Are there Christian non-nutjobs? It seems to me that Christianity poisons a person’s whole world view—rendering them intellectually untrustworthy. If they believe that, they can believe anything.
Well… yes and no. I wouldn’t trust a Christian’s ability to do good science, and I don’t think a Christian could write an AI (unless the Christianity was purely cultural and ceremonial). But Christians can and do write brilliant articles and essays on non-scientific subjects, especially philosophy. Even though I disagree with much of it, I still appreciate C.S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton’s philosophical writing, and find it thought provoking.
In this case, the topic was moral realism. You think Christians have some worthwhile input on that? Aren’t their views on the topic based on the idea of morality coming from God on tablets of stone?
Christians believe human morality comes from god. Rather obviously disqualifies them from most sensible discussions about morality—since their views on the topic are utter nonsense.
This isn’t fully general to all Christians. For instance, my best friend is a Christian, and after prolonged questioning, I found that her morality boils down to an anti-hypocrisy sentiment and a social-contract-style framework to cover the rest of it. The anti-hypocrisy thing covers self-identified Christians obeying their own religion’s rules, but doesn’t extend them to anyone else.
You can’t read everything; you have to collect evidence on what’s going to be worth reading. A Christian on this sort of moral philosophy, I think that Lewis is often interesting but I plan to go to bed rather than read it, unless I get some extra evidence to push it the other way.
And I would be interested to know what people think of Lewis’ Tao, and the arguments he makes for it.
Since:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis#Conversion_to_Christianity
...I figure there would need to be clearly-evident redeeming features for anyone here to bother.
Meh. If someone being a theist were enough reason to not bother reading their arguments, we wouldn’t read much at all.
You have to filter crap out somehow.
Using “christian nutjob” as one of my criteria usually seems to work pretty well for me. Doesn’t everyone do that?
C. S. Lewis is a Christian, but hardly a nutjob. I filter out Christian nutjobs, but not all Christians.
Are there Christian non-nutjobs? It seems to me that Christianity poisons a person’s whole world view—rendering them intellectually untrustworthy. If they believe that, they can believe anything.
Looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis#The_Christian_apologist
...there seems to be a fair quantity of nutjobbery to me.
Except insofar as Christianity is a form of nutjobbery, of course.
Well… yes and no. I wouldn’t trust a Christian’s ability to do good science, and I don’t think a Christian could write an AI (unless the Christianity was purely cultural and ceremonial). But Christians can and do write brilliant articles and essays on non-scientific subjects, especially philosophy. Even though I disagree with much of it, I still appreciate C.S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton’s philosophical writing, and find it thought provoking.
In this case, the topic was moral realism. You think Christians have some worthwhile input on that? Aren’t their views on the topic based on the idea of morality coming from God on tablets of stone?
No, no more than we believe that monkeys turn into humans.
Christians believe human morality comes from god. Rather obviously disqualifies them from most sensible discussions about morality—since their views on the topic are utter nonsense.
This isn’t fully general to all Christians. For instance, my best friend is a Christian, and after prolonged questioning, I found that her morality boils down to an anti-hypocrisy sentiment and a social-contract-style framework to cover the rest of it. The anti-hypocrisy thing covers self-identified Christians obeying their own religion’s rules, but doesn’t extend them to anyone else.
You can’t read everything; you have to collect evidence on what’s going to be worth reading. A Christian on this sort of moral philosophy, I think that Lewis is often interesting but I plan to go to bed rather than read it, unless I get some extra evidence to push it the other way.
FWIW, I recommend it.
AFAIR, that, the Narnia stories, and the Ransom trilogy are the only Lewis I’ve read. Are there others you have found interesting?