authoritarian view of society and culture that you have taken. So, we're at an impass here.

I think that religion, today, is a threat to our hardwon freedoms. You confirmed that for me, and it was to that confirmation that I responded. If you want to try another tack, and express why you think obedience is so vital in a way that doesn't threaten to abridge those freedoms, as the pope, the cardinal, the bishop of Durham and you seem to do, then I will gladly consider what you have to say. but so far I've seen nothing that remotely woos or attracts me.

And when you say that Nicholas and I have offered criticism but no solution, I ask: What for? What are you asking for a solution for? I think there is a perfectly legitimate place in society for religion. I don't think that religion or any other special interest group, should have a determinative voice in public policy. If we have problems in society, fine, let's find solutions, but religion itself is not one, because there are too many (religions, that is). And if religion insists on intruding itself more and more in public space, as it is threatening more and more to do, then that is a provocation which deserves the most urgent repudiation. That's as fair as I can say it. And if that is what people like Dawkins and Harris and Grayling are responding to, then their urgency is not exuberant irrationalism, as Shermer says, but plain sense, in my view. I think, if the UNHRC resolution had come out before Shermer's article was published, he might have thought so too.

A last point. I don't claim empricism as my benchmark, as you put it. Legal reasoning, and moral reasoning, and philosophical reasoning is not necessarily empirical, but it is reasoning nonetheless. And even history, which you call interpretive, involves the giving of reasons. Some interpretations happen to be better than others, and better supported by reasons.

The giving of reasons is my benchmark. You may use whatever approaches you like, but if you hit me over the head again with tradition and authority and obedience, I'll respond the same way. Give me the reasons why I should accept the tradition or obey the authority. Otherwise, the claims are empty. And I know of nothing that you can say that could confirm the final authority of the pope, of the Muslim scholars of Mecca or Medina, of the Bible, the Qu'ran or the Magisterium, and until you have some reasons, there is no further we can go. Epistemology is the study of reasons for believing, and the basis for claims to know. The only possible way for you to go is to produce the reasons for believing and the grounds of knowledge.

Nicholas: Greywizard is correct of course; Edward Gibbon in “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was quoting Seneca the Younger but did not see fit to acknowledge the source.

As an aside; throughout the early part of my life I accepted (thanks to my Sunday School “education”) that the expression “Do not do unto others, that which is hateful to yourself” was coined by Jesus, until I discovered that it was Hillel who spouted it (standing on one leg) in Rome in the century before Jesus. Then to my further surprise, I discovered that Kung-Zi (Confucius) had already promoted it some 500 years before Hillel. It would not surprise me if someone else had come up with it even earlier than Kung-Zi! Nor does it surprise me that Jesus would not acknowledge Hillel, nor that Hillel would not acknowledge Kung-Zi. That is the nature of plagiarism.

Greywizard: It is safe to say that St. Paul re-created the pronouncements of Jesus into the Christianity that developed over the centuries into the various forms that we have today. But Christianity emerged out of Judaism, and the latter emerged out of Egyptian and Babylonian religions. The Babylonians themselves based their religion on the earlier Sumerian model.

Now here is the rub; for if you go back to Sumerian writings of some six or seven thousand years ago, it seems to me that their intention was not so much to start a system of institutional religion, but to establish an organisational structure to regulate their life. They had agriculture, education, justice, marriages, commercial contracts, territorial conflicts, and other aspects of a civilised society to contend with, and had, therefore, created “houses” and laws to regulate these forms of government, with “lords” to oversee them. Over the years, these houses (ministries) gradually became “temples”, and the ministers lording over them became “gods”.

It seems to me also that the idea of temples and gods (rather than ministries and state secretaries) found favour with the ruling classes (then as now), for it is more difficult to make the hoi-polloi obey the authority of a minister or a king who is here one day and gone the next, than to claim authority for eternal and invisible “gods” who cannot be questioned, challenged, or deposed; and who wielded supreme, magical, and miraculous powers of creation, punishment, and reward (the latter usually in the hereafter).

I don’t believe that the ancient rulers believed in their “gods” anymore than rulers in the centuries that followed ever did, although the masses (bless 'em), being generally as stupid and incapable of forming independent thoughts then as now, swallowed the “religions” imposed on them, hook, line, and sinker.

However, I do not blame the ancients for swallowing tales of the “creation” of life, for they had the misfortune of not having a Wallace, a Darwin, or a Dawkins to explain the nature of evolution to them, nor do I blame them for swallowing the plagiarised and grossly exaggerated biblical story of a “universal flood”, for they had no basic knowledge of physics, biology, or the architecture of giant naval vessels! But what puzzles the hell out of me, is why, with all this information available today, even to school-children, that the majority of people in our age should still “believe” in cockeyed tales of miracles, magic, and mystery!

I would like to comment further on your contribution, and also on Paul Rodden’s points, for it is a subject that interests me and absorbs a lot of my free time, but I feel that I should stop here, lest I breach your boredom threshold with my ranting!

ZakCan you give a precise source for the alleged original in Seneca? I suspect it's one of those mythical quotations. Like "we trained hard, but kept getting reorganized etc" one, which was made up for a government report in the mid-1900s, and attibuted to 'Petronius' as a joke. And the one constantly attributed to GK Chesterton that once people stop believing in God they believe anything - which is (a) obviously untrue (b)not found in any extant work of Chesterton, although it's vaguely similar to some sentiments expressed by the fictional, and delightful, Father Brown.

Greywiz, you say:

"A last point. I don't claim empricism as my benchmark, as you put it. Legal reasoning, and moral reasoning, and philosophical reasoning is not necessarily empirical, but it is reasoning nonetheless. And even history, which you call interpretive, involves the giving of reasons. Some interpretations happen to be better than others, and better supported by reasons.

The giving of reasons is my benchmark. You may use whatever approaches you like, but if you hit me over the head again with tradition and authority and obedience, I'll respond the same way. Give me the reasons why I should accept the tradition or obey the authority."

---

I notice you leave out theological reasoning, but it's still reasoning. In the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, Philosophy also plays a very significant role. So, in England, we have Fregus Kerr doing brilliant work on Wittgenstein.

You just won't admit that your 'reason' relies on tradition, in exactly the same way mine. A scientific tradition. That is why I have said in the past they are isomorphic.

I'm not a great enough mind to do theology, I rely on those who have got the minds and ability to do it. In the same way, you're not a great enough mind to be one of the great scientists—the equivalent of our great theologians and philosophers—so you, too, have to rely on what you're told. But, what's more, you're obedient to it. If you were in a situation you had never experienced before and a scientist warned you not to touch something—although it looked perfectly safe—or you'd get an electric shock which would kill you, then you wouldn't do it, would you?

Well, in the Church, the church tells us tells us what will kill the soul, and my obedience is of the same type. It's not slavish, but respect for those who know better, just like you would with scientists, who'd advise you what would kill your body. But, what's more, I have found that when I have lived as they advise me, my life is, indeed happier, more loving and has a greater sense of purpose and flourishing.

