everything is consolidated at http://rmwilliamsjr.net
and mirrored at http://rmwilliamsjr.livejournal.com
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
capturing a quote from stephen jones at ced groups yahoo
-------------------------------------------------
Group
Here is a six-months old Christian History magazine article debunking the
commonly held myth that the history of Christianity and science has been
typified by warfare, and also the flat Earth myth:
"What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly
accepted today? One obvious one maintains that before Columbus,
Europeans believed nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief
allegedly drawn from certain biblical statements and enforced by the
medieval church. This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-
century origin, elaborated and popularized by Washington Irving,
who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it in his four-volume history
of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by White and others.
The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person
after Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In
the Middle Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education,
cathedral school or university, without being perfectly clear about
the earth's sphericity and even its approximate circumference. Why
does the myth live on? Because it is a great illustration of other
myths people fervently believe in, such as the barbaric ignorance of
medieval people and the warfare thesis. You don't easily give up
your best illustration of a deeply held belief."
Steve
PS: See the tagline quote by evolutionists George Johnson who points out that
if the major events of life's history happened "by nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution" (i.e. natural
selection), then they are "an awfully long string of `too good to be true's'"!
==========================================================================
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2002/004/17.44.html
Christian History
Issue 76, Fall 2002, Vol. XXI, No. 10, Page 44
The Link: Natural Adversaries?
Historian David Lindberg shows that Christianity and science are not at
war-and never have been.
Has Christianity always warred with science? Or, conversely, did
Christianity create science? CH asked David Lindberg, Hilldale Professor
Emeritus of the History of Science and currently director of the Institute
for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin.
And he should know. Lindberg specializes in the history of medieval and
early modern science, especially the interaction between science and
religion. His Beginnings of Western Science (University of Chicago Press,
1992) is an oft-translated standard in the field. He is also currently the
general editor, jointly with Ronald Numbers, of the forthcoming eight-
volume Cambridge History of Science.
Many people today have a sense that the church has always tried to quash
science. Is this, indeed, the case?
This view is known as the "warfare thesis." It originated in the seventeenth
century, but it came into its own with certain radical thinkers of the French
Enlightenment. These people were eager to condemn the Catholic Church
and went on the attack against it. So, for example, the Marquis de
Condorcet (1743-1794), a mathematician and philosopher, assured his
readers that Christianity's ascension during the Middle Ages resulted in "the
complete decadence of philosophy and the sciences."
So how did this myth get from eighteenth-century France to twenty-first-
century North America?
The men mostly responsible are John William Draper (1811-1882) and
Andrew Dixon White (1832-1918). The more influential of the two was
White, first president of Cornell University, who evoked strong opposition
from religious critics for the secular curriculum (emphasizing the natural
sciences) that he established at Cornell.
White responded with bitter attacks on his critics, culminating in his two-
volume History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874).
White's book, still in print, continues to be powerfully influential.
What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly accepted
today?
One obvious one maintains that before Columbus, Europeans believed
nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief allegedly drawn from certain
biblical statements and enforced by the medieval church.
This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-century origin, elaborated and
popularized by Washington Irving, who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it
in his four-volume history of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by
White and others.
The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person after
Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In the Middle
Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education, cathedral school or
university, without being perfectly clear about the earth's sphericity and
even its approximate circumference.
Why does the myth live on?
Because it is a great illustration of other myths people fervently believe in,
such as the barbaric ignorance of medieval people and the warfare thesis.
You don't easily give up your best illustration of a deeply held belief.
Was there conflict between Christianity and science before the scientific
revolution?
Christianity and science had a complex relationship.
Before Christ's birth, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, and Galen had written
treatises on scientific questions. These books entered medieval
Christendom during the twelfth century in Latin translation from Greek and
Arabic versions. Christian scholars immediately realized that these books
were incredibly impressive and valuable, teaching them how to think about
a wide range of scientific questions.
But it was also clear that this body of writings (especially those by
Aristotle) contained theological land-mines.
Aristotle believed in the eternity of the world.
He also judged the world to be deterministic, with no room for divine
providence and divine action.
And Aristotle's philosophy was set within a rationalistic framework that
maintained that true knowledge could be achieved only through
observation and reason-thereby ruling out revelation as a source of truth.
Now one of the most durable myths about science and religion is that the
church responded to these theologically dangerous teachings by
suppressing Aristotle's writings and the rest of the ancient Greek scientific
tradition.
What really happened?
Medieval scholars (university professors, including theology professors)
were confronted by a terrible dilemma. They were not prepared to
compromise the central doctrines of Christian theology. But they also
recognized that the classical sciences had great explanatory power.
They preferred peace to warfare, so they looked for ways to accommodate
this powerful tradition. They corrected the ancient sources where that
seemed necessary, and on occasion they reinterpreted theological doctrines.
And they argued vigorously for the usefulness of the classical sciences.
There were certainly skirmishes, including several cases in which a
university scholar was condemned for teaching doctrines judged
dangerous, but most of these were local and temporary. And there was
never anything approaching intellectual warfare between theologians and
scientists.
Roger Bacon, an outstanding scientist of the thirteenth century, is a good
example of some of these developments. Borrowing a theme from St.
Augustine, he argued that the classical scientific tradition could be the
faithful handmaiden of theology and religion.
Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great also contributed to this enterprise.
They worked their way through Aristotle's writings line by line, looking for
ways to reinterpret him or revise Christian theological doctrines to make
them consistent with each other.
The point is that in the end, Christendom made its peace with the classical
tradition. Aristotle's writings became the centerpiece of medieval university
education, and the church became their greatest patron.
What guided medieval scholars as they worked out this accommodation?
St. Augustine (354-430), the most influential theologian of the Middle
Ages, gave them their principal tool. Augustine had cautioned that
Christians should not make fools of themselves by reading their astronomy
from the Bible. Don't embarrass the Christian faith with half-baked science.
Here's what Augustine wrote in his Literal Commentary on Genesis:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the
heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit
of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable
eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about
the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he
holds as certain from reason and experience.
"Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an
embarrassing situation, in which people reveal vast ignorance in a Christian
and laugh that ignorance to scorn."
The result of Bacon's work, and Aquinas's, and Albert's, and that of many
others less well known, was a Christianized Aristotle and an
Aristotelianized Christianity.
And does this Christianization affect or limit science in any way?
It depends on the area. In technical areas-the mathematical sciences,
medicine, and other "non-worldview" sciences-not in the least. For
example, in the history of geometrical optics (a favorite study of medieval
scholars and one of my own historical specialties), I have yet to find a
single theoretical claim that is in any way altered by the Christian context in
which that research took place.
Did Christianization ever motivate scientific investigation?
Definitely. For example, Roger Bacon argued that if you wanted to
interpret scriptural passages that touch on the heavens or other objects of
scientific investigation, you had to have scientific knowledge. And quite a
large amount of scientific content is found in medieval theological treatises.
Given everything you've said, what can we conclude about the causes of
the scientific revolution?
There are two widely-held theories, both involving religion. One maintains
that the scientific revolution was the product of European secularization, as
Christianity lost its hold on educated Europeans. The other claims that the
scientific revolution was a product of religious reform-specifically, the
Protestant Reformation.
In my opinion, neither of these positions is defensible. Many factors
contributed to the scientific revolution, but it was most fundamentally a
continuation and outgrowth of medieval institutions (the universities) and
of the Christianized classical scientific tradition of the Middle Ages.
So neither Protestants nor Catholics invented modern science. Their
theology or worldview was not the ground or source from which modern
science emerged; but they did provide a context within which the natural
sciences developed and flourished.
Copyright (c) 2002 by the author or Christianity Today
International/Christian History magazine.
[...]
Copyright (c) 1994-2002 Christianity Today International
==========================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the next chapter of the adaptationists' story, the fruit of these chance
alliances, the internally elaborate eukaryotic cells, diversified through
random variation and selection, developing various specialties. Some were
adept at using their cilia for locomotion, others for sensing the existence of
harmful chemicals, others for responding to light. And then these
eukaryotes formed alliances of their own. A light-seeking eukaryote that
happened to stick to a eukaryote with a swiftly lashing tail would beat its
competitors in the race to find the brightest sunlight, the nectar for its
chloroplasts. And so is born a primitive organism. With more feats of
imagination one can come up with a story of how more complex animals
with kidney cells, liver cells, and brain cells came to be. The stories are
driven by a compelling logic. But at every step of the process, a great deal
of luck is involved. To the believers in laws of complexity, these rather ad
hoc explanations begin to sound like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.
How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Tiger Got His Stripes. How
the Algae Got Its Chloroplasts, How the Sperm Cell Got Its Tail. When
they hear their colleagues straining perhaps a little too mightily to squeeze
every thing into the Darwinian framework, some biologists call the result
an evolutionary Just So story: a compelling tale based on scant evidence,
which sometimes has the facile ring of reasoning after the fact. Could the
complexity we see around us come from nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution? This strikes some
skeptics as an awfully long string of `too good to be true's.'" (Johnson G.,
"Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995],
Penguin Books: London, 1997, pp.236-237)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
Group
Here is a six-months old Christian History magazine article debunking the
commonly held myth that the history of Christianity and science has been
typified by warfare, and also the flat Earth myth:
"What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly
accepted today? One obvious one maintains that before Columbus,
Europeans believed nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief
allegedly drawn from certain biblical statements and enforced by the
medieval church. This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-
century origin, elaborated and popularized by Washington Irving,
who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it in his four-volume history
of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by White and others.
The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person
after Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In
the Middle Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education,
cathedral school or university, without being perfectly clear about
the earth's sphericity and even its approximate circumference. Why
does the myth live on? Because it is a great illustration of other
myths people fervently believe in, such as the barbaric ignorance of
medieval people and the warfare thesis. You don't easily give up
your best illustration of a deeply held belief."
Steve
PS: See the tagline quote by evolutionists George Johnson who points out that
if the major events of life's history happened "by nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution" (i.e. natural
selection), then they are "an awfully long string of `too good to be true's'"!
==========================================================================
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2002/004/17.44.html
Christian History
Issue 76, Fall 2002, Vol. XXI, No. 10, Page 44
The Link: Natural Adversaries?
Historian David Lindberg shows that Christianity and science are not at
war-and never have been.
Has Christianity always warred with science? Or, conversely, did
Christianity create science? CH asked David Lindberg, Hilldale Professor
Emeritus of the History of Science and currently director of the Institute
for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin.
And he should know. Lindberg specializes in the history of medieval and
early modern science, especially the interaction between science and
religion. His Beginnings of Western Science (University of Chicago Press,
1992) is an oft-translated standard in the field. He is also currently the
general editor, jointly with Ronald Numbers, of the forthcoming eight-
volume Cambridge History of Science.
Many people today have a sense that the church has always tried to quash
science. Is this, indeed, the case?
This view is known as the "warfare thesis." It originated in the seventeenth
century, but it came into its own with certain radical thinkers of the French
Enlightenment. These people were eager to condemn the Catholic Church
and went on the attack against it. So, for example, the Marquis de
Condorcet (1743-1794), a mathematician and philosopher, assured his
readers that Christianity's ascension during the Middle Ages resulted in "the
complete decadence of philosophy and the sciences."
So how did this myth get from eighteenth-century France to twenty-first-
century North America?
The men mostly responsible are John William Draper (1811-1882) and
Andrew Dixon White (1832-1918). The more influential of the two was
White, first president of Cornell University, who evoked strong opposition
from religious critics for the secular curriculum (emphasizing the natural
sciences) that he established at Cornell.
White responded with bitter attacks on his critics, culminating in his two-
volume History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874).
White's book, still in print, continues to be powerfully influential.
What other myths about science and Christianity are commonly accepted
today?
One obvious one maintains that before Columbus, Europeans believed
nearly unanimously in a flat earth-a belief allegedly drawn from certain
biblical statements and enforced by the medieval church.
This myth seems to have had an eighteenth-century origin, elaborated and
popularized by Washington Irving, who flagrantly fabricated evidence for it
in his four-volume history of Columbus. The myth was then picked up by
White and others.
The truth is that it's almost impossible to find an educated person after
Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) who doubts that the earth is a sphere. In the Middle
Ages, you couldn't emerge from any kind of education, cathedral school or
university, without being perfectly clear about the earth's sphericity and
even its approximate circumference.
Why does the myth live on?
Because it is a great illustration of other myths people fervently believe in,
such as the barbaric ignorance of medieval people and the warfare thesis.
You don't easily give up your best illustration of a deeply held belief.
Was there conflict between Christianity and science before the scientific
revolution?
Christianity and science had a complex relationship.
Before Christ's birth, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, and Galen had written
treatises on scientific questions. These books entered medieval
Christendom during the twelfth century in Latin translation from Greek and
Arabic versions. Christian scholars immediately realized that these books
were incredibly impressive and valuable, teaching them how to think about
a wide range of scientific questions.
But it was also clear that this body of writings (especially those by
Aristotle) contained theological land-mines.
Aristotle believed in the eternity of the world.
He also judged the world to be deterministic, with no room for divine
providence and divine action.
And Aristotle's philosophy was set within a rationalistic framework that
maintained that true knowledge could be achieved only through
observation and reason-thereby ruling out revelation as a source of truth.
Now one of the most durable myths about science and religion is that the
church responded to these theologically dangerous teachings by
suppressing Aristotle's writings and the rest of the ancient Greek scientific
tradition.
What really happened?
Medieval scholars (university professors, including theology professors)
were confronted by a terrible dilemma. They were not prepared to
compromise the central doctrines of Christian theology. But they also
recognized that the classical sciences had great explanatory power.
