defend the indefensible: religious fundamentalists

but seriously yeah, define "fundamentalist". Are we talking about the specifically peculiar strain of Christianity that insists on a literal interpretation of the Bible (which is inherently impossible and inconsistent anyway?) If we're just talking about religiously devout types, I think there's many many many easily defensible examples.

I gather this thread is mostly intended to disparage to ego-driven, blinkered idiots who can't process other people's input, as others have said...

x-post

and dave225 on the really seriously cute money

Most of the fundies that I've known do pay taxes. And I grew up around a lot of them. But I suppose there is a fringe element that doesn't - the militia types, maybe.

i am flattered (dunno if that is the intention).

anyway, Alex in NYC HIMSELF is the Alex in NYC of sociopolitics -- you should see HIS posts on these kinds of topics!

I think what I'm trying to say is that the fundies, for all their flaws, also take seriously a lot of ethical principles which probably do more good to the social fabric than harm. I'm not saying people have to be fundie to be ethical, just that there is some degree of correlation there, at least in certain areas, I think.

you CAN say that about muslim and jewish fundamentalists, too.

xpost

i am flattered (dunno if that is the intention).

I'm guessing it's not, but I'm flattered that you're flattered.

If you're a religious fundamentalist, you're an idiot and an asshole and need to fuckin' evolve with all speed. Period.

(I hope I didn't come across as too accomodating, did I?)

this figure is a tad steep, no?

They're badass, they make lovely rugs, and they probably did more to bring on the collapse of the Soviet Union than anybody else.

The worst exigencies seem to be when nationalism and religion get confused but it's pretty bad stuff nonetheless.

xpost

I think that few things are as threatening to a non-fundamentalist as someone who doesn't beleive the same way they do! evidence: this thread (among others). not condoning fundies, just sayin'.

A fundamental difference between Christian and Islam fundamentalists. Muslims don't give a damn about other people's religion, they just worry about whether MUSLIMS are pure and devout (there are still quite a few jews in Iran that don't get hassled).. Christians, however, believe everyone is damned unless they find Christ.

not true. Xians and Jews are fellow "people of the book" and are supposed to be respected. Huge difference between Islam post-19th Century and before.

"There's just one little request I have. If it's not too much trouble, of course. Call me profoundly misguided if you want. Call me immoral if you must. But could you please stop calling me arrogant and elitist?

I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values -- as deplorable as I'm sure they are -- don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant? "

Michael Kinsley, "Am I Blue?," washington post

of course, there are those "fundies" who withdraw from society (and by doing so i mean more than just homeschooling their kids) but i don't think there's that many of them.

oh and amish, everyone loves the amish! but they're fundies too.

(* -- except for, arguably, the lubavichers -- and THEY only concentrate their evangelizing on other jews and NOT on the goys!)

(i am not religious, nor am i spiritual, if that isn't clear)

this is soooo insane. i was raised in the episcopalian church, in a very "tolerant," nay progressive one, and i don't think that any of the people that i went to church with (many of whom i still know, not to mention my parents) don't "actually" believe what they believe in. who the fuck are you to decide who "actually" believes or not, anyways?

The main thing of value that the fundamentalist churches do, and one of the majorly overlooked sources of their strength, is they create tightly-knit communities, where people may derive aid and comfort, a sense of belonging and (from time to time) direct practical assistance.

In an era when communities are fragmenting and diffusing, being torn and frayed from a thousand different directions -- mostly economic in origin, but occasionally flowing from mistaken applications of governmental power -- then belonging to a group of people who profess a personal committment to viewing your welfare as equal to their own, probably feels like owning a mountain of gold.

Under those circumstances, the exclusionary and judgemental aspects of fundamentalism probably don't count for much, because you've crossed over from the excluded group into the included one and those strictures don't apply to you with the same felt force.

Christ! I mean, this is what cults are all about. The fact that fundamentalism is respectable cult means you get to have the goodies without nearly the same stigma. Look at it this way - with millions of single parents out there in dead end jobs that barely pay shit, belonging to a fundie church can be the difference between despair and hope.

This is what makes the alliance between the big corporations who are lined up for their tax cuts and the big fundie churches who stand to grow as the social safety net is placed in their keeping such an unholy alliance. But to millions of USA-ers, this shift looks like a natural god-ordained blessing.

Um, well I guess I got a bit off-track in my defense, but I did make the right gestures at the beginning there.

er, like what? or should i even ask?

