Nah, I think Harris looks like they did Ben Stiller over and got it right this time, without the chimp-like elements.
Now, back to the intelligent discussion, folks! This is fascinating, and I am happy to see it remain on a high, “pass-the-tea, Maude” level.
By the way, I just sent Sam Harris a link to this thread, telling him if he’s not sick to death of the subject by now, he might be interested in reading it (and that perhaps his wife might like to join in on the hotly contested “Sam Harris/John Irving” debate).
I think you have a valid point, but I still beg to differ. What is motivating the asshole of either variety – the faith-based asshole and the “evangelical atheist” – is the opinion that his own views as to the Truth trump any rights and privileges you may have to your own faith or to making up your own mind on the issue.
I have as strong a call to help you find a deep, close, personal relationship with Jesus Christ as that guy who called on you unexpectedly last week with a Bible under his arm and a tract in his outstretched hand. The difference is that I’m not convinced that you’re deluded and need to have me rescue you from the error of your ways – you’re a human being with the same wisdom and abilities as me, ceteris paribus, who arrived at whatever position he has on the religion issue based on his own life experiences and the logic which he applied to them. And the omniscient God whom the fundy is so anxious to keep on the good side of, He knows that – knows right where you are, and loves you nonetheless.
Lots of people have read Eve’s books and columns. And they know her in one sense of the word. We on this board know her better – we’ve come to exchange views with her. We’ve traded more than a few witty riffs over the years; I was around when she “came out” online; I have more than a clue how she’s likely to react to a given comment. Some lucky few of us know her as a flesh-and-blood person, adding to the interchange of ideas here the ability to interreact with body language and such, to share a meal, etc. And for some obscure reason, no one has seen fit to court her and know her in the Biblical sense.
That apparent total digression has a point. Nearly everybody claims to know God from His books – but remember that He has the same problem as Socrates; leading writers attributed back their own idées fixés to Him, and from His literary output, you can’t get to know Him all that well. He wants to get into a one-on-one with you – not just having you read His book, but sending spiritual IMs into your mind, and receiving them back from you.
That bit of witnessing was essential to my point – that’s where I’m coming from religiously. I’m conveying the message of a God of love who wants to make your life richer and fuller and extend it indefinitely, not one that is playing carrot-and-stick in cosmic terms and trying to coerce you into turning to Him by threatening you with eternal damnation if you don’t.
And do I care if you take my witness seriously or not? Well, I have enough of an ego to wish you would, and enough commitment to Christ to hope you would – but I also know God as loving and omniscient, and quite well aware of where you are, in spiritual terms. And He is in charge, not I. Therefore, if any given person decides that my witness above belongs in the trash can right alongside the Jack Chick tract, hey, no problem – I did what I was called to do, and you reacted as you felt right, and that is exactly how things should be.
Because you see, I don’t have that sense of ultimate egotism that affects the fundies and the “evangelical atheists” – that what they “know to be the Truth” is something that they need to force down the throats of everyone else, like some magic potion that will remove stupidity.
Peace.
Well, but then “fundamentalist” becomes redefined on the basis of what ARE the “Fundamentals” on which you may NOT compromise, and specifically applies then to those persons who will accept NO compromise at all whatsoever. (Or else, there can be NO non-fundamentalists, because every sect – or freelance believer – will have SOME “fundamental” belief on which they won’t compromise, and the term loses meaning)
Unfortunately, he is too snowed under and over-extended with plugging his book, and starting new work, to join in this discussion, but he did read the thread and finds it interesting (of course, he agrees with some of us and disagrees with others, esp. on the presumed inerrancy of Holy Texts). Nice fellow.
He finds the “Sam Harris/John Irving” contest “very funny,” by the way.
Well, there you go, learn something new and all that. Does that include all the OT stuff that occured after Moses’s death? That would be kind of bizarre.
[puzzled Israelite]I’m not sure where we’re headed as a people…oh, wait, it sez it right here…nevermind.[/puzzled Israelite]
Or does the Torah end w/ Moses’s death?
And since “Moses” is singular, is the possessive form “Moses’s”? I can never remember.
[/hijack]
Polycarp,
Thanks for a thoughtful, interesting post. I am still going to insist that there is nothing about atheism that commands an advocate to witness. The difference between your approach and a more aggressive, unyielding one is a matter of degree, not kind. My understanding (from A Southern Baptist upbringing, and right down the road from you if I am not mistaken), is that believers are supposed to spread the word of God. I suspect a fundamentalist Christian might take that directive more to heart than one who is not a fundamentalist, but nothing compells him to be overbearing about it. If anyone comes to to me and says “I’m right and you are wrong and nothing you can say will change my mind,” that person is simply being a jerk and in my mind such behavior has little or nothing to do with the message, only the mesenger. If I were to insist to you that Eric Clapton was the greatest guitar player who ever lived and anyone who says otherwise is delusional would that make me a fundamentalist Clapton fan, or simply obnoxious?
