Posted on 03/11/2009 1:11:11 AM PDT by Cronos
The “camel eye of the needle” quote doesn’t quite refer to this argument. The protestant work ethic, as outlined very clearly in post 16, is perfectly ok. The problem arises when people go beyond the limitations that the theology also has. It’s one thing to say “work is a good thing in and of itself, and success is a natural result of hard work”, but people forget that Calvin also made it quite clear that the reverse is NOT neccesarily true (chance and circumstance happens to us all - not only in Job, but read Ecclesiastes). Once you accept that material success is THE sign of God’s grace, its a simple progression to believing that failure MUST be a sign of God’s disfavor, which of course is nonsense. The only true measure of “success” for a believer is when you do exactly what God requires of you, wherever that may lead.
I think you are mistaking each other folks!
Let us make it clear. The mortal remains of Calvin reside in this churchyard, next to the mortal remains of this woman who was a prostitute for some time in her life.
Those parts of both of them that are not corruptable, their souls, spirits, pneuma, vital essence or whatever you want to call it, have moved on. I hope and I trust into God’s loving and eternal embrace.
Thanks, dangus. EarthD — that was weird, I thought you were cracking a funny or that some artifact of Calvin was buried separately (not uncommon in the middle ages)
>>> Meanwhile, the British sacrificed nothing for Christianity, becoming wealthy and militarily dominant while the Spanish, Austrians, Lithuanians and Italians were tied up saving civilization. <<<
Yep. “Location, location, location.”
>>> Contrast this to Calvin, who issued a religious fatwah calling for the execution of Galileo. <<<
This would have been a “neat trick” when you consider that Calvin DIED the year that Galileo was BORN (Galileo was born in February 1564 and Calvin died in May of that year).
I think that you’re confusing Galileo for Copernicus. I remember that Calvin criticized Copernicus for some reason, but don’t remember him calling for his death.
St Augustine didn’t founder because of the colonists’ Catholic beliefs (the Franciscan missionaries who lived among the Timucua and Apalachee did perfectly fine) but rather because of their dependence on government. This wasn’t the problem of one bad commander. It was a problem that plagued St Augustine throughout the first Spanish period (1565 to 1763). It was also a problem that plagued much of New Spain. I’m sure everyone on this forum understands the dangers in government dependence. The early Virginia colonies (a bunch of Protestants) had similar problems.
Copernicus proved that the earth was in orbit around the sun, along with the other planets, and not the other way around. This theory effectively turned the religious community upside down.
It was the Copernican theory that effectively gave agnostics and atheists the opening they needed to disclaim the church's belief that God created the earth and the heavens.
Even though Copernicus was very religious, he enabled atheism.
I dunno - that puzzled me too :)
I wonder how the prostitute would feel if she knew she had been buried next to a lawyer.
>>> Copernicus proved that the earth was in orbit around the sun, along with the other planets, and not the other way around. This theory effectively turned the religious community upside down. <<<
I seem to remember that Copernicus “framed a hypothesis” regarding heliocentrism; I don’t think that a proof was forthcoming until Newton (via Kepler and Galileo).
I dug up a photocopy of a 1960 article by Edward Rosen (”Calvin’s Attitude Toward Copernicus”). Rosen argues in part that Calvin never criticizes/condemns Copernicus by name in any of his writings. The claim that Calvin DID do this was traced back to Bertrand Russell’s _A History of Western Philosophy_; Russell apparently got it from A.D. White’s _A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_. This genealogy stretches further back to some 19th century Anglican named Farrar; apparently, nobody down the line bothered to provide a citation, and so the claim that Calvin “called out” Copernicus on the question of geocentrism (or any other matter) is without foundation.
Now as for Luther and Melanchthon, that’s another matter...
LOL! Beat me to it!
No, my mistake was (at least) that it wasn’t Calvin in person, but rather Geneva... Apparently there was some amount of buzz among fairly modern historians that Calvin opposed Copernicus, but I’m reading that such a tension is held at least by this one author to be mythical; that its unlikely Calvin had enough knowledge of Copernicus to disdain him.
At this time, I’m going to simply retract that statement about Calvin. I had heard it as a science major, not from any Catholic apologetics, but my first quick attempt to substantiate any truth from the matter immediately raises red flags.
It’s a little intellectual flaw I have: if an obviously interested party states something I find useful, I’ve always made sure I can back it up before I repeat it. (For instance, if I learn something from a Catholic apologist about the counter-reformation.) But as I writing serious arguments on the internet, I’ve got to be equally careful even if I learned it before I was so careful and the motivation for my source’s bias or error hadn’t been so obvious. I don’t know why I would have been taught this wrong, but I should’ve checked it out before repeating it.
On the other hand, a lot of easy-to-find references on the internet presume popular understandings. For instance, the Our Daily Visitor’s 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia (which is old enough to have lost copyright protection, so it’s what you’ll find on line) routinely simply restates the popular notions of largely Protestant middle America. So I’m not saying the inverse is true: that Geneve wasn’t hostile to Galileo.
Like Reagan said, “It’s what they know that’s wrong.” I gotta be better than them.
>> My my...you do inject much and presume mountains. <<
You DID call someone “protoplasm.”
>>> No, my mistake was (at least) that it wasn’t Calvin in person, but rather Geneva... Apparently there was some amount of buzz among fairly modern historians that Calvin opposed Copernicus, but I’m reading that such a tension is held at least by this one author to be mythical; that its unlikely Calvin had enough knowledge of Copernicus to disdain him. <<<
If you have a source for your claim that Geneva (the city fathers?) had it out for Copernicus, I’d like to see it.
As for Calvin, the most from the scholarly input I’ve seen is that he was disdainful of heliocentrism per se. Given that heliocentrism had a history that stretched back to ancient Greece, and that the “scientific establishment” in Calvin’s time hadn’t exactly come out for one side or the other, it seems unfair to say he was either “out to get” Copernicus or scientifically benighted.
If you want to throw mud at Protestants in regard to this topic, my understanding is that Luther and Melanchthon would be more appropriate targets. However, don’t be surprised if athiests and agnostics don’t pick up that mud and throw it back at you. In a general effort to smear Christianity. It’s what they do.
>> If you have a source for your claim that Geneva (the city fathers?) had it out for Copernicus, I’d like to see it. <<
What I found was a source which rebuts that notion.
>> If you want to throw mud at Protestants in regard to this topic, my understanding is that Luther and Melanchthon would be more appropriate targets. <<
I’m not trying to throw mud; that’s why I retracted the comments. But believe me, there’s been a 400 year bombardment from the atheists and agnostics on the Catholic church on this issue; I don’t think I’m going to contribute to it.
>> If you don’t believe you have a soul...then you think you are made up of only protoplasm. It’s a fact, not an accusation and no amount of discussion on this thread will make a bit of difference to you if you believe that all of Calvin is in that grave. If you believe in a soul...what’s the problem? <<
That’s exactly what I inferred from what you said. Hence, when you called him protoplasm, I also inferred you thought he’d say he didn’t have a soul. But even an agnostic could accuse you of reductionism. Even if an agnostic doesn’t believe he has a soul, he may believe that his protoplasm is arranged in a manner which makes it more significant than other protoplasm.
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