Gideon,

I am interested to see how you’ll characterize a “Christian political party,” or religious “hypocrisy” or the “centrality” of views to the Christian faith. I've always been puzzled how Christianity can reconcile its strong moral teachings [good samaritan etc] while itself admitting that political aspirations MUST be "riddled with hypocrisy" [God:God::Caesar:Caesar]. Can we really distinguish Christianity's "intent" [e.g. original] from its uses [e.g. as a social signal: "I am your friend"]?

Jews, I know, make the same dichotomy comfortably because they imagine the social signal as passed down physically, i.e. corporeally, without the host’s choice -- at birth / by circumcision / by last name -- such that one can fail to DEMONSTRATE his Judaism / choose to be Jewish and still be a Jew on the "inside". Christianity, by contrast, can cease to exist in some geographic area (like a corporate brand or national constitution), even when all its (former) members are still alive. Its survival is not physical, but mental. It is utterly impervious to physical conditions.

But then, what data could you use to PROVE a distinction between, e.g., those ethical "tenets," "mentioned in the bible," vs. those that are actually "central to Christianity"? It's hard enough to justify distinguishing metaphysical statuses of things whose physical boundaries we've agreed upon (e.g. Veblen: the original vs. modern uses of wealth / messages about Stuff vs. messages about its Holder). How could you distinguish the metaphysical statuses of a thing in order to characterize its physical existence? -- why bother calling Christianity a "syndrome," if its only common symptom is that it's contagious? Any argument you make will be non-disprovable TWICE.

The typical response to that claim is that "my argument is disprovable; you'll see once I gather more evidence." But that's the same thing as saying, "My concepts are symmetric with my grader's concepts; you'll see once I clarify my concepts." The former language would require Eben, the grader, to choose whether to criticize either our brain’s search for evidence, or the actual lack of evidence; the latter language permits him to lay the blame on the brain’s static concepts, or on the education it received. He will choose the latter, because it empowers him to dismantle arguments on which WE are the experts.

-- AndrewGradman - 30 Mar 2008