homepage
  roll on christmas  
click here to find out more about ship of fools click here to sign up for the ship of fools newsletter click here to support ship of fools
community the mystery worshipper gadgets for god caption competition foolishness features ship stuff
discussion boards live chat cafe avatars frequently-asked questions the ten commandments gallery private boards register for the boards
 
Ship of Fools


Post new thread  Post a reply
My profile login | | Directory | Search | FAQs | Board home
   - Printer-friendly view Next oldest thread   Next newest thread
» Ship of Fools   »   » Oblivion   » The Bible for Grown Ups (Page 2)

 - Email this page to a friend or enemy.  
Pages in this thread: 1  2  3 
 
Source: (consider it) Thread: The Bible for Grown Ups
shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556

 - Posted      Profile for shamwari   Email shamwari   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Forgot to ask the question: Is the doctrine of the Virgin Birth a biological or a theological statement?
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010  |  IP: Logged
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322

 - Posted      Profile for Enoch   Email Enoch   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
... But it seems to me that to do this is to uncouple faith from the real world, and to make God something less than creator, a being within the world that some people choose to believe in. ...

But that prejudges the question which is the 'real world' or to put it more accurately, which is the right understanding of how the world is.

If I say God cannot do something that does not fit with how I understand the world to be, that is saying the 'real world' is no more than the version of it I expect it to be.

If God is God, it has to follow that the 'real world' is the version of it that he created, as he engages with it, the world he sees rather than the one I do. If my understanding is less than his, it is my understanding that must defer.

--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson

Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368

 - Posted      Profile for Martin60   Email Martin60   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Of course they're dated, anciently enculturated from the moment they're written shamwari. The VB is a biological claim, a claim about reality, a miraculous and therefore theological claim. Without it Christianity only has the similar claim of the resurrection of otherwise nothing but a human to something human and more claiming to be having been divine by some other means than by hypostatic union. As a hypostatic union (of which there are infinite of course) He was always fully human and fully divine by nature, from conception.

--------------------
Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
... But it seems to me that to do this is to uncouple faith from the real world, and to make God something less than creator, a being within the world that some people choose to believe in. ...

But that prejudges the question which is the 'real world' or to put it more accurately, which is the right understanding of how the world is.

If I say God cannot do something that does not fit with how I understand the world to be, that is saying the 'real world' is no more than the version of it I expect it to be.

If God is God, it has to follow that the 'real world' is the version of it that he created, as he engages with it, the world he sees rather than the one I do. If my understanding is less than his, it is my understanding that must defer.

It's hard to talk about these things, as in technically difficult, because our words and phrases are often unhelpful.

'Real world' was unhelpful there. Just the world would be better, and God's world would be more precise, but probably less clear.

I am talking about people making room for their beliefs by radically changing their world view. People who appear to fully accept the common world view when they take their doctor's advice or buy a computer or judge how fast to drive, but in special 'Christian' or religious areas throw all that away and say all sorts of strange things might be true because God.

Our common world view is not complete, not agreed by everybody, and there are probably some very different alternatives out there, but for most people in the more connected bits of the world, most days of the week it is uncontroversial. And I think it is a very good thing, and we all know it, and it distresses me to see people asserting their right to believe whatever they like because God, miracle, prayer and you can't stop me.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

 - Posted      Profile for Dafyd   Email Dafyd   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Neoliberalism means small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media.

It means that because it believes that values are something that can be separated off from evidence, theories, and probabilities. Small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media are the practical manifestation.

(For more on Neoliberalism, or specifically neoclassical economics and how it depends upon the separation of fact and value, see among other books, John Lanchester's How to Speak Money, Ha Joon-Chang's Economics A User's Guide, and especially Robert and Edward Skidelsky's How Much is Enough?)

As a rough precis of the argument, if you believe it's not possible to assess values by evidence and theory, the only way to assess values in public is to see how strongly people feel about them. And the only way to see that is to see how much time and resources, that is, money they're willing to spend on them. Thus, on these assumptions, how people act within an unregulated market is an accurate reflection of what they value.
Underlying this is a picture of the human being as someone who arbitrarily choose values by non-evidential means, but who evaluates the means to achieve their values by rational evidence. The two faculties, evidential reasoning and value-based reasoning are separated as means to ends. Since values are arbitrarily chosen their importance can only be determined relative to each other; by what the human agent is prepared to sacrifice for what. Which is to say, by what the economic agent is prepared to spend on and what they're prepared to forgo.

--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096

 - Posted      Profile for simontoad   Email simontoad   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I haven't heard of this book before, and it's unlikely that I will be reading it. There are already too many other books I haven't read.

However, if a book claims to be "The Bible for Grown Ups" then spends all its inky energy on arguments about the virgin birth, it isn't really living up to its title. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be The Bible for clever but still rather spotty adolescents.

IMHO the point when one begins to grow up is when one starts to have a relationship with the text and to let it have a relationship with you. Regarding it as a textbook for living that one must simply obey or a manual that one has grown out of and can sit in judgement over both fall badly short.

I can't express this all that clearly, but as years have gone by, I find the scriptures more authoritative, not less. I'd be hard put to explain exactly how I mean that, save that:-

a. Neither Lev 11:19 nor Deut 14:18 mean that we are obliged to classify a bat as a bird.

b. We should take the narrative seriously. We should not bowdlerise out the bits we don't like. Their presence in the text is not an endorsement that we should - or are entitled to - behave like the people we meet in its pages. Whatever we draw from the text, we should engage seriously with it, what the writer selected, and what we think they might be trying to say.

c. One has to be a conceited ass to be persuaded by the argument 'they were primitive people who believed in miracles, but we know better'. They knew just as well as we do that in the normal way of things, sick people are not healed, neither loaves nor fishes multiply from nothing and people do not walk on water. That's why they called the events miracles and in each case is one of the two reasons why they recorded them as something exciting?

