Liberal Religionists: Enablers of Fundies?

[angela2]

Say that it was proven a nut named John Doe actually authored 1, 2 or 3 books of the new testament - Would the baby have to go out with the bath water?
Which books? My guess is it would have to be more than 3 books. The synoptics differ almost entirely in details. The legitimate letters of Paul are similar.
Pretty much impossible to prove as I see it, but....
True, but you didn't make that provision. Besides, almost anything I take couldn't be prove/disproved.
Why? What if someone screwed up the facts, allegory or whatever you choose to label it?
If someone screwed up the facts, I'd have no way of knowing, would I?
LOL! As likely as someone proving indubitably that Jesus Christ was playing a big joke on the world.
Hey, you asked.

[Steven Mading]

How so?
By being just as intolerant and hateful as the god and jesus characters in the bible told them to be, for exactly the same reasons.

[angela2]

By being just as intolerant and hateful as the god and jesus characters in the bible told them to be, for exactly the same reasons.
Cherry picking and non-responsive

[geddit?]

Hey, you asked.

<derail>

Reason I'm asking is curiosity.

I'm wondering how important/necessary the bible is to be a Christian.

(I'm bible averse - having been hit with it at school one too many times.:D )

My grandfather asserted that the bible was a combination of allegory and historical fiction. According to my mother, (he passed away before I was born) his Christian faith was unassailable.

And for what it's worth:

He had a Doctorate in Theology from Columbia - at age 20.
He was a lifelong practicing Episcopalian Minister.


geddit?

[seebs]

I think there's a couple of different possible answers to the question of how "important" the Bible is.

First off, distinguish between the Bible and the things said in it. It would be very hard to be "Christian" while rejecting all of the Bible's theological and moral claims. Certainly, though, it's possible to be Christian without ever seeing a Bible. In fact, a fair number of people were Christians before anything was being called "the Bible", and indeed, before some of the text in it was ever written!

Geddit, your grandfather's faith, and beliefs about the Bible, strike me as a reasonable and not uncommon combination. It's certainly common for people who have gotten real degrees in the field to be more aware of the subtleties of the text; it is generally not the people with doctorates from real universities who demand an absolutely literalist interpretation. (Well, assuming they studied the Bible. I've seen many people whose doctorates are in other fields assert that the Bible is plain historical fact, or at least that it's all intended as such.)

I think the Bible is certainly very useful to an aspiring Christian, when read with a mature perspective. The "combination of allegory and historical fiction" view will get you a lot further with this than the "literal history in every respect" view. As a diary of other people who have sought God, it is an excellent book.

I know at least a couple of people who reject the supernaturalist claims, but who are convinced that the teachings of Jesus are not only a viable foundation for morality, but the best such foundation to be had. At least one of these people identifies as "Christian". I recognize the difficulties this presents to people who like nice, neat, category rules, such as "Christians are theists", but I am not about to quibble; it seems to me that favoring exclusive definitions over inclusive ones is contrary to the faith in any event.

[ELECTROGOD]

I know at least a couple of people who reject the supernaturalist claims, but who are convinced that the teachings of Jesus are not only a viable foundation for morality, but the best such foundation to be had. At least one of these people identifies as "Christian". I recognize the difficulties this presents to people who like nice, neat, category rules, such as "Christians are theists", but I am not about to quibble; it seems to me that favoring exclusive definitions over inclusive ones is contrary to the faith in any event.
It's not a matter of being "nice and neat", it's a matter if a person claiming something can be consistent and make sense.
If a person calls themself a Christian but rejects the supernatural god-being (Jesus Christ) of the belief system...then they clearly are NOT a Christian (even if they like the title). They just like some of the book.
I can put on a Marine's uniform but it won't make me a Marine.
Taking parts of a philosophy is fine, which is what your friend is doing, but that doesn't "qualify" them as a Christian. Why? Because they don't have the basic belief of a "Christian".
If a person doesn't care to make sense they don't have to. But the rest of us will view them as not making any sense.

[angela2]

<derail>

Reason I'm asking is curiosity.

I'm wondering how important/necessary the bible is to be a Christian.

(I'm bible averse - having been hit with it at school one too many times.:D )

My grandfather asserted that the bible was a combination of allegory and historical fiction. According to my mother, (he passed away before I was born) his Christian faith was unassailable.

And for what it's worth:

He had a Doctorate in Theology from Columbia - at age 20.
He was a lifelong practicing Episcopalian Minister.

Your grandfather sounds very impressive.

Christianity is a lot more than the bible. Even an individual person's basis of belief includes more than the bible. My belief is that Christianity is better able to help me make sense of my experiences, both religious and secular, than anything else.

When I say Christianity, I include the tradition because, let's face it, nobody reads the bible with entirely fresh eyes. I also include Christian writers past and present and believers wherever and when ever they might be found especially those in churches that work. LOL

I can understand saying that the bible is historical fiction. It isn't always accurate historically (as best we know), but it was history for the writers in the way knew it at the different times in which they wrote. Our modern concept of what history is is pretty modern. Often today we tend to ignore the fact that no written history is complete; every one is had by a process of selection. Would we have made the same selections? We don't know because we don't know what's been left out.

Anyway, must stop rambling because I have an early appointment. In theory, if all of Paul's authentic letters ceased to be credible, Christianity would have big problems. But most of us wouldn't let go easily even without essential documents. That's because we have experienced Christianity as true for us in ways that nothing else has been true.

[angela2]

First off, distinguish between the Bible and the things said in it. It would be very hard to be "Christian" while rejecting all of the Bible's theological and moral claims. Certainly, though, it's possible to be Christian without ever seeing a Bible. In fact, a fair number of people were Christians before anything was being called "the Bible", and indeed, before some of the text in it was ever written!
Seebs, let me see if I understand what you are saying. Do you mean that someone can be a Christian if Christian beliefs found at least in nascent form in the bible are communicated to this person in some manner other than through the bible?

[angela2]

You probably have found in this thread comments about the various literary forms in the bible. Allegory was the most popular at the time your grandfather lived. But I would guess that he wouldn't have a problem with any that we've discussed.

Many people who want to study Christianity come to that study with a simple faith. Although they don't usually become less faithful through academic study, there does come a time for each of them when they realize that Christianity is much more complex than they ever guessed. They get innoculated against simplistic answers.

It sounds as if your grandfather stuck with academic study for a while. I did the same. My realization at the end of it all was that all that I understood in all its complexity was humble in comparison to what we will know when we see face-to-face.

[seebs]

Seebs, let me see if I understand what you are saying. Do you mean that someone can be a Christian if Christian beliefs found at least in nascent form in the bible are communicated to this person in some manner other than through the bible?

The boundary case, I think, is pre-Biblical Christians.

At this point, I would guess that anyone who is reasonably-called "Christian" will hold at least one belief that can be plausibly supported from the Bible. (Of course, so will nearly anyone who holds any beliefs at all.) I don't think they have to have ever seen a Bible.

Consider, as an interesting boundary, the hidden Christians in Japan, who had no written records of their beliefs, and performed their ceremonies entirely in secret for a fairly long time. Their beliefs are recognizably related to Christianity, but I think virtually none of them formed them based on access to a Bible.

[seebs]

It's not a matter of being "nice and neat", it's a matter if a person claiming something can be consistent and make sense.
If a person calls themself a Christian but rejects the supernatural god-being (Jesus Christ) of the belief system...then they clearly are NOT a Christian (even if they like the title). They just like some of the book.

Says you. Since when are you in charge?

I'd say that someone who believes in "Jesus as great moral teacher" and has no supernaturalist beliefs at all, but values the social and ritual background of Christianity, and follows the teachings of Jesus, has a pretty good claim to being "Christian. Such a person passes the duck test.

Taking parts of a philosophy is fine, which is what your friend is doing, but that doesn't "qualify" them as a Christian. Why? Because they don't have the basic belief of a "Christian".
If a person doesn't care to make sense they don't have to. But the rest of us will view them as not making any sense.

I don't think I recognize your authority in this matter. As the saying goes, you are not my bishop.

[Biff the unclean]

I don't think I recognize your authority in this matter. As the saying goes, you are not my bishop.
Since he claims no authority other than the accuracy of calling a spade a spade then we do not recognize your authority to supercede facts with blarney, since your constantly asserted “authority” is based on your imagination.

[ELECTROGOD]

Says you. Since when are you in charge?
So says reason. Do you see me in charge of Christianity or something? Is that the best comeback to reason that you can muster?
So, I guess that in your head you can go to the surplus store, buy the uniform of a U.S. Marine and then go around claiming (and believing) that you actually are a U.S. Marine. I would love to see you try that at a Marine base. I think that the Marine "Bishops" would tell you that you live in crazy town (you might even get put in jail for fraud).
I'd say that someone who believes in "Jesus as great moral teacher" and has no supernaturalist beliefs at all, but values the social and ritual background of Christianity, and follows the teachings of Jesus, has a pretty good claim to being "Christian. Such a person passes the duck test. Duck test? How about definiton? When it comes to defintions and categories you appear to want to elude them even though people are clearly outlining what fits in those categories.
What you seem to want to ignore is that the Christian Bible is the only source for the Jesus character. By rejecting some of this source's claims and accepting parts of others you are not abiding by the religion based on the Bible but rather making up your own that you find comfortable.
No one says that you can't do that since it's your own life to live (well, maybe some competing Christian sects) but accepting part of a philosophy is not accepting the philosophy. No doubt that the parts you don't accept you are filling in with what can be identified in another philosophy. Accepting parts of a philosophy but not the belief of a belief system can be viewed as common since some attributes of religious philosophy can be seen reflected in many other religions and some parts even considered to be basic social ethics apart from religion.
I don't think I recognize your authority in this matter. Not suprising as apparently I am not saying what you would like me to be saying.

[Biff the unclean]

I'm still wondering how a person who doesn't believe Jesus was the CHRIST can be called a CHRISTian.

[angela2]

What you seem to want to ignore is that the Christian Bible is the only source for the Jesus character. By rejecting some of this source's claims and accepting parts of others you are not abiding by the religion based on the Bible but rather making up your own that you find comfortable.
Oops. You don't want to argue the deity of Jesus Christ solely on biblical claims. You must know that. Some passages of scripture are strongly Jewish monotheistic. Also one can make a case for subordinationism from scripture.

[seebs]

So says reason. Do you see me in charge of Christianity or something? Is that the best comeback to reason that you can muster?

Well, my question is, why should I accept your definition?

So, I guess that in your head you can go to the surplus store, buy the uniform of a U.S. Marine and then go around claiming (and believing) that you actually are a U.S. Marine. I would love to see you try that at a Marine base. I think that the Marine "Bishops" would tell you that you live in crazy town (you might even get put in jail for fraud).

Nope. Never said anything of the sort.

But of the dozens of things that people have claimed are absolutely necessary for someone to be "Christian", I'm not sure why I should accept your standard over someone else's.

Duck test? How about definiton? When it comes to defintions and categories you appear to want to elude them even though people are clearly outlining what fits in those categories.

I think people are overeager to stuff things into categories.

What you seem to want to ignore is that the Christian Bible is the only source for the Jesus character.

I'm not ignoring it, it's just not true.

Christianity predates the Bible.

By rejecting some of this source's claims and accepting parts of others you are not abiding by the religion based on the Bible but rather making up your own that you find comfortable.

The assertion that people pick what they find "comfortable" is both insulting and unsupported. There are a lot of things about Christianity I don't think are comfortable; I just find them persuasive.

I admit, however, to being a Christian rather than a Bibliolator. I never claimed that Christianity was "the religion based on the Bible", and since Christianity existed before the Bible did, the only people claiming that are modernists.

Who, as it happens, are indeed following a religion made up within the last couple hundred years.

No one says that you can't do that since it's your own life to live (well, maybe some competing Christian sects) but accepting part of a philosophy is not accepting the philosophy.

Agreed.

But the Bible is not Christianity.

I can understand why people whose churches say it's a sin for them to learn anything that isn't taught by the church would get this wrong. But you're supposed to be a skeptic, a freethinker... What's your excuse for repeating obviously wrong claims about the history of Christianity?

[angela2]

The boundary case, I think, is pre-Biblical Christians.

I'm sure you will concede that important differences exist between pre-biblical Christians and people today who have not read the bible.

Consider, as an interesting boundary, the hidden Christians in Japan, who had no written records of their beliefs, and performed their ceremonies entirely in secret for a fairly long time. Their beliefs are recognizably related to Christianity, but I think virtually none of them formed them based on access to a Bible.
Hidden 'Christians' or 'related to Chrisitanity?' I presume you recognize a difference between those phrases two phrases. Do I presume to much?

[seebs]

I'm still wondering how a person who doesn't believe Jesus was the CHRIST can be called a CHRISTian.

This is a good, solid, question.

But... What exactly does "the Christ" mean? Different people have had different beliefs about this.

The non-theist "Christians" I have known seem to feel that the "Christ" concept is an attempt by primitive and superstitious people to put into words the notion of a person who has correctly articulated the right moral code.

Thus, they accept, not what those primitive people seemed to think, but rather what it appears they were actually talking about.

The mere fact that I do not believe in "humors" in the sense that medieval physicians did does not mean that I cannot accept the claim "being insulted tends to put people in a poor humor" as being a true statement.

[seebs]

I'm sure you will concede that important differences exist between pre-biblical Christians and people today who have not read the bible.

Many. However, nonetheless, the Bible is not the foundation of Christianity; it is a collection of writings about the foundation of Christianity.

Hidden 'Christians' or 'related to Chrisitanity?' I presume you recognize a difference between those phrases two phrases. Do I presume to much?

I am sure there is a difference, but I wouldn't know where to draw the line, and I am not sure it is productive to try.

I don't see any particular benefit in trying to come up with an exhaustive list of precise boundaries. I can't come up with one for "politically conservative", I can't come up with one for "smart", I can't come up with one for "dangerous"... Why should I expect that "Christian" will be easier to define than everything else?

[angela2]

I am sure there is a difference, but I wouldn't know where to draw the line, and I am not sure it is productive to try.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. My bias in favor of definition comes from having been the student of too many professors who claimed to be Christian but taught that which was distinctly non-Christian. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps academia is not the real world. But when I look at the history of Christianity, I see certain ideas which first took root in the academy having filtered down to people in the pews.

You say your beliefs are more orthodox than we might imagine. Do you have a desire to see those beliefs transmitted intact? I know of more than one mainline Protestant church where the pastor does not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. In subtle ways that are below the horizon of most people, these pastors transmit their beliefs to their congregations.

[seebs]

Perhaps. Perhaps not. My bias in favor of definition comes from having been the student of too many professors who claimed to be Christian but taught that which was distinctly non-Christian. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps academia is not the real world. But when I look at the history of Christianity, I see certain ideas which first took root in the academy having filtered down to people in the pews.

I have had experiences like that, but they are hugely dominated by the teachings of people who are very firm and dogmatic in their drawing of lines.

The militant Baptists at ChristianForums who openly flame and deride the people they disagree with are very big on definitions; they are also big fans of retributive violence and most of them appear to endorse torture as a political strategem.

I think the problem is this: Exclusion itself is contrary to Christian teaching. You cannot, then, have a boundary which excludes invalid teaching, but contains anything.

You say your beliefs are more orthodox than we might imagine. Do you have a desire to see those beliefs transmitted intact? I know of more than one mainline Protestant church where the pastor does not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. In subtle ways that are below the horizon of most people, these pastors transmit their beliefs to their congregations.

I don't much care about "intactness" of beliefs; after all, even though I'm arguably more orthodox than many Protestant groups, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm more correct; it could just mean I'm more resistant to a change that God is trying to lead us into.

I'm much more concerned with orthopraxy than orthodoxy, really.

If I have to share oxygen and land with people, I'd rather they be people who believe in being nice, but are unsure about the deity of Jesus Christ, than with people who are very mean but quite certain about the Trinity. In practice, I think the former are substantially closer to the essence of Christian practice than the latter.

And though I have all knowledge, and all faith, and have not charity, I am nothing.

[angela2]

I'm much more concerned with orthopraxy than orthodoxy, really.
Can one really have orthopraxy without orthodoxy? From whence do we derive the rightness of our practice?

If I have to share oxygen and land with people, I'd rather they be people who believe in being nice, but are unsure about the deity of Jesus Christ, than with people who are very mean but quite certain about the Trinity. In practice, I think the former are substantially closer to the essence of Christian practice than the latter.

And though I have all knowledge, and all faith, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Seebs, I'm not arguing against charity or tolerance. I hope you know that. But I see a serious difficulty in your thought. To you there seem to be only two categories of Christians: extreme fundies and those who refuse to set boundaries.

My fear is that if we respond to hate-filled Christians by not affirming the deity of Jesus Christ, they will be the inheritors of the Christian tradition in the future. Because for all that is wrong about them, they are right about this.

[angela2]

Detroit just won the ALCS. Now I'm going to watch the Mets win the NLCS, I hope.

[seebs]

Can one really have orthopraxy without orthodoxy? From whence do we derive the rightness of our practice?

A good question! Does it matter that much, if our practice is actually right?

There is no correlation between opinions on the Trinity and being nice.

Seebs, I'm not arguing against charity or tolerance. I hope you know that. But I see a serious difficulty in your thought. To you there seem to be only two categories of Christians: extreme fundies and those who refuse to set boundaries.

This is not the case.

Many, many, groups set boundaries all over the place.

My fear is that if we respond to hate-filled Christians by not affirming the deity of Jesus Christ, they will be the inheritors of the Christian tradition in the future. Because for all that is wrong about them, they are right about this.

I'm all for affirming that. But to affirm, not only the deity of Jesus Christ, but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, I think I have to accept people who disagree with me.

[angela2]

A good question! Does it matter that much, if our practice is actually right?
Isn't it you who is arguing for orthopraxy?
There is no correlation between opinions on the Trinity and being nice.
I would be the last to suggest there was.
Many, many, groups set boundaries all over the place.
But other groups don't seem to enter into your consideration.
I'm all for affirming that. But to affirm, not only the deity of Jesus Christ, but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, I think I have to accept people who disagree with me.
You can certainly make a case for non-exclusive orthopraxy from church history and scripture. However, I rather doubt that you can make a case for non-exclusive orthodoxy from church history, scripture especially if we are considering only the deity of Jesus Christ.

You say that you care more about orthopraxis than orthodoxy, but except for saying you are in favor of 'nice,' I have yet to hear you tell me how an orthopaxis devoid of orthodoxy differs from a benevolent anthropocentric philosophy. Perhaps you do not see it as different. If that is true, to call such orthopaxy Christian is to add confusion.

(The Mets are getting killed. :( )

[ELECTROGOD]

Ok, angela2 and seebs. Since you keep trying to argue that the Christian bible is not the only source for the character of Jesus and that the religion itself predates the Bible (well, parts of it anyway) thus suggesting that there may have been some other source for this information, then please tell me just what source for Jesus each of you used to learn about Jesus and currrently use to reference Jesus. What source does each of your churches use and if there is another source then what is it exactly.

[ELECTROGOD]

Oops. You don't want to argue the deity of Jesus Christ solely on biblical claims. You must know that. Some passages of scripture are strongly Jewish monotheistic. Also one can make a case for subordinationism from scripture.
What other claims are there other than the Christian Bible which you can honestly reference?
You mean Jewish like the religion that predicted a messiah but doesn't accept Jesus to be that messiah?
What would subordinationism have to do with it?

[ELECTROGOD]

Well, my question is, why should I accept your definition?
Because it is the reasonable definition of what a Christian is.
Nope. Never said anything of the sort. Sure you did, you don't remember?
But of the dozens of things that people have claimed are absolutely necessary for someone to be "Christian", I'm not sure why I should accept your standard over someone else's. Because it is the reasonable definition of what a Christian is..."one who believes in Christ". That you care to argue this is amazing.
I think people are overeager to stuff things into categories. And some people squirm at the idea of being put in a category.
How is this: You are a human.
I just put you in a category. That doesn't really hurt now does it?
I'm not ignoring it, it's just not true. Then present another (not just the assertion that there is another).
As far as I can tell before the Bible there was just an oral tradition of mythical stories passed on by word of mouth within primitive cultures with the first writings coming well after any possiblity of the fact demonstrating that they too used oral tradition as their source.
Christianity predates the Bible. And the Bible was assembled/designed to support Christianity.
The assertion that people pick what they find "comfortable" is both insulting and unsupported. There are a lot of things about Christianity I don't think are comfortable; I just find them persuasive. You find it insulting? Ha, all I can say to that is tough shit because that is exactly what is and has been going on all over the world for a long time (so, when did you arrive on this planet?).
You mean you find PARTS of it persuasive...right? You know, the comfortable parts, not the bears killing children parts.
I admit, however, to being a Christian rather than a Bibliolator. I never claimed that Christianity was "the religion based on the Bible", and since Christianity existed before the Bible did, the only people claiming that are modernists. I already realize that you are a Christian seebs, your continuing defense of the belief system itself on this board makes that quite clear.
After the bible was assembled/designed it became the basis of reference for the Christian religion and has been used as such since. I daresay that it's what you and those teaching you have learned the Christian belief system from.
Who, as it happens, are indeed following a religion made up within the last couple hundred years. Below you try and paint me as not being aware of Christian history but here you seem to be making it up as you go. The Bible has been followed as long as it has been around since the religious (and other leaders) declared it to be the goto source for the religion as it spread across the world to people who had never even heard of Israel, etc.
But the Bible is not Christianity. Sure it is, it was assembled/designed/modified to represent all of what Christianity is and claims to be.
I can understand why people whose churches say it's a sin for them to learn anything that isn't taught by the church would get this wrong. But you're supposed to be a skeptic, a freethinker... What's your excuse for repeating obviously wrong claims about the history of Christianity? What are these obviously wrong claims? That you and every other Christian alive didn't learn about Christianity and Jesus from the Christian bible which has been promoted as the Christian "holy" book for well over a millennia, endorsed and spread by the various powerful churches over this time?
If it's just a matter of you wanting us to consider you to be one of those on the fringe of a religion then that is fine but many of the ideas you hold as part of your personal belief system do not reflect what most of the church today holds or throughout history has held as part of it's belief system.
Your wanting it to be so will not make it so either.

[angela2]

What source does each of your churches use and if there is another source then what is it exactly.
I've answered this question innumerable times. My church uses scripture, tradition, experience and reason.

If you want to know how I learned about Jesus, I'll tell you. I was a toddler when my parents began to take me to church, much to young to read anything. I learned about Jesus from people telling me about him, priests, nuns and other Christians. In fact, I never owned a bible until I became a Protestant in my 40's. I did know a lot of scripture, however, because the priest read and preached on scripture every Sunday. In my college years, I attended mass every day ... more scripture readings. I also owned a 'missal,' the book which gives the words of the mass and enables Roman Catholics to follow along. When I learned to read, that was what I read. It contained lots of scripture.

