I hope no one got fired for that joke.
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Iâm with Jonas on this (and Iâm speaking as an atheist, who spent some time thinking about other views after an extended and not-entirely-fruitful close encounter with someone who saw the world very differently). Blanket criticism of Christianity seems ⌠not fully informed. Of course itâs not true; itâs the non-true parts that give the benefit. Starting wars: not OK, whether done by an atheist or a person of faith. Ignoring facts about the material world which have been repeatedly observed and tested and which represent the best theory going: not OK. Persecution of LGBT, of women, of outgroups far and wide: not OK. But those represent religion done wrong, and thereâs more to it than that. As with anything, you have to do it right. Baby != bathwater.
I think Professor Dawkins (who is present, if not materially, then at least in spirit in discussions like this) is only able to support his perspective by arbitrarily excluding a lot of data points about human psychology and our inner experience. You have to include all the data; intellectual honesty demands it. Chris Hadfield seems (based on his Fresh Air interview) like one who manages this.
We live in two worlds simultaneously: the material world, and the inner world. Thereâs a universe in each of us.
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I dunno, man. I read all 1,138 pages of Stephen Kingâs IT in two days hanging out by the pool at my auntâs house back in 1986. Took me considerably longer than that to get through the Book of Job.
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A lot of people would disagree with this â they would say thatâs actually religion done right.
On what basis do you dictate what is and what isnât âreligion done wrongâ? Thereâs no physical basis for making such a determination so presumably itâs on the basis of your âinner worldâ. (Thereâs no a priori reason to conclude that âreligion done rightâ shouldnât contradict what we know about the material world â that assumption has to come from oneâs âinner worldâ.) But presumably fundamentalist Christians have their own âinner worldsâ on the basis of which they derive their own definitions of âreligion done wrongâ that might contradict your own.
On what basis do we decide who is right? Seems to me we can only rely on our own biases for that.
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Dawkins wants a couple of tabs of acid & locking in the bathroom for some quiet self-reflection.
You typed a lot of words, but Iâm sorry to say, I donât understand a lot of it.
What is an âinner experienceâ ? You canât squeeze down religion to âitâs spirituality, an idea, a concept, a philosophy reallyâ when itâs under attack, and have it full blown with itâs time to decide on wars, laws and policies.
And @JonasEggeater, donât try to turn this into âchristians V. muslimsâ ; atheists think that it is all make believe, and claiming that christians are somehow âpersecutedâ or attacked, in the US (!) is ridiculous and offensive.
Religious people have a fundamental right to their belief, of course, and here Iâm not just talking about the law, and if it did not interfere with society outside of your house I wouldnât have a problem with it.
You and I disagree on actual history, which I didnât really want to get into: I tried making the distinction between modern-day academic history and otherwise, but that was necessarily brief. I think actual history is a quite positivist concept, and wholly ahistorical, a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and of academic professionalism, not without its own critiques, and not without its own special narratives, institutional fictions, etc, Itâs certainly not something I generally see talked about without a lot of contextualizing and theorizing and grain-of-salting skepticism by academic historians. TLDR itâs a narrative, like other narratives. Iâm not sure itâs a worthwhile debate to get into, especially as weâre not historians ourselves, and it can get quite meta.
Your mentioning of the Athena story (which you misstated, but whatever) does rather put âsecond hand accountsâ against âhistorical fact.â These are your words, your juxtaposition, your claim that âpeople [do not] uncritically acceptâ the former when the latter is provided. Iâm not sure itâs worth disagreeing further over your exact words.
Dunno, my reading of the Bible along with standard resources and historical works shows there to have been some deal of actual (ahem) history recorded along with the myths, legends, stories, and other narratives. But Iâm not a biblical scholar and it doesnât seem worth quibbling over this at length. Whatever its degree of scientific, modern-day historical value (and I think weâd both agree it doesnât have a ton, whatever it does have), weâre in agreement on its value in the larger sense of it being a historical documentâcultural artifactâimportant text from the period, and thatâs my main point.
