1. Basic situation as I see it is this, God got it in the neck for the following reasons: a. Kant reduced demonstrations for his existence to a shakey moral inference. b. Philologists shredded the Bible so the text became unstable c. Voltaire & co mocked the inconsistencies.
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5. Now that we’ve lost Xtianity, we’ve also lost the grounds for pursuing truth in science (and everything). This partly accounts for our drift to scientism. The result is that we know we’re largely determined by evolution and, at some level, physics.
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6. We also know we have some capacity to make our own values and shape our environment—though this is itself cosntrained by cognitive biases, evolution and, ultimately, physics.
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7. So that’s what man is at the moment: We’re without God, without the idea of truth, stuck with provisional models that might be completely subverted by our ambivalent relationship to truth and our own biological biases.
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I'm instinctively inclined to agree with the claim that Christianity prioritises truth and therefore caused its own downfall, but the details mostly escape me. How would you convince a sceptic?
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Read Nietzsche? This chap (
@vncvrrentevents) has a quite nice summary of the historical aspect: http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/518/894 … I may have misunderstood you. I’m assuming you mean a sceptic of this thesis, not Xtianity? -
One further thought: Would this self-destructive tendency in Christianity apply to the other major monotheisms? If yes, how to account for their (somewhat) different historical trajectories? Islam, for one, appears to be ascendant, although that may of course be illusory.
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I don’t know. It strikes me that Judaism stresses adherence to law and Islam stresses obedience to the will of God (there is also an Islamic school of thought that says taqiyya, lying to enemies, is moral). It seems only Christianity priorities truth in particularly.
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I'd be curious as to whether insiders see these emphases the same way, and, in case of Christianity, whether parts of the sacred texts (or practices etc. central to the religion) provide support for Nietzsche's thesis.
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I read the Bible every day, I think so. The problem with “insiders” is that they can’t be honest. Can a priest, a Rabbi, a liberal (degraded Xtian), or an Imam be really honest about what they think of their faith—esp. to an outsider? Their roles prohibit this very thought.
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My thought was a bit more straightforward. I’m interested in whether the Nietzschean thesis can be supported by Christian texts that explicitly prioritise truth in the relevant way.
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I think the New Testatment is mostly about this. Jesus comes as a force against law (the Pharisees & Rome) and for something higher, which seems to me to be redemption found in truth & love. Speaking this is the highest good, and higher than religious law or the laws of state.
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The separation between church and state that started under Henry VIII, freed the scientific mind of superstitions, paving the way for the industrial revolution.
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