I will be rational in the morning. There is no excuse for religion.

T-A-X da F-U-C-K outta da churches.

I would also stipulate that most misapplications of government power have been inpired by and directed by buisness interests.

I think that basically the GOP wet dream is to end government social programs and have the responsibility for them assumed by religious organizations. The idea being that the religious organizations will be able to instill a sense of personal responsibility in the recipients of their largesse, which the government is unable to do. Unfortunately, I think that the GOP has assigned the religious organizations a Sisyphean task here. Churches already are the recipients of a huge government charity giveaway in the form of their tax-exempt status. If they can't cut the mustard with that propping them up, then I doubt they ever will. The cultural trends are against them. People are becoming less religious - it's more noticeable in Europe, but it will eventually happen in the US as well. What's next? Active govt funding of churches? That would be a huge mistake - for all the reasons that led so many people to immigrate to the US in the first place back in the early colonial days.

Er, not really. I'm with Ed here. Aimless' post could also be used to defend white supremicists, for instance, i.e. "we may hate Jews and blacks and Arabs, but we've instilled a real sense of community here!"

That sense of community -- no matter how positive a thing it may be in and of itself -- isn't a mitigating circumstance that can excuse intolerance.

In my experience, this couldn't be any further from the truth than 2 + 2 = 5. People are fucking horrible and exist to screw you over.

here, you and i are in 100% agreement (though tis i who created this thread)

I don't think there's anything that remotely indicates this "trend" in the US, where ridiculous majorities routinely respond to religious polls with a surprising commitment to their faith (ie "believe in God", "go to Church", "believe the Bible is the word of God", etc.)

People are fucking horrible and exist to screw you over.

This is overly dramatic and cheaply cynical. The truth is so much more nuanced than this and people, surely should be judged on a case by case basis. I, for one, can't even be bothered to screw over most people.

-anybody else read George Lakoff?

-i still consider myself a Christian (raised Presbyterian, augmented by neitzsche/hegel/j.campbell)

-fundamentalism/extreme zealotry of any belief system causes problems

-people tend to fucking suck. individuals, not as much. groups of them, fuck yeah.

The weakest parts of Plato and Descartes' philosophy are the appeals to religion. In Plato's case, a supreme Good is the logical result of his theory of Forms, but it leaves itself open to an infinite logical regression in which the Good itself is simply an image of a higher Form and so on and so on. Descartes, having (semi-spuriously) reduced his knowledge to the Cogito, then drags God back into the scheme of things with almost no justification whatsoever, mainly to keep the Church off his back.

Religion is irrational. This need not be an insult, simply stating that it is not something that can be proved through rational means. I wouldn't deny the possibility that somebody might experience what they believe to be a personal religious revelation. I see no way that they could communicate that revelation to me in such a way as to prove that I should believe them. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" I haven't experienced a revelation, therefore logic tells me God does not exist. If It does exist in any of the forms espoused by the major Theistic religions, I refuse to worship It anyway. It strikes me as being a bit cold and sadistic.

Wittgenstein?

well what can I say, I feel sorry for you. I could point out the many places where rationality/spiritual thinking overlap (cf. relatively tired theoretical physics = mysticism trope) but you've already convinced yourself that other people's experiences cannot communicate anything valid or "real" to you, so what's the point? have fun livin in your lonely universe of personal experience...

kidding.

I think there are plenty of problems with atheism, not least the fact that we've failed to address the challenge laid down by Nietzsche nearly 150 years ago to find meaningful ways of living without God. But atheists undeniably have logic on their side. Mysticism means not knowing stuff and pondering the limits of knowability, not writing a big convenient explanation into place to refer doubters to.

Also, I didn't mistake yr passion for rudeness, Shakey. If you can't be passionate about this stuff, what can you be passionate about?

Much like that kind of facile response says a lot more about the experiences you've had in your life and where you've lived than it does about mine.

x-post

Dan I don't get it - are you insulting me? saying I haven't been screwed over?

what? science is a methodology, not an object with an "existence."

x-post

no, that's not it either. that'd be like saying there's a buncha test tubes lyin' around or something. I think it's maybe better to say that science or scientific method is a way (but not the way) of measuring/defining the material world? or something, i dunno.

x-x-x-post

The main thing I will say is that it is more logically consistent than certain kinds of moderation.

If you claim to believe in biblical Christianity, for example, there are things in there that almost require a fundamentalist--or at least an evangelical approach.

