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christians (pg. 35)
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
The guys in robes tend to change their views, or apologize for the views and actions of past robe-wearers, whenever popular opinion gets too out of step with entrenched church doctrine.
Wonder why that is, given that Christianity is an evangelical religion. :p |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
The guys in robes tend to change their views, or apologize for the views and actions of past robe-wearers, whenever popular opinion gets too out of step with entrenched church doctrine. |
This is not entirely correct. While the church does change it's views over time this is not due to popular opinion so much as due to further theological study. If it were due to popular opinion then you would have long since seen the Vatican reverse it's position on pre-marital sex, birth control, abortion, etc.
Just as an interesting side note: the Vatican clearly stated in 1969 that in order for a law to be valid it must meet three criteria; 1) it must be born of proper authority (the pope), must be supported through theology (basis in scripture and consistant with scripture), and must be accepted by the church (God's people, AKA the faithful AKA Chistians). Oddly, although this directive has never been changed one rarely sees any discussion about the will of the faithful in church documents anymore. I suggest this is because on many issues the church is inflexable on the will of the people and the will of the pope are inconsistant... in such cases the position of the church, by it's own directive, must be looked at as a guideline or suggestion only, it cannot be deemed dogma. |
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| trewqy |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
The guys in robes tend to change their views, or apologize for the views and actions of past robe-wearers, whenever popular opinion gets too out of step with entrenched church doctrine.
Wonder why that is, given that Christianity is an evangelical religion. :p |
i wanted to say that but then he'll retort out something even more out of this world. |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by trewqy
i wanted to say that but then he'll retort out something even more out of this world. |
:stongue: "out of this world" :stongue: I assure you, all my retorts are based in fact. Just because you lack the required background information to independently varify my responses does not make them incorrect or unsubstantiated. If you are truly interested in the answers you should research your questions, alas, I'm certain you are too smug and convinced of yourself to bother. The truth is; you are not interested in the answers, your interest lies in your want to discredit people who believe differently then you. This is nothing but vanity and intolerance. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
This is not entirely correct. While the church does change it's views over time this is not due to popular opinion so much as due to further theological study. If it were due to popular opinion then you would have long since seen the Vatican reverse it's position on pre-marital sex, birth control, abortion, etc. |
But restrictions on those things still have tons of popular support in the "Third World," which is currently where the Catholic Church (among other Christian groups) gains nearly all of its converts. If Europeans were the only "potential converts" for Catholicism these days, you can bet that those positions would be changed pretty quickly.
I might be wrong, though. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
This is an interesting piece on the science-religion "wars:"
http://www.philosophaster.com/articles/bil.html
It's a book review of Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World; the author, Richard Lewontin, is skeptical that those "wars" are best represented as "reason versus irrationality." He casts them as a struggle between populism and elitism.
| quote: | The struggle for possession of public consciousness between material and mystical explanations of the world is one aspect of the history of the confrontation between elite culture and popular culture. Without that history we cannot understand what was going on in the Little Rock Auditorium in 1964. The debate in Arkansas between a teacher from a Texas fundamentalist college and a Harvard astronomer and University of Chi-cago biologist was a stage play recapitulating the history of American rural populism. In the first decades of this century there was an im-mensely active populism among poor southwestern dirt farmers and miners.[7] The most widely circulated American socialist journal of the time (The Appeal to Reason!) was published not in New York, but in Girard, Kansas, and in the presidential election of 1912 Eugene Debs got more votes in the poorest rural counties of Texas and Oklahoma than he did in the industrial wards of northern cities. Sentiment was extremely strong against the banks and corporations that held the mortgages and sweated the labor of the rural poor, who felt their lives to be in the power of a distant eastern elite. The only spheres of control that seemed to remain to them were family life, a fundamentalist religion, and local education.
This sense of an embattled culture was carried from the southwest to California by the migrations of the Okies and Arkies dispossessed from their ruined farms in the 1930s. There was no serious public threat to their religious and family values until well after the Second World War. Evolution, for example, was not part of the regular biology curriculum when I was a student in 1946 in the New York City high schools, nor was it discussed in school textbooks. In consequence there was no organized creationist movement. Then, in the late 1950s, a national project was begun to bring school science curricula up to date. A group of biologists from elite universities together with science teachers from urban schools produced a new uniform set of biology textbooks, whose publication and dissemination were underwritten by the National Science Foundation. An extensive and successful public relations campaign was undertaken to have these books adopted, and suddenly Darwinian evolution was being taught to children everywhere. The elite culture was now extending its domination by attacking the control that families had maintained over the ideological formation of their children.
