What The Chinese See That We Don’t

By Rod Dreher • January 22, 2013, 11:24 AM

Now that a new generation of leaders are taking the helm in China in March and talking about reform, at least some Chinese are looking at the US and wondering if religion is the key to constitutional democracy.

Obama’s inauguration was a top trending topic on Sina Weibo, China’s massive microblogging site, with over 25 million posts on Jan. 21. Of these, one comment by a Weibo user by the name Wugou1975 was forwarded over 2,000 times, garnering over 500 comments. The blogger posted a photo of Obama taking the presidential oath with Supreme Court Justice John Roberts:

Some Chinese find it unbelievable that this secular country’s democratically elected president was sworn in with his hand on a Bible, not the Constitution, and facing a court justice, not Congress. But actually, this is the secret of America’s constitutional democracy: It’s not just the Constitution or the government’s “separation of powers.” Above that is natural law, guarded by a grand justice. And below is a community of Christians, unified by their belief.

That’s from The Atlantic’s site. Isn’t that astonishing? That these citizens of a non-Christian communist country can see what so very many Americans teaching on college campuses and working in US news and entertainment media do not.

George Washington:

“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

John Adams:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

We lose the Judeo-Christian religious roots of our democracy, and we will lose our democracy. We may have the rule of the people, but it will look very different in time compared to what we have known.

In the current edition of Mars Hill Audio Journal, the Anglican priest and academic Andrew Davison talks about the Christian approach to reason, and how the interpretation of the world can look very different through Christian eyes. He recalls seeing a leper begging in India. If one is a Christian, he says, one’s Scripture and Tradition tells one how one is to respond to that suffering person — and how one is not to respond: one must help the suffering man, as if he were God himself. If one is a Hindu, says Davison, one’s Hinduism may require a very different response. Reasoning from Hindu first principles, one may be required to walk past the leper, as he is suffering from sins of a past life, and needs to do so to make his next life better.

From a Christian point of view, this is cruelty. But it may be kind from a Hindu point of view. The point isn’t that all Christians would respond kindly, and all Hindus would respond callously. The point is that the basis on which we call a response “compassionate” or “cruel” depends on our fundamental belief system. And these belief systems are not merely about personal piety, but have far-reaching consequences for the way we organize our common life, including, of course, our politics. Ideas, as we know, have consequences.

Posted in China, Politics, Religion. Tagged America, Andrew Davison, Bible, China, George Washington, Mars Hill Audio Journal, politics, United States.

78 Responses to What The Chinese See That We Don’t

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Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 7:14 am

MH

“Carlo, we’re discussing religion and American democracy, so how Christianity manifests itself in the US is far more relevant than other times and places.”

And I think you are completely wrong, sorry. The way Christianity manifests in the US is impossible to understand without a deep understanding of European history and of reformation theology.

Now be patient with me and let me write the following in capitals for greater emphasis:
WHAT I JUST SAID IS SO TRUE THAT THE UNDERSTANDING OF CHRISTIANITY BY AMERICAN LIBERAL SECULARISTS LIKE YOU IS COMPLETELY SHAPED BY A PARTICULAR FORM OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT.

Your response to my mention of Aquinas is perfect: you don’t even care to know what idea of God you don’t believe in. But you are still a prisoner to it.

[Note from Rod: I agree with you, Carlo, but I am about to head out the door to catch a plane. I'd love it if you could spare a moment to give the capsule version of this argument. Incidentally, Jurgen Habermas, no Christian he, has said that the things secular liberals such as he treasure and defend as liberals would have been unthinkable if not for Christianity. I have a pretty good idea he wasn't thinking about Falwell. -- RD]
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 8:32 am

Rod:

” spare a moment to give the capsule version of this argument.”

well that’s hard in this format. I would just say that historically, in order to exalt the absolute transcendence of God, Reformed theology severed the connection between nature and grace, and between reason and faith. So, the question of God no longer arises from WITHIN the human yearning for meaning, beauty, happiness. And faith is no longer the fulfillment of the deepest questions of reason, but rather an arbitrary belief of a set of revealed truths found in the Bible etc. This is why Calvinism never produced good food, for instance. Because the beautiful things of life raise the religious question, but in Calvinist theology there is no ‘analogia entis’ so the beauty of the creatures is not a road to the beauty of God. And neither is the humanity of Christ, so that salvation become essentially a juridical question (see MH’s mention of ‘rebellion’ etc).

