The thing that makes ideologies dangerous

-

The thing that makes ideologies dangerous is that those 
ensnared by them don't know they're dangerous, 
which makes them dangerous too!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timeline of David Alexander, Celebrity Ex-Evangelical Convert to Mormonism

-
Image
"...my 47 years in evangelical Christianity." See here ( 20:20) Here, as best as I can gather, is the religious background of the celebrated ex-evangelical convert to Mormonism David Alexander.  Alexander features his evangelical background as the platform from which he defends Mormonism and opposes evangelicals.  Questions have been posed about the extent of Alexander's evangelical involvement.  How one answers these questions will depend on (1) whether one considers the Twelve Tribe group in which Alexander (as "Duresh") belonged for what appears to be most of the last 20 years, should be counted as evangelical or not, and (2) whether the great number of churches Alexander reports having passed through during the previous 27 years, some of which could undoubtedly be counted as evangelical, represents typical evangelical experience.   I leave it to my readers to decide the answers to these two questions for themselves. Where possible I have relied on Al...
Read more

Notes on the Gospel Tangents' Podcast "What does Sandra Tanner have to Say about Biblical Forgeries"

-
Podcast: What Does Sandra Tanner have to Say About Biblical Forgeries I've been enjoying listening to this part of the interview between Rick C. Bennett and Sandra Tanner. Since my own area includes Gospels and Patristics, I thought I would chime in with few comments and corrections.  For the most part my comments follow the sequence of the discussion, and probably doesn't make much sense if you have'n't listened to the discussion. (1) The context of Paul’s warning against people preaching other Gospels (Galatians 1) had to do, as becomes clear as one reads on in Galatians, with forcing Gentiles who converted to Christianity to become Jews first, through circumcision and what not. I have never encountered a New Testament scholar who would make the case that Paul was referring to Gnostic Gospels. I can’t say for certain that there is no scholar who does not make that case, but it would certainly be an idiosyncratic one. (2) When what might be called proto-Gnost...
Read more

Temeritas (Rashness): Two Flaws In Thinking That Mess Up Our View Of Ethics, History, Politics, & Everything Else.

-
Image
  One of the most helpful categories for understanding how we go wrong in our thinking is Augustine's idea of   temeritas   (rashness), which he defines as the TENDENCY TO ASSERT AS CERTAIN WHAT IS UNCERTAIN and WHAT IS UNCERTAIN AS CERTAIN. To "assert the certain as uncertain" is to refuse, or be unable to, be appropriately moved by evidence. To assert the "uncertain as certain" is to achieve certainty ahead of the evidence, i.e., prematurely. Often those who have very bad case of the first (asserting the certain as uncertain), tend to accuse others of being guilty of the second (asserting the uncertain as certain), and vice-versa.   Termeritas   is the sin which apologists of all sorts tend to be prone. Vaclav Havel is often quoted as saying, "Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.” I have no idea if Havel actually said this or where, but he is often quoted as saying it. Whatever the case, my experience would tend t...
Read more