Reply To: Fundamental Principles to be documented within our constitution

[Anonymous]

#1387

My turn again.

The constitution should proceed, but slowly. We should keep talking about all this as some of us have to get through it.

Modernism *Long Sigh*. Christianity could not explain everything well enough and then someone looked through a telescope and saw a moon revolving around Jupiter. In that moment The West stood on the brink of annihilation via skepticism & pyrrhonism. Luckily, Decartes said “I think therefore I am” and then we were able to avoid Nihilism but Modernism was formed. The great men tried to answer all life’s questions by two methods, Empiricism and Rationalism. The Rational approach was an abject failure and might still be an utter calamity, we don’t know yet. Empiricism still seems a viable option.

Craig, I strongly urge you to digest Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason before you commit wholly to modernism. Kant himself believes that modernism is doomed and cannot exist without practical experience to keep it in check. It very possible that the Enlightenment will never provide us with a meaningful existence and make truth an impossibility. I think the rest of this conversation is best had in person. The bottom line is, Modernism happened and we have to deal with it’s failures and success now.

On that point, the Enlightenment gave us many many great things (medicine, steam engines etc). Islam is an example of a civilisation that hasn’t had it’s Enlightenment and they are so technologically backward. They either have to have their revolution or avoid it altogether. I’m worried about Pre-Enlightenment values. Sounds a little too close to Witch Burning to me. However, it must be said that St Thomas of Aquinas and St Augustine were great thinkers too. Maybe we could have made the steam engine without The Enlightenment. Again I stress that this is academic. The Enlightenment happened and we are all stuck with making sense of the by-products.

The individualism conversation is another hard one. I, like Craig, will never submit to any ruler. If I choose to do something it is because I have chosen it. I don’t understand how their can be crime/sin/honour/guilt/shame without this principle. Similarly, I can choose to place the needs of the whole before the needs of the part. But this is still an individual choice.

My only rational for rights goes like this. Even if a tyrannical ruler has me executed, I can walk to the gallows with my head held high. As long as I maintain my own mental sovereignty and sense of self nothing can ever stop my from holding my head high. I don’t have a rational where my own fleeting opinion isn’t my highest authority, but I think Christians do. I would like to think that I have enough virtue that I now no longer act on fleeting opinions and have learnt to act in accordance with traditional teachings, but only because I think it is a good idea, no because of any higher authority.

Totally up for a podcast/youtube channel.