Religion as metaphore

"I have an advantage over my dialogue partners in that I'm an atheist, and I understand religious myths are just metaphors, or poetry for genuine ideas we find difficult to express otherwise. So yes, you could say I use computer science in my religious dialogues because I view religion as a communication language. ... " -- Judea Pearl in CACM 06/12 Vol55 No.6

Do you mean semaphore ("a variable or abstract data type that provides a simple but useful abstraction for controlling access by multiple processes to a common resource in a parallel programming environment") or metaphor?

You know, theists can understand metaphor too, even if they do believe in God. "Only by not believing in God can I understand how language really works" -- how condescending!

(And I'd ask Dr. Pearl if he's ever read On Christian Teaching, in which St. Augustine delineates a theory of signs and reality that formed a significant foundation to twentieth-century semiotics.)

Fortunately I realize Perl's words are just metaphors, or poetry for "genuine" stupid and reductive ideas.

The father god idea is a metaphor for who humans (many if not most humans) really wish they were - an all powerful, all knowing, and immortal person, who cannot by definition be frustrated or a loser in any sense.

Since humans can't be all knowing/powerful, and even to think they could is understood as blasphemy, so they deny they even think it, and since they get convinced only a god can guarantee the desired human personal immortality - the metaphor thus must be - not a metaphor - but real - i.e., big daddy will give me all I want - some day - otherwise all is lost. Or so it is "believed".

So then it is not so much that theists don't understand metaphor, it's just in this case they misidentify a metaphor for a reality - an ideal reality - for obvious wish-fulfillment purposes.

I'm not a professional - a psychiatrist or psychologist could explain this better I'd imagine.

Or, people who grew up on literalistic thinking can rarely escape it, even if they escape the religion wherein they practiced it. Nor can they recognize that others have a much more nuanced view of reality.

See, anyone can psychologize!

ref 2
I don't think semaphore (the control primitive) would work in this context. It was spozed to be "metaphor" but an extra "e" crept in there when I wasn't looking. Or more likely when I wasn't thinking. Oh well.

ref 7

Large percentages , which translate to fairly substantial numbers ( http://bit.ly/Mit5Qr) of the population in the US have quite a literal view of things.

I appreciate that more nuanced views are possible, and that many of the people here do indeed hold such nuanced views.

There seems to be a reluctance among the more sophisticated to acknowledge how many (proportionately and numerically) of the faithful are not so highly evolved.

>9: I think what you interpret as "reluctance" is rather a realism that the United States is not the only country in the world and that Christianity has been around for 2000 years. Many of us take a global and long historical view of Christianity, according to which the literalists you criticize are indeed a small minority.

Or is johnthefireman, for example, supposed to answer for American fundamentalist/evangelical literalists when he's a Roman Catholic living and working in South Sudan?

ref 10

From the article referenced above:

...(SNIP)

Second Coming of Jesus Christ

The survey asked Christians whether or not they believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ. Reflecting the great importance of this teaching in most Christian traditions, fully 79% of Christians say they believe that Christ will return to earth someday.

This belief is nearly unanimously expressed by white evangelical Protestants (95%) and black Protestants (92%). Smaller majorities of Catholics (70%) and white mainline Protestants (60%) say they believe in the second coming of Christ.

...(SNIP)

Much of Western Europe doesn't count because there so many who have become unbelievers by any realistic measure of such things. In the developing world, I think you will find that the great majority is even more unsophisticated than people are in the US.

Now I suppose one could argue that over the long arc of history, most believers will be fully educated in the faith, will hold their faith in the highest and most sophisticated manner, and so the few millions who today are not so advanced will pall in numerical significance compared with those future multitudes.

Meanwhile, I say that 79% of American Christians, are a honking lot of people, even if they were the only "literalists" on the planet.

And for the record, cousins, I have no problem with nominal christians, except maybe for their cowardice.

It's them there literalists - christian, muslim and jewish - who am the problem, cousins.

As for majority over minority, what argument is that? Asshat scientologists are a very tiny minority of the world’s peoples. They are N.U.T.S. If they numbered 2 billion people would that make them suddenly not nuts? Methinks not.

I gather that the argument is that the religiously unsophisticated , (We're trying to stick to polite terminology here), don't represent the "best" of what the religious outlook has to offer, and in any case are sufficiently rare so that it is unfair to characterize the religious in general as being tainted with what the secular world sees as intellectual "sins" or at any rate as shortcomings.

I can certainly appreciate the chagrin of those whose opinions are "sufficiently obscure" at being confounded (is that the right word?) with say, young earth creationists or with the sort of mentality that earnestly seeks to uncover the "historical" Noah's ark.

But lets face it; the numbers, both absolute and proportional, of those whose religious opinions are unmodified or unmitigated by knowledge in any field of endeavor that was not available by the time that scripture was declared canonical
are considerable, and have real political influence in the modern world.

That there are more sophisticated souls who are mistaken (in my opinion) at a much higher and more interesting level is cold comfort, given the damage that the other sort are prepared to perpetrate.

I met a goddess on the lane
between damnation and salvation
She spoke in wonders and she claimed
I'd find my path if I was patient
Then she left, left me bereft
What might've said or even confessed
If she had stayed and made my way
A guide I lost, as quick as won
Beneath the sun, within a day
Anyway I wondered on
With none to evade nor to adore
I think her words had meaning more
A deeper sense, though I'm sure
As I forgot, just what, I met her fore

The Second Coming is an interesting discussion. It sure did not happen according to the expectations of most of the NT writings.

And how might the Second Coming work given what we now understand as a generally bigger size of things beyond the Earth?

That the faithful are not the least bit bothered by the multi thousand year delay surely says something about how religious doctrines or beliefs are related to the observable world, and how malleable religious ideas are in the face of seemingly fixed texts.

Maybe one minute in heaven is worth a thousand years here, so the delay is only a few minutes.

Or maybe we should understand the second coming not as a literal event but as the development of a new morally regenerate political and economic order among men here on earth.

Or maybe you just haven't waited long enough; after all HE works in mysterious ways, n'est ce pas?

The last thing you're allowed to say, or so it seems, its"Well, that was a nice story, but really guys and gals, nobody's coming deus ex machina to fix our messes for us "

But how would it work?

Jesus coming in clouds of glory and making a new heaven and earth, a new creation.

Does the entire universe cease to exist? Does just the Earth become a new world and there is a new heaven and earth just locally?

And I am approaching this as a Christian believer, and I am asking real questions.

We have images from the NT which I think were understood at that time and perhaps subsequently quite literally. I do not think they were intended figuratively at all.

I think Jesus was coming within a few years, while some were still there alive, to be taken in a twinkling of the eye.

He did not.

Now what?

How do we take the Second Coming? Is it a cosmic event - and keep in mind how big the cosmos is. Is it centered on Earth, with Jesus coming on a cloud down from heaven to the Earth?

> 17

All this is one giant effing problem that cannot be solved by the human mind.

However the problem can be DISSOLVED as it was created in the first place by the human mind.

The solution is to become a devout esoteric Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist.

Pick one. Or pick them all.

Problem dissolved.

ref 17

I suppose I'm in danger of being demoted to the "dumb" row, but I don't see the nature of your difficulty.

If one believes in a powerful spirit being who made the world according to his will, what's the problem imagining that he can remake it according to his will?

