I’m out of practice, but engaged a bit over @ Evangelical Outpost in a discussion on world view. Sort of. It started out with Joe Carter listing his confession or statement of faith, or what I called his manifesto. A list of the doctrinal stances he personally works from.
It turned into a freewheeling discussion, but what interests me for this post are the questions.
One was “Do Christian bloggers fail when they do not address important current events, especially of catastrophes”,etc? I know I have had the same reaction of anger as was expressed… but I also ended up thinking better of it. So what are the opinions here? News bloggers will of course, by their nature, cover breaking news, their challenge is simply to address the event with the proper tenor, etc ( as far as the morality of their posting) – but for those who usually write with different themes, are they letting down their readership when they ignore the event on their blog? There are all sorts of reasons for that to happen, not the least of which some do not know what to say. Is that OK?
The exact question was this:”Joe again your blogging is oblivious … is that your world view at work?” And I am wondering if that reflects on our world view? Does this negate the integrity of a Christian view of life and the world?
Another question is maybe similar, although more subtle. It is this,” Do the failures of Christians and the Church to live up to their standards then negate the integrity of their message?” I realize that people like to point fingers at Christians for their inability to be perfect, but does this logically negate the whole of their system, or the many testimonials to how it did empower them and change their lives for the better. Is it a supportable claim that Christianity renders little more than a placebo effect?
Another side question: Can the evolution theory claim all of science as its own? Or is it just an inclusion that is given more weight by its adherents than it merits? Is there science outside of the evolution theory is what I’m asking I guess.
And then there is this:”I think reason is at least as good an anchor as faith.”
Is it? Has time through the historical record shown this? I could probably argue against that on several levels, but does the idea have any merit? Where would one argue that from…what base of support? It just seems to be a zeitgeist hopeful thinking. Sort of like- hey, can we just go back to the idealism of the age of Enlightenment? Is reason a reasonable source of the moral standard, IOW?
Ilona, no. Reason is not as good a guide as faith. I have to think how to explain why it isn’t.
One of the reasons why reason fails is that it either leaves each individual to start over again, or ends up being deference to authority voices. Neither is efficient in the long run.
Faith (at least of the Judeo-Christian tradition) incorporates base rules that incorporate a great deal of experience, but also requires an requires an individual to act and reason for his- or herself. It can avoid either extreme.
One example of the failure of reason is the s8xual revolution. Now, I am not a prude, but it makes me heartsick to realize what we have wrought in less than two generations. Reason said “This is human nature”. Reason said, “We can negate the consequences, so why put people through this denial of a natural impulse?” Reason figured that what we had was what we would always have.
Reason failed absolutely to realize that biologically, a s8x-loving species such as ours will either restrict its s8xual drive or will create an incredible disease vector. Reason also failed to acknowledge that we have more complex emotional and psychological needs involved in s8xual behavior.
All I have to do is look around at the women of my generation and the one just following it and see the blasted, destroyed lives. The sorrow inflicted on their children is immense as well. Reason only works when you know all the facts, but we rarely do. Human societies are incredibly complex.
(I had to change e’s to 8’s to get the comment to post. It didn’t like the word “s8x”.)
“Do the failures of Christians and the Church to live up to their standards then negate the integrity of their message?” I would say no, in fact, it actually proves it. We all fail, and we all need Jesus. It seems to me that the problem really comes when some Christians forget their own failures, and focus on pointing out someone else’s. That is when, in my opinion, the world rightfully calls us hypocrites.
As for faith vs. reason – well, look at what we have been commanded to do by Jesus. Any fool can tell that it’s utterly unreasonable, but yet a person who does try to follow those orders finds that astonishing things happen.
This is something that cannot be known or deduced by reason. However, after attempting to live such a life, reason does have to acknowledge that something is occurring that’s beyond the normal range of human experience. Thus it becomes “reasonable” to have faith, but only after we have already assumed a knowledge we did not and could not personally have.
The Doctor Is In had a wonderful post about grace recently at his blog. http://docisinblog.com/archives/2005/08/27/grace-4-u2
Okay, now the evil genie is harassing me even more.
Wow. You’re giving me some things to really think about..pushing the envelope of the usual responses.
When you said “Reason only works when you know all the facts, but we rarely do.” that pinpointed a ,or the, pivotal problem for reason. The context in the discussion was that reason is enough for deciding moral mandate.
…in your second post, it raises the question whether we can support some of our ideas of what is moral as encompassed by reason. There was a respondant in the original discussion who was making a case for “natural law”- that is that our morality is instinctual and tends to be universal. I don’t agree with that view, but raise it here as the opposite argument to morality being decided by reason.
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Jan, that is how I think, but I had to look at it from the opposition’s PoV. I think you are onto something when addressing the false fronts that people try to put up to somehow “defend” their faith. Kind of backwards things but I think it often works that way. Maybe that hypocrisy is what creates some of the resistance.
This was a new direction to appraoch the questions for me. Usually I just approached it from the weakness of subjective morality for the group. But this is finding the weakness in reason as the arbiter of morality.
I caught that, too, and blogged about it, comparing it with a couple of other pieces I ran across lately. You might want to take a look.
I’m inclined to side with the commentator who wanted to know how credo connects with constructive action. I sometimes see as much Christian-looking activity on the part of infidels as I do from confessing Christians.
I will definitely take a look at your post.
Although I have to say that I consider this,”I sometimes see as much Christian-looking activity on the part of infidels as I do from confessing Christians.” to be mythos that is traded around and given currency just because it has commerce. Sort of a Christian urban legend.