What is a Christian fundamentalist?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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Purex, nobody is claiming absolute knowledge. Even excepting scripture as the Word of God is not knowing absolute knowledge for only God knows absolute knowledge and we can only understand scripture in a limited way.
We are simply endowed with a actually understanding mind that is able to abstract the general from the particular. the general concepts are immaterial and therefore we have an immaterial reasoning soul.
And of course we are talking about absolute knowledge in about corporeal bodies. Metaphysice does go beyond physical science.
This is true of the Trinity which is mentioned indirectly in Scripture. Three persons in one God is a mystery to human reason.
I don't agree with everything the fundamentalists believe but they about 80% of the beliefs down right.
Divine magic? Well they believe the Incarnation revealed itself to us and the Incarnation itself is mystery to human reason.
So we don't have to have absolute knowledge to know something of the absolute.
Dear, I'd say the points that make you a fundamentalist is sola fide, sola scriptura and a more literal interpretatio of scripture.
We are simply endowed with a actually understanding mind that is able to abstract the general from the particular. the general concepts are immaterial and therefore we have an immaterial reasoning soul.
And of course we are talking about absolute knowledge in about corporeal bodies. Metaphysice does go beyond physical science.
This is true of the Trinity which is mentioned indirectly in Scripture. Three persons in one God is a mystery to human reason.
I don't agree with everything the fundamentalists believe but they about 80% of the beliefs down right.
Divine magic? Well they believe the Incarnation revealed itself to us and the Incarnation itself is mystery to human reason.
So we don't have to have absolute knowledge to know something of the absolute.
Dear, I'd say the points that make you a fundamentalist is sola fide, sola scriptura and a more literal interpretatio of scripture.
PureX
Well-known member
How does the fact that we humans have imagination come to mean that we can possess absolute knowledge? And what are you calling "metaphysical", here?
I don't think it's such a mystery. We have simply invented three "characters" to represent three different ways in which we can concieve of and interact with what we call "God".
"Right" compared to what? What is the criteria you are using to establish the degree of their accuracy?
If we only know "something of" the absolute, how can we even know that it is absolute? What criteria are we going to use to judge the absoluteness of something that is incomplete to us? How do we know that what we don't know won't render it not absolute?
Aimiel
Well-known member
Even standing in God's presence, and searching for an understanding of Him, I have never once thought that I could begin to understand Him even 1%. He is un-fathomable. He is so far beyond what we can comprehend with our finite minds. He is Spirit. Spirit is not bound by time or space. Even once we are in Heaven, we will spend the ages to come, just exploring His Wealth of knowledge and His Love. We won't ever come to an end of that study. We will never be His equal, but will always find out that He is Greater than we previously thought.
We judge absoluteness based on what is relative, potential and contingent. Obviously by your whole argument you say the absolute is unconditioned which is one definition.
By the way conditions only affect the way we go about thinking not what we can think.
I should say 80% in terms of Roman catholic teaching.
Well of course we get into faith and do you believe that revelation comes from God or did somebody make it up. I can always argue that everything has a purpose and since our goal is in the love of God and submission to God's will, God would have to reveal himself for us to accomplish our goal.
I'm not talking about imagination but higher levels of thinking. Imagination is part of our lower level receptive mind. Metaphysics deals with natural theology ontology and cosmology.:thumb: :bannana: :devil:
By the way conditions only affect the way we go about thinking not what we can think.
I should say 80% in terms of Roman catholic teaching.
Well of course we get into faith and do you believe that revelation comes from God or did somebody make it up. I can always argue that everything has a purpose and since our goal is in the love of God and submission to God's will, God would have to reveal himself for us to accomplish our goal.
I'm not talking about imagination but higher levels of thinking. Imagination is part of our lower level receptive mind. Metaphysics deals with natural theology ontology and cosmology.:thumb: :bannana: :devil:
PureX
Well-known member
Yet you are absolutely sure that God wrote the bible, and that Jesus rose from the dead, and that there is a heaven and a hell, and that your version of religious Christianity is the only true path to righteousness, and that anyone who thinks otherwise has to be wrong, or "lost". You don't know anything about God except that you believe that you know more about God than anyone who believes anything ELSE about God knows .... hmmmm
PureX
Well-known member
Well, right here is the difference. I can make relative judgements about what I think is absolute, but I can't actually determine that something is absolute. It can only be absolute relative to my limited perception and understanding of it. I could say: "To me, this appears to be absolute". But I can't say that "I know this is an absolute".
It is the essential aspect of all the definitions of the word except when the word is used as a sloppy adjective, like: "Oh, that scarf is absolutely divine!"
We don't know. It very often happens that what we take as a revelation from God is nothing more than the experience of our own powerful imaginations, or the suggestions of others, or of our own sub-conscious. And in those instances such revelations appear exactly as "real" as if they WERE real. So how could we tell?
That would be a very subjective argument, though.
I disagree. I think imagination is the heart and soul of the amazing abilities of the human mind. Without it we would be nothing more than another species of primate.
Isn't that just physics?
