Progressive Christianity

[Pyrrho]

If the Bible is just a collection of works written by uninspired people, why are you a Christian at all?  Why are you not some other sort of theist?  It seems to me that you have rejected the foundation of Christianity, but still accept some form of Christianity.  Why do that?

I have absolutely rejected the foundation of conservative Christianity. Most people who identify as Christian are unaware that their theological foundations are really, at most, several hundred years old. I understand many atheists do not draw a distinction between conservative Christianity and any other practice, but many of us do.

You do not seem to understand my meaning.  There are certainly plenty of people who are Christians of some sort, but reject part of the Bible, and some who pretend that taking the horrific stories as allegory somehow makes them nicer than they are (though they invariably fail to explain how one could take them as nice stories even if one does not take them literally).

If you throw out the Bible, from whence do you get any kind of "Christianity?"  What I am suggesting is, that without the texts that make up the Bible, there would be no Christianity at all.

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Yes.  He went on and on about his enemies being tortured in hellfire forever and ever.  And his reaction to a fig tree not bearing fruit because it was not in season is extremely childish.  Jesus is a remarkably poor role model.

It sounds like you're reading or referencing the bible with a similar application to conservative Christians - as a literal text.  It really isn't meant to be read that way. If there are specific sections you would like my feedback on with cultural and linguistic context in place, feel free to let me know. 

Take the fig tree story as a metaphor if you like.  How does that make Jesus into an admirable character?  What we have is a story of a grown man throwing a childish temper tantrum, who punishes an inanimate object for not doing what it could not possibly do.  Where is the good message in that?  How do you interpret the story to make Jesus into something other than a stupid childish fool?

And if we take the stories of Jesus condemning his enemies to torture for eternity as metaphor, again, what interpretation can you give those stories such that Jesus is not a vindictive asshole?

It is fine for you to tell me that they are not literally true.  But as mythical stories, they still portray Jesus as a despicable character.


That contrasts greatly with Odysseus in The Odyssey.  Odysseus, though an imperfect man, is still a heroic character who uses his intelligence to overcome extreme obstacles to achieve his honorable goals.  Odysseus is a much better character to emulate than Jesus.  Of course, this is myth, and virtually no one today regards The Odyssey as literally true.  But one can see the virtues of intelligence and perseverance and integrity displayed in Odysseus.  Even though one will never encounter the mythical obstacles that Odysseus faced, one can still emulate him with that being a good thing.  But emulating Jesus makes one a petty, vindictive, stupid, childish little twerp.

A right to call oneself something does not make one right in calling oneself that thing.  If she says she is the queen of England, are you going to bow down to her?

Suppose I were to tell you I am a Christian.  Of course, I don't believe in hell, or heaven, or that Jesus is the son of God, or that Jesus even existed as a man, or that there is a God at all.  But I am a Christian all right.

Now, what do you say to that?  Am I a Christian if I say I am?  Am I the queen of England if I say I am?  Is there a problem with saying that one is something that one is not?

I am reminded of something Lewis Carroll wrote:


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm

(It's a great book, by the way.)

There's glory for you.

Hi Pyhhro - I agree with your logic, but I think I would apply it a little further back.  Perhaps it is conservative Christians who are (to borrow your example) proclaiming themselves Queen of England. Their theological tenets are relatively young, and actually at odds with much of what is in the bible when read with academic honesty.

If the Bible is read with academic honesty, one comes to the conclusion that is it just a collection of old books written by primitive savages, with no more insight than other primitive savages.  In other words, such a reading makes one not a Christian in any usual sense of the word.

According to you, what does the word "Christian" mean?

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Then why do you call yourself a Christian, to me a better suited name would be a Progressive Mythian. Eliminating all you have of the Bible how is it you could possibly identify with Christ. How is it you are able to see a purpose for Christ if the Bible's a myth. You should be honest with yourself and actually admit your a progressive non believer.

GC

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Interesting - I don't feel I've eliminated anything from the bible. I will agree that I refuse to put upon it things that it was never meant to bear. I feel that I take the bible more seriously than my conservative counterparts when I approach it with honesty and an eagerness to maintain it's context. The mythologies surrounding Christ's crucifixion and resurrection are pretty unique for their time in that they portray a God as a willing and forgiving victim, succumbing to humanity's need for a sacrifice - not the other way around - and in doing so, rejecting the role of sacrifice all together.  I definitely am a non-believer in the popular conservative Christian theology, and I kindly reject the idea that their is the only way to understand and incorporate Jesus into my beliefs. I appreciate your encouragement to continue deconstructing. It's always nice to have encouragement on that journey. 

