I think this is a bit too large for the comments pane, so...
Quoth Regina:
That was really informative. Thanks. :)
Question: do you view bad things that come from religion as the natural progression of religion and its logical conclusion? Or are they abuses of a system that could work?
Yer welcome.
That's a sort of complex question, and I may or may not be able to answer it well, but I'll try.
Start with this thread here. There's some exceedingly long pontificating there that might be of some use.
To attempt to answer it directly... it depends on the "bad thing" in question. Blind faith, frex, can be a "logical conclusion" of religion. It isn't for all people, but for a lot of them it is. Yet it's possible to have blind, unreasoning faith in, say, friends, political leaders, etc. So it's not just religion, though religion's got it.
Same idea with the importance of priests and the rise of the Inquistion. I view the priesthood as a logical conclusion of pretty much all religions. The Inquisition, not so much - clearly it didn't arise in a lot of places and/or religions. One could also draw a comparison between it and the Stalinist purges for one, which is clearly an irreligious thing.
Fundamentalism is more a societal movement than a religious one, really, insamuch as conservatism and/or stagnation almost always set in in any society after a certain point, religions included.
Not sure if that answers the question entirely, though, so we'll try another way, if I can articulate it correctly.
IMHO, religion is flawed not so much because of the bad things associated with it[1] than because it by and large doesn't have the capacity for reasoned change at a fundamental level. There's a bunch of reasons for that, but that's the heart of it. OTOH, science as a system has gone through any number of changes, abandoning theories and the like as it becomes necessary. In the end, I think that will mean that science will end up being able to satisfactorally explain everything or most things, while religion will forever be stuck with some manifestation or another of the Will of God or what have you. That as an explanation for the world rings totally false to me. I'm not even sure I can comprehend it on anything other than a basic level. Nevertheless, an awful lot of people are perfectly happy with that as an explanation for things. On the other other hand, a lot of people are perfectly content with space aliens and Atlantis as an explanation for things, too. *shrug*
Still not sure if that did it, but it was a try.
[1] - You can, if you want, associate a lot of bad stuff with science and/or athiesm or whatever, too. The great dictators of the 20th century, for one. Nazi gas chambers for another. The atomic bomb, for yet another. Are those necessarily the logical conclusions of science? No more than the Inquistion or the Crusades were necessarily the logical conclusions of religion, I'd say. Either one is prone to certain things, but not necessarily.
Posted by Dwip at July 20, 2003 12:47 PMThis actually is based off of the last topic, but because I can, I am putting it here. Take that logic & reason! Buwhaha.
Quoting from the Book of Marius, Chapter 8257:
". . . and as for Christianity, let us note the Inquisition, of both types but especially the Spanish one. In today's world, it is largely "fundamentalist" Islam/Christianity that is opposed to whatever the latest new research topic is."
Well you see now, it's not that we are opposed to scientific change. That's great stuff. I don't happen to be much of a science person, but one of my friends, who is also Lutheran, is a science geek. Science is good.
UNLESS it crosses the bounds of acceptable, ethical conduct. Stem cell research based on aborted fetuses, for example. Sure, the possible scientific benefits may be potentially great, but the cost in human life is too high. This, of course, requiring one to consider human life's beginning at conception. For those interested, there's lots of science out there on when the fetus can first move or think, etc.
Taking a step back into the general argument, the Lutheran Church, for example, is not based on "blind faith." I'd be happy to quote from the various articles of doctrine, one of which is that there can be no ... and forgetting the exact wording, but here goes "no disagreement between science and Scriptures" ... or something to that affect.
See, we're all about science. But we also believe God created the laws of science and set into motion Creation. Just as he created science, he also bound us with the Law and Gospel which spell out what Marius refers to as "morals" and such.
And yeah, leaving science to go free without constraints is ... tempting the unknown--for the lack of a better way to explain this. And yeah, hell, you're a movie type person... I'm sure you've seen plenty of movies demonstrating where man and science go ... too far. Eh?
And all this talk about the Inquisition...
Not my call. Not the Lutheran Church's call. I'd also suggest there was some politics involved. Not to mention Spain was ... well, unique. And then we could talk about the Iberian War 1808-1814 and why Spain is the way Spain is. Catholicism in Spain. &c. You'll find the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic Church making some bad calls throughout its history. Crusades. Inquisition. Then we can explore doctrine. The whole zealous sexual repression of the Middle Ages thing as opposed to a Scripturally-based creed on sexuality and its place in God's Plan. But lo, I have talked too long and digressed too much. Smitten, I am.
Posted by: Tonto Marechal at July 20, 2003 8:54 PM"Stem cell research based on aborted fetuses, for example. Sure, the possible scientific benefits may be potentially great, but the cost in human life is too high."
The cost in human life? Let's change that around and replace cost with waste. If a fetus is aborted, would you that we gain nothing from it? This is, of course, an entirely seperate entity from abortion itself, so please, don't drag that into your response if any.
Posted by: Whir at July 22, 2003 2:15 PM