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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: The Revelation to Mike Huybensz
Message-ID: <5159@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 19:03:37 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.5159
Posted: Wed Apr 24 19:03:37 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Apr-85 22:55:16 EST
References: <5087@umcp-cs.UUCP> <502@cybvax0.UUCP>
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In article <502@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>In article <5087@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
>> Well, the obvious difference I see is that there is a long chain
>> of analysis and examination (not to mention person-to-person witness)
>> between me and the supposed origin of the church.  You seem to be falling
>> into the fundamentalist heresy, Mike;  church tradition is also important
>> in determining the nature of christian belief.

>A longer game of "telephone": not only in accretions to the original
>interpretations, but also in the cultural assumptions that determine
>the interpretations.  That's the good part of the fundamentalist heresy.
>The bad part is that they still take the bible seriously.

I don't know about that.  I think their chief problem is not that they take
the Bible seriously; it's that, rather than using both the techniques of
modern textual analysis and the teachings passed on through the church, they
reject both, clinging instead to a Pietistic view of the Bible that refuses
to be informed by anything else.

I see a similar problem with your analysis.  When you compare the church to
various cults which have followed, it seems to me that you neglect to take
into account that these cults are essentially perversions of christianity.
They take the forms that we see precisely because they were conceived in a
society where christianity is in the air.  It is not suprising to me that
they resemble christianity in various aspects, but the fact that they are
copied from christianity doesn't necessarily reflect upon the original.

In point of fact, the so-called modernist trend in theology does in fact
attempt to take cultural influences into account, as well as other facts
relevant to the writing of the texts.

>False analogies and other fallacies are still incredibly powerful, as any
>study of popular politics would show.  And religions sweep a lot under the
>rug when they insist on faith rather than logic.  Must we count the
>millions whose deaths were justified by falsehoods?

Well, in fact the Episcopal Church insists on neither.  The Pietists have
done a lot of damage by over-emphasizing faith to the exclusion of anything
else.  On the other hand, Logic (and even some less rigorous forms of
systematic thought, such as the scientific method) are too weak to examine a
lot of questions, even very simple ones.  I insist that there is middle
ground; the two are not dichotomous, nor are they the only dimensions.

And besides, there is always the same problem;  it is difficult to
distinguish between a world in which there is no God, and a world with a God
who is almost totally concealed.  As I see the Christian faith, it posits a
God who has deliberately chosen to set up this ambiguity.  One would
therefore expect an experimental test of his existence to fail, if treated
rigorously.  Science is therefore correct in rejecting the miraculous as
explanitory.  For precisely the same reason, it is not scientifically valid
to say that you can demonstrate the non-existence of such a God, because you
cannot set up a test which can distinguish between the two hypotheses.  You
have to choose on some other basis.  Some, for instance, would put their
faith in the power of simple explanations.  It would then be reasonable,
however, to look at these beliefs.  Why are simpler explanations more
valuable?  What if one explanation, even if it cannot be scientifically
verified, has vastly different implications than the other?

  Charley Wingate    umcp-cs!mangoe