So you see that in my case seebs is right. I learned about Christianity through the oral conveyance of the tradition. In the bible, just before Paul gives the words for the eucharistic ceremony, he says, "I give you what has been handed down to me." The word for 'handed down' is the same word from which we derive the word 'tradition,' and it has the same meaning. When I was too young to read, those priest and nuns and other Christians handed down to me what had been given to them.

As an anecdote ... I always find it interesting to hear myself quote scirpture orally because I can always tell if I learned a certain passage as RC or Protestant. What does Jesus say when Pilate asks him if he is the Messiah? "Thou hast said it." Must have learned that one as an RC because that's not the translation in any of the versions of the bible I have used since I became a Protestant. Oral tradition.

Please don't be insulting in your response. I've told you about important experiences in my life. There is no need to be hurtful.

[ELECTROGOD]

Ok, angela2 and seebs. Since you keep trying to argue that the Christian bible is not the only source for the character of Jesus and that the religion itself predates the Bible (well, parts of it anyway) thus suggesting that there may have been some other source for this information, then please tell me just what source for Jesus each of you used to learn about Jesus and currrently use to reference Jesus. What source does each of your churches use and if there is another source then what is it exactly.

[JamesBannon]

I've answered this question innumerable times. My church uses scripture, tradition, experience and reason.
The first 2 are certainly true but the remaining two are highly questionable.

[seebs]

The first 2 are certainly true but the remaining two are highly questionable.

Not knowing which church it is, I don't know how we can make any such statements.

The Anglicans and Episcopalians are the ones who most visibly preach "Scripture, Tradition, Reason" as a basis, and they certainly mean it. That you might not think there is a rational basis for accepting Scripture misses the point; Reason is one of the three supports they rely on, but the other two are treated as a priori valid. The results are consistently pretty good, from the perspective of someone who has to share a planet with them.

[seebs]

Isn't it you who is arguing for orthopraxy?

Yes. My question is:

If it is true that our practice is right, does it really matter that much where we got it?

But other groups don't seem to enter into your consideration.

They do, they just haven't always been entirely relevant to this discussion.

You can certainly make a case for non-exclusive orthopraxy from church history and scripture. However, I rather doubt that you can make a case for non-exclusive orthodoxy from church history, scripture especially if we are considering only the deity of Jesus Christ.

I can, from one simple thing: The teaching of judging by fruits.

If someone who is absolutely convinced that Spong's essentially non-theistic Christianity is the real truth lives the life of a Christian, loving his neighbor, feeding the hungry, and so on...

Then he is apparently orthodox enough.

You say that you care more about orthopraxis than orthodoxy, but except for saying you are in favor of 'nice,' I have yet to hear you tell me how an orthopaxis devoid of orthodoxy differs from a benevolent anthropocentric philosophy. Perhaps you do not see it as different. If that is true, to call such orthopaxy Christian is to add confusion.

In some cases, it doesn't differ in outcomes, but since it is motivated by beliefs that are rooted in Christian teaching, it strikes me as somewhere in the realm of "Christian".

Someone who follows the teachings of Jesus is, IMHO, probably Christian.

[seebs]

Ok, angela2 and seebs. Since you keep trying to argue that the Christian bible is not the only source for the character of Jesus and that the religion itself predates the Bible (well, parts of it anyway) thus suggesting that there may have been some other source for this information, then please tell me just what source for Jesus each of you used to learn about Jesus and currrently use to reference Jesus. What source does each of your churches use and if there is another source then what is it exactly.

Oral and written tradition, personal revelation, and reason.

You may not know this, but the Bible is not the sum total of all documents that survive from the period when it was written.

Note, by the way, that the sources I list above are also the sources from which the Bible was made. It is the effect, not the cause.

[angela2]

Yes. My question is:

If it is true that our practice is right, does it really matter that much where we got it?



They do, they just haven't always been entirely relevant to this discussion.



I can, from one simple thing: The teaching of judging by fruits.

If someone who is absolutely convinced that Spong's essentially non-theistic Christianity is the real truth lives the life of a Christian, loving his neighbor, feeding the hungry, and so on...

Then he is apparently orthodox enough.



In some cases, it doesn't differ in outcomes, but since it is motivated by beliefs that are rooted in Christian teaching, it strikes me as somewhere in the realm of "Christian".

Someone who follows the teachings of Jesus is, IMHO, probably Christian.
Whatever floats your boat.

IMO non-theistic Christianity is an oxymoron.

[seebs]

Whatever floats your boat.

IMO non-theistic Christianity is an oxymoron.

Four years ago, I felt the same way.

I have since met enough people who reject the conventional sense of theism, but who follow Christian teachings and are active in Christian communities, that I have abandoned that test as a requirement for "Christianity".

There are non-theists at my church whose non-theism is, IMHO, a necessary step in coming closer to God.

Sound wacky? So do a lot of the variants of theism out there, and some of them are wacky in ways which end up being a barrier to faith rather than a component of it.

[angela2]

Four years ago, I felt the same way.

I have since met enough people who reject the conventional sense of theism, but who follow Christian teachings and are active in Christian communities, that I have abandoned that test as a requirement for "Christianity".

There are non-theists at my church whose non-theism is, IMHO, a necessary step in coming closer to God.
But in spite of all this, you are still a theist. Maybe you don't want to come closer to God.

[ELECTROGOD]

Oral and written tradition,
I highly doubt that there is any Christian alive or for centuries who would be able to claim an unbroken oral tradition stemming from the early church before the Bible and not the Bible itself.
We all know just how reliable oral tradition is, this is why it is not used for reliable historical evidence.
personal revelation,
This is not very solid, especially if you are asserting that this knowledge comes just from you and not any other Christian scriptural sources.
and reason.
Oh, you do make me laugh! :D
You may not know this, but the Bible is not the sum total of all documents that survive from the period when it was written.
And...

Note, by the way, that the sources I list above are also the sources from which the Bible was made. It is the effect, not the cause.
It is what Christians use for their source material. How are you coming with presenting other sources that they use(d) instead of the Bible?

[angela2]

Yo, Electro. If you want to pick a fight with a theist, why don't you find one?

[seebs]

I highly doubt that there is any Christian alive or for centuries who would be able to claim an unbroken oral tradition stemming from the early church before the Bible and not the Bible itself.
We all know just how reliable oral tradition is, this is why it is not used for reliable historical evidence.

So what?

The fact remains that a substantial portion of Christian belief is extra-Biblical.

In short:

If there were no established churches, and someone handed you a book labeled "the Bible", your response to it would be totally different than if someone who was a member of an organization with a documented written history going back two thousand years handed you a book labeled "the Bible" and explained that his organization had been preserving and studying this text all that time.

The Bible is significant, but it's not all there is.

[seebs]

But in spite of all this, you are still a theist. Maybe you don't want to come closer to God.

I already did that part of the program. Gave up on all the obviously empty noises that the religious people made, avoided their hypocrisy and irrationality, went exploring on my own.

Found love, rather than dogma, and then got to wondering where love came from.

[lpetrich]

In fact, a fair number of people were Christians before anything was being called "the Bible", and indeed, before some of the text in it was ever written!
Depends on what you mean by "Xian". Is it some idealized "True Xianity", or is it what has often gone under the label of Xianity?

I think the Bible is certainly very useful to an aspiring Christian, when read with a mature perspective. The "combination of allegory and historical fiction" view will get you a lot further with this than the "literal history in every respect" view. As a diary of other people who have sought God, it is an excellent book.
seebs, you ought to tell that to those who believe that True Xianity involves believing that the Bible is literal history in every respect.

And I thought that the Bible was supposed to be The Greatest Book Ever Written.

I know at least a couple of people who reject the supernaturalist claims, but who are convinced that the teachings of Jesus are not only a viable foundation for morality, but the best such foundation to be had.
Someone who's a Xian atheist?

So someone can be counted as a Xian while believing that the God of the Bible is as fictional as the Greek gods?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. My bias in favor of definition comes from having been the student of too many professors who claimed to be Christian but taught that which was distinctly non-Christian.
And how did you come to that conclusion, angela2? How do you tell the difference between what is Xian and what is non-Xian?

I'm much more concerned with orthopraxy than orthodoxy, really.

If I have to share oxygen and land with people, I'd rather they be people who believe in being nice, but are unsure about the deity of Jesus Christ, than with people who are very mean but quite certain about the Trinity. In practice, I think the former are substantially closer to the essence of Christian practice than the latter.
Why do you come to that conclusion, seebs? And that it is not (say) beeelieeeving in the Bible?

[seebs]

Depends on what you mean by "Xian". Is it some idealized "True Xianity", or is it what has often gone under the label of Xianity?

I would say it's a bit of both. I just observe that, whatever we believe now, we believe in part because of things handed down by people who had no Bible.

seebs, you ought to tell that to those who believe that True Xianity involves believing that the Bible is literal history in every respect.

I do. Regularly.

Frankly, more of the people I know who believe that are atheists than are Christians. I have seen a lot of atheists who seem to believe that everything, even psalms, is always historical and literal. I've rarely seen even fairly wacky Christians go that far.

And I thought that the Bible was supposed to be The Greatest Book Ever Written.

I am a big fan, anyway.

Someone who's a Xian atheist?

So someone can be counted as a Xian while believing that the God of the Bible is as fictional as the Greek gods?

By me, sure. I don't think they'd pass the Nicene Creed test, but the vast majority of Calvinists don't either.

Why do you come to that conclusion, seebs? And that it is not (say) beeelieeeving in the Bible?

Partially just based on my own religious experiences. Partially based on analysis.

If "believing in the Bible" is to be central, then we can probably assume that the Bible's essential claims and points are true. (If they aren't, the whole exercise gets into one of those Smullyan-style logic puzzles.)

In the Bible, Jesus regularly affirms standards of judgment involving kindness and charity to others. His references to "belief" are generally in contexts where it is ludicrous to interpret it as "claim that I exist" and easy to interpret it as "accept the following or preceeding message as reliable".

That message, then, strikes me as more important than its source. Or, as Paul put it, "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;"

(Yes, that's sort of a sentence fragment, but the whole thing is a single parenthetical. Trying to figure out how to quote Paul without savaging him, and without reproducing whole chapters, is a bit rough.)

In short, if the Bible is true, then being compassionate is more important than believing the Bible to be true.

Obsessing over the Bible is like driving your car back and forth over a road map in the hopes that this will somehow cause you to be magically transported to California. Study is nice, but at the end of the day, you gotta get out there and love some neighbors.

[Ubercat]

Quote:
Originally Posted by angela2
Perhaps. Perhaps not. My bias in favor of definition comes from having been the student of too many professors who claimed to be Christian but taught that which was distinctly non-Christian.


And how did you come to that conclusion, angela2? How do you tell the difference between what is Xian and what is non-Xian?


I would like to know also, having been repeatedly hammered by Angela myself, for presuming to know anything about christians.

-Ubercat

[angela2]

And how did you come to that conclusion, angela2? How do you tell the difference between what is Xian and what is non-Xian?
After a while, I developed this amazing sixth sense. Bits and pieces would stick out where they shouldn't. And then the bits and pieces would form a gestalt. Of course, these people never admit openly that they're not Christian. For some reason I can't fathom, they want the label even though they show no respect for the beliefs or the believers. There's always some slight of hand involved and lots of ducking and weaving.

Another student and I squeezed a confession out of a professor once that his theology taught that God was the author of evil. It took both of us the entire two hour class. He didn't come out and state what he believed with dignity because he knew once he admitted this fact he could no longer claim that his theology was Christian.

Usually it's fairly easy to spot a pretender to Christian theology. That's because Christian theology is internally consistent. So inconsistencies are a sure sign. But this guy was so good that his system was internally consistent. Just dead wrong.

Redefinition of terminology is another sign. This professor claimed that the god of his theology was transcendent. Nevermind that his god was trapped in creation. He somehow needed to use the word transcendent.

I just could not believe that this guy thought his theology was Christian. So I went to a mutual friend, another professor. He told the sad story of how this guy had started out trying to reconcile a particular philosophy with Christianity. As he went along, he made bigger and bigger concession at the cost of Christianity. But the process was so gradual, that there was no defining moment in which he had to face what his theology had become. And this guy was totally brilliant. What a waste.

[seebs]

I am curious, angela, as to what you make of:

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 45, Verse 7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I have a reasonably good defense against this, IMHO, but it does seem like a straightforward starting point for arguing that God is the author of evil.

[ELECTROGOD]

The fact remains that a substantial portion of Christian belief is extra-Biblical.
In short:
If there were no established churches, and someone handed you a book labeled "the Bible", your response to it would be totally different than if someone who was a member of an organization with a documented written history going back two thousand years handed you a book labeled "the Bible" and explained that his organization had been preserving and studying this text all that time.
But you haven't shown what that might be or that the churches now or in the past since the instillation of the bible have really used any other source (at least other than mystical revelation which never seems to be about the establishing of the Jesus character like in the Bible) for their information. Because you have gotten some or much of the information from others (priests, nuns, pastors, parents, etc.) who have read and gotten their information from the bible or from yet others who have gotten it from the bible does not mean that these are other sources of Christian information and beliefs apart from the bible.
See, you've tried to take it off track of where the Jesus character was understood to be established to "there are aspect of Christian belief that are extra-biblical". Not quite the same argument.
Different interpretations of the same material from one source is still based on that material from that source.
The success of Christianity is that it follows (actually was the originator) of the business model of duplication. At the core of this model is the idea that you offer the exact same product (or closely as possible) to customers whereever your product is made available. The spread of this belief system across the world thoughout the centuries relied on the Christian bible as this duplicatable source of information. In that way people in North America would know what was included in the belief system much like those in Europe, the Middle East and beyond would. If it were left to oral tradition and revelation you would have completely different religions springing up over time started from the ideas of Christianity. In fact, even with a set book of scriptures to follow there is still a good bit of variation that has occured within Christianity (imagine if oral tradition were all you had...oral tradition not being someone else telling you what the bible says). The basic stuff still stays the same though.
The Bible is significant, but it's not all there is. From previous posts you mean "not all there is other than mystical revelations", right?

[angela2]

I am curious, angela, as to what you make of:

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 45, Verse 7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I have a reasonably good defense against this, IMHO, but it does seem like a straightforward starting point for arguing that God is the author of evil.
seebs,

I'm 64 years old. From that perspective, you're a very bright youngster. You've been very clever in dancing with Christian beliefs, and maybe you're proud of your footwork. You certainly fooled this old woman.

But, you see, I've lost respect for you.

You know, I never much cared what you believed which is why I didn't pay careful attention to the bits and pieces. I like you because of who you are cyberspace-wise not because of some ideal belief I think you should have.

Now if you will just please, please, please, cut out the fancy footwork, I can go back to respecting you, which is what I really want to do. I know Paul said he was all things to all people, but most of us aren't Paul.

BTW, poor translation of Isaiah.

[seebs]

I just like the KJV because it's purty.

I still have no idea at all what you're talking about. If you'd slow down a bit, show your work, maybe I could follow. For instance, if you could point to where I said something that implies non-theism, that would help. At this point, I am wondering whether you have a special private meaning of theism that's different from what everyone else seems to mean by it.

I mean, we are talking about belief in a supernatural creator, that kind of thing, yes?

[angela2]

I just like the KJV because it's purty.
Yea, me too. Who in their right mind would prefer "in a mirror dimly" to "through a glass darkly?" Then there's the "whale" vs "large fish." If I ever get swallowed I demand a whale.

[seebs]

But in any event, the "poor" translation is the KJV. I know other people translate it differently; I'm just pointing out that I don't know how unreasonable the position is, depending on what one means by "evil".

[Stumpjumper]

Did I find the right thread :D

[lpetrich]

I have seen a lot of atheists who seem to believe that everything, even psalms, is always historical and literal. I've rarely seen even fairly wacky Christians go that far.
Including young-earthers?

(me: And I thought that the Bible was supposed to be The Greatest Book Ever Written.)
I am a big fan, anyway.
I couldn't help but be sarcastic about seeing it praised as the greatest history book and the greatest moral instruction book ever written, and after seeing certain sorts of people wave it around as THE TRUTH and the source of all goodness while going to extremely great lengths to avoid acknowleding even the tiniest flaws in it.

If "believing in the Bible" is to be central, then we can probably assume that the Bible's essential claims and points are true.
And how does one distinguish essential from nonessential ones?

In the Bible, Jesus regularly affirms standards of judgment involving kindness and charity to others.
One does have to be a bit selective, because Jesus Christ was depicted as having some less-than-loving teachings and doing less-than-loving things.

His references to "belief" are generally in contexts where it is ludicrous to interpret it as "claim that I exist" and easy to interpret it as "accept the following or preceeding message as reliable".
Like...

Trying to figure out how to quote Paul without savaging him, and without reproducing whole chapters, is a bit rough.
I don't feel dependent on what Paul had to say, so my life is a little bit easier. :)

In short, if the Bible is true, then being compassionate is more important than believing the Bible to be true.
That's if it is 100% consistent, which it isn't.

Obsessing over the Bible is like driving your car back and forth over a road map in the hopes that this will somehow cause you to be magically transported to California. Study is nice, but at the end of the day, you gotta get out there and love some neighbors.
And if it's so important to do so, then what does one need a Bible for?

(What's a True Xian?)
After a while, I developed this amazing sixth sense. Bits and pieces would stick out where they shouldn't. And then the bits and pieces would form a gestalt. ...
But I don't see what connection that has with what has often been called Xianity past and present.

I just like the KJV because it's purty.
I prefer modern-English translations; to me, a translation is supposed to be understandable.

[seebs]

Including young-earthers?

Even they generally grant that it's not ALL literal.

And how does one distinguish essential from nonessential ones?

A very interesting question, and possibly the reason that very few people consider Chick Tracts to be inerrant.

One does have to be a bit selective, because Jesus Christ was depicted as having some less-than-loving teachings and doing less-than-loving things.

And also as speaking in hyperbole rather a lot. Someone pointed out to me that, while Jesus was quite willing to say some hostile things about groups of people (such as the Pharisees), Jesus doesn't seem to have spent much time being insulting or mean to people.

His references to "belief" are generally in contexts where it is ludicrous to interpret it as "claim that I exist" and easy to interpret it as "accept the following or preceeding message as reliable".

Like...

Any context where someone says to other people who are present "believe in me" suggests that the interpretation "assert that I exist" is not a likely one.

That's if it is 100% consistent, which it isn't.

If it isn't, then we're stuck with the best guess at what was stressed most... And being compassionate is important anyway.

It seems to stay important.

And if it's so important to do so, then what does one need a Bible for?

I don't know that we need it, but it seems to be useful to people who take it seriously without pretending it's a textbook.

People who study the text seriously are often able to find real value in it; people who treat it as though the first impression anyone gets from reading any translation is absolute undeniable truth tend to end up believing a lot of contradictory nonsense.

I prefer modern-English translations; to me, a translation is supposed to be understandable.

In many cases, "understandable" also means "inaccurate in a way consistent with the personal beliefs of the people in charge of the translation".

Part of the problem is that you simply can't have a perfect translation, and you end up with a conflict between the desire for sentences that can be read in English, and sentences that carry a reasonably good perception of what the original text said.

I tend to quote in KJV just because the poetic language is pretty, and serves the additional function of warning people that casual interpretation according to modern usage is probably foolhardy.

[angela2]

In many cases, "understandable" also means "inaccurate in a way consistent with the personal beliefs of the people in charge of the translation".

Part of the problem is that you simply can't have a perfect translation, and you end up with a conflict between the desire for sentences that can be read in English, and sentences that carry a reasonably good perception of what the original text said.
A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.

[Biff the unclean]

What a joke. The bible is a collection of barbaric myths. The central theme of the NT is of a fiendish God who requires the perfect human sacrifice before he can “forgive” humanity. Yeeeeech!
Readable translation, poetic or plodding prose, it’s still barbaric. And if it isn’t beneath you people then it should be.

[BigJim]

A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.
Please proove me wrong here, but that statment just seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

What basis do you have for this assertion? Have you done your own translations from the orginal texts? If they are unreadable, does that make them more accurate translations? Does that mean that the original texts were unreadable to the educated people of the day?

[Vorkosigan]

A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.

Speaking as someone with more than a decade of translation experience from Chinese to English, I'd say this statement was completely wacky. Readability depends on the subjective judgment of the reader and the skills of the translator.

Part of the problem is that you simply can't have a perfect translation, and you end up with a conflict between the desire for sentences that can be read in English, and sentences that carry a reasonably good perception of what the original text said.

Not really. The "problem" lies in (1) reader expectations that the text will have a certain amount of gravity, since it is the Bible, and will reject as "unreadable" translations that preserve the vigor and informality of the original; (2) that the translators are torn between honestly rendering the text and protecting favored doctrines; (3) that many words have meanings that have been lost, or the text cannot be reconstructed, but translators feel obligated to provide meanings for them anyway; (4) that doctrine influences the understanding of the meaning and thus the way the translation is rendered; and so on. The text could be honestly translated and be perfectly readable, no problem. But most readers would reject such a "readable" translation because it does not accord with their expectations or desires, their understanding of "proper" translation being influenced by the long shadow of the King James.

Michael

[Vorkosigan]

I have seen a lot of atheists who seem to believe that everything, even psalms, is always historical and literal. I've rarely seen even fairly wacky Christians go that far.

You've got to be kidding me. I can't help it if your beliefs are a fuzzy mess that acts as an enabler for the fundamentalists who would destroy you if they had the chance, but don't go deflecting your incoherency back onto us and pretending it makes you superior. I have never met an atheist who held the position that poetry in the Bible was literal truth. Perhaps you can name some of those "a lot of atheists?"

Vorkosigan

[angela2]

quote: angela2
A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.
Speaking as someone with more than a decade of translation experience from Chinese to English, I'd say this statement was completely wacky. Readability depends on the subjective judgment of the reader and the skills of the translator.
Uh huh. You mean the subjective judgment of the reader as to 'readability' and the skills of the translator to render a close translation? I hear an echo.

[angela2]

Please proove me wrong here, but that statment just seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

What basis do you have for this assertion? Have you done your own translations from the orginal texts?
It's not difficult today to get an interlinear bible online or to find commentaries that give the nuances of the original language. Also multiple translations are available online and I own many others. Lastly, study bibles give information on translation.
If they are unreadable, does that make them more accurate translations?
I never said 'unreadable.' I gave a continuum. And I said 'in general.'
Does that mean that the original texts were unreadable to the educated people of the day?
No.

