One question I’ve wondered is how can people call themselves Christian, Muslim, Jewish etc. if they don’t actually believe their own holy text. The only good thing that has come from religion is the Golden Rule, and it can get along fine without religion. The rest is useless crap that we would be better off discarding.
So if you are a fundamentalist who believes your word is literal and 100% true or a cafeteria believer who picks and chooses what to follow, I’m really curious how you reconcile this to yourself.
Sorry to be an atheist jumping in so early, but a while back when I was checking out various christian faiths, I quickly realized that many if not most protestants were unaware of how their faith differed from other protestant faiths. I’m also very surprised at how readily folk will identify themselves as “cafeteria catholics” today, as when I was growing up that was only used as an insult.
I think a great many churchgoers consider things such as community, programs offered, and convenience to be sufficiently important that they will not sacrifice them for the sake of doctrinal niceties they consider relatively insignificant.
I’d say the correct answer is that the ideas were correct when originally expressed and in the original language, after that it was man rewriting it and passing it down, along with language word meaning changes that may make a passage seem stupid now.
As far as can you doubt some doctrine in your church, sure, especially if it has no scriptural backup or even scripture says the opposite. An example of that is the Catholic no marriage for priests, when Jesus said direct “A minister shall be blameless, the husband of one wife”.
But see if you are not becoming a minister there you can indeed still stay and be a member as you try to talk sense into the leaders with the wrong view. If whatever is wrong does not affect salvation, sure one can stay in other words.
I suspect that most believers (OK, I’ll restrict myself to Christians of various stripes here) *do *believe their holy texts to be the word of God (some believe those texts to be the divinely inspired work of men, some believe them to be dictated by God Himself), but also believe that others are mistaken in their understanding of those holy texts. There’s a lot of ground between fundamentalist/literalist and cafeteria believer, and most Christians are going to fall into that middle zone.
Priestly celibacy is not Catholic doctrine, but a discipline the Roman Catholic Church imposes on its priests. Celibacy was not always required of priests, and the rule could, in theory, be relaxed or rescinded in the future. Eastern Rite Catholics, in communion with the Roman church, do not require celibacy of their priests (although they may require it of bishops, as do the Orthodox churches).
There are even extremely narrowly defined circumstances under which the Roman church permits married priests.
The OP is needlessly prejudicial – and I mean that term literally, pre-judging a wide assortment of believers’ stances.
Many people adopt nuanced views, ranging from “valid and mandatory for the time and place to which it was directed, but hardly so for today” to “figuratve does ot mean false, it simply means not literal”. I can remember making the comment, over on CF, that “Even if God had created the Heavens and the Earth in one 144-hour period in October 4004 B.C., Genesis chapter one would still be a myth. That’s not an assertion about its truth value; it’s specifying what genre of writing it is.”
Relevant too might be the poster which used to hang on the office wall of one of our fav orite prieests: “Jesus came to take away your sins, not your mind.”
One way to look at scripture, (regardless of the religion), is to view it like the story of Moses and the Commandments, where God hands some human “the truth” (carved in stone) that is transcribed as scripture and every word is considered a part of unalterable truth. Depeding on the beliefs and the book, this still allows for allegory, metaphor, parable, and other literary expressions, so that even among those who hold that scripture is God’s/the gods’ unalterable word, there can be differences in belief among believers in the same book(s).
A different way to view scripture is to see it as the repository of different revelations by God/the gods that had a particular meaning to those to whom it was originally revealed while carrying a greater or more permanent truth to those in later generations or ages. In this scenario, God/the gods is/are seen talking to the people constantly through history with the words of the scripture tested against new experiences to gain greater insight to what God/the gods intended for humanity through the ages.
From the perspective of a person outside the belief community, the first scenario looks to be a foolish adherence to ancient superstitions while the second scenario appears to be a way for the believers to justify any changes in belief without giving up their books.
Attacking such people for an outsider’s complaint that they are superstitious or making it up as they go along may give the outsider the comfort of “proving” something to themselves, but it wll rarely, if ever, persuade a believer of the outsider’s views.
Groups adhering to the various scenarios, above, would include, following the first scenario, fundamentalist Muslims who simply hold the Qu’ran as unalterable truth, Southern Baptists, (with internal variations of views), who hold that the Bible is unalterable truth, but that its various stories, allegories, parables, and letters must be interpreted in the light of their media as commented upon by other books, and Catholics who hold the second scenario, explaining that the truth is provided in the works as explained and maintained through history in the declarations of church councils. More conservative Judaism, (lower case, including some number of Orthodox and Conservative groups), take a position somewhat between the two scenarios, with the explication of apparent contradictions arising in the Talmud, (the Mishnah and Gemara), as debated and confirmed in Halakhic, (legal), opinions and Haggadic, (explanatory), opinions.
None of those groups have a single, cast-in-concrete view of scripture and there can be wide differences in the approaches of members within all those groups. I have provided them only as a very broad sketch of the general direction that some groups follow.
Well, I’m an atheist so probably shouldn’t be answering, but I don’t see any real conflict in someone believing that, for example, Jesus is the Son of God and gave Christianity a set of beliefs and morals, encapsulated in the Bible, with which to guide their observance of God, whilst also having the ability of using their own minds to understand that the Bible is a collection of writings by human beings who spoke through the culture of their time and that, therefore, there may be parts of the Bible’s teachings which have little or no relevance to current society (keeping of slaves, for example).
As a direct example, my girlfriend is a believing but non-practising Catholic. She does not go to church because she is gay and disagrees with the teachings of her church fathers and the sections of the bible that suggest homosexuality is a sin. She believes that God made her this way and if the Church fathers haven’t been able to adjust their thinking then it’s their problem not hers. She regards references to homosexuality being a sin in the Bible as man’s prejudice from a time when it was not understood.