Again we only have human reason to go by, so we can know the absolute in a relative way by our human reason. We don't need absolute knowledge.
If we can define the Absolute then we obviously can know something about it.
Again you get into subjective, objective. They are two sides to the same coin.
imagination or phantasms is part of our receptive mind. It differs from the higher reasoning faculties.
No physics deals with what we can experimentally prove. Metaphysics goes beyond that.
If we can define the Absolute then we obviously can know something about it.
Again you get into subjective, objective. They are two sides to the same coin.
imagination or phantasms is part of our receptive mind. It differs from the higher reasoning faculties.
No physics deals with what we can experimentally prove. Metaphysics goes beyond that.
PureX
Well-known member
We do if we're going to claim certainty.
We can invent and define lots of things that don't exist. We have very powerful imaginations.
Yes, I am aware of where I end and the world begins. *smile*
I'd say they are pretty integrated. I don't think logic is any "higher" than imagination. And I don't think logic would be of any use at all without imagination.
I think what is beyond that is called supposition, not metaphysics.
Practical certainty is just beyond a reasonable doubt. But First cause and metaphysics is like math you move towards a more absolute understanding.
It's not imagination as it is based on experience.
It obviously is. We distinguish between the world of fantasy and what we are knowing of the objective world through what we experience.
There is reproductive and constructive imagination and constructive is the one used in fantasy creations.
I say metaphysics is more absolute than physical science.
It's not imagination as it is based on experience.
It obviously is. We distinguish between the world of fantasy and what we are knowing of the objective world through what we experience.
There is reproductive and constructive imagination and constructive is the one used in fantasy creations.
I say metaphysics is more absolute than physical science.
There was a time when people could proudly say they stood for God and Country.
There are those who hate that and have invented the words
fundamentalist
Nationalists
both are made into some evil per the media, the harping and labeling of the media.
"They will make good evil and evil good"
or something like that.
There are those who hate that and have invented the words
fundamentalist
Nationalists
both are made into some evil per the media, the harping and labeling of the media.
"They will make good evil and evil good"
or something like that.
Duder
Over 750 post club
CryTears-
Are loving God and loving country always compatible - in other words, is God catagorically in favor of nationalism?
Lets take a page from PureX's book - whether nationalism is good or bad is a relative determination. If tribes are warring over resourses or killing each other for sport, then I think God will call good any impulse toward nationalism, because it will broaden the loyalies of the tribes, uniting them under a common banner and mitigating the intertribal violence. When society is organized tribally, nationalism reduces the number of borders and boundaries, and hence the opportunities for unpleasantry.
However, when nations compete for resourses or kill each other for sport, God will call nationalism bad and approve a trend toward globalism - a condition where loyalties are broadened even further and where the opportunity for violence is reduced even further.
I believe that the fewer borders and boundaries the better. When nationalism reduces the number of borders it is good. When it increases the number of borders it is bad. It all depends on where you are in history. At this time in the evolution of human society, nationalism has become an evil to be overcome.
. . . or as Miletus accused Socrates to the Athenian court, "making the worse appear the better cause."
Are loving God and loving country always compatible - in other words, is God catagorically in favor of nationalism?
Lets take a page from PureX's book - whether nationalism is good or bad is a relative determination. If tribes are warring over resourses or killing each other for sport, then I think God will call good any impulse toward nationalism, because it will broaden the loyalies of the tribes, uniting them under a common banner and mitigating the intertribal violence. When society is organized tribally, nationalism reduces the number of borders and boundaries, and hence the opportunities for unpleasantry.
However, when nations compete for resourses or kill each other for sport, God will call nationalism bad and approve a trend toward globalism - a condition where loyalties are broadened even further and where the opportunity for violence is reduced even further.
I believe that the fewer borders and boundaries the better. When nationalism reduces the number of borders it is good. When it increases the number of borders it is bad. It all depends on where you are in history. At this time in the evolution of human society, nationalism has become an evil to be overcome.
I agree with the points in your post except for this last one.
The USA has many different people yet we have few civil wars, we unite as a nation when disaster strikes.
Mexico is another one.
Russia has had many hits on its nationalism, the nationalist are labeled as evil. They have outsiders coming in and using their country.
(As Germany and many other countries.)
If it can be made that nationalism is a bad word and racist then it will be easier to take the country. They are doing that in the USA by making anyone who loves their country as racists.
Anyone who wants to follow the bible is being labeled backward
as anyone who wants to follow the Koran.
It is a way of causing strife in order to attack.
PureX
Well-known member
Who is "they"?
Do you understand how racism works? Racism happens when one group of people who don't actually know anything about another group of people except that they are a different race, begin to project all their own shortcomings and their worst fears and onto them. They turn these strangers into a kind of collective "bogeyman" that represents and embodies everything they fear and hate in themselves.
The problem with this, of course, is that it's all imaginary. The "bogeyman" isn't really there. But the racist can't see this anymore, because whenever he looks at one of "those people" all he sees is the representative of what he fears and hates most in himself. And he wants to destroy it. He wants to make it go away. He might even kill that innocent stranger because he has become so thoroughly convinced that this stranger is the evil "bogeyman" that he has imagined him to be in his own mind.
