Whole Reason

I won­der if Wil­son was his first choice. More specif­i­cally, I won­der if William Lane Craig was ever asked. Hitch’s clos­ing remarks at the Emory U. debate with WLCraig left me want­ing more (and I would com­mend athe­ist and Chris­t­ian alike to look that up if you aren’t well famil­iar with it).

This looks good. Nice post. I’ve already watched sev­eral of the Hitchens/Wilson debates but I was unaware of “Col­li­sion.“
It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, “Is Chris­tian­ity good for the World?” I guess it depends on what type of Chris­tian­ity. This is actu­ally just part of a broader ques­tion, “Is reli­gion good for the world?” I think it’s the same answer though. It depends on what type of reli­gion.
Regard­ing Dr. Craig. I think he focuses more on the exis­tence of god and wouldn’t be as good as Wil­son regard­ing the topic above.

» CIN: It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, “Is Chris­tian­ity good for the World?“
I think that Alvin Schmidt answers this con­vinc­ingly in How Chris­tian­ity changed the world.
The answer imo is, reli­gion is bad for the world, but Chris­tian­ity has unques­tion­ably lifted human­ity by almost sin­gle­hand­edly cre­at­ing the roots and foun­da­tions for mod­ern sci­ence, edu­ca­tion, human value, hos­pi­tals, and abo­li­tion. With­out it, we would still be, for exam­ple, under the cruel hands or Rome, where slav­ery, sex­ual per­ver­sions of every sort (one his­to­rian notes that it was nearly impos­si­ble for any boy in Rome to reach man­hood with­out hav­ing been rit­u­ally pen­e­trated by an older man), pagan­ism, and infan­ti­cide were rampant.

…reli­gion is bad for the world, but Chris­tian­ity…
Is a religion.

» CIN: …reli­gion is bad for the world, but Christianity…Is a reli­gion.
Not in the way that I am using the term. I am using it in the sense that peo­ple say “I am not reli­gious, but I am spir­i­tual.“
I am talk­ing about the dif­fer­ence between exter­nal reli­gion and inter­nal holi­ness and devo­tion to God in a healthy man­ner.
The term reli­gion, in both sec­u­lar and Chris­t­ian con­texts, has come to have a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion, though sec­u­lar­ists use it in the broader sense.
So what I meant was “exter­nal, hyp­o­crit­i­cal reli­gion” is bad for human­ity. This does not pre­clude the healthy, sin­cere, non-hypocritical type — the type that has done so much good for humanity.

Rome, where slav­ery, sex­ual per­ver­sions of every sort (one his­to­rian notes that it was nearly impos­si­ble for any boy in Rome to reach man­hood with­out hav­ing been rit­u­ally pen­e­trated by an older man), pagan­ism, and infan­ti­cide were ram­pant.
daniel is a really strange per­son. He just can­not help putting in the vicious dig no mat­ter what the topic under dis­cus­sion (here: “one his­to­rian notes” — I’ve some­what con­ver­sant with Roman his­tory and cul­ture and I’ve never heard this. Slaves, it is true, were sub­jected to this from those so inclined, but Roman cit­i­zens? “Nearly impos­si­ble”? No, most def­i­nitely not. And to main­tain oth­er­wise is, itself, a per­ver­sion of his­tory and evi­dence of bias.). Daniel him­self is evi­dence of the type of Chris­tian­ity that has been bad for the world imo.

What fol­lowed the golden age of Rome were the Dark Ages, thanks to Christianity.

» CIN: What fol­lowed the golden age of Rome were the Dark Ages, thanks to Chris­tian­ity.
That piece of anti-Catholic enlight­en­ment spin is quickly being debunked by his­to­ri­ans. Real his­to­ri­ans refer to the period as the Mid­dle Ages — the Dark Ages is inac­cu­rate as a descrip­tor.
Per­haps you missed today’s ear­lier post:
Europe’s Dark Ages and Islam’s Golden Age — two his­toric fictions?

