Religion and Ethics Forum

Sorry I was just trying to triangulate.
It helps to break up, neutralise and prevent the development of rotten and sclerotic networks and systems in the church.

How does it do that?

As demonstrated in Welby's tenure. It would help to prevents personification where the C o E becomes Welby or Runcie or anyone so ALL members of the Church are not seen as mini Welby's It prevents the concentration of power , it reduces the opportunities for patronage.

How does it reduce the opportunities for patronage?

At the very least it seems Welby was stretched beyond his capacity and it is hard to see anyone not failing in the role.

What if the moderator is stretched beyond his or her capacity? Why would changing the name of the role of CofE "chief executive" help in any way?

'Winter fuel cut to put 50,000 into poverty next year'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80l9lde5yjo

That's not what the article says.

The article says that an extra 50,000 pensioners will be put into relative poverty which is defined as having less than 60% of the median income.

I'm not quite sure how that is supposed to help.

Help what and help who?

VG,

Religions substantially concern themselves with what their various gods supposedly do and do not want the faithful to do. Whether these gods actually do want the faithful to do or not to do these things (and whether those gods even exist at all) is unknowable. There’s nothing to test or measure about that.

Agreed that this particular aspect of religion can't be tested -  yes religion concerns itself with a higher power/ spiritual consciousness/ something greater than human thinking, which it claims links purpose and meaning to human actions.

But other abstract concepts e.g. freedom, responsibilities, duty, integrity, identity, morality i.e. an individual's control of their desires and instincts and the regulation of society by characterising certain actions as right or wrong are common to religion and politics.

Politics on the other hand says that you will live longer, be happier, be more secure, be more literate, be more whatever if various real world events happen or don’t happen (see the manifesto extracts I linked to for examples). These claims by contrast are testable and measurable.

Testable metrics would be meaningless without politics also concerning itself with freedom, responsibilities, duty, integrity, identity, morality etc. i.e. the same abstract concepts as religion minus the woo.

We currently have a lot of political time spent on identity, for example in the transgender debate - it's not metrics that deemed that men with a penis who identify as women without having experienced the biological constraints of women should be considered as women in society and given access to women's spaces and sport.

What are the metrics people used to decide whether or not it is right, or even how much wealth and income is fair, for the government to redistribute using benefits and taxes (e.g. inheritance tax, personal tax, corporation tax) so working individuals are compelled to help the unemployed and less well-off?   

Of course there’s an overlap between the two fields, but this substantial difference between them seems undeniable to me.

Except this difference is not meaningful in practice as the overlap is what leads to the UK giving political, economic and military support to governments despite the metrics telling us what the consequences of this support are e.g. that it will cause inflation in food and energy prices e.g. Ukraine v Russia; or despite the metrics telling us that over 40,000 people have been killed by Israeli bombing and denial of food, water, electricity, and 80 percent of all verified Palestinian deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing, and that children aged five to nine made up the largest group of victims.

Did we have riots against asylum seekers because of metrics or because people believed something that isn't true?         

Abstract thought is fine so far as it goes, but there’s still a fundamental, qualitative difference between “you should do X because that’s my faith” and “you should do Y because the effects can be tested against a set of goals”. Politicians when they’re doing politics largely abjure the former; clerics when they’re evangelising largely rely on it.

That is a very narrow focus and does not cover much of the impact of religious and political ethics on society.

The important difference is that in politics demonstrably bad ideas can be found out and rejected, and better ones sought (think of the disastrous Truss mini budget for example that seemed great to the Tufton Street wonks who spawned it and to the Daily Mail, and then collapsed immediately it met reality). How would you propose to test the idea “God doesn’t want you to go to bed with your boyfriend” by comparison though?

How would you test ideas about what society/ Parliament thinks you should do in terms of sexual or any other type of morality? How do you test how much privately-owned wealth governments should or should not redistribute or how much governments should fund public services or how much immigration is acceptable or how many asylum seekers the UK should accept? Do metrics determine whose freedoms or living standards take priority?

This would be a possible interpretation if Papias's original statement about Matthew followed directly on from that about Mark. But it seems fairly clear that the words translated 'so too' do not refer back to the quote about Mark. The contrast you have suggested doesn't exist.

It wasn't my contrast, it was yours.


Papias says (according to Eusebius) "and so Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [Or: translated] them to the best of his ability." You cannot infer from that that Matthew also wrote about the things Jesus did.