Why don't Fundamentalist schools...

[kenpo tiger]

*One* must also take into account the times in which Jesus and the others lived. Their affect was one of violence, since they were surrounded by it and thus had to conform to survive.

Good stuff - interesting. You've explained a portion of it a step further than is usual.

 

[elder999]

Getting back to the original question, though...

Psychologist Carl Jung once said that a great deal of institutional religion seems designed to prevent the faithful from having a spiritual experience. Instead of teaching people how to live in peace, religious leaders often concentrate on marginal issues: Can women or gay people be ordained as priests or rabbis? Is contraception permissible? Is evolution compatible with the first chapter of Genesis? Instead of bringing people together, these distracting preoccupations actually encourage policies of exclusion, since they tend to draw attention to the differences between “us” and “them.”

These policies of exclusion can have dramatic consequences. Most notably they have given rise to the militant piety that we now call fundamentalism, which has erupted in every major world religion during the 20th century. Every fundamentalist movement, whether in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, is convinced that the modern secular establishment wants to destroy it. Fundamentalism is not inherently violent or even out to change the world; most fundamentalists simply want to live what they regard as a good religious life in a world that seems increasingly hostile to faith. As someone correctly pointed out earlier in the thread, the Amish are fundamentalists, after all, and practice pacifism as part of that fundamentalism, but when a conflict has become entrenched in a region—as in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Chechnya—religious fundamentalists have gotten sucked into the escalating violence and become part of the problem.

In the United States members of the so-called Christian Right believe that their faith is in jeopardy and that they have a sacred duty to protect it by attacking their liberal opponents, or what they view as liberal ideologies, like being pro-choice as far as abortion, or pro-euthanasia, gay marriage, and teaching the theory of evolution in schools-or, as in the case of the original post, jazz, evolution and what I can only assume is un-chaperoned dating. Some of them believe the reasons for these are strongly supported by a literal interpretation of some verse in the Bible, or injunction against certain types of behavior. In some cases, they might be right, but they’re wrong, more often than not.


In any case, they see often see jazz music, rock and roll, and other modern expressions as arising from or leading to licentious behavior, and thus, sinful. Likewise unsupervised dating: not that kids can’t date without having pre-marital sex, but why allow them the temptation, when humans have, from the fundamentalist point of view, a sinful nature. Teaching evolution runs counter to certain more literal interpretations of the Genesis creation myth, so it is against, in some fundamentalist’s views, the very word of God.

 

[heretic888]

Nice try, guys. But, no cigar.

Its debatable how entrenched Jesus and his disciples were within a Semitic culture --- or whether they even existed at all --- but, unfortunately, it really has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

Why, you may ask? Quite simple. Neither Jesus nor any of his direct disciples nor anybody living in the first century of the Common Era wrote the gospels of the New Testament. T'were a bunch of Greek dudes.

C'man, now. I've gone over this 'lil pickle in at least three different threads --- cited the same sources and research over and over. To sum up, the fellahs that wrote the four canonical gospels did not speak Hebrew (they have Jesus authoritatively cite the Septugaint to a bunch of Israeli rabbis?!), were not familiar with Palestinian/Israeli geography (such as saying certain regions were in the exact opposite direction to certain bodies of water), and were not familiar with Jewish laws (such as having Jesus tell women they cannot divorce when women had no such rights in Israeli society at the time). The canonical gospels are about as "Semitic" as my made-in-China Timex watch.

Not to mention, the entire philosophy, mythology, and metaphysics they expound is completely Hellenistic. The "Logos" (or "Word") is pilfered from Heraclitus. The injunction to forsake one's family, friends, and possessions to follow the Way is pure Pythagoreanism and Cynicism. The entire dying-and-resurrecting Godman/Savior thing had been around since the stories of Osiris. The injunction against marriage (unless one cannot control his "urges") and celebrating of celibacy (that's a tongue twister!) is entirely Pythagorean. The "do unto others" stands in contrast with conventional understanding of the Torah (which more commonly asserts "blood for blood"), but is in complete harmony with Pythagoras, Plato, and Socrates.

At best, the New Testament --- and early "Christianity" as a whole --- is a revised form of Neo-Platonic philosophy given a thiny-veiled Jewish guise.

Pshaw, now. Pshaw. :asian:

 

[Tgace]

 

[heretic888]

Psychologist Carl Jung once said that a great deal of institutional religion seems designed to prevent the faithful from having a spiritual experience. Instead of teaching people how to live in peace, religious leaders often concentrate on marginal issues: Can women or gay people be ordained as priests or rabbis? Is contraception permissible? Is evolution compatible with the first chapter of Genesis? Instead of bringing people together, these distracting preoccupations actually encourage policies of exclusion, since they tend to draw attention to the differences between “us” and “them.”