They preferred peace to warfare, so they looked for ways to accommodate
this powerful tradition. They corrected the ancient sources where that
seemed necessary, and on occasion they reinterpreted theological doctrines.
And they argued vigorously for the usefulness of the classical sciences.
There were certainly skirmishes, including several cases in which a
university scholar was condemned for teaching doctrines judged
dangerous, but most of these were local and temporary. And there was
never anything approaching intellectual warfare between theologians and
scientists.
Roger Bacon, an outstanding scientist of the thirteenth century, is a good
example of some of these developments. Borrowing a theme from St.
Augustine, he argued that the classical scientific tradition could be the
faithful handmaiden of theology and religion.
Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great also contributed to this enterprise.
They worked their way through Aristotle's writings line by line, looking for
ways to reinterpret him or revise Christian theological doctrines to make
them consistent with each other.
The point is that in the end, Christendom made its peace with the classical
tradition. Aristotle's writings became the centerpiece of medieval university
education, and the church became their greatest patron.
What guided medieval scholars as they worked out this accommodation?
St. Augustine (354-430), the most influential theologian of the Middle
Ages, gave them their principal tool. Augustine had cautioned that
Christians should not make fools of themselves by reading their astronomy
from the Bible. Don't embarrass the Christian faith with half-baked science.
Here's what Augustine wrote in his Literal Commentary on Genesis:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the
heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit
of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable
eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about
the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he
holds as certain from reason and experience.
"Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an
embarrassing situation, in which people reveal vast ignorance in a Christian
and laugh that ignorance to scorn."
The result of Bacon's work, and Aquinas's, and Albert's, and that of many
others less well known, was a Christianized Aristotle and an
Aristotelianized Christianity.
And does this Christianization affect or limit science in any way?
It depends on the area. In technical areas-the mathematical sciences,
medicine, and other "non-worldview" sciences-not in the least. For
example, in the history of geometrical optics (a favorite study of medieval
scholars and one of my own historical specialties), I have yet to find a
single theoretical claim that is in any way altered by the Christian context in
which that research took place.
Did Christianization ever motivate scientific investigation?
Definitely. For example, Roger Bacon argued that if you wanted to
interpret scriptural passages that touch on the heavens or other objects of
scientific investigation, you had to have scientific knowledge. And quite a
large amount of scientific content is found in medieval theological treatises.
Given everything you've said, what can we conclude about the causes of
the scientific revolution?
There are two widely-held theories, both involving religion. One maintains
that the scientific revolution was the product of European secularization, as
Christianity lost its hold on educated Europeans. The other claims that the
scientific revolution was a product of religious reform-specifically, the
Protestant Reformation.
In my opinion, neither of these positions is defensible. Many factors
contributed to the scientific revolution, but it was most fundamentally a
continuation and outgrowth of medieval institutions (the universities) and
of the Christianized classical scientific tradition of the Middle Ages.
So neither Protestants nor Catholics invented modern science. Their
theology or worldview was not the ground or source from which modern
science emerged; but they did provide a context within which the natural
sciences developed and flourished.
Copyright (c) 2002 by the author or Christianity Today
International/Christian History magazine.
[...]
Copyright (c) 1994-2002 Christianity Today International
==========================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the next chapter of the adaptationists' story, the fruit of these chance
alliances, the internally elaborate eukaryotic cells, diversified through
random variation and selection, developing various specialties. Some were
adept at using their cilia for locomotion, others for sensing the existence of
harmful chemicals, others for responding to light. And then these
eukaryotes formed alliances of their own. A light-seeking eukaryote that
happened to stick to a eukaryote with a swiftly lashing tail would beat its
competitors in the race to find the brightest sunlight, the nectar for its
chloroplasts. And so is born a primitive organism. With more feats of
imagination one can come up with a story of how more complex animals
with kidney cells, liver cells, and brain cells came to be. The stories are
driven by a compelling logic. But at every step of the process, a great deal
of luck is involved. To the believers in laws of complexity, these rather ad
hoc explanations begin to sound like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.
How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Tiger Got His Stripes. How
the Algae Got Its Chloroplasts, How the Sperm Cell Got Its Tail. When
they hear their colleagues straining perhaps a little too mightily to squeeze
every thing into the Darwinian framework, some biologists call the result
an evolutionary Just So story: a compelling tale based on scant evidence,
which sometimes has the facile ring of reasoning after the fact. Could the
complexity we see around us come from nothing more than one chance
event after another, selected by the filter of evolution? This strikes some
skeptics as an awfully long string of `too good to be true's.'" (Johnson G.,
"Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995],
Penguin Books: London, 1997, pp.236-237)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, March 16, 2003
to capture Stephen Jones post on CED. permission has been granted conditional to this link:
link back to original posting it is not always available and may be subject to joining group.
Group
Here is 81 year old English philosopher Mary Midgley's review of
Darwinist philosopher Daniel Dennett's new book "Freedom Evolves".
Interestingly, Midgley notes that Dennett seems to have quietly dumped his
view that Darwinism is a "universal acid":
"In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent
qualities. He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in
Darwin's Dangerous Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of
Darwinism being a "universal acid", eating through all other
thought-systems and radically transforming them. There is not
much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely nothing
about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology".
But Midgley notes, "Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains,
namely, the doctrine of memes":
"Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism
that function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing
behaviour patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological
parasites infest their bodies. These mythical entities were invented,
somewhat casually, by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a
supplement to his story of the causal supremacy of genes, and the
current huge popularity of evolutionary thinking has caused the idea
to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies people outside the
physical sciences with something that looks to them like a scientific
explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and
feeling. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this
story, offering memetics as the only truly scientific way of
explaining culture. .... Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this
admirably realistic approach, Dennett still insists that memes - he
explains them as comparable to liver-flukes, genuinely external
to humans and having their own interests to promote - are its
true scientific explanation."
But the problem is, "On memetic principles, the only reason why he and
others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-
Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them to act in
this way"!:
"Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask:
how does memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic
principles, the only reason why he and others campaign so ardently
for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke)
has infested their brains, forcing them to act in this way. That is, of
course, a less welcome notion than the similar explanation of the
idea of God which is their favourite example. (As Dawkins put it,
God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the method
seriously you must apply it consistently."
Steve
==========================================================================
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,904441,00.html
Guardian
[...]
Fate by fluke
Daniel Dennett has charted a new and welcome course between free will
and scientific determinism in Freedom Evolves, says Mary Midgley
Saturday March 1, 2003
The Guardian
Buy Freedom Evolves at Amazon.co.uk
Freedom Evolves
by Daniel C Dennett
309pp, Allen Lane, o20
"Concern about free will is the driving force behind most of the resistance
to materialism generally and neo-Darwinism in particular.
"Free will is an evolved creation of human activity and beliefs, and it is just
as real as such other creations as music and money... Recognising our
uniqueness as reflective, communicating animals does not require any
'human exceptionalism' that must shake a defiant fist at Darwin... We may
thus concede that material forces ultimately govern behaviour, and yet at
the same time reject the notion that people are always and everywhere
motivated by material self-interest."
This is the burden of Daniel Dennett's new book and it is really welcome.
As he points out, educated people today are often trapped in a strange kind
of double-think on this topic. Officially, they believe physical science calls
for determinism, which proves they have no control over their lives. But in
actual living, most of the time they assume they do have this control. They
ignore their supposedly scientific beliefs rather as their ancestors often
ignored threats of eternal punishment. Yet those beliefs can still cause deep
underlying anxiety, confusion, guilt and a sense of futility.
Dennett shows he has grasped this odd situation. He quotes, with some
alarm, a passage from a science-fiction book in which an amoral character
triumphantly cites Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as proving
finally that we have no free will, we cannot control our actions, and thus
that we can have no duties. He rightly insists he never said this. But he
does see now why people may think he did.
The trouble is that, in these discussions, what chiefly gets across to the
reader is not so much the detailed arguments as the general tone, the
rhetoric, the way the emphasis lies. And writers like Dennett, who want to
promote a worldview centring on science, are indeed often somewhat
hostile to the concept of free will. They treat it as an ally of traditional
religion and a prop of the penal system. They do not readily notice that it is
just as necessary to today's secular morality, which centres on personal
autonomy. These campaigners aim to get rid of the immortal soul. But the
last thing they want to do is to lose individual freedom.
In this book Dennett does at last grasp this nettle. He tries much harder
than he has before to show that he understands the importance of our inner
life. He devotes much of the book to dissecting the mistaken notion that
"science" requires us to write off that inner life as an ineffectual shadow.
Determinism, he says, is not fatalism. Fatalism teaches that human effort
makes no difference to what happens, and we know this is false. Human
effort often does make that difference. What makes this effectiveness seem
impossible is not science but the rhetoric that has depicted the mind as a
separate, helpless substance being pushed around by matter.
That rhetoric grew out of Descartes' dualism and an atomistic simplification
that dates from the 17th century - the conviction that a single simple
pattern, found in the interaction of its smallest particles, must govern the
whole of nature. Particle physics, which at that time dealt in very simple
ultimate particles like billiard balls, must therefore supply the model for all
other interactions. All complexity was secondary and somehow unreal.
Since that time, as Dennett points out, all the sciences, including physics,
have dropped that over-simple model. They find complexity and variety of
patterns everywhere. That is why we now need scientific pluralism - the
careful, systematic use of different thinking in different contexts to answer
different questions.
In particular, we are now finding steadily increasing complexity throughout
the developing spectrum of organic life. The more complex creatures
become, the wider is the range of activities open to them. And with that
increase goes a steadily increasing degree of freedom: "The freedom of the
bird to fly wherever it wants is definitely a kind of freedom, a distinct
improvement on the freedom of the jellyfish to float wherever it floats, but
a poor cousin of our human freedom... Human freedom, in part a product
of the revolution begat of language and culture, is about as different from
bird freedom as language is different from birdsong. But to understand the
richer phenomenon, one must first understand its more modest components
and predecessors."
Interestingly, this evolutionary view of human freedom is quite close to the
one Steven Rose suggested in his excellent book Lifelines. Thus, two
writers who started from opposite positions in the sociobiology debate
have both, on reflection, reached similar conclusions on the relation
between freedom and evolution. They both make the central point that our
conscious inner life is not some sort of irrelevant supernatural intrusion on
the working of our physical bodies but a crucial part of their design. We
have evolved as beings that can feel and think in a way that makes us able
to direct our actions. This means, of course, that the self is a much larger
and more complex thing than the detached soul which Descartes thought
was the essence of our being. We operate as whole people. Our minds and
bodies are aspects of us, not separate items. They do not need to compete
for the driving seat.
As Dennett points out, this holistic approach certainly works better than
the simple libertarian attempt to avoid fatalism by interrupting determinism
with patches of quantum indeterminacy - an attempt that could only
produce spasms of randomness, not freedom. Dennett's and Rose's path
between randomness and fatalism is surely essentially the right one. But it
needs to be worked out with great care and sensibility.
In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent qualities.
He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in Darwin's Dangerous
Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of Darwinism being a "universal
acid", eating through all other thought-systems and radically transforming
them. There is not much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely
nothing about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology". Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains, namely,
the doctrine of memes.
Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism that
function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing behaviour
patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological parasites infest their
bodies. These mythical entities were invented, somewhat casually, by
Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a supplement to his story of the
causal supremacy of genes, and the current huge popularity of evolutionary
thinking has caused the idea to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies
people outside the physical sciences with something that looks to them like
a scientific explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely
like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and feeling.
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this story, offering
memetics as the only truly scientific way of explaining culture. But in
Freedom Evolves he does not really need this device any longer. The need
for it has vanished because he is now endorsing human thought and feeling
as real parts of nature - genuine activities, not supernatural extras - part of
normal causality and therefore capable of explaining what happens in
culture. Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this admirably realistic approach,
Dennett still insists that memes - he explains them as comparable to liver-
flukes, genuinely external to humans and having their own interests to
promote - are its true scientific explanation.
Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask: how does
memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic principles, the only
reason why he and others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be
that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them
to act in this way. That is, of course, a less welcome notion than the similar
explanation of the idea of God which is their favourite example. (As
Dawkins put it, God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the
method seriously you must apply it consistently.
And if you do that, you should surely see that it is pure fatalism. This
quaint remnant is perhaps the only serious flaw in an otherwise really
admirable and helpful book.
£ Mary Midgley's most recent book is Science and Poetry (Routledge)
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
==========================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Three mechanisms are supposed to prevent behavior that can lead to fraud
and compromise in scientific research. The first is the peer review system,
by which committees of specialists in a field determine the merit of the
individual proposals submitted for funding. The second is the referee
system, by which scientific papers are sent out for review to qualified
reviewers who recommend whether the papers should be published,
changed, or rejected. The third mechanism is the replication of
experiments. In theory, other scientists attempt the same experiment; if
they cannot replicate the results, the claimed result is dismissed.
Replication of experiments, however, rarely takes place; there is almost no
money available for it, or in it. Why should peer reviewers allocate some of
the limited funds to duplicate what has already been done? Also, a scientist
who simply replicates other researchers' results would soon be labeled a
hack and wouldn't get further funding. Instead, rival scientists try to
establish their reputations by extending the results in some way. ... Grant
peer review, journal peer review, and experiment replication are supposed
to make science self-correcting. But Impure Science illustrates that
preeminent people involved in science are repeatedly defeating these
mechanisms. If science is at all self-correcting in the United States, it is
despite the efforts of some of these powerful individuals, not because of
their efforts." (Bell R.I., "Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political
Influence in Scientific Research," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY,
1992, p.xiv)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
link back to original posting it is not always available and may be subject to joining group.
