vol VII: Notes
1999
Notes
[Notebook DB 52A Mathesis]
[Sunday 31 October 1999 - Saturday 6 November 1999]
Sunday 31 October 1999
[page 62]
Pascendi: the dichotomy between faith and science from the point of view of content is non-existent. From the point of view of mode of acquisition faith is uncritical, science critical Pius X: On the doctrines of the modernistsCRITICAL = error estimate.
Distinguish ROLE from person filling ROLE.THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF WILDERNESS.
Monday 1 November 1999
Tuesday 2 November 1999
[page 63]
. . .
Compare the church search for knowledge (preserving the deposit of faith) with scientific establishment [forever seeking the new]
Wednesday 3 November 1999
Thursday 4 November 1999
Descent with modification. Rate of evolution limited by mutation. Kimura Kimura
What constraints does the past place on the future? Virtually none over the long run.
. . .
Evolution depends on the invention of writing. SCRIPTURE = DNA of CHURCH. Now, the world is the DNA of religion.
[page 64]
. . .
Church has always needed political support.
MEMETIC ECOLOGY / NOETIC ECOLOGY : Enculturation of religion.
FREEDOM = disconnection of ROLE and PERSON, from BLOODLINES to DEMOCRACY, ie FAMILY TRADITION to SOCIAL TRADITION
[page 65]
One sees a parallel between the mythic phase of Greek history and the dark ages, to be followed by the enlightenment in Greece that culminated in Aristotle and in the middle ages in Thomas [Aquinas], to continue to grow into the present.
Modern problem: Church has opened itself to reality.
Placing a document in context is like placing a gene in context.
The doctrinal rigidity of the Church is suspicious.
. . .
[page 67]
Theological method develops and propagates myth, ie fiction.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Michael Baigent et al page 67: 'Sol Invictus . . . was essentially monotheistic. In effect is posited the sun god as the sum of all attributes of all other gods, and thus peacefully subsumed all potential rivals. Baigent
[page 68]
Church cannot enter into meaningful dialogue while it remains a total legend in its own mind.
Original sin:
Can we say that almost certainly the beliefs of the Church are a result of both politics and science because knowledge is for action.
The truth comes from evolutionary theory that looks at the Church as a survival oriented organism from outside.
. . .
[page 69]
Friday 5 November 1999
Paula Fredriksen: From Jesus to Christ, YUP. Fredriksen
Fredriksen page vii: '. . . so that the reader can have a sense of the historical and social forces behind the development of the various images of Jesus.'
Baigent paGe 371: 'There is also, increasingly, a desire for a true leader, — not a Fuhrer, but a species of wise and benign spiritual figure, a 'priest king' in whom mankind can safely repose its trust.' GAIA
Fredriksen page ix: Jesus did not write (or nothing preserved. Gospel : oral, gospel: literary.
[page 70]
Fredriksen page ix: '. . . they did not see themselves as writing scripture.'
page x: Hellenism ⊗ Judaism: a common principle.
'Both these cultures, each in its own way, affirmed certain common religious principles: that absolute divinity was absolutely good; that it stood in some relation, whether distant or direct, to the world; and that man's experience of the world once properly understood, affirmed divine goodness. Both, therefore, has to confront the challenges to these principle posed by the problem of evil.'
page xii: evolution by cultural selection
The Church is an organism based on symbolism, Like most organisms it is designed to ensure the survival of one set of entities at the expense of another, in this case the ruling class at the expense of the peasants, who are rewarded not with the necessities of life but the enigmatic currency of promised life after death. This is a false salvation. We need real salvation.
[page 71]
I knock the church as a victim and a descendant of victims. Now I am trying to get back on the gravy train again, hem hem.
Fredriksen page 3: 'The writer was an evangelist, a sort of creative editor' → Gospel of Mark 70CE.
Fredriksen page 4: 90-100 → Matthew and Luke
'But fundamentally the gospels are theological proclamation, not historical biography.'
Fredriksen page 5: death of Jesus → 40-70 years
' . . . the reliability of oral traditions, in the absence of independent or convergent lines of evidence, is nearly impossible to assess.'
dissimilarity: something new
coherence
multiple (independent) attestation
linguistic suitability
Fredriksen page 6: 'Stated briefly, anything embarassing is proably earlier.'
'The canon thus reflects the political and theological controversies of this later period more than it reflects
[page 72]
either the historical situation of those controversies or the period that the canonical texts purportedly describe. The four gospels collectively stan as te survivors of a process whose principles of selection had more to do with competition between different Christian groups than with a disinterested concern for history.'
We see a selection designed for administrative efficiency, eg Elizabeth II New Testament gift [to all us school children when she visited Australia in 1954]
Church history seen from inside differs from that outside and as it opens itself to the world the critical eye can see the difference
Saturday 6 November 1999
Following the declaration of infallibility the Church painted itself into a corner by increasingly violent denunciations of signs of the times culminating in its darkest hour in Pius XII and the Nazis. John Cornwell
From the point of view of many, someone just snapped their fingers and the victim was on the street (perhaps in a new suit) penniless and bound, it seems, by that most unholy of employment contracts, Canon 668:3 '§3. Whatever a religious acquires through personal effort or by reason of the institute, the religious acquires for the institute. Whatever accrues to a religious in any way by reason of pension, subsidy, or insurance is acquired for the institute unless proper law states otherwise.'
The connection of the Church to God through the Bible and Jesus is exceedingly tenuous by any standards. The Church rules by its own mass and its deep roots in maintaining political order, first realized (?) by Constantine. Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia
. . .
Fredriksen page 18: 'In brief, the milieu of Christianity, and thus its interpretative context, is the world of Hellenism.'
[page 74]
. . .
Evolution proceeds by reproduction of the fit. The fit are those able to obtain from their environment the resources necessary to reproduce.
. . .
What we are doing here is striking an interpretative atitude to the world and all that is in it, Many might argue that the height of human existence is mystical
[page 75]
experience, the experience of unity with all that is. Of people who have that experience some might feel that it is the most natural thing in the world, To others it is a gift from on high.
The second attitude has a very long history. We might discern an early appearance in the writing of Parmenides. We call this rationalism. The neat intellectual dichotomies that classify the world into real and unreal, casting the daily run of life as a drudgery rather than a joy. Although it seems that the Goddess was proving a position, we may surmise that Parmenides really thought it was true and the argument was an hypothesis developed after the fact, In other words the words f the Goddess are the rationalization of faith. John Palmer - Parmenides
Faith is a necessary element of culture because as Aristotle noted, we are born a tabula rasa and immediately begin to import information from our environment, This information, in conjunction with our genetic inheritance shapes us from egg to adult. Because this information is given, it must be accepted, One can no more reject one's
[page 76]
genotype than one can reject the language and culture of one's family. This faith is received without conscious criticism, but not uncritically, Survival depends on good information and all our information processing systems are turned to give reliable results from conception n. As a guide to our exquisite qualities only one base pair per billion (in our genome of three bilion base pairs) is copied erroneously per generation. This is equivalent to one typo in a million pages of text.
Faith stays the same
Content of faith changes.
. . .
[page 77]
Ut unum sint flies directly in the face of the natural tendency to diversity. John Paul II: On Ecumenism
