But anyone who believes he is following God’s commandments is doing just that. I suppose you can say that there is a god, but you don’t know what you want so you can do what you please.
No, but it means that you accept those things out of moral reasoning, not because God said so. Unless you have objective evidence why god said one thing and not another, you are putting your morals above god’s - a good thing, since most people’s morals seem to be better than that of the God of the Bible. You probably wouldn’t kill someone for picking up sticks on a Saturday, for instance.
Well, the OT isn’t even ostensibly of divine origin. The first few books are claimed to have been written by Moses and, IIRC, it’s not supposed to be a literal transcription of god’s word. You can compare this with the Koran which is supposed to be a verbatim copy of god’s words through the angel Gabriel (IIRC). The NT certainly isn’t divinely authored—the New Testament books that are in the bible are there as a result of a vote! Some, the Apocryphia (sp?), didn’t make it. The Gospel of Thomas is one example of a more credible gospel that got the boot. So in terms of authorship, what little I’m aware of suggests that it is not difficult to ignore parts of one’s holy text simply because of questions of authorship.
Additionally, the pre-printing-printing press method of reproduction would leave room for plenty of doubt on any questionable passage. The redaction and what not creates even more wiggle room.
Of course, translation is notoriously sketchy. How many people think that god said that thou shall not “kill” or “lie,” when a true and updated translation may indicate that one shall not “murder” or “give false testimony [as a witness]”?
Another issue is that we’re not dealing with Euclid’s Elements. We’re not looking at tightly argued texts built from easy to grasp axioms. One could easily find room for interpretation in a holy text, IMO, and people do it all the time. As a last resort, one could always claim that it was a metaphore or an allegory.
I think a really important element has to do with what the cafeteria believer considers to be proof. I’ve known, and currently know, Christians who believe they “know” god. And by “know,” they mean that they are personally in touch with Jesus and have received personal, meaningful communication from him. I’ve spoken to astrology advocates who insist they have a priori knowledge or understanding that trumps any alleged facts that may come their way. I don’t think there is a psychosis going on here; but instead they’re people who just haven’t learned to apply critical thinking fully.
Personally, I don’t understand it. It seems to me that if god really wanted to give me a sign, he’d make it on par with his powers; but for other people, seeing a three legged dog outside a church is a sign from heaven and that’s all there is to it. The point of that is that it is probably easier to believe discount passages in a book of quesitonable heritage when one feels that one has a personal relationship with the diety herself.
Ironically, I can’t help but wonder if that last one isn’t an element helping to create such malignant fundies, because the other side of the coin is that it is probably easier to believe the literal text of a passage when one thinks one’s god is backing it up through personal communication.
Of course, I haven’t read the book. The author may have a powerful argument. Oops! Jesus is ringing my doorbell. Gotta go.
Nice post, js_africanus. There are quite a few nits that could be picked with your historical exegesis – but they are purely and simply nitpicking, not a flaw in your basic statement.
That said, I have an anecdote that may amuse you and others. You said:
I saw a report on a Christian board I belong to about a person having seen a church with one of those changeable-letter marquees outside, the ones that usually list sermon topics and times of service, or announce stuff, or are occasionally used for oh-so-twee bits of ‘wit.’ This one, however, had:
So you’ve been waiting for a sign?
This is a sign.
See you Sunday!
You pick sides, presumably with the theologian who comes up with the theory that provides you the explanation of what the scripture says that most helps you improve your life.
Of course, in the old days, that often ended with someone being barbecued in the town square. Now they can just go on a book tour 
And before you ask “but what if you pick the wrong side”, well, then you’d better hope that God is really a merciful being who takes into account that your intentions were good, your efforts sincere, your faith heartfelt and your actions beneficial to your neighbor.
“Passion. The story of the crucifixion of Christ, usually told in the version of one of the four apostles. (The Passion According to Reuter’s Jerusalem Correspondent has not received the attention it deserves.)”
- John Barber, A Musician’s Dictionary
JS_AfricanusOTTOMH a rather large portion of Jews do hold that the Torah, in its entirety, was given by G-d to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Back To The OP
I do get a sense of Jack Chick while reading the review in the link. The argument that my faith rests entirely on a question I’ve never thought to ask myself, and that being forced to deal with that question will bring my faith down like a house of cards.
I dealt with the question of whether the Torah was literal and innerant back in elementary school. Genesis said the whole universe just took six days. The science books, and those really cool PBS specials said the Big Bang was billions of years ago and that Lucy was millions of years old. I may still have that charming book of Bible stories with a cover depicting a fallen Adam and Eve fleeing the garden for an earth filled with dinosaurs. The story of Noah made no scientific sense, and was very similar to a story in my book of Greek myths.
