Your last paragraph offers an ideal that we seem to have misplaced in
much of life today, as well as occasionally on this list. In the
secular dimension of society, the byword these days is "civility".
While that word (civility) also would be appropriate for this
particular list, my sense is that there underlies a more profound
issue.
The specifics of any given strong religious belief (or any tightly held
understanding) by their nature create distinction, and therefore
distance from a differing belief. Commitment to that belief generally
involves the sense of being right, and in turn - if sufficiently
motivated - leads to a certain "evangelism" for the held belief.
In the great settings for philosophical discussion, this led to
discourse that was a powerful vehicle for advancing understanding. Of
course, the formalization of the beliefs manifested in the creation of
"schools", the counterpart of denominations in religious life, bringing
those of similar beliefs or leaning into community.
All this is pretty ho-hum obvious. But in the context of religious
life, Christianity as a larger community has demonstrated a proclivity
toward fragmentation and a measure of habitual distancing among its
sort of federated pieces (for reasons that are both discernible and
understandable). My Jewish friends point to the idea that Messiah is to
bring peace to the world, and they do not see that. Among some of the
more thoughtful, that observation could be made about interactions
within the Christian community as well.
I've been a churchman for a long time, so I have some understanding of
the upsides and downsides of the workings of the Christian community.
For me, it has led to a more intentional tolerance (not so easy at
times, and not universally appropriate) for the religious holdings of
others within Christendom whose holdings differ from mine. [And that's
a challenging undertaking!] My ideal is to maintain that respect,
while listening respectfully to differing opinions on the basis that
they can inform and teach beneficially. My world of faith has not been
static over the years, and I think that is desirable, else there is no
opportunity for development and integration, or, simply phrased,
spiritual growth.
That said, the inevitable result of "increasing the resolution" on the
spiritual aspect of our lives is greater, not lesser, idiosyncrasy
(unless our idea of spiritual "maturity" - whatever that may be - is
some sort of uniformity of conformity). That might mean that we should
find it harder and harder to live in ever smaller communities.
But something's wrong with this picture!
It should, in principle at least, be relatively easy to live in
Christian community, however diverse it might be! Diversity in belief
is not easily tolerated, and that is evident in Christian history even
in the earliest years (ultimately profoundly shaping orthodoxy of
today). But there are those inconvenient teachings of the one whose
name we take in community.
I'll just slow down here and jump to the point.
With inevitable differences among us, and yet having freely adopted a
model of living in peaceable community, we should at the very least
among ourselves, in our diversities, be capable of very intentionally
embracing the ideals of respect and civility in our internal discourse,
if for no other reason than we have identified with the person and
example of Jesus who calls us to do so. But the practicality is that it
encourages us to ruminate and learn, and not just react.
I admit this seems almost too obvious to articulate, but there are
subtleties (including the distinctive over-the-transom nature of
conversation via the Internet) that pull us away from that ideal, even
subconsciously, that form habits whose expression we might not be to
proud of in broad daylight or upon reflection. So I'll just say the
obvious, and join the plea for the bare minimum of "civility" in
discourse. We do not do ourselves or our testimony proud by doing
otherwise.
Gaahhh, that sounds preachy, but it is basically stream of
consciousness. So I beg your forbearance -- I'm going to send it anyway.
Still striving for true respect and civility in my own
walk....Regards - JimA [Friend of ASA]
John Walley wrote:
12/17/09 Post #1
"with some of the posts having value, others
being simple forwarding of often silly anti-AGW propaganda"
I contend this is subjective. What some consider to be
propaganda, others consider to be hard science and truth. This comment
affirms Ted's observation about entrenched positions.
As an observer of this list for years I have seen a multitude of
volatile issues discussed and several prominent participants resign
such as PVM and David O, and personality induced conflict has been a
given throughout. Politics will always surface these differences and
there is no modern scientific discussion more intertwined with politics
than AGW except for maybe abortion. In fact, if I recall, it was
abortion and that was the issue being discussed that David O chose to
leave over and his leaving was a great loss to the list.
But as reasonable adults, we should be able to discuss the
political underpinnings and assumptions that lay beneath the
interpetations of this data and that determine our biases and there
should be room at the table for various political views, including the
traditional evangelical Christian views.
Thanks
John
From:
Allan Harvey <steamdoc@q.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wed, December
16, 2009 8:01:09 PM
Subject: [asa] List
rules?
No, this message isn't about the
pseudonym issue ...
I'm wondering whatever happened to
the rule of a maximum 4 posts per day per person. One person in
particular has been in egregious violation of this on more days than
not for several weeks now (with some of the posts having value, others
being simple forwarding of often silly anti-AGW propaganda), and I can
think of another whose pace is not far behind. A few others have
exceeded the limit on multiple occasions.
Of course we don't want to be overly
strict -- some days the discussion is such that a 5th or 6th message
might be needed. I see that even our Executive Director Randy reached
5 on Dec. 7. But the list is being drowned in messages these days, and
the signal-to-noise ratio is not good. So I ask the powers-that-be: is
that still a rule/guideline? And if so, to preserve some semblance of
value for this list would you please do something (presumably starting
with warnings) about our more flagrant offenders?
Allan (ASA member)
P.S. The easiest way to spot how
much people are posting is the archive pages like this:
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Dec 17 11:31:05 2009