h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<<>the carnal (non-regenerate) mind, and SCS as you call it, is all about the spiritual mind

I'm afraid that really hasn't made it any clearer to me. I don't follow the distinction between the 'carnal mind' and the 'spiritual mind'.>>
I don't think I can help, really, it's not a distinction easily explained to people who don't get the whole spiritual thing. To answer the guy's question in a previous posting - a spiritual mind is not something everyone has, and one doesn't use one and then the other as circumstances dictate.

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I am sorry about that, but there's nothing else I can say, really.

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His views are different from standard American views in some respects, yes, he's of a socialist bent, for one. So in that sense, he's not representative of a "standard" view, but he's not dissimilar to those of most Christians I know...
<< It appears that in fact a sizeable number of Christians clearly think that he does not represent the standard Christian view - they said he was mistaken, though not wrong enough to be a full-blown heretic. As to 'discredited' - he has his opinion on theology, I don't know how you would judge whether it's credible or not.>>

There's no such thing as 100% agreement in any field, but Campolo's views aren't that outrè..

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He did, and I never said he didn't.

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Of course I did, though as I was at work, perhaps not as thoroughly as I'd have liked to...
<< I mean, I can't help but notice that the 2nd paragraph begins: 'The woman is in his eyes a public menace. The man has everything to fear from her, and the first Adam would have done well to be wary about her. The eye with which he looks at her is singularly critical, and not only in De cultu. No occasion is lost to show her vain, conceited, sensual, frivolous, avid and at the same time stupid and cunning.' It continues in that vein for several more paragraphs.>>

So read the whole thing!

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Huh indeed! I didn't get that from the article at all...

Hi Ed,

I started with the guy's home page, and it seems you've missed the most convincing part of his proof.

He's had a discussion thread open for several years now, on which he has managed to successfully ignore many people pointing out obvious flaws in his idea. Eventually, most of them gave up, therefore he must have been correct all along.

Gif

>Huh indeed! I didn't get that from the article at all...

No, nor did I - but nevertheless, Tertullian clearly states it in De Cultu. I posted the link before.

And yes, I read the whole article.

Gif

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To an extent, yes...

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True, but I suspect, to a much lesser degree than you think.
<< But what I'd like to know is...what caused the evolution? Why did Christianity drift away from what is now regarded as the true interpretation? Why has it drifted back?>>
Everything cultural evolves.

<< have my own theory, of course. I suggest that Christians' interpretations are led - sometimes kicking and screaming - by changes in secular thought. But I'd welcome a Christian opinion.>>
No, you're giving secular views far too much credit, and the church far too little. Christianity has always preached freedom, and the secular society hasn't been too happy about it.

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I couldn't tolerate the book long enough to read that far, but I'd be interested in a precis, because I don't see how he could make that case!

Vicky

Ed, you wouldn't be putting Descartes before the.....again. New book for your round to it list, Steven Pinker's latest,The Stuff of Thought, Language as a window into Human Nature. Only just started it but it is very interesting.

Vicky:
>>To answer the guy's question in a previous posting - a spiritual mind is not something everyone has,

Wooaah! That needs further explanation. How/When is a spiritual mind acquired?

More fundamentally...are you using the word 'mind' in the way I understand it? I take it to be the sum total of our mental processes. These processes are, themselves, biological in origin.

It occurs to me that you might be using it slightly differently. I'm wondering if by 'mind' you mean 'a way of looking at things'? (Which I might phrase, in mechanistic terms, as 'the application of a subset of mental processes').

Am I close?

If so...that would raise questions about why would might assume that one's spiritual way of looking at things is any better than other (carnal?) ways?

NOTE: I may be totally mistaking what you mean by a 'spiritual mind' and hence going off on a tangent. As I said - it needs further explanation.

That Pinker's been in my pile for ages. Too many books! Such a short life!

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It was of course, Mikey, I was quoting him.. Tut tut, Pedro, attention to detail is so important for an economist!

Vicky

>>No, you're giving secular views far too much credit, and the church far too little. Christianity has always preached freedom, and the secular society hasn't been too happy about it.

That's a fair point. But my underlying point is that surely Christianity and secular thought undergo the precisely the same cultural evolution: we make it up as we go along. The arbiter of what we choose to accept at any given time is ordinary, human thought. For better or worse, we apply precisely the same sorts of judgement to religious opinion as to any other stream of knowledge. And so we should! So I'm still struggling to see where this 'sanctified common sense' comes into it?

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By becoming a spiritual person, by becoming a Christian, essentially.

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Yes, except there's more to the mind than the purely biological.

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Well, that too, but you're confusing the issue, it's the same thing!

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Well, for starters, you can't understand scripture without a spiritual way of looking at it. Hence all the questions the answers of which seem so obvious to me, and yet there's this yawning chasm!

>>Christianity has always preached freedom, and the secular society hasn't been too happy about it.

I'd quibble with that, though. Isn't it more like:
'Some elements within Christianity have always preached freedom, and those elements which have aligned themselves with power structures haven't always been happy about it.'?

I don't think, for example, that it would be reasonable to characterise the Inquisition as secular.

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It was a power structure and as such, not unsecular.

Vicky

Hi Vicky,

OK, very short precis of Hitchens on fascism and religion:

Fascism originates in Italy, where it has the support of the RC church. It spreads to Spain and several other European and South American countries, and is everywhere either supported or not opposed by the Vatican and the local churches (by some Popes more than others). It also spreads to Japan, where it becomes linked with the God-Emperor cult.

Even after WW2, Catholicism supports fascism in Spain and South America and (and I want to check this for accuracy, but it's what Hitchens claims) was involved in spiriting away some Nazi war criminals to South America.

Hitchens treats Nazism separately from other fascist movements, as there were pagan elements involved, and as some Christians resisted the 'Final Solution', but essentially the same points apply.

Gif

Here's another yawning chasm:
>>Yes, except there's more to the mind than the purely biological.

Granted, it isn't always (often?) useful to understand the mind at the neural level. We can talk, for example, about ideas as entities in themselves. But if it's not biological...what is it?


But on the acquired spiritual mind thing...it seems to me that all you're really saying is that if one accepts the Christian way of looking at things, one sees things differently. That doesn't tell us anything on what basis one should accept the Christian way of seeing things in the first place. Does it?

>>not unsecular.

'Darling...I'm not unpregnant.'

I agree, Gif, that The Hitch is on very shaky ground when he equates Stalinism with religion. That part really belongs in an argument for Enlightenment Liberalism.

>>(and I want to check this for accuracy, but it's what Hitchens claims) was involved in spiriting away some Nazi war criminals to South America.

Here's a starter:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

IIRC, there's also evidence of Vatican banking connections in the laundering of Nazi criminal proceeds.

replying to a hidden post seems a good place to interrupt and back-track to an earlier part of the thread.

On the subject of who gets to use the term Christian:

I've had some misunderstandings with some of the more fundamental type Christians.. such as being told I *can't* be a Christian, because I read science fiction (!), or because I am a solo mother, or any number of other reasons, sometimes by other solo-mothering, science-fiction-reading, themselves-fairly-idiosyncratic-Christians.




Obviously this is adapted from one of Vicky's posts on the Favourite Bible Verse thread and does not completely reflect in detail my situation or experiences. But I think this does show that Vicky and I might be able to agree that nobody should be saying

O post of surpassing fleetness!
What gems of knowledge lay within your lost repose?
Now we must continue without your sweetness,
Cos what you said - f**k knows!

Gif