[BigJim]

I have seen a lot of atheists who seem to believe that everything, even psalms, is always historical and literal. I've rarely seen even fairly wacky Christians go that far.

You've got to be kidding me. I can't help it if your beliefs are a fuzzy mess that acts as an enabler for the fundamentalists who would destroy you if they had the chance, but don't go deflecting your incoherency back onto us and pretending it makes you superior. I have never met an atheist who held the position that poetry in the Bible was literal truth. Perhaps you can name some of those "a lot of atheists?"


I'm guessing that seebs meant to say Atheists treat the bible, even psalms as if it was historical and literal in an effort to disprove it, or use it against believers, not that atheists actually believe it is literally true.

Basically that atheists make up the strawman "the bible is literally 100% true".

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[lpetrich]

(Jesus Christ portrayed as less-than-nice...)
And also as speaking in hyperbole rather a lot.
And what brings you to that conclusion, seebs? Did Jesus Christ himself say so in plain and simple words?

And how does one avoid "If I like it, it's non-hyperbole, while if I don't like it, it's hyperbole"?

Sort of like "If I like it, it's literal, while if I don't like it, it's allegorical" and "If I like it, then context is irrelevant, while if I don't like it, it's out of context".

I find this continual double standard of "heads I win, tails you lose" VERY annoying, and that sort of thing makes fundamentalism seem MUCH more rigorous and straightforward. If one is going to cherry-pick, then at least be honest about it, rather than claim to accept the whole thing as absolute truth, then get evasive and weaselly about the parts that one dislikes.

Someone pointed out to me that, while Jesus was quite willing to say some hostile things about groups of people (such as the Pharisees), Jesus doesn't seem to have spent much time being insulting or mean to people.
So rhetoric like "You snakes and brood of vipers, how can you escape being sentenced to Hell?" isn't really insulting or mean?

As Bertrand Russell noted, Socrates did not go around foaming at the mouth about how anyone who would not listen to him deserved to be sent to Tartarus for some well-deserved eternal torment.

If it isn't, then we're stuck with the best guess at what was stressed most... And being compassionate is important anyway.
However, there are lots of uncompassionate things that Jesus Christ was described as saying and doing that are difficult to explain away without special pleading.

Like when he was at a boy at the Jerusalem Temple who had gotten so lost in his studies that he forgot about his parents, who took three days to find him. "Don't you see that I must be at my Father's house?" seems like a rather uncompassionate thing to say to worried parents, as did his getting out of touch with them.

(On my liking modern-English translations...)
In many cases, "understandable" also means "inaccurate in a way consistent with the personal beliefs of the people in charge of the translation".
I will concede that that does happen, like some translations bowdlerizing the "eunuchs" in Matthew 19:12 into "those who cannot marry".

Part of the problem is that you simply can't have a perfect translation, and you end up with a conflict between the desire for sentences that can be read in English, and sentences that carry a reasonably good perception of what the original text said.
Seems like the Bible is a less-than-perfect work if it is difficult to translate without serious ambiguity.

I tend to quote in KJV just because the poetic language is pretty, and serves the additional function of warning people that casual interpretation according to modern usage is probably foolhardy.

A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.

So are you two saying that the best translation of anything is a very awkward translation? Or is that only true of the Bible?

[angela2]

So are you two saying that the best translation of anything is a very awkward translation? Or is that only true of the Bible?
Some versions that make a serious effort to give a close translation are reasonably readable (I wouldn't use the word 'awkward').

One consideration with translations is why we are reading it in the first place. I'm a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I love his work (in translation). I read it for entertainment. Although I've been told it's much more powerful in Spanish, I've never made an effort to find out.

Sometimes I'm so impressed by a particular phrase in a translation, I want to know if it's the result of the imagination of the translator or the author. One time I was reading a translation of Augustine that used the word, "fickle" to describe the fluttering of a leave. I actually dug through the Latin and discovered that the imaginative use of that word was Augustine's.

With scripture, I have a strong interest in knowing what the text in another language really said. Maybe that's because scripture is integral to theology and theology is my discipline. So I've done a lot of looking.

As to recommending a translation of the bible to those who haven't done a lot of looking, the NRSV is a good one. It's even better as a study bible since that has relevant notes. That's one way to keep the flow of the translation and still be sure the text isn't misunderstood.

[RPS]

And how does one avoid "If I like it, it's non-hyperbole, while if I don't like it, it's hyperbole"?By doing careful and honest interpretation and hoping for the best. No guarantees however.

Sort of like "If I like it, it's literal, while if I don't like it, it's allegorical" and "If I like it, then context is irrelevant, while if I don't like it, it's out of context".I see this claim a lot and I can't see it as anything other than nuts. Does language require interpretation? Duh. Is it subject to erroneous or slanted interpretation? Duh.

The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...." That's no law. Yet no court has ever interpreted the First Amendment as literally meaning no law. For example, telling military secrets to the enemy is prohibited. Is that "cherry picking"? When Jesus says "I am the Door" I don't expect hinges. I don't think anyone else does either. Is that "cherry picking"?

I find this continual double standard of "heads I win, tails you lose" VERY annoying, and that sort of thing makes fundamentalism seem MUCH more rigorous and straightforward.Only if you haven't thought it through and simply want an easy target.

[sharon45]

Only if you haven't thought it through and simply want an easy target.Instead christians haven't thought it through because they really want an easy answer.

[Vorkosigan]

quote: angela2
A good point and worth stressing. As a general statement, I would say that the more 'readable' a translation is the less likely it is to be a close translation.

Uh huh. You mean the subjective judgment of the reader as to 'readability' and the skills of the translator to render a close translation? I hear an echo.

The only echo is in your head. "The skills of the translator" is in reproducing the foreign language text in an acceptable version of the target language, one acceptable to the readers and dependent on context. "I yesterday went" which is the literal word order of a Chinese sentence, is usually not acceptable in English. But any of the following word orders would be a "close" -- in fact, dead on -- rendering:

I went yesterday
Yesterday I went
I yesterday went
Went I yesterday
Yesterday went I

The acceptablility of any of the above depends on the context and expectations of the reader, not the translator -- they are all equally faithful renderings. There is no conflict between closeness and readability. The well known exclamation in Chinese "men dou mei you!" can be translated readably as either....

No way!
Over my dead body!

Which one is more readable? Why? The second is the closest translation, for it supplies the exact idiomatic equivalent of the Chinese "there is no door!" IMHO it is also more readable, but that is my subjective preference.

Vorkosigan

[angela2]

"The skills of the translator" is in reproducing the foreign language text in an acceptable version of the target language, one acceptable to the readers and dependent on context.
While everything you say is true, you should bear in mind that Chinese is a modern language and complete texts in Chinese are available. So any translator would give the same or nearly the same English word or phrase as you do. Context doesn't answer all the questions raised with ancient languages. Because they are ancient languages the context may be unavailable. For both Hebrew and Greek we often have difficulty finding the exact meaning of a word or phrase. Words that are used only once in either language give us no reference point.

The problems get even more complicated. Sometime a Hebrew text is corrupt and nearly unintelligible in the original language. For example, 2 Sam. 6:6-8.

Also some passages in Biblical Greek lack the phrase, "it is" or "they are". This language also lacks articles making it difficult sometimes to assign modifiers.

The worst translations occurs when translators choose (perhaps using these problems as an excuse ) to give translations that go far beyond the text and are really the result of the translator's interpretation of the text that is extant. The book The Message (I hesitate to call it the bible) is an example of this.

[Vorkosigan]

While everything you say is true, you should bear in mind that Chinese is a modern language and complete texts in Chinese are available. So any translator would give the same or nearly the same English word or phrase as you do. Context doesn't answer all the questions raised with ancient languages. Because they are ancient languages the context may be unavailable. For both Hebrew and Greek we often have difficulty finding the exact meaning of a word or phrase. Words that are used only once in either language give us no reference point.

The problems get even more complicated. Sometime a Hebrew text is corrupt and nearly unintelligible in the original language. For example, 2 Sam. 6:6-8.

Also some passages in Biblical Greek lack the phrase, "it is" or "they are". This language also lacks articles making it difficult sometimes to assign modifiers.

The worst translations occurs when translators choose (perhaps using these problems as an excuse ) to give translations that go far beyond the text and are really the result of the translator's interpretation of the text that is extant. The book The Message (I hesitate to call it the bible) is an example of this.

Angela, I just wrote extensively on this above in my very first post above. It also has nothing to do with readability either. How translators handle the problem of missing or corrupt text is not a readability issue. It's a fidelity issue.

There. is. no. relationship. between. fidelity. and. readability. Your original complaint, that a close translation would be unreadable, is based on false ideas about translation. A close translation can be very readable.

Michael

[EthnAlln]

Speaking as someone with more than a decade of translation experience from Chinese to English, I'd say this statement was completely wacky. Readability depends on the subjective judgment of the reader and the skills of the translator.


Well said. Wednesday night I attended a poetry reading by Evgenii Evtushenko, in which he read some of his poems in translation, some in the original Russian. He made a nice comment on translation. "A translation is like a woman. If it's beautiful, it isn't faithful; if it's faithful, it isn't beautiful."

That is particularly true of his most famous poem, "Babii Yar." Of course, it's the name of a place, so it doesn't require translation. But where does the name come from? "Baba" is a somewhat pejorative term (in Russian) for a woman, suggesting a wrinkled old lady, although to Cossacks, it was pretty much synonymous with "woman." "Babii" is the adjectival form of it. "Yar" is a hill. So "Crone Knoll" might be a good translation, but it doesn't satisfy me. After 30 years of moonlighting translating Russian and Ukrainian scientific articles, I finally gave the whole thing up as a bad job. No translation ever satisfies me now, not my own, not other people's.


Not really. The "problem" lies in (1) reader expectations that the text will have a certain amount of gravity, since it is the Bible, and will reject as "unreadable" translations that preserve the vigor and informality of the original; (2) that the translators are torn between honestly rendering the text and protecting favored doctrines; (3) that many words have meanings that have been lost, or the text cannot be reconstructed, but translators feel obligated to provide meanings for them anyway; (4) that doctrine influences the understanding of the meaning and thus the way the translation is rendered; and so on. The text could be honestly translated and be perfectly readable, no problem. But most readers would reject such a "readable" translation because it does not accord with their expectations or desires, their understanding of "proper" translation being influenced by the long shadow of the King James.


Well said, again. A famous example occurs in Luke 19, where Zacchaeus allegedly tells Jesus "I will give half of my goods to the poor, and if I cheated anyone of anything, I will give him back four times as much." In fact, the two future-tense verbs "will give" and "will give back" are both in present tense in Greek. Now, in most languages, the present tense can be used to express an intention that will take place in the near future, and I believe that is true of Greek also (although at the moment, I can't come up with a quotation to prove it that is unambiguously a statement of future intent).

But suppose it really was a statement of what Zacchaeus always did. Think what it would mean if Zacchaeus actually said, "I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I give him back four times as much." He would be justifying himself in the face of those who assumed he was a crook because he was a tax collector. Then Jesus' words about salvation coming to his house that day would have an entirely different meaning. Not that Zacchaeus' heart had been changed, but that he was finally reconciled with his neighbors. Jesus' willingness to go to his house and dine with him was the catalyst that brought about this reconciliation.

To me, it's a better story that way, but perhaps only because the old version of it has gotten stale to me. I'm not an expert in Koine Greek, so I can't say for sure which translation makes more sense.

[angela2]

Angela, I just wrote extensively on this above in my very first post above. It also has nothing to do with readability either. How translators handle the problem of missing or corrupt text is not a readability issue. It's a fidelity issue.

There. is. no. relationship. between. fidelity. and. readability. Your original complaint, that a close translation would be unreadable, is based on false ideas about translation. A close translation can be very readable.

Michael
This is a silly dicussion. If the text is corrupt, what happens then? Does the translator try to be as faithful as possible to what is extant? If she/he does, will it affect the readability of the text? C'mon.

[Biff the unclean]

This is a silly dicussion. If the text is corrupt, what happens then?
You give the impression that you are looking for a loop hole. There are parts of the text which you wish to change while continuing make the claim that you believe the text and so you have labeled them corrupt

[Vorkosigan]

Well said. Wednesday night I attended a poetry reading by Evgenii Evtushenko, in which he read some of his poems in translation, some in the original Russian. He made a nice comment on translation. "A translation is like a woman. If it's beautiful, it isn't faithful; if it's faithful, it isn't beautiful."

LOL. I have from time to time taken a crack at some of the Tang poems. Then I go find some alcohol.

Michael

[angela2]

LOL. I have from time to time taken a crack at some of the Tang poems. Then I go find some alcohol.

Michael
That's how I felt when forced to translate Ovid. :D

[Steven Mading]

I'm guessing that seebs meant to say Atheists treat the bible, even psalms as if it was historical and literal in an effort to disprove it, or use it against believers, not that atheists actually believe it is literally true.

Basically that atheists make up the strawman "the bible is literally 100% true".

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've had this accusation leveled at me before by someone unable to understand the gist of my argument. I point out what a literalist interpretation of the bible would result in, for the purpose of proving to believers that the important parts of their religious views are not coming from their bible like they falsely think they are. They are filtering their interpretation of their bible through something ELSE that is external to the bible, and using that something ELSE to decide what they want the content of their religion to be. If they read in Deuteronomy that people who wear clothing of mixed types of fibers should be stoned to death, something inside themselves, something entirely external to the bible itself, comes out and says, "that's ridiculous and draconian, obviously we don't *really* want to kill people for wearing a cotton/polyester blend tee-shirt." So they ignore that part of the bible, or use the "metaphor" dodge to sweep it aside. Something that is not itself the bible was just used there to filter out a part of the bible. It's this something ELSE, whatever it may be, that is the real source for their morality. Therefore the bible adds nothing useful to their worldview, and they should stop thinking poorly of those of use who don't use the bible at all. Whatever it is that they are using as their filter through which they interpret their bible, it is that filter, not the bible itself, that is the source of their morality and convictions. We atheists simply eliminate the middleman and use that moral filter itself instead of trying the unnecessary step of picking and choosing the parts of the bible we like.

The purpose of showing the lunacy of a literalist interpretation of the bible is to try to get people to admit that it's the moderate, nice Christians that are the ones deviating from what the religion says, not the fundamentalists. It always bugs me when nice, moderate Christians use the claim "those people aren't following true Christianity" (or some variant thereof) try to distance themselves from the fundamentalists of the world. While I understand that they shouldn't be tainted by association with the fundamentalists, and I understand they they don't think the same way, I just wish they'd phrase it the other way around, because that's actually a much more truthful and honest description of what's going on. The fundamentalists are the ones following more closely to the religion, and it's the moderates that have deviated from it. And it's a good thing - and they deserve respect for having the moral fortitude to make that deviation, but it IS a deviation from what the religion actually says. But because the moderates feel a need to pretend the religion is all nice and happy and the source of all goodness, they twist it around and phrase it the other way - that the nice happy version they follow is the 'real' one, when it's actually the other way around. By refusing to label their deviations from canon as being exactly that, they continue perpetuating the myth that religion is good and areligion is bad - and that's a myth that has direct negative social impact on me and other atheists like me.

(The same problem exists within Islam with regards to the Taleban.)

[Steven Mading]

There. is. no. relationship. between. fidelity. and. readability. Your original complaint, that a close translation would be unreadable, is based on false ideas about translation. A close translation can be very readable.
Michael
But what about ideas that are terse to explain in the source language and have no easy terse parallel in the target language? That happens a lot. To choose a translation that has perfect accuracy would require verbosity and thus not be very readable. The inverse can be a big problem too: when a vague word in the source language doesn't have vague parallens in the target language, you end up having to be verbose to retain correctness. Consider the famous "thou shalt not [kill or murder]". In the source hebrew the fact that the word being used is ambiguious does not require verbosity, the inherent problems in abmiguity are immediately apparent. In English, a perfectly correct translation would be "Thou shalt not kill or perhaps thou shalt not murder." Anything less verbose does not communicate it correctly. For example, just saying "thou shalt not murder or kill" sounds like it means both are prohibited, when it really it's supposed to mean just one or the other and we can't tell which from the text." The idea just doesn't translate tersely.

For another example, try translating the Japanese concept that "In the next paragraph, the speaker who is saying the first sentence is female while the speaker who is saying the second sentence is male" - which is communicated by word choices embedded in the sentences themselves in Japanese, but in English where both men and women are allowed access to 100% of the language to use, communicating this fact would require an extra out-of-band explanation, and perhaps a little aside about a feature of the Japanese language.

[angela2]

I've had this accusation leveled at me before by someone unable to understand the gist of my argument. I point out what a literalist interpretation of the bible would result in, for the purpose of proving to believers that the important parts of their religious views are not coming from their bible like they falsely think they are. They are filtering their interpretation of their bible through something ELSE that is external to the bible, and using that something ELSE to decide what they want the content of their religion to be. If they read in Deuteronomy that people who wear clothing of mixed types of fibers should be stoned to death, something inside themselves, something entirely external to the bible itself, comes out and says, "that's ridiculous and draconian, obviously we don't *really* want to kill people for wearing a cotton/polyester blend tee-shirt." So they ignore that part of the bible, or use the "metaphor" dodge to sweep it aside. Something that is not itself the bible was just used there to filter out a part of the bible. It's this something ELSE, whatever it may be, that is the real source for their morality. Therefore the bible adds nothing useful to their worldview, and they should stop thinking poorly of those of use who don't use the bible at all. Whatever it is that they are using as their filter through which they interpret their bible, it is that filter, not the bible itself, that is the source of their morality and convictions. We atheists simply eliminate the middleman and use that moral filter itself instead of trying the unnecessary step of picking and choosing the parts of the bible we like.

The purpose of showing the lunacy of a literalist interpretation of the bible is to try to get people to admit that it's the moderate, nice Christians that are the ones deviating from what the religion says, not the fundamentalists. It always bugs me when nice, moderate Christians use the claim "those people aren't following true Christianity" (or some variant thereof) try to distance themselves from the fundamentalists of the world. While I understand that they shouldn't be tainted by association with the fundamentalists, and I understand they they don't think the same way, I just wish they'd phrase it the other way around, because that's actually a much more truthful and honest description of what's going on. The fundamentalists are the ones following more closely to the religion, and it's the moderates that have deviated from it. And it's a good thing - and they deserve respect for having the moral fortitude to make that deviation, but it IS a deviation from what the religion actually says. But because the moderates feel a need to pretend the religion is all nice and happy and the source of all goodness, they twist it around and phrase it the other way - that the nice happy version they follow is the 'real' one, when it's actually the other way around. By refusing to label their deviations from canon as being exactly that, they continue perpetuating the myth that religion is good and areligion is bad - and that's a myth that has direct negative social impact on me and other atheists like me.

(The same problem exists within Islam with regards to the Taleban.)
And no matter how many times any number of people prove that you will just plain wrong, you continue to repeat yourself.

[seebs]

I've had this accusation leveled at me before by someone unable to understand the gist of my argument. I point out what a literalist interpretation of the bible would result in, for the purpose of proving to believers that the important parts of their religious views are not coming from their bible like they falsely think they are.

This carries the hidden premise that the Bible is intended to be literal. I have no reason to believe this.

If it's not intended as literal, then interpreting it literally is modifying the message, and interpreting it in some other way is less of a modification.

[seebs]

But what about ideas that are terse to explain in the source language and have no easy terse parallel in the target language?

A friend of mine is a big fan of an anime called "One Piece", of which the licensed official English translation is essentially a rewrite. (Whole plot arcs are removed, weapons are digitally altered to look like non-weapons, blood is removed...)

So she obtained a Chinese copy of the show, with fan-added English translations.

At one point, something bad happened, and a character yelled something. In English, it was rendered as "DO NOT WANT!"

The problem here is that, while there is something you could yell in Japanese which would translate elegantly to the English "NOOOOOO!", there's simply no way to say just "no" in Chinese. (At least, I never found one.)

Any translation of this is gonna screw things up.

On the topic of readability vs. clarity: I think it's important to remember that the source material is in many cases poetic to begin with. A straight literal translation of poetry is likely to be awful. In some cases, the original text was not "clear" in the sense that one wishes a translation of a textbook or manual to be "clear".

For another example, consider the Rammstein song Du Hast.

(Under 20%, O Copyright People)

Du
Du hast
Du hast Mich
Du hast Mich gefragt
Du hast Mich gefragt und Ich habe nichts gesagt.

You cannot translate this into English correctly. You could write

You
You have
...

But what next? English won't let you write "You have me asked", because that's not how we form parts of sentences. Furthermore, given the intentional pun in the German, might not "You / You hate" be a better translation?

Indeed, the band's translation is:

You
You hate
You hate me
You hate me to say
You hate me to say and I did not obey

It's not even meaningful, I think, to speak of "clarity" in this case, and a "clear" translation would be inherently less accurate.

Since a great deal of the material in the Bible is in poetic language in the original, a "clear" translation is likely to be just plain wrong; furthermore, in many cases, the translations that claim to be "clear" have obtained their clarity by picking sides on questions that people have not agreed on. What is the best translation for malakos arsenokoites, and how do we pick a "clear" translation?

[Merzbow42]

This carries the hidden premise that the Bible is intended to be literal. I have no reason to believe this.

If it's not intended as literal, then interpreting it literally is modifying the message, and interpreting it in some other way is less of a modification.

You seem to agree that if God is presenting a coherent message to humanity in the Bible, a great deal of human interpretation is necessary to determine what God is actually saying. (And if you don't actually think God is coherent, I'd like to hear you defend him against charges of insanity). Does not this act of interpretation involve constant comparisons against one's own and society's own standards of moral behavior? If so, then why is God relevant?

[seebs]

You seem to agree that if God is presenting a coherent message to humanity in the Bible, a great deal of human interpretation is necessary to determine what God is actually saying.

I think this carries the assumption that I think God wrote the Bible. I don't think so.

I think that Jesus presents a coherent message in, say, the Sermon on the Mount. I would say that a fair amount of interpretation is necessary to understand this message.

Does not this act of interpretation involve constant comparisons against one's own and society's own standards of moral behavior? If so, then why is God relevant?

Well, a couple of things. One is that I believe that the human moral sense also comes originally from God. (I'm not arguing that evolutionary methods aren't involved as some of the "how" of our experience of right and wrong; I'm making a teleological claim, not a mechanical one.)

But beyond that... Examination of our own understanding, and of our society's views and insights, may be helpful in understanding the message, but that doesn't mean that the message doesn't add some information, or give us the beginnings of a way to disambiguate competing claims made by our society or intuition.

