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> Tom Holland... argues the separation of church and state can be traced back to the Bible and it been a steady progression to secularism from there This is ba
by rvense 6y ago
> Tom Holland... argues the separation of church and state can be traced back to the Bible and it been a steady progression to secularism from there
This is basically what's known as survivor bias. I think if you look at history you will find that power shifted to and from faith (and the church) in many waves. But true secularism was not, to my knowledge, seriously suggested for the first thousand years or more of Christian history. In a way this view of theological history suggests that there is a "true meaning" of the Bible that people didn't happen to notice for over a millennium - that the principles of modern society was always there in waiting, waiting for us to understand it. What this Tom Holland might refer to are sayings such as the phrase "Render unto Cesar the things that are Cesar's, and unto God the things that are God's", which does sound like advocating some form of secularism - to modern ears! But of course these verses had many different interpretations over the years.
Personally, I think a much better explanation is that the interpretation of religious texts always happen in a context. Like any text, I don't think it makes sense to claim that there is an interpretation of any religious text that could be called its true meaning, because meaning always arises as a dialogue between the text and its reader, which happens in a certain context, a certain point in material history. You might be able to say that there is the original intention of the authors, but this is not accessible to us. "Render unto Cesar" can perhaps easily be used as an argument for secularism in a Christian context, but I don't believe the phrase can fully explain its inception.
The Bible, like any religious text, contains the blueprint for an infinity of societies. This idea that any part of modern American society, or Hegel's 19th century Prussian society, for that matter, is the natural consequence of what's in the Bible is very strange when you look, both at everything that came before, and also the fact that a very different progression happened in many parts of the Christian world, like Ethiopia or Coptic villages in Egypt. I don't think the theory of "steady progression" holds much water unless you're extremely selective about your facts and perspective.
- forest_dweller 6y ago> This is basically what's known as survivor bias. The number of times this comes up on here it is a bit of a meme. So I will counter with the maxim of "If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail".
- rvense 6y agoI don't think that's a very good counter, and I don't think it addresses the substance of my post at all. I'd say the term comes up often because it's a very common phenomenon - much like the one about hammers and nails. I'm sure there are many other terms for it - the idea that "history is written by the victors" It's certainly older than the concept of cognitive biaess, and I could as easily have invoked that.
- forest_dweller 6y agoYes it does. It isn't survivorship bias if the process has been going on centuries. Whenever people bring up "X has worked" you will have someone on this site say "survivorship bias". It has become such a trope of this site I have heard other people mention it on discord discussions and I haven't brought the subject up. If you start with a faulty premise we can just stop there (and one that is a complete trope).
- rvense 6y agoI don't think the argument I was addressing can be summed up as "X has worked". It's more like "X has happened, therefore X is an inevitable consequence of Y which preceded it." Also, tropes are often tropes for a reason. You can't dismiss something just because it comes up often.
- forest_dweller 6y ago> I don't think the argument I was addressing can be summed up as "X has worked". It's more like "X has happened, therefore X is an inevitable consequence of Y which preceded it." You are splitting hairs now. The point I am making is that frequently on this site observations are discounted immediately as survorship bias. It almost as if it the only one people know. It simply isn't survorship bias if something been going on for hundreds of years in a particular direction. > Also, tropes are often tropes for a reason. You can't dismiss something just because it comes up often. I am dismissing it because it doesn't make sense and it is frequently overused. Thus the hammer and nail analogy. In any event it pointless continuing this discussion further. So lets just leave it.