19th century church-science reconciliation

The end of the Age of Enlightenment meant a time of ""The Accord and shifting the focus of social scientists towards reconciling science and the old WV religious system. This meant that the blatant non reconcilable differences in the two belief systems had to be minimized. So, social theorists subconsciously reworked both into a single closed system of thinking and did it so well that their effort has been, until now unnoticed.

The doctrines of Christianity had ceased to be relatively accurate well in the last half millennium. Thus, its doctrines could never actually be reconciled with science. Reforming Christianity was impossible; what would be left if all its “miracles” were removed? Old religions only die a long and slow natural death. The effort of the Accord could only achieve an illusion of compatibility by compromising both. For Christianity to accommodate required it be "liberalized." The result was the creating of "liberal Christians," those of the upper and middle income classes who were skeptical of “miracles” but, even so, worshiped Jesus Christ in their Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, and other such mainline churches. But by allowing science to compromise the faith, secularized Christians stripped the "Holy Scriptures" of their supposed inerrancy, and turned the old faith into a pallid, diluted thing. This served to further weaken the social bond, demote the faith's moral authority, and encouraged the growth of materialism, sensualism and crime. For the next century and a half, Fundamentalist Christianity was pushed to the fringes of public opinion.

What the compromising did to the old faith was no worse than what science did to itself. In order for science to appear reconciled with even a liberalized Christianity, social science theorists were compelled to unknowingly use the twenty-one Appendix-listed word-tricks when interpreting their data. They and the clergy both knew that, for the benefit of society, the public must not realize that either their faith or their science was being compromised. In order to protect and preserve the social bond, social theorists had no choice but to use the stratagems as an integral part of the very methodology of social theory."" ---chapter 12, "Destiny and Civilization, the Evolutionary Explanation of Religion and History."  

charles
http://atheistic-science.com

Originally posted by charles brough But by allowing science to compromise the faith, secularized Christians stripped the "Holy Scriptures" of their supposed inerrancy, and turned the old faith into a pallid, diluted thing. This served to further weaken the social bond, demote the faith's moral authority, and encouraged the growth of materialism, sensualism and crime.

I'd have to disagree here. That was happening long before the rise of secular society. In fact, the church was making coin hand over fist licensing immorality, materialism and crime through Indulgences at the height of the its power, when the religious social bond was at its peak.

Nor were things terribly different in the early church. Some early Popes kept slaves and lived in decadence, others fought gang wars with rival claimants (for instance when Damascus, who happened to own many of Rome's brothels, took the papacy by collapsing a church on the heads of his rival Ursinus and supporters). Then there's Callistus, who was arrested once for attempting to flee the country with church funds for the care of widows and orphans and again later for beating up Jews in a synagogue and trying to extort money out of them.

There was even a running series of Popes at one point in the middle ages, who came under the control of a cabal of prostitutes, an era known as the "Pornocracy" (no, I'm not joking!)

Nor were these human failings exclusive to popes and bishops. Chaucer resonated with medieval English society partially because of his bawdy caricatures of individuals like the Friar in his Canterbury Tales, a "wanton" "festive" "gossip" who knew all the barmaids in the country and spent his time getting "intimate" with "worthy women of the town", avoiding "poverty-stricken curs". He was the "finest beggar" and "lived by pickings" - profitable ones, for he was dressed "like a lord or a pope" - from widows "who had no shoes"; on "love days" he was "not a cloisterer". 

The ideal of the ascetic Christian, in practice, tended to be an exception rather than a rule (ie early Protestant reformers, the Puritans, some monastic orders, etc)

Edited by edgewaters - 21-Feb-2009 at 18:23