“Tom Krattenmaker is part of a growing conversation that acknowledges–and seeks to address-- the abiding need for meaning and inspiration in post-religious America.” (Jacket blurb on author Krattenmaker’s “Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower” 2016.)
“growing conversation” and" post-religious America" are the key words here, describing a movement that is well underway and opposed to the old religious narratives. Krattenmaker does not believe in God; neither does he believe Jesus is God. He does not believe in the traditional concepts of heaven and hell. He does not oppose atheists or evangelicals. Instead, he offers a way of thinking about Jesus that could benefit secular minded individuals.
I am skittish about posting anything here because of your adamant philosophical mindset. Probably at the bottom of my bucket list is oblivion. I don’t believe in heaven and hell, but long for a better world here for my children than the one I now experience. I really don’t need to hear more postmodern garbage about conflicting goods or existential problems. I went through all that when I was a young man.
Okay, he believes this and he believes that. But why should I and others take him seriously until he is himself able to demonstrate why he believes what he does? Until he is able to persuade us to believe the same things. Until he is able to demonstrate that the millions upon millions around the globe who still embrace the old religious narratives are just plain wrong.
And that’s just on this planet. Imagine all the mind-boggling narratives about God that almost certainly exist on all the other planets where intelligent life has evolved.
It would be interesting though to sit in on an exchange in which both you and he discuss God, peace on Earth and morality. As that relates specifically to the lives that we live from day to day. Lives in which moral and religious and humanist narratives precipitate behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments. Engendering particular sets of rewards and punishments on this side of the grave and [for some] particular consequences for “I” – for the “soul” – on the other side of it.
And how “well under way” is this movement? What percentage of religious folks around the globe would likely to be sympathetic to his own ideas about God and religion.
He doesn’t even have his own wikipedia page yet.
Of course you are. After all, look at all you’ve got to lose if I manage to nudge you closer to my frame of mind. And look at all I’ve got to gain if you nudge me closer to yours.
Back again to what you believe. Back again to a contemptuous dismissal of “postmodern” folks like me.
Tell me:
Are you or are you not a progressive Christian yourself? And what of those progressive Christians who do believe in a life after death for “I”? Or don’t any of them believe this at all?
What do you imagine will be the fate of your own particular “I” when you are eyeball to eyeball with death itself?
I always liked Egyptian mythology where that was reversed. Geb the Earth Father and Nut the Sky Mother. It also works better with bad dad jokes and gender roles. Strong silent type? Totally Earth Father. Weirdly mercurial and cries a lot? Totally Sky Mother. Thunder and lightening? Scary, to be sure and if you are unlucky it can mess you up. But earthquakes? You can learn to tolerate them but it’s pretty much 100% a bad time.
Why should I attempt to answer your questions about progressive Christian beliefs, or for that matter, about my own beliefs, when you can so easily dismiss them as “in the head” and too feeble to convince anyone of anything. Your questions are circular, all leading back to your own ideas about what reality in our time consists of. It is apparent that you listen to your own ideas which I find rather hopeless, as do most of the writers I’m currently reading. Do you have children? If so, what kind of world would you like to see them grow up in? Your fear about the demise of the “I” does not move me because I do not live in fear or for vain wishes.
Good to see you around, my friend, The reversal you mention is neat. Don’t be a stranger. What do you think of the current trend toward a natural religion?
Okay, let’s suppose that Mary asks you instead. She doesn’t dismiss everything as “in one’s head”. She’s just curious as to how you might convince her that progressive Christianity is something she should embrace rather than one of the old narratives that she accepts now. And she is also curious as to how progressive Christians interpret God insofar as there is a relationship between the behaviors she chooses on this side of the grave and her fate on the other side of it.
What do you tell her?
And, again: I don’t dismiss everything that everyone claims to believe as just “in their head”. I ask them instead to connect the dots between what they do believe about God and what they are able to demonstrate that others are obligated to believe as well.
In that case, let’s bring the questions down to Earth. Let’s focus in on a particular context in which issues like morality and God come up. I’ll ask you questions about it and you can point out more specifically how they are circular.
