Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.

Purgatory : Why Christians Always Left Me Cold

1356718

Comments

  • Indeed.
  • Rossweisse wrote: »
    I know that worship isn't about me - but if I were forced to listen to 'praise songs' week in and week out, I'd have to stay at home and listen to Choral Evensong (in the morning) on the radio, because it would drive me mad. I can acknowledge the sincerity of the participants without being able to take part in it.
    Oh agreed. If praise songs with worship bands were the steady diet, I’d decide I needed to look elsewhere. I’m talking more about the occasional hymn I don’t like or that I think is dreck. Having fairly strong ideas about how things out to be done, those are the times I need to remind myself it’s not about me. Others may not have similar challenges. :wink:
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    I'm pretty certain we all have similar challenges. Young Master Tor can't see the point of liturgy in any form whatsoever, I cringe at the awful 'drama' slot, and we both kvetch about the music (he's on drums, I'm on bass, we do what we can to keep a tight back line).

    And yet, it's not about me, or him. We've been there for 12 years now.
  • @Lamb Chopped I'm on my phone so can't make it pretty. If church is for engaging with different sorts of people, what is the difference between it and a service club like Rotary? Or a football club? Or going to the same pub every day? Or going to work?

    Surely worship is for God-stuff, which is people-stuff and real people-stuff is about the lonely, the depressed, the anxious, the drug-addict, the life-crisised. And its not about doing stuff for them so much as it is being with them, where they are. It's the deaconal stuff, as I understand the reformed tradition anyway.

    So it must be to replenish us, to steel us for the struggles of the ministry of the people. Surely worship is for me, for me to get what I need, and for God to (danger Will Robinson) whatever God exists for, which I am trying not to define or limit.

    I appreciate that worship services themselves may be places where ministry takes place or allows connections to be made, but surely that is ancillary.

    I guess it depends in part on your theology, and I am saturated in Catholicism. I know that the reformed tradition is moving towards worship as (buggered if I know) something other than a liturgical celebration. I myself would like to take a chainsaw to every projector and every screen in every church in Australia. The only technology I would keep are lights, heaters for winter and fans for summer. Grumpy grump grump grump.

    I got a bit silly, but really this is vital stuff with more than one perspective.

    sleep now...
  • Timo Pax wrote: »
    Well, I raised the issue of music not so much because I wanted to talk about music (and the fact that the thread is now largely about music might be telling ....), but because I see the oversimplistic, mainstream music one tends to encounter in church as symptomatic of the oversimplistic, mainstream character of a lot of UK religious life generally. And it's my belief that this oversimplistic, mainstream character puts people off the church, or makes them see it as a bit redundant. <snip>

    :lol: Congratulations! You've just given one of the most concise, and best, descriptions of some 'Alphaed' churches I've ever read.

    Just in case you haven't ventured far in your church-tasting as yet, it tends to be that the higher up the candle you go, the better the music.

    "Better" is a very subjective term ….
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    Exhibit A: Rutter.
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    Exhibit A: Rutter.
    Ahh-men. What's really irritating is that, among the piles of dreck, there are pieces that show that he really is talented, and capable writing music worth performing. ("Shepherd's Pipe Carol" could drive me to homicide.)

  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    @Lamb Chopped I'm on my phone so can't make it pretty. If church is for engaging with different sorts of people, what is the difference between it and a service club like Rotary? Or a football club? Or going to the same pub every day? Or going to work?

    Surely worship is for God-stuff, which is people-stuff and real people-stuff is about the lonely, the depressed, the anxious, the drug-addict, the life-crisised. And its not about doing stuff for them so much as it is being with them, where they are. It's the deaconal stuff, as I understand the reformed tradition anyway.

    So it must be to replenish us, to steel us for the struggles of the ministry of the people. Surely worship is for me, for me to get what I need, and for God to (danger Will Robinson) whatever God exists for, which I am trying not to define or limit.

    I appreciate that worship services themselves may be places where ministry takes place or allows connections to be made, but surely that is ancillary.

    I guess it depends in part on your theology, and I am saturated in Catholicism. I know that the reformed tradition is moving towards worship as (buggered if I know) something other than a liturgical celebration. I myself would like to take a chainsaw to every projector and every screen in every church in Australia. The only technology I would keep are lights, heaters for winter and fans for summer. Grumpy grump grump grump.

