Rendering Unto Caesar: Scoping Out the Medieval Dungeon (part 5)
One of the differences between a modernist a someone trapped in a medieval mindset is the approach taken toward the entity that medieval thinkers claim to be divine. A modernist will infer from the poor track record of medieval thinking that the entity considered to be divine is not really divine. The assumption that it is only divine in the medieval imagination is a natural consequence of the track record of theft, murder, and destruction that such imaginations have demonstrated in the past.
This would also conform well with modern theories of astral objects which have themselves evolved as more and more information about them becomes available. There was a time when people considered the Sun to be an eternal entity. Current speculation considers it to have a beginning and an ending. If such is the case with the Sun then such can also be the case with the entity that the medieval mind thinks of as the inventor of the Sun. There was a time when the medieval deity did not exist. It has not been around forever.
The bridge between medieval thought and modernity is the notion of eternal law. The difference between the two is the process used to determine what qualifies as an eternal law and what does not. The modern mind studies nature to search for patterns that are valid in any time and place. Those patterns are used to formulate relational expressions that are assumed to always hold true until further research finds cases where they do not apply.
I encountered a medieval thinker who rejected an idea because he considered it to be "man's" law rather than the law of his deity. All of the relational findings of natural science could easily be rejected as fabrications of the human imagination in favor of the laws of an entity that bears the earmarks of human creativity. Rather than search for a natural relation that is always true, the medieval minds asserts that his indoctrinated relation was the product of an eternal entity.
The medieval mind cowers in terror at the thought of eternal torment as punishment for questioning the validity of the authority that would supposedly treat her in such a vicious and brutal manner. How anyone could find such a fiend to be lovable is beyond my comprehension. It would be like loving the hostage taker who threatened to cut off body parts one at a time.
What is even worse is the zealotry that results from this kind of thinking. It compels people to commit unspeakable atrocities in order to uphold medieval regulations. Teens torment their peers to the point of suicide out of a medieval sense of justice. People who suffer from such torment are labelled as chemically imbalanced and fed brain damaging chemicals. The tormentors are considered to be practitioners of traditional religion. Actions against them would be a form of religious persecution. Religious persecutors are protected by medieval minds using modern concepts of civil rights.
Do you agree that religious persecutors deserve the freedom to persecute and that their victims should be treated as somehow genetically defective? On a related note, what do you make of the recent events in the Central African Republic?
Links: The previous entry in this series. EuroNews report on religious violence in the Republic of Central Africa.
This would also conform well with modern theories of astral objects which have themselves evolved as more and more information about them becomes available. There was a time when people considered the Sun to be an eternal entity. Current speculation considers it to have a beginning and an ending. If such is the case with the Sun then such can also be the case with the entity that the medieval mind thinks of as the inventor of the Sun. There was a time when the medieval deity did not exist. It has not been around forever.
The bridge between medieval thought and modernity is the notion of eternal law. The difference between the two is the process used to determine what qualifies as an eternal law and what does not. The modern mind studies nature to search for patterns that are valid in any time and place. Those patterns are used to formulate relational expressions that are assumed to always hold true until further research finds cases where they do not apply.
I encountered a medieval thinker who rejected an idea because he considered it to be "man's" law rather than the law of his deity. All of the relational findings of natural science could easily be rejected as fabrications of the human imagination in favor of the laws of an entity that bears the earmarks of human creativity. Rather than search for a natural relation that is always true, the medieval minds asserts that his indoctrinated relation was the product of an eternal entity.
The medieval mind cowers in terror at the thought of eternal torment as punishment for questioning the validity of the authority that would supposedly treat her in such a vicious and brutal manner. How anyone could find such a fiend to be lovable is beyond my comprehension. It would be like loving the hostage taker who threatened to cut off body parts one at a time.
What is even worse is the zealotry that results from this kind of thinking. It compels people to commit unspeakable atrocities in order to uphold medieval regulations. Teens torment their peers to the point of suicide out of a medieval sense of justice. People who suffer from such torment are labelled as chemically imbalanced and fed brain damaging chemicals. The tormentors are considered to be practitioners of traditional religion. Actions against them would be a form of religious persecution. Religious persecutors are protected by medieval minds using modern concepts of civil rights.
Do you agree that religious persecutors deserve the freedom to persecute and that their victims should be treated as somehow genetically defective? On a related note, what do you make of the recent events in the Central African Republic?
Links: The previous entry in this series. EuroNews report on religious violence in the Republic of Central Africa.