Group
Here is 81 year old English philosopher Mary Midgley's review of
Darwinist philosopher Daniel Dennett's new book "Freedom Evolves".
Interestingly, Midgley notes that Dennett seems to have quietly dumped his
view that Darwinism is a "universal acid":
"In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent
qualities. He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in
Darwin's Dangerous Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of
Darwinism being a "universal acid", eating through all other
thought-systems and radically transforming them. There is not
much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely nothing
about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology".
But Midgley notes, "Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains,
namely, the doctrine of memes":
"Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism
that function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing
behaviour patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological
parasites infest their bodies. These mythical entities were invented,
somewhat casually, by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a
supplement to his story of the causal supremacy of genes, and the
current huge popularity of evolutionary thinking has caused the idea
to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies people outside the
physical sciences with something that looks to them like a scientific
explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and
feeling. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this
story, offering memetics as the only truly scientific way of
explaining culture. .... Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this
admirably realistic approach, Dennett still insists that memes - he
explains them as comparable to liver-flukes, genuinely external
to humans and having their own interests to promote - are its
true scientific explanation."
But the problem is, "On memetic principles, the only reason why he and
others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-
Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them to act in
this way"!:
"Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask:
how does memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic
principles, the only reason why he and others campaign so ardently
for neo-Darwinism must be that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke)
has infested their brains, forcing them to act in this way. That is, of
course, a less welcome notion than the similar explanation of the
idea of God which is their favourite example. (As Dawkins put it,
God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the method
seriously you must apply it consistently."
Steve
==========================================================================
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,904441,00.html
Guardian
[...]
Fate by fluke
Daniel Dennett has charted a new and welcome course between free will
and scientific determinism in Freedom Evolves, says Mary Midgley
Saturday March 1, 2003
The Guardian
Buy Freedom Evolves at Amazon.co.uk
Freedom Evolves
by Daniel C Dennett
309pp, Allen Lane, o20
"Concern about free will is the driving force behind most of the resistance
to materialism generally and neo-Darwinism in particular.
"Free will is an evolved creation of human activity and beliefs, and it is just
as real as such other creations as music and money... Recognising our
uniqueness as reflective, communicating animals does not require any
'human exceptionalism' that must shake a defiant fist at Darwin... We may
thus concede that material forces ultimately govern behaviour, and yet at
the same time reject the notion that people are always and everywhere
motivated by material self-interest."
This is the burden of Daniel Dennett's new book and it is really welcome.
As he points out, educated people today are often trapped in a strange kind
of double-think on this topic. Officially, they believe physical science calls
for determinism, which proves they have no control over their lives. But in
actual living, most of the time they assume they do have this control. They
ignore their supposedly scientific beliefs rather as their ancestors often
ignored threats of eternal punishment. Yet those beliefs can still cause deep
underlying anxiety, confusion, guilt and a sense of futility.
Dennett shows he has grasped this odd situation. He quotes, with some
alarm, a passage from a science-fiction book in which an amoral character
triumphantly cites Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as proving
finally that we have no free will, we cannot control our actions, and thus
that we can have no duties. He rightly insists he never said this. But he
does see now why people may think he did.
The trouble is that, in these discussions, what chiefly gets across to the
reader is not so much the detailed arguments as the general tone, the
rhetoric, the way the emphasis lies. And writers like Dennett, who want to
promote a worldview centring on science, are indeed often somewhat
hostile to the concept of free will. They treat it as an ally of traditional
religion and a prop of the penal system. They do not readily notice that it is
just as necessary to today's secular morality, which centres on personal
autonomy. These campaigners aim to get rid of the immortal soul. But the
last thing they want to do is to lose individual freedom.
In this book Dennett does at last grasp this nettle. He tries much harder
than he has before to show that he understands the importance of our inner
life. He devotes much of the book to dissecting the mistaken notion that
"science" requires us to write off that inner life as an ineffectual shadow.
Determinism, he says, is not fatalism. Fatalism teaches that human effort
makes no difference to what happens, and we know this is false. Human
effort often does make that difference. What makes this effectiveness seem
impossible is not science but the rhetoric that has depicted the mind as a
separate, helpless substance being pushed around by matter.
That rhetoric grew out of Descartes' dualism and an atomistic simplification
that dates from the 17th century - the conviction that a single simple
pattern, found in the interaction of its smallest particles, must govern the
whole of nature. Particle physics, which at that time dealt in very simple
ultimate particles like billiard balls, must therefore supply the model for all
other interactions. All complexity was secondary and somehow unreal.
Since that time, as Dennett points out, all the sciences, including physics,
have dropped that over-simple model. They find complexity and variety of
patterns everywhere. That is why we now need scientific pluralism - the
careful, systematic use of different thinking in different contexts to answer
different questions.
In particular, we are now finding steadily increasing complexity throughout
the developing spectrum of organic life. The more complex creatures
become, the wider is the range of activities open to them. And with that
increase goes a steadily increasing degree of freedom: "The freedom of the
bird to fly wherever it wants is definitely a kind of freedom, a distinct
improvement on the freedom of the jellyfish to float wherever it floats, but
a poor cousin of our human freedom... Human freedom, in part a product
of the revolution begat of language and culture, is about as different from
bird freedom as language is different from birdsong. But to understand the
richer phenomenon, one must first understand its more modest components
and predecessors."
Interestingly, this evolutionary view of human freedom is quite close to the
one Steven Rose suggested in his excellent book Lifelines. Thus, two
writers who started from opposite positions in the sociobiology debate
have both, on reflection, reached similar conclusions on the relation
between freedom and evolution. They both make the central point that our
conscious inner life is not some sort of irrelevant supernatural intrusion on
the working of our physical bodies but a crucial part of their design. We
have evolved as beings that can feel and think in a way that makes us able
to direct our actions. This means, of course, that the self is a much larger
and more complex thing than the detached soul which Descartes thought
was the essence of our being. We operate as whole people. Our minds and
bodies are aspects of us, not separate items. They do not need to compete
for the driving seat.
As Dennett points out, this holistic approach certainly works better than
the simple libertarian attempt to avoid fatalism by interrupting determinism
with patches of quantum indeterminacy - an attempt that could only
produce spasms of randomness, not freedom. Dennett's and Rose's path
between randomness and fatalism is surely essentially the right one. But it
needs to be worked out with great care and sensibility.
In this book Dennett does, on the whole, supply these excellent qualities.
He uses a much more conciliatory tone than he did in Darwin's Dangerous
Idea. There is no more fighting talk here of Darwinism being a "universal
acid", eating through all other thought-systems and radically transforming
them. There is not much rhetoric about sky-hooks, and there is absolutely
nothing about the fashionable doctrine now known as "evolutionary
psychology". Only one relic of extreme neo-Darwinism remains, namely,
the doctrine of memes.
Memes are supposed to be a kind of parasitical quasi-organism that
function as genes (or possibly as units) of culture, producing behaviour
patterns by infesting people's minds just as biological parasites infest their
bodies. These mythical entities were invented, somewhat casually, by
Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as a supplement to his story of the
causal supremacy of genes, and the current huge popularity of evolutionary
thinking has caused the idea to catch on despite its wildness. It supplies
people outside the physical sciences with something that looks to them like
a scientific explanation of culture - "scientific" because it looks vaguely
like
genetics, and because it does not mention human thought and feeling.
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dennett ardently embraced this story, offering
memetics as the only truly scientific way of explaining culture. But in
Freedom Evolves he does not really need this device any longer. The need
for it has vanished because he is now endorsing human thought and feeling
as real parts of nature - genuine activities, not supernatural extras - part of
normal causality and therefore capable of explaining what happens in
culture. Yet, quite gratuitously, alongside this admirably realistic approach,
Dennett still insists that memes - he explains them as comparable to liver-
flukes, genuinely external to humans and having their own interests to
promote - are its true scientific explanation.
Occam, however, was surely wise in suggesting that we should not
multiply entities beyond necessity. Might we not reasonably ask: how does
memetics apply to Dennett's own case? On memetic principles, the only
reason why he and others campaign so ardently for neo-Darwinism must be
that a neo-Darwinist meme (or fluke) has infested their brains, forcing them
to act in this way. That is, of course, a less welcome notion than the similar
explanation of the idea of God which is their favourite example. (As
Dawkins put it, God is perhaps a computer virus.) But if you propose the
method seriously you must apply it consistently.
And if you do that, you should surely see that it is pure fatalism. This
quaint remnant is perhaps the only serious flaw in an otherwise really
admirable and helpful book.
£ Mary Midgley's most recent book is Science and Poetry (Routledge)
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
==========================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Three mechanisms are supposed to prevent behavior that can lead to fraud
and compromise in scientific research. The first is the peer review system,
by which committees of specialists in a field determine the merit of the
individual proposals submitted for funding. The second is the referee
system, by which scientific papers are sent out for review to qualified
reviewers who recommend whether the papers should be published,
changed, or rejected. The third mechanism is the replication of
experiments. In theory, other scientists attempt the same experiment; if
they cannot replicate the results, the claimed result is dismissed.
Replication of experiments, however, rarely takes place; there is almost no
money available for it, or in it. Why should peer reviewers allocate some of
the limited funds to duplicate what has already been done? Also, a scientist
who simply replicates other researchers' results would soon be labeled a
hack and wouldn't get further funding. Instead, rival scientists try to
establish their reputations by extending the results in some way. ... Grant
peer review, journal peer review, and experiment replication are supposed
to make science self-correcting. But Impure Science illustrates that
preeminent people involved in science are repeatedly defeating these
mechanisms. If science is at all self-correcting in the United States, it is
despite the efforts of some of these powerful individuals, not because of
their efforts." (Bell R.I., "Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political
Influence in Scientific Research," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY,
1992, p.xiv)
Stephen E. Jones sejones@i... or senojes@y...
Home: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
trying to capture a link filled message to review and follow links
-----------------------------------------
A set of measurements related to each other by a linear
independent relationships, is consider a `space'. Such spaces
are as real as most theories can achieve. The three dimensional
space human can visualize is but one example of these spaces.
Adding time (i. e. an event measurement) to the formula does not
significantly change the logic of the mathematical operations.
Hence, spaces can be any number of dimensions including infinitely
dimensional.
The does not mean there isn't any problems with
current `scientific' theories. The ubiquitous word
`natural' applied to everything as if it was explanatory is a prime
example.
`Natural' is often used to cover a blatant pathetic fallacy
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/PatheticFallacy.html
or a neon fallacy ( saying nature has the properties of a machine).
Machines are devices constructed by intelligence for specific
purposes. If one wish to assert, that humans are the only intelligent
entities in the universe than attributing intelligence to inanimate
objects is fallacious. On the other hand, I personally do not assert
that intelligence and natural are the only two types of entities in
the universe. I stated this at the beginning as my philosophical
position. The universe is a large place and may contain a number of
objects, some may be intelligent and `natural' or `unnatural'.
Considering the Fermi's Paradox
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm
I believe my position is more potentially objective than its
converse.
On the question of the constancy of speed of light. There is
quite a number of reasons to believe the speed of light is a
constant independent of epoch it originates in or it position in the
universe. The largest explosion in the universe does not indicate a
significant shift in the speed of light value for intense radiation
levels.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0010/0010322.pdf
You may be referencing the GZK cutoff
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Preprints/GZK/paper.pdf , where
material particles can not approach the speed of light due the
microwave background. This is only a theoretical limit and there is
some grave doubt it even exists.
http://www.p-ng.si/public/pao/paop.html
The Gabon "natural nuclear reactor" provides data for the
1.7 Billion year epoch as to the constancy of several physical
parameters.
http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/index.shtml
http://crpg.cnrs-nancy.fr/MODEL3D/oklo.html
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
http://www.astro.psu.edu/~cwc/qsogroup/alpha/
http://camb.demonhosting.co.uk/JConfAbs/5/869.pdf
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/76c_oklo_fundamental_nuclear_con
stants.pdf
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
This "natural nuclear reactor" operated for some 1+ million
years at
1 X 10^20 neutron flux or 1X10^7 times greater than modern reactors
with no control rods and a low power output.
Completely avoiding the positive void coefficient regime of Chernobyl.
http://www.geocities.com/graham_young_uk/Chernobyl.html
Comments on CMB.
This is a better description of the data analysis.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0302/0302496.pdf
-----------------------------------------
A set of measurements related to each other by a linear
independent relationships, is consider a `space'. Such spaces
are as real as most theories can achieve. The three dimensional
space human can visualize is but one example of these spaces.
Adding time (i. e. an event measurement) to the formula does not
significantly change the logic of the mathematical operations.
Hence, spaces can be any number of dimensions including infinitely
dimensional.
The does not mean there isn't any problems with
current `scientific' theories. The ubiquitous word
`natural' applied to everything as if it was explanatory is a prime
example.
`Natural' is often used to cover a blatant pathetic fallacy
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/PatheticFallacy.html
or a neon fallacy ( saying nature has the properties of a machine).
Machines are devices constructed by intelligence for specific
purposes. If one wish to assert, that humans are the only intelligent
entities in the universe than attributing intelligence to inanimate
objects is fallacious. On the other hand, I personally do not assert
that intelligence and natural are the only two types of entities in
the universe. I stated this at the beginning as my philosophical
position. The universe is a large place and may contain a number of
objects, some may be intelligent and `natural' or `unnatural'.
Considering the Fermi's Paradox
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm
I believe my position is more potentially objective than its
converse.