If (IF!) you think that no one comes to God except through Jesus, then you can't honestly say that all paths to the divine are just different perspectives, and everybody can define their own relationship with God, etc. etc. Fundamentalism is the most logical outcome of that belief.

If (IF!) you think that people who don't believe as you do are gonna fry in hell, I think that the natural outgrowth of that is to tell people to start thinking as you do. If you were reasonably certain that jumping off a cliff onto the jagged rocks below was a bad thing, and you saw a guy about to jump (on the theory that it was a good Sunday-afternoon lark) wouldn't you try to warn him? If not, why not?

It's really tough to say that "to me, the sky is blue and the grass is green; opinions may differ," if you really believe what you claim to believe. If you claim to be sure that 2+2=4, but you have no problem with people saying 2+2=78, or 2+2=aardvark, then what does it mean to say that you think 2+2=4?

Shakey, Ferlin's and science's inability to explain phenomena does not boost the existence of God. This is not a zero sum game. ( I hope) It's about two different ways of looking at and explaining our world and about where they can intersect and where they are, essentially, mutually exclusive.

There's lots and lots of stuff we can't yet properly account for. There might well be stuff that it's impossible for humans to ever account for. If somebody wants to label that stuff God, then that's their call. But I don't think doing that solves anything or adds anything to knowledge whatsoever.

hstencil, I kiss you.

x-x-post

I defy you to name one part of the Koran that was responsible for the flowering of 'Islamic' science. The multi-national, cosmopolitan, Islamic world had much ancient science in its possession and was full of dynamism, economic development, and curiosity.

Michael, I call myself an atheist because I reject the Christian, Jewish and Islamic God, not because I'm certain that It doesn't exist.

By that somewhat idiosyncratic definition, I too am an atheist.

depends on who's doing the observing, tho. obv. people who believe in creationism don't believe in darwin's theories, because they interpret their observations differently. doesn't heisenberg basically state that all observation is subjective, in a way?

xpost - yeah shakey i have but it's also been a lifelong interest.

xxpost - michael i didn't claim it as "islamic" science! but the muslims did preserve the scientific achievements of the greeks and romans and egyptians, true, that's a plain fact. but they also used ancient sciences to move further! what kind of numerals do we use? where did algebra come from?

xxxpost - ferlin you've already said you think it's time to get rid of religion on this thread! how would somebody religious take what you've written? I'm not religious, but I still don't see the point of claiming you or I have the answer to everything. We don't.

There was a strain of Islam even in the middle ages that vigorously attacked non-Islamic forms of knowledge.

true. I wasn't claiming it as an absolute, not sure why you and Michael are taking it as thus.

yeah clearly. especially because those who are objecting to evolution, to my mind, either don't really understand what they're talking about, or hew to a literal translation of the Bible ("King Solomon stopped the motion of the Sun!") which is patently stupid and ridiculous for more reasons than I can count... actually this is one of my main beefs with the fundamentalist people I've crossed paths with in my life, that they were not intellectually curious (or particularly well-versed) in the foundations of their beliefs.

x-post

Altho I hear Johnny Cash kept an extensive Biblical library and was quite the amateur scholar... (he was my kind of Christian)

Didn't the Arabs borrow the numerals from India? They might have invented the zero though, which is pretty crucial. I don't know how much science they actually invented, I'm suspicious of the accounts that say all they did was preserve existing knowledge. But I think the Renaissance would have come about anyway. The rediscovery of the Greek texts wasn't solely down to Islamic sources.

(not to derail this thread any further)

History
The numeral or digit zero is used in numeral systems where the position of a digit signifies its value. Successive positions of digits have higher values, so the digit zero is used to skip a position and give appropriate value to the preceding and following digits.

By the mid second millennium BC, Babylonians had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system.

The Ancient Greeks were unsure about the status of zero as a number: they asked themselves "how can 'nothing' be something?", leading to interesting philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religous arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero.

By 130 Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, had begun to use a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not as just a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was the first true zero in the Old World. In later Byzantine manuscripts of his Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest), the Hellenistic zero had morphed into the Greek letter omicron (usually meaning 70).