While I can certainly sympathize with the general message of your post here, I'm afraid the Jungian understanding of "spirituality" is a bit skewed. Not to mention, overtly Romantic in its disposition. Jung believed spirituality and mysticism was "experience of the archetypes". Unfortunately, almost all of Jung's archetypes --- such as Father, Mother, Shadow, Old Man, and Animus --- are concrete-operational role personae. They are not transcendental or transrational structures (as we see expounded with Plato's Forms).

Actual spiritual experience, for most people, is usually only attainable via sustained contemplative or meditative practice. Whether it be Zen sitting meditation, Sufi contemplative prayer, mystical Christian practice, Hindu yoga, or whatever. Sometimes an "illumination" can be evoked from near-death experiences, certain religious rituals, or even gazing upon certain works of art --- but, for most people, this kinda stuff is fairly rare. Meditation is your best bet.

Jung doesn't expound anything resembling meditative or contemplative practice. His psychotherapy is little more than a really fancy form of scripting.

Just my take, mind you. Laterz. :asian:

 

[heretic888]

Indeed.

 

[MisterMike]

LOL. I guess that's his story and he's sticking to it...

 

[rmcrobertson]

Not that anything will get some folks to read well when their deep beliefs are at stake, but this is from, "The Skeptic's Dictionary:"

Carl Jung (1875-1961), synchronicity & the collective unconscious


Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and colleague of Freud's who broke away from Freudian psychoanalysis over the issue of the unconscious mind as a reservoir of repressed sexual trauma which causes all neuroses. Jung founded his own school of analytical psychology.


Jung believed in astrology, spiritualism, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and ESP.* In addition to believing in a number of occult* and paranormal notions, Jung contributed two new ones in his attempt to establish a psychology rooted in occult and pseudoscientific beliefs: synchronicity and the collective unconscious.


Synchronicity is an explanatory principle; it explains "meaningful coincidences" such as a beetle flying into his room while a patient was describing a dream about a scarab. The scarab is an Egyptian symbol of rebirth, he noted. Therefore, the propitious moment of the flying beetle indicated that the transcendental meaning of both the scarab in the dream and the insect in the room was that the patient needed to be liberated from her excessive rationalism. His notion of synchronicity is that there is an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time rather than sequentially. He claimed that there is a synchrony between the mind and the phenomenal world of perception.


What reasons are there for accepting synchronicity as an explanation for anything in the real world? What it explains is more simply and elegantly explained by the ability of the human mind to find meaning and significance where there is none (apophenia).* Jung's defense of acausal connections is so inane I hesitate to repeat it. He argues that "acausal phenomena must exist...since statistics are only possible anyway if there are also exceptions" (1973, Letters, 2:426). He asserts that "...improbable facts exist--otherwise there would be no statistical mean..."* (ibid.: 2:374). Finally, he claims that "the premise of probability simultaneously postulates the existence of the improbable" (ibid. : 2:540). However, if you think of all the pairs of things that can happen in a person's lifetime, and add to that our very versatile ability of finding meaningful connections between things, it then seems likely that most of us will experience many meaningful coincidences. The coincidences are predictable but we are the ones who give them meaning.


Even if there were a synchronicity between the mind and the world such that certain coincidences resonate with transcendental truth, there would still be the problem of figuring out those truths. What guide could one possibly use to determine the correctness of an interpretation? There is none except intuition and insight, the same guides that led Jung's teacher, Sigmund Freud, in his interpretation of dreams. The concept of synchronicity is but an expression of apophenia.


According to psychiatrist and author, Anthony Storr, Jung went through a period of mental illness during which he thought he was a prophet with "special insight." Jung referred to his "creative illness" (between 1913-1917) as* a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious. His great "insight" was that he thought all his patients over 35 suffered from "loss of religion" and he had just the thing to fill up their empty, aimless, senseless lives: his own metaphysical system of archetypes and the collective unconscious.


Synchronicity provides access to the archetypes, which are located in the collective unconscious and are characterized by being universal mental predispositions not grounded in experience. Like Plato's Forms (eidos), the archetypes do not originate in the world of the senses, but exist independently of that world and are known directly by the mind. Unlike Plato, however, Jung believed that the archetypes arise spontaneously in the mind, especially in times of crisis. Just as there are meaningful coincidences, such as the beetle and the scarab dream, which open the door to transcendent truths, so too a crisis opens the door of the collective unconscious and lets out an archetype to reveal some deep truth hidden from ordinary consciousness.


Mythology, Jung claimed, bases its stories on the archetypes. Mythology is the reservoir of deep, hidden wondrous truths. Dreams and psychological crises, fevers and derangement, chance encounters resonating with "meaningful coincidences," all are gateways to the collective unconscious, which is ready to restore the individual psyche to health with its insights. Jung maintained that these metaphysical notions are scientifically grounded, but they are not empirically testable in any meaningful way. In short, they are not scientific at all, but pseudoscientific.


