How the World Is Marking the 500th Birthday of Protestantism

[Unorthodox]

Man, it's too bad my son didn't choose different for his religion report.  You guys would have made great reference material.  Sadly, I don't presently have time to participate. 

(they couldn't pick one of the top 5, bonus points to anyone who guesses what my son decided to research.) 

[Elok]

Well, about all I know about you is that Halloween is your religion, so I'm going to guess some kind of paganism variant?

[Rusty Edge]

I don't want to get into this either.

 My reaction was to take a sort of Quaker stance,  and question why there need to be priests and intermediaries in spirituality, but ultimately I like and respect Greek Orthodoxy. I did leave the Methodist church for a Lutheran congregation because I thought the pastor was following his own prophecies, which I didn't think were compatible with the scriptures. That's case of me, a layperson making a judgement against a cleric. It's also a case of choosing traditional over the spiritual. 

I figure Orthodoxy is a truer Christianity than Catholicism, Classical or Radical Protestantism. Don't know enough about Coptic Christians to make any comparison. I fault the Orthodox church for not taking a harder and earlier stance against violence and vengeance in post-Yugoslavia, but I blame the other religions there too for not doing the same.

I have a friend that majored in math and theology. Ultimately he became an ordained Methodist, but he was tempted to convert to Orthodoxy because he said most of Christianity took a wrong turn by embracing Aristotle. I could be wrong on the particular philosopher.

I imagine it's possible, and maybe easier to see a change in a religion from a distance or a historical perspective that people immersed in the culture can't see themselves. Something that happened with a religious leader, or an emperor.

Anyway, it's an interesting thread to skim...but nothing I have time, energy or inclination to argue.

[Elok]

Most people don't like to argue this stuff, I know.  Modern Orthodoxy has ... problems.  No human institution doesn't.  We avoided the pitfalls of Papacy by being more decentralized, with national churches that mostly defer to secular leaders provided they aren't blatantly blasphemous or antagonistic.  This does make us much more vulnerable to being turned into jingo poodles, which is why the aforementioned anti-phyletism council is so important--it's a rare blow against one of our worst weaknesses.  Putin appears to be using the Russian Church as his personal propaganda outlet and catering to Holy Rus' hooey that's more about ethnic triumphalism than actual piety.  Blecch.

The other problem is that, being so decentralized, we fight a lot.  Not over doctrine so much; all the big doctrinal decisions were made long ago, and we tend to endorse each others' minor decisions as a kind of courtesy (e.g., "okay, sure, the Romanovs were saints, whatever, it's not like non-Russians will take that seriously anyway").  But since all those decisions were made so long ago, the rules about who controls what are based on medieval precedents.  We tried to have a major council in Crete a year ago; it was derailed by boycotts involving suspicion of the Ecumenical Patriarch's motives and some bizarre fight between Antioch and Jerusalem over who had authority over a handful of churches in Yemen.  I like to think that this is still better than the circumstances attending some of the medieval councils.  For example, nobody has imprisoned a Pope in quite some time.  In some ways, the end of Byzantium was rather a blessing.

So, yeah.  That's us.  Regarding differences, Orthodoxy allows that Augustine was a saint for the same principle of courtesy I just enumerated, but we're deeply suspicious of a lot of the stuff he said.  It's been remarked (I forget who said it) that we had St. John Climacus instead of Augustine, and St. Gregory Palamas instead of Aquinas.  We aren't besotted with Aristotle like Aquinas was, but we had him from the beginning, unlike the West who rediscovered him later, so maybe he wasn't such a big deal?  In general, we're happier leaving things fuzzy than the RCC.

[Buster's Uncle]

I do still have stuff to say/react, just not so much with the feeling like saying it the last few days...

[Unorthodox]

Well, about all I know about you is that Halloween is your religion, so I'm going to guess some kind of paganism variant?

Religiously, I'm about the polar opposite of an atheist.  Instead of believing they are all inherently false, I happen to believe they all have(or had) value to the individuals who believe.  That doesn't make one more or less correct than another, and my truth doesn't need to be yours. 

I happen to see Halloween as the ultimate celebration of human imagination and creativity, and thus value it above many things, yes. 

As for my son, I can see where some might lump his choice in with paganism, I believe that would be folly.  Though I can certainly see how one might expect that, especially if they haven't been following me too terribly long as my inspiration of late has definitely drifted to more traditionally pagan sources in recent years  Especially with talk of a permanent stone circle in the yard, but that connection would require someone be (somewhat understandably) ignorant of the plethora of stone circles from a variety of ancient cultures.     

Edit: grammar and stuff 

[Unorthodox]

I do still have stuff to say/react, just not so much with the feeling like saying it the last few days...

You know I'm dying to jump in as well, but I'm afraid I lack the time due to various situations. 

[Lorizael]

Does anyone need a crazy transhumanist's opinion on religion?

[Unorthodox]

Always. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.

[Lorizael]

Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Protestantism. Personally, the various schisms that befall religions are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of a text. I mean, I've been in a fair number of arguments about the meaning or message of some (stupid, unimportant SF) story, but it's kind of always seemed obvious to me that we're arguing about our personal preferences rather than the literal truth of the text. Our experiences always inform how we interpret a text, and when we will never have direct access to what the text is about, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a text), but don't try to convince people of what the text actually says.

Oops. Uh, I guess I went for a PoMo argument rather than a transhuman argument. That probably won't come off very well.

[Buster's Uncle]

Where we've been over a lot of this before - with me in a better mood for expressing my POV: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16689.0

[Elok]

Oh, uh, I don't actually have a strong opinion about Protestantism. Personally, the various schisms that befall religions are kind of baffling to me. I guess it comes down to me not understanding how conflict arises from varying interpretations of a text. I mean, I've been in a fair number of arguments about the meaning or message of some (stupid, unimportant SF) story, but it's kind of always seemed obvious to me that we're arguing about our personal preferences rather than the literal truth of the text. Our experiences always inform how we interpret a text, and when we will never have direct access to what the text is about, that's the best we can do. So maybe try to convince people that your particular preferences are better (and such preferences will lead to a particular reading of a text), but don't try to convince people of what the text actually says.

Oops. Uh, I guess I went for a PoMo argument rather than a transhuman argument. That probably won't come off very well.

I assume you've seen the relevant SSC post.  Religious splits are very commonly about what might be described as "politics."  Even in the Byzantine Empire, very few people had a particularly strong opinion about whether Christ had one or two natures.  But everybody had a strong opinion about those [Greeks/Non-Greeks] from [Constantinople and environs/the East] and their obnoxious sense of superiority.

Now, when you look at Orthodoxy vs. Protestantism, the accumulated little differences add up to quite a gap in perception ...

[Buster's Uncle]

...And thus, this thread, Elok being more than worth the effort to try to school -and learn from- when I'm up to making the effort...

[Elok]

Have you encountered the Slate Star Codex yet?  The backlog is a massive timesuck, he's been posting for years, but it's great fun.  It's the personal blog of a guy who's sort of like Lori, if Lori had decided to be a psychiatrist instead of an astrosomething.

Anyway, fun story about the heretics of the Third and Fourth councils: it's unclear to what extent they even believed the stuff they were accused of believing.  Modern conversations with Copts and other Monophysites tend to be very civil, and not just because we feel bad about them getting massacred right now.  It appears a lot of it was just a preference for slightly different wording, exacerbated by whether or not one was a filthy fish-sauce-eating Greek.

Now, I still anathematize your damnable errors and stuff.  But I like Russell Moore, and he's Southern Baptist, even if most of the Southern Baptists don't seem to like him much.