Are these two values or one? If Equality means equality of all humans than it leads naturally to tolerance of others. However, if equality means equality of citizens, it does not necessarily lead to tolerance of non-citizens. Also, Equality has meant from time to time equality among qualified people: Whites, Men, Landowners, etc.
It seems the church's role might be different in each.
I would suggest that equality may be found more easily in the church that tolerance.
I do think we need to nominate a non-church thinker as the starting point of tolerance. Or perhaps there was an event or change in society that we should investigate.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Jim: Sidenote: Evolving Christianity
In 1776, there was this idea in the United States that people were equal. Just because your father was a monarch did not mean that you could take my property away, or tell me to be quiet, or tax me whatever you wanted. The fact is, the power of the monarch, of the whole government, came from the people. All people are created equal; and all people have certain rights that no government can take away from them.
What those ideas mean now, is very different from what they meant in 1776. For one thing, property and government are very different. For another thing, we've taken the next logical step in some of those ideas.
America is where we are right now in this experiment in democracy.
In the first century A.D. there was this idea that the law was not enough. It was not enough to live into God's hope for humanity to simply follow the rules in the book. There needed to be a spiritual transformation, and without that transformation, you were lost.
The practice of Christianity has changed since then. When it was a cult, there were certain requirements, such as giving away all of your money to the group, that were not practiced with it was the imperial religion. It has changed and evolved with the science and sociology of the times.
Christianity is where we are right now in the experiment to find a connection with God.
* * *
I've just started Sam Harris's book, "The End of Faith." (Or Regligion, not sure.) And what he wants to do, is claim that religion, unlike everything else is stagnant and not evolving. That is simply wrong.
It does not demean religion to say that it has been transformed by broad social trends. Religion is to bring people to God, and to do that it must be different now than it was in 1450 C.E., or 2000 B.C.E.
* * *
While speaking to fellow Jews, where the choices of religions were following the Jewish law or making offerings to pagan temples seeking the intervention of disinterested Hellenistic deities, Jesus said for the people to follow him. He said that he was the way to his Father's home.
Jesus was right. It was not enough to follow the law, that was an empty existance. There was more than the painful and oppressed world before them. And, to realize that truth was to be reborn into a new existence unlike what was left behind. It does not mean that I have to view the current manifestation of Judahism as less than the current manifestation of Christianity.
Jesus was a real person addressing real problems. He was talking to people who were suffering and bringing them relief. He was trying to transform their lives to allow them to live on this planet in greater harmony with the rest of creation. You cannot take his words and use them like mathematical equations. It just doesn't work that way. They have specific meaning in specific context.
* * *
What's become of that tradition? Is it lost, is it no longer of value to individuals and society? That's the main conversation we're having. But Christianity, is different now than it was then. There are very, very few things that were essential then that are essential now.
My goodness, in only just over two centuries our democracy has completely changed. We've radically expanded suffrage, but dramatically expanded federal power. New challenges, new understandings, and so on.
Surely, the human organization designed to bring us to God would have to change similarly. In Harris's book he makes the absurd claim that man from the 1400's would be at ease in our churches today. That is simply not so. The church has changed, as has science and politics. They are related, and that's okay.
* * *
Just to reconnect, I think that Christianity was a valuable influence in creating the values of equality and tolerance in Western Culture.
What those ideas mean now, is very different from what they meant in 1776. For one thing, property and government are very different. For another thing, we've taken the next logical step in some of those ideas.
America is where we are right now in this experiment in democracy.
In the first century A.D. there was this idea that the law was not enough. It was not enough to live into God's hope for humanity to simply follow the rules in the book. There needed to be a spiritual transformation, and without that transformation, you were lost.
The practice of Christianity has changed since then. When it was a cult, there were certain requirements, such as giving away all of your money to the group, that were not practiced with it was the imperial religion. It has changed and evolved with the science and sociology of the times.
Christianity is where we are right now in the experiment to find a connection with God.
* * *
I've just started Sam Harris's book, "The End of Faith." (Or Regligion, not sure.) And what he wants to do, is claim that religion, unlike everything else is stagnant and not evolving. That is simply wrong.
