[Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Panon Windows?

[Duncan]

Steven D'Aprano posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:47:09 +1100 as excerpted:

> On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 12:47:05 pm Duncan wrote:
>> FWIW, something that sometimes gets lost on both Christian (I honestly
>> don't know if it applies in Islam, etc, or not) and Linux/FLOSS
>> fundamentalists, but which I'm acutely aware of, due to my background,
>> is that it *MUST* be a personal choice.
> 
> Historically, freedom of choice in religion was vanishingly rare. It
> *still* is vanishingly rare in many parts of the world, particularly the
> Islamic world, where proselytising other religions is a crime, and
> converting away from Islam is often treated as a capital offense.

That I know.  What I don't know is whether there's a "salvation by faith" 
parallel that can be claimed (if only by some relatively minor sect) for 
Islam or most other religions.

> As Richard Dawkins points out, it would be the strangest thing if people
> referred to small children or even new-born babies as "Republican" or
> "Democrat", but all over the world people think nothing of talking about
> "Jewish babies" and "Catholic babies" or "Hindu babies". It is
> ridiculous and wicked.

I'm aware of infant baptism in Catholicism, but at least with the variants 
I've actually had experience with, most would agree with you, and baptism 
isn't practiced until at least some time after a kid can talk and express 
the wish.  (The youngest I'm aware of was a five-year-old, and that was 
extremely exceptional.  Probably 7 or 8 is the youngest that would be 
considered normal.)  Regardless, most still do take 'em while they're 
still very much under (ordinarily) their parents' wing/guardianship/
influence, and would be at what Kohlberg-stage-2, reward orientation, or 
early stage-3, peer, while "peer" is still likely defined as parents' 
religious group.  Decisions at that age could be argued either way.

Personally, I've come to the conclusion that the age of the Jewish
Bar/Bat-Mitzvah (typically 13) would perhaps be a better minimum, tho 
that's ancient and doesn't recognize the recent gap phenomenon that one 
book I read referred to as the NQA period, not quite adult, not quite 
adolescent, that occurs in modern culture due to the increasing length of 
education needed before young people can be considered functional adults.  
Thus, probably 16 or so, today, minimum, arguably even the 18 that's 
considered legally of age for many things (including military service, 
voting, and I believe marriage tho some allow it earlier, but NOT alcohol/
tobacco) here in the US.

> Even when freedom of religion is permitted by law, there is very little
> actual freedom of religion (to say nothing about freedom *from*
> religion) in practice. Duncan, you were raised as a particular Christian
> denomination. I feel confident to make a prediction:
> 
> 90% chance you are still with the same denomination.

No.

> 9.99% chance you are with a very similar denomination.

Well, define "very similar".  Not so much, really, tho both are protestant 
and reasonably conservative, but there's much different, as well.  I'm 
tempted to name names as I have little to hide and would enjoy the 
discussion without getting offended (tho I tend to have a rather higher 
tolerance in that area than many, it seems), but am resisting as it'd be a 
gateway to going even farther off topic, if that's really possible, than 
we are now. =:^]

But if you like, you can mail me.  If you're running thru gmane as I am, 
the encrypted addresses are /supposed/ to be valid forwards (thru spam 
blockers, of course), tho I've never tried it.

> 0.01% chance that you have converted to significantly different branch
> of Christianity (say, Greek Orthodox) or an offshoot like Mormonism or
> Unitarianism.

Actually, I did study with the JWs and only recently decided it wasn't for 
me.

> And a vanishingly small chance that you converted to a non-Christian
> religion. Even if you have done so, I can virtually guarantee it isn't
> Druze, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Chinese Traditional Religion, or
> medieval Norse religion. To mention just a few out of thousands.

While I understand you're talking statistics at least to some degree, 
that's a reasonable assumption given the previous hints.  Otherwise I'd 
have likely mentioned /something/ about their parallel to "salvation by 
faith", given that it was quite evident I viewed that doctrine quite 
favorably.

> Do you really think that you have freedom to choose any religion? Can
> you really tell us that you could have equally chosen to convert to
> Samaritanism, Ghost Dance, or Bambuti native religion as some variety of
> Protestantism? (In fact, I'm predicting that even Catholicism would have
> been a huge and difficult step.)

Well, one church I was a member of for a time had started as a Catholic 
Bible study group... tho it had quite diverged by the time I came to know 
it and was a member.  But that at least the current one wasn't Catholic 
was a reasonably safe bet in context too, even more so after my above 
comments on infant baptism, tho of course that's in this reply.

>> For Christians (at least most Christians, and here's why I'm not sure
>> it applies to Islam, etc), it's called "salvation by faith".  If it's
>> the law, it's not faith.
> 
> On the contrary, according to most Christians throughout history, it's
> the law that you have faith, or else. (Not just any old faith, of
> course, it has to be the right one.)

Perhaps I should have modified "most Christians" with "current", and 
arguably with something about official stance as well, as most current do 
seem to at least give lip service to the concept.

But as I hinted at above, in the context of the favorable light in which I 
quite evidently hold the saved by faith concept, it's reasonably obviously 
a major bit of my belief system.  As such, and given that I didn't name 
anything but Christian, it's a pretty safe bet that I'm still a Christian.

Actually, I'd name that bit as practically short-circuiting the evaluation 
of most other religions as well, tho it didn't occur in precisely that 
context...

[I was three paragraphs into a further explanation before I decided that 
was going too far off topic and decided not to take the entire list 
there...]

Let's just say that the salvation by faith concept seems to me to be the 
one element that's different with Christianity, and the only real 
possibility worth bothering with as it's the only one in which I see any 
hope -- I don't believe it's possible without that, so even granting for 
argument sake that another way is factually correct, I see no hope in it.

As such, I'd be quite interested in finding salvation by faith elements in 
other religions, but I'm not aware of such.

And I'd assume given the Dawkins reference that you're likely either 
atheist or at least agnostic?

FWIW, tho it has been quite some time ago, I /some/ bit of comparative 
research (high school level) on the major world religions, mainly 
consisting of reading a book divided into two parts for each, an 
explanation, followed by selections from (English translations of) its 
holy works.  (Googling and checking Amazon, it may have been a compendium 
of Hudson's the World Religions and Novak's companion World Wisdom.)  My 
main take away from that was just how similar the holy works did seem to 
one another.  IIRC, Shintoism was the hardest for me to get my mind 
around, but I enjoyed very much the holy writings excerpts and the intro 
to especially the other oriental and Indian religions (Confucianism, 
Taoism, Hinduism, etc), plus Islam.  But I don't remember covering 
Zoroastrianism and Baha'i wasn't yet covered, IIRC.  I don't recall 
anything about salvation by faith, however, except possibly with 
Christianity.  I do recall being pleased to get at least a bit of a view 
into Judaism's distinction from Christianity, other than the obvious 
(Christ), and to realize how close Islam was to Judaism and Christianity, 
as well as to get a bit better grasp on the Eastern Orthodox/Catholic/
Protestant split.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman