Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 16:56:50 +0100
From: Carsten Agger <agger-AT-faklen.dk>
Subject: Re: PKF: (Re-) Introducing myself


David Geelan wrote:

> I'm aware, in my championing of a Christian perspective, of just the
> concerns that Carsten has raised about the history and approach of
> Christians to other faiths and beliefs. My response is that such actions
> are in no sense 'Christian' (i.e. Christ-like), whatever labels their
> authors have appended to them, but are all about conquest and power and
> oppression...

    Yet those persons who participated in these actions fora great deal
believed wholly and devoutly that they were being
the champions of Christ. Most of the missionaries fervently believed
that they were fighting for Good against Evil, many times forcibly
imposing baptism & so forth on the people the imperial governments
had colonized.
    Actually, it may well be that the most hideous crimes are most easily
committed by those who think they possess the Universal Truth - because
if you stand for Good and Truth, then what can your adversaries represent -
apart from Untruth and Evil? We see it even today, in the aggressive
interventionism displayed by Western countries in many international
conflicts.

> Even the very brief statements I quoted yesterday
> demonstrate that Jesus Christ was a million miles from providing any
> mandate for imperialism. (Christianity's Judaic heritage is a different
> question in terms of genocide, and one that I have to admit I find
> impossible to answer.)
>

    Obviously, Jesus Christ was a million miles away from what theChurch became
even a few centuries after his death. Like Kierkegaard
demonstrated, Christianity demands from the *individual*, and heavy
demands - and yet priests do not recommend that people hate their
parents and leave their families to walk the Earth in the conviction that
God will feed them as He feeds the birds of heaven. If we look at
religion in a cross-cultural sense, we end up dealing with gods, not
God.

> ..but must interpret the ways that God is
> revealed to us. And since our interpretation occurs through our own
> conceptual filters and past experiences, I am nowhere near confident
> enough of my own interpretations to make them universal or abolute.
>

Sounds like som sort of Berkeleyanism: we're ideas in the mind of God, no?

> I hope this serves to make my perspective clearer, and to show how I can
> agree with Cartsen in almost every detail, despite being a member of a
> group his organisation is primarily set up to defend against!

Huh? I'm sorry I don't quite understand this - your signature would
indicatethat you're a university professor, and our magazine (a very special
magazine,
but yet a magazine which is printed in 4,000 copies 4 times a year is a little
short of being an organization - it's short of being a *large* organization,
anyway.)
    In all cases, our magazine has been well received and has a fine
collaboration with *many* university professors. What is attacked are some
*trends* represented by *some* teachers; let me give an example. At a seminar
in the University of Aarhus, one of the leading professors of religious history

and theology (same faculty here) gives a talk on "cultural evolutionism - what
else?"
where he advocates the point of view that our culture is "irreversibly"
superior
to all others.
    He ended his speech with an anecdote, according to which a woman who does
not wear a scarf is necessarily "irreversibly" superior to a woman who does.
    This is not only cultural evolutionism - it is an example of a professor
abusing
his professional standing to further his own private cultural chauvinism.
    Some students I know were rather shocked, and pointed out that this
elogy of our culture on behalf of Islam were an example of prejudices
discarded by most authorities of the field about a century ago.
    As a result, the professor angrily asked whether the student "knew what
sort of an institution our University is", and it was found out that,
retrospectively,
the seminar had been closed for students (even though it was announced
as public for everybody). On the other hand, another professor exclaimed,
delighted at the anecdote: "whenever you preach, I am among the believers".
    *That* is an example of the trends the Torch wants to fight, not with
any kind of unrest, but with words and education. And these thoughts
have received *massive* support from *other* parts of the University.
    So, I think you may be wrong when you say you belong to a group
we want to defend against - I suspect you are not  a law-and-order
politician in disguise? ;)
    And *that* is also, to answer Bill's question, why the time to turn the
other cheek has ended. let me quote from our article on "Cultural
Relativism":  The problem is *not only*
    "trends are rampant among various senior lectures and professors, but also
and especially that these presumably intelligent people do not by themselves
uncover and take vigorous exception to any such trend as we daily meet them
among many politicians and in the majority of the media. Why does this almost
never happen?

Should it not be the most dignified social and historic task to a university to
do this - not least in view of the multi-religious and multi-ethnic situation,
in which the western world is these years?

At any case our secularised and positivistic view of the world - which modern
physics, linguistics and neurology can no longer verify - is hardly 300 years
old, whereas religious paradigms have persisted for almost half a million years
in one or the other aspect. In other words, regarding the long history of
civilization we are extreme, not the others. Why not show a little humility
instead of being convinced of the superiority of western culture? On what
unproblematic and self-evident definition of truth and reality is it at all
possible to define »progress« in history? "

> their own - I have done this too. Perhaps this is natural as we work to
> find a balance, rather than be dominated by our own cultural biases, but
> surely a *mature* relativism includes a tolerance for the beliefs of our
> 'home' culture?)

    Yes, of course - but that does not mean it has to accept
the popular myths, which may be recognized by the fact that they are
hardly ever disputed - like the myths of how Man rose out of
Ignorance and Superstition into the present Enlightenment,  which
is a very popular belief in less educated circles.
    And when such ignorance is met in decisionmakers where they
might cause harm, then it should be *gainsaid* - like PKF
did many times - even if I don't agree with his negative attitude
towards science.
regards,


    Carsten
--
agger-AT-faklen.dk      The Torch Magazine: http://www.faklen.dk/en
Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff:   http://imv.aau.dk/~brynskov/enw/enw_eng.html
NEMO PROPTER AMOREM DESPICIATUR!
Miembro de la Biblioteca Circular: http://www.encomix.es/~espada/circulo.html


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