    I got a bit silly, but really this is vital stuff with more than one perspective.

    sleep now...

    Well, church is actually for a lot more than just one purpose. Off the top of my head, besides the body-of-Christ love-your-neighbor stuff, I'd add teaching, mutual help and comfort, provision of the sacraments, group activism (I'm sure there's a suitable New Testament term for this but I can't think of it just right now), corporate witness-to-the-world, corporate acts of mercy (e.g. running a food pantry, or anything else that requires more than a couple of Christians to get it going and keep it running), and so forth and so on. My point was only that there is a very strong aspect of church that overrides (or should I say "balances" ? ) any tendency to be simply "just God and me" in isolated individualism. Attractive as that is to certain personality types (like mine).

    I'm not really sure why you brought up reformed theology--maybe I missed something upthread--but I'm not qualified to speak much to that, being a Lutheran and wholly unreformed.

    The replenishment thing is totally real and important. I'm just saying there's more to it than that.
  • Timo PaxTimo Pax Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    I’m starting to feel a little sorry for having kicked off this thread - just because there have been so many strong and thoughtful and reflective posts on it* and I haven’t had time to really process or formulate responses to them all, despite the fact that I’ve found almost everything written above so valuable.

    So, to bite off one small chunk ... @SusanDoris has expressed general curiosity about the religious experience I went through, @Colin Smith asked a more pointed question, and @Simon Toad was surprised that a new Christian would be formulating matters quite as I have done.

    I wrote a brief description in All Saints when I first joined the Ship here: https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/comment/187070/#Comment_187070. You’ll see that I described it as lasting a couple of days ... but I should add here that this was as a slow burn, rather than some transfixing spiritual transport. That meant it wasn’t so much an inexplicable ‘bang!’ moment of epiphany I then tried to fit templates onto so much as a gradual unfolding during which questions arose and gradually resolved themselves.

    Despite the unexpected character of the event, in retrospect I can see I was on some level being primed for it well in advance. I had always been profoundly moved by the culture of medieval Christianity; I had a history of dating Christians, one of whom became my wife; I moved for a long time in academic circles where encounters with theologians were not infrequent - and some of these people became good friends. Even if I’m a ‘new Christian’, then, what’s new to me is the belief rather than the doctrine,

    So I can well accept that had I grown up in a different culture, the questions that arose in me during those days would have been rather different, or taken a different form. But it’s not as though on one side there is ‘the experience’ and on the other is the ‘pattern recognition’. The experience is of a pattern. And sure, I can interrogate this in various ways. But interrogating this in a holistic ‘was the experience really what the experience seemed to be’ way feels like quite an abstract exercise - a bit like deciding to live in a world imaginatively populated by Philosophical Zombies: sure, I have no proof that the people around me are anything other than consciousless automatons, but that way lies Philip K. Dick-style madness.

    Other kinds of interrogation are interesting and useful and I’m still working them out (and probably will be for quite some time). But they’re all ultimately grounded in a perspective that as experienced felt not just new, but more real and profound than most of the last few decades of my life, and demands action adequate to that. Under such circumstances, one’s needs are intensely pragmatic, and one can only work with the tools available at the deepest level of being to which one has access. What I’ve got is a loving and redemptive God, and I don’t have any choice but to cleave to that. Here I stand and, barring further insights or deepening, I can do no other.

    * Seriously. I was for some time an admin on a Soto Zen forum, and even for that allegedly peaceable and dispassionate creed there was a maximum thread length of maybe 10 before everything degenerated into a vindictive flamewar that had to be shut down. I have no idea what the Ship’s secret is, but a big shout out to @Doc Tor and the other moderators for keeping it from disintegrating into Greek Fire.

  • Heh. The secret here is Hell. Which is a board I have recommended to other start-up forums, as it seems to do remarkably well in preventing forum-wide meltdown.
  • TheOrganist: "Another major offender is I, the Lord of sea and sky (Here I am Lord) which is known by many musicians as the split personality song because we lurch from the voice of God (I, the Lord of sea and sky) to the voice of ??? (Here I am Lord) without pause or break. Who is speaking - God, someone else, the singer, both? "

    Moving from God to the believer? Like many of the Psalms, you mean?

