From simple syrups, eye drops, balms and pills to suppositories combining a multitude of ingredients, pharmaceutics has been a precision science since antiquity.
Used through the ages to cure a vast variety of ailments and diseases, pharmaceutics has its roots in the combination of medicinal plants and roots. In fact, Hippocrates’ (ca 460 - ca 370 BC) writings mention at least 250 medicinal plants in his studies, while Galen of Pergamon (AD 129-199), the most accomplished of antiquity’s medical researchers, described in his so-called Galenic Formulations medicines that combine up to 100 different ingredients each.
In AD 1300, the Byzantine physician Nicholas Myrepsos compiled a compendium of more that 2,200 medicines, many of which concerned mixtures of three to five different ingredients.
This knowledge has been passed down from antiquity and remains very much alive in the present day, being used by researchers the world over in groundbreaking discoveries, while it was also the subject of a recent symposium organized by the International Hippocrates Institute of Kos on the southeastern Aegean island.
According to the institute’s president, Professor Stefanos Geroulanos, the ancients mostly used herbs and other plants in their concoctions, but also minerals and animal matter such as ivory, lions’ teeth and even feces.
Among the most renowned medicinal ingredients during antiquity was the so-called “Limnia Gi” or Earth of Limnos, an export product used to heal wounds which was mined from a spot almost in the center of the northeastern Aegean island and mixed with animal blood. The mixture, which contained high levels of iron, was packaged and sealed with wax.
In many cases, ancient medicines worked by virtue of their placebo effect, according to scientists. Such was the case with gold, which in recent years has been hailed as a treatment for rheumatism, though conclusive studies have yet to be confirmed.
In ancient times, gold dust was mixed in food and, according to Geroulanos, was the signature ingredient in the famous Viennese schnitzel, a recipe that was a closely guarded secret in the kitchens of the Palaiologos court that made its way to Vienna via Spain through wedlock. The Byzantine schnitzel owed its color to the gold dust in the crust in which the pork was cooked, while later the gold was replaced by more mundane ingredients.
However, many of the healing plants and herbs of antiquity continue to be used today either in conventional pharmaceutics or in homeopathic remedies. Among these are the arbutus berry, extracts of which are still used as an anticoagulant and which Hippocrates suggested as a cure for thrombophlebitis.
The European yew, or Taxus baccata, contains one of the sources of a drug used in certain types of cancer treatments, as does the periwinkle flower. Another plant that has made a comeback is wormwood, which is used to tackle malaria, as well as white willow, which Hippocrates used as an analgesic.
“The best medicine for a sore throat,” according to Geroulanos, “is camomile tea with honey and lemon, a concoction that dates back to the ancients, who made a variety of syrups based on honey.”
According to the professor, they used honey mixed with water, vinegar or plant or herbal extracts. Meanwhile, another treatment that has survived from antiquity is a balm for liver spots made of warmed olive oil, beeswax and mastic gum.
A 1,400-year-old fresco of St Paul has been discovered in an ancient Roman catacomb.
Nick Pisa
June 29, 2011
The Telegraph
(h/t: MYSTAGOGY)
The fresco was found during restoration work at the Catacombs of San Gennaro (Saint Januarius) in the southern port city of Naples by experts from the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Art.
The announcement was made on the feast day of St Peter and Paul which is traditionally a bank holiday in Rome and details of the discovery were disclosed in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
A photograph released by the Vatican shows the apostle, famous for his conversion to Christianity from Judaism, with a long neck, a slightly pink complexion, thinning hair, a beard and big eyes that give his face a "spiritual air."
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who is Pope Benedict's Culture Minister, wrote in L'Osservatore Romano:"The image of St Paul has an intense expression, philosophical and its discovery enriches our imager of one of the principal apostles."
The figure is dressed in white and beige robes and with the letter 'I' on the hem, which may stand for 'Iesus' (Latin for Jesus) and it shows him approaching a dead person.
Details on the right hand side of the fresco have crumbled away but nevertheless it still remains a striking image which Cardinal Ravasi described as "sensational."
Father Antonio Loffredo, director of the catacombs in Naples, said: "We hope that many locals and tourists will come and look at this fresco which has been wonderfully restored."
Last year another fresco of St Paul was found in another Catacomb in Rome and that was dated to the 4th century AD and is believed to be the oldest image of him in existence.
St Paul was a Roman Jew, born in Tarsus in modern-day Turkey, who started out persecuting Christians but later became one of the greatest influences in the Church.
He did not know Jesus in life but converted to Christianity after seeing a shining light on the road to Damascus and spent much of his life travelling and preaching.
He was executed for his beliefs around AD65 and is thought to have been beheaded, rather than crucified, because he was a Roman citizen.
I heard this story on NPR yesterday morning on the way into work; very beautiful and inspiring.
In Russian culture, one iconic image is the elderly woman — in Russian, she's called a "babushka" — sitting on a roadside, selling vegetables from her garden.
One group of babushkas from the village of Buranovo, 600 miles east of Moscow, is blowing up that stereotype.
The dozen or so women — mostly in their 70s and 80s — have become a musical sensation, charming audiences across Russia. They sing Beatles tunes and songs by iconic Russian rocker Viktor Tsoi. They fly around the country for concerts. They made it to the Russian finals of the Eurovision music contest. And they have a Facebook page.
These women are sending a message loud and clear: It can be hip to be a babushka.
These two books, two of Nietzsche's last books, are simultaneously one of the greatest challenges ever launched against Christianity (after that of Dostoyevsky in The Brother's Karamazov) and are the greatest challenge to modern atheists. No matter which side of the debate you belong to -- or if you are a third party altogether -- Nietzsche has something to rock your world. I first read these books as a teenager and they forever changed the way that I view the world. The question that everyone who reads these books, and the rest of Nietzsche's work, must ask themselves is what to make of the modern world. As we enter a supposedly post-Christian era, an era of which Nietzsche was certainly the forerunner and prophet, we must ask ourselves just how much of our heritage we are willing to part with as we part with Christianity. And we must ask ourselves upon what basis we will build this new, post-Christian civilization. My belief is that Nietzsche was right: the foundation will be power.
Perhaps the most remarkable of all surviving Sumerian documents relating to law is a tablet that preceded Ur-Nammu's collection of laws by about 200 years. This tablet tells a story that illuminates the notion of justice, describing reforms undertaken in the city-state of Lagash around the year 2350 BC by King Urukagina.
The document begins by recounting the worst abuses of the previous regime. High taxes and oppressive laws, originally put into effect because the city-state was engaged in war, had been carried over into peacetime. Tax collectors and other corrupt royal officials were everywhere, taking donkeys and sheep from farmers and even showing up at cemeteries to seize a portion of the bread and barley that families carried to furnish the graves of their recently deceased relatives.
According to this tablet, King Urukagina changed all this. He fired the dishonest tax collectors and other tainted officials, gave amnesty to citizens unjustly imprisoned, and most important, decreed ordinances protecting common citizens from exploitation by the government. In the unknown author's account of all this, there appears for the first time in recorded history the word freedom.
Discovery of public structure in north Israel city is breakthrough, first time Christian structure has been unearthed in Acre, a city said to have been highly influential in early years of Christianity.
The Israel Antiquities Authority has had a breakthrough discovery, unearthing a public structure from the time of the Byzantine Empire in the northern Israeli city of Acre.
The structure is about 1,500 years-old and it is believed to have served as a church. The structure was uncovered during a rescue excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority following an unauthorized dig in the area that uncovered the structure.
The excavation was done approximately 100 meters west of a mound located in the eastern part of Acre, close to the area in which the future Azrieli shopping mall is being built.
Nurit Page, head of the excavations in the area under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority said that the city's bishop was known in Christian scriptures as someone who was extremely influential in the development of Christianity as a religion.
This discovery is the first concrete proof of Acre's role in early Christianity. "This is an important discovery for the study of Acre," Page said, adding that it is of particular significance "considering no remnants from the Byzantine Period had been found other than living quarters near the [Mediterranean] sea."
