god is not a big nice guy who sits on a cloud and commands stuff, but is rather an entity from a different and better dimension (“heaven”), and satan is not a red guy who like fire but rather an entity from a different dimension (“hell”). Now “god” told all the “messiahs” to write these books so we didn’t destroy ourselves and that one day we could live in those dimensions and be happy.
Another thought is that our energy (everything is basically energy, and energy can not be created or destroyed) can go to the good dimension given we do good deeds when we die. This would support the hinduism religion.
But it’s not hard to think that the bible was made up by a crazy guy. The church was enormously corrupt and I, like many ppl, have lost faith in those beliefs. And a friend once told me that the only reason Jewish ppl dont eat pork is because a bunch of important Jews got food poisoning from pork along time ago, so now they dont eat because they think god told them not too.
I’m very much in agreement with the OP. I’m an athiest, but I believe religion is a very good thing to have around. I have some pretty strong morals (I think), and it’s good to know that some of those without such internal strength can find it in Jesus.
Ironically, this is my attitude about abortion as well. I’m against it personally in my own life. It’s not an issue that I believe will ever directly enter my life because I’m forward thinking enough to avoid it’s consideration. But for other folks that aren’t so fore-thinking, I’m completely comfortable with them using it.
Seeing as how religion, at least in the west, has been incalculably destructive and anti-humanist, I’d just assume see it universally kicked into the shitter. Of course, I happen to think that the Bible is wrong. If it is, in fact, the word of god then it would be in my interest, at least in a selfish sort of way, to live my life as it tells me too regardless of the societal impact on this earthly plane (assuming that I can reconcile what I see as the book’s contradictions).
The OP assumes that religion has had a beneficial impact on society, and as such its assertion that the veracity of the Bible is largely irrelevant is a logical one. I, however, would challenge the intitial assumption (and that’s really a whole different debate).
Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that the word of man will inevitably fall apart. I meant that it’s possible that the word of man will fall apart, and therefore, it’s subject to future revision by other men if it was deemed to have fallen apart.
If it’s acknowledged as the word of a higher being, though, then it is by definition, if not infallible, then at least beyond human terms to determine whether or not it might be. Of course, whether or not one wishes to have faith in the infallibility of this higher being is at the nub of religious belief, but if it was written by human beings, there’s little reason to consider it such.
Sua, a rather interesting thought there. My opinion is: no, it doesn’t matter.
Interestingly enough, however, I know that there are a lot of people who would say YES it matters, parables are not a way to teach about morality, political ideals, etc etc. Why, take my namesake fer’instance. Atlas Shrugged had to be one of the three most personally influential books in my life. Many people, however, find that fiction as a medium for explanation is unacceptable. Usually when they disagree with what is expressed, however…
I have found fiction to be the best mechanism for these explanations, actually, because the issue may be more focused. When we discuss what caused the Great Depression, I’ve seen it blamed on the Stock Market Crash, the Gold Standard (somehow?), the Fed, the government’s monetary policy, the government not listening to the Fed, the Fed listening to the government, etc etc etc. The truth is out there somewhere amidst a pile of blame-layers who don’t want to own up to it.
There are two-and-a-half styles of debaters in these boards: those who use hypothetical situations to convey meaning through “all else held equal” mentalities and those who insist that if you can’t find a cite for something they disagree with you’re wrong wrong wrong. “Cite Please?” Then there’s the debaters who use a combination of both hypotheticals and cites.
I don’t like cites most of the time. I feel that statistics often cloud what should be a cut-and dry debate of shoulds and shouldn’ts over is and isn’ts.
If we say that it absolutely matters whether or not the bible is false prepare to close down great debates’ hypothetical posters.
Also, a cite is a substitute for lack of valid reason(s), but is not proof of an argument, merely support. In the case of religion, this is bad faith, for a cite “proves” God exists, and there is no cite from God to the contrary, so much for cites.
Also, to get back to the argument, which is really asking if a form of absolutism is tolerable at any time. I say no, by definition that this absolutism eliminates the question in the future. Why do most people in power tolerate or advocate absolutism? Absolutism is elitism, and elites are exempt from dogma/religion in the same way communist party members were easily exempt from most of communism. That’s why elites perform the disingenuous irony of prefering that the masses engage in it, because it allows them not only to be exempt from the alternative, which is earning respect and not having it bestowed on them from birth (usually), but it allows them to be elites without qualification, which what elitism mostly is. When an elite claims that religion is good for the masses, they are merely hiding the fact that they despise them with it and allow the curse to continue (and pat themselves on the back for doing so).
