UBB.classicTM 6.5.0
quote:won't actually do. God is the creator. He introduced himself to Moses as "I am who I am", and even the grammar of that is a puzzling statement. The 'Being' in the term 'Supreme Being' turns out to be something quite different and a lot more disconcerting than those who use that term conveniently to consign God into the primordial stratosphere think it means. If God is real, we have to accept him as he is, on his terms, not ours.
"She says that if this is what God is like or even if this is what religious people hold is some kind of accurate reflection of what God is like, then she's not interested."
quote:I quite agree, in fact I preached on this yesterday. The very desire to name God is, in my view, an attempt to "tie him down" or domesticate him. But he is absolutely independent and accountable to no-one. Much as we would like to,we cannot pin God down to modern rationality - indeed, we need to recognise that such a construct is the product of a particular time and culture rather than being, as we tend to think, universal.
God is the creator. He introduced himself to Moses as "I am who I am", and even the grammar of that is a puzzling statement. ... If God is real, we have to accept him as he is, on his terms, not ours.
quote:I wouldn't be one of them, I've often thought along those lines. It's still rather a gruesome story - although it was considered perfectly suitable for Sunday School when I was a child (which fact says as much about ourselves as about God).
The Binding of Isaac looks to us like child cruelty, but did God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, or did Abraham think that was what God was telling him to do because that was what people did then to other gods? Some people may disapprove of me for even asking that question.
quote:Absolutely not. If you're a Christian, the OT is part of the deal. Always has been, always will be. And if you want your "still small voice" or your "Lord's my shepherd", or whatever your favourite "cute" bits are, you have to be prepared to defend every single murderous, incestuous, genocidal jot and tittle of it too.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Isn't a rejection of the OT in total a perfectly reasonable reaction to the stories therein?
quote:Ooookay..
Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't agree, but for what she (and probably some of you) would undoubtedly regard as an unacceptable reason.
quote:Well. Yes, to the extent that the deity is the way he is and whatever people think about him doesn't change that.
Yes, there is much that is puzzling about the Old Testament. There's actually more than we sometimes like that is puzzling about the New Testament. God, whether unincarnate as in the OT or incarnate in Jesus Christ is puzzling. He isn't the nice, accept everything, you're all lovely, impassive supernatural entity, take what you please and reject the bits that you don't like, sort of being that a lot of people would prefer him to be.
quote:Again, this seems to be a variation on a theme of "this is the way that the deity is because the bible says so," which isn't all that helpful.
quote:won't actually do. God is the creator. He introduced himself to Moses as "I am who I am", and even the grammar of that is a puzzling statement. The 'Being' in the term 'Supreme Being' turns out to be something quite different and a lot more disconcerting than those who use that term conveniently to consign God into the primordial stratosphere think it means. If God is real, we have to accept him as he is, on his terms, not ours.
"She says that if this is what God is like or even if this is what religious people hold is some kind of accurate reflection of what God is like, then she's not interested."
quote:I don't understand how this sentence can logically follow your previous sentence I quoted above. You were arguing previously that the deity is the way he is depicted in the OT, take it or leave it. But now you're also saying that the version in the OT might not be a advanced or perfect. I don't understand how that's so different from saying that the OT is so far from being an accurate impression of the deity as to be wrong - other than scale.
Perhaps some of the revelation in the OT is primitive or imperfect.
quote:Well the text said that God told A to sacrifice I. If you're saying that this is a problem, then you have a problem with accepting the text. Which, incidentally, isn't much different to my friend's position.
But it's a relatively small part of the OT that people home in on when they want an excuse not to believe at all. The Binding of Isaac looks to us like child cruelty, but did God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, or did Abraham think that was what God was telling him to do because that was what people did then to other gods? Some people may disapprove of me for even asking that question.
quote:With respect, you don't know my friend. So I'll ask you to please not make assumptions about her, or how she has wrestled and struggled with the text before reaching her current position.
However, wrestling with those sort of questions, rather than just using them as an excuse to reject God, and with him, if he exists, the whole of ultimate reality, is fundamental to the journey to understand and appreciate more of who God is and what he is like. He reveals himself supremely in Jesus Christ, but that revelation is in the context of all that it came out of.
quote:She doesn't like Job - but I think this is due to poor church teaching she has been exposed to (ie she thinks the message of Job is to suffer manfully in silence and that God plays dice with humans). I haven't asked about Isaiah, I suspect she's not too keen on Psalms as she takes a pretty dim view of any kind of poetry that calls for destruction of others.
And what about Isaiah, Job or the Psalms. Does she reject those also?
quote:Which sort-of sounds like it might have some meaning, but on a deeper level probably doesn't. We all have a choice about the kind of deity we want to believe in, which we think makes all things make sense. The fact that someone is saying they have sincere problems accepting that the deity might sometimes ask a father to murder his own child does not therefore mean that she doesn't believe in the God we see in Christ.
We do not find God by speculating about the sort of God we'd like him to be or would rather he is.
quote:OK.
What I've said is a bit wordy. Undoubtedly there are others on this boards who could express this better. But, no, I think she is wrong.
quote:Mmm. That's interesting.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Absolutely not. If you're a Christian, the OT is part of the deal. Always has been, always will be. And if you want your "still small voice" or your "Lord's my shepherd", or whatever your favourite "cute" bits are, you have to be prepared to defend every single murderous, incestuous, genocidal jot and tittle of it too.
quote:I suppose the problem with this is that if one has an archtype which "everyone" accepts is a result of a direct command from the deity, then it becomes much more difficult to tell someone who thinks that they've also heard a similar command from the deity that they're wrong.
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So Joshua is a case where the concept is right - God is holy and the only divinity - but the action of killing everyone who disagreed is wrong. If we lose this, we cannot then tell people today who think god want everyone else to die are wrong nad immature in their thinking.
quote:I don't think you're obliged to defend it, exactly, but you do at least have to engage with it. I agree absolutely that it's part of the deal.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Absolutely not. If you're a Christian, the OT is part of the deal. Always has been, always will be. And if you want your "still small voice" or your "Lord's my shepherd", or whatever your favourite "cute" bits are, you have to be prepared to defend every single murderous, incestuous, genocidal jot and tittle of it too.
quote:To be clear, that's my friend we're talking about not Adeodatus'
Originally posted by Eliab:
Your friend is quite right to think that much of the OT is unsuitable for children, but is quite wrong to reject the God that it portrays on those grounds. A religion that was entirely suitable for children would be inadequate to the task of saving adults.
quote:The problem for me, and I suspect Cheesey's friend, is not that bits of the OT are nasty. It's that God is often the one doing or commanding other people to do the shitty things.
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:I don't think you're obliged to defend it, exactly, but you do at least have to engage with it. I agree absolutely that it's part of the deal.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Absolutely not. If you're a Christian, the OT is part of the deal. Always has been, always will be. And if you want your "still small voice" or your "Lord's my shepherd", or whatever your favourite "cute" bits are, you have to be prepared to defend every single murderous, incestuous, genocidal jot and tittle of it too.
I'm personally quite glad that parts of the OT are as nasty, cynical, and horrific as they are, because it shows that neither life being shitty, nor people being shits, are incompatible with a genuine experience of God. Your friend is quite right to think that much of the OT is unsuitable for children, but is quite wrong to reject the God that it portrays on those grounds. A religion that was entirely suitable for children would be inadequate to the task of saving adults.
quote:I think my friend's position is fairly simple: if Christianity accepts (on some level) that loyalty to the deity is more important than loyalty to the law, and if we have evidence that people who were spoken to by the deity were told to murder their own children - then how can you be sure that the deity isn't going to tell you to murder your own child?
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
The problem for me, and I suspect Cheesey's friend, is not that bits of the OT are nasty. It's that God is often the one doing or commanding other people to do the shitty things.
I personally wonder how anyone can not have a major problem with all this stuff. Some of it makes IS seem positively fluffy-bunny.
quote:The friend is quite right to reject the God portrayed. And religion saves no one.
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:I don't think you're obliged to defend it, exactly, but you do at least have to engage with it. I agree absolutely that it's part of the deal.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Absolutely not. If you're a Christian, the OT is part of the deal. Always has been, always will be. And if you want your "still small voice" or your "Lord's my shepherd", or whatever your favourite "cute" bits are, you have to be prepared to defend every single murderous, incestuous, genocidal jot and tittle of it too.
