"The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. " -- Frank Zappa
The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the witness of the apostles to the life, death, burial, and, resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were eye-witnesses of his resurrection. They were also recipients of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which he had promised and which they passed on to his followers and which is available to believers today. The Christian faith is historical as well as existential. It is propositional as well as experiential. It encompasses the mind, the will, and the emotions of the Christian. It affects the body, the soul (mind, will, emotions) and the spirit (inner immaterial being) of man.
Faith in the heart and mind of the believer can range from the simple Forrest Gump variety to sophisticated Augustine. God accepts both. Children can possess and enjoy what the cleverest atheist can only press his nose against the glass and vacuously ponder.
10 comments:
But there would not have been a reason for the death and resurrection if there hadn't been a talking snake.
Here is some more from Frank on the issue (edited to remove the words the might offend):
The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your ****ing mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.
-- Frank Zappa,
"The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge."
This is erroneous, at the most basic, fundamental level possible. It is a kindergarden grade error. It is incorrect, and so colossally so, that the rest of the quote is invalidated.
(Having said this, I heard a Christian man with a PhD make the same mistake last year.)
Thanks for the editing on the quote. I appreciate it.
If you want me to nuke the silly Doukhobor post I will -- let me know.
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thous shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2, v 17, King James version)
It was not knowledge per se that was forbidden, just knowledge of evil (they already were experiencing the good).
A similar revision is the tag "..money is the root of all evil" when it is "For the love of money is the root of all evil" (I Timothy 6:10).
That being said, there are and have been strands of Christianity which are decidedly anti-intellectual; but the same can be said of most ideologies.
Zappa is mislead. Intellectuality, science and culture of late antiquity were saved by christian monks in medieval era; without them, it would be no science --- at least not so soon. Zappa thinks that intellectuality = atheism, but he is wrong; he lacks practice on philosophic matters. Most hardcore atheists are ignorant (Bertrand Russell is an exception, but he was not simply an atheist, but a full skeptic), they are not intellectuals at all.
"The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the witness of the apostles to the life, death, burial, and, resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Actually, what Christianity is based upon is a series of contradictory anonymously-authored accounts, written decades after events, in a language foreign to the eye-witnesses and displaying a level of literacy that it is highly unlikely that any of the eye witnesses possessed.
Obrigado, Espectivas!
Yeah, ignorant non-intellectuals are what I come to when I think of Albert Einstein, George Orwell, Carl Sagan, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Richard Feynman, Epicurus, Thomas Paine, Voltaire…
There are ignorant atheists, and there are ignorant theists. Only theism encourages ignorance as a policy.
RE: silly Doukhobor post: I am not one who encourages censorship. It is your Blog, you do what you want.
“science and culture of late antiquity were saved by christian monks in medieval era”
wow, that is a remarkable re-write of history. The medieval dark ages were a product of Christianity and it’s anti-intellectual bent. Art and culture advanced inside the church, but most of what we now remember of science of the Greeks and the Romans was preserved not be Christians, but by Moslems. There is a reason we use Arabic numbers… ever heard of algebra?
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