As to why this requires study and effort, instead of just being said, this comes down to the question of what the message is. If I were convinced that the Real Point were a specific list of forbidden activities, then I would think the book hopelessly ineffectual at specifying them.

If, on the other hand, the point is to lead people to think about these questions in the right way, the material is all there, and it seems to work okay as long as people take the question seriously.

[braces_for_impact]

Wow, how did I miss this thread for so long? Damnit, now I have a lot of reading to do. This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot over the past week, so it's interesting that I should run into this thread now.

I used to be of the opinion that moderate Christianity wasn't so bad, but I've been sensing the winds of change in regards to my opinion on this issue. (Admittedly I have waffled back and forth some. ;) )

I'm starting to become really irritated when I constantly hear that fundamentalists or (especially) extremists have hijacked religion. This is especially true in regards to terrorism. We see it on the news every day, that Islam is a "religion of peace". As if there's a totally benign form of religion, and what extremists do is bastardize it somehow.

The problem as I see it, irregardless of whether we're speaking of Islam, Christianity, etc. is that any specific brand of religion (moderate or extreme) can be used to justify anything. Such is the nature of faith.

Every time something goes horribly wrong, there's always someone there to assure us that what motivates these people is merely a "mistranslation". All of these various holy books really do say all those horrible, nasty things. Those men that flew those planes into the World Trade Center really did believe they would receive 72 virgins in paradise as their reward. Michael F. Griffin really did believe he was performing a just and righteous act when he killed Dr. David Gunn outside an abortion clinic, and that god would reward him for it.

In the U.S. the religious right has hijacked the Republican party. Supposedly these fundamentalists are in the minority. Yet despite a vast majority of liberal or moderate Christians residing in a democratic republic: homosexuals are still denied basic rights, stem cell research is severely curtailed, science classes all over the country have to fight to teach evolution, we are the aggressor in a war in the middle east, the rich are getting richer while the poor are becoming worse off - need I go on?

How can moderate Christians criticize their fundamentalist brethren in a society which views holding religion up to scrutiny as taboo? After all, if you call bullshit on their silly ideas, someone might call bullshit on yours.

I cannot help but think that moderate Christianity lays the groundwork for fundamentalism. Many, if not most, moderates still believe that man is wretched and can only be saved by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, that there is an afterlife, that god has a master plan, and that Jesus will be coming back either within the next 50 years or within their own lifetime. These simply are not conducive ideas to securing a bright future, or rationally setting policy for the present.

[lpetrich]

These arguments about translation make me wonder how the Bible can qualify as a universally relevant and otherwise perfect document if it is so difficult to translate properly. Why doesn't it come with a translation guide and a guide to its political, social, and cultural background?

And why isn't it revealed directly to everybody's consciousnesses if revealing it is so super important?

I also note a rather desperate unwillingness to accept that the Bible has even the tiniest of flaws.

[Steven Mading]

And no matter how many times any number of people prove that you will just plain wrong, you continue to repeat yourself.
The number of times that proof has been presented to me is zero. The number of times people have been willing to lie and pretend they have such a proof and have presented THAT is very very large.

Here's a free clue - a large number of repetitions of a claim doesn't constitute proof of the claim.
The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation. People believed the genesis story quite literally until geology proved it wrong. The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.

There is nothing wrong with being open-minded enough to drop those parts of the religion that are shown to be wrong, and reinterpret them as purely metephorical. However, there is something wrong with trying to twist things every time this happens into making it look like the interpretation was always metaphorical, when clearly it was not. I'm not a fan of historical revisionists.

[Steven Mading]

This carries the hidden premise that the Bible is intended to be literal. I have no reason to believe this.

If it's not intended as literal, then interpreting it literally is modifying the message, and interpreting it in some other way is less of a modification.
I refer you to my response to angela2's post.

[RPS]

The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation. People believed the genesis story quite literally until geology proved it wrong. The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.This claim is patently false. See, e.g., Augustine, circa 400 A.D., The Literal Meaning of Genesis (http://www.holycross.edu/departments/religiousstudies/alaffey/Augustine-Genesis.htm).

[WishboneDawn]

These arguments about translation make me wonder how the Bible can qualify as a universally relevant and otherwise perfect document if it is so difficult to translate properly. Why doesn't it come with a translation guide and a guide to its political, social, and cultural background?

And why isn't it revealed directly to everybody's consciousnesses if revealing it is so super important?

I also note a rather desperate unwillingness to accept that the Bible has even the tiniest of flaws.

The bible has lots of flaws. Flaws upon flaws. Huge friggin' holes even.

Just so you know I'll never say it's perfect.

[seebs]

And why isn't it revealed directly to everybody's consciousnesses if revealing it is so super important?

I would argue that, with very rare exceptions, the important revelation is there for everyone.

I also note a rather desperate unwillingness to accept that the Bible has even the tiniest of flaws.

I don't. I just don't see them as particularly significant or important.

I think there's a lot of fallacy of the excluded middle; the Bible is often portrayed, both by fundamentalists and by atheists, as having to be either totally perfect or totally worthless.

Me, I just think it's pretty good at being what it is.

[seebs]

The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation.

No, it isn't.

The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.

Augustine called. He said something about the Literal Meaning of Genesis (http://www.holycross.edu/departments/religiousstudies/alaffey/Augustine-Genesis.htm).

If, then, Scripture is to be explained under both aspects, what meaning other than the allegorical have the words: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth?"

Seriously, this is just plain wrong. It's not even within hailing distance of plausibility.

Modern literalism, the belief that nothing is allegorical, is the modern deviation; it simply doesn't exist before the late 1800s.

I'm not a fan of historical revisionists.

But you're taking their word for it that their modernist post-Enlightenment notion of "truth" is the same way that the early Christians and Hebrews understood it, and that's just plain nonsense.

Christians and Hebrews both understood Scripture to be largely allegorical in many fronts, and frequently debated whether a given passage might be literal, or allegorical, or both. They did not have the notion that a given passage had exactly one meaning and no other, and they did not necessarily grant an assumption of primacy to a literal reading.

[seebs]

This claim is patently false. See, e.g., Augustine, circa 400 A.D., The Literal Meaning of Genesis (http://www.holycross.edu/departments/religiousstudies/alaffey/Augustine-Genesis.htm).

Good catch. Also Origen:

What intelligent person can believe that there was a first day, then a second and third day, evening, and morning, without the sun, the moon, and the stars; and the first day…even without a sky? Who is foolish enough to believe that, like a human farmer, God planted a garden to the east in Eden and created in it a visible, physical tree of life from which anyone tasting its fruit with bodily teeth would receive life; and that one would have a part in good and evil by eating the fruit picked from the appropriate tree? When God is depicted walking in the garden in the evening and Adam hiding behind the tree, I think no one will doubt that these details point figuratively to some mysteries by means of a historical narrative which seems to have happened but did not happen in a bodily sense.

I mean, come on folks! Basic Christian history, here.

[RPS]

I mean, come on folks! Basic Christian history, here.Why let facts get in the way of a good story?

[Merzbow42]

Well, a couple of things. One is that I believe that the human moral sense also comes originally from God. (I'm not arguing that evolutionary methods aren't involved as some of the "how" of our experience of right and wrong; I'm making a teleological claim, not a mechanical one.)


If our moral sense came from God, then why is it that the standard for what is considered moral changes so much across the Bible (and into the modern day)? If you answer that even God realizes that moral standards should change and evolve over time, then God's work must therefore not be in establishing a one-time moral reference point, but in guiding changes to our moral reference point over time.

If so, then why is it so difficult to detect God's work in guiding such changes? Certainly the history of the moral evolution of the human race is fraught with ups and downs, centuries long. This is exactly what I would suspect if it was humanity itself trying to recalibrate its moral compass via trial and error without help from above.

I am trying to find signs of God in liberal theology, but wherever I look, he seems to slip out of sight again.

[seebs]

I don't think the underlying moral standards have changed, I think people have gradually learned to apply them. I don't think that what we have now is the revealed moral truth; I just think it's closer than we were two hundred years ago, which was in turn closer that what we had a thousand years ago.

I don't see any easy way to describe how we would detect God's work in such a case, because we have no control groups.

[lpetrich]

It's true that Origen and Augustine considered the Genesis creation stories to be allegorical; Augustine apparently believed that God had created the Universe in an instant. Instead of stretching those days out into ages, he squeezed them into instants.

However, those premodern theologians nevertheless agreed that the Universe is under 6000 years old, though they disagreed on exactly when it was created -- around 3800 BCE or around 5500 BCE.

Augustine said so plainly in his City of God, and he considered the early parts of the Bible to be literal history, though interestingly enough, he considered pagan mythology to be more-or-less literal history.

I will concede that Augustine had the good sense to criticize being attached to scientific errors in the name of one's religion; as Bertrand Russell said, "One wonders what he would have thought if he had lived in the time of Galileo."

So I think that seebs and RPS are being unhistorical here. And "modern" inerrancy is not exactly unhistorical here either, because it often involves arguing away as nonliteral anything inconvenient for it.

[seebs]

They had no reason to pick any particular number for the age of the earth, so I think it's quite reasonable for them to tentatively accept the rough numbers from the Biblical account.

However, the key point here is the question of whether literalism-in-everything is the "historical approach". It's not. The historical approach of both Christians and Jews is to treat many passages as allegorical, and allow for the possibility that a passage which might seem literal at first reading might be shown through reason or evidence to be allegorical.

We're not arguing conclusions, but methods, and on methods, allegorical reading has been there since the very dawn of Christianity.

[Merzbow42]

I don't see any easy way to describe how we would detect God's work in such a case, because we have no control groups.

Exactly, and that's what I think the problem comes down to. Liberal Christians are smart enough to grant modern science, history, and philosophy almost all the ground that these disciplines have rightfully claimed from religion, but still stubbornly insist that God's work is evident somehow. Liberal theology seems to be willing to interpret as allegorical any passage of the Bible that has been found to conflict with anything these disciplines have uncovered; the only thing I've never seen conceded is the assertion of God's existence (even the claim of Jesus' divinity is abandoned by many).

Putting aside the debate of moral absolutism/relativism and to what degree, why couldn't we have come upon all of the moral wisdom that we've accumulated just on our own? Exactly where do you see evidence of God's work that can't plausibly be explained otherwise?

[seebs]

That's a very good question, and I guess it comes down to what's "plausible".

I believe I can tell my own actions from those of others, and my own thoughts from those of others. In prayer, I often experience things that seem very much to be external to me.

I'm not inclined to dispute the apparent externality of experiences (see also solipsism, rejection of).

[Steven Mading]

This claim is patently false. See, e.g., Augustine, circa 400 A.D., The Literal Meaning of Genesis (http://www.holycross.edu/departments/religiousstudies/alaffey/Augustine-Genesis.htm).
While I was away, lpetrich already debunked this adequetely, so I'll just state that I agree with his response.

[Steven Mading]

No, it isn't.

(followed by [blah blah Augustine blah blah])
While I was away, lpetrich already debunked this adequetely, so I'll just state that I agree with his response.

[seebs]

Well, uhm.

If you're going to make the claim that everything is literal, on the basis of the evidence that people regularly took things allegorically and interpreted them literally only if there was no conflicting data or argumentation, well...

Okay. I guess you can say that. It doesn't mean anything, and it isn't an argument, and it leaves the entire thing as a sort of weird parody of fundamentalism. But you can say it.

On the down side, since it leaves no common frame of reference between whatever you're talking about and any actual Christian or Hebrew history of scriptural interpretation, it does sort of invalidate any hypothetical points that are supposed to follow from it.

The fact remains, allegorical interpretation is not new, it was known to people thousands of years ago, and the assertion that interpreting things as allegory is a "modern deviation" is completely and utterly debunked. That things were sometimes taken literally does not establish the belief that nothing was ever seen as allegory until the modern era.

[fatpie42]

However, those premodern theologians nevertheless agreed that the Universe is under 6000 years old, though they disagreed on exactly when it was created -- around 3800 BCE or around 5500 BCE.


I don't think they would have come up with a figure like 6000 years as early as Augustine or Aquinas. One of my lecturers was actually writing about the guy who first added up the ages of the figures in the Bible, - looking it up - aha!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher

James Ussher is the guy who first did that, and he wasn't born til 1581! What reason Augustine or Aquinas might've had for dating the Earth, I do not know. Perhaps they had some reason for saying that the number 6000 was the perfect number or something, I could not say (or perhaps they never made such a daft claim as to date the age of the Earth without evidence). However, it was not until quite some time later, that the age of the Earth was dated by use of the Bible.

[fatpie42]

While I was away, lpetrich already debunked this adequetely, so I'll just state that I agree with his response.

Why do you agree? What evidence do you have?

You only agree with what he has said because it supports your view, don't you? It doesn't seem like you care about his accuracy whatsoever.

[RPS]

Steven Mading's original claim was as follows.The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation. People believed the genesis story quite literally until geology proved it wrong. The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.This claim was thoroughly debunked (as is conceded) by references to Origen and Augustine specifically describing key portions of Genesis as allegory.It's true that Origen and Augustine considered the Genesis creation stories to be allegorical.......I agree with his [lpetrich's] response.Undeterred by the glaring error, a fallback position was quickly concocted.However, those premodern theologians nevertheless agreed that the Universe is under 6000 years old, though they disagreed on exactly when it was created -- around 3800 BCE or around 5500 BCE.The extent of Steven Mading's response is essentially a "me too." However, the new fallback position is both inapt and inept. It is inapt because the issue wasn't and isn't conclusion (young earth) but rather method (allegorical interpretation). The claim was that allegorical Biblical interpretation is a recent invention. It plainly and conclusively is not, as is now conceded.

The fallback position is inept because, if it were relevant, premodern theologians did not all think the universe was under 6,000 years old. Examples include Justin Martyr, St. Cyprian of Carthage and Maimonides. Clement of Alexandria determined that we can't know when creation took place from reading Scripture. Some honesty and a "my bad" ought to end this discussion. How about it?

[seebs]

The problem is, the claim under discussion was, and I quote:

The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation. People believed the genesis story quite literally until geology proved it wrong. The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.

The claim that some theologians gave a smaller age for the earth is consistent with this, but it doesn't prove it. The writings of Origen and Augustine on Genesis both establish conclusively that early Christians treated the work as describing something other than events happening in "days" as we understand days. So it's not just that some points were interpreted allegorically; the specific point under discussion was interpreted in a metaphorical or allegorical sense roughly 1500 years before any of the scientific evidence that would make this "necessary" arrived.

In short, the claim is absolutely, totally, wrong.

That there have been literal interpretations of some things sometimes does not change that; in Augustine's work, we see clearly that the notion that a passage may be literal or figurative is there, and furthermore, that scholars expected to reason this out based on such questions as "if we interpret it literally, will it contradict what we already know about the world?"

[Steven Mading]

The problem is, the claim under discussion was, and I quote:

The interpretation of key parts of the bible as metaphor is a very modern deviation. People believed the genesis story quite literally until geology proved it wrong. The 6 days of creation didn't start being interpreted as metaphorical days that are not really earth days until after it was necessary to do so to not look foolish in comparasin to what science was learning about the age of the earth.

The claim that some theologians gave a smaller age for the earth is consistent with this, but it doesn't prove it. The writings of Origen and Augustine on Genesis both establish conclusively that early Christians treated the work as describing something other than events happening in "days" as we understand days.

You are wrong because they indicate only two people saying that - not the entire body of early Christians as you claim. Furthermore, the genesis story is merely one example of what I was referring to, not the only example. Take the Noah flood story as another example, or the cosmology of what the stars and the sky are (is heaven physically located "up" or is that just a metaphor, for example.)

As time goes on, more and more of these things get moved into the metaphor camp than were before. I find it frustrating when moderate modern chrisitains convince themselves of the lie that these were *always* in the metaphor camp. It's a necessary lie to support the claim that when some fundamentalist acts in a reprehensable manner by actually following the bible, that this isn't really the bible's fault. Most Christians, who are not fundamentalists, whether they admit it to themselves or not use a system where they rely first and foremost on objective real-world knowlege as the arbitrator of utmost authority, and filter the bible based on that (using comparasin to the objective world to decide which parts of the bible to call non-literal). What that means is that the more people learn about the objective world, the less and less of the bible is left to be taken literally. The parts they take literally are shrinking, and the metaphorical part is growing.

I admit that it was wrong for me to claim it was once 100% literal in it's interpretation. It is also wrong when moderate modern Christians claim the line has never moved and their current ratio of literal to metaphorical is the same as it always was, or is something embedded hardcoded into their bible (which is indirectly what they are claiming when they say that fundamentalists are not really following the bible and not being "true" christians.) The fact of the matter is that the decision as to which parts of the bible to take literally versus metaphorically cannot actually be a feature of the bible itself. It's a decision that has to be made externally to the bible itself, using something else as the final arbitrator. Thus the more of it you take as metaphorical, the further you are deviating from it, using something else to drive that deviation. And that's a GOOD thing. It's not a misinterpretation of the bible that makes fundamentalists do bad things, it's a strict adherence to it that does.

[Steven Mading]

Some honesty and a "my bad" ought to end this discussion. How about it?
How about a halfway "my bad"? I picked a bad example. And there are examples of people not taking the bible 100% literally that do date back a long time. However, I do NOT admit that this invalidates my larger point because my larger point doesn't need a 100% shift from "bible is 100% literal" to "bible is 100% metaphorical" to work. Even a slighter shift in that percentage would work to back up my point. So long as there is MORE of the book today taken metaphorically than there used to be, it still backs up what I'm trying to say. Instead of trying to rescue the claim that the scripture of Christianity is an inherently good thing, why won't modern moderate Christians just admit that they *are* deviating from what the scripture says, and that there's nothing wrong with deviating from what the scripture says when they take it metaphorically, and that this is a good thing? Trying to phrase it the other way around just gives fuel to the fundamentalists. So long as you try to claim the bible *is* the Truth with a capital "T" provided you just carefully interpret some of it metaphorically, you give rise to those who will interpret much less of it metaphorically than you will, (thus resulting in Fundamentalilsts).

Furthermore, if you are using an external source to fact-check the bible to figure out which parts to interpret metaphorically, then why not just eliminate the middleman and stop trying to use the bible? If it's that unreliable that you have to hold it up to a sanity check against something else - then why not just use that something else directly instead? Adding the bible to that mix adds nothing useful and carries with it a lot of dangerous baggage. Baggage that the fundamentalists make use of.

[No Robots]

Furthermore, if you are using an external source to fact-check the bible to figure out which parts to interpret metaphorically, then why not just eliminate the middleman and stop trying to use the bible? If it's that unreliable that you have to hold it up to a sanity check against something else - then why not just use that something else directly instead?

That's like saying that someone digging for gold should just not bother because there's too much muck to go through, and he should just play with the equipment.

[seebs]

You are wrong because they indicate only two people saying that - not the entire body of early Christians as you claim.

You don't get it.

Even ONE example utterly disproves the claim that interpreting "key sections" in non-literal fashions is a modern deviation.

Furthermore, you've shown no evidence that the two examples provided thus far of Genesis commentary are in any way atypical.

Furthermore, the genesis story is merely one example of what I was referring to, not the only example. Take the Noah flood story as another example, or the cosmology of what the stars and the sky are (is heaven physically located "up" or is that just a metaphor, for example.)

Right. And whaddya know, in one of the sources I pointed to, you already see some analysis of this.

But my point isn't the claim that they necessarily interpreted a given passage allegorically; it is that early Christians were well aware that many passages were allegorical, and would read a passage allegorically if a literal reading contradicted their available experience.

As time goes on, more and more of these things get moved into the metaphor camp than were before. I find it frustrating when moderate modern chrisitains convince themselves of the lie that these were *always* in the metaphor camp.

I don't care whether they were always metaphor; I merely observe that the decision to treat something as allegory when it doesn't seem likely to be true literally is not a new idea, and goes back pretty much as far as we have written records.

It's a necessary lie to support the claim that when some fundamentalist acts in a reprehensable manner by actually following the bible, that this isn't really the bible's fault.

Except that once again, your statement makes sense only if the Bible is being "actually followed" by being read in a literalist-only fashion.

There's a big difference between a possibly-defensible claim that early Christians and Jews tended to take the Bible literally if they had no evidence to the contrary and the claim that the Bible was unambiguously intended to be literal at all times.

Modern fundamentalist literalism is much more literalist than any previous instance of Christianity or Judaism that we have records of.

I admit that it was wrong for me to claim it was once 100% literal in it's interpretation. It is also wrong when moderate modern Christians claim the line has never moved and their current ratio of literal to metaphorical is the same as it always was, or is something embedded hardcoded into their bible (which is indirectly what they are claiming when they say that fundamentalists are not really following the bible and not being "true" christians.)

I have never in my life seen anyone make the claim that the line has never moved. I have written at length about previous examples of that line moving, in fact.

As to the latter, you are making an obvious mistake. You grant that we use the external world as evidence in determining whether something is likely to be literal truth or not. Why, then, would you assert that the line must be "encoded for the Bible" for it to be crazy for people to disregard it? My complaint about the literalists is that they are disregarding the external world, and that they are putting their desire for an easy answer above the serious and honest interpretation of the Bible.

The fact of the matter is that the decision as to which parts of the bible to take literally versus metaphorically cannot actually be a feature of the bible itself.

And I don't think anyone but an occasional fundamentalist has ever claimed it was.

It's a decision that has to be made externally to the bible itself, using something else as the final arbitrator. Thus the more of it you take as metaphorical, the further you are deviating from it, using something else to drive that deviation.

Wrong.

You're still starting with the obviously false that modern fundamentalism is the benchmark of true Christianity.

Let's just take Augustine and Hovind as our examples. Hovind preaches a literal Genesis, Augustine preaches one which involves a fair amount of symbolism and metaphor.

Your claim would have us believe that Augustine's view is a deviation from the text, and Hovind's is an adherence to it.

This is ludicrous. Augustine finds theology in a book of theology; Hovind finds geology in a book of theology. One of them is reading the Bible as a sacred text that has served as a foundational part of a religion; one is reading it as a textbook.

And that's a GOOD thing. It's not a misinterpretation of the bible that makes fundamentalists do bad things, it's a strict adherence to it that does.

This might be true if we granted your ludicrous premise, but it's not true in the actual world where Christianity has a long history, and Judaism a longer one, of exploring the meanings of the text under discussion.

I have actually gone for the long interesting debates with the nutjob fundies. You know what? They don't know shit about the Bible, by and large. They ignore whole books that are inconvenient to their agenda. They have memorized lists of single-verse prooftexts taken out of context and painstakingly revised to cover a particular desired outcome.

When someone takes "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law" and says "this means that unless you obey the Mosaic Law in exact detail, you do not really love anyone", he's diverging from the clear sense of the text -- made even clearer if you read the surrounding material.

With some very notable exceptions, most fundamentalists are utterly clueless about the Bible, and are ignoring all the supplementary information (you do know there's other Christian writings from the period, yes?) we have about how it was understood by its authors and by the readers they were writing for.

So far as I can tell, your position rests entirely on an absolutely uncritical acceptance of a large variety of claims made by fundamentalists about the nature and interpretation of the Bible, and the history of Christianity. Given that you don't believe them on biology, geology, or morality, why are you suddenly treating them as experts on Christian history? The oldest fundamentalist writings are under a hundred and fifty years old!

[Steven Mading]

That's like saying that someone digging for gold should just not bother because there's too much muck to go through, and he should just play with the equipment.
Huh?

[Steven Mading]

You don't get it.

No. You don't. If one person is following the 60% of the bible literally, and another is following 40% of it literally, then the first person is closer in line with it than the second person. Claiming that it was meant to be metaphorical is just another way of saying you aren't supposed to believe what it actually says. For example, if two Christians agree with each other in every way on Christianity but with the one exception of one small part of Deuteronomy, where one of them thinks people wearing cotton/polyester blend shirts are perfectly fine while the other thinks they should be punished by stoning them, then one who says to stone them is slightly closer to following the bible. It's a good thing people DON'T take that part seriously today, and it's a good thing they DON'T follow it. I fully agree with you that a literal reading of the bible is insane. But the honest way to describe it when you don't follow those parts is to say "I don't believe this part" instead of "I believe this, but that's because it's metaphorical." I just see it as a way of having to dodge out of having to admit that the bible is not inerrant. Instead of saying "this part is incorrect" people would rather say "It's correct, but in a metaphorical way."

[Ubercat]

Quote:
Originally Posted by No Robots
That's like saying that someone digging for gold should just not bother because there's too much muck to go through, and he should just play with the equipment.

Huh?

I believe NR is saying that there is GOLD in the bible. It's in there somewhere. You just have to keep digging. The creator of the universe inspired that book, so you know it's true. Maybe you just have to look in between all the evil acts of biblegod, the glaring inconsistencies, and the contradictions of reality, that the supreme being saw fit to fill it with.

-Ubercat

[No Robots]

I believe NR is saying that there is GOLD in the bible. It's in there somewhere. You just have to keep digging. The creator of the universe inspired that book, so you know it's true. Maybe you just have to look in between all the evil acts of biblegod, the glaring inconsistencies, and the contradictions of reality, that the supreme being saw fit to fill it with.

Nah, I just like this kind of thing:

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.

Helps me put up with all the 'tards.

[Steven Mading]

So far as I can tell, your position rests entirely on an absolutely uncritical acceptance of a large variety of claims made by fundamentalists about the nature and interpretation of the Bible, and the history of Christianity.
If that's what you think then you aren't listening. I agree that a 100% literal interpretation is not typical. I agree that it's not what the religion's believers usually do. I do NOT agree that this means the literalists are adhearing less to the religion. Instead I would characterize it as "most of the believers have enough common sense to deviate from their religious texts in cases where those texts are known to be wrong." But that's still a deviation. And that means the looneys who *don't* do that deviation are closer to following the religion. The reason I like moderate Christians is that they Do deviate from their texts when they realize they have to. The reason I get frustrated with them is that they refuse to admit that this is what they are doing. Instead of admitting to the devaition when they deviate on some small part they instead claim that part was always supposed to be metaphorical, and that was its original intent. The reason I think they do this is that they would like the statement "Devoted followers of our religion are rational and good" to always be perceived as true, which is hard to do if it turns out that someone who only adheres to a subset of the religion ends up being more rational and more good than someone who follows all of it fully.

[seebs]

No. You don't. If one person is following the 60% of the bible literally, and another is following 40% of it literally, then the first person is closer in line with it than the second person.

Only if it's intended to be literal. If it's not literal, then the person interpreting it literally is further from it.

You're still using the fundamentalist presupposition here.

Who is "closer" to the poet; the man who believes a literal tiger is on fire, or the man who chooses an allegorical interpretation?

I think the problem here is that your assumption that the topic is actually literal is so deep that, no matter how often you talk about alternatives, you always evaluate them in terms of the obviously false claim.

[seebs]

If that's what you think then you aren't listening. I agree that a 100% literal interpretation is not typical. I agree that it's not what the religion's believers usually do. I do NOT agree that this means the literalists are adhearing less to the religion.

The only way it makes them closer to the religion is if the religion itself is "literal interpretation of the Bible". It isn't, and hasn't been.

[Merzbow42]

That's a very good question, and I guess it comes down to what's "plausible".

I believe I can tell my own actions from those of others, and my own thoughts from those of others. In prayer, I often experience things that seem very much to be external to me.

I'm not inclined to dispute the apparent externality of experiences (see also solipsism, rejection of).

In the above quote you seem to be claiming personal experiences you've had that lead you to believe. But that of course isn't enough for non-believers who want impersonal evidence of Christianity's truth. I would think this evidence would have to take the form of a Biblical claim that is observably true and is also inexplicable by science.

Do you think there are such claims? Or do you think that being a Christian is not a matter of requiring impersonal evidence but of having personal spiritual experiences? If the former, then what claims in the Bible will you give no ground on (beyond just the claim of the existence of God, which is not specific to Christianity)? If the latter, why do you think your personal spiritual experiences reflect reality more accurately than those of Muslims and Hindus?

[Biff the unclean]

I would think this evidence would have to take the form of a Biblical claim that is observably true and is also inexplicable by science.
I think what we really need is a claim that is explicable by science. And the scientific explanation needs to be “God.” If the answer is inexplicable then there is no explanation and jumping to the conclusion “God” makes no sense to do at all.

[seebs]

In the above quote you seem to be claiming personal experiences you've had that lead you to believe. But that of course isn't enough for non-believers who want impersonal evidence of Christianity's truth.

Well, I suppose it wouldn't. I also can't offer impersonal evidence of moral claims, and I just don't waste time trying to debate morality with people who don't have the framework of making value judgements.

I would think this evidence would have to take the form of a Biblical claim that is observably true and is also inexplicable by science.

I don't see why.

Do you think there are such claims? Or do you think that being a Christian is not a matter of requiring impersonal evidence but of having personal spiritual experiences? If the former, then what claims in the Bible will you give no ground on (beyond just the claim of the existence of God, which is not specific to Christianity)? If the latter, why do you think your personal spiritual experiences reflect reality more accurately than those of Muslims and Hindus?

I think I'd tend towards the latter. Why do I think my experiences reflect reality more accurately? I don't. Rather, I think my theories about these experiences are probably better, although I may be wrong. I continue to explore some of the alternatives. I am much more convinced of monotheism in general than of Christianity in particular, although I do find Christianity persuasive. However, when I talk with Muslims, I frequently find that we are able to reach agreement on essential claims, and that our disagreements are in areas we both acknowledge as being somewhat more speculative.

[Steven Mading]

Only if it's intended to be literal. If it's not literal, then the person interpreting it literally is further from it.

You're still using the fundamentalist presupposition here.

Who is "closer" to the poet; the man who believes a literal tiger is on fire, or the man who chooses an allegorical interpretation?

I think the problem here is that your assumption that the topic is actually literal is so deep that, no matter how often you talk about alternatives, you always evaluate them in terms of the obviously false claim.

I simply do not agree with your unspoken premise that the set of scripture that is currently interpreted metaphorically is identical to the set of scripture that was INTENDED to be interpreted metaphorically by the original authors. You have just admitted in a recent post that those two sets have not been fixed over time. Things have moved from one category into the other. Given that, it does not make sense to claim that the current divvying up of which beliefs to take metaphorically versus literally is closer in line with the original intent than the past sets of beliefs taken mataphorically, or that the moderate's version is more in line than the literalists' version. The honest truth is that you are using something EXTERNAL to the religion in order to judge which parts of the religion to hand-wave away. The more you do that, the better. "Tiger Tiger" is not presented as a historical record. The bible actually is. If it's a history book then it's not intended to be metaphorical. If it's a book of fables then it's not intended to be a believed history. If you want some parts to be read one way and other parts to be read another way, then you are overlaying your own judgement on top and using that to filter what you read - and that's great but give credit where credit is due. When you do that, the "truths" you learn are coming from yourself, not from the bible.

[seebs]

I simply do not agree with your unspoken premise that the set of scripture that is currently interpreted metaphorically is identical to the set of scripture that was INTENDED to be interpreted metaphorically by the original authors.

That's not my premise either.

I don't believe that we happen to have it exactly right now. I'm just arguing that it definitely wasn't, at any time, "all literal" as the baseline or ideal.

The honest truth is that you are using something EXTERNAL to the religion in order to judge which parts of the religion to hand-wave away.

This claim is a pure non-sequitur without your hidden premise: The idealized form of the religion is a purely literal interpretation.

That premise is bunk.

Without it, you have no way of knowing, without actually getting in there and doing the work, whether interpreting a given passage allegorically is hand-waving it away, or finally coming to accept it. You can't make that claim without some basis for asserting the "actual meaning".

The more you do that, the better. "Tiger Tiger" is not presented as a historical record. The bible actually is.

See, here you begin to almost have an argument; "it should be interpreted as a historical record because it is written in such a form".

There are, of course, problems. One is that people have always known that stories were used to communicate things other than their factual content. As pointed out repeatedly, the notion that all stories with chronological orderings are factual accounts is the modernist deviation here; it's not anything like how people used to understand such stories.

If you want some parts to be read one way and other parts to be read another way, then you are overlaying your own judgement on top and using that to filter what you read - and that's great but give credit where credit is due.

My own judgement, perhaps, but my judgement informed by a fair amount of interest in questions like "how was this written and when".

Keep in mind, it's not some kind of wacky innovation to think that the Epistles and the Gospels and the Prophets are three different kinds of writing; we know that, because we have all sorts of information about who wrote them, when, to whom, and so on.

When you do that, the "truths" you learn are coming from yourself, not from the bible.

Sort of like the way that, when you read the front page news differently than you read the comics section, the "truths" you learn come exclusively from yourself, not from the newspaper?

[RPS]

So long as there is MORE of the book today taken metaphorically than there used to be, it still backs up what I'm trying to say. Instead of trying to rescue the claim that the scripture of Christianity is an inherently good thing, why won't modern moderate Christians just admit that they *are* deviating from what the scripture says....On what basis do you conclude a literal interpretation was intended?

I would think this evidence would have to take the form of a Biblical claim that is observably true and is also inexplicable by science.

Do you think there are such claims?Yes. Volitional freedom for one.

[Steven Mading]

On what basis do you conclude a literal interpretation was intended?

On the basis of the fact that it was actually written that way. The only way to assume it was not meant that way is to assume it was meant as very dry sarcasm.

[Steven Mading]

This claim is a pure non-sequitur without your hidden premise: The idealized form of the religion is a purely literal interpretation.

That premise is bunk.

The claim that the instructions as to which parts are metaphor and which are literal is internal to the religion itself is bunk. You're using external references to make that decision. When you find the Noah flood story to be non-literal, it's not because the religion says so. It's because it doesn't mesh with what you know about the world, using sources external to the religion. Whether you call that "metaphor" or I call it "hand-waving" doesn't change the fact that it's not by use of the religion itself that you come to that decision.

Show me where in the bible there is something hinting at the notion that the Noah flood story was not meant to be believed.

Sort of like the way that, when you read the front page news differently than you read the comics section, the "truths" you learn come exclusively from yourself, not from the newspaper?
The information that tells you the comics are not true is not contained inside the newspaper itself. It's external.

[seebs]

The claim that the instructions as to which parts are metaphor and which are literal is internal to the religion itself is bunk.

But I never made that claim.

I would say that, in some cases, you really can argue from the text itself for a given interpretation. In most cases, though, reason and experience of the world are at issue, and that is what Christians have believed since before we even had the book.

Whether you call that "metaphor" or I call it "hand-waving" doesn't change the fact that it's not by use of the religion itself that you come to that decision.

But neither is it by use of "the religion itself" that people come to the conclusion that it's literal.

The distinction between "metaphor" and "hand-waving" is a huge one, and your consistent attempts to trivialize it suggest that you really haven't even thought about what it would mean for a text to have been written as anything other than factual literal history.

It might mean that studying "metaphor" is the way to figure out what the writer was writing about.

Show me where in the bible there is something hinting at the notion that the Noah flood story was not meant to be believed.

Red herring.

The information that tells you the comics are not true is not contained inside the newspaper itself. It's external.

Really? So the section names like "variety and entertainment" or "national news" are not part of the newspaper?

But in any event, do remember that Christianity is much broader than just "the Bible". The Anglicans call it "Scripture, Tradition, Reason". You are treating both Tradition and Reason as though they are somehow not part of Christianity.

Not all of us claim "sola scriptura"; that's Protestants, and not even all of them. Even when they do claim it, the vast majority mean only "take no doctrinal stance that is not supported by Scripture", not "never use experience as a guide in understanding something".

[Biff the unclean]

Red herring.

Not really. Noah's flood is mentioned as history in Matthew 24:37, Luke 17:26-27 and in 2 Peter 2:4-5
Where is there, in any book of the bible, even a hint that the story is metaphor?

[Biff the unclean]

So with Noah scripture says history, tradition says history, reason says metaphor... how do you choose? 2 out of 3?, reason trumps tradition? rock breaks sissors, paper covers rock? how does this work?

[Selsaral]

And what about Jesus? Scripture says history, tradition says history, but reason and our knowledge of the world says metaphor (dead jews don't come back to life, zombies don't walk the streets). But the vast majority of Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead. If you are allowed to believe this magical occurance in the bible was intended to be literal history, how do you disqualify other magical occurances? What happened to the 'check it against our knowledge of the natural world' part?

[hinduwoman]

Even reasonable muslims agree with the op.

The High Sheriff of greater London, Khalid Hameed does blame UK muslims for not doing enough to stop radicalising the faith. The community as a whole has failed to bring the extremists in line, he says.

[EthnAlln]

Quote:
Originally Posted by No Robots
That's like saying that someone digging for gold should just not bother because there's too much muck to go through, and he should just play with the equipment.



I believe NR is saying that there is GOLD in the bible. It's in there somewhere. You just have to keep digging. The creator of the universe inspired that book, so you know it's true. Maybe you just have to look in between all the evil acts of biblegod, the glaring inconsistencies, and the contradictions of reality, that the supreme being saw fit to fill it with.

-Ubercat

Yup, I recognize the psychology. When I lived in Tennessee 40 years ago, the newlyweds in the apartment adjacent to mine had gotten married without reconciling their very different faiths (she was Church of Christ, he Assembly of God). They raised the subject with me, wanting my opinions on their theology. (Makes sense; ask an atheist and ex-Catholic to sort out the differences between them.) I told them none of it made any sense to me. But the husband held the Bible up piously and said, "There's an answer in here, and I'm going to find it." In other words, when faced with the complete bankruptcy of a system, reaffirm it. That's the American Way.

[AthenaAwakened]

So with Noah scripture says history, tradition says history, reason says metaphor... how do you choose? 2 out of 3?, reason trumps tradition? rock breaks sissors, paper covers rock? how does this work?

You are so silly (but funny)

:rolling::rolling::rolling:

[lpetrich]

If you're going to make the claim that everything is literal, on the basis of the evidence that people regularly took things allegorically and interpreted them literally only if there was no conflicting data or argumentation, well...
WHAT evidence?

I will concede that allegorical interpretation was common in past centuries; but that does not mean that everybody before modern times believed that the Bible's history is 100% allegorical unless they had other reasons to believe that any of it is literal.

In fact, the usual policy was the opposite: it was literal unless they had reasons to believe it allegorical, like unwillingness to accept the Bible's anthropomorphisms. Look at Augustine's City of God -- part of it is an attempt to create a parallel timeline of Biblical and pagan history.

Dating Creation mentions some calculations of the Biblical date of creation that are much older than Archbishop Ussher's efforts; in fact, there are two main categories of such dates:

Septuagint-based: around 5500 BCE
Masoretic-based: around 4000 BCE

This discrepancy comes about because the Septuagint adds as much as a century to when various early patriarchs begot their sons. The Jewish (3761 BCE) and Ussher (4004 BCE) dates are both Masoretic-based, while Augustine quoted a Septuagint-based age.

Interestingly, some pagans believed that the Universe was much older. Aristotle believed it to be eternal, while Diogenes Laertius in his Introduction (http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlintro.htm) to his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers tells us that the Egyptians believed that philosophy was invented by Ptah / Hephaestus, who lived 48,863 years before Alexander the Great, or around 49,219 BCE. And Berossus tells us us that the long-lived kings before Xisuthrus's Flood lived a total of 432,000 years (!)

[Biff the unclean]

I’m afraid that Selsaral has killed this thread. He went right to the heart of the matter wanting to know what criteria separated a magic Jew who wouldn’t stay dead and his zombies from metaphor. No Christian is going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

[Merzbow42]

Let's put aside the question of the Old Testament/Genesis for now. I don't think pre-modern Christians took the Gospels to be anything other than literally accurate accounts of the events recounted therein (after the Church reached consensus on which Gospels should be canonical). Modern fundies are probably similar in approach to early Christians in regards to the NT, but more literal in regards to the OT.

[fatpie42]

No. You don't. If one person is following the 60% of the bible literally, and another is following 40% of it literally, then the first person is closer in line with it than the second person.

That's only true if you are objectively MEANT to take the text literally. Now, if you were a literalist Christian I would understand you taking such a view. However, as an atheist who believes that literal interpretation is just plain wrong, I cannot understand how you can say that one is objectively meant to take the text literally. In fact, the whole point of the Origen account was that the original writer of Genesis could not have taken their account literally since it would make no sense to speak of a 'day' without the sun and the earth.

You've decided that the literal account is the intended meaning of the Bible - and this decision is entirely arbitrary.

[Steven Mading]

That's only true if you are objectively MEANT to take the text literally. Now, if you were a literalist Christian I would understand you taking such a view. However, as an atheist who believes that literal interpretation is just plain wrong, I cannot understand how you can say that one is objectively meant to take the text literally.
That's easy - I'm not in a position to bother bending over backward to try to 'save' the Christian scriptures, so I don't need to use the metaphor dodge. Just recognize them as being falsified stories. The only reason to get people to treat them as "true but in a metaphorical way" would be if I wanted people to remain Christians after seeing flaws in the Christian account of things. But I don't see that as being a useful goal. I want them to realize the belief system isn't realiable when they see those flaws. The metaphor interpretation allows people to soften over those flaws and ignore them.

[Steven Mading]

But I never made that claim.

Your position requires it. If you don't believe it, then your position is internally inconsistent.

I would say that, in some cases, you really can argue from the text itself for a given interpretation.
So even if you claim you didn't make that claim before, you're making it right there.


The distinction between "metaphor" and "hand-waving" is a huge one, and your consistent attempts to trivialize it suggest that you really haven't even thought about what it would mean for a text to have been written as anything other than factual literal history.

On the contrary, it's the "metaphor" Christians that haven't thought that one through. If you have reason to use real-world plausability as a means to deny the literalness of, say Noah's Ark, then why stop there? There's also a lot of other stories there that aren't borne out by comparasin to real-world considerations - like the idea of a virgin birth, or of a dead Jesus being ressurected. Pretty much every defining aspect of the religion itself is just as implausable as the Noah's Ark story or a literal interpretation of the Genesis story. Why argue that one was really meant to be believed, while the other was not? And once you do that, why bother using the book at all as a historical reference for anything if you know you can't actually trust it?

It's like someone reading "Lord Of The Rings" and coming away from it saying, "Well, obviously it's just a story most of the way through, except that there really was a magic ring carried by a little person that turned you invisible and you really did have to throw it in a certain volcano to get rid of it, but all that stuff about the walking trees and the orcs? Obviously that wasn't meant to be believed, what kind of an idiot do you take me for? I only believe half of the silly things it claims, not *all* of them."

[seebs]

Your position requires it. If you don't believe it, then your position is internally inconsistent.

I don't see why.

So even if you claim you didn't make that claim before, you're making it right there.

No. I am claiming that there is at least some information in the text that can guide a decision about how to interpret it -- not that there is no use, ever, of other information.

When I read a newspaper, the way I determine which things are which is based partially on section headings and the like, but also partially based on prior experience or information.

On the contrary, it's the "metaphor" Christians that haven't thought that one through. If you have reason to use real-world plausability as a means to deny the literalness of, say Noah's Ark, then why stop there? There's also a lot of other stories there that aren't borne out by comparasin to real-world considerations - like the idea of a virgin birth, or of a dead Jesus being ressurected. Pretty much every defining aspect of the religion itself is just as implausable as the Noah's Ark story or a literal interpretation of the Genesis story. Why argue that one was really meant to be believed, while the other was not?

Even here, you use "believed" to mean implicitly "believed to be literal fact".

Until you can get away from the constant reaffirmations of the unconscious assumption that all text is literal history, I don't think you can even start to talk seriously about this question.

That said, I think one answer might be to point out the rather significant differences between OT and NT writings. Keep in mind that we are not talking about a single work here; we are talking about 66-79 (depending on whom you ask) very visibly distinct works.

And once you do that, why bother using the book at all as a historical reference for anything if you know you can't actually trust it?

I think here the key weakness in your position is that you're depending on the assumption that we view this as a single work all of which has the same provenance. It's not.

Past that... I use lots of references even though I know they are not perfectly reliable. I know of false data in Wikipedia, and I know of false data in the phone book. I still use both as references.

It's like someone reading "Lord Of The Rings" and coming away from it saying, "Well, obviously it's just a story most of the way through, except that there really was a magic ring carried by a little person that turned you invisible and you really did have to throw it in a certain volcano to get rid of it, but all that stuff about the walking trees and the orcs? Obviously that wasn't meant to be believed, what kind of an idiot do you take me for? I only believe half of the silly things it claims, not *all* of them."

If we were talking about a single unified work in a single literary style by a single author, this would be a plausible analogy.

When we are talking about roughly seventy different works, by at least a dozen different authors, written over a period of centuries, it's not even close.

[Steven Mading]

Even here, you use "believed" to mean implicitly "believed to be literal fact".

If it is your intent to use some language other than English, you should be honest enough to say so outright. "To believe X" *means* "to think X is true". That's what the word actually means.


When we are talking about roughly seventy different works, by at least a dozen different authors, written over a period of centuries, it's not even close.
And collected together at the Council of Nicea into one work because the council attendees came to the agreement that these works were true.

[Steven Mading]

Seebs, I notice you didn't answer the question posed by Selsaral. What makes you think the really definitional important parts of Christian literature (like the claim the Jesus came back from the dead) are meant to be believed quite literally even though other parts aren't? What backs up the claim? It's rather an important one - rather central to claiming you're a Christian, actually. (I would assume you believe the ressurrection literally, else it would be very odd that you would claim to be a Christian.)

[seebs]

If it is your intent to use some language other than English, you should be honest enough to say so outright. "To believe X" *means* "to think X is true". That's what the word actually means.

Sure, but it doesn't mean "to think that X, reinterpreted as literal fact no matter what it was originally, is true".

If I choose a non-literal way of making a claim, then someone who takes the claim literally does not believe the actual claim I made.

And collected together at the Council of Nicea into one work because the council attendees came to the agreement that these works were true.

But, as demonstrated, Christians of that time did not think that "true" necessarily meant "true-when-taken-literally".

And that's the thing that you keep saying you understand, and then turning around and ignoring it again.

The fact is, the people selecting those books did not necessarily believe that the accounts were factual histories. In many cases, they specifically disbelieved the literal interpretations.

You are looking at this through the eyes of the modernist and fundamentalist, who treat all claims as factual claims expressed literally. That's not how all of the texts were written, and it's not how all of them were understood by the people who gathered them together.

[seebs]

Seebs, I notice you didn't answer the question posed by Selsaral. What makes you think the really definitional important parts of Christian literature (like the claim the Jesus came back from the dead) are meant to be believed quite literally even though other parts aren't?

I believe the Gospel accounts to be historical accounts; obviously, they have the problems of any second-hand account, but they are in essence historical accounts; they are repetitions of stories from people who were there, and they are framed in that style. (Well, some of John is pretty mystical, but...)

The OT myths are a totally different kind of story. Just think for a moment; imagining that the history from around Abraham to around Moses were literally true history... How would Moses have known any of it?

The Pentateuch were almost certainly written no earlier than Moses; certainly, not by Abraham or Noah or any of the early historical figures.

This leaves me fairly comfortable treating them as mythical works, especially Genesis. Past Genesis, you will notice a sudden tendency for claims to start being, if not always entirely believable, at least mostly coherent. We have the prophets speaking in riddles, we have a few stories, we have an obvious adaptation of a play (Job), and we have song lyrics... But there's a whole lot of material that gives the impression that it was written down at least by people who had been to some of these places or met some of these people.

What backs up the claim? It's rather an important one - rather central to claiming you're a Christian, actually. (I would assume you believe the ressurrection literally, else it would be very odd that you would claim to be a Christian.)

I do, although I know plenty of Christians who don't. I suppose they don't qualify under the Nicene Creed, but then, neither do most Calvinists. I'm not big on dogma and orthodoxy.

In any event, that's why I treat these books as different kinds of claims; Genesis is written in a way that sounds to me like a myth -- more so if we accept the claims of the Hebrew scholars that, for instance, the name "Adam" is a pun. The difference in style between that and the comparatively straightforward storytelling of the Gospels, or of Acts, is quite noticeable.

[Biff the unclean]

Selsaral asked, Steve Mading asked and I asked. What backs up your claim that the gospels are not mythical. You keep repeating that they aren't but they are filled with the same magical stories as the OT. And for that matter the name Jesus can also be taken as a pun. What criteria do you use to seperate living in the belly of a big fish from turning water into wine?

[angela2]

Seebs, I notice you didn't answer the question posed by Selsaral. What makes you think the really definitional important parts of Christian literature (like the claim the Jesus came back from the dead) are meant to be believed quite literally even though other parts aren't?
When people talk about truth today, they often mean that truth is something that is perceptible by the senses, verifiable or falsifiable.

But for most of the history of Christianity, people did not have these scientific ways of discerning available to them. When they said something was true, they meant some combination of the objective and the subjective.

[Steven Mading]

But for most of the history of Christianity, people did not have these scientific ways of discerning available to them. When they said something was true, they meant some combination of the objective and the subjective.
If so (and I doubt that it was so), that would still be wrong because things that are subjective are things for which "true" and "false" are meaningless terms. If something is subjective, then you can't be wrong about it, and you can't be right about it. There is no means of verifying your stance because it's just a matter of preference. For example, "I find this music enjoyable" is subjective, while "Thus music is represented by the following sheet music" is not.

Saying, "I think this is true in a manner that is half objective and half subjective" is just a weasily way of saying "I halfway think this is true."

[Steven Mading]

But, as demonstrated, Christians of that time did not think that "true" necessarily meant "true-when-taken-literally".

And that's the thing that you keep saying you understand, and then turning around and ignoring it again.
"Understand" does not mean "agree with". I understand that you make the assertion. I understand what it would mean if it was true. You know what would make me believe your claim? If you could show how throughout history people Christians didn't really believe Jesus was the son of god, or that he really got ressurected, or that he really performed miracles. These are things Christians most definately are taking quite literally, as a core definitional part of what it means to claim to be a Christian.

[Steven Mading]

In any event, that's why I treat these books as different kinds of claims; Genesis is written in a way that sounds to me like a myth -- more so if we accept the claims of the Hebrew scholars that, for instance, the name "Adam" is a pun. The difference in style between that and the comparatively straightforward storytelling of the Gospels, or of Acts, is quite noticeable.
The ressurection is written in a way that sounds to me like a myth. But I don't call it metaphorical. I just call it wrong. Why is there this hangup on admitting that there's parts you don't believe are true? You're fond of naming works of fiction as examples of things not intended to be taken literally - but here's the difference - when someone recognizes that Harry Potter is presented as fiction, that person doesn't go around saying "I do believe it - just in a metaphorical way - Hogwarts really exists in a certain metaphorical way." No, they just come out with it and just say, "It's a fun story but it's not real. It's a work of fiction and the author didn't intend for anyone to actually believe it."

Why the need to try to rescue the use of the word "believe" to apply it to something you think is fiction? If you think Genesis is a fictional metaphor, then it's false to claim you believe it. That's simply not what the word "believe" means. "It's a mythical metaphor that I believe is true" is a statement that makes no sense whatsoever.

[Biff the unclean]

When people talk about truth today, they often mean that truth is something that is perceptible by the senses, verifiable or falsifiable.

But for most of the history of Christianity, people did not have these scientific ways of discerning available to them. When they said something was true, they meant some combination of the objective and the subjective.
But since you do not live in such a benighted time you should know better. Why do you argue for such a flawed and outdated concept?

[WishboneDawn]

Selsaral asked, Steve Mading asked and I asked. What backs up your claim that the gospels are not mythical. You keep repeating that they aren't but they are filled with the same magical stories as the OT. And for that matter the name Jesus can also be taken as a pun. What criteria do you use to seperate living in the belly of a big fish from turning water into wine?

I'll just through in my two cents...They could be mythical, that's a possibility. It's also a possibility that they're literally true (though I'd say that's a very slim one) and theres the possibility that they contain some fact and some fiction. I tend to find the last possibility more reasonable. Even the OT isn't completely about magical stories and does have bits that are historical.

[Biff the unclean]

Well this question was really addressed to Seebs & Co. who constantly call Atheists “fundies” and complain we take the bible as being literal. We wanted to know the criteria they use to tell the literal from metaphor. Every time we ask this we are told that parts are literal and parts are not instead of being told how to tell one from the other. It almost looked like Seebs would give a criteria in his last post but instead he just repeated his mantra of parts are literal and parts are not.
I have suspicions that are less than flattering of what methods Liberals use to differentiate the two, and why they won’t tell us, but I won’t voice them yet.

[angela2]

If anyone is interested, this address of a book review on the topic of interpreting scripture, a method called "second naivete".

The article states that,"The "second naivete"' of the title refers to Barth's and Ricoeur's common conviction that theological interpretation of the Bible ought to lead us beyond a critical preoccupation with the text to a fresh encounter with the divine reality to which the text bears witness."
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1992/v48-4-bookreview7.htm

[Nice Squirrel]

Well this question was really addressed to Seebs & Co. who constantly call Atheists “fundies” and complain we take the bible as being literal. We wanted to know the criteria they use to tell the literal from metaphor.
We have the decoder ring. Why do you refuse to ignore our decoder rings? Seriously, in debating athiests often will cite a specific passage and when any interpretation is offered other than the literal "foul" will be cried by some demanding that the literal reading being the correct and true one. The big trouble with this method is it keeps discussion on the level of the child who has not yet learned how to read and discuss symbology and interpretation of texts.

Every time we ask this we are told that parts are literal and parts are not instead of being told how to tell one from the other.I have told you that it is completelly literal and you should believe every word in it's modern usage since this is what you want to hear. If not, then please make an attempt to understand the symbology and see if you can tie it into your life. (Yes, you can still do this and not believe in God or a god.)


It almost looked like Seebs would give a criteria in his last post but instead he just repeated his mantra of parts are literal and parts are not.
I have suspicions that are less than flattering of what methods Liberals use to differentiate the two, and why they won’t tell us, but I won’t voice them yetyou are the one making the charge place you ideas out into the open.

Is there a passage or story you would like to examine for its ideas?

[Biff the unclean]

Seriously, in debating athiests often will cite a specific passage and when any interpretation is offered other than the literal "foul" will be cried by some demanding that the literal reading being the correct and true one. The big trouble with this method is it keeps discussion on the level of the child who has not yet learned how to read and discuss symbology and interpretation of texts.
Yes, we are all quite familiar with this tactic that theists use of insulting their opponents rather than addressing their questions.


I have told you that it is completelly literal and you should believe every word in it's modern usage since this is what you want to hear. If not, then please make an attempt to understand the symbology and see if you can tie it into your life. (Yes, you can still do this and not believe in God or a god.)
Bullshite. Liberal Christians only see symbols when it suits them. And they continually whine about bad translations while never explaining why churches hire only idiots to translate their sacred texts.

you are the one making the charge place you ideas out into the open.

Is there a passage or story you would like to examine for its ideas?
Are you having reading comprehension problems? The same thing has been continually repeated by 3 different people in this thread. What standard is used that shows, say, the parting of the Red Sea or Jonah in the belly of the whale as metaphor and Christ’s resurrection as literal.
What criteria makes the firmament and a physical heaven in the sky poetic and Jesus’ bodily ascension into the same sky historic?:banghead:

[angela2]

Jonah in the belly of the whale as metaphor and Christ’s resurrection as literal.
Good question. The book of Jonah is taken figuratively because the best we can figure out that's the way it was written to be taken. That decision involves a few things. First of all, if this is a prophetic book, why does it not contain any oracles or verses against Israel or foreign nations as prophetic books usually did? Secondly, it author probably lived in post-exilic times. This suggest that the book is a reevaluation of the OT idea that a prophet was considered to have been a true prophet if his prophecy came to pass. Over time it appears that the problems with that idea became all too obvious. So Jonah as reluctant prophet whose prophecy was true at the time it was uttered but nonetheless did not come to pass cannot be anything but satire given the portrayal of prophets generally.

On the other hand, there is no evidence in scripture that anyone ever considered the resurrection to be figurative. It's a one time event (can't be a satire) that is taken literally by all NT writers.

[Biff the unclean]

On the other hand, there is no evidence in scripture that anyone ever considered the resurrection to be figurative. It's a one time event (can't be a satire) that is taken literally by all NT writers.
Of course the question had nothing to do with prophecy but rather with the report of supernatural events. You appear to be evading the question. I noticed that you pointedly skipped over the parting of the Red Sea.
There is no evidence in scripture to consider the firmament to be figurative. Yet (almost) no Christian does. And they do not consider it to be literal because of extra-scriptural physical evidence. But they ignore such evidence when it comes to the resurrection.

We know the resurrection is taken literally but you have no criteria that distinguishes between one “supernatural” event’s standing as literal and that of another not being literal that goes beyond your mere whim as you demonstrate above.

[Steve Schlicht]

It's a one time event (can't be a satire) that is taken literally by all NT writers.

How do you know this?

[seebs]

The ressurection is written in a way that sounds to me like a myth. But I don't call it metaphorical. I just call it wrong. Why is there this hangup on admitting that there's parts you don't believe are true?

For the same reason I have a hangup about admitting that I don't think the comics are "true". I do not accept the notion that they were intended as factual accounts.

You're fond of naming works of fiction as examples of things not intended to be taken literally

I have actually used poetry as an example more often, I think, and most poetry is considered non-fiction.

Why the need to try to rescue the use of the word "believe" to apply it to something you think is fiction? If you think Genesis is a fictional metaphor, then it's false to claim you believe it. That's simply not what the word "believe" means. "It's a mythical metaphor that I believe is true" is a statement that makes no sense whatsoever.

I believe that it is intended to communicate certain claims, and I believe those claims to be true. I believe the message I understand it to be portraying.

That message is not the one you get by reading it as though it were written literally; that message is, so far as I can tell, not even wrong, just plain incoherent.

I don't see why this is so hard to understand.

[WishboneDawn]

On the other hand, there is no evidence in scripture that anyone ever considered the resurrection to be figurative. It's a one time event (can't be a satire) that is taken literally by all NT writers.

Did Paul take it literally? Really? Did Mark, who didn't even see fit to mention it?

[Biff the unclean]

How do you know this?

That’s a good question. Resurrection of a God/man is not a “one time event” but it was common as dirt among the mystery cults. Maybe Jesus’ resurrection is a satire on all of these other cults.

[Biff the unclean]

I don't see why this is so hard to understand.
It's hard to understand because you claim not to be making things up as you go alone in the same posts that you describe making things up as you go along. Your criteria for something being true or not is your whim.

[seebs]

Bullshite. Liberal Christians only see symbols when it suits them.

This is a very stringly-phrased accusation of consistent dishonesty, and yet, there's no support for it.

All the liberals I know give real evidence of making honest attempts at understanding text. If it were true that this were biased hugely by what "suits them", we would expect to find that they are never in any way inconvenienced by their beliefs; in fact, I find rather the opposite, that the more people are willing to talk seriously about symbology, the more likely they are to show real practical devotion. To use an idea from another thread: Caring about hermeneutics is strongly correlated with being willing to modify one's own life, rather than telling other people to modify theirs.

And they continually whine about bad translations while never explaining why churches hire only idiots to translate their sacred texts.

It's not a question of idiots; it's a question of the theoretical impossibility of the task. There is no sequence of words in English that accurately translate certain phrases in other languages. There are good translations out there, but even with a "good" translation, you need to understand the issues of translation.

If you insist in interpreting the parable of the Good Samaritan in terms of a culture that's spent two thousand years believing that Samaritans are very kind people, you will not understand it at all.


Are you having reading comprehension problems? The same thing has been continually repeated by 3 different people in this thread. What standard is used that shows, say, the parting of the Red Sea or Jonah in the belly of the whale as metaphor and Christ’s resurrection as literal.

Who tells us the story of Jonah? Was it a person who was allegedly there? Do we have a specific person identified as the person who observed this story? Was it written down by people who actually knew any of the people involved?

You will notice a key difference here: Many of the OT stories are oral tradition with no information at all about sources, and furthermore, are stories with a very different feel to them than the NT stories.

In short, it's a different book by a different writer who makes no claims to have seen any of these events, and is written so as to stress the moral of the story. It reads very much like one of the parables. The Gospel accounts, by contrast, read much differently.

Those differences are enough to make me read the stories differently, just as I read the parables differently than I read the account of the events surrounding their telling.

[seebs]

It's hard to understand because you claim not to be making things up as you go alone in the same posts that you describe making things up as you go along. Your criteria for something being true or not is your whim.

You keep asserting this, but you've provided no evidence at all. All you do is assert that, obviously, the whole thing was meant to be literal, and then ignore every post in which anyone explains actual distinctions between the text.

As long as you use "true" to mean "literal", there's not much point.

[RPS]

You keep asserting this, but you've provided no evidence at all. All you do is assert that, obviously, the whole thing was meant to be literal, and then ignore every post in which anyone explains actual distinctions between the text.That's because such distinctions don't exist. It's like when I watch The Colbert Report. It's objective truthiness is obvious.

[seebs]

That's because such distinctions don't exist. It's like when I watch The Colbert Report. It's objective truthiness is obvious.

No distinctions, huh? So, a poetic myth written in Hebrew, which reports extensively and in vivid language about dozens of events that allegedly took place centuries or even millennia earlier, spanning centurieg, consistently interpreted as symbolic and allegorical by the people who were passing it on, is in no way at all different from a story written at most a generation or so after the events described by people who, if they weren't there themselves, at least talked to people who were, written in a much more conventional style, with the parables specifically identified as being symbolic and often having their meanings explained within the dialogue?

Sorry, but the claim that there's no distinctions is ridiculous.

[Biff the unclean]

You keep asserting this, but you've provided no evidence at all. All you do is assert that, obviously, the whole thing was meant to be literal, and then ignore every post in which anyone explains actual distinctions between the text.
No one, other than Christians has claimed this. No matter how many times you are corrected about this strawman of yours you never seem to tire of it.
Evidence? You are doing it right in front of us!

As long as you use "true" to mean "literal", there's not much point.
Since your version of “true” appears to be not what something says but what you want it to say. Unless, of course, what it says happens by mere chance to be what you want then that becomes true. Everything then becomes “true”, not because it is but because YOU want it to be. Unless you don't want it to be...as in the case of someone other than you saying anything...then nothing is true.
You keep being asked for some criteria that you use that is independent of your own whims and wishes and you never give one. You just fall back on your happy-horse-shite-strawman of literal meaning that no one is talking about except you. The only criteria is your ego.:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Nice Squirrel]

Yes, we are all quite familiar with this tactic that theists use of insulting their opponents rather than addressing their questions.
So you have no response to my point? It was no tactic, and there was no insult intended. Or are you not reading what I wrote literally? Because no where did I insult or intend insult. When do you decide what is intended as literal and metaphore. If you see a friend and he says he feels like a burger. Is he in the emotional state of a burger? Or hungry for a burger? How do you know? What if he is drunk like a skunk? Does this mean he is sober because skunks don't drink alcohol? What if your friend was stewed? Is he in a pot with vegetables and cannibles dancing arround him?

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?


Bullshite. Liberal Christians only see symbols when it suits them. And they continually whine about bad translations while never explaining why churches hire only idiots to translate their sacred texts.
This is an unsubstanciated claim. Evidence that this is true please.


Are you having reading comprehension problems? The same thing has been continually repeated by 3 different people in this thread. What standard is used that shows, say, the parting of the Red Sea or Jonah in the belly of the whale as metaphor and Christ’s resurrection as literal.See drunk as a skunk. Is it literal or metaphor? or a bit of both? Oh crap now we are into the limitations of language and the layering of meaning, something I suspect will be denied.


What criteria makes the firmament and a physical heaven in the sky poetic and Jesus’ bodily ascension into the same sky historic?:banghead:You are absoulutely right. The sky does not exist.

[angela2]

Of course the question had nothing to do with prophecy but rather with the report of supernatural events. You appear to be evading the question. I noticed that you pointedly skipped over the parting of the Red Sea
Aside from the Red Sea, what do you think of my answer?
There is no evidence in scripture to consider the firmament to be figurative. Yet (almost) no Christian does. And they do not consider it to be literal because of extra-scriptural physical evidence. But they ignore such evidence when it comes to the resurrection.
What do you mean by the firmament? The sky that the psalmist tells us will be rolled up like a scroll? I see a figure of speech there.
We know the resurrection is taken literally but you have no criteria that distinguishes between one “supernatural” event’s standing as literal and that of another not being literal that goes beyond your mere whim as you demonstrate above.
Just calling my post a whim doesn't give me any information about why you think it to be so.

[angela2]

How do you know this?
If you mean do I have scientific proof, you're right, I don't. But neither can it be refuted by science.

The best we can do is to work with the internal evidence.

[angela2]

Did Paul take it literally? Really?
Yes, it understood it to have truly happened. Literally. Romans 1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3 the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name,
And he used it spiritually and figuratively.
Did Mark, who didn't even see fit to mention it?
Since he didn't mention it (or at least we don't have it in the extant copies), we can't know what he thought.

[seebs]

No one, other than Christians has claimed this. No matter how many times you are corrected about this strawman of yours you never seem to tire of it.
Evidence? You are doing it right in front of us!

You're making an assertion about motive, though, and I don't see much support for that.

Since your version of “true” appears to be not what something says but what you want it to say.

Except that, once again, this statement contains the hidden premise "what a text says is exactly its most literal interpretation, no more, no less, in every case and in every circumstance."

Let's start from the top.

Do you believe that, in the entire history of human language, there has ever been any text where the most literal meaning of the words was not "what the text says"? Even once?

[Biff the unclean]

You're making an assertion about motive, though, and I don't see much support for that.
That’s the impression your posts are leaving. If that is not your intent then it’s best you knew so you can do something about it.

Except that, once again, this statement contains the hidden premise "what a text says is exactly its most literal interpretation, no more, no less, in every case and in every circumstance."
Which is nothing but hand waving on your part.
It is YOUR contention that certain supernatural stories in the Bible are literal and it is YOUR contention that others are not.
By what possible criteria do you tell the difference? You have been asked that multiple times by multiple people and the only thing you’ve done is assert that the Jesus stories are literal and the Hebrew are myth but with no real explanation of why just some baseless assertions about the authors.

Let's start from the top.
No, let’s stick to the subject for a change and drop your tired strawman.
Just give us a straight answer of what criteria you use to tell the mythic from the literal.

[Donkeykong]

Yes seebs please do! if you can

[Biff the unclean]

Aside from the Red Sea, what do you think of my answer?
I wondered why you waste your time and ours playing around
What do you mean by the firmament?
The solid dome that God spent an entire day creating
Gen:1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

By all means go into a tap dance but there it is on the first page of your bible, a solid dome holding up an ocean in the sky. I’ve never met a Christian who thought it existed even though this strange fantasy dome-world is the world of both the NT & OT
And I am not claiming you think it exists. What I’d like to know is if the firmament is myth how do you separate the story of Christ bodily ascending into the firmament as literal and not the myth of the OT. If a man made out of dust and his friend the talking snake are mythology then the Fall from eating a magic apple is mythology. Why would you need salvation from a myth?


Just calling my post a whim doesn't give me any information about why you think it to be so.
Because you have no criteria to separate bible stories that are literal from those which are not other than you like some and you don’t like others.

[WishboneDawn]

Yes, it understood it to have truly happened. Literally. Romans 1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3 the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name,
And he used it spiritually and figuratively.

I've seen a lot of debate around whether Paul took the ressurection literally. I'm not sure it's a matter to be solved with scripture quotes since it's the quotes that spark the debate in the first place. Count me as still unresolved on that issue.