After a long analysis, I settled on that section of Genesis as parable. My parents, and Rabbi Klirs often told me parables. These were not attempts to deceive me. The story of Noah, I decided, was probably a story which predated Judaism and told of an actual flood which seemed really big at the time. But, was there a G-d? After more searching, I found that there was. My faith does not rest on unquestioning belief in the Torah.
Re The Author
Am I the only one who sees a resemblance to Ben Stiller?
Heh. I see what you’re saying, but I mean, why bother even seeing any part of a religious text as authoritative? If you agree with some of it, but don’t agree with other parts, doesn’t that make you the “authority,” rather than the text? In which case, why not just start your own religion?
I do sort of see where you’re coming from, though. So you see it as more of a dynamic interaction between religious texts and believers, wherein the parts of the texts that are “inspirational” allow the believers to further develop their own religious understanding?
I’m just so proud to have started a Great Debates religion thread that–rather than turning into a train wreck–has become an interesting and informative exchange of ideas! Who’da thunk that would ever happen?!
[Oh, and, sadly, Sam Harris is not “my” hot author, he’s married and probably young enough to be my great-grandson . . . ]
Does the book discuss the dangers of blind faith only in a religious context?
It might be worth looking at how religions that have no sacred texts maintain continuity. (Especially as we have evidence that sacred texts are not guarantors of continuity in the first place, from the evidence of several religions that have them.)
Orthopraxy is one of the common ones: in some cases, belief is even optional, so long as the correct practices are carried out. (You can see a mainstream example of this in the cases of atheistic Jews who continue to maintain halachic practices because they are still Jewish.)
Shared pools of context, religious imagery, religious metaphor: the context of the myths and parables of the religion, the visual structure of its ritual spaces and rituals, and so on. In some cases this will also have shared religious experience. But the shared familiarity of the images and mindsets of approach to the divine is a continuing thread, even if it does not have a canonical or holy form.
Shared belief. All religious epistemologies come with a certain set of axioms about the structure of the world, including interaction with the divine. There will be a range of takes on those axioms, but none of these will include all possible worldviews; there exist religious axioms that are flatly incompatible with each other. (For example, the common African religious belief in a universe that needs maintenance to maintain its purity vs. the common Christian religious belief in a fallen universe that needs redemption.) Continuity of paradigm is another force of maintenance on a religion.
All of these contribute to “Why not start your own religion?” Religions are not books; even when they include texts they are built of an additional corpus of material that may not have much, if anything, to do with that text. Centrality of the importance of a particular text is one of the axioms that goes under “shared belief” above; it will not be shared by all religions, or indeed all implementations of a particular one.
No, but that’s its main point. Frankly, a lot of it went over my pretty little head. I had to reread a few paragraphs and still couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying.
It’s an interesting book, but deep, and not an easy, light read.
No, I don’t see that at all. Perhaps instead of telling me that I’m not being fair or setting up imaginary targets to knock them down, and admonishing Zoe for saying that I’m “cool,” you should clue me in on exactly what the discussion is about.
Based on the title and the wording of the OP, I assumed that the discussion was asking how it’s possible to be religious and yet not accept every word of the religion’s dominant holy text as completely, 100% true and accurate.
Once again, I point to the wording of the title “How can there Be NON-Fundamentalists?” which I read as “how can you be religious without being 100% religious?” And to the text of the OP, which implied that non-fundamentalists were “fooling themselves,” implying that their beliefs were invalid. Or that “they must let in a chink of reason,” implying that their beliefs were unreasonable. Or that “they must admit that maybe none of it holds water.” Holds water how? By being a 100% inerrant transcription of the thoughts of God? Or by being a valid basis for a belief system? How much water are we talking about here?
Perhaps you’d explain which part I misread, exactly.
Again, how do you mean “holds water?” Holds water as a 100% exhaustive, accurate description of the workings of the universe? As the basis for a moral and belief system? As proof of the existence of God?
The only argument I made was that I use the Bible and the tenets of Christianity as the framework for my moral system. I am not dogmatic, because I accept that there are other, equally valid moral systems. And that is not my “fooling myself” or being a “casual Christian;” that is simply my being “not a fundamentalist.”
I’m intrigued by how much you can read into quotation marks. But since you asked: Yes, I believe that there is an objective reality. I also believe that that is mostly irrelevant to me because it impacts me in no meaningful way. The objective reality exists, but it is only relevant in so far as we humans can perceive it and conceive of it. And how we interpret that objective reality is what I call “truth.”
Take the existence of God as a simple example. He either exists or he doesn’t. My belief in God doesn’t cause Him to come into being any more than someone else’s disbelief causes Him to vanish. So He exists, and that’s the truth. How do I come to that conclusion? Because I cannot conceive of a universe in which He doesn’t exist. I’ve tried to imagine such a situation many times, and it simply makes no sense to me. Someone might say, “but your belief doesn’t change the fact that God doesn’t [or does] exist.” And my response would be “yes, but that doesn’t matter.” Either I’m right, and when I die I’ll get to heaven and He’ll give me a metaphysical high-five and say, “Good on ya!” Or I’m wrong, and I’ll be dead so it won’t matter.