And I can attempt to note the extent to which your answers may well be circular in turn. Circular in the sense that the answers you give will be based wholly on the assumptions you make about progressive Christianity, the old narratives and behaviors you yourself choose. Given that progressive Christianity is asserted by you to be the most reasonable and virtuous path to take, your answers are correct.
Yes, I have a daughter. But having or not having children doesn’t make the points I raise go away.
Krattenmaker is “an award-winning ‘USA Today’ columnist”, So what if Wiki hasn’t heard of him yet. I’m not one who relies on Wiki for my only research.
As for your questions, you have only one, which I’m tired of trying to address. You show no knowledge of progressive Christianity and look to me, a tyro, for explanation. So, how has the old religious narrative benefited mankind? I’d ask Mary, “What have concepts of heaven and hell done for you lately? Would you rather have a judgmental God or a God who is unconditional, universal love? Would you rather have a God who is not at enmity with natural science, who is not supernatural?” Ah, but I speak in vain. You would put the old religion narrative in Mary’s mouth and justify the insertion with your hopeless philosophy.
So basically you are saying that, as with her, you have faith in your own rendition of God. Why? Because in believing what you do it comforts and consoles you. In other words, in much the same way that her own belief comforts and consoles her. And this is based not on what either of you are able to demonstrate is true about God but [in my own opinion] on the manner in which your own personal experiences rooted in the lives that you have lived predisposed you to believe what you do.
All of this embedded in the “concept” of God.
But how is this concept of God in sync with natural science to be intertwined in 1] natural disasters that crush the lives of hundreds of thousands year in and year out and 2] the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave given what you imagine the fate of “I” to be on the other side?
Mary has her own genuine beliefs here and you have yours. Okay, and between the two of you that need be as far as it goes.
Fair enough.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this. My response to Mary would be entirely in sync with my response to you. Focusing in on not what she believes but how she came to believe what she does given the manner in which I have come to understand “I” here as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
And in exploring the gap between believing something “in your head” and demonstrating [even to yourself] that [in a philosophy venue] it is reasonable – wise – for others to believe it.
And, yes, in regard to morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side of it, my philosophy “here and now” is [to me] brutally despairing.
But you seem to suggest that this in itself is the problem here. It’s me. And yet, over the years, I have spent countless hours in deep introspection grappling to understand these relationships in all sincerity.
I believe what I do because it seems reasonable to think and to feel as I do. And I try to explain that in my signature threads. Others can then read them and try to explain to me why they don’t share my points of view.
After all, here what else is there?
Just for the record, here is one explanation of what it means to call yourself a progressive Christian: progressivechristianity.org/the-8-points/
That’s a kindergarten portrayal of progressive Christianity. Read Spong.
That God is love has nothing to do with natural disasters. God is a force for the healing of human separations, not a weather causer, Can you not admit that love can heal troubled souls or do you still believe God is a sky deity like Thor? We humans are here to help others, Science and love are not contradictory aspirations, except where science is used to enhance war.
It is plausible that the God belief came about as the human brain evolved into self-consciousness, as Freud notes, and evolved into our current religious beliefs.
This does not mean that a God does not exist.It simply means that God is a part of who we are and is derived by creative evolution into how we treat each other. It is difficult for me to express to you the evolution of a belief into a force, since the old narrative of a sky God is stuck in your throat. That is evident from the types of questions you raise. You cannot give up the judgmental God who allows humans to go to hell and destroys millions of them with bad weather.
You want God to be a person in order to be personal. Love is personal, especially the needed unconditional, universal Love I call God.
This in my view is typical of the objectivist mind.
Consider: Even if others are willing to 1] consider the arguments of progressive Christians, or 2] actually call themselves progressive Christians today, they are still judged by you.
The folks in the link above are viewed by you disdainfully as kindergarteners because they don’t embody Spong’s own rendition of progressive Christianity.
And the irony here is that above you noted this: “You show no knowledge of progressive Christianity and look to me, a tyro, for explanation.”