The other reason, the reason why they selected that miracle, rather than another one, is that the event is saying something about Jesus, who he is, why he is here, what he does.

Top thread. Everyone's saying top things. This is my 'post of the thread' so far. Thanks for your efforts Enoch.

--------------------
Human

Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014  |  IP: Logged
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636

 - Posted      Profile for BroJames   Email BroJames   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The sort of belief we have in the Virgin Birth is an issue. If you read the biblical texts in order to find out what happened, where Jesus was born and when, who his parents were and what were their circumstances - a perfectly reasonable thing to do - then a pregnancy without sex and sperm is a problem. It's something which in our shared world, which is God's world, according to our common understanding doesn't happen.

To say that it's a miracle, or that the Bible says it and I simply choose to believe it is, I think, a violent act. It trivialises, it breaks faith with our fellow humans and, I would say, the God whose world it is.

Beginning with the end of this quotation, I would argue the first two phrases in the paragraph are themselves a trivialising way of making statements about Christian belief which gloss over many much more nuanced ways of believing.

More importantly, though, the first paragraph quoted could equally be said about the resurrection. The resurrection is surely one of those things "which in our shared world, which is God's world, according to our common understanding doesn't happen."

I'm not arguing for an unquestioning credulity about miracles, but in principle it would seem odd to accept the resurrection, but to balk at the virgin birth.

Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Neoliberalism means small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media.

It means that because it believes that values are something that can be separated off from evidence, theories, and probabilities. Small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media are the practical manifestation.

(For more on Neoliberalism, or specifically neoclassical economics and how it depends upon the separation of fact and value, see among other books, John Lanchester's How to Speak Money, Ha Joon-Chang's Economics A User's Guide, and especially Robert and Edward Skidelsky's How Much is Enough?)

As a rough precis of the argument, if you believe it's not possible to assess values by evidence and theory, the only way to assess values in public is to see how strongly people feel about them. And the only way to see that is to see how much time and resources, that is, money they're willing to spend on them. Thus, on these assumptions, how people act within an unregulated market is an accurate reflection of what they value.
Underlying this is a picture of the human being as someone who arbitrarily choose values by non-evidential means, but who evaluates the means to achieve their values by rational evidence. The two faculties, evidential reasoning and value-based reasoning are separated as means to ends. Since values are arbitrarily chosen their importance can only be determined relative to each other; by what the human agent is prepared to sacrifice for what. Which is to say, by what the economic agent is prepared to spend on and what they're prepared to forgo.

Interesting. Can you give examples of values chosen on evidence? And couldn't there be a way of choosing values which us neither about evidence nor random? I'm thinking (dare I say the word?) of poetry and narrative.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338

 - Posted      Profile for cliffdweller     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
If we believe the world is God's world, then I think this must be something we believe is true about the world everybody lives in. It can't be an add-on for Christians.

An example of the sort of thing I'm thinking about is the cute idea of God-incidences...

To say that it's a miracle, or that the Bible says it and I simply choose to believe it is, I think, a violent act. It trivialises, it breaks faith with our fellow humans and, I would say, the God whose world it is.

There are other ways of believing in the Virgin Birth, of course, understandings that don't do a violence to our world view (a world view which I regard as a precious and hard won thing), and which allow us to stay in dialogue with our neighbours rather than leaping off into some anti-rational mindset. These are the powerful and fruitful ways I think we need to seek.

Again, I find the way you are generalizing what I presume is your own "worldview" to pretty much everyone on the planet-- or even everyone in your nation-- to be a bit of an aggressive assault. It's not just Christians who believe in spiritual realities/truths-- even the famous "nones" (no religion) often believe in a spiritual dimension to life.

There simply is not ONE common, universal worldview. There isn't. To suggest that the Christian worldview is a "violent" assault on a common worldview is therefore to begin with a false presumption.

Now, if you want to argue that reason and evidence and the scientific method are important and valuable and should not be set aside for religious belief, have at it. There are many within our culture, and I daresay on this board, who would agree. To some degree, I would agree. But it is far from a universal truth, even among non-religious people. You need to begin the argument with an accurate portrayal of the cultural understandings you're presuming to speak for.

Once you recognize that there is a whole spectrum of "worldviews"-- ways of approaching truth and organizing our observations of the world-- co-existing on our planet and within Western society-- it gets a lot harder to argue that any one worldview needs to "conform" with any other worldview. That argument on it's own will fail simply because there isn't that sort of common understanding about the nature of truth. However, you can argue why one worldview is superior to another, or why the presumptions of one might usefully be considered by another.

[ 26. September 2016, 16:33: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

--------------------
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644

 - Posted      Profile for Beeswax Altar   Email Beeswax Altar   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
It's hard to talk about these things, as in technically difficult, because our words and phrases are often unhelpful.

Your concern is that Christians might take pride in believing something that is antithetical to our collective experience as humans and yet you can't come up with an easy way of saying what that collective experience is? I would say that if you can't easily describe this shared reality that Christians are living outside of that said reality isn't shared by as many humans as you believe. Usually the experiences that we collectively share as humans can be described with one word.

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
'Real world' was unhelpful there. Just the world would be better, and God's world would be more precise, but probably less clear.

I suspect you are having difficulty explaining what you mean because you don't want to admit what you are actually saying.

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
I am talking about people making room for their beliefs by radically changing their world view. People who appear to fully accept the common world view when they take their doctor's advice or buy a computer or judge how fast to drive, but in special 'Christian' or religious areas throw all that away and say all sorts of strange things might be true because God.

