Pullman's Dark Materials: Debunking Caldecott's Criticism
Leonard F. Wheat
Philip Pullman" begins with a Leonie Caldecott essay bearing that
title. Caldecott is a columnist for THE CATHOLIC HERALD, but her
essay is from another Christian Journal, TOUCHSTONE: A JOURNAL OF MERE
CHRISTIANITY. (The words "Mere Christianity" seem to be borrowed from
a C. S. Lewis book having that title. Caldecott is a defender of C.
S. Lewis, whose pro-Christian children's book THE LION, THE WITCH, AND
THE WARDROBE Pullman's work seeks to counter.) Caldecott's essay is
an attack on Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" fantasy trilogy, which
is indeed anti-Christian (and anti-Lewis).
My purpose in writing this rebuttal is to expose the flaws in
Caldecott's analysis. In doing so, I won't dwell on the foolishness
and superstition embodied in the supernaturalistic religious beliefs,
including Caldecott's own specifically Catholic beliefs, Caldecott
uses as premises for some of her arguments. Anyone who accepts the
beliefs and doctrines of Christianity is certainly not going to be
persuaded by me or anyone else that those beliefs are wrong. Such
people will easily agree with Caldecott that Pullman's anti-Christian
message is erroneous and not worthy of respect. But, aside from the
merits of Pullman's message, Caldecott's essay is full of errors
having little or nothing to do with the truth of Christianity. It is
these errors I wish to point out.
Caldecott's errors relate to (1) the "Inkling criterion" and the
"fairy tale criterion" that Pullman's trilogy fails to meet, (2)
alleged bending of the rules that occurred when THE AMBER SPYGLASS won
the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, (3) attributing evil to parents,
priests, and others normally counted as good, (4) distorted and
ignorant depictions of Christianity, (5) putting the story's moral on
the lips of a protagonist instead of leaving it implied, (6) Pullman's
supposedly inconsistent attitude toward polemicism, (7) Pullman's
alleged "message of despair," and (8) minor factual errors.
1. FALSE CRITERIA FOR GOOD FANTASY: THE INKLINGS
Caldecott's first anti-Pullman argument is this: "A case can be made
for measuring the fantasy novels of this last decade against those of
half a century earlier," specifically, fantasy novels written by four
Oxford area novelists known as the Inklings – C. S. Lewis, J. R. R.
Tolkien, Charles Williams, and George MacDonald. According to
Caldecott, Pullman's trilogy fails this test. But Caldecott's case
begins to crumble when she fails to say why good fantasy novels must
imitate – or at any rate observe certain unspecified criteria
established by – the works of these earlier writers. Why can't a
modern fantasy writer develop new themes and new formats and proceed
in new directions? And why must the Inklings provide the standard by
which later fantasy must be judged? That standard, if it even exists
and can be defined, is arbitrary. Why not use L. Frank Baum's Oz
books or Dickens' "A Christman Carol" (a supernaturalistic story
featuring ghosts) as the standard?
I would argue that the only criteria a good fantasy novel must meet
are (a) the inclusion of supernaturalism, the definitive
characteristic of fantasy, (b) technically good, readable writing, and
(c) an entertaining, imaginative plot. Other characteristics, such as
a worthwhile message or a hidden allegory (both of which are found in
Pullman's trilogy), are unessential but can add to a story's quality.
Caldecott's argument continues to crumble when she fails to define
clearly the Inkling characteristics that "good" fantasy must observe.
We get only hints. She does say that both Lewis and Tolkien developed
Christian themes. I'm not so sure that is true when it comes to
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy but, in any case, it is foolish to
suggest that good fantasy must have pro-Christian or any other
pro-religious themes. Religious content, and especially pro-religious
content, is not and cannot be made a requirement of good fantasy.
The only other hint – probably what she has in mind – is that the
Inklings "all sought to enchant the imagination with new fairly tales
built firmly on the foundations of the old stories." In other words,
good fantasy supposedly must be at least loosely based on the fairy
tale. But the fairy tale criterion is again foolish. Good fantasy
indeed CAN bear a resemblance to old-fashioned fairy tales, but why
MUST it do so? Did Tolkien's THE HOBBIT end with Bilbo Baggins
marrying a figurative princess and living happily ever after, and was
he a heroic figure, comparable to a fairy tale prince? Does the LORD
OF THE RINGS trilogy, which Caldecott admires, end with Frodo marrying
a figurative princess and living happily ever after? To be sure,
Caldecott could (but wisely doesn't) argue that good fantasy must,
like fairy tales, involve supernaturalism. But, since all fantasy –
Pullman's included – contains supernaturalism, that criterion fails to
discriminate between good and bad fantasy.
Caldecott apparently would reply that neither "happily ever after"
nor supernaturalism is quite what she has in mind. Near the end of
her essay – far removed from her original "Inkling" reference to fairy
tales – she returns to the fairy tale theme. "The consolation of
fairy-stories [is] the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of
the good catastrophe . . . , the sudden joyous ‘turn.'" But fairy
tales, with or without romance, don't always have that "sudden joyous
turn" at the end. How about Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little
Mermaid" (very sad ending) and his "The Emperor's New Clothes" (an
embarrassing moralistic "turn")? And how about "Chicken Little,"
where the protagonist and his companions get eaten by Foxy Loxy?
Again, "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" ends with the greedy king
getting his comeuppance. Where's the joy?
I suspect Caldecott would answer that her Inklings avoided the
anomalous, nonjoyous endings of some fairy tales. She has in mind
only the "sudden joyous turn" criterion she finds in the tales penned
by the Inklings. But "sudden joyous turn" is a criterion that
Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy easily meets. Both primary villains
– the Authority and Metatron – die, a major secondary villain – Mrs.
Coulter – also dies, organized religion falls into disarray, the
mulefa (intelligent, wheeled animals) are saved from the threatened
fate of the demise of their life-giving wheel-pod trees, and the
heroine returns home to a revitalized situation that offers her a
promising future in science. If emphasis must be placed on "sudden,"
the sudden event is when Lyra and Will realize that they are in love.
This event causes the dust (symbolizing knowledge) to start raining
down from the heavens on them, on mankind, and on the dust-starved,
upturned blossoms of the pod-wheel trees on whose survival mulefa
civilization depends.
I would also ask where Caldecott gets the idea that a "sudden joyous
turn" is a unique characteristic fairy tales. Most novels, and not
just romance and crime novels and adventure novels, allow good to
triumph over evil. Caldecott could just as well argue that good
fantasy must resemble traditional westerns in the respect that
westerns usually end with a "sudden joyous turn."
Caldecott's Inkling criterion, by any interpretation, simply doesn't
make sense.
2. DISPARAGEMENT OF PULLMAN'S WHITBREAD PRIZE
Caldecott next attacks the decision to give Pullman the 2002
Whitbread Book of the Year Award for THE AMBER SPYGLASS, the third
book of his Dark Materials trilogy. She writes: "No children's novel,
under the rules governing the award, had ever been able to win the
overall prize [contrasted with the children's literature prize] among
the categories competing. For Pullman, the rules were bent, or
broken, and the great accolade was, for the first time in the history
of the prize, awarded to a piece of fiction marketed as being for
children (though Pullman has recently started to claim that he did not
write it as children's fiction at all)."
The answer to this charge is that the Dark Materials trilogy is both
children's and adult fiction. What nobody, and certainly not
Caldecott, seems to have recognized is that Pullman's tale is allegory
– brilliantly conceived, richly detailed allegory. An allegory is a
surface story (the story you actually read, or see on the screen) that
uses symbols (persons, places, things, events, names, etc.) to tell a
hidden story or to represent ideas organized to form a narrative.
Pullman's surface story is designed primarily for adolescents, or
"young adults" in the librarian's vernacular. But the allegory, the
hidden story, is adult stuff. It is so adult that Caldecott, who
obviously is highly intelligent, completely missed it, as did
practically everyone else. As a matter of fact, I myself failed to
perceive the allegory when I first read Pullman's trilogy. Only a
careful rereading, inspired by something I read on this website and
intended specifically to discover any allegory, revealed the allegory.
Actually, Pullman's tale hides three hidden stories: (1) an upside
down retelling of John Milton's PARADISE LOST, combined with some
other biblical material, (2) a straightforward retelling of the C.S.
Lewis story THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, to which
Pullman's surface story is an anti-Christian rebuttal, and (3) an
extremely subtle anti-missionary allegory. Only one previous story, a
story from film rather than literature, has managed to accomplish the
complex feat of developing a triple allegory, so Pullman has achieved
a prize-deserving literary "first." (The previous triple allegory is
Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which allegorized (1)
Nietzsche's THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, (2) Homer's THE ODYSSEY, and (3)
Arthur Clarke's theory of future man-machine symbiosis.)
PARADISE LOST is a story wherein Satan leads a group of angels in a
rebellion against God; the Christ, driving his fierce chariot, routes
the rebellious angels and sends them cascading into hell; Satan builds
a bridge from hell to earth and crosses (or climbs) the bridge; Sin
(Satan's daughter) and Death (the son of Satan and Death) follow Satan
across the bridge to the new world (earth); Satan disguises himself as
a serpent and successfully tempts Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden
fruit; and Adam and Eve, as punishment for this Original Sin, are cast
out of Paradise (Eden), which for them becomes forever lost.
Pullman's retelling of Milton's story is characterized by role
reversals: the bad guys (Satan, his rebellious angels, Sin, Death, and
Adam's son Cain) become the good guys, and the good guys (God, the
Christ, the loyal angels, and the Church and its priesthood) become
the bad guys. Various Pullman characters symbolize Satan, Sin, Death,
God, the Christ, Adam, Eve, Cain, God's loyal angel Abdiel, Satan's
pal Beelzebub, Judas (an extraneous character, not from Milton's
story), and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (additional extraneous
material, taken from Rev. 6:1-8). Other things symbolize Satan's
capital (Pandemonium), Christianity's Judgment Day, and the gospel of
John's gnostic words "The truth shall set you free." The most
important symbols include Lord Asriel as Satan, Lyra as Sin,
Pantalaimon (Lyra's daemon, or soul) as Death, Will as Cain, and
Metatron as the Christ. After Asriel (Satan) builds and crosses his
astral bridge from Lyra's world to the world of Cittigazze (i.e., from
hell to earth), Lyra and Pantalaimon (Sin and Death) follow him across
the bridge, unmistakably imitating the parallel event from PARADISE
LOST. Some particularly clever symbolism uses four hand-span-tall
Gallivespians (modeled after and named after the Lilliputians from
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS), mounted on huge dragonflies, to symbolize the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
In the allegorical retelling of THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE
WARDROBE, various other Pullman characters symbolize the kindly
professor (owner of the house where the four children are living), the
four siblings (Lucy, Susan, Edmund, and Peter), Tumnus the faun, the
robin, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, Father Christmas, Maugrim (the wolf, head
of the witch's secret police), Aslan the lion (Lewis's Christ symbol),
the White Witch, the witch's grotesque followers, the mice who gnaw
through the cords than bind Aslan, and the four horseback-mounted
siblings (now adults) who hunt the White Stag at the end of the story.
For example, the dual-identity character who is Lord Boreal in Lyra's
world but Sir Charles Latrom ("Mortal" spelled backwards) in Will's
world is Lewis's dual-personality character Tumnus, the faun, who is
half human and half goat. This allegory has no anti-Christian
message; the allegory is simply a way of identifying Pullman's story
with Lewis's story and thus spotlighting the latter as the object of
Pullman's attack.
I'm not at this time going to reveal any of the details of Pullman's
third allegory, the missionary allegory. But I will say this much: if
you examine Pullman's story carefully, you will find the exceedingly
imaginative symbols for both Christian missionaries and the
superstitions they deposit in the places they visit.
I do have doubts about whether the judges who awarded the Whitbread
prize to Pullman were aware of any of the three allegories. But even
in the absence of such awareness, the surface story has enough
material requiring interpretation by people of adult intelligence to
qualify as adult literature.
3. ATTRIBUTING EVIL TO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE GOOD
As she did with her Inkling criterion, Caldecott invents another rule
of writing in her third accusation. She says that "parents, priests,
and even God himself," people ordinarily considered good, should be so
portrayed in children's literature – so as not "to harm a child's
capacity for faith." Pity the poor stepchildren in our society who
have seen stepmothers portrayed in children's literature – "Snow
White" and "Cinderella" – as evil. Should we perhaps remove such
stories from school libraries so as not to undermine the faith of
certain children in their stepmothers? Should we also ensure that
children are taught that all priests are good, a lesson that might
render naive children more susceptible to the advances pedophile
priests? And what about the priests who constantly frighten gullible
children with superstitious threats of torture by fire? These people
are evil in my book, if not Caldecott's. Surely Pullman is entitled
to express his own beliefs, not Caldecott's, by portraying not only
priests but God as evil.
Caldecott's criticism is really nothing more than an expression of
personal taste. She presumably knows that many parents and many
priests are evil, but she likes to think they are all good and is
unwilling to let occasional realism interfere with "a child's capacity
for faith." I can understand a religious person's having such an
attitude. But Caldecott has no right to impose her tastes on others
by declaring it wrong for fiction to display evil parents and evil
priests. The same goes for God: atheists have just as much right as
Christians to apply their own tastes in the literature they write.
Caldecott is all the more wrong when she implies that Pullman depicts
Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, as someone evil. Pullman does no such
thing. Asriel is an imperfect human, but he cares for his daughter
and is fighting for a good cause, the quest for the victory of
knowledge over superstition. His goal is to preserve the dust, which
symbolizes knowledge. Caldecott is willing to overlook imperfections
in Harry Potter's father and godfather: "[Harry's] father and his
godfather were far from perfect at his own age of fifteen, . . . . but
none of this adds up to a reversal of the order in which certain
people can be trusted." The same can be said of Lyra's father. He is
imperfect but he is a good man, fighting for the right cause.
4. "DISTORTED AND IGNORANT DEPICTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY"
Caldecott's fourth charge is that Pullman's trilogy "contains one of
the most distorted and ignorant depictions of Christianity in the
history of literature." Let's put that accusation to a test. The
most succinct expression of Pullman's depiction of Christianity comes
from the mouth of the angel Xaphania (a respelling of the biblical
prophet Zephaniah's name): "The history of human life has been a
struggle between wisdom [science, knowledge] and stupidity
[religion]." Caldecott may think Pullman is distorting Chrisianity,
but A. D. White's two-volume 1896 classic, A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF
SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM, thoroughly documents the charge.
Take another example. Dr. Mary Malone says, "The Christian religion
is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." Christianity,
unlike Judaism and some other religions, belongs to a category of
religions scholars call salvation religions. The central purpose of
Christianity is to save souls, that is, to prepare people for a
superstitiously conceived life after death by (a) saving them from
eternal torture in a place or state called hell and (b) enabling them
to enjoy an "eternal life" of bliss in a place or state called heaven,
where they will enjoy the company of God, the Christ, Mary (in the
case of Catholics), angels, saints, and previously or subsequently
departed loved ones. A secondary purpose of Christianity is to give –
under threat of hell – a vain, egomaniacal God all the praise,
worship, gifts (money especially), temples, baptism, penitence,
begging, prayer, bowing, kneeling, liturgy, and other supplication
that he demands and that, if withheld or given too parsimoniously, can
lead to the believer's going to the wrong place after death. Both the
primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in the
supernatural, which by definition are superstitions. The
superstitions include beliefs in God, a supernatural Jesus, a Holy
Spirit, perhaps a Virgin Mary, Satan, angels, demons, heaven, hell,
and magical or quasi-magical effects resulting from certain practices
and rituals such as confession, absolution, manipulation of rosary
beads, baptism, and communion. When Pullman alludes to these beliefs
by calling them, collectively, "a very powerful and convincing
mistake," he is absolutely right.
The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
Christianity, IS a lie. There is no heaven, no life beyond the grave.
So there is no ignorance in calling heaven a lie. Any ignorance
expresses itself in the beliefs in heaven and hell.
To characterize as "distorted" Pullman's describing Christianity as
evil is to bury one's head in the sand. Christianity, not to mention
almost every other religion (with some modern exceptions, such as
Unitarianism), has been a continuing source of evil, suffering, and
corruption: inquisitions, crusades, other religious wars, human
sacrifice (including first-born sacrifice), genocide (including
genocidal infanticide -- by the sword), witch trials and executions,
burnings at the stake, stoning deaths of adultresses, the selling of
indulgences, persecution, discrimination, imprisonment, assassination,
bombings, the Scopes trial, other suppression of the teaching of
evolution, mob intimidation, pedophile priests, paid-for absolutions,
terrified pregnant girls who think they are condemned to hell, and all
sorts of other ills. Neither Caldecott nor any other Christian will
be convinced by such facts, but the facts are just that – facts. They
fully justify Pullman's unflattering description of "the Church."
5. MORAL ON THE LIPS OF A PROTAGONIST
Caldecott next asserts that Pullman is guilty of "the cardinal sin of
fiction, whereby an author, instead of embedding the moral of his
story in the text as a whole, contents himself with putting it on the
lips of a protagonist." Here Caldecott is wrong in several ways.
First, even if having a protagonist explicitly state a point were a
sin – it isn't – fiction displays all sorts of other sins far more
worthy of the adjective "cardinal." Examples are multiple implausible
coincidences, whodunits in which only the detective knows about the
hidden clue or detail, hackneyed plots, and rambling dialogues that
do nothing to advance the plot.
Second, in stories with points or morals or messages, it is not
uncommon for the moral to be explicitly stated. And it is of no
consequence whether the statement comes from the lips of a protagonist
or from the narrator. The fables in AESOP'S FABLES all end with
explicitly stated morals. One Aesop website ends "The Grasshopper and
the Ant" with this explicit moral: "It is best to prepare for the days
of necessity." And I recall from childhood the explicit moral of "The
Hare and the Tortoise." That moral is "Slow and steady wins the
race." Likewise, I seem to recall that, on returning to Kansas,
Dorothy Gale says, "There's no place like home," although that perhaps
does not qualify as a moral. Be that as it may, Caldecott's "lips of
a protagonist" rule is arbitrary and unjustified.
Third, Caldecott is simply wrong when she says, or implies, that the
chief morals of the Dark Materials trilogy are spoken. I suppose
Caldecott is referring to what Lyra says on the penultimate page of
the trilogy: "We shouldn't live as if it [heaven] mattered more than
this life in this world, because where we are is always the most
important place." If Caldecott thinks that moral is all the moralism
there is to Pullman's story, then Pullman put too little rather than
too much on the lips of a protagonist. Not long ago, someone began a
Dark Materials thread on this website by complaining about the "sad
ending," Lyra separated from Will. I replied by explaining that
Pullman is using the separation of the lovers for a symbolic purpose.
He is saying that bliss (symbolized by a future life with Will) cannot
be found in another world (Will's world, symbolizing heaven) promised
by God but must be found in our own world (Lyra's world). This
symbolism was apparently too subtle for Caldecott to grasp. She
thinks that spoken words ("the most important place") that merely hint
at the real message, the message that bliss cannot be found in heaven,
are the essence of the message. She likewise remains completely
oblivious to the hidden message about missionaries, a message she
would have heard if Pullman had put it on the lips of a protagonist.
And she is unaware of the allegorical identities of the various
characters, because neither Lord Asriel nor any character says
anything like "I am Satan." Being unaware of those allegorical
identities, she misses Pullman's message that Jesus is dead, gone, not
still alive in heaven, where he supposedly "sitteth at the right hand
of God, the Father almighty." That is, she doesn't realize that
Metatron symbolizes the Christ, and that Metatron's death symbolizes
the irreversible death of the Christ. It would seem that Pullman
should have abandoned the subtlety that Caldecott prescribes and put
the message – "Jesus doesn't exist" – on Lyra's lips. I should add
that Satan, symbolized by Asriel, also dies. Caldecott missed the
"Satan doesn't exist" message because Pullman followed her
prescription and kept it from Lyra's lips.
6. INCONSISTENT ATTITUDE TOWARDS "POLEMICISM"
Caldecott writes that "it is ironic that Pullman, in reacting to
Lewis's Christian polemicism, should so clearly display the same fault
as he tries to ram his own message home." Here Caldecott's "same
fault" argument depends on her ambiguous use of "polemicism."
Polemicism has specific meaning and a general meaning. When she
refers to Pullman's criticism of "Lewis's Christian polemicism," the
reference is to a specific form of polemicism: pro-Christian
polemicism. But when she refers to "the same fault" in Pullman's
message, she shifts ground. Now she most certainly is not referring
to pro-Christian material: Pullman's material is anti-Christian. What
Caldecott is now referring to is a different sort of polemicism:
argumentativeness in general, without regard to the argument's content
or the author's specific point of view.
