Reply #117: the point is this

[imenja]

You use your dislike of the right wingers as a pretext for denouncing all Christians. You accusatively noted that I share some similar thought process with right wingers because I do not denounce religion, because I refuse to limit myself to a consciousness of the material world alone. My reference to male sexual organs was intended to point out to you how ridiculous your comment was. You also share characteristics with right wingers and the same sex organs that have produced patriarchy. Should I blame you for their misdeeds as a result? Of course not. It was not meant to be a sound argument, because yours is not. Any effort to express prejudice at entire groups of people is by essence illegitimate. If the fact that I and the overwhelming majority of the rest of humanity maintain faith prompts you to dislike us because you oppose Right Wing Christians, that is a problem for your own conscience. I have made an effort to get you to examine that position. I can do no more.


That you have never observed science discussed in Sartre's work somehow makes him illegitimate? One could make that point about most works of literature, art, and philosophy. So what? If the only aspects of human existence that matter to you are the material, why are we even having this conversation? We, in this scenario, are but a mere biological shell, so questions of culture, politics, art and history are worthless.

I believe you miss your mark with your assessment of Sartre and the other Existentialists. For one thing, all schools of thought have to be examined in their time frame. To imagine that the Existentialists
should reflect the same concerns Rousseau or Descartes does is unrealistic. There is indeed something profoundly cynical in the work of Camus and Sartre, but their work emerged from a time of horrific war, genocide, and colonialism. Both Sartre and Camus were active in the French resistance. Nazi occupied France bore little resemblance to Enlightenment Europe in which many of your favored philosophers wrote. It is unrealistic to expect its thinkers to contemplate the same questions. Moreover, mid 20th century philosophers did not have the same need to highlight the virtues of scientific thinking, because they lived in a world were science prevailed. The excesses of the applications of science became visible to all with the revelations of the Nazi laboratories and death camps. Hitler's was also a secular ideology, and he employed science to carry out the worst atrocities known to human kind.


The Christian Existentialists do not exhibit the same cynicism evident in the atheistic Existentialists. That is perhaps the peskiest aspect of faith: it offers hope in the fact of despair; it renounces cynicism when most see no other possibility. That is why I conceded that "I try" to have faith. I lack this kind of mental and emotional strength.

It guess it has never occurred to me to evaluate philosophers in the way that you have, in terms of whether they ask the questions I deem relevant without regard to the historical context in which they wrote. All of the men you mention have made enormous intellectual contributions to the modern world. I would never dismiss as fabricators or "whiny men" Western culture's great thinkers because I know very well that their contributions far exceed anything that I will ever do. And I certainly am not going to insist that all worthwhile efforts to explore the human condition ended with the Enlightenment. I would prefer not to keep human kind limited to 18th (or 19th, in the case of Bertrand Russell) concerns.

You evidently see science and religion as inherently contradictory. So did the Inquisition and so do conservative Christian fundamentalists. I, like most progressive Christians including those who are themselves scientists, see no inherent contradiction between the two.

I'm sorry you feel I have treated you badly. You quite abusively insulted my faith and that of all believers. Your insults resulted in your posts being deleted, despite the fact that I never reported them. Your post above does not accurately represent your own statements. One of your deleted posts insisted the Christians were perpetrating a massive, illegitimate scam on the world. You wrote this in response to my post about the importance of Christ's teachings of love and forgiveness. You obviously carry around a great deal of anger toward Christians. Perhaps if I lived in Mississippi I might have similar views. The world of faith, however, is not limited to the conservative Christians who may be your neighbors. It is not limited to the TV preachers who make the cable talk show circuits. My responses were intended to impress upon you that religion is far more than what you envision. I did so through intellectual debate, not insults, despite the example you yourself set.