And now we are back to circular arguments about some worldview that is common to all but can't be described. How many Christians suggest ignoring the advice of doctors? Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses do but then orthodox Christians don't consider them Christians. Now, I suspect you have a problem with excluding them but I don't. In any event, what shared worldview holds that it is always advisable to take the advice of one's doctor? Frankly, most of the problems I'm currently experiencing in my life would not not exist if somebody I love would have ignored the advice of her physicians and instead followed the collective wisdom of humans going back thousands of years. Hell, she is so far one of the lucky ones what with still being alive.

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
Our common world view is not complete, not agreed by everybody, and there are probably some very different alternatives out there

Well, if its not complete, not agreed upon by everybody, and has different alternatives, then it really isn't a common worldview is it?

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
for most people in the more connected bits of the world, most days of the week it is uncontroversial.

Just go ahead and say what you mean. What you are calling the common worldview that we as humans share is nothing more than the collective opinions currently fashionable among educated upper middle class white people. It is still controversial even among educated upper middle class white people much less humanity as a whole. See the push back you are getting on this forum made up largely of educated upper middle class white people as evidence.

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
it distresses me to see people asserting their right to believe whatever they like because God, miracle, prayer and you can't stop me.

Indeed...equating one's feelings with reason is one of the foundations of this worldview. Whether it is a feature or a bug depends on your perspective. For me, it is a bug. A bug that makes the whole worldview not only intellectually indefensible but rather annoying.

--------------------
Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan

Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
Lyda*Rose

Ship's broken porthole
# 4544

 - Posted      Profile for Lyda*Rose   Email Lyda*Rose   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
it distresses me to see people asserting their right to believe whatever they like because God, miracle, prayer and you can't stop me.

It distresses me that you assert your right to tell me what I should and shouldn't believe even if you can't stop me from believing what I wish. Not to mention that you accuse me of perpetrating a "violent act" because I believe what I do. I feel violated. Pot, kettle.

--------------------
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757

 - Posted      Profile for Ricardus   Author's homepage   Email Ricardus   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

There are, of course, many Christians who will say that, if Jesus was God, then he could do anything, or if I pray about some situation, then all normal expectations are suspended, because this world is subject to intervention from God as the characters and events of a novel are subject to interference by its author. But it seems to me that to do this is to uncouple faith from the real world, and to make God something less than creator, a being within the world that some people choose to believe in.

Even if this is true (and FWIW although I don't agree with you I don't think it's obviously wrong), this seems to me a way of thinking that is entirely alien to the general population, i.e. it is about as far away from the popular worldview as the Summa Theologica.

--------------------
Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

 - Posted      Profile for Dafyd   Email Dafyd   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It means that because it believes that values are something that can be separated off from evidence, theories, and probabilities. Small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media are the practical manifestation.

Interesting. Can you give examples of values chosen on evidence? And couldn't there be a way of choosing values which us neither about evidence nor random? I'm thinking (dare I say the word?) of poetry and narrative.
It is only on the neoliberal picture that one chooses values, and I do not accept that picture. Values are not a matter of choice, like so many varieties of cereal on the supermarket shelf.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the concepts 'values' and 'evidence' and the demand to link them directly presuppose the separation to which I'm objecting.

That is, the central cases of the concept 'evidence' are legal: some testimony that establishes some discrete fact - the defendant was present at a certain place and time, the wounds were caused by such and such type of instrument, and so on. Those kind of discrete fact do not by themselves command any direct evaluative significance.
Instead, they build up by interpretation into broad philosophical anthropologies and worldviews, that cannot normally be directly refuted or confirmed by any single discrete fact, but only by sustained discussion and restatement. And certainly when it comes to philosophical anthropology, narrative is important in so far as humans are agents, and to talk about agency is to talk about narrative.
From the philosophical anthropologies and worldviews are derived ethical evaluations, orientations towards good.
It is not however true to say that narrative is not about evidence. It is simply that the evidence has to be interpreted to form a narrative. (I leave aside the question as to whether there is any evidence as such without and prior to interpretation.) And no single evidential fact on its own can overturn the interpretation.

Augustine converted from Manichaeanism to Christianity because he found Manichaeanism ceased to make sense of his experience of life. One cannot say that any one discrete fact was decisive (not even the faulty Manichaean astronomy). Yet one cannot say that his conversaion was not based on facts in his life.
(I choose Augustine simply because he's someone whose conversion has been frequently examined, rather than because I want to present him as exemplary.)

To say poetry is a way of choosing values which is not about evidence is just as meaningful as saying that prose is a way of choosing facts which is not about value judgements. Which is to say, not meaningful at all.

--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Too many responses, and too many misunderstandings of what I'm saying. I don't know where to begin.

The common understanding I've spoken of is simply the current materialist, physical, biological, historical model of the world and how it works. We have no difficulty talking about, say, how to tackle the Zika virus, because there is a well established understanding of epidemiology. There are no significant voices talking about sympathetic magic as a possible solution. If a car goes wrong, what percentage will do anything other than get the services of a mechanic? There are disagreements about climate change, but it's mainly from people wriggling in the closing gaps in the evidence. The deniers are trying to make their case in the same sorts of ways as their opponents, arguing about evidence, models, feedback, etc. They don't bring, say, astrology into the debate. In academia, subjects like history and economics where there are plenty of energetic disagreements, nonetheless find it possible to have a meeting of minds within a common language.

Just a few examples. We could all easily add many more. I think this can be described as a common worldview. I think it's a great achievement, and quite a remarkable one. There are a few fuzzy edges where mathematical conundrums are unsolved. Quantum physics is very strange. We think there will be limits to what we can know or predict. Some areas of life are very resistant to clarity. In the main, though, we can talk about all sorts of things to all sorts of people because we have a common worldview.

When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
So Dafyd, do you think we are unable to choose values; that they are simply given to us by our broad philosophical anthropology? Why, then, do we disagree about values so much?

I don't, incidentally, see poetry as a way of choosing values, but as a way of communicating them, and of expressing them potently so that, perhaps, we or others might choose them, or live by them with more commitment.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368

 - Posted      Profile for Martin60   Email Martin60   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
What problem?

