The Western Liberal Reconceptualization Of Religion

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Don't forget food.

--Brant

Brant,

Your style sometimes reminds me of this (I got it from Michael Hurd):

Michael

[anthony]

On 8/14/2019 at 2:06 PM, studiodekadent said:

 

Conclusion
The role of religion, and particularly Christianity, in the development of Liberalism, is a contentious issue. Some argue that Liberalism is an inherently Christian idea. Others argue that Liberalism has nothing to do with Christianity and that Christianity cannot be reconciled with it. My antipathy towards Christianity inclines me to be more sympathetic to the latter position, but the reality is that Liberalism developed in the context of a civilization with an intellectual history that cannot be understood without looking at the Christian contribution to it. It developed in the context of a civilization where Christian ideas had political implications, for both good and ill. As an historical matter, the influence of Christianity on Liberalism cannot be discarded.

A critical area in which Christian ideas influenced Liberalism is in Luther's elevation of the individual mind as the locus of Christian Salvation. Religion emerged to reinforce and sacralize collective identity and encourage pro-social action; the idea of religion as primarily a matter of individual belief represents an extreme deviation, and even an outright inversion. Religion, once external to the self and about the supremacy of the group over the individual, became understood as internal to the self and an essentially sacred right of the self. Freedom of religion, understood as an individual's right to determine their own beliefs and live by them so long as the individual respects the right of others to do the same, carried within it the freedoms of conscience, speech and the press; within the context of an evangelical faith that sees religious beliefs as the most significant beliefs a person may hold, each of these four freedoms require the other three. The immortal words of Thomas Jefferson's Virgina Statute illustrate how the freedoms of religion, conscience, speech and press are intertwined. 

 

Really good few paragraphs. "...illustrate how the freedoms of religion, conscience, speech and press are intertwined".

Reads like the antidote to theocracy to me.

Have the post-liberal (yup, non-Objectivist) secularists come up with anything as good?

"And Christians/Evangelicals never appealed to the State to enshrine their values?" 

Yes, they have. But the Left would take over the State to "enshrine" their nihilist dis-values. 

 

[studiodekadent]

9 hours ago, anthony said:

Really good few paragraphs. "...illustrate how the freedoms of religion, conscience, speech and press are intertwined".

Reads like the antidote to theocracy to me.

Have the post-liberal (yup, non-Objectivist) secularists come up with anything as good?

"And Christians/Evangelicals never appealed to the State to enshrine their values?" 

Yes, they have. But the Left would take over the State to "enshrine" their nihilist dis-values. 

 

If Evangelical Christians were all Jeffersonian libertarians you'd have a point. But their demonstrated preference is always for statism. 

Not to mention, Jefferson himself was a Deist and also a Secularist (the entire point of the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom was to establish secularism). 

Leftist values versus the values of the theocratic Christian Right? Doesn't sound like either of those is a preferable alternative. 

[anthony]

11 hours ago, studiodekadent said:

If Evangelical Christians were all Jeffersonian libertarians you'd have a point. But their demonstrated preference is always for statism. 

Not to mention, Jefferson himself was a Deist and also a Secularist (the entire point of the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom was to establish secularism). 

Leftist values versus the values of the theocratic Christian Right? Doesn't sound like either of those is a preferable alternative. 

Interesting, to be a deist and secularist. I don't know enough about Thomas Jefferson to estimate how he carried that off, it seems as if he mentally bridged the gap from old 'order' into the new. That took great prowess.

Neither set of values, certainly, is a "preferable alternative". But...immediately, and foreseeably, the "mystics of muscle" are the bigger danger, as I see this.

Statism appears to be the established norm for all in the mainstream, while the US Conservatives at least in theory, speak of reducing it.

I dug this up, worth a re-read. On topic I believe. One way or other, most boils down to mysticism.

"As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter—the enslavement of man’s body, in spirit—the destruction of his mind.

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive—a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society—a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute."  [Galt's Speech]

----

Personally, the "mystics of spirit" (/mind) never had (when I was young) and can't have any sway over me. Where I think, however, and Rand above made succinct, the people whose minds can't be gotten are constantly vulnerable, is by threats to and force over their physical selves, values, etc. - in the name of "Society". The materialists can get at one where the spiritualists can't gain purchase. Then, causally, one's 'spirit" could also and equally be harmed by the mystics of muscle, by their indirect means.