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Nihilism Within Christianity

Essay by   •  December 17, 2010  •  Essay  •  521 Words (3 Pages)  •  1,123 Views

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There have been several papers written on the hypocrisy of Christian Ideology, the majority of which deal with the concept of slave morality, or the appeal to the unforeseen. Both are legitimate

points against Christianity, but overlook a key flaw in the Christian approach to epistemology. There are two tenants of Christian thought that show the christian for what he is: a subjectivist. These two Christian ideas which christianity relies on so heavily are the idea of the fallen man, and the idea of unattainable information. Both are strong cornerstones of Christian thought and both display epistemological subjectivism, which is a philosophical precursor to moral and ethical subjectivism, a belief strongly contradictory to christian thought.

As a christian I was taught the idea of the fallen man early on. In Christian ideology, it's the reason, although perhaps not the sole one, that christianity even exists. It is the necessatator for Jesus, Rules, Laws, Salvation, and basically the whole of the modern christian's day to day life. The notion that man is inherently evil holds heavy ramifications in nearly every philosophical department, and the one I take most issue with is what it says about the relationship humans have with truth.

The strain of syllogism I follow from this fallen beginning and other biblical standards is thus: God is truth. As truth, absence of God, or sin, is false. Since man will tend towards the evil (or the false) in any given situation, his ability to decipher truth is not only not there, it is there with a well defined liar's paradox, in that most of his thoughts, presuppositions, and actions will be fallen, and therefore false. The two main problems that arise with man's thoughts and actions become generally false are a paradox of falsehood, and an epistemological nightmare. If man is always lying, even this realization is false, and so on. Also, If man is incapable of fully knowing a truth, axiomatics and all human-hosted belief in facts, along with any objective view of truth is false, as it has been brought into nascence by a fallen man.1

The other subjectivist tenet in christianity is the idea of fully arcane information, that is, knowledge not only not given to mankind, but unintelligable to it. Shrouded in the christian's ever-heard answer of "It is not for us to know", and found in the bible passages of unquestioned authority of god, the idea that divine

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