But the late Olmec had already begun to use a true zero (a shell glyph) several centuries before Ptolemy in the New World (possibly by the fourth century BC but certainly by 40 BC), which became an integral part of Maya numerals. Another true zero was used in tables alongside Roman numerals by 525 (first known use by Dionysius Exiguus), but as a word, nulla meaning nothing, not as a symbol. When division produced zero as a remainder, nihil, also meaning nothing, was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future computists (calculators of Easter). An isolated use of their initial, N, was used in a table of Roman numerals by Bede or a colleague about 725, a true zero symbol.

The first decimal zero was introduced by Indian mathematicians about 300. An early study of the zero by Brahmagupta dates to 628. By this time it was already known in Cambodia, and it later spread to China and the Islamic world, from where it reached Europe in the 12th century.

The word zero (as well as cipher) comes from Arabic sifr, meaning "empty".

I know they helped to preserve the Greek texts, but I think I remember reading that by the start of the Renaissance the Italian City-States didn't have so much direct contact with the Islamic world and that the texts were actually brought in by Venetians and others trading with Constantinople, which was still Greek-speaking and had preserved much that was thought lost.

I can confirm this. They should technically be called Indian numerals, since the numerals we use today look nearly identical to the Indian ones. Some of the Arabic numerals are nearly unrecognizable from the modern forms we use.

I'm also not sure how much of Algebra was discovered and how much preserved by Arabs.

Algebra evolved very slowly in general until the Renaissance, much like astronomy. Arabs refined the older Greek and Ptolemaic astronomical measuring equipment, greatly improving the precision of the then-existing data. They also came up with new methods for calculating things, arguably the most famous being Omar Khayyam's geometric method for determining cube roots. But very little in terms of fundamentally new algebra and astronomy was done. It was more like engineering than true science.

11th century Indian numerals:

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Diagrams/Indian_num_4.gif

11th century Arabic numerals:

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Diagrams/biruni.gif

In the following centuries, the Western Arabic style evolved closer to the Indian style and to our present-day style. This numeric system was the one borrowed by the Europeans around the 13th century.

The Renaissance came about in no small part from prescient Greeks hightailing it off the sinking ship Byzantia in favor of the safer Western reaches. El Greco, for instance.

I defy you to name one part of the Koran that was responsible for the flowering of 'Islamic' science

because, as ahmed ali thoughtfully points out in the foreword to his translation of the qu'ran (note: for anybody looking for a "first" qu'ran in english, the yusuf ali translation is far superior)

"the quran restructured the [pagan middle-eastern] metaphorical mould through allegory, paralleling it as a rhythmical unit with the conceptual language of transcendence which acquired primary authority and universal persuasive power ... nature and its phenomena that figure so prominently in the qu'ran acquire a deeper significance as signs of god. the truths presented in it have come to be recognized with the advance of knowledge as conforming to the laws of causation and effect"

you attribute islamic science to a multi-national, cosmopolitan, Islamic world ... full of dynamism

but as ahmed ali explains, the true importance of the qu'ran is that it is the signal work of "linguistic and intellectual dynamism" (quoting ahmed ali here) which revolutionized pagan thought in the middle east.

that must be why you call it an islamic world, right? quite simply, no islamic world pre-islam, or rather, pre-qu'ran.

when communities are fragmenting and diffusing, being torn and frayed from a thousand different directions -- mostly economic in origin, but occasionally flowing from mistaken applications of governmental power -- then belonging to a group of people ... probably feels like owning a mountain of gold

if you want a sound example of this in action look at iran in the 70s. you've got

#1) economic polarization due to american investment (with the wealth being disproportionately distributed towards the most westernized elements of society - logically, since my parents and grandparents ability to speak english and interact on equal ground and effectively with westerners was their #1 job qualification) and

#2) misapplication of governmental power (the combination of an oppressive secret police and a regime that was content to look in the other direction to these abuses and to the dissatisfaction of the people while it wasted millions on renovating persepolis)

and suddenly, whammo, the fundamentalist elements that had been dormant for 100+ years were suddenly ascendant.

Sorry about that. Like I said, it's been a while since I last read this stuff. I typed my post first and did the fact checking later. Anyway, my comments still apply to the Muslim world of the time.

For anyone who is interested in reading more about Indian vs Arabic numeric writing, take a look at this book.

(well sort of, since Kepler was a bit of a nutcase who was obsessed with the Harmony of the Spheres and didn't want to believe his own findings)

http://www.ursa.fi/yhd/komeetta/Brahe.jpg

the great quadrant rules, ye fules

By today's definitions, science = explaining how things work. Engineering = building stuff.

