Theology and Sociology

[The Grand Nudger]

First, new is not always better. Many times, it’s not. Each thing must be judged on its own merit to determine its worth.

Next, I would hesitate to say “truer” here. If someone determines something that is true, then true it is. Another person, then or later, may build on that truth, finding another truth. Someone else, further on up the road, may come up with something that seems true but upon further investigation turns out to not be. There can be “little truths” that would change, sure, such as the best way to get to Canfield. But not the big truths we are talking about in Theology, Why are we here? What created all of this? What is our purpose? And, well, you get the idea.

Maybe, trying to work with your idea, if there is an “arrow of progress” (still not liking the phrase, but let’s use it for now), it would be how much truth we find. It’s like how we grow in our knowledge of mathematics, for example. 2i*2i=-4 is not any truer than 2+2 = 4. It’s an additional truth that expands our knowledge. This arrow is certainly not a linear arrow, always progressing “forward”, since there are mistakes, diversions, and lies.

I don’t mean to be difficult, but I have some questions about parts of what you said.

Animists had some truth, pagan greeks added to that, christians have even more.  Or maybe christianity is a mistake, diversion, or lie.  We're on the same page.

Maybe I’m reading too much here. Why would it be “a lot of work” for an idea to be required to fit our current understanding in order to be true?

"Doing alot of work" as in a short declarative that's hiding a laundry list of assumptions.  For example.  Our current understanding of reality is post-christian.  If an idea fitting with our current understanding of reality is one of your metrics then christianity fails.  Somehow...though, I think you must mean something else and a whole lot else. You're not here to tell us how christianity fails as an idea because it does not represent our current understanding of reality.

Had who not erred so little? Current theistic religions or past theistic religions? What do you see as current versus past?

If they “erred so little”, then how are there misperceptions that have compounded into such mountains? Maybe I’m missing something here.

Pick anyone, really.  Especially if you think they had less of some x.  It's fairly easy to see how even small things can multiply into larger difficulties.  If you're wrong about how fast you're going that's one thing.  If you're wrong about how fast you're going and how fast something else is going....it starts to get dicey in more than just two ways.  The central mistake of theism is nothing if not an earnest one.  It's when we combine and retain mistakes about the nature of the sacred that it gets wildly out of hand...and pretty quick.  At least in my opinion.

Was there a typo here? You say the same thing twice. Did you mean “a god from nature” in the first part? That would make more sense. Natural theology is a branch of theology that explores what can be known about God using reason alone without means such as religious experience.

No typo, stressing the word for a different sense.  Natural theology tells us about natures god - or so it says...but..perhaps., it just tells us about nature?  When we ask ourselves "What do we worship?"  -The thing that created us.  Well..that'd be nature.  It really did that and I think it's pretty amazing.  Ape thinks apes are cool, go figure.  When we try to imagine the powers that gods have we imagine them as having the power of storms and floods and meteors and plagues and earthquakes - but also of life and babies and growth and wealth - whatever that means to us.  Of terror and of beauty. Well, that's nature again.  All of that.  

I don’t see a valid reason to assert something which is demonstrably untrue. What do you mean here?

Every religion has a vision of how the world should be.  It usually isn't that way when we formulate the idea, lol.  Do you think that something about natural theology or just a god of nature cosigns those rather elaborate constructs?  Say we walk out into nature and we see a bloodbath.  Stuff getting eaten alive asshole first on a good day.  We think..no...no, it shouldn't be this way.  We won't be living like this if we can help it.  If something about natural theology or a god of nature -did- cosign that idea, what could a god possibly add to the natural conclusion?  Are we only not going to be living like that if there is also a god..or is that question god nuetral?  The god detail redundant and non-operative. From the other end, if we chain a god to a natural theology then don't we run the risk of proving our god false every single time we learn something new about nature - or that we had been wrong about nature before?