Is America a "Christian" Nation?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Typhoon
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Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

Post by Typhoon »

Mr. Perfect wrote:
Typhoon wrote: Only in your imagination.
Only by personal experience.
We've never met.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Simple Minded

Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Mr. Perfect wrote:
Typhoon wrote: Only in your imagination.
Only by personal experience.
We've never met.
Typhoon,

WARNING! Never ask Mr. Perfect what you were wearing in his imagination! :P
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Typhoon
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Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

Post by Typhoon »

Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
Mr. Perfect wrote:
Typhoon wrote: Only in your imagination.
Only by personal experience.
We've never met.
Typhoon,

WARNING! Never ask Mr. Perfect what you were wearing in his imagination! :P
Image
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Apollonius
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Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

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kmich wrote:A loud, quite visible group in the secular community respond to religious fundamentalism and assertion with a kind of reactionary atheism that considers religion, particularly Islam, as the root of violence in the world. These people not only have minimal understanding of religion, but they also have very little comprehension of the philosophy of science, have never seriously read Popper or Kuhn, or have any sense of the limitations of reason as elucidated in philosophy as far back as Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.”





Sometime in the long distant past I went through Kant's work. I've never read anything more than a gloss of Popper. However. assuming you're referring to Alvin Boyd Kuhn, inspired by Tom Harpur, I did read Shadow of the Third Century about ten years ago. I am currently reading and enjoying his real masterpiece A Rebirth for Christianity (1963)




The paucity of understandings on both sides of the religious/secular divide in this country leads to endless arguments that I find depthless and fatuous.


When the internet first got popular I used to have some fun arguing with atheists but I lost interest and am now selfishly tending my own garden.
Simple Minded

Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

Post by Simple Minded »

Apollonius wrote:
When the internet first got popular I used to have some fun arguing with atheists but I lost interest and am now selfishly tending my own garden.
Apollonius,

One of several reasons I enjoy reading your opinions and respect you (at least how I created you in my imagination :P ) as a person. And if someday I need to re-create you, for any reason I can determine, I have that power. ;)

What on Earth could be more subjective than religion?

It seems unreasonable to think I live in the same country as any of the American OTNOT posters, which merely increases the amount of diversity we celebrate. :P

Have you ever read The Imitation Of Christ by Thomas A'Kempis?
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Apollonius
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Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

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No, I had not, at least not recently. Since your reading recommendations are ones I always take seriously, I took the time to look at what's available online.



And now that I did, I'm sure I had at least taken a cursory look at Thomas à Kempis before and had not been altogether pleased with what I saw. I still have trouble with his world view.



The author I just mentioned puts it this way:
Even today, Christianity still maintains that Jesus is the only efficacious generator of salvation, because in him God has demonstrated the divine life for man. But this is to assert that a divine model has no power to elevate man until it has become demonstrated in the flesh. More than that, the Christian theology postulates that the beneficence of such a model had to await the advent of this one living demonstration to be efficacious in human life at all. In other words, the way of salvation was never open to man until the year 33 AD. Yet historical evidence testifies that the ancient world did not lack demonstration of the efficacy of the divine power to change human life in the lives of many personages to whom divine or near-divine status was attributed. How could Christianity assert that it alone had given the world a true Son of God when the East had exalted its Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus, Bodhisattvas, Nirmanakayas, and avatars in considerable number. The Christian will protest that these were not the very God, but only highly spiritualized humans, whereas Jesus uniquely personified in himself the wholeness of the Godhead. But the East will rejoin that this statement cannot be accepted in light of its ancient and well articulated metaphysics. If there is but one God, then there cannot be a second; that Oneness permeates all. If spirituality is inherent in man because of his divine origin, its revelation must be gradual and diverse: It is hidden in many lives but revealed in the great. Indeed, the Eastern faiths name hundreds of such divine incarnations.

The pagan religions rejected Christianity not because they denied the divinity of Jesus but because they could not accept the claim that he was a unique manifestation of divinity.


[...]


The weakness of the Christian position is that Christianity asks the individual soul to fight his battle for God's grace without giving one ounce of power into man's own hands. It sends him into the struggle unarmed, urging him to plead total helplessness and to throw himself on divine mercy. It asks him to "negotiate from weakness", not from strength. When the ideal of pagan philosophy was dominant, and with it an understanding of the complex inner constituents of man's being, the spirit of the individual was braced to wage his battle with courage, knowing that he could have direct access to the source of spiritual power even if that power were not as yet evident in him. The knowledge that the divine potentiality was available was itself the guarantee of ultimate victory. Paganism armed the individual with certitude of his invincibility; Christianity swept away this inner certainty and left man clinging precariously to the single lifeline extended to him.


-- Alvin Boyd Kuhn, A Rebirth For Christianity (Quest Books, 2005, originally published in 1963)




Truth is, I don't have a steadfast position on any of this. My inclinations are both pagan and orthodox, depending on my mood. As you know, I've been through some rough times lately and lack of physical power leads one to think of leaving it in the hands of a god that will take care of everything in due course, if only we would submit to this one belief.


So one prays a lot. And hopes that the medical advances discovered by mortal men have worked their wonders.


In any case, after a journey through purgatory, it looks like maybe I have some sort of reprieve. Certainly the pain has subsided-- at least for now.




Returning to Thomas à Kempis,

No man is fit to enjoy heaven unless he has resigned himself to suffer hardship for Christ. Nothing is more acceptable to God, nothing more helpful for you on this earth than to suffer willingly for Christ. If you had to make a choice, you ought to wish rather to suffer for Christ than to enjoy many consolations, for thus you would be more like Christ and more like all the saints. Our merit and progress consist not in many pleasures and comforts but rather in enduring great afflictions and sufferings.


http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/imit ... l#RTFToC85



Yes and no. At a certain point pain is overwhelming. It doesn't allow room for merit and progress.




And we read this from wikipedia:

The Book One deals with the withdrawal of the outward life—so far as positive duty allows and emphasizes an interior life by renouncing all that is vain and illusory, resisting temptations and distractions of life, giving up the pride of learning and to be humble, forsaking the disputations of theologians and patiently enduring the world's contempt and contradiction.[31][32]

Kempis stresses the importance of solitude and silence, "how undisturbed a conscience we would have if we never went searching after ephemeral joys nor concerned ourselves with affairs of the world..." Kempis writes that the "World and all its allurements pass away" and following sensual desires leads to a "dissipated conscience" and a "distracted heart".(Chap.20)[33] Kempis writes that one should meditate on death and "live as becomes a pilgrim and a stranger on earth...for this earth of ours is no lasting city."(Chap.23)[34] On the Day of Judgement, Kempis writes that a good and pure conscience will give more joy than all the philosophy one has ever learned, fervent prayer will bring more happiness than a "multi-course banquet", the silence will be more "exhilarating" than long tales, holy deeds will be of greater value than nice-sounding words.(Chap.24)[35]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_of_Christ



So is it prideful to admire learning?


Also, though I live in a place where I get much more of it than most people, I'm not sure that I prefer silence to a long tale, especially if it is set to music.
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Is America a "Christian" Nation?

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

TaK is a mystic, not a theologian, and should be read in the proper context.

I often listen to the free Librivox audiobook version while driving.

https://librivox.org/search?q=Imitation ... m=advanced
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
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