Thank you, Atheist! You're quite brilliant, aren't you? You might be my favorite person right now. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
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Thank you, Atheist! You're quite brilliant, aren't you? You might be my favorite person right now. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Yes, I agree. There are way more than two sides.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
I also like how you described the two positions in your blog as
Quote:
two sides of the same corroded coin
You make great points. I'm not technically a science psychologist, but I am a psych minor, bio-chem major, so you tell me what I should call myself. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Fox News is one of the worst things to happen to this country. I wish criminal action could be taken against it. I'm not from a bible belt, I'm from Southern Caifornia. Even the generally progressive people here have been screwed up by the nutso media. Mega confusion abides. It's pretty funny when it's not scary.
Fair enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Maybe reading some biblical scholarship would help:Quote:
Unfortunately, you'll have to do a lot more than say the bible isn't fairytales and nonsense, because to me, that's precisely what it is.
http://www.amazon.com/Book-J-Harold-Bloom/dp/0802141919
http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Ri.../dp/0060630353
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Code-Bib...0&sr=1-2-spell
Also, we must keep our definitions straight: If the Bible is just a bunch of fairy-tales, then why is it that it has something of a better following than say. . .Aesop's Fables? There is more to the whole project in the scriptures than just telling fairy tales.
This is a common mistake made by both atheists and fundamentalists: What Bible are you talking about? We fail to recognize that the Bible is a canon and not a complete book. The differences between the Old and New Testament are great because they are both two different traditions (or rather, the NT is a tradition sprung out of the OT). But there's even different opinions, ideas and motives of the authors within the OT or NT. One must also account for the Redactor edits made upon many parts of the scripture.Quote:
The morality of the bible is a joke and isn't even followed by the vast majority of christians. Should we not eat pork? Are crayfish "unclean"? Should we wear beards or not? Which parts of the bible's morality should we accept as valid or reasonable?
Even if we use Jesus' morality exclusively, we would do away with law courts at once because everyone involved in the legal process will have sinned at some time, so cannot judge another.
I should say also that yes there are some nutty things in the Bible (being bisexual, I do not exactly appreciate Leviticus 20), but we must once again remember that the Bible is a tradition of texts and not one complete text. Also, the Bible is not meant to be a series of morality tales (unlike as normative traditions has interpreted it for millennia). There is an awful misconception of the Book of Job by Christians as some kind of morality tale about how one should keep their faith even if God does strange things. They kind of forget that almost the entire book deals with Job fretting over why God had to destroy his entire life. The book ends not with God coming to explain to Job to be patient, but with God "coming out of the whirlwinds" and virtually mocking him, posing more puzzles and ambiguities and then leaving. Not exactly a morality tale I think.[/QUOTE]
As stated before, it is both an atheist and normative Judeo-Christian misconception that there is Biblical morality (or immorality if you wish). Little of the OT are outright morality tales. The entire post-crusifixtion history of the West has been a misreading of both the OT and NT, simply because there is no single reading. Why would I defend 2000 years of horrid abuses of the Bible?Quote:
If you think you can show how biblical morality has moved human morality forwards rather than backwards - as I believe it has - have a crack. Given that absurd rules were made across vast tracts of Europe for centuries because someone wrote something 2000 years beforehand your position may be somewhat difficult to defend.
That said, I'm not going to deny that an anti-Semitic interpretation of the NT or some nutty interpretation of the OT has had an gross effect on civilization. But you cannot blame the texts for the people who were perverse enough to carry out such acts.
Lol, I should probably read your blog.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
As stated before, it is both an atheist and normative Judeo-Christian misconception that there is Biblical morality (or immorality if you wish). Little of the OT are outright morality tales. The entire post-crusifixtion history of the West has been a misreading of both the OT and NT, simply because there is no single reading. Why would I defend 2000 years of horrid abuses of the Bible?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
That said, I'm not going to deny that an anti-Semitic interpretation of the NT or some nutty interpretation of the OT has had an gross effect on civilization. But you cannot blame the texts for the people who were perverse enough to carry out such acts.
Lol, I should probably read your blog.[/QUOTE]
Hm. I think issues are being conflated here. Any version of the bible, or any religious text, by nature of being atheist, have to be viewed as fairy tales and/or mythology. You have yourself called it mythology. Why should we examine it over and over to try to find deeper meaning? For me, it is clear that no story of man points to evidence of deities. Perhaps you just want it to be something valid so badly, that you feel compelled to urge people to stop thinking of fact vs. fiction.