    The Psalms make it quite clear who is speaking and, dare I say it, the "voice of God" is signposted at every turn. And do you really mean to compare Dan Schutte with the psalmist(s)?
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Exhibit A: Rutter.

    :lol: One of the weirdest things about the CofE's re-writing of the Gloria is that so many of those for the "new" words can be segued into Pop goes the weasel - and if you try it during a service (as the accompaniment nobody notices.
  • You are evil. I like you.
  • fineline wrote: »
    Hi anoesis - yes, ennui. Not sure what you are projecting onto me, but I am familiar with the term ennui, if you were thinking I had to look it up in a dictionary. Or if you mean projecting onto what I meant, you are correct, I do mean a sort of deliberate boredom, which is supposed to indicate sophistication, though I think when people are in that environment, they pick it up automatically, so it is perhaps not always fully conscious and self-aware.

    I can’t do it myself though - I’ve been to churches where people are like this (with no earnestness at all, and sometimes making fun of my earnestness), and I went to a posh uni years ago where this ennui was the norm, and I just don’t pick it up.

    I assure you I wasn't suggesting you might need to look up ennui in a dictionary! It was more that I was a little concerned I might have picked up the germ of your idea, and run off with it in a totally different direction than you had intended...
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    I’m talking more about the occasional hymn I don’t like or that I think is dreck. Having fairly strong ideas about how things out to be done, those are the times I need to remind myself it’s not about me. Others may not have similar challenges. :wink:
    Apparently, the Lord has been reading this thread and thought I needed to be challenged this morning. :unamused:

  • Heheheheh. You should have HEARD what we got this morning! And I remembered this thread halfway through and forced myself to sing.
  • Well, I shouldn’t complain too much. We also sang some I like, including one we rarely sing. I’ll take it.
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Well, I shouldn’t complain too much. We also sang some I like, including one we rarely sing. I’ll take it.
    We got "Let us break bread together on our knees." I braced myself and sang it. At least I knew we had "Michael" to close, and that was a big help.

  • At least y’all actually do kneel at Communion, so it makes some sense. I’ve no idea what to make of it when we Presbies sing it.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    I remember (vaguely) the earlier words to that music, and am always put in mind of the way we mucked up the refrain, “When I fall on my face with my knees to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me” :mrgreen:
  • @Timo Pax ahhh, I projected onto you. Thanks for clarifying.

    @Lamb Chopped cheers LC, of course you are right! How can human stuff not be multi-faceted?
  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    fineline wrote: »
    I’m quite fascinated with the dislike of earnestness, and wondering to what extent that sentiment is a middle class English thing. The idea that one should never show much enthusiasm, always be a bit cynical and detached, etc. Same with dislike of happiness. I’m remembering a sort of precursor to reality TV thing years ago, where they were trying to get working class northern people to pass as upper middle class Londoners, and one thing they said was to never show enthusiasm or emotion, to always seem a little bored.

    Reminding one, of course, of the "Sex Education" scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. NSFW. (Two-click rule followed: click on one of the links that say Monty Python's The Meaning of Life Sex Education.)

  • I have to say, your expression of the quiet, individual opening to holiness, all that stuff--that's what really resonates with me just by nature. It just sounds lovely. IMHO God delights in dropping me in stuff that is diametrically opposed to my nature...
  • Timo Pax wrote: »
    snip

    it seems to me that most expressions of Christian faith express broadly 'mainstream' values. The ethics are rarely anything that would surprise a secular centrist, the manner of expression is vaguely pleasant,

    Umm. I'm tempted to say "thank fuck for that" but what system of ethics and manner of expression would you prefer?

    One could also point out that the mainstream values in secular (western) society are
    1) in large part the result of many centuries of Christian dominance.
    2) the same as those in the Christian Church because (a) people are people and people invented Christianity or (b) see Romans 2:14-16
    3) That the scientific/secular worldview is comparatively recent and either not enough time has elapsed for a specifically secular/science based moral code to evolve or, more likely in my view, science is a lousy basis for any moral code.
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    edited September 2019
    Russ wrote: »
    Causality is both ways. Christianity played a large part in forming western societies AND Christianity as we in western societies know it has been formed by the particularities of European culture.

