Christianity and Anti-intellectualism:

Axl888

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When it comes to understanding the Word of God, Christians do not need philosophies and worldly principles (Col. 2:8 warned us on this), Christians only need the Bible, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and savior of all mankind, and follow His commandments...and with these the Holy Spirit shall dwell unto them and guide them to understand what is in the Bible which is the Word of God.

And we ought to be like the Bereans and not to believe every video found in youtube (LOL) or any post from anybody on this forum (including axl888 of course) for no man is infallible.
Acts 17:11 - These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
1 John 4:1 - Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.


And it is a very big mistake for you to generalize and conclude that Christians are not intellectual or anti-intellectual.
 
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Christians only need the Bible, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and savior of all mankind, and follow His commandments...and with these the Holy Spirit shall dwell unto them and guide them to understand what is in the Bible which is the Word of God.
Since you've denied logic, rationality and reason, it goes against your very own principles to even consider having reasons to believe this in the first place. There is no journey that you have undertaken to get you from not believing something to believing in the fully-fledged Catholic/Christian trinitarian worldview with all the LED's and acoustic guitars.
Once you deny logic, rationality and reason, your whole worldview becomes Nihilistic by definition. The concept of meaning and purpose becomes foreign because you deny the possibility of those too.
You're full of conceit, that's for sure, you challenge everything except your own beliefs - therefore you reject logic, rationality and reason for everything except for the thing you base your entire worldview, ideology, moral system and theology around.

And we ought to be like the Bereans and not to believe every video found in youtube (LOL) or any post from anybody on this forum (including axl888 of course) for no man is infallible.
Acts 17:11 - These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
1 John 4:1 - Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.


And it is a very big mistake for you to generalize and conclude that Christians are not intellectual or anti-intellectual.
My judgement speak entirely to the majority of Christians I've ever met or interacted with (including you, in regards to your utter infatuation with Corinthians 2:8), which is more than I can possibly ever count. You bring it upon yourself for making one truth claim (that Genesis 1:26 is the Trinity, most recently) yet refusing to listen to anything except the sound of your own voice.
 

Axl888

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Since you've denied logic, rationality and reason, it goes against your very own principles to even consider having reasons to believe this in the first place. There is no journey that you have undertaken to get you from not believing something to believing in the fully-fledged Catholic/Christian trinitarian worldview with all the LED's and acoustic guitars.
Once you deny logic, rationality and reason, your whole worldview becomes Nihilistic by definition. The concept of meaning and purpose becomes foreign because you deny the possibility of those too.
You're full of conceit, that's for sure, you challenge everything except your own beliefs - therefore you reject logic, rationality and reason for everything except for the thing you base your entire worldview, ideology, moral system and theology around.
Whether you like it or not, having faith and believing to an entity that is supernatural and not seen in this material world is beyond your so-called logic, rationality and reason, have you seen your god allah at any time? I bet your answer is no, yet you still believe allah does exists, so you are no different from us Christians, unless of course you declare now that you are an atheist. And there goes again your hypocrisy, "You're full of conceit, that's for sure, you challenge everything except your own beliefs - therefore you reject logic, rationality and reason for everything except for the thing you base your entire worldview, ideology, moral system and theology around.", don't you know your statement also applies to you?

My judgement speak entirely to the majority of Christians I've ever met or interacted with (including you, in regards to your utter infatuation with Corinthians 2:8), which is more than I can possibly ever count. You bring it upon yourself for making one truth claim (that Genesis 1:26 is the Trinity, most recently) yet refusing to listen to anything except the sound of your own voice.
So you are a judge now? And I am full of conceit? LOL
 
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Whether you like it or not, having faith and believing to an entity that is supernatural and not seen in this material world is beyond your so-called logic, rationality and reason
Is this the worldview you operate from? you sound like a fully-fledged atheist (because the natural conclusions of your position is that there can't be a God).

So if there is complete inability to understand any religious matters intellectually (including the very validations for your entire religion, texts and interpretation of them), then we come back to the question of why you even claim to believe anything in the first place.
Why are you not an atheist or agnostic if you hold this anti-intellectual position, which rejects validating any of your beliefs or allowing for argument to evaluate your beliefs? Seeing you have no intellectual reasoning or experience to base your beliefs of, nor any reasoning to validate your truth claims about the reliability of the Bible.

So you are a judge now?
Prove me wrong, be the outlier.
 

Axl888

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Is this the worldview you operate from? you sound like a fully-fledged atheist (because the natural conclusions of your position is that there can't be a God).
And how you come to that conclusion? Really, you are now sounding like adam "the shifty" schiff LOL
 
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And how you come to that conclusion? Really, you are now sounding like adam "the shifty" schiff LOL
Well if you have no logical or reason to believe in God, then you most, underneath the bonnet be an atheist of some sort, or at least an agnostic. Or at best be a believer in the idea of God, rather over the actual reality of God and the blessings of God (like intelligence, yes, intelligence isn't actually from Satan).