I mean, I'm not sure what your position is. You seem to be saying that atheist and Christian opinions are incorrect. So what is your argument? At some point it was brought up that there are many many interpretations or bibles and points of view, but maybe you don't understand the nature of atheism. ALL theism is flawed, incomplete, invalid. The only people saying that atheists fixate on Christianity as the big opponent are not atheists. Christianity stands out in these arguments because there aren't scientologists or snake charmers here arguing their causes. Let me just say, we live, we struggle, we die. All of the rest is theory at this point. It doesn't mean that there are zero possibilities, and it doesn't mean atheists are dissing the bible as literature. But why should we care about or value the bible or any bible when we feel that these religions have been debunked and only serve to confuse and assert cultlike mentality on masses?
What DO you want atheists to say about the things you are talking about? I am genuinely curious as to what you think the atheist position should be, and how you think we should pose our arguments, instead of just berating us for discussing scientific fact. :)
That is incorrect.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Atheists don't usually take the bible literally at all. I look at each individual analysis of the bible and discuss that.
Given the bible's ridiculous mess of contradictions and outright fallacies, finding sane analysis isn't always easy, so one is left with the words themselves as a starting point.
To say that the bible is the only part of interest is allso fallacious. Speaking personally, the bible doesn't interest me a bit until some theist tries to use it as justification or evidence.
As with most active atheists, including Dawkins et al, what concerns us is the indoctrination of young minds with mumbo-jumbo, the attempted inflicting of religion-generated morality on others and the proliferation of anti-science propaganda.
I believe, as I have often said that opponents of atheism are far more likely to use a strawman argument than anyone else.
Unless you can show that even a significant percentage of atheists adhere to the traits you claim, you should stop making the claim.
Again, I believe this is a false dichotomy of your making; it does not reflect reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I agree. It's a question of how seriously one takes them. The Mayan 2012 apocalypse is a case in point.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Wow, I'm blushing!Quote:
Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin
As noted in my reply above, I don't need biblical scholarship and I certainly don't take the bible literally. Not that I believe it's possible to take it literally.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
Aesop didn't claim to be a god or the son of a god.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
Aesop did not have the luxury of his supporters actually torturing people for not believing in him and he most definitely did not have supporters burning books written in opposition to his fables.
They are not mistakes I make and that is borne out by my many references to the apocrypha, among others.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
Regardless of what you think, there are hundreds of millions of christians who do use the bible as a basis for their morality.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
I think it's irrelevant whether the New Atheist read the Bible literally, misunderstand it, or are mean to believers. They still fill a valuable social role of being in vocal opposition to religion and as active advocates for secularism.
The idea that atheist are only concerned with the Bible is nonsense also, I am far more concerned with the vast injustices inflicted by Islam. It just so happens that Buddhist don't seem to be actively involved in trying to **** with my life. Christian and Islamic fundamentalism stands as a real threat to me if their ideas manage to take hold where I live, so I just happen to be more concerned with them.
It think it is important here that I differentiate the difference between our typical modern use of "myth" and mythology. When I refer to the world religions as using mythology, I mean that they create narratives containing metaphor, symbolism, allegory and tons of different literary techniques to express a whole meta-narrative of the universe.Quote:
Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin
Different from secular literature, mythology is meant to encourage an entire worldview. It is important to notice that if religion was all about believing in a man (or men) in the sky and an afterlife, than there would be only little differences between religions. In fact, religion is meant to convey a cultural mythology. This mythology is not meant to be some kind of alternative to science (for indeed, mythology existed long before science) but to be a framework at how we view the world at levels other than ontological ones.
For example; Christian mythology (which is more focused on a single narrative than Judiac) originates in its "hero" who sacrifices himself for the sins of the world. Whether or not there is factual truth to this myth is irrelevant to the framework in which we are discussing it (for within the Christian framework, it's whether or not you believe in its truth, and not its actual ontological truth). The point of this mythology is to express the framework of its meta-narrative which would be things like; we all have to redeem ourselves from our sins because Christ died for them, his death is a fulfillment of Jewish prophesies, etc.
I think the problem is that we have our epistemologies mixed up: It is impossible get anything out of religious mythology from a scientific perceptive because the two are completely different.
That's because they're stories (or at a deeper level, mythologies). Science, like religion does create a narrative of the universe, but this narrative is not based on culture, tradition or philosophy but empirical data and theory.Quote:
For me, it is clear that no story of man points to evidence of deities.