On the question of the constancy of speed of light. There is
quite a number of reasons to believe the speed of light is a
constant independent of epoch it originates in or it position in the
universe. The largest explosion in the universe does not indicate a
significant shift in the speed of light value for intense radiation
levels.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0010/0010322.pdf
You may be referencing the GZK cutoff
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Preprints/GZK/paper.pdf , where
material particles can not approach the speed of light due the
microwave background. This is only a theoretical limit and there is
some grave doubt it even exists.
http://www.p-ng.si/public/pao/paop.html
The Gabon "natural nuclear reactor" provides data for the
1.7 Billion year epoch as to the constancy of several physical
parameters.
http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/index.shtml
http://crpg.cnrs-nancy.fr/MODEL3D/oklo.html
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
http://www.astro.psu.edu/~cwc/qsogroup/alpha/
http://camb.demonhosting.co.uk/JConfAbs/5/869.pdf
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/
http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/~ilya_shl/alex/76c_oklo_fundamental_nuclear_con
stants.pdf
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9606/9606486.pdf
This "natural nuclear reactor" operated for some 1+ million
years at
1 X 10^20 neutron flux or 1X10^7 times greater than modern reactors
with no control rods and a low power output.
Completely avoiding the positive void coefficient regime of Chernobyl.
http://www.geocities.com/graham_young_uk/Chernobyl.html
Comments on CMB.
This is a better description of the data analysis.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0302/0302496.pdf
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
to capture excellent essay at:
new gnosticism
new gnosticism
The New Gnosticism
Is It "The Age of the Spirit" or "The Spirit of the Age?"
By Michael Horton
Entertainment Weekly is not exactly an evangelical house-organ, and yet, like many secular periodicals these days, it seems to observe more truth than a number of evangelical magazines and journals. In its October 7, 1994 issue, Jeff Gordinier wrote,
In a year when TV airwaves are aflutter with winged spirits, the bestseller lists are clogged with divine manuscripts and visions of the afterlife, and gangsta-rappers are elbowed aside on the pop charts for the hushed prayers of Benedictine monks, you don't have to look hard to find that pop culture is going gaga for spirituality. [However,] seekers of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck out the most dulcet elements of faith, coming up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern meditation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for 'virtue,' and a loopy New Age pursuit of 'peace.' This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forrest Gump's ubiquitous 'boxa chocolates' than like any real system of belief. You never know what you're going to get.
There could hardly have been a better description of the dilemma in which the ancient church found itself, from the time of the apostles until the third century. It is a heresy that is constantly threatening the orthodoxy of the church and it is as old as Satan's lie, "You shall be as gods." It is called "Gnosticism." St. Paul called the Gnostic prophets "super-apostles" who apparently knew more than God. They see into the heavenly secrets and offer techniques for escaping earthly existence. "Timothy," the Apostle warned, "guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith" (2 Tm 6:20). "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5). The super-apostles had preached, he says, a different gospel and a different spirit. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Cor 11:13). The reference here is to the Gnostic emphasis on the Angel of Light versus the Angel of Darkness.
Not far beneath the surface of much of the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John and the Epistles, is a running polemic against the most dangerous heresy in church history. According to one of its early opponents, St. Clement of Alexandria, Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge") consisted of the knowledge "of who we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto 78.2). Knowledge of these secrets was considered redemptive. The purpose of this article will be to explain the origins and identity of Gnosticism in an effort to establish the point that contemporary American religion, whether liberal or conservative, evangelical or New Age, Mormon or Pentecostal, represents a revival of this ancient heresy.
The Old Gnosticism
From a number of secondary sources we are able to gain a portrait which allows us to see the main features:
1. Eclectic and polymorphic. A "cut-and-paste" spirituality emerges from the Gnostic writings. As Philip Lee observes, "Gnostic syncretism...believes everything in general for the purpose of avoiding a belief in something in particular. In the case of Christian Gnosticism, what is being avoided is the particularity of the Gospel, that which is a 'stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.'"1 It is generally agreed that Gnosticism emerged as a form of mystical Christian spirituality blended together with Greek paganism. We recall Paul in Athens, in the Areopagus, where "people did nothing but discuss the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21), telling the Greeks that they were "very religious." Gnosticism was an attempt to incorporate the seeker spirituality of the Greeks into Christianity.
In its very nature, it was diverse and capable of amalgamation and assimilation of various religious systems. Biblical religion, by contrast, insisted upon the uniqueness of divine self-disclosure in Scripture and in God's redemptive acts. There is one God (Yahweh) who is known in the written and Living Word. Many of the church fathers were simply exasperated by trying to figure out what the Gnostic texts actually meant, whereas Christianity held distinct, easily understood and well-defined doctrinal convictions.
2. Individualistic and subjective. While the writings are extremely esoteric and mystical, there is an obvious thread of individualism and an inward focus characteristic of mysticism. As in Greek Platonism, the subject (the knower) has priority over the object (the known), and the path to spirituality is through inwardness, meditation, and self-realization.
3. Immanence over transcendence. In terms of the individual's relation to God, the Gnostic stresses God's nearness over his distant holiness and sovereignty. In fact, the individual self is a "spark" of the One (God). As one scholar puts it, "The self is the indwelling of God."2 There is a direct intimacy between the divine and the self that requires no mediation. In Gnostic literature, the relationship between "God" and the self is often described in romantic and even erotic language.
4. Spirit over matter. Sometimes called in our day "mind over matter," the Greek and Gnostic worldview is dualistic. That is, it divides the world into matter (evil) and spirit (good). Evil, suffering, illness and death are all attributed to the existence of matter and the "Fall" was not from innocence to rebellion (as in the biblical account), but from pure spirit to physical bodies. Imprisoned in a material world, the self is alienated from its true home. This theme of a war between Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the Divine Within and the World Outside, and the sense of alienation, despair, loneliness and abandonment in the physical world, is the recurring key to understanding Gnosticism.3 In our day, Matthew Fox, repeating the warning of self-described Gnostic psychologist C. J. Jung, expresses this sentiment well: "One way to kill the soul is to worship a God outside you" (Roof, p. 75).
5. Anti-institutional orientation. Associated with matter and the physical imprisonment of the self, institutions are viewed as spiritual enemies. The Outside God and the Outside Church are enemies of the soul, directing the self away from one's own inner experience to others and to formal structures of authority, creeds, doctrines, rituals and sacraments. St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. A.D. 110) charged, "They have no concern for love, none for the widow, the orphan, the afflicted, the prisoner, the hungry, the thirsty. They stay away from the Eucharist and prayer."4 This did not mean, however, that they did not form communities, but these were ascetic sects that served to nurture individual rather than communal concerns, and experiential rather than liturgical and doctrinal forms of public worship.
6. Anti-sacramental. Closely related to its suspicion of the church as an institution was Gnosticism's disregard for sacraments. If the self enjoyed a direct and immediate relationship with God's Spirit, and knowledge came through a secret revelation of a mystical nature, surely the introduction of material means of grace-the printed word (accessible to everyone), water (in Baptism), and bread and wine (the Eucharist)-actually become impediments to real fellowship with God. They are insufficiently "spiritual" for Gnostic piety, as rebirth (a prominent Gnostic theme) is by the Spirit in opposition to matter. Furthermore, the gnosis (Revelation Knowledge) was based on the idea that only a few really knew the secrets, while Christianity's emphasis on Word and sacrament, available to anyone who could read or eat, challenged this private, spiritual elitism.
7. Anti-historical. Lee notes, "Gnostic 'knowledge' is unrelated in any vital sense either to nature or to history" (p. 102). As spirit is opposed to matter, and individual inwardness is opposed to an institutional church, eternity is opposed to time. Salvation for the Gnostic is redemption from the body, institutions, and the grinding process of history into which the pure self is mercilessly thrown.
In biblical religion, God not only created the world (material as well as spiritual), and pronounced it "good," but also created matter and history in which to unfold his salvation. In fact, Christianity's cardinal belief in salvation by God becoming flesh, and by his fleshly resurrection promising resurrection of our bodies, was anathema to Gnosticism, as it was foolishness to Greeks who generally saw spirit as good, and matter as evil. In Christianity, redemption does not take place in a super-spiritual sphere above real human history, but within it. Gnosticism, however, emphasizes instead the self's personal, direct encounter with God here and now, and has little or no place for the historical events of God's saving activity.
8. Anti-Jewish. While biblical religion focused on God's personal involvement with the world in creation and redemption, through the bloody sacrifices that anticipated the Messiah, Gnosticism harbored a deep distrust of the Old Testament God. In fact, two Gnostic sects appear in this connection. Marcion (d. A.D. 160) rejected the Old Testament entirely on the basis that it represented a wrathful Judge who created matter and imprisoned souls in history, while the New Testament God (Jesus) was the God of Love. The Creator-God (Old Testament) and the Redeemer-God (New Testament) were viewed as opposites in Marcionism. In addition to the Old Testament, Luke's Gospel and Paul's epistles underwent radical revisions.
In the following century, Mani, a Persian evangelist whose ideas spread quickly to the West and were embraced by St. Augustine before his conversion, founded a powerful sect of Manichaeism. Once again, it was deeply dualistic (spirit vs. matter, Light vs. Darkness, etc.) and championed salvation chiefly in terms of secret knowledge of the principles for overcoming the world, nature, and history through spiritual ascent.
9. Feminist. Ancient Gnosticism, as we have seen, divided the world into spirit and matter as columns of "good" and "bad." They defined characteristics of femininity as love, freedom, affirmation, and nurture, and these were in the "good" column, while those of masculinity were defined as justice, law, wrath, and strength, and put in the "bad" column. This is in sharp contrast to the Christian God who, in both Testaments, is a good, gracious, loving and saving, as well as just, holy and sovereign Father. "Sophia," the Greek word for "wisdom," after the goddess of wisdom, became the "God" of many Gnostics. The 13th-century mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote, "What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth," and this image is replete in the mystical literature. "Ancient Gnosticism," Lee writes, "loathed the patriarchal and authoritarian qualities of official Christianity. From the Gnostic point of view, the structure and discipline of the Church stifled the spirit" (p. 158). The antipathy toward nature was reflected in the Gnostic celebration of the "androgynous [i.e., sexless] self." While the body may be either male or female, the spirit is "free."
One must beware of concluding that the "knowledge" championed by the Gnostics was the same thing that we mean normally by the term. Lee observes:
The difference between orthodox knowledge and Gnostic knowledge has been described as the difference between open revelation and secret revelation. Although it is true for both faiths that the Holy Spirit is at work to open the eyes of the believer that he may know the truth, within orthodox thought the Holy Spirit's work takes place in the presence of, and in terms of, given historical data and within the context of the Holy Catholic Church. Thus, in the Apostles' Creed, the article affirming belief in the Holy Spirit is securely nestled between belief in the person and work of Jesus Christ and a willingness to learn from the Holy Catholic Church" (p. 101).
Gnostic "knowledge" is not only anti-historical and subjective; it is anti-intellectual and immediate. This is why St. Irenaeus called it "pseudo-knowledge" and Paul told Timothy it was "knowledge falsely called" (1 Tm 6:20). It preferred what we often call "heart knowledge" to "head knowledge," although Christianity knew no such dichotomy.
Especially popular in Alexandria, Gnosticism threatened Christianity's very existence, not as an external threat, but as an internal rival. In other words, it attempted to reinterpret biblical religion and reshape it into something other than that which was announced by the prophets, fulfilled in Christ and proclaimed by the apostles. Even as Christianity officially condemned the heresy, and the ancient fathers wrote voluminously on the subject, the philosophical influence of Greek Platonism continued to shape the medieval church. Nevertheless, whenever the unadulterated Gnostic tenets would reappear, as in such medieval sects as the Albigensians, the Cathari (Pure Ones) and Bogemils, the church reasserted its apostolic and catholic condemnations. At the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists revived Gnosticism, and a number of Renaissance humanists, including Petrarch, had also embraced this revival.
A number of scholars, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have argued that the Reformation represented not only a reaction against Pelagianism (the ancient heresy of works-righteousness), but also against Gnosticism. By charging that the church had allowed Greek philosophy priority in interpreting Scripture, the Reformers recovered the Bible's clear declarations on creation, redemption, worship, the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the church, Word and sacrament, and a host of related teachings.
The New Gnosticism
Without offering a chronicle on Gnosticism throughout church history, our purpose here is simply to refer to that portion of history that most directly bears on the current revival.
A trip to the local bookstore confirms that there is a revival of explicit Gnostic spirituality in American culture, with the New Age movement claiming direct descent.5 Often passing for psychology, philosophy and religion, Gnosticism is now back with a vengeance and forms the broad parameters (if there are any) for the smorgasbord of American spirituality. After two world wars, Westerners have become disillusioned with the grand scheme of turning this world into Paradise Restored. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Andre Malraux poured their energies into lamenting the sense of despair and alienation, and the theme of humanity being "thrown" into the world, imprisoned in evil material structures is prominent in their work. The popularity of existentialism blended with an older Transcendentalism that was always seething just beneath the surface of the American consciousness to produce a post-war generation of "seekers" who were ripe for Gnostic spirituality. It is that older Transcendentalism that must be explained before we can understand the ways in which modern evangelicalism and liberalism represent sister "denominations" in what Harold Bloom calls "The American Religion: Gnosticism."
