The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TWO.
When Storm, self-professed freedom fighter, disparages:
"'...governments that blither of a detente." (p. 17)
- that briefly ignites Lockridge who expresses some political opinions but only very briefly and cuts himself off in mid-sentence with:
"'...- never mind.'" (ibid.)
Clearly, the purpose of this passage is not to initiate a debate but to inform the readers of what kind of guy Lockridge is: forthright, thinking for himself, outspoken and so on. His opponents in the bull sessions to which he refers would have called him loud-mouthed and opinionated. Indeed:
"'My arguments didn't make me any too well liked.'" (ibid.)
My issue would be not simply that I disagree with Lockridge but, more fundamentally, that I do not think in anything like the same terms. I would have to ask him to back up his generalizations with some examples in order to try to identify a set of parameters for a discussion. But the text does not move in that direction. We are just looking at Lockridge as a person.
Again we remember how reference to contentious issues is used to gauge character in Manse Everard's interview for the Time Patrol. When Everard has grasped some knobs on his chair, Mr. Gordon fires questions without waiting for answers. How does Everard react to physical danger? What are his views on internationalism, communism, fascism and women? What are his personal ambitions? Everard is understandably "What the devil?"-ing but is assured that this is only psychological testing and that his opinions do not matter:
"'...except as they reflect basic emotional orientation.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 1, p. 3.
We learn something of Everard's opinions as the series proceeds.
Storm prefers the Triple Goddess to:
"'...the Father of Thunders.'" (p. 21)
Historically, patriarchal monotheism displaced Goddess-worship although, despite St. Paul's iconoclastic denunciation of Diana of Ephesus, Christianity incorporated a Mother of God in a Council at Ephesus. Storm expresses a preference for the Goddess but humanity as a whole has to understand past stages of religion and move on.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Incorrect, pagan notions about "mother goddesses" had nothing to with the Council of Ephesus, which met to settle the Nestorian controversy. Nor is the BVM a goddess and was never claimed to be such by the Church. She was highly favored by God when she was asked to consent to becoming the mother of the Second Person of the Trinity.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Incorrect. The fact that there was a Mother Goddess in Ephesus must have influenced the declaration of a Mother of God in Ephesus. This dos not amount to saying that Mary is a goddess. The Annunciation in Luke's Gospel is just one of many such stories about the miraculous births of important figures.
Paul.
When a patriarchal monotheism incorporated a major feminine object of devotion, it had to label her as something other than a "goddess" but that was easily done because there were already many angels and saints who would previously have been "gods" or "goddesses."
System-building is ingenious. Patanjali based his Yoga Sutras on the atheist soul-pluralist Samkhya philosophy but wanted to recognize devotion to a deity as a yogic practice so he categorized "God" as a special kind of soul, not subject to reincarnation, the teacher of the earliest teachers but not a creator. Matter and souls, including "God," remained uncreated and beginningless as in Samkhya.
We can admire and appreciate all these systems without getting caught up in them.
Kaor, Paul!
Absolutely wrong, I have read about the Council of Ephesus in Fr. Philip Hughes' history of the general councils, THE CHURCH IN CRISIS. Not a word was said about pagan "goddesses."
Antisupernaturalist mythology is not applicable to Judaism and Christianity, which is about God's interventions in our history.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Absolutely wrong. I did not say that the Council of Ephesus referred to goddesses.
What is "Antisupernaturalist mythology..."?
The proposition that Judaeo-Christianity is about God's interventions in history is a statement of faith in that tradition. Therefore, it cannot be stated as if it were simply a fact in a discussion with someone who does not share that faith. I agree that Judaeo-Christianity is a tradition of belief that God intervenes in history.
Surely this subject-matter warrants a subtler approach than "Absolutely wrong"? I respond in kind but only to demonstrate that both sides can do it.
Paul.
Sean,
I suspect that another issue is lurking in the background, one that we have had before. I think that you think that any anti-supernaturalist who discusses Christianity automatically falsifies Christianity by denying that Christianity is based on belief in the supernatural? This only has to be stated clearly to be seen to be false.
An anti-supernaturalist acknowledges that Christianity is based on a belief in the supernatural, then states his own disbelief in the supernatural. Perfectly straightforward. This discussion has to be had. You are trying to rule it out of court before it even starts.
If you identify so completely with a belief system that you defend it as a matter of life and death, then you wind up misrepresenting the people that you are disagreeing with. I always try to make sure that I have understood a position before I take issue with it. Anti-supernaturalists do not deny that Christianity is supernaturalist. They argue against it for that very reason.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
What irked me were words like these: "Christianity incorporated a Mother of God in a council at Ephesus." It grated on me as crude and offensive because that is not how Catholics and Orthodox think. Rather, the teaching about the BVM was logically derived from the decisions made at the Council about Nestorianism and the Person of Christ.
Orthodox Christianity advances by deepening its understanding of what it believes, not by "incorporating" contradictory notions into it.
I consider antisupernaturalism a mythology because its adherents are unable to prove the supernatural is not real, while those who do believe in it can at least offer arguments for the supernatural being real. To say nothing of how antisupernaturalists are unable to explain what happens at shrines like Lourdes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Christianity did incorporate a Mother of God at Ephesus.
No one is obliged to prove a negative. If you claim that there is life on Mars, then you are obliged to prove it, not to challenge others to disprove it. This is a basic logical principle which I have elucidated more than once. This makes antisupernaturalism a mythology?
