“The worldview of a modern person should be formed based on scientific knowledge and respect for positive rational traditions.” Anything wrong with that statement?
Isn’t it overrated, at least unattainable, or at least a goal ones have been striving for since the Enlightenment, but are no closer to attaining than at outset, so you begin to wonder just how “enlightened” it can be. Better to go for the people with heart who renounce violence
For every fine development of the Enlightenment there is a horrendous one. For every American Revolution that produces ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people,’ there is a French Revolution that produces murder and mayhem, within months devouring even its early leaders, and finally suffers Napoleon rising from the ashes. And then gradually the American experience dissolves into mush as people begin to typify the iron and clay toes imagery of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream idol. And France, after nurturing Karl Marx, gives rise to FECRIS, the anticult watchdog that affixes the C-word to anyone deviating from script of mainline humanist thinking.
That grandiose first paragraph sounds nice. Who cannot be attracted to it? But is it not pushing people beyond their limits? If there is one thing the early 2020s has demonstrated—the early COVID-19 years—it is that people can’t even agree on what “scientific knowledge is.” The science that is “settled” is often settled by decree. The science that is “proven” has often been proven by ignoring evidence to the contrary. The worshippers of science and reason never seem to notice when money and power trumps their science and reason. Is it Nathan R. Jessup extended into general life? “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” You can make a case for his words.
Let that airy first paragraph into our own arena of religious belief and presently we have breakaway guys who acknowledge Jehovah’s Witnesses are right on the most fundamental issues, then get all worked up over peripheral items, to the point where they separate into their own splinter groups. In time, one of them makes the ridiculous “tail wagging the dog statement” that its too bad his group and the Watchtower group he bolted from cannot agree, for “they’d have more people that way,” but hey—it’s their problem, not his. As he fulfills to the letter what Paul found most shameful, that sects and divisions should characterize the people of God. (1 Corinthians 10:18-19)
Believe me, I take caution from it. In part, it’s why I call myself a “seed-picker” and not a “scholar.” As soon as you declare yourself a scholar you find some item that the dumbbells have got wrong and you get all pretentious over it, masking that pretentiousness as a quest for pure conscience.
It’s enough to get the core points right. What! You think men who are “unlearned and ordinary” as the twelve were are ever going to ascend to breathtaking heights of scholarship? The learned people are forever saying to the unlearned and ordinary, “Okay, you’ve done well—amazingly well, really, considering you’re lack of education. But the smart people are here now. Step aside.”
But the “unlearned and ordinary” don’t step aside. They know God would have chosen the smart people in the first place had those ones been his special favorites. They know that the smart people will cave when the going gets rough. They will get overly worried of what they have to lose, chief among that being prestige in the eyes of other smart people. That’s why you always get some people in congregations who are clumsy, boorish, and it’s challenging to work with them as they are so, yet they are always out there. Nobody has more sticktoitiveness than they. One of them read point blank from the tract the other day—and it is hardly his weakness; he’s just doing what has been suggested—“Do you think it’s possible to live forever? Yes? No? Or maybe?” I’ve seen it work with a short preceding icebreaker. But point blank, not so much. The householder squirmed, caught off-guard by the awkwardness of the sudden spot he was in, and I caught his eye. “This will be on the test,” I said good-naturedly, as though to a high school student. I didn’t know what else to say. I suppose I could have said nothing.
****** The bookstore
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