In this thread, post 252 the topic about Christian heaven, I made the point in several places about a literal reading of the bible is the only reliable interpretation, due to all the factors and mechanics in a topic so complex as the bible. In other words, if the text says that a talking donkey was talking, I take that to mean exactly what it says, not as metaphor. (Though, there are examples, like when Jesus says to cut off your hand if you are tempted to steal, that seems an obvious metaphor. As I said, the bible is a very complex book).
I said:
UDS responded with:
and
Well, I consider this to be apologetics of the highest order. No Offense UDS, let me explain myself. Basically, and you can correct me if I misinterpret you, a person living 4000 (or 2000) years ago is supposed to have enough common sense to recognize that donkeys don’t talk, yet, they somehow are supposed to believe in Resurrection (Elisha, if you want to keep it to the same time period). (I agree the donkey story was a passing example, if you want examples with more substance, take the Story of Daniel Perhaps, the oven and the Lions den).
This seems like a specious example. Specious being defined as: superficially plausible, but actually wrong. Thank you for your comments UDS, I am not criticizing you personally, only the framework of your response. The same can be said for anyone who responds to this thread.
Well, there are abundant examples of persons living now who recognise that donkeys don’t talk (and read the story of Balaam’s ass in a way consistent with that understanding) but who believe in resurrection. So I don’t see anything implausible about the notion that such people could have been found 4,000 years ago.
I would think, rather, that the onus is on those who suggest that such people could not not have been found to produce some plausible reason for thinking that.
Could I suggest that your preoccupation with whether the events of a particular bible story did or did not occur factually is anachronistic and misplaced? There are obviously some stories where factuality is important - the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, for example - but most of the time it isn’t. What, e.g., the Genesis stories about creation, Adam and Eve, etc tell us about what it is to be human doesn’t really depend on whether the stories are factual or mythic. While people in the past might have accepted them as factual in default of better evidence, it wasn’t important that they should be factual, and it was even less important that Balaam’s ass should be factual. The question of whether OT texts can be read as modern historiography can’t really preoccupy people until that particular literary genre has been invented.
So maybe the question we should be asking here is not whether they had “enough common sense to recognize that donkeys don’t talk”, but whether they had enough common sense to know that that didn’t matter greatly to an appreciation of the text.
It is at this point that I offer the term Cognitive Dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. (Usually accompanied by at least mild grade stress, my added comment).
It is my personal belief that people simply do not believe in this type of thing. Walking on Water, Casting out Demons, Resurrection, etc. I think that way way way back in the back of the mind there is this little substance of doubt that whispers to them: there are no demons and you can not cast them into pigs. I think most religious people struggle with this, and, they are often not 100% fully directly conscious of it. But it is there. This is my Theory. I know people may want to jump and say “Robert, you don’t know what is going on in other people’s minds!”… but, really, I do not think people are so gullible as to actually believe you can cast demons into pigs.
I will make a slim exception for someone raised in a small town with a 10th grade education and limited exposure to the outside world. Possibly, in that case, you could really actually believe in demons. But for 99% of the population, no.
Now obviously, 300 years ago people allowed themself to be burnt at the stake instead of repenting or converting. Even today, in vary rare cases people will refuse medication for themself or their children, which sometimes results in death, on religious grounds. I saw a article on Reddit recently entitled:
Study suggests that some highly educated parents choose not to vaccinate in order to conform to in-group mentality and reinforce belonging to their social groups
Abstract:
U.S. media reports suggest that vastly disproportionate numbers of un- and under-vaccinated children attend Waldorf (private alternative) schools. After confirming this statistically, I analyzed qualitative and quantitative vaccination-related data provided by parents from a well-established U.S. Waldorf school. In Europe, Waldorf-related non-vaccination is associated with anthroposophy (a worldview foundational to Waldorf education)—but that was not the case here. Nor was simple ignorance to blame: Parents were highly educated and dedicated to self-education regarding child health. They saw vaccination as variously unnecessary, toxic, developmentally inappropriate, and profit driven. Some vaccine caution likely predated matriculation, but notable post-enrollment refusal increases provided evidence of the socially cultivated nature of vaccine refusal in the Waldorf school setting. Vaccine caution was nourished and intensified by an institutionalized emphasis on alternative information and by school community norms lauding vaccine refusal and masking uptake. Implications for intervention are explored.
My Attempt is not to start a vax/anti-vax debate. I am simply making a parallel. The dynamic of Group Think can be very very strong and incredibly nebulous. Group Think: the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility.
People who handle poisonous snakes in church, do they - really - believe God will prevent them from being bitten? Or is it a combination of Cognitive Dissonance and Group Think? The person who works the late night shift at the local convince store, his coworker was recently robbed at gun point. Rodney, however, has no fear of working the late night shift because, he claims, he has Jesus to protect him. Does he - really - believe this, or is it self assurance, fear and hope all mixed together?
