Another denomination takes a stand

Care to prove this? What church are you speaking of? Many denominations have been at the forefront of scientific, social, and psychological development.

Take civil rights for instance. The church was a major instrument in that movement that lead to monumental change from the elimination of slavery (Quakers, etc.) to the enactment of civil rights legislation (Quakers, Baptists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and on and on and on).

Many of these same churches (denominations) were instrumental in ending the Vietnam War. The Unitarian church has produced some of the most brilliant scientists we have had as well as some of our most brilliant psychologists.

From what frame of reference are you speaking?

 

Hi Jimmy - I believe that I understand your point and I don't really disagree with it but I also believe that you've misphrased your point above. I don't believe, for example, that the brilliance of these scientists was due to the Unitarian Church. I believe that they had very high IQs and excellent educations. They would have been brilliant regardless of their religious affiliations (or lack of them). The fact that these brilliant people chose to belong to this church is a point in favor of both the church and the scientists. I do not, however, believe that you can demonstrate that the church "produced" these brilliant scientists.

As for the statement that David made below, "Apart from it's contribution to the whole question of morals and ethics and how we should live together in a society, the church really has nothing to contribute," I'll say only this,
Like that's such a small thing?
Besides, I don't agree. I think religion contributes more than ethics. It contributes something that might be equally important.
It contributes hope.
Jack

 

That's quite a sweeping statement.

First of all, at least you (curiously) seemed open to the fact that "the church" (any particular one you had in mind? I'll assume you mean Chrsitians collectively) does, in fact, have a contribution to "the whole question of morals and ethics and how we should live together as a society" (although the last one of these seems to contradict your next statement, particularly regarding the church's allegedly being a "force of reaction and opposition to development.....socially.")

Perhaps you can qualify that? I find it interesting that the above-mentioned Thomas Oden, in the same earlier quoted introduction to his work on counseling, also notes what prompted his own re-think in the area of psychology:

Psychologically? It was the actual failure of psychotherapeutic techniques which had pushed Oden to consider the alternatives. Moreover, he also noted the insight Christian thinkers (such as Kierkegaard) had brought into the examination of the human personality,

Socially? Perhaps the fact that most medical and many educational institutions in the developing world (and a huge percentage of those in the developed world as well) at least had their genesis as Christian institutions would seem to indicate otherwise.

Scientifically? Rather than give examples here, I can suggest a look through some of the articles at the website of the American Scientific Affiliation, from every perspective imaginable, including an article on Asa Gray, Darwin's friend and key academic supporter in the US, and an ardent Evangelical Christian: http://www.asa3.org/

Looking back at the record of the 20th century, of the ongoing implosion of Western society, of historically unprecedented massacres (e.g., by Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, none of them Christians), it would appear to be more a record of degeneration than of evolution in all but the technological sense. As I had earlier noted, the Hegelian idea of automatic progress in history seems at times like this to be fully in bloom.

Peace,

Matt

 

flat earth?

re: "Scientific" problems created by "the church", the following makes it clear that even those referred to for many years can sometimes turn out to have been fabrications:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html

Matt

 

Yet what sort of 'hope', Dave; hope in the afterlife, which doesn't exist? Hope that all the wrongs, disappointments and frustrations that we experience in this life will be righted in the next?

Just because a person is a Christian and a great scientist, for example, does not mean that their Christianity has made them a great scientist. In fact, think of the enormous contradicts in thought that some of these great innovators and discoverers must have had when they have, for example, made a linguists breakthrough and still subscibe to the fable of the tower of babel!
Or geologists with a 7 day creation; or astronomers or space scientists with a sun standing still so some Hebrew king had light to win a battle? Or psychologists and thinkers with belief in the garden of eden and sin through a serpent, and a benevolent god slaughtering women and children?

Oh dear, with all our learning, just when can we grow up? Why do we still turn to the church for our morals and guidance when most of their thinking is rooted in the consciousness of our very early human/animal ancestors?

 

Just out of curiosity, davidhume, how old are you?

 

Oh dear, my straw man alarm just keeps going off and won't stop ringing....

Seriously, DavidHume, have you read anything of the articles I've posted the links to above? Disagree if you want, but for goodness' sake interact with what's been posted rather than roll out the same old tired nonsense.

La paz sea contigo,

Matt

 

Hello Jack,

Your point is well taken. The UUA has been at the forefront of scientific inquiry for decades. They have passed resolution after resolution at their general assemblies promoting scientific inquiry and research in many areas. But, I certainly understand your point.

 

I'm not really sure how much contribution religion makes to morals and ethics. I think that people have inherent social instincts and they always find themselves embedded in cultural contexts. Culture obviously includes religion, but it includes a lot more besides. What religion does most effectively is rationalize those social imperatives in terms of whatever it is that a particular group thinks is highest and most holy. Religion provides our social mores with supernatural authority.