I think to know what will kill my body and what will kill my soul, is vitally (in it's real sense) important. You however, see it otherwise, but then proceed time and time again to demean it, just because you haven't experienced it. Well, use your experience and try some strychnine, rather than have faith in the scientists. After all, they might be wrong in that one case (remember, it's inductive reasoning)! So, isn't it stupid to rely on them? Philosophers of science call it 'black-swan theory'—the problem of induction—or 'black-swanning', when it's used as an informal fallacy.

All I can say is, there are plenty of Christians who switch their minds off—I've quoted some of the books in previous posts—and that sort of lemming-like behaviour doesn't do thinking christians any favours because people like you, Greywiz, latch onto it, extrapolate a generalisation, and then, as a result, I go into tit-for-tat mode. What else can I do when you just stereotype and generalise wildly?

Your equivalent types to religious lemmings were excellently shown up by the experiments of Stanley Milgram on the obedience of people to those in white lab coats.

White lab coat or chasuable, the same thing's going on. Just admit it Greywiz, and don't try to make out your methods are superior. I give very good, valid reasons, you just don't want to hear them. You call them rubbish.

Well, listen to the sermons of your priests, and, like us, however falteringly, try to live them out...

This is more relevant to the last debate - but there is a very odd situation in Turkey at the moment where a constitutional court is threatening a good democratic government because it is not "secular" enough.

Here's a link to the Economist editorial:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10966213

So far as institutional religion goes, I'm afraid I can't get into the debate, as a non-conformist by background and temperament. I tend to think of the institutions of the churches as a necessary evil. I'm sure Paul will take me to task for this...

Let’s start at the end, where you bid me ‘listen to the sermons of your priests.’ NO. That I will not do. I will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, but I will ask questions, raise doubts, and try as much as I can to affirm what is true. Of course, some things will be based on the authority of those who know better than I do. We would know nothing otherwise. However, I try to base my understanding on work that can be peer reviewed across social and cultural boundaries

Let’s stop and think about that for a moment. You say that theology uses reasoning -- as it does -- and you might add that theology, too, is peer reviewed, and you accept the authority of theology, because, though not having the ability to be a theologian yourself, you receive it from those who do, and moreover, who subject their theological reasoning to peer review.

That’s fine. Do that if you want. But remember the peer review in Roman Catholicism is very different from the peer review in science or other ‘secular’ disciplines. Here’s an example of what peer review looks like. David Irving, in his book, The Bombing of Dresden, claims that up to 250,00 people were killed during the bombing of Dresden of 13-14 February 1945. When I read his book in the 1960s I thought he knew what he was talking about. The actual figure is closer to 35,000. The figure of 250,000 comes from a forged document, which Irving himself had accepted in 1963 as spurious. But then, for ideological reasons, when he published The Bombing of Dresden, he changed his mind, where he argued (unsuccessfully -- see Richard Evans, Lying about Hitler, chap. 5 -- and fraudulently) that it was genuine. In his attempt to defend his credentials as an historian, he sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel, for calling him a Holocaust denier. He lost, and his many shortcomings as an historian were revealed for all to see.

What’s that got to do with theology? Simply this, that there are no objectively available sources of evidence that will show whether or not theological reasoning reaches sound conclusions. In the end, all that is left is authority, no way of checking whether something is true. That’s why people like Hans Küng get shelved, because their reasoning leads them away from the authoritative answer.

You can test that yourself. Have a theological argument with a Muslim or a Hindu, and you will soon find that you have no common ground to stand on. You can reason all you like within the limits prescribed by the foundation documents of your faith, but once outside the hermeneutical circle (as Paul Tillich called it), the only thing you can do is shout or keep your counsel. It’s not a matter of whether your mind is switched on or off; there are fundamental barriers to breaking out of the circle that religious reasoning sets up for itself.

I don’t want to claim, and it would be foolish to do so, that there are no epistemological difficulties with science or history or other forms of reasoning. However, it seems clear that we can reason to some purpose about the evidence for the number of people killed in the Dresden bombing. It is not clear that we can do this in theology. You can argue, if you like, that Jesus was the incarnation of God, and that his death on the cross was somehow salvific, but there is nothing to base that claim on. You may think you know what will kill your soul, but you can give me no evidence that you have one. So long as you are, as you are, within the circle, everything is fine, but as soon as you step out of it -- and that’s what you do when you offer theological reasoning as a basis for making public decisions -- there is no common basis upon which our conclusions can be based.

Just as an aside, Stanley Milgram’s experiment had nothing to do with the authority of science. It was a scientific experiment to study the effects of authority itself, and its conclusions do not support your case. Indeed, they suggest that authority has a destructive effect on the ability of persons to make rational choices. Milgram’s experiment argues against you, and not for you.

jonhunt. No, this is more relevant to the present debate. I happen to think the editorial is wrong, and that religious forces could subvert democracy. It wouldn't be the first time. As Matthew Parris says in the Times today:

"Throughout history, faith resurgent, the Church militant - be it Islam, Christianity or Judaism - tends as it gains enthusiasm to become more extreme. It goes back to basics. It strips the modifications of modernity, delving for a core. That core is fundamentalist."

I am surprised that the Economist takes this point of view. Are they trying to convince us that 'moderate Islam' is consistent with democracy? Perhaps. I think they are recommending an experiment that could turn out very badly. You've heard the story of the camel and the tent.

First time I've actually used Wikipaedia, as you can't rely on it at all as being authoritative, but it has a rather nice (and correct) definition of non-conformism, and I quote:

In specific usage (usually capitalized), however, it refers to the Protestant Christians of England who refused to "conform", or follow the governance and usages of the Church of England. It can also refer to Roman Catholics as they also refused to conform to the Church of England.

So, I'm right in there with you, jonhunt!

What I would question, is if you denied you had a tradition or weren't institutional. One of the local 'non-conformist', non-Catholic, churches is as institutional as you can get, dominated by some very formidable old ladies, who wear those 'hats' (you know the sort? Like in Last of the Summer Wine), who hate change with a vengeance, yet their governance is totally at the local level, and boy, is it governed. You'd have to get the ecclesiastical equivalent of planning permission to move the piano 3 feet!

I think your example of events in Turkey is a poignant one, and I'm sure GreyWiz isn't a dictator-in-the-wings, and probably a nice chap like everyone else in here. The difficulty is, if the 'nice chaps' (or chap-esses) aren't in power, then who's to say what can happen?

Despite my blather and acerbic reactions to GreyWiz, I hope I have been trying to show that it is institutions and traditions that keep the whole ship steady, and therefore are more likely to reduce and control extremism, and not the normal folk. For the normal folk, like me, the only authority the (Catholic) Church has is that which I give it as being part of the sensus fidei, my 'Baptismal Priesthood', which really does count in our terms. The 'authority' of the papacy is bottom up, not top down, like that of dictators.

Where there isn't the stability of institution and traditions, extremism pops up. This is what I think Arendt was getting at, and if one looks at France in 18C, and Germany during the Weimar era, one sees this sort of confusion out of which something horrible grew. 'Mass Psychology' springs from confusion, not order.

