Hi Mark, this is fun.
> I like his use of the term
> "intellectual conversion." It seems to fit my own experience.
I think you can use the term without attributing it to anyone else, if it
applies to you.
> When I refer to poststructuralism...
Didn't you call yourself a poststructuralist? You said "I quickly found
poststructural nominalist approaches to be more useful..." So I thought
you
were saying the term applied to your own thoughts and "approaches".
So I don't know if your approaches account for heirarchical social
constructions and you see some higher significance to them that I am, at
present, missing. Or if you are manipulating the constructions for
personal
power, influence, and/or hegemony. Or you have some other meaning here
that
I am missing.
> Yes. I take it on faith that the shunning...
Is this the faith that you defined as "purely a matter of my feelings of
closeness to Baha'u'llah and my personal insights"? Because it doesn't
fit.
Sounds more like a "pretense of certainty" to me.
> I place a great deal more
> emphasis on correct behaviors (orthopraxy) than on correct doctrines
> (orthodoxy).
Are you bru****ng up on your Greek?
> Several Baha'is
> came into the room and openly accused me of being a Covenant-breaker.
Susan said to me a few years ago something to the effect of "God save
Himself from His defenders".
> One
> even sent me a virtual New Years Card for a few years.
At Naw Ruz?
> I personally have the most difficulty with normative Calvinistic
> (Reformed) apologetics
I work with a guy that is in just that mind set. I told him about your
"pretense of certitude". He is certain to have some sort of reply in the
coming weeks or months.
> they
> were each addressing distinct subject matter.
My issue, for the sake of Baha'i unity, is that they need to understand
and
accept that I believe as I believe and I am a member of their religion,
just
as I must accept them as members of my religion. When we can all do that,
the Faith will not be exclusivist. It will include any and all who can
accept the Covenant of Baha'u'llah as they perceive He intended the
Covenant
to be. And we will be a happy family, hopefully familiar with the beliefs
of our brethren and sistrene and mothrene and fathren, (never studied
Greek,
okay, I know its Germanic).
>...successful religions are those which are
> most effective in "routinizing" that charisma - making it a part of
> their daily lives.
Yeah, that is the trick. Wonder when a religion will succeed at that.
--Kent
"Foucaultian" <drfosternotfromgloucester@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:95ydnS0pSoe9t7fVnZ2dnUVZ_hOdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On May 13, 7:37 am, "Kent Johnson" <k...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Hi Mark, well, don't know about all this name-dropping. Lonergan was a
>> guy
>> who worked toward reconciling theological and scientific method, I
think.
>> Don't know about "intellectual conversion" but I could google it if you
>> think I should know more about it.
>
> I just mentioned Lonergan because I like his use of the term
> "intellectual conversion." It seems to fit my own experience.
>
>> So I am only marginally familiar with structuralism through
linguistics.
>> I
>> could guess that post-structuralism finds fault with the idea that we
>> have
>> an inherent structural system of order that we perceive, but as I said,
>> it
>> is just a guess and sounds just so negative to me. I know you aren't a
>> negative guy, so I guess you need to tell me about how you label
>> yourself.
>
> Foucault did not call himself a poststructuralist. It was others who
> applied it to him.
>
> When I refer to poststructuralism, I mean a line of thinking which
> views issues such as meaning (knowledge) and power as emerging out of
> relations between text (discourse/narrative) and the reader. However,
> the word "text" is used very broadly to refer to any set of symbols,
> including, for instance, how an individual presents herself to others.
> People with the ability to influence how a set of symbols (a text)
> will be socially constructed, such as "public intellectuals," can be
> said to have power over others. In other words, not all social
> constructions of reality are equal, i.e., social construction is
> hierarchical construction. Considering that those persons with more
> influence over social constructions have succeeded in amassing greater
> hegemony (control over others), knowledge becomes a function of power.
>
>> Personally I guess I am a reasonablist. I believe in taking a step
back,
>> looking at my actions and my words as they would appear in a newspaper,
>> not
>> a scholarly journal. For example I don't talk about ghosts and
>> channeling,
>> but rather inspiration and eternity, not about shunning Covenant
Breakers
>> but about avoiding contentiousness, not about how to correctly abolute
>> but
>> how to maintain the spirit, not about the laws so much as the
teachings.