Lol, funny enough, I'm an agnostic and for the most part learn towards there being no God. I've been trying to explain this whole time that religious mythologies are a mix of both fact and fiction. To simplify it, mythology is an allegorizing of fact.Quote:
Perhaps you just want it to be something valid so badly, that you feel compelled to urge people to stop thinking of fact vs. fiction.
When one takes the simple theist/atheist or Christian/nonbeliever dichotomy, you are left with very little to think about. I am indeed saying that common atheist and common Christian opinions are incorrect (it is valuable to note that when I mean "common atheist opinions" I am referring to the opinions this new surge of atheists have had this past decade; I'm not arguing against nonbelief, I'm just arguing against this unnamed movement of nonbelievers such as Dawkins, Harris, etc. which we might as well call neo-atheism).Quote:
I mean, I'm not sure what your position is. You seem to be saying that atheist and Christian opinions are incorrect. So what is your argument?
My argument is simply that in order to approach various world religions, we should approach them by their own framework (just as we should approach science by its own framework and not with whether or not we have "faith" in it or not). That's not to say that you should believe in these religions, I'm just arguing against disregarding them as fairy-tales and the believers as "misguided" or worse "crazy" (the latter which nobody as far as I know has said here).
That's what I'm arguing against. I'm arguing against Hitchens' anti-theism, I'm an anti-anti-theist in that regard :DQuote:
ALL theism is flawed, incomplete, invalid.
I'm not saying that. It's unavoidable that American atheists would attack Christianity as oppose to Taoism because the latter has very little to do with their nations religious culture, tradition and population. But yes, I agree and I think everyone agrees that atheists don't believe in any religions. That's not what we're discussing.Quote:
The only people saying that atheists fixate on Christianity as the big opponent are not atheists.
Like I said, that's because you are taking the Bible for what it is not. Nowhere in the Bible does it present itself as a "theory" waiting to be proved or debunked.Quote:
Christianity stands out in these arguments because there aren't scientologists or snake charmers here arguing their causes. Let me just say, we live, we struggle, we die. All of the rest is theory at this point. It doesn't mean that there are zero possibilities, and it doesn't mean atheists are dissing the bible as literature. But why should we care about or value the bible or any bible when we feel that these religions have been debunked and only serve to confuse and assert cultlike mentality on masses?
I have no problem with the atheist position; that is, atheism in the very general sense of the term as it has always been: Nonbelief in deities or religion. That's all fine and dandy and I would fit myself into that category to an extent.Quote:
What DO you want atheists to say about the things you are talking about? I am genuinely curious as to what you think the atheist position should be, and how you think we should pose our arguments, instead of just berating us for discussing scientific fact. :)
My problem is with this movement of atheists that we all are very aware of, who criticize religion as "pointless", "meaningless", "dangerous" etc.
Stop by anytime. I'm always looking for new readers and commenters.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
Yeah, I mean it's obvious to anyone reading the Skeptic's annotated Bible or Dmitry Brant's weblog how it requires a literalist perspective to respond in that fashion. I mean the same people hopefully wouldn't read Stephan Crane's poem "In the Desert" and then write a post talking about the absurdity of a creature eating its own heart or write a long rational rebuttal against Emily Dickinson's poem CIII that the moon in fact can't smile because it's not alive and such an assertion is ridiculous. Dmitry actually says outright that his perspective is geared towards debunking a literalist fundamentalist perspective.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Omg that can't be same discussion I encountered a few months back when searching Crane's poem and some guy said something to the extent of: "He's eating his heart? That's ****ed up, the guy must be on PCP or something!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
EDIT: It's not, but I think there was some other discussion on another poetry website which inspired the same absurdity.
People often talk about science illiteracy, but art/literature illiteracy is a major problem too. It's scary.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
There's no need to take the Bible literally to still be able to attack the ideas in it. And we can't ignore that large portions of it, especially in the New Testament, are indeed intended to be taken literally. Also, in the last 2000 years, until recently, taking the stories as literal truth has been the norm.
Attacking a book which many people claim as a source of some sort of spiritual truth for its lack of consistency is perfectly reasonable. Besides the fact that much of what you can take away from the Bible metaphorically is either entirely irrelevant to how we should live or quite easily up to debate and that in itself raises the question of why we should care about what the Bible means. The fact of the matter is that the only way someone can justify the politicization of their interpretation of the Bible as valid is through the claim to an obvious literal interpretation. Thus, attacking literal interpretations is an important thing to do, and these were accepted by the majority not too long ago. At the least, making sure someone is aware of how absurd and silly the Bible is on a literal level should make a reader aware of how uncertain and subjective other readings that avoid the literal interpretation are.