Now of course the word "heaven" is a bit of a problem. In days of old there were things in or on the earth, and there were things in or above the sky. Things in "Heaven" or "The Heavens" were made of different stuff and obeyed different rules than things in the earth. Similarly, "heaven" the abode of god, angels and peaceful spirits and hell, the abode of devils and the damned were conceived as locations that could , in principle at least, be reached by more or less ordinary means from earth. If you dug deep enough (or found a long enough
cave as Orpheus did) you could get to the underworld, and if you could fly, as The Prophet (may peace be upon him) did in the night journey, you could get to heaven.

I suppose that contemporary believers who are aware that celestial objects are by and large made of the same "stuff" as earthly things are and obey the same laws (lets not get into
dark matter) tend to believe that heaven and hell (if they believe in them at all) are in a "spiritual" place, i.e. they don't have a physical location in our universe and can't be traveled to or discovered by ordinary means.

The god of everything there is could presumably alter any part of his creation or all of it, if that's his pleasure, and could alter the "spiritual" bits as well as the "physical" ones.

As I understand it (barely) the western tradition has been that god is (mostly) constrained by logic, so he can make an irresistable force, or he can make an immovable object, but he can't make both together. He can't make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. On the other hand, according to some, he can be his own grandpa, so maybe logic isn't such a hard constraint for him after all.

Once you have a being that can do pretty much anything that isn't out and out contradictory (and can do even that, on a good day), I don't see why there should be any problem with a small thing like the second coming.

An interesting topic—for a PhD, for a LibraryThing talk post—would be the degree to which pre-modern people and religions understood "heaven" in its various senses (eg., paradise and "the heavens"), and when that changed and with what effect. That is, for example, contemporary Christians make a firm split. Did ancient ones?

I suspect that you'd find a diversity of views, but much to suggest that early Christians were not naive about the topic—imagining that Jesus lived up on Jupiter or whatever.

~16

"Maybe one minute in heaven is worth a thousand years here, so the delay is only a few minutes. "

Perhaps so, but then the delay of a mere hour would amount to 60,000 years here on Earth, and the delay of a day would amount to some 1,440,000 years. (Some arguments are better not used.)

Given the Second Coming,

My difficulty is simply how it is done? The image of Jesus coming to Earth on clouds of glory seems to limit the extent of the event.

If there is to be a Second Coming will it involve the whole cosmos, even additional universes should they exist.

Is it a local thing? That would fit the imagery of scripture. Jesus comes to end the Earth and everyone here who is going goes to heaven, plus all the dead people, if they are not already there. But that would limit the new heaven to something of an earthly scale, ignoring the rest of the cosmos, perhaps for its own Second Coming later on?

What about all the other forms of life, which seem to be part of our extended family to a degree that was not envisioned at the times of the writings of scripture?

My first difficulty is that I cannot envision the Second Coming, what it entails. The version I read about in various places in scripture seem to be of a smaller scale that I would think necessary.

Is the final battle between good and evil only an earthly thing?

Secondarily, my difficulty is that I do not see God operating outside of the universe created according to his will. Meaning certain things are certain, like conservation of momentum, entropy, even evolution which as far as I can tell may very likely be a fundamental principle that operates even in the non biological realm - biology being only a specialized type of evolution.

>11 (modalursine): "Meanwhile, I say that 79% of American Christians, are a honking lot of people, even if they were the only "literalists" on the planet."

I'm sorry, but that is a gross misinterpretation of the data, and given that the study explicitly addresses this question a few paragraphs above with radically different conclusions, we can only assume that you either didn't read the whole thing or chose to willfully misrepresent its findings to support your own agenda against Christians. To quote from the very same report:

Most Americans (78%) continue to view the Bible as the word of God, though there is disagreement over whether everything in the Bible is literally true; 35% say it is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, while 43% say the Bible is the word of God, but not everything in it should be taken literally.

What the 79% statistic, then, does not reveal is how people understand the second coming of Christ--whether they believe literally that some guy with long hair and a beard would come floating down out of the clouds, or whether they believe in any number of allegorical interpretations. To simply assume that if you answer yes to the question, you are a "literalist" on par with young earth creationists is not just uncharitable -- it's a completely illogical and grossly unfounded assumption.

ref 21

"...the delay of a mere hour would amount to 60,000 years here on Earth, ..."

You see a problem with that? The faithful can always retort that
the non appearance of the second coming is no kind of evidence that it won't happen real soon. You just haven't waited long enough.

I wonder what sort of creatures our descendants will be 60,000 years hence, assuming they don't go extinct along the way. Actually I suppose our odds of getting to 60K are pretty good, given our current age. As to 1.4 Mega years, who can say? Either way, I wouldn't put any money down on a second coming by then, even if I had a way to collect.

ref 23

What a strange way of defending the faith.

Taken at face value, "Most Americans (78%) continue to view the Bible as the word of God..." would seem to indicate that
quite a large number of Americans are signing on to a pretty amazing claim, the sort of thing that only a "believer" can believe (if that's not too tautological a way to put it).

Then you want to take it away by in effect asking "So what does being 'the word of god' actually mean?" Surely, for some people. something being 'the word of god' is simply a figure of speech, like saying that someone was inspired by his muse.

I don't suppose (but I can be surprised) that anyone today really believes that Calliope or any of her sisters are "real" beings with objective existence outside of our imaginations.

Do you seriously propose that that's the way most self described Christians see the situation when they use the expression "the word of god"?

So then you grant that "35% say it is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, while 43% say the Bible is the word of god but not not everything in it should be taken literally"

So that amounts to saying that 35% have swallowed the cool aid, but 43% have only sipped it.

So OK, lets say that "only" 35% are literalists on everything, but on any question. the figure can be from 35% to (35+43)=78%, depending on the question. If the "43%" are evenly split on any question, that gives us half of them (call it 21%) are fundamentalists on any given question, so add that to the 35% who are literalists on every question and you get something like 56% literalists on any given question more or less.

But even if literalists are only 35%, that's still not a negligible number.

Meanwhile, what you seem to be arguing, is that all those people who say "The Bible is the word of God" are not by that token affirming that there is a powerful intelligent spirit being, "king of the world", "author of life" who created everything there is according to his will, has a plan for human history, intervenes in human history on behalf of that plan, and furthermore has either directly written or commissioned the said book.

That's one powerful set of assertions to base on absolutely no supporting material evidence.

>25: That's an extraordinarily obtuse dance of arguments ... there seems there may be a point in there somewhere, but I'm not at all sure what it is. So let's tackle some of what you seem to be saying...

What a strange way of defending the faith.

You seem to misunderstand what my post 23 was about. You claimed that 79% of Christians were literalists because they believed in the second coming of Christ, even though the survey itself revealed that only 35% of Christians claim to be literalists. My post was not about defending the faith; it was about pointing out how you completely misrepresented the data to fit your own derisive mockery of Christians.

So that amounts to saying that 35% have swallowed the cool aid, but 43% have only sipped it.

So now we see what this is really about. You're not interested in having a rational discussion about what Christians actually believe. You only want to mock them for believing in anything.

You seem to find it risible that anyone should take anything in the Bible literally.

I must therefore conclude that you believe that it is foolish, idiotic, and ultimately harmful to society to believe the following things (I'll give you an example from each of the Old Testament and the New Testament):

"You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's." (Exodus 23:13-17)

"Love one another as I have loved you." (John 12:34)

Would you please explain why you believe that we should kill each other, sleep with each other's spouses, steal from each other, bear false witness against each other, covet each other's property, and in general not love each other?