She thus misrepresents what Pullman said about Lewis. Pullman was
not objecting to Lewis's displaying a point of view about religion,
without regard to the specific content of that point of view. Pullman
was objecting to Lewis's specifically pro-Christian point of view.
That "fault," which Caldecott does not even regard as a fault, cannot
be found in Pullman's trilogy. Pullman does not display a
pro-Christian point of view, which is what he criticizes Lewis for.
7. PULLMAN'S "MESSAGE OF DESPAIR"
According to Caldecott, "For me the whole Pullman affair is tragic
precisely because . . . a great talent, a formidable intelligence, has
been used to send a message of despair." The message she refers to
is, of course, the message that there is no God, no heaven. And the
real tragedy is that a grown woman, educated and intelligent and
apparently living a comfortable life, is so mired in superstition that
she thinks the disappearance of God and heaven would be a cause for
despair. The only good, the only pleasure, the only happiness she
will acknowledge lies not in the present but in an anticipated future
life after death. A life having no afterlife to look forward to is
cause for "despair." So is a life without the self-centered God who
demands constant worship, praise, prayer, chants, confession, bowing,
kneeling, head covering, rosary manipulation, cathedral building, and
financial contributions – under penalty of perpetual torture by fire.
Caldecott's pitiful attitude amounts to a ringing, if indirect and
unintended, endorsement of Pullman's anti-Christian message. An
intelligent adult's belief that a good and comfortable life not
followed by an afterlife in a supernatural heaven is cause for despair
plainly illustrates one reason why Pullman's anti-Christian themes are
justified.
8. MINOR FACTUAL ERRORS BY CALDECOTT
Beyond the above problems, Caldecott's essay is marred by two minor
errors of fact. On page 3 she says the Dark Materials "dust" is
"equivalent to original sin." What the dust really represents is
knowledge. Dust – knowledge – is what makes the alethiometer work,
enabling it to tell the truth. Xaphania explains things to Lyra and
Will: "Dust is not a constant. There's not a fixed quantity that has
always been the same. Conscious beings make Dust [develop knowledge]
– they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting,
by gaining wisdom and passing it on."
On page 5 Caldecott says that the "fearsomely powerful archangel"
Metatron is "a kind of satire on St. Michael." But she is wrong.
Metatron symbolizes the Christ. In PARADISE LOST, the Christ attacks
Satan and his rebellious angels by driving his "fierce chariot" at
them and herding them to the wall of heaven, which opens and thereby
permits Jesus to drive the rebels over the edge and down into hell.
In Pullman's trilogy, Metatron moves across the sky in a floating
Clouded Mountain, sometimes called "the Chariot." Metatron's driving
the chariot and his using it to attack Asriel's (Satan's) rebel angels
affirm that Metatron symbolizes the Christ. Identifying Metatron with
the Christ is the whole point of calling the floating mountain "the
Chariot."
Warchild
"Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com...
> Tolkien, Charles Williams, and George MacDonald. According to
> Caldecott, Pullman's trilogy fails this test. But Caldecott's case
> begins to crumble when she fails to say why good fantasy novels must
> established by - the works of these earlier writers. Why can't a
> modern fantasy writer develop new themes and new formats and proceed
> in new directions? And why must the Inklings provide the standard by
> which later fantasy must be judged? That standard, if it even exists
> and can be defined, is arbitrary. Why not use L. Frank Baum's Oz
> books or Dickens' "A Christman Carol" (a supernaturalistic story
> featuring ghosts) as the standard?
>
> I would argue that the only criteria a good fantasy novel must meet
> are (a) the inclusion of supernaturalism, the definitive
> characteristic of fantasy, (b) technically good, readable writing, and
> (c) an entertaining, imaginative plot. Other characteristics, such as
> a worthwhile message or a hidden allegory (both of which are found in
> Pullman's trilogy), are unessential but can add to a story's quality.
>
> Caldecott's argument continues to crumble when she fails to define
> clearly the Inkling characteristics that "good" fantasy must observe.
> We get only hints. She does say that both Lewis and Tolkien developed
> Christian themes. I'm not so sure that is true when it comes to
> Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy but, in any case, it is foolish to
> suggest that good fantasy must have pro-Christian or any other
> pro-religious themes. Religious content, and especially pro-religious
> content, is not and cannot be made a requirement of good fantasy.
>
> Inklings "all sought to enchant the imagination with new fairly tales
> built firmly on the foundations of the old stories." In other words,
> good fantasy supposedly must be at least loosely based on the fairy
> tale. But the fairy tale criterion is again foolish. Good fantasy
> indeed CAN bear a resemblance to old-fashioned fairy tales, but why
> MUST it do so? Did Tolkien's THE HOBBIT end with Bilbo Baggins
> marrying a figurative princess and living happily ever after, and was
> he a heroic figure, comparable to a fairy tale prince? Does the LORD
> OF THE RINGS trilogy, which Caldecott admires, end with Frodo marrying
> a figurative princess and living happily ever after? To be sure,
> Caldecott could (but wisely doesn't) argue that good fantasy must,
> Pullman's included - contains supernaturalism, that criterion fails to
> discriminate between good and bad fantasy.
>
> Caldecott apparently would reply that neither "happily ever after"
> nor supernaturalism is quite what she has in mind. Near the end of
> tales - she returns to the fairy tale theme. "The consolation of
> fairy-stories [is] the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of
> the good catastrophe . . . , the sudden joyous 'turn.'" But fairy
> tales, with or without romance, don't always have that "sudden joyous
> turn" at the end. How about Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little
> Mermaid" (very sad ending) and his "The Emperor's New Clothes" (an
> embarrassing moralistic "turn")? And how about "Chicken Little,"
> where the protagonist and his companions get eaten by Foxy Loxy?
> Again, "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" ends with the greedy king
> getting his comeuppance. Where's the joy?
>
> I suspect Caldecott would answer that her Inklings avoided the
> anomalous, nonjoyous endings of some fairy tales. She has in mind
> only the "sudden joyous turn" criterion she finds in the tales penned
> by the Inklings. But "sudden joyous turn" is a criterion that
> Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy easily meets. Both primary villains
> Coulter - also dies, organized religion falls into disarray, the
> mulefa (intelligent, wheeled animals) are saved from the threatened
> fate of the demise of their life-giving wheel-pod trees, and the
> heroine returns home to a revitalized situation that offers her a
> promising future in science. If emphasis must be placed on "sudden,"
> the sudden event is when Lyra and Will realize that they are in love.
> This event causes the dust (symbolizing knowledge) to start raining
> down from the heavens on them, on mankind, and on the dust-starved,
> upturned blossoms of the pod-wheel trees on whose survival mulefa
> civilization depends.
>
> I would also ask where Caldecott gets the idea that a "sudden joyous
> turn" is a unique characteristic fairy tales. Most novels, and not
> just romance and crime novels and adventure novels, allow good to
> triumph over evil. Caldecott could just as well argue that good
> fantasy must resemble traditional westerns in the respect that
> westerns usually end with a "sudden joyous turn."
>
> Caldecott's Inkling criterion, by any interpretation, simply doesn't
> make sense.
>
> 2. DISPARAGEMENT OF PULLMAN'S WHITBREAD PRIZE
>
> Caldecott next attacks the decision to give Pullman the 2002
> Whitbread Book of the Year Award for THE AMBER SPYGLASS, the third
> book of his Dark Materials trilogy. She writes: "No children's novel,
> under the rules governing the award, had ever been able to win the
> overall prize [contrasted with the children's literature prize] among
> the categories competing.
One must note - Pullman's trilogy was not originally marketed to children.
It has only been published in YA editions in *reprintings*. The original
editions were marketed as a very standard fantasy trilogy.
For Pullman, the rules were bent, or
> broken, and the great accolade was, for the first time in the history
> of the prize, awarded to a piece of fiction marketed as being for
> children (though Pullman has recently started to claim that he did not
> write it as children's fiction at all)."
>
> The answer to this charge is that the Dark Materials trilogy is both
> children's and adult fiction. What nobody, and certainly not
> Caldecott, seems to have recognized is that Pullman's tale is allegory
> - brilliantly conceived, richly detailed allegory. An allegory is a
> portrayed in children's literature - so as not "to harm a child's
> capacity for faith." Pity the poor stepchildren in our society who
> have seen stepmothers portrayed in children's literature - "Snow
> White" and "Cinderella" - as evil. Should we perhaps remove such
> departed loved ones. A secondary purpose of Christianity is to give -
> under threat of hell - a vain, egomaniacal God all the praise,
> be convinced by such facts, but the facts are just that - facts. They
> fully justify Pullman's unflattering description of "the Church."
>
> 5. MORAL ON THE LIPS OF A PROTAGONIST
>
> Caldecott next asserts that Pullman is guilty of "the cardinal sin of
> fiction, whereby an author, instead of embedding the moral of his
> story in the text as a whole, contents himself with putting it on the
> lips of a protagonist." Here Caldecott is wrong in several ways.
> First, even if having a protagonist explicitly state a point were a
> sin - it isn't - fiction displays all sorts of other sins far more
> the message - "Jesus doesn't exist" - on Lyra's lips. I should add
> financial contributions - under penalty of perpetual torture by fire.
>
> Caldecott's pitiful attitude amounts to a ringing, if indirect and
> unintended, endorsement of Pullman's anti-Christian message. An
> intelligent adult's belief that a good and comfortable life not
> followed by an afterlife in a supernatural heaven is cause for despair
> plainly illustrates one reason why Pullman's anti-Christian themes are
> justified.
>
> 8. MINOR FACTUAL ERRORS BY CALDECOTT
>
> Beyond the above problems, Caldecott's essay is marred by two minor
> errors of fact. On page 3 she says the Dark Materials "dust" is
> "equivalent to original sin." What the dust really represents is
> knowledge. Dust - knowledge - is what makes the alethiometer work,
> enabling it to tell the truth. Xaphania explains things to Lyra and
> Will: "Dust is not a constant. There's not a fixed quantity that has
> always been the same. Conscious beings make Dust [develop knowledge]
> - they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting,
David E. Siegel
> 1. FALSE CRITERIA FOR GOOD FANTASY: THE INKLINGS
>
> Caldecott's first anti-Pullman argument is this: "A case can be made
> for measuring the fantasy novels of this last decade against those of
> half a century earlier," specifically, fantasy novels written by four
> Tolkien, Charles Williams, and George MacDonald. According to
> Caldecott, Pullman's trilogy fails this test.
A case can always be made for measuring a recent work against widely
admired works of the past. But a verdict of 'Quite different, but
also good" should be allowed.
>But Caldecott's case
> begins to crumble when she fails to say why good fantasy novels must
> imitate ? or at any rate observe certain unspecified criteria
> established by ? the works of these earlier writers. Why can't a
> modern fantasy writer develop new themes and new formats and proceed
> in new directions? And why must the Inklings provide the standard by
> which later fantasy must be judged? That standard, if it even exists
> and can be defined, is arbitrary. Why not use L. Frank Baum's Oz
> books or Dickens' "A Christman Carol" (a supernaturalistic story
> featuring ghosts) as the standard?
I quite agree.
>
> I would argue that the only criteria a good fantasy novel must meet
> are (a) the inclusion of supernaturalism, the definitive
> characteristic of fantasy, (b) technically good, readable writing, and
> (c) an entertaining, imaginative plot. Other characteristics, such as
> a worthwhile message or a hidden allegory (both of which are found in
> Pullman's trilogy), are unessential but can add to a story's quality.
>
> Caldecott's argument continues to crumble when she fails to define
> clearly the Inkling characteristics that "good" fantasy must observe.
> We get only hints. She does say that both Lewis and Tolkien developed
> Christian themes. I'm not so sure that is true when it comes to
> Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy but,
JRRT thought it was true of his work, or at least he said so in
several of his letters. He didn't seem to think it was a
characteristic of all good fantasy, or even of all fantasy that he he
himself enjoyed. Note that "developed
Christian themes" is NOT the same as "composed chritian allegories".
JRRT strongly deniewd that LotR was an allegory of any kind, and
seemed to have thought less of CSLs works that were allegorical
precisely for this reason.
>in any case, it is foolish to
> suggest that good fantasy must have pro-Christian or any other
> pro-religious themes. Religious content, and especially pro-religious
> content, is not and cannot be made a requirement of good fantasy.
Exactly.
>
> The only other hint ? probably what she has in mind ? is that the
> Inklings "all sought to enchant the imagination with new fairly tales
> built firmly on the foundations of the old stories." In other words,
> good fantasy supposedly must be at least loosely based on the fairy
> tale. But the fairy tale criterion is again foolish. Good fantasy
> indeed CAN bear a resemblance to old-fashioned fairy tales, but why
> MUST it do so? Did Tolkien's THE HOBBIT end with Bilbo Baggins
> marrying a figurative princess and living happily ever after, and was
> he a heroic figure, comparable to a fairy tale prince? Does the LORD
> OF THE RINGS trilogy, which Caldecott admires, end with Frodo marrying
> a figurative princess and living happily ever after? To be sure,
> Caldecott could (but wisely doesn't) argue that good fantasy must,
> like fairy tales, involve supernaturalism. But, since all fantasy ?
> Pullman's included ? contains supernaturalism, that criterion fails to
> discriminate between good and bad fantasy.
>
> Caldecott apparently would reply that neither "happily ever after"
> nor supernaturalism is quite what she has in mind. Near the end of
> her essay ? far removed from her original "Inkling" reference to fairy
> tales ? she returns to the fairy tale theme. "The consolation of
> fairy-stories [is] the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of
> the good catastrophe . . . , the sudden joyous ?turn.'" But fairy
> tales, with or without romance, don't always have that "sudden joyous
> turn" at the end. How about Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little
> Mermaid" (very sad ending) and his "The Emperor's New Clothes" (an
> embarrassing moralistic "turn")? And how about "Chicken Little,"
> where the protagonist and his companions get eaten by Foxy Loxy?
> Again, "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" ends with the greedy king
> getting his comeuppance. Where's the joy?
The concept of the "sudden joyous turn" or "good catastrophe" as a
form of "consolation" is taken straight from JRRT's essay "On Fairy
Stories". However, although he says it is characteristic of "fairy
tales" he says that it is also chjaracteristic of any good fantasy,
and indeed of any well-written story in any genre. Note that the
"joyous turn" need not come at the end, and can be quite brief. in
LotR the primary "good catastrophe" isprpbably the chapter "The Field
of Cormallon" when Frodo awakes after having been rescued from the
downfall of Sauron, or perhaps the moment of the downfall itself,
particualrly as seen from afar by Eowyn and F. Read "OFS" for a number
of examples of the "joyous turn" in various stories, classic and
newer, as JRRT saw it.
Note that to JRRT this "joyous turn" always echos, on an unconsious
level at least, the "real-live" turn provided by the story of the
rebirth of christ. But not everyone will agree with this.
>
> I suspect Caldecott would answer that her Inklings avoided the
> anomalous, nonjoyous endings of some fairy tales. She has in mind
> only the "sudden joyous turn" criterion she finds in the tales penned
> by the Inklings. But "sudden joyous turn" is a criterion that
> Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy easily meets.
<snip examples>
>
> I would also ask where Caldecott gets the idea that a "sudden joyous
> turn" is a unique characteristic fairy tales. Most novels, and not
> just romance and crime novels and adventure novels, allow good to
> triumph over evil. Caldecott could just as well argue that good
> fantasy must resemble traditional westerns in the respect that
> westerns usually end with a "sudden joyous turn."
>
I would say that she gets it by grossly mis-reading JRRT's essay,
cited above.
> Caldecott's Inkling criterion, by any interpretation, simply doesn't
> make sense.
>
> 2. DISPARAGEMENT OF PULLMAN'S WHITBREAD PRIZE
>
> Caldecott next attacks the decision to give Pullman the 2002
> Whitbread Book of the Year Award for THE AMBER SPYGLASS, the third
> book of his Dark Materials trilogy. She writes: "No children's novel,
> under the rules governing the award, had ever been able to win the
> overall prize [contrasted with the children's literature prize] among
> the categories competing. For Pullman, the rules were bent, or
> broken, and the great accolade was, for the first time in the history
> of the prize, awarded to a piece of fiction marketed as being for
> children (though Pullman has recently started to claim that he did not
> write it as children's fiction at all)."
>
> The answer to this charge is that the Dark Materials trilogy is both
> children's and adult fiction. What nobody, and certainly not
> Caldecott, seems to have recognized is that Pullman's tale is allegory
> ? brilliantly conceived, richly detailed allegory.
<snip>
> Actually, Pullman's tale hides three hidden stories: (1) an upside
> down retelling of John Milton's PARADISE LOST, combined with some
> other biblical material, (2) a straightforward retelling of the C.S.
> Lewis story THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, to which
> Pullman's surface story is an anti-Christian rebuttal, and (3) an
> extremely subtle anti-missionary allegory. Only one previous story, a
> story from film rather than literature, has managed to accomplish the
> complex feat of developing a triple allegory, so Pullman has achieved
> a prize-deserving literary "first." (The previous triple allegory is
> Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which allegorized (1)
> Nietzsche's THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, (2) Homer's THE ODYSSEY, and (3)
> Arthur Clarke's theory of future man-machine symbiosis.)
While I'm not sure enough to cite examples, i think that multi-level
allegories are rather more common than you imply. Well-constructed
ones may be a different matter, of course.
<snip>
> 3. ATTRIBUTING EVIL TO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE GOOD
>
> As she did with her Inkling criterion, Caldecott invents another rule
> of writing in her third accusation. She says that "parents, priests,
> and even God himself," people ordinarily considered good, should be so
> portrayed in children's literature ? so as not "to harm a child's
> capacity for faith." Pity the poor stepchildren in our society who
> have seen stepmothers portrayed in children's literature ? "Snow
> White" and "Cinderella" ? as evil. Should we perhaps remove such
> stories from school libraries so as not to undermine the faith of
> certain children in their stepmothers? Should we also ensure that
> children are taught that all priests are good, a lesson that might
> render naive children more susceptible to the advances pedophile
> priests? And what about the priests who constantly frighten gullible
> children with superstitious threats of torture by fire? These people
> are evil in my book, if not Caldecott's. Surely Pullman is entitled
> to express his own beliefs, not Caldecott's, by portraying not only
> priests but God as evil.
>
> Caldecott's criticism is really nothing more than an expression of
> personal taste. She presumably knows that many parents and many
> priests are evil, but she likes to think they are all good and is
> unwilling to let occasional realism interfere with "a child's capacity
> for faith."
exactly!
>
> 4. "DISTORTED AND IGNORANT DEPICTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY"
>
> Caldecott's fourth charge is that Pullman's trilogy "contains one of
> the most distorted and ignorant depictions of Christianity in the
> history of literature." Let's put that accusation to a test. The
> most succinct expression of Pullman's depiction of Christianity comes
> from the mouth of the angel Xaphania (a respelling of the biblical
> prophet Zephaniah's name): "The history of human life has been a
> struggle between wisdom [science, knowledge] and stupidity
> [religion]." Caldecott may think Pullman is distorting Chrisianity,
> but A. D. White's two-volume 1896 classic, A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF
> SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM, thoroughly documents the charge.
Actually this is an unfortunate source to cite. It is itself a
classic of spin-doctoring, and distorts and invets much of the history
it retells. You might do better to cite Twain's "Mysterious Stranger"
from the same period.
<snip>
> Both the
> primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in the
> supernatural, which by definition are superstitions.
I would not define any belif in a diety as a superstition. Nor I think
do most people so define it. and 'unproved' and even 'unprovable' are
not the same as 'false'. This is as much an assertion of a belif
system as factually true as that which any religious figure makes.
<snip>
>When Pullman alludes to these beliefs
> by calling them, collectively, "a very powerful and convincing
> mistake," he is absolutely right.
>
> The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> Christianity, IS a lie. There is no heaven, no life beyond the grave.
and your definate evidence for this is.. what exactly? if youwere to
say it is "an unproved specualtion, not supported by an evidence, so
to assert tht it is fact is a lie" then you would be on much firmer
ground.