I'm not frightened of GreyWiz, but our own country's social instability, and that we really don't know the megalomaniacal intentions of any of the significant MPs in our country, including our ex- and current PM. If Blair's anything to go by, any bleak future in England isn't going to come from a doddery old heretical Cardinal of Westminster, or Islamic fundamentalist, but nutters like him. It's going to spring from within the seat of government, where the real power's vested.

Therefore, I think Greywizard, has an overly optimistic notion of the powers of human reason and goodness, and people's willingness to comply with them, too, despite what history shows. I just hope he over-eggs the pudding in reaction to me, and doesn't really believe that if something's reasonable or charitable, they therefore hold the seeds of their own authority and compliance within them, and therefore people will assent or even consent to them, because 'it's obvious'.

As I said a few posts back, reality and history do no show this. Akrasia and self-deception are all alive and well. After all, it was GreyWizard who quoted Owen Flanagan at me (why don't you read Owen Flanagan's "The Problem of the Soul."), but I wonder whether he's read the finest corpus of work by Flanagan and Amelie Rorty on this very subject?

In fact, as an aside, I did an in-depth study of Amelie Rorty's work on Aritotle, ethics, and the akratic, and I possess copies of all her significant papers from journals, her books co-authored with Flanagan and one with McLaughlin (Perspectives in Self-Deception), as well as the work of Herbert Finagrette, and Mike Martin's work on Self-deception and it's relationship to self-understanding and morality.

In fact, it is reading this corpus of work (of which they are probably the periti) which threw the whole 'reason' thing up in the air for me, and would provide very strong evidence to show that GreyWiz's 'faith' in reason—whatever type—is very, very, seriously misplaced.

Oh, I don't know, have a look at this:

The Moral Duty of Promoting Political Conflict

I don't have faith in reason as such. Reason leads us into odd byways and dead ends. But what I do think is important is the free play of critical reason, which has an ability, as it goes along, to correct mistakes. That is why freedom is so very important.

Very strange, Paul, that you should take a body of critical work as (and here I miss what 'periti' refers to, though I take it you mean 'this corpus of work', in which case it should read 'peritus'), in some sense, authoritatively bringing the whole 'reason' thing in question. You seem to have a very great affinity for authority. It is because I do not trust the reason thing that I value freedom. You have almost totally misunderstood my point.

I've reflected often about what it means to be 'critically reasonable', and in those moments when I feel I have really grasped what that means, I've been struck dumb, like Wittgenstein or Aquinas (not that I'm making a real comparison!), but that I realised I can't say anything. Because as soon as I do, it's public, and when it's public, it's open to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, etc..

That is, in real life, critical reasoning is impossible. It's a utopian dream, a fantasy, as real life is messy.

I'm in the Barque of Peter, the sea's very treacherous, and we're near the rocks, so we risk shipwreck. However, I see critical reason as jumping overboard and taking one's chances, rather than staying in the boat and helping to row.

I put my life into the hands of the Captain, not because he's the captain (i.e., rank), but because I trust he knows what he's doing. He's the expert, not I. My submission to the Church is symbolically my submission to the Lordship of Christ, and, as I said, out of respect for His 'expertise' in how to live my life, rather than my own, because whenever I've been graced enough to live as I ought, then my ability to love others has increased, not decreased, which is the implication of what secular humanists think religion does to people. Well, I suppose it did, to the Pharisees.

Nicholas: That Seneca quotation keeps coming up in collections of his quotations. Since you set me a task, I tried to find where he might have written it or on what occasion he said it, but without success. However, I am intrigued and will keep looking.

On the other hand, you might well be right, but if I were to come up with a turn of phrase like that, damned if I would attribute it to anyone else, not even in jest!

Greywiz, "You seem to have a very great affinity for authority."

So, why are you all getting hung up on the quote from Seneca, whether he said it or not, what was the exact source, whether it was Seneca the Younger, the Elder, or the In-betweener?

That looks like putting weight on authority rather than reasoning, to me.

Ah, well, now, Paul, we can reason about all sorts of things, as in the case of attributions of historical sayings. This is not an argument about authority, but about history. And I think Nicholas may well be right, from what I can see. Wikipedia has a page on the quote, and no one seems to be able to find its source in Seneca. So, I take it that it's original is in Gibbon, unless someone can produce some evidence. See how helpful historical reasoning is!

Regarding the Chesterton quote. I could have sworn that I read it in "Orthodoxy" years ago, but I've searched an online version and it's not there. However, the third chapter of "Orthodoxy" is entitled "The Suicide of Thought," in which he argues that modern thought is, in fact, committing suicide, which implies, indeed, since Chesterton puts orthodoxy at the centre of thought, that if you stop believing in God (the centre of the orthodox point of view) you will indeed believe in anything (that is, your ability to reason about anything will be destroyed). This may carry over into Father Brown. I'm not sure, but the idea is to be found in "Orthodoxy", even if the words are not. Someone probably came up with a nice neat capsule summary of Chesterton's point and it got wrongly attributed. There are quite a lot of misattributions around, like the one pretending to be from Dostoyevsky, that if God doesn't exist, then nothing is forbidden. That seems to be the implication of things said in "The Brothers Karamazov", but the saying itself is not there -- at least I've looked for it and couldn't find it. But again, Paul, this is open to further refinement.

In one sense both Chesterton and Paul are right. If you try to start everything from scratch you get nowhere. But that only means the acceptance of a transitional authority, so the whole body of human knowledge is a contantly shifting whole, as more is learned, and as corrections are made. Thought only commits suicide if it doesn't acknowledge the necessity of temporary way stations where we affirm with some confidence that we know, always aware that every claim to knowledge is subject to revision on more evidence.

I thought what I might do, is not digress from the subject, but from the 'matter' of the discussion.

My postgrad study was in the architecture of information systems. Now, one of the biggest mistakes—in computing terms—was the sell-off of the telephone network, the GPO, and I have a friend who is an expert in the field of the railways, and he echoes my concerns in the sell-off of the railway network, British Rail.

It's not that we're politically opposed to the Conservative Party, but of the whole breakdown of the infrastructure, called 'privatisation'. Anyone who understands computer or rail networks realises the value of centralised management and control is vital for the system to work as a whole. So, for example, my friend knows some rail timetablers. These guys have brains the size of planets and have a memory for every route, every train (including freight), every junction, like a London Black Cab driver. But because there are junctions where trains cross over, this affects timetabling very dramatically. Therefore, the reason the train networks have not been able to improve dramatically, and if anything, have decreased, is because the network was at full capacity when it was sold off, and so all you could do was tinker with capacity, not increase it (unless you lay more track, but this still has to consider the timetabling - and therefore might actually worsen things than improve them, depending on where the joins are situated).

Exactly the same is true of distributed computer networks, where there are 'bottlenecks' at hubs, routers, etc.. And so, something called 'bandwidth throttling' is introduced to manage it—or to save money—which is why even if you buy into a really fast internet connection, unless your doing dedicated file downloading, you're surprised that your webpages might not load any quicker, or the videos your watching still keep pausing and stuttering. This is due to limits in the infrastructure, but also a problem of what's called 'load balancing', due to inefficient, centralised, management of the network. (Some people actually refer to the guys who can do this well, 'network gods'!)

