Some Salient Points on Jesus of Nazareth

[fkizz]

That... is completely irrelevant to my discussion with Monarchist, Ludicus.
Also in Iceland no one is intentionally born with Down Syndrome. Because, any child that displays a hint of Down Syndrome, is immediately killed.
I wonder if maybe these two things are related?

I guess for some groups the religion is false simply because the Americans like it (the Protestant version at least).

[basics]

Dr. Legend,

I drove buses in Edinburgh for two years and perhaps the happiest occasion was when I had to do the disability run composed mostly of Down's Syndrome kids. The happy chatter and noise that filled that vehicle was something to behold especially in the normal duties when one sees all the miserable faces of folks going to work or fighting for a place on going home. It's a picture that remains in my memory.

[Prodromos]

Indeed. If we killed people just for being weird or even stupid, the vast majority of the global human population would qualify for summary execution.

In Iceland they are undoubtedly taught relentlessly about "science." But how much are they taught about the Imago Dei? Not much, apparently.

Like Theodore Roosevelt said, "to educate a man in mind and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society."

[Sar1n]

Indeed. If we killed people just for being weird or even stupid, the vast majority of the global human population would qualify for summary execution.

In Iceland they are undoubtedly taught relentlessly about "science." But how much are they taught about the Imago Dei? Not much, apparently.

Like Theodore Roosevelt said, "to educate a man in mind and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society."

Morality does not mean religion. Do I even have to remind you of people still being executed for having weird religion by other religious people?

[fkizz]

Morality does not mean religion. Do I even have to remind you of people still being executed for having weird religion by other religious people?

There were plenty of religious people executed by non-religious people for being religious in eastern europe.

Point being, you can claim morality does not mean religion, in the same sense that having water does not imply a water fountain or the sea. Or that having oil and gasoline does not imply living near an oil refinery. Or that you can drink chinese tea without being in china.

You still need the source to exist, even if you are far away from them and even if bad things can happen with the source material handlers, it does not disprove the existence of the source.
Only alternative as a source are mystics, but those are often in low numbers, and spirituality movements, but those movements often speak in even more esoteric terms than the religions, so they get a smaller crowd.

[Sar1n]

There were plenty of religious people executed by non-religious people for being religious in eastern europe.

Point being, you can claim morality does not mean religion, in the same sense that having water does not imply a water fountain or the sea. Or that having oil and gasoline does not imply living near an oil refinery. Or that you can drink chinese tea without being in china.

You still need the source to exist, even if you are far away from them and even if bad things can happen with the source material handlers, it does not disprove the existence of the source.
Only alternative as a source are mystics, but those are often in low numbers, and spirituality movements, but those movements often speak in even more esoteric terms than the religions, so they get a smaller crowd.

Wrong. Morality can be based on many things, and religion is honestly one of worse ones. It's arbitrary, and through defering to basically limitless source, it can provide justification to anything.

Take a look at secular humanism, for example, or utilitarianism.

[basics]

Sar1n,

The one thing that stands out with Jesus Christ is that He never came to establish a religion, rather to establish communication again with God.

[sumskilz]

Wrong. Morality can be based on many things, and religion is honestly one of worse ones. It's arbitrary, and through defering to basically limitless source, it can provide justification to anything.

Take a look at secular humanism, for example, or utilitarianism.

Secular humanism is essentially a religion, which clearly evolved out of Christianity, but one that includes the dogma of denying it's a religion. In that latter regard, it's not unique. Nor is it unique among religions in being non-theist, or in it's lack of any particular afterlife belief. Utilitarianism is an approach to normative ethics which relies on the empirically unverifiable assumptions of secular humanism, that primarily happen to also be a subset of those of Christianity (not a coincidence).

Now you may have a definition of religion in mind, that excludes secular humanism from the socially constructed category of "religion", but I'm speaking from the perspective of anthropology and the academic study of religion. The issue is that Christianity is so central to the Western conception of religion, that it leads to a miscategorization and misunderstanding of what constitutes religion cross-culturally. What I mean is, if you consider the unifying aspects of all phenomena across all known cultures that are considered religions, then secular humanism certainly falls within that realm by any rational argument. Two issues arise from this which I find particularly interesting, the first is Westerners often misunderstand non-Christian religions as essentially Christianity but with a few substitutions in dogma, when in fact they may have very different priorities, and the second is that non-Westerners often don't really buy the claim that Western governments aren't Christian.

Some academic definitions...

The Comparative Religion department at the University of Washington:

“Religion is an intense and sustained cultivation of a style of life which heightens awareness of morally binding connections between the self, the human community and the most essential structures of reality. Religions posit various orders of reality and help individuals and groups to negotiate their relations with those orders.”