> 27

I don't think it is modalursine who is being the disingenuous one here. That would be you.

If ALL the bible advocated was love your neighbor as yourself, take care of widows and orphans and the indigent, don't kill or steal, or lie, then I could take it literally and I could be a christian - a christian atheist, but nonetheless a christian.

Morality is one thing and just so stories are another. It's rather convenient for you to leave out the umpteen claims of miracle and magic and Satan and hell, etc. to disingenuously try to score a debate point.

Looky - if I agree with the main moral precepts of Buddhism does that make me a Buddhist? Would it make you a Buddhist?

You're not mixing apples and oranges here, you are mixing watermelons and anvils. Raising the dead , walking on water, and being born of a virgin does not equate to prohibitions like not murdering, stealing, lying, etc.

IOW, who do you think you are kidding?

> 26

No christian I know anything about is a 100 per cent literalist. I would doubt you know of one.

E.g., have you ever met a christian who takes the Song of Solomon literally? I haven't. Even the most crazed southern baptist literalist I ever met, including my parents, interpret that whole book as all metaphor. Also, e.g., only a TINY number of christians worldwide believe the biblical writer was being literal regarding handling snakes and drinking poison not hurting you if you have faith. 99.9 per cent of christians think that would be nuts. But that doesn't mean for the most part many if not most of them are literalist nuts also. An almond is not a cashew, but it is still a nut.

OTOH, there are some who label themselves as christians who take hardly anything in the bible as anything other than metaphor, including the virgin birth, all the miracles of jesus, including his alleged appearances three days after "bodily" death. A VERY tiny number of christians are this non-literal. And 99.9 per cent of christians generally do not accept these few as christian brothers but would think them in some sense crazed. This 99.9 per cent of christians are literalists - to some VERY great degree. No, they don't all agree on what is or what is not to be taken literally. That doesn't solve the problem of WAY too many christians being WAY too literal in their interpretation of christian scripture that they fail any rational smell test.

>28: You seem to mistake sarcasm for disingenousness. I was simply following modalursine's argument to the logical conclusion: he's the one that seems to think that even the 43% who don't take everything literally are "sipping the kool-aid" -- that is, that they're still stupid, just not quite as stupid.

If modalursine wants to actually discuss the complexities of Christian biblical exegesis as practiced by the majority of Christians--you know, the ones who approach Scripture humbly knowing that they are limited and fallible creatures--then I will drop the mockery in return.

Bust so long as modalursine willfully misrepresents data (as he has done by distorting the claims of those survey) and by making absurd assertions (e.g. that anybody who is not a literalist must also deny the basic claims of Christianity such as "all those people who say "The Bible is the word of God" are not by that token affirming that there is a powerful intelligent spirit being, "king of the world", "author of life" who created everything there is according to his will, has a plan for human history, intervenes in human history on behalf of that plan, and furthermore has either directly written or commissioned the said book").

For modalursine knows that there is a vast difference between being a young-earth-creationist type of literalist and being a mainstream Christian who believes that the Bible is the Word of God but that what that means is a deeply complex revelation of spirituality. But he doesn't want to admit that Christians can be complex thinkers. He wants to invoke an absolute binary: either you're a young-earth-creationist or you think Christianity is just a pious myth. There's no room in modalursine's view of Christianity for nuance or complexity.

And as long as modalursine's view of Christianity is naively simplistic, then my conclusions therefrom will be naively simplistic.

After taking a moment to calm myself down, I think that (despite modalursine's willful misrepresentation of the data) there has been a breakdown of understanding here over the use of the term "literalist".

It would seem--and I hope he will correct me if I am wrong--that modalursine takes "literalist" to be a required way of reading the Bible in order to lead to traditional Christian doctrines about a personal God, the Incarnation, the second coming, etc.

When I use the term "literalist" -- and perhaps I should have made this more explicit -- I am speaking of a method of biblical exegesis that demands a literal reading even in the face of absurdities, e.g. those readings that lead to young earth creationism or that gloss over places where Scripture directly contradicts itself; and denies the utility of other modes of exegesis, e.g. allegorical, tropological (moral), or anagogical.

Such a method of biblical exegesis as a widespread phenomenon is a recent development and does not represent either traditional methods of exegesis stretching back to early Christianity or the majority of Christians today (taken as a global community numbering somewhere around 1.5 billion). As I wrote over over on the Heresy thread:

It is essentially impossible to read the Bible completely literally, because the Bible contradicts itself at the literal level time and time again. To take just one example, from the first chapter of Genesis: God creates light on the first day, but doesn't create any of the heavenly bodies that produce light (sun, stars, and the moon {yes, I know, the moon reflects the sun}) until the fourth day. Critics of Christianity love to claim that they're the first to notice this, but they're not. It's quite obvious to anyone with sense that what Genesis means by "light" on the first day has to be something other than starlight or daylight or a candle. St. Augustine noted this fact, and also noticed that Genesis nowhere describes the creation of the angels, even though angels (cherubim) show up at the end of Genesis 3. So, Augustine puzzled through these two problems and came to the idea that, when God created light on the first day, this meant that God created the angels; and when God separated the light from the dark, this meant that God cast out the fallen angels from heaven.

Indeed, a fundamental principle of Christian biblical exegesis from its very beginning is that the important meaning of the text is a mystery, hidden beneath the letter and revealed by Christ the Word Incarnate. This is how Paul reads the Old Testament in his epistles. Most succinctly he says of the rules of the Old Testament, “These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:17) Paul follows this method of exegesis in Romans, I Corinthians, Galatians, and Hebrews in order to explain how Christ fulfills the words of Scripture, how its meaning so far surpasses the letter because it is spoken by the Word.

Fundamental literalists frequently shy away from admitting that, taken at the literal level, the biblical text makes errors and claims so outlandish and against reason as to stretch credulity. Lawecon has pointed some of those out: claims that the sun "stood still" at various points in history, or that, at the Crucifixion, the dead arose from their graves and walked around. If either of these things had actually happened, other people (i.e. non-Jews) would have noticed and written about it. But they didn't. If the Gospel of Matthew is the only evidence we have that the dead walked around, that should be a signal -- not, crucially, a signal that the Gospel is wrong, but a signal that the literal surface meaning is not the important meaning. It is a signal that we need to dig deeper to understand what Christ has signified. Indeed, one of the most influential early Christian exegetes (Origen) perceived that these "stumbling blocks" of contradiction and absurdity at the literal level are placed in Scripture intentionally by the divine author to make us stop and stumble -- and thus to force us to look longer, to look deeper, to understand better what God is trying to say to us. In the case of the sun standing still or the dead walking about, we are called to take these as signs or hallmarks (in the sense of symbols) of profound moments in the history of the relationship between God and his creation.

But because fundamentalist literalism refuses both to engage with the tradition and to engage with the text in any way that would admit diversity of opinion or creativity of thought, it refuses to see what was obvious even to Paul!

This delineates a complex intellectual tradition stretching over more than two thousand years (for it has roots in Second Temple Jewish thinkers like Philo of Alexandria). Sadly, it is not a tradition one can glimpse if all one sees are the caricatures of the American media about creationists and homophobic pastors.

So many christians obviously get it so wrong. Obviously.

Couldn't the christian god have made it all clearer so even the humblest mind could immediately and easily grok the needed divine info/message and thus insure "salvation" for the greatest number?

Is the christian god either the willful or inadvertent author of confusion?

Well, no, I'm thinking the actions of christians constitute strong evidence the christian god is just made up.

Namaste.

Jesus Christ was a Creationist. I'm in good company. :)

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. -Mark 10:6

>32 (JGL53): I'm sorry that you find intellectual and conceptual complexity so threatening.

>33: Fuzzi, you do understand that there is no inherent contradiction between God the Creator and the facts of the evolution of the universe as established by science, right? That is, one can believe both in Scripture and in the rational evidence of chemistry, physics, and biology -- it's a view called "theistic evolution" and you can read a very good description of one scientist's journey to faith in Francis S. Collins's The Language of God.

I believe in science, except where it contradicts God's word.

It would be a boring world if we all agreed on everything...

> 34

Non sequitur.

Please reboot.

> 33, 36

"Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers."
~Bruce Calvert

Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.
~Martin H. Fischer

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
~H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1925

Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

~Buckminster Fuller, 1972

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

~William Drummond, Academical Questions

What luck for rulers, that men do not think.

~Adolph Hitler

Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd.

~Voltaire, 1767

have you ever met a christian who takes the Song of Solomon literally? I haven't.

As an example of ancient Hebrew love poetry? Seriously? Yes, many Christians see it that way—most, probably. For example, the standard Catholic Bible, the New American Bible, interprets it that way, not getting around to the allegorical readings until the fourth paragraph of the introduction (see http://www.usccb.org/bible/scripture.cfm?bk=Song%20of%20Songs&ch= ) They may also appreciate it on other levels, and recognize allegorical readings have, historically, been common in both Christianity and Judaism. But putting a "literal" reading as primary is not in the least odd.

In other words, if you've never met a Christian who takes the Song of Solomon "literally," you've probably not met many Christians. More probably, you simply don't understand what Christians in fact believe.

This 99.9 per cent of christians are literalists

Things may look different in Mississippi, the most religious state in the union, the state with the smallest percentage of Catholics, one where even mainline Protestants tend in literalist directions and, I think not coincidentally, one of the least-educated states in the nation. But while your definition of "literalist" is apparently elastic, it would be vocabulary-abuse to accuse most mainline Protestants or the Catholic church of Biblical literalism as it is commonly used by people (not in some personal idiolect). By a stingy measure, non-lteralists comprise at least 70% of Christians worldwide, not 0.1%. In other words you are off by 700%. That's off!

Religious people seem to assent to propositions which, to the secular eye, seem very far from apparent.

Yet most people one meets in ordinary life who claim to be "religious" are usually not particularly daft , cognitively deficient or egregiously uninformed.

How to square that circle?

When I first came to these forums, I floated the proposition (though not in those terms) that it was mostly "ketman"

http://www.ketman.net/captivemindchapter3.html

Why? Group and family loyalty, unwillingness to buck perceived cultural norms combined with the patent irrelevance of any of those "sunday" sentiments to actual practical life might explain the phenomenon.

That idea was roundly rejected by all and sundry. I came to understand, perhaps more slowly than is flattering to myself, that not everyone thinks as I do, and that when people say that they believe X, by golly, maybe they believe X.

So imagine my perplexity, when I am told that in claiming that millions of my fellow citizens believe some very startling propositions, that I am distorting the facts, misquoting or misinterpreting the poll numbers and grossly misunderstanding the true situation.

It seems that the vast majority of the faithful are practicing the ketman of exegesis. All those surprising propositions to which they assent are not the least bit surprising because the outward formulations are only code or metaphor (did I spell it right this time?) for perfectly reasonable propositions so that our objections are but attacks against straw men.

Wow!

>40

I think the prevailing culture is a powerful force, and surely explains much of what you see. But this works in both directions. People in Mississippi almost can't help being some sort of Christian. Educated white people in the northeast can't help being non-religious. Getting to the bottom of what one ought to believe about reality is time-consuming, risky and, simply, not to most peoples' taste.

We disagree, however, on the notion that "Sunday sentiments" are "patently irrelevant" to actual practical life, as if religion wasn't all about how to live your life—what to value, how to treat people, etc.

It seems that the vast majority of the faithful are practicing the ketman of exegesis. All those surprising propositions to which they assent are not the least bit surprising because the outward formulations are only code or metaphor (did I spell it right this time?) for perfectly reasonable propositions so that our objections are but attacks against straw men.

I think you're engaged in bending yourself into a pretzel of misunderstanding. It seems to me the situation is just simpler. Most Christians are not literalists in any meaningful use of the term, but most Christians do indeed believe some—for you—"startling" things. Christian belief, like other human belief, involves all sorts of shortcomings(1), but one shouldn't imagine that honest beliefs about the world are not at all what people think they are, but are some sort of "code" for something else. It's a conspiracy theory about other people's minds.

1. For example, lots of professing Christians can't adequately describe core elements of Christian orthodoxy, but then 75% of Americans can't find Israel on a map!

I can find Israel on the map.

It is New Hampshire I have problems with.

The real test: Which is larger?

I could cheat and look it up. But I confess I have no guess which is the larger?

~25

"Meanwhile, what you seem to be arguing, is that all those people who say "The Bible is the word of God" are not by that token affirming that there is a powerful intelligent spirit being, "king of the world", "author of life" who created everything there is according to his will, has a plan for human history, intervenes in human history on behalf of that plan, and furthermore has either directly written or commissioned the said book.

That's one powerful set of assertions to base on absolutely no supporting material evidence."

Usually, it is considered illogical to put the burden on someone with whom one disagrees of proving a negative. If you believe that there is scriptural evidence for each of the propositions you cite above, and that those persons who say that they are "literalists" affirm each of those propositions, then, I would think, the burden would be upon you to prove such a contention.

By biblical literalist I mean someone who takes any of the "supernatural” stories in the bible as literal historical events. E.g., Adam and Eve and the snake (Satan). E.g., Noah's Ark. E.g., the miracles of Jesus. E.g., the entire effing book of Revelation. Etc.

IOW by biblical literalist I mean someone who takes the ontological claims of the bible as literal truth - on faith, not because it is logically or scientifically convincing.

No christian I know of takes the Song of Solomon literally - i.e., as a pornographic description of how some guy thinks some woman is hot, how much her body parts turn him on, how much he likes to bang her, etc. All christians I know of read all that as metaphor - i.e., poetic expressions of christ's love for his church (i.e., the body of believers). Thus this is why I say no christian I know of is 100 per cent a literalist.

> 40

I recall a poll sometime back that reveals that many if not most people in the U.S. who self-label as christian are in fact deists and universalists (i.e., they believe moral non-christians can make it to heaven also) - based on their answers to specific questions that go beyond the usual "Do you believe in god?", "Are you a christian?", "How often do you attend church?", etc.

So there may be something going on like you originally suspected. I.e., it seems that many "christians" go along to get along but don't actually believe the really nasty stuff in their church creed.

E.g., just one anecdote from my own life along these lines: back in the bad old days when I worked for a living I was fortunate to be the supervisor of a very competent nurse. I had overhead her once say she was a member of such and such (southern) baptist church so then I assumed the worse. Over the years in discussions on break it turned out she was pro-abortion rights, in favor of gays serving in the military and being married and was a universalist (didn't believe in hell).

I asked her at one point why the hell was she a southern baptist, and how the hell she could be one if her fellow church members knew her opinions - and she said basically what you are suspecting - most of her friends and relatives was s.b., it was a social thing in addition to just simply believing god is love, and she basically kept her unacceptable social and theological opinions to herself and just went along with the basic (public) program.

After seeing the results of the aforementioned poll I am convinced there are a hella lot of people like her.

Especially in small town America.

E.g. if, in a town of 500 souls, the only grocer, pharmacist, physician, feed and seed store owner, lawyer, or even a maid happens to be an atheist - what do you think he or she will do - tell ANYBODY, except maybe his or her spouse, or just attend the local church on Sunday like everybody else? Which would be best for "business"?

(Uh, those would be rhetorical questions, cousins.)

No christian I know of takes the Song of Solomon literally - i.e., as a pornographic description of how some guy thinks some woman is hot, how much her body parts turn him on, how much he likes to bang her, etc. All christians I know of read all that as metaphor - i.e., poetic expressions of christ's love for his church (i.e., the body of believers). Thus this is why I say no christian I know of is 100 per cent a literalist.

Again, most Christians acknowledge that they are love poems between humans first and foremost. As I noted, this is the explanation offered by the authorized Catholic translation of the Bible in English. That "most" (formerly it was "all") the Christians you know read it differently is only proof of your limited social circle or of your misunderstanding.

That they are "pornographic" is just dumb. You clearly haven't read them. They're love poems, not pornography. They include praises of a woman's hair (like a flock of sheep!) and breasts (like fawns!), but it's pretty tame stuff, and considerably less explicit than the love poetry of Greece and Rome or, say, Sumer (See The Harps that Once's poems to a woman's vulva being like lettuce).

I recall a poll sometime back that reveals that many if not most people in the U.S. who self-label as christian are in fact deists and universalists (i.e., they believe moral non-christians can make it to heaven also)

Again, this is a tissue of misunderstandings and misstatements:

1. Universalism is the view that all will be saved, not the view that non-Christians can be saved.
2. There are many explicitly universalist Christians (eg., Madeline L'Engle, George MacDonald, Origen)
3. The view you describe—that non-Christians can make it to heaven—is not only not universalism, and not anti-Christian, it is the accepted dogma of the vast majority of Christians in the world!—including Catholicism, Orthodoxy and most branches of Protestantism.

That you have not been exposed to this world is clear. What is not clear is why you can't recognize the limits of your experience. I recognize Maine is not the world, so I don't go about pontificating that everyone likes blueberry beer and that black people are a rare thing. Surely you could do the same. It's not like you couldn't Google away these misconceptions in a spare hour or two.

> It's not like you couldn't Google away these misconceptions in a spare hour or two.

In fairness, surfing the 'net seems to be much more efficient at reinforcing preconceptions than removing them. And Google's efforts to get searchers to the content they are calculated to prefer may contribute to epistemic closure.

Would you please explain why you believe that we should kill each other, sleep with each other's spouses, steal from each other, bear false witness against each other, covet each other's property, and in general not love each other?

Well, the Bible does command God's followers to do most of those things at one point or another.

Jesus Christ was a Creationist. I'm in good company. :)

Ah, so you are a fictitious being as well?

>47: I've never been to Maine (lived a few years in Massachusetts, though), but I really like blueberry beer!

(My wife, who has been to Maine but whose parents are Michiganders, insists that I put you on notice that Maine blueberries don't hold a candle to Michigan blueberries.)

> 51

Speaking of Maine, Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are quite nice.

And so are MOST of the people of Maine, I would imagine. In any case, that has been my experience.

>22

As I understand Christian theology, God's creation is good. Humanity's willfull disregard for following the good, has pulled everything, EVERYTHING, out of alignment. Jesus took on the job of pulling it right again. We have a particular privilege of joining in that work. And knowing myself as a very poor exemplary, I'm glad that the Christ has it well in hand.

And I for one, am also glad that He has delayed long enough to include me and mine.

> 53

Hmmmm. Interesting theory there. Doesn't seem that complete, though.

E.g., where was jesus - or god - and what were they doing 250 million years ago at the time of the Permian extinction?

Do you at least have an entertaining answer to that? Would it involve the word "design"?

.
.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event

ref 47
3. The view you describe—that non-Christians can make it to heaven—is not only not universalism, and not anti-Christian, it is the accepted dogma of the vast majority of Christians in the world!—including Catholicism, Orthodoxy and most branches of Protestantism.

The more ecumenical attitude is certainly the position of most Christians I've talked to (a smallish sample given the millions of Christians in the world) but one can be forgiven for thinking that the word has not got around to everyone.

Things have probably changed since Dante's day; but then again, aren't those sorts of things supposed to be eternal truths?

Lets see. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" touches on Irish Catholic doctrine, which at least is a bit more recent than Dante, but would lead one to think the Church's position is a bit harsher than it really is.

If you listen to the hell fire and brimstone TV or radio evangelists, you might come away with similar misimpressions.

So while the acceptance of alternate routes to salvation may be official doctrine of all or most denominations, and while most of the decent sort of people who happen to be christians buy into that, in my experience, it seems not to be the only attitude out there. Some of the faithful are still somewhat er,
"unreconstructed" (is that a polite word?) on that point, or perhaps they too falsely believe that that is the official position of their respective creeds.

I wonder modalursine if Christians think there is an alternative route to salvation rather than that Jesus' redemptive work is sufficient regardless of an individual's state of belief or repentance at the time of death.

Maybe some others might comment.

The distinction likely makes little practical difference in the end, but it might be a more accurate assessment of how some Christians might see things.

E.g., where was jesus - or god - and what were they doing 250 million years ago at the time of the Permian extinction?

Somewhere on an uninhabited atoll in the Pacific an elderly sea bird is fighting off an eye infection. Where's Jesus in that? Nowhere! And I'll tell you why. He's sent himself back in time to pet dying dinosaurs.

I wonder modalursine if Christians think there is an alternative route to salvation rather than that Jesus' redemptive work is sufficient regardless of an individual's state of belief or repentance at the time of death.

Most Christian theology does not say there is an alternate route, but rather that this route is available to more people than explicitly believe in it.

> 56

Obviously the world is just chock full of many, many, many, MANY different types or categories of christians. So in short we are arguing the obvious - except which group constitutes the TRUE christians - who ‘s got it correct - and who has not. And what are the total numbers of each. Not particularly interesting questions, intrinsically, but those would be the questions.

Some christians believe jesus died to redeem all persons and that all persons will eventually make it to heaven, even if some need go through a purgatory stage after death before being allowed in - one supposes Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot would definitely need this “reconstructive” period. These are the universalists - the “there-ain’t-no’hell” types.

Some christians believe few will make it through the narrow gate and most will go to hell for either rejecting jesus’s saving grace or are just unlucky not to know of it and make a choice, or were just predestined for hell a la the Calvinist/Presbyterian type of christian god. Some of the christians in this group believe most people will get the message in time and the heaven-bound will outnumber the hell-bound. Whatever. In any case, the determination is made in this life - no after life second chance.

So which is the largest grouping? I personally don’t know and hardly care. I suppose it would be a better world with more liberal and less reactionary christians in it.

So which group is right? Well, that is the never-ending debate. My one man’s opinion is that they are both wrong. For sure they both can’t be RIGHT. That is why they need to leave the rest of us the hell alone and fight this internecine battle out until one sides wins out - then they can come after the rest of us - which is about only 65-70 per cent of the world’s population.