Antisupernaturalists are not obliged to explain what happens at Lourdes. We cannot explain everything. There are and presumably always will be many phenomena that we do not understand but this is not a defense of obscurantism. Scientists divide phenomena into those that they can explain and those that they cannot explain yet.
Since I disagree with monotheism on philosophical grounds and with Christianity on historical grounds, I cannot appeal to either of those beliefs in order to explain the events at Lourdes. We have said all this before, haven't we?
Paul.
Sean,
A religion is bound to be described differently from the outside than from the inside. Muslims describe the Koran as a direct revelation from Allah. Neither you nor I describe it as that. I describe it as the scripture of the third Abrahamic tradition. I describe the Granth as the scripture of a Hindu-Muslim synthesis, not as a divine revelation. And so on.
Paul.
Paul: Yes. See "Outsider Test for Faith" which clarified why I am not a believer in any religion.
https://www.amazon.ca/Outsider-Test-Faith-Which-Religion/dp/1616147377
https://religions.wiki/index.php/Outsider_test
Kaor, Paul!
I refuse that word "incorporate." Non-believers don't have the right to tell Christians how and what they believe.
If anti-supernaturalists cannot convincingly argue for the non-existence of the supernatural I see no reason to even pay attention to their views. That is not same as proving/disproving theories/claims based on the material sciences.
And I will continue to believe that the 72 miracles grudgingly conceded by investigators as having no known natural causes at Lourdes wee acts of divine intercession thru the intercession of the BVM. My point being that such events are challenges to anti-supernaturalists. They can disbelieve in Christianity and philosophic arguments for the supernatural, but it's much harder to ignore recently recorded historical facts like a man dying of bone cancer or a woman dying of ALS being instantaneously cured when placed in the waters at Lourdes. The entire history of Lourdes makes sense only by taking into account its Christian background and origins.
Irrelevant to mention Islam, Mohammed was not a prophet nor is Islam "Abrahamic."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not telling you how or what you believe. A religion that had had only a masculine object of worship came also to include a feminine object of (very great) devotion. I have reworded my statement but not changed its content. This seems to be a very touchy subject. Non-believers do have the right to articulate their understandings of what is going on in religions. (I do not understand why the word, "incorporate," is considered offensive but I can say the same thing using other words.)
Sean, you really do not understand the basic logical principle that no one is obliged to prove a negative. I thought that I had made it clear. Check it with a logician. Asking us to prove the non-existence of the supernatural is like asking us to prove the non-existence of life on Mars. If (for example) you say that there IS life on Mars, then you are obliged to prove THAT, not to challenge others to disprove it. You think that, because the supernatural is not a matter for the material sciences, you are entitled simply to assume the supernatural and to challenge others to disprove it? We cannot and do not have to disprove it. You have to prove it.
Such events are challenges to all scientists.
We can and DO disbelieve in Christianity and the supernatural for reasons that we can and have stated and these reasons should be discussed, not put to one side. We do not ignore recently recorded historical facts. We acknowledge that these facts are among the many phenomena that we cannot explain because we cannot explain everything.
The entire history of Lourdes does not make full sense to all of us yet. We are still learning instead of clinging to preconceived dogmatic conclusions. You are not discussing this issue. You are dividing it into two sides, "supernaturalist" and "anti-supernaturalist," then flinging everything that you can think of against "anti-supernaturalists," at the expense of misrepresenting them. Who is ignoring recently recorded historical facts? Such facts, having been recorded, have to be acknowledged and also have to taken into account as evidence that can be cited to support one side of what has become an unnecessarily charged argument. This is doing nothing for anyone.
Relevant. Mohammed is believed to have been a prophet and Islam is the third Abrahamic tradition.
Relax. Accept that there are different beliefs and world-views out there and those that you disagree with are not as obviously wrong as you seem to think they are.
Paul.
Note that we -did- decisively win the Cold War. Basically by spending the USSR into bankruptcy.
Correct.
If I had had any say in matters which, of course, I did not, then the Soviet Union would have democratized its structures and have invested resources not in nuclear stockpiles but in what its people needed.
The number of people on the left who were misled into thinking that the Soviet Union was doing something good was astonishing. I know an ex-Greek Communist Party member who still thinks that the Soviet Union was a force for good and that Gorbachev alone destroyed it! That illusion persists.
Kaor, Paul!
I do understand, what you said about the impossibility of proving a negative. My point being that convinces me anti-supernaturalists quite simply have no convincing arguments.
Refused, what you said about the BVM. Because the origins of what Catholics and Orthodox believe about her goes back to the controversies about Who and What Christ is, not to some alleged need for a feminine "object" of devotion.
I don't believe people who believe as you do will ever be able to show the miracles recorded at Lourdes were caused by unknown natural means.
I deny Mohammed was a prophet, and he was not even Jewish by origin. Whatever he said in the Koran about Judaism/Christianity was drawn from heretical and apocryphal sources. At most Islam is a stripped down, Arianizing imitation of Christianity (as Hilaire Belloc suggested).
Your speculative hopes about democratizing the USSR would have been futile. The institutions set up by Lenin and the policies he implemented were designed for setting up a ruthless one party totalitarian regime. Seven decades of that kind of rule gave those institutions/policies plenty of time to wreck Russia.
At least you have no illusions about the USSR as such, which is good.
Ad astra! Sean
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