The Clifford Geertz definition popular among anthropologists:

“a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”

[Sar1n]

Nice try, I'll give you that, but you're being inconsistent.

First, you've estabilished that religion is, in your mind, closely linked to the idea of god here:

In Iceland they are undoubtedly taught relentlessly about "science." But how much are they taught about the Imago Dei? Not much, apparently.

Like Theodore Roosevelt said, "to educate a man in mind and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society."

There were plenty of religious people executed by non-religious people for being religious in eastern europe.

Point being, you can claim morality does not mean religion, in the same sense that having water does not imply a water fountain or the sea. Or that having oil and gasoline does not imply living near an oil refinery. Or that you can drink chinese tea without being in china.

You still need the source to exist, even if you are far away from them and even if bad things can happen with the source material handlers, it does not disprove the existence of the source.
Only alternative as a source are mystics, but those are often in low numbers, and spirituality movements, but those movements often speak in even more esoteric terms than the religions, so they get a smaller crowd.

And then when your claim is countered with examples, you back off to definitions of religion so vague that they don't have to include any idea of god or worship at all.

So which one is it?

[sumskilz]

Nice try, I'll give you that, but you're being inconsistent.

If this was meant to be addressed to me, I think you've confused me with someone else. Although, I would say that from a historical perspective, secular humanism does owe a great deal to the Imago Dei doctrine.

[Sar1n]

Right. Too tired, and wasn't looking really well on who wrote what. Sorry about that.

Regardless, you're way off mark. Although not called that way, secular humanistic ideas appear during classical antiquity, before Christianity and away from Judaism. Very similar concepts pop up in various eastern philosophies like Confucianism, for which the Imago Dei concept is irrelevant.

Imago Dei is interesting concept in one thing. It shifts the focus of ethics from god to human. This shift creates parallel to the philosophies that focus on human life. But it's not the main source of these ethics, as evidence by their appearance without the influence of this doctrine.

[Prodromos]

Religion has a pretty solid foundation for objective morality. Secular humanism adopts the moral house built by religion while denying its foundation. Secular humanism is essentially, "Be nice for no reason. Don't ask why." A house without foundations is doomed to collapse.

But you know it's technically religion, still. Perhaps an underdeveloped religion, but it still makes religious claims.

[basics]

If Jesus is Who He said He is then how could there be anything before Christianity? It's a question in similarity with the ones Satan put to Him, remember, if, if , if? It was then a question of the spoken word and how true and effective it was. He spoke us into existence from the outside and spoke many things into happening when on the inside, being human that is. The Old Testament tells us that His followers were known as saints to God and later Christians amongst the peoples yet still saints to God. So from righteous Abel, the first saint or Christian up until Babel we never had a religion on the planet until the Mysteries came on the scene. These religions were always going to be hijacked versions of the true and that's where the similarities end.

[sumskilz]

Regardless, you're way off mark. Although not called that way, secular humanistic ideas appear during classical antiquity, before Christianity and away from Judaism. Very similar concepts pop up in various eastern philosophies like Confucianism, for which the Imago Dei concept is irrelevant.

It sounds like you're referring to the Pre-Socratic philosophers. In them, you can see the roots of methodological naturalism, but not the moral principles of secular humanists I referred to which are a subset of Christian moral principles. Post-Enlightenment humanist morality didn't arise from reading Pre-Socratic philosophy, it arose from intellectuals thoroughly enculturated in Christian worldview reading Pre-Socratic philosophy. Even the claim that these philosophies are devoid of supernatural thinking is somewhat of a secular humanist creation myth.

Likewise you're referring to Voltaire's Confucius, rather than the actual Confucius of text, another widely believed humanist myth. Confucius was unambiguously a theist who believed Tian was the source of all goodness, that Tian gave humanity decrees regarding proper morality and virtue, and that Tian cannot be deceived. I'm not sure how even Voltaire believed his own view of Confucius, because even translating Tian's name as Heaven, he is clearly a deity believed to have agency and desires, which are explained in very anthropomorphic terms.

Imago Dei is interesting concept in one thing. It shifts the focus of ethics from god to human. This shift creates parallel to the philosophies that focus on human life. But it's not the main source of these ethics, as evidence by their appearance without the influence of this doctrine.

This interpretation is not familiar to me. The essence of Imago Dei is the belief in the spark of the divine in every individual, this belief leads to a very different moral system than say the belief in a deity that desires to be fed the souls of your defeated enemies. The latter apparently having been fairly common throughout history. This is what I was referring to.

[fkizz]

And then when your claim is countered with examples, you back off to definitions of religion so vague that they don't have to include any idea of god or worship at all.
So which one is it?