Since he didn't mention it (or at least we don't have it in the extant copies), we can't know what he thought.

Exactly. That's why this claim you made about the ressurection, "that is taken literally by all NT writers," is unsupportable.

[Ubercat]

It's funny how the figurative parts of the bible increase as science advances our knowlege. Does it phase the christian that we now know that there couldn't have been a wordwide flood? Of course not. Once enough physical evidence is in to disprove a flood, he just changes that part of the bible to a metaphor. Unless he's a nutcase like Hovind. Then he tries to subvert science into being his fuzzy little pet.

biblegod dizzyingly changes faces, as time goes on. First he's this, then he's that. He's over here, then he's over there. And it's all just honkydorry with the christian, just as long as he still exists. "Please jeebus! Be real! I don't care what you look like, or how you think, or what you meant by this or that which the bible claims you said. Just exist! I'll change you around anyway I need to, just to avoid admitting that I wasted x years of my life believing in you!"

-Ubercat

[RPS]

Sorry, but the claim that there's no distinctions is ridiculous.I thought my satire and my agreement with you here was obvious. My apologies. All this talk about no criteria is downright silly (and willfully ignorant). Christians have been involved in the careful study of exegesis, hermeneutics, and textual criticism (higher and lower) for centuries.

[angela2]

It's funny how the figurative parts of the bible increase as science advances our knowlege.
So you're saying as scientific knowledge changes scriptural interpretation shouldn't? Hardly seems fair. :D

[fatpie42]

That's easy - I'm not in a position to bother bending over backward to try to 'save' the Christian scriptures, so I don't need to use the metaphor dodge.

What is this legendary 'metaphor dodge'? If symbolism is the best explanation, why are you unwilling to take it seriously? What would it even mean to talk of a day 'in which' light was created. You cannot have days and nights without light! They cannot possibly have meant that literally. What more do you need?


Just recognize them as being falsified stories. The only reason to get people to treat them as "true but in a metaphorical way" would be if I wanted people to remain Christians after seeing flaws in the Christian account of things. But I don't see that as being a useful goal. I want them to realize the belief system isn't realiable when they see those flaws. The metaphor interpretation allows people to soften over those flaws and ignore them.

But you have presupposed that there are flaws. This is because you have presupposed that the literalist interpretation is the correct one. If you accepted the evidence which makes a symbolic interpretation more likely you would realise that the flaws are not in the text itself necessarily, but rather in the interpretation.

Put it this way, there was a point where it was believed that the Earth needed to be the centre of the universe. Why was this? Well, some people interpreted that from the Bible. Was their interpretation wrong? Or can the Bible be interpreted in a number of different ways. Is there even a 'correct' interpretation anyway? If we think the Bible is just another text and we do not see it as a source of truth, why should we have any judgment as to how it should or shouldn't be interpreted?

If someone like St. Augustine interprets the Genesis as meaning that small things develop into bigger things (he really said that), surely we can both accept that, for the time period, this was actually quite a sensible hypothesis. Who are we to say that this was a 'flawed' interpretation of Genesis? Who are we to say that there is such a thing as truth or falsity when it comes to the Bible?

If someone managed to create Douglas Adams' 'Total Perspective Vortex' that wouldn't make his book 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' TRUE. It would merely mean that the Total Perspective Vortex was REAL. In the same way, Augustine's theory which is very close to evolution and was interpreted from the Bible, does not make the Bible true (or false), but rather means that his interpretation does not contradict the world around us.

I can't help but feel that all this idea of 'justifying the Bible' and 'correcting the flaws' is somewhat missing the point. The point is that we need to respect that there are varying interpretations and, since the Bible is not (in our eyes) an authority, there is no way of deciding which one is the correct interpretation (though 'historical criticism' might shed some light and that shows that symbolism in scriptures was widespread).

[fatpie42]

Selsaral asked, Steve Mading asked and I asked. What backs up your claim that the gospels are not mythical. You keep repeating that they aren't but they are filled with the same magical stories as the OT. And for that matter the name Jesus can also be taken as a pun. What criteria do you use to seperate living in the belly of a big fish from turning water into wine?

Since when did Stephen Mading accept that the stories in Bible were mythical. He didn't claim they were myths, he claimed they were 'false'.

[fatpie42]

When do you decide what is intended as literal and metaphore. If you see a friend and he says he feels like a burger. Is he in the emotional state of a burger? Or hungry for a burger? How do you know? What if he is drunk like a skunk? Does this mean he is sober because skunks don't drink alcohol? What if your friend was stewed? Is he in a pot with vegetables and cannibles dancing arround him?

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?


Well, if you look to Wittgensteinian philosophy, meaning is use. The problem with a text is that there is a limit to which we can gauge the context in which the words are being used. We would be in a much better situation if we were with a person who could explain their meanings and clarify various points to us.

However, language does follow certain rules, and there is an extent to which we can understand what someone is trying to acheive by their words even if they are using imagery.

Just read a novel. Metaphors can be understood when we look at their context. If you were a radical sceptic about language you might ask how we ever understand each other, whether we are using metaphors or not. However, if you recognise that we do understand each other and that we do understand metaphors quite often, there isn't really much of a problem.

[WishboneDawn]

Since when did Stephen Mading accept that the stories in Bible were mythical. He didn't claim they were myths, he claimed they were 'false'.

I'm beginning to think that there are two problems when talking about the bible with some people and those people can be atheists or christians.

1) They equate myths with lies or falsehood.

2) They read the bible uncritically or with only one form of criticism in mind (usually historical) and ignore other kinds of criticism.

[Biff the unclean]

Since when did Stephen Mading accept that the stories in Bible were mythical. He didn't claim they were myths, he claimed they were 'false'.
What the F does that matter. Seebs says some are myths and some are literal and jumps all over anyone who disagrees. Yet for some strange reason he won't tell us the criteria he uses to tell one from the other.

[angela2]

I can't help but feel that all this idea of 'justifying the Bible' and 'correcting the flaws' is somewhat missing the point. The point is that we need to respect that there are varying interpretations and, since the Bible is not (in our eyes) an authority, there is no way of deciding which one is the correct interpretation (though 'historical criticism' might shed some light and that shows that symbolism in scriptures was widespread).
I think you may be a little too far on the other end of the spectrum for my taste, but you've made an important point. Atheists here are telling Christians in effect that the bible is some ancient writing locked in the past. They act as if the interpretation of the bible were fixed for all eternity at the time it was written. Now I can see that if that is what atheists think, the bible isn't much use to them...or for that matter anyone else. But that's not what most Christians believe. We believe that the bible is the living word, interpreted anew by the Holy Spirit for each generation.

Having said that, I'll also point out that the written text imposes limitations on interpretation. A wedding feast can't become a funeral procession. Someone who died by crucifixion can't have died of athlete's foot.

So we have, in fact, two different understandings of what scripture is. And perhaps that is why the atheist will never be satisfied with Christians' answers, because the bible can't be made to lay down and play dead for scientific reasoning as they wish.

[Steve Schlicht]

I think you may be a little too far on the other end of the spectrum for my taste, but you've made an important point. Atheists here are telling Christians in effect that the bible is some ancient writing locked in the past. They act as if the interpretation of the bible were fixed for all eternity at the time it was written. Now I can see that if that is what atheists think, the bible isn't much use to them...or for that matter anyone else. But that's not what most Christians believe. We believe that the bible is the living word, interpreted anew by the Holy Spirit for each generation.

Well, angela2, I think that many Christians would find you on the other end of the spectrum making such an assertion on the absolute Word of God (ala Muse).

The issue regarding atheists positing an interpretation that the bible is fixed for all eternity at the time it was written is because that is, by far, the most common claim of Christians. Or, it is that you are addressing such an atheist critique when atheists just happen to be addressing the claim of Christians that the bible is the unwavering Word of God...and then finding flaw in the atheists refutation because you just happen to be a Christian who perceives it as a "living" document subject to new interpretation by each new generation.

You can't really fault the atheist for not finding sure footing in such discussions when the goal posts are shifted depending upon which theist is responding.

Having said that, I'll also point out that the written text imposes limitations on interpretation. A wedding feast can't become a funeral procession. Someone who died by crucifixion can't have died of athlete's foot.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this, however, I would only add that someone cannot "die" by crucifixion and then live for all eternity as the prince of paradise in a realm of gold and pearl beyond the known universe.

This is, in my view, appears to be the claim of the written text and it simply makes no sense as we humans know language and concepts.

So we have, in fact, two different understandings of what scripture is. And perhaps that is why the atheist will never be satisfied with Christians' answers, because the bible can't be made to lay down and play dead for scientific reasoning as they wish.

It is really because there are many ancient texts (even older than the Christian editorial that was compiled and voted on by men of Nicea) that have differing claims, with similar unfalsifiable claims and imperative messages via myth and hero and monster and the representative authority of sage.

Scientific reasoning is not the enemy of humankind and is not comparable to fables and legends and parables because it is a completely different animal altogether.

My view should not be misconstrued as dismissing what motivates people to find comfort in their own traditions, mythic heroes and legends or any value they may have for adherents.

It is when we are expected to believe in them as real people who effect our governance, liberty and physics that it becomes a problem.

Steve

[Ubercat]

So you're saying as scientific knowledge changes scriptural interpretation shouldn't? Hardly seems fair. :D

I'm sorry. I thought your god was supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever. Science has a right, and a duty to advance. biblegod just has to BE right. If he isn't, as demonstrated by the failings of scripture, then something is very wrong. Perhaps he doesn't exist? How else would you explain his inability to have EVER put anything into his instruction manual that wasn't obviously a creation of the beliefs and prejudices of the bible authors?

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

IHaving said that, I'll also point out that the written text imposes limitations on interpretation. A wedding feast can't become a funeral procession. Someone who died by crucifixion can't have died of athlete's foot.

I'm curious then, as to how Judas died, who bought the potters field, and what happened to the 30 pieces of silver. Do you have any non ludicrous theories?

So we have, in fact, two different understandings of what scripture is. And perhaps that is why the atheist will never be satisfied with Christians' answers, because the bible can't be made to lay down and play dead for scientific reasoning as they wish.

A perfect god, who wanted to draw people to himself, (Ie. loving) could EASILY have done a vastly better job on the bible. He chose to write it in such a way that it would be interpreted as just another myth, by anyone reading it with an open mind. He also could have written it in such a way that it would not lead to opposing interpretations by fanatics among his followers, who in turn carry(ied) out tragic wars over it.

-Ubercat

[RPS]

I think that many Christians would find you on the other end of the spectrum making such an assertion on the absolute Word of God (ala Muse).Despite those who claim it, the vast number or varying interpretations even among those who claim a fixed for all time view proves otherwise.

The issue regarding atheists positing an interpretation that the bible is fixed for all eternity at the time it was written is because that is, by far, the most common claim of Christians.I highly doubt that. Can you support it with evidence?

I thought your god was supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever.But people aren't.

A perfect god, who wanted to draw people to himself, (Ie. loving) could EASILY have done a vastly better job on the bible. He chose to write it in such a way that it would be interpreted as just another myth, by anyone reading it with an open mind. He also could have written it in such a way that it would not lead to opposing interpretations by fanatics among his followers, who in turn carry(ied) out tragic wars over it.Yawn.

[Biff the unclean]

Atheists here are telling Christians in effect that the bible is some ancient writing locked in the past.
Well that is a problem you Protestants have when (unlike the Roman Catholics) you take a book and exalt it above reason. A friend of mine who is a Jesuit priest calls it ‘the Protestant cult of the bible.’
Books ARE locked. If the available information changes the book does not. The only way the information in a book can change is if later editions are edited and rewritten.

They act as if the interpretation of the bible were fixed for all eternity at the time it was written.
Yes, that is called honesty. The book says what it says. The only way to make it say something different is to rewrite it. But you have declared this book to be magic, some parts of it even have curses for those who attempt to change it. So you are stuck with it.

Now I can see that if that is what atheists think, the bible isn't much use to them...or for that matter anyone else. But that's not what most Christians believe.
You have already told us that “truth” has no real meaning for Christians. That it is partially objective and partially subjective.
We Atheists do understand what you are saying. You are giving the word 'truth’ it’s medieval meaning of a statement that would elicit a strong and positive emotional response. Much like St Augustine’s attack on reason at the beginning of On The Trinity.
Educated people gave up this Christian alternate meaning centuries ago and readopted the Classical Greek/Roman meaning of being in accord with the facts because the Christian meaning is nonsense. Truth is truth whether it gets an emotional response out of you or not.

We believe that the bible is the living word, interpreted anew by the Holy Spirit for each generation.
Which is about as blatant a piece of bull shite as they come. A ghost told you to say your book means something that it doesn’t say. Oh brother!
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you Christians try honesty for a change? You guys could do that in a number of ways. You could stop pretending that you are following the bible and admit that culture and morality have advanced since it was written. Or follow the bible but rewrite it to say what you want it to say instead of pretending a Holy Ghost waved his magic wand and changed the meaning of the words.

Having said that, I'll also point out that the written text imposes limitations on interpretation. A wedding feast can't become a funeral procession. Someone who died by crucifixion can't have died of athlete's foot.
Really? Surely the firmament is no longer a solid dome?

So we have, in fact, two different understandings of what scripture is. And perhaps that is why the atheist will never be satisfied with Christians' answers, because the bible can't be made to lay down and play dead for scientific reasoning as they wish.
The problem with the scientific method is that at it’s heart its purpose is to keep people honest. The problem with scientific reasoning is that it is honest reasoning.
Christianity cannot exist in the face of honesty. It cannot even bear “truth” but must pervert the very meaning of the word.

[Biff the unclean]

Still waiting to hear that criteria Christians use to tell what parts are literal and what parts are not.

[Steve Schlicht]

Despite those who claim it, the vast number or varying interpretations even among those who claim a fixed for all time view proves otherwise.

My point exactly!

I highly doubt that. Can you support it with evidence?

Yes. (http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp)

Steve

[Ubercat]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ubercat
I thought your god was supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever.

But people aren't.

So biblegod thought that the "firmament" was a real thing in the sky, but then discovered that it wasn't at the same time that we did? If he knew it wasn't real, then why did he inspire a human author to put it in the book?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ubercat
A perfect god, who wanted to draw people to himself, (Ie. loving) could EASILY have done a vastly better job on the bible. He chose to write it in such a way that it would be interpreted as just another myth, by anyone reading it with an open mind. He also could have written it in such a way that it would not lead to opposing interpretations by fanatics among his followers, who in turn carry(ied) out tragic wars over it.

Yawn.

Yeah. Who cares if biblegod caused millions of people to be butchered? He's STILL "good." Don't bore me with that crap.

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

Still waiting to hear that criteria Christians use to tell what parts are literal and what parts are not.

And you're gonna KEEP waiting. They know that any explanation they give can easily be blown out of the water. How can a human being KNOW that he is wrong, yet BELIEVE that he is right?:huh: Surely the human brain is an amazing organ.

-Ubercat

[WishboneDawn]

Still waiting to hear that criteria Christians use to tell what parts are literal and what parts are not.

I think probably the list fo me would be reason, criticism (source, form, historical, etc), religious tradition, the writing of scholars and likely more I haven't thought of. Some probably use, "What my preacher told me." Heck, some may use PBS documentaries.

I'm sort of wondering how you guys would approach the question.

[benjdm]

I'm sort of wondering how you guys would approach the question.
I tend to read it literally wherever it doesn't make it clear it is being metaphorical. Since I don't consider it an authority, I haven't put a whole lot of thought or effort into interpretation.

[Steve Schlicht]

Well, for me as an atheist, I would say that it appears to be an early attempt at a "Constitution" or a set of documents and narratives and prose edited to set forth some sort of moral/ethical foundation for a particular community in a particular region during a particular period of time.

Superstition and distinct lack of scientific exploration at the time combined to require otherworldly elements into this lexicon, which now often conflicts with other avenues of study.

It was really just another cycle of time where charismatic leaders attempt to reassert authority and provide statute to modify human behavior and, I suppose in some way, set out what seems right and good to a large community of people under the banner of "governance".

The eastern cultures took a distincly different course and came up with other ways to govern and provide societal standards.

American history and the near deification of the founding fathers is a prime example of how this process works.

Steve

[Biff the unclean]

I think probably the list fo me would be reason, criticism (source, form, historical, etc), religious tradition, the writing of scholars and likely more I haven't thought of. Some probably use, "What my preacher told me." Heck, some may use PBS documentaries
Resurrection :Literal or not.
Reason says a resounding NO.
Source says Yes
Form says No, (common pagan myth)
Historical says No, throughout history dead Jews stay dead
Religious tradition says Yes, absolutely literal
Scholars are all over the place because they have no hard facts to work with only anecdotes.
PBS depends if they are fund raising or not

I'm sort of wondering how you guys would approach the question
Exactly the same way you would evaluate these claims if you heard them today…say at a carnival sideshow.
I use the very same standards to determine if something exists or not that you do. Is there a sandwich on this plate, is a car parked in my space? The only difference is that I don’t suspend my standards when I hear the word God.

[Steve Schlicht]

Don't forget the trains, Biff...stop for the trains!

Steve

[WishboneDawn]

Well, for me as an atheist, I would say that it appears to be an early attempt at a "Constitution" or a set of documents and narratives and prose edited to set forth some sort of moral/ethical foundation for a particular community in a particular region during a particular period of time.

So that particular time would be at Nicea? I tend to think of that as less a matter of morals and ethics then of establishing a unified structure and theology (Well, it worked for a little while. :)). A powerful base for Constantine too which does suggest your view.

But there were other particular times. The council at Jamnia, the work of the Deuteronomical editor, etc. Was it always for the same reason?

Superstition and distinct lack of scientific exploration at the time combined to require otherworldly elements into this lexicon, which now often conflicts with other avenues of study.

It was really just another cycle of time where charismatic leaders attempt to reassert authority and provide statute to modify human behavior and, I suppose in some way, set out what seems right and good to a large community of people under the banner of "governance".

With Constantine? Do you think the Rabbi's at Jamnia had the same intent?

I see you looking at the bible and seeing a finished document that was produced at one point in time for a specific purpose. That's fair but it's a limited approach. The bible is also a collection of writings from different genres, traditions...lots of different sources. Where does Song of Songs fit into reaserting authority? It also has a tradition of being discussed and debated, especially before it was the bible. How does that fit into asserting authority? Isn't it also fair to look at what scripture was before Nicea or at diiferent times since?

I don't think you're view is wrong and to be honest, it's not one I've given enough thought to myself, but it's not the only view and it leaves as much unexamined and unexplained as any one view.

[benjdm]

I don't think you're view is wrong and to be honest, it's not one I've given enough thought to myself, but it's not the only view and it leaves as much unexamined and unexplained as any one view.
As long as we're throwing questions back and forth, if you were unconvinced any divine revelation had ever occurred, how would you interpret the bible ?

When I try and imagine how I would interpret the bible if I became convinced it was a divine revelation, I think I would interpret it literally, which would then convince me it wasn't a divine revelation....not very helpful. My empathy and imagination - my ability to put myself in your shoes - is too limited, I guess.

[Nice Squirrel]

burp.

[WishboneDawn]

Resurrection :Literal or not.
Reason says a resounding NO.
Source says Yes
Form says No, (common pagan myth)
Historical says No, throughout history dead Jews stay dead
Religious tradition says Yes, absolutely literal
Scholars are all over the place because they have no hard facts to work with only anecdotes.
PBS depends if they are fund raising or not

Except for reason and historical I'm not sure your claims of yes and no are so cut and dry but regardless, you get what I meant.

Right now, after thinking about that stuff, I tend to think of the ressurection as a metaphorical event. Granted, I'm not going to claim that's what the bible says. Depending on how you look at the bible it can say different things...Form, source, historical, etc...But regardless, it can be read as a metaphorical event, despite an original author's intent.

[Steven Mading]

For the same reason I have a hangup about admitting that I don't think the comics are "true". I do not accept the notion that they were intended as factual accounts.

Reading between the lines, I get the impression that you have the following statement as a premise: "Things which are intended to be interpreted as fictional metaphors cannot be called false". I do not agree. A false story that is INTENDED to be understood as false (i.e. a work of fiction) is still false. It's just not *deceptively* false if the author intended the reader to see that it isn't really a true story. If you think there's some wonderful metaphors in the bible, you don't have to claim they are true in order to say so. To use an example, if someone says "I think there are wonderful metaphors in the play 'A Christmas Carol', and their message is good", they aren't saying "I think 'A Christmas Carol' is true".

Take a fable for example. You don't have to claim the story of the tortise and the hare is true in order to claim it has a good message. Calling it fictional because you don't believe a story about talking animals was meant to be believed doesn't detract from that fact that you might like the message.

Your constant insistence (and that of so many other moderate Christains) that when part of the bible is found to not be literally true, that the only proper way to express that is to call it metaphorically true (a nonsense concept), and never just call it false, is, to get back to the subject at hand, is a practice that enables fundies.

"It is not literally true, but as a metaphor it is true" is an utterly weasily, nonsensical concept. What's wrong with just saying plain-spokenly, "It is false, but I think it was not intended to be believed as true because I think it was intended as fiction."? I's a much more honest way to express the idea, that is not open to feeding fuel to the fundies.

[Biff the unclean]

And we have told you it relies on personal experience and interpretation.
Yes, this is the same non-answer we have learned to expect from Christians.
Q: What criteria do you use to interpret if a give scripture is literal or not?
A: Interpretation

And WTF does YOUR personal experience have to do with something SOMEBODY ELSE wrote?

[Steve Schlicht]

So that particular time would be at Nicea? I tend to think of that as less a matter of morals and ethics then of establishing a unified structure and theology (Well, it worked for a little while. :)). A powerful base for Constantine too which does suggest your view.

But there were other particular times. The council at Jamnia, the work of the Deuteronomical editor, etc. Was it always for the same reason?

It appears to me to be so.

The reason seems to be a valid one for the times, so please don't perceive any particular animus in my opinion.

What other reasons would you assert?

With Constantine? Do you think the Rabbi's at Jamnia had the same intent?

Establishing a moral/ethical code of conduct and interpretive methods of finding purpose in life?

Certainly.

I see you looking at the bible and seeing a finished document that was produced at one point in time for a specific purpose.

Oh, I wish you were closer to where I live and I would share with you my collection of Bibles dating to the early 1800's (The Marian, The Jerusalem, etc. and assorted Concordances)...the gnostics. I am an atheist and have studied many assorted religious texts over the years, some of which seem nothing alike and still find that they are narratives attempting to impart a moral/code and standard for their day...some more superstitious than others depending upon their level of scientific study and reliance.