The Antiquities Authority says that the size of the building and its impressive style show that this was a public building that was used in the bishop's city of Acre during the Byzantine Period. Archaeologists have pointed to other indicators that the excavations are in fact of Christian origin, including the roofing tiles used on the structure, the bits of ornate marble and the shards and rings they found nearby.
Underneath the walls archaeologists have found clay pipes and one of the rooms has a mosaic floor. The building received its water supply from a nearby well.
Acre during the Byzantine Empire is mentioned on multiple occasions in Christian scriptures. Bishops from both Acre and Caesarea were said to have participated in international conferences focusing on the establishment of core Christian principles.
Their participation in these formative gatherings is testimony to the centrality of Acre in Christianity of the time.
An anonymous Italian pilgrim wrote of the wealth and beauty of Acre in the year 570, praising the beautiful monasteries in the city.
The majority of the Byzantine antiquities unearthed in Acre until this breakthrough can be traced back to the destruction that took place when the Muslim Arabs conquered the area during the seventh century.
Beneath the foundation of the newly discovered church, archaeologists found earlier structures from the Hellenistic Period, holding imported vessels from the Mediterranean Basin. They found amphoras which they have determined to be from the Island of Rhodes based on their imprinted with the names of the Greek island's leaders.
They have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality; that is English consistency, let us not blame it on little bluestockings à la Eliot. In England, in response to every little emancipation from theology one has to reassert one's position in a fear-inspiring manner as a moral fanatic. That is the penance one pays there. -- With us it is different. When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates. Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth -- it stands or falls with the belief in God. -- If the English really do believe they will know, of their own accord, 'intuitively', what is good and evil; if they consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy: so that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, so that the highly conditional nature of its right to exist is no longer felt. For the Englishman morality is not yet a problem...
The best test of the durability, usefulness, and truth of any given philosophy and its moral implications is its application to a specific and concrete example. While we have been conducting this debate, the trial of Casey Anthony, a woman in Orlando, Florida, for the murder of her two year old daughter has been ongoing. Casey Anthony suffocated her young daughter by putting duct tape over her mouth and nose. She then left her dead body in the trunk of her car so long that it began to decay. Later, she wrapped the girl in a Winnie the Pooh blanket and buried her in a shallow grave. During the month after she killed her daughter, Anthony was finally able to live the life she had wanted, unencumbered by the duties of parenthood; she partied, drank, participated in a "hot body" contest, and had a general good time. For more about the case, you can see the relevant Wikipedia article here. Was what this woman did a moral "evil" (or wrong, or whichever word you prefer)? Why?
In their defense of the biblical view of creation, the apologists were also obliged to take up the question of the meaning of history. Greek historical thought had been impressed by the constantly recurring elements in human history; one of the means, though not the only one, by which the Greeks interpreted history was a theory of cycles. Among the Romans, their own sense of manifest destiny prompted a revision of their theory; it was asserted that although previous events had foreshadowed the coming of Rome, as Vergil said, the fall of previous civilizations did not indicate the inevitable course of empire, so long as Rome remained true to the ideals of its past. In declaring the loyalty of the Christians to the empire while repudiating the deification of the emperor, apologetic theologians were compelled to clarify their reasons for differing from these theories of history. It was a necessary presupposition of the Christian proclamation that historical events were unrepeatable; otherwise "it is inevitable that according to the determined cycles Moses will always come out of Egypt with the people of the Jews, [and] Jesus will again come to visit this life and will do the same things he has done, not just once but an infinite number of times according to the cycles." In opposition to Roman claims, Tertullian asserted that "all nations have possessed empire, each in its proper time ... until at last almost universal dominion has accrued to the Romans," adding ominously: "What [God] has determined concerning [the Roman Empire], those who are closest to him know."
When a theology was dominated, as Tertullian's sometimes was, by a vivid futuristic eschatology, it could share the Roman belief that the empire represented the final phase of human accomplishment, but always with the proviso that now it was time for the final phase of divine intervention. When that intervention did not come, at least not in the form in which many had expected it, the apologists had to deal with the possibility that the world would continue even without the empire as they had known it. They often fell back upon a more general conception of "the providence of God, which regulates everything according to its season." Such a view of providence, like the monotheism of which it was a corollary, seriously complicated the problem of evil and of free will, as the formula of Origen suggests: "As a result of [God's] foreknowledge the free actions of every man fit in with the disposition of the whole which is necessary for the existence of the universe." The doctrine of divine providence became the standard rubric under which theologians considered the problem of history. It remained for Augustine to clarify the Christian conviction that because of Christ and despite "all appearances, human history does not consist of a series of repetitive patterns, but marks a sure, if unsteady, advance to an ultimate goal."
My brother, Andrew Walker, who is an undergraduate English student at the University of Central Florida, a musician, a writer, a poet, an artist, and, most importantly, a new daddy(!), recently started a blog, entitled Twenty-Second Stopwatch. He hasn't posted much so far, but I vouch for him (and not just because he's my brother) so check it out!
It's unfortunate that the history of modern atheism and naturalism and its developments over time have been so understudied by historians. This book, however, is a great start to what I hope is a bright future for that area of historical study. Turner masterfully discusses the cultural, religious, philosophical, and economic factors that developed in America after (and often as a result of) the Enlightenment and which led directly to the "coming of age" of unbelief as a viable option in modern America. He also, importantly, reports on the reactions of Christians to these changing socioeconomic factors and how these reactions often led to further unbelief. Very importantly, for a topic like this, which is still developing historically even as historians begin to examine its roots, I put down this book unable, in spite of my best attempts, to decipher whether the author was a "believer" or an "unbeliever" -- a true testimony to good, impartial, unbiased, and thorough historical research.
If divine purpose does not inhere in the cosmos, then human beings must define the meaning of their own brief lives amid a pointless vastness. Hence arises the distinctively modern angst. And, since life without purpose makes it difficult to define the meaning of any human endeavor, this problem has made modern culture, whenever concerned with value rather than fact, restless and volatile. Consider modernism in the arts, experimental almost by definition, incessantly exploring novel styles, seeking new meanings, or rejecting meaning altogether in fantastic nihilisms like Dada. Modernism hardly owes its soul utterly to the Victorian invention of agnosticism, but could modernism exist in a culture confident of divine purpose? The emergence of unbelief has rewired the neural circuits of our society.
James C. Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America, pg. 264
Devotion and Dissent: The Practice of Christianity in Roman Africa – Online Project (1998)
Introduction: The cult of the martyrs in Roman Africa is attested in the literary evidence in the second century by the Acts of the martyrs of Scillium; indeed the genre is so well established that Perpetua provided a first-person account of the witness of her group of companions at the beginning of the third century. These texts must certainly have had some commemorative function and been used in a liturgical context. We do not know more, however, about the rituals of the cult.
Tertullian provides evidence that the faithful sought specific spiritual favors from the martyrs. In de pudicitia, he objected to the claims that the martyrs have the power to win the forgiveness of sins committed directly against God, sins such as idolatry and murder, which are thought to be beyond the power of the church. He provides no evidence of appeals to the intercessory power of the martyrs to obtain other favors, such as healings.
In Cyprian’s day, the practice of the cult can be delineated more fully. Cyprian, for example, is able to name the martyr progenitors of the confessor Celerinus. He instructed his clergy to carefully note the days of death of the martyrs, so that they might be commemorated annually. Some stories of wonders performed by the martyrs, such as the prophecy of victory by Mappalicus, are recorded in Cyprian’s letters. As Graeme Clarke has pointed out, he made provision for the circulation of the narrative of his own confession. We may suspect that he made similar arrangements for the events of his second trial and martyrdom to be recorded and published. Although Cyprian was careful to secure the proper burial of the martyrs, his correspondence betrays no interest in the veneration of their bodies or the elaboration of their grave sites. His own practice of treating the martyrs like the ordinary dead, by celebrating the eucharist and praying for them, was perhaps part of his polemic against their special authority.