>
> To characterize as "distorted" Pullman's describing Christianity as
> evil is to bury one's head in the sand. Christianity, not to mention
> almost every other religion (with some modern exceptions, such as
> Unitarianism), has been a continuing source of evil, suffering, and
> corruption: inquisitions, crusades, other religious wars, human
> sacrifice (including first-born sacrifice), genocide (including
> genocidal infanticide -- by the sword), witch trials and executions,
> burnings at the stake, stoning deaths of adultresses, the selling of
> indulgences, persecution, discrimination, imprisonment, assassination,
> bombings, the Scopes trial, other suppression of the teaching of
> evolution, mob intimidation, pedophile priests, paid-for absolutions,
> terrified pregnant girls who think they are condemned to hell, and all
> sorts of other ills. Neither Caldecott nor any other Christian will
> be convinced by such facts, but the facts are just that ? facts. They
> fully justify Pullman's unflattering description of "the Church."
You can take almost any social force which has strongly influenced
many people over long time periods and find both good and evil
consequences. This includes both the chtistin church and organized
science.
<snip>
-DES
Giles
children.
Um, what? The publisher was Scholastic and young'uns are pretty much
their demographic.
Warchild
"Giles" <gbo...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
Um - the first paperback versions from several years ago were not in the
YA format. That what.
Warchild
Warchild <no...@none.com> wrote:
To follow up on that - published in the US by the Del Rey division of
Ballantine Books.
Andrew Wheeler
So you're using a very specific and unusual definition of "originally,"
then -- to mean "in a subsequent reprint form, in a later country of publication."
To be more specific: _The Golden Compass_ was published (in the USA) in
1996 in hardcover by Knopf Books For Young Readers (an imprint used only
for YA titles, as one might guess) and reprinted in paperback in 1997 by
Ballantine Del Rey (an imprint used for both adult and YA books --
they've published many of the Heinlein juveniles in paperback for three
decades or so). In the UK, the same book was known as _Northern Lights_
and was published by Scholastic (a house which does not publish books
for adults) in hardcover in 1995 and in paperback in 1996.
All this, of course, means absolutely nothing with regards to the
literary or extra-literary work of Pullman's trilogy -- but it does mean
that when you replied to a very long message with no snipping and only
one interpolated sentence you were not only quite rude but completely
factually incorrect.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"The fragmented nations apparently stand for his favourite sure-fire
sign of cultural sickness: identifying oneself with one's own race,
religion, language, sex or sf association rather than all pulling
together for America and Robert Heinlein. Other symptoms include being
rude to Robert Heinlein, making Robert Heinlein pay excessive tax, and
writing poor reviews of Heinlein books; perhaps I exaggerate."
-David Langford on _Friday_
JoatSimeon
>
>A case can always be made for measuring a recent work against widely
admired works of the past. But a verdict of 'Quite different, but also good"
should be allowed.
-- however, Pullman has stated that his work was partially intended to replace
those of the Inklings, which he considers pernicious _because of their
ideology_.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap"; that leaves him legitimately open to the same
sort of criticism.
Nancy Lebovitz
Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>3. ATTRIBUTING EVIL TO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE GOOD
>
> As she did with her Inkling criterion, Caldecott invents another rule
>of writing in her third accusation. She says that "parents, priests,
>and even God himself," people ordinarily considered good, should be so
>portrayed in children's literature – so as not "to harm a child's
>capacity for faith."
In the chronicles of Narnia, Eustace is portrayed as having bad parents.
I suspect that Caldecott means "priests" very literally, but Lewis at
least has it that religion can go bad, and it takes thought and attention
to tell whether and what parts of your religion should be taken seriously.
Tolkien has Denethor as a *very* bad father.
--
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
"We've tamed the lightning and taught sand to give error messages."
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
Matt Ruff
>
> 4. "DISTORTED AND IGNORANT DEPICTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY"
>
> Caldecott's fourth charge is that Pullman's trilogy "contains one of
> the most distorted and ignorant depictions of Christianity in the
> history of literature." Let's put that accusation to a test. The
> most succinct expression of Pullman's depiction of Christianity comes
> from the mouth of the angel Xaphania (a respelling of the biblical
> prophet Zephaniah's name): "The history of human life has been a
> struggle between wisdom [science, knowledge] and stupidity
> [religion]."
So Pullman's nuanced critique of Christianity is to say that it's stupid?
> Caldecott may think Pullman is distorting Chrisianity,
I don't know if calling it stupid is "distortion," but it doesn't sound
like much of an argument, either.
> Take another example. Dr. Mary Malone says, "The Christian religion
> is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." Christianity,
> unlike Judaism and some other religions, belongs to a category of
> religions scholars call salvation religions. The central purpose of
> Christianity is to save souls,
Christianity isn't a monolith, so to speak of it as having a "central
purpose" really is a distortion. Yes, the promise of salvation is a big
part of its appeal for many people, but that's hardly the whole story.
> The
> superstitions include beliefs in God, a supernatural Jesus, a Holy
> Spirit, perhaps a Virgin Mary, Satan, angels, demons, heaven, hell,
> and magical or quasi-magical effects resulting from certain practices
> and rituals such as confession, absolution, manipulation of rosary
> beads, baptism, and communion. When Pullman alludes to these beliefs
> by calling them, collectively, "a very powerful and convincing
> mistake," he is absolutely right.
Well, first of all, Christians vary widely in their attitude towards the
more supernatural aspects of their religion -- to describe them all as
wide-eyed believers in angels, demons, etc. is another distortion.
Second, even if we stipulate that supernatural beliefs are false,
whether they are a "mistake" depends on what the beliefs are intended to
achieve and what they actually do achieve.
> The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> Christianity, IS a lie.
I don't believe in Heaven, but even if I'm correct and it doesn't exist,
that doesn't make the people who do believe in it liars. They're just wrong.
> So there is no ignorance in calling heaven a lie.
Unless heaven actually exists, of course. And whether it exists or not,
calling it a lie implies not just ignorance but bad faith on the part of
believers.
> To characterize as "distorted" Pullman's describing Christianity as
> evil is to bury one's head in the sand.
Oh please.
> According to Caldecott, "For me the whole Pullman affair is tragic
> precisely because . . . a great talent, a formidable intelligence, has
> been used to send a message of despair." The message she refers to
> is, of course, the message that there is no God, no heaven. And the
> real tragedy is that a grown woman, educated and intelligent and
> apparently living a comfortable life, is so mired in superstition that
> she thinks the disappearance of God and heaven would be a cause for
> despair.
Well, for people who believe in God in heaven, and take a great comfort
in that belief, it would be a cause for despair. That doesn't mean
Pullman can't or shouldn't argue against religion if he wants to, but it
seems to me Caldecott should be equally free to be disappointed with him
if he does.
-- M. Ruff
Warchild
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:417856BA...@optonline.com...
Thank god for the Net Police! Who else would there be to not only point out
my factual error, but to brow beat me at the same time!
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Thank god for the Net Police! Who else would there be to not only point out
> my factual error, but to brow beat me at the same time!
Some of us believe facts matter more than opinions. And some of us
believe etiquette is important. Knowing who *doesn't* believe in those
two things can also be useful.
But it's not an exclusive club; anyone can join -- all you have to do is
strive to get your facts right [1] and follow the standard guidelines of
attribution and editing.
[1] In a related discussion of Pullman a couple of weeks ago, I
brain-farted out a post calling _The Amber Spyglass_ the first novel in
the trilogy, and was quickly corrected by someone who was thinking
straight that day. So this isn't an "I'm right and you're wrong" exercise.
Leonard F. Wheat
> > Both the
> > primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in the
> > supernatural, which by definition are superstitions.
>
> I would not define any belief in a deity as a superstition. Nor I think
> do most people so define it. and 'unproved' and even 'unprovable' are
> not the same as 'false'. This is as much an assertion of a belief
> system as factually true as that which any religious figure makes.
I did not and do not "define any belief in a deity as a superstition."
I wrote that "false beliefs in the supernatural" are, "by
definition," superstitions. That is, a superstition can be defined as
a false belief in the supernatural. If Zeus and Apallo, a couple of
supernatural gods, really exist, belief in them is not a superstition.
If they do not exist but you believe in them, your belief is a
superstition.
>
> <snip>
>
> >When Pullman alludes to these beliefs
> > by calling them, collectively, "a very powerful and convincing
> > mistake," he is absolutely right.
> >
> > The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> > believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> > Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> > Christianity, IS a lie. There is no heaven, no life beyond the grave.
>
> and your definate evidence for this is.. what exactly? if you were to
> say it is "an unproved specualtion, not supported by an evidence, so
> to assert tht it is fact is a lie" then you would be on much firmer
> ground.
I need no evidence to assert that there exists no Santa Clause, no
tooth fairy, no incubus, no demon, no Zeus, and no heaven. In all
such matters, the burden of proof lies with the person affirming the
existence of such supernatural entities. These are all obvious cases
of "you can't prove a negative" (whereas, if any of these things
exist, evidence of their existence could exist). How would you go
about disproving the existence of demons? They might be invisible
and, as spirits, lacking any other physical qualities (mass, heat,
magnetism, physical substance, etc.) that could be detected by any
scientific instrument.
> >
> > To characterize as "distorted" Pullman's describing Christianity as
> > evil is to bury one's head in the sand. Christianity, not to mention
> > almost every other religion (with some modern exceptions, such as
> > Unitarianism), has been a continuing source of evil, suffering, and
> > corruption: inquisitions, crusades, other religious wars, human
> > sacrifice (including first-born sacrifice), genocide (including
> > genocidal infanticide -- by the sword), witch trials and executions,
> > burnings at the stake, stoning deaths of adultresses, the selling of
> > indulgences, persecution, discrimination, imprisonment, assassination,
> > bombings, the Scopes trial, other suppression of the teaching of
> > evolution, mob intimidation, pedophile priests, paid-for absolutions,
> > terrified pregnant girls who think they are condemned to hell, and all
> > sorts of other ills. Neither Caldecott nor any other Christian will
> > be convinced by such facts, but the facts are just that ? facts. They
> > fully justify Pullman's unflattering description of "the Church."
>
> You can take almost any social force which has strongly influenced
> many people over long time periods and find both good and evil
> consequences. This includes both the Christian church and organized
> science.
I certainly won't deny that churches occasionally do good things, the
least of which may be providing pleasure and entertainment for their
members through such activities as pot-luck suppers (or sourkraut
dinners in the case of my grandmother's church) and youth Christmas
carol outings. Of greater value is the Seventh Day Adventist hospital
work in underdeveloped countries. Charitable work by churches also
has value. But the good things don't come close to balancing the evil
that religion has wrought. All the pot-luck suppers ever held cannot
compensate for one Scopes trial, and the joy of Christmas carol
outings cannot compensate for the terror and panic that fear of being
cast into "the hell of fire" has struck in the hearts of many pregnant
Catholic teenagers (I am familiar with specific instances). What have
you to offer in exchange for the Spanish Inquisition, the World Trade
Center disaster, the abortion clinic doctor's assassination by a
Catholic zealot, and the intimidation of abortion clinic patients by
jeering, spitting, threatening mobs of Catholics and Fundamentalist
Protestants?
As for your "evil consequences" of some science, science is not the
issue. We are discussing the evil in religion. Two wrongs don't make
a right.
Leonard F. Wheat
> those of the Inklings, which he considers pernicious _because of their
> ideology_.
>
> "As ye sow, so shall ye reap"; that leaves him legitimately open to the same
> sort of criticism.
Well, of course Pullman's delivering an opinionated message about
religion leaves him open to the same sort of criticism he directs at
those who deliver messages reflecting the opposite opinion. But being
"open to the same sort of criticism" does not validate that criticism.
What we are discussing here is the validity of Caldecott's criticism
of Pullman's work, not Caldecott's right to deliver her criticism.
Wayne Throop
: I need no evidence to assert that there exists no Santa Clause, no
: tooth fairy, no incubus, no demon, no Zeus, and no heaven. In all
: such matters, the burden of proof lies with the person affirming the
: existence of such supernatural entities.
Proof schmoof. I see no reason to assert anything about them at all,
in any strong sense. I simply *assume* they don't exist as a working
hypothesis, until the hypothesis becomes unuseful. No reason to
go around "asserting" it.
assert
@as.sert \*-'s*rt\ vb
1: to state positively
2: to maintain against opposition : DEFEND
SYN: declare, affirm, protest, avow, claim
-- as.sert.ive \-'s*rt-iv\ adj
-- as.sert.ive.ness n
Asserting pink unicorns don't exist is just too much bother, IMO.
"Maintaining against opposition", "defend"ing, "protest"ing, etc.
To state a negative positively. And squabbling over who should *prove*
things about pink unicorns is *way* far more effort than it's worth.
Indeed, this post is far more.... oh foo, the rest disappears
in a puff of self-reference.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Ghod
news:b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com...
: sie...@acm.org (David E. Siegel) wrote in message
news:<dbdfe7e0.04102...@posting.google.com>...
: > > Both the
: > > primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in
the
: > > supernatural, which by definition are superstitions.
:
: >
: > I would not define any belief in a deity as a superstition. Nor I
think
: > do most people so define it. and 'unproved' and even 'unprovable'
are
: > not the same as 'false'. This is as much an assertion of a belief
: > system as factually true as that which any religious figure makes.
:
:
: I did not and do not "define any belief in a deity as a
superstition."
: I wrote that "false beliefs in the supernatural" are, "by
: definition," superstitions. That is, a superstition can be defined
as
: a false belief in the supernatural. If Zeus and Apallo, a couple of
: supernatural gods, really exist, belief in them is not a
superstition.
: If they do not exist but you believe in them, your belief is a
: superstition.
The OED says:
superstition
1. Unreasoning awe or fear of something unknown, mysterious, or
imaginary, esp. in connexion with religion; religious belief or
practice founded upon fear or ignorance.
b. In particularized sense: An irrational religious belief or
practice; a tenet, scruple, habit, etc. founded on fear or ignorance.
2. An irrational religious system; a false, pagan, or idolatrous
religion. Now rare or Obs.
b. A religious ceremony or observance of a pagan or idolatrous
character. Now rare or Obs.
c. Religious observance. Obs. rare1.
d. Idolatrous or extravagant devotion. Obs.
3. 'Over-nicety; exactness too scrupulous' (J., 1755). (Cf.
SUPERSTITIOUS 3.) Obs. rare0.
4. transf. (from 1). Irrational or unfounded belief in general; an
unreasonable or groundless notion.
Merriam-Webster Online:
1 a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the
unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural,
nature, or God resulting from superstition
2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
I've always found the argument that a belief in a god is not
superstition to be pretty silly.......
Ghod
Random House Webster's:
1. a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the
ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence,
proceeding, or the like.
2. a system or collection of such beliefs.
3. a custom or act based on such a belief.
4. irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in
connection with religion.
5. any blindly accepted belief or notion.
See #4? Perfect.
Leonard F. Wheat
> In article <b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com>,
> Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >3. ATTRIBUTING EVIL TO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE GOOD
> >
> > As she did with her Inkling criterion, Caldecott invents another rule
> >of writing in her third accusation. She says that "parents, priests,
> >and even God himself," people ordinarily considered good, should be so
> >capacity for faith."
>
> In the chronicles of Narnia, Eustace is portrayed as having bad parents.
>
> I suspect that Caldecott means "priests" very literally, but Lewis at
> least has it that religion can go bad, and it takes thought and attention
> to tell whether and what parts of your religion should be taken seriously.
>
> Tolkien has Denethor as a *very* bad father.
> --
And here's another example: The New Testament gospels portray the
priests of Jerusalem as evil bribers. Now, I'll admit that the
gospels are not exactly children's literature, but I can testify from
first hand experience that they are used -- and the example in
question is used -- to teach children in Christian Sunday School
classes. In Mark 14:10-11, Matthew 26:14-16, and Luke 22:3-6, priests
bribe Judas with silver to betray Jesus.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> >
> > 4. "DISTORTED AND IGNORANT DEPICTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY"
> >
> > Caldecott's fourth charge is that Pullman's trilogy "contains one of
> > the most distorted and ignorant depictions of Christianity in the
> > history of literature." Let's put that accusation to a test. The
> > most succinct expression of Pullman's depiction of Christianity comes
> > from the mouth of the angel Xaphania (a respelling of the biblical
> > prophet Zephaniah's name): "The history of human life has been a
> > struggle between wisdom [science, knowledge] and stupidity
> > [religion]."
>
> So Pullman's nuanced critique of Christianity is to say that it's stupid?
>
> > Caldecott may think Pullman is distorting Chrisianity,
>
> I don't know if calling it stupid is "distortion," but it doesn't sound
> like much of an argument, either.
It isn't intended as an "argument." It is a conclusion or, if you
prefer, a characterization of religion.
>
> > Take another example. Dr. Mary Malone says, "The Christian religion
> > is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." Christianity,
> > unlike Judaism and some other religions, belongs to a category of
> > religions scholars call salvation religions. The central purpose of
> > Christianity is to save souls,
>
> Christianity isn't a monolith, so to speak of it as having a "central
> purpose" really is a distortion. Yes, the promise of salvation is a big
> part of its appeal for many people, but that's hardly the whole story.
Now you are speaking nonsense. I said the central purpose of
Christianity is to save souls, and it is. That does not mean that
saving souls is all there is to Christianity. Appeasing and stroking
the ego of a vainglorious, egomaniacal, and arrogant might-makes-right
God is another purpose, albeit closely related to the first. Gaining
all sorts of favors in this world (lottery winnings, cures, love,
football victory -- anything and everything people pray for) is still
another purpose.
And forcing non-Christians, non-Catholics, and nonfundamentalists to
live by Catholic-fundamentalist antiabortion doctrine and Protestant
fundamentalist creationism and school prayer doctrine is yet another
purpose of at least a large segment of Christianity -- including
probably most Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans and
practically all members of the numerous "Bible Church" sects. We
might call this use of government to impose Christian doctrines and
practices on others "integration of church and state."
> > The
> > superstitions include beliefs in God, a supernatural Jesus, a Holy
> > Spirit, perhaps a Virgin Mary, Satan, angels, demons, heaven, hell,
> > and magical or quasi-magical effects resulting from certain practices
> > and rituals such as confession, absolution, manipulation of rosary
> > beads, baptism, and communion. When Pullman alludes to these beliefs
> > by calling them, collectively, "a very powerful and convincing
> > mistake," he is absolutely right.
>
> Well, first of all, Christians vary widely in their attitude towards the
> more supernatural aspects of their religion -- to describe them all as
> wide-eyed believers in angels, demons, etc. is another distortion.
Nobody is describing "all" Christians as wide-eyed believers in all of
the idiotic beliefs of Christianity. In fact, I was describing
CHRISTIANITY (the religion), not Christians (the members of the
Christian churches). Christians do vary widely in their beliefs.
Many of them -- Congregationalists, Methodists, and Episcopalians
especially -- reject most of the things their official religion calls
on them to believe. Millions of Christians don't believe in hell,
Satan, demons, angels, Adam and Eve, or miracles, and a smaller number
don't believe in heaven or the power of prayer either. But those
beliefs ARE some of the chief beliefs and doctrines of Christianity,
whether or not every Christian believes them. (I exclude Unitarians
from the Christian category: they don't believe any of this nonsense.)
>
> Second, even if we stipulate that supernatural beliefs are false,
> whether they are a "mistake" depends on what the beliefs are intended to
> achieve and what they actually do achieve.
You surely have strange notions about what a mistake is. If something
is untrue, believing it to be true is a mistake, regardless of whether
the false belief has consequences. It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome. My
dictionary defines a mistake as (1) "an error or fault resulting from
insufficient knowledge, deficient knowledge, or carelessness" and (2)
"a misconception or misunderstanding." Nothing there about intent or
results. The belief in heaven and every other superstition qualify as
mistakes.
>
> > The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> > believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> > Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> > Christianity, IS a lie.
>
> I don't believe in Heaven, but even if I'm correct and it doesn't exist,
> that doesn't make the people who do believe in it liars. They're just wrong.
Go back and reread what Baruch said. He said that the CHURCHES --
institutions, not people -- are telling lies. I too was referring to
the teachings of the churches. You certainly can recognize that
Baruch (speaking for Pullman) is using "lie" loosely to mean a
falsehood; he is not using "lie" in its narrow or technical sense a
false statement made by someone who knows it is false.
>
> > So there is no ignorance in calling heaven a lie.
You are misinterpreting Pullman by giving "lie" a meaning he did not
intend. As for "ignorance," there is abundant ignorance in calling
heaven a truth. Since ignorance is simply unawareness of the truth or
facts, you yourself acknowledge that belief in heaven displays
ignorance when you say that you personally don't believe in heaven.