An interesting POV. To take it a step further, the Catholic Church may not have held the biblical doctrine of Sola Scriptura, it did hold the Pope’s interpretation of it to be infallible (and therefore literal). It is to me, the birth of biblical “literal interpretation”. To me, Protestantism allowed individual study of the bible vs institutional study, and thus encouraged the literal attachment to the written word. Since I hold no degrees in religious study I am forced to simplify my views on the differences that have evolved over time.
I never approached the idea of fundamentalism as a Protestant issue within Christianity because I was raised Catholic. I’ve always thought of the early years as being more dogmatic because of the violent lengths the Church went through to maintain the status quo. To me, dogmatic behavior was the result of a fundamental state of mind (The world’s flat and I’ll kill you to prove it). Although this is not a direct relationship I think it applies to the violence found in today’s fundamentalist Muslim doctrine.
No, but I think tradition says Joshua wrote the parts afte Moses, and the book of Joshua also, of course. I believe that book was written by an author of the Torah, and is considered closely related to it.
Old-school conservative attribution of authorship, which I believe is based on Talmudic doctrine borrowed by Christianity, claims that Moses wrote the entire Torah except the last few verses of Deuteronomy which describe his death. They were added in order to close out the narrative by Joshua, who wrote the book ascribed to him – again, except for the final passage describing his death, which was written by Phinehas ben Eleazar ben Aaron, the High Priest, to close out the story of Joshua.
Modern scholars, of course, take a quite different view, ascribing the entire Hexateuch to four or more traditional sources: the Yahwistic or Judahite (J); the Elohistic or Ephraimite (E); the Priestly §; and the Deuteronomic (D). Some scholars claim to see interior strands within these four principal traditions that produce, e.g., J1 and J2, and P1 and P2 traditions.
You DO understand that “Papal Infallibility” (on teachings regarding Faith and Morals) was only made an official Catholic doctrine after Luther’s time, right? In any case, it’s still not “literalism”, since “literal” means “to the letter” – that what it says on the text is all that is; and the RCC has always picked and chosen which parts of the text are to be taken as allegory and symbol and which as fact, and has always inserted tradition and scholarship into the mix. Now, they were (and are) dogmatic and absolutist about what traditions and scholarship were “the Truth”. But Literal is not a synonym of Absolute.
Thus literalism and fundamentalism found the most fertile ground among the Protestants.
Except that you’re coming up with a personalized definition of “fundamentalist” ("= dogmatic, oppressive, absolutist, intolerant"), that does not exactly map with the origin of the term “fundamentalism” itself, and its use in a religious sense.
(BTW, teachings about the shape and location of the Earth in the universe were not Fundamentals of the Faith, but Ordinary Magisterium, albeit dogmatically held and enforced. The “I’ll kill you if you say otherwise” part was mere authoritarianism.)
Just so we’re all in the same page, js_africanus, the Torah is specifically the First Five Books of the Jewish scripture, Genesis through Deuteronomy, not the entirety of Christian OT.
Fundamentalists are the end product of doctrine, not of the written word. If they were the result of the written word, there would be no need for the advise and consent of religious leaders. One follows the other. Religion REQUIRES leadership in order to stay on message. Fundamentalism is based on “literal interpretation by proxy”. I hold as a test of my theory that all fundamentalists have leaders.
In any case, Magiver, we’re hijacking the thread, as this is not really its subject. Just reiterating my (further back) observation, that this is yet another different definition of “fundamentalist” that makes the OP harder to answer.
Yes, we’re getting off point but the original question is based on a premise that all religions are based on the literal word of God. Fundamentalists who make allowances are not, by definition, fundamentalists.
There is some truth to the original concept of the thread. As people gain general knowledge of the universe it becomes more apparent how much faith is required to maintain a certain level of religious conviction. It does not nullify a belief in God but it does question the religious doctrine that has survived from the earliest days of civilization. At some educational point, doctrine begins to resemble nothing of God and everything of man.
I would project that thought forward. As knowledge of the universe increases so does the prospect of a belief in a higher power. The magnitude of the universe demands a certain respect for it’s order and complexity. Its sheer mathematical beauty is beyond man’s comprehension. Over time we may cease to believe in religious doctrine but nobody escapes the laws of gravity and time.
I thought about this thread last night, as I am reading a very enjoyable social history of single women in the US, and I thought I might use it as a reference source for a book I’m doing.
Then the author says that many girls envied and looked up to “Florenz Ziegfeld’s Florodora Girls,” and I smacked my forehead in dismay. True, it’s a minor mistake—but it puts everything else she says into doubt, too.
Well, sure, if you’re in one of those cultures where they marry them off before they hit puberty…
God’s divine message might be tainted by human error? Next you’ll be claiming Jesus didn’t really bless the cheesemakers.
No. No, you’re not. I went eagerly to the link just to see the photo after Eve declared him “hot” (shallow slut that I am) and the first thing I thought was “Ben Stiller? Eve thinks Ben Stiller is the hottest thing going?!”
Not bad…my bookclub is currently doing “books by authors we have crushes on.” Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon and Salman Rushdie. OK, Rushdie isn’t cute in that “see him on the street and want to do him way” but he is intellectually adorable.