Mysticism has a long tradition within Christianity, and although it developed out of the same influences and centers as Gnosticism itself, it was deemed acceptable even by some who had opposed the heresy. The "ladder of spiritual ascent" and the dualism between spirit and matter, the inwardness and related themes, remind us that the difference is a matter of degree. In a sympathetic treatment, titled, Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition (Zondervan, 1989), United Methodist theologian Robert G. Tuttle, Jr. traces the influences of Greek and Roman Catholic mysticism on John Wesley. Through the various Holiness groups in America, evangelicalism was heavily influenced by a form of spirituality that was considered by many, especially at Princeton Seminary, to be a rival to the historic Christianity recovered in the Reformation. But there were other influences in the culture that contributed to the Gnostic awakening in America. Just as the medieval church was unwittingly shaped by Greek Platonic influences, modern American Christianity, both liberal and evangelical, is shaped by Romanticism-itself a revival of Greek and Gnostic influences.
The Romantics include such worthies as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), who resigned his Boston Unitarian pastorate in 1832 because he could no longer accept institutional religion and refused to serve "Communion." (Since Unitarians do not have a genuine Communion, it is difficult to regard this as a major departure.) After all, Emerson said, he was himself a spark of God and enjoyed direct access without an incarnate Mediator and the impediments of physical sacraments. At Harvard, Emerson declared that orthodox Christianity was dead, and the only way forward was to recover the "spiritual" dimension of religion. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes was a great fan of Emerson's. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was closely associated with Emerson and other "Transcendentalists," as many of the American Romantics were now being called. The Westminster Dictionary of Church History defines Transcendentalism as "an optimistic, mystic and naturalistic state of mind rather than a system of thought," which had "a wide influence on American literature, philosophy, and religion. Based on English romanticism (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle) and German philosophical idealism, it found Calvinistic orthodoxy too harsh and Unitarian liberalism too arid. It emphasized individual experience as sacred, unique, and authoritative."
The sense of alienation is apparent in Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Taking no root, I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impatience I may feel, or conceive of, as regards this earthly life."6 If this feeling was true in the early 19th century, it is certainly exacerbated by the influences of modernity: the rootlessness precipitated by rapid travel, mobility, displacement of families, and technological advances that tend to dehumanize existence. As for the Gnostic preoccupation with spirit, and the eternal over matter and time, Emerson declared, "I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air."7 Like the ancient Gnostics who, according to St. Ignatius, did not bother themselves with the physical needs of this world, Emerson's spiritual arrogance knew no bounds: "I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits...They have no other watchman, or lover, or defender, but I."8
The recurring note in Romanticism, and especially in its American Transcendental variety, is personal experience: the self's transcendence of community, flesh, history, creed, doctrine, church, Word and sacraments, to ascend to the lofty heights of deity. Each individual self is "God" and requires no mediation for access to the divine.
We do not have to look very far to see the influence of this movement on 19th-century Protestantism. The revivalistic evangelicals wanted to escape from this world by a personal experience of being born again, and successive experiences: A second blessing or a rededication would revive the soul in its flight toward Deity and full surrender. Doctrine was considered an encumbrance, as were creeds, liturgies and sacraments, and the anti-intellectual strain of Gnosticism reared its ugly head. In orthodox Christianity, grace redeems this world; in Gnosticism, it redeems the self from nature. Grace did not save nature, but provided a way of escape. At the same time, "the liberals," according to Philip Lee, "made ample room for nature on their stage by moving grace into the wings. There remained in both camps a Gnostic separation of Creation from Redemption" (p. 93).
At this point, psychology was born and took root quickly in America more than anywhere else. It offered an alternative to theology, as the study of the self and self-consciousness replaced the study of God and his redemptive acts. George Ripley declared during this period, "The time has come when a revision of theology is demanded. Let the study of theology commence with the study of human consciousness."9 But this psychological orientation not only demanded the first word, it ended up swallowing everything within reach and the stage was set for the therapeutic revolution of the 20th century, with peace of mind and eventually self-esteem becoming more important than sin and grace. Narcissism (self-worship) became legitimate and, in fact, the only religious duty. Although C. J. Jung, a father of modern psychology, was openly and self-described as a Gnostic, his mysticism is easily absorbed into the greater Gnostic ooze of contemporary pop-psychology and recovery movements.
The preaching also turned from the objective emphasis on God's saving work in Christ, to techniques for self- improvement, psychologically and morally conceived. Considered too offensive for the immortal and innocent self, the Law was not suitable for preaching unless it could be shown that it was somehow beneficial for personal transformation. Divine commands had to be seen as attainable and reasonable principles for self-enhancement and universal love. Damnation was entirely out of place as a purpose for the Law, or for any sociable discourse. Similarly, the Gospel, hardly distinguishable now from the Gnostic law, became a secret formula (gnosis) for rebirth, self-realization, and the personal unmediated experience with the Divine. This was true equally for liberals and evangelicals, Unitarians and revivalists, as well as for the many Gnostic cults that were born in this environment (Christian Science, Unity, Adventism, etc.), however differently each may have stated it.
Horace Bushnell marks the departure from an evangelical Calvinism to an evangelical Romanticism: "My heart wants the Father; my heart wants the Son; my heart wants the Holy Ghost....My heart says the Bible has a Trinity for me, and I mean to hold by my heart. I am glad a man can do it when there is no other mooring."10 The Mormon "testimony" is quite similar when its truth-claims are founded upon a "burning in the bosom." Similarly, when evangelicals sing Romantic hymns such as, "He Lives," with the line, "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart," they have little trouble accommodating to the Romanticism of Schleiermacher, father of modern liberalism, when he said that the essence of Christianity is "the feeling of absolute dependence." And when evangelicals eschew creeds, doctrines, liturgies, and sacraments over personal experience, how can they quibble with the liberal Adolf von Harnack, who believed that "the authentically spiritual is composed of those things that are inward, spontaneous and ethical as opposed to the outward, organized, ceremonial and dogmatic"?11 Gnosticism becomes the tie that binds.
At last, we come to our own century. A number of books have been published in recent years pointing up the "Gnosticization" of American religion, including Philip Lee's, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford, 1987), and Harold Bloom's, The American Religion (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Although Bloom, a distinguished Yale professor, and the nation's leading literary critic, identifies himself as a Jewish Gnostic, he provides a provocative insight into the popularization of Gnosticism. Other studies have pointed tangentially to this same condition, such as those of professors James D. Hunter (University of Virginia), Wade Clark Roof (University of California), and Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University). Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart also point in the same direction.
In spite of their rivalry, fundamentalism and liberalism "both essentially proclaim a Christ who does not redeem," but merely reveals, according to Lee (p. 107). All of these writers point to the breakdown in the Reformation's orthodox stance in both conservative and liberal camps as opening the door to Transcendentalism and, finally, to the current orientation. Beyond the liberal-evangelical split, Wade Clark Roof now says we cannot discern any real differences between New Age and evangelical spirituality on a number of counts. This new Gnosticism "celebrates experience rather than doctrine; the personal rather than the institutional; the mythic and dreamlike over the cognitive; people's religion over official religion; soft, caring images of deity over hard, impersonal images; the feminine and the androgynous over the masculine" (Roof, p. 132). Although Roof does not make the point, these are clearly the tenets of ancient Gnosticism.
Note Lee's point on Christ as Revealer [Gnosis] over Christ as Redeemer:
Another way to shed light on the American tendency to regard Christ as revealer only is, to observe the American fascination with technique. For the evangelicals, conversion is a technique, a necessary one, for salvation. The history of Israel and the life of Jesus, which indeed were often spiritualized beyond recognition, were important only insofar as they could be employed to bring sinners to repentance (p. 109).
Lee says that the liberal approach to the Scriptures, "following its Transcendental heritage," was to see them as "techniques for living the Christian life" and the Bible became "a rich source of those truths that we, in our hearts, already know" (p. 111). But this is now precisely the same attitude often taken by evangelicals to the Scriptures. Both liberals and evangelicals disdain doctrine for personal experience, and objective truth for personal transformation, and in this sense, each is, in its own way, Gnostic. The anti-intellectualism is understandable, according to Lee. "If God is immanent, present within our psyche, if we already have the truth within, then why go through all the hassle of studying theology?" (p. 111). Isn't this precisely the point of the division many of us grew up with between head knowledge and heart knowledge? The former is intellectual, the latter spiritual-that is, gnosis. James D. Hunter observes, "The spiritual aspects of Evangelical life are increasingly approached by means of an interpreted in terms of 'principles,' 'rules,' 'steps,' 'laws,' 'codes,' 'guidelines,' and the like."12 Wade Clark Roof adds, "Salvation as a theological doctrine...becomes reduced to simple steps, easy procedures, and formulas for psychological rewards. The approach to religious truth changes-away from any objective grounds on which it must be judged, to a more subjective, more instrumental understanding of what it does for the believer, and how it can do what it does most efficiently" (p. 195).
Pentecostalism represents an even greater dependence on Gnostic tendencies. Lee writes, "Just as faith healing held an important place among the medieval Gnostics of southern France, it has also been a significant element in the more extreme sects of Protestantism...The Savior God is pitted against the natural God, and before millions of television viewers the Savior God prevails" (p. 119). Roman Catholic scholar Ronald Knox's work, Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950) remains a classic study of this subject. Even the desire to speak in tongues, as if the biblical idea of tongues was a super-natural language unknown to mortals, shows the desire to escape even natural human language in a direct spiritual encounter of immediate ecstasy. Although the biblical writers were well aware of this practice of "ecstatic utterances" in pagan religion, they did not use the Greek word for this practice, but instead chose glossai (lit., "languages"), leading us to conclude that tongues refers in the New Testament to known earthly speech.
The outer edges of Pentecostalism are especially blatant in Gnostic emphases, as a number of works have shown, including The Agony of Deceit.13 Salvation is knowledge-"Revelation Knowledge" (Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Paul Crouch and other "faith teachers" use the upper case to distinguish this from mere written revelation). The Word that truly saves is not the written text of Scripture, proclaiming Christ the Redeemer, but is rather the "Rhema" Word that is spoken directly to the spirit by God's Spirit. Bloom writes, "Paul was arguing against Corinthian Enthusiasts or Gnostics, and yet I wonder why his strictures have not discouraged American Pentecostals more than they seem to have done...Pentecostalism is American shamanism," although the author himself applauds the Gnostic tendency. Bloom concludes of this group, "To know also that one is completely free-the Emersonian Wildness-because one's solitude is shared with the Holy Spirit, carries the rapture to a Sublime elevation. And though Assemblies of God theology is officially Trinitarian, in praxis the Pentecostal knows only Oneness, and calls the Holy Spirit by the name of Jesus, not the Jesus of the Gospels or even the Christ of Paul, but the American Jesus, a Pentecostal like oneself."14 (It is worth noting that the Assemblies of God were involved in a rift within Pentecostalism over this very point, siding with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity over "Oneness Pentecostals.")
For those of us who were raised in fundamentalist, evangelical or pentecostal sects, the experience of "rebirth" comes neither through the Word of the Gospel nor through the water of Baptism, but through a "Spirit Baptism" that is direct and immediate. The Word is primarily seen as an instrument for coaxing the individual into accepting the new birth. The new birth, especially if one judges by the testimonies of converts, is not so much the result of hearing with human ears, in human words, a declaration of things that happened in human history. In short, it is not so much the preaching of the Cross, but the preaching of "my personal relationship with Jesus," the day when "Jesus came into my heart," that is central. Lee again: "Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian's assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal experience of having been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put 'conversion in the power of man himself' to be gross popery." In fact, "Rebirth in God is the exact opposite of rebirth into a new and more acceptable self, as the self-acclaimed born again Christians would see the event" (pp. 144, 255).
Norman Vincent Peale exploited the "peace of mind" craze earlier this century, a movement that borrowed its capital from Transcendentalism directly. Nevertheless, the liberal Peale was hailed as a great evangelist by evangelical Billy Graham and was asked to participate in the crusades. Lee once again notes the tie that binds: "For both of them, Christianity is understood from a Gnostic point of view....The real world with which religion has to do is the world within" (p. 199). This is not to suggest that Billy Graham is a liberal! Rather, it is to argue that in our day Gnosticism unites more than orthodox Christianity divides.
Also in terms of their views of Christ, liberals and evangelicals reveal a common Gnostic tendency. While the liberals divided the Jesus of History (a normal Jew who lived in first-century Palestine) from the Christ of Faith (resurrected God-Man), proclaiming that the Spirit of Christ lives and calls us into vital communion even though his body is not raised, evangelicals often seem to worship the spirit of Jesus apart from his humanity. "Jesus in my heart," at the end of the day, is more important for personal Christian experience, piety, and worship than Jesus in history. Although evangelicals insist on a historical resurrection as a matter of official creed, in actual practice, one wonders why it is important if the spirit of Jesus is in one's heart? After all, no one believes that Jesus takes up physical residence in one's heart, so what can we mean by "asking Jesus into our heart" other than inviting his spirit? Little is said of the biblical notion that it is the Holy Spirit who unites us not to the spirit of Jesus in our hearts, but to the God-Man in heaven according to both his divine and human natures.
In Gnosticism, not only the object of faith (Christ), but the act of faith, becomes radically revised. In Christianity, faith is trust in God's specific promise of salvation through Christ. In Gnosticism, faith is magic. It is a technique for getting what we want by believing in it strongly enough. As C. Peter Wagner, an advocate of the Vineyard movement, puts it, "Empirical evidence also validates the absolute necessity of faith or whatever else you want to call it-possibility thinking or goal setting-as a prerequisite for church growth."15 Is faith really a synonym for possibility thinking and goal setting? Then would not everyone possess faith? Or is faith a unique gift from God to trust in Christ, as in biblical teaching? The Second Helvetic Confession (a 16th century Reformed statement) declares, "Christian faith is not an opinion or human conviction, but a most firm trust and a clear and steadfast assent of the mind, and then a most certain apprehension of the truth of God presented in the Scriptures and in the Apostles' Creed, and thus also of God himself, the greatest good, and especially of God's promise and of Christ who is the fulfillment of all promises."