[snip]
>
> > According to Caldecott, "For me the whole Pullman affair is tragic
> > precisely because . . . a great talent, a formidable intelligence, has
> > been used to send a message of despair." The message she refers to
> > is, of course, the message that there is no God, no heaven. And the
> > real tragedy is that a grown woman, educated and intelligent and
> > apparently living a comfortable life, is so mired in superstition that
> > she thinks the disappearance of God and heaven would be a cause for
> > despair.
>
> Well, for people who believe in God in heaven, and take a great comfort
> in that belief, it would be a cause for despair. That doesn't mean
> Pullman can't or shouldn't argue against religion if he wants to, but it
> seems to me Caldecott should be equally free to be disappointed with him
> if he does.
Caldecott's right to be "disappointed" is not at issue. Her freedom
to believe whatever she wants has not been challenged, and
disappointment is hardly the same thing as despair. I was merely
commenting on the sort of mentality that sees learning that a
superstition is untrue is a cause for "despair."
Leonard F. Wheat
Those are all good definitions of superstition. But some additional
points about what constitutes superstition are in order. First, like
many other words, superstition has both (1) a narrow meaning,
typically the word's original meaning, and (2) a broader, looser,
often metaphorical meaning. In the case of superstition, the narrow
meaning is the one I gave: a false belief in the supernatural. But
"superstition" is often applied loosely, or metaphorically, to refer
to just about any false belief that does NOT involve supernaturalism.
The last OED definition (#4) you quote, along with the second half of
OED #1b, and the last Merriam-Webster definition (#2) you quote are
the broader definition.
Second, the first three OED definitions of superstition and the first
M-W definition are in essential agreement with mine. They simply use
different ways of (a) saying "false" and (b) saying "supernatural."
Regarding "false," the dictionary definitions use such substitute
words as "unreasoning," "imaginary," "founded on fear or ignorance,"
"irrational," "pagan," "idolatrous," "religious," and "resulting from
ignorance, fear . . . , trust in magic, or a false conception" -- and
they also throw in "false" in a couple of places.
The different ways of saying "supernatural" that the definitions use
include "religious" (religious beliefs entail supernaturalism),
"religion," "trust in magic" (a form of superstition), and "false
conception of causation" (alluding to supernatural causation). The
M-W definition also includes an explicit reference to "the
supernatural."
I prefer the simpler definition: "a false belief in the supernatural."
Being more abstract, it does a better job of covering such
nonreligious superstitions as . . .
1. beliefs that bad luck results from (a) a black cat crossing
one's path, (b) breaking a mirror, (c) walking under a ladder, and (d)
getting a hotel room on the 13th floor or otherwise becoming
associated with the number 13.
2. belief in such nonreligious supernatural beings goblins,
fairies, werewolves, vampires, gremlins, elves, trolls, genies,
zombies, invisible men, griffins, and fauns.
3. belief in impersonal metaphysical entities such as the Greek
Logos, Hegel's Spirit, and The Force.
4. belief in fortune tellers (both the crystal ball type and
palmists), psychics, astrology (and astrologers), and tarot card
readings.
5. belief that amulets and talismans can supernaturally protect a
person from harm.
6. belief in human-into-whatever metamorphosis (man into vampire,
man into werewolf, men into pigs ("The Odyssey"), Billy Batson into
Captain Marvel, Scarlet O'Neil into Invisible Scarlet O'Neil, Dr.
Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, Snow White's stepmother into an old crone) and
reverse metamorphosis (vampire back into man, etc.).
7. belief in parakinesis (mentally induced levitation of
objects), in psychically induced teleportation, and the ability of
some humans to pass through solid walls.
8. belief in numerology (beyond bad luck associated with the
number 13) and in numerological determinism.
9. belief in magic, including black magic and voodoo magic (e.g.,
sticking pins in a voodoo doll to harm or kill someone, opening a
mountain by saying "Open Sesame," creating or transforming something
by waving a magic wand and saying magic words like "abacadabra").
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>> Well, first of all, Christians vary widely in their attitude towards the
>> more supernatural aspects of their religion -- to describe them all as
>> wide-eyed believers in angels, demons, etc. is another distortion.
>
> Nobody is describing "all" Christians as wide-eyed believers in all of
> the idiotic beliefs of Christianity. In fact, I was describing
> CHRISTIANITY (the religion), not Christians (the members of the
> Christian churches). Christians do vary widely in their beliefs.
Well, Christianity is defined by what Christians believe -- so as their
beliefs vary, so does the nature of Christianity.
> Many of them -- Congregationalists, Methodists, and Episcopalians
> especially -- reject most of the things their official religion calls
> on them to believe. Millions of Christians don't believe in hell,
> Satan, demons, angels, Adam and Eve, or miracles, and a smaller number
> don't believe in heaven or the power of prayer either.
Exactly my point.
> But those
> beliefs ARE some of the chief beliefs and doctrines of Christianity,
> whether or not every Christian believes them.
I'd argue otherwise. See above.
>> Second, even if we stipulate that supernatural beliefs are false,
>> whether they are a "mistake" depends on what the beliefs are intended to
>> achieve and what they actually do achieve.
>
> You surely have strange notions about what a mistake is. If something
> is untrue, believing it to be true is a mistake,
I write fiction for a living. My job is to make people care about
characters who don't really exist -- to believe in them, at least enough
to have feelings about them. Are my readers "mistaken" to care about the
lives of these nonexistant people? I'd say no, because the goal of
fiction is not to communicate literal truths about real individuals --
it's catharsis, entertainment, and, sometimes, the communication of
general truths through the use of fictional examples.
As for religion, whether it's a mistake to believe in a nonexistant
deity depends on what the goal of that belief is. If you want eternal
life, or a miracle cure -- things that only a real deity could provide
-- then, yeah, you're wasting your time. But if you're looking for
something less tangible -- inspiration, spiritual fulfillment, peace of
mind -- then even a fictional God may suffice.
> It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
> football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
> that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome.
If they believe that prayer will help them, and if that belief inspires
them to play better, then it *will* affect the game's outcome.
>>> The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
>>> believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
>>> Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
>>> Christianity, IS a lie.
>>
>> I don't believe in Heaven, but even if I'm correct and it doesn't exist,
>> that doesn't make the people who do believe in it liars. They're just wrong.
>
> Go back and reread what Baruch said. He said that the CHURCHES --
> institutions, not people -- are telling lies.
Again, an institution is defined by its members. If the members of the
church believe that God exists, then "the church" isn't lying, even if
it's wrong.
> You are misinterpreting Pullman by giving "lie" a meaning he did not
> intend.
Oh, I'm pretty sure he did intend.
> As for "ignorance," there is abundant ignorance in calling
> heaven a truth.
Unless it happens to exist -- something I doubt, but can't prove.
-- M. Ruff
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> >
> > Matt Ruff wrote:
> >
> >> Well, first of all, Christians vary widely in their attitude towards the
> >> more supernatural aspects of their religion -- to describe them all as
> >> wide-eyed believers in angels, demons, etc. is another distortion.
> >
> > Nobody is describing "all" Christians as wide-eyed believers in all of
> > the idiotic beliefs of Christianity. In fact, I was describing
> > CHRISTIANITY (the religion), not Christians (the members of the
> > Christian churches). Christians do vary widely in their beliefs.
>
> Well, Christianity is defined by what Christians believe -- so as their
> beliefs vary, so does the nature of Christianity.
What you say is only partially true. Christianity is defined
primarily by the official doctrines of Christianity, by which I mean
those doctrines that a substantial majority of church officials
(contrasted with the laity) -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant --
hold to be true. To the extent that certain doctrines are no longer
accepted by the majority of Christian laymen, you can reasonably argue
that these particular doctrines are no longer an essential part of
Christianity. I am thinking particularly of the related doctrines of
Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus, resurrection of the dead, and
the Kingdom of God on earth (contrasted with heaven). The belief in
demons and in the Virgin Birth of Jesus may or may not belong in this
"no longer accepted" category.
The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
Christianity include the following:
1. There is an omnipotent, omniscient, immortal God who directly
or indirectly created the universe and is deeply concerned about human
affairs.
2. Jesus was and is a supernatural being who performed miracles
and whose death was necessary for people to achieve salvation. Jesus
is alive and well and lives with God.
3. God, like humans, has an inner self or soul called the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can depart from God to visit people on
earth (spirit possession) as an agent of God in order to achieve
various objectives.
4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who help
him in his work.
5. Each human has an inner self, soul, or spirit that, unlike
God's spirit, stays with the body during life but departs when a
person dies.
6. After humans die, their souls go to either heaven or hell,
although in Catholicism the soul must undergo a period of cleansing in
purgatory before going to heaven. Heaven is a place or state of
bliss, and hell is a place or state of punishment that may or may not
involve grotesque torture.
7. A person's likelihood of going to heaven is increased by piety
and religious activity, including church attendance, financial support
of a church, prayer, baptism, communion, bowing and kneeling, hymn
singing, and occasionally inviting the preacher over for dinner.
8. The same things also increase a person's likelihood of
receiving protection and favors from God during the mortal life, the
most important favors being things the Christian prays for.
9. God has promulgated certain divine laws, including but not
limited to the Ten Commandments, and violation of these divine laws
constitutes sin. Sin, in turn, reduces the likelihood of one's going
to heaven and increases the likelihood of going to hell. It also
affects the likelihood of receiving protection and favors from God
during the mortal life.
Although not all Christians accept all of these beliefs, most
Christians do accept most of them. These are certainly the beliefs
Pullman had in mind when he called Christianity a lie -- in the loose
sense of the word, i.e., in the sense of a false system of beliefs.
>
> > Many of them -- Congregationalists, Methodists, and Episcopalians
> > especially -- reject most of the things their official religion calls
> > on them to believe. Millions of Christians don't believe in hell,
> > Satan, demons, angels, Adam and Eve, or miracles, and a smaller number
> > don't believe in heaven or the power of prayer either.
>
> Exactly my point.
But that point does not validate your more fundamental point that
Christianity cannot be defined in terms of what most Christians, and
particularly Christianity's clergy, believe.
>
> > But those
> > beliefs ARE some of the chief beliefs and doctrines of Christianity,
> > whether or not every Christian believes them.
>
> I'd argue otherwise. See above.
>
> >> Second, even if we stipulate that supernatural beliefs are false,
> >> whether they are a "mistake" depends on what the beliefs are intended to
> >> achieve and what they actually do achieve.
> >
> > You surely have strange notions about what a mistake is. If something
> > is untrue, believing it to be true is a mistake,
>
> I write fiction for a living. My job is to make people care about
> characters who don't really exist -- to believe in them, at least enough
> to have feelings about them. Are my readers "mistaken" to care about the
> lives of these nonexistant people? I'd say no, because the goal of
> fiction is not to communicate literal truths about real individuals --
> it's catharsis, entertainment, and, sometimes, the communication of
> general truths through the use of fictional examples.
>
> As for religion, whether it's a mistake to believe in a nonexistant
> deity depends on what the goal of that belief is. If you want eternal
> life, or a miracle cure -- things that only a real deity could provide
> -- then, yeah, you're wasting your time. But if you're looking for
> something less tangible -- inspiration, spiritual fulfillment, peace of
> mind -- then even a fictional God may suffice.
You need to keep your eye on the ball. We are discussing the accuracy
of Pullman's calling Christianity a mistake. And we can be sure that,
in calling Christianity a mistake, he was referring to the truth of
its doctrines, not to whether those doctrines give satisfication,
inspiration, or peace of mind to believers.
Incidentally, beliefs don't have goals. False professions of belief
may have goals, such as getting elected, but a belief is simply a
belief. You believe not because you have a goal but because you were
indoctrinated as a child, or because you have irrational fears, or
because you are innately superstitious, or because you are inclined to
believe what other people believe rather than thinking for yourself.
You are confusing goals with effects.
>
> > It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
> > football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
> > that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome.
>
> If they believe that prayer will help them, and if that belief inspires
> them to play better, then it *will* affect the game's outcome.
You're begging the question when you suggest that belief might inspire
them to play better.
> >>> The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> >>> believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> >>> Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> >>> Christianity, IS a lie.
> >> I don't believe in Heaven, but even if I'm correct and it doesn't exist,
> >> that doesn't make the people who do believe in it liars. They're just wrong.
I covered this ground in a previous post. When Pullman calls heaven a
lie, he is using "lie" loosely to mean a false belief. He isn't
saying that the clergy don't believe what they're saying when they
promise an afterlife in heaven. To put his point in your words, the
people who believe in heaven are "just wrong."
Wayne Throop
: The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
: Christianity include the following: [.. list omitted ..]
I note that your list diverges in several interesting respects from,
eg, the Nicene Creed. Is this intentional, or a matter of paraphrasing?
Did you just make up your list off the top of your head,
or do you have a source for it?
Actually, like the gettysburgh address, the Nicene Creed
might make a good powerpoint slideshow.
Agenda
* God
* Jesus
* Afterlife
* Holy Spirit
* Church
God
* father
* powerful
* creator
Jesus
* son of God
* our lord
Jesus: Major Life Events
* virgin birth (mary)
* suffered (pilate)
* crucified
* dead
* buried
Afterlife
* 3 day wait
* rose from dead
* ascended to heaven
* seated (to God's right)
Afterlife: Return
* judgement
* quick, dead
Holy Spirit
* proceeds from God
* coequal: God, Jesus
* inspires prophets
Church
* baptism
* sins forgiven
Future Plans
* resurrection
* eternal life
Hm. Needs some graphs. Maybe a pie chart or something.
Maybe some background images and/or a color scheme to add some punch.
John F. Eldredge
Hash: SHA1
On 24 Oct 2004 19:03:49 -0700, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
Wheat) wrote:
> The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
>Christianity include the following:
>
>4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
>dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
> Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who
>help him in his work.
>
This would be considered heresy by most Christians. The mainstream
view is that there is only one God, with three aspects (Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit). Satan is a rebellious angel, a created being, not
a god. You are describing Manichaeism, which split off from
Christianity around 250 A.D.
>7. A person's likelihood of going to heaven is increased by
>piety and religious activity, including church attendance, financial
>support of a church, prayer, baptism, communion, bowing and
>kneeling, hymn
>singing, and occasionally inviting the preacher over for dinner.
>
This belief varies by denomination. Most Protestants believe that
salvation is granted by faith in Jesus' power to save us, and
accepting that gift of grace, not by earning salvation by our own
works. This is based upon the following Bible verses:
> For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this
> is not your own doing, it is the gift of God -- not because
> of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:9-10)
Catholic belief is that salvation is a combination of God's grace and
human good works.
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--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>> Well, Christianity is defined by what Christians believe -- so as their
>> beliefs vary, so does the nature of Christianity.
>
> What you say is only partially true. Christianity is defined
> primarily by the official doctrines of Christianity,
If you're going to call someone's beliefs stupid, then I think you ought
to focus on what they actually believe rather than on what they are
supposed to believe.
>> I write fiction for a living. My job is to make people care about
>> characters who don't really exist -- to believe in them, at least enough
>> to have feelings about them. Are my readers "mistaken" to care about the
>> lives of these nonexistant people? I'd say no, because the goal of
>> fiction is not to communicate literal truths about real individuals --
>> it's catharsis, entertainment, and, sometimes, the communication of
>> general truths through the use of fictional examples.
>>
>> As for religion, whether it's a mistake to believe in a nonexistant
>> deity depends on what the goal of that belief is. If you want eternal
>> life, or a miracle cure -- things that only a real deity could provide
>> -- then, yeah, you're wasting your time. But if you're looking for
>> something less tangible -- inspiration, spiritual fulfillment, peace of
>> mind -- then even a fictional God may suffice.
>
> You need to keep your eye on the ball. We are discussing the accuracy
> of Pullman's calling Christianity a mistake. And we can be sure that,
> in calling Christianity a mistake, he was referring to the truth of
> its doctrines, not to whether those doctrines give satisfication,
> inspiration, or peace of mind to believers.
But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms of
their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion for many
people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued that it's a
"mistake" to care about fictional characters.
> Incidentally, beliefs don't have goals.
Believers do, and that's what I meant.
>>> It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
>>> football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
>>> that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome.
>>
>> If they believe that prayer will help them, and if that belief inspires
>> them to play better, then it *will* affect the game's outcome.
>
> You're begging the question when you suggest that belief might inspire
> them to play better.
How is that begging the question?
-- M. Ruff
David E. Siegel
> > Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
<snip>
> >
> > > The angel Baruch tells Will that "the churches . . . tell their
> > > believers that they'll live in Heaven, but that's a lie." What
> > > Baruch, speaking for Pullman, says is true. Heaven, a cornerstone of
> > > Christianity, IS a lie.
> >
> > I don't believe in Heaven, but even if I'm correct and it doesn't exist,
> > that doesn't make the people who do believe in it liars. They're just wrong.
>
> Go back and reread what Baruch said. He said that the CHURCHES --
> institutions, not people -- are telling lies. I too was referring to
> the teachings of the churches. You certainly can recognize that
> Baruch (speaking for Pullman) is using "lie" loosely to mean a
> falsehood; he is not using "lie" in its narrow or technical sense a
> false statement made by someone who knows it is false.
I'm sorry, use of the term "lie" in this context means more than a
"falsehood". it means a knowing falsehood, a deliberate attempt to
decieve. If the character in the book is saying that the churchs (not
all of whom speak with one voice on this isue, BTW) are saying
something that they (or their spokesmen) belive is true, but
nevertheless calls it a "lie", then that cahracter is engaging in
deceptive debating tactics -- trying to claim the emotional and moral
force of the word "lie" while not in fact meaning it. To say that
soemthjing is a "lie" is to make a storng statement, precisely because
it is a claim of an intentional falsehood. To characterize someone
who makes a sincere but (you belive or claim) incorrect statement as
telling a lie is the tactic of an unfair debater.
Now if Pullman (or his character, which may not be the same thing)
claims that the churchs (or some of them) have been intentionally
deciving people, that they don't belive in hevean or hell, but use
them to trick people into belivign and thus acting to support the
churches, that is one thing. That *would* be to accuse them of lies
indeed, and rather heinous ones. But thatt accusation requires more
than claims that heaven and hell don't exist, it requires claims about
the belifs and intentions of those running the churches, which you
don't say Pullman made.
But to claim that Pullman (again, or his character) used "lie" as no
more than a synonym for "incorrect statement" and that this is
perfectly acceptable is to misuse the English language, either
intentionally or ignorantly.
-DES
David E. Siegel
> > > Both the
> > > primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in the
> > > supernatural, which by definition are superstitions.
>
> >
> > I would not define any belief in a deity as a superstition. Nor I think
> > do most people so define it. and 'unproved' and even 'unprovable' are
> > not the same as 'false'. This is as much an assertion of a belief
> > system as factually true as that which any religious figure makes.
>
>
> I did not and do not "define any belief in a deity as a superstition."
> I wrote that "false beliefs in the supernatural" are, "by
> definition," superstitions. That is, a superstition can be defined as
> a false belief in the supernatural. If Zeus and Apallo, a couple of
> supernatural gods, really exist, belief in them is not a superstition.
> If they do not exist but you believe in them, your belief is a
> superstition.
>
> >
Since you also beilve that none of these deities exist (as you say
later in the same post) and don't even think that there is any need to
support this belif with evidence (as the burden is on the beliver)
you *do* appear to define any belife in a diety as a "false belief in
the supernatural", at least in the absence of evidence for the
existance of said diety sufficient to convince you, or at least raise
a doubt in your mind.
I however, have always prefered to restrict the use of "supersition"
to belifs which offer *control* over the beliver's enviornment via
supernatural or unexplained means. Thus "magic" of most sorts would
qualify, as would a person who belives that his browser crashes if he
fails to throw salt over his shoulder before invoking it.
The difference is that between a "prayer" and a "spell" -- as one
fantasy writer says frequently "a spell always works".
I will admit that some of the dictionary defs of 'superstition' are
broader than this, and could reasoanbly be read to include any
religious belief, or any unproved and unsupported belief.
-DES
phil hunt
>
>What you say is only partially true. Christianity is defined
>primarily by the official doctrines of Christianity, by which I mean
>those doctrines that a substantial majority of church officials
>(contrasted with the laity) -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant --
>hold to be true.
To be specific, the Nicene Creed.
> To the extent that certain doctrines are no longer
>accepted by the majority of Christian laymen, you can reasonably argue
>that these particular doctrines are no longer an essential part of
>Christianity. I am thinking particularly of the related doctrines of
>Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus, resurrection of the dead, and
>the Kingdom of God on earth (contrasted with heaven). The belief in
>demons and in the Virgin Birth of Jesus may or may not belong in this
>"no longer accepted" category.