I defy you to name one part of the Koran that was responsible for the flowering of 'Islamic' science.

Vahid, let us be clear. I mean no particular ill will toward Islam. I do not find in my, admittedy cursory readings of the Koran, the Pentateuch, or The New Testament anything specific impelling the several faithful toward what one might contemporarily call the scientific method. You may use language of the highest pc shrillness without making an argument that would be considered valid by the Greeks whose traditions Islamophiles would like to claim credit for having introduced to the West. If you can find anything specific in Muslim theology to suggest that Muslims are more likely to be open to the arguments of reproducible experimental results, I remain humbly ready to be corrected. If not, take your politics of resentment and bugger off, they are not the basis of any kind of long term achievement and will not further any causes other than that of the polemicist and the pathetic small-town rabble rouser.

What I suggested above was that the Arab (Muslim) domination of Near Asia and its attendant legal, econonimic, and cultural stability allowed the native genius of the many peoples under the early caliphate to flourish, nourished as they were by the Arab, Persian, Ptolemaic (in the Greek and Egyptian sense), Byzantine, Indian, and yes, even Jewish traditions to profit from fair laws, safe travel, relative (to the epoch) religious tolerance, and profitable trade.

who's an islamophile? islam ran my infant non-islamic ass the hell out of my homeland.

i'm not arguing for the greeks, michael, i'm arguing for you.

You may use language of the highest pc shrillness

thank you

the polemicist and the pathetic small-town rabble rouser

now who would that be?

Sorry, you aright to call me out for this. It's beneath me.

come on, dude, i know what i'm talking about here.

take your politics of resentment and bugger off

i'm not sure we'd all be better off if i did that.

let's instead say "integral to"

Please see above but you are essentially arguing my case here. (i.e. 'attendant')

BTW, where are you from?

my parents: one is an engineer and one is a scientist, they both consider it their religious duty. their (islam-derived-tho-not-islamic) baha'i theology tells them to promote justice and kindness and provide comfort, they feel that they are best equipped to do so by providing for people's material comfort.

i feel it would be somewhat presumptuous to question their (and tycho's!) motivations. besides i don't think it's really germane to the question of fundamentalism.

Also, the Fundamentalists' claims to be true adherents to their particular faith are open to many challenges. Those people above who claim Fundamentalists are more consistent in their belief have fallen for the same misdirection. The fact is that the Bible and the qu'ran are not susceptible to one unimpeachable reading. Those who claim that they understand them "correctly" are propagating the cheekiest of lies.

(Side note, vahid's point about the centrality of the qu'ran in the flowering of Arab culture is well taken. It seems to parallel the way Luther's German translation of the Bible invented modern German and paved the way for the Enlightenment, by creating a set of linguistic tools that would eventually outgrow their creators.)

I get up in the morning just fine in the knowledge of a marvelous sparkling random universe, full of the unexplained mysteries of life and the tools to set down the road to explaining them.

it's hard to argue with the argument that everything can be traced to crass self-interest (like michaelangelo painted the chapel so he wouldn't starve). my only defense is that you really only have 1 thinker of note who argued strongly for that line of thought (hobbes?) ... am i forgetting anybody.

-- Michael White (Sanmichel...) (webmail), March 4th, 2005 3:54 PM. (Hereward) (link)

A Fundamentalist world would by definition not be an evolving one

noodle i agree but could you define what's a fundamentalist? another thing that confuses me in discussions about fundamentalism is that it's hard to describe what's a fundamentalist. yes we all know what we're talking about - but what ARE we talking about? (other than "believing fuckwads who ruin everything" - a different set for everybody on this thread)

certainly nobody would describe quakers as "fundamentalists" but they really are. no compromise!! they make decisions only when consensus is reached (and yet they manage to function in groups really effectively - there's more than one conflict-resolution book out there that studies the quaker consensus method) fanaticism!! if you want to read a heart-rending acct of personal sacrifice you can read norman mailer's "armies of the night" (pgs 286-287) where he describes a group of quakers who conducted a hunger strike, in solitary confinement, naked (they refused to wear prison clothes), nearly to the point of death, with no media attention, in silent protest against the vietnam war. yet i'm sure nobody here could convincingly argue against that.

so what's a fundamentalist?

