"...both groups start out with a False Dilemma about the Bible that impinges on most of their subsequent arguments about these topics."Okay, that certainly applies to fundamentalists (and their evangelical brethren) where bibliolatry is endemic, but it's incidental to any thoughtful atheist critique I've come across. Most aren't overly worried about the Good Book. They come at it from a broader perspective, and the Bible is simply "collateral damage". Atheism stands apart from any narrowly focused argument about the Bible. Or Science and Health, the Quran or any other specific scriptural tradition. Their focus is not so much on the Bible, but on the what they see as the problematic concept of God or gods. Christian fundamentalism? Not so. There God is assumed and the Bible, read with a wooden literalism, becomes an ultimate authority. An atheist can most certainly appreciate the Bible as literature, and its historical and social significance, just as they can enjoy the Iliad and the Odyssey (or reruns of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys).
In other words, whereas debate about the Bible is absolutely central for conservative Christians, that's not necessarily so for atheists (or progressive Christians for that matter).
No, no, no. It's thoroughly comprehensible to many atheistically inclined people that the Bible does indeed contain a mixture of truth and error. They reject the objectionable (and there's plenty of that) but simply insist that there is nothing supernatural behind such benign teachings as the Sermon on the Mount. There are plenty of non-Christian readers who appreciate the mythic elements in the New Testament narrative (as you would in Greek mythology) as long as you understand something about metaphor - as in the Resurrection for example."It seems incomprehensible to both sides that the Bible could be a mixture of truth and error. Nevertheless, to an objective observer it is apparent that a single piece of literature is easily able to accommodate both. In other words, both sides in the debate have engaged in Fallacious Reasoning relative to the Bible. Since both claims about Scripture can be characterized as false, it is illogical for either side to assert that their claim about Scripture is true based on the falsity of the other side."
Sticking with the Greek mythology analogy, there are some pretty hairy stories about the Greek gods, every bit as horrible as the accounts of Yahweh. But you'd have to be both tone deaf and colour blind not to find something thought provoking in the tales of Persephone or Icarus. I confess to be being totally atheistic when it comes to the alleged inhabitants of Mount Olympus - and I expect Miller is willing to risk the thunderbolts of Zeus too. Is this because we find it incomprehensible that there might be a mixture of truth (albeit non-propositional) and error therein? Don't think so.
So it seems to me that Mr Jones has himself posed a false correspondence between two quite different things. But I'll keep an open mind till the next instalment.
Does it take a Bible to be able to define atheism?
ReplyDeleteThat seems like a pretty much losing proposition.
I noticed early on that there are distinct differences between what I will call "science" atheists, and "WCG" atheists. Difference begins with how individuals arrived at non-belief, and also involves considerable emotion. I will agree that the science atheists are dispassionate for the most part. I will also concede that WCG atheists frequently aspire to be like their science atheist counterparts, but by presenting a horrible representation of God, Herbert Armstrong's teachings have proven to be a very powerful modifier to everything which they ever touched and corrupted. They leave individuals to choose between a harsh, obsessive-compulsive "god" who pro-actively seeks opportunities to punish, marginalize, and kill his children over the most miniscule of offenses (rather than forgive and mentor) or no god at all. Having submitted to the system of governance exemplified by Armstrongism, members frequently experience overwhelming cognitive dissonance, finding it necessary to seek a new model, or no model at all. I doubt that any sort of God who intends for things to actually work would find fault with their logic.
ReplyDeleteBB
The Bible clearly contains many untrue statements and many self-contradictions. So, if God cannot make mistakes, the Bible cannot be God-inspired.
ReplyDeleteI believe we can learn much from Peter Enns incarnational model of the Bible. That is, the Bible speaks in terms contemporary to its writing. I also believe that the Bible starts off by presenting the fact that man has chosen to be separated from God. And the Bible itself fits into that program of separation rather than being an exception to it. Because of the absence of God as instructor and interpreter, the Bible has been humanly used in such a way as to give rise to many disagreeing religious factions and sometimes outright war.
ReplyDeleteI have also found that the atheists I know have no real concern about the Bible or the Koran, etc., unless they had a bad religious experience to fuel this jaundice. Most of the atheists I know (and I know very few so I do not have and unbiased sample) are instead avid libertarians who cannot countenance the idea that anyone would tell them what to do. Hence, any religious code of morality is anathema to them. Oddly, some have their own code derived from humanism and they are quite moral. It is not that morality is repugnant to them. It is just something that they themselves must choose.
-- Neo
yes Neo, I too know more than a few atheists, since I live and work in the scientific/academic world. I find many of them to be extremely moral individuals, and closer to "godliness" than some professing Christians. Perhaps that is because they have learned, rightly, to reject much (or all) of what masquerades as Christianity in this society. Certainly, what is going on in the Middle East, with the rise to power of the world's largest Satanic cult, and its actions, does not help make any religion appear proper to the skeptical or uninformed.
ReplyDeleteWe look forward to the day when TRUE Christians will be in charge...and peace, joy, and prosperity will be the rule. Ignorance will be abolished. We should all look forward to that time...