The result was a fundamentalist revolt, the invention of "Creation Science," and successful popular pressure on local school boards and state textbook purchasing agencies to revise subversive curricula and boycott blasphemous textbooks. In their parochial hubris, intellectuals call the struggle between cultural relativists and traditionalists in the universities and small circulation journals "The Culture Wars." The real war is between the traditional culture of those who think of themselves as powerless and the rationalizing materialism of the modern Leviathan. There are indeed Two Cultures at Cambridge. One is in the Senior Common Room, and the other is in the Porter's Lodge. |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
But restrictions on those things still have tons of popular support in the "Third World," which is currently where the Catholic Church (among other Christian groups) gains nearly all of its converts. If Europeans were the only "potential converts" for Catholicism these days, you can bet that those positions would be changed pretty quickly.
I might be wrong, though. |
There is some merit in what you say. I'm not certain that there is overwhelming opposition to birth control, pre-marital sex, and abortion in the third world though. Certainly, in practice there is little opposition to pre-marital sex anywhere on the planet. It is worthwhile, however, to point out that one of the main goals of Pope Benedict is to restore the church in Europe. If his goal was to do this then it would make sense that he would repeal the afore mentioned positions. The fact that these things continue as beliefs of the church stands as an example that the church does not bend to public opinion... that said, the prevailing beliefs of the present population will necessarally make their way into the church as the next generation of scholors, theologians and clergy will have grown up with these ideas and that will shape their interpretation of scripture and theology. |
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| all-nite-freak |
| stop being smart craig and post int the crack head thread...ive been up for 3 days and need something to distract me from the constant spider attacks. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
There is some merit in what you say. I'm not certain that there is overwhelming opposition to birth control, pre-marital sex, and abortion in the third world though. Certainly, in practice there is little opposition to pre-marital sex anywhere on the planet. |
I'm going to assume you're joking here. Pre-marital sex is punished in all sorts of ways in all sorts of places, from being thrown out of the house to being shunned to being forced to marry the person to being killed.
As for abortion, see this:
http://www.pregnantpause.org/lex/world02map.htm
Not that laws necessarily indicate public support, but I think that they often do.
| quote: | | It is worthwhile, however, to point out that one of the main goals of Pope Benedict is to restore the church in Europe. If his goal was to do this then it would make sense that he would repeal the afore mentioned positions. The fact that these things continue as beliefs of the church stands as an example that the church does not bend to public opinion... that said, the prevailing beliefs of the present population will necessarally make their way into the church as the next generation of scholors, theologians and clergy will have grown up with these ideas and that will shape their interpretation of scripture and theology. |
Yeah. I certainly wouldn't suggest that church leaders are entirely cynical about "moving with the times" in order to gain converts and money. I think that a lot of them are probably very principled people who genuinely believe in what they say and think that bringing Europe back to Catholicism (rather than watering down Catholicism for the sake of regaining Europe) is the right to do. But there is always the "numbers game" to consider: the population of Africa is larger than that of Europe and growing much, much more quickly. |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
This is an interesting piece on the science-religion "wars:"
http://www.philosophaster.com/articles/bil.html
It's a book review of Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World; the author, Richard Lewontin, is skeptical that those "wars" are best represented as "reason versus irrationality." He casts them as a struggle between populism and elitism. |
An interesting read, however, it seems to apply specifically to the debate between creationists and those who believe in evolution in the US. The debate between theists and athiests is much larger and less specific. One cannot simply state that thiests are the populists and athiests are the elitists in this wider debate. I, for example, would fall into the catagory of the elite, however, I am a thiest (this is not despite my education but due to it). In fact, in much of the world the thiests are the elite, this is especially true of the Vatican itself which is one of the wealthiest organizations in the world and is comprised of highly educated people (likely more so than any other organization). |
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| all-nite-freak |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
But restrictions on those things still have tons of popular support in the "Third World," which is currently where the Catholic Church (among other Christian groups) gains nearly all of its converts. If Europeans were the only "potential converts" for Catholicism these days, you can bet that those positions would be changed pretty quickly.
I might be wrong, though. |
which level are you on the caste system;) |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
I, for example, would fall into the catagory of the elite, however, I am a thiest (this is not despite my education but due to it). |
You're also a universalist (if I understood your comments earlier in the thread correctly), historically very much an "elite" viewpoint. ;)
I think that the article is correct in a general sense; atheism and the more "polite" versions of religion abound in the upper classes, while the "rougher" versions of religion abound in the lower. |
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