Elmer Fudnament:

http://images.google.com.au/images?q=tbn:sAKBpK4tbIwJ:www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/a16-fudd.gif

I guess a broad brush definition of Fundamentalist would be somebody who claims to adhere to the true tenets of their religion as opposed to what they would claim were temporizing deviations on the part of other sects. You could say that this includes all religions but I'd argue that there's a difference between the universalizing aspects of, say, Catholicism or Unitarianism or Bah'ai (of which I admit I know little) and the ideological claims of Fundamentalists.

Like I said above, I believe that the Fundamentalists' core claim to believe the definitive version of their religion is deeply flawed. That doesn't mean that there can't be positive aspects to their beliefs (I'd take the Iranian revolutionaries over the Shah's regime, without ignoring their negative aspects). Quakers are interesting people. I'd say their roots in the early Reformation, when Protestantism was pretty much the opposite of Fundamentalism - a million ways to the truth springing up all over and tolerating one another, more or less - rules them out of accusations of genuine Fundieness.

Also, that sitting around waiting for the spirit to move you stuff strikes me as being really Zen.

I find it hard to defend religious fundies, mainly b/c of the whole church funded school thing, I don't agree w/the teaching of religious dogma as scientific fact, in fact I think it's terrible.

OTOH, there's a part of me that wishes I was religious, that wishes I could believe. The viewpoints & philosophies that I think would make for a better, more equitable world for everybody have never held less power than they do now. They have been beaten down. I kind of feel like I have nothing. I wish I was religious, but I just can't believe in all that. Terrible, eh?

By Ferlin's def. (which I find interesting) the Quakers are not Fundamentalists. It seems like most of us are equating fundamentalism with a distinct anti-intellectual/single-minded/"there are no ways but MY way" POV, which seems about right.

loose ends from upthread that don't really have anything to do with the discussion at large but I feel compelled to answer:

A well educated Muslim may wish to experiment but he is no more compelled by theology than a pagan or Hindu.

I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. If, in a cursory sense, you were to study the many permutations of Islamic theology and rigorous thought over the centuries, you would understand that Islam has a very rich tradition of scholars compelled not only to study theology, but other disciplines as well. I cannot say anything about the Hindu religion because I don't know its past and traditions as well (I would guess it's pretty similar tho).

during the discussion of mathematics (thank you barry for your elucidation on many things), there was talk of muslims' contributions as being "engineering, not science." This seems sort of strange to me since it was asserted earlier in the thread that Christian churches were "built by science, not faith." So engineering in the Christian world is science but in the Islamic world it's merely engineering? Seems kinda strange, esp. if you have ever seen Islamic architecture. Go to the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, and witness for yourself this mere "engineering" (which was clearly compelled by theology since there's plenty of actual text as part of the architecture!).

And it's certainly not true that science >>> engineering -- anyone who considers the Alhambra or the Hagia Sophia or the Roman acquaducts to be "mere" engineering needs to have their head examined. There's nothing intrinsically better about doing science vs doing engineering, one doesn't require more thought and expertise than the other. But they are different things. Science is science, and engineering is engineering.

Exactly, somebody was talking earlier about Tycho Brahe being an astronomer but of course astronomy and astrology were totally part of the same practice at this time.

I don't think I'm as wildly in disagreement with Shakey and hstencil as it looked last night and I've been thinking about why. It's the "Religions of the Book" that I'm objecting to and I think it's something to do with the Books. This is why I'm arguing that religious experience is necessarily locked outside of language and I distrust Monotheism because it feels like a re-iteration of logocentrism, a kind of logical cop-out blind to its own cop-outiness. The Eastern traditions all pretty firmly reject talking about themselves - "That which can be named is not The Tao" and so on - even when they're talking about how they can't be captured by language. Zen Koans are intended to be deconstructive, I think. On these terms to want religion locked outside of Greek/Western logic isn't to privilege one over the other but to try to avoid contamination, maybe?

Course you might still argue that people have successfully made the effort to share religious experience, and we'd prob'ly have to disagree at that point. If I've clarified to myself (slightly) something of what I'm thinking, it still leaves a problem of two universes which in theory can have no contact or influence on one another.

A further shot at dodgy aphorism-making:

Fundamentalism = the urge to simplify
Mysticism = the urge to complicate

?

"‘I should hardly have thought, sir,’ he said, ‘that you had any quarrel with mystical explanations.’