Incidentally, "Concrete operational role personae," is, well, kinda gibberishy. "Concrete operations," is a term taken from the work of Jean Piaget; it refers to a phase in cognitive development during which the child sees the world wholly in terms of immediate perception and immediate consequences, with little or no ability to grasp abstractions or to draw conclusions. It would be better to simply say that archetypes are material structures, or "concrete," aspects of reality--but this would collide head-on with the incorrect definition of Jungian archetypes as being material, empirically-verifiable realities.

As for "role personae," well, it's redundant. "Personae," is the plural of, "persona," which means, literally, "mask--" and since a role is a mask one adopts....you see where I'm going with this.

I have to add that I get a little bored with the pseudo-professorial tone ("Pshaw, now..."), and the faux conversationalism (which only developed about three months back), used to cover up the repetition of the ideas of this Ken Wilber guy. If you take a look at his stuff, you'll see pretty much identical claims. It's not that I disagree about the provenance of some aspects of the Gospels--it's that Wilber, too, simply jumbles ideas and claims together.

But more seriously, folks, Jung does raise the same issues of the collision between religious experience and some aspects of humanist and empiricist thought that are fundamental to public education in this country. There's no way to paper over that divide, and it's been there from at least the 1880s.

And the last thing that's, "heretical," in this particular point in history, is an espousal of fundamentalist values.

 

[elder999]

Where to begin?

Its debatable how entrenched Jesus and his disciples were within a Semitic culture --- or whether they even existed at all --- but, unfortunately, it really has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

Why, you may ask? Quite simple. Neither Jesus nor any of his direct disciples nor anybody living in the first century of the Common Era wrote the gospels of the New Testament. T'were a bunch of Greek dudes.

C'man, now. I've gone over this 'lil pickle in at least three different threads --- cited the same sources and research over and over. To sum up, the fellahs that wrote the four canonical gospels did not speak Hebrew (they have Jesus authoritatively cite the Septugaint to a bunch of Israeli rabbis?!), were not familiar with Palestinian/Israeli geography (such as saying certain regions were in the exact opposite direction to certain bodies of water), and were not familiar with Jewish laws (such as having Jesus tell women they cannot divorce when women had no such rights in Israeli society at the time). The canonical gospels are about as "Semitic" as my made-in-China Timex watch.

Not to mention, the entire philosophy, mythology, and metaphysics they expound is completely Hellenistic. The "Logos" (or "Word") is pilfered from Heraclitus. The injunction to forsake one's family, friends, and possessions to follow the Way is pure Pythagoreanism and Cynicism. The entire dying-and-resurrecting Godman/Savior thing had been around since the stories of Osiris. The injunction against marriage (unless one cannot control his "urges") and celebrating of celibacy (that's a tongue twister!) is entirely Pythagorean. The "do unto others" stands in contrast with conventional understanding of the Torah (which more commonly asserts "blood for blood"), but is in complete harmony with Pythagoras, Plato, and Socrates.

At best, the New Testament --- and early "Christianity" as a whole --- is a revised form of Neo-Platonic philosophy given a thiny-veiled Jewish guise.

Firstly, questions about the provenance of the Gospels in relation to authorship are sketchy at best for a variety for reasons, not the least being that they are a conflation of several documents and traditions, just as Christianity is. It’s rather like the wretched argument about who truly wrote the plays of Shakespeare: Marlowe, Bacon, Derby or De Vere, et. al. An interesting distraction and exercise in intellectual masturbation at best a dismissal of the value of the work at worst. It is also, as you pointed out, not germane to the question at hand, that of the first post.

At any rate, to dismiss the existence of pre-canonical Christianity and its inherent Semitism is to dismiss the archaeological record and contemporaneous Christian writings. It’s also a rather common mistake to look at an undeniable Greek influence and espouse the notion that Christianity is entirely a product of Greek culture; it’s a dismissal of, or indicative of ignorance of the rather common religious phenomena of syncretism, and rather like calling the Catholics pagans because so many of the figures of their communion of saints have origins as pagan gods-not entirely inaccurate, but missing the bigger picture by offering a narrow, dumped down point of view.

To state that the notion of "love thy enemy" was taken whole cloth from one source, and not necessarily original thought, is to dismiss another rather common phenomena of well structured religious ethics, that of commonality. To say that the Golden Rule, do unto others, is not a product of Christianity because it can be found in Greek philosophy, and therefore must be of Greek origin or influence, is to entirely miss that the very same rule can be found in Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism., and a variety of other isms of one sort or another that have no written ethos.

Lastly, while the influence of the ancient mystery schools on Christianity is readily apparent, the undeniable differences in the development of Christian practice-as well as the early conflicts over entirely Semitic issues such as table fellowship and circumcision- point to it being something altogether different from, but influenced by Greek thought-among others, and, again, an examination of pre-canonical Christian writings would lead to this undeniable conclusion, rather than the simple minded notion that Christianity is an entirely Greek school of thought that exhibits no Semitic or other influence.

I'd rather approach your whole post about "spiritual experience" elsewhere, rahter than continue with the thread drift......

...but it's fair to say that I don't entirely agree with you there, either.:uhyeah:

 

[heretic888]

Oh, good grief...

