Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
How did Astrology become a Thing again? Since 2020, I've encountered it more and more IRL among the general population, even in people with undergrad degrees. I checked Tinder the other week before re-un-installing, and at least 1/3rd of the profiles had birth sign front-and-center. I honestly thought this was a slain beast.
Someone talking about capricorns really riles up my inner fedora.
Someone linked an article, "We Are Repaganising" in the culture war thread. I think this is another facet of this. With Christian condemnation of astrology neutered in broader society, pagan customs return.
I think the de Christianization of the west has made a lot of that stuff more acceptable to the general public. Although I don’t think I’d call our current zeitgeist repaganizing simply because I think our age at current is more nihilistic than pagan. Pagans while they were a bunch of vaguely indo European religious cults had some define beliefs about the world and definite notions of morality, anthropology, ecology, and metaphysics. Norse pagans had definite ideas about what being a good heathen meant. Romans had different, but equally strong ideas about the universe, the gods, morality, and so on. We have no ideas like that. We don’t have much of a conception about metaphysics, and the answers to most questions about morality tend to be “eh, believe whatever you want. The only universal evil is calling what someone wants to believe or do evil..”
Of course things like astrology would come back in those circumstances.
Yes, spot on. David Bentley Hart writes this up well here if one doesn't find his prose to squash one like a bug.
It’s a bit wordy, but I agree with the main thrust of his arguments. It’s just that I don’t think it’s just morality though. The idea of any kind of Truth as something that you are supposed to believe even in circles where it absolutely matters is pretty much gone. You don’t have to take any certain position on the origin of the universe, even in fairly conservative Christian circles. Creeds and formularies are barely taught. There are essentially maybe 3 groups that still insist on fundamental principles and creeds and concepts as a fundamental for belief: Islam, TLM Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Other than that, it’s kind of a free market of ideas. If you read back into history, when the culture was still Christian at its root, you’d have all kinds of arguments about the right way to be a Christian. Not the preferred way. I remember reading a book called “The Great controversy” in which the author— who was Adventist, I believe — spent the entire book arguing that all other Christians were wrong and in danger of hell for not keeping the Sabbath. This wasn’t a statement of “well, I think, but im not going to say everyone else is. Wrong.” It was YOU ARE WRONG AND IF YOU DON’T CHANGE YOU ARE OUTSIDE OF THE FAITH. you can find other similar arguments made in the late Christian Western world where belief in evolution or denial of the Trinity or infant baptism were major, important beliefs that were required of the flock more or less.
I agree with the Benedict Option author. Most of the people who consider themselves Christian are Theraputic Deists, and they would have been considered heretics in most earlier eras. It’s denial by not caring in some sense. The reason you don’t care about the truth claims in many cases is that you don’t really believe in the exclusivity of the religion you claim.
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