quote:

Originally posted by johnboy:
[qb] I'll engage more fully after the holiday and possibly address any specific agenda items of the Religious Right in which you or anyone else may be interested. [/qb]

Actually, there's probably little to be had from you and I getting particular on issues and positions since we DO mostly share not only the same positions but the same rationales. And, there is little likelihood of our engagement by any fundamentalistic passers-by.

Accordingly, I'll be ready to move on to something else and will consider the theocratization FUD --- and secularistic FUD --- to be stalemated by our constitutional balance of powers par excellence

In the ACLU we trust (just kidding)

By the way, I had to wikipedia that f.u.d. thingy. Is that some holdover acronym from thalo.net or something? Anyway, cool beans.

[/FUD]

pax,
Elmer

C'est bon, JB. Enjoy the long weekend, and hang in there through the first anniverary memories of Katrina fill the airwaves.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] It's a good thing the abolitionists didn't get more "practical" and devote their energies to "other social justice issues." [/qb]

Ah yes, it is precisely the Dixiepublican influence I most decry, not those from the Land of Lincoln, those who became Southern Baptists and Southern Methodists for practical reasons and defended it with the same type of fundamentalistic, fideistic, authoritarian bible-thumping we still witness today.

The abolitionists were another type of evangelical and their energies were neither wasted nor misguided. Bravo, indeed. I would applaud such a reassertion of the Lincoln states .!

pax!
jb

I would to temper any excessive pejorative force that my charges of fideism and fundamentalism might convey. These are descriptive terms for approaches some people value and others disvalue. I clearly see such approaches as suboptimal. There are many people I love who disagree.

pax!
jb

quote:

Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam ... Rosie O'Donnell

O.K. Rosie, sure, it is not like there is no parity whatsoever between fundamentalistic approaches of different religions and ideologies. There will always be people in every tradition or ideology who, uncritically and unreflectively,
accept whatever has been taught them at mother's knee, unable to properly integrate faith and reason.

Let's stipulate, for argument's sake, that there are radically fundamentalistic Christians, who have bought into their own faith, uncritically and unreflectively, and maybe some of them would even be radically fundamentalistic Muslims if not for the accident of their birth.

HOWEVER, those who are radically fundamentalistic Christians have still, in a very real sense, won the cosmic lottery, at least in the sense that they have uncritically and unreflectively fully bought into a set of religious beliefs and moral precepts, and have participated in a religious community, that, formatively speaking, are all much more transformative than deformative of the human spirit.

Radically fundamentalistic Christians are thus protected by the system they have bought into and this greatly mitigates any threat they'd otherwise pose, even if one does not want to give them credit. (Best I can tell, they explicitly disclaim credit anyway.)

Some Islamists (an umbrella term for certain political ideologies), apparently, and for many different reasons, are presently and for the foreseeable future, undeniably, an unmitigated threat that should not be trivialized or disregarded. And the nature of this threat is not morally equivalent to our standard, garden variety fanatics - ideological, religious or otherwise. (Eat'em up Tigers! Eat'em up! Go LSU! Beat Auburn!)

quote:

From previous post:
[qb] Some Islamists ... are ... an unmitigated threat ... [/qb]

A question is left begging, perhaps, regarding what I think about those Islamists who are not an unmitigated threat? I think those who are not unmitigated threats are threats, nonetheless. I'll neither count nor weigh the different ways here (on this thread).

"Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam ..." Rosie O'Donnell


Interesting that such leftist thinking can't detect its own backside, or how it ventures into the teeth of the very ideology it finds so oppressive. By lambasting fundamentalist Christianity, which operates from "God will send them to hell" in the afterlife as opposed to Islamists' deadly dream of a world theocracy they must bring to pass, the left actually raises the cultural issue, and even the clash of civilizations it is so want to dismiss.

IOW, fundamentalist Christians are routinely scrutized for how they think rigidly and endorse the beating of their children as acceptable discipline, all of it based on family dynamics/values, etc . . . . So oops, Rosie, your slip is showing girlie girl!

You won't catch leftists leveling the same charges against misogynist Moslem culture, whose adherents, without even being radicalized, are gender-abusers.

Pretty scary when you realize folks like Rosie want to save the planet without the use of higher brain functions.

Some thoughts that I'd written elsewhere and am posting here, where it seems they fit.

pax,
JB

Criteria for Political Discourse

I'm a William F. Buckley conservative, myself. There are a couple of reasons, principled and prudential, that I believe that conservatism is the preferred default position in human affairs. Foremost, the principle of subsidiarity focuses us on the values of human dignity and human freedom, thus "jobs" must be done at the most competent level nearest the individual as practicable. Also, from a prudential perspective, Charles Sanders Peirce urges us to speculate boldly on theoretical matters but to approach matters of practical and vital interests much more modestly, paying heed to both common sense and the wisdom accumulated and articulated by tradition. These approaches are exemplified in our Catholic stance and in some politically conservative outlooks.

What is at stake in our political discourse, in my view, is the cultivation and nurturance of an environment that fosters authentic dialogue. Such dialogue is indispensable to enriching our life in Christian community and in helping us to permeate and improve the temporal order. It can be difficult to discern the difference between authentic dialogue and political monologue without some meaningful criteria, for the political gadfly can fly around on what look like wings of legitimacy.