In terms of the internet, if the GPO had been kept, we would probably have the best internet infrastructure in the world by now because of the centralised management and all the boffins (who were rather lowly paid civil-servants compared with their real worth, complete with beards, nylon shirts, stripy pullovers, and socks under their sandals). Instead, it was fragmented, and the boffins were given early retirement or made redundant (the same with the timetablers).

Now, these boffins are what business likes to refer to as 'intellectual capital' (note the wording - it's only value is monetary), and the privatised companies laid them off, only to realise later just how much 'valuable' knowledge walked out the door with them, never to be recaptured.

Alasdair MacIntyre's book, After Virtue, starts with a story along the same lines.

Therefore, I have to say, whether I was a Christian or not, I would believe pretty much the same as I do now: the importance of shared knowledge, centralised management, tradition, and the vital need for institutions. The structures are pretty much the same—secular or sacred—and they're all fallible (the railways and the GPO weren't the best, but they were better than they are now (especially the health service). We're not going to get a perfect institution, but I put my eggs in that basket because it's better than the hang-loose, individualistic, alternatives.

Reasoning tells me that the myth of inexorable 'change' and 'inevitable progress' are simply that, myths. What's worse, is that they are propagated by the priests of power and commerce. Relativism is the best snake-oil the sophists have ever sold, soon it's going to be too late to do anything about it, especially if healthy religion is silenced...

Wihtout meaning to offend, Paul, aside from the last two paragraphs, you finally sound as though you know what you are talking about. The trick comes in the last two paragraphs.

No one would deny the importance of shared knowledge and the need for institutions. About centralised management: It depends, doesn't it? The Soviet Union tried central management of the economy and it didn't work. So centralised management may not be the best way to go in every case. Look at the Internet, which we are using for this conversation. Is there any centralised management? If so, where is it?

That's the first point, but then, why do you hare off on a tangent into 'hang-loose, individualistic, alterantives' and relativism? It's not either/or here at all. You take one extreme, centralised management, presumably unchanging to the extent that you can make it so (since change, you say, is not, 'inexorable'), and then oppose it to the other extreme, something like I called a day or so ago, atomistic individualism. There are all sorts of gradients around here, and it seems to me you should be ready to recognise this, especially, as you say, that we will never get a perfect institution. Compare that, if you will, with the Muslim claim that the Muslim Ummah is the best society, or with the Roman Catholic claim that someone does, in limited but real ways, have infallibility.

You seem to think that knowledge can be a real and, in some way, final possession, so that nothing needs to change. Knowledge is a growing body of more reliably confirmed, but still falsifiable, beliefs about the world. The precise problem with religion is that it does not belong to this corpus of belief. And the reason it does not belong to this corpus of belief is that its major claims cannot be falsified. Where religion is concerned (and I doubt there is any healthy religion, though there are more and less healthy varieties, to be sure), relativism is the rule, not the exception, because there is no way to settle the major disputes in the field of religious belief. Authority can't settle them, because authority itself depends upon their settlement.

So, I am encouraged by what you say at the outset, where you really seem to know something about what you are saying, but your case is weak in the tail, so to speak. There is no reason, in the end, to go all woolly on us, and speak as though we must either opt for central management or a destructive relativism. The progress of science shows that this is not true. Most other critical disciplines, including biblical scholarship, likewise. Really embarrassing things happen when those at the centre, at the heart of central management, like the pope, write things like his book on the historical Jesus, which makes a nod towards critical study of the Bible, and then goes on to make ridiculous claims about the historicity of the biblical narratives about Jesus.

It's got to be one or the other. Either we join together in critical discussion about things that concern us, or we make claims that will not stand up in a critical discussion of the issues, and are content to go our own way. I think the most healthy thing is to have discussions about things in which what we say is subject to answer by others, and in which we try to meet the challenge of critical response. Critical traditions of this sort, though a source of unending concern to those who like their beliefs clear and hard-edged, are the best way for us to move forward, as a human community, whether we are Christians, Muslims, atheist, Hindus or Jews. So far I have not heard one good reason why we should give in to the blandishments of just one of these traditions, or of a part of one of them. The best way forward, surely, is for us to go forward as a human community. It works in science. Why shouldn't it work in other areas?

According to the, ahem, authority of the American Chesterton Society, the much-touted non-quotation is a paraphrase composed by Cammaerts to link bits of two Father Brown stories. Do I accept this authority? In practice, in this instance, yes, while leaving a corner of my mind open to the possibility that there is no such Society, and the web-page is a hoax. But the quotes from the Father Brown stories are right, and the rest is referenced, and I could check it, if I hadn't better things to do.

Likewise, I am inclined to accept what Paul Rodden writes about the 'Public' Switched Telephone Network (now private bodged-together networks, as I half-understand it). You write with conviction, Paul, about facts I could in principle check, and your diagnosis is borne out by my personal experience.

In contrast, I deny that Ratzinger now writes, or any divine or group of divines has ever written, with any authority about anything YHWH is or has done, or anything Jesus said. If they actually knew anything about these things, as the GPO boffins knew about telephone networks, they would be so persuasive that atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, (etc) would quickly die out. But they don't know; the early Christians made it up, and layer upon layer has been added down the centuries to hide the cracks and inconsistencies and absurdities and horrors.

We humans do not need the institutionalised Christian churches, or the pretence that the Koran is a perfect book, or the hypnotic repetitions of Tibetan lamaism, or their equivalents in the other big religions.

A mindless trope often appears to the effect that theology tries to answer the 'why' questions, and science only deal with the 'how'. The exact opposite is true. Science is doing amazingly well as answering at lot of the how and why questions. Theology evades every question. Consider a sparrow-hawk chasing a sparrow. If the hawk wins, the sparrow's fledglings die. If the sparrow escapes, the sparrow-hawk's fledglings die. Science can explain at lot of the how and why of this. Theologians down the centuries have systematically evaded, and continue to evade, the question "Why would a benign deity allow such cruelty?"

Greywiz, in the last discussion, I quoted something from the Canadian Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan, on tradition, which you might have missed, Greywiz:

"Classical culture cannot be jettisoned without being replaced; and what replaces it, cannot but run counter to classical expectations. There is bound to be formed a solid right that is determined to live in a world that no longer exists. There is bound to be formed a scattered left, captivated by now this, now that new development, exploring now this, now that new possibility. But what will count is a perhaps not numerous center, big enough to be at home in both the old and the new, painstaking enough to work out one by one the transitions to be made, strong enough to refuse half-measures and insist on complete solutions even though it has to wait." From: 'Dimensions of Meaning', Collection, Collected Works vol. 4, 244-5

I agree with him and, as I implied in that post, I aim to be part of the 'not too numerous centre'. I see both the 'right', and the 'scattered left' (which is relativism), as very misguided, as both are extremes, and as such, become somewhat the same.