As an atheist, I can tell you that the bible is not a mixture of truth and error but is error in it's entirety: From false history to false pious platitudes to hold the false history together. In it's entirety, the bible is made up stories invented by pretentious priests for the purpose of controlling the minds and hearts of people gullible enough to believe in it and willing to give up their share of life's good for a better good after they're dead. "Stupid" is not a good enough description of this delusion - but, it's the best one I have.
ReplyDeleteThank you Corky for beautifully demonstrating my point about the False Dilemma relative to the atheist position on the Bible.
DeleteGosh Corky, please tell us how you really feel!
ReplyDeleteIn reflection, I'm not sure I've met any real Christians yet. I certainly haven't met any 'Christians' I feel I can trust. In fact, often it's quite the opposite of trust.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm quite cognizant that we all have imperfections and I'm not expecting perfection, I'd be much more hopeful if I could be convinced that those I meet are moral, ethical and prone to keeping the laws of God and man instead of engaging in risky behavior which could lead to public disclosure that their hands have been in the cookie jar. And it's not just a few foibles here and there, it does really seem that their whole lives are based on hypocrisy.
This was impressed on me by the movie, "God's Not Dead" starring Hercules and Superman. Throughout the movie I wondered if these 'Christians' had ever heard of "flee fornication" (they seemed to treat it as some sort of insect sin), "be not unequally yoked" and, furthermore, wondered at the viability of having a fatal disease, knowing you're going to die and being just fine with it, when there wasn't a shred of hope. And then there was the Chri$tian Mu$sic played by the musicians with long hair. Had they not read "it is a shame for a man to have long hair"? The same question might be asked of the stalwart member of Duck Dynasty.
Sure, most people seem to lie now and then, but the 'Christians' I've met are full hard on liars. Now to be sure, the people in the Community Church I attended in my youth seemed to be marginally better than the Lutherans 4 blocks over and the Lutherans were a whole lot better than the Catholics in their high place on the hill, bowing down before their graven images. And the Catholics were just light years ahead of the Armstrongists which exhibit the worst of human nature (asking in United how to get a restraining order against a stalker is entirely the wrong question -- the question should have been, how do we get out of this stinking cult?!).
There's also a question of who wrote the New Testament and how it was written. I'm not certain anyone can help with that. Apparently, the Catholics assembled it from oral myth in the Fourth Century. There certainly aren't any original documents left around. I'm not expecting an original epistle written by the 'Apostle' Paul in his own hand writing on the original parchment is going to be trotted out any time soon. I'll believe Revelation after it has all come to pass as written.
I've also seen the mega churches: Pure Plastic with no ('spiritual') nutritive value at all.
In any event, after all these experiences, I'm not certain I'd like the results if Christians were put in charge and I'm not certain ignorance would be abolished -- quite the opposite, in fact.
And haven't we tried this all before?
I have faith in human nature. It stands, particularly in the Bible. The works of the flesh are not only with us, but probably the best description of Christianity, just after II Timothy 3.
And that's not a particularly encouraging kind of faith.
Ad hominem Tu Quoque is also a type of fallacious argument. Whether or not the Christian (or the Atheist) is a hypocrite has no bearing on the matter at hand.
DeleteHere is something I've never seen pondered before. People have been known to masquerade as Christians, basically to either make others think more highly of them, or to lay some sort of con. But, who ever heard of anyone masqerading as an atheist? Is the world ready for a true atheist, or an atheist "falsely so - called"? Or, how about a scientific "eisegesis" cobbled together to support the work of some atheist "guru". Or, the ultimate classic: a novice atheist who practices atheism imperfectly, leading others to believe that all atheists are hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteThese are some things with which Christians are forced to contend, but for which there is no correlation in atheism.
BB
This is the same old silly claim that Atheism is a religion. No, it's not. The two have almost nothing in common.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with Bob on his point: lots of people pretend to be Christians because in our society it makes life a whole lot easier. Just claim to be a Christian and it makes it a whole lot easier to make friends, get a job, find a wife, raise kids ... you name it. Being part of the "in" group makes life a whole lot easier than bucking the tide. And it's easy - it's not hard to act and talk as if you were a Christian, whether you believe any of their crap or not.
The same of course could be said for Muslims living in the Middle East or Hindus living in India. Life is easier if you act like you're part of the majority.
People who are hypocrites and claim to be Christians are no Christians at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's not an ad hominem argument: Christians are to exhibit the Fruit of the Spirit. There are also standards for Christian ministers, which, if violated, permanently disqualify them from any ministerial activities. The problem here is that if no one is exhibiting Christian behavior, how is anyone supposed to believe in it?
These are not trivial matters. My not seeing any of those claiming to be Christians in their hypocrisy and exhibiting none of the supposed Fruit of the Spirit, but works of the flesh instead, mark the absence of any 'spirit' of Christianity.
And what did the one said to be Jesus say in those writings collected to be the New Testament? Something about offending others.