"‘On the contrary,’ replied Father Brown, blinking amiably at him. ‘That’s just why I can quarrel with ’em. Any sham lawyer could bamboozle me, but he couldn’t bamboozle you; because you’re a lawyer yourself. Any fool could dress up as a Red Indian and I’d swallow him whole as the only original Hiawatha; but Mr Crake would see through him at once. A swindler could pretend to me that he knew all about aeroplanes, but not to Captain Wain. And it’s just the same with the other, don’t you see? It’s just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it it’s still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it’s a platitude...’"
—The Arrow of Heaven
(fr.The Incredulity of Father Brown, G.K.Chesterton)

and

"‘The dog could almost have told you the story, if he could talk,’ said the priest. ‘All I complain of is that because he couldn’t talk you made up his story for him, and made him talk with the tongues of men and angels. It’s part of something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that’s arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.’ He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown, and went on talking almost as if he were alone. ‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words:

"‘He was made Man’."
—The Oracle of the Dog (fr.same collection)

chesterton considered himself an orthodox catholic tho i think this only had force in contrarian terms: set against establishment anglicanism, plus also the various freethinkings, atheisms and cultisms of his day: he wz a carlylian dialectician as much as anything, making his points clearer by turning cliches on their heads (ts: forensic logic vs moral logic)

i like that he sets the bar high, in terms of what science can and can't do (another of my favourtie stories is "the mistake of the machine"), and i like the way he insists that his faith (ie father brown's) makes no sense, and wd be hollow, if it doesn't accord with science, rationalism and above all common sense—indeed, that it delivers them better, bcz it also delivers humility

the problem dodge w.the "ineffable" is that it can easily be to turned into a bully's trick: "if you don't feel/see/experience this, it is bcz you are less sensitive/moral/enlightened" morphing into "i'm not telling you to do this bcz of what *i* want: i'm telling bcz the INEFFABLE is telling me to tell you"

why i posted those:
chesterton = interesting example of someone who, on some levels, wz a bit of a bigot (religious and cultural), being i think able to turn the clash of his beliefs with various conventional wisdoms and/or faddish er fads into genuine practical moral insight

other believers (inc.atheists) (=me, sorta) please copy

FB solves this particular story somewhat after the fact (i wson;t spoil it for you), but his explanation is based a little bit in forensic evidence, and a lot in common sense about how people work and why various people have acted the way they have

so i think what he means there by "he was made man" is that the reason to believe in god is that god believes in man: that he cares and understands every individual as an individual, and that if we want to be true to this faith, we should try and do that too

-- f--gg (gffcnn...), March 5th, 2005.

i dunno, he seems kinda like a douche to me!

http://www.altpress.com/sections/photo_contest03/06-10-2003/michele_lago/thursday.jpg

i don't particularly agree w.chesterton that you need to be a catholic, or any kind of christian, to understand each person in themselves (though i do think this is a good thing to try and do): i think he wz right that there were/are a lot of faiths (esp."novel" faiths?)* which ppl grab at in order to fast-track their way thru this process, or sidestep it altogether

*(he's talking about ancient religions but he does sort of mean the modern fascination with them more than how they may have worked back then)

Chesterton also seems to be saying there that rationality and scepticism are founded on Christianity, that it moved humanity away from the Pagan religions which were dehumanising, hence the animal totemism.

Now I'm not sure I totally agree with him - the early history of the Church is full of fighting with Greek philosophy as much as with Paganism - but it's an interesting argument. Like he's saying Scepticism belongs to God too.

(and i think he's wrong that it doesn't belong to other gods, and i also think he's wrong that atheism ALWAYS leads to superstition, but he's right that some pseudo-atheisms have a hysterical edge which lead straight back into some of the stuff which xtianity was trying to clamber out of)

in the first story in this book FB is caught in a resurrection scam, where a bogus miracle involving him is concocted by his enemies, who include an atheist freemason mystic and a fake-pious factory boss whose workers FB has helped in a strike

they assume he will go along with it bcz it will "help the church" but he does exactly the opposite, bcz to him the catholic church is AGAINST ALL LIES

this seems historically a difficult position to support! but like i say i think GKC's position is built out of embattled paradox in a way

is it a good idea to? i don't think it's a NECESSARY idea (eg to safeguard morality, like kant argued): i think on the whole the good things that can come of it (eg as just explored) can be got to other ways, and maybe possibly arrived at without extra harmful epiphenomenal baggage

(also, on the subject of classifying things as opposites: Levi-Strauss to thread)

http://ox.eicat.ca/~scarruthers/ilx/pope-dan.jpg