When Love and Logic Became Heresy: A Holy Betrayal!

Thinking Thursday Playlist

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Peter Abelard and Heloise shared one of history’s most brilliant and tragic love stories. Their passion defied the rules of medieval society, and their intellect threatened the authority of the Church. Castrated, condemned, and censored, they became symbols of how religion punishes both love and reason.

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:22 Love Story
4:20 Peter Abelard
12:09 Heloise
16:51 The Consequences
22:22 Legacy
24:38 Patron Thanks

A sincere thank you to this video's supporters:
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#peterabelard #heloise #atheist #mindshift #atheism #exchristian #christiandeconstruction #deconstructionhelp #counterapologetics

[MindShift-Brandon]

Happy Thinking Thursday! Let’s switch it up and look at a few believers today.

[serazaydia]

Heloise's story is heartbreaking...just imagine how many women like her in history never had a voice at all

[Aleiza_]

Another case of the Church saying, "No, stop making sense!!!!"

Another excellent video, Brandon! 👌

[Regulardryad]

When i left my faith, i did what you said. I interrogated the scriptures and developed my own philosophy about what they meant, but on reflection, i discovered that i had just created my own religion. So i left it behind as well

[Khyotie]

This one was so good. Their story made me cry. Heloise saying she prayed and chanted but her heart still belonged to Abelard hit me hard. The romantic in me connects to it. Like you say, In the end WE are all we have.

[robinette]

“The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind”
Eloisa to Abelard

[CatDaddyGuitar]

This is an interesting study on cognitive dissonance in belief..seeing the glaring problems but wanting to still believe. As you stated, I also understand this thinking. I was talking with my ex yesterday about a mutual friend from a previous church and how she's openly gay and Christian, still trying to be friends (possibly trying to be accepted) by people who think she's going to hell, instead of making new friends who actually do accept her. She's trying to salvage something that's just not there and continually subjecting herself to their dogmatism. Anyway, food for thought.

[hatsoptional]

My favorite (paraphrased) quote from the video: “I must understand in order to believe, is a much healthier approach than, I must believe in order to understand”

[Explodington]

He's trying to make sense of our religion! Stop him!

[Layola_Pops]

When I was converted to Christianity the pastor who approached me proved to me "Beyond the shadow of a doubt" that God was real, so I too came with that "I must understand, before I believe. Fastforward about a couple of years and multiple bible study sessions I start to identify inconstancies and decide to look at the bible outside the teachings of the church, bcz there were literal books in the bible that we'd never touch and versus that were never addressed.

Then I approached the same pastor with these inconsistencies and he answered like 3 or 4 out of the 10 I brought up and that's when I decided to stop going to church altogether. A couple of secular bible studies later and I'm content with the idea of me leaving the faith. I still read the bible now and then to justify my decision and so far I haven't been proven wrong for it

[DannyS]

While the age gap is problematic, the fact that she was able to have her own opinions and felt comfortable with sharing those opinions with him are two signs that their relationship was decently healthy.

[louisegibson]

I really love and appreciate your work. This topic, especially, is fascinating.

[DianaEve]

I really enjoy this series. Thank you. I play the violin at a fundamentalist church. For the past month I’ve been reading The Consolation of Philosophy during the sermon. It’s been keeping me sane.

[dasbus]

Great episode Brandon, even if this is mostly (but not completely) a tragic story. Thanks!

[tobymartin]

The emphasis you put on Abelard teaching his students how to think, reason, and argue rather than simply enforcing his personal conclusions reminds me of one of my best teachers, who taught me A level philosophy. My classmates were surprised when I told them that he was a Christian, and the only reason I knew was because he went to my church. He was excellent and never letting his personal views cloud how he taught, focusing on how to think and not what to think. I can't deny that having another Christian open to intellectual inquiry and pursuing arguments made me feel safer in my own doubts, beginning to see them as genuine and earnest searches for the truth, rather than sinful dissent. By the end of that process, I was an atheist, probably not something he intended...

Regarding respect for theistic thinkers of the past who were genuine intellectual juggernauts, one of the most intriguing for me was Origen. So learned was he, that he seems to have been the first Christian theologian to engage in serious scriptural criticism, using his knowledge of multiple languages to try and create a coherence within the text. Of course, some of the conclusions he came to as result really upset the orthodoxy of later Christians. Like you, he pointed out that a God that can't save everyone is a failure, and adopted universal reconciliation, even for Satan. This was no good for the enforcers of the Nicene Creed, and even worse was his view of Christ as a subordinate creation of the Father. As such, he became a heretic. It just goes to show that those Christian apologists who act as though skeptics who talk about contradictions and absurdities are simply uninformed and performing shallow analysis are blatantly ignoring the fact that the most serious and devout theologians doubted and disagreed with each other on the 'truth' with as much indignation as any skeptic, often bringing up the same problems.

Heloise contribution to women's history regarding rebellion, skepticism, and doubt should be lauded, but I'm just as impressed by more anonymous voices. In her book Doubt: A History, Jennifer Hecht records an occasion where a woman (left unnamed, so I presume she wasn't anyone distinctive or in the upper echelons) from Montaillou was taken before the Inquisition and asked where she got her doubts and dissenting views on hell and the resurrection from. This is an old tactic of course - the early Church Fathers viewed all heresies as emanating from a single source, Simon Magnus. But her reply was that nobody told her - she thought of them for herself.

[docgrossman]

Can't wait for your Giordano Bruno episode!

[lrf]

I never heard of Peter Abelard or Eloise, but I feel like I should read up on them now.

[hamobu]

Brandon, you are Neil DeGrasse Tyson of religion and philosophy.

[CatDaddyGuitar]

5:40 😂 It doesn't matter, I went to Notre Dame High School and everyone said "Noter Dāme"

[tile-maker]

This is probably one of the best takes you have made. The story is so human and real. Thank you. I am looking for books.