If you have no logic or rational comprehension of what you believe, then do you even know what you actually believe? (or is that another mystery to you too?) or do you just repeat phrases that have aesthetic qualities, poetic qualities, that sound good to your ear?
 

Axl888

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Well if you have no logical or reason to believe in God, then you most, underneath the bonnet be an atheist of some sort, or at least an agnostic. Or at best be a believer in the idea of God, rather over the actual reality of God and the blessings of God (like intelligence, yes, intelligence isn't actually from Satan).

If you have no logic or rational comprehension of what you believe, then do you even know what you actually believe? (or is that another mystery to you too?) or do you just repeat phrases that have aesthetic qualities, poetic qualities, that sound good to your ear?
OKAY, i respect your opinion bro... have a good day! :)
 

DavidSon

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I watched the two shorter videos and think yes, intellectual inquiry is part of human experience and sadly missing from the voice of popular Christianity. Philosophy is a method of investigating our (God given) reason, while theology is a logical expression of our faith. As much as some try, we can't possibly separate the two qualities.

The question, "do you really believe in the supernatural realm of the first century believers or not" is important. Meaning, do we understand the social environment or mindset within the time-period in question. Do we have the background to accept as truth the statements of another believer? The 2nd video made an important statement: A man can't believe in what he doesn't know.

Thanks to God we have access to not just the traditional sayings of Jesus, but all of the previous, contemporary, and later elements that have driven the religion. To discover that the Essenes and other ascetics of the era practiced nearly everything that Jesus preached I find astounding. The fact that Ebionites and earliest Jewish disciples did not recognize a virgin birth or physical resurrection is worthy of recognition.

Also thanks to God we have the writings to search how or from who the various theories (atonement, trinity, original sin, heaven and hell, resurrection, rapture, purgatory, etc.) originated. If mainstream Christianity isn't willing to be truthful about these subjects, I think we'll see a continued decline of the church in the West. REAL faith is not blind.
 

Wigi

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Christianity is all for anti-intellectualism ? What about Thomas Aquinas or CS Lewis?

I don't understand the purpose of this thread.


If mainstream Christianity isn't willing to be truthful about these subjects, I think we'll see a continued decline of the church in the West. REAL faith is not blind.
I think, a decline of all form of spirituality is correlated with an highly materialistic environment were worldly matters tend to be deified. I've heard atheists irl saying my god is my money or my well being. Apostasy in the west has nothing to do with a lack of 'intellectual' Christianity.

Also I doubt that fervent Christians actually believe faith is blind, it's more that faith isn't mainstream nowadays.

"Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?"
Luke 18:8
 
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Christianity is all for anti-intellectualism ? What about Thomas Aquinas or CS Lewis?
Aquinas was certainly not a Protestant, his Summa Theologica however is among the best things I've read in Christianity. Not THE best, but among them. He is an example of a Christian who thought about his faith, and who reflected deeply upon theology. More people of his stature among the average Western Protestant Christian would be more inviting to see.

Although he himself is a massive jump from even my lowest expectation on this forum, which is simply for Christians to be able to answer questions asked when they hold so rigidly to doctrines and dogmas they can't explain. I believe wholeheartedly that the intellect is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind. Without it, we don't have anything to even attempt to justify religious beliefs on, that's just factual.
 

Wigi

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More people of his stature among the average Western Protestant Christian would be more inviting to see.
CS Lewis or Søren Kierkegaard ?

which is simply for Christians to be able to answer questions asked when they hold so rigidly to doctrines and dogmas they can't explain.
I think it's a quite unreasonable to expect from finite beings reasonings that could explain entirely all the things revealed by an infinite being knowing how limited our understanding of things is today.

We don't even fully understand a universe we see with our eyes.
 
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CS Lewis or Søren Kierkegaard ?
Kierkegaard, to some extent yes, he has a lot of insight on various things and does hammer home a lot of great seldom contemplated ideas in Christian doctrine.

CS Lewis though, not really, he was always more of a fiction writer than a theologian or philosopher. "Lewis' Trilemma" is one case-in-point towards terrible arguments that should be viewed shamefully, especially by Christians.

I think it's a quite unreasonable to expect from finite beings reasonings that could explain entirely all the things revealed by an infinite being knowing how limited our understanding of things is today.

We don't even fully understand a universe we see with our eyes.
This is no secret. The point here is that adhering to an unquestionable, exclusivist dogma and/or doctrine at the level of antogonizing others requires equally strong intellectual, logical, rational etc understanding. Without this, all the person has is strong opinions. Strong opinions without any reason to have them are worthless.