    I think what Timo Pax is pointing to is that one would think that the difference between theism (belief in a person-like God) and atheism should be huge. Life-changing. But somehow culturally it isn't.

    Mainstream western society may have slid over the line into atheism over the last 125 years. But it has been gradual. An evolution not a revolution.

    That's a bigger issue than tastes in music...

    I would say that society has slipped into secularism, rather than atheism. What is interesting, and may be part of what Timo is getting at, isn't the apparent difference between the theist and atheist outlook but that so many people don't seem interested in the question.

    A true agnostic is someone who has weighed the evidence for God's (or a god's) existence and concluded it's insufficient for them to form an opinion whereas what we seem to have now are a lot of agnostics-by-default who simply aren't interested in whether there is or isn't a god/God. I find that indifference puzzling and even alarming.

  • Timo Pax wrote: »
    I’m starting to feel a little sorry for having kicked off this thread - just because there have been so many strong and thoughtful and reflective posts on it* and I haven’t had time to really process or formulate responses to them all, despite the fact that I’ve found almost everything written above so valuable.

    So, to bite off one small chunk ... @SusanDoris has expressed general curiosity about the religious experience I went through, @Colin Smith asked a more pointed question, and @Simon Toad was surprised that a new Christian would be formulating matters quite as I have done.

    I wrote a brief description in All Saints when I first joined the Ship here: https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/comment/187070/#Comment_187070. You’ll see that I described it as lasting a couple of days ... but I should add here that this was as a slow burn, rather than some transfixing spiritual transport. That meant it wasn’t so much an inexplicable ‘bang!’ moment of epiphany I then tried to fit templates onto so much as a gradual unfolding during which questions arose and gradually resolved themselves.

    Despite the unexpected character of the event, in retrospect I can see I was on some level being primed for it well in advance. I had always been profoundly moved by the culture of medieval Christianity; I had a history of dating Christians, one of whom became my wife; I moved for a long time in academic circles where encounters with theologians were not infrequent - and some of these people became good friends. Even if I’m a ‘new Christian’, then, what’s new to me is the belief rather than the doctrine,

    So I can well accept that had I grown up in a different culture, the questions that arose in me during those days would have been rather different, or taken a different form. But it’s not as though on one side there is ‘the experience’ and on the other is the ‘pattern recognition’. The experience is of a pattern. And sure, I can interrogate this in various ways. But interrogating this in a holistic ‘was the experience really what the experience seemed to be’ way feels like quite an abstract exercise - a bit like deciding to live in a world imaginatively populated by Philosophical Zombies: sure, I have no proof that the people around me are anything other than consciousless automatons, but that way lies Philip K. Dick-style madness.

    Other kinds of interrogation are interesting and useful and I’m still working them out (and probably will be for quite some time). But they’re all ultimately grounded in a perspective that as experienced felt not just new, but more real and profound than most of the last few decades of my life, and demands action adequate to that. Under such circumstances, one’s needs are intensely pragmatic, and one can only work with the tools available at the deepest level of being to which one has access. What I’ve got is a loving and redemptive God, and I don’t have any choice but to cleave to that. Here I stand and, barring further insights or deepening, I can do no other.

    * Seriously. I was for some time an admin on a Soto Zen forum, and even for that allegedly peaceable and dispassionate creed there was a maximum thread length of maybe 10 before everything degenerated into a vindictive flamewar that had to be shut down. I have no idea what the Ship’s secret is, but a big shout out to @Doc Tor and the other moderators for keeping it from disintegrating into Greek Fire.

    Thank you. I hadn't intended my question to be pointed (at least, not in a stabby way) but was genuinely curious how you processed a spiritual experience. I'm not immune from similar experiences, to the extent that while I am still an atheist I have a strong sympathy for numenism which, albeit it makes no sense rationally, appeals to me emotionally. In other words, my intention was to compare notes and was certainly not, as someone's comment implied, an attempt to undermine your experience.

    Your last para is amusing. The most hostility I have ever experienced in an online 'faith' forum was on a Facebook group for atheists. I wasn't atheist enough for them!
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    Atheists can get as touchy as Christians, if you point out gaps in their arguments!
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    edited September 2019
    Atheists can get as touchy as Christians, if you point out gaps in their arguments!