--------------------
Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
St Deird
Shipmate
# 7631

 - Posted      Profile for St Deird   Author's homepage   Email St Deird   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Again, hatless - how does this not apply to the resurrection?

--------------------
They're not hobbies; they're a robust post-apocalyptic skill-set.

Posts: 319 | From: the other side of nowhere | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by St Deird:
Again, hatless - how does this not apply to the resurrection?

It does.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Lyda*Rose

Ship's broken porthole
# 4544

 - Posted      Profile for Lyda*Rose   Email Lyda*Rose   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
So for you, hatless, Christianity should just be a philosophy and a moral framework for the experience of the material world? There should no considering of the possibility of transcendence attached to it since that cannot be proven materially or mathematically? Oh, yeah, and those of us who like our Christianity with a dollop of mystery are committing violence against people with your world view. Great. [Roll Eyes]

--------------------
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338

 - Posted      Profile for cliffdweller     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Too many responses, and too many misunderstandings of what I'm saying. I don't know where to begin.

The common understanding I've spoken of is simply the current materialist, physical, biological, historical model of the world and how it works...

I think this can be described as a common worldview.

Except that it's not. Again, not even close. No matter how many times you insist that it is. This very thread has demonstrated that there is a whole spectrum of beliefs. Some hold that ONLY those things that you described are real-- the material, observable, measurable world confirmed by scientific discovery. Some hold that ONLY the spiritual realm is real and some or all of the material world is an illusion (this is a minority view in the West). And many, many people-- not just Christians, but people of all sorts of religions, both organized and informal-- hold some mixture of the two-- that there is both a material and a spiritual realm, that may or many not overlap entirely or partially. In many parts of the West, that "mixed" worldview is probably the norm, although there are so many variations it would be hard to say any one of these is the majority.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We have no difficulty talking about, say, how to tackle the Zika virus, because there is a well established understanding of epidemiology. There are no significant voices talking about sympathetic magic as a possible solution.

Apparently you haven't encounter the anti-vax movement.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

If a car goes wrong, what percentage will do anything other than get the services of a mechanic?

I have known a great number of people, both Christians and non-Christians, who have engaged in prayer in these circumstances. I know of one who claimed a miraculous "healing" of their car while they were holding a key portion of their disabled engine in their hand. Of course, you would dismiss their account, perhaps rightly. But it is undeniable that there are, in fact, people who respond to such problems in some spiritual manner.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They don't bring, say, astrology into the debate.

There are people who will bring astrology into such a debate, they just don't happen to be in the majority. And yes, they are IMHO, mockable-- but they are not invisible, at least not in my part of the world.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

In academia, subjects like history and economics where there are plenty of energetic disagreements, nonetheless find it possible to have a meeting of minds within a common language.

Have you spent much time in academia? There is very little "meeting of minds", especially when there is an energetic disagreement.

People in the same field do speak a common language-- use similar technical terms in similar ways. That does not mean they share the same worldview. It is quite clear, for example, that Stephen Hawking and John Polkinghorne do not share a "common worldview", even though they are both in the same field of study and no doubt agree on very many things within that field.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.

Perhaps, but you'll have to do a lot better than you've done here to convince me or most Virgin-birth-believing Christians that it's a problem. Building your argument on the demonstrably false premise that there is a "common worldview" that excludes the miraculous is not going to do it. So if that is your goal then perhaps you should try another tact. Gaining a better, fuller understanding of the diversity of beliefs in the society immediately outside your front door would be a good start.

[ 27. September 2016, 00:19: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

--------------------
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

 - Posted      Profile for Lamb Chopped   Email Lamb Chopped   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
For what it's worth, the fact that something is a/the accepted worldview has nothing to do with its actual truth. AFAIK every commonly held worldview up to the present has had its spectacular errors. Why should the present day be any different?

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322

 - Posted      Profile for Enoch   Email Enoch   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
For what it's worth, the fact that something is a/the accepted worldview has nothing to do with its actual truth. AFAIK every commonly held worldview up to the present has had its spectacular errors. Why should the present day be any different?

Well said Lamb Chopped. That gets two [Overused] [Overused]

--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson

Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008  |  IP: Logged
Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757

 - Posted      Profile for Ricardus   Author's homepage   Email Ricardus   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.

--------------------
Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368

 - Posted      Profile for Martin60   Email Martin60   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Looks like a case of Spongiform Theolopathy.

--------------------
Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

 - Posted      Profile for Dafyd   Email Dafyd   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
So Dafyd, do you think we are unable to choose values; that they are simply given to us by our broad philosophical anthropology? Why, then, do we disagree about values so much?

Again, you're making the concept of 'choosing' central.

Do you think we are unable to choose beliefs? I think it's about as sensible to talk about choosing values as it is to talk about choosing beliefs. Less sensible: on what basis would we choose values in any case? It makes some sense to talk about choosing a political party on the basis of our values. But if our values are up for choice, on what basis would we choose between them?

The epistemic traffic between values and philosophical anthropology runs in both directions.
(That said, I'm not happy with the metaphor of 'values' either. I think it would be constructive to make an effort to abandon that metaphor as a way of talking about normative goods.)

Why do we disagree about values? We have different views of what the human being is. We have different interests based on class, race, gender, orientation, and we (especially those of us who are in one way or another privileged in those ways) confuse our interests with our goods. And so on. There's no puzzle here unless you have a neoliberal worldview that conflates interests and choices.

quote:
I don't, incidentally, see poetry as a way of choosing values, but as a way of communicating them, and of expressing them potently so that, perhaps, we or others might choose them, or live by them with more commitment.
The same goes for prose. There are a couple of things that can be better expressed by poetry: foregrounding the beauty of skilled craftsmanship on the one hand, foregrounding the role of language in expression and the way our language makes some thoughts easier than others on the other. Not that prose can't do those but it doesn't as insistently impose them on our attention. But otherwise, largely, no. Poetry is not a form of magic.