Thankfully, Len Swidler provides us with such criteria in his Dialogue Decalogue:
http://astro.temple.edu/~dialogue/Antho/decalog.htm

What is at play here, in my view, is his 9th Commandment:

quote:

Persons entering into interreligious, interideological dialogue must be at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their own religious or ideological traditions. A lack of such self-criticism implies that one's own tradition already has all the correct answers. Such an attitude makes dialogue not only unnecessary, but even impossible, since we enter into dialogue primarily so we can learn--which obviously is impossible if our tradition has never made a misstep, if it has all the right answers. To be sure, in interreligious, interideological dialogue one must stand within a religious or ideological tradition with integrity and conviction, but such integrity and conviction must include, not exclude, a healthy self-criticism. Without it there can be no dialogue--and, indeed, no integrity.

This helps the discernment process, I believe. Using this criterion, it becomes clearer why an endless tautological cycle of proof-texting appeals to authority (the Pope, the Bible & the Catechism or even the Koran & the Prophet) followed by ad hominem critiques of one�s fellow participants are not dialogue. It only enjoys a superficial legitimacy. It is not useful, from a logical perspective, because it is immersed in fallacy. It is not useful from a dialogical perspective because, per Len's criteria, it lacks self-criticism, hence, integrity.

The easiest way to uncover the absurdity of such a fundamentalistic approach is to attempt a parody of the gadfly's argument by substituting "the Prophet" for the Pope or Magisterium and by substituting "the Koran" for the Bible or Catechism. Such uncritical appeals to authority are not only naive but can become dangerous. At best, they destroy dialogue; at worst, they destroy buildings and people.

As a conservative, in the classical "liberal" tradition, the first thing that might catch one's attention vis a vis any given platonic, aristotelian or thomistic approach is whether or not this or that proponent portrays a naive realism or a critical realism, an a prioristic foundationalism or a weakened foundationalism, an uncritical infallibilism or a chastized fallibilism.

On one hand, we cannot coherently surrender our metaphysical realism. On the other hand, we must recognize that our ontological hypotheses, as root metaphors for modeling reality, remain very highly speculative and that, therefore, any moral impetus urged from the deontological hypotheses we derive therefrom should, necessarily, be proportionately attenuated, which is to say, urged in a more modest and tentative way, especially in a pluralistic political arena.

In fact, we may end up urging (supplementing) our perspectives by otherwise employing mostly prudential arguments, not because we're anti-metaphysical, but, because, often, we see the weaknesses in our own arguments (vis a vis their lack of full transparency to human reason) and must, sometimes, wait patiently for the moral clarity that we hope will eventually dawn with the advent of new discoveries.

That's, in my view, the most authentically conservative approach, over against any aggressive moral statism, for example. N'est pas?

Except, perhaps, for the most general notions re: foundations of our epistemology and re: the most general of moral precepts, metaphysics that employ non-negotiated universals (concepts that employ definitions and categories not in use by the wider community of moral discourse in a pluralistic society) have little currency in political discourse. Metaphysical arguments may demonstrate the reasonableness of our beliefs, but they are not coercive, which is to say that they do not even compel belief in God much less in one's deontology.

In the plainest of terms, this is to say that there is a tendency for folks, armed with metaphysical propositions, to try to PROVE too much.

At this point on humankind's journey, what we have in the world of metaphysics are competing tautologies, some, arguably, more taut than others. The best way we have of adjudicating their claims are via Lonergan's conversions, which is to suggest that orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy, which is to ask: How well does this people institutionalize conversion?

The aristotelian-thomistic approach has much to recommend it, but there is a great danger in using it to prove too much (and it can do better in those reformulations that are less substantialistic, essentialistic and a prioristic). Many approach thorny bioethical issues and vexing moral problems with rather facile formalistic arguments. And we need those, to be sure, but we absolutely must go beyond them in our analyses of moral objects because, get this:

faith is not a philosophical syllogism
hope is not a philosophical syllogism
love is not a philosophical syllogism

For that matter, the things we value most in life are not wholly propositional!

Our current metaphysics do not deliver us explanatory adequacy or empirical demonstrability regarding the most important values in our lives.

To quote my own paraphrases from folks like Fathers McBrien and McCormick:

Our approach presently is one-sidedly philosophical. How can we make it more Christocentric, more "anchored in charity"?

It is a narrow, parochial approach. Could it be more universal [catholic] in its appeal?

It is biologistic and physicalistic. How can we make it more personalistic, emphasizing the centrality of the human person?

It is presented as infallible. How could it be more "modest and tentative" in its appeal?

Could it be more ecumenical, drawing on other sources outside Catholicism for ideas?

It is so exclusively deductive. How could it be more inductive, using the insight of laypersons?

It seeks universal conformism. How can it be more pluralistic, allowing for differences according to individual cases?

It has been so manualistic and minimalistic. How can it be more aspirational, "appealing to the spiritual hungers of people" vs. setting forth merely basic obligations?

My challenge to some conservatives is to answer why things must be so one-sidedly philosophical, essentialistic, minmalistic, physicalistic, biologistic, parochial, deductive, infallibilistic?

The case to made by some progressives is how we can better aspire and give witness to the complementary values that I juxtaposed above.

Even if the Magisterium has been basically right on matters of doctrine and discipline vis a vis such as sex and gender, for example, (and I don't believe it has been), there would remain a huge failure to distinguish between life issues and generative/procreative issues in order to establish some parvity of matter, which is to say it has WAY overinvested importance in the latter to the real detriment of the former.

Conservatism does not confuse ways & means with ends. It does not make tradition an absolute and does not ground arguments in authoritarian appeals. And it does not over-reach, claiming apodictic certainty for matters that are truly in doubt.

[q]Conservatism does not confuse ways & means with ends.[/q]

Nor does it use the Ways & Means Committee for improper ends -- such as benefitting the rich few.