    That lot weren't touchy. As far as they were concerned you could only be a real atheist if you absolutely rejected every possible kind of spirituality and regarded those who do believe as fools.

    If it hadn't been so unpleasant it would have been amusing to witness the level of intolerance.
  • Timo Pax, you've done us a great favor by giving us such a great thread. Don't feel obliged to respond to every single post (awesome as all these are) as if you were a worried host checking to see that the drinks don't run out. :wink: Just enjoy yourself and go along for the ride. Respond to what feels good in the moment. We'll all serve ourselves from the bar, heh.
  • Yes, I've had tough times on atheist forums, some very arrogant know-alls used to frequent them. But they seem fewer in number, the forums I mean..
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Atheists can get as touchy as Christians, if you point out gaps in their arguments!

    Mine have none.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    Atheists can get as touchy as Christians, if you point out gaps in their arguments!

    Mine have none.

    You're braver than me. I thought that had massive thread-derailment potential so cried off.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Atheists can get as touchy as Christians, if you point out gaps in their arguments!

    Mine have none.

    You're braver than me. I thought that had massive thread-derailment potential so cried off.

    To paraphrase Dionne Warwick, Colin, just... scroll on by. Everybody else will.
  • @Simon Toad No problem. I think in a way it was really my better-than-middling knowledge of Christianity that prompted me to write the incredibly-long original post. Given that I had a long-standing appreciation of Christianity; given that I had so many people of the faith around me whom I respected, loved, and admired; given that I had spent the last twenty years or more feeling as though something important was missing in my life, and this absence made it feel hollow ... well, what exactly took me so long to embrace the faith?
    I would say that society has slipped into secularism, rather than atheism. What is interesting, and may be part of what Timo is getting at, isn't the apparent difference between the theist and atheist outlook but that so many people don't seem interested in the question.

    Yes, that’s puzzled me for a long time. I’m particularly interested in it because of where I work, a sort of think-tanky NGO that strives, by its own lights, to do good in the world and influence policy-makers to do the same. The people I work with are all intelligent, diligent, and morally-motivated - and there’s no doubt in my mind that perhaps three generations ago this moralism would have been grounded in religious convictions. Now, it doesn’t seem to be grounded in anything, really: the goods aimed at are, AFAICT, simply intrinsically so. This always struck me as unsatisfying, hence my original focus on Soto Zen. But I seem to be alone in this sense of dissatisfaction. And I worry that at times the drive toward the good is propelled overmuch simply by the delights of reacting against the bad ....



  • Umm. I'm tempted to say "thank fuck for that" but what system of ethics and manner of expression would you prefer?

    Ha! Well, it’s the right question, and the short answer is ‘I don’t know’ - beyond something that seemed to express in some measure the depth and unknowability and wildness of the (S|s)pirit (so I suppose a ‘system’ is not necessarily what I’m thinking of here). In literature, the writer I found most moving on religious themes prior to coming to the faith was Flannery O’Connor, and I suspect I’ll find her moving still. I realise you can’t really build a system of ethics on her collections of freaks and visionaries ... but when it comes to showing the operations of grace or blindness on the human soul, she opens new doors. Milton, the same ....
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    edited September 2019
    "Timo wrote:
    Yes, that’s puzzled me for a long time. I’m particularly interested in it because of where I work, a sort of think-tanky NGO that strives, by its own lights, to do good in the world and influence policy-makers to do the same. The people I work with are all intelligent, diligent, and morally-motivated - and there’s no doubt in my mind that perhaps three generations ago this moralism would have been grounded in religious convictions. Now, it doesn’t seem to be grounded in anything, really: the goods aimed at are, AFAICT, simply intrinsically so. This always struck me as unsatisfying, hence my original focus on Soto Zen. But I seem to be alone in this sense of dissatisfaction. And I worry that at times the drive toward the good is propelled overmuch simply by the delights of reacting against the bad ....

    My own take, speaking as an atheist who has thought about the question, is that 'moral values' are innate to some degree in all social animal species from humans to (surprisingly) vampire bats. The phrase to look up if you're interested is reciprocal altruism.

