[lbo-talk] Signs of the Times

[Chris Doss]

Well, there is Protestantism and there is Protestantism. By its very contrarian nature, it, like Trotskyism, leads to proliferation of sects, especially loony ones. The Lutherans, at least Lutheran intellectuals, are miles above the Baptists or, urgh, Jehovah's Witnesses or Evangelicals. I mean, ARE there any Mormon or Baptist or JW or Evangelical intellectuals?

Did Spinoza actually know very much about the history of religious philosophy (that is, all of medieval European and Arabic philosophy) outside of the rabbinical tradition? Making religion into philosophy wasn't really what they were trying to do; they took religion as a datum and incorporated it into their thought, not substitute one for the other.

--- On Wed, 9/16/09, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:


> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Signs of the Times
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 3:39 PM
> As to Catholicism, there was a lot of
> good stuff going on during the 60's
> and 70's, but that's been been taken care of.  No more
> Vatican II
> evidently.  As to protestantism, there is certainly an
> impressive
> intellectual tradition in its origins, but at this point,
> the average
> protestant where I'm from knows very little about the Bible
> (which is
> kinda depressing given the origins of protestantism) 
> Although personally,
> I agree with Spinoza that the core kernel of Christianity
> is not terribly
> complicated at all, and that the general attempt to make
> religion into
> philosophy is an act of mystification.  robert wood
>