Virgin Birth is in the NC and thus part of "official" Christianity,
as is ressurection of the dead and the 2nd coming.
>3. God, like humans, has an inner self or soul called the Holy
>Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can depart from God to visit people on
>earth (spirit possession) as an agent of God in order to achieve
>various objectives.
I don't think this is true, my understrandingi s that most
Chrisdtians beleive God (asnd the HS) are everywhere, all the time
-- it's implied in omnipotent and omnisicent.
>4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
>dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
>Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who help
>him in his work.
Nothing about Satan in the NC.
>5. Each human has an inner self, soul, or spirit that, unlike
>God's spirit, stays with the body during life but departs when a
>person dies.
Implied.
>6. After humans die, their souls go to either heaven or hell,
>although in Catholicism the soul must undergo a period of cleansing in
>purgatory before going to heaven. Heaven is a place or state of
>bliss, and hell is a place or state of punishment that may or may not
>involve grotesque torture.
Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
glory to judge the living and the dead".
>7. A person's likelihood of going to heaven is increased by piety
>and religious activity, including church attendance, financial support
>of a church, prayer, baptism, communion, bowing and kneeling, hymn
>singing, and occasionally inviting the preacher over for dinner.
I think salvation by works is not a universally-held doctrine. More
usual is salvation by faith.
--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)
Wayne Throop
: Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
: glory to judge the living and the dead".
The recitation I learned in my early church experience most closely
corresponded to "The Apostles' Creed", and the version at the url
below *does* mention hell.
See http://www.bible-researcher.com/ecumenical-creeds.html
The version I learned (or at least, the version as I remember it)
has slight wording changes from the one at the url above, but
basically that's what will come tumbling out if I get started
on the "I believe" line.
Something like
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by
the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead,
and buried.
<deep breath after run-on sentence>
On the third day he arose from from the dead and ascended into heaven,
where he sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
<another deep breath>
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection
of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
I'm not sure if the deletions of hell and the saints and such was
intentional, actually in the version I recited, or if my memory
hasn't got it right. Hrm.
John
"John F. Eldredge" <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote in message
news:20qpn09e9hcja0ruh...@4ax.com...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 24 Oct 2004 19:03:49 -0700, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
> Wheat) wrote:
>
>> The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
>>Christianity include the following:
>>
>>4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
>>dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
>> Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who
>>help him in his work.
>>
>
> This would be considered heresy by most Christians. The mainstream
> view is that there is only one God, with three aspects (Father, Son,
> and Holy Spirit). Satan is a rebellious angel, a created being, not
> a god. You are describing Manichaeism, which split off from
> Christianity around 250 A.D.
Catholicism (which I realise is not the whole of Christianity) is the most
polytheistic monotheism in the world, thanks to the worship of Mary and the
hundreds of Saints.
Andrew Wheeler
Catholics would claim that saints and Mary are not "worshipped," but
instead venerated or prayed to in hopes that they will intercede with
the godhead. Whether this is a distinction without a difference depends
on how tightly one defines "worship."
John
The line is reaaaaly thin, particularly with respect to Mary.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> >
> > Matt Ruff wrote:
> >
> >> Well, Christianity is defined by what Christians believe -- so as their
> >> beliefs vary, so does the nature of Christianity.
> >
> > What you say is only partially true. Christianity is defined
> > primarily by the official doctrines of Christianity,
>
> If you're going to call someone's beliefs stupid, then I think you ought
> to focus on what they actually believe rather than on what they are
> supposed to believe.
Pullman does focus on what Christians believe. The quotation at
issue, wherein Baruch (speaking for Pullman) calls the belief in
heaven a lie (meaning a falsehood, not a lie in the literal sense)
refers specifically to the Christian belief in heaven. Your argument
boils down to this: there is no such thing as a Christian belief (or
Jewish belief or Muslim belief, for that matter), because you can
always find some Christian (or Jew or Muslim) who disbelieves a
particular belief. That argument is fatuous. All religions,
Christianity included, have belief systems. The beliefs of
Christianity are defined by Christian tradition, official Christian
doctrine (e.g., as embodied in creeds), by what the clergy teach, and
by what the majority of Christians believe. By all of these sources,
heaven is a Christian doctrine.
> >> I write fiction for a living. My job is to make people care about
> >> characters who don't really exist -- to believe in them, at least enough
> >> to have feelings about them. Are my readers "mistaken" to care about the
> >> lives of these nonexistant people? I'd say no, because the goal of
> >> fiction is not to communicate literal truths about real individuals --
> >> it's catharsis, entertainment, and, sometimes, the communication of
> >> general truths through the use of fictional examples.
> >>
> >> As for religion, whether it's a mistake to believe in a nonexistant
> >> deity depends on what the goal of that belief is. If you want eternal
> >> life, or a miracle cure -- things that only a real deity could provide
> >> -- then, yeah, you're wasting your time. But if you're looking for
> >> something less tangible -- inspiration, spiritual fulfillment, peace of
> >> mind -- then even a fictional God may suffice.
> > You need to keep your eye on the ball. We are discussing the accuracy
> > of Pullman's calling Christianity a mistake. And we can be sure that,
> > in calling Christianity a mistake, he was referring to the truth of
> > its doctrines, not to whether those doctrines give satisfication,
> > inspiration, or peace of mind to believers.
>
> But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms of
> their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion for many
> people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued that it's a
> "mistake" to care about fictional characters.
In the first place, Pullman is entitled to choose his own subjects.
If he wants to attack beliefs in terms of their literal truth, that's
his privilege. If you want to write about the supposed benefits of
false beliefs, that's your privilege. Don't try to dictate to Pullman
what he can write about.
In the second place, Pullman isn't missing the point of Christianity.
What may be the purpose of Christianity for some quasi-agnostic
Christians is not the real central purpose of Christianity. The
central purpose of Christianity is to save souls, and that purpose
requires a belief in heaven. The overwhelming majority of Christians
believe in heaven -- 97 percent of Southern Baptists, 94 percent of
Missouri Synod Lutherans, 98 percent of Bible Church and other sect
members, 91 percent of nonsouthern Baptists, 93 percent of
non-Missouri-Synod Lutherans, 90 percent of Presbyterians, 84 percent
of Episcopelians, 84 percent of Methodists, 76 percent of
Congregationalists, 91 percent of Catholics, and 89 percent of all
Protestants combined (University of California survey).
>
> > Incidentally, beliefs don't have goals.
>
> Believers do, and that's what I meant.
>
> >>> It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
> >>> football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
> >>> that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome.
> >>
> >> If they believe that prayer will help them, and if that belief inspires
> >> them to play better, then it *will* affect the game's outcome.
> >
> > You're begging the question when you suggest that belief might inspire
> > them to play better.
>
> How is that begging the question?
Begging the question is making a statement that assumes the truth of
something that might not be true, as in "When did you stop beating
your grandmother." Your statement assumes it is true that belief in
the power of prayer might inspire the Notre Dame team to play better.
>
> -- M. Ruff
Leonard F. Wheat
> : lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat)
> : The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
> : Christianity include the following: [.. list omitted ..]
>
> I note that your list diverges in several interesting respects from,
> eg, the Nicene Creed. Is this intentional, or a matter of paraphrasing?
> Did you just make up your list off the top of your head,
> or do you have a source for it?
I have an avocational interest in religion (not just Christianity), a
38" bookcase with four shelves of books on religion (all of which I
have read and underlined), a Christian upbringing (15 years of
parentally mandated indoctrination, both Sunday school and church),
and a scholarly book on religion (Johns Hopkins Press) that I have
authored. So I think I am qualified to say what the main doctrines of
Christianity are. I deliberately left out some of the more
controversial ones, such as the virgin birth, which is why I wrote
"INCLUDE the following" rather than "ARE the following."
Frankly, I don't think anyone needs that strong a background in
religion to know what the main doctrines of Christianity are.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 24 Oct 2004 19:03:49 -0700, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
> Wheat) wrote:
>
> > The official and generally accepted doctrines that define
> >Christianity include the following:
> >
> >4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
> >dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
> > Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who
> >help him in his work.
> >
>
> This would be considered heresy by most Christians. The mainstream
> view is that there is only one God, with three aspects (Father, Son,
> and Holy Spirit). Satan is a rebellious angel, a created being, not
> a god. You are describing Manichaeism, which split off from
> Christianity around 250 A.D.
Christianity, although it regards itself as a monotheistic religion,
is actually polytheistic. Protestantism has four gods: God, the Lord
Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Satan. Catholicism adds a fifth: the
goddess Mary. (To Catholics, Mary is technically a saint, first among
equals, and she receives "adoration" rather than worship; but these
are distinctions that religious scholarship does not recognize. Mary
is treated as a goddess and has the characteristics of a goddess.)
Satan is treated as a rebellious angel in the book of Revelation but
not in other parts of the Bible. In any case, his origin is
irrelevant. In Christianity, he functions as a powerful and evil bad
god, the equivalent of Ahriman in Zoroastrianism, from whence he came
to Christianity.
Calling the three members of the Trinity a "Godhead" and a single
entity is a ploy invented by early theologians in an effort to
rationalize their claim that Christianity is monotheistic. What you
call the three "aspects" of the Godhead are three separate entities.
The Lord Jesus is a Lord (god), is not part of God but "sitteth at the
right hand of God the Father Almighty," is prayed to (especially by
fundamentalists, who prefer to pray to Jesus rather than to God), and
in not only the gospels but Revelation is clearly separate from God.
The Holy Spirit is an anachronism dating back to a time when most
Christians had an anthropomorphic conception of God (as many
Christians still do). God was a heavenly king sitting on a throne in
heaven. He had a head, arms, and legs. So conceived, he had an inner
soul or spirit ("pneuma," literally "breath, in the New Testament).
The Holy Spirit departs from God's anachronistic physical body and
goes to earth as an agent to possess people (spirit possession) so as
to achieve whatever God is after. The Holy Spirit fertilized the
Virgin Mary, led Jesus into his ministry, caused converts (and causes
Pentecostal members) to speak in tongues, gave the disciples the power
to perform miracles after Jesus' departure, enabled men to prophesy,
and settles on the Pope when a new Pope is chosen. The Holy Spirit is
definitely a separate entity, cavorting around on earth most of the
time (and capable of being many earthly places at once) while God
remains behind in heaven.
> >7. A person's likelihood of going to heaven is increased by
> >piety and religious activity, including church attendance, financial
> >support of a church, prayer, baptism, communion, bowing and
> >kneeling, hymn
> >singing, and occasionally inviting the preacher over for dinner.
> This belief varies by denomination. Most Protestants believe that
> salvation is granted by faith in Jesus' power to save us, and
> accepting that gift of grace, not by earning salvation by our own
> works. This is based upon the following Bible verses:
>
> > For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this
> > is not your own doing, it is the gift of God -- not because
> > of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:9-10)
Theologians are notorious for picking and choosing their Bible verses
to justify their own parochial points of view. But that is beside the
point, because my statement -- the one you seek to refute -- does not
list "good works" among the things that increase "a person's
likelihood of going to heaven." Go back and read what I wrote.
Belief in the requirements for salvation indeed does vary by
denomination, but most Christians regard it as prudent to do the
things that increase "a person's likelihood of going to heaven." And
despite your claim that mere faith is enough to save a person -- you
think mere belief in God and Jesus can save rapists and killers from
hell -- 78 percent of Missouri Synod Lutherans and 65 percent of
Catholics think baptism is "absolutely necessary" for salvation.
Leonard F. Wheat
> On 24 Oct 2004 19:03:49 -0700, Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >What you say is only partially true. Christianity is defined
> >primarily by the official doctrines of Christianity, by which I mean
> >those doctrines that a substantial majority of church officials
> >(contrasted with the laity) -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant --
> >hold to be true.
>
> To be specific, the Nicene Creed.
The Nicene Creed is one source of Christian doctrine among several.
The Apostles Creed is probably more widely used. (I had to memorize
it as a kid in order to be confirmed into the Methodist Church -- not
my idea.)
>
> > To the extent that certain doctrines are no longer
> >accepted by the majority of Christian laymen, you can reasonably argue
> >that these particular doctrines are no longer an essential part of
> >Christianity. I am thinking particularly of the related doctrines of
> >Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus, resurrection of the dead, and
> >the Kingdom of God on earth (contrasted with heaven). The belief in
> >demons and in the Virgin Birth of Jesus may or may not belong in this
> >"no longer accepted" category.
> Virgin Birth is in the NC and thus part of "official" Christianity,
> as is ressurection of the dead and the 2nd coming.
A doctrine can be "official" and still be "no longer accepted" by a
majority of Christians. I'm not going to insist that the Second
Coming and the Virgin Birth are still definitive doctrines of
Christianity, although the Virgin Birth is certainly a definitive
doctrine of Catholicism.
> >3. God, like humans, has an inner self or soul called the Holy
> >Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can depart from God to visit people on
> >earth (spirit possession) as an agent of God in order to achieve
> >various objectives.
> I don't think this is true, my understrandingi s that most
> Chrisdtians beleive God (asnd the HS) are everywhere, all the time
> -- it's implied in omnipotent and omnisicent.
Most Christians don't have the foggiest notion of what the Holy Spirit
is supposed to be.
>
> >4. There is also a bad God named Satan -- Christianity is a
> >dualistic religion -- who is responsible for the evil in this world.
> >Satan may or may not command an army of supernatural demons who help
> >him in his work.
> Nothing about Satan in the NC.
There doesn't have to be. He does show up in the Bible, in both the
Old Testament and the New Testament (gospels and Revelation).
> >5. Each human has an inner self, soul, or spirit that, unlike
> >God's spirit, stays with the body during life but departs when a
> >person dies.
> Implied.
>
> >6. After humans die, their souls go to either heaven or hell,
> >although in Catholicism the soul must undergo a period of cleansing in
> >purgatory before going to heaven. Heaven is a place or state of
> >bliss, and hell is a place or state of punishment that may or may not
> >involve grotesque torture.
> Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
> glory to judge the living and the dead".
Hell doesn't have to be in the Nicene Creed for hell to be a basic
Christian doctrine. Get out the gospel of Matthew and read Jesus'
many references to hell in both the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.
Both heaven and hell ARE mentioned in the Apostles Creed.
The most basic Christian doctrine is that Jesus' death on the cross
was necessary for man to be saved. "Saved" implies the existence of
both hell (from which man can now be saved, if he cooperates) and
heaven (to which man can go if he is saved).
> >7. A person's likelihood of going to heaven is increased by piety
> >and religious activity, including church attendance, financial support
> >of a church, prayer, baptism, communion, bowing and kneeling, hymn
> >singing, and occasionally inviting the preacher over for dinner.
> I think salvation by works is not a universally-held doctrine. More
> usual is salvation by faith.
The activities I describe under point 7 do not come under the heading
of "good works." For the most part, they are worship and ritual.
Leonard F. Wheat
> lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com>...
> > sie...@acm.org (David E. Siegel) wrote in message news:<dbdfe7e0.04102...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > Both the
> > > > primary purpose and the secondary one rest on false beliefs in the
> > > > supernatural, which by definition are superstitions.
>
> > >
> > > I would not define any belief in a deity as a superstition. Nor I think
> > > do most people so define it. and 'unproved' and even 'unprovable' are
> > > not the same as 'false'. This is as much an assertion of a belief
> > > system as factually true as that which any religious figure makes.
> >
> >
> > I did not and do not "define any belief in a deity as a superstition."
> > I wrote that "false beliefs in the supernatural" are, "by
> > definition," superstitions. That is, a superstition can be defined as
> > a false belief in the supernatural. If Zeus and Apallo, a couple of
> > supernatural gods, really exist, belief in them is not a superstition.
> > If they do not exist but you believe in them, your belief is a
> > superstition.
> >
> > >
>
> Since you also beilve that none of these deities exist (as you say
> later in the same post) and don't even think that there is any need to
> support this belif with evidence (as the burden is on the beliver)
> you *do* appear to define any belife in a diety as a "false belief in
> the supernatural",
You are confusing what I believe about Gods with the definition of
superstition. I believe that no gods exist and that, therefore, any
belief in a god or gods is a superstition. That is a belief, not a
definition. If I am wrong and gods exist, then belief in those
particular gods is not a superstition. Why? Because the DEFINITION
of superstition is any FALSE belief in the supernatural.
[snip]
>
> I however, have always prefered to restrict the use of "supersition"
> to belifs which offer *control* over the beliver's enviornment via
> supernatural or unexplained means. Thus "magic" of most sorts would
> qualify, as would a person who belives that his browser crashes if he
> fails to throw salt over his shoulder before invoking it.
You haven't phrased your idea very well, because beliefs per se can't
"offer control over the believer's environment." What you probably
meant is belief in THINGS than offer control over the believer's
environment. Even here, the word "control" is fuzzy. Do you mean
belief in things that can (or perhaps do) influence a person's
environment? Well, let's see. Government and the weather and the
lights in my house influence my environment. So you're calling these
things superstitions?
In any case, I take it you don't think the Hindu belief in
transmigration of souls, which certainly wouldn't affect our
environment, is a superstition. Or the belief that the world was
created by God in six days. Or the belief in trolls. Or the belief
that Jesus walked through a solid wall. Or the belief that fortune
tellers can foretell the future with the aid of a crystal ball. Why
don't you think these beliefs are superstitions? Or, if you do
consider them superstitions, how to you reconcile that position with
your definition?
Wayne Throop
: Begging the question is making a statement that assumes the truth of
: something that might not be true, as in "When did you stop beating
: your grandmother."
Not really. It's only begging the question when you assume your
conclusion. For example, "he never stopped beating his grandmother, so
he must still be doing it", which assumes he was doing it to start with.
Your proposed example didn't conclude anything at all.
: Your statement assumes it is true that belief in the power of prayer
: might inspire the Notre Dame team to play better.
No, he proposes it as an alternative mechanism, he didn't assert
it must be so. He didn't *conclude* that belief would affect the
outcome, he simply pointed out that ruling out divine intervention
doesn't rule out prayer working. And indeed, it doesn't.
Wayne Throop
:: eg, the Nicene Creed. Is this intentional, or a matter of
:: paraphrasing? Did you just make up your list off the top of your
:: head, or do you have a source for it?
: lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat)
: I have an avocational interest in religion (not just Christianity), a
: 38" bookcase with four shelves of books on religion (all of which I
: have read and underlined), a Christian upbringing (15 years of
: parentally mandated indoctrination, both Sunday school and church),
: and a scholarly book on religion (Johns Hopkins Press) that I have
: authored. So I think I am qualified to say what the main doctrines of
: Christianity are.
OK. So, with that in mind, why does your list diverge
so much from the Nicene creed on several important matters?
: Frankly, I don't think anyone needs that strong a background in
: religion to know what the main doctrines of Christianity are.
You omitted the triune nature of God, that Christ was his only son and
part of said trinity, and claimed that Satan is a god. These are rather
major departures from all the statements of belief I'm familar with.
But that's OK, I'm sure you can provide references to these things
in your vast book collection, or in URLs.
Mind you, I'm not refuting or rebuting you.
I'm just curious as to why your account diverges on these matters
from the various creeds I'm aware of, and what the teachers of
my "sunday school" of days long gone by had said. If you don't
want to say, that's fine also.
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>>If you're going to call someone's beliefs stupid, then I think you ought
>>to focus on what they actually believe rather than on what they are
>>supposed to believe.
>
> Pullman does focus on what Christians believe. The quotation at
> issue, wherein Baruch (speaking for Pullman) calls the belief in
> heaven a lie (meaning a falsehood, not a lie in the literal sense)
> refers specifically to the Christian belief in heaven. Your argument
> boils down to this: there is no such thing as a Christian belief (or
> Jewish belief or Muslim belief, for that matter), because you can
> always find some Christian (or Jew or Muslim) who disbelieves a
> particular belief.
My argument, as stated several posts ago, is that Christianity is not a
monolith. That doesn't mean that there is no Christian belief system, it
means that there are *multiple* Christian belief systems -- something
that you have already conceded.
>> But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms of
>> their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion for many
>> people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued that it's a
>> "mistake" to care about fictional characters.
>
> In the first place, Pullman is entitled to choose his own subjects.
> If he wants to attack beliefs in terms of their literal truth, that's
> his privilege.
I totally agree, it's his privilege to miss the point if he so chooses.
But it's mine to draw attention to the fact when he does.
