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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (20339)	6/13/2005 2:11:41 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Most of the passages and quotes stated require a belief in an after life. If you don't hold such a belief some Christians would say the only thing you can do is eat, drink and be merry and of course that which follows is: Despair (Latin desperare, to be hopeless.) Despair, ethically regarded, is the voluntary and complete abandonment of all hope of saving one's soul and of having the means required for that end. It is not a passive state of mind: on the contrary it involves a positive act of the will by which a person deliberately gives over any expectation of ever reaching eternal life. There is presupposed an intervention of the intellect in virtue of which one comes to decide definitely that salvation is impossible. This last is motived by the persuasion either that the individual's sins are too great to be forgiven or that it is too hard for human nature to cooperate with the grace of God or that Almighty God is unwilling to aid the weakness or pardon the offenses of his creatures, etc. It is obvious that a mere anxiety, no matter how acute, as to the hereafter is not to be identified with despair. This excessive fear is usually a negative condition of soul and adequately discernible from the positive elements which clearly mark the vice which we call despair. The pusillanimous person has not so much relinquished trust in God as he is unduly terrified at the spectacle of his own shortcomings of incapacity. The sin of despair may sometimes, although not necessarily, contain the added malice of heresy in so far as it implies an assent to a proposition which is against faith, e.g. that God has no mind to supply us with what is needful for salvation. Despair as such and as distinguished from a certain difference, sinking of the heart, or overweening dread is always a mortal sin. The reason is that it contravenes with a special directness certain attributes of Almighty God, such as His goodness, mercy, and faith-keeping. To be sure despair is not the worst sin conceivable: that evil primacy is held by the direct and explicit hatred of God; neither is it as great as sins against faith like formal heresy or apostasy. Still its power for working harm in the human soul is fundamentally far greater than other sins inasmuch as it cuts off the way of escape and those who fall under its spell are frequently, as a matter of fact, found to surrender themselves unreservedly to all sorts of sinful indulgence. newadvent.org

To: epicure who wrote (20339)	6/13/2005 11:57:14 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Perhaps this passage from A History of Economic Theory and Method (4th Ed., Ekelund & Hebert, 1997) will shed some light on the matter: "Early Christian thought treated the kingdom of God as being near at hand, and so it emphasized "other worldly" treasures. Production and material welfare would be superfluous in the kingdom of God. Indeed, earthly treasures were regarded as an impediment to the attainment of this heavenly kingdom. As the passage of time made the comings of this kingdom seem more distant, wealth came to be looked upon as a gift of God, furnished to promote human welfare. Christian thought therefore came to center on the "right" use of material gifts, an idea that persisted in medieval economic thought. Thus St. Basil (c. 330-379) wrote: "The good man ... neither turns his heart to wealth when he has it, nor seeks after it if he has it not. He treats what is given him not for his selfish enjoyment, but for wise administration (Works of St. Basil ... )" Of course, there are other reasons for the Christian church - or other religious/political establishments - to urge poor followers/subjects to eschew worldly treasures. Maintaining civil order, for one. From at least the time of Plato, acquisitive behavior was seen as a threat to the status quo and, therefore, to social welfare, which depended on the ability to maintain a stable ruling class to responsibly administer the resources of the city-state. Later economic theorists (social/political philosophers, really, since economics wasn't a discipline unto itself until the 19th century) suggested efficiency requires that the working population be kept poor lest they choose to work less, reducing production. And for the ruling class, accumulation of wealth served primarily to finance national power. Kings enabled a favored few to become wealthy by granting monopoly rights over trade, but only so that they could tax it to fill royal coffers. Everyone else should be kept on the margin of subsistence. As Edgar Furniss wrote in a 1957 work, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: "Thus the nation's destiny was conditioned upon a numerous population of unskilled laborers, driven by the very competition of their numbers to a life of constant industry at minimum wages: 'submission' and 'contentment' were useful characteristics for such a population and these characteristics could be fostered by a destruction of social ambition amongst its members." It wasn't until the dawn of capitalism that accumulation of wealth was seen as furthering social welfare. Monetary wealth serves to finance physical capital, which, combined with labor, increases productivity of that labor, resulting in higher incomes, consumption and savings - i.e. monetary wealth accumulation, which begins the virtuous circle again. I guess the point is that you shouldn't view even Christian religious doctrine as static and independent of the conditions of the times, but rather as a reflection of the conditions. As society evolved, and progressed technologically, doctrine evolved with it. What you see as inconsistency, I see as enlightenment. I seriously doubt that Jesus would look disapprovingly on accumulation of wealth that serves to better conditions for all. Rather, I think he would want to see the benefits extended to those who are still living in essentially feudal societies around the world. But in His day, as in the early church, the middle ages and up to the days of Adam Smith, the economic and social realities were entirely different from today.