If people want to argue for human potential, against waste and suffering, then they must begin with equality as some point. Why does absolutism void equality? Because it is based on arbitrary rules, and followers, and decrees, and guilt, and violation, and order, and hierarchy, and unseen forces to help makes sense of it all. What is the alternative? A world where everyone is guaranteed a shot at their potential and self-awareness, and religion is not allowed to prejudice or thwart anyone’s first steps by falsely indoctrinating them into their role or place in the universe. I am never amused when someone claims to find God after they were brainwashed from birth into the idea.
Well. I have my personal problems with absolutes and extremists, in a general sense, but I find that rampant subjectivism has (at least) as many problems, especially in a democratic environment.
The distinction here is fact versus truth… can the bible be true without being factual? Clearly I believe so. My distaste for cites comes mainly from what persuades me argumentively…and that is the application of the ideals expressed.
If we apply the bible to our life and it turns out to be good, then it doesn’t matter whether the facts portrayed are true or false strictly speaking. It doesn’t matter that the holocaust was factual or not, actually, in the same vein…what matters is that we recognize that such an event is bad.
Which brings us to what we all consider good and bad, and dare I say that morality needs ground more firm than subjectivism. I have come to terms that it cannot be completely objective, but I feel very strongly that one must strive to remove subjective valuations from life. Whether this can be done successfully from morality is still up in the air as far as I’m concerned.
There can be little applied responsibility without an objective standard of morality. Whether this standard is derived from hypotheticals, fiction, or fact seems largely irrelevant to me. All of history can be considered to be one long story after another, involving countries and people that no longer exist at all or no longer exist in the same way. Charlemange is as real as Jesus IMO. What we learn from them, and how much we agree on what we learn, is what matters.
According to a lot of Christians, though, the “divinity of Jesus Christ” is the core belief. You know, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) and “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6) The Nicene Creed doesn’t talk about the Golden Rule or how everyone should be nice to each other or, in fact, any human-to-human ethical concerns. It talks about believing in God, believing in Jesus as the Son of God, and believing in the Resurrection of Jesus as giving salvation.
No ethical precept or system can really be held to be central to Christianity, since Christians have always differed so widely on ethical questions; Christianity has been invoked to justify everything from absolute pacifism to militant imperialism, from anarchism to the divine right of kings, from radical egalitarianism to chattel slavery.
I think Memetic Darwinism explains why these are universal concepts. The religions that said it was OK to kill, steal, and screw your siblings died out because they ended up inbred and pissed off all their neighbors.
We’re talking about two slightly different things, ME. I wasn’t denying that belief in the divinity of JC wasn’t a core belief – I was asserting that it isn’t a core belief of Christianity that those who don’t believe in the divinity of JC are evil.
I have to disagree – according to Christian belief, JC washed away the old law, and replaced it with the law of love - love thy neighbor as thyself, etc. This is the core law of Christianity. I argue that people using Christianity to justify those systems you mention were relying on the peripheral parts of Xianity, or on the supposedly washed away old law.
Moving on - the discussion about parables earlier interests me. I think all believers would agree that G-d is beyond mortal ken. Therefore, anything G-d tells us about himself is not the strict truth - it has been “watered down” so we can understand it. Is it not possible, and even reasonable, for G-d told have told Moses the stories of Genesis, etc., not as the absolute truth, but instead as, well, parables - messages from G-d told in a way his people could understand them? If this is so, again, does it make the message invalid?
I think it depends on what you think the message is
Consider the “parable” of creation. Should the Bible contain advanced physics to prove it is true, or should He speak to the level of the readers to explain, in a pretty concise way, that He created everything. What more is there to know when we consider the point of religion is to teach and enforce morality, not to get into arguments over the evaporation of black holes.
But if we take from that that He created everything right then and there when there is clearly evidence to the contrary we are making a mistake.
[sup]assuming God really exists, of course[/sup]
But I have some problems even with this… another poster who shall remain nameless because he didn’t want to be remembered for this line once said, “One could argue that even God could not write a book so clear so as to avoid human misinterpretation.” Indeed.
I agree with you, sua.
MEbuckner Ahh, don’t hate cites, of course, but I sometimes find them superfluous. Like my rhetoric?
Well…not necessarily “evil”. But, “those who don’t believe in the divinity of JC are lost and in need of salvation and really need to be converted” has been a core belief of Christianity. The methods employed for this conversion have ranged from peaceful pestering to fire and sword. On the one hand, Christianity is a universalistic religion, which means that it potentially embraces people of every race and nation and tribe (even theologies like Calvinism teach that the “elect” are scattered among all the nations; Christian Identity is obviously a whacked-out fringe group, and not part of the core beliefs of Christianity). On the other hand, this universalism means that everyone is supposed to convert; you can unite everyone regardless of race or color or previous condidition of servitude, but historically Christianity has sought to unite everyone with regard to creed, and to replace all other creeds.