It does not demean religion to say that it has been transformed by broad social trends. Religion is to bring people to God, and to do that it must be different now than it was in 1450 C.E., or 2000 B.C.E.
* * *
While speaking to fellow Jews, where the choices of religions were following the Jewish law or making offerings to pagan temples seeking the intervention of disinterested Hellenistic deities, Jesus said for the people to follow him. He said that he was the way to his Father's home.
Jesus was right. It was not enough to follow the law, that was an empty existance. There was more than the painful and oppressed world before them. And, to realize that truth was to be reborn into a new existence unlike what was left behind. It does not mean that I have to view the current manifestation of Judahism as less than the current manifestation of Christianity.
Jesus was a real person addressing real problems. He was talking to people who were suffering and bringing them relief. He was trying to transform their lives to allow them to live on this planet in greater harmony with the rest of creation. You cannot take his words and use them like mathematical equations. It just doesn't work that way. They have specific meaning in specific context.
* * *
What's become of that tradition? Is it lost, is it no longer of value to individuals and society? That's the main conversation we're having. But Christianity, is different now than it was then. There are very, very few things that were essential then that are essential now.
My goodness, in only just over two centuries our democracy has completely changed. We've radically expanded suffrage, but dramatically expanded federal power. New challenges, new understandings, and so on.
Surely, the human organization designed to bring us to God would have to change similarly. In Harris's book he makes the absurd claim that man from the 1400's would be at ease in our churches today. That is simply not so. The church has changed, as has science and politics. They are related, and that's okay.
* * *
Just to reconnect, I think that Christianity was a valuable influence in creating the values of equality and tolerance in Western Culture.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Matt: Luther as Everyman
The passage from Luther as a younger man is indeed a mainstream view born pretty directly from Christian scripture and doctrine. The latter passages are a terrible evil, and are quite a stretch from the original texts. In the evolution of Luther's thinking, we see the crux of our discussion.
While I imagine you will mount a credible defense that Christianity -- the strict adherence to Christ's teachings -- has no place for the killing of heretical rabbis, Luther's comments as an old man are the inevitable results of the assertion that a certain school of thought is the one true path to God. Hence the proposition that religion inherently leads to human suffering. When a school of thought claims The Way, The Truth and The Light, there is by definition a devaluing of all other claims to truth. When the argument revolves around one's fitness to sit at the right hand of the Creator, devaluing someone's truth is devaluing their fitness before God. It becomes inevitable that your opponents are heretics.
While I imagine you will mount a credible defense that Christianity -- the strict adherence to Christ's teachings -- has no place for the killing of heretical rabbis, Luther's comments as an old man are the inevitable results of the assertion that a certain school of thought is the one true path to God. Hence the proposition that religion inherently leads to human suffering. When a school of thought claims The Way, The Truth and The Light, there is by definition a devaluing of all other claims to truth. When the argument revolves around one's fitness to sit at the right hand of the Creator, devaluing someone's truth is devaluing their fitness before God. It becomes inevitable that your opponents are heretics.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Jim: Topic I: Secular Sources of Equality?
Some time after the Reformation & Renaissance Western Civilization began moving toward greater equality for its members. That meant throwing off notions of royalty and a ruling class. Getting rid of slavery and, in the United States, ending Jim Crowe. We've named this move as one of the great values of Western Civilization.
I've proposed two sectarian sources of that idea: (1) The text of the Bible which demands kindness to the stranger and proper treatment of poor, as well as, lifting up all human beings as the intentional creation of God, and (2) the Protestant Reformation which began the process of tearing down church hierarchy.
So, what are the secular sources? Do we start with Thomas Jefferson or Locke? By secular I don't mean atheist writers, we'll never know whether anyone was an atheist. I mean people who did not use religion as the source of their move toward equality, or lets say primary source. You really can't pull the Bible out of Western thinking any more than you could pull the ideas of the Constitution out of American theological thinking.