When it comes to the complexity of existence though, I don't think we are willing to admit often that in the face of that complexity is supreme simplicity. What you ask or allude to here is an epistemic question about the nature of knowledge, which comes back to the root of the nature of being.
As I've seen in your other posts, you're clearly a Christian, so you are likely philosophically an idealist (even if you didn't recognize it as such), not a materialist. That's a good start for such a question.
Alongside the nature of knowledge itself, the question of "can truth be known?" is another question worth asking.
If truth can be known, then what is that truth? and where/how can it be found? and if truth can't be known, then how can we hold onto worldviews (including politics and morality) and religions with any sense of authority?

It's a very long progress of defining and re-learning one's approach to existence, being, morality, ideology and ultimately God too.
Many secular philosophers after Nietzsche (as he had an impact on Western thought that came unexpected to Western philosophy, culture and religion) really battled it out from his own conclusions, two of the most notable were Wittgenstein and Heidegger, then we had the school of absurdists (like Camus) as well.
It's important to have actual serious contemplation of these issues in determining one's faith, religion and the nature of both.
History is full of intellectuals, from every field and religion, it's a shame that certain majoritys of religious groups choose to be willfully ignorant to even the most simplest things about existing and the wealth of knowledge their religions have in their histories.

Now many that have lurked this thread may interpret me as bashing Christianity but I don't and I say and ask these things with complete sincerity, these are things that are very very important to me and to Faith itself. I ask and challenge things because I care.
 
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Another thread trying to ‘prove’ Christianity and Christians wrong...
No, it's about Christians who refuse to engage in rational or logical argument with regards to their truth claims. If Christians refusing to do so 'disproves' Christianity in-and-of-itself in your mind, then so be it but that's not what my intentions ever are.
I'm not a proselytizer nor do I care, fundamentally, what you believe - whether Christian, Atheist, Hindu etc.
 

Lisa

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No, it's about Christians who refuse to engage in rational or logical argument with regards to their truth claims. If Christians refusing to do so 'disproves' Christianity in-and-of-itself in your mind, then so be it but that's not what my intentions ever are.
I'm not a proselytizer nor do I care, fundamentally, what you believe - whether Christian, Atheist, Hindu etc.
You must care, most of your posts and threads are trying to disprove Protestantism as correct..and it makes you seem to have an agenda, not in trying to hear what we say but to do everything possible to disprove everything we say...so much fear.
 
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You must care, most of your posts and threads are trying to disprove Protestantism as correct..and it makes you seem to have an agenda,
Out of all of the Christians here forcing their views onto others, how many here aren't Protestants of some configuration? there are certainly no Catholics here.

Catholics however, are far more likely by nature to attempt at giving mature answers to all the kinds of things I have asked here. And a modern Catholic especially would have no hostility towards me for asking such things.

not in trying to hear what we say but to do everything possible to disprove everything we say...so much fear.
This is a problem when you consider discussing the logic of religious beliefs to be 'disproving everything we say', this is a big issue.

I have no fear of anything but God, but in fact, I even am able to question God and if it even exists to logically determine whether I hold valid views or not. If you're not able to do the same, with sincerity, again, it is a big issue.

Your parellel post to me on the other thread here is a reflection of fear, not Faith:
I hope you’ll be saved for your sake not mine.
Have I ever threatened any of you in any form whatsoever? have I ever told you to follow 'my way or the highway'? no.
I believe in God, not Christianity, I don't have any urgency in me to belittle others for not believing what I believe, this is what separates me from all of you here.
 

Lisa

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Out of all of the Christians here forcing their views onto others, how many here aren't Protestants of some configuration? there are certainly no Catholics here.

Catholics however, are far more likely by nature to attempt at giving mature answers to all the kinds of things I have asked here. And a modern Catholic especially would have no hostility towards me for asking such things.



This is a problem when you consider discussing the logic of religious beliefs to be 'disproving everything we say', this is a big issue.

I have no fear of anything but God, but in fact, I even am able to question God to logically determine whether I hold valid views or not. If you're not able to do the same, with sincerity, again, it is a big issue.

Your parellel post to me on the other thread here is a reflection of fear, not Faith:


Have I ever threatened any of you in any form whatsoever? have I ever told you to follow 'my way or the highway'? no.
I believe in God, not Christianity, I don't have any urgency in me to belittle others for not believing what I believe, this is what separates me from all of you here.
Who’s forcing their views. We have views and we talk about them, I don’t see that as forcing anyone we are just talking to people like everyone else here does.

I’m not fearful of what you say, you are wrong about who God is, I and others are only trying to set you straight.

I’m not hostile to you. I think catholic which is also called universal is fine with anyone’s and everyone’s beliefs, especially when you start incorporating their beliefs in with yours. That’s pretty much their history.

I sincerely hope you’ll be saved and that wasn’t a threat ya know. Just a goodwill gesture. I don’t believe I have ever belittled anyone here.
 
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