Personally I think evaluating theology by democratic vote of the followers can be a pretty piss poor way of doing it, and for two reasons.

First, many, if not most people do not go to church for the theology. They go for fellowship, for worship, for comfort and solace, to make an impression, because they were dragged there, because it's Mother's Day, because they lost a bet, because they got hooked into teaching Sunday school, because they want to check it out, because they like the pastor, because they are pissed at their last pastor, because they in a life crisis, because they are interested in God, and there a ton of other reasons.

In seventeen years of parish ministry I might have had three or four who attended my particular church because they liked the theology.

Most of what passes for theology in people's heads is a notion of what they think Christians ought to believe, not what they really believe. Do many people believe God created the world in six days? Yes. Do they care about the science behind it? Absolutely not. And that is probably due more to the really bad third grade science teacher they had than with anything they learned in church.

So most Christians do church they way they drive their cars. They could no more tinker under the hood than they could identify rock strata, but they are still able to get around.

Second, people will do what they want and believe what they want, and most people find churches that matches their current prejudices and deep-set beliefs. The theology of a particular church is usually not thought out.

Personally I think that classical music is a "higher" more intellectual form of music than popular music. But if you look at what is listened to, you would not get that impression at all. Is Adele better than Beethoven because more people listen to her? No.

> 60

All of what you write here is quite true, and of non-Christians as well. Even clergy are (in my experience) usually motivated by other factors more than theological subscription -- although they are more likely to know what theology it is they've subscribed to.

However, I think in terms of history and culture, the tendency to reduce religious identity and motivation to a theological orientation that can be codified as a creed is a phenomenon that the modern world owes to Christianity.

(53) 2wonderY: Succinctly put, thank you.

(60) Bravo!

(sad that it's true)

> 60

All true.

The only issue, still, is that what music one prefers is not that significant an issue, nor is the fact that few of us understand car mechanics. Mundane issues are indefinitely numerous, and none are of absolute significance.

Is religious belief the same - a trivial choice?

Well, I will agree with that.

The people who think it is significant? They have a problem. And it's a personal one.

Would that they would go away and leave the rest of us alone.

...what music one prefers is not that significant an issue...

It's thinking like that which leads to Barry Manilow.

>64: "Would that they would go away and leave the rest of us alone."

You do understand that by hanging out in the "Let's Talk Religion" and "Christianity" groups on LT, you make it very difficult for them to leave you alone, right? It's kind of like hanging out at Starbucks and yelling at all the coffee drinkers to go away.

Or are you asking the theists to put you on "Ignore"?

It's not that hard to be left alone. When I am with my secular friends, I tend to get a lot of religious questions. The reason is that they don't know many religious people. They don't care about religion (mostly) and I am an anomaly in their lives.

> 65

If the quality of music were taken as seriously as "true" religion I suspect Barry Manilow would have been assassinated long ago - just like an abortion doctor, or those kids in Norway.

> 66

Here I am - leaving you alone.

It's a mystery.

(well, I AM a catholic - small "c")

LOL

> 67

I envy your friends (per your third sentence).

If the quality of music were taken as seriously as "true" religion I suspect Barry Manilow would have been assassinated long ago

Get behind me, Satan!

More about the bible:

http://delanceyplace.com/index.php (6/12/12)

"According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 78 percent of all Americans say that the Bible is the 'word of God,' and almost half of those believe that, as such, 'it is to be taken literally, word for word.' Polling data from the Barna Group indicate that nearly half of all Americans agree that 'the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings' (88 percent of all 'born-again' Christians believe the same), and the Gal­lup Poll finds that 65 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible 'answers all or most of the basic questions of life.' These statements are shorthand descriptions of the idea of the Bible as God's magnum opus, the first and last word on who God is, who we are, why we're here, and where we go after this. ..."

The article then goes on to describe how little the same people who reverence the bible actually know about its contents.

One claim that I find a bit hard to believe (sounds like a bad joke) is that one in ten think that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.
Is he pulling our leg?

But the larger point, that people know not whereof they speak, is all too easy to believe.

How many have actually read the bible?

In my Sunday School class and among others at my church the level of biblical literacy is shockingly low. Significant confusion about the time frames, the events, and the players.

Interestingly enough though many have read books about living as a Christian or such. Just not so much of the bible.

Most informed atheists that I have met have much greater knowledge of the bible.

I think people believe the Bible is true the same way they used to think the Encyclopedia Britannica was true; ie, if they were to read it, they would find helpful, and true information. But they also think of it in the same way as I heard in (I believe) an E.F. Schumacher book, where someone is quoted as saying of the EB, I don't have to know because SHE does.

> 71

I read through the bible twice, once at age 14 and again at age 17.

So, was this a good idea? Well, ....

I was a deist by age 17, an agnostic by age 22 and a wild-eyed raging atheist at age 27 - having finally accepted and admitted what a pulsating ball of slimy writhing self-cannibalizing snakes constitutes the brain of your average fundamentalist.

Maybe it is not recommended that persons actually read the bible. Maybe bibles should come with a warning label:

DO NOT OPEN. For Thumping ONLY.

That seems to be taking the whole "ignorance is bliss" thing a little too far.

> 74

If the whole world were ignorant of the very existence of Barry Manilow and his "music", would it not be a much better world?

In any case, maybe knowledge is not for everybody. Many people, and not just Tom Cruise, apparently can't handle the truth.

Well, being proof of that, I guess I have to take your word for it!

~73

"I read through the bible twice, once at age 14 and again at age 17."

You know, once again you sound just like our fundamentalists who think that "reading through the Bible" is an achievement or something that people in the Christian or Jewish faiths "should do."

I, frankly, just don't get it. The Bible - either the Jewish or Christian Bibles - is an anthology. It isn't a unitary work. Its component parts use to be called "scriptures," and until Constantine and his pet Bishops invented orthodoxy and heresy, there really was no canon of the really valid scriptures that comprised a Bible.

I do think it is admirable if religious people are willing to put in the hard work of taking one of the components of this anthology and intensively analyzing it. There are various ways of doing that: learning the original language, learning the variants in the manuscripts, learning what phrases meant in the time and language in which the component was written, learning about the society in which it was written, etc. But reading through a particular English version of The Bible is no more admirable than reading an English translation of Voltaire. It certainly isn't some critical test of the validity or intensity of one's religious beliefs.

>77

Word.

In addition to reading through the bible twice I forgot to add that between early childhood and age 20 I had to endure each Sunday four hours of preaching and Sunday school and "training union" (yes it was actually called that), not to mention yearly revivals and vacation bible school and camp meetings and youth gatherings and such - i.e., several thousand hours total of people telling me what was meant by the various stories in the bible - propagandizing me in the faith, so to speak.

I generally paid attention.

Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I should have just blanked out and sung Barry Manilow songs in my head.

I am flat tired of Tim and lawecon agreeing so much lately. What the hell is up with that?

I agree with him a lot. I feel most of our tiffs are peculiar misunderstandings.

#77: You know, once again you sound just like our fundamentalists who think that "reading through the Bible" is an achievement or something that people in the Christian or Jewish faiths "should do."

Go ignorance. It's completely awesome when people say they believe the Bible is the holy writ of God and they accept no other authority, and yet don't know the Bible and only repeat the words that some authority has fed them.

until Constantine and his pet Bishops invented orthodoxy and heresy, there really was no canon of the really valid scriptures that comprised a Bible.