Going bact to MH, who is clearly a “Protestant atheist” (regardless of his denominational background) he said that God is “a” being, one more thing on top of all the other things. For Aquinas God is Being itsef, the mystery we face every morning when we get out of bed. If one lives intensely the human drama, he will be in the position to ‘see’ Christ. If God is separated from the natural religious sense, in the long run He will become an arbitrary addition to life and will be rejected, as is happening for many people today.

As a result, in US history you can observe strong swings from extreme fideism to extreme naturalism, precisely because of a theology in which natural reason and faith have nothing to do with each other and the divine is essentially arbitrary.
Sharon Astyk says:

January 23, 2013 at 8:53 am

The statement that derives from a certain point of origin does not logically necessarily presume that continuing its relationship with that point of origin is necessary – that point would have to be argued, rather than simply asserted as a natural connection.

The examples of India and South Korea, Turkey, Israel and Japan suggest that it is NOT necessary for a liberal democracy to continue to have a connection with Christianity, even if such a connection exists historically, any more than the US itself postulates the need to have a continual connection with paganism because of its Greek and Roman roots.

The Hinduism argument is totally specious, I fear as others have pointed out – the simple truth is that the religions in their ordinary and moderate forms are more alike than not – a largely Hindu, a largely Jewish, a largely Muslim etc… democracy with some American semi-Christian roots has many of the same basic tenets.

So is the argument about “Judeo-Christianity” which IMHO is just a kind of apologetics for pushing Jews into a unitary position with Christians that Jews don’t hold. For example, as I’ve pointed out a few hundred times, for Jews, marriage is a contract, not a sacrament, and it is subject to change via contract law. It is also subject to halacha, but since Jews have virtually never had the convenience of being a majority religion, they expect their practices to be different than those permitted by law and act accordingly – many Jews won’t perform gay marriage, but they won’t be more troubled by them than interfaith marriages, or the marriage of a Kohen to a convert, both of which they also wouldn’t perform

Now Carlo’s statement is true, and it is true that American Protestantism completely underlies American culture and histor in a number of really profound ways, but you need a better argument than “this is really important to our past” to make the case that the future is profoundly endangered by a shift other nations have made quite successfully. We will be a DIFFERENT nation if we are not a devoutly Christian one – suggesting that liberal democracy will blow away with the winds of change requires a much better argument.
mlindroo says:

January 23, 2013 at 10:08 am

Geoff Guth says:
January 22, 2013 at 6:42 pm

> What I categorically reject is the idea that religion
> is fundamental to morality itself. The idea that
> the divine has any interest in personal morality is
> largely a Christian innovation and came about
> long after the study and development of ideas about
> moral and ethical conduct commenced in earnest.

As a secular liberal, I actually think there is much wisdom in the Washington and Adams quotes that Rod mention! They describe the undoubtedly important role of religion as a common source of altruism and trust a few centuries ago.

With a few exceptions, the major world religions all tend to be morally concerned. There is the idea — shared by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans before the advent of Christianity, BTW — that powerful, omniscient deities are watching man and that evil deeds will be harshly punished by god(s). Notions of supernatural punishment, karma, nirvana, damnation and salvation, and heaven and hell have evolved in most major religions, but they are relatively infrequent in hunter-gatherer cultures. Why? Probably because the latter do not need it — primitive tribal societies can rely on kin altruism and reciprocity for maintaining social bonds since they live in small groups of 20-30 people. In large societies, on the other hand, you have thousands or millions of cooperating individuals that are mostly not related. How do you ensure ruthless “freeloaders” (protected by anonymity) do not steal or cheat in that case? Today we rely on extensive secular institutions (police, courts) which largely did not exist when George Washington was still president. People were expected to behave since everybody believed God was watching them. This is also why atheism was frowned upon. As John Locke wrote: “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God. Promises, Covenants, and Oaths, which are the Bonds of Humane Society, can have no hold upon an Atheist.”