I'm personally quite glad that parts of the OT are as nasty, cynical, and horrific as they are, because it shows that neither life being shitty, nor people being shits, are incompatible with a genuine experience of God. Your friend is quite right to think that much of the OT is unsuitable for children, but is quite wrong to reject the God that it portrays on those grounds. A religion that was entirely suitable for children would be inadequate to the task of saving adults.
quote:This. None of us, including the most ardent fundamentalists, accepts all of the OT at face value, and those who come close t doing so often come up with some pretty darn scary theology as a result
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I think rejecting the OT per se is not the answer. Rejecting it as a guide to who God is or as an example to follow - largely yes.
I think it should be taken as the search of a people to understand their God - or to understand the nature of divinity. There are many times throughout the books that they see clearly. There are also many times when they don't. If you reject it completely, you lose and example of how not to interpret the divine.
So Joshua is a case where the concept is right - God is holy and the only divinity - but the action of killing everyone who disagreed is wrong. If we lose this, we cannot then tell people today who think god want everyone else to die are wrong nad immature in their thinking.
quote:This is absolutely true. The whole "Positive Christianity" thing was a direct effort in Nazi Germany to deny away the Jewishness of the gospel.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
(Basically I think Marcionism ends up as quite an anti-Semitic position even though it generally isn't intended that way.)
quote:That's certainly a problem, but it's not an insurmountable one (unless you're a strict literalist, which I'm not, and I'm fairly confident you aren't either). It seems to me that it's as possible that the ancient Israelites invented, imagined and misconstrued words from God as it is that modern Christians do. It's also possible that God, with his vastly superior knowledge, might command something that looks wrong but which is at least justifiable for reasons not fully recorded. It's also possible that there's some explanation that we don't know.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
The problem for me, and I suspect Cheesey's friend, is not that bits of the OT are nasty. It's that God is often the one doing or commanding other people to do the shitty things.
quote:The friend was Evelyn Waugh (the author of Brideshead Revisited among others). Churchill wasn't horrified by the OT, rather excited and amused to skewer it and needle his friends, and to point out the bad parts by annoyingly reading bible quotes aloud. Waugh and a friend had bet Churchill that he couldn't read the entire bible in 2 weeks for £20. Waugh described it in a letter. (I have the book of letters somewhere, but found this link online. The letters are great fun to read.)
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think the issue is how do you read it. There is a story involving Winston Churchill's son Randolph, a self-proclaimed atheist, who was challenged by a believing friend to take time out to read the Bible. After a couple of weeks in the Old Testament, he exclaimed to his friend "God is such a shit!".
quote:My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But I'm not sure the first part of your post really stands up. People seem quite able to hold as holy scriptures that by most standards look pretty horrible whilst remaining at worst the same as everyone else and at best a lot better than most.
quote:And how's that been working out so far?
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
quote:I don't understand what you mean. If one is reading the text as a Christian, one is by necessity rejecting the Jewish reading of it.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
If a text doesn't have a 'true meaning' then one person's 'nice' reading is no less authentic than another person's 'nasty' reading.
quote:Surely only if it is univocal? If there are a number of layers to the meaning, then to take one does not reject another, in a different layer?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I don't understand what you mean. If one is reading the text as a Christian, one is by necessity rejecting the Jewish reading of it.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
If a text doesn't have a 'true meaning' then one person's 'nice' reading is no less authentic than another person's 'nasty' reading.
quote:I didn't know children were specifically protected from Greek or Hindu myths. I learnt about Greek mythology at primary school. Our teacher came in specifically to teach that subject.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Agreed. Especially protecting young children from them, as one would from Greek or Indian Hindu myths.
quote:This can't possibly be true. If a text has a "true meaning" then that meaning is objective fact. It exists - nobody gets to "decide" what it is. What the users of the text get to do is try to determine what the true meaning is.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
quote:I would agree that if that's all there is to the lesson David and Goliath then there are better ways of teaching that point. I think though that with mythology the point is not always as limited or definable as that. It is a poor myth or legend or story that can be reduced to a single moral.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I tried to suggest various ways to approach the texts in philosophical ways which didn't require acceptance of the stories on any level (such as using the David and Goliath story as one of an encouragement to perseverance against the odds) but she just shrugs and says there are better ways to learn and teach those lessons.
quote:Mr Cheesy, I really don't quite know how to respond to that, because you seem completely not to have grasped what I was trying to say, so much so that I can't even tell whether that is because I have expressed myself badly, or because you have assumed I was saying something different anyway.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:....
quote:I don't understand how this sentence can logically follow your previous sentence I quoted above. You were arguing previously that the deity is the way he is depicted in the OT, take it or leave it. But now you're also saying that the version in the OT might not be a advanced or perfect. I don't understand how that's so different from saying that the OT is so far from being an accurate impression of the deity as to be wrong - other than scale
Originally posted by Enoch:
....
Perhaps some of the revelation in the OT is primitive or imperfect.
quote:Now, there, I can say we are approaching this from hugely different directions. Yes, we do have that choice, but if God really exists, it follows that 'choosing' what sort of a deity we want to believe in, is both foolhardy, and doesn't make sense.
..... We all have a choice about the kind of deity we want to believe in, which we think makes all things make sense.
quote:I still don't really understand what you are saying. It seems to me that, by necessity, Christians understand the Jewish texts differently to Jews because the former is a different religion and views it in the light of the NT.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
If a text doesn't have a 'true meaning' then one person's 'nice' reading is no less authentic than another person's 'nasty' reading.
quote:I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text. Sceptics from outside have perhaps less access or involvement.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:This can't possibly be true. If a text has a "true meaning" then that meaning is objective fact. It exists - nobody gets to "decide" what it is. What the users of the text get to do is try to determine what the true meaning is.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
quote:Possibly, but this needs unpacking. The one who has extra layers is almost inevitably going to be using different tools to the one who lacks those layers.
Originally posted by TomM:
Surely only if it is univocal? If there are a number of layers to the meaning, then to take one does not reject another, in a different layer?
To use the terms used in patristic exegesis, and as recovered by (e.g.) de Lubac, perhaps one literal sense excludes another, but that is far harder to require of allegory, typology and anagogy.
quote:True, I guess I was trying to offer a way to see value in these myths outside of the surface disgusting layer.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I would agree that if that's all there is to the lesson David and Goliath then there are better ways of teaching that point. I think though that with mythology the point is not always as limited or definable as that. It is a poor myth or legend or story that can be reduced to a single moral.
quote:I wouldn't disagree. But I guess my friend might wonder why we should persevere with these legends which appear to have to little going for them when there are other, better, legends and stories and myths available.
The myth or legend doesn't have a literal meaning. It is a symboutside ofol for something, but that something cannot be said directly. Often I think the something is the recognition of evil in the world and yet the hope that behind the evil there is still something good. But the stories tell that having to represent God as a character in time when God is in fact the ground of being and creator who cannot be represented directly.
quote:OK, it is entirely possible I've misunderstood what you were saying and/or am projecting onto you things you don't believe.
Originally posted by Enoch:
Mr Cheesy, I really don't quite know how to respond to that, because you seem completely not to have grasped what I was trying to say, so much so that I can't even tell whether that is because I have expressed myself badly, or because you have assumed I was saying something different anyway.
quote:I don't know that it is "foolhardy". I think the only deity that is worth believing in is the one we see in the incarnation; the one who loved mankind - and individuals - so much that he came and got involved. If the deity exists and isn't like that, then he isn't worth believing in. If the OT text suggests that the God-of-love isn't actually like the God we see in the incarnation, then the texts are wrong.
quote:Now, there, I can say we are approaching this from hugely different directions. Yes, we do have that choice, but if God really exists, it follows that 'choosing' what sort of a deity we want to believe in, is both foolhardy, and doesn't make sense.
..... We all have a choice about the kind of deity we want to believe in, which we think makes all things make sense.
quote:OK, but you can't know what I'm actually like without at least meeting me. How much less can you actually know the unknowable deity?
I can choose what I think Mr Cheesy is like, what sort of a personality he has. But what matters isn't what I think you are like, but what you actually are like.
quote:But I'm not a deity.
Even if I have known you all my life, I still may not know everything there is to know about you, but even if I think I know you quite well, that doesn't stop me from being more right or more wrong.
quote:This is true, but the particular case we're talking about is whether one can ascertain something about an ancient religious text based on the way that (unidentified) members of that religion interact with it.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text. Sceptics from outside have perhaps less access or involvement.
