[Ford Prefect]

Originally posted by Carl
...what?

Saturn and Uranus were Titans, not Olympian gods.

[Flipside]

iirc Saturn was Chronos in Greek mythology, Zeus' father, who was indeed a Titan, and also had his nads cut off my Zeus, when they landed in the Sea, they formed Aphrodite, goddess of love.

I think drugs were better back then...

[kasperl]

Originally posted by Fragrag

Offtopic, but:

This is how you can see that your Latin teacher managed to drill you right, when I saw lux, I thought at once
"Lux, luc-is, f"
and
"Ferre, fero"

(Yes, I follow Latin...)

And this is how I know I have some studying to do.....

(Seen the bit in Monty Python's Life of Brian with 'Romanus eunt domus'?)

[Ford Prefect]

Originally posted by Flipside
iirc Saturn was Chronos in Greek mythology, Zeus' father, who was indeed a Titan, and also had his nads cut off my Zeus, when they landed in the Sea, they formed Aphrodite, goddess of love.

I think drugs were better back then...

Indeed, and even funnier because Chronos, in turn, came to power by castrating his father, Uranus, (also the only planet in the solar system to be called by the Greek name.)

It was just one big Freudian festival.

[Flipside]

LOL Makes Alexanders bisexuality seem a strangely silly thing to worry about

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Flipside
iirc Saturn was Chronos in Greek mythology, Zeus' father, who was indeed a Titan, and also had his nads cut off my Zeus, when they landed in the Sea, they formed Aphrodite, goddess of love.

I think drugs were better back then...

What's really Freudian is that the Goddess of Love, the momost beautiful woman in the world and cosmos (etc), was born from a pair of testicles.

[vyper]

Proving that romance is just a load of bollocks?

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
...It goes back to Christianity's ontological dualism, viewing the physical world as an obstacle to the transcendence of one's soul.

That idea was condemned as heresy by Christianity.  In specific, it is part of the heresy (or rather, group of heresies) called Gnosticism.  

Christianity teaches that God is going to transform and perfect the world, and that we are going to be resurrected to everlasting life in physical bodies in this transformed universe, not that the world is something to ditch at the first available opportunity.

[Ford Prefect]

If Christianity is monistic, then why the obsession over the idea of wordly temptations? Why the multiple references to Satan as "Lord of This World"? Why even have a concept of heaven? I would argue, in fact, that all religions, no matter what their doctrines claim, are dualistic to some degree. They all speak of some variation on the concept of the seperation between body and soul.

In addition, Gnosticism, as far as I know, was condemned by Christian institutions because of the specific portion of its creed which states that only a select few have the mystical inner knowledge referred to as "gnosis", a statement which is actually less Platonic than Christianity.

[Sesquipedalian]

Sorry, forgot to come back to this.

Worldly temptations, etc., uses world in the sense of
4.  The inhabitants of the earth; the human race.
5.
   1. Humankind considered as social beings; human society: turned her back on the world.
   2. People as a whole; the public: The event amazed the world.


The idea here is that people are messed up, and evil is commonplace in human society.  It is the evil of human society (lying, envy, hatred, etc., etc. etc.) that is supposed to be overcome.  Being physical is declared good by God.

It is also true that Christian doctrine regards the physical world as also damaged by the effects of evil (in the same way human beings and human society are), but that is why God wants to fix it.

The Hebraic (and therefore biblical) understanding of human beings sees us more as integrated beings than as a comglomeration of parts.  The "soul" in Hebrew is nephesh which really just means "life" (or by extension, "a living being").  Nephesh is created by ruach, which means "breath" or "wind," which in Latin is translated as spiritus and thus leads to English's "spirit."  So, to the Hebrew mind, what we call "having a soul" to them meant simply "being alive and breathing."

Now, at death, the Hebrews though that we are essentially ripped apart: ruach leaves us, and we cease to be a nephesh, but only maintain a sort of sleeping half-existence in Sheol, the "grave" or the "pit."  The biblically presented solution to this problem is resurrection: being made alive by having ruach put back into our (glorious, transformed) bodies so that we are once again living beings.

