Personally, if I were affiliated with a group that generated so much craziness, I'd do one of two things: work to alter the group to the fullest of my capabilities or leave the group.
I don't exactly judge all Christians as any specific thing. But throughout its history, Christianity has had an adverse relationship with logic. Not Christians. Christianity. The ones who ran the Inquisition and condemned Galileo....etc.
The problem here is that you're still casting too wide a net when you talk about Christianity as a single group at this level. And I think you might be mixing levels -- uh, orders of organization, taxonomic divisions? -- as well.
First there's that "affiliated with a group" thing. Christianity-as-a-global-whole is not really a "group" one becomes affiliated to; rather there are a whole lot of groups -- large, small, distinct, vague, autonomous, comprising subgroups -- to which one may or may not be affiliated. But "Christianity" on that scale is too nebulous and too diverse for "affiliation" to really work well as a concept. "Member of" in the sense of being a member of a species or a member of a generation, yes; "affiliated with", not so much.
Now if you want to narrow it down to Catholics, fundamentalists, evangelicals, Orthodox, Lewis-style "mere" Christians, or one of the many other subclasses, sects, or groups-of-sects, then something like your first paragraph makes a little more sense. But from over where I'm standing, I have absolutely no ... connection in any organizational sense, that would give me any power to "alter the group" that includes, say, Catholics. Or dominionists. Or Branch Davidians. We might "connect" over a cup of decaf coffee in the sense of having a shared vocabulary, mythology, and (some) basic moral axioms, but as far as "altering their group", I'm an outsider. I lack even the ant-like power that any individual member of an organization has, except within my own congregation, my own denomination, my own community, or an interfaith group that one of the groups I'm connected to is a part of. (And in that last case, it'll depend on the nature and purpose of the particular interdenominational group.)
Similarly, what does it mean to "leave" a group so nebulous? I guess I could adopt my own new nomenclature, but when it comes down to it, "Christian" still describes me. I could elect to leave -- disaffiliate myself from -- a particular church, a particular sect, a particular group of people, but as long as I believe what I believe, I'm a Christian regardless of my organizational affiliations or lack thereof.
(We're back to that "member of" in the sense of "member of a species" thing again. I can complain about what "humanity" does (in the same sense of ascribing the actions of large groups to the class as a whole that you've done with Christianity), but it's hard for me to "leave" humanity in any meaningful sense.)
Really, the best I can do is stand up and say, "They're not all like that. We're not all like that. There are other groups of us."
Way back in the earliest days of the Church, when you could actually say "the Church", your statement would have made sense. But that was like 1800 years ago (I could be wrong by 150 years either direction; I'm not as up on church history as I ought to be).
I agree with part of this although you are WAY off with 1800 years ago. The Spanish Inquisition was at the time of Columbus. The Jews were slaughtered wholesale in Spain and Portugal by "The Church." The Church were all Catholics until after Martin Luther, remember? I realize that Protestants don't follow the "Holy Father" and see the Pope as the divine ruler of Christianity, as Catholics do. I think 'Protestant' and 'splinter group' should be synonymous, based on their behavior. However, you have to realize that no matter how much you protest, identifying yourself as Christian lumps you in will all the others in the minds of most of the world, like it or not. Personally, I agonize with you. It is beyond me in a way how you can so strongly identify with a group when a large portion of others who similarly self-identify revile you. I know the depth of your feels, so I understand the difficulty. If it were me (and I've had plenty of similar trouble in this realm) I'd stop using the label and go my own way.... Going my own way is pretty much a hallmark of being me :)
Similarly, it was specifically the Catholic Church which conducted the Inquisition and tried Galileo; IIRC, the Inquisition's targets included other Christians who didn't adhere strictly enough to Catholic doctrine, so obviously it couldn't have been All Of Christianity running the Inquisition...
...But oddly enough, despite those examples, Catholicism has had its share of influential philosophers who worked with logic just fine (though one might question their axioms ... and of course, there's no shortage of logic-challenged folks as well -- I'm not claiming all Catholic philosophers were great logicians[*]). So even if you limit it to Catholics[**], saying that it has historically had "an adverse relationship with logic" is at best inaccurate and incomplete.
It's true that various Christians (and groups/sects/movements thereof) have had trouble with logic, but "throughout its history" is a long time and includes a significant amount of logical thought as well. Admittedly not as long as history as your religion, nor nearly as good a reputation for logical thought (our gaffes have included some whoppers), but "an adverse relationship" throughout the history of the faith is stretching things more than a little bit.