Oh, sorry, I was thinking you were calling it âhistoryâ. Still, it is different than a duplication of the Gettysburg Address, on that we can agree, right? It could be a reproduction of Gone with the Wind, since there are some historical facts in the story that can be substantiated with a lot of dramatic license and unproven characters and events added in for effect.
By virtue of something being called myth, it is not history. But it is a history of myths, so in that sense, I will agree that the Bible is a historical collection of myths and metaphors with a sprinkling of history that isnât all substantiated and/or sometimes exaggerated for dramatic effect. Just because someone said something a long time ago, doesnât make it true history, it is an archive of beliefs or philosophies of the time, but not a factual accounting of events.
Otherwise, simply because mummified food was placed in the tombs of the pharaohs and there are hieroglyphics describing this, doesnât make it true, but I agree that people of the time believed that it would happen, It doesnât make the events of rising pharaohs facts.
Youâre welcome! And, if a bump ever show up, well, now ya know. I guess. Not sure how safe that actually is.
Church-going theist here, trying to live every day by my religious principles.
Iâm not Christian, though, so I guess that doesnât help.
@Donald_Petersen, the Book of Job is awesome! You must have had a lousy version. I love the part where Yahweh is bragging about how butch he is⌠âHast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Canst thou smite Behemoth, or catch thee Leviathan with a hook of brass?â⌠from the point of view of a folklorist, theologian or sociologist this stuff is priceless. It just slots right into The Golden Bough and all.
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Historyâs not necessarily a factual accounting of events: see my various posts above. Respectfully, this is a popular myth, that thereâs true history and then that other stuff. Itâs not really worth opening up the can of postmodern critiques of historical positivism, no one walks away from that happy. It gets to be really abstruse stuff and youâll all howl Obscurantist! at me and whatnot. I think you mean academic history, which has its own truths, of course.
Yes, and I understand that even in modern history, what is covered, who is highlighted and the perception of the people focused on depends upon the writers tone and opinion of said people and what facts or angles s/he wants to cover. That being said, the bible may be of historical importance in terms of documentation of some real events, but in no way should be considered a âhistory bookâ.
Haha, I stole that from a professor, and reuse it with a maddening, quite unfunny regularity: like any dumb joke, itâs only funny to the teller, and gains in hilarity with each retelling.
I did Tommyknockers similarly quickly, the Bible I tend to savor and pore over, dunno why.
I agree that it represents a historical period of time, so IT as an object is a piece of history, as I would also accept that books written by Twain are historical books of his era, but not necessarily fact based.
Yeah, I guess so. But Iâm a proud, arrogant, hubristic sonofabitch, and even as a kid, the Book of Job merely took 31 fancily-worded chapters to tell me what my dear old Mom would say in four words: âBecause I Said So.â
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I actually have no problem with peopleâs inner world. Whatever enriches life but doesnât hurt or intrude on the enrichment of other peopleâs lives is great. Life is hard, donât make it harder, in other words.
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I donât think it s all that strange. It has a very particular and unique history in having been copied over so often over the millenia, but I don t think that changes it s antique origins at all.
Thereâs more to it than that: you seem to maintain that thereâs an objective historical truth that can somehow be related clearly through a narrative (a âhistory bookâ), and I would argue that thatâs positivist, uncritical, and not without its own mythologizing and special pleading. Itâs not about who or what is covered, who built Thebes of the Seven Gates and all that, more about the very fictiveness of all narrative, of facts even, primarily those that would present themselves as being without fiction. Again, this canât really be excavated without some heavy postmodern-meta lifting, and thatâs horribly boring and obscure if you havenât read the texts (and sounds like bad-faith obscurantism etc.): academic history covers what youâre talking about, and itâs a more accurate and historical term than real or actual or history books, shudder, all of which are quite loaded terms.
Itâs probably best to drop the terminological-theoretical wrangling, as I think we all agree on the important stuff. These discussions get rarefied pretty quickly, with one side insisting on commonsense truths while ignoring important critical-theoretical distinctions; and the other side insisting on these important critical-theoretical distinctions to the point where commonsense truths get obscured. I agree with you that the Bible rather fails at being so-called objective history as practiced by modern-day professional academics, but I disagree with a lot else, letâs be friends!
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