Marcion of Sinope (c. 85-160) wrote a canon of the Christian texts long before Constantine I (227-337) was born, and he was excommunicated, implying a certain belief in orthodoxy and heresy.

But reading through a particular English version of The Bible is no more admirable than reading an English translation of Voltaire.

Your analogy is totally lost on me. Certainly if you want to claim that you are a scholar of Voltaire, much less a follower of Voltaire, having actually read through the works of Voltaire is an admirable thing. Sneering about languages is pointless; the perfect is the enemy of the good, and for most people who have a limited budget of time, learning the material from translation will provide more insight then trying to learn the language and then the material in the original.

It certainly isn't some critical test of the validity or intensity of one's religious beliefs.

No. But certainly the fact that you've actually taken the time to read through and try to understand the texts of your or someone else's faith does mean something and does put you above those who cite the texts shown to them by others and have no idea of the whole.

""until Constantine and his pet Bishops invented orthodoxy and heresy, there really was no canon of the really valid scriptures that comprised a Bible.""

"Marcion of Sinope (c. 85-160) wrote a canon of the Christian texts long before Constantine I (227-337) was born, and he was excommunicated, implying a certain belief in orthodoxy and heresy."

======================

What?

A canon is the "authorized and authentic texts," recognized by a religious authority. It isn't some "I like these" list by a lone heretic.

===========================
""Reading through a particular English version of The Bible is no more admirable than reading an English translation of Voltaire.""

"Your analogy is totally lost on me. Certainly if you want to claim that you are a scholar of Voltaire, much less a follower of Voltaire, having actually read through the works of Voltaire is an admirable thing. Sneering about languages is pointless;"

=============================

Well, let me help you with the analogy. As you point out, most 21st century Americans who read Voltaire in translation aren't scholars of 18th Century French or of 18th Century French culture and politics. They thus are effectively reading essays regarding which they have no background and no real understanding, translated from another culture, time and language.

The same is true of most of 21st century Americans who read just some old English translation of the Bible, although the disconnect is even greater since you are there dealing with multiple cultures, times and some variance in the original languages. (Indeed, the cultures and cultural understandings are MUCH more variant than is true from Voltaire to a 21st century American. So in that sense, you're right - the analogy is only a rough one.)

In neither case is the activity particularly praiseworthy. You can certainly do it if you want, but you could equally go fishing, and with probably less harm to your intellectual development.

What apparently makes "reading through the Bible" praiseworthy in the mind of the fundamentalist is that for the fundamentalist the Bible is the "word for word, word of G-d". But if it is the word for word word of G-d, and not just some amusing essays by a historical figure of another century, then one might imagine that one would want to understand what one was reading in some depth. After all, it is G-d speaking. Apparently not. Reading the Bible in English is treated just like a 21st Century English speaking American reading Voltaire in translation, except the experience is considerably more disconnected.

Got it?

========================

" "the perfect is the enemy of the good, and for most people who have a limited budget of time, learning the material from translation will provide more insight then trying to learn the language and then the material in the original.""

Well, that, I thought, was the point of religious authorities, scholars, and Church traditions. I don't just go putter around under the hood of my car when it stops, and say "the perfect is the enemy of the good" (while probably doing more harm than good). I certainly don't give lectures on car mechanics while not having a clue about car mechanics. I take my nonfunctioning car to an expert car mechanic I trust. Apparently you would view my uninformed tinkering and lecturing to others about "what car mechanics really means" to be preferable to relying on an expert, in some unexplained sense of "preferable."

#83: It isn't some "I like these" list by a lone heretic.

Wikipedia seems to think he had a sizable church, which would make him a religious authority, and certainly if you call him a heretic, there was heresy before Constantine.

Well, that, I thought, was the point of religious authorities, scholars, and Church traditions.

The day you trust the government unquestioningly on what we should do, I'll start thinking about trusting the church unquestioningly.

I certainly don't give lectures on car mechanics while not having a clue about car mechanics.

I don't believe that. Hell, literally I don't believe that; I fully believe that you would become an "expert" in car mechanics the instant it suited you. But certainly I know that you're willing to pontificate on far more subjects then you could possibly be an expert in.

Apparently you would view my uninformed tinkering and lecturing to others about "what car mechanics really means" to be preferable to relying on an expert, in some unexplained sense of "preferable."

You've got a false dichotomy there. I see no evidence that discouraging people from reading the Bible will discourage them from arguing about religion. Just as problematic is the word "expert". There are "experts" out there taking any position you want on religion; I fail to see how discouraging people from reading the Bible will make them any more likely to find an "expert" who actually knows something about the topic.

"I don't believe that. Hell, literally I don't believe that; I fully believe that you would become an "expert" in car mechanics the instant it suited you. But certainly I know that you're willing to pontificate on far more subjects then you could possibly be an expert in."

I fully accept your expertise on pontificating regarding topics on which you have no expertise.

> 80

I am myself disturbed by the extent to which I have agreed with lawecon's posts lately. I agree thoroughly with #77, for instance, although I have grave reservations about the analogy advanced at the foot of #83.

~86

In what respect are you disturbed?

I said nothing about not posing questions to your preferred expert. Of course you should do that, and the expert should expect that you will do so.

I have maintained for a long long time on these forums, however, that there really are people who know more about particular subjects than you, I or the guy next door. That is the way they make their living. That isn't the way you make your living.

One can't "just pray" and know everything equally as well as an expert. Knowledge doesn't work that way.

=============

subsequently edited to add "more"

> 87 In what respect are you disturbed?

There's no point in retreading the earlier conflicts that give me misgivings about my recent agreements with you.

I said nothing about etc.

No. But I think there is trouble at the root of your car repair analogy. Most people seem to think of religion and scripture as either a) a car in working order that they drive, or b) a hopeless wreck no sensible person should attempt to drive. Other than scholars, clergy, and other experts who do actually have some interest and ability to engage in "repairs," the tendency is to view the thing as an immutable monolith.

There are also basic difficulties with the credentialing of experts in religion that seem to exceed those associated with car repair.

Once again, we seem to have a situation where the peculiarities of the American fundamentalist protestant outlook become "Most people."

Most people outside America, including most self-identified religious people, think no such thing. Most people who are religious outside of plain meaning, the HS speaks to me, but it says in the Bible, blah blah blah, American fundamentalist Protestantism have no problem identifying the experts in their faith or consulting with them. Some even regularly consult with Professors in Religious Studies programs in universities.

Most in America, however, are just plain not-too-bright and use any excuse to stay that way.

The difficulties in credentialling experts in religion may be related to the wide variety of claims. We have a very healthy book industry.

Experts from Creflo Dollar (Jesus said sent money) to Robert Funk (Jesus did not say anything), plus the 24 hour telethon that is TBN.

Moody Bible, Dallas Theological Seminary, Sewannee, Princeton - just a sampling of the range just in the US.

Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islam, and all others. And quacks among them all.

Which is the expert?

> 89 Most people outside America, including most self-identified religious people, think no such thing.

I can only speak to my anecdotal experience, which is not actually limited to Americans. While I am sympathetic to your impulse to deride the state of religious knowledge in the US, I wonder about the evidential base for your generalization about non-Americans.

There are also basic difficulties with the credentialing of experts in religion that seem to exceed those associated with car repair.

Excellent.