That's fair but it's a limited approach. The bible is also a collection of writings from different genres, traditions...lots of different sources. Where does Song of Songs fit into reaserting authority?

You don't think song and artful tradition play a part in asserting authority of the whole?

What about traditional dance, chants and singing?

Of course, they assert authority via group bonding.


It also has a tradition of being discussed and debated, especially before it was the bible. How does that fit into asserting authority? Isn't it also fair to look at what scripture was before Nicea or at diiferent times since?

Certainly, I never said otherwise. It doesn't change my theory on what these narratives were about and what motivated people to generate them.

I don't think you're view is wrong and to be honest, it's not one I've given enough thought to myself, but it's not the only view and it leaves as much unexamined and unexplained as any one view.

Well, I never claimed that it was the only view or...for that matter that there could not very well be some other explanation.

I get the feeling that my view may be perceived as promoting some negative connotation when it is simply offered as one explanation that I find more significant in light of historical and cultural similarities and traditions.

Take my view with the same grain of salt that is given to any other.

:wave:

Steve

[WishboneDawn]

As long as we're throwing questions back and forth, if you were unconvinced any divine revelation had ever occurred, how would you interpret the bible ?

When I try and imagine how I would interpret the bible if I became convinced it was a divine revelation, I think I would interpret it literally, which would then convince me it wasn't a divine revelation....not very helpful. My empathy and imagination - my ability to put myself in your shoes - is too limited, I guess.

I'm not sure why divine revelation would mean literal. When people want to communicate powerful shared truths like love and depravity and courage and all that crap, it's generally not a literal form we resort to. It's poems and songs and stories that we use to get the point across, no? Why wouldn't god use the same methods?

But to your question, I'm not convinced it IS divine revalation is the sense that god wrote it or channeled it through human authors. I think it shows the ancient hebrew and christian ideas of the divine. I read it keeping in mind (or trying to anyway) reason, tradition and different forms of criticism. Probably pretty close to how Fatpie would approach it. The assumptions I do bring in to it would be that a) there's a god and b) it's got some very useful information for me about how to live and structure my life. It's also got some gore and unpleasant stuff but I'm an old time fan of horror movies and greek myths so no biggie.

[Biff the unclean]

Right now, after thinking about that stuff, I tend to think of the ressurection as a metaphorical event. Granted, I'm not going to claim that's what the bible says. Depending on how you look at the bible it can say different things...Form, source, historical, etc...But regardless, it can be read as a metaphorical event, despite an original author's intent

Part of my job is to give lectures and write magazine articles and the occasional book. If my audience is getting some meaning from my words, that is other than that which is my intent, then I am doing a piss poor job of communication. If my audience is getting the information that they interpret (imagine) I am saying instead of my original intent then they are not getting information from me. They are being ‘informed’ by their own imagination.
And that has been the greatest boast of Liberal Christians on this board…the need to interpret the bible themselves and how wonderful it is that it’s “living” and not static. But they are getting information not from the bible but from their own imaginations. They are making it up as they go along while claiming the authority of the bible.

[Merzbow42]

Your constant insistence (and that of so many other moderate Christains) that when part of the bible is found to not be literally true, that the only proper way to express that is to call it metaphorically true (a nonsense concept), and never just call it false, is, to get back to the subject at hand, is a practice that enables fundies.

Exactly. The point I made to seebs earlier in this thread was that for the Bible to have value as a religious text above and beyond the value that, say, an inspirational novel has, the Bible must contain information unobtainable by non-spiritual methods, or at the very least moral wisdom unlikely to have been stumbled upon by non-spiritual means. He was unable to point to any specific example of such when pressed.

In the end, liberal Christians are just wishful thinkers. They are akin to Mormons; most Mormons don't make any attempt to justify the specifics of the ridiculous story in the BoM, they simply assert its truth because they pray and get a good feeling about it (which is exactly what Mormon missionaries tell prospective converts to do in order to achieve a 'testimony').

I've always claimed that any assertion of a proposition without recourse to impersonal evidence provides intellectual cover for those who would take this to the extreme - modern-day fundies.

[WishboneDawn]

It appears to me to be so.

The reason seems to be a valid one for the times, so please don't perceive any particular animus in my opinion.

What other reasons would you assert?

I'm thinking of stuff like preserving cultural heritage (that strikes me when I think of the D editor. If his agenda was more about leadership and such I don't know why he'd preserve contradictory aspects of stories like the animals on Noah's ark), uniting different tribes, creating a common language (what does the trinity mean for example), excluding some traditions...

But yeah, I see how all or most of that could fit under the umbrella of your idea.

Establishing a moral/ethical code of conduct and interpretive methods of finding purpose in life?

Certainly.

Okay, yeah.

Oh, I wish you were closer to where I live and I would share with you my collection of Bibles dating to the early 1800's (The Marian, The Jerusalem, etc. and assorted Concordances)...the gnostics. I am an atheist and have studied many assorted religious texts over the years, some of which seem nothing alike and still find that they are narratives attempting to impart a moral/code and standard for their day...some more superstitious than others depending upon their level of scientific study and reliance.

Now I wish I did live closer so I could see that. I'd even bring cheesecake. Damn.

You don't think song and artful tradition play a part in asserting authority of the whole?

What about traditional dance, chants and singing?

Of course, they assert authority via group bonding.

Point taken. I think I was thinking you were implying something more...sinister and forgetting the positive aspect of what you were implying.


I get the feeling that my view may be perceived as promoting some negative connotation when it is simply offered as one explanation that I find more significant in light of historical and cultural similarities and traditions.

Take my view with the same grain of salt that is given to any other.

:wave:

Steve

Yes sorry. I think I was taking your view that way, both that it was the only way you viewed the bible and that it was a judgement (Bad!) on that view of what the purpose was. I apologize, thanks for being patient with me there.

[benjdm]

I'm not sure why divine revelation would mean literal. When people want to communicate powerful shared truths like love and depravity and courage and all that crap, it's generally not a literal form we resort to. It's poems and songs and stories that we use to get the point across, no? Why wouldn't god use the same methods?
Because love, depravity, courage, and stuff, are human abstractions about human behaviors and emotions. If god wanted to only share his own experiences with love, depravity, courage, and stuff, I could see it....maybe. I'm sure I'm projecting somewhat - I tend to communicate in manner X, therefore I expect others to communicate in manner X.
But to your question, I'm not convinced it IS divine revalation is the sense that god wrote it or channeled it through human authors. I think it shows the ancient hebrew and christian ideas of the divine.
Without divine revelation, why would those ideas be any more valid than anyone else's ideas ? I don't see why you would reference them at all.
b) it's got some very useful information for me about how to live and structure my life. It's also got some gore and unpleasant stuff but I'm an old time fan of horror movies and greek myths so no biggie.
I don't see how that is different than just using the bible as one source of ideas and evaluating the ideas' merit against your own thinking. Which we all do anytime we read anything.

[benjdm]

dup

[WishboneDawn]

Part of my job is to give lectures and write magazine articles and the occasional book. If my audience is getting some meaning from my words, that is other than that which is my intent, then I am doing a piss poor job of communication. If my audience is getting the information that they interpret (imagine) I am saying instead of my original intent then they are not getting information from me. They are being ‘informed’ by their own imagination.

That's a good point and damn you, I'm going to be thinking on that. There's something that's not quite right in that about form and intent but I can't give you a good response at the moment.

And that has been the greatest boast of Liberal Christians on this board…the need to interpret the bible themselves and how wonderful it is that it’s “living” and not static. But they are getting information not from the bible but from their own imaginations. They are making it up as they go along while claiming the authority of the bible.

No, I've heard personal experience talked about quite a bit. That encompasses a lot of territory. Have we ever had a talk about what personal experience means (probably and I missed it)?

[WishboneDawn]

Because love, depravity, courage, and stuff, are human abstractions about human behaviors and emotions. If god wanted to only share his own experiences with love, depravity, courage, and stuff, I could see it....maybe. I'm sure I'm projecting somewhat - I tend to communicate in manner X, therefore I expect others to communicate in manner X.

I'm sort of the opposite. Someone can tell me straight out what they mean and I stare at them slack jawed. Frame the same thing in some outlandish metaphor and the lightbulb goes on.

Without divine revelation, why would those ideas be any more valid than anyone else's ideas ?

I'm not sure why they'd be more valid either. But I've got cultural and family ties to a certain faith and I find it's more relevent and meaningful to me because of that. Doesn't mean I'm not out learning about and admiring other faith traditions or schools of thought. Sort of like how I admire and learn about corvettes and jaguars but my lovely little hyundai is what I've chosen because it's suits my life.

I don't see how that is different than just using the bible as one source of ideas and evaluating the ideas' merit against your own thinking. Which we all do anytime we read anything.

Agreed.

I'm not sure what to say about that but agreed. :)

[Ubercat]

No, I've heard personal experience talked about quite a bit. That encompasses a lot of territory. Have we ever had a talk about what personal experience means (probably and I missed it)?

While I don't recall any threads SPECIFICALLY about personal experience, I've catalogued it several times as:

Emotional endorphin rushes - Imagining heaven and getting excited
Happy coincidences - Something good happens and is credited to biblegod. Anything from ones team winning, to a prayed about disease going into remission.
Wishful thinking - Wanting jesus to really for real exist, really bad.
Good dreams - Dreaming about biblegod, and taking it as a message.

I recently realised an addition:
Feeling normal human empathy for others - and crediting it to the holy spirit.

Any others that I've left out, that anyone can think of? Maybe we should start a thread?

-Ubercat

[Nice Squirrel]

Part of my job is to give lectures and write magazine articles and the occasional book. If my audience is getting some meaning from my words, that is other than that which is my intent, then I am doing a piss poor job of communication. If my audience is getting the information that they interpret (imagine) I am saying instead of my original intent then they are not getting information from me. They are being ‘informed’ by their own imagination.

What make you think they are getting the information you are relaying? Could they undersatnd the same information if they received it in a different form or different language? Do you make sure that you never use analogies to explain what you mean but only use verifiable scientific terms and no jargon? Or do you assume your audience has a certain level of knowledge going into you lecture? Because I give lectures too and depending on the audience I vary my analogies and depth of discussion. Analogies help the audience understand new concepts. I suspect you use them.

And that has been the greatest boast of Liberal Christians on this board…the need to interpret the bible themselves and how wonderful it is that it’s “living” and not static. But they are getting information not from the bible but from their own imaginations. They are making it up as they go along while claiming the authority of the bible

Isn't that what you are doing in you lectures and books? Making it up.

[Biff the unclean]

No, I've heard personal experience talked about quite a bit. That encompasses a lot of territory. Have we ever had a talk about what personal experience means (probably and I missed it)?
I’ve only seen what the experiences were, posted once or twice though the claim of personal experience is repeated almost daily. The experiences posted were laughable (one guy had an upset tummy feel better after praying) and again amount to being informed by ones own imagination.

[WishboneDawn]

While I don't recall any threads SPECIFICALLY about personal experience, I've catalogued it several times as:

Emotional endorphin rushes - Imagining heaven and getting excited
Happy coincidences - Something good happens and is credited to biblegod. Anything from ones team winning, to a prayed about disease going into remission.
Wishful thinking - Wanting jesus to really for real exist, really bad.
Good dreams - Dreaming about biblegod, and taking it as a message.

I recently realised an addition:
Feeling normal human empathy for others - and crediting it to the holy spirit.

Any others that I've left out, that anyone can think of? Maybe we should start a thread?

-Ubercat

I think that would be a good idea because I already have major issues with your proposal there. :)

[Biff the unclean]

Because I give lectures too and depending on the audience I vary my analogies and depth of discussion. Analogies help the audience understand new concepts. I suspect you use them.
Good, I hope you don’t talk over the parole board’s head

Isn't that what you are doing in you lectures and books? Making it up.
Fortunately no one is expecting a firm grip on reality from someone who enjoys pretending they are a squirrel.

[Nice Squirrel]

Now that response was uncalled for. I was pointing out that you most certainly use analogies and that there is more than one way to help people understand concepts. I was also hinting at audience and translation problems.

[WishboneDawn]

I’ve only seen what the experiences were, posted once or twice though the claim of personal experience is repeated almost daily. The experiences posted were laughable (one guy had an upset tummy feel better after praying) and again amount to being informed by ones own imagination.

I read it and think normal human experiences and how the bible speaks to those. Like...um...experience with children. Then reading about Jesus and him telling the apostles to be like children. Now that's not the best example because that does lead to an interpretation (be innocent, be wonder filled) that doesn't jive with the original intent (be like the least of us) because how we view children has changed. But I think the parables appeal to that view of personal experience.

[Merzbow42]

I read it and think normal human experiences and how the bible speaks to those.

Isn't it far more inspiring to think that humans came up with these stories on their own rather than requiring help from God?

[WishboneDawn]

Isn't it far more inspiring to think that humans came up with these stories on their own rather than requiring help from God?

That IS what I think. Sure, I think they got inspiration from experiences they interpretted as divine (nothing there an atheist could argue with I think) but it was human hands, minds and hearts that crafted the bible.

[Biff the unclean]

I read it and think normal human experiences and how the bible speaks to those. Like...um...experience with children. Then reading about Jesus and him telling the apostles to be like children. Now that's not the best example because that does lead to an interpretation (be innocent, be wonder filled) that doesn't jive with the original intent (be like the least of us) because how we view children has changed. But I think the parables appeal to that view of personal experience.

But they give you advise about normal human experience from barbarians living under the heel of a totalitarian regime.
“…be like the least of us” is terrible advice for a person in the 21 century. It’s worst than useless, it’s demeaning.
Today’s Christians “reinterpret” that into a more uplifting message but the uplifting message is coming from modern day Americans and not the bible.

[benjdm]

I don't see how that is different than just using the bible as one source of ideas and evaluating the ideas' merit against your own thinking. Which we all do anytime we read anything.

Agreed.

I'm not sure what to say about that but agreed. :)
Well, then I would argue you are holding your own thinking as your authority on matters, and therefore would be a Christian freethinker. I won't tell anyone. :D

[WishboneDawn]

But they give you advise about normal human experience from barbarians living under the heel of a totalitarian regime.
“…be like the least of us” is terrible advice for a person in the 21 century. It’s worst than useless, it’s demeaning.

I disagree. Once you figure out what he meant by be like children you don't need to stop there. So be like the least of us. Be humble, serve others, etc. can be advice that I tend to think quite a few people could do with these cays.

[/quote]Today’s Christians “reinterpret” that into a more uplifting message but the uplifting message is coming from modern day Americans and not the bible.[/QUOTE]

Of course it comes from the bible. If I look at a Kandinsky print (yes, I'm being pretentious but the guy did beautiful stuff. But I did say print instead of painting so I think that mitigates the pretentiousness)) and see a horse face where none was intended it still comes, in part, from the print. I would not have seen the face without the print.

Thats as far as I'll go on that though as I'm not sure I'm so willing to support that bit.

[WishboneDawn]

Well, then I would argue you are holding your own thinking as your authority on matters, and therefore would be a Christian freethinker. I won't tell anyone. :D

LOL. Don't worry, the crowd I hang with sort of expects that. Ironically, it was my minister (then friend) who pushed me to think that way. :huh: :)

I'm starting to realize however that my experience with religion, church, ministers, etc. is not the norm.

[Biff the unclean]

I disagree. Once you figure out what he meant by be like children you don't need to stop there. So be like the least of us. Be humble, serve others, etc. can be advice that I tend to think quite a few people could do with these cays.
It is the advice that the powerful give to the weak they wish to oppress. But it doesn’t matter if the advice given by the author was good or bad. When it becomes “reinterpreted in each generation by the Holy Ghost” that means it becomes different advice. The advice of the interpreter, not the source, like the children’s game “telephone.”

Of course it comes from the bible. If I look at a Kandinsky print (yes, I'm being pretentious but the guy did beautiful stuff. But I did say print instead of painting so I think that mitigates the pretentiousness)) and see a horse face where none was intended it still comes, in part, from the print. I would not have seen the face without the print.
But it isn’t part of the print any more than there is a big fluffy bunny in that cloud I can see out of my window.
There are only two possible sources of information in these simple exchanges, the author or the audience. In the bible, the print and the cloud the source of the information in question was the audience. The “author” was transmitting different information than that which we were discussing.

[angela2]

I'm sorry. I thought your god was supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever.
You could be mistaking scripture for God.

[angela2]

A perfect god, who wanted to draw people to himself, (Ie. loving) could EASILY have done a vastly better job on the bible.
-Ubercat
Add that to my list.

The answer has been given dozens of times. The fact that God is perfect is not undermined by an imperfect scripture. Especially when God didn't write it.

[WishboneDawn]

But it isn’t part of the print any more than there is a big fluffy bunny in that cloud I can see out of my window.

Well yeah, the Great Fluffy Bunny Dilemma is why I chickened out of this line in my last post. :)

[angela2]

Educated people gave up this Christian alternate meaning centuries ago and readopted the Classical Greek/Roman meaning of being in accord with the facts because the Christian meaning is nonsense. Truth is truth whether it gets an emotional response out of you or not.

Actually educated people have given up the Enlightenment understanding of scientific reasoning. Because is useless when discussing 'truth.' It's usefulness is quite limited. You should try to keep up.

[WishboneDawn]

I'm sure glad, that as an uneducated person, I'm free from the above comments. :D

[angela2]

Superstition and distinct lack of scientific exploration at the time combined to require otherworldly elements into this lexicon, which now often conflicts with other avenues of study.
Steve

And here lies the crux of the disagreement. Since atheists give no credence to the 'otherworldly,' they cannot appreciate the stated purpose of scripture. It was intended to witness to God/Jesus Christ.

I don't care if the science or history in the bible is accurate, current or whatever. I don't read it to as a book on science or history.

[angela2]

But they are getting information not from the bible but from their own imaginations. They are making it up as they go along while claiming the authority of the bible.
Since you want no part of the Holy Spirit, how would you know?

[angela2]

The experiences posted were laughable (one guy had an upset tummy feel better after praying) and again amount to being informed by ones own imagination.
That is outright assumption and insulting to the guy with the upset tummy.

[Ubercat]

Add that to my list.

The answer has been given dozens of times. The fact that God is perfect is not undermined by an imperfect scripture. Especially when God didn't write it.

If biblegod didn't inspire the bible, then why do you use it? And without it, what do you know of your god? Please feel free to update or comment on my list of personal experience categories.

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

Actually educated people have given up the Enlightenment understanding of scientific reasoning. Because is useless when discussing 'truth.' It's usefulness is quite limited. You should try to keep up.

What is "truth"? You make it sound like some religious mumbo jumbo, which scientific reasoning shouldn't bother with anyhow.

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

Since you want no part of the Holy Spirit, how would you know?

I'm not Biff, but I know. As a christian, I was VERY interested in the holy spirit for some time. I gradually realised that all my experiences with it were indistinguishable from my own imagination. Making it up as I went along, IOW. :D You'll probably say that I wasn't a true christian, but if there IS such a thing, and I wasn't one, then biblegod decided ahead of time that I couldn't be one. There's NOTHING I could do now to be saved, that I didn't do then. No fear, no guilt, no repentance, no acceptance of christ, no love and worship, no humble service. NOTHING.

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

That is outright assumption and insulting to the guy with the upset tummy.

Yeah! Billions going to hell. Amputees all over the world. biblegod can spend his time answering prayers for upset widdle tummies if he wants to!

-Ubercat

[angela2]

I'm not Biff, but I know. As a christian, I was VERY interested in the holy spirit for some time. I gradually realised that all my experiences with it were indistinguishable from my own imagination. Making it up as I went along, IOW. :D You'll probably say that I wasn't a true christian, but if there IS such a thing, and I wasn't one, then biblegod decided ahead of time that I couldn't be one. There's NOTHING I could do now to be saved, that I didn't do then. No fear, no guilt, no repentance, no acceptance of christ, no love and worship, no humble service. NOTHING.

-Ubercat
utter bullshite (a word I learned from atheists), all of it.

[Ubercat]

utter bullshite (a word I learned from atheists), all of it.

Good for you. I won't get angry anymore. I'm getting used to you condescending christians.

-Ubercat

[angela2]

What is "truth"? You make it sound like some religious mumbo jumbo, which scientific reasoning shouldn't bother with anyhow.

-Ubercat
Let me ask you, do you believe there is some independent place to stand from which one may judge universal 'truth?

[Biff the unclean]

There is a Universal Studios in LA and one in Florida, you could stand there

[Biff the unclean]

Since you want no part of the Holy Spirit, how would you know? When you are looking for truth ™ at Universal Studios don't miss the Ghost Busters ride

[angela2]

When you are looking for truth ™ at Universal Studios don't miss the Ghost Busters ride

:D

[Ubercat]

Let me ask you, do you believe there is some independent place to stand from which one may judge universal 'truth?

No. I doubt that there is such a thing, at least as far as gods go. If you're talking about the facts of the physical universe, probably. Though we're no where near standing there yet.

-Ubercat

[Merzbow42]

Since you want no part of the Holy Spirit, how would you know?

Unless you can show us this Holy Spirit, we'll claim until the end of time that it's all in your imagination. So how about it? Behold the spirit for us, please!

[Merzbow42]

That IS what I think. Sure, I think they got inspiration from experiences they interpretted as divine (nothing there an atheist could argue with I think) but it was human hands, minds and hearts that crafted the bible.

Do you believe that God interacted with creation at all, in any way, since he created the universe?

[angela2]

Unless you can show us this Holy Spirit, we'll claim until the end of time that it's all in your imagination. So how about it? Behold the spirit for us, please!
Unless you believe in Jesus Christ, you are unlikely to have an experience of the Holy Spirit. However, if you pray you might. So how about it?

[WishboneDawn]

Do you believe that God interacted with creation at all, in any way, since he created the universe?

Honestly, I don't know. I have a feeling that I'd answer yes but I haven't put enough thought into that question to give you a good answer.

[Ubercat]

Unless you believe in Jesus Christ, you are unlikely to have an experience of the Holy Spirit. However, if you pray you might. So how about it?

And he can't believe in christ without the holy spirit moving him to. How convenient. Many of us prayed our little hearts out and got nothing. So the prayer is a long shot.

-Ubercat

[Ubercat]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Merzbow42
Do you believe that God interacted with creation at all, in any way, since he created the universe?

Honestly, I don't know. I have a feeling that I'd answer yes but I haven't put enough thought into that question to give you a good answer.

That's amazing. How could you consider yourself a christian, without having the vaguest idea or even much thought on what, if anything the christian god has ever done since the creation?

That's like me calling myself a vegetarian, without even knowing what one WAS. How would I know to avoid meat, if I didn't know that was the point of being a vegetarian?

-Ubercat