As for the 'solid right', in this country, what I have seen recently referred to as the 'Trentecostals', are in ascendancy: the Latin Mass Catholics who dress as if they have just walked out of a Father Brown mystery. These are as dangerous as the Pentecostals: and just as loopy. The first group's an anachronism, and wants to destroy anything novel, and tries to preserve the Church in aspic, the other's based on spontaneity, and wants to destroy any whiff of tradition with the putatively 'authentic', and 'charismatic'.

Lonergan is arguing for incremental and well-considered development, not the knee-jerk reactions of many in the religious and secular spheres. Immediacy, in terms of gratification, action, decision, etc., characterises modern, relativistic culture, and it's got to be unhealthy. The Night Club is the secular equivalent of the Pentecostal Church. One extreme is obsessed with history, the other, is histrionic.

I'm not bitter about secularism, as I've said before, I think it's good, but like the church, it has some (very) bad elements. I think the real trouble is, that I don't deny your criticisms of the Church's past, among other things, therefore I don't fulfil the stereotype you want to portray. I agree with a lot you say, despite you rubbishing most of what I say.

I'm happy with science, I'm happy with the secular, but I'm happy with religion, too. You just always have to have the upper hand and get your 'dig' in. Considering how bright you are, it is surprising how your replies misrepresent me, deliberately parody me, or bring up the same old hackneyed historical events of the past, probably because I'm not playing the enemy as you'd like me to be. You know that there are as many non-religious people who are stark raving bonkers, an embarrassment to reason (and your position), and as real a threat to society, as religious ones, yet you just won't admit this. This is what is really frustrating. If both sides have people in common, then all that's associated with people—good and bad—is going to be present to roughly the same degree in both domains.

I can't talk about other religions or churches, but Catholicism doesn't operate the way you'd like to believe it does. You're part of the game, GreyWiz, not the referee, but what's more, I'm probably more on your side than you'd like like to think, too.

As some empirical evidence (or not), The American Chesterton Society does exist, and I have two books by Dale Alquist, it's president, on my shelf. Also, Aidan Mackey also exists as I have spoken to him a few times on the 'phone, and he lives near Bedford. Aidan Mackey is probably the worlds' expert on GKC, and works closely with Stratford Caldecotte, who heads up the Chesterton Institute here, in Oxford.

I suspect we're going to be pre-empted soon, since this thread has been running for quite awhile. I just want to make one or two comments in response to Paul's latest

First, I didn't miss the Lonergan quote. I just think it's almost irrelevant now. The world has moved a long way since Lonergan died. The Berlin Wall fell, Soviet communism went bankrupt, and Islamism has begun to leave its imprint almost everywhere.

In response to these historical events, Christians in the west have begun to make special demands of their own, correlative to the demands that Islam is making. In the process, in my view, these religious demands on secular democracy have placed our freedoms seriously in jeopardy. They have begun to distort the secular compromise, and seek to make their impact felt in exemplary ways.

The Roman Catholic Church has chosen, for its main line of attack, issues having to do with life and death, including things like birth control, abortion, stem cell research, assisted dying, and have begun labelling their opponents as creating a 'culture of death.' It's a kind of ethical grandstanding, but it's having a chilling effect on western society.

The main reason for the chill is that Roman Catholic ethics is a proprietary brand. It has no other foundation than its claim that these are the commands of a god. Muslims come with the same claim, although they serve a different one. Paul says that he is happy with science, the secular, and religion too. These, however, are not three separate approaches to the world, as though they can all live happily together. The secular is, you might say, the pot in which the other ingredients of society may be stirred. Religion, unbelief, loopy belief, scientific experiment and scholarly study: all belong in the pot, but none of them has a preferential relationship to it, and none of them should try, as some religious leaders are trying, to reserve a special place for their ideas of how we should arrange our affairs within the secular compromise.

Paul thinks that there are religious and non-religious people who are stark raving bonkers, who constitute a danger to society. And then he adds the rider that I won't admit this, and he finds it frustrating. Well, of course I admit it. There are loopy people of practically every description out there. But they are not necessarily the ones who pose the greatest danger to society. The real danger comes when well-organised and funded religious groups, who already have a very strong hold over many people, insist on their voices predominating in the public discussion of how we should organise our lives as a society.

The church, for instance, can inveigh against things like ebryonic stem cell research, but it can't give a reason for that opposition, besides the religious one about the sanctity of all human life, even human life as rudimentary as a blastocyst. And it's sacred because given by God. The church cannot prove this. All it can do is repeat its belief. And yet, despite this, its voice is heard high above all the rest, because a man in a red cap, or a man with an ornate shepherd's crook, is saying it. And they are evidently willing even to exaggerate and to prevaricate in order to make sure that their words stick.

So, Paul, it's not the past of the church I'm really interested in. It's the present changing temper of the church, and its growing insistence on being heard in secular discussions, heard in a way that others are not heard and cannot make their voices heard, because they have an institutional voice that can still distort the public discussion. I have felt the impact of this distortion in my own life. I think it is a danger to our freedoms.

But I want to stress that it is not only the church that concerns me here. I don't care how it operates. What I see is the continuing insistence by religious groups of all sorts, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and others, who insist that their voices be privileged and their beliefs protected from offence. This growing trend is, I believe, a serious danger to all of us. Religious institutions may provide something valuable for their memebers, but members of religious institutions should reflect that, but for the secular compromise, religions would not only not be protected, but would very likely be fighting amongst themselves for supremacy. It has happened before, and it looks very much as though these sad events may be repeated in our own time.

Institutional Religion, the need for it and the form that can answer this need, should not be different from any other kind of social organization and from the society demands to which it answers, i.e.constitutional legislation. This puts responsibility on those who come together to form and bring this institution into their lives. They need to understand what they are doing

The following piece I wrote for my own web site may be of some help for getting a philosophical insight into this whole business of Religion in human society for those who want more than an utilitarian understanding, like they would have of any other social service organization.

In the foreword to his book Patterns of comparative Religion the philosopher Mircea Eliade (1907 – 1986) tells us of a principle that has been restored by modern Science to our way of thinking, which it had been seriously endangered by some of the confusions of the 19th century, the Age of Empire.

It is found in the idea, “It is the scale that makes the phenomenon”. The observation was made by the mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912), whose thinking led to the mathematics of Chaos Theory. His mathematical insight acknowledges that a structure, physical like weather or social like population, initially growing according to simple rules of Science, can become a phenomenon of a complexity so great that the slightest change in any of its determining factors can make its outcome look totally random, not subject to scientific prediction. It is this course of events that makes Political History a science resembling Meteorology.

To indicate a way in which this problem of unpredictability can be circumvented Poincaré asked : “does a naturalist who studies the elephant under the microscope have a better idea of what the elephant is as a phenomenon of animal life than someone who observes it in a zoo at the level of human eyesight?”

Following this up with the idea of Marshall McLuhan in his 1964 book Understanding Media, of which the basis is his saying, “The Medium is the Message”, we can be on our way to gain some insight into Eliade’s approach to the subject of ‘religious phenomena’, which, Eliade says, cannot be grasped by means of physiology, biology, neurology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other academic study approach, because they miss the one unique and irreducible element in it - ‘the element of the sacred’.