> In the second place, Pullman isn't missing the point of Christianity.
> What may be the purpose of Christianity for some quasi-agnostic
> Christians is not the real central purpose of Christianity.
And I can only repeat, Christianity is not a monolith. There is no one
"real central purpose".
-- M. Ruff
Gerry Quinn
lenw...@earthlink.net says...
> has value. But the good things don't come close to balancing the evil
> that religion has wrought. All the pot-luck suppers ever held cannot
> compensate for one Scopes trial,
Are you saying that those who instigated the Scopes trial were evil, or
deluded by their beliefs into evil actions?
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
> Christianity, although it regards itself as a monotheistic religion,
> is actually polytheistic. Protestantism has four gods: God, the Lord
> Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Satan. Catholicism adds a fifth: the
> goddess Mary. (To Catholics, Mary is technically a saint, first among
> equals, and she receives "adoration" rather than worship; but these
> are distinctions that religious scholarship does not recognize. Mary
> is treated as a goddess and has the characteristics of a goddess.)
What do you mean, exactly, by "religious scholarship"? Your version of
it seems to have little connection with the doctrines of the various
religions.
- Gerry Quinn
Leonard F. Wheat
> : lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat)
> : Begging the question is making a statement that assumes the truth of
> : something that might not be true, as in "When did you stop beating
> : your grandmother."
>
> Not really. It's only begging the question when you assume your
> conclusion. For example, "he never stopped beating his grandmother, so
> he must still be doing it", which assumes he was doing it to start with.
> Your proposed example didn't conclude anything at all.
Your understanding of "begging the question" is incorrect. All that
is required is that the statement include an assumption, generally
implied, that MIGHT not be true. The statement need not, and
generally doesn't, include any sort of conclusion, unless you want to
call the assumption a conclusion. (But you write that "It's . . .
begging the question when you assume your conclusion," so you
presumably didn't mean to equate "assumption" with "conclusion.") If
the statement is accompanied by evidence that the assumption is true,
in which case the "assumption" is no longer just an assumption, then
the question has not been begged. Etymology: When a person "
begs the question," he is figuratively begging the listener to accept
something as fact when factuality has not been established.
Leonard F. Wheat
> :: I note that your list diverges in several interesting respects from,
> :: eg, the Nicene Creed. Is this intentional, or a matter of
> :: paraphrasing? Did you just make up your list off the top of your
> :: head, or do you have a source for it?
>
> : lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat)
> : I have an avocational interest in religion (not just Christianity), a
> : 38" bookcase with four shelves of books on religion (all of which I
> : have read and underlined), a Christian upbringing (15 years of
> : parentally mandated indoctrination, both Sunday school and church),
> : and a scholarly book on religion (Johns Hopkins Press) that I have
> : authored. So I think I am qualified to say what the main doctrines of
> : Christianity are.
>
> OK. So, with that in mind, why does your list diverge
> so much from the Nicene creed on several important matters?
My list really doesn't diverge significantly on IMPORTANT matters. I
left out the Virgin Birth because it is controversial among Protestant
Christians and no longer a generally accept feature of Protestant
Christian doctrine. I left out the Second Coming and Resurrecting of
the Dead from the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed ("He will come
again in glory to judge the living and the dead") because that is even
less believed in today. The references to "light" in the Nicene Creed
are gnostic references that are obsolete.
My list of doctrines is not based on creeds alone. And had it been
based on creeds, the Nicene Creed is not the only one: its use would
be arbitrary. We also have the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian Creed,
and the Constantinopolitan Creed.
>
> : Frankly, I don't think anyone needs that strong a background in
> : religion to know what the main doctrines of Christianity are.
>
> You omitted the triune nature of God, that Christ was his only son and
> part of said trinity, and claimed that Satan is a god.
I could well have included the Trinitarian nature of God but omitted
it because it is inconsistent with stronger doctrines that treat God,
the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as separate entities. No
theologian has ever come up with a rational explanation of how three
can be one.
I should have added the detail that Jesus, according to doctrine, is
the Son of God. (However, in the gospel of John he is God incarnate
-- God in the flesh.)
Satan is substantively a god in a dualistic system, just as Mary is a
goddess in Catholicism.
Wayne Throop
: Your understanding of "begging the question" is incorrect.
Apparently, there are many people who are similarly wrong,
so I need not want for company.
Jim Deutch
<storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>> It's a mistake for Notre Dame's
>>>> football players to collectively pray for victory -- despite the fact
>>>> that their prayer's aren't going to affect the game's outcome.
>>>
>>> If they believe that prayer will help them, and if that belief inspires
>>> them to play better, then it *will* affect the game's outcome.
>>
>> You're begging the question when you suggest that belief might inspire
>> them to play better.
>
>How is that begging the question?
Perhaps he is begging you to stop questioning his pet theory.
My theory is that he doesn't realize that Pullman is writing fiction,
and that Wheat is a closet Catholic, over-compensating.
Jim Deutch (Jimbo the Cat)
--
"If you want to find the bottleneck, the first
place to look is at the top of the bottle." - Uncleal
Aaron Denney
If you mean the schoolteacher, than no. If you mean those that voted
for the law, prosecuted him, etc., then yes.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Gerry Quinn
Actually it was Scopes' friends who prosecuted him. The trial appears
to have been instigated entirely by those interested in challenging the
Butler Act. In short, the OP as quoted above shows the hysterical
extremism typical of his kind.
- Gerry Quinn
Werner Arend
What was the Scopes trial about?
Werner
Werner Arend
>
>>> But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms of
>>> their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion for
>>> many people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued that it's
>>> a "mistake" to care about fictional characters.
>>
>> In the first place, Pullman is entitled to choose his own subjects. If
>> he wants to attack beliefs in terms of their literal truth, that's
>> his privilege.
>
> I totally agree, it's his privilege to miss the point if he so chooses.
> But it's mine to draw attention to the fact when he does.
>
No, I don't think he misses the point. You can only be comforted by
your belief if you really believe that what you believe is true. Saying
"I believe in something plainly wrong because it makes me feel better"
doesn't make any sense. So attacking the truth of a belief also means
attacking its potential for making people feel better. Separating one
from the other is just an excuse some people use in order to avoid
having to deal with arguments they don't like.
BTW, it's just the same for most allegorical interpretations of a belief
system. You can reasonably say that Hell is a state rather than a place
without rejecting Christianity, but any allegorical interpretation of
Jesus' divine nature, for instance, would put you outside Christian
doctrine and commonly held Christian belief. People may do so because
they don't want to lose the comfort of their faith and the community
they've grown up in, but in effect they're just deceiving themselves.
BTW, that fit's the term "lie" nicely in my book.
Werner
do$feratu
"Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com...
>
> My list of doctrines is not based on creeds alone. And had it
been
> based on creeds, the Nicene Creed is not the only one: its use
would
> be arbitrary. We also have the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian
Creed,
> and the Constantinopolitan Creed.
What about Apollo Creed?
George Carty
A Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching the Darwinian theory of
evolution in violation of the Butler Act, a pro-'creationism' law passed
by local Christian fundamentalists.
Leonard F. Wheat
My several October 26 response posts haven't showed up after 24 hours,
so I'll try again.
> :: I note that your list diverges in several interesting respects from,
> :: eg, the Nicene Creed. Is this intentional, or a matter of
> :: paraphrasing? Did you just make up your list off the top of your
> :: head, or do you have a source for it?
The Nicene Creed has many of Christianity's doctrines, but not all of
them; and it overemphasizes certain doctrines (e.g., the Virgin Birth,
which is widely accepted today only among Catholics; Satan) while
mentioning but underemphasizing others (e.g., heaven and hell). Also,
the Nicene Creed is but one of several. The Apostles Creed is more
widely used, and the Athanasian Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed
also compete for attention.
I intentionally left out two items from the Nicene and Apostles Creed:
(1) the Virgin Birth and (2) the Second Coming, Resurrection of the
Dead, and Judgment Day (three features of one event). These doctrines
are today largely confined to Catholics and Protestant
fundamentalists. You could make a decent case for including the
Virgin Birth, but for Protestants it is a trivial detail even for
those who accept it. I could also have mentioned the doctrine of
Original Sin, but it is so suspect among modern Christians that I
chose not to.
> : lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat)
> : I have an avocational interest in religion (not just Christianity), a
> : 38" bookcase with four shelves of books on religion (all of which I
> : have read and underlined), a Christian upbringing (15 years of
> : parentally mandated indoctrination, both Sunday school and church),
> : and a scholarly book on religion (Johns Hopkins Press) that I have
> : authored. So I think I am qualified to say what the main doctrines of
> : Christianity are.
>
> OK. So, with that in mind, why does your list diverge
> so much from the Nicene creed on several important matters?
See above
> : Frankly, I don't think anyone needs that strong a background in
> : religion to know what the main doctrines of Christianity are.
> You omitted the triune nature of God, that Christ was his only son and
> part of said trinity, and claimed that Satan is a god. These are rather
> major departures from all the statements of belief I'm familar with.
> But that's OK, I'm sure you can provide references to these things
> in your vast book collection, or in URLs.
I should have mentioned that the Christ (messiah) was, according to
doctrine, the Son of God.
I did say that a Christian must believe in (1) God, (2) a supernatural
Jesus, essentially a second god, and (3) the Holy Spirit, essentially
a third God. So all three members of the Trinity were mentioned. I
did not list belief in the Trinity per se as a Christian doctrine,
because no theologian has ever been able to explain how three separate
beings can be a single being, or "Godhead." After all, Jesus "sitteth
at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty" (that makes him
separate), and the Holy Spirit spends most of its time here on earth,
where it performs such mischief as impregnating virgins and possessing
Holy Rollers, causing them to speak in tongues (glossolalia).
Satan is definitely a Christian god, and Christianity -- like
Zoroastrianism and Islam -- is definitely a dualistic system (one with
a good god and and bad god, two rivals for power). You wrongly assume
that, because Satan is not mentioned in the Nicene Creed (he's not in
the Apostles Creed either), he is not a part of Christianity. But he
is mentioned in the Old Testament (Zech 3:1-2, Job 1-2, I Chron.
21:1), in the New Testament gospels, in the book of Revelation; and he
is constantly on the lips of Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and other
fundamentalist preachers.
Jesus, conversing with Satan, said, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" (Now
that's telling him off!) Jesus, who spoke countless times of hell's
fire, Jesus promised sinners that on Judgment Day he would say to
them, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for
THE DEVIL and his angels [demons]" (Mt. 25:41). Jesus explained to
his disciples the meaning of his parable about the "enemy" who sowed
bad seed in the field of the man who had sowed good seed in his field.
"He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, . . . and the enemy who
sowed [the bad seed] is THE DEVIL." Again, Jesus says, "I saw SATAN
fall like ligntning from heaven" (Luke 10:18). And: "If SATAN is
divided against himself, how will his kingdom [hell] stand?" (Luke
11:18).
> Mind you, I'm not refuting or rebuting you.
> I'm just curious as to why your account diverges on these matters
> from the various creeds I'm aware of, and what the teachers of
> my "sunday school" of days long gone by had said. If you don't
> want to say, that's fine also.
To repeat, the creeds aren't the last word about the doctrines of
Christianity. The Bible, the clergy, and the beliefs of ordinary
Christians also help define Christianity and its doctrines. The
creeds fail to mention the most definitive doctrine of Christianity.
This doctrine holds that Jesus was a SAVIOR (one who "saves" people
from hell) whose suffering and death on the cross was necessary to
enable righteous people to go to heaven.
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>>
>>>> But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms of
>>>> their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion for
>>>> many people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued that
>>>> it's a "mistake" to care about fictional characters.
>>>
>>> In the first place, Pullman is entitled to choose his own subjects.
>>> If he wants to attack beliefs in terms of their literal truth, that's
>>> his privilege.
>>
>> I totally agree, it's his privilege to miss the point if he so
>> chooses. But it's mine to draw attention to the fact when he does.
>
> No, I don't think he misses the point. You can only be comforted by
> your belief if you really believe that what you believe is true.
If that's true, it shouldn't be possible for people to be comforted or
otherwise moved by the fates of fictional characters -- but they are. I
felt great after I saw "Return of the King," for example. I was a little
sad that Frodo and Gandalf left Middle-Earth, but overall I was happy
that good won out. Now, if you were to say to me that I was "mistaken"
to get emotional about a bunch of hobbits and wizards who don't really
exist, I would say you are missing the point.
> Saying
> "I believe in something plainly wrong because it makes me feel better"
> doesn't make any sense.
I believe in Frodo, even though I know he's not real, because it makes
me feel good to do so. Does that statement make no sense to you, or do
you know what I mean?
> So attacking the truth of a belief also means
> attacking its potential for making people feel better.
Sure. If you were to sit in the front row at a screening of "Return of
the King" calling out things like, "This is just a movie," and "None of
this stuff is really happening," you'd probably ruin the film for a
large part of the audience. My question is, why would you want to do that?
-- M. Ruff
Leonard F. Wheat
> : Begging the question is making a statement that assumes the truth of
> : something that might not be true, as in "When did you stop beating
> : your grandmother."
>
> Not really. It's only begging the question when you assume your
> conclusion. For example, "he never stopped beating his grandmother, so
> he must still be doing it", which assumes he was doing it to start with.
> Your proposed example didn't conclude anything at all.
You're wrong. Begging the question is, as I said, making a statement
that assumes the truth of something that might not be true. The
statement need not even involve a conclusion. If you were to argue
that the assumption (that you beat your grandmother in the example) IS
a conclusion, then you would be stuck with your above statement: "It's
. . . begging the question when you assume your conclusion."
The assumption that begs the question may or may not be true. As long
as the assumption is not backed by evidence, it remains an assumption.
Leonard F. Wheat
> : Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
> : glory to judge the living and the dead".
>
> The recitation I learned in my early church experience most closely
> corresponded to "The Apostles' Creed", and the version at the url
> below *does* mention hell.
>
> See http://www.bible-researcher.com/ecumenical-creeds.html
>
> The version I learned (or at least, the version as I remember it)
> has slight wording changes from the one at the url above, but
> basically that's what will come tumbling out if I get started
> on the "I believe" line.
>
> Something like
>
> I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
> and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by
> the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead,
> and buried.
> <deep breath after run-on sentence>
> On the third day he arose from from the dead and ascended into heaven,
> where he sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
> whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
> <another deep breath>
> I believe in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection
> of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
>
> I'm not sure if the deletions of hell and the saints and such was
> intentional, actually in the version I recited, or if my memory
> hasn't got it right. Hrm.
The Nicene Creed does not mention hell, but the Apostles Creed does.
The Nicene Creed includes these lines: "He suffered death and was
buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the
Scriptures; he ascended into heaven." But the Apostles Creed's
parallel lines include hell: ". . . was crucified, dead, and buried;
he descended into hell. On the third day he rose [sometimes AROSE]
from the dead; he ascended into [sometimes UNTO] heaven."
David E. Siegel
Quite true, but the actual *prosecution* was taken over by advocates
for the law, unlike those who insigated the arrest.
The arrest was instigated in part as a means to challange the law, a
test case; and in part as a publicity stunt for the city of dayton.
This is well documented and was not particualrly secret at the time.
-DES
Wayne Throop
: The Nicene Creed does not mention hell, but the Apostles Creed does.
You say that as if you were correcting something.
But... near as I can tell, that's exactly what I just got done
saying at tedious length.
Craig Richardson
<G.J....@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>Werner Arend wrote:
>> What was the Scopes trial about?
>
>A Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching the Darwinian theory of
>evolution in violation of the Butler Act, a pro-'creationism' law passed
>by local Christian fundamentalists.
There's a great bit in Hambly's "Darwath" trilogy where the
void-crossing history major and biker are talking to some native
wizards[1] about a couple of races that are thought of by the locals
to be somewhat less than human. Gil, with the benefit of some
knowledge of prehistory and evolution, recognizes one of them as
Neanderthals and tries to explain it in terms the wizards can
understand - that they, at some point way back in time must have
shared with the ancestors of Darwath humanity a common environment,
common hunting grounds, etc. Rudy, the biker, chips in (in English)
"common ancestors..." Gil switches to English, too, and fires back
"Let's not broaden the Scopes of this discussion any more than we have
to."
--Craig
[1] I'm trying to keep it short, so I didn't spend much effort making
the setup sound good. The background isn't as cliched as it sounds,
and it works in practice.
--
"It's great to be known, but it's better to be known as strange."
- Chairman Kaga
Warchild
"Gerry Quinn" <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote in message
Len has done a good job of distilling the fundamentals of Christian theology
to a form that can be compared to other religions. That is why the
responders get so bent out of shape. Their dogmas do not *permit* the
comparison of Christianity to other religions.
Matt Ruff
>
> You're wrong. Begging the question is, as I said, making a statement
> that assumes the truth of something that might not be true.
I'm with Wayne on this one -- to beg the question is to assume the
conclusion of an argument in the course of making that argument. I
didn't do that.
-- M. Ruff
phil hunt
>
>> Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
>> glory to judge the living and the dead".
>
>Christian doctrine. Get out the gospel of Matthew and read Jesus'
>many references to hell in both the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.
> Both heaven and hell ARE mentioned in the Apostles Creed.
>
>The most basic Christian doctrine is that Jesus' death on the cross
>was necessary for man to be saved. "Saved" implies the existence of
>both hell (from which man can now be saved, if he cooperates) and
>heaven (to which man can go if he is saved).
The other possibility is one could go to heaven, or just be dead.
--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)
Leonard F. Wheat
> On 25 Oct 2004 21:11:58 -0700, Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Hell isn't in the NC, except by implication: "He will come again in
> >> glory to judge the living and the dead".
> >
> >Hell doesn't have to be in the Nicene Creed for hell to be a basic
> >Christian doctrine. Get out the gospel of Matthew and read Jesus'
> >many references to hell in both the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.
> > Both heaven and hell ARE mentioned in the Apostles Creed.
> >
> >The most basic Christian doctrine is that Jesus' death on the cross
> >was necessary for man to be saved. "Saved" implies the existence of
> >both hell (from which man can now be saved, if he cooperates) and
> >heaven (to which man can go if he is saved).
>
> The other possibility is one could go to heaven, or just be dead.
Somehow, "just be dead" doesn't do justice to the concepts of "saved"
and "savior." Anyhow, abundant supplemental evidence exists that hell
is that from which the sinners are to be saved. Much of this evidence
comes from Jesus himself, who again and again referred in his
preaching to "the hell of fire" and "the eternal fire" where "men
shall weep and gnash their teeth."
Leonard F. Wheat
Worth mentioning is the fact that the trial became a national
spectacle. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate
for President, volunteered his services as prosecutor and was welcomed
in this role. Clarence Darrow, the nationally famous defense
attorney, volunteered his services on Scopes' behalf and made a fool
of Bryan, even while losing the case. H. L. Mencken, a nationally
famous journalist with the Baltimore Sun and founder and editor of
American Mercury magazine covered the trial.
The trial was held in 1925. Fifty years later, in 1955, the Lawrence
and Lee play "Inherit the Wind," which dramatized the Scopes trial,
opened on Broadway. The play was later made into a movie starring
Frederick March as Bryan and Spencer Tracy as Darrow. I saw both the
play, with Paul Muni as Darrow, and the film. Muni did a splendid
job. Tracy was guilty of overacting, displaying too much anger and
shouting.
Werner Arend
> Werner Arend wrote:
>
>>
>> Matt Ruff wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>>> But what I'm saying is that by judging Christian beliefs in terms
>>>>> of their literal truth, Pullman is missing the point of religion
>>>>> for many people, just as he'd be missing the point if he argued
>>>>> that it's a "mistake" to care about fictional characters.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In the first place, Pullman is entitled to choose his own subjects.
>>>> If he wants to attack beliefs in terms of their literal truth, that's
>>>> his privilege.
>>>
>>>
>>> I totally agree, it's his privilege to miss the point if he so
>>> chooses. But it's mine to draw attention to the fact when he does.
>>
>>
>> No, I don't think he misses the point. You can only be comforted by
>> your belief if you really believe that what you believe is true.
>
>
> If that's true, it shouldn't be possible for people to be comforted or
> otherwise moved by the fates of fictional characters -- but they are. I
> felt great after I saw "Return of the King," for example. I was a little
> sad that Frodo and Gandalf left Middle-Earth, but overall I was happy
> that good won out. Now, if you were to say to me that I was "mistaken"
> to get emotional about a bunch of hobbits and wizards who don't really
> exist, I would say you are missing the point.
