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  1. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Pentecostalism, Desire and Longing

    I wanted to open a thread under this heading, which means I am giving the Pentecostal religion and religious experience a certain inflection: as involving longing and desire. I have the sense---it is not an idea I invented myself of course and is fairly well known---that the spirit of...
  2. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    Hello there. I have selected a few parts and submit this to you with the hope of inspiring interesting conversation. It is possible that I have a mistaken understanding---I more or less take that as a given and as inevitable! (because knowledge is too vast, and too subjective, and too flexible...
  3. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    It seems to me that, with certain caveats, and with some exceptions, that the line your pursue here is sound in numerous ways. The core for me would be in "we cannot accept any faith in the infallibility of these texts as socially good or even neutral". And this means that we agree that a...
  4. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is Intellectual Honesty a Religious Virtue?

    Were all your 32,000 posts of this sort?
  5. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    You make a very good point. We are aware that 'interests' that operate in our world often incite our fear and anger ... for occulted reasons. The interesting fact here, if you accept Peter Berger's analysis, above, is that Islam and also Pentecostalism are exploding on a world-level. So, if one...
  6. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is religion fundamental to human nature?

    Rather quickly, and without thinking about it much, I think that I intuitively responded to your question, and intuitively have an answer: Each of those positions, or orientations, require specific metaphysical presuppositions. They are founded on metaphysical suppositions. And they are attempts...
  7. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    The question is: Can we learn to hate constructively? Can we channel our hatred and our intolerance in a productive and also a non-hysterical and non-brutish way? Can we arrive at a 'reasoned hatred' where what we hate is truly the object of our hate and not our projection of ourselves onto the...
  8. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is religion fundamental to human nature?

    Good point. Yet we still need a definition of 'religion'. I extend it to indicate one's psychological and existential platform, a questioning being in an indescribable and incomprehensible Reality, and as such a concomitant of consciousness. What you seem to mean (?) is more the specific outer...
  9. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Wending my way through 'the material entanglement'...

    Wending my way through 'the material entanglement'...
  10. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is religion fundamental to human nature?

    Very good points. In examining the 17th Century and the rise of a new method of analysis---a wonderful book on the topic is Basil Willey's The Seventeenth Century Background---one is presented with the idea that uniquely at this juncture certain persons began to challenge the tenets of...
  11. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    I don't have a great deal to go one here as I am not Dutch. But I have a few Dutch friends who have given some insight into Dutch politics and Dutch attitudes generally. It seems to me safe to say that generally the Dutch are one of the most tolerant and progressive polities and that given the...
  12. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is Intellectual Honesty a Religious Virtue?

    And ... the hypermodern is just a stance. Perhaps a fragile stance. Or a concocted one.
  13. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is religion fundamental to human nature?

    It does seem that a fuller description of what is meant by religion is required. My sense, so far, is that man is essentially religious, but what this means to me is that our religion is the way that we relate to existence. Religion did not become a theological exercise, as it seems to be...
  14. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Is Intellectual Honesty a Religious Virtue?

    The OP question was: Do any of the world's religions explicitly uphold intellectual honesty as a virtue? If so, please quote where they do that, or explain how and in what manner they do that. Also, why they do that? That is, what value or values do they see in intellectual honesty. It seems...
  15. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    (Dirty Wars, YouTube) Years back in a debate with some folks on a forum like this, and when I voiced opposition to the second war on Iraq, I was asked: What then, if you would not engage in a total war, would you do, given that you recognize a threat? I said that if I had the power I would...
  16. Gustav Bjornstrand

    Imams banned from charity event

    I admit to being confused about the conflict in the ME. Essentially, I think it is not an issue that can be decided on a moral or ethical basis. I have the sense that the ME is being deliberately attacked and undermined to to open up recalcitrant areas in culture to penetration by vast economic...
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