There are some types of understanding that are available from the outside by taking a disengaged stance, bracketing out what the significance is for you personally. (Some kinds of biology for instance.) Other types require you to get involved. You won't get far in understanding a novel if you don't let yourself be pulled along by the writing. You don't get far in understanding a person's life and the problems they face if you insist in viewing the person from the outside in the abstract.
quote:Why on earth would you suspect that?
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suspect that your friend's main problem with Christianity isn't exactly what she's admitting to you. Which isn't to say that she doesn't (or shouldn't) have problems with the OT.
quote:They also have the most to gain with having the text agree with them. Consciously or unconsciously.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text.
quote:Well, there are a few aspects to this:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I don't understand what you mean. If one is reading the text as a Christian, one is by necessity rejecting the Jewish reading of it.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
If a text doesn't have a 'true meaning' then one person's 'nice' reading is no less authentic than another person's 'nasty' reading.
quote:Because from what I've read, most people's primary reasons tend to be more personal. Abstract theological problems bolster the personal ones, rather than vice versa. Of course, 'personal' can encompass a range of responses to Christianity - but theological problems with the OT don't strike me as particularly personal.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Why on earth would you suspect that?
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suspect that your friend's main problem with Christianity isn't exactly what she's admitting to you. Which isn't to say that she doesn't (or shouldn't) have problems with the OT.
quote:I never found a way of looking at the OT - or much of the NT for that matter - that didn't ultimately include an element of what I wanted it to say. I'm really not being judgemental when I say that I don't think I ever met anyone else for whom that wasn't true, either.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:They also have the most to gain with having the text agree with them. Consciously or unconsciously.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text.
quote:I wouldn't disagree with that, but that's a long way away from Ricardus's claim that the principal users of a text define what it means.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text. Sceptics from outside have perhaps less access or involvement.
quote:Yes, of course. It's much easier to determine how accurately I have measured the speed of light than how accurately I have interpreted a particular aspect of the Bible. And it's certainly much easier for two people to agree on the former than the latter.
Add in that the question of what is or isn't objective is a bit harder to define when it comes to cultural products like texts and their meanings than it is when it comes to say astronomical bodies or the mechanics of falling objects.
quote:I can't get rid of it, I can't embrace it, I can't bear the God it describes.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:I never found a way of looking at the OT - or much of the NT for that matter - that didn't ultimately include an element of what I wanted it to say. I'm really not being judgemental when I say that I don't think I ever met anyone else for whom that wasn't true, either.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:They also have the most to gain with having the text agree with them. Consciously or unconsciously.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text.
This is, of course, a problem that arises whenever you approach a text in which you have some sort of investment. I always wanted the gruesome or disturbing parts of the OT to be explicable or excusable. At the same time, I was aware that this is something Christians have always done - aren't there old sermons that sanitise the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea as an allegory for the "drowning" of our spiritual enemies in baptism? Okay, fine - but the text still says God killed a load of Egyptians, and ultimately there's no way round that.
And you're left with any number of instances like that, in which it seems apparent that most of us here, now, are the moral superiors of God. But I really believe you can't get rid of it, not one word, unless you're okay with reinventing Christianity in your own image. That's my two-penn'orth. YMMV.
quote:Use it to prop up a wobbly table leg?
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I can't get rid of it, I can't embrace it, I can't bear the God it describes.
What the ever living FUCK am I MEANT TO DO with it?
quote:That's what happens when you try to apply the scientific method to literary criticism. (And is also why physics is much less susceptible to bullshit than literary criticism.)
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:This can't possibly be true. If a text has a "true meaning" then that meaning is objective fact. It exists - nobody gets to "decide" what it is. What the users of the text get to do is try to determine what the true meaning is.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My point is that if a text has a 'true meaning', then the people who get to decide what that 'true meaning' is are the people who actually use it.
It's like measuring some physical constant - the speed of light, say. You can measure the speed of light, by various different means, and depending on what you do, you'll get a number which is closer or further away from the true value.
quote:But the Bible isn't just a piece of literature - it's a book about God. And as such, discussing whether it correctly describes God or not is a perfectly valid and coherent thing to do.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
The big question over which literary critics have indulged in much mutual masturbation is whether 'true reading' is a valid concept.
quote:Well, yes. The Bible is a book about God. The objective truth is God Himself.
1.) If we are believers we might think that the objective meaning is in the Mind of God,
quote:This doesn't follow. It might be true, but it doesn't have to be true.
and that those of us who are particularly holy, or favoured in the predestination sweepstake, will get a glimpse of that meaning.
quote:Why would we say that? Think of the Bible as a biography. The objective truth is what actually happened to the person, and why he did what he did.
2.) We could also say that the objective meaning is what the original author intended.
quote:But "the meaning of the text" is not some kind of abstract rules-lawyering game. "The meaning of the text" is God. That's where it's pointing, and He is the truth beneath it.
3.) The only thing that can be objectively measured - to my mind - is the effect the text has on the people who read it. If the primary users of the text react to it in one way, then that is a thing we can measure to determine the meaning of the text.
quote:OK, so here is my take. One should look at the ultimate end for one's holy book. In Christianity, it is Jesus. So if one looks at Jesus' overall message, one can then view through this lens. It doesn't rid all problems, of course, but Jesus' 'greatest commandment is Love. Anything that doesn't jibe with love should be subject to greater scrutiny.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I never found a way of looking at the OT - or much of the NT for that matter - that didn't ultimately include an element of what I wanted it to say. I'm really not being judgemental when I say that I don't think I ever met anyone else for whom that wasn't true, either.
quote:If you view the bible as a mix of myth, history, apologetics and instruction, I think it makes much more sense.
but the text still says God killed a load of Egyptians, and ultimately there's no way round that.
quote:
Originally posted by keibat:
Admitting up front that I have skimmed this thread rather than reading it meticulously, I haven't noticed anyone making the crucial point that the OT isn't 'a book', it's a collection of texts – an anthology, actually, created and edited and copied and selected over a very long time (measured in centuries), some of them having been passed down for centuries in oral tradition before being written down, others first composed as written texts; narrative history, prophecy, poetry, straightforward fiction, somewhat tedious aphorisms ... And the NT too, for that matter, is also an anthology, written down over most of a century by authors in significantly different situations and for significantly different purposes... So having a blanket evaluation of either the NT or the OT (with which I bundle-in the Apocrypha) really doesn't make good sense.
quote:Sure. But 'What is the meaning of this text?' is a different question from 'Does the meaning of this text accurately describe reality?'.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
But the Bible isn't just a piece of literature - it's a book about God. And as such, discussing whether it correctly describes God or not is a perfectly valid and coherent thing to do.
quote:Well, OK.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Sure. But 'What is the meaning of this text?' is a different question from 'Does the meaning of this text accurately describe reality?'
quote:OK, but it is entirely possible, is it not, that from the earliest days the poem was applied to St Ives, Cambs as well as St Ives Cornwall. It is even possible that the poem was actually written about somewhere else but that two independent travellers misheard it as referring to St Ives and one thought it was Cornwall and another thought it was the one in Huntingdonshire.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Take the riddle of the man going to St Ives. As it stands, it's ambiguous whether it means St Ives Cornwall or St Ives Cambridgeshire. If we find out from some external source that it's the Cornish one, that doesn't make 'Cornwall' part of the meaning of the text (it can't do - we didn't learn about it from the text but from elsewhere). And if we find out he was actually going to Plymouth, that doesn't imply that St Ives means Plymouth.
quote:More disgusting than the Iliad or King Lear?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
True, I guess I was trying to offer a way to see value in these myths outside of the surface disgusting layer.
quote:It's difficult to ascertain anything about a religious text without interacting with it.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
This is true, but the particular case we're talking about is whether one can ascertain something about an ancient religious text based on the way that (unidentified) members of that religion interact with it.
It seems that we've actually got a fairly unique situation here in that we have various religious groups who look at the same texts and interpret them in fundamentally different ways. It therefore seems to me to be a category error to claim that one can make judgments about the ancient text based on behaviours of one of the groups who interact with it.
quote:It depends on how much stress you put upon 'entirely'. It's not 'entirely' different.
