Has anyone else noticed a double standard in the seriousness with which truths and ideas are taken in modernity (post-modernity?)? I have seen many people, including Orthodox Christians, become very animated about science, for example. When they encounter someone who does not believe in the most up-to-date scientific theories, they argue vociferously with such a man, and try to win him over to the truth. They may even denounce him as naïve, blind, foolish, stupid, ignorant, ridiculous, or bad. They may also tell him that among the scientific experts there is such a great deal of consensus on the matter as to make dissent from that consensus tantamount to insanity. Then, behold, a theological question. The same people who were willing to contend so forcefully for scientific truth suddenly become enamored with opinion. They who before ridiculed and disparaged the dissenter from science now defend the dissenter from dogma and turn their criticism against anyone who dares to say, heresy. The consensus patrum is held to be so hopelessly indeterminate as to be practically meaningless. Instead of the zeal for truth and accuracy which characterized the scientific debate, niceness and tolerance become the chief concern. It becomes a worse thing to *call* someone wrong than to *be* wrong. This all leads me to conclude that such people believe the spiritual world is, if real at all, decidedly less real than the physical world. We moderns find historical accounts of theological riots in Byzantine cities almost hard to believe, and the Church Fathers often caustic polemical style when defending Orthodoxy against the heterodox, we find discomfiting. I think the reason many of us are so determined not to fight about theology is because were practical atheists.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 22:52:14 +0000
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