Some simplified medieval Christian philosophy subsumed onto a modern Christian fundamentalist.

Joshua

I found myself getting involved with the same crass debates with Christian kids in high school frequently, enough to have given myself an opinion of the common unread, Christian man's philosophical opinions. One topic was that if God is omniscient then free-will does not exist, yet for it to exist must must not be omnipotent and therefore imperfect; a central topic of Saint Augustine's in the mid fourth century. Then later in the ninth century John Scotus Eriugena began trying to merge Neoplatonism into Christianity which culminated into something resembling pantheism (by forcing god into the Form of the Good concept across the divided line if you're familiar with Plato) which isn't a perfect attempt, but one nonetheless to understand the totality of unfathomable, unchanging, infinite nature that conflicts with the anthropomorphic sky-daddy of the Old Testament. Then in the twelfth century came a whole slew of Moorish philosophers (notably the Muslim Averroes and the Jew Moses Maimonides) trying to formulate a synthesis between the modern conundrum of faith against reason; settling with clever compromises like the "doctrine of double truth" which is "the view that religion and philosophy, as separate sources of knowledge, might arrive at contradictory truths without detriment to either" [EB.com]. The point here being that faith was desperately struggling against reason, that is until the most honest man, Tertullian, came along to say "I believe that which is absurd". There were very important debates in the thirteenth century, e.g. between Platonic realists and nominalists which to a modern thinker ought to appear silly, and yet, in order to maintain consistent reason it would be best that a Christian side closer to Platonic realism whereas a modern man of science to nominalism, and yet a modern, intelligent Christian would probably, although inconsistent with logic, scoff at Platonic realism, so the Christian of integrity has to stick to his consistency to maintain integrity, despite the empirical evidence that states otherwise.

Therefore, is it simply honest induction to say that, generally speaking, any Christian with integrity has an insight characteristic of the dark ages, while the Christian with a more modern insight has inconsistent logic? Or am I being myopic?

IronRabbit

vinlyn

In my view you're falling into the same ego trap that many religious people fall into -- the need to be critical of someone else's religion that is different than yours. "My religion is better than your religion". Personally, I don't find it very becoming of a Buddhist, although naturally you have a right to debate such issues.

For those of us that believe in God, the God factor trumps everything else. We believe what we believe. I wish more people who are Christians, or who like me respect many Buddhist principles and many Christian principles would stop trying to prove the other person wrong.

Joshua

Luckily I'm no Buddhist, thus I adhere to no dogma. Nor am I attempting to explicitly condescend, I've simply made myself an autodidactic student of philosophy who has found that 800 year old debates are apparently valid to this day for the Abrahamic bunch and I wish to test my thesis. You're welcome to an antithesis, the Hegelian synthesis was certainly my goal.

Be careful, even in the face of adversity, vinlyn, for your presuppositions that I ought to be a dogmatic Buddhist are also indicative that you are more conceitful yourself than you'd like to let off. Remember, there is a vast gap between principles and metaphysics.

Dakini

hunh?? :crazy: Josh, you lost me somewhere...in the beginning. I'm not good at Western philosophy. But about "dark ages", faith, reason etc., is Buddhism any different? Buddhism relegates the questions science ("reason") attempts to answer to the category of "imponderables". So there's not any conflict; they operate in different spheres. Vajrayana didn't make it out of the "dark ages" until the Chinese arrived in Tibet, yet it developed a brilliant and complex theory. I guess this is off-topic. I can't tell. You can have a mod chuck this post if it's irrelevant. :-/

vinlyn

Luckily I'm no Buddhist, thus I adhere to no dogma. Nor am I attempting to explicitly condescend, I've simply made myself an autodidactic student of philosophy who has found that 800 year old debates are apparently valid to this day for the Abrahamic bunch and I wish to test my thesis. You're welcome to an antithesis, the Hegelian synthesis was certainly my goal.

Be careful, even in the face of adversity, vinlyn, for your presuppositions that I ought to be a dogmatic Buddhist are also indicative that you are more conceitful yourself than you'd like to let off. Remember, there is a vast gap between principles and metaphysics.

First off, I did assume that you were Buddhist, or at least interested in Buddhism, since you are posting on a Buddhist forum. I am actually somewhat relieved in reading your latest post because it seems far less likely that you are resorting to the old "my religion is better than your religion" routine that we see so often.