Originally posted by mousethief:
I'm not sure how taking the exact same set of words, but setting the chunks in a different order, and then emphasizing the chunks differently, makes it an entirely different book.
quote:He didn't use the word 'define'. I think you're risking tilting at a windmill here.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:I wouldn't disagree with that, but that's a long way away from Ricardus's claim that the principal users of a text define what it means.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think the point here is that the people who use the text are the ones who are most dedicated to discovering the true meaning of the text. Sceptics from outside have perhaps less access or involvement.
quote:It's not always true that the objective meaning of a story is always the same as the objective truth of that story. (The objective meaning of 'Let's take the £350 million pounds a week we give to the EU and spend it on the NHS' is unaffected by the fact that objectively speaking it isn't true.)
But ultimately, God exists (we believe). We can read the Bible to try and learn what God is like, and what he wants from us, but we don't get to define God. Even in the instances where the Church (for whatever value of Church) claims infallibility, it's not defining God. It's just saying that God won't let it misunderstand this bit.
quote:So when you were ten you were told the meaning of 'galaxy'? Aphrodite's conception? And U/Orion's and his 'sword'?
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:I didn't know children were specifically protected from Greek or Hindu myths. I learnt about Greek mythology at primary school. Our teacher came in specifically to teach that subject.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Agreed. Especially protecting young children from them, as one would from Greek or Indian Hindu myths.
And don't children normally relish rather horrible stories? I got a copy of Grimms' fairy tales from my parents when I was a girl. They obviously didn't read it first, because it has some pretty weird stuff in it. But I found it interesting. It probably aided my imagination.
Today's kids get early access to the internet and can see all sorts of things, and play all sorts of violent games. I find it hard to believe that a children's book of Bible stories is what makes the difference....
But I suspect that the real fear here is of fundamentalist religious indoctrination. To prevent that you'd have to ban parents, not just books of 'myths'.
quote:Oh, much more terrible than either of those. The Iliad and King Lear contain many dreadful words and deeds, but neither work ascribes them to a god whom you must then either love, or burn forever.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:More disgusting than the Iliad or King Lear?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
True, I guess I was trying to offer a way to see value in these myths outside of the surface disgusting layer.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Your riddle example is both too simple and a poor analogy.
Context is a massive part of reading the Bible. It is incredibly naive and/or arrogant to claim otherwise.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Good job I didn't claim otherwise then isn't it!quote:Yes, I agree. It's one reason why I'd say that though the Bible is important, it's not the centre of our faith.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:Well, OK.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Sure. But 'What is the meaning of this text?' is a different question from 'Does the meaning of this text accurately describe reality?'
In which case I would argue that "what is the meaning of this text?" is the wrong question. Because the reason to care about the text is that it's pointing us at God.
quote:The Old Testament, taken on its own, doesn't do so either.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
The Iliad and King Lear contain many dreadful words and deeds, but neither work ascribes them to a god whom you must then either love, or burn forever.
quote:Jesus, the Word of God, is the centre of your faith.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Yes, I agree. It's one reason why I'd say that though the Bible is important, it's not the centre of our faith.
quote:If one is imbibing the biblical text with spiritual truth in contrast to the Shakespeare text, then yes. A lot more disgusting.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
More disgusting than the Iliad or King Lear?
quote:I'm saying that if one reads them in a similar way to a fairy story, they're pretty foul stories with oblique morality tales. But I think it is possible to dig deeper and get something philosophically interesting from them despite them being about disgusting acts - eg Abraham/Isaac.
Most myths seem to me to be problematic from an ethical point of view on the surface. I'm not sure if surface is the right metaphor here: by 'surface' I suppose you mean if you view them as a report of merely one more of the damn things that comes after another.
quote:No. But let's imagine that there are Tories in the future who remember this phrase. Let's imagine a situation in a few decades time whereby we really are able to put an extra £350m into the NHS every week.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's not always true that the objective meaning of a story is always the same as the objective truth of that story. (The objective meaning of 'Let's take the £350 million pounds a week we give to the EU and spend it on the NHS' is unaffected by the fact that objectively speaking it isn't true.)
quote:Sorry, but it is. If it is a lie uttered as political rhetoric for unscrupulous purposes, the objective question whether it's true or not is profoundly germane to that. Likewise, if it reveals that someone who aspires to high office here has the same sort of personal relationship with truth, honesty and integrity as the current POTUS, whether the statement is true or not is fundamental to everything else about that statement.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
... It's not always true that the objective meaning of a story is always the same as the objective truth of that story. (The objective meaning of 'Let's take the £350 million pounds a week we give to the EU and spend it on the NHS' is unaffected by the fact that objectively speaking it isn't true.). ...
quote:Well, but is it?
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's not always true that the objective meaning of a story is always the same as the objective truth of that story. (The objective meaning of 'Let's take the £350 million pounds a week we give to the EU and spend it on the NHS' is unaffected by the fact that objectively speaking it isn't true.)
quote:Well, yes - except that sometimes things aren't as simple as they first appear. It is true that the £350m isn't a great reflection of the true numbers, given that it appears to be a gross figure and given that even if everything else was equal any excesses that the British government had after leaving the EU would also have to be shared amongst agriculture, science etc as well as the NHS.
Originally posted by Enoch:
Sorry, but it is. If it is a lie uttered as political rhetoric for unscrupulous purposes, the objective question whether it's true or not is profoundly germane to that.
quote:I think this is quite a naive understanding of politics - which is almost never about accountancy and economics and almost always about feelings, policies and ideas. Boris, it appears, genuinely believes that the UK is going to do very well out of Brexit. That is what he is selling here by talking about the £350m.
Likewise, if it reveals that someone who aspires to high office here has the same sort of personal relationship with truth, honesty and integrity as the current POTUS, whether the statement is true or not is fundamental to everything else about that statement.
quote:I don't know that it is quite the same thing to be referring to this number now as during the referendum campaign. And it wasn't as if there was complete silence about it at the time - many were debunking it and calling it nonsense.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
But given that we know that the £350 million pounds claim is pure nonsense, it is not open to us to believe that the Brexiteers did their due diligence and honestly believed that £350 million pounds a week would be available to the NHS.
So the possible meanings of this particular text are:
1. Lead Brexiteers did believe £350 million pounds, and so they are really stupid.
2. Lead Brexiteers did not believe £350 million pounds, and so are liars.
We need extra information to distinguish between 1 and 2.
The text is not just a series of logical propositions that exists with no context.
quote:Yes. I understand this is at least one reason why the Baptist Union has never signed up to the Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith. The EA says, "We believe in ... the divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God", while the BU believes that "our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures". I much prefer the latter.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Jesus, the Word of God, is the centre of your faith.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Yes, I agree. It's one reason why I'd say that though the Bible is important, it's not the centre of our faith.
quote:So that's another possible meaning for the text - it was never intended to be an honest number, but is a metaphor for "we want our money back". Just like forgiving someone 70 times 7 times doesn't actually mean that you get to count up to 490...
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Sorry, my last was meant to conclude that "Brexit saves money for the NHS" has a certain kind of power to it beyond simply it being a deception or a lie. Or playing on the stupidity of voters.
quote:Good point, possibly not the best example to use. On the other hand, I think we were attempting to struggle to use a contemporary example to understand and discuss the phenomena of "truth" with regard to biblical text.
Originally posted by simontoad:
sorry, is this the OT thread, or the Brexit thread?
quote:But it still matters whether it's true or not. A fine sounding lie doesn't become less of one for sounding good or symbolising what some people wish was true - though perhaps I'd better not say that or Professor Dawkins will seize on my words and accuse us of doing that.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Sorry, my last was meant to conclude that "Brexit saves money for the NHS" has a certain kind of power to it beyond simply it being a deception or a lie. Or playing on the stupidity of voters.
quote:So do I.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan
Yes. I understand this is at least one reason why the Baptist Union has never signed up to the Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith. The EA says, "We believe in ... the divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God", while the BU believes that "our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures". I much prefer the latter.
quote:No, it doesn't. Quite the opposite in fact. The word 'objective' claims that the truth of the matter is not answerable to the statement; the direction of fit is words to world. Therefore, a statement that claims objective truth is answerable to the world and therefore may be wrong.
Originally posted by hatless:
Could we have a moratorium on the word "objective"? It makes pretend to a higher level of truth. 'X is objectively the case,' meaning X is really, really definitely true and you simply can't disagree.
quote:But it is not germane to the meaning of the sentence. The sentence is false because the meaning is different from the truth.
