For this:
What in the Gospels suggests Jesus was a Jewish mystic, that he harboured compassion for all sentient beings, that he understood belief in the life force of blood to be superstition, and that the life force consequently was breath?
Well you know what I really think as regards the things you care to hear from me about. I think the obsession with dogma on the part of "true believers" contributes to a religious discourse that is thinning out Church membership, especially in today's religious marketplace.
Well, it's in response to questions you addressed to me when I remarked that knowledge of a religious tradition can be had in more than one way, and that I think contemporary discourse privliges a certain kind of knowledge of religious tradition; a privliging that is impacting the landscape of...
This is really Charles Taylor's analysis and not so much mine: that the need to make individuals the right sort of Christian was a "disembedding force" that broke the bonds of "human respect" and helped to generate a whole series of alternative moral and spiritual horizons.
Well, we're talking about different things then because you're talking about "true believers" whereas I'm just talking about people.
The proliferation of all the elments of the "spiritual/ religious" quest industry, including even websites like this, testify to a very different model of...
I never said that they are mutually exclusive, only that it hinders its transmission as a received tradition. There is now always a deep scrutiny of the gift before it will be accepted. It's no longer enough to say "I worship the God of my fathers" and to leave it there as though that might...
This is a good question.
I would question the assumption that a significant amount of knowledge about one's religious tradition is necessary to practice it- and practice it fruitfully. The idea betrays a certain modern notion/ invention of religion. There is, in my opinion, different types of...
So his overturning of the tables in the Temple was an example of vegetarian rage? That Jesus was against animal sacrifice, the incident in the Temple by no means proves. Even if he were against ritual animal sacrifice to God, it wouldn't establish that he abstained from meat during ordinary...
Thanks Penguin. For my part– according to the kind of internal criteria which Legion questioned in post #16– I am confident of certain aspects of Jesus' ministry. Most obviously his reputation as a healer,but also his conflict with the Temple authorities, a prophetic denunciation of...
Sorry, perhaps I should have been more precise. I don't intend to say that historical criticism has established the claims we most associate with the Christian faith are true. I only mean to point out there is an entire field of historical criticism dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus...
Donum Vitae. I've not read it myself, but the points below seem to be concise:
In Vitro Fertilization - Why Not?: A refresher on the Church's teaching - By Father Thomas Berg
Right, so the problem is the way they are being obtained. Since in vitro is already opposed by the Church, permitting the usage of [in their mind] illicitly obtained embryos for scientific purposes can only deepen the error and compound the moral reprehensibility.
An interesting claim, as though Jesus is ultimately an unnoteworthy granular excess around which people formed and solidifed a series of their own projections. Though, why not consider that the mythic elements themselves are related to the historical core. That is to say, that the mythic...