    Basically, for any group of animals to hang together and offer mutual benefit to all individuals within it there has to be an underlying 'code' of behaviour which moderates short-term selfish acts and preferences acts that are of long-term benefit to the group. I would say this behaviour has evolved but a Christian might point to Romans 2:14-16 for an explanation.

    Thus, far from being grounded in nothing, the good you saw in your colleagues is inherent in human nature and part of the glue that keeps our social structures working.

    Of course, our society is a lot more complex than even chimpanzee society and I would argue that humans are still working through (evolving) the moral ramifications of that change after thousands of years living in small tribal groups. And of course, just as in other animal species, some individuals abuse the code.
  • Yes, agree with that. Plenty of evidence that some animals exhibit altruism, punishment, reconciliation, etc. Check out Frans de Waal on primates.
  • enjoying the thread (in spite of my grumpy start upthread) but would like to steer back a little to part of the OP: 'Christian churches have had a hard time attracting people for the last few decades' and offer a slightly different take on this as my own CoE shack sees numbers dwindling. Nearly all of us spend a very large part of our lives in buildings and being outdoors is much better for the soul. Attending church on a Sunday morning can effectively take up half the day -and in winter at least half the daylight hours and if you work fulltime you need to other stuff: outdoor hobbies, sorting garden, taking kids to sport training etc etc. If any shipmates think there is anything in this then I'm interested in offering and discussing possible ways church could adapt to this.
  • ...Christian churches have had a hard time attracting people for the last few decades...
    Personally, I think that is a good thing.
    It is the narrow path, not the wide one, that leads to salvation.
    IMHO, one thing christianity should not be is institutionalized, and it is only a minority of congregations that manage to avoid it.

  • I would submit that nobody, but nobody manages to avoid it. Even if you've got three pals and a monkey meeting in someone's front room you've got some form of institutional thing going on.
  • Moyessa wrote: »
    ...Christian churches have had a hard time attracting people for the last few decades...
    Personally, I think that is a good thing.
    It is the narrow path, not the wide one, that leads to salvation.
    IMHO, one thing christianity should not be is institutionalized, and it is only a minority of congregations that manage to avoid it.

    Often families bring their little bundle of joy to be baptised at our shack. We try and make them as welcome as we can and the ceremony takes place within the morning service. I suspect they feel like fish out of water -and we never see them again.
    So have they been helped on the road (narrow or wide) that leaves to salvation? We can choose to believe 'in faith' but are we just doing something terribly wrong? -which is I think what @Timo Pax was getting at in his OP.
  • Thus, far from being grounded in nothing, the good you saw in your colleagues is inherent in human nature and part of the glue that keeps our social structures working ... of course, just as in other animal species, some individuals abuse the code.

    I have a vague feeling we’re steering into David Hume’s strictures against deriving ‘ought’s from ‘is’s. But I’ll stick closer to what I’m more familiar with and my own experience.

    The problem with the ‘it’s innate and evolved behaviour’ account is, IMHO, three-fold (btw, I’m not claiming theistic arguments necessarily manage to avoid these).

    The first objection is a weak one, and is simply that it’s a bit thin. The goods my employer organisation works toward are diverse - liberty, data privacy, security, trustworthiness of information sources (the common thread here is technology, not a particular ideology as such). Lumping all these together as abstract ‘goods’ for which the individual agent sacrifices various other ‘goods’ (time, more lucrative career opportunities, etc.) seems to avoid answering most of the interesting questions one might have about them.

    The second is that it’s actually not very ‘grounding’ - or rather, it’s only grounding if you take ‘nature’ as the ultimate ground, and have a particular view of how nature works. Other NGOs working in our area often have an agenda grounded in a homo oeconomicus view of human nature rightly being about benefit maximisation for a rational individual. In this view, while it might be the case that we (or at least, most of us) all have altruistic tendencies, these are in fact delusory, either in that they’re irrational weaknesses that ought to be overcome, or they’re not really ‘altruistic’ per se: ultimately, other-benefitting actions are self-benefitting, which reciprocal altruism fits neatly. In any event, ‘good’ behaviour is grounded in something else that gives it value: concrete goods (or, in a Dawkins-y way, reproductive advantage) maximised through rationality.