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:Sorry, but it is. If it is a lie uttered as political rhetoric for unscrupulous purposes, the objective question whether it's true or not is profoundly germane to that.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
... It's not always true that the objective meaning of a story is always the same as the objective truth of that story.
quote:Well, 'central' is a bit of a vaguely defined concept I admit. But:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Jesus, the Word of God, is the centre of your faith.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Yes, I agree. It's one reason why I'd say that though the Bible is important, it's not the centre of our faith.
But the source for Jesus is the Bible. Going to the Bible, and not tradition, is central to the Reformation.
And there are subsects who equate the Bible as the be all and end all, a self-contained and fully explained compendium of everything.
Saying the Bible is not the whole, I get. But shoving from the centre I don't.
quote:The bible isn't the physical book, but the sources that form it. Someone was referencing those sources in the spreading and teaching of Christianity in those years prior to literacy and cheap books. In other words, teaching from the Bible.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:Well, 'central' is a bit of a vaguely defined concept I admit. But:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Jesus, the Word of God, is the centre of your faith.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Yes, I agree. It's one reason why I'd say that though the Bible is important, it's not the centre of our faith.
But the source for Jesus is the Bible. Going to the Bible, and not tradition, is central to the Reformation.
And there are subsects who equate the Bible as the be all and end all, a self-contained and fully explained compendium of everything.
Saying the Bible is not the whole, I get. But shoving from the centre I don't.
1. For most of history, Christians haven't had direct access to the Bible. Firstly because they couldn't read, and secondly because manuscripts were expensive.
2. I'm not convinced that 'X is the source of what we think about Y' implies that X and Y have similar status. Yes, we need the Bible to make the claims we make about Jesus, but for that matter we needed Johannes Gutenberg to make the Bible readily available, but that doesn't make Johannes Gutenberg central to our faith.
quote:The Bible's only begotten son?
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
But the source for Jesus is the Bible.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
quote:But there is sufficient ambiguity that it isn't simply a truth/lies statement. It probably isn't true, but it largely depends on exactly what Boris intended it to mean and what those listening think he is saying.
Originally posted by Enoch:
But it still matters whether it's true or not. A fine sounding lie doesn't become less of one for sounding good or symbolising what some people wish was true - though perhaps I'd better not say that or Professor Dawkins will seize on my words and accuse us of doing that.
quote:So? My point is that just because our beliefs about Y come from X, that doesn't make X and Y of equal status. In the modern world X is a set of objects and people that include Gutenberg; in the Middle Ages Gutenberg obviously wouldn't have been part of that set, but other people might, such as St Jerome. But just as Gutenberg isn't central to our faith, neither is St Jerome.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:The bible isn't the physical book, but the sources that form it. Someone was referencing those sources in the spreading and teaching of Christianity in those years prior to literacy and cheap books. In other words, teaching from the Bible.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
2. I'm not convinced that 'X is the source of what we think about Y' implies that X and Y have similar status. Yes, we need the Bible to make the claims we make about Jesus, but for that matter we needed Johannes Gutenberg to make the Bible readily available, but that doesn't make Johannes Gutenberg central to our faith.
quote:You're right that most of them couldn't read and couldn't afford their own copies of the text; however, Bible passages were read aloud in church. People had plenty of opportunity to hear them.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
1. For most of history, Christians haven't had direct access to the Bible. Firstly because they couldn't read, and secondly because manuscripts were expensive.
quote:A statement that claims objective truth may be disproven, but the problem is that it's very hard to come up with any objective facts.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:No, it doesn't. Quite the opposite in fact. The word 'objective' claims that the truth of the matter is not answerable to the statement; the direction of fit is words to world. Therefore, a statement that claims objective truth is answerable to the world and therefore may be wrong.
Originally posted by hatless:
Could we have a moratorium on the word "objective"? It makes pretend to a higher level of truth. 'X is objectively the case,' meaning X is really, really definitely true and you simply can't disagree.
On the other hand, a statement that disclaims objectivity has a direction of fit of world to words. The world is made answerable to the speaker. For example an expression of approval or disapproval has no appeal or response; if the hearer cares about the speaker's approval then the hearer must comply.
quote:That statement is the sort of thing that only an internet pundit could come out with.
Originally posted by hatless:
A statement that claims objective truth may be disproven, but the problem is that it's very hard to come up with any objective facts.
quote:You'll have to help me here. I'm confused as well as insulted.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:That statement is the sort of thing that only an internet pundit could come out with.
Originally posted by hatless:
A statement that claims objective truth may be disproven, but the problem is that it's very hard to come up with any objective facts.
Human beings need to breathe and consume nourishment.
All human beings are mortal.
All human beings spent at least twenty-five odd weeks developing in a woman's womb.
There's three.
(An 'objective fact' of course is a tautology.)
The objective truth or falsehood of a statement is not the same as whether it can be verified/falsified (as appropriate). (Verificationism and falsificationism effectively reject the concept of objective truth.)
quote:It is possible that the problem here is that my training is in science rather than philosophy, but I'm pretty sure it is nothing to do with being an internet pundit.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:That statement is the sort of thing that only an internet pundit could come out with.
Originally posted by hatless:
A statement that claims objective truth may be disproven, but the problem is that it's very hard to come up with any objective facts.
quote:I apologise for any insult. Although I don't see what is insulting in the description 'internet pundit' given that it includes everyone on this board, and we are presumably all subject to the same temptations.
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:You'll have to help me here. I'm confused as well as insulted.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:That statement is the sort of thing that only an internet pundit could come out with.
Originally posted by hatless:
A statement that claims objective truth may be disproven, but the problem is that it's very hard to come up with any objective facts.
Human beings need to breathe and consume nourishment.
All human beings are mortal.
All human beings spent at least twenty-five odd weeks developing in a woman's womb.
There's three.
(An 'objective fact' of course is a tautology.)
The objective truth or falsehood of a statement is not the same as whether it can be verified/falsified (as appropriate). (Verificationism and falsificationism effectively reject the concept of objective truth.)
quote:I did not use the word 'evidence'. You're equating 'evidence' and 'world'. The world as you go on to complain is not reducible to the measurable evidence about the world.
You previously said that the word objective said a statement had to fit the evidence - words to world. Now you're saying it's not the same as whether it can be verified or not?
quote:I entirely agree with you in disapproving of the measurable outcomes in health care and elsewhere. I don't agree with you that the problems with them can be directly imported here.
My point is probably less narrowly theoretical. I work in mental healthcare where the fashion is that everything we do should have measurable outcomes.
quote:The World: Round or Flat? Opinions differ.
Try and find objective facts about mental illness. What is it? Is schizophrenia even a thing? What about the effects of Brexit? Or the causes and consequences of immigration? What are the causes of racism? What is the relationship of climate change to extreme weather? Is education better or worse now than thirty years ago? How should we tackle the obesity epidemic?
quote:Yes, fair comment, I am overstating my case a bit here.
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:You're right that most of them couldn't read and couldn't afford their own copies of the text; however, Bible passages were read aloud in church. People had plenty of opportunity to hear them.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
1. For most of history, Christians haven't had direct access to the Bible. Firstly because they couldn't read, and secondly because manuscripts were expensive.
Moo
quote:Well, neither. It is as inaccurate to say it is a round as to say it is flat. It is roughly spherical, a 3-dimensional shape. Both "flat" and "round" are usually used to describe 2-d shapes.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The World: Round or Flat? Opinions differ.
quote:Well - yes and no. Because life isn't as simple as saying all things are either right or wrong. That's not the same as saying "anything goes", but it is to embrace the reality that there are different kinds of truth and different kinds of perception and that the "literally true" is not the only kind of truth.
There is a great difference between saying that the truth of the matter is not easily available and saying that therefore it doesn't matter and anything goes. Again, saying that some people are biased and uttering subjective opinions is not the same as saying that the truth or facts are subjective.
quote:I don't know what 'objectively' is supposed to modify in 'objectively be tested' and how it is supposed to modify it.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It seems to me that there are some things which are true/false statements and which can objectively be tested.
quote:I note that if there are questions about what it means to be 'in the country' in the case of 'people illegally in the country' then there are equally questions about what it means in the other case of 'people in the country'.
So if I said that the population of the country was x, clearly that's (essentially) an absolute figure. And one could offer various kinds of proof in the form of a census to objectively measure how many bodies were in the country at any given time - where objectivity implies robust, replicable methods which give answers that experts are happy reflect the true situation. There is a "real and true" answer to the question, there are a range of tools to use which give a reliable answer.