Yes, I suppose I am free to reject said suggestion, am I not?
And here lies the simple, fundamental problem. The parts you want to keep, well yes, that happened! The parts of marginal importance… well, that is obviously scientifically impossible/merely a story telling device. This is a COLOSSAL double standard.
This is a… fascinating attitude. “If something’s difficult to figure out, just pretend it’s something simpler.” Quantum mechanics is really, really hard. So, fuck it, let’s just stick with Newton. Who cares about accuracy? Easy is where it’s at!
Well, Miler, as fascinating as your comments are, since you rarely contribute anything but a drive by snide remark… to any discussion I have ever seen you take part in… I’m going to breathe deeply and meditate nice, happy thoughts from me, to you, and hope that you are not as actually angry, bitter and cynical, in real life, as you appear here online.
Do you mean liTeralism? Because they’re two very different things, and if you want it corrected you can use the little triangle to report your post and have the title corrected.
You have completely misunderstood what I have been saying. I haven’t said that I “wanted to keep” the factuality of any part of the scriptural texts. Nor have I suggested that that whether they are accepted as factual or not depends on whether anybody wants to keep their factuality.
What I have said is (a) it is possible, through a critical reading of the text, to make a judgment as to whether the author intends us to accept them as factual, or needs us to do so in order to persuade us of the religious/spiritual proposition that he is advancing.
And, (b) it is possible to make differing judgments in relation to differing texts. The judgment doesn’t depend on what we want; it depends on the characteristics of the text. And since these are widely varying texts, composed in widely varying circumstances by widely different people over widely different times in widely different genres, diverse judgments about the intended factuality of the various texts are not only possible but likely.
And, (c) your suggestion that pre-literate unscientific people aren’t capable of this kind of reading of a text is not only completely unevidenced but, as far as I can see, completely unsupported by any argument. You simply assert it as something that you believe, that you must believe, as though your need to beleive this means that we have to believe it too. We don’t have to believe it and, as long as you give us no reason to believe it, we’re not likely to.
And finally, (d), you seem to think that if that pre-literate unscientific people aren’t capable of critical reading of the texts, they must default to reading them with as though they were modern historiography. This is not only unevidenced and unargued, but profoundly unlikely; this genre of writing was completely unknown to them. If they have a default assumption about the genre of the texts (and I see no reason to think they do) it’s certainly not going to be this.
You are refusing to define your terms. You are reacting by (1) criticizing my “ignorant” understanding of a great many topics and (2)you are serendipitously (see, I can use big words too) avoiding making any declarative statements of your own on the topic.
So, perhaps, you could explain to me how a person can not believe in a talking donkey while at the same time believe in the Resurrection and still have any intellectual credibility.
Forget about my “flawed” understanding of whatever topic you choose to denigrate me for, and please support the double standard involved in the the donkey/resurrection dynamic.
***If you continue to maintain that talking donkey’s are too marginal an example, you can substitute demons and pigs.
Oh, how I - love - it when people give me lectures on things I have already covered. Here we have the added bonus that I made my comments clear — in the first post of this very thread —. Yes, I know the bible is a complex book:
If I have misdeteced sarcasm on your part, I fully and truly apologize. If I did not misdetect your comments, ok, people get frustrated, I understand. Can we please return to more civil discourse.
Why do you think I included his comments, specifically cut copied and pasted them - from another thread - if I did not realize and agree with the fact that analyzing the mindset of an ancient individual is going to be very difficult to do?
So, I guess, it would help, if you paid attention to what I’m actually posting here and please refrain from giving me lectures on what I am ignorant about and what I do not understand when I have already addressed your points in my opening comments.
The problem with your statement is, if you apply it outside the subject of religion, you destroy the study of history. Because the process you spend so much time sneering at moderate Christians for, is basically the same one followed by historians who study literature from antiquity. It is, in fact, the process historians use when they study the Bible itself. Because there is a lot of true history in that book. A lot of mythologizing, and propaganda, and cultural referents that have been lost, and some outright lies. But historians do not throw up there hands and say, “Just take it face value, it’s too hard to read it any other way.” They study it, they compare what they find there to what they find in other places, they prune away the stuff that can’t be true, interpret the stuff that doesn’t make sense as best they can, and indentify the stuff that’s verifiable fact. They aren’t hypocrites for doing this, and they aren’t employing a double standard.
And neither are the Christians who do the same thing looking for moral truth in the Bible, as opposed to historical truth. Because, and this is the point you’ve never seemed to grasp in this discussions, faith does not come from the Bible. People are not Christians because they read it in a book, and getting rid of the book does not get rid of Christianity. People believe in God because they think they see evidence of his existence in the world around them. Over the centuries, some people wrote down why they think they see God in the world around them. The best of these stories got collected in the Bible. To your average Christian, the Bible is important because it represents the best ideas man has about the nature of God - but they’re still man’s ideas, and still subject to man’s frailties.
