Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[The Grand Nudger]

What I find interesting most Atheist have never read the bible, and if they have it was only to find fault. That's kind of like looking at the cover of a book and calling it trash. 

In mere reality, atheists and agnostics are consistently and demonstrably more knowledgeable about religions and magic books than practitioners are.  It's more like the people who tend to know the most about these things just don't believe in them or even actively reject them, than that they'd only glimpsed the cover. Personally, it's not the absurd myths or the explicit lies or the historic revisionism that are a deal breaker for me. I enjoy mythology. It's the fundamental message that's a no-go.

[JairCrawford]

@vulcanlogician I don’t think harmonizing scriptures is inherently fundamentalist per se, I just know that it’s often done, particularly with the gospels to try to nail down (no pun intended) a solid historical account from them. This is done in a literalistic way among fundamentalists. I even know there are some pastors that teach that Jesus overturned tables at the temple twice, because the Synoptics place the event late in his ministry and John places the event early, and in their minds both must be read literally.

But I will admit I am not without bias. I do the same thing when it comes to Jesus breathing on his disciples in John versus the account of Pentecost in Acts. I believe these were separate events because of my Pentecostal theology on the matter regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. So I can’t poke fun at the literalists too much lest I become a hypocrite.

[Jehanne]

@vulcanlogician I don’t think harmonizing scriptures is inherently fundamentalist per se, I just know that it’s often done, particularly with the gospels to try to nail down (no pun intended) a solid historical account from them. This is done in a literalistic way among fundamentalists. I even know there are some pastors that teach that Jesus overturned tables at the temple twice, because the Synoptics place the event late in his ministry and John places the event early, and in their minds both must be read literally.

But I will admit I am not without bias. I do the same thing when it comes to Jesus breathing on his disciples in John versus the account of Pentecost in Acts. I believe these were separate events because of my Pentecostal theology on the matter regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. So I can’t poke fun at the literalists too much lest I become a hypocrite.

They are cherry picking, as always; there are some two dozen gospels within a century or so of Jesus' execution. Why not the Gospel according to Peter? Gospel of Thomas? Infancy Gospel of Thomas? Or, my favorite, the Acts of Peter? (See below,)

[HappySkeptic]

As I stated elsewhere, my theist beliefs came about by the in-depth study of what is referred to as near death experiences.

Two problems with that.

1) How do your test your "study" of NDEs?  How do you know your interpretation is correct?  Is there science to back up the idea that NDEs are actual evidence of an afterlife?

The easiest person to fool is the one with "armchair" study.  These people know some things, but are too ignorant of the shortcomings of their knowledge to realize that they are still ignorant. 

I have a former colleague who truly believed in a new energy source - who "studied" it, had a degree in Engineering, believed the people associated with it.  It is all complete bullshit, but having enough knowledge to be sucked in, but not enough to critique the failures, made him susceptible.  With all my physics background, I could still not convince him (and he put money into it), because he was sure he "researched it".

2) Basing belief off questionable science is actually bad theology.  What happens to your belief if a scientist demonstrated the exact physiology behind NDEs?  You are essentially believing in a god because of ignorance about a particular physiological phenomenon.

Theology should never be based on the science of the day, the story of the day, or the cult of the day.  Good theology thoughtfully searches for meaning through life experiences and perhaps a bit of philosophy or inspiring writings.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's also the question of how any evidence of an afterlife...would..ipso facto, lead to some silly god. What we have here, is a failure of imagination, not a failure of investigation. There are actually more people who believe in ndes and afterlives than there are people who believe in gods. Meanhwile, not everyone who believes in gods believes in an afterlives - and in point of fact, no early christian believed in -any- of this shit, at all. They believed in bodily resurrection in a physical world, not ghosts floating up to the operating room ceiling.

[Belacqua]

It's mighty convenient to find them both lumped in together then, isn't it? That just sounds too good to be true. Jesus not only fed people, but did so in a way that conveyed a message through time. Allegory doesn't work like that.

Allegory can work like that. Often it does. 