I think it’s a plausible and elegant theory. This also seems to be a classic case of the “Founding Fathers” making an accurate assessment of the way things worked back in the 18th century, given the social and economic constraints of the time. But I don’t think religion remains fundamentally important to morality anymore since we have other “enforcement mechanisms” to ensure the rule of law is being followed.

MARCU$
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 10:10 am

Sharon:

I would just say that a democracy requires a demos (a people) and that you should not take it for granted. A demos is not just an assembly of individuals, but a people brought together by a mutual recognition of human dignity and value. For instance in the classical Athens the demos where the freemen. And they had no reason to regard the slaves as similar to them. The fact that in modern democracies all adults are regarded as part of the demos is a reflection of the Christian idea that all human beings are made in the image of God. If this idea disappears, I think it is quite possible that sooner or later some dominant social group will find a good reason to exclude other people from the demos. Think for instance of that recent editorial (was it in the NY Times) that argued that the nature of marriage should not be decided democratically because it is a fundamental human right … as defined by a small cultural elite who controls the mass media.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

January 23, 2013 at 10:25 am

Carlo, BEING PATRONIZING DOESN’T MAKE YOUR ARGUMENT MORE APPEALING OR YOU MORE CONVINCING.

Going bact to MH, who is clearly a “Protestant atheist” (regardless of his denominational background) he said that God is “a” being, one more thing on top of all the other things.

I understand that I reject a specific formulation of Christianity. How could it be otherwise? I live at a specific moment in history and culture, and I’m not free to be someone else. But who’s concept of God is correct? Yours or the one I don’t believe in? Neither of us has a a neutral arbiter we can go to, or some way to test our ideas.

Now the universe is far older and larger than everyone prior to 1850 thought remotely possible. Moreover humans do not appear to be the result of special creation, nor did we descend from only two people. Which leaves me asking how could something this fundamental be missed?

So the religious claims I was raised with seem sketchy to me and I can’t will myself to believe them. Frankly once you reject one religion you’re usually SOL with all other religions. They all end up sounding pretty sketchy.
Franklin Evans says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:12 am

Carlo (re: Sharon’s post),

I follow your statements and logic with some admiration, and respectfully add that at some point practicality and experience needs to be considered as well.

No foundationally Christian culture or nation has avoided stains on their ideals. However one wants to view it, however one wants to limit the chronology of that examination, Christians have managed to perpetrate horrific deeds despite the ideals of Christianity.

From certain points of view — and my personal bias being a very non-Christian POV — there is little to trust quod erat demonstrandum in the abstract claims presented above. Indeed, the only effective recourse for those burdened by those deeds has been secular law, something that preempts or supercedes the justifications offered by the perpetrators. Droit de seigneur literally lost its head in France. The sensibilities of merchants routinely ignored their moral groundings in the name of profits, something with which we are faced right now in the US.

The Great Experiment of the American republic took the unique approach: Certainly they found their contemporary morals and ethics in the Christian ideals, but they deliberately divorced the codification of them from the religious veneer. There is no God in the Constitution, and that is the source for all justice and justifications in our republic. It left the door open for devout believers to bring their foundations to the table (as it were), but slammed it shut on any attempt to take religious control over the secular foundations.

Speaking of practical experience: I would submit that the First Amendment was routinely violated right through the advent of public education up to that point in time of racial integration and the removal of mandatory prayer. That is what comes to my mind every time someone tries to assert that the US is a Christian nation, especially when that removal and its following consequences are attacked as some sort of cause for our present woes. We are a nation with a Christian majority, one that has given us plenty of lessons of the “tyranny of the majority” the founders worked to avoid.
mlindroo says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:17 am

Carlo says:
January 23, 2013 at 10:10 am

> I think it is quite possible that sooner or later
> some dominant social group will find a good reason
> to exclude other people from the demos. Think for
> instance of that recent editorial (was it in the NY Times)
> that argued that the nature of marriage should not
> be decided democratically because it is a fundamental
> human right … as defined by a small cultural elite
> who controls the mass media.