BTW, regard­ing the Dark Ages, there *was* a bit of chaos after the fall or Rome, which you can’t really BLAME on Chris­tian­ity, nor can you blame Xians for the Bar­bar­ian hordes that came in the wake of Rome’s Fall. So you may be right that there was per­haps a brief “dark” period. How­ever, you can blame Chris­tian­ity for the *recov­ery* of learn­ing, social order, the rise of sci­ence, and the like. See:
Top 10 Rea­sons The Dark Ages Were Not Dark

In fact the term “dark ages” is almost as ancient as the period itself — it was coined in the 1330s by Petrarch, the Ital­ian scholar, to refer to the decline of Latin lit­er­a­ture. It was later taken by the protes­tant reform­ers (16th cen­tury) and then the mem­bers of the Eng­light­en­ment (18th cen­tury) as a deroga­tory term with much broader impli­ca­tions, because they saw their own “enlight­en­ment” as absent from the ear­lier period. Hardly a fair judge­ment on the past. For­tu­nately for mod­ern stu­dents of his­tory, the term is now offi­cially known as the Early Mid­dle Ages — a name which has no con­no­ta­tions at all.

Were the Dark Ages really dark or is this descrip­tion inac­cu­rate?

‘Dark ages’ strictly speak­ing only refers to the cen­turies immedaitely after the fall of the roman empire, when bar­bar­ian hordes were con­quer­ing for­mer roman ter­ri­tory and there was lit­tle writ­ing going on. it is known as ‘dark’ because we sim­ply don’t know a lot about what was hap­pen­ing then due to the lack of writ­ing.
How­ever, things soon became more set­tled and sta­bilised, chris­tian­ity began to spread through Europe again, and monas­ter­ies were estab­lished which were cen­tres of learn­ing and pro­duced literature.

Dark Ages (Wikipedia)

Pop­u­lar cul­ture has fur­ther expanded on the term as a vehi­cle to depict the Mid­dle Ages as a time of back­ward­ness, extend­ing its pejo­ra­tive use and expand­ing its scope.

Were the Dark Ages All That Dark?

The charge that “the dom­i­nant view […] today is that the ‘fall of Rome’ was a largely peace­ful tran­si­tion to Ger­manic rule, within a period of pos­i­tive cul­tural trans­for­ma­tion,” as writ­ten in the jacket of Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civ­i­liza­tion, is a bit over­stated. But it is unde­ni­able that a sig­nif­i­cant school of thought has devel­oped over the past 30 years or so, argu­ing that the fall of the west­ern Roman Empire was not really that trau­matic an event, and to think oth­er­wise is to have a “pro-Roman” bias and a polit­i­cally incor­rect view that some civ­i­liza­tions are supe­rior to others.

So again, I must say that Chris­tian­ity has been over­whe­lim­ingly pos­i­tive for human­ity, not some­thing I can say for most other ide­olo­gies, though sec­u­lar­ism has made con­tri­bu­tions worth mentioning.

Lip­stick on a pig.

Some of my favorite courses recently have been the his­tory classes. In church his­tory, we spent a good deal of time look­ing at this tran­si­tional period between the age of Rome and the Mid­dle Ages.
Part of the con­fu­sion between what Daniel is say­ing and what Cineaste is argu­ing is over the issues of defin­ing Chris­tian­ity.
Those of us who come from a Protes­tant per­spec­tive view the com­bi­na­tion of Chris­tian­ity with the Roman Empire as a bad thing. When church and state became too inter­twined it was a neg­a­tive thing for both sides. We do not view that as a Chris­t­ian devel­op­ment, but rather as a human error (power grab) made through the vehi­cle of the church and Chris­tian­ity.
One could argue that it is nit-picking and it is all the same, all Chris­tian­ity, but the count­less Chris­tians who were mar­tyred because they did not hold to the Roman Catholic view would beg to dif­fer.
Any phi­los­o­phy or ide­ol­ogy can be hijacked and used for other means, even if those means do not line up with the ide­ol­ogy. The idea of free­dom of speech can be used as an excuse to lie about some­one else. We all rec­og­nize that is a wrong appli­ca­tion of that idea.
The same holds true for Chris­tian­ity. Sim­ply because some­one mis­ap­plies the faith for their own per­sonal gain, that does not mean the faith itself is to blame. The indi­vid­ual using the faith as an excuse is to blame.
Most evan­gel­i­cals (if not all) would be Protes­tant and would there­fore want to make a clear dis­tinc­tion between what the Roman Catholic church did and taught and what Chris­tian­ity taught and teaches.

You for­get that, at the time you men­tion, there was no such thing as “Roman Catholi­cism” and “Protes­tantism.” There was just Chris­tian­ity, still strug­gling to define itself and its rela­tion to the world, the empire, and to var­i­ous move­ments within itself. The prob­lem you touch on, I think, is more salient: where it made the fatal grab for power, mod­el­ing itself upon the state and grant­ing the emperor power over itself. Chris­tian­ity chose power over truth, I think, and still suf­fers for it (even in its Protes­tant guise). It seems to me that reli­gion — all reli­gion — should always be counter-cultural in that it coun­ters power and all its uses. The thing which always strikes me about Jesus is his refusal of power, polit­i­cal or oth­er­wise, to his detri­ment. The church has done, by and large, the opposite.