--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740

 - Posted      Profile for quetzalcoatl   Email quetzalcoatl   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
This discussion reminds me of Scot Atran, who argues in his book 'In Gods We Trust' that religions often contain counter-intuitive ideas.

He cites various reasons for this, one being that many religions are costly, and believing in something irrational is part of that cost. It's not meant to be an easy ride. (I would connect that with erosion of the ego, but I don't think Atran goes with that).

But there are other reasons, for example, being memorable, storing important cultural information, and being hard to fake.

I think Atran worked mainly in tribal areas, so his thesis may not be appropriate to religion in Europe and US. I don't know.

Although you could argue that religion becomes irrelevant, not because it is counter-intuitive, but because it no longer stores the vital cultural stuff.

[ 27. September 2016, 10:46: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011  |  IP: Logged
Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644

 - Posted      Profile for Beeswax Altar   Email Beeswax Altar   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.

You do realize that ancient people knew perfectly well where babies come from right? Modern genetics in no way makes the virgin birth harder to believe than it was in the first century. In fact, given artificial insemination, I would think the virgin birth is easier to believe. Of course, if one not conceived through sexual intercourse cannot be totally human as was implied up thread, then modern science is creating monsters. I see no reason why Christians should change what we preach to appease our cultured despisers. When that has been done in the past, bad things happened.

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
It does.

"It does" is not a valid answer to a question that begins "how does."

--------------------
Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan

Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
So for you, hatless, Christianity should just be a philosophy and a moral framework for the experience of the material world? There should no considering of the possibility of transcendence attached to it since that cannot be proven materially or mathematically? Oh, yeah, and those of us who like our Christianity with a dollop of mystery are committing violence against people with your world view. Great. [Roll Eyes]

Let's say yes to mystery and wonder, but not locate them in some outside-breaking-in God, but in the natural world itself. Don't look for the supernatural, but see how that natural is super!

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Too many responses, and too many misunderstandings of what I'm saying. I don't know where to begin.

The common understanding I've spoken of is simply the current materialist, physical, biological, historical model of the world and how it works...

I think this can be described as a common worldview.

Except that it's not. Again, not even close. No matter how many times you insist that it is. This very thread has demonstrated that there is a whole spectrum of beliefs. Some hold that ONLY those things that you described are real-- the material, observable, measurable world confirmed by scientific discovery. Some hold that ONLY the spiritual realm is real and some or all of the material world is an illusion (this is a minority view in the West).
You don't say?
quote:
And many, many people-- not just Christians, but people of all sorts of religions, both organized and informal-- hold some mixture of the two-- that there is both a material and a spiritual realm, that may or many not overlap entirely or partially. In many parts of the West, that "mixed" worldview is probably the norm, although there are so many variations it would be hard to say any one of these is the majority.

People have different opinions, of course, and special beliefs if they are religious, which they often struggle to articulate in the modern world, because they don't really fit with the common world view, and have to be seen as exceptional, and have special exemptions for them. People compartmentalise their thinking, for instance.
quote:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We have no difficulty talking about, say, how to tackle the Zika virus, because there is a well established understanding of epidemiology. There are no significant voices talking about sympathetic magic as a possible solution.

Apparently you haven't encounter the anti-vax movement.

I certainly haven't, here in the UK, but aren't the anti-vaxers really just a form of conspiracy theorists? (There's an interesting spiritual dimension to conspiracy theorising, but that's another story.)

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

If a car goes wrong, what percentage will do anything other than get the services of a mechanic?

I have known a great number of people, both Christians and non-Christians, who have engaged in prayer in these circumstances. I know of one who claimed a miraculous "healing" of their car while they were holding a key portion of their disabled engine in their hand. Of course, you would dismiss their account, perhaps rightly. But it is undeniable that there are, in fact, people who respond to such problems in some spiritual manner.

It's an interesting one. I have come across some people who have prayed for a car to start and when it does they see it as an answer to prayer. Is there, perhaps, something else going on? A dead car is a horrible thing, and the thought of the repair bill deeply depressing to someone without much money. The cough of an engine firing up is a true joy in such circumstances, and the despair and joy are good subjects for prayer. I suspect people really know that this is what they are doing, and the prayer is not intended as an alternative to good maintenance.

I've never known anyone try to repair bodywork by prayer. Why is that, do you think? Isn't it the incomprehensibility of the insides of a car, and our helplessness sitting there turning the key and trying to catch the moment with the throttle that leads people to prayer? Not a world view where God intervenes, or they would try prayer to get rid of dents and rusty holes.
quote:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They don't bring, say, astrology into the debate.

There are people who will bring astrology into such a debate, they just don't happen to be in the majority. And yes, they are IMHO, mockable-- but they are not invisible, at least not in my part of the world.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

In academia, subjects like history and economics where there are plenty of energetic disagreements, nonetheless find it possible to have a meeting of minds within a common language.

Have you spent much time in academia? There is very little "meeting of minds", especially when there is an energetic disagreement.

Energetic disagreement is the meeting of minds. When they don't meet there is silent incomprehension. Think of an Amazonian tribe's first contact.
quote:

People in the same field do speak a common language-- use similar technical terms in similar ways. That does not mean they share the same worldview. It is quite clear, for example, that Stephen Hawking and John Polkinghorne do not share a "common worldview", even though they are both in the same field of study and no doubt agree on very many things within that field.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.

Perhaps, but you'll have to do a lot better than you've done here to convince me or most Virgin-birth-believing Christians that it's a problem. Building your argument on the demonstrably false premise that there is a "common worldview" that excludes the miraculous is not going to do it. So if that is your goal then perhaps you should try another tact. Gaining a better, fuller understanding of the diversity of beliefs in the society immediately outside your front door would be a good start.