Not that anything will get some folks to read well when their deep beliefs are at stake, but this is from, "The Skeptic's Dictionary" [...]

Is there a particular reason you felt the need to copy-and-paste the entire damn article with a simple link would have sufficed?? Also, you really need to work on delineating which parts of your posts are yours and which are from other authors (italics would be nice)...

Even if there were a synchronicity between the mind and the world such that certain coincidences resonate with transcendental truth, there would still be the problem of figuring out those truths. What guide could one possibly use to determine the correctness of an interpretation? There is none except intuition and insight, the same guides that led Jung's teacher, Sigmund Freud, in his interpretation of dreams. The concept of synchronicity is but an expression of apophenia.

Despite all the guffawing that "The Skeptic's Dictionary" gives, Jung's "synchronicity" is just another word for ESP --- which Freud himself believed in.

According to psychiatrist and author, Anthony Storr, Jung went through a period of mental illness during which he thought he was a prophet with "special insight." Jung referred to his "creative illness" (between 1913-1917) as* a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious. His great "insight" was that he thought all his patients over 35 suffered from "loss of religion" and he had just the thing to fill up their empty, aimless, senseless lives: his own metaphysical system of archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Ah, so ad hominems, then??

Synchronicity provides access to the archetypes [...]

It should be noted that "synchronicity" --- not a view I particularly subscribe to, anyway --- is not Jung's only, or even principal, means of accessing the "archetypes".

[...] which are located in the collective unconscious and are characterized by being universal mental predispositions not grounded in experience.

This is a half-truth.

The "archetypes" are believed by Jung to be a type of species-typical inheritance resulting from millenia upon millenia of shared experiences. He connects them, at least somewhat, to human biology and genetics.

They are not, however, dependent on the individual's experiences --- well, sorta not, anyway --- but are very much a result of collective human experience.

Jung maintained that these metaphysical notions are scientifically grounded, but they are not empirically testable in any meaningful way. In short, they are not scientific at all, but pseudoscientific.

Some are, some aren't.

"Concrete operations," is a term taken from the work of Jean Piaget; it refers to a phase in cognitive development during which the child sees the world wholly in terms of immediate perception and immediate consequences, with little or no ability to grasp abstractions or to draw conclusions. It would be better to simply say that archetypes are material structures, or "concrete," aspects of reality--but this would collide head-on with the incorrect definition of Jungian archetypes as being material, empirically-verifiable realities.

You're collapsing pre-op and con-op, Robert. They're very, very different.

Might wanna brush up on your Piaget, methinks.

As for "role personae," well, it's redundant. "Personae," is the plural of, "persona," which means, literally, "mask--" and since a role is a mask one adopts....you see where I'm going with this.

Contrary to your constant claiming, Robert, a social role is not necessarily a "mask" individuals adopt. Unless, of course, you think every father and mother in the world is really "faking" being a father and mother??

I have to add that I get a little bored with the pseudo-professorial tone ("Pshaw, now..."), and the faux conversationalism (which only developed about three months back)[...]

*laughs* Try three years back. Also, If you're bored, feel free to leave.

It's not that I disagree about the provenance of some aspects of the Gospels--it's that Wilber, too, simply jumbles ideas and claims together.

But, as you have so extensively demonstrated in the past, Robert, you know about as much about Ken Wilber's philosophy as I do about quantum physics.

And the last thing that's, "heretical," in this particular point in history, is an espousal of fundamentalist values.

"Why, Mr. Pot, you're looking rather black on this fine evening, if I must do say so myself!!"

"Why, thank your very much, Mr. Kettle. Your comments are so noted!!"

 

[elder999]

1. Teach evolution.

2. Allow jazz music.

3. Permit students to be out alone.

What up, here, is that there's a lot of kvetching about them damn secular humanists and their political correctness, their censorship, their narrow-mindedness. Well, shoe's on the other foot, now.

What are fundamentalist Christian schools so afraid of? Why do they find it necessary to regulate every aspect of their students' lives? Why should it be impossible for some of us to teach there, though their professors are welcome at any college or university run by secular humanists or Catholics?

Just to get things back on track...

A more concise question might be “What danger does fundamentalism represent?”

In light of the events of 9/11, the answer becomes somewhat obvious, but what about the danger fundamentalism represents to religion?

When people feel that their backs are to the wall, they often lash out aggressively. Hence the hatred that continues to cause so much turmoil around the world.

Yet such religiously inspired hatred represents a major defeat for religion. That’s because, at their core, all the great world faiths—including Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—agree on the supreme importance of compassion. The early sages and prophets all taught their followers to cultivate a habit of empathy for all living beings.
Why, then, do supposedly “religious” leaders declare war in God’s name? And why do some people use “God” to give a sacred seal of approval to their own opinions?