Before I begin, I want to be honest and admit that I won't be able to answer this question directly as it presupposes too much with which I disagree. It's a bit like the old cliche of a loaded question: "do you still beat your wife?" I also want to be up front and admit that most of this post will consist of the same content I as a post I wrote for this blog some time back as I believe that it provides the best answer which I am able to provide to this question.
I think that it can be said without the need to provide supporting evidence that the majority of people who claim to adhere to any given philosophical or religious idea or be a member of any given religious or philosophical group, whether Christianity or atheism or any other, live that idea or that group affiliation passively. I do not intend by this to say that Christians and atheists live identifical lives. Even someone who passively or halfheartedly lives the Christian life will, I believe and stand as a witness with personal testimony, live a life which inspires hope, nurses authentic love, and carries with and within it a quiet but intense joy; these are things that an atheist's worldview, decidely pessimistic and ultimately fatalistic, can never engender in its adherents.
Be that as it may, on the surface there is probably very little difference to the casual observer between the daily life of the average atheist and the daily life of the average Christian. Both live rather average lives; both obey the speed limit (most of the time), cross the road only after looking both ways, and put their pants on one leg a time.
With that in mind, I hold that when examining the positive and/or negative effects and results of a given philosophy, we cannot look at the "average" adherent to that idea, who probably has a limited knowledge of the intricacies of the tenets of that philosophy and almost certainly only selectively applies its principles to their activities and thoughts. We must, instead, look to the most outstanding examples of a philosophy, those who have internalized its message and sought to actively embody its principles, if we are to see what is the real, deep meaning and consequence of a philosophy. While looking at the most outstanding examples of a philosophy, in order to really understand the meaning and consequence of that philosophy, we must, to some extent imitating Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, ask ourselves the question: "What if everyone did this? What if every person were such an outstanding example of x philosophy? What results would this produce?"
That Christianity has produced many truly remarkable outstanding examples is so well known that it probably goes without saying. Basil of Caesarea, a 4th century Christian bishop in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and theologian, created the world's first hospitals. John of Kronstadt, a 19th century Christian priest in Russia, dedicated his entire life to serving the poor, expending all of his time and economic resources on improving conditions for and providing loving care to the impoverished people around him; he would even often, to the consternation of his busy wife, give away his own shoes if he came across someone whose shoes were too worn out! Peter Claver, a 17th century Roman Catholic priest, dedicated his entire life to caring for and fighting for the humane treatment of African slaves in the Americas. I could go on and on with examples; the bishops, monks, and nuns of all times and today provide the most numerous examples, as a group of people who have chosen to dedicate their entire lives to living the principles of the Gospel. But, for the sake of brevity and simplicity in this post, I will confine myself here to a single example, arguably the most remarkable example of a lived Christian faith in recent decades: the Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in what was then the Ottoman Empire but is now the Republic of Macedonia. Mother Teresa began her life as a nun at the age of 18 in 1928; she went to India, the country where she would do most of her work, the following year. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, the organization from which most of her later fame would derive, in 1950 with the intention to, as she wrote, care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." And this she did until her death at the age of 87 in 1997.
Of her 87 years, 69 of them were spent as a nun, 68 years were spent in India, and 47 years were spent specifically dedicated to the mission already quoted. Conveyed in ratios, this means that she spent 79% of her life as a nun and 54% dedicated specifically to her mission to the poor and sick as head of the Missionaries of Charity. Why is all of this important? Thomas Cahill (to quote him yet again in this debate), in his book Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, tells the story of Malcolm Muggeridge's famous conversion from atheism to Roman Catholicism, answering our question:
Malcolm Muggeridge, the supremely secular British curmudgeon, who cast a cold eye over so many contemporary efforts and enterprises, was brought up short while visiting an Indian leprosarium run by the Missionaries of Charity, the sisters founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He had always imagined secular humanism to be the ideal worldview but realized, while strolling through this facility, built with love for those whom no one wanted, that no merely humanist vision can take account of lepers, let alone take care of them. To offer humane treatment to humanity's outcasts, to overcome their lifetime experience of petty human cruelties, requires more than mere humanity. Humanists, he realized with the force of sudden insight, do not run leprosariums.
In other words, there are no atheist Mother Teresas, and there are two important reasons why there are none:
1. Atheism does not demand anything of its adherents; it is an easy philosophy -- the easiest philosophy. Christianity demands of those who would live its highest callings that they are to sell all of their possessions, give the earnings to the poor, and follow in Jesus' footsteps (Matthew 19:21). Even from its "average" adherents, Christianity demands that they feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, be hospitable to strangers, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoners. Jesus even went as far as to identify himself with all of the weakest members of society, telling his followers that whatever they did to and for these they did to and for him and whatever they failed to do they failed to do to or for him (see the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Matthew 25:31-46). Christianity issues absolute commandments to its adherents; it is a demanding philosophy. Christianity demands of its adherents a life of dedication to the poor, the weak, the sick, the outcast, the orphan, and the widow; the effects of this demand shine through in the lives of people like Mother Teresa who actually follow out this demand in full. Atheism demands nothing and, consequently, it produces nothing.
2. From an atheistic perspective, Mother Teresa is, to be blunt, either a moron or, at best, a lunatic. According to modern atheism, we only have one life to live; after this life, when we die we cease to exist. Our consciousness is extinguished; our bodies are placed into the ground where they decay and are eaten by microorganisms and insects. That's the end of the story. There is no afterlife, there is no resurrection, there is no hope for eternity. For someone, like Mother Teresa, to waste over half of her life living in squalor in a ghetto in Calcutta, India, risking her own health by surrounding herself day after day with sick and dying people, is, from the perspective of a modern atheist, ridiculous. If we only have so many years, so many days, so many hours until our very existence is permanently extinguished, why waste the majority of it suffering and laboring to care for a bunch of people you don't know and would never have met unless you'd chosen to place yourself (and why would you?) in that filthy Indian slum? What a ludicrous waste of time!
These are the reasons that atheism does not produce outstanding examples like Mother Teresa; it neither demands nor inspires devotion. A life like Mother Teresa's is difficult; from an atheist perspective, voluntarily (and, in the case of Mother Teresa and a great many other exemplary Christian personalities, joyfully and vigorously) taking such difficulties on oneself is foolish. The logical atheist perspective, and the perspective which most modern atheists inevitably espouse whether they are willing to admit it or not, is one of "eat, drink, and be merry -- for tomorrow we die!" A moderated hedonism is the only rational atheist morality. Why live your fleeting, meaningless moments doing aught else but enjoying them to the fullest?
Now you might be asking, what does this matter? So what if atheism can't, won't, and doesn't produce Mother Teresas? What's the big deal? Apply Kant's categorical imperative which I mentioned previously in this post. Imagine a world of atheists; this necessarily means a world with no Mother Teresas. This means a world where the ideal morality is some form of "enlightened" selfishness. There is no reason to care for those with terminal illnesses, whose utility has expired and whose very existence will soon expire; how much less is there reason to dedicate one's life to doing so!
Not only is this a world with no Mother Teresas, this is also a world with no Martin Luther Kings, no Mahatma Gandhis, no Basil the Greats, no Peter Clavers. An atheist world is a world with no call to or inspiration for or desire for a life of dedication and devotion to causes like the equality of human beings (a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept itself), or care for the sick, comfort for the dying, feeding the starving, and assisting the impoverished (all, again, uniquely Judeo-Christian concepts themselves). This atheistic world is a sad, terrifying place.
There are some atheists who might respond at this point: "So what? I don't expect the whole world to become atheists like me; let them keep doing what they're doing." But, of course, this is a genuinely selfish and arrogant response. "The world is a better place because Christians are in it and would suffer unfathomable harm were they to leave it entirely, but I'm too smart or too good or too whatever to be one of them. I'll leave it to the Christians to comfort the poor and the sick and the dying and to carry the banner of and bear the suffering for fighting for causes like justice and equality, while I live out my life in selfish indulgence." That is what this answer amounts to.