But Wagner's worldview is also dominated by the Gnostic fascination with dualism between Light and Darkness, as spiritual warfare takes on an increasingly super-spiritual preoccupation. Like Frank Peretti's novels, this popular view of spiritual warfare in which individual believers decide the outcome of battles between good angels and bad angels is too close to Manichaean Gnosticism for comfort.
The Gnostic revolution has been demonstrating its elasticity in recent years in the spirituality of the baby boomers, whose interest in the sacred has been celebrated in national periodicals, the study of which has become something of a cottage industry. Wade Clark Roof sampled a wide variety of seekers. For instance, Sonny D'Antonio, raised Roman Catholic, considers himself "a believer, but not a belonger." "The material parts of the church turned me off," he says (p. 18). Mollie Stone, raised a Pentecostal, tried Native American spirituality, then Quakerism for its "inner peace," and is "turned on" to Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups, although she is not herself an alcoholic or related to one. As for churches? "Creeds and doctrines divide people," she says (p. 23). Roof observes, "The distinction between 'spirit' and 'institution' is of major importance." Although Roof does not point to Gnosticism, his studies mark undeniable parallels: "Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion. This distinction is increasingly pertinent because of the strong emphasis on self in contemporary culture and the related shift from objective to subjective ways of ordering experience" (p. 30). Religion is too restricting, but spirituality offers a way of plugging into the divine with the correct spiritual technology. Roof explains, "As a computer programmer who happens to be an evangelical put it, without any prompting on our part: 'We all access God differently'" (p. 258).
The whole point of Christianity, however, is that one cannot "access" God at all! He must come to us through a personal Word (God in flesh) and a written Word (Scripture), and when we do come to him it must be through Christ, and we come to Christ through the ordained means. It might offend the Gnostic and narcissistic individualism of our age, but we do not "all access God differently."
Roof refers to the Outer and Inner Worlds, the former suspect while the latter is always respected. "Direct experience is always more trustworthy, if for no other reason than because of its 'inwardness' and 'within-ness'-two qualities that have come to be much appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture" (p. 67). But it is the surveys themselves that bear the greatest interest. Fifty-three percent of the Boomers said it was "'more important to be alone and to meditate' than to worship with others" (p. 70). But this was as true for many evangelicals as New Agers. Linda, one respondent, an evangelical who likes James Dobson and believes that America is in moral trouble, tells us, "You don't have to go to church. I think the reason I do is because it helps me to grow. It's especially good for my family, to teach them the good and moral things" (p. 105). In other words, the church imparts knowledge, not of sin and salvation by Christ's atonement, but by practical techniques for Christian living. It is purely narcissistic and individualistic as well as moralistic. The church that will get the vote of the seeker, then, is the church that offers (and delivers) more gnosis-saving techniques and secret formulae-than others. In fact, according to Roof's surveys, 80 percent of Americans believe "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues" (p. 256). "Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, 'People have God within them, so churches aren't really necessary.' Right to the point, the question taps two views common to spiritual seekers: one, an immanent as opposed to a transcendent view of God; and two, an anti-institutional stance toward religion." The results? "Sixty percent of seekers view God in this mystical sense..." (p. 84). The mystical seekers' spirituality "is rooted more in their own biographies and experiences than in any grand religious narrative that purports to provide answers for all times and in all places," and this blends easily with secular or pagan modes of thought (p. 85). In Christianity, it is Christ's crisis experience on a Roman scaffold outside center-city Jerusalem; in Gnosticism, it is Linda's crisis experience that counts.
If experience is most trustworthy, and the cognitive (intellectual) aspects of a religion are downplayed ("Heart Knowledge" over "Head Knowledge"), what is to keep us from another "Dark Ages" of gross superstition? Belief in ESP, astrology and reincarnation is actually highest among college graduates, says Roof (p. 71). The "unknown God" of ancient Greece turns out to be not so distant from the spirituality of the nineties. As Roof puts it, even the "god" of evangelicals is amorphous and undefined: "This God is thought of in very human terms: God, as it were, is created in one's own image," and one might add, God is created in one's own experience. Even the evangelicals, Roof notes, "put a strong emphasis on the moral aspects of faith" over cognitive belief. The American Religion is united in its affirmation that, "It's not so much what you believe, or which religion you follow, it's how you live" (p. 186). Jesus is not as much a Savior as a moral Hero, Teacher and Guide for the gnostikoi- "those in the know." "Not just dropouts, but many loyalists and returnees speak of Jesus in a way that is vague theologically, but morally uplifting.... Theological language seems to have given way to psychological interpretations. If there is one theme throughout that characterizes the languages of boomer faith, it is the subjectivist character of the affirmations: 'I feel,' 'I have found,' 'I believe'" (p. 203).
One thing that needs to be said before concluding this article is that the critique of Gnosticism should not (indeed, must not) down-play the necessity of a living, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. However, it is given by the Holy Spirit, not attained by us. We do not "appropriate" salvation and the gifts of the Spirit; the Spirit confers Christ and all of his blessings to the believer, in communion with the whole church. While we focus on the objective content of the Faith (Christ and him crucified and raised for our salvation), we must not, in reaction, jettison the subjective application of redemption. In any case, we must always keep in mind that our friendship with God (which is a wonderful promise in the Gospel) is expressed in joyful obedience, not in the narcissistic pursuit of "intimacy" as an end in itself.
In the next article, I want to relate all of this background-much of it thick in the theoretical language and tedious description-to the practical issues of Christian life and worship. I also want to offer a way out of the Gnostic maze.
Notes
1. Philip Lee, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p.80.
2. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of The Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 76.
3. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 50-75.
4. Henry Bettenson, The Later Christian Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 103.
5. Marylin Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin's, 1987), p. 120. Claiming the Gnostics by name, Ferguson states, "Like that of the founding fathers and of the American Transcendentalists of the mid-1800s, the dream of the Aquarian Conspiracy in America is a framework for nonmaterialist expansion: autonomy, awakening, creativity-and reconciliation." The movement is "reluctant to create hierarchical structures" and is "averse to dogma." She says, "By integrating magic and science, art and technology, it will succeed where all the king's horses and all the king's men have failed."
6. Cited in Vernon L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America, vol. 2 of Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp. 441-2.
7. Emerson, Journals, ed E. W. Emerson, vol. 5, p. 288.
8. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 316.
9. Cited in Lee, p. 104.
10. Martin Marty, The Righteous Empire (New York: Dial, 1970), pp. 184-7
11. Cited in Lee, p. 155.
12. James D. Hunter, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandry of Modernity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983), p. 75.
13. See The Agony of Deceit, ed. Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991)
14. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 177.
15. Cited in Lee, p. 210.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
capturing one of Stephen Jones's tag lines it is the first time i have heard this....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The final fallacy of this sort that we will consider is known as poisoning
the well. In such arguments an attempt is made to place the opponent in a
position from which he or she is unable to reply. This form of the fallacy
received its name from John Henry Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century
British churchman, in one of his frequent controversies with the clergyman
and novelist Charles Kingsley. During the course of their dispute, Kingsley
suggested that Newman, as a Roman Catholic priest, did not place the
highest value on truth. Newman protested that such an accusation made it
impossible for him, or for any other Catholic, to state his case. For how
could he prove to Kingsley that he had more regard for truth than for
anything else if Kingsley presupposed that he did not? Kingsley had
automatically ruled out anything that Newman might offer in defense.
Kingsley, in other words, had poisoned the well of discourse, making it
impossible for anyone to partake of it. ... Anyone attempting to rebut these
arguments would be hard pressed to do so, for anything he or she said
would only seem to strengthen the accusation against the person saying it.
The very attempt to reply succeeds only in placing someone in an even
more impossible position. It is as if, being accused of talking too much, one
cannot argue against the accusation without condemning one self; the more
one talks the more one helps establish the truth of the accusation. And that
is perhaps what such unfair tactics are ultimately designed to do: by
discrediting in advance the only source from which evidence either for or
against a particular position can arise, they seek to avoid opposition by
precluding discussion." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction
to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990,
pp.195-196)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The final fallacy of this sort that we will consider is known as poisoning
the well. In such arguments an attempt is made to place the opponent in a
position from which he or she is unable to reply. This form of the fallacy
received its name from John Henry Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century
British churchman, in one of his frequent controversies with the clergyman
and novelist Charles Kingsley. During the course of their dispute, Kingsley
suggested that Newman, as a Roman Catholic priest, did not place the
highest value on truth. Newman protested that such an accusation made it
impossible for him, or for any other Catholic, to state his case. For how
could he prove to Kingsley that he had more regard for truth than for
anything else if Kingsley presupposed that he did not? Kingsley had
automatically ruled out anything that Newman might offer in defense.
Kingsley, in other words, had poisoned the well of discourse, making it
impossible for anyone to partake of it. ... Anyone attempting to rebut these
arguments would be hard pressed to do so, for anything he or she said
would only seem to strengthen the accusation against the person saying it.
The very attempt to reply succeeds only in placing someone in an even
more impossible position. It is as if, being accused of talking too much, one
cannot argue against the accusation without condemning one self; the more
one talks the more one helps establish the truth of the accusation. And that
is perhaps what such unfair tactics are ultimately designed to do: by
discrediting in advance the only source from which evidence either for or
against a particular position can arise, they seek to avoid opposition by
precluding discussion." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction
to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990,
pp.195-196)
i want to capture these references
-------------------------------------------------
Hi Sonnikke, I have been gone for a while, had to switch jobs when my old BioTech turned turtle, although hopefully it will transmute into a Phoenix. You asked for more info concerning pathways for gene control and duplication of genes for evolution. One major family of pathways involved in gene control which crosses species lines are the MAP Kinase proteins and their related protein families. Here is one very good reference providing informatio concerning the relationships
http://link.springer-ny.com/link/service/journals/00239/papers/49n5p567.pdf
(Sorry that I am not putting it in HTML format but I am short on time this morning). PLease note the clustering of the related p38 and JNK families with the related Yeast gene family for osmotic shock. These genes and their associated proteins play a different role than the mitogen activated proteins. Control generally occurs via a feedback style loop of the transcription factor substrates and the initiated gene product. Some of the apparently unrelated or difficult to trace families may be the result of looking at the active site rather than the docking site, of course the docking site data was not available at the time of publication of the paper. Here is a short reference for that as well.
http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=20122677&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b
This type of duplication of a gene and use of the protein for a different function is rather common.
Another pathway, although not dealing with translational control of genes, is the clotting activity of horseshoe crabs. This is important as, based on current understanding, the Horseshoe crab is a very old and succesfull species. The reason that I like this pathway is that it trashes one of Dr. Behe's examples of Irreducible Complexity, namely blood clotting. Here is a little info on the crab and the clotting system.
http://www.mbl.edu/animals/Limulus/blood/bang.html
Please note the occurance of one the signs of an "Unsuccessful" pathway acording to Behe, namely the clotting of the entire organism due to an unusually severe infection. However, in the open circulatory pathway of the crab this generally is not a problem. Subsequent modifications to a similar pathway, here is a decent paper on this.
http://biochem.wustl.edu/~enrico/tibs02_krem.pdf
So you see, duplication really can account for complex, even "Irreducibly complex", pathways
------------------
-------------------------------------------------
Hi Sonnikke, I have been gone for a while, had to switch jobs when my old BioTech turned turtle, although hopefully it will transmute into a Phoenix. You asked for more info concerning pathways for gene control and duplication of genes for evolution. One major family of pathways involved in gene control which crosses species lines are the MAP Kinase proteins and their related protein families. Here is one very good reference providing informatio concerning the relationships
http://link.springer-ny.com/link/service/journals/00239/papers/49n5p567.pdf
(Sorry that I am not putting it in HTML format but I am short on time this morning). PLease note the clustering of the related p38 and JNK families with the related Yeast gene family for osmotic shock. These genes and their associated proteins play a different role than the mitogen activated proteins. Control generally occurs via a feedback style loop of the transcription factor substrates and the initiated gene product. Some of the apparently unrelated or difficult to trace families may be the result of looking at the active site rather than the docking site, of course the docking site data was not available at the time of publication of the paper. Here is a short reference for that as well.
http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=20122677&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b
This type of duplication of a gene and use of the protein for a different function is rather common.
Another pathway, although not dealing with translational control of genes, is the clotting activity of horseshoe crabs. This is important as, based on current understanding, the Horseshoe crab is a very old and succesfull species. The reason that I like this pathway is that it trashes one of Dr. Behe's examples of Irreducible Complexity, namely blood clotting. Here is a little info on the crab and the clotting system.
http://www.mbl.edu/animals/Limulus/blood/bang.html
Please note the occurance of one the signs of an "Unsuccessful" pathway acording to Behe, namely the clotting of the entire organism due to an unusually severe infection. However, in the open circulatory pathway of the crab this generally is not a problem. Subsequent modifications to a similar pathway, here is a decent paper on this.
http://biochem.wustl.edu/~enrico/tibs02_krem.pdf
So you see, duplication really can account for complex, even "Irreducibly complex", pathways
------------------
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
an email i dont want to lose
---------------------------------------------------------------
I think that Robert M. Price's book, Beyond Born Again
(on the web) is one of the best for any Evangelical
Christian to read who wants his peculiar concerns to
be addressed and challenged. It's written by a former
Evangelical for Evangelical readers. [Price's latest
work, Deconstructing Jesus, was a little beyond me.