[/QB][/QUOTE]You've pointed to a bit of variety, but that doesn't dent my decision to continue speaking of a common world view. I think that's precisely what we have.

Documentaries don't have to explain their starting assumptions at the beginning, they just get going. We all know where they are coming from, because we are (nearly) all coming from the same place. If I watch a film, unless it's some zombie or Sci-fi thing, all the characters will understand the world in pretty much the same way I do (with the exception that they won't mind being shot or punched as much as real people do). You can find some books and films with magical realism, but it's a small number, and of course, it's fiction.

I can see that I've upset you and a lot of people, and that wasn't my intention. I don't think I lead a particularly sheltered existence. I will go to work tomorrow as part of a multi-faith chaplaincy team in a large mental healthcare charity specialising in treatment resistant patients. I will have conversations with some people with very strange worldviews, and I will find once again how near in understanding my Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Muslim colleagues are.

I believe the church has gone up a blind alley, unable to articulate the faith without using dead categories of thought. Bonhoeffer called it the death leap back to the Middle Ages. It sells God short, who should always be sought in the centre, not the edges, not in weird events or flaky car ignition systems, but in economics and politics and technology.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.

The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
So Dafyd, do you think we are unable to choose values; that they are simply given to us by our broad philosophical anthropology? Why, then, do we disagree about values so much?

Again, you're making the concept of 'choosing' central.

Do you think we are unable to choose beliefs? I think it's about as sensible to talk about choosing values as it is to talk about choosing beliefs. Less sensible: on what basis would we choose values in any case? It makes some sense to talk about choosing a political party on the basis of our values. But if our values are up for choice, on what basis would we choose between them?

The epistemic traffic between values and philosophical anthropology runs in both directions.
(That said, I'm not happy with the metaphor of 'values' either. I think it would be constructive to make an effort to abandon that metaphor as a way of talking about normative goods.)

Why do we disagree about values? We have different views of what the human being is. We have different interests based on class, race, gender, orientation, and we (especially those of us who are in one way or another privileged in those ways) confuse our interests with our goods. And so on. There's no puzzle here unless you have a neoliberal worldview that conflates interests and choices.

quote:
I don't, incidentally, see poetry as a way of choosing values, but as a way of communicating them, and of expressing them potently so that, perhaps, we or others might choose them, or live by them with more commitment.
The same goes for prose. There are a couple of things that can be better expressed by poetry: foregrounding the beauty of skilled craftsmanship on the one hand, foregrounding the role of language in expression and the way our language makes some thoughts easier than others on the other. Not that prose can't do those but it doesn't as insistently impose them on our attention. But otherwise, largely, no. Poetry is not a form of magic.

I'm intrigued by this idea of choosing or not choosing. I don't think I did choose my values. They are very similar to my father's, and my desire to be like him. They are influenced by things I find attractive in others, often for reasons I can't readily express.

I think I can empathise to some extent with people who see the world in terms of honour and shame, so there is a little bit of this in me, an echo of the feelings they might experience, but we seem to be different. So values are not chosen like clothes, but are part of our identity, like being right-handed or shy.

I agree that values is an awkward term. It's very economic, and it just gives us the one metaphor for something that is rich and complex. But sticking with it for a moment, I think there are different values amongst people who share a lot in terms of understanding, experience, environment, generation and social position. Political opinions, for instance, are partly explained by self-interest, but plenty of people go against their apparent self-interest. Where is this variety coming from? If it's not choice, it's certainly something personal.

I think that a form of magic is precisely what poetry is.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
originally posted by hatless:
When Christians take a crude view of the Virgin Birth of the sort that would make a geneticist whimper, and defend it by saying, well, God can do anything, that, I think, is a problem.

You do realize that ancient people knew perfectly well where babies come from right? Modern genetics in no way makes the virgin birth harder to believe than it was in the first century. In fact, given artificial insemination, I would think the virgin birth is easier to believe. Of course, if one not conceived through sexual intercourse cannot be totally human as was implied up thread, then modern science is creating monsters. I see no reason why Christians should change what we preach to appease our cultured despisers. When that has been done in the past, bad things happened.

Ancient people seem to have had somewhat different ideas to us. Even Darwin didn't know precisely where babies come from.

There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.
quote:

quote:
originally posted by hatless:
It does.

"It does" is not a valid answer to a question that begins "how does."

The question was 'How does this not apply to the resurrection?'

'It does', meaning 'it does apply', seems a reasonable answer.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

 - Posted      Profile for Dafyd   Email Dafyd   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I think that a form of magic is precisely what poetry is.

If by magic you mean a way of expressing values potently, then tabloid headlines and the political rhetoric of Mr Donald Trump are far more magical than any poetry.

I would like to say that poetry is the antidote to magic. Unfortunately the history of poets in the twentieth century is not encouraging to that idea. Any poem can be read as magic. But one of the criteria of good poetry is to be more rewarding when read as anti-magic.

If you read poetry as a form of magic, then if you turn to King Lear all you'll see is a contrived morality tale. If you read it as anti-magic, then you see what all the fuss is about.

--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

 - Posted      Profile for Lamb Chopped   Email Lamb Chopped   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.

Say what?

Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?

Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338

 - Posted      Profile for cliffdweller     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
(lots of responses to my comments that seem to be totally missing the point...)

[Confused]

...then finally getting to the point:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
You've pointed to a bit of variety, but that doesn't dent my decision to continue speaking of a common world view. I think that's precisely what we have.

This doesn't seem to be a view shared by anthropologists or sociologists. Indeed, the whole point of having a technical term like "worldview" is to describe/explain/understand the various and competing worldviews existing within a society. If we all or even most of us share a "common worldview" there's really not much need for the term in the first place. If the only vegetables in existence were peas, we wouldn't need the broader term "vegetable", we'd just have "peas".