[*] And yes, I still remember the philosophy professor at the University of Dallas who thought he'd logically/mathematically proved that there had to have been a "first moment of time" because he didn't grok a couple of mathematical concepts. *sigh* I never did succeed in explaining the error to him.
[**] Since the jumping-off point for the essay I quoted from that started this discussion was "intelligent design", I should perhaps clarify that I'm talking about Catholics here only because you mentioned historical examples that pertain to them, not because of their stance on evolution (the Catholic Church acknlowledges evolution, by the way). OTOH, given the Catholic position on abortion, pertinent to the end of the passage I quoted, maybe they're not so out of place at this point after all.
The first splits from Catholicism were Martin Luther and Henry VIII founding the Church of England so that he could get the divorce from Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn that the Pope refused to grant. He married Anne Boleyn in the 1530's. Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses in 1517 and was excommunicated by The Church in 1521. Ferdinand and Isabella financed Columbus in the 1490s and it was 1492, during the reign of the virulently anti-Semitic Isabella the massive numbers of Jews fell to the Inquisition. Isabella expelled Jews on pain of death.
So, given the historic events, The Church, the Catholic Church, was all Christianity had to offer until the Reformation was in full swing in the 1600s
The Pilgrims came to this country for religious freedom as Protestants wanting to get away from Catholic Europe and the Anglican Church of England. In point of fact, it was all but a few heretics, all of the organized Christians of the world at that time who ran the Inquisition. As for Galileo, it was the Jesuits who brought him before the Inquisition (is this starting to have a repetitive theme?) who were still in charge of most of Christendom in the 1630's when he was persecuted and put under house arrest for the rest of his life, another ~10 years.
I don't limit it to Catholics because I've been in the Creationism furor since I was a child and that is the product of Evangelical Protestants. Christians who are in enough power (in whatever group they are in) to control things like forcing Creationism to be taught as an alternative to evolution, which they say is invalid because it is "only a theory" are a sample of the ones I mean when I say logic never got in their way. They refuse to understand the scientific meaning of the word theory in the same vein that they push abstinence-only education in the face of rising teen pregnancy and STDs; they way they talk about AIDS being a conspiracy and about how condoms are an attempt at genocide. And about a thousand other examples but I'm stopping while I have an iota of my sanity left for tonight.
The Christian Right, as a political movement, is ruining it for you and for reasonable Christians everywhere. If reasonable Christians want to 'take back the night' they are going to have to become a lot more forceful and outspoken....before their extremist brethren target them, the way many of them would target you. Something to think about.....
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I don't exactly judge all Christians as any specific thing. But throughout its history, Christianity has had an adverse relationship with logic. Not Christians. Christianity. The ones who ran the Inquisition and condemned Galileo....etc.
Part 1 of 2
First there's that "affiliated with a group" thing. Christianity-as-a-global-whole is not really a "group" one becomes affiliated to; rather there are a whole lot of groups -- large, small, distinct, vague, autonomous, comprising subgroups -- to which one may or may not be affiliated. But "Christianity" on that scale is too nebulous and too diverse for "affiliation" to really work well as a concept. "Member of" in the sense of being a member of a species or a member of a generation, yes; "affiliated with", not so much.
Now if you want to narrow it down to Catholics, fundamentalists, evangelicals, Orthodox, Lewis-style "mere" Christians, or one of the many other subclasses, sects, or groups-of-sects, then something like your first paragraph makes a little more sense. But from over where I'm standing, I have absolutely no ... connection in any organizational sense, that would give me any power to "alter the group" that includes, say, Catholics. Or dominionists. Or Branch Davidians. We might "connect" over a cup of decaf coffee in the sense of having a shared vocabulary, mythology, and (some) basic moral axioms, but as far as "altering their group", I'm an outsider. I lack even the ant-like power that any individual member of an organization has, except within my own congregation, my own denomination, my own community, or an interfaith group that one of the groups I'm connected to is a part of. (And in that last case, it'll depend on the nature and purpose of the particular interdenominational group.)
Similarly, what does it mean to "leave" a group so nebulous? I guess I could adopt my own new nomenclature, but when it comes down to it, "Christian" still describes me. I could elect to leave -- disaffiliate myself from -- a particular church, a particular sect, a particular group of people, but as long as I believe what I believe, I'm a Christian regardless of my organizational affiliations or lack thereof.
(We're back to that "member of" in the sense of "member of a species" thing again. I can complain about what "humanity" does (in the same sense of ascribing the actions of large groups to the class as a whole that you've done with Christianity), but it's hard for me to "leave" humanity in any meaningful sense.)