I'm sure that there are also some reading this right now muttering to themselves about how wrong I am. "Atheists can do things like that too!" I hear someone yelling. That's fine; here's my challenge: if I'm wrong, prove it! Find me an atheist Mother Teresa and I will retract this point. I encourage you to try -- but you won't be able to.
To summarize: 1. Most Christians are not Mother Teresas, yet Christianity produces Mother Teresas whereas atheism is incapable of doing so. 2. Most atheists are not Josef Stalins, yet atheism produces Josef Stalins whereas Christianity is incapable of doing so.
The ancient and medieval Church understood the Bible at several levels. Allegorical, typological, moral, and mystical interpretations flourished alongside historical-literal readings. The hand of the Church kept the reins taut enough to prevent the Bible from becoming Babel. The Protestant Reformers rejected this traditional control; they left the meaning of the Bible in individual hands (in principle, at least) and at the same time exalted it as the sole foundation of faith. This mixture was potentially explosive -- indeed, religious radicals like the Anabaptists touched it off. From the beginning, therefore, the cautious founders of Protestantism looked with a wary eye on readings that wandered very far from the obvious meaning of the text.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this suspicion hardened into outright literalism. By 1800, Protestants in general and Evangelicals in particular read the Bible with a flat-footed literalness unparalleled in the annals of Christianity. Any apparent statement of act, however incongruous with experience, was taken as fact, and fact stamped with divine authority.
This literalism was not obscurantist or simple-minded, as it sometimes appears in retrospect. On the contrary, it developed form an effort to make the Bible fit common sense: to insist on the rationality of the divine revelation and to quash mystical exegesis that could be neither controlled nor clearly understood. Protestant literalism insisted that the ordinary human being could grasp the Word of God in ordinary human terms. As such, literalism formed part of the larger drive to secure religious belief by making it comprehensible, by keeping it within the bounds of human experience and understanding.
In this case, the effort backfired, for literalism put the authority of the Bible at risk. Literalism implied that the Bible's truth depended on its factuality, but scientific developments in the early nineteenth century made Biblical "facts" increasingly questionable. Usually unintended, this scientific subversion came from several directions. Moses's account of the creation of the world in six days, detailed in the first chapter of Genesis, did not square with Pierre Simon Laplace's nebular hypothesis, which required a good deal more than six days for the formation of the solar system and was, to boot, uncomfortably vague as to God's role in the whole business. (Laplace distinctly did not regret his subversion.) But Laplace's theory, though broached at the turn of the century, roused little interest in America before the 1840s.
In that decade, the Bible also ran into trouble from the "American school" of anthropology. These writers, some motivated mostly by racism but all invoking scientific evidence (principally cranial measurements), argued for "polygenesis," the separate creation of several distinct human races, as opposed to "monogenesis," the descent of all human beings from one primal pair. The most eminent American naturalist, Louis Agassiz of Harvard, lent his authority to their hypothesis. Polygenesis frankly declared that Genesis was seriously deficient: Moses had neglected to mention several other Adams and Eves. And most of the opposition to polygenesis arose because of the apparent slur on Scripture. Josiah Nott, one of the leading polygenesists, snarled that he needed "just to get the dam'd stupid crowd safely around Moses & the difficulty is at an end." The crowd did not budge easily: it had too much invested in Bibilical literalism. Neither the nebular hypothesis nor polygenesis raised a real storm, however, primarily because by the 1840s another disturber of the peace, geology, had already made a shambles of strict literalism.
Ominous rumblings were heard among natural historians in the last years of the eighteenth century, but it was Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-1833) that delivered the crushing blow to Biblical literalism. Lyell convincingly demonstrated that millions of years of slow working of natural forces, not the six thousand years allowed by a strict reading of the Old Testament, had shaped the present face of the earth. If Lyell were right, the entire Creation narrative lapsed into mythology. The implications for Biblical authority -- and for a Christian natural theology -- were potentially devastating. Geology suddenly obsessed American theologians, and they began vigorously to backpedal on the issue of literal exegesis. In the 1830s, even Evangelicals softened their insistence on reading literally every single word; by the 1850s, the Mosaic chronology was rapidly becoming an antique. It took a while for the dust to settle, but by 1860 rigid literalism was largely left to the uneducated or uneducable. A friend of Chauncey Wright recalled Wright's encountering a woman who "believed implicitly that the world was made in six days. He looked at her as if she were a new order of being, and I shall never forget the tone of his exclamation, 'Is it possible?'" Wright was no Christian, but many a Christian minister shared his attitude toward literalsim. The veracity of the Bible was rescued only by repudiating its total factuality.
A few nights ago, after we had put the kids to bed, my wife and I were flipping through the various movies on Netflix looking for something to watch. We came across this movie. It was the best viewing choice we've ever made. Everyone needs to see this great movie, my new favorite.
Why, if one is utilitarian, is it better to be miserable and wise than stupid and contented? No answer which sustains the coherence of the doctrine has ever been forthcoming, for utilitarianism is, in fact, in all its rich confusions, the result of attempting to combine hopelessly irreconcilable elements. Its stress on equality among all men is an inheritance of Christianity -- and it is this element in Christianity that horrifies Nietzsche as much as any other -- while in its emphasis on happiness in this life it negates the basic premiss of Christianity (at least as Nietzsche sees it, and it is a view generally shared). To take the latter point: the Christian Church, in opposition to its founder, has always been insistent on the worthlessness of the things of this world -- this is Nietzsche's central argument in The Anti-Christ. For a start they are transient, and that strong streak of Platonism in Christianity ('Christianity is Platonism for "the people",' Nietzsche writes in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil) had enforced the idea that anything that is not eternal is without value. Not only is it their ephemerality which eliminates them: ambition, pride, ruthlessness, together with achievement and creation itself, as human beings understand it, are intelligible only in a world in which everything passes away. So also, it might be retorted, are the Christian virtues of patience, fortitude and remorse. True enough, yet they are all predicated on a future reward, just as the vices are eternally punished. In short, because utilitarianism had emerged from Christianity it attempted to apply to a world seen in a wholly secular way a set of values that makes sense only in a religious, more specifically Christian, context. Hence, while upholding earthly happiness, it reflects its Christian legacy in its condemnation of contented zombies -- a condemnation Nietzsche shares, but which he realizes that one must find radically new grounds to sustain.
Other central concepts of morality discussed by Nietzsche are also meaningful only in a religious context. For instance, one of the most magnificent passages in Twilight, indeed in all of Nietzsche's writings, occurs in number 5 of the 'Expeditions of an Untimely Man', where, attacking 'G. Eliot', a still more hapless victim of his demonological schema, he writes:
They have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality ... In England, in response to every little emancipation from theology one has to reassert one's position in a fear-inspiring manner as a moral fanatic. That is the penance one pays there. -- With us it is different. When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident ... Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces ... Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth -- it stands or falls with the belief in God. -- If the English really to do believe they know, of their own accord, 'intuitively', what is good and evil; if they consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy: so that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, so that the highly conditional nature of its right to exist is no longer felt. For the Englishman morality is not yet a problem ...
Astonishingly accurate as this is about English moral philosophers of the last hundred years, it seems unfair of Nietzsche to attack only them, when it applies at least as much to post-Christians of other nations. But that hardly matters. What does matter is the conclusiveness of the point Nietzsche is making. It applies equally to Kant, whom Nietzsche does not spare in either of these two books [Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ]. Indeed it applies more to him. For he too gets rid of the Christian God as a foundation of morality, only to reintroduce Him later on as a guarantee that virtue will pay, if not in this world then in the next. Even readers who find much of what Nietzsche writes unsympathetic must surely share his amazement, if not his indignation (though they should share that too), when they contemplate a world from which God has been eliminated but in which it is thought that we should behave just as people did, or ought to have done, when He was still a pervasive presence. The trouble is that our conception of human nature has failed to alter: we still derive it from seeing ourselves as creatures, obliged to obey the dictates of our Creator. This view of ourselves is so difficult to overcome -- where do we look to find an alternative one? -- and the very idea of ourselves as being continuous with the rest of nature is so reductive, that we mostly lazily stick with our Christian inheritance, which we persuade ourselves is the 'natural' view to take. But at the same time we realize that something is amiss, so we tinker around in an ad hoc sort of way, holding on to such concepts as 'rights' and 'equality', jettisoning or tacitly ignoring others that we find inconvenient. The result, in Nietzsche's view, is a moral and spiritual vulgarity so depressing that he has to stage a one-man, non-stop demonstration of exaltation.