After writing Beyond Born Again he obtained two Ph.D.s
in N.T. in both N.T. theology and N.T. history, and so
he now interacts with a host of varied hypotheses and
interpretations raised by Jesus Seminar people, and I
cannot follow all of the hypotheses! He is currently
of the opinion that we possess even less certainties
regarding what is known (and can be known) about the
historical Jesus than most people in the Seminar would
readily admit.]
My collection of testimonies, Leaving the Fold, has,
like Bob's book, garnered responses from Evangelicals
and Former Evangelicals like myself who either felt
challanged by it, or who were grateful that there were
others out there like them who had wrestled with the
same questions and wound up on the more moderate side
of the fence.
Of course there are a lot of interesting books out
there. But there is only one truly fabulous website
that I know of that features all known Christian texts
and different approaches to the historical Jesus and
more links than you can shake a mouse at:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com
Speaking of your question in particular -- pagan
connections with Christianity -- one of the most
recent and most talked about books on the topic is
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan
God?
by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy
[A wide-reaching review of pagan ideas and influences
on Christianity, along with interesting parallels. Of
course it is not necessary to agree with the author's
thesis that Jesus never existed in order to be
entranced by all the parallels between paganism and
Christianity.]
--------
Two interesting recent books try to pinpoint "earlier
Jesuses" and "earler Messiahs" before Jesus of
Nazareth:
Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ
by Alvar Ellegard
[I haven't read this one, but I do know that this
author's hypothesis is different from that of the one
below.]
The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the
Dead Sea Scrolls
by Israel Knohl, David Maisel (Translator)
[I've skimmed this one and it raises some fascinating
questions and explores some fascinating parallels.]
Along with the above books, I suggest the works of
Geza Vermes -- from his book, Jesus the Jew, to his
recent, The Changing Faces of Jesus, both of which
mention charismatic Jewish wonder workers and healers
who lived near the time of Jesus and who addressed God
as "Father."
--------
The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a
Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an
Historical Jesus
by Earl Doherty
Mr. Doherty has an extensive website that includes
many of his arguments and most recent articles and
responses to his critics. Type his last name and book
title into the www.google.com search box and you'll
find his writings.
------------
If you want to discover more works on paganism and
Christianity, try www.amazon.com and do a book
search using the words "pagan and christian." Here's
some of the more interesting books that my own search
pulled up at amazon:
Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience
by Gus, Ph.D. Dizerega
[A curious book written by a pagan that preacefully
points out similarities of beliefs and their
expression among both modern day pagans and
Christians.]
------
Pagan & Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning
by Edward Carpenter
Book Description
Contents: Solar Myths and Christian Festivals; The
Symbolism of the Zodiac; Totem-Sacraments and
Eucharists; Food and Vegetation Magic; Magicians,
Kings and Gods; Rites of Expiation and Redemption;
Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth; Myth of the
Golden Age; The Saviour-God and the Virgin-Mother;
Ritual Dancing; The Sex-Taboo; The Genesis of
Christianity; The Meaning of it All; The Ancient
Mysteries; The Exodus of Christianity; Conclusion;
Appendix on the Teachings of the Upanishads: Rest; The
Nature of the Self.
About the Author
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a well-regarded
English poet and scholar. He studied at Brighton
College and then entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Carpenter was close friend to E. M. Forster and
Laurence Houseman and was a member of The Fabian
Society.
Another older work like the above is
Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an
Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove,"
and Other Allied Symbols - 1915
by Thomas Inman
[I am unsure how accurate such older works are, since
the information maybe be based on inaccurate sources
or translations.]
Customers who bought this book also bought:
Aryan Sun Myths: The Origin of Religions by Sarah E.
Titcomb, et al (Paperback)
The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by
Acharya S (Paperback)
Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E.: A Sourcebook
by Ramsay MacMullen (Editor), Eugene N. Lane (Editor)
(Paperback)
A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones, Nigel
Pennick (Contributor) (Paperback)
The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of
the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
World by Marvin W. Meyer (Editor) (Paperback
--------
Pagans and Christians
by Robin Lane Fox
[A relatively recently published work that I have
enjoyed reading, though it is quite long and you have
to choose which sections interest you the most.]
REVIEWS:
The Christian Church does not talk much about how it
obtained dominance in the European world. One reads of
BIble stories and martyrs and popes but nothing on the
events that led to the overthrow of the gods of a
religious people. In this book, one discovers that
early Christians were the "Atheists" since they did
not worship a pagan god.
Pagan gods were wondrously easygoing. Each town or
family had their own god. Acceptance or rejection was
entirely personal. Gods could be adopted, created,
borrowed or discarded depending on the social
circumstance. Christianity demands that only "God"
(Jesus) receive adoration, thus setting up a conflict
that resulted in one side winning and outlawing the
former gods.
What is particularly interesting is the daily life of
the people and how their religion affected them.
Pagans were generous with their money, held services,
performed rituals and prayed for success or money.
Even more interesting is the manner in which
Christianity adapted and adopted from pagans - both in
theology and ritual. The mystical union of god and man
was a uniquely pagan thought as was the "Mind of God".
We read about the ferocious fights concerning divinity
("Was Jesus one or separate with God?"), scripture
(books were "voted" holy at synods) and ceremony.
Christianity owes at least as much to paganism as it
does Judaism. Get this book and The Unauthorized
Version, Fox's other masterpiece.
***
I came away from reading this wonderful book with a
feeling of "those sly dogs" refering to the
Christians. After reading this book your eyes will be
opened to how everything we accept as truth today has
a very spotted past. The book describes how the
Christian Church learned from their Pagan past how to
manipulate its flock. A practice that goes on to this
day. The exegete, Mr. Fox digs up the dirt so to speak
on the most pios of institutions. The book is vast and
very detailed. Not one to pick up for mindless
Christian entertainment. You might just learn the
flawed truth about our most hallowed institutions and
be set free. This is not a book for fundamentalist and
will be damned by them.
It was interesting to find out that the early church
was not prosectuted for it faith...A lession the
church has learned to use today on those they consider
"unsavory". I came away with the impression that the
Christian church today is and was no better than the
pagans it drew most of their traditions from.
***
Doubtless, the author knows his subject. But, like
many contemporary academics, he is unable to clearly
and concisely state a thesis, marshal the facts and
arguments and to then move on. I suspect this type of
thing results from a fear of making oneself an easy
taget for some carping, caviling "scholar".
The author, with his undisciplined, meandering style,
managed to turn a fascinating subject and his own deep
knowledge into an insufferably long (799 pages) and
tedious mass of mush. It is hardly surprising that
this book is out of print.
Yes, there are some fine nuggets to be mined herein.
However, they are easy to miss when your eyes are
glazed over. This book is not recommended for the
general reader looking for an interesting, informative
book of manageable length.
-------------
The Pagan Background of Early Christianity.
by William Reginald Halliday
Publisher: Cooper Square Press; (January 1970)
REVIEW:
This work is a printed version of W.R. Halliday's
series of lectures to the Board of Biblical Studies of
the University of Liverpool, and due to the nature of
his audience, many connections between Christianity
and pagan religion are left unsaid. He argues that
Christianity was a product of its time, often drawing
from the same pool of symbols, thoughts, and rituals
which were used by the pagan religions. Of the myriad
of pagan religions, Halliday limits his discussion to
the state religion of Rome, the Stoics, Epicureans,
Cynics, and Mithraites. There was no reference to the
influence of Druids, Bacchanalians, or other Hellenic
or Oriental cults on Christian practices. His argument
is convincing, and his conclusion, that Christianity
filled a spiritual void by blending ritual,
philosophy, and a moral code seems to bear weight.
Overall, his comparison of Christian ritual and pagan
practices is compelling, but this work's narrow scope
and often tedious format impede it's usefulness.
----------
Pagan Saviours: Pagan Elements in Christian Ritual and
Doctrine
Availability: THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE.
If you would like to purchase this title, we recommend
that you occasionally check this page to see if it has
become available.
Paperback: 24 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.25 x
8.25 x 5.75
Publisher: Ishk Book Service; (January 2000)
--------
Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second
Century (Patristic Monograph Series, 10)
by Harold Remus
----------
Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook
by A. D. Lee
Table of Contents
Preface Conventions and Abbreviations Acknowledgments
Introduction Part 1. Pagans and Christians Through
Time 1. Pagans in the Third Century 2. Christians in
the Third Century 3. Pagans and Christians During the
tetrarchy 4. Constantine 5. Pagans and Christians in
the Mis Fourth Century 6. Pagans and Christians in the
Late Fourth Century 7. Christianization and its Limits
in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries Part 2. Other
Religious Groups 8. Jews 9. Zoroastrians 10.
Manichaeans Part 3. Themes in Late Antique
Christianity 11. Ascetics 12. Bishops 13. Material
Resources 14. Church Life 15. Women 16. Pilgrims and
Holy Places Glossary Editions Bibliography Index of
Sources General Index
About the Author
A.D. Lee is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient
History at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is
the author of Information and Frontiers: Roman FOreign
Relations in Late Antiquity (1993) and is a
contributor to the Cambridge Ancient History
---------
--- richard williams
wrote:
> thank you very much.
> i just finished skimming his book you quoted earlier
> on CED
> and will printout and slowly read his stuff tonight
> and tomorrow, i hope...i would never have found it
> without your help.
>
> do you know of good books or sites on early
> christian
> and
> pagan relationships?
>
> looking for something like mithras worship and
> christian syncretism.
>
> thanks again
>
> richard williams
>
> --- Edward Babinski wrote:
> >
> > I believe this is the exact site address for
> Price's
> > BEYOND BORN AGAIN:
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/
> >
> > Robert M. Price on the arguments used by
> Evangelical
> > apologists to "prove" Jesus's Divinity:
> >
> > A False Trilemma
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap7.html
> >
> > Jesus God's Son
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/son.html
> >
> > Doctrinal History of the Controversy:
> >
> > When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define
> > Christianity during the Last Days of Rome
> > by Richard E. Rubenstein
> >
> > The above struggle "to define Christianity" never
> > ended. The Bible raises more questions than it
> > answers.
> >
> > A supplementary reading list on "The Trinity"
> would
> > include:
> >
> > --- Patristic source material:
> > [1] Rusch W.G. The Trinitarian Controversy
> (reader)
> > ****
> > [2] Rusch W.G. The Christological Controversy
> > (reader)
> > ****
> >
> > --- Orthodox apologia for the Trinity:
> > [3] Dunn J.D. Christology (essays) ***
> >
> >
> > --- Egyptology
> > [4] Griffiths J.G. Triads and Trinity
> (distinguished
> > egyptologist's account of pagan origins of the
> > Trinity, heavy going) ***
> >
> > --- Apologia for non-Trinitarian views:
> > [5] Broughton J.H. & Southgate P.J. The Trinity
> True
> > or False (the most comprehensive scriptural
> > arguments
> > against both the Trinity and the related doctrine
> of
> > Preexistence, with, interestingly, two alternative
> > approaches to John 1)*****
> > [6] Buzzard A.F. & Hunting C.F. The Doctrine of
> the
> > Trinity (broadly similar to Broughton & Southgate
> > but
> > less comprehensive on the scripture sections, and
> > not
> > as strong in the treatment of Preexistence. The
> > book's
> > plus point is a fuller treatment of historical
> > development)****
> > [7] Holt B. Jesus God or the Son of God (critique
> of
> > the concept of Jesus as "god" which goes
> > considerably
> > further down this road than the two previous
> books,
> > but paradoxically contains an apologia for the
> > literal
> > preexistence of Jesus in heaven before birth).***
> > [8] Graeser M.H., Lynn J.A., & Schoenheit J.W. One
> > God
> > and One Lord (popularist and unfortunately
> sloppily
> > proofread critique of the Trinity, no substitute
> for
> > either Broughton or Buzzard, or both)*
> > [9] Sigal, Gerald. The Jew and the Christian
> > Missionary (discusses some of the ways Christians
> > use
> > the Old and New Testament Scriptures)
> >
> > NB: some of these books are currently only
> available
> > from Amazon's international websites - although
> > shipping rates and times are very reasonable.
> >
> >
> >
> > OTHER WEBSITES:
> >
> > www.earlychristianwritings.com
> > (The Definitive Basic Information and Study Site
> for
> > Ancient Christian Literature, Including the
> Gospels,
> > Patristic Literature and many other Early
> Christian
> > Texts).
> >
> > Gospel of Matthew (info on its dating,
> > interpretations, many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html
> >
> > Gospel of John (info on its dating,
> interpretations,
> > many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/john.html
> >
> > Geza Vermes on the Fourth Gospel (from his latest
> > book, The Changing Faces of Jesus)
> >
>
http://www.penguin.co.uk/Book/BookFrame?0140265244_EXC
> >
> > Book of Revelation (Apocalypse of John) (info on
> its
> > dating, interpretations, many links)
> >
>
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/revelation.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> > http://taxes.yahoo.com/
>
>
> =====
> richard williams....................
> thinkcreation2002@yahoo.com
> http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia ......creation
> evolution homepage
> http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com ....blog
> http://myhq.com/public/t/h/thinkcreation ...sorted
> CED bookmark list
> http://myhq.com/public/r/w/rwilliam ........unsorted
> CURRENT bookmark list
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CEreadingstudy/join
> .... reading group
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> http://taxes.yahoo.com/
________________________________________
---------------------------------------------------------------
I think that Robert M. Price's book, Beyond Born Again
(on the web) is one of the best for any Evangelical
Christian to read who wants his peculiar concerns to
be addressed and challenged. It's written by a former
Evangelical for Evangelical readers. [Price's latest
work, Deconstructing Jesus, was a little beyond me.