But there are a range of statements that are not - or are not intended to be - objective in that sense. So if we were to talk about "how many illegal migrants are there in the country", then that's dependent on the kinds of question being asked. What does it mean to be an "illegal migrant"? What does it mean to be "in the country", etc and so on.
quote:What you are saying here is the Brexiteers are right.
The Brexiteers would like us to believe that success/failure of Brexit is in our hands, and therefore somehow "believing in ourselves" and "thinking positively about the future" will lead to a good outcome. Which may or may not be true, but that's not really something which is objectively true or false either. We're not really going to know if it is an inevitable economic car-crash until afterwards or whether the attitude the country has to it will have had any impact on its success.
quote:I find this to be an inspired insight
Originally posted by hatless:
My point is probably less narrowly theoretical. I work in mental healthcare where the fashion is that everything we do should have measurable outcomes. We are asked to define indicators set specific targets, and do robust assessments so that we can demonstrate our effectiveness....
Often I see the demand for objectivity as a sort of bullying. It's a hammer in a world of intricate mechanisms and people made of flesh and blood. The Old Testament will not give up its treasures to this approach, and nor, in fact, will much of life, including much of the stuff professional scientists do.
quote:I think most people, and most scientists, are using the terms in the way I've described:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I don't know what 'objectively' is supposed to modify in 'objectively be tested' and how it is supposed to modify it.
However, 'objectively true/false' does not mean the same as 'true/false and can be tested' (or even 'true/false and objectively be tested').
Let's go back to the basic principle. There's a class of verbs including 'see', 'perceive', 'believe', 'know' etc. A basic sentence with such a verb would be 'The child sees the cat'. The child is the grammatical subject. The cat is the grammatical object. Now in a basic sense any aspect of the seeing that happens as a result of qualities of the cat is objective (of the grammatical object). So the qualities of the cat are objective.
quote:I don't think this is very helpful either. The usage has gone beyond the basics of the grammatical difference.
(An objective observer or objective judge, for what it's worth, is a second-order usage, and means an observer or judge who is for practical purposes free of subjective qualities that interfere with the observer's responsiveness to objective qualities.)
quote:No I don't think I am.
]I note that if there are questions about what it means to be 'in the country' in the case of 'people illegally in the country' then there are equally questions about what it means in the other case of 'people in the country'.
You're confusing differences about the definitions in the terms of the question being asked with differences in the answer. That is, for any particular definition of 'in the country' the answer is given.
quote:What a strange thing to say. It's like you think that anyone who disagrees with you is obviously wrong and misguided because they're not using terms in the way that you use them.
If you say that the answer to 'how many people are illegally in the country' is subjective what you are saying is that claims by the right-wing press are not open to correction. The right-wing press say we're being swamped, the centre-left press say we're not, there's no way to settle the matter. Which would be fine if it didn't have practical consequences. Because the further consequences is that if the Home Office says someone is in the country illegally, because the Home Office has targets to meet politically motivated by the right-wing press, then the Home Office is justified in deporting that person regardless of what the courts rule or of any paperwork saying otherwise. Which I think is a dangerous position to hold.
quote:Ye gods.
What you are saying here is the Brexiteers are right.
If the truth is subjective, that is it depends on us believing in ourselves, then that's agreeing with the Brexiteers.
quote:Mmm, yeah. The whole question of whether we can ever be sure about anything is a whole other headache. I think we generally tend to accept certain things if they're repeatable because we'd not get too far if we just sat around debating whether every little the thing we were measuring was actually true or not.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Hence skepticism and postmodernism. I mean, we can't be sure about anything, so we agree on certain things, and call them intersubjective, if they can be tested repeatedly.
quote:If you jump off of building, you will fall until you meet with sufficient resistance to arrest your fall. If the building is of sufficient height, you will die regardless of whether your philosophy might tell you otherwise. Or whether or not you mind shares anything with any other.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Hence skepticism and postmodernism. I mean, we can't be sure about anything, so we agree on certain things, and call them intersubjective, if they can be tested repeatedly.
quote:Right: plenty of people have tested this idea.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If you jump off of building, you will fall until you meet with sufficient resistance to arrest your fall. If the building is of sufficient height, you will die regardless of whether your philosophy might tell you otherwise. Or whether or not you mind shares anything with any other.
CAUTIONARY NOTE: It is not recommended you personally test this statement. It has been sufficiently demonstrated already.
quote:If your building is in space or under water, you might just float there, as in 'Gravity'. Your scenario is true in certain contexts, that is the point about agreement.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:If you jump off of building, you will fall until you meet with sufficient resistance to arrest your fall. If the building is of sufficient height, you will die regardless of whether your philosophy might tell you otherwise. Or whether or not you mind shares anything with any other.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Hence skepticism and postmodernism. I mean, we can't be sure about anything, so we agree on certain things, and call them intersubjective, if they can be tested repeatedly.
CAUTIONARY NOTE: It is not recommended you personally test this statement. It has been sufficiently demonstrated already.
Philosophy: The practice of making even the most simple things as complicated as possible.
quote:Well, I take your previous points about what is workable, rather than what is philosophically congruent. In fact, science tends to work. Anyway, a long way from the OT.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
OK I'm going to have to bow out because my head hurts.
quote:This is a very straw filled argument. Most people do not approach life in this way. Nor do they look at the OT this way.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The things we measure, the things we count, are an indication of what we value and what we notice. Restricting ourselves to the objective, the measurable, is an easy out. It feels true because it's solid, it's verifiable. But it misses pretty much everything of value-- the depth, the nuance-- the beauty.
quote:Which was precisely my point. You seemed to have missed the entire context of my response to the very specific context of hatless' post.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:This is a very straw filled argument. Most people do not approach life in this way.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The things we measure, the things we count, are an indication of what we value and what we notice. Restricting ourselves to the objective, the measurable, is an easy out. It feels true because it's solid, it's verifiable. But it misses pretty much everything of value-- the depth, the nuance-- the beauty.
quote:Again, you are missing my point-- which is that Christian fundamentalists will insist on the OT being the TRUE, REAL, ACCEPTED ACTUAL WORD of GOD without critical examination. [/b][/i] precisely because they are searching for that same sort of certainty-- they are valuing that same sort of absolute, objective, measurable truth. And, the mirror image-- atheistic fundamentalists-- will reject the OT/Christianity precisely because they cannot accept it as the TRUE, REAL, ACCEPTED ACTUAL WORD of GOD. It simply is not true that "no one reads the OT this way"-- although it may be close to true in this forum. Quite a few people, again, both Christian and atheistic, read the OT with precisely this sort of expectation-- and either reject it entirely or accept it without critical analysis-- based on that.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Most people do not approach life in this way. Nor do they look at the OT this way.
The problem lies when someone insists all, or a particular bit of it, must be the
TRUE, REAL, ACCEPTED ACTUAL WORD of GOD without critical examination.
quote:I didn't say 'no one', I intentionally avoided absolutes in my post.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It simply is not true that "no one reads the OT this way"-- although it may be close to true in this forum.
quote:This i a perception thing, I think and how many do exactly what is a difficult thing to determine.
Quite a few people, again, both Christian and atheistic, read the OT with precisely this sort of expectation-- and either reject it entirely or accept it without critical analysis-- based on that.
quote:On this we will disagree, I'm afraid. I would say most of us wish to be certain which is quite a different thing.
The desire for this sort of measurable, absolute, verifiable truth is quite real and quite present in most of us--
quote:I don't think I am arguing with you so much as viewing from a different vantage point. Or perhaps applying different weight to the points made.