I've proposed two sectarian sources of that idea: (1) The text of the Bible which demands kindness to the stranger and proper treatment of poor, as well as, lifting up all human beings as the intentional creation of God, and (2) the Protestant Reformation which began the process of tearing down church hierarchy.
So, what are the secular sources? Do we start with Thomas Jefferson or Locke? By secular I don't mean atheist writers, we'll never know whether anyone was an atheist. I mean people who did not use religion as the source of their move toward equality, or lets say primary source. You really can't pull the Bible out of Western thinking any more than you could pull the ideas of the Constitution out of American theological thinking.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Matt: On Personal Morality
Ahh... I can stop tearing down the famously righteous and just talk about me for a change. If there's a topic I like more than myself, I can't think of it.
You said:
I am a secularist. Or an atheist, or a materialist. Something along those lines. I am not unclear on my own beliefs, but consistant definitions amongst people self-identifying as any of those things are very hard to come by.
Being one of those, I believe that everyone is equal. Not in the eyes of God and not for any spiritual reason. I believe everyone is equal because I see no ultimate reason or order to the universe. There is no one keeping score, so how could you argue that I am achieving on some level more than anyone else? Or better than a gnat for instance? I don't think I am more moral, or better, or more or less equal than a gnat. It has as much "right" to exist as I do. Even the concept of having "rights" outside of a human context is silly in my mind. Again, with no objective standard, the concept makes no sense. Since I have no God that can stand immovable against this universe's frame of reference, there is no standard against which I can judge the relative value of lives, or life vs. non-life for that matter.
Why am I moral at all? Because I was taught to be, and being taught to be something for a brain constructed like a primates' is reason enough, I guess. I would imagine that is not a satisfying answer, but it's the best I've come up with.
You said:
If I were not a Christian, I do not think I would believe all people are equal.
I am a secularist. Or an atheist, or a materialist. Something along those lines. I am not unclear on my own beliefs, but consistant definitions amongst people self-identifying as any of those things are very hard to come by.
Being one of those, I believe that everyone is equal. Not in the eyes of God and not for any spiritual reason. I believe everyone is equal because I see no ultimate reason or order to the universe. There is no one keeping score, so how could you argue that I am achieving on some level more than anyone else? Or better than a gnat for instance? I don't think I am more moral, or better, or more or less equal than a gnat. It has as much "right" to exist as I do. Even the concept of having "rights" outside of a human context is silly in my mind. Again, with no objective standard, the concept makes no sense. Since I have no God that can stand immovable against this universe's frame of reference, there is no standard against which I can judge the relative value of lives, or life vs. non-life for that matter.
Why am I moral at all? Because I was taught to be, and being taught to be something for a brain constructed like a primates' is reason enough, I guess. I would imagine that is not a satisfying answer, but it's the best I've come up with.
Matt: On Luther
There is an ugly trend brewing. Because as you point out, most scholars before very recent times were theists, or at least presented themselves as such, we are in a rut. You are presenting very good things about your faith, and I am left to refute that, inevitably finding ugly things to say about Popes, Cardinals, Church Elders and reformers of Western society. Oh well, nothing for it, I suppose.
Luther did indeed reform on the basis that common Germans should have access to the scripture. I believe a reasonable case can be made that a thread of the philosophy of equality of all men before God is found, generally, in that line of reasoning. However, let's examine some of Luther's actual published works.
In 1543, Luther wrote to Christians a proscription of the Jews:
Lest this be seen as just a general slur on the man, he gets more specific about how the Christian must treat the Jew:
There's a lot, but here are the specifics:
All of the ellipses do not change the meaning, each admonition I quoted above is the specific action, and the following paragraph which I expurgated is just the justification for the action, all about devils, evil, etc.
Here is the paragon of Christian scholarship, specifically advocating the destruction of Jewish homes and places of worship, the killing of Rabbis, the taking of their money and livelihood, the denial of safe passage and putting them to hard labor.
Did his more famous scholarly list have a greater (and more good) influence? Perhaps, but this more obscure list comes from the same Christian scholarship and might easily have been the playbook from which German horrors sprung 400 years later. I should do the research and discover if Luther's writings show up in Nazi propaganda -- it certainly sounds suspiciously similar.
