Right now dark energy is a hypothesis. We will no doubt get confirmatory evidence of it, or else abandon the hypothesis. Would you do the same for God?
No one knows for sure, except that it didn’t will itself into being. It might be a child universe of a meta universe, or it might come from a quantum fluctuation (if the net balance of energy is zero) or it might be something else. A century ago we didn’t even know about the existence of lots of subatomic particles, give them time.
I would entirely agree with this paragraph.
You are begging the question, “so much credence” compared to what? It looks obvious to me that more eyebrows have been raised at the claims of the Bible than any other book. You can go to your local library and check out scores of books devoted to throwing spitwads at the Bible. If the library is too far away, there are thousands of threads right here on the Straight Dope Message Board. Is this the case for any other book? If not, then how can you claim that there are “so few” raised eyebrows at the Bible?
Again one might ask, “so much credence” compared to what? Personally I’m amazed at how little credence is given to supernatural claims, and how much is given to natural claims. (Or at least those that appear superficially natural.) Blutnly, if professional skeptics spent less time on alien abductions and more time debunking Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution or The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, they certainly would have down the world more good.
Like on the Straightdope forums…
You miss the point. No one raises eyebrows at crap that no one believes. The very reason there are a large number of eyebrows raised about the Bible is because there is a vast amount of belief in it. The amount of belief is so huge that even a very small number of raised eyebrows (proportionately) still amounts to a large number absolutely.
Natch. But I’d be interested in your views on the OP as it applies to other religions.
There are some assumptions built into the conceptualization implicit in the OP and some responses that need highlighting and discussing, IMO.
First, let’s note, and toss to one side, the fact that a minority of Christians believe in the literal verbatim inspiration of God – that he in effect dictated the Bible to human writers who acted basically as stenographers, or at best put into their own wording the ideas he’d told them to say. Some of the psychology outlined by people above has a lot to do with why this view is held, along with a point I tend to stress: insecure people need to have something to cling to, and an inspired, inerrant Word of God unchanging across the centuries is something that fills the bill for their needs.
Now, to deal with the others, let’s start with a parallel:
The Iliad is an epic poem by Homer dealing with the siege of Troy. In point of fact, there were Greek attacks on Troy, several of them. It does have a historical analog. And its heroes are legendary, but at least a few families in historical Greece claimed lineal descent from some of them, implying that there were historical figures on whom the characters of legend were founded, though of course a lot of fiction was added to them.
But we also have Greek gods getting involved. Ares and Diomedes fight and Diomedes wounds Ares. Surely that’s fictional? Well, yes, of course, but the fact is that beyond what we can learn about Achaean customs and traditions, we also get a handle on how the Greeks of Homer’s time conceived of Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, etc. That is, it’s a valuable resource in the study of Greek religion.
Likewise, Abraham, Moses, David, etc. are figures of legend. Who they are, what they did and said, are reconstructed in mythological and legendary terms. To what extent they were real people underlying the legend is debatable. And of course we get a handle on Jewish custom and tradition across a broad time range.
In addition, the Bible is a valuable resource for how the Israelites and Jews conceived of YHWH at various times in their history. That’s valuable information in and of itself.
But beyond all this, let’s make, for the sake of argument in this post and responses to it, the presumptions: there is a God, a being transcending this Universe who was its Creator. This does not automatically presume that the first chapter of Genesis is a verbatim account of how He did it (it shows every evidence of being myth) but merely that He did. Further, that this being relates to humans interpersonally, as Person to person, and takes an interest in what they do and why – and that, for reasons best dealt with elsewhere, He took a special interest in the Children of Israel and their descendants, and used that one-on-one contact to teach and guide them. That does not necessarily mean that any one of them got it right, relayed precisely what He wanted them to say. It does mean that we can gain some knowledge of Him by following the evolution of Israelite/Jewish/early Christian conception of Him as it is recorded in that collection of writings put together over time.
And that makes it an extremely valuable resource, even without any assumptions about its inspiration.
Note what I’m saying here: not that any rational thinker has to buy a pig in a poke about Christian belief, but rather something syllogistic: there are people who believe in the Christian God, and not all of them subscribe to turn-off-your-brain dogmatism about the Bible. IF they are correct about the existence, characteristics, and methodology of the Christian God, the Bible becomes a valuable resource for learning about Him – when one extracts the knowledge from the cultural matrix in which it is embedded.
As compared to other ancient books. The works of the Greek historians are analyzed to see what they exaggerated, what they made up, and what they misinterpreted. Books about historical figures are compared with other evidence to see which stories are true, and which are fabricated. The difference is that there is no institution trying to claim that unicorns do exist and that the Greek naturalist should be trusted.
As for diets, I researched a bunch of them for my wife when she was writing entries on a bunch of diets for an encyclopedia. There is plenty of data out there disputing bad diets, and supporting the few good ones. It’s not that no one does this, it is just that you can’t make money telling people the diets don’t work, and you can make plenty telling them they do. Thus the proponents write books, buy ads and go on talk shows.
Any ancient book, regardless of its credibility, is valuable in telling us how they lived and how they thought. True of the present also. Any instance of pulp fiction from today would be a treasure for those living 5,000 years from now.
But even granting the existence of god, how do we know he took special interest in any humans, of any religion? There’s a kind of anthropic principle at work here. I might say that God has a special interest in Jews since we survived, but the reason that Mithraists don’t say something similar is that the religion did not survive. If the Bible is no more and no less credible than other holy books, why give special credence to western or any religions or views of god?
I’m in no way saying that a literally true or inerrant holy book is necessary for justification of belief. I’m only saying that there should be something in it not easily explicable by the written by humans with no inspiration hypothesis. And this is not proof or even justification for disbelief, just evidence for the lack of justification for belief.
Everybody lies because everyone wants to believe. It works.
As long as you were making presumptions, you should have presumed that the people God was interacting with had any sway on the society. If not then the bible remains useless as a guide for how to get a knowledge of God.
This is hardly impossible, since the NT focuses in on a sect that has a totally different approach to things than is presented in the OT. As this demonstrates, God could have spent all his time talking to sects, and have had no influence at all on the main body of people written about in the OT, or the NT either if they’re the wrong sect. Maybe the golden calfers had it right.
(All of this presuming there’s a god talking to anyone at all, of course.)
God wouldn’t be God if He couldn’t compensate for our imperfections. God gives us free will but His plan will happen, the victory is assured. He knew exactly where he would place you before you were born, possibly, but I’d have to research this, before the world was created. To say that God could not get His word to us in the way He wants us to have it is severally underestimating God.
Most religions, or better phrased faiths have to do with man somehow in communication with what we would term the supernatural. The Christian scriptures (NT) speak of the supernatural as absolutely real, alive and able to influence the physical world. Such supernatural entities can create other faiths to lead people to them, and enforce the principals they introduce to mankind within the limits that God allows.
So all religions are true even if contradictory because these supernatural beings create different realities for different people, all true?
Can’t argue with that.