Dear Wim,
Greetings,
The bereavements seem to have run their course, after a year on my own my
new boss was installed on Saturday and I have perhaps four more weeks before
fatherhood arrives (any tips Marco?). So in this brief lull - of only a
couple of days, what with this week being what it is - I'm trying to catch
up on old correspondence. The only major ones left in my "MoQ for
processing"
folder are your original "Is Society Making Progress" thread and about six
from John B (which will probably have to wait until after Easter - they
require a bit more than simply me requesting information!). In any case, it
does feel good to be back. I never intended to 'be a stranger' in Platt's
phrasings. So, on with the show...
Wim wrote:
> We need both static and Dynamic (aspects of static patterns of value).
> Assessing patterns of value from an overall quality point of view is
better
> than assessing them from either a Dynamic or a static point of view.
Taking
> alternate Dynamic and static points of view and seeing what changes in the
> assessment can help us however to value both aspects, to understand them
> better and (in the end) to reach better overall assessments.
Complete agreement there.
>
> 'Religious traditions, systems of education and books (taken as patterns
of
> value) differ from each other in the amount of freedom they leave for the
> Dynamic' (as I wrote 17/11 23:30 +0100) and 'some churches strangle the
> spirit, others let it breathe freely' (as you added 24/11 12:03 -0000).
> In what ways does Anglicanism cherish the spirit? In other words: what are
> the positive ways in which it jumps to the moon of DQ apart from not
> inhibiting such activity by claiming 'to be the whole answer' and avoiding
> extremes? What are the Dynamic aspects of Anglicanism?
As far as I'm aware Anglicanism is the only branch of Christianity which
makes Reason into an equivalent authority with scripture and tradition
(church). It doesn't provide any new spiritual means of progression other
than the church fathers (eg Augustine) but it allows room for dynamic
development in the light of ongoing experience. Moreover the competing
authorities - rather like Rog's balance of power argument for the US
constitution - allow for more individual freedom for the believer, whilst
also providing enough static latches for the learner to hang on to.
Anglicanism is by no means perfect, but I think it does have significant
virtues.
> I am wondering what you think from my 24/3 23:32 +0100 posting to Erin
(and
> its predecessor of 16/3 17:28 +0100).
On the question of religious experience I'm preparing something which will
hopefully emerge next week. I'm very happy with religion as a superior
starting point than science (isn't that - in some form - an inevitable
consequence of the argument in ZAMM?). On meaning, see below.
>Does 'letting the spirit breathe
> freely' correlate positively with 'propagating openness to read radical
new
> ideas'?
"Radical" - unless in its original sense of going down to the roots - is not
necessarily a good in and of itself (my conservative bias emerging). But
otherwise I'm reasonably happy with that.
>
> We may indeed have different ideas of what a doctrine is. The problem may
be
> my limited knowledge of English, but 'doctrinal' and 'doctrine' translate
> into Dutch as something very near to 'dogmatic' and 'dogma'. For me they
are
> almost synonymous.
I do have slightly unconventional views of what doctrine is. Doctrine and
dogma are effectively two words for the same thing, it's just that dogma has
a greater pejorative overtone in (English) English. I've waffled on about
this before, but my view is that Western Christianity became distorted after
about 1200AD, and the view of the nature of doctrine changed as part of that
distortion. I would argue that my understanding of doctrine is consistent
with what was understood for the first thousand years or so, and with what
is accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy. If you want to pursue that further, I'm
happy to do so. (It does eventually come back to things relevant to the MoQ)
> 'Doctrines [being] formulated by ... churches in a process very similar to
> that which happens in science - competing hypotheses trying to accurately
> describe ... experiences' might be an accurate description of the reality
of
> institutional Christianity if every church would think of itself as 'a
part
> of the universal church' AND act accordingly AND if 'describing
[religious]
> experience' would be the core business of this 'universal church'.
I'm being a very pious Anglican ;-)
> Conversely churches
> 1) often do their utmost to limit competition to a minimum,
> 2) often claim that formulating new hypotheses is unnecessary because
> (interpreting and re-interpreting) the old ones contained in Holy Writing
or
> in Church Law should be enough,
> 3) hardly ever act as if they were only a part (which would imply the need
> for stronger organizational links with other parts; the oecumenical
movement
> is mainly a talkshow of those at the top of the churches) and
> 4) are more in the business of interpreting (defining the 'Meaning' of)
and
> guiding/organizing religious experience than in that of merely describing
> it.
Churches have historically had priorities above and beyond elucidating the
mysteries. Consider, if the religious establishment was also the principal
means of preserving social quality - without which any higher values cannot
survive - and, moreover, they were preserving a higher degree of social
quality than predecessors, those alternative priorities could well have been
god-given, even if, from our exalted vantage point, they now seem backward.
Your critique seems governed by the reformation-era paradigm. I would be
interested in exploring the possibility of whether a church could exist
which didn't at some point say 'this is the truth'. Not even the quakers
would seem to qualify....
> By the way, science might be better understood as explaining experience
and
> describing a defining a 'reality' behind it than as merely describing it.
>
You'll have to unpack that one a bit more before I agree with it.
> You write 'I don't think that the truth or falsity of religious belief is
a
> matter of opinion'.
> To me 'religious belief' is 'trust in some pattern at a higher level than
> intellect' and 'truth' (or 'falsity') of that trust is meaningless to me.
> 'Religious belief' can be Meaningful to me (and not to others, because of
> their other position on 'the ladder' or relative to one or more mountains)
> or not.
There is a danger we might get stuck on words here. What you describe as
trust is what I recognise as faith. Religious belief is something abstracted
from that (and therefore derivative) but I still think it something with
more or less correspondence to reality - and therefore not "a matter of
opinion" - that is, it's closer to saying "this map works" than "I prefer
Mozart to Beethoven".
>
> I wouldn't say 'religion = DQ' for me. Rather 'religion is reconnecting
with
> or reaching for DQ' (at least the Dynamic aspect of it). Or as I wrote 9/6
> 20:54 +0100:
> 'Religion (with its Latin root re-ligare, to reconnect) can be defined as
> the essentially human pursuit of re-experiencing DQ.
I don't think religion is fundamentally about generating experiences. Or at
least, I don't think that's what Christianity is about. (Traditional
language would describe it as about salvation, existentialists/modern
liberals might describe it as about an authentic life, I would say that it
is about becoming who you are (and that is a dynamic thing). Who we are are
creatures placed into a particular context, and I think it is living in and
participating in that context to a healthy and full extent that is
salvation, or joy. I see Christianity as a means to that end. That might
make me unorthodox....) From a MoQ perspective I think it's about accepting
and valuing our own static natures, as well as our openness to the dynamic.
To go back to where we started: "We need both static and Dynamic (aspects of
static patterns of value)."
With friendly greetings to you too.
Sam
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