If you live in the Twin Cities and can possibly swing by and throw some cash down at this event you would be doing a very good thing. Danny is an old friend and a great human being. We met at the bookstore we both worked at in the 90s. Shortly after we both started we were hauling boxes of books in and out of this bookfair and sitting down for a break Danny motioned his flask towards me as if to ask if I wanted a swig. Needless to say we hit it off.
So Danny has blood cancer now and needs help. Danny's mom is not in the best of health and Danny has been taking care of her in recent years. Danny and his mom live 9 houses down from Danny's sister and her 3 kids in an old Minneapolis neighborhood. Reasons to love Danny - he's half Luxembourgian; his Christmas parties held at Paddy's apartment were the most famous and best ever in the history of the city of Minneapolis - literally hundreds of people showed up over the 16 or so hours the party would go on; Danny taught me how to drink (things other than Keystone and Jim Beam), to smoke (Canadian cigs as well as Drummies back when they were still good) and to eat (the man insisted on a proper breakfast of bread baked that morning, cheese, and meat - sometimes it seemed like our old boss Tom didn't appreciate us having breakfast at the bookstore every 9:30am); he used to drag me all over MN in the old VW he was always working on - my job was to hold the heater near the window so as to make a small patch that could be seen through; he is a great polka dancer, or so says my wife; Danny's mom Shirley is one of the sweetest women you will ever meet and watching Danny make her hot Jameson with honey when her cough is bad in winter is downright Dickensian; Danny is the consummate working man's working man - he's spent the last decade cooking in a college cafeteria (he always wanted to be a chef, and is a fantastic cook, but never got to culinary school), worked at a bookstore before that, did some maintenance work, that sort of thing - but beyond that he is just that sort of man Belloc imagined but could never himself really understand, Danny is one of the last true working class blokes - not so keen on aspiration but having nothing against it - I don't know that I know of any other human being whose life is less "My Life: The Movie" than Danny - he is a man with no guile; how many other people do you know who spent a week each January winter camping in self-made igloos on MN's boundary waters, ending that week with a party which would draw 75-100 people coming up from the Cities to drink at the bar Danny and friends made of snow and ice? The man is one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. The link notes him as a "behind the scenes" guy, which is definitely true of Danny, but I have never in my life known a "behind the scenes" sort of person who had endeared himself to so many people and who had so many friendships that rose above the superficial. Danny is a gem.
So please, if you are in the Cities and can make it, go and buy a few drinks at St. Helena's for Danny. If you can't do that, but are feeling especially charitable, email ellenschmitz@mac.com and ask her how to donate some cash straight to Danny's cancer fund. Thanks.
St. Helena parishioner (and Uncle to two St. Helena students, Benjamin and Alexander), Dan Knight likes to operate behind the scenes. At the Autumn Daze Festival, you won't find Dan on the stage, but running the amazing food area. Now he is in a situation that can't be ignored. Dan was recently diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a serious form of blood cancer. While this is a big deal, Dan was lucky to discover that hi...s sister, Melissa, is a perfect match and will be a marrow donor for his treatment. On June 23rd, Dan leaves the 'hood for a bone marrow transplant and treatment at Mayo clinic in Rochester and will be away for at least 100 days.
Please join Dan's family, friends and the St. Helena Community to send him off with a bash to kick cancer's butt!
This family friendly event will raise funds to help Dan's family with some of the costs of treatment and other expenses related to being away from home for so long, as well as show Dan and his family that we are all rooting for him as he takes on this disease. This will be an 'ol fashioned barbecue with a roasted pig and all the fixins, a silent auction, raffle, entertainment and games for kids.
HOW CAN YOU HELP? ~Do you have a connection to a business or person who could make a donation of a large raffle item (flat screen TV, BBQ grill, fire pit...) ~We are accepting donations for the silent auction. We are looking for gift certificates, products, services, artwork, baskets, etc. If you are willing to solicit donations from local businesses, please let one of the administrators of this page know. WE have a lot of work to do, and a short time to do it! ~Donate a bottle of wine or a 6 or 12 pack of beer for a beer/wine wall at the event. Please contact one of the administrators of this site for info on where to drop it off. ~Plan to attend the feast on June 18th! ~For more information or to help with the event, please contact Ellen Schmitz at ellenschmitz@mac.com
David, you wish to compare moral philosophies to see if any can support the lack of belief in gods while still functioning with a morality that we would find acceptable. I propose that we cannot even compare philosophies until we have stopped to review the evidence which bears on human morality and ruled out "philosophies" that are counter to that evidence. Unfortunately, moral philosophy has had precious little to say that isn't. Considered specifically in light of: mirror neurons and their function in humans and other primates, as revealed by current neuroscience; the fact that atheists are drastically underrepresented in rates of criminality despite being more likely to live in urban areas; and the numerous acts of selflessness performed in service to humanity by atheists throughout history, continuing into the sacrifices of numerous atheist men and women serving our communities as police, firefighters, and service members; how can you defend the claim that atheists have even remotely diminished access to moral insights, when compared to theists? Please account for each of those three observations in your answer.
By St. Luke the Surgeon, Archbishop of Simferopol (1877-1961)
"When we examine contemporary science as developed by scientists such as Lamark and Darwin, we see the antithesis and I would say the complete disagreement that exists between science and religion, on topics that concern the more basic problems of existence and knowledge. For this, an enlightened mind cannot accept at the same time both one and the other and must choose between religion and science."
A well known German Zoologist, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), who was a good follower of Darwin, wrote these words some 65 years ago, in his book, “The Riddle of the Universe” that was very successful and as it seemed, had proved that faith is absurd. So says Haeckel that every enlightened man must choose between science and religion and should follow either one or the other. He considered it necessary that such men should deny religion because a logical man cannot deny science.
Truly, is this necessary? No, not at all, for we know that many and great scientists were at the same time great believers. For example, such was the Polish astronomer Copernicus who laid the foundation of all contemporary astronomy. Copernicus was not only a believer but was also a cleric. Another great scientist, Newton, whenever he mentioned the word God, he removed his hat. He was a great believer. A great bacteriologist of our time and almost a contemporary, Pasteur, who laid the basis of contemporary bacteriology, he would start every scientific work with a prayer to God. Some ten years ago a great scientist passed away, who was our countryman, physiologist Pavlov, who was the creator of the new physiology of the brain. He too was a great believer. Would Haeckel therefore dare say that these men did not have enlightened minds because they believed in God?
So what happens now? Why even today there are some scientists, professors at Universities whom I personally know and are great believers. Why don’t all the scientists deny religion but only those who think the same as Haeckel? Because these people believe only in the material and deny the spiritual world, they do not believe in life after death, they do not accept the immortality of the soul and of course they do not accept the resurrection of the dead. They say that science is capable of everything, that there is no secret in nature that science cannot discover. What can we answer to these?
We shall respond to them this way. You are totally right. We cannot limit the human mind that searches nature. We know that today, science knows only a part of the things we have of nature. We also understand that the possibilities of science are great. In this they are right and we don’t doubt it. What then do we doubt? Why don’t we deny religion like them and consider it contrary to scientific knowledge?
Because we believe wholeheartedly that there is a spiritual world. We are certain that apart from the material world there is an infinite and incomparably superior spiritual world. We believe in the existence of spiritual beings that have higher intellects than us humans. We believe wholeheartedly that above this spiritual and material world there is the Great and Almighty God.
What we doubt is the right of science to research with its methods the spiritual world. Because the spiritual world cannot be researched with the methods used to research the material world. Such methods are totally inappropriate to research the spiritual world.