Talk about getting things backwards!

In America, the struggle has traditionally involved a culturally and politically conservative ruling elite of wealthy WASP men reluctantly expanding the franchise to include non-property owning men, Blacks and women.

The “small cultural elite who controls the mass media” is not the force wanting to “exclude other people from the demos”, Carlo. It favors EXPANDING the right to marry.

MARCU$
Another Matt says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:39 am

Carlo,

In your opinion, was Aquinas’s conception of god something which existed prior to the 13th century, or is it a Thomist innovation? I happen to find it almost meaningless, much in the way I find Anselm’s ontological argument meaningless — “existence” is not something that can be said to exist, nor is it a property of things (even my using the pronoun “it” to refer to existence as an entity is a linguistic accident — concepts take noun forms).

I can kind of understand it in the further Thomist clarification that “god constantly causes all of reality to exist,” but this is a conception of god as “a being” that is unceasingly doing a lot of work to keep reality going. But again, was this an idea of god that anyone had before Aristotelian influences entered the church?

And why take Aquinas as an authority in the first place?
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 23, 2013 at 12:44 pm

We lose the Judeo-Christian religious roots of our democracy, and we will lose our democracy.

Well, if you believe that, act Christian. There is no way to legislate some kind of reinforcement of our “Judeo-Christian religious roots” without destroying our democracy.

Along with the reference Franklin makes to Gandhi, it is highly relevant to quote his apt observation “I would seriously consider becoming a Christian, if I had ever met one.”

IF our democratic republic has Christian roots, they are specifically PROTESTANT roots. When did any Orthodox patriarch advocate democracy? The Roman variant of Christianity considered republican government anathema until the mid 20th century, when it was desperate for allies against communism.

The congregational form of church governance preceded elective civil governance. The connection even there is fuzzy: as many modern Christians have vociferously pointed out, we don’t get to vote on the will of God, it is what it is. But congregational church governance was not voting about what is right. Rather, it was understood that the majority sentiment of the congregation would reflect the work of the Holy Spirit on each individual member, better than the mind of any bishop, patriarch, archbishop, or Pope.

The Tamil who asked whether the Brahmins would have allowed them to get an education has a solid point. But, as John Reader highlights in Africa: Biography of the Continent, if there had been no European contact in the 1500s, African and Indian societies would have continued to evolve in some manner. It would have been different, but might have broken some of the same ground Europe broke, as it parted from its savage past. European contact froze “authentic” indigenous culture as it was at the point of contact.

So, all in all, I’d say Franklin has it about right. There have certainly been Christian contributions to the flavor of our democracy, the motivations for developing our republican institutions. But impossible without Christianity? I don’t think so.

Christianity is A good source of moral instruction and framework, but not the only one. Vladimir Putin observed that without the Komsomols, he saw no way to socialize the youth of the Russian Federation but the church. That’s an interesting equation…
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 4:51 pm

MH:

I understand, I apologize for sounding patronizing. However, you will agree with me that even if one has been disappointed by the tradition he/she grew in, one should at least keep an open mind about certain fundamental human questions and keep looking.

Matt:

thanks for the questions, but what can I say in a few words? Perhaps I will recommend the to books that helped me the most in thinking about these matters:
Gilson’s “Spirit of medieval philosophy”
Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity”
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 5:06 pm

Franklin Evans:

of course. The point however is from what ideal standpoint abuses and injustices can be criticized. Even at the time of its most horrible failures our civilization did have a collectively accepted external criterion that could be used as a leverage to protest against injustice.