Which I think was your point-- and mine as well-- so not quite sure why you appear to be arguing with me.
quote:Please forgive this grievous error on my part.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:I didn't say 'no one', I intentionally avoided absolutes in my post.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It simply is not true that "no one reads the OT this way"-- although it may be close to true in this forum.
quote:This i a perception thing, I think and how many do exactly what is a difficult thing to determine.[/QB][/QUOTE]
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Quite a few people, again, both Christian and atheistic, read the OT with precisely this sort of expectation-- and either reject it entirely or accept it without critical analysis-- based on that.
quote:On this we will disagree, I'm afraid. I would say most of us wish to be certain which is quite a different thing.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The desire for this sort of measurable, absolute, verifiable truth is quite real and quite present in most of us--
quote:Unless I am totally and completely missing your point, it seems to me like you are swatting at gnats. I'm totally mystified as to why you're subjecting my remarks to such intense scrutiny when it would appear in essence we're saying similar, if not identical things. But if it's serving some useful purpose for you or anyone else, sure, have at it.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I don't think I am arguing with you so much as viewing from a different vantage point. Or perhaps applying different weight to the points made. [/QB]
quote:Hatless may be right that the word 'objective' is properly ruined for any serious use even if not for the reasons he thinks.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think most people, and most scientists, are using the terms in the way I've described:
Objective: some quality of something which can be measured in such a way that the measurement can be repeated using accepted methods (which are based on reasoned and testable premises) and which give the same answer if different people repeat the test.
quote:Fine you don't agree with the Brexiteers conclusions. I feel that if you grant the Brexiteers all their premises and endorse their method of reasoning and dispute the premises of the counterarguments it doesn't really help matters to say that you disagree with the Brexiteers' conclusions at the end.
In future, kindly keep your warped opinions as to my "agreement with Brexiteers" to yourself.
quote:I'm sorry, this is the heart of the whole problem. Knowing what is going to happen in the future is simply not a fact and furthermore anyone who knows anything about economics can tell you that perception is a big part of success or failure.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Fine you don't agree with the Brexiteers conclusions. I feel that if you grant the Brexiteers all their premises and endorse their method of reasoning and dispute the premises of the counterarguments it doesn't really help matters to say that you disagree with the Brexiteers' conclusions at the end.
quote:Riiight, yeah. Once again you're claiming that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, irrational and now suicidal. Which just shows how little you know about politics and economics.
If you're taking all the rope the Brexiteers give you and hang it from a rafter and make it into a noose like they ask and then stand on a stool and put your head through the noose it's a bit late to object that you don't agree with them kicking the stool away.
quote:You're simply here insisting that words have to mean what you say they mean - even though there is a whole bunch of reasons to actually use them in the way that I've described.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Hatless may be right that the word 'objective' is properly ruined for any serious use even if not for the reasons he thinks.
However, there are perfectly good words for 'measurable' and 'testable'. There isn't another good word for 'pertaining to the object of knowledge/belief/perception as opposed to the knowing/believing/perceiving subject'.
Furthermore, as hatless has described the culture that only measurable and testable knowledge deserves an honorific 'objective' has destructive consequences for areas like mental health and education.
Furthermore as I've tried to describe the culture that once one goes beyond what is measurable and testable all that is left are opinions is also destructive for public life.
quote:I don't know - I've somehow lost the will to live. I think we can only understand the OT within a certain context - and the only contexts we have are those of how different people perceive and perceived it. We then have to choose the perception and the interpretation that makes most sense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
This is all an analogy, right?
quote:Well some have said in this thread that God cannot have commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (given what we know of God) and others have said that the OT is some kind of developing understanding of God. Still others have said that we can look to Jews to see how they understand God - and that isn't a deity who commands adults to kill their children.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Steady. Stick around. That's a workable interim summation. It's academically interesting and surely not too difficult to work out what the writers meant, what their context was?
quote:I think we all have to do the best with what we've got. I kinda like that Gandhiji managed to develop a theology of non-violence based around the Bhagavad Gita, a poem within the Mahabharata about a battle.
That is as true as it gets surely? There's no higher or esoteric truth, no truth that only initiates to, adepts of the mysteries that one has to be born into.
quote:I'm assuming that is addressed to me? Looking back over my posts I don't think I expressed myself very well.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And I'm not-at-all persuaded that looking at the Jews gives us the best reflection of how the passage is supposed to be interpreted.
quote:Except...
Originally posted by Ricardus:
But 'What is the meaning of this text?' is a different question from 'Does the meaning of this text accurately describe reality?'.
Take the riddle of the man going to St Ives. As it stands, it's ambiguous whether it means St Ives Cornwall or St Ives Cambridgeshire. If we find out from some external source that it's the Cornish one, that doesn't make 'Cornwall' part of the meaning of the text (it can't do - we didn't learn about it from the text but from elsewhere). And if we find out he was actually going to Plymouth, that doesn't imply that St Ives means Plymouth.
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
, *which* St. Ives doesn't make any difference to the riddle.quote:Yes. When I first heard about Gandhi's approach, I was relieved, comforted, sympathetic, and a bit puzzled. I'd tried to read the same text, and dropped it because of that early scene, where (IIRC from years ago) Arjuna is on the brink of going to war with his brothers. And he's hesitant. So he asks his god for advice, and is told to go ahead with war, and not worry about trying to make peace with his brothers. Etc.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think we all have to do the best with what we've got. I kinda like that Gandhiji managed to develop a theology of non-violence based around the Bhagavad Gita, a poem within the Mahabharata about a battle.
I don't know how he did it. It seems to me to be quite a radical reading of the Hindu religious texts.
Is it the most truthful reading? I don't know. I'm not sure anyone knows. But then I don't know that "truthful" really has a lot of meaning if it is only being used to describe an understanding that is closest to that of the author. Because truth is more than that.
quote:OK, I'm saying that the Jewish interpretation you're offering is just one amongst a load of others. If you are agreeing it has no special status, then I can't see how anything collapses - it is just another interpretation that exists out there.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I'm assuming that is addressed to me? Looking back over my posts I don't think I expressed myself very well.
The OP was about various forms of Marcionism, i.e. rejecting the OT on the grounds that it's nasty. If Christians reject the OT then the only users of the OT are the Jews. But if the Jewish reading of the OT isn't nasty, then the OT isn't nasty, and the whole reason for rejecting it in the first place collapses.
quote:I don't think this is the proof you seem to think it is. Some Jews are able to read it without seeing it as nasty just as Gandhi was able to read the Gita as see past the war it describes. I don't think this invaidates the view of someone picking up either book and describing it as nasty.
Or to put it another way. Some Christians have the idea that you can only read the OT in the context of the NT, because otherwise you end up with a book that is nasty. But Jews don't read the OT in the context of the NT, and nevertheless aren't nasty, so empirically speaking that idea is wrong.
quote:This would be an irrational verb?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
You're simply here insisting that words have to mean what you say they mean - even though there is a whole bunch of reasons to actually use them in the way that I've described.
quote:Excuse me, it is you that are getting hellish - it is you that are making claims about me supporting something that I plainly don't and it is you who are making uncalled and graphic comparisons with suicide.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
This would be an irrational verb?
Mr cheesy describes a whole bunch of reasons;
Dafyd simply insists.
Yes, I have the temerity to disagree with you; and the bare-faced cheek to believe the reasons in favour of my view are more compelling than the reasons in favour of your view. This is Purgatory. Either cope with people arguing against you, or go off and whinge about it in Hell.
quote:I don't think he's saying it invalidates the view of someone who picks up the OT, reads it and then describes it as nasty. He's saying it invalidates the view that the OT can only be described as nasty unless it is read in the context of the NT.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I don't think this is the proof you seem to think it is. Some Jews are able to read it without seeing it as nasty just as Gandhi was able to read the Gita as see past the war it describes. I don't think this invaidates the view of someone picking up either book and describing it as nasty.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Or to put it another way. Some Christians have the idea that you can only read the OT in the context of the NT, because otherwise you end up with a book that is nasty. But Jews don't read the OT in the context of the NT, and nevertheless aren't nasty, so empirically speaking that idea is wrong.
quote:One thing I've been trying to figure out is whether it's possible to hold to the inerrancy (other adjectives are available) of these particularly troublesome passages - i.e. if it says that God told A to kill B - and
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think my friend's position is fairly simple: if Christianity accepts (on some level) that loyalty to the deity is more important than loyalty to the law, and if we have evidence that people who were spoken to by the deity were told to murder their own children - then how can you be sure that the deity isn't going to tell you to murder your own child?
And if we say that Jesus is the perfect image of God and we can't imagine him murdering a child in order to please the deity (never mind being the deity that demands that kind of loyalty), why the blazes do we do theological gymnastics to try to say that when the bible says "God says kill.. blahdiblah" that's the same deity that we see in the incarnation..?
quote:A bit pedantic, but it's important to remember there is a distinction in biblical hermeneutics between
Originally posted by DaleMaily:
Returning to the OP, this point early on grabbed my attention:
quote:One thing I've been trying to figure out is whether it's possible to hold to the inerrancy (other adjectives are available) of these particularly troublesome passages - i.e. if it says that God told A to kill B - and
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think my friend's position is fairly simple: if Christianity accepts (on some level) that loyalty to the deity is more important than loyalty to the law, and if we have evidence that people who were spoken to by the deity were told to murder their own children - then how can you be sure that the deity isn't going to tell you to murder your own child?