>
> That sounds very positive to me. Personally, I place a great deal more
> emphasis on correct behaviors (orthopraxy) than on correct doctrines
> (orthodoxy). My vision of Baha'i moral community is one in which
> `Abdu'l-Baha becomes the example (Exemplar) of conformity to the
> Covenant (orthopraxy), and in which polydoxy (a tolerance for many
> understandings of the Sacred Texts) is normative.
>
>> Exactly. Wow. What a thing to say. I am not willing to "shun" in the
>> sense of isolate, punish, otherizing them, and I don't believe that was
>> intended. I think it is about minimizing the damage they can do to the
>> unity of the Baha'i Faith, which in my opinion is notsomuch.
>
> Yes. I take it on faith that the shunning of Covenant-breakers is
> desirable, because I don't find the idea to be at all personally
> appealing.
>
>> There is no cogent group of Covenant Breakers anymore, there is no
danger
>> from them anymore, there is no list of them that I am aware of. If
>> someone
>> has been labeled a Covenant Breaker and someone knows about it and is
>> willing to tell me that the person is a Covenant Breaker, well, it
hasn't
>> happened yet, but I would just avoid talking to them about the Baha'i
>> Faith.
>
> I think it is im****tant to be careful. I opened a discussion room on
> the Paltalk chat service a few years ago. It was called something
> like, "Orthopraxy, Heterodoxy, and the Baha'i Faith." Several Baha'is
> came into the room and openly accused me of being a Covenant-breaker.
>
> The Internet presents new challenges. My view is that, unless I know
> someone is a Covenant-breaker, etc., I will not shun then. I may, as
> you also indicated, say that I would rather not discuss the Baha'i
> Faith with them, but I would not want to shun them unless I had
> verifiable reasons to do so.
>
>> That would probably be the end of it because this cyber community only
>> has
>> so many axes to grind. But should it ever come up I probably wouldn't
>> invite them to my home. But that is because in order to be known as a
>> Covenant Breaker they must be quite disagreeable people to be with. It
>> is a
>> reputation thing, not a command from God.
>
> Back when I was the Baha'i Forum manager on AOL and ran the Baha'i
> section on CompuServe, I regularly interacted with Covenant-breakers
> (with the approval of the House of Justice). However, I kept the
> discussions very business-like. Most of them were very nice to me, and
> I think they appreciated my even-handedness in dealing with them. One
> even sent me a virtual New Years Card for a few years.
>
>> There are so many on the TRB that fit the bill of being disagreeable I
>> don't
>> need to know if they are Covenant Breakers or not in order to decide
not
>> to
>> invite them home.
>
> Yes, it was not quite so bad when it started, but it has degenerated
> into little more than flame-throwing.
>
>> OIC! You are equating *blind faith* with a "pretense of certitude" (in
>> Berger's words). Huh!
>
> Yes. To me, faith is blind.
>
>> It is so true that the idea of "faith" is generally perceived through
the
>> Christian dominated *belief of the improbably* in just about every
circle
>> I
>> find. But I wasn't equating the concepts until you mentioned it. And I
>> see
>> a lot of good from challenging blind faith, so I withdraw my criticism
of
>> a
>> "pretense of certitude". Just don't call my faith a pretense, because
I
>> define my faith differently from the Christian norm (as you do).
>
> I personally have the most difficulty with normative Calvinistic
> (Reformed) apologetics - especially the presuppositionalism of
> Cornelius Van Til. To Van Til, Christianity (read: Calvinism) offers
> the only position in which, when one accepts, for the sake of
> argument, its presuppositions, all of its conclusions are logical.
>
>> Yep. So you should quote it. Loudly and often.
>
> I do. The usual reaction I get is that `Abdu'l-Baha's definition has
> simply been "expanded upon" by the Guardian. I disagree. To me, they
> were each addressing distinct subject matter.
>
>> But I think "charisma" is a misnomer. It is a
>> sharing spirit, a unity of purpose, a shared vision of the im****tance
of
>> sharing the vision.
>
> By charisma, Weber meant the personal magnetism of the founder of the
> religion. Weber felt that successful religions are those which are
> most effective in "routinizing" that charisma - making it a part of
> their daily lives.
>
> Mark Foster
>
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