Friday, March 8, 2013
Liberals Stacking the Deck
Have you ever noticed that when conservative Christians make dogmatic statements in agreement with orthodoxy, they're labeled by liberals as "gatekeepers," "immature," "simplistically minded," etc.; but when a liberal makes all sorts of dogmatic statements that undermine or attack Christian orthodoxy, he's just "questioning." What's wrong with someone asking a question? LOL.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Nothing wrong with asking questions. When I was a child and was first exposed to Christianity I was told that I was asking too many questions. That turned me off to it. I would ask my grandmother so many hard questions that she started changing the subject, and eventually stopped bringing it up around me.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why the left is so hard on conservatives who espouse orthodoxy, is that their reasoning and evidence behind their positions are often profoundly unsophisticated or total fabrications. Conservatives don't have an "intellectual" who can very articulately explain why it is they think the way they do. They've offered us Santorum, Trump and Palin, and made it impossible for liberals not to make fun of them.
Nothing is wrong with asking questions. I used to tell my congregation that they could ask any question they wanted. No question is heresy. The reason why most laymen don't like questions is because Christianity was dumbed down in the twentieth century to the point that most Christians had no idea why they believed what they did. Ask those questions of Augustine or Calvin or Edwards. They wouldn't be changing the subject on you and you may have walked away anyway, but not because you didn't get good answers.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that these people aren't asking real questions, but making dogmatic statements in the form of questions that are meant to undermine historic Christianity.
And that's what I mean by "liberal" on this blog. I rarely, if ever, talk about politics. So I'm not talking about political liberals vs. political conservatives. I'm discussing what goes on in contemporary theological discourse.
What public contemporary Christians or theologians do you consider at the cutting edge of Christian thinking or who are pulling Christianity out of its 20th century declination?
DeleteI think these are two different questions. The first depends upon what you're talking about. There are tons of philosophers in philosophy and tons of biblical scholars and tons of theologians, etc. It depends upon what you're looking for. If I was to tell someone to start reading a good intellectual introduction to Christianity, I would suggest someone like Michael Horton and likely tell him or her to read his systematic theology The Christian Faith.
DeleteThe second question assumes something I don't believe. I think the decline in Christianity in the 20th and 21st Centuries is due to apostasy within the church, not intellectual problem. Christianity has always had capable intellects debating the issues in every generation, but you need an audience for that to be effective, and the easy apostasy within the church takes less effort and offers more liberality in one's vices. Hence, the issue is a rebellion of desire for vice that only produces a rebellion of the intellect in order to justify itself.
It's easy to blame apostasy within Christian ranks on the pursuit of sin, but almost all ex-Christians I've spoken to (and I help host seminars/workgroups that aid Christians who leave their faith) leave Christianity when they pursue knowledge, not sin. It's actually the hardline/fundamentalist (i.e. creationist) view of Christianity that helps push Christians to apostasy because many simply cannot continue being part of a church that still thinks humans rode dinosaurs with saddles on their backs, and that homosexuals choose their lifestyle and are just heterosexual sinners.
DeleteUnless Christianity can rectify faith with modern science and knowledge, it will continue to slowly decline. But, since I'm fine with that, I actually want Christian leaders to stay as conservative and fundamentalist as they can.
That's a false dichotomy and begs the question concerning knowledge. Obviously, I believe they already have true knowledge in Christianity, so their pursuit of alternative theories to reality more often comes from their sinful rebellion against God. That pursuit, whether consciously or unconsciously, is one that seeks to undermine biblical authority in order to be at peace with the dominant contradictory system around them. You just pointed out that they are not in submission to what they believe the Bible to be teaching so they give up the faith. Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. They are sinful and don't want to believe what undermines their warped minds.
DeleteChristianity will be as big or small as God determines it to be according to His predetermined choice and judgment upon a culture/church. Secular theories of knowledge are just vehicles to weed out false believers from real ones. Baalism worked that way in the OT. Gnosticism and Christological heresies worked that way in the early Church. And secularism works that way today. The deception of the wicked is also a tool of God for the godly intellectual and spiritual development of His people.
So acquiring knowledge using the scientific method, which is a secular method, is a "sinful rebellion against God"? It seems to me that you're saying scientific evidence that contradicts the bible is by default wrong because it contradicts the bible. That's circular reasoning. E.G., X contradicts Y and so X is wrong because it contradicts Y.
DeleteIf "Christianity will be as big or small as God determines it to be" and "The deception of the wicked is also a tool of God", then there is no room for free will my friend. According to you, I am just a tool that god is using to "weed out false believers from real ones." I suddenly feel so used. LOL.
I'm a Calvinist and don't believe in free will. You're an atheist and cannot believe in it either. I have no idea why you brought up free will.
ReplyDeleteI didn't say anything about the scientific method. I said "theories." The scientific method is not a secular or religious method, it's just a method. You make it secular or religious depending upon the worldview that drives it.
Ok, I'm sorry I didn't realize you were a Calvinist. I'm an agnostic on free will anyway, to me it's all dependent on quantum mechanics.
DeleteBut ex-theists I've spoken to were lead astray from religion because of thinking and being exposed to evidence, scientific evidence. The scientific method often leads to evidence that contradicts what the bible says. When that happens people have 2 choices: discredit or ignore the science and believe the bible no matter what; or accept the evidence and either work it into their theology, or if the evidence is powerful enough, jettison belief in the bible.
If people are not given the choice to rehash their faith to make it more compatible with evidence, then often they are left with no choice but to leave the faith. And that's what they do.
And in Calvinism and atheism, their choice is based on something else that is predetermined either by God or biology.
ReplyDeleteWhat is science? The Bible doesn't contradict science because the Bible doesn't speak to science. The Bible itself tells us that it exists that "the man of God may be equipped for every good work." It's to train his mind and soul in theological truth and ethics. Some history is needed for that, and a cosmology that is of both a metaphysical and physical nature. But, again, you think too much of what science is and what it can conclude. That's because you're a product of the Enlightenment, which btw has been a view of the world largely refuted by postmodern philosophy.
What is science? Obviously something you know little to nothing about.
Delete"That's because you're a product of the Enlightenment, which btw has been a view of the world largely refuted by postmodern philosophy."
You're a product of the middle ages, hopelessly out of touch with the understanding and knowledge of the modern world. That's why less and less people are buying into your kind of pseudo-intellectual rubbish. We live in a post-enlightenment world, we live in the age of science and information. I think you are a prime example of what theism does to the mind: it freezes its intellectual development in the dark ages in fear and superstition while the rest of the rational world learns and progresses.
LOL. I didn't think you'd answer the science question, as real science limits the boundaries of knowledge, as opposed to being something that can discover all knowledge for us.
ReplyDelete"You're a product of the middle ages, hopelessly out of touch with the understanding and knowledge of the modern world. That's why less and less people are buying into your kind of pseudo-intellectual rubbish. We live in a post-enlightenment world, we live in the age of science and information. I think you are a prime example of what theism does to the mind: it freezes its intellectual development in the dark ages in fear and superstition while the rest of the rational world learns and progresses."
Actually, I'm much more postmodern. You just don't seem to understand the difference between the Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment. You espouse Enlightenment views above and then say we live in the Post-Enlightenment age. That means that the positivism of the Enlightenment (i.e., that humans can progress in knowledge of the world and reality inductively from science and reason) is rejected by our Post-Enlightenment age.