I wouldn’t be a Christian

[vulcanlogician]

Well, anyone who ever wrote a sentence is an individual working out of a tradition. I wouldn't want to attribute sentences we like to the individual and sentences we don't like to the tradition. 

Your mentioning of Weil's taking influence from the Upanishads got me thinking. That makes all the difference. Understood as a single dimension of thinking along with different intellectual or philosophical traditions, Christianity loses much of its vulgar character. With Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas (the three 'A's) it was the Greeks. Wittgenstein and Weil had the whole of ancient and modern philosophy. I doubt very few on this forum have a problem with Christianity as a "dimension in one's thinking." They have a problem with that one dimension presupposing all other dimensions --they have a problem with Christianity, the religion. Not Christianity, the mode of thought.

The problem with Augustine is that he came along too late to be put into the canon. Also, you have Paul (who did make it into the cannon) trivializing the Greeks. As much as enlightened minds can open the Bible and see reflected in it their own enlightened moral notions, so too can a barbaric, anti-intellectual mind find justification for its hostility/suspicion toward scientific/Greek style truth.

Christianity as a mode of transcendence almost doesn't deserve to be called "Christianity."

This seems very strange to me. Does the whole history of mystical experience in Christian Europe somehow get discounted now? I'm feeling a little bit of a No True Scotsman thing going on. 

Fair enough. Though I did throw the qualifier "almost" in there. (I seldom throw qualifiers around lightly.)

If modern American Christians have some version of the religion which is unaware of the great thinkers of their church, they are being foolish. I wish they would study more. But I don't see how that stops me from getting the wisdom from the people that they have rejected. 

The biggest barrier that could be forged between you and Augustine's wisdom would be you choosing to become a fundamentalist Christian. That's the sad truth. (Although I suppose becoming a fundie Muslim or something like that might do the trick, too. But maybe less so.)

Yes, the things you name cause distress. Some Christians (e.g. those in the tradition best exemplified by William Blake) would disagree that they are core tenets. Again, there are different types. 

If you begin to slap the label "Christian" on almost anything that resembles or takes inspiration from Christian thought, the term loses all meaning.

Example: "Anyone who looks out for the needy and downtrodden is a Christian."

Yeah. Then that means there are a ton of Hindu, Muslim, and atheist Christians out there. When I say "core tenets" I refer to things that can be located in the Bible and identified as such. If you think atheists are bad about this, go post on a Christian forum about what the core tenets of Christianity are. I think you'll find that we are more flexible than they. Moreover, we are getting myopic again. Perhaps Blake could be seen more as a rebellion against Christianity (albeit one that uses Christian symbology) than as an exemplar of Christian attitudes.

Then there is the possibility that we should be distressed about certain things. Harsh self-criticism goes against the spirit of our own times, but is probably justified. One of the good things about the very strange writing of people like Simone Weil is that their values are so completely at odds with those of our own society. The degree to which we are soaked into bourgeois liberal society, and its core tenets, is sometimes hard to discern.

We absolutely should be distressed about certain things (at least when speaking of moral concerns). But one must be careful when imposing harsh criticism upon oneself. I, for one, won't be criticizing myself too harshly based on the edicts of the ancient Israelites or the many opinions of Paul. Neither will I be listening to the confused rantings of modern evangelicals.

If Weil has presented a compelling mode of self-criticism, again, I would attribute that to Christian thought being but one dimension of her ideas. Take out all the other dimensions, and you are left with Paul's opinions. So we must regard her Christian influence in the context of her other influences. I should also mention that I'm unfamiliar with Weil's work; I'm just going off of what you are saying.

Rob and Wyzas are criticizing the institution and cultural phenomenon that IS Christianity. If you find their criticisms to be mischaracterizations, then you'll have to go further and say that most people who claim to be Christians are mischaracterizing their own religion. And if you do that, then Rob and Wyzas aren't criticizing Christianity to begin with, they are criticizing a mischaracterization of it. And if that is true, there is no need to bring in Weil or Augustine to make your point.

The values people find acceptable on this forum, for example, tend to fall within a very narrow range. Disagreements may amount to "the narcissism of small differences." Even if we can't accept Weil's extremes, it puts into relief our own (largely unexamined) assumptions and makes clear that very different modes would be possible. 

I'd say "welcome to the internet" but "welcome to humanity" seems more apt. When people gather under any flag (atheism, Christianity, or otherwise) you're going to have an overlap of values. I'm not excusing it. But it is unrealistic to expect anything else outside of a philosophy classroom (or other rigorously intellectual settings). Welcome to Plato's cave. The more people agree on something, the more distorted you will find their common perspective to be. Two people might agree "that scientific inquiry is the best tool to discern our evolutionary history." Ten people might agree that "scientific consensus is to be trusted concerning evolution." One hundred people might agree that "Science is right about evolution!" By the time a thousand people agree on it, all you are left with is: "Science good. Other things bad."

As far as humanity/the internet goes, however, this is one of the best joints around. If you are a transient flea like I once was, I recommend sticking around on this particular dog's backside. Sure, it ain't perfect. But I have yet to find a better place.

Well, Nietzsche's reasons for condemning Christianity are almost entirely different from those of wyzas or robvalue. I'm not sure that we want to follow Nietzsche on this if it means accepting his values instead. But that's another topic. 

Oh boy is it ever! I was invoking Nietzsche to make a point about how Christianity often creates distress in order to subsequently cure it. So I see no need to take his whole philosophy into account just to relay a single point he made.

But (as far as I'm concerned) Nietzsche has a lot of poignant things to say about philosophy and values in general. I tend to regard his criticisms as more valuable than his own positive assertions, but that's just me. I tend to see him as the James Randi of philosophy. He's good at calling out bullshit by showing you exactly how that bullshit was passed off as the truth.