    And then finally ... while such an account perhaps provides a satisfactory grounding for a general picture of altruistic behaviour, what it doesn’t do is ground myself or my colleagues in any particular altruistic decision we might make. On the reciprocal altruism model, we shouldn’t make sacrifices unless we have some belief that the short-term disadvantage will be balanced by a long-term advantage. But .... well, we’re all college-educated types, typically intelligent and highly motivated. And we’re working smack in the middle of the City of London surrounded by people making eight times our salary at least - but I suspect very few of us would trade positions with any of the traders or corporate lawyers around us. We are, it seems to me, staking quite large sums on our work eventually being socially repaid to us on the reciprocal-altruism model. And it’s thus always seemed to me that most of the people I work with are, every day, making some kind of leap of faith - whether about the kind of society they can expect to live in in future, or what their eventual rewards will be, or that virtue is its own reward, or whatever.

    I’m not saying that ‘leap of faith’ needs to be into the arms of Christianity to be valid. But I’ve always found it curious that my coworkers manage to do it quite so routinely, and apparently unquestioningly.




  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    My own take, speaking as an atheist who has thought about the question, is that 'moral values' are innate to some degree in all social animal species from humans to (surprisingly) vampire bats. The phrase to look up if you're interested is reciprocal altruism.

    This is all very well, but we know in our guts that if the lights went off tomorrow, we'd be clubbing each other to death for a tin of beans by Saturday. The quote has been reworked repeatedly, but a society/a city/Britain is three/six/nine meals away from anarchy/barbarism/chaos. Take your pick.
  • Moyessa wrote: »
    ...Christian churches have had a hard time attracting people for the last few decades...
    Personally, I think that is a good thing.
    It is the narrow path, not the wide one, that leads to salvation.

    Well, my concern is I suppose more about belief than about the church per se. But I’d say, maybe naively ... surely the prospect of forgiveness and salvation is for all, and much of the promise of the NT has to do with how often we stumble?

    But to some extent my worry is as much about this-worldly salvation as the next. My last couple of employers have all been very big on the notion of supporting their workers’ ‘mental health’, and a part of me can understand why: quiet desperation does indeed seem to me the order of the day, and I’ve often counted myself among that crew. But the mental-health solutions on hand seem to me entirely inadequate to the problem: at best a sort of tranquilliser in the Fitter Happier vein. Christianity for me has opened up a new sense of what it is to be, and to be human, while purely secular approaches seem in my view often to depend on limiting this, often painfully.

    I would like, in the end, for more people to know joy. And having missed this for many years for not very good reasons, I wish there was some way to point it out better to other people. Probably they’re unworthy of it. But then, aren’t we all?
  • loved the subtle pointer to Dark Side Of The Moon!
    But joy is subjective surely?
  • I would like, in the end, for more people to know joy.
    Yes, we badly all need it. Would that we could understand the mind of God. I think I am finally at peace with knowing that my mind is not His mind.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Moyessa wrote: »
    ...Christian churches have had a hard time attracting people for the last few decades...
    Personally, I think that is a good thing.
    It is the narrow path, not the wide one, that leads to salvation.
    IMHO, one thing christianity should not be is institutionalized, and it is only a minority of congregations that manage to avoid it.

    Have they?
  • Martin, I followed your link to the interesting article from the Guardian, which seems to support my point:
    the Church of England is set up to be entirely embedded in the nation around it, from the parish system all the way up to the coronation service. The idea that it could somehow reinvent itself as a religion for outsiders and the marginal may be profoundly Christian, but it is sociologically incredible. The God that the English still more or less believe in is less and less likely to be found in churches, or at least in church services.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Never mind the quality, feel the width. Of the narrow joy of salvation in the picture.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    My own take, speaking as an atheist who has thought about the question, is that 'moral values' are innate to some degree in all social animal species from humans to (surprisingly) vampire bats. The phrase to look up if you're interested is reciprocal altruism.

    This is all very well, but we know in our guts that if the lights went off tomorrow, we'd be clubbing each other to death for a tin of beans by Saturday. The quote has been reworked repeatedly, but a society/a city/Britain is three/six/nine meals away from anarchy/barbarism/chaos. Take your pick.

    Well, animals are not purely altruistic. They also punish, as well as conciliate each other. And they can be brutal.
Sign In or Register to comment.