After writing Beyond Born Again he obtained two Ph.D.s
in N.T. in both N.T. theology and N.T. history, and so
he now interacts with a host of varied hypotheses and
interpretations raised by Jesus Seminar people, and I
cannot follow all of the hypotheses! He is currently
of the opinion that we possess even less certainties
regarding what is known (and can be known) about the
historical Jesus than most people in the Seminar would
readily admit.]
My collection of testimonies, Leaving the Fold, has,
like Bob's book, garnered responses from Evangelicals
and Former Evangelicals like myself who either felt
challanged by it, or who were grateful that there were
others out there like them who had wrestled with the
same questions and wound up on the more moderate side
of the fence.
Of course there are a lot of interesting books out
there. But there is only one truly fabulous website
that I know of that features all known Christian texts
and different approaches to the historical Jesus and
more links than you can shake a mouse at:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com
Speaking of your question in particular -- pagan
connections with Christianity -- one of the most
recent and most talked about books on the topic is
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan
God?
by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy
[A wide-reaching review of pagan ideas and influences
on Christianity, along with interesting parallels. Of
course it is not necessary to agree with the author's
thesis that Jesus never existed in order to be
entranced by all the parallels between paganism and
Christianity.]
--------
Two interesting recent books try to pinpoint "earlier
Jesuses" and "earler Messiahs" before Jesus of
Nazareth:
Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ
by Alvar Ellegard
[I haven't read this one, but I do know that this
author's hypothesis is different from that of the one
below.]
The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the
Dead Sea Scrolls
by Israel Knohl, David Maisel (Translator)
[I've skimmed this one and it raises some fascinating
questions and explores some fascinating parallels.]
Along with the above books, I suggest the works of
Geza Vermes -- from his book, Jesus the Jew, to his
recent, The Changing Faces of Jesus, both of which
mention charismatic Jewish wonder workers and healers
who lived near the time of Jesus and who addressed God
as "Father."
--------
The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a
Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an
Historical Jesus
by Earl Doherty
Mr. Doherty has an extensive website that includes
many of his arguments and most recent articles and
responses to his critics. Type his last name and book
title into the www.google.com search box and you'll
find his writings.
------------
If you want to discover more works on paganism and
Christianity, try www.amazon.com and do a book
search using the words "pagan and christian." Here's
some of the more interesting books that my own search
pulled up at amazon:
Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience
by Gus, Ph.D. Dizerega
[A curious book written by a pagan that preacefully
points out similarities of beliefs and their
expression among both modern day pagans and
Christians.]
------
Pagan & Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning
by Edward Carpenter
Book Description
Contents: Solar Myths and Christian Festivals; The
Symbolism of the Zodiac; Totem-Sacraments and
Eucharists; Food and Vegetation Magic; Magicians,
Kings and Gods; Rites of Expiation and Redemption;
Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth; Myth of the
Golden Age; The Saviour-God and the Virgin-Mother;
Ritual Dancing; The Sex-Taboo; The Genesis of
Christianity; The Meaning of it All; The Ancient
Mysteries; The Exodus of Christianity; Conclusion;
Appendix on the Teachings of the Upanishads: Rest; The
Nature of the Self.
About the Author
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a well-regarded
English poet and scholar. He studied at Brighton
College and then entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Carpenter was close friend to E. M. Forster and
Laurence Houseman and was a member of The Fabian
Society.
Another older work like the above is
Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an
Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove,"
and Other Allied Symbols - 1915
by Thomas Inman
[I am unsure how accurate such older works are, since
the information maybe be based on inaccurate sources
or translations.]
Customers who bought this book also bought:
Aryan Sun Myths: The Origin of Religions by Sarah E.
Titcomb, et al (Paperback)
The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by
Acharya S (Paperback)
Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E.: A Sourcebook
by Ramsay MacMullen (Editor), Eugene N. Lane (Editor)
(Paperback)
A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones, Nigel
Pennick (Contributor) (Paperback)
The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of
the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
World by Marvin W. Meyer (Editor) (Paperback
--------
Pagans and Christians
by Robin Lane Fox
[A relatively recently published work that I have
enjoyed reading, though it is quite long and you have
to choose which sections interest you the most.]
REVIEWS:
The Christian Church does not talk much about how it
obtained dominance in the European world. One reads of
BIble stories and martyrs and popes but nothing on the
events that led to the overthrow of the gods of a
religious people. In this book, one discovers that
early Christians were the "Atheists" since they did
not worship a pagan god.
Pagan gods were wondrously easygoing. Each town or
family had their own god. Acceptance or rejection was
entirely personal. Gods could be adopted, created,
borrowed or discarded depending on the social
circumstance. Christianity demands that only "God"
(Jesus) receive adoration, thus setting up a conflict
that resulted in one side winning and outlawing the
former gods.
What is particularly interesting is the daily life of
the people and how their religion affected them.
Pagans were generous with their money, held services,
performed rituals and prayed for success or money.
Even more interesting is the manner in which
Christianity adapted and adopted from pagans - both in
theology and ritual. The mystical union of god and man
was a uniquely pagan thought as was the "Mind of God".
We read about the ferocious fights concerning divinity
("Was Jesus one or separate with God?"), scripture
(books were "voted" holy at synods) and ceremony.
Christianity owes at least as much to paganism as it
does Judaism. Get this book and The Unauthorized
Version, Fox's other masterpiece.
***
I came away from reading this wonderful book with a
feeling of "those sly dogs" refering to the
Christians. After reading this book your eyes will be
opened to how everything we accept as truth today has
a very spotted past. The book describes how the
Christian Church learned from their Pagan past how to
manipulate its flock. A practice that goes on to this
day. The exegete, Mr. Fox digs up the dirt so to speak
on the most pios of institutions. The book is vast and
very detailed. Not one to pick up for mindless
Christian entertainment. You might just learn the
flawed truth about our most hallowed institutions and
be set free. This is not a book for fundamentalist and
will be damned by them.
It was interesting to find out that the early church
was not prosectuted for it faith...A lession the
church has learned to use today on those they consider
"unsavory". I came away with the impression that the
Christian church today is and was no better than the
pagans it drew most of their traditions from.
***
Doubtless, the author knows his subject. But, like
many contemporary academics, he is unable to clearly
and concisely state a thesis, marshal the facts and
arguments and to then move on. I suspect this type of
thing results from a fear of making oneself an easy
taget for some carping, caviling "scholar".
The author, with his undisciplined, meandering style,
managed to turn a fascinating subject and his own deep
knowledge into an insufferably long (799 pages) and
tedious mass of mush. It is hardly surprising that
this book is out of print.
Yes, there are some fine nuggets to be mined herein.
However, they are easy to miss when your eyes are
glazed over. This book is not recommended for the
general reader looking for an interesting, informative
book of manageable length.
-------------
The Pagan Background of Early Christianity.
by William Reginald Halliday
Publisher: Cooper Square Press; (January 1970)
REVIEW:
This work is a printed version of W.R. Halliday's
series of lectures to the Board of Biblical Studies of
the University of Liverpool, and due to the nature of
his audience, many connections between Christianity
and pagan religion are left unsaid. He argues that
Christianity was a product of its time, often drawing
from the same pool of symbols, thoughts, and rituals
which were used by the pagan religions. Of the myriad
of pagan religions, Halliday limits his discussion to
the state religion of Rome, the Stoics, Epicureans,
Cynics, and Mithraites. There was no reference to the
influence of Druids, Bacchanalians, or other Hellenic
or Oriental cults on Christian practices. His argument
is convincing, and his conclusion, that Christianity
filled a spiritual void by blending ritual,
philosophy, and a moral code seems to bear weight.
Overall, his comparison of Christian ritual and pagan
practices is compelling, but this work's narrow scope
and often tedious format impede it's usefulness.
----------
Pagan Saviours: Pagan Elements in Christian Ritual and
Doctrine
Availability: THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE.
If you would like to purchase this title, we recommend
that you occasionally check this page to see if it has
become available.
Paperback: 24 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.25 x
8.25 x 5.75
Publisher: Ishk Book Service; (January 2000)
--------
Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second
Century (Patristic Monograph Series, 10)
by Harold Remus
----------
Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook
by A. D. Lee
Table of Contents
Preface Conventions and Abbreviations Acknowledgments
Introduction Part 1. Pagans and Christians Through
Time 1. Pagans in the Third Century 2. Christians in
the Third Century 3. Pagans and Christians During the
tetrarchy 4. Constantine 5. Pagans and Christians in
the Mis Fourth Century 6. Pagans and Christians in the
Late Fourth Century 7. Christianization and its Limits
in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries Part 2. Other
Religious Groups 8. Jews 9. Zoroastrians 10.
Manichaeans Part 3. Themes in Late Antique
Christianity 11. Ascetics 12. Bishops 13. Material
Resources 14. Church Life 15. Women 16. Pilgrims and
Holy Places Glossary Editions Bibliography Index of
Sources General Index
About the Author
A.D. Lee is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient
History at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is
the author of Information and Frontiers: Roman FOreign
Relations in Late Antiquity (1993) and is a
contributor to the Cambridge Ancient History
---------
--- richard williams
wrote:
> thank you very much.
> i just finished skimming his book you quoted earlier
> on CED
> and will printout and slowly read his stuff tonight
> and tomorrow, i hope...i would never have found it
> without your help.
>
> do you know of good books or sites on early
> christian
> and
> pagan relationships?
>
> looking for something like mithras worship and
> christian syncretism.
>
> thanks again
>
> richard williams
>
> --- Edward Babinski
> >
> > I believe this is the exact site address for
> Price's
> > BEYOND BORN AGAIN:
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/
> >
> > Robert M. Price on the arguments used by
> Evangelical
> > apologists to "prove" Jesus's Divinity:
> >
> > A False Trilemma
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap7.html
> >
> > Jesus God's Son
> >
>
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/son.html
> >
> > Doctrinal History of the Controversy:
> >
> > When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define
> > Christianity during the Last Days of Rome
> > by Richard E. Rubenstein
> >
> > The above struggle "to define Christianity" never
> > ended. The Bible raises more questions than it
> > answers.
> >
> > A supplementary reading list on "The Trinity"
> would
> > include:
> >
> > --- Patristic source material:
> > [1] Rusch W.G. The Trinitarian Controversy
> (reader)
> > ****
> > [2] Rusch W.G. The Christological Controversy
> > (reader)
> > ****
> >
> > --- Orthodox apologia for the Trinity:
> > [3] Dunn J.D. Christology (essays) ***
> >
> >
> > --- Egyptology
> > [4] Griffiths J.G. Triads and Trinity
> (distinguished
> > egyptologist's account of pagan origins of the
> > Trinity, heavy going) ***
> >
> > --- Apologia for non-Trinitarian views:
> > [5] Broughton J.H. & Southgate P.J. The Trinity
> True
> > or False (the most comprehensive scriptural
> > arguments
> > against both the Trinity and the related doctrine
> of
> > Preexistence, with, interestingly, two alternative
> > approaches to John 1)*****
> > [6] Buzzard A.F. & Hunting C.F. The Doctrine of
> the
> > Trinity (broadly similar to Broughton & Southgate
> > but
> > less comprehensive on the scripture sections, and
> > not
> > as strong in the treatment of Preexistence. The
> > book's
> > plus point is a fuller treatment of historical
> > development)****
> > [7] Holt B. Jesus God or the Son of God (critique
> of
> > the concept of Jesus as "god" which goes
> > considerably
> > further down this road than the two previous
> books,
> > but paradoxically contains an apologia for the
> > literal
> > preexistence of Jesus in heaven before birth).***
> > [8] Graeser M.H., Lynn J.A., & Schoenheit J.W. One
> > God
> > and One Lord (popularist and unfortunately
> sloppily
> > proofread critique of the Trinity, no substitute
> for
> > either Broughton or Buzzard, or both)*
> > [9] Sigal, Gerald. The Jew and the Christian
> > Missionary (discusses some of the ways Christians
> > use
> > the Old and New Testament Scriptures)
> >
> > NB: some of these books are currently only
> available
> > from Amazon's international websites - although
> > shipping rates and times are very reasonable.
> >
> >
> >
> > OTHER WEBSITES:
> >
> > www.earlychristianwritings.com
> > (The Definitive Basic Information and Study Site
> for
> > Ancient Christian Literature, Including the
> Gospels,
> > Patristic Literature and many other Early
> Christian
> > Texts).
> >
> > Gospel of Matthew (info on its dating,
> > interpretations, many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html
> >
> > Gospel of John (info on its dating,
> interpretations,
> > many links)
> > http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/john.html
> >
> > Geza Vermes on the Fourth Gospel (from his latest
> > book, The Changing Faces of Jesus)
> >
>
http://www.penguin.co.uk/Book/BookFrame?0140265244_EXC
> >
> > Book of Revelation (Apocalypse of John) (info on
> its
> > dating, interpretations, many links)
> >
>
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/revelation.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> > http://taxes.yahoo.com/
>
>
> =====
> richard williams....................
> thinkcreation2002@yahoo.com
> http://fastucson.net/~rmwillia ......creation
> evolution homepage
> http://rmwilliamsjr.blogspot.com ....blog
> http://myhq.com/public/t/h/thinkcreation ...sorted
> CED bookmark list
> http://myhq.com/public/r/w/rwilliam ........unsorted
> CURRENT bookmark list
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CEreadingstudy/join
> .... reading group
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
> http://taxes.yahoo.com/
________________________________________
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