The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
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Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#2HDS seems to be one of the places I wouldn't want to spend even one minute of my life. I find it hard to invent more pointless things to discuss than these.
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#3Excellent article, and it calls to mind this article I saw on the LA Times website recently: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-se...
I like to describe myself as being vaguely 'militantly agnostic'[1] ("I don't know, and you don't either," as one of my favorite bumper stickers reads), and so this quote from the OP resonates with me:
But I wondered if she hadn’t swung too far in
the opposite direction, associating propositional
inquiry with religion-haters and then dismissing
it entirely.
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#4HDS seems to be one of the places I wouldn't want to spend even one minute of my life. I find it hard to invent more pointless things to discuss than these.
It sounds like great practice for HN:
'''Anthropologist Michael Jackson once summed up the HDS ethos. “You don’t walk up to people and tell them their beliefs are wrong,” he said. “That’s just rude.” '''
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#5So arrogant. But yes, as soon as HDS ceased to be Christian, it should have disbanded. Little point in existing nowadays.
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#6You might enjoy this Long Now talk by James Carse: http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-li...
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#7[deleted]
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#8HDS seems to be one of the places I wouldn't want to spend even one minute of my life. I find it hard to invent more pointless things to discuss than these.
It sounds like great practice for HN: '''Anthropologist Michael Jackson once summed up the HDS ethos. “You don’t walk up to people and tell them their beliefs are wrong,” he said. “That’s just rude.” '''
I suppose, that's a question of culture. If truth is something that can be approximated or found, then having my beliefs shaken is something to be welcomed if it can bring me “closer to the truth” (whatever that may be). If, however, truth is present a priori, and my beliefs just a path to it, then having them shaken would remove me further from that assumed truth, and that would indeed be “rude”.
If your quoted sentence were true unqualifiedly, then science could not exist. Science is shaking-your-beliefs-as-a-way-of-life. Every single day.
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#9I get the feeling that Bieber is dissatisfied with his investment of time and student loans, but that doesn't logically generalize to shuttering the school. Like any religion, if it's not for you, then it's not for you. Especially if you knew going in that you're an atheist.
Pluralism isn't actually inevitable in schools of religion (if one wanted to study in an environment of nothing but conservative Southern Baptism, one would be spoiled for choice), but it's probably the only philosophy that would work when training ministers at a place like Harvard. Critiques of religion, possibly including those Bieber has, are interesting and worth considering, and probably are considered at more doctrinally self-assured places like e.g. Notre Dame. If that's the sort of thing Bieber wanted to study, however, he should have found somewhere else to do so. It's almost a archetype of the asshole atheist, that he would want to proselytize for his atheism in the same institution in which others are training for religious ministry.
Re: The Perils of Lazy Pluralism (Should Harvard Divinity School Still Exist?)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like great practice for HN: '''Anthropologist Michael Jackson once summed up the HDS ethos. “You don’t walk up to people and tell them their beliefs are wrong,” he said. “That’s just rude.” '''
I suppose, that's a question of culture. If truth is something that can be approximated or found, then having my beliefs shaken is something to be welcomed if it can bring me “closer to the truth” (whatever that may be). If, however, truth is present a priori, and my beliefs just a path to it, then having them shaken would remove me further from that assumed truth, and that would indeed be “rude”. If your quoted sent…
As has been pointed out many times, that's the difference between science and religion. From day, scientists are trained to understand their beliefs and understandings must be based on the evidence before them, and that if the evidence no longer supports the belief, a new belief must be adopted. Religion is based on the idea that the belief is right, and everything else must adopt to it, regardless of the evidence.