… but it does go a long way towards explaining where all the gay Muslims are…
I prefer a different analogy.
It’s like the attic in a house your family has lived in for generations. Every now and then you might go up there and poke around. Maybe you’ll find something that catches your eye. So you bring it down, dust it off, and use it. But maybe you’re not using it the same way previous generations did. Is that wrong? No. Likewise, it’s ok to stick something of yours up there. Maybe a future generation will clean off the dust and use it. Or maybe they’ll leave it there because they can’t think of a use for it.
Religion is a living and evolving thing. The fundamentalists are the ones who stand still against natural social change.
Mmm. Maybe. But then again, Judaism had an active oral tradition centuries before the OT was actually written down.
This argument sounds like “fundamentalist atheism.” If it is possible for any aspect of your key Holy Book to be false, then logically, all of it must be false. Personally, I don’t agree with fundamentalist all-or-nothing Christians, and I don’t agree with all-or-nothing atheists.
I don’t believe that those who consider themselves fundamentalist Christians (I don’t know enough about other religions to form an opinion) are doing as good a job as they claim of following the word of the Bible to the level. As far as I’m aware, there are not individual editions of the Bible that give each person a minute-by-minute play by play of how he should live each day of his life in the 20th century. We’re covered when it comes to the proper method for sacrificing a lamb, but the book is oddly silent when it comes to stuff like how to deal with it when someone cuts you off in traffic.
Therefore, every person who claims to be a fundamentalist is actually acting on his interpretation of his religion’s Holy Book. Even if the book itself were infallible, and even if the humans who wrote it down were infallible, the people who are reading the book are most definitely not. Even thouse who feel they are following the literal word of the book to the letter, are actually interpreting what it says and deriving their own fallible human understanding of its meaning from it.
But I fail to understand how someone could come to the conclusion that that means the entire book is invalid. It is the work of human beings, inspired by God to explain to other human beings how God “works” and how we should be treating each other. There’s an awful lot in the book that’s so obviously right; why is that all invalid just because the universe isn’t really only a couple thousand years old? Why should I reject a religion that overwhelmingly says “love your neighbor” just because it has bits that say “unless he’s gay?”
No. That would be John Irving.
Hey, that would ceretainly be sufficient reason for me!
(And Sam Harris is way hotter than John Irving!)
The Christian Church made it for a few hundred years before there was a bible.
I wonder if different media had been available if there’d be Christianity. If, for instance, instead of written texts, we had video of people who passed on what they had heard about Christ a generation after it happened.
Or if the gospels had never been codified into a bible. If they just called them ‘our best documents about what happened,’ and nobody ever said the documents themselves were holy.
Actually, Eve, I think the best example of your OP’s argument might be the Book of Mormon. Are there any Mormons who don’t take it literally? “Non-literal” and “Mormon” really do seem mutually exclusive to me.
Yep, that rack up there makes a dandy coffee table if you throw a board over it. 
Precisely. But if religion were initiated by a perfect deity, why should it be a living, changing thing? Wouldn’t a deity get it right the first time? If religion were purely manmade, reflecting whatever the moral code of the time was (and I’ll give you the best morals, not the worst) then you’d expect it to be changing, just as you said.
Some religions resynch with the current moral code through new divine inspiration, be it Messiah, prohet or angel, but the same argument holds.
I suppose most believers who accept that their religious text is fallible retain only the parts that ring true to them spiritually. But upon closer examination, how can that work? Isn’t that saying that your ability to discern the “true” parts of your religious text is better than that of the saints who wrote it? Of course, I guess one can pick out the parts that ring true, but at the same time acknowledge that one’s own spirituality is as fallible due to personal and cultural influence as that of the texts’ authors, and pray for divine guidance. Nobody ever said religious belief was easy. (OK, I’m sure some snotty atheist/agnostic/humanist has said it. However, I was raised Lutheran and am now a snotty agnostic, and I can honestly say that making sense of your life is hard any way you choose to do it, whether through faith or through reason or some combination thereof.)
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s a question of how the divine manifests itself. If it can only be glimpsed in distorted form through texts, and religious leaders are similarly fallible, what can man rely on to get a better view? Again, one can pray for divine guidance and hope for the best, but ultimately, how does distinguish between divine and Satanic influences? If God’s love is everywhere corrupted by the imperfect state of the world, and even man’s own abilities to perceive it are flawed, how can man ever be expected to know the true path to God?
(Sorry if any of this post is contradictory, but the topic is a bit of a brain-stretcher. And Eve, I like your recent habit of GD thread-starting. You keep your OPs short, sweet, and humble, which is quite a breath of fresh air for the forum!)
Yep, he’s hot. You have chosen wisely, go forth…
Depends on what you mean by “literally.” There are some few Mormons who do not think that the BoM is actual history, but that Joseph Smith was inspired to write it. A pretty unorthodox opinion, but then Mormons don’t have a whole lot of ‘required’ beliefs, and the historicity of the BoM isn’t one of them. People who think the BoM is not in some way an inspired book tend not to be Mormons for very long. On the whole, however, LDS accept the BoM as what it claims to be.