I think that I would look elsewhere for religion's most valuable and unique functions. At its best (and it often isn't at its best) religion attunes man, both with himself and with with his surroundings. And perhaps more important, it introduces man to the transcendent dimension of life.

It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

Interestingly, if you look at the history of ideas, it quickly becomes clear that progress isn't necessary linear or obvious.

In the Renaissance, probably the most 'progressive' group were the humanists. But these worthies were literary in inspiration, they often favored Neoplatonist ideas that read the physical world as an image, an emanation of some higher realm, and they hoped to restore an imagined golden age of classical antiquity.

The Reformation was clearly 'reactionary' in comparison. Like the humanists, the reformers were rebels against a system that they believed was corrupt, but unlike the humanists, they found their inspiration in the Medieval preoccupation with religion.

If you were alive then, who would you have bet on to lead us into the modern secular world? I think that you would have put your money on the wrong horse. (I would have.)

What the Reformation did was sweep away the Catholic church with its apostolic authority and its guidance by the Holy Spirit. The Reformation dismissed or at least reinterpreted the sacraments. It rejected miracles and magic. The Reformation stressed the absolute gulf between creator and creation, leaving only one bridge - Jesus Christ. And it accepted only one authority - the Bible. Sola scriptura.

That left the physical world transformed. It was no longer a set of magical correspondences to higher things. It was just a creature, presumably continuing on under its own power according to the laws representing God's will in creating it. If man can understand nature's laws, then man can understand nature. Physics finally become an autonomous science, free of the spiritual purposes so obvious in things like alchemy.

And it left authority tottering. The Medieval certainties all fell prey to skepticism. Only the Bible was to be held apart as the one remaining revelation. But once the intellectuals were busy doubting the church, the saints and the sacraments, it wasn't very long before questions were directed at Christianity's Biblical redoubt. Why should the Bible be any different than the rest of the supernatural stuff?

In other words, the Reformation led directly and seamlessly into Deism. And Deism led to modern secularism and religious free-thought. Thanks fundies! (Ironic, isn't it?) Who in the 16'th century could have seen that coming?

History doesn't move in a straight line. It's hard to identify the good-guys and the bad-guys, because it's impossible to know how things are going to play out in a few centuries.

 

The statement "the Missionary Church is one of the fastest–growing denominations in the U.S.A." is meaningless without more information.

For example, if they had 100 converts last year and 400 this year they have a 400% increase. Small numbers give big percentage changes in growth/decline rates.

 

I used to attend a UUA meetings (one in the UK and one in Silicon Valley) and met very few members who believed in God; most were humanists. The meetings were great with guest speakers talking about the life of a musician (Mozart for example) or other great figures. The only reason I stopped attending was they started sheltering illegal immigrants (El Salvador is my recollection) - I was advised imembership could jeopardize my request for US citizenship.

 

Yes, feeding the poor, building and maintaining hospitals, helping third world countries develop irrigation systems and supplying them with livestock, taking care of AIDS patients, running homeless and battered women's shelters, and let's not forget teaching people how to completely transform their lives into something meaningful and purposeful, etc...

Nothing to contribute! That's one of the most foolish and ignorant statements I have ever read in my life.

 

Re: Re: Another denomination takes a stand

Interesting observation. The only thing to add, one supposes, is that a group of 100 (from any religion... or for that matter, Amway or Avon!) grew at that pace, it would be pretty impressive. (;->

Matt

 

Interesting observations, Bill.

I suppose that would depend on one's view of religion itself (the degree to which a given religion's ethical values are considered "revealed"). At the same time, "religion" is, if not defined by culture (certainly true in many cases), often a strong influence on culture. With regard to ethics particularly, I'll give you an interesting quote that Fyodor Dostoyevsky puts in the mouth of Ivan Karamazov (or rather, someone quoting Ivan):

Excellent historical analysis, although as you note, "history doesn't move in a straight line". The early Reformers (up until the end of the 18th century, more or less), while holding to a principle of sola scriptura, still had a deep respect for the wisdom and writings of the early Church, but didn't accept these uncritically, but rather subjected them to comparison with the Scriptures. One sees this in the writings of, say, Lutheran scholar Martin Chemnitz, who was deeply conversant with the early Church writings, as was Calvin, and indeed was John Wesley in the 18th century. It was in the beginning of the 19th century, with the loss of scholarship familiar with not only the Scriptures, but the whole moorings of historical Chrsitianity, that Christian theology began to fall into the trap you describe above (though you probably wouldn't look at it as such).

I'm a committed Protestant, but I recognize that part of the way that we got where we are now (e.g., ongoing discussions as to whether openly homosexual people could be ordained as clergy) is related to the loss of any sense of the historical moorings of theology.

So I wouldn't say that the Reformation "led directly and seamlessly into Deism"; I'd say it was a more gradual fall. Certainly there were ways in which it led in that direction, though.

Peace,

Matt