And, frankly, I do not understand the whole religious vs. secular part of your argument. We are discussing about the general views that shape a civilization. If you have a body of people who believe that all human beings are created equal, over a millennia or two this will slowly produce certain outcomes (even among countless moral failures). If you have a body of Nietzscheans (which is more or less where we stand) in the long run you will get different outcomes EVEN THOUGH in principle both groups share the same degree of moral weakness and human fallibility.
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 5:19 pm

mlinroo:

I assure you that without the “P” in WASP no such expansion of the demos would have taken place more or less peacefully. You should try with, oh, I don’t know, Bashir el Assad, or the Indian Brahmins of a couple of centuries ago, or the heads of the Chinese Communist Party.

As for the idea that somehow having one’s sexual/romantic liaisons endorsed by the state is a”right,” that’s a completely different discussion.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

January 23, 2013 at 8:47 pm

Carlo, thanks for the apology.

Oh I agree about trying to keep an open mind, and I’m not militantly anti religion. I got a little twitchy on this topic because even if religious faith was purely good, it’s not as simple as willing yourself to believe. So how are is our culture supposed to react to things like the linked article?
Carlo says:

January 23, 2013 at 9:29 pm

MH asked:

“So how is our culture supposed to react to things like the linked article?”

What do you mean?
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:11 pm

I think Carlo just said that without Protestant Christianity, democracy would have been impossible.

I don’t think Carlo would say that.

But I think he just did.
Noah172 says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:48 pm

MH,

Now the universe is far older and larger than everyone prior to 1850 thought remotely possible. Moreover humans do not appear to be the result of special creation, nor did we descend from only two people. Which leaves me asking how could something this fundamental be missed?

What are you trying to say here — that all Christians are young-earth creationists? I am sure that you know that is not true; you read this blog, written by evolutionist Christian Rod, after all. In fact, Christian bodies that represent the great majority of the world’s Christians — the RCC, most if not all Orthodoxy, and many Protestant groups — either openly embrace the scientific consensus on the age of the earth and evolution or at least do not require their members to accept YEC. A 2011 survery by the Pew foundation of evangelical Protestant leaders, a majority of whose respondents were from the Third World, found the group almost evenly split between strict creationists evolutionists; among First-World respondents, the latter had a 14-point lead over the former.

I won’t take up space here recounting all the Christians throughout the ages who have contributed to scientific advancement, both long before Darwin and after him to the present.

Theistic evolutionists — BioLogos et al. — are doing some fascinating work studying the Scriptures. Biblical Hebrew has a much smaller and often more ambiguous vocabulary than modern English (or even, for that matter, Koine Greek or late Imperial Latin). The Biblical name Adam — aleph-daleth-mim — also means man or mankind, creating a gray area in the first two chapters of Genesis. Furthermore, there are many odd passages throughout the Hebrew Scriptures in which “the sons of Adam” (bnai adam) are contrasted with other Hebrew words for man, ish (aleph-yod-shin) or enosh (aleph-nun-waw-shin): see, e.g., Psalm 8:4. It is entirely possible that what the Scriptures have really said all along, and how their earliest Israelite readers may have understood them, is that Adam was not the progenitor of all humanity but of a cluster of Semitic peoples from whom the Israelites themselves were descended.

Throw in some other details — the specific Mesopotamian location and Neolithic historical context given in the text for Eden; who was Cain afraid would kill him? who did Cain marry?; etc. — you have the makings of a theologically and scientifically coherent narrative of God creating the world through the natural processes (including evolution) that we poor mortals now understand better, and then beginning with an obscure neolithic Mesopotamian couple to create a vessel through which a Savior for all humanity would come to earth.

I know that you do not accept any of what I just wrote. I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming that there are no good logical arguments against what I am presenting; there are, and I wrestle with how to respond to them. All I can say is that if humanity missed something fundamental about the origins of our planet or our species, that is not a failing of the God who created both, as well as the minds you and I have to try to understand his handiwork.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

January 24, 2013 at 8:28 am

Carlo, here’s what I mean. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the premise is correct. The problem is that our government is prevented from promoting any single religion, which is why we have the current religious market place. However, the nature of markets is that some people don’t participate, hence the current falloff in religiosity. How could US culture respond to that? I don’t see any effective response, so these sort of articles are basically navel gazing and annoy me.

