Savages rely on religion for a worldview.
This is largely an ad hominem attack. Whether or not savages rely on religion is besides the point, and does not disprove religious claims. Not to mention it is grossly inaccurate. Religious people come in all shapes and forms.
Those thinkers did not, they relied on their own thinking, religion was but an unnecessary burden for them imposed upon them purely incidentally. They were religious as a result of errors of thought they incurred due to the kind of education and culture that was ingrained upon them.
If they were able to extricate themselves from such biases, they would renounce their religion upon the realization of the implausibility of such views.
And you somehow have secret access to their minds, to discern what they really thought about matters religious?
Ideology need not be complex as they are today, it is merely a guide of political and social behavior for people to abide by. They have existed ever since people functioned in a group, as obviously they always needed to organize their activities.
You're confusing ideology with social-political philosophy. As far that ditchomy is concerned, religious thinkers have clearly favored the latter over the former. Some examples off the top of my head: Karl Barth, Jacques Maritain, Russell Kirk, Michael Oakeshott, etc.
All the religious wars that were fought in the name of the holy text?
Wars occur for endless reasons, religion is but one. And often religious conflicts were heavily mixed in with political and econonic disputes. Yet we could look at this from a different perspective: religious wars involve men fighting for what are their deepest held beliefs.
Rousseau himself made some interesting comments about this:
"Fanaticism, though sanguinary and cruel, is nevertheless a great and powerful passion, which exalts the heart of man, which inspires him with a contempt of death, which gives him prodigious energy, and which only requires to judiciously directed in order to produce the most sublime virtues. On the other hand, irreligion, and a reasoning and philosophic spirit in general, strengthens the attachment to life, debases the soul and renders it effeminate, concentrates all the passions in the meanness of private interest, in the abject motive of self, and thus silently saps the real foundations of society; for so trifling are the points in which private interests are united, that they will never counterbalance those in which they oppose one another."
No, not really. Modern Christianity is different from Islam because it was heavily influenced by the Western Culture which values independency of thought and action.
That doesn't make any sense, since Western culture has it's birth in the early Medieval period when the Christian faith was spreading across Europe in wake of the collaspe of the Roman Empire. Along with the faith, missionaries also brought with them the Classical heritage of Greece and Rome. This is why Novalis once remarked that Western culture is built on three main pillars: the philosophy of Greece, the laws of Rome, and the spirituality of Christianity.
Religion in itself offers a very short leash. The fence encompasses a very small area.
Maybe according to your definition of religion, which is nothing more than a strawman you set up in order to knock down.
What does making referrences to philosophy have to do with endorsing philosophical thought?
I honestly amazed you would even ask such an absurd question.
Scripture is the cornerstone of religious literature as it is the description of what a religion is like and how it ought to be observed. All else is irrelevant
You're obviously taking too much of a Protestant and "Minimalist" approach to religion. This does not apply to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
Christians preach the message explicitly. You are rotten. Only God is good. Man is dead in his sins. Submit, you wicked sinner. The purpose of this mentality is to teach man to devalue his inner being so he may be more docile to the will of authority.
I think Pascal summs up the Christian message better:
"What kind of freak is man! What a novelty he is, how absurd he is, how chaotic and what a mass of contradictions, and yet what a prodigy! He is judge of all things, yet a feeble worm. He is repository of truth, and yet sinks into such doubt and error. He is the glory and the scum of the universe!"
Man is indeed a sinner, but he is also created in God's image. Christ became man in order to save man, which shows how important man is to God and the closeness between human and divine natures. Vladimir Soloviev even taught how the
God-Man(ie Christ) showed the way to
God-Manhood.
Very irreligious. Those are rebels against Conventional religious thought.
Catholicism is an irreligious tradition? Am I understanding you correctly?
:rolli:
Non-literalist perspective is not an accurate interpretation of the word.
That's absurd especially considering the various forms of literature contained within the Bible. Not only historical books like Judges, but even "Wisdom" literature like Job, Proverbs, Psalms, and Song of Songs.
How can one apply a literalist approach to Pslams or even especially Song of Songs- which is an allegorical telling of God's love for Israel through the prism of the love between a man and a woman.
??????
I do not get what relevance all your anecdotes have to this.
So you fail to see how the historical origins of Christianity are relevant to this discussion?
How can a religious thinker be secretly
irreligious? That's pure bullshit, and you know it!