Wednesday, December 2, 2009

“For reason is a property of God’s, since there is nothing which God, the Creator of all things, has not foreseen, arranged, and determined by reason. Furthermore, there is nothing god does not wish to be investigated and understood by reason.”
Tertullian, de paenitentia i, 2.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Except God...

Thesauros said...

Why do you say that?

“The highest discipline in Judaism and Islam is jurisprudence, the highest discipline in Christianity is theology."

Philosopher Ernest Fortin “Thomas Aquinas” History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 226.


Those who would like to diss all three monotheistic religion show a profound lack of understanding on this count. Of the three, Christianity alone is based on reason and logic. Islam and Judaism are based on the law.

Practically everything about Christianity is an open invitation to investigation; especially historical investigation.

Unknown said...

Christian theology may never have existed, if not for the exposure to Islamic studies of nature during the crusades. Christianity also had to borrow heavily from Plato (also re-introduced by the Muslims) in order to jumpstart the scientific self-inquiry of theology.

Contrary to where we currently stand, Christianity in and of itself bred nothing but ignorance for centuries. Christianity develops when it seeks outside itself, and fundamentalists most glaringly illuminate the short-comings of pure Christian study.

Unknown said...

Japanese dating site, sweet. Those things are essentially like online brothels. Sadly, I don't have the frequent flyer miles required...

Thesauros said...

Japanese dating site, sweet. Those things are essentially like online brothels. Sadly, I don't have the frequent flyer miles required..."

What are you talking about?

Unknown said...

The anonymous post above that one has a link. Feel free to delete it and my comments about it :P

J Curtis said...

Ginx, all too often, the existance of God is just dismissed out of hand rather than investigated with an open mind, usually by lumping all religions in together. I think that's what Mak (through Tertullian) is getting at.

Thesauros said...

The anonymous post . . ."

Wow! You're a brave man to click on stuff like that. I'm too paranoid on behalf of my computer to go where I don't know what's on the other side of the click. Still, I enjoy your comments, even though TB thinks you're a sociopath for communicating with me.

Unknown said...

Who says I'm not a sociopath?

Also, links can't hurt you as long as you have decent security settings. I also run Ad-Aware (free program, Google it if you desire) every night when I go to sleep. Besides, no matter how hard I try to prevent it, I have to fix a problem eventually... that's pretty much how life goes. No sense in being too careful.

What if the link led me to the meaning of existence? How stupid would I be for NOT clicking it! That's Pascal's Wager applied to URL links.

Thesauros said...

What if the link led me to the meaning of existence"

Well, as an atheist you'd have to throw it out any way so . . .