I would argue that these people have forgotten what it means to practice compassion.The word compassion does not; of course, mean to feel sorry for someone. Like sympathy, it means to feel with others, to enter their point of view and realize that they have the same fears and sorrows as yourself. The essential dynamic of compassion is summed up in the olden rule, first enunciated by Confucius in about 500 B.C.E.: ‘Do not do to others as you would not have done to you.” Confucius taught his disciples to get into the habit of shu: “Likening to oneself.” They had to look into their own hearts, discover what gave them pain, and then rigorously refrain from inflicting this suffering upon other people.

The Buddha also taught a version of the golden rule. He used to advise his monks and lay followers to undertake meditative exercises called The Immeasurables. They had to send out positive thoughts of compassion, benevolence, and sympathy to the four corners of the earth, not omitting a single creature (even a mosquito!) from this radius of concern. They would thus find that once they had gone beyond the limiting confines of egotism and self-interest their humanity had been enhanced. They would even have intimations of infinity.

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, taught the golden rule in a particularly emphatic way. One day a heathen asked him to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching while standing on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and replied: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it!” This is an extraordinary statement. Hillel did not mention any of the doctrines that seem essential to Judaism, such as belief in one God, the Exodus from Egypt, and adherence to the complexities of the Law of Moses.

Jesus taught the golden rule in this way: he told his followers to love even their enemies and never to judge or retaliate. If somebody struck them on the face, they must turn the other cheek. In his parable of the Last Day, when the King comes to judge the world, those who enter the Kingdom do not do so because they have adopted orthodox theology or observed the correct sexual mores, but because they have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsts and visited the sick and criminals in prison. St. Paul agreed. Christians could have faith that moved mountains, but if they lacked charity it was worth nothing.

Islam is also committed to the compassionate ethic. The bedrock message of the Koran is an insistence that it is wrong to buildup a private fortune, and good to share your wealth fairly in order to create a just and decent society where poor and vulnerable people are treated with respect; On-the Last Day the one question that God will ask Muslims is whether they have looked after the widows, the orphans, and the oppressed, and if they have not, they cannot enter Paradise.

Why was there such unanimous agreement on the primacy of compassion? Truly religious people are pragmatic. The early prophets and sages did not preach the discipline of empathy because it sounded edifying, but because experience showed that it worked. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our personal misery. When we gave them up, we were happier. Egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of ourselves and impeded our enlightenment.

The safest way of combating ego was to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put others there. Perhaps one can explain it this way: we are programmed for self- defense; human beings completed their biological evolution during the Paleolithic Period, when they became hunters. Aggression is thus deeply written into our nature. If we make a consistent habit of countering this aggression, we probably do experience a change of consciousness.

Human beings by nature seek ecstasy, a word that comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “to stand outside” the self. If we do not find ecstasy in religion, we turn to art, music, dance, sex, sports, even drugs, but such rapture can only be temporary

Religious leaders claim that the practice of the golden rule can give us an experience of ecstasy that is deeper and more permanent If every time we are tempted to speak unkindly of an annoying colleague, a sibling, or an enemy country we asked how we would like such a thing said of ourselves, and, as a result of this reflection, desisted, in that moment we would transcend our ego. Living in this way, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, we would enjoy a constant, slow-burning ecstasy that leaves the self behind. The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once remarked that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is.

The practice of compassionhas to be consistent; it does not work if it is selective. If, as Jesus explained, we simply love those who are well disposed toward us, no effort is involved; we are simply banking up our own egotism and remain trapped in the selfishness that we are supposed to transcend. That, I think, is why Jesus demanded that his followers love their enemies. They were required to feel with people who would never feel affection for them, and extend their sympathy without expecting any benefit for themselves.

Does that mean that we are supposed to “love” Hitler or Osama bin Laden? The practice of compassion has nothing to do with feelings. According to the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, what we call love simply requires that we seek the good of another. If we allow our rage and hatred to fester, this would not hurt our enemies—it would probably gratify them—but we ourselves would be diminished. Anger is what the Buddha called an “unskillful” emotion. Feelings of rage are natural,and have a place in how we relate to the world, but if they are overindulged they are unhelpful, since they often proceed from an inflated sense of our own importance.

 

[heretic888]

Now, on to more relevant discussions...

Firstly, questions about the provenance of the Gospels in relation to authorship are sketchy at best for a variety for reasons, not the least being that they are a conflation of several documents and traditions, just as Christianity is.

Yes. But, you see, the "Gospels" are all we know about "Jesus Christ". If you're going to go around claiming the man (who probably never even existed) was a symbol for all things Semitic, it helps to have his source material back this up.

At any rate, to dismiss the existence of pre-canonical Christianity and its inherent Semitism is to dismiss the archaeological record and contemporaneous Christian writings.

What we know about pre-canonical Christianity was that is most assuredly was not centered in Israel. In fact, its practically non-existent in the "Promised Land" during the first two or so centuries CE. The movement(s) abound(s), however, in places like Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, and even Rome.

Connecting Christianity with any concrete "archaelogical record" is, also, about as "sketchy" as it gets.