The reign of Constantine and his contributions to the Eastern Orthodox tradition (NOT the Roman tradition--he hated Rome) are one of the most misquoted and misunderstood aspects of history.

First, Constantine didn't decide anything--except to the get the capital of his Empire the hell out of Rome, and to call a council to get the Bishops to quit squabbling. At the Council he backed Arius, not what became the Orthodox tradition, and would have rescinded the Council's decision and continued to back Arius, were it not for Arius's untimely, and somewhat humiliating death. He was about to be reinstated, at Constantine's request, by a Bishop who swore Arius would die before he would restore him. (At the public ceremony Arius needed to take a crap, could not make it the outhouse and essentially shat out his bowels behind a colonnade.)

The canon of Scripture was essentially set by the time of the Council of Nicaea, although it was not made official there. In fact, the biblical canon was not even discussed at Nicaea. Constantine did commission Bibles in 331, which may have sparked discussion for the need for an official canon, but that did not happen under Constantine.

Oh, and the Bishop of Rome had little to do with the council. He was elevated as First Among Equals, but along side of the Bishop of Alexandria and Antioch.

Most people outside America, including most self-identified religious people, think no such thing. Most people who are religious outside of plain meaning, the HS speaks to me, but it says in the Bible, blah blah blah, American fundamentalist Protestantism have no problem identifying the experts in their faith or consulting with them. Some even regularly consult with Professors in Religious Studies programs in universities.

I think you mean most Westerners. And by that you must mean most European Christians.

> 93 "...At the Council he backed Arius, not what became the Orthodox tradition, and would have rescinded the Council's decision and continued to back Arius, were it not for Arius's untimely, and somewhat humiliating death. He was about to be reinstated, at Constantine's request, by a Bishop who swore Arius would die before he would restore him. (At the public ceremony Arius needed to take a crap, could not make it the outhouse and essentially shat out his bowels behind a colonnade..."

To quote J.C. (Johnny Carson), I did not know that. No doubt this gross event is just one of a myriad of happenstances and circumstances that roundabout led to what constitutes today‘s christian "orthodoxy".

What for the want of a healthy high-fiber diet in one individual 1,700 years ago christianity would have more so anticipated islam - no trinity and god as superior to jesus.

One can imagine a scenario in first century Rome wherein some important proto-orthodox religious leader trips on a curb and fatally concusses himself - otherwise christian pantheism would be the religion of 2.2 billion people today.

It seems historical accident is god.

LOL.

He could have been poisoned.

The reign of Constantine and his contributions to the Eastern Orthodox tradition (NOT the Roman tradition--he hated Rome) are one of the most misquoted and misunderstood aspects of history.

This is a bit odd, I must say. The council is a core part of Catholic belief. Catholics recite its creed—albeit, along with the the east, the Constantinoplitan revision—or, sometimes, the Apostles Creed, at every mass. Further, the council set the pattern of ecumenical councils generally, which form a key element of Catholic ecclesiology. The church of Rome itself was not anything but in agreement with the result of the council.

I don't know the sources as well as I should, but if I'm not mistaken, and I read my Constantine and the Conversion of Europe correctly, there's no evidence Constantine backed Arius at the council, but rather the opposite. Eusebius makes it clear that the phrase "homoousios" was suggested by Constantine himself, and that although it was not generally liked in the east it was utterly unacceptable to the Arian party. The council ended by excommunicating Arius and two supporters, and Constantine banished them immediately. Socrates includes a number of letters Constantine wrote, explaining the council and attacking Arius. That Constantine later pestered Arius, trying to win him over to the Nicene agreement is clear. But it doesn't change his actions during the council.

On Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, the canons themselves seem to me to say something less than the "first among equals" you assert. They seem to state only that both Alexandria and Antioch are deemed to have their traditional metropolitan role over surrounding bishops just as Rome does. That Rome does was clearly assumed, but that doesn't mean anything more than that. For some reason Rome's metropolitan role was well known, but that's it. People push it farther, but that's really all Canon 16 says.

Arius' death—Socrates says he didn't merely shit himself, he shat his intestine out! Writing more than 100 years later, with Arius firmly a heretic, and seeming basing his report on tourist-guide information about the spot, well, it's a good story but oh-to-perfect deaths are just that. Incidentally, as you probably know, the orthodox liturgy includes a description of Arius' death too, saying he emptied his ousia—ha ha ha!, you can hear the liturgist saying.

As for why this comes up, I found this quote today:

The deadliest attack of the infidel is not so faith-destroying as these attempts to prop up our belief by the endorsement of the politician, or the patronizing certificate of the minimifidian man of science, neither of whom, it may very possibly be, knows as much of the Scriptures and Christianity as the once dark savage who sits clothed and in his right mind at the feet of the missionary of the cross.

That may have been 1854, but--barring the use of the word minimifidian--it could be said today. At which point the accusation of ignorance of the Scriptures is dropped, the claims of not being ignorant of the Scriptures will be dropped.

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On a separate note, I believe that Voltaire and the authors of the Bible have something to say to us today. Simply reading the literal text may leave some of that obscured, but the use of a good commentary should clear a lot of that up. If the reading of the text and commentary can't provide insight into the universal human elements of the text, then who cares? They're interesting for scholars of the era, of the culture, but surely in that case we should be reading and basing our lives off more modern, more relevant works.

I suggest Peter Brown's excellent work, The Rise of Western Christendom, for more details.

Constantine would not have known an ousia from uzi in all probability. He just wanted the Church to stop the fighting--it fist fights were breaking out over the nature of Christ. Arius had the easy, and more understandable position, plus he was good at writing ditties, so you could sing his theology! (Remember that hit, "There Was A Time When He Was Not!?")

>99

I think we're in basic agreement—Constantine was more concerned with unity than dogma. That seems clear. It does seem to me the evidence is he didn't favor Arius in the way you asserted, but I shall withhold final criticism until I look at Brown's work, one of his I don't have.

From a modern Christian perspective, I think it's worth mulling just how much good and how much bad there was in these Christological fights. Nicaea is one thing—Arianism cuts to the core of Jesus identity and therefore meaning. But Chalcedon and its confused arguments about natures split the church very seriously, and might have been healed but for that split. The split was as much about power and identity as about dogma. A cautionary tale, perhaps.

FWIW, I remember reading somewhere that recent discoveries show Newton to have been an Arian, or at least held heterodox and punishable christological views.

It would seem that accepting the notion of revelation is something held in common by all Christians, and all Abrahamics, come to think of it.

There seems to be some disagreement of just what was revealed to whom, when and how, but the basic idea seems clear enough; information is transferred from the mind of god to
the mind of man by some medium or other, whether by direct
speech, dreams, or whatever, and then communicated to the rest of us by the usual earthly methods, including written texts.

Revelation, it seems to me, is a special case of the miraculous, so all Christians (and all Abrahamics?) therefore accept the existence of the miraculous.

It is very easy to read scripture as teaching the Father is before the Son, and that the Son is subordinate to the Father.

I tend to that interpretation myself.

> 101

Newton was indeed a crypto-unitarian with Arian leanings.

>102

What really should bake people's noodles is that I think it's pretty clear the various authors had different conceptions of it. You can't really speak of Christological disagreements—things hadn't gotten to the point where anyone's theology was cut and dried and people could fight about the differences. But there were clearly different assumptions going on. They got figured out, and if you're not a fundamentalist that's okay. If you are, you have to tie yourself in knots to see it all one way.