Let me clarify something in which believe. Two people can ask the same question and have a different purpose. One person can ask the question as a means of putting down someone else's religion; a policy that -- in general -- I don't respect. Another person can ask the same question and have as their purpose finding the truth; and that is a policy I can respect. But in seeking the truth, I also think we have to honestly realize that it's pretty doubtful any of us are going to solve the secrets of the universe and all that's in it. Not that there's anything wrong with the quest. Just as we could each list any number of great historical thinkers who don't believe in God, we could also list any number of great historical thinkers who do believe in God.

As far as to whether or not I'm conceitful, it is my view that I am not (at least in terms of religion) because I know I don't know the answers. That is why I am open to Buddhist, as well as Christian principles...and for that matters, other world views.

I do find your point that 800 year old debates are "apparently valid to this day for the Abrahamic bunch" odd...but perhaps I'm just not seeing your point. While I would not disagree with your view, I don't think it's at all unique to the adherents of any religion. By one year after Buddha's passing, 4 factions had developed in Buddhism. By 10 years after his passing there were approximately 16 factions. Over the years the number of Buddhist sects increased to over 500. Today, we may have a World Fellowship of Buddhists, but they have hardly eliminated the schisms in Buddhist thought.

Joshua

hunh?? :crazy: Josh, you lost me somewhere...in the beginning. I'm not good at Western philosophy. But about "dark ages", faith, reason etc., is Buddhism any different? Buddhism relegates the questions science ("reason") attempts to answer to the category of "imponderables". So there's not any conflict; they operate in different spheres. Vajrayana didn't make it out of the "dark ages" until the Chinese arrived in Tibet, yet it developed a brilliant and complex theory. I guess this is off-topic. I can't tell. You can have a mod chuck this post if it's irrelevant. :-/

Well, my presence here obviously makes Buddhism a favorable philosophy , in fact, and completely impertinent to this thread, I absolutely love German idealism and transcendentalism. But that's all it is for me, philosophy. I'm a skeptic at heart. I will willingly suspend judgment on especially attractive philosophy to test their claims, and thus Buddhism has yet to fail me, though I often fail it. Tibetan Buddhism does have some very brilliant philosophies (e.g., kalachakra, cittamatra, the theory of bardo, etc) but they definitely are served upon a great big silver platter of faith. So the buck doesn't stop there, you know?

But anyways I'm just flabbergasted that modern Christians and medieval Christians faced identical dilemmas which remain more or less uneroded by time, and when eroded, which is a good thing in terms of reason, one begins deviated very rapidly from faith, thus faith supersedes reason. Which was even alright as early as five hundred years ago when many people still believed that the earth was in the middle of the universe and surrounded by a veil of water, then air and then fire which created the stars through vents in the air as even recorded in Don Quijote. But we went to the moon (metaphorically speaking), times are changing.

So please don't think I'm consciously attacking Christianity, I probably am implicitly but I'm only trying to organize my thoughts and new knowledge.

Joshua

Luckily I'm no Buddhist, thus I adhere to no dogma. Nor am I attempting to explicitly condescend, I've simply made myself an autodidactic student of philosophy who has found that 800 year old debates are apparently valid to this day for the Abrahamic bunch and I wish to test my thesis. You're welcome to an antithesis, the Hegelian synthesis was certainly my goal.

Be careful, even in the face of adversity, vinlyn, for your presuppositions that I ought to be a dogmatic Buddhist are also indicative that you are more conceitful yourself than you'd like to let off. Remember, there is a vast gap between principles and metaphysics.

First off, I did assume that you were Buddhist, or at least interested in Buddhism, since you are posting on a Buddhist forum. I am actually somewhat relieved in reading your latest post because it seems far less likely that you are resorting to the old "my religion is better than your religion" routine that we see so often.

Let me clarify something in which believe. Two people can ask the same question and have a different purpose. One person can ask the question as a means of putting down someone else's religion; a policy that -- in general -- I don't respect. Another person can ask the same question and have as their purpose finding the truth; and that is a policy I can respect. But in seeking the truth, I also think we have to honestly realize that it's pretty doubtful any of us are going to solve the secrets of the universe and all that's in it. Not that there's anything wrong with the quest. Just as we could each list any number of great historical thinkers who don't believe in God, we could also list any number of great historical thinkers who do believe in God.