It’s also a rather common mistake to look at an undeniable Greek influence and espouse the notion that Christianity is entirely a product of Greek culture; it’s a dismissal of, or indicative of ignorance of the rather common religious phenomena of syncretism, and rather like calling the Catholics pagans because so many of the figures of their communion of saints have origins as pagan gods-not entirely inaccurate, but missing the bigger picture by offering a narrow, dumped down point of view.

Actually, my position is that "Christianity" was a Jewish adaptation of the Greco-Roman mystery schools. In essence, it was an attempt to "trick" the Jewish populace into "buying into" Hellenistic philosopy and religion by claiming Judaic roots (a very common practice at the time, as we see with Philo's claims that, say, Moses taught Plato philosophy).

As Earl Doherty has put it elsewhere, the early Christian apologists as a whole were basically Logos philosophers that, at best, viewed any biographical "Jesus Christ" in a secondary capacity. They were essentially Neo-Platonists wedded to a Jewish theology and ethic; basically, preaching Platonic philosophy within a Jewish cultural context.

To state that the notion of "love thy enemy" was taken whole cloth from one source, and not necessarily original thought, is to dismiss another rather common phenomena of well structured religious ethics, that of commonality. To say that the Golden Rule, do unto others, is not a product of Christianity because it can be found in Greek philosophy, and therefore must be of Greek origin or influence, is to entirely miss that the very same rule can be found in Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism., and a variety of other isms of one sort or another that have no written ethos.

Actually, it wasn't that as much as it was a matter of verbatim copies from extant sources (like, say, Plato's writings about Socrates). These weren't the same "ideas", they were almost exactly the same words.

Lastly, while the influence of the ancient mystery schools on Christianity is readily apparent, the undeniable differences in the development of Christian practice-as well as the early conflicts over entirely Semitic issues such as table fellowship and circumcision- point to it being something altogether different from, but influenced by Greek thought-among others, and, again, an examination of pre-canonical Christian writings would lead to this undeniable conclusion, rather than the simple minded notion that Christianity is an entirely Greek school of thought that exhibits no Semitic or other influence.

The major "Semitic" influence on Christianity was one of cultural backdrop and context. The philosophy and metaphysic itself is Platonic through and through (especially in Paul's letters).

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

Just to get things back on track...

A more concise question might be “What danger does fundamentalism represent?”

In light of the events of 9/11, the answer becomes somewhat obvious, but what about the danger fundamentalism represents to religion?

When people feel that their backs are to the wall, they often lash out aggressively. Hence the hatred that continues to cause so much turmoil around the world.

Yet such religiously inspired hatred represents a major defeat for religion. That’s because, at their core, all the great world faiths—including Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—agree on the supreme importance of compassion. The early sages and prophets all taught their followers to cultivate a habit of empathy for all living beings.
Why, then, do supposedly “religious” leaders declare war in God’s name? And why do some people use “God” to give a sacred seal of approval to their own opinions?

I would argue that these people have forgotten what it means to practice compassion.The word compassion does not; of course, mean to feel sorry for someone. Like sympathy, it means to feel with others, to enter their point of view and realize that they have the same fears and sorrows as yourself. The essential dynamic of compassion is summed up in the olden rule, first enunciated by Confucius in about 500 B.C.E.: ‘Do not do to others as you would not have done to you.” Confucius taught his disciples to get into the habit of shu: “Likening to oneself.” They had to look into their own hearts, discover what gave them pain, and then rigorously refrain from inflicting this suffering upon other people.

The Buddha also taught a version of the golden rule. He used to advise his monks and lay followers to undertake meditative exercises called The Immeasurables. They had to send out positive thoughts of compassion, benevolence, and sympathy to the four corners of the earth, not omitting a single creature (even a mosquito!) from this radius of concern. They would thus find that once they had gone beyond the limiting confines of egotism and self-interest their humanity had been enhanced. They would even have intimations of infinity.

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, taught the golden rule in a particularly emphatic way. One day a heathen asked him to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching while standing on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and replied: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it!” This is an extraordinary statement. Hillel did not mention any of the doctrines that seem essential to Judaism, such as belief in one God, the Exodus from Egypt, and adherence to the complexities of the Law of Moses.

Jesus taught the golden rule in this way: he told his followers to love even their enemies and never to judge or retaliate. If somebody struck them on the face, they must turn the other cheek. In his parable of the Last Day, when the King comes to judge the world, those who enter the Kingdom do not do so because they have adopted orthodox theology or observed the correct sexual mores, but because they have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsts and visited the sick and criminals in prison. St. Paul agreed. Christians could have faith that moved mountains, but if they lacked charity it was worth nothing.

Islam is also committed to the compassionate ethic. The bedrock message of the Koran is an insistence that it is wrong to buildup a private fortune, and good to share your wealth fairly in order to create a just and decent society where poor and vulnerable people are treated with respect; On-the Last Day the one question that God will ask Muslims is whether they have looked after the widows, the orphans, and the oppressed, and if they have not, they cannot enter Paradise.