Really, the fundamental (heh) problem with Biblical literalism is that it’s at odds with the concept of free will. Which, while not something I put a lot of stock in personally, is a major cornerstone of most Christian philosophies. But what’s the point of giving us free will, if you also give us explicit, word-for-word instructions on how to act? That’s not testing our morality, that’s testing our ability to take direction. If, as Most Christians believe, God wants us to make our own moral choices, then the Bible must be the work of men, and not the infallible Word of God, because he wants to see if we can make the right choice in the absence of guidance - or even in the presence of bad advice.
So, the so called “cafeteria Christianity” that is so often sneered at by Fundamentalists and the less lights among atheists is, in fact, the form of Christianity that is most in harmony with the basic precepts of mainstream Christian thought: the Bible should not be taken literally because a literal Bible would make God’s tests too easy.
Robert allow me to summarize your argument, “I’m a Protestant.”
Even that summary is a little off since some Protestant traditions have evolved Prima Scriptura traditions that you’d disagree with. You disagree with centuries of Catholic and Orthodox belief about the Bible. This thread is about 500 years late to the “Great Debate.” The accepted, if not historically accurate, method of expressing your disagreement is to write your argument down in detail and nail it to a church door.
Yes, as an amalgamation of text(s), it can be viewed as a historical document of the history of religion and beliefs of (Judaeo Christian) culture. I never said that it could not be viewed as such. Never.
Yes. The problem with, one from column A and two from column B and none from column C style of personal theology is that it is self serving and inconsistent. Like, for example, I know people who say a woman can preach in church, despite Paul’s admonishment that they should not speak in church because that is an “outdated” policy from another time. This same person says, however, that homosexuality is clearly wrong because “the overwhelming evidence in the bible is against it”.
Nope. Giving word for word instructions on how to act does not eliminate free will. Restrict? Yes. Eliminate? No. Any casual examination of the Hasidic lifestyle will bear this out…
I have a pretty clear and developed sense of right and wrong. I am doing good Samaritan acts for people on an almost daily basis. It is almost a compulsion. But I don’t need any book to tell me to do it. Nor, I think, do most of the Christians who think they need a book or a church to do right. I think humanity can do fine on it’s own.
I fault them for different reasons.
They want the benefit of being religious without the hard work. All you have to do to be a Christian, according to some Christians, is say you are a Christian. You can be a horrible person and repent and all you have to do is - feel - sorry and you are forgiven. What a fundamental lack of accountability!
You know who I admire? The Amish. The Mennonites. A nun or priest who joins some non glamorous sect of the Catholic church and moves to the poor side of Detroit to help the poor, physically and spiritually.
You know who I don’t admire? Christians that drive SUV’s and shop at Wal Mart and walk around talking about how this is a “Christian” nation, homosexuality is a sin, Obama is a socialist, global warming is false, immigrants are coming for your job, welfare is for lazy people who abuse the system, the world is 6000 years old and that Jesus wants you to own an AR15.
There are lots of Christians like that in this small red neck town I live in. I am not saying all religious people are like that.
This is the time that others far more schooled in this subject than I say it really started taking off. Before 1500 the Church actually allowed a fair degree of freedom according to Thomas Brodie and others. He says suddenly something shifted around 1500 CE, and that interpretation of the Bible begin to move as never before, from the symbolic to the literal.
Brodie says he can’t explain fully why this happened, but there were lots of clues. He mentions the 45 year period which surrounds “the death of Denis the Carthusian (1471) and Columbus was born, as were Copernicus, Luther and Ignatius Loyola. By the time Galileo appeared, shortly after Ignatius died, the world had moved far from Denis the Carthusian.”
Brodie mentions Ernan McMullin which sums up the shift of interpretation quite succinctly in two sentences: *The Reform shifted interpretation from symbolic to literal. And the Catholics said: “If you go literal, we’ll outdo you.” *
He spends a few pages on this, so not sure how to highlight the finer points, but may try to get to it later if I get the time, or find a cite for it if there is any interest.
Look. the donkey didn’t talk in the way Mr. Ed talked. The donkey clearly talked because it was made to do so by God to send a message. So, assuming you believe in miracles, there is no reason to doubt the literal correctness of that text while continuing to accept that donkeys in general do not talk.
If you buy the ability of God to work miracles - which is something not limited to fundamentalists, I’d think - there is nothing in the Bible considered by itself to make you doubt - except the internal contradictions. You only get a problem when there is external evidence against a story, or when you try to pass off a story as not involving miracles, the way creationists do when they try to get their stuff taught in schools.
If you say some of it is bogus and some of it is not, then you need to say what the criteria is. If it is historical support, you need to be ready to toss it all, or at least wind up with a deistic sort of god. I tried asking about this in a thread a whole back and wound up with Christianity reduced to deism.
So, I’d say moderates and non-literalists can easily believe in a specific talking ass. There is not likely to be historical evidence against it, after all.