Tyro: “a beginner, novice”.
Explain that please.
More of the same. This is what you believe about God. So that makes it true. Thus the part about “God and love and helping each other out” in the next natural disaster is all just sorted out neatly in your head. Connecting these words mentally generates a psychological balm that allows you to situate yourself in the Big Picture of your choice. Nothing has to actually be demonstrated at all. Merely believed.
Any such conjectures of this sort are plausible. You merely anchor them to a particular set of assumptions about God, the human condition and existence itself. You do it. I do it, others do it.
But there’s still the part about reconfiguring what you believe into a demonstrable assessment that others you deem to be reasonable and virtuous are obligated to embrace in turn. And then noting for us how your belief here prompts you to choose particular behaviors that are most closely in sync with what progressive Christians imagine their fate will be on the other side of the grave.
But then back up into the clouds of sheer speculation:
One thing your own narrative does share in common with the link above is how profoundly theoretical and conceptual and nominal it is. The words that assess God and religion are almost never brought down to earth and situated existentially in the lives that we live. Instead, the whole point seems aimed at generating a comforting and consoling frame of mind: the belief in how much more wonderful the world could be if only everyone thought like you do.
How then might Spong be the exception here?
No, I want those who profess to believe in God – in any God – to demonstrate to me why I should choose to believe it myself. And, in turn, how this God might reconfigure my belief that we live in an essentially meaningless world that ends in the obliteration of “I” at death, into a more hopeful assessment of human reality.
Iambiguous, I will not discuss the matter of progressive Christianity with you anymore. Let’s just say for the sake of your ego that you win the argument.
Of course I know what a tyro is. I’ve only just begun to delve into the material. Goodbye, and good luck with your hopeless beliefs, of which you will never convince me. Please go away from my thread. Putting you on"ignore".
“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water,& breeds reptiles of the mind.”–Blake
Winning the argument here is never the point. It ever and always comes down to this: the extent to which you are able to think yourself into believing in the existence of God. And the extent to which this comforts and consoles you.
Ierrellus merely shunts my points aside and refuses to actually engage them in a substantive discussion. There is simply too much that is at risk for him there.
Or, sure, so it seems to me.
Okay, then back to this:
[i]"The folks in the link above are viewed by Ierrellus disdainfully as kindergarteners because they don’t embody Spong’s own rendition of progressive Christianity.
And the irony here is that above Ierrellus noted this: “You show no knowledge of progressive Christianity and look to me, a tyro, for explanation.”
Tyro: “a beginner, novice”.
Explain that please."[/i]
But of course he and I are through now, aren’t we?
Note to others: Make of this what you will.
Though [of course] my own bottom line remains the same: “I”, a hopelessly ambiguous and problematic existential contraption, am getting closer and closer to toppling over into the abyss that is oblivion; closing out my final years on this side of the grave in what is deemed by me to be an essentially meaningless world.
Some victory, eh?
“Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.”-- Blake
One of the propositions of postmodern, post Wittgenstein philosophy is that there are no ethical absolutes.
Is Blake right, or are some rules of ethical behavior necessary? Peter Hitchens, among the new atheists turned Christian, laments the loss of ethical standards,
which he sees as responsible for most of society’s ills.
The Blake koans, or aphorisms, Are from “The Portable Blake,” (1946—Kazin introduction.)
For anyone interested in Blake Kazin’s introduction is a work of scholarly excellence.
Not as long as we’re around!
So there is no hope for us?
“Blake is against all theological casuistry that excuses pain and admits evil; against sanctimonious apologies for injustice and the attempt to buy bliss in another world with self-deprivation in this one.”( Kazin 1946)
That would be my point as well.
The sky father and the earth mother encompass mindless matter such that peace on Earth is embodied wholly in the laws of matter.
Being conscious matter however human beings either do or do not have the autonomy to construe peace on Earth in very different ways. If in possession of free will, some want it to revolve around one set of moral and political values while others insist on entirely conflicting sets instead. Some with God in the picture, others with No God at all.
Then what?
And that hasn’t changed yet for thousands of years.