Noah172, I know that most Christians are not young-earth creationists and that historically many scientists were religious. I’m also glad for the efforts of BioLogos and others to square religious belief with science because neither is going away any time soon.

What I’m talking about is the great demotion effect of scientific knowledge which has been going on since Copernicus, but picked up speed post 1850 in what has been called the second scientific revolution. This has reach a point where a 2009 Pew survey found that while 95% of the American public believed in God, that number was only 51% among scientists. Additionally, the National Academy of Science charted belief in God as low as 5.5 percent among biologists and 7.5 percent among physicists and astronomers in a 1998 study. So are scientists cold and dead inside, or does the great demotion effect make religious belief difficult?

To get a feeling for what I’m talking about. There are about 100 billion galaxies in our universe, each containing about 100 billion stars. The universe is about 14.5 billion years old and modern humans have existed for only about 200,000 years. Meanwhile we occupy only the surface area of a rather small planet consisting of about 1/10,000 th the mass of the solar system. Here’s a fairly famous image of the Earth taken from Voyager at the edge of the solar system.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSf6pQqMdKfG7_TnQ1bV8b5glDT2SCwx7nBTUAPlz0LCaCF9byS

That might look like nothing to you, but that single pixel pointed to by the arrow is where everyone we’ve ever heard of has lived.

The great demotion is that we’re all tiny specks, on the surface of a speck, orbiting a speck. All of us tiny things could go poof at any moment due to impersonal physical forces, that as near as we can tell behave randomly on short time scales, but can produce massive city destroying effects in an instant. Basically the universe doesn’t seem like its particularly interested in me or anyone else, and it’s really enough to make you want to hide under the bed in cosmic terror.
Franklin Evans says:

January 24, 2013 at 9:08 am

Carlo,

If I understand your query correctly, the best response I can find is that while we consider the higher, abstract effects and consequences of Christianity’s primary role in Western Civilization, we must also consider the much shorter-term but still more relevant experience of the United States’ history as a major departure from Europe’s examples. The departure is not a change of kind, but a change in certain attributes, the rejection of monarchy being at the top of that list right after the rejection of religion as a primary source for both (then) present and future laws. The religious-secular divide is critical to the character of our nation, illustrated by its failures and successes.

I agree with your Nietzsche reference, but only as one (yes, major) component, not as a general description. The long-term strength of our society is based on a short-term weakness: that two or more major influences can co-exist for periods of time, interacting, conflicting, and (one hopes) coming to some form of consensus. Nietzschean is not how I’d label the one influence, but I’m willing to stipulate that if you are willing to acknowledge that it is offset by the foundational concept of “created equal”. We, in our “moments” (years or decades long), are bounded by the interactions and conflicts. My plea is that we keep those at the top of our awareness, because our participation in them is the only practical impact we can have.
Carlo says:

January 24, 2013 at 9:28 am

Siarlys:

actually, I said that in most non-Christian cultures the ruling classes find ways to keep people subjugated by denying that they share the fullness of humanity, whereas in Christian culture such method cannot be sustained over the long term because it goes against a basic tenet of the faith. Obviously the letter to Philemon did not bring an end to slavery in the Roman world, but a culture that embraced its vision of the brotherood of all people was bound to abolish slavery sooner or later.

In such context, the whole Protestant/Catholic divide is quite irrelevant, is it not?
Carlo says:

January 24, 2013 at 11:08 am

Franklin Evans:

I don’t know. By “Nietzschean” I meant the general attitude that we are the creators (not the “recognizers”) of values. As such, any consensus between such vision and the “Platonic” (not just Christian) vision seems completely out of reach. Therefore, I am personally very pessimistic that the US can stay faithful to its founding, which was based precisely on the recognition that all men are created equal. Our dominant culture does not view people as created at all, but rather as self-creators.
Carlo says:

January 24, 2013 at 11:16 am

MH:

Oh, OK, now I understand your question. The simplest answer is that ideas matter, and culture matters, and intellectual life matters. In this case, there has been a dominant idea for about half a century that increasing secularity and democracy go hand in hand. If that idea is incorrect and ultimately dangerous (as I believe) it needs to be challenged both among the intellectuals and at the level of popular culture. Politics is the last of my concerns, frankly.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 24, 2013 at 12:20 pm

Carlo, in the context of a few fundamentals from Scripture, the Protestant/Catholic divide, the Roman/Greek divide, the Coptic, Nestorian, and other divides, are all quite irrelevant. Jesus said that “all the law and the prophets” hang on two commandments.