As far as to whether or not I'm conceitful, it is my view that I am not (at least in terms of religion) because I know I don't know the answers. That is why I am open to Buddhist, as well as Christian principles...and for that matters, other world views.

I do find your point that 800 year old debates are "apparently valid to this day for the Abrahamic bunch" odd...but perhaps I'm just not seeing your point. While I would not disagree with your view, I don't think it's at all unique to the adherents of any religion. By one year after Buddha's passing, 4 factions had developed in Buddhism. By 10 years after his passing there were approximately 16 factions. Over the years the number of Buddhist sects increased to over 500. Today, we may have a World Fellowship of Buddhists, but they have hardly eliminated the schisms in Buddhist thought.

I mostly agree with you.

Again though, I'm not Buddhist, at least as far as any of the mythos and non-philosophical, non-technical bits. Irrelevant to the thread, but it's in my belief that science, philosophy and religion all ought to be one and the same, and until the end is met, there's too many fallacies in dogma, even scientific dogma (the intelligentsia had a rough time accepting that four hundred year old Newtonian theories that stood the test of thousands of empirical observations weren't accurate).

Anyways, I'm not trying to make this personal, although I'm obviously implicitly attacking your faith. Or rather, because your faith is without a philosophy (simply faith in a historical event), it is abnormally susceptible to scrutiny, in fact, and in this case, to a sort of Scylla and Charybdis tightrope where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. A tightrope I used to point out in high school in disbelief that none of the kids found the ideas intuitive, and now come to find out, they were intuitive all along.

vinlyn

Joshua said, "But we went to the moon (metaphorically speaking), times are changing."

And I think we may also agree that there is a need for Buddhism (as well as other religions) to modernize. Now some will say that you can't modernize the Dhamma. Okay, I don't necessarily disagree with that, although we probably do need to modernize the way in which we incorporate Buddhism into our lives. I haven't been on any rafts, lately. In fact, I haven't been on a raft my whole life!

I think where I come down to the need for change is what I saw while living in Thailand. A monkhood that isn't expected to change much from what it was 2,500 years ago...in my view, the primary reason that the number of monks in Thailand appears to be steadily diminishing.

Joshua

It's cool. It's in my opinion that legitimate Christian faith is declining in at least the United States, I mean let's be honest, statistics are empty, how many of those are just brainwashed and fear-fed teenagers who don't know their convictions from their hormones, and how many of those become intellectuals? In practise it seems at least where I'm always hanging out that Christians typically are doing well to work from Adam to Joseph safely. Science really is killing religion, it's making an apathetic populace into (I'm not knowledgeable on the subject) the projected nihilistic phase of humanity described by Nietzsche. They will need something to fill the void, and it will need to conform to layman's science more or less. Buddhism might have a shot there, probably not (the Beatles even failed with transcendentalism), but it would be a good contender.

happyjourney

I think buddhism would indeed have a shot there. simply because of it's practitioners being, generally speaking, more open minded and ready for change. readiness to change plays a big part in the servival of a religion. buddhism is less of a religion and more philosophical and contemplative then christianity and most world religions. however it is viewed as another religion by many and that thinking does the spread of the dhamma a greater diservice then science and reason ever will, in my opinion.

i read on the dalai llamas website that many parts of buddhist cosmology have to be rethought because of modern sciences discoveries about the nature of the universe. yes, that isn't applicable to all buddhists, but it speaks a great deal to the charector of buddhism.

Joshua

That's a bingo.

People can have their pesky science and a purpose simultaneously. Then we can avoid those awful horrors of Nietzsche, let's just hope he went crazy 'cause he had syphilis rather than on account of the bleakness of purposelessness.

..

Buddhism is brilliant, to the Christian you ask is there determinism since scripture supports it and they say no, but it's clear there's not exactly free will nor does it hold up to the logic of an omniscient flame-thrower. So then you ask the Buddhist if there's determinism and he says who really knows? It's probably somewhere in the middle way. Nice 'n circumvented, just let science take the garbage out.

Theswingisyellow

Insightful post Joshua, please keep it up. Without inquiry what are we? Our fear of inquiry, especially to that which we hold dear, says much about us.
All the best,
Todd