Philosophy: Love truth or love Christianity?

[Ani_Ibi]

He who beings by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection: Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Alrighty then. Thoughts?

 

[IanBoyd57]

Alrighty then. Thoughts?

Loving following your religion more then loving following the truth certainly seems to be a popular trend.

 

[Truthstalker]

Tricky. He is splitting truth from Christianity, which he fails to define the difference. In my book there is a one to one correspondence; in his book there is a distinction that he fails to make known to us. Nor does he display anything except a fine handle on how to do non sequitors.

The cow is a bucket.
Therefore sea shells fly to Mars.

 

[john_doran]

you should love your religion because (you think) it’s true, not because it’s your(s or your family’s or your community’s) religion.

makes perfect sense to me.

 

[jimmy]

Loving following your religion more then loving following the truth certainly seems to be a popular trend.

This seems to imply that people think their religion is false yet they continue to follow it. I don’t think there are very many people who love to follow what they think is false.

And is the ‘your’ supposed to be specific to Catholicism or is it a general statement about people?

 

[john_doran]

Rules of fighting: 1) Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. 2) Don’t bring a gun to a Chuck Norris fight.

good grief, i haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time.

awesome. just awesome.

 

[jimmy]

good grief, i haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time.

awesome. just awesome.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Tricky. He is splitting truth from Christianity, which he fails to define the difference.

Heh heh heh. Coleridge is busted!

Truthstalker:

The cow is a bucket. Therefore sea shells fly to Mars.

Now this is something I can understand.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

jimmy:

This seems to imply that people think their religion is false yet they continue to follow it. I don’t think there are very many people who love to follow what they think is false.

jd has hit upon something above. Some folks value their position in a social group more than they value the truth. Is it logical to do so? Or is their logic simply applied to a different set of values than ours?

Folks set up a hierarchy of categories each of which has higher or lower value for them.

Mazlow (below) says that membership in social groups has greater value than self-actualization (the pursuit of truth) based on survival needs.

Now this leads to the distinction between survival and life. What is the distinction? Thoughts?

When we make that distinction, then let’s ask this question: What do men (women) die for? That is, when does life trump survival?

cpayne:

About “hierarchical goods”: What I had in mind was Aquinas’s arrangement of natural law principles from the most general, like “Good is to be done and evil avoided,” to more specific ones that have more or less binding force depending on the specific application and situation. (In case anyone was going to ask: No, this is NOT moral relativism. ) If I remember correctly, the hierarchy of goods goes from life and self-preservation, to family and procreation, to knowledge and education, to socialibility and recreation. They are hierarchical because each depends on the previous ones, except for life and self-preservation, which is a necessary good for anything else to follow.

Ani Ibi:

A psychologist put forward a similar theory. It was called the Mazlow Hierarchy of Needs.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/hierarchy.gif