How do we know that there is a spiritual world? Who told us that it exists? If we are asked by people who do not believe in Divine Revelation, we shall answer them thus: “Our heart tells us." For there are two ways for one to know something, the first being that which is spoken by Haeckel, which is used by science to learn of the material world. There is however another way that is unknown to science, and does not wish to know it. It is the knowledge through the heart. Our heart is not only the central organ of the circulation system, it is an organ with which we know the other world and receive the highest knowledge. It is the organ that gives us the capability to communicate with God and the world above. Only in this we disagree with science.
Praising the great successes and achievements of science, we do not doubt at all its great importance and we do not confine scientific knowledge. We only tell the scientists: “You do not have the capability with your methods to research the spiritual world, we however can with our heart."
There are many unexplainable phenomena which concern the spiritual world that are real (as are some type of material phenomena). There are therefore phenomena that science will never be able to explain because it does not use the appropriate methods.
Let science explain how the prophecies appeared on the coming of the Messiah, which were all fulfilled. Could science tell us how the great prophet Isaiah, some 700 years before the birth of Christ, foretold the most important events in His life and for which he was named the evangelist of the Old Testament? Could it explain the prophetic grace possessed by the saints and tell us with which physical methods the saints inherited this grace and how they could understand the heart and read the thoughts of a person they had just met for the first time? They would see a person for the first time and they will call him by his name. Without waiting for the visitor to ask, they would answer in regards to what troubled him.
If they can, let them explain it to us. Let them explain with what method the saints foretold the great historical events which were accurately fulfilled as they were prophesied. Let them explain the visitation from the other world and the appearance of the dead to the living.
They shall never explain it to us because they are too far from the basis of religion - from faith. If you read the books of the scientists who try to reconstruct religion, you will see how superficially they look at things. They do not understand the essence of religion, yet they criticize it. Their criticism does not touch the essence of faith, since they are unable to understand the types and the expressions of religious feeling. The essence of religion they do not understand. Why not? Because the Lord Jesus Christ says: "No one can come to me unless My Father who sent Me draws him to Me" (John 6:44).
So it is necessary that we be drawn by the Heavenly Father, and it is necessary that the grace of the Holy Spirit enlighten our heart and our mind. To dwell in our heart and mind through this enlightenment, the Holy Spirit and the ones who were found worthy to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, those in whose heart lives Christ and His Father, know the essence of faith. The others, those outside the faith, cannot understand anything.
Let us hear the criticism against Haeckel from a French philosopher Emile Boutroux (1845-1921). So says Boutroux: “The criticisms of Haeckel concern much more the ways, than the essence, which he observes with such a materialistic and narrow view, that they cannot be accepted by religious people. Thus the criticism of religion by Haeckel is not referred to, not even in one of the principles that constitutes religion."
This is therefore our opinion regarding Haeckel’s book “The Riddle of the Universe” which up to day is considered the “Bible” for all those who criticize religion, which they deny and find it contrary to science. Do you see how poor and tasteless arguments they use? Don’t become scandalized when you hear what they say about religion, since they themselves cannot understand its essence. You people, who may not have much of a relationship with science and do not know much about philosophy, remember always the most basic beginning, which was well known by the early Christians. They considered poor the person who knew all the sciences yet he knew not God. On the other hand, they considered blessed the person who knew God, even if he knew absolutely nothing about worldly things.
Guard this truth like the best treasure of the heart, walk straight without looking right or left. Let us not bother with what we hear against religion, losing our bearings. Let us hold on to our faith which is the eternal indisputable truth. Amen.
Knowing the Bible, especially the King James Version of it, is an important aspect of knowing Western Civilization, modern history, and the English language. Know thy Bible!
NFL legend Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible.
“Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season. “This, too, shall pass.”
Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. The phrase “This, too, shall pass” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Ditka was quoting a phantom scripture that sounds like it belongs in the Bible, but look closer and it’s not there.
Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. The Bible may be the most revered book in America, but it’s also one of the most misquoted. Politicians, motivational speakers, coaches - all types of people - quote passages that actually have no place in the Bible, religious scholars say.
These phantom passages include:
“God helps those who help themselves.”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
And there is this often-cited paraphrase: Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.
None of those passages appear in the Bible, and one is actually anti-biblical, scholars say.
But people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better, says Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
“In my college religion classes, I sometimes quote 2 Hesitations 4:3 (‘There are no internal combustion engines in heaven’),” Bouma-Prediger says. “I wait to see if anyone realizes that there is no such book in the Bible and therefore no such verse.
“Only a few catch on.”
Few catch on because they don’t want to - people prefer knowing biblical passages that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, a Bible professor says.
“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs.
“They have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in,” he says, “but they ignore the vast majority of the text."
It was slow in starting, but once it got rolling, this book was terrific! The first several chapters sounded like the "hype" you hear in television commercials for upcoming action flicks, and the style got old after only a few pages. Once the book really began, however, it was excellent through to the end. Plumb and his fellow authors do not shy away from the most terrible and disgusting aspects of the Renaissance, such as the revival of pederasty and the rampant adultery committed by middle class men, nor do they fail to give praise where praise is due. You get a real feel for the Renaissance and the great personalities, achievements, and events of the period. The last few chapters, which cover several of the greatest individuals of the Renaissance, are particularly good. They lead the reader to a real appreciation for the people of the Renaissance, a real understanding of what makes them tick, and an empathy for each of them as a person. This book taught me to love the Renaissance.
With profound concern the Russian Orthodox Church has taken reports coming from various countries in the world about recurring manifestations of Christianophobia. Christians have been subjected to persecution, becoming victims of intolerance and various forms of discrimination. The recent tragic events in Egypt’s Giza on May 7 and 8, when during mass disorders Christian churches were set on fire and parishioners of the Coptic Church were killed, are only one chain in the link of such developments. Our brothers and sisters are killed, driven away from their homes, separated from their relatives and friends, deprived of the right to confess their religious beliefs and to bring up their children according to their faith. Regrettably, the manifestations of Christianophobia cannot be treated as occasional incidents: they have become a settled tendency in some parts of the world.
Discrimination against Christians varies in expression from country to country. In some cases Christians are attacked in hooligan actions, which as a rule are manifestations of extremism on religious grounds. In some countries where Christians are a minority their freedom of faith is considerably restricted with regard to the right to celebrate, to own property and to establish and run theological schools. There are cases where Christians are rendered extremely severe court judgments and given even death sentences according to laws on blasphemy (as disagreement with the beliefs of other religions is described in such cases). But even in those countries where Christianophobia is manifested only in seeing Christians as ‘second-rate citizens’, our brothers in faith remain in distress. All this leads to the mass emigration of Christians from countries in which they have lived for centuries, as we see it in today’s Iraq and some other countries of the Middle East.
At the same time there are manifestations of Christianophobia also in countries where a majority of citizens confess Christianity. The domination of rigid and sometimes even aggressive secularism leads to the forcing Christians out of public life, while public statements and actions motivated by Christian faith, especially its moral assessment of events taking place in a society, rouse a negative reaction.
By drawing the public attention to the growing manifestations of Christianophobia, discrimination and persecution against Christians of various confessions, we do have as our aim to interfere in the internal affairs of state and do not call the world community to do it. Christianity teaches its followers to obey law and to respect lawful governments, according to St. Paul who said, Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities (Rom. 13:1). At the same time, governments, too, as responsible before their citizens, are obliged to respect people’s dignity and rights and, accordingly, to ensure the free confession of religious faith and security of religious communities.
Nor do we see other religions as sources of Christianophobia. The Russian Orthodox Church has always opposed any discrimination against individuals and peoples on the grounds of their religious affiliation and resolutely condemned any manifestations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Russia, just as other countries under the canonical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, has accumulated a rich experience of peaceful coexistence between religions, as well as mutual respect and interreligious solidarity. We are ready to share this experience with all those who wish to build a just society.