Who is going to attack you for following the bible? Don't you think that you're creating a "bogeyman", here?
Just because someone rejects your assertions about the bible, or rejects your beliefs as backward and foolish doesn't mean they are attacking you. We all have the right to believe as we see fit. And in amerca, we are able to express those beliefs, too. But we are not allowed to attack anyone for them. And we are not allowed to force our beliefs on others, nor are they allowed to force their beliefs on us. At least for now we are not allowed to do so. Unfortunately there are those among us who would like to change these protections, and are working hard at doing that.
But no one is attacking you just because they desagree.
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yes exactly, I understand that this is how the middle of the road racism works. The Indians were savages, the Africans were niggers and now the Arabs are terrorists.
Yes that is how we got all those soldiers to go into Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, prior to the 'terrorist' scare, someone had to fan the smoke signals and prime them ready to hate.
The people who are pushing the idea the term fundamentalist, right wing Christians, who with their power of the pen and publishing are pouring the idea's in school books that Christianity is backward, and somehow forcing people to believe what they believe when it is quite the opposite.
The bogeyman created itself and all the "isms", I am just fighting back prior to defeat.
This is where you jumped off the plank.
When there is an organized effort to put the view out that Christianity is backward, that is an attack. You might not recognize it as an attack but it is an attack.
If there was an organized effort in this country to criticize Judaism
there would be so much hysterics one could not leave the house for the sound of the humming. They insist they are attacked now, what if it were true? Heaven forbid!
You do not see Christians suing over things being too secular but no one seems to mind putting a small town on the gullitine and wanting to take the cross out of their town emblem or the fish or the word Jesus. That is an attack. You have been programed to believe that is diversity but it isn't when it always so conveniently happens to go along with another religions views.
For the sake of constant repeat: I could care less what someone else worships or not worships as long as it does not affect me or mine.
You fail to see the work of those who want to make the NT hate speech, hate crime, when there is nothing more anti semitic in the NT as the OT. There is a reason for that.
You fail to see the people who are terminated for wearing a cross to work, see "TARGET" and that is why I boycott the store.
I would say that is pushing ones belief on others, just as if a Christian would sue if someone would not wear a cross.
It doesnt happen, the idea is so foreign you cannot even understand what I am saying.
What is the definition of Nationalism?
PureX
Well-known member
No one can force anyone to believe anything. Tell me, how do you imagine that this "force" works? How could you make me believe something against my will?
Huh? How can a "bogeyman" create itself? It's an imaginary character. And what do "isms" have to do with anything?
Couldn't it simply be that a lot of people have chosen to believe that religious Christianity is backward? And that there is no conspiracy, and no "organized force" making them believe it, but that they simply have decided for themselves that this is the case? And don't they have a right to choose to believe as they wish, just as you have?
A reason I might not see it is because it only exists in your mind, too.
Well, those symbols didn't belong there in the first place. We are allowed to put such symbols in lots of places, but we aren't allowed to put them anywhere where it creates the appearance that the state is promoting a specific religion. That was written into our constitution by the framers, and for good reason. So these images never belonged on state building or in state flags, etc., but then why would Christians want them there, anyway, I wonder, if it were not to try and create the very idea that the founding fathers were trying to deny? Ask yourself that - why SHOULD religious symbols be on public building unles to promote the idea that the religion that used that symbol is sanctioned or promoted by the state? In effect, the very desire to put them there was a direct contradiction of the intent of the 1st amendment.
No, it was actually a defense. It was a defense of the 1st amendment, that says the state cannot promote a religion. And I can't think of any other reason why a religious symbol would be placed in a state building or in state symbols except to create the impression that the state promotes that religion.
You keep referring to people as though they are incapable of thinking or reasoning for themselves, and instead are being controlled and manipulated by some secret force, just because they have come to believe something different from you. That's quite insulting to others, don't you think? Do you really believe that only you and the Christians that agree with you have the ability to think for yourselves? Do you really believe that anyone who disagrees with you is some sort of mind-controlled puppet? Doesn't that sound pretty arrogant and irrational, even to you?
Then you should not mind that religious symbols be removed from public buildings and emblems, since you respect the right of other people to believe differently, an all.
I see it all the time right here on TOL. Lots of posters here use the bible to promote hatred and violence. And Bob Enyart has made a whole carreer of it. Believe me, I am well aware of the current climate of "sanctified hatred" among Christians. I am trying to fight against it as best I can.
I would boycot a store that did that, too, and I'm not even a Christian. I think you should be able to wear whatever symbols you want to, unless there is a necessary dress code (like a policeman, for example) or something like that.
Well, those are not exactly the same, but I get your point, and maybe the person effected should sue the store. I think they might have a case. Though the store is a private business, and may have an equal right to have it's employees present a neutral image. In which case they would have the right to tell their employees that they can't wear religious symbols while at work. We do have to consider the rights of the other side, too, you know.
I would appreciate it if you would stop presuming to know what I can or can't understand. Thanks.