This all fits within a larger understanding of the world that sees all creation, both material and spiritual, as part of one whole.  This isn't exactly monism, because there are many things and they don't all have the same "substance" or "essence," but rather is the idea that it all happens in the same arena, or on the same plane of existence, or whatever terminology you want to use.

It was more common in Greek culture to consider souls and bodies as separate entities that happened to be joined together.  Death simply dissolved a temporary association.  This fits into a larger view of the world as consisting of two (or more) separate planes existence.

(As a historical sidenote, the spread of Christianity in Greek culture caused a collision of these two ideas.  Sometimes people would beleive in both concepts without recognising the inconsistency, while others would choose one or the other.  Since our own culture derives so much from Greek culture, it is common to find the inconsistent mixing of the two ideas in the minds of many people.  This is, however, rare among theologians and teachers of Christian doctrine.)

Anyway, that was a long post to answer a profound question.  Hope it helped.

EDIT: Oh, and there is a lot more variety than you might think in ideas about the soul and the afterlife, and so on.  Shinto, for example, has no such concepts.  The Old Kingdom Egyptians believed only that the Pharoah was a god and ascended to them after he died, whereas the Middle Kingdom Egyptians beleived everyone had a soul and the possibility of an afterlife.  Buddhism and most forms of Hinduism see the soul as very separate from the body (as did Plato).

As for the Gnostics, their claims regarding special knowledge were the capstone of an entire system of thought, and the whole lot of it was considered heretical.

[Ace]

The whole dualistic nature of body/soul is pretty much summed up by the Stoic humanism of the Renaissance. The Augustinian humanism made no distinction between body or soul.

Which of course points to the utter and complete hilarity of modern fundies hating "secular humanists" when they themselves (even the most uneducated) are holding 15th century humanist views.

[Sesquipedalian]

Gotta love the twists of history, eh?  (Of course, there are also a lot of distinctives about secular humanism that explicitly run against Renaissance humanism, and especially Christian humanism, so it is not entirely silly.)

However, for fundamentalist Christians to hate anybody is even more ironic (and saddening).

[Ford Prefect]

I think I failed to convey my argument. I'm looking at religion from a psychological standpoint, with the understanding that the writings of a particular religion are the aggregate of many people's interpretations of it, and that all people are inclined towards some common beliefs. What about Eucherius's De Contemptu Mundi, or John 2:15-17 in the Bible? (As follows.)

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Now, I'm sure that there's evidence that completely contradicts this, because, as I said before, a religion cannot really be one whole; it is a composite of interpretations. So what we're left to work with are our own conclusions about human nature. I am inclined to believe that human beings naturally chase a mirage of purity beyond the physical, so I see the aforementioned works as the most relevant to the question of what Christianity is.

So I'm inclinded to agree with Nietzsche: Christianity is Platonism for the masses.

[Sesquipedalian]

Allwo me to reiterate:  John uses "the world" in these sort of verses to refer to fallen human society and its ways, not to matter.  You are reading the wrong sense of the word "world" if you understand it to mean the physical world of dirt and plants and air and animals and hamburgers and sailboats and such.

It seems to me that you are compounding ethical dualism (belief in good and evil) with ontological dualism (belief in two "planes of existence").  When you say "purity beyond the physical," you are describing an idea that makes good=spiritual and evil=physical.  But that isn't the idea presented in any of the texts that Christianity considers authoritative.  There, the consistent idea is ethical dualism that affects both the material and the spiritual.  There is no idea that spiritual somehow automatically equals good, or physical is automatically bad.

Since this is the consistent teaching of the authoritative writings of Christianity (and therefore Judaism), that would seem to undermine your thesis that all people tend towards a common belief in ontological dualism re: body and soul.  There is an entire religious tradition that simply doesn't follow that model.

And using the plurality of interpretations as a reason to abandon pursuit of an actual external truth is fallicious.  Postmodern philosophers are correct that none of us can claim to know the whole truth about the world, but it is entirely wrongheaded to leap from there to the conclusion that none of us can claim to know anything, and thus that all interpretations are equally valid, so one may as well use one's own and leave it at that.  And it seems to me that that is exactly what you are doing: you make the a priori assumption that people compound ethical and ontological dualism, and thus try to force all religions into that framework, even if we completely object.