The BoM contains a lot of narration of events (literal), some quotes from Isaiah (largely metaphor), accounts of visions or allegories with their interpretations, and sermons on how to behave. It isn’t as difficult to tell which is which as it is with the Bible.
The LDS view of the Bible is that it is mostly inspired and correct, but also corrupted and containing mistakes. Individual Mormons tend to vary on how much they accept as historical (such as Noah’s ark, etc.), and most wouldn’t be too bothered to find out that one or another ancient story was exaggerated or whatever. Of course, we firmly believe in the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that he is the Savior. Everything else is secondary, however. Mormons tend to be literal about the Bible where some others are not, and metaphorical in spots that Fundamentalists take literally. We also think that the authors of the books of the Bible were inspired, but human.
All this confusion is why we think it’s important to have a living prophet. It’s his job to help modern-day people figure out the word of God and how it applies to them. Prayer and personal inspiration are also considered helpful.
Hope that helps you understand the LDS POV.
Who says that rejecting faith is the only way to rethink things? Lots of non-fundies look at the truth of the bible in a more postmodern sense. We don’t see the truth in the bible in the universe being created in 144 hours, we see it in Jesus saying the most important thing is to love God with all your heart and next most important is to that love your neighbor as yourself. Just because some who call themselved Christians reject homosexuals doesn’t mean God does.
Why should it be, why shouldn’t it be? I know it must seem like a pretty tired excuse to an atheist, but saying “this is was God thinks” or “this was what God was thinking” isn’t something I consider possible.
Be fair, Sol. Eve said maybe none of it holds water. She did not say “all of it must be false.”
The OP’s problem is the assumption of perfect knowledge. This is a tenet of Fundamentalists, who are Biblicists, & assume that just because a text is canon, it’s infallible. The non-religious should know better.
Just because a history textbook has a few inaccuracies, doesn’t mean it has no truth. This who are not “fundamentalist” read their scriptures seriously, & judge them against reason & outside information. That doesn’t mean they throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Then I worded it incorrectly. How about attempt two: I reject the notion that all those who don’t accept Christ as their savior are doomed to hell. I also reject the notion that homosexuality is an abomination. Does that mean that I must also reject the notion of “judge not, lest ye be judged,” or “love thy neighbor,” or to go back further, “thou shalt not kill?” Since atheists have rejected the Bible as “the truth,” then does that mean I should be in constant fear of atheists trying to murder me or steal from me or covet my neighbor’s wife?
I’m at a loss to understand why I’m “fooling myself” if I accept only the parts of Christianity that make sense to me, those that fit in with the rest. It does form a coherent belief system and a coherent moral code; it’s not as if I’m just winging it here and making stuff up as I go along.
DIE, HERETIC!
Perhaps you missed the part where I said “Okay that last part is for humor only.”
I’m not necessarily arguing with Eve, I’m arguing with her so-called “hot” author. If someone describes himself as being not a fundamentalist, then by definition, it’s not so damning to him if maybe none of it holds water. If I’m a fundamentalist, then I have to believe in all or nothing. If I’m not a fundamentalist, I’m open to varying interpretations of the “truth.”
As well as the possibility that the actual “truth” is unlike anything I’ve ever realized, that in fact it’s potato bug worship that is the One True Way, and I’m going to spend an eternity in torment because I stepped on one as a child and didn’t perform the proper ritual of attonement. If that is the truth, it’s irrelevant, because it doesn’t make any sense to me, so I couldn’t believe it even if I wanted to. So I believe that God gave me a brain, and I’ll use it to make sense of the world, believe the parts that fit in with that conception and find some other explanation for the parts that don’t.
That’s not “letting in a chink of reason,” as if the entire notion of religious belief is unreasonable, and people come about their belief systems without giving it any thought. And I say it’s not “fooling yourself” to be able to reconcile a belief system out of things that would to a cursory observer seem like completely incompatible concepts. I believe it takes a lot of reason, a lot of time, a lot of thought, and a good bit of faith.
(And since people seem to keep thinking I’m angry when I’m not: I’m not. Really. The digs at Eve’s honey are meant in fun.)
Correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m sure someone will) but isn’t this the logical fallacy of the excluded middle? IE: if some Scripture is untrue, then all of it is untrue.
Extending the analogy:
If some black people steal things, then all black people steal things.
If some gay men are flamboyant, then all gay men are flamboyant.
If **some Republicans make homophobic statements, then all Republicans make homophobic statements.
If some transsexuals are witty, gorgeous and have fabulous lives, then all transsexuals are witty, gorgeous and have fabulous lives. 
Then you are not a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Catholic, or one of any number of fundamentalist Protestant sects that claim to know the word of God, and by extension, his mind. Also, the major Christian religions’ final appeal is to the truth of their dogma, which is justified as a representation of what God wants re. humans. That dogma is either immutable, or open to interpretation. If the former, then only one interpretation can be correct; if the latter, then it must needs comprise, at least in part, some human input. Humans being flawed, it follows that the dogma is to some degree suspect.
If some scripture is untrue, then all of it comes into doubt. There’s a difference.
Take away the word ‘black’ and add my distinction. then you have it.
If some people steal things then all people might steal things.
Same goes for your other analogies.