No, I won't say that. As someone who reads and occasionally reviews
books, of course I won't.
Instead, I'll say that if you regard religious myths as simply stories,
then I agree with you. But religion tends to mean more than stories
for most people to whom it means anything at all. And for anyone who
regards religion as a collection of stories that make you feel good,
any kind of fiction that does the same thing will be a working
substitute. Using the term "belief" to describe this relationship
to fictional characters seems strange to me.
>> Saying
>> "I believe in something plainly wrong because it makes me feel better"
>> doesn't make any sense.
>
> I believe in Frodo, even though I know he's not real, because it makes
> me feel good to do so. Does that statement make no sense to you, or do
> you know what I mean?
I do know what you want to say, but I wouldn't ever put it the same
way. Instead, I'd say you can enter a fictional world, live with the
characters there, and take something back to your own life from there,
be it comfort, insight or whatever.
That doesn't constitute what I would describe as "belief", and certainly
not the kind of belief I associate with religion.
>> So attacking the truth of a belief also means
>> attacking its potential for making people feel better.
>
> Sure. If you were to sit in the front row at a screening of "Return of
> the King" calling out things like, "This is just a movie," and "None of
> this stuff is really happening," you'd probably ruin the film for a
> large part of the audience. My question is, why would you want to do that?
I wouldn't, because everyone knows it already. People just choose to
suspend their disbelief for as long as they're watching the movies,
in order to get whatever they get out of watching it. No one except
a few eccentrics would ever say that Middle Earth is real in the
way the term is usually understood. Religion is different. Religion
claims that, at some level, religious dogma is true, and requires
that you, so to say, suspend your disbelief all the time, which means
that you'll come to live in an illusionary world. Or would you
say that "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that God really exists"
is a statement that makes sense?
Werner
Michael Caldwell
"Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote
> I prefer the simpler definition: "a false belief in the supernatural."
> Being more abstract, it does a better job of covering such
> nonreligious superstitions as . . .
> 1. beliefs that bad luck results from (a) a black cat crossing
> one's path, (b) breaking a mirror, (c) walking under a ladder, and (d)
> getting a hotel room on the 13th floor or otherwise becoming
> associated with the number 13.
Added to this of course the sorts of "reflexive" superstitions which noi
longer adher strictly to belief. For example, I somehow picked up the
reflexive "knock on wood" superstition while in Japan last year, I suspect
from coworkers. Of course I don't neccessarily need to use wood, and I don't
actually believe the underlying superstition but... Things like saying
"Bless you" when somebody sneezes fall into this one too, I've yet to meet
someone who seriously believes that your soul leaves your body when you
sneeze leaving an empty vessal ripe for possession until blessed (In fact
they tend to be either baffled or annoyed when I thank them for saving me
from possession), and yet they're physically uncomfortable some of them if
they refrain from doing it...
Anyway, to take it back to SF, what are people's favourite examples of
Superstitions in SF? I quite like the many found in Pratchett's works,
though most of those are actually quite sensible, given the way belief works
on the Disc... Wearing a potato in your hat I remember as being one of
them...
--
"Heroin, it's the opiate of the masses" - William Gibson, All Tomorrows
Parties.
Michael Caldwell
"Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote
> 9. God has promulgated certain divine laws, including but not
> limited to the Ten Commandments, and violation of these divine laws
> constitutes sin. Sin, in turn, reduces the likelihood of one's going
> to heaven and increases the likelihood of going to hell. It also
> affects the likelihood of receiving protection and favors from God
> during the mortal life.
Actually, that last bit's wrong, UNREPENTED sin does that, sin all by itself
doesn't. And if you have a papal indulgence...
Matt Ruff
>
> Instead, I'll say that if you regard religious myths as simply stories,
> then I agree with you. But religion tends to mean more than stories
> for most people to whom it means anything at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that for many religious people, the
benefits they get from their faith don't require their beliefs to be
literally true, anymore than Frodo has to be a real person in order for
me to care about him and get something from hearing about his adventures.
It's true that most religious take their beliefs more literally than I
take Tolkien, but I think that's a side issue.
>> Sure. If you were to sit in the front row at a screening of "Return of
>> the King" calling out things like, "This is just a movie," and "None
>> of this stuff is really happening," you'd probably ruin the film for a
>> large part of the audience. My question is, why would you want to do
>> that?
>
> I wouldn't, because everyone knows it already. People just choose to
> suspend their disbelief for as long as they're watching the movies,
> in order to get whatever they get out of watching it. No one except
> a few eccentrics would ever say that Middle Earth is real in the
> way the term is usually understood. Religion is different. Religion
> claims that, at some level, religious dogma is true, and requires
> that you, so to say, suspend your disbelief all the time, which means
> that you'll come to live in an illusionary world.
No, you still live in the real world, you just believe some stuff that
may not be true, but makes you happy whether it's true or not. I
understand why this bothers some people, but I don't have an inherent
problem with it.
> Or would you
> say that "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that God really exists"
> is a statement that makes sense?
It's no more intrinsically nonsensical than my statement about Frodo.
-- M. Ruff
Gerry Quinn
> "Gerry Quinn" <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote in message
> >
> > > is actually polytheistic. Protestantism has four gods: God, the Lord
> > > Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Satan. Catholicism adds a fifth: the
> > > goddess Mary. (To Catholics, Mary is technically a saint, first among
> > > equals, and she receives "adoration" rather than worship; but these
> > > are distinctions that religious scholarship does not recognize. Mary
> > > is treated as a goddess and has the characteristics of a goddess.)
> >
> > What do you mean, exactly, by "religious scholarship"? Your version of
> > it seems to have little connection with the doctrines of the various
> > religions.
>
> to a form that can be compared to other religions. That is why the
> responders get so bent out of shape. Their dogmas do not *permit* the
> comparison of Christianity to other religions.
Of course they do. So long as the comparisons are valid, and don't
contain inventions such as those above.
Again I ask - he refers to "distinctions that religious scholarship does
not observe". I merely ask for references to this supposed body of
"religious scholarship" whose authority he invokes.
- Gerry Quinn
Werner Arend
> Werner Arend wrote:
>
>>> Sure. If you were to sit in the front row at a screening of "Return
>>> of the King" calling out things like, "This is just a movie," and
>>> "None of this stuff is really happening," you'd probably ruin the
>>> film for a large part of the audience. My question is, why would you
>>> want to do that?
>>
>> I wouldn't, because everyone knows it already. People just choose to
>> suspend their disbelief for as long as they're watching the movies,
>> in order to get whatever they get out of watching it. No one except
>> a few eccentrics would ever say that Middle Earth is real in the
>> way the term is usually understood. Religion is different. Religion
>> claims that, at some level, religious dogma is true, and requires
>> that you, so to say, suspend your disbelief all the time, which means
>> that you'll come to live in an illusionary world.
>
> No, you still live in the real world, you just believe some stuff that
> may not be true, but makes you happy whether it's true or not. I
> understand why this bothers some people, but I don't have an inherent
> problem with it.
I think that's intellectually dishonest. I can, for instance, concede
the remote possibility of a creator god among all the other quadrillions
of possibilities for how the universe came to be what it is, every one
of them without a shred of evidence so far. But even if I thought
believing in a god would make me happier (which I don't), I don't think
I could bring myself to believe in one. For instance, I have read
Teilhard de Chardin, I like some of his central concepts even though I
would not use Christian terms to describe them, and I would really like
them to be true. But current understanding of the universe seems to
point in another direction. So, however happy it would make me, I can't
believe in them, and would consider it intellectually dishonest to do so
in spite of contrary evidence.
And yes, I do judge people, among other things, by intellectual honesty.
If they can't describe their belief in a consistent way and can't answer
critical questions with anything but "that doesn't matter to me", I lose
some respect for them.
And I still don't get how "believing in something that I know isn't
true" makes sense except in an allegorical way.
>> Or would you
>> say that "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that God really exists"
>> is a statement that makes sense?
>
> It's no more intrinsically nonsensical than my statement about Frodo.
That means, you would have a different concept of being a Christian than
about one billion other Christians, negating one of the defining
characteristics of religion: a set of beliefs commonly held by a group
of people. You couldn't honestly say to be part of this group of people,
if their belief is different from yours in such a central matter. You
would not have a religion any more, just an individual worldview.
On the other side, even if I thought some existential wisdom would be
conferred by reading "The Lord of the Rings", I would not say I believe
in Frodo, or Middle Earth, or anything else in Tolkien's work. I would
say I believe in that wisdom, but that's a different thing. Were I a
poet, I *might* say I believe in Middle Earth, but that would only be
another way to say I believe in the wisdom, and not to be taken
literally. I'd never express myself thusly in a debate.
Werner
Ken McIsaac
Wheat) wrote:
>The Nicene Creed does not mention hell, but the Apostles Creed does.
>The Nicene Creed includes these lines: "He suffered death and was
>buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the
>Scriptures; he ascended into heaven." But the Apostles Creed's
>parallel lines include hell: ". . . was crucified, dead, and buried;
>he descended into hell. On the third day he rose [sometimes AROSE]
>from the dead; he ascended into [sometimes UNTO] heaven."
Apparently there are more than one version of the Apostle's Creed.
I've been saying it at least once a week for about 25 years now. It
has never included any mention of hell. The version we (Canadian
Roman Catholics) use goes "was crucified, died and was buried. On the
thrid day..."
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Wheat) wrote:
>The trial was held in 1925. Fifty years later, in 1955, the Lawrence
>and Lee play "Inherit the Wind," which dramatized the Scopes trial,
>opened on Broadway.
Fifty?
Michael Stemper
>On 27 Oct 2004 09:07:12 -0700, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote:
>>The Nicene Creed does not mention hell, but the Apostles Creed does.
>Apparently there are more than one version of the Apostle's Creed.
Nope, there is the Apostle's Creed and there is the Nicene Creed.
The Apostle's Creed has, for the most part, simpler wording, and is
often taught to children.
>I've been saying it at least once a week for about 25 years now. It
>has never included any mention of hell. The version we (Canadian
>Roman Catholics) use goes "was crucified, died and was buried. On the
>third day..."
That's the Nicene Creed, which is usually used in Mass. It's the Apostle's
Creed that contains the bit about "... descended into Hell..."
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made from meat?
Ken McIsaac
Stemper) wrote:
>In article <nu92o0dug9edcslcd...@4ax.com>, Ken McIsaac writes:
>>On 27 Oct 2004 09:07:12 -0700, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote:
>
>>>The Nicene Creed does not mention hell, but the Apostles Creed does.
>
>>Apparently there are more than one version of the Apostle's Creed.
>
>Nope, there is the Apostle's Creed and there is the Nicene Creed.
>
I remain perplexed by this, but I think I have a hypothesis.
US Catholic Churches use the Nicene Creed. Canadian Catholic Churches
use the Apostle's Creed. Having lived in both countries, I know them
both, although I sometimes use the language of one half way through
the other because of crossed mental wiring.. I think something like
that happened here.
I am 100% certain that I have never said anything about hell while
reciting the creed. However, doing an online search for the wording
of the Apostle's Creed just now, I found some versions that use "he
descended into hell" and some versions that use "he descended to the
dead".
Although my brain refuses to insert either one every time I try to
recite it in my head, the second version must be the one we Canadian
types say during mass. Maybe this is why I always finish before
everybody else. :)
Leonard F. Wheat
> George Carty <G.J....@durham.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<417F9845...@durham.ac.uk>...
> > Werner Arend wrote:
> > > Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > >
> > >> In article <slrncnten5...@ofb.net>, wno...@ofb.net says...
> > >>
> > >>> On 2004-10-26, Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
> > >>>
> Worth mentioning is the fact that the trial became a national
> spectacle. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate
> for President, volunteered his services as prosecutor and was welcomed
> in this role. Clarence Darrow, the nationally famous defense
> attorney, volunteered his services on Scopes' behalf and made a fool
> of Bryan, even while losing the case. H. L. Mencken, a nationally
> famous journalist with the Baltimore Sun and founder and editor of
> American Mercury magazine, covered the trial.
> The trial was held in 1925. Fifty years later, in 1955, the Lawrence
> and Lee play "Inherit the Wind," which dramatized the Scopes trial,
> opened on Broadway.
What I meant to say was, of course, THIRTY years later.
Wayne Throop
: Actually, that last bit's wrong, UNREPENTED sin does that, sin all by
: itself doesn't. And if you have a papal indulgence...
Ah yes. The old "Get out of Hell free" card.
Leonard F. Wheat
> "Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote
>
> > 9. God has promulgated certain divine laws, including but not
> > limited to the Ten Commandments, and violation of these divine laws
> > constitutes sin. Sin, in turn, reduces the likelihood of one's going
> > to heaven and increases the likelihood of going to hell. It also
> > affects the likelihood of receiving protection and favors from God
> > during the mortal life.
>
> Actually, that last bit's wrong, UNREPENTED sin does that, sin all by itself
> doesn't. And if you have a papal indulgence...
I'm about to quibble with you without strongly disagreeing. Sin and
unrepented sin are identical until such time as the sinner repents.
Even then, I doubt that many Christians believe that a sinful life
followed by deathbed repentance is as likely to lead to heaven as a
relatively sin-free life with repentance -- or even without
repentance. Likewise, how many Christians believe that (a) constant
sinning and repenting will give them the same chance of divine favors
as (b) a sin-free life? If two Christians both pray for the $72
million winning number combination on their lottery tickets (or for
their child's recovery from an auto accident, if you prefer), does the
average Christian think that (a) the rapist who repents is as likely
to win as (b)someone who has always behaved?
You must also consider Catholic-Protestant complications. Catholics
have available to them a formal means of repentance. They can go to
confession and receive absolution from a priest, subject to their
saying a few Hail Marys and playing around with the beads on a rosary.
The confessional repentance works -- absolution is granted -- even
when it is merely formal and insincere: a girl may confess every week
to having sex with her boyfriend, confident that she can be forgiven
if she confesses to her priest.
A Protestant, on the other hand, can't do very much except decide to
"accept Jesus Christ as your own personal savior," be "born again,"
and start listening to Pat Robertson every day on the radio (or is it
TV?). Well, perhaps I exaggerate: a Protestant can kneel at his
bedside and pray to God or to Jesus for forgiveness and hope (but not
necessarily expect) to be forgiven if he/she is sincere. The trouble
is, although a Protestant may be genuinely sorry about having
performed a particular sinful act, such as looking covetously at a
neighbor's well constructed wife (violation of one of the Ten
Commandments), he cannot sincerely repent most of his sins. Were I
still a Christian (I stopped believing between the ages of 15 and 16),
I would have an awful time sincerely repenting having looked
covetously at some woman who happened to be married.
Hence I continue to maintain that, in the Christian belief system, sin
decreases the likelihood of going to heaven, increases the likelihood
of going to hell, and decreases the likelihood of receiving favors or
protection in this life. Few Christians really believe that God (or
Jesus in the case of fundamentalists) erases every act of sin from the
divine record book simply because the sinner prays for forgiveness.
That is tantamount to equating rape, murder, and million dollar
embezzlement with calling someone a fool (Jesus said whoever says "You
fool!" is damned to hell).
Michael Stemper
>On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:27:23 -0500, mste...@siemens-emis.com (Michael Stemper) wrote:
>>In article <nu92o0dug9edcslcd...@4ax.com>, Ken McIsaac writes:
>US Catholic Churches use the Nicene Creed. Canadian Catholic Churches
>use the Apostle's Creed.
Ah, okay. I didn't know that. Actually, a priest at my parish will sometimes
start off the Apostle's Creed, rather than the Nicene, which sends all of
us madly scrambling for hymnals, so that we can read it.
>I am 100% certain that I have never said anything about hell while
>reciting the creed. However, doing an online search for the wording
>of the Apostle's Creed just now, I found some versions that use "he
>descended into hell" and some versions that use "he descended to the
>dead".
I'd forgotten about that wording difference. I do actually remember
the "to the dead" version, now that you mention it. So, I guess that
your original statement about two versions of the Apostle's Creed was
correct. I completely misinterpreted what you were saying. My apologies.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
No animals were harmed in the composition of this message.
David E. Siegel
> > "Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote
> >
> > > 9. God has promulgated certain divine laws, including but not
> > > limited to the Ten Commandments, and violation of these divine laws
> > > constitutes sin. Sin, in turn, reduces the likelihood of one's going
> > > to heaven and increases the likelihood of going to hell. It also
> > > affects the likelihood of receiving protection and favors from God
> > > during the mortal life.
> >
> > Actually, that last bit's wrong, UNREPENTED sin does that, sin all by itself
> > doesn't. And if you have a papal indulgence...
>
>
> I'm about to quibble with you without strongly disagreeing. Sin and
> unrepented sin are identical until such time as the sinner repents.
> Even then, I doubt that many Christians believe that a sinful life
> followed by deathbed repentance is as likely to lead to heaven as a
> relatively sin-free life with repentance -- or even without
> repentance. Likewise, how many Christians believe that (a) constant
> sinning and repenting will give them the same chance of divine favors
> as (b) a sin-free life? If two Christians both pray for the $72
> million winning number combination on their lottery tickets (or for
> their child's recovery from an auto accident, if you prefer), does the
> average Christian think that (a) the rapist who repents is as likely
> to win as (b)someone who has always behaved?
>
I belive that different groups of christians have different takes on
the above questions.
> You must also consider Catholic-Protestant complications. Catholics
> have available to them a formal means of repentance. They can go to
> confession and receive absolution from a priest, subject to their
> saying a few Hail Marys and playing around with the beads on a rosary.
> The confessional repentance works -- absolution is granted -- even
> when it is merely formal and insincere: a girl may confess every week
> to having sex with her boyfriend, confident that she can be forgiven
> if she confesses to her priest.
>
AS I understand it (I am not a Catholic, nor indeed a Christian, but
am fairly well read on the issues, and know a number of Catholics
fairly well, starting with my wife) formal absolution is only
considered effective if it follows *sincere* repentance, and while the
priest usually presumes sincerity, it is assumed that God can tell,
and that a priest's formal declaration of absolution does not bind
God. Also in the case of the same act being repeatedly confessed, the
priest can (although rarely does) decide that the repentance is not
sincere and withhold formal absolution on that ground. I have read of
such cases.
I might add that while the normal ccase is that the pennance is the
recitation of set, standard prayers, it can be anything at all, and
there are plenty of cases of priests imposing far more rigiourous
penances than that, including ones involving some degree of practical
amends.
-DES
Michael Stemper
>lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com>...
>> You must also consider Catholic-Protestant complications. Catholics
>> have available to them a formal means of repentance. They can go to
>> confession and receive absolution from a priest, subject to their
>> saying a few Hail Marys and playing around with the beads on a rosary.
>> The confessional repentance works -- absolution is granted -- even
>> when it is merely formal and insincere: a girl may confess every week
>> to having sex with her boyfriend, confident that she can be forgiven
>> if she confesses to her priest.
>AS I understand it (I am not a Catholic, nor indeed a Christian, but
>am fairly well read on the issues, and know a number of Catholics
>fairly well, starting with my wife)
Your understanding as shown below is accurate:
> formal absolution is only
>considered effective if it follows *sincere* repentance,
Check.
> and while the
>priest usually presumes sincerity, it is assumed that God can tell,
>and that a priest's formal declaration of absolution does not bind
>God.
Check.
> Also in the case of the same act being repeatedly confessed, the
>priest can (although rarely does) decide that the repentance is not
>sincere and withhold formal absolution on that ground. I have read of
>such cases.
I haven't, but it sounds plausible (in extremis).
>I might add that while the normal ccase is that the pennance is the
>recitation of set, standard prayers, it can be anything at all,
That is correct. In fact, post-VII, the trend has been *away* from
prayers as penance.
A masterful summary, which saved me from having to write my own rebuttal.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of 2
Tim McDaniel
> "Michael Caldwell" <absu...@es.co.nz>
>: And if you have a papal indulgence...
>Ah yes. The old "Get out of Hell free" card.
'Tain't. It's a "Get out of penance" card.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm>, from the Catholic
Encyclopedia:
But in the special sense in which it is here considered, an
indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin,
the guilt of which has been forgiven. ...
To facilitate explanation, it may be well to state what an
indulgence is not. It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a
pardon of future sin; neither could be granted by any power. It is
not the forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it supposes that the sin
has already been forgiven. It is not an exemption from any law or
duty, and much less from the obligation consequent on certain
kinds of sin, e.g., restitution; on the contrary, it means a more
complete payment of the debt which the sinner owes to God. It does
not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of
subsequent lapses into sin. Least of all is an indulgence the
purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer's salvation or
releases the soul of another from Purgatory.