Why was there such unanimous agreement on the primacy of compassion? Truly religious people are pragmatic. The early prophets and sages did not preach the discipline of empathy because it sounded edifying, but because experience showed that it worked. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our personal misery. When we gave them up, we were happier. Egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of ourselves and impeded our enlightenment.

The safest way of combating ego was to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put others there. Perhaps one can explain it this way: we are programmed for self- defense; human beings completed their biological evolution during the Paleolithic Period, when they became hunters. Aggression is thus deeply written into our nature. If we make a consistent habit of countering this aggression, we probably do experience a change of consciousness.

Human beings by nature seek ecstasy, a word that comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “to stand outside” the self. If we do not find ecstasy in religion, we turn to art, music, dance, sex, sports, even drugs, but such rapture can only be temporary

Religious leaders claim that the practice of the golden rule can give us an experience of ecstasy that is deeper and more permanent If every time we are tempted to speak unkindly of an annoying colleague, a sibling, or an enemy country we asked how we would like such a thing said of ourselves, and, as a result of this reflection, desisted, in that moment we would transcend our ego. Living in this way, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, we would enjoy a constant, slow-burning ecstasy that leaves the self behind. The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once remarked that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is.

The practice of compassionhas to be consistent; it does not work if it is selective. If, as Jesus explained, we simply love those who are well disposed toward us, no effort is involved; we are simply banking up our own egotism and remain trapped in the selfishness that we are supposed to transcend. That, I think, is why Jesus demanded that his followers love their enemies. They were required to feel with people who would never feel affection for them, and extend their sympathy without expecting any benefit for themselves.

Does that mean that we are supposed to “love” Hitler or Osama bin Laden? The practice of compassion has nothing to do with feelings. According to the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, what we call love simply requires that we seek the good of another. If we allow our rage and hatred to fester, this would not hurt our enemies—it would probably gratify them—but we ourselves would be diminished. Anger is what the Buddha called an “unskillful” emotion. Feelings of rage are natural,and have a place in how we relate to the world, but if they are overindulged they are unhelpful, since they often proceed from an inflated sense of our own importance.

Well said. :asian:

 

[rmcrobertson]

Just to take up one point showing why I'm not going to bother to read through the collected works of Ken Wilber:

persona
/person/

• noun (pl. personas or personae /personee/) 1 Psychoanalysis the aspect of a person’s character that is presented to or perceived by others. Compare with ANIMA. 2 a role or character adopted by an author or actor.

— ORIGIN Latin, ‘mask, character played by an actor’.

This comes from "The Compact Oxford English Dictionary," but hey, what would THEY know.

As for fundamentalism, the question--as it would be in other schools--is the refusal to tolerate anything unorthodox. That's the fundamental difference between them and humanist, liberal public schools: humanist and liberal schools, by definition, have an investment in the heterodox.

 

[heretic888]

Just so I don't waste my time with more lengthy retorts...

Just to take up one point showing why I'm not going to bother to read through the collected works of Ken Wilber:

persona
/person/

• noun (pl. personas or personae /personee/) 1 Psychoanalysis the aspect of a person’s character that is presented to or perceived by others. Compare with ANIMA. 2 a role or character adopted by an author or actor.

— ORIGIN Latin, ‘mask, character played by an actor’.

This comes from "The Compact Oxford English Dictionary," but hey, what would THEY know.

Logical Fallacy: Appeal To Ridicule
Logical Fallacy: Composition
Logical Fallacy: Genetic Fallacy
Logical Fallacy: Hasty Generalization
Logical Fallacy: Straw Man

As for fundamentalism, the question--as it would be in other schools--is the refusal to tolerate anything unorthodox. That's the fundamental difference between them and humanist, liberal public schools: humanist and liberal schools, by definition, have an investment in the heterodox.

Actual Definition: Fundamentalism
Actual Definition: Humanism

Based on the above definitions, 'fundamentalism' is clearly intolerant to alternative viewpoints. However, there is nothing to indicate that all forms of 'humanism' are necessarily tolerant of alternative viewpoints, either. For example, many 'humanists' are exceedingly intolerant of religious and/or supernatural explanations.

To claim there is no such thing as a 'fundamentalist humanist' is a logical fallacy.

Laterz.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Please look up the terms, "humanism," "liberalism," and "fundamentalism." It is in theory possible to have a "fundamentlaist humanist," or a "fundamentalist liberal," but such usages are in fact oxymoronic. Moreover, the term, "fundamentalist," is associated exclusively with religion in actual usuage, as well as in history. The essential question of this thread is answered by the very definitions of the words:

humanism

• noun 1 a rationalistic system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. 2 a Renaissance cultural movement which turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.


liberal

• adjective 1 willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own. 2 (of a society, law, etc.) favourable to individual rights and freedoms. 3 (in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate reform. 4 (Liberal) (in the UK) relating to the Liberal Democrat party. 5 (especially of an interpretation of a law) not strictly literal. 6 given, used, or giving in generous amounts. 7 (of education) concerned with broadening general knowledge and experience.

fundamentalism

• noun 1 a form of Protestant Christianity which upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible. 2 the strict maintenance of the ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology.