I guess I have problems identifying something as a “core belief” of Christianity if most Christians have demonstrably not accepted it, or at least not followed it in the same way that some particular group states it. (Obviously, no Christian group I’ve ever heard of has just come right out and said “Screw the Golden Rule”–“but hey, if I were a benighted heathen savage living in the hell-bound darkness, I’d want those nice Christians to come and convert my people at sword-point and save us all from the eternal Lake of Fire, so you see, we are following the Golden Rule!”) I’m sure that Quakers would define pacifism as being a core belief of Christianity, but most Christians aren’t Quakers and haven’t been pacifists. When I’m talking about “core beliefs”, I’m trying to do so in a more or less objective sense–personally, I have difficulty in picking one or another Christian sect or denomination or group and saying these guys–all 12 of them or 1,000,000,000 of them–are “right” and the other 1,999,999,988 or 1,000,000,000 professing Christians are “wrong” in their interpretation of God’s Word. That smacks of the way some Protestant evangelicals will talk about “Christians” and “Catholics” as in “She was a Catholic, but then she converted to Christianity”. (Some interpretations may of course be more or less conducive to peaceful relations with heathens like me.) Based on this standard, I find it hard to come up with many Christian “core beliefs” with regards to ethics. Sure, don’t steal and murder, the stuff that’s common to all mankind–but even there there are loopholes. “Don’t steal and murder…unless you’re on a Crusade for the True Faith”. And is capital punishment murder? (And capital punishment for what? Murder? Heresy? Counterfeiting pennies?) What about killing in a “just war”? Is that murder? It’s hard to say what the “core beliefs” of Christianity in general have been with regards to those questions…whereas, until pretty recently, Christians were universal in believing that the really important thing is for everyone to be baptized into the True Faith and saved in the name of Jesus.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that Christianity–like most major world religions, I suspect–is a more complicated and more “prickly” thing than just a neat sociological vehicle for passing down useful ethical precepts to the young folks along the lines of “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if people were nice to each other for a change”. Which is why I think it does matter if the Bible is true or not. Whether or not the Bible is true, we can still teach kids to be nice to each other, and we can even whip up some My First Book of World Virtues with the Parable of the Good Samaritan from the New Testament and all the different great sages’ (Buddha’s and Confucius’ and Hillel’s and Jesus’ and Socrates’) formulations of the Golden Rule. But whether or not the Bible is true does make a difference, I think, in whether or not people should be going out and carrying out the Great Commission and trying to win the world over for the Lord.
aynrandlover- It is good that you recognise the problems with subjectivism*, because here is where it bites you in the ass, so to speak:
I’m not going to go all “pissy liberal” on you for the holocaust thing, but OF COURSE it matters if it were true. If the event did not happen, and it is just an ugly story told to remind people that killing is bad, then it has no more power than any other cautionary tale (though a good deal more gruesome details). There are as many interpretations of stories as there are stories, and you are never guaranteed a clear message.
The holocaust DID happen however, (duh) and because of this, very clear things can be taken away from it, briefly; that nationalism is not necessarily moral, that language, in the Orwellian sense, is a weapon, that genocide is possible, etc… The smaller details of the holocaust are open to debate: how many, how often, who exactly, and with what method, but the event itself is as open to debate as the fact of gravity.
Moral people react in about the same way to the holocaust, a “brute fact” if there ever was one. If it didn’t happen, and it were just a tale, they would not. It is as simple as that.
The bible, if it is a book of moral parables, is weak. There is no healthy adult that needs to be told that killing is wrong and that they should love their neighbor. These are things told to children, and even if the bible didn’t have as many more ugly messages, even if it were all peace and love, it still would be of little use to thinking adults.
The bible, if it is factual, (something I think very unlikely) presents a very distinct view of reality. It makes claims that are scientific in scope (the days of creation, the flood, etc.) It is doubtful if it ever was intended to be taken as just a moral guidebook. If I were a christian, I would be insulted that someone thought my holy book was just a bunch of nice parables, and didn’t need to be anything else. I’d rather they reject it outright. Simple morality is not grounds for religious belief.
One final point: there is a sort of subtle patronization going on when it is said that religion, even if untrue, is “good for people”. It smacks of social engineering and is a form of elitism. The people who say this often feel that they don’t need religion to keep them in line, but, clearly, the “masses” do. Ugly.