An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal
punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven,
which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the
power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant
merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and
reasonable motive. Regarding this definition, the following points
are to be noted:
* In the Sacrament of Baptism not only is the guilt of sin
remitted, but also all the penalties attached to sin. In the
Sacrament of Penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it
the eternal punishment due to mortal sin; but there still
remains the temporal punishment required by Divine justice, and
this requirement must be fulfilled either in the present life or
in the world to come, i.e., in Purgatory. An indulgence offers
the penitent sinner the means of discharging this debt during
his life on earth. ...
God alone knows what penalty remains to be paid and what its
precise amount is in severity and duration. Finally, some
indulgences are granted in behalf of the living only, while others
may be applied in behalf of the souls departed. It should be
noted, however, that the application has not the same significance
in both cases. The Church in granting an indulgence to the living
exercises her jurisdiction; over the dead she has no jurisdiction
and therefore makes the indulgence available for them by way of
suffrage (per modum suffragii), i.e. she petitions God to accept
these works of satisfaction and in consideration thereof to
mitigate or shorten the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory. ...
The mere fact that the Church proclaims an indulgence does not
imply that it can be gained without effort on the part of the
faithful. From what has been said above, it is clear that the
recipient must be free from the guilt of mortal sin. Furthermore,
for plenary indulgences, confession and Communion are usually
required, while for partial indulgences, though confession is not
obligatory, the formula corde saltem contrito, i.e. "at least with
a contrite heart ", is the customary prescription.
--
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
Ken McIsaac
Stemper) wrote:
>In article <dbdfe7e0.04102...@posting.google.com>, David E. Siegel writes:
>>lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com>...
>
>>> You must also consider Catholic-Protestant complications. Catholics
>>> have available to them a formal means of repentance. They can go to
>>> confession and receive absolution from a priest, subject to their
>>> saying a few Hail Marys and playing around with the beads on a rosary.
>>> The confessional repentance works -- absolution is granted -- even
>>> when it is merely formal and insincere: a girl may confess every week
>>> to having sex with her boyfriend, confident that she can be forgiven
>>> if she confesses to her priest.
>
>>AS I understand it (I am not a Catholic, nor indeed a Christian, but
>>am fairly well read on the issues, and know a number of Catholics
>>fairly well, starting with my wife)
>
>Your understanding as shown below is accurate:
Yep. I'll chime in, too.
>
>> formal absolution is only
>>considered effective if it follows *sincere* repentance,
>
>Check.
>
>> and while the
>>priest usually presumes sincerity, it is assumed that God can tell,
>>and that a priest's formal declaration of absolution does not bind
>>God.
>
>Check.
>
>> Also in the case of the same act being repeatedly confessed, the
>>priest can (although rarely does) decide that the repentance is not
>>sincere and withhold formal absolution on that ground. I have read of
>>such cases.
>
>I haven't, but it sounds plausible (in extremis).
In the Old Days, some priests in Quebec would withhold absolution of
*any* sin from married women whom they believed did not have enough
children, on the grounds that they must have been committing at least
one sin (contraception) that they were not confessing.
This is generally seen as a Bad Thing about the Old Days. And, no, I
don't know how they computed how many children was "enough".
>
>>I might add that while the normal ccase is that the pennance is the
>>recitation of set, standard prayers, it can be anything at all,
>
>That is correct. In fact, post-VII, the trend has been *away* from
>prayers as penance.
Absolution for serious crimes, for example, is probably granted as
follows. "Certainly, God forgives you, my son. Make sure you make a
good Act of Contrition on your way to the police station to turn
yourself in."
Leonard F. Wheat
You three chaps all missed what may be the biggest flaw in my argument
that Catholics, by confessing their sins and obtaining priestly
absolution, can easily avoid hell. That flaw is purgatory. Granted,
purgatory is not hell, so a sinner's going to purgatory does not mean
he/she has gone to hell despite absolution. But it is generally
understood that the longer and more serious the sins, the longer the
stay in purgatory.
There is also the issue of how vigorously the sinner is scrubbed --
purged -- in purgatory. Some modern Catholics view purgatory as a
mere period of waiting, the only punishment being psychological,
namely, "the pain of intense longing for God." Others see purgatory
as a place where varied but unspecified and only vaguely conceived
punishment take place. If we were to believe Dante, writing in volume
2 (Purgatorio) of his Divine Comedy, purgatory can be very
uncomfortable and definitely has degrees of punishment. Naturally,
modern Catholics don't take Dante's version of the details too
seriously, but I think many do accept the idea of varying types and
degrees of punishment. Anyhow, that is the impression I got from a
Catholic roomate years ago in college. (I have no reason to believe
he ever engaged in serious theological research on the topic, so he
wasn't necessarily conveying an "official" Catholic position.)
According to Ferm's Encyclopedia of Religion: "Definitions of faith at
the Councils of Florence and Trent, received by the Roman Catholic
Church, say that there is a purgatory and that the offerings of prayer
and especially of the Mass aid souls there. Acquinas and Bonaventure,
following S. Gregory, hold the punishment to be both absence from God
[that's no different from some modern definitions of hell] AND BURNING
BY FIRE, although the description was not upheld at Florence against
the Greeks."
David, it would be interesting to learn what your wife has been taught
about purgatory. And Ken, let's hear what you've been taught.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
wrote on Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:48:02 GMT:
> Werner Arend wrote:
>> No, I don't think he misses the point. You can only be comforted by
>> your belief if you really believe that what you believe is true.
> If that's true, it shouldn't be possible for people to be comforted or
> otherwise moved by the fates of fictional characters -- but they are. I
> felt great after I saw "Return of the King," for example. I was a little
> sad that Frodo and Gandalf left Middle-Earth, but overall I was happy
> that good won out. Now, if you were to say to me that I was "mistaken"
> to get emotional about a bunch of hobbits and wizards who don't really
> exist, I would say you are missing the point.
>> "I believe in something plainly wrong because it makes me feel better"
>> doesn't make any sense.
> I believe in Frodo, even though I know he's not real, because it makes
> me feel good to do so. Does that statement make no sense to you, or do
> you know what I mean?
Oh... So you're saying you think all Christians understand that their
religion is based on a fantasy novel, that the characters are fictional,
and they're just enjoying the emotional effect of a story, without it
having anything to do with reality. Feel free to go explain that at a
church next Sunday. I'm sure they'll all be glad that you shared your
point of view with them.
At least, I hope that's what you're saying, not that you actually
believe _Lord of the Rings_ to be a true cosmology and history, and that
Frodo and Gandalf were real people.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I think [Robert Heinlein] would take it kindly if we were all to refrain from
abandoning civilization as a failed experiment that requires too much hard
work." -_Rah, Rah, RAH!_, by Spider Robinson
Brad Sims
>
> --
> "Heroin, it's the opiate of the masses" - William Gibson, All Tomorrows
> Parties.
Fix yer sig delimiter; it should be
<new line> <dash> <dash> <SPACE> <new line>
--
If you want to put fruit and little umbrellas in your drink, fine, but
don't call it beer (and you can expect me to call you a pansy).
-- Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Michael Caldwell
> In Dread Ink, the Grave hand of Michael Caldwell Did Inscribe:
>> --
>> "Heroin, it's the opiate of the masses" - William Gibson, All Tomorrows
>> Parties.
> Fix yer sig delimiter; it should be
> <new line> <dash> <dash> <SPACE> <new line>
Now I know that, and you know that, but the problem is that I do them free
hand (The computer I'm using is Japanese windows based for convoluted
reasons, and I can't find the right tool), and occassional typos happen...
Matt Ruff
>
> Oh... So you're saying you think all Christians understand that their
> religion is based on a fantasy novel, that the characters are fictional,
> and they're just enjoying the emotional effect of a story, without it
> having anything to do with reality.
No.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>>
>> may not be true, but makes you happy whether it's true or not. I
>> understand why this bothers some people, but I don't have an inherent
>> problem with it.
>
> I think that's intellectually dishonest. I can, for instance, concede
> the remote possibility of a creator god among all the other quadrillions
> of possibilities for how the universe came to be what it is, every one
> of them without a shred of evidence so far. But even if I thought
> believing in a god would make me happier (which I don't), I don't think
> I could bring myself to believe in one.
I'm not suggesting that you should. I'm trying to explain why, if you
*did* believe in God, I wouldn't automatically consider it a horrible
mistake that needed to be corrected.
> And yes, I do judge people, among other things, by intellectual honesty.
I do too -- if they're trying to sell me something, or if they offer
their ideas up for public debate. But if someone is quietly minding
their own business, I don't think it's my job to go kick sand on their
belief system. If they're not asking for my opinion on whether their
beliefs are literally true, I assume it's because they don't care about
my opinion.
> And I still don't get how "believing in something that I know isn't
> true" makes sense except in an allegorical way.
I don't think belief is an either/or proposition -- there are different
degrees and different kinds of belief.
> That means, you would have a different concept of being a Christian than
> about one billion other Christians,
I've met plenty of Christians who managed to combine skepticism and
faith quite effectively -- people who I think could be accurately
described as both believing and not believing at the same time.
-- M. Ruff
David Johnston
wrote:
>> Actually it was Scopes' friends who prosecuted him. The trial appears
>> to have been instigated entirely by those interested in challenging the
>> Butler Act. In short, the OP as quoted above shows the hysterical
>> extremism typical of his kind.
>
>What was the Scopes trial about?
An estate dispute as I recall. Something about inheriting the wind.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Then you need to explain how you think your "belief" in Frodo is like
Christian "belief" in Jesus, because otherwise your comparison of the
two is not just false, but insulting to both fiction readers *and*
theists.
What you have in fiction is "suspension of disbelief". You know it's
a story, written by someone you could go meet (or visit their grave if
they're dead), and you put aside your disbelief long enough to
experience the story, and then it's over and you come back to reality.
What religious believers have is "faith". They *know*, for a fact,
that their gods and demons are *real*. Evidence doesn't matter, logic
doesn't matter. With less evidence and logical explanation, those with
weaker "faith" circuits drop out of the religion, but those who remain
in the religion are those who are capable of absolute faith without the
slightest shred of reality backing them up.
They're totally different things.
David Dyer-Bennet
> In article <b5f71a25.04102...@posting.google.com>,
> lenw...@earthlink.net says...
>
>> Christianity, although it regards itself as a monotheistic religion,
>> is actually polytheistic. Protestantism has four gods: God, the Lord
>> Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Satan. Catholicism adds a fifth: the
>> goddess Mary. (To Catholics, Mary is technically a saint, first among
>> equals, and she receives "adoration" rather than worship; but these
>> are distinctions that religious scholarship does not recognize. Mary
>> is treated as a goddess and has the characteristics of a goddess.)
>
> What do you mean, exactly, by "religious scholarship"? Your version of
> it seems to have little connection with the doctrines of the various
> religions.
That's kinda the point. "Religious scholarship" is looking at the
various religions objectively from the outside.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
>>
>>> Oh... So you're saying you think all Christians understand that their
>>> religion is based on a fantasy novel, that the characters are fictional,
>>> and they're just enjoying the emotional effect of a story, without it
>>> having anything to do with reality.
>>
>> No.
>
> Then you need to explain how you think your "belief" in Frodo is like
> Christian "belief" in Jesus, because otherwise your comparison of the
> two is not just false, but insulting to both fiction readers *and*
> theists.
I wasn't comparing them directly. I was using fiction as an example of
how belief could be rewarding even if its object isn't real.
-- M. Ruff
Leonard F. Wheat
The largely imaginary psychological "rewards" of religious faith don't
begin to balance the psychological torment and physical pain inflicted
not only on the faithful but on people of the "wrong" faith -- or no
faith at all -- by the faithful. Here, from today's Washington Post,
is the latest example of a "rewarding" experience -- elsewhere you
call it "pleasure" -- conferred by faith on one of the faithful. The
locale is a Maryland suburb of Washington, DC.
"A woman who set herself on fire in an apparent abortion protest in
Prince George's County was hospitalized in critical condition. Police
in Berwyn Heights said the woman doused herself with gasoline Friday
outside an abortion clinic at 60th Avenue and Greenbelt Road, then
walked toward the clinic.
"Police Capt. Richard Hartnett said an officer nearby used a fire
extinguisher to put out the flames. The woman, whose identity was not
released, was airlifted to a hospital with burns over much of her
body."
The unspeakable agony this faith-drivin idiot inflicted on herself is
just part of the religion-based evil inherent in the situation. To
judge from her walking toward the clinic, the woman probably intended
to either (a) use herself as a human torch to set the building on fire
or (b) embrace and immolate either a patient or a doctor -- in other
words, inflict severe harm and possibly death on people who don't
share her particular faith. In the process, she was thumbing her nose
at freedom of religion by trying to force one of her own religious
doctrines ("God forbids abortion") on people who don't accept that
doctrine.
This event was no anomaly. Self-destruction inspired by religion pops
up every now and then in the news. So many Middle Eastern Muslim
suicide bombers have killed themselves, fellow Muslims, and Jews in
recent years that we have all lost count. Back in the 1960s and l970s
Buddhist priests and other Buddhists got caught up in a
self-immolation fad. A few years back another religious zealot, a
Catholic antiabortionist, shot and killed an abortion clinic doctor
through the doctor's kitchen window.
Philip Pullman knew what he was talking about when he said (speaking
through Will Parry's father): "Every little increase in human freedom
[e.g., freedom of religion -- freedom to reject antiabortion doctrine]
has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know
more and be wiser and stronger and those who want us to obey and be
humble and submit [to the priests, to the Pope, to God, and to
Allah]."
Ken McIsaac
Wheat) wrote:
<snip some stuff about absolution for length>
>
>You three chaps all missed what may be the biggest flaw in my argument
>that Catholics, by confessing their sins and obtaining priestly
>absolution, can easily avoid hell. That flaw is purgatory. Granted,
>purgatory is not hell, so a sinner's going to purgatory does not mean
>he/she has gone to hell despite absolution. But it is generally
>understood that the longer and more serious the sins, the longer the
>stay in purgatory.
>
>There is also the issue of how vigorously the sinner is scrubbed --
>purged -- in purgatory. Some modern Catholics view purgatory as a
>mere period of waiting, the only punishment being psychological,
>namely, "the pain of intense longing for God." Others see purgatory
>as a place where varied but unspecified and only vaguely conceived
>punishment take place. If we were to believe Dante, writing in volume
>2 (Purgatorio) of his Divine Comedy, purgatory can be very
>uncomfortable and definitely has degrees of punishment. Naturally,
>modern Catholics don't take Dante's version of the details too
>seriously, but I think many do accept the idea of varying types and
>degrees of punishment. Anyhow, that is the impression I got from a
>Catholic roomate years ago in college. (I have no reason to believe
>he ever engaged in serious theological research on the topic, so he
>wasn't necessarily conveying an "official" Catholic position.)
I can't give you the "official" position, either, not being a
theologian.
Your discussion of purgatory is correct, I believe, but outdated.
My impression is that post-Vatican II, the church doesn't talk much
about purgatory anymore. Even Hell is defined as "the pain of intense
longing for God": the church just doesn't go in for fire and
brimstone.
The whole point of purgatory is that *people* don't like the idea that
somebody can live a sinful life and "get away with it". So, in answer
to "why should I be good if my sins will be forgiven at the Last
Rites", they came up with purgatory, where you're going to do the
time. Medieval depictions of purgatory have it just as bad as Hell,
except at least your sentence is limited.
The modern church has gotten away from all this because the whole
point of the doctrine of grace is that *nobody* "deserves" salvation.
It's a gift freely given, not something you earn for good behaviour.
(cf. the parable of the workers in the vineyard who get paid a whole
day's wage no matter when they start; and the "other brother" in the
prodigal son story, who seems to really get the shaft.)
*People* don't like this notion, but that's what the scripture seems
to say.
Wayne Throop
: (cf. the parable of the workers in the vineyard who get paid a whole
: day's wage no matter when they start; and the "other brother" in the
: prodigal son story, who seems to really get the shaft.)
"Seems"?
Christopher J. Henrich
wrote:
> : Ken McIsaac <kmci...@uwo.ca>
> : (cf. the parable of the workers in the vineyard who get paid a whole
> : day's wage no matter when they start; and the "other brother" in the
> : prodigal son story, who seems to really get the shaft.)
>
> "Seems"?
>
He is deprived of the pleasure of gloating over the misery of his
prodigal brother. How important that is,... well, YMMV.
--
Chris Henrich
"It's our supreme ability and willingness to screw up that is the secret of our
success."
-- R. X. Cringely
Wayne Throop
::: whole day's wage no matter when they start; and the "other brother"
::: in the prodigal son story, who seems to really get the shaft.)
:: "Seems"?
: He is deprived of the pleasure of gloating over the misery of his
: prodigal brother. How important that is,... well, YMMV.
I was under the impression that the father redivided the inheritance.
That's a bit more than "deprived of gloating". But maybe I'm reading
too much into the fatted calf bit.
Matt Ruff
> Matt Ruff <storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<41851F30...@worldnet.att.net>...
>
>>Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
>>
>>> Then you need to explain how you think your "belief" in Frodo is like
>>> Christian "belief" in Jesus, because otherwise your comparison of the
>>> two is not just false, but insulting to both fiction readers *and*
>>> theists.
>>
>> I wasn't comparing them directly. I was using fiction as an example of
>> how belief could be rewarding even if its object isn't real.
>
> begin to balance the psychological torment and physical pain inflicted
> not only on the faithful but on people of the "wrong" faith
[snip extended rant]
Now you're just begging the question.
-- M. Ruff
Ken McIsaac
wrote:
It's a little hard to say. What the father tells is elder son is "All
I have is yours", which sounds to me like he did not further subdivide
the inheritance. Certainly, he gets the shaft in the sense that his
dad never made a big deal about the fact that he did *everything* he
was supposed to do, but when his no good brother comes back after
wasting half the family fortune, there's a party.
The argument that theologians make, though, is that this discussion
misses Jesus' point, which is the non-zero-sum nature of the Kingdom
of Heaven. It is possible for *both* sons to get "All I have".
This doesn't really make sense to competition-based monkeys like you
and me, which is why they came up with purgatory. People just don't
like the idea that "be good all your life" doesn't get you any more
brownie points than "confess your sins while you're watching your
femoral artery spurt", but that seems to be what Jesus said.
Leonard F. Wheat
Stating a conclusion, be it right or wrong, never constitutes begging
the question. Question begging statements (1) IMPLY rather than
directly state something and (2) what is implied is of dubious
accuracy.
My statement is a conclusion, and its accuracy is supported by
evidence from my original post that began this thread. There I wrote:
"Christianity, not to mention almost every other religion (with some
modern exceptions, such as
Unitarianism), has been a continuing source of evil, suffering, and
corruption: inquisitions, crusades, other religious wars, human
sacrifice (including first-born sacrifice), genocide (including
genocidal infanticide -- by the sword), witch trials and executions,
burnings at the stake, stoning deaths of adultresses, the selling of
indulgences, persecution, discrimination, imprisonment, assassination,
bombings, the Scopes trial, other suppression of the teaching of
evolution, mob intimidation, pedophile priests, paid-for absolutions,
terrified pregnant girls who think they are condemned to hell, and all
sorts of other ills. Neither Caldecott nor any other Christian will
be convinced by such facts, but the facts are just that – facts. They
fully justify Pullman's unflattering description of 'the Church.'"
I could have mentioned additional evils, such as the persecution of
Galileo, the burning of heretics, and Pope Innocent III's twenty-year
Albigensium Crusade against heretics in southern France during which
hundreds of thousands of ascetic cultists were tortured and killed.
Modern evils include the self-immolations referred to in my preceding
post on this subthread, the enactment by Catholic dominated
legislatures of state laws banning the sale of birth control devices
to non-Catholics as well as Catholics (freedom of religion?), the use
to tax revenue derived from non-Catholics as well as Catholics to
support parochial schools (still going on in Louisiana and in places
where voucher laws have been enacted), the use of tax-supported public
schools to enforce Christian prayer and Bible reading on the children
of Jews and atheists and other non-Christians, discrimination against
Catholics by the Masons and other organizations, and the de facto ban
on avowed atheists running for public office.
These evils far outweigh the "pleasure" you believe religion gives to
some believers. The scale is so heavily overbalanced on the side of
religious evils the my conclusion admits no doubt (other that
faith-based doubt that relies on irrational belief rather than
evidence).