And if we say that Jesus is the perfect image of God and we can't imagine him murdering a child in order to please the deity (never mind being the deity that demands that kind of loyalty), why the blazes do we do theological gymnastics to try to say that when the bible says "God says kill.. blahdiblah" that's the same deity that we see in the incarnation..?
not therefore tacitly (or overtly) approve of them. Some people who I have spoken to have suggested that Jesus (who is God, let's remember) has shown us that this is "not the way", but does that imply God had some sort of personality transplant in the intertestamental period? My recollection of the ins and outs of this particular explanation is very wooly, so if someone more familiar with it could explain it to me I would be much obliged.
quote:Thanks for the distinction. So in my example above:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Infallibility is connected to literalism, because it holds to verbal plenary inspiration (divine dictation). So every "jot and tittle" of the text (in it's "original language") is completely, entirely true in the literal sense
Inerrancy sees inspiration as coming in and thru the human authors, as well as in and thru the events being recorded. So it holds for the same authority to every text, but allows for much greater latitude in interpretation
quote:Not all inerrantists would go as far as your 1st ex but it's at least an option for an inerrantist, whereas not at all in infallibility. I might say "the text is accurately recording that A (mis)heard God tell him to kill B"
Originally posted by DaleMaily:
quote:Thanks for the distinction. So in my example above:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Infallibility is connected to literalism, because it holds to verbal plenary inspiration (divine dictation). So every "jot and tittle" of the text (in it's "original language") is completely, entirely true in the literal sense
Inerrancy sees inspiration as coming in and thru the human authors, as well as in and thru the events being recorded. So it holds for the same authority to every text, but allows for much greater latitude in interpretation
- Someone who believes in inerrancy, but not infallibility, can hold that God did not tell A to kill B, despite the Bible saying so
- Someone who believes in infallibility has to accept if the Bible says God ordered A to kill B, it did happen that way and consequently they don't feel obliged to explain it (apart from "God ordered it, so they must have deserved it")
Is that right?
quote:Sure. And of course not everyone thinks thru/ applies their hermeneutic consistently or thoughtfully. But in general you're going to find more diverse interpretations within infallibility precisely because it allows for various ways on understanding the text. Inerrantists tend to be more uniform because they're bound to that single , mostly literal, meaning
Originally posted by DaleMaily:
Sorry for double posting, but I meant to add that I know people who seem to be in-between inerrancy and infallibility as per your definitions: they are completely happy to accept at least a significant section of books like Genesis from a mythological point of view (including accepting evolution as fact)but still happy to think that God specifically ordered humans to kill other humans, and because God ordered it it must be OK.
quote:So, the questions regarding the veracity and contradictory nature of some biblical text are like a wall across a path. Infalliblists run straight into it as if it were not there and inerrantists place a springboard and attempt to leap over the wall.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
These particular OT texts are still problematic for us inerrantists, but our gymnastics are at least a bit more graceful.
quote:While the distinction between "inerrancy" and "infallibility" may be of great significance for evangelicals, might it be suggested that for the rest of us its the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee: mere sophistry!
A bit pedantic, but it's important to remember there is a distinction in biblical hermeneutics between
inerrancy and infalliblity harkening back to the old "battle for the Bible" debate within evangelicalism.
quote:Not sure that really helps. IMO it is fairly clear that the sacrifice is an instruction and a test.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
]
Yet, God subverts the expectation by preventing Abraham from killing Isaac and also providing a different sacrifice. This sets Abraham's God apart from the other local gods.
This interpretation holds true to the text, and also removes lB's wall. No leaping required (in this particular case).
quote:It might look like it is something else, but only if you know the ending of the story.
22:1 Some time after these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am!” Abraham replied. 22:2 God said, “Take your son – your only son, whom you love, Isaac – and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you.”
quote:In that particular case. Others? Not so clean a wash.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The thing is, I had always assumed that the story of Abraham and Isaac was a story about not sacrificing your first-born son to God.
In Abraham's bronze-age world, it was (apparently, according to both Biblical and other sources) not unknown for first-born children to be sacrificed on the altar/thrown in the flames. And initially, Abraham assumes Yahweh is one of those gods who demands this sacrifice.
Yet, God subverts the expectation by preventing Abraham from killing Isaac and also providing a different sacrifice. This sets Abraham's God apart from the other local gods.
This interpretation holds true to the text, and also removes lB's wall. No leaping required (in this particular case).
quote:Well I've learned something today; I thought inerrentists believed, as per wikipedia, that the bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact"
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Not all inerrantists would go as far as your 1st ex but it's at least an option for an inerrantist, whereas not at all in infallibility. I might say "the text is accurately recording that A (mis)heard God tell him to kill B"
quote:Sorry I was transposing the terms. My bad
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Well I've learned something today; I thought inerrentists believed, as per wikipedia, that the bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact"
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Not all inerrantists would go as far as your 1st ex but it's at least an option for an inerrantist, whereas not at all in infallibility. I might say "the text is accurately recording that A (mis)heard God tell him to kill B"
One would think that if the bible was actually intended to be taken in this way that the passage might just make it clear that old Ab thought he heard God, but didn't.
quote:OK, I could be wrong, but this is my impression of the difference between the two terms in as layman's a way as I can manage -
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Sorry I was transposing the terms. My bad
It is a rather precise distinction, really an in-house dispute among evangelicals (see marsdens reforming fundamentalism)
quote:A fair number of the neo-atheists-- the mirror image of Christian fundamentalists (perhaps because so many were raised that way).
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
But the assumption that something has to be factual in order to be "true" is a function of 19th Century reaction to the Enlightenment -- basically a poor understanding of/ reaction to the scientific and textual criticism advances of that time. I cannot imagine anyone other than a post-Enlightenment fundamentist insisting that Jesus had to have specific factual situations in mind when he created his parables in ordee for them to communicate valid truths. I mean, who does that, other than a modern fundamentalist?
quote:In fairness, I don't know that this detail would matter much. I think the way stories are remembered means that the context isn't necessarily passed on.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
I've always thought of the parables as "Once upon a time ..." stories, albeit based on true-life situations so the listeners can identify with them.I never thought they had to describe specific historical events.
If Jesus had said, "There was a farmer in my village who went out to sow ..." or "My friend Jacob was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho ..." or "My mother Mary's aunt once lost a coin ..." then it would be different.
quote:I've often thought that some of the alleged discrepancies in these tales, and in Jesus' teaching material, come from the fact that they were repeated by Jesus many times but often with slight variations to fit the context - just as a comic today will vary their routine or stories according to whether they are in Brighton or Glasgow, or in response to audience feedback. I'm sure too that Jesus often put in more "padding" which the Gospel writers omit.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The parables which are retained in the gospels have interesting levels of detail, but we don't know how often they were repeated in front of different audiences and we don't know how the were reconstructed by the authors of the gospels.
quote:Or it could be they were written by different people who didn't have identical memories.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:I've often thought that some of the alleged discrepancies in these tales, and in Jesus' teaching material, come from the fact that they were repeated by Jesus many times but often with slight variations to fit the context - just as a comic today will vary their routine or stories according to whether they are in Brighton or Glasgow, or in response to audience feedback. I'm sure too that Jesus often put in more "padding" which the Gospel writers omit.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The parables which are retained in the gospels have interesting levels of detail, but we don't know how often they were repeated in front of different audiences and we don't know how the were reconstructed by the authors of the gospels.
quote:Something like
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Or it could be they were written by different people who didn't have identical memories.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:I've often thought that some of the alleged discrepancies in these tales, and in Jesus' teaching material, come from the fact that they were repeated by Jesus many times but often with slight variations to fit the context - just as a comic today will vary their routine or stories according to whether they are in Brighton or Glasgow, or in response to audience feedback. I'm sure too that Jesus often put in more "padding" which the Gospel writers omit.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The parables which are retained in the gospels have interesting levels of detail, but we don't know how often they were repeated in front of different audiences and we don't know how the were reconstructed by the authors of the gospels.
ISTM, things would be much easier for y'all if God had been a better proofreader.