Really, the best I can do is stand up and say, "They're not all like that. We're not all like that. There are other groups of us."
Way back in the earliest days of the Church, when you could actually say "the Church", your statement would have made sense. But that was like 1800 years ago (I could be wrong by 150 years either direction; I'm not as up on church history as I ought to be).
(continued...)
Re: Part 1 of 2
I think 'Protestant' and 'splinter group' should be synonymous, based on their behavior. However, you have to realize that no matter how much you protest, identifying yourself as Christian lumps you in will all the others in the minds of most of the world, like it or not. Personally, I agonize with you. It is beyond me in a way how you can so strongly identify with a group when a large portion of others who similarly self-identify revile you. I know the depth of your feels, so I understand the difficulty. If it were me (and I've had plenty of similar trouble in this realm) I'd stop using the label and go my own way....
Going my own way is pretty much a hallmark of being me :)
Re: Part 1 of 2
I was baptized Greek Orthodox, remember? There were Christians who weren't Catholics before Luther.
Longer reply when I'm more awake.
Part 2 of 2
Similarly, it was specifically the Catholic Church which conducted the Inquisition and tried Galileo; IIRC, the Inquisition's targets included other Christians who didn't adhere strictly enough to Catholic doctrine, so obviously it couldn't have been All Of Christianity running the Inquisition...
...But oddly enough, despite those examples, Catholicism has had its share of influential philosophers who worked with logic just fine (though one might question their axioms ... and of course, there's no shortage of logic-challenged folks as well -- I'm not claiming all Catholic philosophers were great logicians[*]). So even if you limit it to Catholics[**], saying that it has historically had "an adverse relationship with logic" is at best inaccurate and incomplete.
It's true that various Christians (and groups/sects/movements thereof) have had trouble with logic, but "throughout its history" is a long time and includes a significant amount of logical thought as well. Admittedly not as long as history as your religion, nor nearly as good a reputation for logical thought (our gaffes have included some whoppers), but "an adverse relationship" throughout the history of the faith is stretching things more than a little bit.
[*] And yes, I still remember the philosophy professor at the University of Dallas who thought he'd logically/mathematically proved that there had to have been a "first moment of time" because he didn't grok a couple of mathematical concepts. *sigh* I never did succeed in explaining the error to him.
[**] Since the jumping-off point for the essay I quoted from that started this discussion was "intelligent design", I should perhaps clarify that I'm talking about Catholics here only because you mentioned historical examples that pertain to them, not because of their stance on evolution (the Catholic Church acknlowledges evolution, by the way). OTOH, given the Catholic position on abortion, pertinent to the end of the passage I quoted, maybe they're not so out of place at this point after all.
Re: Part 2 of 2
Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses in 1517 and was excommunicated by The Church in 1521.
Ferdinand and Isabella financed Columbus in the 1490s and it was 1492, during the reign of the virulently anti-Semitic Isabella the massive numbers of Jews fell to the Inquisition. Isabella expelled Jews on pain of death.
So, given the historic events, The Church, the Catholic Church, was all Christianity had to offer until the Reformation was in full swing in the 1600s
The Pilgrims came to this country for religious freedom as Protestants wanting to get away from Catholic Europe and the Anglican Church of England. In point of fact, it was all but a few heretics, all of the organized Christians of the world at that time who ran the Inquisition.
As for Galileo, it was the Jesuits who brought him before the Inquisition (is this starting to have a repetitive theme?) who were still in charge of most of Christendom in the 1630's when he was persecuted and put under house arrest for the rest of his life, another ~10 years.
I don't limit it to Catholics because I've been in the Creationism furor since I was a child and that is the product of Evangelical Protestants. Christians who are in enough power (in whatever group they are in) to control things like forcing Creationism to be taught as an alternative to evolution, which they say is invalid because it is "only a theory" are a sample of the ones I mean when I say logic never got in their way. They refuse to understand the scientific meaning of the word theory in the same vein that they push abstinence-only education in the face of rising teen pregnancy and STDs; they way they talk about AIDS being a conspiracy and about how condoms are an attempt at genocide.
And about a thousand other examples but I'm stopping while I have an iota of my sanity left for tonight.
The Christian Right, as a political movement, is ruining it for you and for reasonable Christians everywhere. If reasonable Christians want to 'take back the night' they are going to have to become a lot more forceful and outspoken....before their extremist brethren target them, the way many of them would target you.
Something to think about.....