» LOUIS: There was just Chris­tian­ity, still strug­gling to define itself and its rela­tion to the world, the empire, and to var­i­ous move­ments within itself.
I think that ‘evo­lu­tion of Chris­tian­ity’ idea is a lit­tle inex­act. Insti­tu­tional Chris­tian­ity, per­haps, as far as big orga­ni­za­tions, is in flux, and per­haps ‘evolv­ing’, but Xian­ity on the indi­vid­ual level has existed since the first cen­tury, though it became more under­stand­able and uni­form after the for­ma­tion of the canon, through the preach­ing of Godly Catholics, and through the spread of lit­er­acy via the mass print­ing of the bible via the print­ing press.
The teach­ings of Jesus, unchanged no mat­ter how poorly com­mu­ni­cated in par­tic­u­lar times and places, and the indwelling of the Spirit, have been con­sis­tent from the begin­ning.
» LOUIS: The thing which always strikes me about Jesus is his refusal of power, polit­i­cal or oth­er­wise, to his detri­ment. The church has done, by and large, the oppo­site.
He may have done this as an exam­ple, but he also may have done it as part of his par­tic­u­lar call­ing, and not as a pre­scrip­tive — that is, his refusal to engage polit­i­cal pow­ers as part of his life does NOT make it for­bid­den for Chris­tians.
Paul the Apostle’s let­ters, as well as other parts of the New Tes­ta­ment, are filled with instruc­tion and prin­ci­ples with regard to gov­ern­ment. And just because we can’t expand the king­dom of God through gov­ern­ment doesn’t mean that, for exam­ple, we should ignore legal/political jus­tice for slaves or women just because Jesus didn’t do that.

You for­get that, at the time you men­tion, there was no such thing as “Roman Catholi­cism” and “Protes­tantism.
I didn’t for­get that, but it seems you are not rec­og­niz­ing that Chris­tian­ity was not a mono­lithic orga­ni­za­tion with no dis­senters dur­ing that time. There have con­sis­tently been Chris­tians who have opposed the man­ner in which Roman Catholi­cism has been and was prac­ticed.
The Ref­or­ma­tion was a final prod­uct of hun­dreds of years of Chris­tians work­ing within and with­out the Catholic church to enact changes. There were popes and lead­ers who tried to turn the tide some, but they were over­whelmed by the sin­ful ten­den­cies of men seek­ing to grab as much per­sonal power as pos­si­ble.
The thing which always strikes me about Jesus is his refusal of power, polit­i­cal or oth­er­wise, to his detri­ment.
I think the his­tor­i­cal Bap­tist dis­tinc­tive belief of reli­gious free­dom and eschew­ing of state-tied churches is reflec­tive of Jesus’ exam­ple and teach­ing.
One can believe in reli­gious free­dom for all indi­vid­u­als, while still exer­cis­ing your polit­i­cal influ­ence from your per­sonal reli­gious perspective.

…it seems you are not rec­og­niz­ing that Chris­tian­ity was not a mono­lithic orga­ni­za­tion with no dis­senters dur­ing that time.
I must not have expressed myself cor­rectly. Though cer­tainly, no expert on the period, I have done some read­ing on the his­tory of Chris­tian­ity, and I cer­tainly don’t think that Chris­tian­ity was some kind of mono­lithic orga­ni­za­tion with­out dis­senters. Quite the oppo­site, in fact. As I under­stand it, there were sev­eral move­ments within the reli­gion, often vio­lently at odds with each other over doc­trine. To claim some pure, unadul­ter­ated, Chris­tian­ity existed just wasn’t the case (wit­ness Paul’s some­times exas­per­ated efforts to rein in his errant flock, even in the begin­ning). I want to be clear: I’m talk­ing about the early church and it’s strug­gles to define what it means to be a Chris­t­ian, the nature of Christ and His rela­tion­ship with God, sal­va­tion, etc. Cer­tainly, there was faith on the indi­vid­ual level, but it could vary from town to town, province to province, east from west. Indeed, until the Coun­cil of Nicea, this was a burn­ing issue — and even that didn’t solve every­thing. The dis­pu­ta­tions con­tinue to this day.
btw: I think that the pur­suit and wield­ing of power, par­tic­u­larly power over oth­ers, is what Jesus meant by “the world.” We all know Lord Acton’s for­mu­la­tion of the dan­ger, but we can also look to Tolkien’s Ring of Power for an imag­i­na­tive vision. That’s what I meant.