I am aware of the screaming irony of arguing for the importance of objective fact with someone who’s screen name is aynrandlover, especially since I am no fan of hers, but I trust I will be forgiven for it…
My caveat in “objective” truth as a teacher is that there are often so many forces at work that it can be exceedingly difficult to pinpoint lessons to be learned.
The Great Depression, for example, has had just about everything going on in the country at the time be blamed for it. Gold standard, shifting off a strict gold standard, the Fed, the government, the fed and the government, people’s greed, etc etc. Some lessons are very difficult to learn through historical references.Coherent fiction has the ability to isolate causes specifically and follow logical conclusions. Of course, there is always the problem of fictional characters being somewhat shallow, plots being contrived, and the logical conclusions being strictly what the author found to be logical.
Lessons do not come easy, at any rate, at least not IMO. What is self evident to one person is a total mystery to another.
I agree that there is much to be directly learned from the holocaust being a factual event, but this mainly centers around “See?–this can happen.” That the actions were “wrong” are, by no stretch of the imagination, required to be rooted in fact.
One important problem with the Holocaust analogy is the fact that it is a relatively recent event, there are still people alive who remember it, and the important facts about WWII are still relatively common knowledge and the majority of the world is in agreement about what happened. Over time, the way the Holocaust is remembered and interpreted can and will change. I saw a pro-tolerance government propaganda film from the late '40s that made mention of it. They presented a long list of people killed in the concentration camps - gypsies, catholics, various nationalities, it went on for some time. Two groups were noticeably omitted - Jews and homosexuals. The nation that made this film? The U.S.A.
Today a considerable portion of the population is not even aware that at least half the people killed in the concentration camps were not Jews. I’m not saying this is a worse misconception than what was put forward before, but it shows that things change. Who knows what people believe about the Holocaust 1000 years from now? If nobody knows for sure, it won’t matter whether what really happened or not, but what believers believe happened.
There are people today who, if asked to describe current events, would paint a picture of wide-spread persecution of Christians in the U.S.A. If they come to power, in the future their interpretation of our times will be accepted by the majority, and alternate views may eventually fade away. It will be a valid cautionary tale about not letting anti-religion zealots gain control of the government and media, even though that never happened.
If we’re using your discription, "quickest ones to persecute, judge, condemn and ostrasize other people for what they are…, then it looks like you are the true Christian.
No, it does not matter if the bible is completely false. Nor does it matter if it is completely true. What matters are its stories, its language, its poetry. What matters is its power to stir us and disgust us. Its power to terrify and comfort. To make us laugh and cry.
What matters is that it was written a long time ago, over a long peiod of time, and from its beginning to its end the characters in it who matter are recognizably human; they have human needs and desires; they have human loves and hates; human hubris and humilty.
What matters is that the bible is about us, about our strengths and weaknesses. It shows us that they have been part of us at least as long as it has been around. And that we ignore both or either to our peril. And that when we don’t ignore them, when we work with what we have, we live happier lives.
Nothamlet- Very nice, but I suggest you replace “the bible” in your post with “Ulysses” and see if any of the meaning changes.
It didn’t, did it?
I will agree with you as loudly as I can that literature is very important to our humanity and to our connectedness with the past. The bible, however, as fiction, is no more transcendent than any other timeless work of literature, and, indeed, a good deal less coherent than most.
An an atheist, I can admire the bible just as a collection of stories, but I assure you that we all can very easily ignore it with as little “peril” as if we ignored any other ancient work of literature. It is a small gap in our knowledge of the artform, but not much more than that.
This wouldn’t be a problem, but unlike Ulysses, people are not reading the bible as stories. They believe that what it says about the nature of the world is correct. Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus and his sacrifice for our salvation. This is only a nice, uplifiting story for those of us on the outside of it. If you don’t believe in the divinity of Christ, you are not a Christian. No one finds this declaration controversial, do they?
Again, if the bible is not true, then it is a collection of contradictory mythologies and stories that have very little possibility of being clearly interpreted, much less used as a moral guidebook, by anyone.
The only reason it is given any weight at all is that many people have believed, and continue to believe, that it is the word of God. The assumption of its divine nature is used to find meaning within it, not the reverse. Taken out of context, the bible fades into the background with other mythologies.
Damnit, Peloquin, I was in the middle of a reply to your post (it involved the irony inherent in the OT – the messes which arose from people following the advice of people who heard voices) when I realized that what I was writing was convincing me that the answer to the OP is yes – it is a problem that people believe the bible to be divinely inspired.