I agree partly Pip. I think it is important that we define what we mean by a "literal" reading: Such a reading I would simply define as one that approaches the Bible without any context at all and reading things as they are on their surface.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
The NT is different (and IMHO a weaker work than the immense OT) because it has a more definitive narrative line and mythos. There is the "hero" who goes out on his "journey" (a literal journey through the land, a metaphorical journey through men's minds, etc) and he has a tragic end but "reuniting" with his home (Heaven) just like so many other hero epics since The Odyssey. Joseph Campbell goes into this deeper in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
All of this presented, the NT indeed can be read more literarly because it has more of a story confined by temporal limits. The OT goes through generations of people in an almost impersonal (but still profound and moving) way. It also is a mix of sayings and poems, epics, mythology, generational history and dialogs (Job is arguably a philosophical dialog). Because of this immense variety, it is hard what one must take literarly or with other methods.
Also, it is probably the worst misfortune of history that these religious texts have resulted in genocide, political oppression, etc. One must be wise in how one interprets the Bible and rely on their own judgement in the end.
The only problem is that it was never meant to be consistent because it is a highly edited canon of books. It's more of a virtual culture or library than an actual book.Quote:
Attacking a book which many people claim as a source of some sort of spiritual truth for its lack of consistency is perfectly reasonable.
Anyway I think we can all agree that people have done insane things in the name of the Bible. Whether if we should blame the text or the people who carried out the atrocities is hard to discern since the Bible is such a complex and enigmatic text and we know very very little about the people who wrote the scriptures.
But we know that this is not the first time people have taken texts and abused them absurdly: The Nazi's propagated Nietzsche even though he was about as anti-fascist a thinker as possible and he was disgusted by the Antisemitism of his day, or how the Soviets abused the writings of Marx in order to create their own totalitarian society in which the proletarian was repressed and not liberated (though it is arguable that Marx kind of went in that direction in his late works). The list is endless.
Among Jews, taking the Bible literally word-for-word, without interpretation, has never been the norm.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
Also nice false dichotomy: "Besides the fact that much of what you can take away from the Bible metaphorically is either entirely irrelevant to how we should live or quite easily up to debate and that in itself raises the question of why we should care about what the Bible means."
It assumes for example that literature need teach morals, but of course, literature does more than just proscribe, it describes. It's mimesis. For example, take Genesis 1. It's not the literal creation that matters, but the symbolism behind that is interesting and still relevant.
The symbolism:
1) The universe is orderly.
2) human beings are different than other animals in our ability to think and reason.
These are descriptive elements that I think are certainly relevant to how we view ourselves today. It's not telling someone to do anything. It's instead describing what the essential characteristics of the world and human beings are, which I think are actually pretty accurate.
Even the proscriptive parts like, "Be fruitful and multiply" have a very strong resemblance to the evolutionary imperative to continually reproduce and pass on our genes.
One, of course, could raise the same objections about The Iliad or even Shakespeare: that our morality and ideas have moved so far beyond these works. Do we still fight wars? Are soldiers still kept long terms away from home? Do people still choose bravery and prestige (being awarded purple heart) over keeping in the back lines, doing their time in the service, and going home to spend a long happy life with their family (Achilles' dilemma)?
It's profoundly disingenuous to pretend ancient literature whether its the Bible, the Iliad, Beowulf, or Shakespeare is incapable of speaking to us today and to the issues that most plague us today.
I very much like this. It is a very bad mistake to make by saying that "the Bible doesn't teach us anything morally good". Of course the NT does have a more clearly defined moral teaching; but the OT (and one of its greatest virtues) does not clearly judge things to a total certainty. Even the infamous objections in Leviticus about crawfish ans whatnot are descriptions of the Israelite's laws and the laws of being in Yahweh's covenant (I may be wrong though because Leviticus was tedious reading after the epic sweep of Exodus).Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
One of the great things I get out of reading the OT as a whole (especially Job and Ecclesiastics) is learning to be able to bear the absurdity and wrath of the world/Yahweh and to find happiness in our works.
Ecclesiastics 3 possesses a message and poetry that seems to transcend even morality and/or religious sentiment in its utter simplicity and concreteness:
Quote:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.