What Frames What

[mahf]

I'm taking a class called "Christianity and the Modern Mind" with Dr. Richard Horner. I'm really excited about it, and the first class just convinced me how much I have the opportunity to learn. On the first day of class, he mentioned two questions that he thinks are worth asking ourselves, both in general and with respect to the class. I think

Comments

[zaimoni]

Ironically, I'm planning to read Neitzche "in depth" because the mediagenic fragments indicate he had a deep empirical understanding of the Romans 7 paradox. [I haven't decided whether to start with Thus Spake Zarathustra or Beyond Good and Evil. I do plan to skip the art theory on my first pass...from what I've heard, it's critically misleading.]

[mothwentbad]

It would be nice to have an infallible decision-making machine, an infallible belief system. But the dilemma is something as follows:

I claim religious text X is the perfect, infallible work of god Y. How do I know this? Because group Z of imperfect, fallible humans say so, and I used my imperfect, fallible judgement to decide that they were right.

This is hardly satisfactory! That is, not any more satisfactory.

From a secular context.

[mahf]

It is worth mentioning that I've never heard anyone say "Religious text X is perfect because we say so!" But it is also worth mentioning that they definitely do give a lot of bad reasons.

Instead of a perfect decision-making machine, all we have is ourselves and the stories we tell each other. And instead of making perfectly infallible choices, we can only explore the stories and the people who tell them and act on the ones that resonate with us for some reason.

[mothwentbad]

I've definitely heard the claim, not from you, but I've heard it (and frequently), that "religious text X is perfect!", and honest analysis of this statement degenerates into the problem above. I'm only saying that the divine approach, then, isn't quite so automatically better, which perhaps also isn't in disagreement with your point, either.

[mahf]

Well, I might believe that a religious text is perfect, but I wouldn't claim that I could prove it. And I wouldn't urge someone to take my word that it was perfect.

If in conversation, we found something in common that happened to be one of my reasons for believing said religious text to be perfect, I might say something like "Hey, maybe you'd like religious text X, since we have this much in common."

I do definitely agree that the divine approach doesn't trump the modern one automatically or easily. These decisions, in my opinion, are very hard ones to make, and it bothers me that so many people on every side make it out to be so simple.

[anonymous]

There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also. Keep working ,great job!.