On Mar 2, 2009, at 7:31:41 PM, Krimel <[email protected]> wrote: Willblake2 writes to that above: Thanks for that Krimel, I'm sure I could learn a lot from you about Christian history. However, you point out:
[Krimel above]"Prior to the Council of Nicea the cannon was not exactly closed but not really open either. There are a couple of "lists" of canonical works that predate the Council by at least a 100 years and as you point out there are a few works on those lists that were omitted for doctrinal reasons." It is my understanding that many more than just a few works were left out, especially in light of the discovery at Nag Hammadi (which the Church also tried to control). This may only be scratching the surface of where Christianity had got in those 300 years. Original Christianity may have been much more mystical and encompassing, no man in the sky etc. What exists now is something pretty childish. [Krimel] There was indeed a relatively rich Christian literature by the time of the Council of Nicea but the list of canonical writing was as I said pretty much in place well before that time. We knew about many of these other writings from fragments and from the Church Fathers who sometimes quoted the documents they were condemning. The Nag Hammadi Library and Dead Sea Scroll were both discovered in the late 1940s. I believe there were charges that the Catholic Church was holding back things from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection but this seemed to have had more to do with professional rivalry and the difficult of putting some of the more fragmentary texts into a translatable format. Among the scrolls were a large collection of fragments that had been stewing in bat shit for 2000 years. One of the myths of Christianity is that at some early time Christians were unanimously agreed on some version of the "true faith" and that this was corrupted over time. These "newer" document instead reveal a much broader spectrum of divergent belief in both Christianity and Judaism than was previously suspected. In actually reading some of these documents I find them to be almost incoherent. Some are of full of bizarre miracles and strange pronouncements. I think they are of great historical interest by very little theological import. There are a great many scholars in this field who draw the conclusion from reviewing this literature that Christianity at least in the first century was far more Jewish than previously thought. Not as you suspect more mystical. While I am not a Christian; I do take Christianity very seriously as it informs the thinking of a great many of my friends and relatives. To say that modern Christianity is childish is just too simplistic. I think there are many specifically Christian thinkers who have a very complex and well developed on profound understandings for their faith. We have had a few in this forum but they usually get raked over the coals, trashed unmercifully and then leave. [Willblake2] My point on the analogy with Christianity is that science creates a reality in the same way, and in my experience it is difficult to express contrary ideas to the norm. Science can label things ad infinitum and then profess meaning from that. We have divided the sun up into labels on "how it works, and what it is made of, etc." and then claim to "understand" it; this is the same thing as dividing a painting (or music) into its parts and then claiming to understand it. Indeed, it may be much more meaningful and useful to view the sun as Egyptians of old did. [Krimel] As I mentioned in a previous post the point of a conceptual system is to offer up the simplest set of concepts to explain the greatest number of perceptual events. Science does not make doctrinal statements. Calling scientific theories, dogma is just as much hyperbola as calling them hunches. Science is always the sum of our best guess at the moment. If this makes you uncomfortable then there are a host of doctrines that you can run to that offer eternal Truth. In this sense science it functionally equivalent to the Buddhist's renunciation of desire and the Christian's submission to the will of God. The function is to ease the horror of uncertainty and the powerlessness we feel in confronting a chaotic universe. [Willblake2] Thanks for answering about "experiencing" evolution. My interpretation of what I read from your post is that what you see is created for you through the doctrinal prism of Evolution, that is fitting it into a box. For example, I can understand "Quality" through reading the opinions in the posts at MoQ. However, I do not experience it in the same way as Phaedrus is portrayed to do in Pirsig's books. If you have faith in the survival concept of Evolution then you will surely interpret the world in that way, in exactly the same way a Christian will interpret his reality as the Will of God. Your evidence is no more than his, and basing yours on the doctrine of science is simply a closed system proving itself, like a snake eating its own tail. Look at evolution from outside this bias for a clearer view.. [Krimel] It is silly to think that we can see the world without some kind of prism. We can try to kill conceptual understanding until Hell freezes over but in the end we will still be looking through a prism of one sort or another. The point as I see it is to understand that this is what is going on and work hard at polishing the prism. But once again, understanding a scientific theory is not an act of faith.. Accepting the assumptions of science is, I think, an act of faith but one of those assumptions is that we should continually test our assumptions. There is the accumulation of 150 years of testing and collecting data that does support the theory of evolution and 2000 years of hemming and hawing supporting religious doctrine. These are very different. [Willblake2] Oh, and you may be overestimating what experiencing the Divine is, I think you experience it everyday. [Krimel] I agree at least to the extent that I do have experiences every day. [Willblake2] By the way, for what its worth, I got my Ph.D from the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London (once a part of the University of London). According to a recent peer review from a wide range of universities it is considered to be one of the top ten universities in the world (along with Yale, CalTech, Cambridge, Oxford, and others). Check it out in the London Times (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1). [Krimel] Ok, if you say so, I will consciously choose suspend my disbelief. [Willblake2] Don't know if this lends credibility to my opinions, it shouldn't. [Krimel] No problem. It doesn't. Sorry about this. I know that whatever I just wrote is even more full of typos than usual but I really have to leave and so.... Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Thanks Krimel, I think I get your points. I suppose I am suffering from Science fatigue. I find your other posts in the Quality/MOQ dichotomy most illuminating which encourages me to continue paying attention to this forum, and perhaps stick to the subject. Willblake2 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