Christianophobia is manifested in the first place in situations where religious differences are used in political struggle mostly by extremist forces who pursue their own purposes incompatible with the welfare of the whole society. Such manifestations ought to be unequivocally condemned by all the healthy social forces including public and religious leaders. Discrimination on religious grounds can be overcome only through a broad dialogue involving governments, international organizations, religious communities and the civil society.
We call the world community, religious leaders and all the responsible public forces to develop a comprehensive and effective mechanism for protecting Christians and Christian communities who are subjected to persecution or restrictions in their religious life and work.
The Russian Orthodox Church stands for a more intensive dialogue between religious leaders and the international community for working out foundations for peaceful coexistence between believers belonging to different traditions.
We express solidarity with our brothers and sisters – Christians who are subjected to discrimination, persecution and violence, empathizing with their suffering and deprivations wherever they may be on their earthly journey.
We pray and call the faithful of the Church to augment their prayers for suffering and persecuted brothers and sisters. We pray that they may be strengthened in their faith and spiritual courage.
This was a very good, comprehensive overview of the philosophy of the Middle Ages, focused especially on the period from Augustine of Hippo to Duns Scotus, but touching on some areas outside of that as well. Thomas Aquinas, of course, takes up the largest chunk of the book of any of the philosophers covered. I was also impressed that Coplestone covered some of the more "obscure" -- or at least less known -- figures of Medieval philosophy, such as Giles of Rome. I have only two complaints about the book. My first complaint is that Coplestone is a bit of a dry writer. Aristotle, the favorite ancient of most of the Middle Ages in the West, is a dry philosopher. So, when you combine the two, you often have long periods of reading's equivalent to the sound that Charlie Brown's teacher makes. My other complaint is that Coplestone spends too much time trying to justify the philosophers rather than letting them speak for themselves. All said, this book is a good introduction to the subject.
[The Pietà] was commissioned by a French cardinal, Jean Bilheres, and this may account for the fact that Michelangelo accepted a Gothic motif in which the full-grown Christ lies on Our Lady's knees. This was originally a wood-carving motif, and the difficulty of adapting it to the crystalline character of marble led Michelangelo to a marvelous feat of technical skill. This is the first work in which he showed that consummate mastery of his craft that his contemporaries, both artists and patrons, valued so highly. It also involved a new stretch of the imagination, for he achieved what theorists tell us is impossible, a perfect fusion of Gothic and Classic art. The motif and sentiment are northern, the physical beauty of the nude Christ is Greek; and Michelangelo gave the Virgin's head, so painfully distorted in Gothic Pietàs, a union of physical and spiritual beauty that is entirely his own. Ever since the Pietà was put in place, people have asked how the mother of a grown man, in the depths of grief, could appear so young and beautiful; and Michelangelo's reply is recorded in both Vasari and Condivi. It expresses in vivid, colloquial form the doctrines of Neoplatonism, which he had absorbed from the Medicean philosophers of his boyhood: that physical perfection is the mirror and emblem of a pure and noble spirit. This is the belief that had led his friend Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco to commission Botticelli's Venus; and we know, from Michelangelo's sonnets, that it justified to his mind his passionate admiration of the naked beauty of young men. Our scientific modern way of thinking, with its reliance on experience and psychology, may reject Neoplatonism as a compound of myth and self-deception. But there is no question of the sincerity with which Michelangelo believed (in Spenser's words) that "soule is form, and doth the bodie make."
Firstly, thank you for your kind words. As regards my sister, I am optimistic at this point that she will be fine in the long run, and at any rate we have the wagons circled around her; she is well looked-after.
Secondly, I want to apologize for the unimpressive explanation of my position in my last rebuttal. Although I have had more leeway in my time for discussions online, lately, my actual submission represented more of a final burst of desperate energy before taking a long sleep and waking up to a freshly calm, if strained, existence.
It seems to me that we have been talking past each other for the entire debate up to this point. You are, of course, free to disagree with this assessment, but that is the reality of the discussion from where I currently stand.
It is not my intention to say that your historians and philosophers are dispensing bad history or necessarily bad philosophy, or to suggest that they disagree with your overall philosophical stance. What I feel, in the case of History, is that you somewhat overstate your case, and that your historical sources disagree with those embellishments. This is not to say that I think your entire case is bankrupt: your point about infanticide was particularly cogent and relevant. I hope we'll be able to discuss that more, later. However, I think for the most part, your historical points--even disregarding my allegations of embellishment--are irrelevant to what we ought to be discussing, which is the fundamental reality of what morality is, and what it isn't. Furthermore, I feel that their statements of agreement with your philosophy, even when done in the context of the classroom, are outside of their proper field of expertise, and hence not compelling. Even if they share your overall philosophy at the end of the day, I maintain my dispute with this philosophy, because it takes only certain historical disciplines into account. Proper allowances for observed human behavior are fatally absent. In the case of Philosophy, it is my feeling--much like that James Q. Wilson explains in his book Moral Sense--that the more fashionable explanations for human nature bouncing around philosophy these days are ignoring the observed realities of psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology.
Unfortunately, we have not been meeting our positions squarely against one another so much as we have been complaining about one another's failure to have the discussion each of us wishes we were having.
My attempts to move the discussion back onto the track that I perceived it ought to have taken has not left time enough to address David's points to the extent that a reasonable person from his side of the argument would take my meaning, and that much is my fault. It is my hope that as we begin cross-examining one another in the entries to come, we will do a better job of acknowledging the nature of this dispute and resolving it.
I'll close here, rather than wander any farther into the realm of argument.
From the first there were at least two explanations of the puzzle. One was that Machiavelli had been inspired by the Evil One to write a plausible book of advice for princes, meant to damn the souls and ruin the fortunes of princes who followed it, and to destroy the prosperity of their subjects. This was the official view, shared by the cardinals and popes who placed and kept The Prince on the Index and by the Protestant pamphleteers who pointed to it as the manual of the Jesuits and the political inspiration of the Counter Reformation. Meanwhile a second view was expressed openly by some of Machiavelli's countrymen in exile and hinted at by some who remained in Italy, where the banned book continued clandestinely to circulate. This was that The Prince, under the guise of giving advice to princes, was meant to warn all free men of the dangers of tyranny. One wonders whether the originators of this explanation of the puzzle may not have been the ardent Florentine republicans who always remained Machiavelli's friends. From this view sprang the judgment, popular in the eighteenth century, that all its epigrams were deliberately double-edged. The nineteenth century offered other solutions to the puzzle. The one that gained ascendancy, as the cause of national self-determination triumphed in Western Europe, was that, ardent republican though he was, Machiavelli made up his mind that only a strong prince could liberate Italy from the barbarians, and so chose to sacrifice the freedom of his city to the unity of Italy. Just before World War I, this solution began to be questioned by those who said that Machiavelli was not a chauvinistic patriot but a detached, dispassionate political scientist who described political behavior as it actually was. After about 1920 this view took a powerful lead over its competitors, and among orthodox Machiavelli scholars it still dominates the field.
Obviously none of these answers is entirely satisfactory. It is possible that Machiavelli was mean enough to sell his birthright of republican ideals for the chance of some third-rate civil service post under a petty tyrant; but that he was at the same time stupid enough to believe that a book like The Prince was the best way into Medici favor, and to let advice that, if it was seriously meant, should have been highly secret escape into general circulation, seems much less credible. Both the notion that The Prince was inspired by the devil and the counternotion that it was the subtle weapon of republican idealism seem equally oversimplified. And, of course, the proposal that The Prince was conceived as a satire is the kind of anachronism that only the eighteenth century could have perpetrated. Machiavelli knew perfectly well that satires were compositions in verse after the manner of Horace and Juvenal, such as his friend Luigi Alamanni wrote. He would have failed completely to understand the proposition that The Prince was a satire. As for the theory that Machiavelli was willing to accept a tyrant prince in order to effect the unification of Italy, there is not the faintest indication anywhere in his writings that he would have grasped the idea if anybody had put it to him. There is nothing about unifying Italy anywhere in The Prince, only about driving out the barbarians, a commonplace of Italian rhetoric from Petrarch to Paul IV. But Machiavelli the Italian patriot is a little easier to swallow than Machiavelli the dispassionate scientist, unless someone can explain how the scientific temper can accord with facts and generalizations equally distorted by emotion and prejudice.