Secular Humanism, as sumskillz said, drinks a lot from Christianity, and is basically a subset of Christianity isolated from the rest. I
f you get well acknowledged to Christianism sub branches, secular humanism seems like copy/paste or cut/paste in many things. Its content flows from religion, but then it tries to deny religious source for morality. Another living paradox.

Utilitarianism still has roots to Christianity, as Sumkillz said, albeit more collectivist. Useful for merchant class.

Your East Asian examples are still religions. Confucius refers to several ideas and beliefs that are an obvious connect to the Divine. Same for Lao Tse. And Hinduism. Also they are pre-Jesus religions, so no contradiction.
Confucius despite very pragmatic, defends several ideas such as the importance of having the religious ritual to preserve harmony of society for example. It's a religion too. It seeks to achieve harmony with the divine forces, as well as with the more earthly ones.

[Sar1n]

Religion has a pretty solid foundation for objective morality. Secular humanism adopts the moral house built by religion while denying its foundation. Secular humanism is essentially, "Be nice for no reason. Don't ask why." A house without foundations is doomed to collapse.

But you know it's technically religion, still. Perhaps an underdeveloped religion, but it still makes religious claims.

Guess what...now my previous post about inconsistency applies to you.

Humanism could be considered religion only by the broadest definitions. But the lines above it make sense only if you consider religion only as system built around the idea of god.

Any morality built upon idea of divinely granted ethics is inherently arbitrary. First you need to presuppose not only an idea of god, but the very specific idea as well. As I wrote many times before...it's inherent to the concept that any idea of god is unproveable, and there are no limits to the possibilities, making any specific idea of god, and morality resulting from it, entirely an arbitrary pick from infinite pool of possiblities, with no logical connections possible within such system. History has proven this countless times, when one idea of god was used to justify contradictory behaviour.

@sumskilz
The relationship of western secular humanism and Christianity is the one of opposition. Despite fact that the golden rule is spelled out in the Bible, Christianity, throughout most of its history, practiced a different concept, "God first, earthly life irrelevant". Humanism arose when thinkers dissatisfied with christianic ethics, especially how it was practiced, encountered pre-christianic authors and started to realize the deficiencies of god-based ethics, and that there is an alternative.

I know that Confucius himself was, more or less, a kind of theist, although the concept of Tian is different from the monotheistic god, and is somewhere between it and Platonism (depending on specific idea of course...the word appears throughout east Asia for similar, but different concepts). But unlike Christianity, the Confucianist Tian takes a back seat while humanistic tendencies come to forefront, and under Confucianism, the Tian can't be used in same manner as God in Christianity, overruling the "incovenient" issues.

You give Imago Dei too much credit. It's simply a reformulation of golden rule to fit the "god first" concept. Which is why you mistake it as a source for humanism, while in truth, humanism is based around the golden rule, among other things. The similarities of both concepts come from same origin, not from one being derived from the other.

[fkizz]

Humanism could be considered religion only by the broadest definitions. But the lines above it make sense only if you consider religion only as system built around the idea of god.

Many things of Secular Humanism are a blantant rip off from Christianity. And then it has the nerve to claim "inspirations are religious free". If you get to know Christianity better you will see plenty of "religion-free" Humanist ideas are a copy paste from an old subset of Christian ideas.

Meaning the source of the morals is the same: Religion.

Sure you can have a lot of gasoline while living very far away from an Oil Refinery. Sometimes able to afford more gasoline than the workers at refinery, yes.
But the source remains the same.

[Sar1n]

Many things of Secular Humanism are a blantant rip off from Christianity. And then it has the nerve to claim "inspirations are religious free". If you get to know Christianity better you will see plenty of "religion-free" Humanist ideas are a copy paste from an old subset of Christian ideas.

Meaning the source of the morals is the same: Religion.

Sure you can have a lot of gasoline while living very far away from an Oil Refinery. Sometimes able to afford more gasoline than the workers at refinery, yes.
But the source remains the same.

Rather hilariously, you refer to the golden rule, which was ripped off by Christianity from older sources.

[fkizz]

Rather hilariously, you refer to the golden rule, which was ripped off by Christianity from older sources.

Older Sources are still Religions. The idea of Messiah was invented by Pre-Christian religions, so Jesus position requires previous religions existance to even be valid. No contradiction.

[Sar1n]

Older Sources are still Religions. The idea of Messiah was invented by Pre-Christian religions, so Jesus position requires previous religions existance to even be valid. No contradiction.

Not really. Golden rule is interesting in one thing. It appeared in many philosophies, many cultures, but only few ever put it in relationship with divine, and they weren't those that formulated it first. In fact, oldest formulation of golden rule in the classical antiquity comes from Thales, who was agnostic.