Honestly, to suggest that there is only one or even primarily one "common worldview" in contemporary society seems to me to represent a distinct lack of basic observation.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

I can see that I've upset you and a lot of people, and that wasn't my intention.

I won't speak for anyone else, but you haven't "upset" me. There's nothing to be upset about. You are, quite simply, wrong. But nothing upsetting about it.


quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I believe the church has gone up a blind alley, unable to articulate the faith without using dead categories of thought. Bonhoeffer called it the death leap back to the Middle Ages. It sells God short, who should always be sought in the centre, not the edges, not in weird events or flaky car ignition systems, but in economics and politics and technology.

If that's what you want to talk then why not just talk about it? Instead of inventing a false consensus, why not simply talk about where you think the church has gone down a "blind alley"? Is it, in fact, our "worldview" (i.e. the presumptions we hold about the make up of reality and the sources of authority we hold for determining that)? Or is it something else? What makes it a "blind alley"-- or a "death leap"? (And while we're on that, can you supply a bit more detail for your Bonhoeffer quote-- which book, what ch or pg? I'm not recognizing the context of the quote you're alluding to...)

All of which one can do, and perhaps profitably so, without assuming some grand social consensus which probably never existed but certainly is not in existence today.

--------------------
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.

Say what?

Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?

Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.

The rule in Leviticus can be found at Deuteronomy 24:1-4. You're right that it doesn't specify ethnicity. I think I read a version where it talks about the woman leaving the land or nation, which I suppose could be a way of reading the reference to house.

That bit isn't so important. I think that this law reflects the widespread belief, up to and including Darwin, that some essence or influence from the male remains after a conception and birth and may be manifested in subsequent conceptions and births with a different male partner.

It's an aspect of what on these boards we have sometimes called the grow-bag understanding of conception. The man provides the seed, and the woman's womb the place where it grows. The extra aspect is that something of the male 'seed' or inheritance remains in the female. There was a famous case in Darwin's time of a horse being mated with a zebra, unsuccessfully, I think. But a later foal from a mating with a proper horse was born with stripes.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636

 - Posted      Profile for BroJames   Email BroJames   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).

In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.

It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.

Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.

Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757

 - Posted      Profile for Ricardus   Author's homepage   Email Ricardus   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.

The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.

--------------------
Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

 - Posted      Profile for Lamb Chopped   Email Lamb Chopped   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
There is an rule in Leviticus against remarrying a Jewish wife you had previously divorced if in the meantime she has been married to a foreigner. It doesn't not apply if the genders are reversed. There is a radically different view of genetics inside that.

Say what?

Could you give me chapter and verse on that one?

Because the only thing I can remember was a law saying that a man might not divorce his wife, watch her marry and divorce some other man (ethnicity not specified), and THEN remarry her again. The point being, I assume, to discourage men from handing women around with as much thought as the mashed potatoes bowl at Thanksgiving. Or to be a bit less snarky about it, to force them to give some thought to whether they really want to divorce in the first place and risk losing her permanently.

The rule in Leviticus can be found at Deuteronomy 24:1-4. You're right that it doesn't specify ethnicity. I think I read a version where it talks about the woman leaving the land or nation, which I suppose could be a way of reading the reference to house.

That bit isn't so important. I think that this law reflects the widespread belief, up to and including Darwin, that some essence or influence from the male remains after a conception and birth and may be manifested in subsequent conceptions and births with a different male partner.

It's an aspect of what on these boards we have sometimes called the grow-bag understanding of conception. The man provides the seed, and the woman's womb the place where it grows. The extra aspect is that something of the male 'seed' or inheritance remains in the female. There was a famous case in Darwin's time of a horse being mated with a zebra, unsuccessfully, I think. But a later foal from a mating with a proper horse was born with stripes.

IMHO that kind of thinking doesn't show up in the Bible (the "something of the male seed remains" bit). To the best of my knowledge, the only person barred from marrying any woman of any history that he chose (okay, bar incest or adultery committed with one another!) is the high priest. He must marry an Israelite virgin*--not a widow or divorcee. Everybody else, including ordinary priests and kings, can marry whomever the hell they like. Which is not what one would expect in the case of a country where "the seed remains" was their theory of genetics.

The high priest thing is interesting, and could conceivably be used to support your idea. However, that sort of falls apart in the absence of a similar restriction on David's line later, or on ordinary priests and Levites, for whom lineage was all-important too. I suspect it has more to do with the doubly-set-apart status of the high priest, which also prevented him from attending even his own family's funerals, also unlike everybody else.

No, the passage you mention goes on to say "Would not the land be utterly defiled?" The objection seems to be a moral one (land is also said to be defiled by unpunished murder and by idolatry AFAIR). Marriage is not something to be picked up and set aside like embroidery, or handed from person to person like a newspaper. Though the rhetorical question God poses there ("And would you now return to me?") suggests that God is willing to forgive even that and take Israel back.

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338

 - Posted      Profile for cliffdweller     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).

In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.

It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.

Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.

That's helpful, thanks.

And yes, that does sound very much like Bonhoeffer-- and as true and relevant today as it was then. His point, of course, would seem to be the complete opposite of what you appear to be arguing here.

--------------------
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636

 - Posted      Profile for BroJames   Email BroJames   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
I'm not quite sure what I am arguing, or what I appear to be arguing. You're not mixing me up with Steve Langton are you?
[Typos]

[ 28. September 2016, 14:52: Message edited by: BroJames ]

Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Greatest I am
Shipmate
# 18671

 - Posted      Profile for Greatest I am   Email Greatest I am   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sounds rather simple-minded.

If large chunks of the human race hold particular opinions, it's rarely wise to just dismiss them all as not being grown-ups, or to assume that they have no foundations for their beliefs.