[aldo_14]

Did anyone ask John?

[Ford Prefect]

I'm arguing that a religion's texts cannot define that single, external truth, because what an intelligent minority has written has little bearing on what most people actually believe. People shape a religion, and since people are more alike than different, as a religion becomes larger, its followers begin to sound more and more like the followers of other religions.

Now, as for the definition of "the world", John makes reference to "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life". Lust is a primal force that we associate with the state of nature, or at least with a more primitive form of human existence, (a band or a tribe, as opposed to a state.) To me, this suggests that sin is drawn from nature-- the physical world in the most literal sense of the term-- because humans as members of civilization associate nature with a kind of "dirtiness".  Yes, yes, it's all God's artful creation, but I still don't think that idea holds water against people's more basic mental associations. Thus the Devil is a representation of the path back to nature, as opposed to forwards toward a higher level of existence. So my assertion is not that people compound ethical and ontological dualism, only that the spiritual world is always seen as superior to the physical world, for the reason that the spiritual can endure beyond the decay of the physical. That doesn't preclude the practice of ethics on earth, especially since moral behavior is usually viewed as the key to spiritual transcendence.

[Sesquipedalian]

In the biblical usage, "lust" refers not to sheer desire or passion, but the misdirection of that passion.  The goodness of sex and sexual desire is repeatly affirmed (and encouraged!) throughout the Bible, even as we are warned not to misuse it in evil ways.  To describe it concretely: If I notice some girl on the street has nice curves and think "Wow, she's hot," that's fine and healthy and not lusting.  But if I decide to start indulging in fantasies about her, imagining what I would do with her given a chance, then I have begun to lust.  However, when I notice how nice my wife's curves are, it is a positively good thing for me to not only get ideas, but to act on them, and none of that is considered the sin of lust.

Anyway, if you simply want to assert that this is what you think, well, you can assert whatever you want.  Just don't call it an argument or expect anyone to find it convincing.  Because any of us who believe in any of the different religions know that they are really fundamentally different.  You'll have to do a lot more than make bare assertions to convince a Buddhist that good is best expressed in the Cross, or to convince a Christian that complete detachment and an end to all desire are the best expression of good.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Did anyone ask John?

Well, he's dead, but 1) the tradition tracing all the way back to the beginning is pretty consistent, and 2) there are whole bunch of people who have dedicated their entire lives to understanding this as best as possible, from as many angles as they can think of.  The results are quite clear and consistent, so we can't ask him, but this is pretty close.

[Ford Prefect]

If I notice some girl on the street has nice curves and think "Wow, she's hot," that's fine and healthy and not lusting. But if I decide to start indulging in fantasies about her, imagining what I would do with her given a chance, then I have begun to lust. However, when I notice how nice my wife's curves are, it is a positively good thing for me to not only get ideas, but to act on them, and none of that is considered the sin of lust.

But nature is still telling you to lust after that other girl. The part of you that has not changed since the beginning of life itself does not recognize marriage as even existent, and that is the psychological basis of sin: The part of us that does not see man-made ethical systems, only basic desires and emotions.

The cross is a symbol; religions don't have to have similar symbols for them to be alike. And as for the end to all desire, that seems to be only a matter of degree. Buddhism says, "No desire at all", while Christianity says, "Okay, if you have to desire, do it under the following conditions," and proceeds to list some rather specific conditions. Neither one regards desire in a truly favorable light, which is what I'm getting at. I think the closest humanity has ever come to having a desire-friendly religion would be ancient Greece, which was sort of an anomaly in the course of human events.

Besides, if you want more evidence that religions aren't really that different from each other, look at their holy men. They all live in spartan conditions, pursuing lives of contemplation of whatever they call god, and singing together. (Of course, lots of people want to be holy but don't want to retire their genitalia, so inevitably these standards become relaxed as civilization becomes larger.) Everyone associates the same basic things with this concept of holiness, which points to a universal set of concepts beneath all the variations.

Although I suppose you're right. It would be a waste of everyone's time for me to try and make this case to a religious person. I just sort of thrive on pointlessness, which is why I chose philosophy.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect

But nature is still telling you to lust after that other girl...