This element is one that can be seen to light up the human mind with an existential insight that identifies a seemingly transcendental link, traditionally known as ‘religion’, which gives human society the ability to extend its biological structuring of family bonding with a spiritual, metaphysical one.

Eliade goes on to sight ‘patterns of appearances of the sacred’ (hierophanies), experienced by humans at all levels of their geographical environment with its plants, animals and humans, of whom Prophets and Kings are the outstanding hierophanies, and at the meeting points of their community’s cultural ways, in an arrangement for dealing with this problem of finding an approach for studying the phenomenon of these appearances.

Similarly McLuhan sees the Media of expression and communication grow and multiply till all ‘things of heaven and earth’ and those of life, including all of human life and the expressions of its conscious awareness of them, can be brought to the attention of searchers for truth in a story where their message can be heard when its telling acquires the coherence of a symphony.

The study of these phenomena, in particular those of ‘the sacred’, can thus be carried out in a process that presents the conscious life of each age in concentric circles, articulated by their existential stories, using their Arts for expressing them in effective Media.

Of these the Age of Globalisation with its worldwide infrastructure of mostly randomly stored digitalised information can be expected to furnish the materials for a coherent existential story, that expresses what will sofar be the deepest of all-encompassing insights, one that can be shared by peoples all over the world, because far from discerning a transcendental link it will be seen as basic to human existence.

Referring to this Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia states : “The future is disorder. A door like this [seeing all and hearing all and saying all] has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It is the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong”.

This is especially so for the science of Philosophy, that was steered into a cul-de-sac by 19th century Western thinking and is now desperately looking for ‘doors of perception’ to resume its task of lighting up and activating the fixed-focus minds of educating, food producing and distributing, governing, trading, finance, manufacturing, building, engineering, planning, market, transporting, communicating and security-maintaining ‘professionals’ as well as the ones of the Temple, the Church, the Mosque, the Palace and the State House.

As Alan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) told them thirty years ago, it may be bad news for academic thinkers and writers, who have no time for Eliade’s symbol-sensitive way of looking for what lights up the mind, but it could be good for practitioners of the communicating Arts, who have an instinct for a ‘good story’ and can combine it with a capacity for insight, acquired in a thinking and feeling life, that probes the depths of the tale’s meaning, and who then express their findings through the Media, that make up the global knowledge market where the seekers after truth come for information.

The mind-numbing fear, experienced by peoples whose every certainty and belief had been bulldozed by imperial conquest and subsequent colonisation to an extent that a choice for death begins to beckon, is now being visited on the thinkers and doers of the erstwhile Empires, most of whom do not believe that now is ‘the best possible time to be alive’, since they cannot let go of what has been guiding their life to take a bungee jump into ‘appearances’, of which they cannot find a way to be certain that they will light up the place where they are going to land.

Perceiving the reality of this made me embark nine years ago on writing my two books, In an African Direction with its 8 ways of human living and functioning, and Empires of the Moon, a history of the social, economic and political bonding of human society, with two additional books of Essays focusing on the light coming out of events that challenge one to think on how a choice for life can be made.

I just received the "Cambridge Companion to Atheism" today. It opened at this page, and a quotation from it is relevant to what we have been discussing. I merely add it to the mix:

"As the US Supreme Court once observed, 'A secular state, it must be remembered, is not the same as an atheistic or an antireligious state. A secular state establishes niether atheism nor religion as its official creed.' Only a government defined in terms of collective agnosticism can ensure the conditions of liberty which individual believers and nonbelievers can coexist peacerfully in order to pursue their own personal visions of the ultimate good." (264-5) I have never wanted to claim anything more.

So, it looks pretty like an appeal to authority to me, GreyWiz...!

No, Paul, sorry, that's much too easy. I've said it all before, and tried to argue it too. This is just a confirmation, or, if you'd rather, an explication. No more, You won't get off that easily. As I said, 'I merely add it to the mix.'

"Around us we see New Age religions offering individualistic piety and instant gratification; a society driven by consumption; a quest for immediacy in communication; a suspicion of 'ideology'; short-termism in public policy; voter apathy; and Christian churches ever more absorbed in questions of internal organisation, personal conversion and individual moral conduct. The modernist belief that we really could make the world better is weakening. The present is our new temporal horizon, our safe harbour in the ocean of time.

Once there is a plan, this must be implemented, and resources for this plan must be controlled and managed. Those who do not agree with the plan or do not co-operate with it must also be 'managed'. The whole project of bringing about a planned future requires the imposition of what Adorno and Horheinmer call 'instrumental reason': a controlling rationality, which presses all of nature in service to its chosen goals."

Hught Rayment-Pickard, The Myths of Time: From St Augustine to American beauty

Just adding to the mix...

So we are all agreed that we don't need institutional religion?

Just checking ...

I look with a significant amount of concern on the following Theos announcement:

"The theory of secularisation has been widely discredited. The reality is that religious faith will play an increasingly significant role in society and not simply due to radical Islam. The return of civil society, the emerging political interest in well-being and the growth of identity politics all point towards a greater role for God in the public square.

"Mr Blair recognises this and is to be congratulated on establishing his new Faith Foundation."

What does Theos mean by the claim that the theory of secularisation has been discredited? This is one of the most absurd remarks yet made. It hasn't been discredited. Religion has been widely discredited, since it continues to present its contradictory face to the world, religion after religion, each contradicting the other. I suppose, if they could actually band together and agree, and find some (reasonably objective) basis for agreement, religions might be a credible force, but why should they be taken seriously when they cannot do this? (Aside, of course, from the fatwas and threats.)

Besides, it shows that Theos misunderstands secularisation. It has nothing to do with a rejection of religion. Atheism does that. Secularism is just a modus vivendi between different world views which can in no way be made consistent with one another, so, instead, we agree to live peaceable together. Does Theos really mean to declare that the secular compromise is over and we should start heading for the bomb shelters? If it does not want to say this, what is it, exactly, that it is welcoming in welcoming Tony Blair's rather childish posturing?

Oh, absolutely, Nicholas! When any culture or institution manifests itself in those forms. You and Greywiz' views of institutional religion have more in common with a sort of religious Maccarthyism and a 'reds under the bed' mentality, than the reality. Your aim is to 'name and shame' religious people and groups. My objective is to attack relativism which is transcultural and not limited to any one group. It's a mindset, which both thinking Evangelicals and Catholics are agreed upon as being very dangerous, and we see it infecting even our own churches at an alarming rate, like a virus.

Those who claim religion is a virus, assume their own immunity. We don't do that. Everyone's susceptible to relativism to a greater or lesser degree, but like a virus, it's only really dangerous when it reaches epidemic proportions. Relativism is the intellectual equivalent of the Black Death.

Greywiz you say "I just think it's almost irrelevant now. The world has moved a long way since Lonergan died."

Oh. So therefore, once a person dies, what they said becomes irrelevant? What about good old (or young?) Seneca? The world's moved on since he died. Surely, in essence, aren't you arguing for what I've termed 'intellectual solipsism' as it's logical conclusion?

