[Buddha-l] it's not about belief

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 21:31 +0100, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
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>>I never felt any sympathy for the idea of divinity and never could
>>understand why people bothered to count it
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>I'm the same way. According to Paul Bloom, you and I may be among the
>10% of the human population that did not inherit the random genetic
>mutation that enables people to hold beliefs in the absence of evidence.
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The idea that 90% of humanity is "able" to hold beliefs without 
evidence, while the other 10% is incapable of this, assumes that human 
intellectual history began with the First Council of Nicaea, which it 
did not. In fact, it nearly ended with the First Council of Nicaea! 
Prior to that time anyone who believed things without evidence was 
considered mentally or morally deficient - or both. As they should be.

Prior to the rise of Christianity all of the schools of (Pagan) 
Philosophy in the classical world were unanimous in their agreement that 
when Religious teaching is contradicted by Reason, then either the 
reasoning is faulty or the teaching is wrong (or, possibly, both). Plato 
makes this very explicit in his dialog the Theaetetus, in which he 
accepts that a person might "believe" something that is true while 
lacking direct knowledge of the truth, but Plato dismisses this as 
unworthy of anyone genuinely interested in knowing truth. Plato accepts 
that for a person who is stupid (incapable of philosophic inquiry) or 
just lazy (disinclined to philosophical inquiry) that perhaps the best 
they can hope for is to just "believe" in the truth - but they will 
never really know if what they believe is actually true or not - they 
will have to take someone else's word for it. All of the Pagan schools 
of Philosophy rejected the notion of belief in the absence of faith as 
contemptible. It is nevertheless true that some of them held that such 
things as the immortality of the soul could be "known" - Plato has 
Socrates insist on this in the Phaedo. While one may disagree with such 
a claim - one cannot accuse Plato of asking anyone to believe this 
without evidence - in fact he quite clearly encouraged people to believe 
nothing - unless they had good reason for doing so. 2,000 years of 
Christianity has made it difficult to realize that just because someone 
claims something to be true does not mean they expect others to "accept" 
it. Christianity adopted the modus operandi of equating truth claims 
with an insistence that these claims be accepted - whereas the more 
reasonable approach is for a person to make truth claims precisely in 
order to invite discussion and debate.

With the Council of Nicaea, the Christians elevated the mere "profession 
of faith" to a level of importance that even Christians had previously 
not embraced. The motivations for doing this were transparent: the 
emperor Constantine was having a hard time imposing Christianity on the 
empire, because prior to the Nicene Creed, just about anything could, 
and did, pass as valid Christianity. Was Jesus human, a god, both, 
neither? Was Jesus "the" God? One of three Gods? Did he really die or 
did he fake that? If he died, did he stay dead or did he really come 
back? If he faked his death, did he also fake his resurrection? If it 
was a fake - who else was in on the deception? If he didn't fake it, and 
he was really Divine, exactly how does one go about killing God? Was 
Mary a virgin? How about Joseph? Did they remain virgins their entire 
lives? Did Jesus have a brother? How about a twin brother? Is there a 
"secret teaching" known only to the "elite"? If so, who are these elite, 
and can I be one, too? If there is no secret teaching - then is 
everything pretty much spelled out in the Gospels? Which Gospels? How 
about this one by Thomas? Or this other one by James? Hey - look, 
there's even one by a girl! And not just any girl - Mary Magdelene. Was 
she Jesus' girlfriend? Did they have sex? Did they have children? Is sex 
bad? Is having children bad? Can only Jews be Christians? Can Jews be 
Christians? Should Christians be circumcised? Won't that hurt? Do rich 
Christians have to give away all their money? Won't that discourage rich 
people from converting to Christianity? Is it OK to study Philosophy? Is 
it OK to study magic? Is it still OK to sacrifice to the Old Gods? Is it 
OK to ask all these questions?

- Curt