The matters at hand are whether the Christians and atheists are kin. I have known atheists. They are for the most part pleasant and moral. They have no need to be hypocritical. They hold themselves to their own higher standards. Those 'Christians' I have known make grandiose claims of superiority based on their supposed 'redemption', but for the life of me, I cannot tell them apart from the most aggressive obnoxious top level corporate businessmen with the supposed 'ministers' acting every bit as directors and CEOs actively pursuing a hostile takeover of something weaker.
Atheists I have known seem to take responsibility for their actions.
Most of the Christianity seem happy with their own form of idolatry. Much of Christianity is actively engaged in abuse. [Kudos to the Pope for automatically excommunicating the Mafia. It's about time.]
If nothing else, it sets a bad example making many people determined that they are not going to follow their example.
And that's beyond the delusions rejecting science and facts.
There seems to be very chance of finding a common class for atheists and Christians. Atheism is not a religion. Christianity is.
Except most of the Christians seem to have a lot more arrogant pride.
Wikipedia defines a religion as: "A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence." This is only one definition, of course, but it would mean that atheism could be classed as a religion by some. I have always regarded atheism as a non-God religion because atheists always seemed to have such a religious fervor about their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteProbably much more attention is paid to atheism than is justified principally because of Fox News and various programs in the evangelical media. According to Froese and Bader, only about 5 percent of the US population claims to be atheist. Yet the right wing media spins up this great battle that is taking place between atheism and Christianity. Most conflict is actually among various factions within the Christian sphere.
-- Neo
Neo, I wouldn't rely on surveys for this one. Sure only 5% claims to be atheists. Because in most of the U.S.A. saying you're an atheist is tantamount to painting a target on your back and wearing a T-shirt that says "please attack me". The 5% that admit to atheism probably live in San Francisco and New York City. They sure don't live in the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West or anywhere outside of a big city.
DeleteSecondly, I fail to see how atheism can be looked at as "an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views...". Atheism in unbelief in one thing. That's all.
Some of my African American buddies used to have a saying, "Everything's everything!" In fact that saying was even immortalized in the Donny Hathaway forgotten classic, "The Ghetto" , a 6-1/2 minute musical excursion into rock jazz fusion, and some of the spoken words of the ghetto. It was huge in the early '70s. Frankly, that saying covers quite a bit of territory!
ReplyDeleteWhen we realized that WCG was a cult, and began pointing that out, some of the stalwarts responded by calling the Catholic Church just a larger version of the cultic mentality, and soon they had expanded the term to include all of Christianity. Honestly, they caused our application of the term "cult" to lose its stigma. Everything's everything. Narrowing or broadening definitions can often do that. When I was an atheist, and later an agnostic, it just didn't compute when an ACOG lady on a forum "informed" me that I, too, fell into an identifiable, and somewhat defined pattern of thinking, and that therefore, for me, atheism was actually a religion. Really, I felt that she had missed the mark, and had lumped me in with some of the people who had formed the basis for her profile. I was actually a non believing "seeker" who had examined existentialism, dianetics, the works of Edgar Cayce, Catholicism with my ex-wife, the works of Dr. Gene Scott, the Self-Realization concepts of Yogananda Paramahansa, and whatever else happened to capture my attention, and appeared to have substance. I found it all to be "wanting"
Later, in private email correspondence, some of my friends on another forum made me aware of their favorite atheist sites and forums. These sites did indeed appear to have nonbelief defined, and all of the reasons supporting nonbelief systematized. The sites were schooling viewers in the art of convincing one's peers that atheism is the only choice that an objectively thinking, intelligent person could make. In terms of imparting evangelistic skills, these sites probably were more effective than all of the teaching and roll playing at a local Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall! Once again, everything's everything.
Really, what I've learned, is that one very human trait is that we try to profile, systematize, define, categorize, and put one another in boxes, if for no other purpose than to keep things straight and organized in our own minds. The good news is this. Stereotyping and marginalizing, though very easy, very human traps into which we can fall, are neither Christian, nor the byproduct of objectivist thinking. The reality actually is that everything's everything!
BB
I never said that Atheism is a religion - that sounds like a straw man. Personally, I would characterize Atheism as a movement. Google defines a movement as "a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas." The "Principles of New Atheism" espoused by Victor Stenger and John Loftus suggest that this is a better characterization. They are: 1) All faith is folly, 2) Stop giving religion special treatment, 3) Bible offers no answers to suffering, 4) Religion is not the source of morality, 5) The universe is matter and nothing more, 6) Atheism is a positive philosophy, 7) Atheism is growing and 8) Godless societies happier, healthier. Does that sound like a credo to you?
ReplyDeleteMiller, I was agreeing with you up until number 5. The first four I think can be agreed upon by most unbelievers. Numbers 5 thru 8, not so much, and I don't think you can assert that most atheists adhere to them.
DeletePerhaps atheistic activists have developed an organized credo such as you cite, and perhaps these groups are akin to a religion/cult. Or a movement. I doubt most unbelievers adhere to this credo.
Things that upset Christians:
DeleteDarwinism - which Bible Belt apologists call "a religion" - , Atheism and Wikipedia.
Scientologists refer to "this M.E.S.T. Universe". MEST is matter, energy, space, and time. I always thought that was cool because it acknowledges the time-space continuum.
DeleteBB