 As I said, disorder and brokenness are to be repaired.  The issue with lust, like gluttony, is that a good thing is misused.  That doesn't make it evil, or dirty, or a problem to overcome, or something that drags you down.  If you re-read what I wrote, noticing and appreciating the attractiveness of a pretty woman is fine and good.      Even before we and our world were broken by evil, that was the way God intended it.  Lust comes up when we move beyond that into what fallen human beings do now.  Finding a woman attractive is one thing; moving into deliberate imaginings about her is another.  In that case, it is no longer simple instinctive attraction, but expressly chosen action.  Sex is good, as is food, but like food it can be abused.  I mean really, the way you construe things, next you'll be saying that Christianity teaches that emotions are evil!

The cross is a symbol; religions don't have to have similar symbols for them to be alike.

A symbol is a symbol of something.  And what they symbolise in this case are totally incompatible at the most fundamental level.  The crosses we Christians hang on our walls, wear on on clothes, etc., symbolise this: God himself loved the world so much that he became human, suffered immensely and died horribly, and then was raised to a glorious new physical human existence, so that all the suffering and dying world could likewise be transformed and given the same new life.  That means the world is worth dying for, that it is unspeakably valuable, that the highest good is to sacrifice oneself for the earthly, this-world life and well-being of another, that trees and rocks and art and society and sharing a good meal with friends all matter in the utmost.  Buddhists have their images of Buddha meditating, usually with a mysterious half-smile on his face.  It symbolises transcendence, Enlightenment, the end of all desire.  Compassion, for the Buddhist, is always a dispassionate compassion, the sort of simple willingness to let go of things that comes when one doesn't care about things any more.  Buddhists teach pacifism because neither land nor art nor society nor relationships with others matter enough to risk one's progress toward Enlightenment y getting involved in the mess of the world.  The image of the meditating Buddha symbolises that the world doesn't matter in the slightest.

And as for the end to all desire, that seems to be only a matter of degree. Buddhism says, "No desire at all", while Christianity says, "Okay, if you have to desire, do it under the following conditions," and proceeds to list some rather specific conditions. Neither one regards desire in a truly favorable light, which is what I'm getting at. I think the closest humanity has ever come to having a desire-friendly religion would be ancient Greece, which was sort of an anomaly in the course of human events.

 For Christianity, desire is good.  Misusing and abusing it is bad.  Again refering your to the difference between desire and lust/greed/selfishness/etc. (it's all the same thing, really), I reiterate that desire is seen in a very favourable light, with full divine sanction and outright command, whereas twisting it into something it was not meant to be is seen in a very unfavourable light indeed.

(Oh, and ancient Greece was not anomalous.  It is quite common.)

Besides, if you want more evidence that religions aren't really that different from each other, look at their holy men. They all live in spartan conditions, pursuing lives of contemplation of whatever they call god, and singing together. (Of course, lots of people want to be holy but don't want to retire their genitalia, so inevitably these standards become relaxed as civilization becomes larger.) Everyone associates the same basic things with this concept of holiness, which points to a universal set of concepts beneath all the variations.

Jesus was unmarried, as was Paul (simply because he to be a full-time travelling missionary, which can't be done well with a wife and kids in tow), but all the rest of the twelve original apostles were married with kids.  The Roman Catholic church didn't make celibacy a requirement for the priesthood until centuries later, and they are still the only ones to do so.  The Eastern Orthodox Churches (Greek, Russian, etc.) have never required celibate priests, nor do the Protestants, nor did the Nestorian churches (who had churches spread from Baghdad to Bejing before Tamerlane killed them all), nor do the ancient Thomas Christians of India, nor the ancient Coptic and Ethiopian Churches.  Likewise, celibate monks didn't exist in Christianity for centuries--it was only when they borrowed the idea from other religions that that even started.  So that would seem to contradict your thesis (which was a pretty weak argument even if it were true ).

Although I suppose you're right. It would be a waste of everyone's time for me to try and make this case to a religious person. I just sort of thrive on pointlessness, which is why I chose philosophy.

Well, it is a waste of time to talk to anyone who disagrees with you on anything if you just make assertions.  In this last post you started to argue a bit more, trying to demonstrate your assertions, and that made a meaningful conversation.