But the “P” in WASP is “Protestant,” not an anglicization of the Greek letter used in early symbolism for Jesus Christ. So I thought you meant what you said, although I couldn’t understand why you did.

When it comes to expansion of the demos, I don’t find that in a hierarchical variant of Christianity, aligned with monarchical and aristocratic ruling classes. But then, Roman theology is broad enough and complex enough that it can produce a Dom Helder Cammarra, a Dorothy Day, a Roy Bourgeois (none of whom are identical in their theologies) quite as much as an Ignatius of Loyola, a Torquemada, a Borgia. So who knows what might have happened in any number of alternative universes?

All of us tiny things could go poof at any moment due to impersonal physical forces, that as near as we can tell behave randomly on short time scales, but can produce massive city destroying effects in an instant. Basically the universe doesn’t seem like its particularly interested in me or anyone else, and it’s really enough to make you want to hide under the bed in cosmic terror.

Yes, but those odds make a plausible argument that something quite powerful must be looking out for us little specks. On a personal level, I have often thought someone who cares deeply about me, don’t ask me why, must be making a way for me, because on my statistics and paperwork and the cold cruel indifference of the universe and the market, I should have been homeless and hungry for the last fifteen years. Maybe the reason there have been no catastrophic meteorite crashes since 70 million years ago is that they are not being allowed.

No proof — but as good an argument as any.
Another Matt says:

January 24, 2013 at 1:18 pm

MH and Noah172,

I don’t know if this thread is still alive, but one of today’s posts by Jerry Coyne is relevant to your discussion:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/a-sophisticated-theologian-explains-why-theology-doesnt-progress/

Indeed, scientists tend to find religion as part of the postmodernist approach to truth.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

January 24, 2013 at 3:18 pm

Another Matt, thanks for the link. I agree with Jerry Coyne that the increase in religions and denominations is a bad sign for their ability to arrive at the truth. I also have sympathy for Jerry. I’ve read a few book of Christian apologetic which try to debunk evolution and the big bang. They are usually painfully bad because the authors often don’t understand the topic they are trying to debunk.

Siarlys Jenkins, if you can pull it off more power to you. I guess my reaction to those odds is that with an estimated 10 billion Earth like worlds in the Milky-way, we just got lucky. Basically we live in a cosmic slot machine.
Carlo says:

January 24, 2013 at 3:51 pm

Siarlys:

“So I thought you meant what you said, although I couldn’t understand why you did.”

Why not? I am lost. Do you assume that I think that North American Protestants don’t feel bound by the most basic precepts of Christianity? Why should I?

Which is not the same as saying that democracy would have been impossible without Protestant Christianity specifically.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 26, 2013 at 9:46 pm

Carlo, you didn’t SAY that North American Protestants don’t feel bound by the most basic precepts of Christianity. So no, I don’t assume that.

If you are lost in your own words, the ones you DID say, I don’t think I can sort it out for you.

You were talking about the “P” in WASP and the expansion of the demos. All else is tangential, at best, to sorting out what you meant by that.
EliteCommInc. says:

January 27, 2013 at 11:58 am

That is an interesting observation about the Bible. No doubt those christians in China are effectively hiding in plain sight. Well sortof . . .,

But the observation is not lost on me, that even as far away as China the evidence is quite clear that the founders based their understanding of what the country should and could be are deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian traditions, as found in the New and Old Testaments. Even if they disavowed christianity, and god as to faith and practice, they held those principles sound as to the foundational standards of how people should operate.