I seem to remember someone got rather hot under the collar when I asked why some people didn't hold to a discontinuity of ideas in relation to life and death. Implying that once someone dies aren't they merely a corpse if you don't believe in an afterlife? Aren't you suggesting the same in relation to ideas, Greywiz?

Is the best way to protect a 'deposit of knowledge', to build on the past meticulously and slowly (Lonergan's view), or re-invent ideas afresh, or junk them because the person's died, so they're obsolete?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought science prefers the first option? Newton's standing on the shoulders...

Either

1. One of the brands of one of the big religions is pretty well right, and all the rest are wrong; or

2. They are all wrong.

If 2 is the case, then a secular state, which tolerates people believing whatever they want in private (providing it does not harm others) but does not privilege in the Legislature any brand of any religion, is the best kind of state. This is true even if (indeed, especially if) nearly 100% of the people believe in one or other of the leading brands.

If 1 is the case, then a secular state is still the best, because there is no prospect that Anglican-Roman discussions, or Christian-Muslim meetings, or even the Blessed Tony's Miraculous Foundation, will result in any kind of consensus about which brand of which religion is right. Moreover, whenever a state has imposed a view that a particular brand of a particular religion is right, the result, as far as I know, has always been misery. Eg, Calvin in Geneva; Ireland in the early 1900s under the Pope; Tibet under the lamas; Soviet Russia under the self-proclaimed living god Stalin.

I completely agree with you, Paul, that 'relativism' as preached by some barmy literary critics is dangerous nonsense. (I mean the sort of stuff which says the inverse square law might be 'true' in western male culture, but other laws could be 'true' for African women.) On the other hand, moral relativism is the only honest kind of ethics. Murder is wrong for reasons that, probably, you and I could more or less agree on. If I admit as a reason 'YHWH said so to Moses', then I have no reason to condemn polygamy, because Allah told Mohammed it was fine, and some god whose name I'm not sure of continues to assure the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (or some such) that it's fine. And there's no consensus, and no prospect of a consensus, about which gods to rely on. Moreover, even if we knew that Ganesh was the one true god, and even if we had reliable knowledge of all Ganesh's moral principles, obeying Ganesh would just be obeying Ganesh, not making ethical choices.

The Black Death!? Really?! Nacht und nebel! Just watch out! You never know who will get you in the dark!

Really, Paul, have you been reading? I've said again and again and again -- how many times do I have to say it? -- that relativism is corrosive. This is not the way. The trouble is that your chosen belief profession is simply not open to any kind of reasonable confirmation that you seem, incredibly, to imagine.

You're a Roman Catholic, and therefore, I take it, a Christian. So you must believe in some combination of the following beliefs. God created the world. God created human beings to rule the world. Human beings (most Christians say 'man', but let's be non-generic shall we?) failed. They sinned, and so all their progeny is condemned (or has been condemned, if you don't like the past with the verb 'to be' -- it works in German). They deserve eternal punishment. In the fulness of time God sent his son to redeem those who were lost. But not all of them. Some, who responded to his call to faith, were (or are) saved. Those, who did not accept Jesus as his son, are condemned forever. (How am I doing so far?)

Now, let's get real for just a moment. You can establish all this, plus the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is the residual legatee of all these promises? And you can prove this against all those, non-Roman Catholic, protestant, Orthodox, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Parsee, Sikh, Bahai, Mormon, Shinto, Confucianist, Jain -- need I really go on to list them all? -- who have a bone to pick with you? And you call me a relativist? A virus like the Black Death? The presumption beggars imagination. I am left with this longing expectation for the answer. Let's just glance up, once in awhile, to see what is going on around us, shall we?

"You're a Roman Catholic, and therefore, I take it, a Christian. So you must believe in some combination of the following beliefs. God created the world. God created human beings to rule the world. Human beings (most Christians say 'man', but let's be non-generic shall we?) failed. They sinned, and so all their progeny is condemned (or has been condemned, if you don't like the past with the verb 'to be' -- it works in German). They deserve eternal punishment. In the fulness of time God sent his son to redeem those who were lost. But not all of them. Some, who responded to his call to faith, were (or are) saved. Those, who did not accept Jesus as his son, are condemned forever. (How am I doing so far?)"

Apart from God creating the world, it's got more in common with Calvinism, than our view.

Nicholas, thanks for your comments. However, Catholics aren't 'bible-alone' Christians. Therefore our morality is based predominantly in Natural Law and Virtue Ethics, which means most of your post doesn't really apply to us.

We don't treat the bible as a statute book which bible-alone Christians bicker about how much force each sentence has. That's Pharisaism. We believe Scripture is the light, Tradition the lens.

We don't turn to it to look up answers like a religious Encyclopaedia Britannica. This for us is a travesty and desecration of the Word of God.

The Word of God for us, is exactly that, not some rule-book for following slavishly, etc.. We are required to be responsible. Other Christians like to call this 'Salvation by Works'. We don't believe humans are nodding dogs, lemmings, or other sub-human life-form or puppet.

The Bible is a book about God's love for us. It's not a moral treatise.

So many non-Catholics are scrupulous neurotics, and those Catholics who are the same have, sadly, imbibed a Protestant view of morality, not a Catholic one.

One of the Catholic aphorisms is that we believe the Bible is a book of The Church, not a Church of the Book.

Oh, well, Paul, excuse me. But what about the atonement? What was Jesus doing in the world, on the cross, rising from the grave? Nothing? Your catholicism seems sadly truncated, but I await with interest the unfolding of the real story.

Oh, sorry, perhaps I should have said 'being raised from the dead,'

You know I didn't say that, Greywiz. There are subtle differences, and the view you proposed was predominantly Calvinist. I'm a Catholic, not a Calvinist. You're normally the pedant (when it suits).

I'm sorry, Paul, what was it that I knew you hadn't said? I wasn't being -- at least I wasn't trying to be -- a pedant. I simply don't know what's so Calvinist about what I said. It's basically all there in the Nicene Creed. Read it over again. Anselm gave us his understanding in "Cur deus homo?", which made it tolerably clear in the language of the medieval sense of honour. But I'm still not sure, why what I said was Calvinist. I mean, after all, Jesus was doing something up there, wasn't he? And the sacrifice of the mass repeats this endlessly. What sacrifice? For whom? Why? You know, I haven't read the "Institutes", so I don't know what Calvin said, but I hazard a guess that he wasn't very far from having the same opinions as the fathers at Trent. So, instead of fobbing me off with an easy 'you're normally a pedant' -- did I really give you a reason to say that?! -- why not try to teach me.

"why not try to teach me." Because you think you know it all (when it suits).

Paul, that's a cop-out. Simple as that.