Remember that when we read about a historical event, we are not experiencing the event directly. We are reading an account of the event that has been selected, interpreted, described from a particular point of view, and carefully placed within a larger narrative. A real event can easily function allegorically in this way. 

A more modern example is Arthur Miller's play A Crucible, which is a description of (more or less) real events, and functions as an allegory of the McCarthy trials. 

In spiritual literature, in particular, events are portrayed so as to provide larger lessons. Jesus fed people, and we would be very simplistic NOT to interpret this as teaching a message about how we should behave. If you were there and saw it, you might say it was a good example or an inspiration. When it's in the book, and interpreted to mean much more than simply giving people food, then a real event becomes allegory. (And I'm aware that any one of the events in the NT may be fiction, but even the ones that are true serve as allegory.) 

Remember that traditionally, each sentence in the Bible is interpreted at four levels, with the literal being the easiest and (usually) least important. Here is the Jewish version of this hermeneutic system:

Peshat (פְּשָׁט‎) – "surface" ("straight") or the literal (direct) meaning.

Remez (רֶמֶז‎) – "hints" or the deep (allegoric: hidden or symbolic) meaning beyond just the literal sense.

Derash (דְּרַשׁ‎) – from Hebrew darash: "inquire" ("seek") – the comparative (midrashic) meaning, as given through similar occurrences.

Sod (סוֹד‎) (pronounced with a long O as in 'lore') – "secret" ("mystery") or the esoteric/mystical meaning, as given through inspiration or revelation.

Christians adapted this system for their own use, since at least the time of Augustine. 

Finally, it is a commonplace of Christian belief that when God unfolds the events of history, he does so in the way that a human author writes a novel. The author may describe an event which is clearly understood by the reader to have more than literal significance. Christians say that God does the same, so that the defeat of the Moabites, for example, is a literal event which has an allegorical meaning inherent in it from the beginning. (I understand that non-religious people will not accept the origin of these meanings, but it shows how allegory functions for believers.)

[The Grand Nudger]

Is it the least important thing, to christianity, that a literal christ existed?

[Neo-Scholastic]

@vulcanlogic, if God orchestrates historical events,then He can also orchestrate them towards a narative that has allegorical meaning. That is the traditional view, Bel seems to favor. I favor a Swedenborgian alternative. Instead, of only select events being imparted with spiritual meaning, such as the cruxifiction, while others are considered mundane, I see meaning as something deeply embedded in reality.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Finally, it is a commonplace of Christian belief that when God unfolds the events of history, he does so in the way that a human author writes a novel. The author may describe an event which is clearly understood by the reader to have more than literal significance. Christians say that God does the same, so that the defeat of the Moabites, for example, is a literal event which has an allegorical meaning inherent in it from the beginning. (I understand that non-religious people will not accept the origin of these meanings, but it shows how allegory functions for believers.)

I think it is also worth noting that narrative is how our brains perceive and interpret the social world in much the same way that science is how we understand the natural world. Events get abstracted into stories with plots and characters and other literary devices including allegory. So, these aren't merely artifacts of literature, they are cognitive maps for representing the world. And I would argue that a God that wanted to communicate something to us in the most effective way possible must do so in the form of narrative.

So yeah, I agree that Scripture presents itself as a compilation of literal events whose happenings were allegorical from the beginning. But there's also a sense in which these events were selected specifically because of their contribution to the greater narrative. And you can see this in the Gospel of John, for example, who says that Jesus did many other things besides the ones he is writing down. In other words (and to address Vulcan's concern) John is telling us that he is only telling us events that carry narrative and allegorical value.

Edit: Neo posted at the same time, and he explained it more concisely lol.

[Jehanne]

@vulcanlogic, if God orchestrates historical events,then He can also orchestrate them towards a narative that has allegorical meaning. That is the traditional view, Bel seems to favor. I favor a Swedenborgian alternative. Instead, of only select events being imparted with spiritual meaning, such as the cruxifiction, while others are considered mundane, I see meaning as something deeply embedded in reality.

Does this mean that there really was a talking dog (see below) running around Palestine during the first century?