In the story, though, it is not humanity that demands the sacrifice.  It is God who requires it.  So you have the story completely backwards.  It is supposed to somehow save us from God punishing us.  Of course, it is an incoherent mess of a story, but that is the story.  Humans do not have the keys to the gates of heaven, so humans cannot demand anything to get into heaven.

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I feel like there is a difference between truth and fact. Myths are certainly not fact. I'm not sure that it then follows, however, that they cannot contain truths.

Sure, there can be truths in myths.  But there are also a lot of falsehoods in myths.  Making a mythical story does not insure that there is some great truth in the story.  And in the case of the Bible, the lessons are almost all bad.  Like the story of Abraham and Isaac, where blind obedience to authority is portrayed as a virtue, even when one is told to do something horrible.

If one lives in accordance with the stories of the Bible, one will be stupid, narrow-minded, and evil.

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I don't know if he has, but I sure will.

There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the christian bible is a clever(ish) fiction devised with two main purposes: explaining the natural world in the absence of widespread scientific process, and controlling humans. If you look at it for what it is, without bias, it becomes clear that the bible is part of an over-arching storytelling tradition that consistently comprises humanity's efforts to preserve what they think they know and to find deeper meaning in reality.

If you examine the content of the text itself, the stories share themes, components, and sometimes even whole narratives with other works of myth (some predating the bible) that were devised for reasons similar to the ones I've already mentioned. Some stories fill in at-the-time gaps in the popular understanding of the natural world, some stories are obvious propaganda to boost national pride and self-righteousness amongst the jewish and/or christian people, and still others serve merely to communicate "god's" commandments to society. It's the same kind of content you find in other systems of myth. Whether it's the flood story, Samson's strong-man-hero story, or even the story of a dying and rising savior god, none of these themes are unique or original to christianity or judaism.

So yeah...while there is no evidence of the existence of a creator god, there is evidence to suggest that the bible, like other works of myth, was written and inspired entirely by humans for entirely human reasons.

In the beginning, man created god in his image.

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That's a really fabulous summary! Girardian theory on Jesus mythology produces a different structure than other dying/rising savior god myths that I am aware of.  If you are aware of any that present a deity as a willing victim to humanity's demand for sacrifice, with their subsequent resurrection tied to the end of a sacrificial system, I'd be truly grateful for you to point me in their direction. What a delightful find that would be for me

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As noted above, humans are not the ones demanding the sacrifice, according to the story.  And, again, it is God who holds the keys to the gates of heaven (metaphorically speaking), not humans, so humans are not in a position to demand anything.

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At the risk of sounding preachy myself, the idea that Jehovah exists and that Jesus is his son is not a tenet of "conservative" christianity. It's a tenet of...christianity. By definition, in fact (from google):


"Christianity is the world's largest religion, with about 2.4 billion adherents, known as Christians. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine and fully human, and the savior of humanity whose coming as Christ or the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament."


While I wouldn't presume to tell you what you believe, I might presume to say that if you don't believe the minimal tenets of what christians believe (tenets Christ himself is said to have taught), then you are not a christian, even if you follow some of the other teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. You can call yourself that if you want, I guess, you'd just have to concede that you're not using the same definition of the word that pretty much everyone else is using.

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I think google has been leaning heavily on conservative Christian definitions.  Thanks for the suggested reading material. I'll get off my prejudice and dive in. I appreciate that you kindly called me out on that and am grateful for the opportunity to make an effort to change it.

Try an ordinary dictionary.  You might also find Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I am not a Christian" worthwhile"

http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

One of the many things he discusses is the changing meaning of "Christian" over time.  It is less robust than it once was, but if the term is to be of any use at all, it must retain some meaning.  And this reminds me of yet another story, about the erosion of what "god" is held to be.  This idea has been discussed by Antony Flew:

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revolutionary article "Gods." Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

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http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

You appear to be erasing all meaning from the word "Christian," though, perhaps, you can explain what it is that you mean by the term.