I think it's tenable to believe, Paul, that one or more of the traditional anthologies tendentiously known as 'the' bible contain(s) various humans' attempts to set down some anecdotes about YHWH's love for humans. But unfortunately the anthologies contain lots of easily misunderstood myth and allegory, many errors, many horrors, and some self-interested invention (eg the variously counted 'ten' so-called 'commandments', which were assembled by a patriarch and the priests of YHWH, and, surprise surprise, serve to extol patriarchal property-owning society and keep the priests of YHWH in business).
I think it is also reasonable to argue that there is a 'natural law' for humans, though I would prefer to call it a current consensus. And I too am attracted by virtue ethics.
So I would say, for example, that it is wrong to force a raped 12-year-old girl to carry a fetus to term, because it is cruel. And I would say that what appears to be the cardinals' only argument, that a fetus is an 'image of (their) god', is (a) unintelligible, and (b) deontology.
In practice, it seems to me that spokespersons for the institutionalised religions always rely on deontology. If they stuck to virtue ethics, they would, in my opinion, be making secular arguments. And then a secular state could engage with them, as it can engage with much the same arguments that I as an atheist might make.

No. Because if I respond fully you'll merely patronise me.

I know how I'd respond, and what you'd say because you're just so predictable. And, in this area, I feel you're just setting me up, as I know what we believe is not based in 'empirical' evidence, but very sound reasoning, but which you'll just call nonsense (like you always do).

I have no interest in trying to convert you because that's a matter of grace, not argument. Argument, however sophisticated, is not of any use (Aquinas believed this, and any Dominican will tell you his famous 'Arguments for the existence of God' were not designed as an apologetic tool). Essentially, you just like the thrill of the chase. Other people play Bingo or Bridge.

I don't mind you making fun, making a joke at my expense, parodying me, even generalising wildly so you appear to refute my points—in fact I enjoy it because I can laugh at myself, and know the limits of my arguments within your narrow terms of reference (when it suits you)—but your increasingly patronising tone is very wearing, and I can't be bothered. If your post didn't smell so much like a set-up, I'd spend time on it.

More and more of your responses are merely patronising. Why all the little German asides? Why attempt to correct my Latin in a ridiculing manner? (Periti, is an ecclesiastical term for a group of cognoscenti called in by the Magisterium to investigate a specific field, especially at a Church Council. That is, we use and adjective as a noun: s. peritus/pl. periti.)

Anyhow, here's a brief response:

What I will say is that we (Catholics) believe in a God who is love in his essence, so how can He condemn or punish?

If you are a Bible literalist, He can: "cos the Bible says so". However, if you apply even the tiniest amount of philosophical reasoning, you realise it is incoherent to hold these two ideas together: that God is totally love, and vengeful, spiteful, etc.. So, we don't. Bible alone Christians do, 'because it's in the Bible': "Jesus loves me, this I know/'cos the Bible tells me so...".

We hold to Natural Law and the Virtues - philosophical positions held by some secularists, and certainly most of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. That's why our moral view is cross-cultural. We're not the only one's who are pro-life. There are plenty of secular humanists and even atheists who are too: not because they're 'crypto-christians', either.

And, in relation to the fall and the atonement, it's related to our philosophical views of time, causality, and free will.

As an illustration: if a Bible-alone Christian is walking around reading their Bible making sure they're abiding by all the rules, and so are also not looking where they're going and so stub their toe on a table leg (God's Justice), they say "The table just hit me!", and quite often leave the Church because God's obviously not up to much if he's not just going to be just meeting my needs. Catholics believe if the table's in the way, and you're not looking where you're going, you'll stub your toe.

That is why we hold to Natural Law. Natural Law 'is written on or hearts' - so we don't have to have our nose constantly in any rule book (as I said, the Word of God for us is the beautiful self-revelation of God to us, and that's why we read it, not as a 'guidebook to life' or moral treatise).

In the same way, what appears to be vengeful is actually 'written into the nature of creation' (i.e., fall 25 feet on earth and you'll hurt yourself, fall 25 feet in space, and it's no problem - this sort of 'relativism' is natural and acceptable). So, we couch the fall and sin in terms of man's loss, not God's punishment or condemnation (although sometimes these words are used, in the sense that if I'm not looking where I am going, I am 'condemned' to stub my toe and feel pain). We do not, therefore, hold to any form of total depravity or predestination in their common, Protestant, understanding. The human person is fundamentally good in their essence as God cannot create anything evil or 'bad', as it is against his essence, and if that goodness was removed, we would cease to exist, because evil is privation, but this is not the same as saying it doesn't exist: holes exist.

Sorry, Nicholas, the above was for GreyWiz.

Catholics do not hold to deonotology or utilitarianism. They are modernist, western inventions.

I realise I have used 'shorthand'. What we reject is what we refer to as Kantianism and Proportionalism. That is, we assent to obligation and the doctrine of double-effect, but not he following:

"Moral theories which reject the notion that the human person achieves its perfection through freely-accomplished virtuous actions are committed to developing models other than a realist teleological one to guide human behavior. Utilitarian consequentialism, to take an example which has its roots in the British moral tradition, judges morality somewhat mathematically on the basis of the over-all good accomplished for the largest number. Kantian deontology, which is typical of Continental schools of ethics, grounds moral judgments on the basis of duty or obligation to follow a moral imperative which itself usually results from some form of a priori moral reasoning." Romanus Cessario, OP

Well, thank you Paul. It's always nice waking up in the morning to a note from you. I have never to my way of thinking, tried to parody you. But, if you want to take it that way, fine. I do know what periti are. Hans Kung was one at Vatican II. In the context it should have been singular, I thought, looking for its reference, but we'll let that pass. Why the German asides? Because I'm trying to learn German, and so I like to put it to use, just for fun.

However, regarding your response. I wasn't, as you apparently assume, arguing from evil to the vengefulness or otherwise of God. I was speaking of the atonement, of what God does through Christ for human beings in the latter's sacrifice on the cross. Anselm, remember, argues that God's honour could not be satisfied by an ordinary human being. His argument is very feudal in this sense. In order to make up for human failure and sin, a completely adequate sacrifice must be offered. This sacrifice was his son. And so, God's honour being satisfied, God can now provide for the condemned, those who, by their intrinsic sinfulness, were bound for hell, a way of salvation. We may accept this offer, or reject it. Those who accept it will be taken lovingly to the Father to enjoy bliss forever. Those who do not, will literally go to hell.

Are you saying that the Roman Catholic Church does not teach this at least in some form? And that was all that I said, and you responded by saying that it was Calvinism. Calvin wasn't always wrong about Christian belief, you know. In fact, I suggest that there is very little taught under Article 2 of "Life in Christ" of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, entitled "Grace and Justification", that Calvin would disagree with, at least in substance. But my point was that, though within any theological system rigorous reasoning is going on all the time, there is no external way in which it can be substantiated, and so any theological system, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc. etc., is, on the face of it, equally plausible. You had just said that relativism is like the Black Death, and my response is that institutional truth, the truth as it is accepted by religious insitutions, but has no external way of substantiating itself, is really a form of relativism. If you're a Christian, you'll believe one sent of truths -- if you don't like the set I offerred choose another -- and if you're Jewish another set, and if Hindu, another set or set of sets, and so on. This looks a lot like relativism to me. I don't mean it in a condescending way, though for some reason you think that is what I am doing.

Take Nicholas' idea (I mentioned it too, sometime earlier) that it is cruel to force a 12 year old girl to carr