What are we to make of this? I think it's hard to say. I conceded early on that Luther's battles with the Catholic church on behalf of the common (Christian) German can be defended as a statement on equality, but it is much more the relative of the equality of Orwell's pig Napoleon "...but some animals are more equal than others.", than it is the relative of Thomas Jefferson's notion "...that all men are created equal..."
The translation of On Jews and their Lies taken courtesy of Fordham University.
Luther did indeed reform on the basis that common Germans should have access to the scripture. I believe a reasonable case can be made that a thread of the philosophy of equality of all men before God is found, generally, in that line of reasoning. However, let's examine some of Luther's actual published works.
In 1543, Luther wrote to Christians a proscription of the Jews:
Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.
Lest this be seen as just a general slur on the man, he gets more specific about how the Christian must treat the Jew:
I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all hristians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us...
There's a lot, but here are the specifics:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them....
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed....
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them....
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb....
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews....
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping....
Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam...
All of the ellipses do not change the meaning, each admonition I quoted above is the specific action, and the following paragraph which I expurgated is just the justification for the action, all about devils, evil, etc.
Here is the paragon of Christian scholarship, specifically advocating the destruction of Jewish homes and places of worship, the killing of Rabbis, the taking of their money and livelihood, the denial of safe passage and putting them to hard labor.
Did his more famous scholarly list have a greater (and more good) influence? Perhaps, but this more obscure list comes from the same Christian scholarship and might easily have been the playbook from which German horrors sprung 400 years later. I should do the research and discover if Luther's writings show up in Nazi propaganda -- it certainly sounds suspiciously similar.
What are we to make of this? I think it's hard to say. I conceded early on that Luther's battles with the Catholic church on behalf of the common (Christian) German can be defended as a statement on equality, but it is much more the relative of the equality of Orwell's pig Napoleon "...but some animals are more equal than others.", than it is the relative of Thomas Jefferson's notion "...that all men are created equal..."
The translation of On Jews and their Lies taken courtesy of Fordham University.
Jim: Topic I: Q3
Similarly, I propose the following as addressing the issue of equality as it relates to the existence of God. I've stated before that I believe God is everything and then some. God is all we perceive and more. Allow me to elaborate on a mini-step toward that:
What unit of life is most significant? There are cells and tissues and organs that are all alive. There are organisms. There are families, societies, and ecosystems. There are also atoms & molecules and planets & galaxies, but these are not living.
Among the units of life, we most often view the self as being in the organism. And, that's fair enough. But there has been some pretty serious stuff, I think by William James, examining our behavior in groups that suggests there is a self in a group. When the Buddhists say that self is an illusion, it is not because they don't believe there are organisms, it is because they think that organisms are not the most significant unit of living thing.
I'd be interested to push on this a little more, but specifically for the topic of equality I would say this: Because God is all things, all people are a part of God and it is natural or right for all people to be treated equally.
[Note: Remember this question is not about religion, its about God. I'm a Christian, and my view of God is derived almost exclusively from Christians & Christian thinkers, nonetheless under this question, I feel the least constrained to address "standard" beliefs.]
What unit of life is most significant? There are cells and tissues and organs that are all alive. There are organisms. There are families, societies, and ecosystems. There are also atoms & molecules and planets & galaxies, but these are not living.
Among the units of life, we most often view the self as being in the organism. And, that's fair enough. But there has been some pretty serious stuff, I think by William James, examining our behavior in groups that suggests there is a self in a group. When the Buddhists say that self is an illusion, it is not because they don't believe there are organisms, it is because they think that organisms are not the most significant unit of living thing.
I'd be interested to push on this a little more, but specifically for the topic of equality I would say this: Because God is all things, all people are a part of God and it is natural or right for all people to be treated equally.
[Note: Remember this question is not about religion, its about God. I'm a Christian, and my view of God is derived almost exclusively from Christians & Christian thinkers, nonetheless under this question, I feel the least constrained to address "standard" beliefs.]
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