Well, are you sure you’re not fooling yourself into thinking that you’re not a Christian? I hope the question sounds absurd to you, because it sounds absurd when applied to me as well. Christianity as it’s always been explained to me is: accept Christ as your personal savior, acknowledge and appreciate the works of God, and live your life as Christ taught, treating people with love, respect, and compassion. I do that to the best of my ability, based on the teachings of Christ. Ergo, I am a Christian. I’m no scholar of comparative religion, so as far as I know, I do all the same things in my day-to-day life that Buddhism teaches. That doesn’t mean I’m a Buddhist, because I don’t identify myself as one and I didn’t use those teachings to create my moral framework.
If I had suddenly hit on the idea that killing and eating babies was a good, proper, Christian thing to do, and still called myself a Christian, then I’d be fooling myself. Because it flies in the face of everything else that the religion says.
It depends on what he were planning to do with those sticks.
But you’re trying to apply your interpretation of existence to explain my religious beliefs, and that’s not appropriate. I do accept those things out of moral reasoning, but I did not wholly invent my moral framework. My moral framework is based on the teachings of Christ. I do not need objective evidence that God said one thing and not another; I have been alive long enough to see the world that God has created and understand what works and what doesn’t. I am not putting my morals above God’s; I was created by God, and was given a brain by God, and given a teacher and savior by God, and trusted by God to interpret what I experience and use that interpretation to do the right thing and make my life on earth meaningful.
Not sure I fully grasp the question? Just taking the Christian religion as an example, it was once entirely Fundamentalist in nature. When Martin Luther started the Protestant Church it created an environment where church leadership could be challenged.
Ultimately, religions consist of people. As educational opportunities increase, greater numbers of people acquire the ability to use reason to challenge religious dogma.
Nothing speaks more of change than to see Afghani children (especially girls) getting a real education
They could using that term to mean distiguish “There is no god/s” Athiests from “There is NO GOD and anyone who believes so is an idiot, delusional or something else” Athiests. The latter bear a disturbing resemblist to their Religious counterparts by the fact both often feel the need to push their belief or lack of it onto you.
If you have a better term to describe both, I’m all ears.
Hmmm… hold it, I don’t think that you’re using the same meaning of “fundamentalism” as the rest of the thread – which is not exact either. (More on that later) You seem to be mapping it to dogmatism, but at the time of Luther Catholicism was dogmatic but NOT “fundamentalist”. Luther made Christian Fundamentalism possible (as we know it by that name); it is a PROTESTANT phenomenon.
In this thread, however, “fundamentalist” as used in the OP actually refers to a Scriptural Literalist, one who believes in the literal factual truth of the entirety of their Scripture’s text as-is, not just as a source of spiritual guidance but also of documentary history AND of legislation for everyday living; and who believes that this can be mostly discerned from a reading at face value, rather than by a select priesthood figuring out the symbols. This most often, but not absolutely, comes tied in with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, the Scripture as sole source of faith and authority in of itself. Yet even at the time of Luther, the Catholic Church did NOT hold to this doctrine; it was the Protestants who exalted Sola Scriptura.
Thing is, Scriptural Literalism is only PART of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism originates as a “Back to Basics” movement, ditching those accumulated practices and doctrines acquired through tradition, uses and customs, and theological pronouncements that he feels are extraneous to the fundamental message of the religion, or that have corrupted over time. In the practice, that includes most visibly an active opposition and effort to roll back any practices and doctrines that are seen as an accommodation to the secular world, an appeasement of nonbelievers, or a watering down of the Old Values; as well as, for the more activist, actual effort towards having civil society itself also conform to the “Basics”. But it does not necessarily mean it HAS to go that way.
How about “assholes?” My point is that when a fundamentalist Christian tries to convert me he is doing so because his faith commands it. There are no tenets of athiesm that require proseltysing. If an atheist is pushing his beliefs on you or calling you an idiot for not agreeing with him, he is simply being a jerk. It has nothing to do with atheism. The only belief fundamental to atheism is a denial of a particular god. A person who professes to be a fundamentalist Christian is required to behave in certain ways consistent with his faith. A claim of atheism has no such requirements; in fact, it is simply a descriptive term.
And one “yes” vote to even the count.
Literalism isn’t the issue. It’s the issue of being willing to compromise. The fact is that there is a certain category of people who believe that to compromise with the infidel is to become the infidel; if you’re not in that category, then in a very real sense you’ve already compromised.
The reverse is probably also true: there is probably the category of people who hold that if you compromise with reason you’ve become irrational.
<complete and total hijack> Eve, if you think Harris is hot, check out Ed Wasser (Morden) on the first three seasons of Babylon 5! Same look, only even better.</hijack>