And as a thinking, intelligent person, she has make up her own mind on this point. That doesn’t mean she has to reject all belief in Jesus or, either, her belief that the Catholic church is the direct descendant of his work, even if that church doesn’t always get it 100% right (in her mind).
Indeed, but they tend to do so with parts of the bible/holy scripture that relate to their own personal beliefs/prejudices/causes. The debate rages on and on about homosexuality and Christianity due to it being in scripture yet I hear very little about the moral dilemma that faces modern Christians when offered shellfish (despite the fact that both of these are forbidden by the same book of the bible).
I read accounts of Christians who describes themselves as literalists and say words to the effect of “I don’t get to pick and choose which parts of the bible I follow” yet they clearly are doing so as unless you’re living as a hyper-orthodox Jew you’re failing pretty drastically on large swathes of it.
When the less pleasant parts of the bible are referenced, such as mandating war and extermination of other races and the famous selling one’s daughters into slavery there is the usual hand waving of “different times, different morality” but if that’s the case then you can apply that reasoning to any part of the scripture, and if you’re doing that then it ceases to be revealed or even particularly well-qualfied wisdom. This doesn’t bother me particularly as I don’t believe that any book can be right simply by virtue of it existing (as a literalist would seem to be doing with their book of choice), but then I’m not religious.
The minister in question would say that many parts of the Bible are fable, myth, & metaphor rather than the literal truth. You are presuming that everyone means the same thing by “holy word” as you.
I’m not a cafeteria Catholic. But the entire Catholic system holds that the Bible is not literal truth – that Scripture and tradition go hand in hand in teaching us sacred, holy, and unending truth.
So I can reject literal words of Genesis without vitiating my fidelity to the Church.
If you believe I am somehow not following the Church’s teachings in some meaningful way, we can discuss it – but a preemptive rebuttal from me would be the observation that you may not understand what the Church teaches as doctrine as opposed to what she teaches as discipline or simply as non-binding tradition.
As good example is the celibacy requirement for priests, discussed above. The Church could reverse its stance on that tomorrow without contradicting any matter of faith or morals, in the same way that the Pope could decree that, starting next Sunday, priests celebrate Mass in a tuxedo, top hat, and tails. It’s a matter of practice, of rules to follow so we’re all doing the same thing, not a matter of divine rule.
I got into a similar discussion when I questioned a devout friend of mine about his visit to Međugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina to visit the supposed site of the 1981 appearance of the Virgin to six children there. He was insistent that it was real, and further insisted that the Vatican had agreed. I pointed out that the matter had not been officially resolved one way or the other by the Vatican, and further – this being the relevant point for this discussion – as a member of the faithful I had every right to disbelieve in the appearance of Our Lady at sites where the Vatican has given their stamp of approval, such as Lourdes or Fatima. An individual Catholic must believe certain truths about his faith, but there are a long list of things that the Church teaches as true that it does not claim to teach infalliably as true, and which a faithful, practicing Catholic may quite properly reject.
OK? So understanding that, if you believe I am somehow cherry-picking my beliefs in a way that’s inconsistent with my religion, please provide some examples.
How can someone say they believe that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the nation when the Constitution has inconsistencies that 200 years of legislation and Supreme Court decisions haven’t been able to eliminate?
For that matter, why did the founding fathers choose one set of words for the 1st Amendment (“Congress shall make no law”) a different set for the 2nd Amendment (“shall not be infringed”) and another set for the 6th Amendment (“shall enjoy the right”)?
And the Constitution was written – in English – solely to serve as law. The Bible is a set of stories from a variety of authors passed down orally for hundreds of years before they were finally written down, used to illustrate a set of beliefs.
The Word is 100% truth, but man does not, can not, understand ‘truth’ in himself, man understands facts, not truths. It is the Holy Spirit teaching us what the truth of God’s Word is, not our own minds trying to make sense of it.
Truths and facts are not the same and usually facts will lead one away from truth. Trying to reconcile the Word with what we have been taught about the world will produce errors which can not be explained without bending, or breaking, the Word. God has to teach us from the beginning, as if we are infants, learning for the first time, His ways of truth, let Him teach you how the world works as if it is the first thing you have learned, Then when you are mature enough in Him, you can fit the world view into what God has taught you, instead of trying to squeeze God’s truth into man’s world view.
To quote Paul “let God be true and every man a liar” (Rom 3:4x)
This is a pretty standard objection presented by atheists to any claim that the Bible contains truth (whether the Bible is inspired by God and written by men, or actually dictated by God). It’s a bit of a straw man, though.
The rules set down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are considered by Christians to be rules for a specific group of people to follow, as part of their covenant with God. They are rescinded by Christ Himself, in His own words in the New Testament, and by His sacrifice, which fulfill’s God’s covenant. There is no moral dilemma facing Christians when offered shellfish, or pork, or when considering certain fabrics for their clothing. There is a dilemman when it comes to homosexual behavior, or extramarital sex, because these things are spoken of in the New Testament, outside of the context of observing the Levitical rules. Different denominations have resolved these dilemmas in different ways.
You have to always keep in mind the distinction between God’s message and what you understand of God’s message. People are fallible and can be mistaken in their beliefs. Just because they believe they understand what scriptures are telling them doesn’t mean they are correct.
Of course. Especially since we have multiple cases of people writng down “the inspired word of God,” whose versions cannot credibly be harmonized with one another.
For Jews it’s especially complicated. I’m Jewish because my mother was Jewish. Even the most religious Hassid would agree with that statement. Yet I hardly particiapte in the religion at all.