To collapse such definitions together is--as I have mentioned in other contexts--to ignore the distinction inherent in the actual language, and in history. Indeed, that is the very point of such notions as archetypes: to collapse the differences that make language, and culture, and history, real and meaningful for people.

It is also--not accidentally--the point of Jung's work, which was primarily religious in philosophy.

 

[heretic888]

Not going to get into the Jung thing again because (a) its off-topic, and (b) as I have repeatedly said, I'm not a Jungian or even a neo-Jungian.

As to your inquiry, one of the definitions of 'fundamentalist' is, to use your own words, 'the strict maintenance of the ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology'. The ideology in question can easily be that of political liberalism or secular humanism. In fact, in my own experience and readings, I have found a number of 'humanists' or 'liberals' that lend themselves to 'fundamentalist' treatments.

A perfect example are the 'liberal' moral-relativists who resolutely assure the rest of us that the only Absolute Truth is that There Is No Absolute Truth. Both fundamentalist and contradictory.

Laterz.

 

[rmcrobertson]

You do realize that this sort of collapsing is pretty much the same saort of thing you see in "Animal House...." Oh wow, you mean we could all be...just atoms in the fingernail of some gigantic being?

The definitions actually point out that it is inherent in the nature of Funadamentalism as an intellectual and philosophical enterprise to exclude anything that violates their own dogma, as fundamentalists themselves will tell you. And they point out that, whatever the idiocies and hobbyhorses of individual liberals and/or humanists, it is inherent in the very nature of their intellectual and philosophical enterprises to encourage dissent and inquiry.

It has been fashinable for a while, in certain rightist circles, to claim that liberals and humanists are, "religious fanatics," of one sort or another. And when we start burning witches, outlawing the teaching of the plain facts of science, burning books, screaming that gay people are bound for some hot place, cheering 9/11 as proof of The Big Guy's Just Wrath, and generally carrying on in ways that squash people's lives, I'll accept that fantasy.

 

[heretic888]

You do realize that this sort of collapsing is pretty much the same saort of thing you see in "Animal House...." Oh wow, you mean we could all be...just atoms in the fingernail of some gigantic being?

Ummm.....

Logical Fallacy: Appeal To Ridicule
Logical Fallacy: Straw Man

.... guess not.

The definitions actually point out that it is inherent in the nature of Funadamentalism as an intellectual and philosophical enterprise to exclude anything that violates their own dogma, as fundamentalists themselves will tell you. And they point out that, whatever the idiocies and hobbyhorses of individual liberals and/or humanists, it is inherent in the very nature of their intellectual and philosophical enterprises to encourage dissent and inquiry.

Sure. But, y'see, the thing is I'm not talkinig about "enterprises" here --- I'm talking about actual people.

The proof, after all, is in the pudding. Not in detached theory or ideology.

It has been fashinable for a while, in certain rightist circles, to claim that liberals and humanists are, "religious fanatics," of one sort or another. And when we start burning witches, outlawing the teaching of the plain facts of science, burning books, screaming that gay people are bound for some hot place, cheering 9/11 as proof of The Big Guy's Just Wrath, and generally carrying on in ways that squash people's lives, I'll accept that fantasy.

So, in other words.....

Logical Fallacy: Red Herring
Logical Fallacy: Appeal To Ridicule
Logical Fallacy: Special Pleading
Logical Fallacy: Straw Man
Logical Fallacy: Two Wrongs Make A Right

'Liberals', of course, can refer to a pretty broad range of individuals and movement here. But, as a whole, that they stick up their noses at any explanation that includes anything resembling something 'religious', 'spiritual', or 'transcendent' is pretty well-established --- and, is even evinced on this board on a regular basis.

'Fundamentalist' is to conservatives what 'reductionist' is to liberals.

Laterz.

 

[rmcrobertson]

The link between sucharguments and those of, say, Pat Robertson is that they all insist that humanism, liberalism, whatever, is just another religion, neither more nor less biased than fundamentalisms.

Please supply examples of liberal humanists banning books, firing teachers for their refusal to adhere to dogma, or assorted witch-burnings. For that matter, please supply examples of Christian liberals (yes, there is a very, very long list of them) such as Jimmy Carter trying such things. For THAT matter, please supply evidence that your definitions of such terms as, fundamentalist," and, "liberal," are more than yours and yours alone.

What fundamentalism shares with Jung is the erasure of history and the collapse of culture difference. In all three, "history," becomes simply the unfolding of God's plan, or the mere repetition of some such thing as, "spirituality," or, "evil;" individual experience simply slumps down into the expression of some vast Underlying Plan and Pattern.

Why ban? Because anything outside that Plan and Pattern is the expression of nonsense or of evil.