” I think that the pur­suit and wield­ing of power, par­tic­u­larly power over oth­ers, is what Jesus meant by “the world.” “
That would be an inter­est­ing word study to read. :p I sup­pose you started with the TDNT? :p

As I under­stand it, there were sev­eral move­ments within the reli­gion, often vio­lently at odds with each other over doc­trine.
To some extent that is true and is true of all reli­gions. How­ever, you can­not claim, as many do today, that Chris­tian­ity was some ill defined move­ment that made no spe­cific, detailed reli­gious claims until the Coun­cil of Nicea.
Yes, Paul’s writ­ings shows that aber­rant beliefs were present from the begin­ning, but they were just that aber­rant. In Peter’s writ­ings, he called those let­ters of Paul “scrip­ture,” which was a spe­cific term used to equate Paul’s can­non­i­cal writ­ings with the Old Tes­ta­ment, what Jews con­sid­ered to be God’s holy word. That demon­strates that from the begin­ning the teach­ings of the apos­tles (the dis­ci­ples, plus Paul) was con­sid­ered author­i­ta­tive.
Ortho­doxy has always been present, but aber­rant teach­ings and dis­torted prac­tices have also been present from the begin­ning. Some­times incor­rect, unbib­li­cal views have been pro­moted by the most pow­er­ful fac­tions within the faith (per­haps that is even the case now, I’m sure I have not inter­preted Scrip­ture per­fectly).
How­ever that does not mean that Chris­tian­ity itself has been frac­tured and fac­tion­al­ized. It sim­ply means that we are fali­able humans who do not under­stand per­fectly and some­times those mis­un­der­stand­ings are pro­moted from pow­er­ful posi­tions.
I do think the desire for wield­ing power is a trap that vir­tu­ally every human being is tempted with — includ­ing Chris­tians, espe­cially those that have the abil­ity to exer­cise some type of polit­i­cal influence.

Ortho­doxy is a slip­pery con­cept, one over which many bat­tles have been, and are still being, fought. Here’s but one famous exam­ple. It seems to me that ortho­doxy could eas­ily have gone another way had his­tor­i­cal events played out dif­fer­ently. I don’t agree with your state­ment that Chris­tian­ity hasn’t been frac­tured and fac­tion­al­ized — just look around. It seems that you think there is a pure, abstract, ide­al­ized “Chris­tian­ity” which exists inde­pen­dent of what humans think and do — and you may well be right. But appeal­ing to that is point­less — how can we know for sure which brand is the true one (do I detect the influ­ence of Plato’s pure forms here?)? Why should I accept your ver­sion rather than, say, the RC one? Much blood has been spilled over this non­sense.
As to James’ snarky ques­tion: I merely present my opin­ion and not the “offi­cial” one. Take it as you will.

It wasn’t really that snarky. I start any word study I do with the TDNT. Then I use my Logos soft­ware to find every instance of the word in the Bible. Then, depend­ing on the lan­guage, I’d use one of sev­eral con­cor­dances that give extra bib­li­cal sourc­ing. Then I’d check pri­mary sourc­ing on more of a lon­gi­tu­di­nal look (though I’m much more inter­ested in cur­rent use than ety­mol­ogy, it can have some value).
Kos­mos, one of the words that is com­monly trans­lated as “the world”, though there are a few oth­ers, has a broad con­no­ta­tion, but it is all phsyical/geographical. In its broad­est sense it can mean “the uni­verse”, or it can mean “the earth”, or it can mean the world *as specif­i­cally opposed to heaven*, which is to say sin­ful earth. Sure, you merely present your opin­ion, but it’s an opin­ion based on noth­ing of merit and has no real value. It’s not that it’s not “ortho­dox” or “offi­cial”, it’s unsup­port­able and unten­able.
Point is, I really think you have no con­cept of Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship, and it’s illu­mi­nat­ing. Just as with the evil neo-cons, you make an assump­tion of stu­pid­ity towards those that dis­agree with you, and never allow a chal­lenge to enter your mind. That’s why you think one opin­ion is as good as another. That’s also why you are stun­ningly igno­rant of the argu­ments of those that dis­agree with you.