A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.

Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?

Is that not why Martin Luther said ---
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

If not, please define faith for us please.

Regards
DL

[ 28. September 2016, 15:19: Message edited by: Greatest I am ]

Posts: 86 | From: Canada | Registered: Sep 2016  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368

 - Posted      Profile for Martin60   Email Martin60   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Please refer please to the Book of Hebrews please.

PS, that's in the Bible.

--------------------
Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

 - Posted      Profile for Lamb Chopped   Email Lamb Chopped   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Greatest I am:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sounds rather simple-minded.

If large chunks of the human race hold particular opinions, it's rarely wise to just dismiss them all as not being grown-ups, or to assume that they have no foundations for their beliefs.

A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.

Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?

Is that not why Martin Luther said ---
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

If not, please define faith for us please.

Regards
DL

No, that's not why Luther said those things.

To explain what he meant, I'd have to give you a multi-hour seminar in the context of his time. (To everybody else--Luther was fond of hyperbole, and not at all fond of people introducing non-biblically-based arguments into theology.)

As for defining faith--why should I? Give me a reason besides your command.

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636

 - Posted      Profile for BroJames   Email BroJames   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Greatest I am:
Isn't faith described as not having a logical or reasonable foundation for that belief?

Not by me it isn't. I wouldn't say that faith is necessarily about believing things which are illogical or irrational, rather that it's about believing in something which could logically or rationally be true, but which cannot be proved to be true by logical or rational means. (Actually, I really want to say that faith is not primarily cognitive and factual so much as about putting trust in a person.)

[ 28. September 2016, 16:54: Message edited by: BroJames ]

Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338

 - Posted      Profile for cliffdweller     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
I'm not quite sure what I am arguing, or what I appear to be arguing. You're not mixing me up with Steve Langton are you?
[Typos]

Hatless, actually. My apologies

[ 28. September 2016, 21:19: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

--------------------
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322

 - Posted      Profile for Enoch   Email Enoch   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Hatless, my apologies but Lamb Chopped, as she so often is, is right on the prohibition on marrying the same wife twice. It's regarded as pollution of the land. There's nothing about foreigners. Nor is there anything about any belief in a residual genetic influence of the husband who first covered the wife.

Scripture doesn't give a fuller reason, but I think somewhere there's a rabbinic gloss about the disgustingness of lending one's wife to another. So, I suppose, if divorce was allowed as a concession to human weakness, it had to be final and irrevocable. Remember that theoretically, there was no need to have divorce for adultery because the wife got stoned.

--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson

Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Hatless, my apologies but Lamb Chopped, as she so often is, is right on the prohibition on marrying the same wife twice. It's regarded as pollution of the land. There's nothing about foreigners. Nor is there anything about any belief in a residual genetic influence of the husband who first covered the wife.

Scripture doesn't give a fuller reason, but I think somewhere there's a rabbinic gloss about the disgustingness of lending one's wife to another. So, I suppose, if divorce was allowed as a concession to human weakness, it had to be final and irrevocable. Remember that theoretically, there was no need to have divorce for adultery because the wife got stoned.

Why would it be pollution of the land to remarry?

In fact the OT society was quite keen on handing women round in Levirate marriage, and believed a marriage to the dead husband's younger brother could provide children for him.

The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage and, like Levirate marriage, makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

 - Posted      Profile for Lamb Chopped   Email Lamb Chopped   Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Why would it be pollution of the land to remarry?

In fact the OT society was quite keen on handing women round in Levirate marriage, and believed a marriage to the dead husband's younger brother could provide children for him.

The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage and, like Levirate marriage, makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.

As for why remarriage-after-another-marriage should pollute the land--hey, I can't tell you that except by referencing their culture, which says the same thing about idolatry and unavenged murder. You'd have to ask an ancient Hebrew. But it appears that they considered any major sin to pollute the land, and in the prophets, such things were said to result in the land "vomiting you out" into exile. Since the land was believed to belong to the Lord and not the people, and was his gift to them, it makes sense that any major infraction of the law of the Lord would be considered to have a bad effect on the land, his gift.

As far as the "quite keen on handing women round in levirate marriage," that's precisely what levirate marriage is designed to avoid. A levirate marriage doesn't just benefit the deceased husband's family by providing him with a legal heir. It benefits the woman by providing her with a culturally-sanctioned means of ongoing financial support so she doesn't lose husband and home in a single blow--particularly dangerous in a patriarchal culture where most land and businesses are held by men, and where she may not be able to find a second husband easily given the fact of her childlessness (which was usually blamed on the woman, and might well scare off suitors). Mosaic law and pre-Mosaic culture give her a strong entitlement to the levirate option, and put pressure on the possibly-reluctant bridegroom to agree to it or face permanent public shaming. We see this in action in the case of Judah and Tamar, and also in the book of Ruth.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see any evidence for your idea that they believed a woman could become pregnant from a deceased husband. The levirate was a legal arrangement, and they knew perfectly well that any children born of the new marriage would be biologically sired by the brother, not the deceased husband. If it were otherwise, why would Onan have bothered with birth control? And why are Perez and Zerah always spoken of as Judah's sons, when Tamar had had two husbands of that family before him?

Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
hatless

Shipmate
# 3365

 - Posted      Profile for hatless   Author's homepage     Send new private message       Edit/delete post   Reply with quote 
Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.’ Genesis 38:8

--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form

Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged



Pages in this thread: 1  2  3 
 
Post new thread  Post a reply Close thread   Feature thread   Move thread   Delete thread Next oldest thread   Next newest thread
 - Printer-friendly view
Go to:

Contact us | Ship of Fools | Privacy statement

© Ship of Fools 2016

Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0

 
follow ship of fools on twitter
buy your ship of fools postcards
sip of fools mugs from your favourite nautical website
 
 
  ship of fools