It is probably hopeless to try to explain the whole puzzle of The Prince. How do you reconstruct the motives at a particular moment of a man more than four hundred years in his grave who has left only the scantiest and most ambiguous clues to what they might be? How do you tell, in the case of a man like Machiavelli, how much of the demonstrable distortion in The Prince was due to faulty observation (he was a passionate man), and how much to the deliberate irony that he certainly sometimes practiced? How do you probe the bitterness and agony of spirit that must certainly have been his on the collapse of all his hopes, and decide which statements came from anger, which from despair, and which from a calculated will to undermine his enemies by indirection?
Probably, like most insoluble problems about men of genius, this one has taken up more time and energy than it deserves. The real importance of Machiavelli, his claim to give his name to a whole period of history, lies elsewhere, not in the points in which The Prince differs from his other writings, but in those in which it agrees. Here the transformation of his legendary figure from a diabolist or a rebel, a spirit who says "No," to a major culture hero, offers the clue. What had happened in almost three centuries, between the time when Machiavelli was either praised as a daring rebel or denounced as an emissary of Satan and the time when he began to be acclaimed as a prophet, was that all Europe had become what Italy in Machiavelli's lifetime already was, a congeries of autonomous, purely temporal sovereign states, without any common end to bind them into a single society or any interest higher than their own egotistical drives for survival and expansion.
Let me begin by sending Skierkowa my best wishes and hopes for his sister and the other problems and obstacles that he is currently encountering in his personal life. I hope that they have a swift and happy resolution.
The first thing I want to do in this, my final, rebuttal is to address Skierkowa’s comments concerning the scholars and quotes from those scholars that I offered in my previous rebuttal. I think it needs to be pointed out, though its quite obvious, that Skierkowa is here being dishonest about his own dishonesty. In his second rebuttal, Skierkowa claimed, concerning the various scholars which I mentioned in my first rebuttal, that “the problem here isn’t appeal to authority, but that David’s authorities disagree with him.” I spent the vast majority of my second rebuttal quoting those scholars to demonstrate that they do indeed agree with me and Skierkowa’s response to this, far from the mea culpa that one would expect from an honest individual, is instead a dishonest attempt at getting around admitting that he was wrong in his contention that these scholars disagree with me.
His response is further dishonest on this point in that he simply dismisses their statements by claiming that they are nothing but “polemic.” That is a dishonest response on many levels, including: 1. These scholars, as Skierkowa himself noted in his second rebuttal, are from a variety of different backgrounds and experts in a variety of different fields. When Jewish, Christian, and atheist scholars in history, philosophy, and religion all find themselves in agreement on a point of the history of philosophy, this point needs to be taken seriously, not brazenly dismissed. 2. Note that all of the quotes were taken from transcripts from classes given at major, respected universities or from books that have been very well-received by these scholars’ peers. Rather than waste any further time on this point, I instead encourage Skierkowa and everyone following this debate to read the books for themselves; I cited them in my previous rebuttal. These scholars make their case; give them their fair hearing. You be the judge of whether the statements which I quoted from these experts in their respective fields are indeed mere "polemic" or are actually statements of their well-researched, well-substantiated conclusions after years of study in their fields of expertise.
The rest of Skierkowa’s third rebuttal is summarized by his statement in its final paragraph that “we’re evolved to be cooperative, gregarious, pro-social creatures that are rooting for each other to survive and flourish.” The problem is that this, again, does not answer the problems inherent in atheism and in the naturalistic worldview. I've addressed this line of reasoning already in this debate. We are not only "evolved to be cooperative, gregarious, pro-social creatures." We are also evolved to be competitive, selfish, and violent. Upon what basis, again, does Skierkowa choose one set of evolved characteristics of humanity over others? The choice seems as arbitrary as the selection of one's favorite ice cream flavor.
The problem also remains that these evolutionary mechanisms did not prevent human beings from killing their own children for thousands of years. It took Judaism and, later, Christianity to do that. This assertion, originally contested by Skierkowa, has been proven in this debate. Unless Skierkowa is willing to say that the advent of the Judeo-Christian tradition was a part of human evolution, the same flaws that have already been addressed in previous rebuttals are present yet again in Skierkowa's statements here.
This entire line of reasoning, in fact, looks stunningly naïve to anyone familiar with the history of the twentieth century. At the beginning of last century, we witnessed several regimes in Europe which attempted to apply evolutionary theory to their social ethics. The Nazis are probably the most well-known of these regimes and were certainly the perpetrators of the most horrific crimes of these regimes. The entire Eugenics movement, however, of which the Nazis were but a part, was the product of the application of evolutionary theory to human society.
One need not look much farther than some of the most well-known and respected voices of the modern atheist community to see that a revival of Eugenics and, no doubt, of the atrocities committed in its name, is inherent in the modern atheistic/naturalistic system. One finds, for instance, Richard Dawkins' advocacy of the "Great Ape Personhood Project;" in his article of endorsement for this bizarre "project" he questions why a human infant should be seen as possessing more inherent value than an aardvark pup -- and mocks those who believe so! Peter Singer, a professor of ethics (!) at Princeton University, is another example, in his vocal advocacy for a return to infanticide as well as euthanasia.
Most modern evolutionary theory posits “survival of the fittest” as the mechanism by which natural selection occurs. The strong survive and thrive, the weak serve and die. If these principles are applied to human society, how does this not result in a situation like that described by Donald Kagan in my selection from his lecture, as quoted in my previous rebuttal, that without the combination of Judeo-Christian religion and Greek reason all that is left is “the law of tooth and claw”?
A child born with cerebral palsy cannot “survive and flourish” – he cannot contribute to society in any substantial way during his lifetime and he cannot perpetuate the species. He will always be a mouth to feed but never hands to produce the food. What, in a worldview like Skierkowa’s, is there to protect and care for him? What is inherent in and compatible with a naturalistic worldview that provides for the protection of and care for the weakest members of humanity? The honest answer is “nothing.”
I know that I’ve already quoted from the works of Thomas Cahill vociferously in this debate, but I wish to turn to him again as he demonstrates this point particularly well in a passage from one of his wonderful books. Perhaps this practical example will met Skierkowa’s criteria of “eliminating polemic and hyperbole, focusing instead on research and insights that have meaningful explanatory power.”
Malcolm Muggeridge, the supremely secular British curmudgeon, who cast a cold eye over so many contemporary efforts and enterprises, was brought up short while visiting an Indian leprosarium run by the Missionaries of Charity, the sisters founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He had always imagined secular humanism to be the ideal worldview but realized, while strolling through this facility, built with love for those whom no one wanted, that no merely humanist vision can take account of lepers, let alone take care of them. To offer humane treatment to humanity's outcasts, to overcome their lifetime experience of petty human cruelties, requires more than mere humanity. Humanists, he realized with the force of sudden insight, do not run leprosariums.
Thomas Cahill, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, pg. 305
It bears repeating many times over: “humanists … do not run leprosariums.” An atheistic and naturalistic morality can, perhaps, if the right controls are in place and the right individual(s) in power, provide for a society the most basic form of moral regulation and injunction. It can do as much as the ancient paganisms of the world before the advent of Judeo-Christian Civilization, but it can do nothing more. It cannot provide the philosophical foundation necessary to create a society which protects its weakest members. It cannot account for a child born with cerebral palsy.
Skierkowa says in his rebuttal that nihilism is wrong because it is “irrational.” And yet allowing such a child to exist and to be a burden and a drain on society while contributing nothing to it is also irrational. Why, Skierkowa, is the irrationality of nihilism unacceptable but the irrationality of expending resources to care for the poor, the sick, and the dying acceptable?
, pg. 26
, pp. 37-8
, pg. 264
, pp. 11-3
, pp. 196-7