Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[Jehanne]

The problem is what it would mean to religiously apprehend things. That isn’t going to be rational.

I also don't know what it means to apprehend something religiously. 

How can you be sure that such a thing won't be rational?

By that standard, one cannot say that anything is irrational.

[Angrboda]

The problem is what it would mean to religiously apprehend things. That isn’t going to be rational.

I also don't know what it means to apprehend something religiously. 

How can you be sure that such a thing won't be rational?

I think revelation is an important concept here. A revealed truth is a fundamental truth about reality that is communicated directly to a mortal by the divine. So religiously apprehending something, I think, would require some elevated communication, beyond that achievable by mortal to mortal, and it must communicate a fundamental, or perhaps important truth. Take Jesus' command to turn the other cheek. People can read that and have a response of wth? How does that makes sense. But if turning the other cheek is an important truth, getting it from a divine authority can bypass our critical filters. So, the same would apply to stories, allegory, and parable. If Jesus' parable about the sower communicates an essential truth that couldn't be communicated non-narratively, then it is a more religious narrative than one which simply relates an easily accepted more through the medium of story.

[Disagreeable]

There is a reason why there are no rational religions. Because the meaning of the word ‘religion’ refers to things that aren’t rational.

If you have a system of beliefs that you are passionate about that you have actually thought through and are actually rational it would be more accurate to call it your philosophy, your way of life or your worldview. You could religiously believe in the goodness of a complete absence of religions without that being contradictory and that just makes clear exactly what kind of equivocation could be going on here. It wouldn’t be your religion of no religions.

You can call whatever you want your religion but that doesn’t necessarily mean it actually is because words mean things.

[vulcanlogician]

I also don't know what it means to apprehend something religiously. 

How can you be sure that such a thing won't be rational?

I think revelation is an important concept here.  A revealed truth is a fundamental truth about reality that is communicated directly to a mortal by the divine.  So religiously apprehending something, I think, would require some elevated communication, beyond that achievable by mortal to mortal, and it must communicate a fundamental, or perhaps important truth.  

Devil's advocate:

It could simply be a heightened sensitivity of the mere mortal to subtler aspects of reality. No need to put non-human or non-mortal entities into the equation.

[Belacqua]

There is a reason why there are no rational religions. Because the meaning of the word ‘religion’ refers to things that aren’t rational.

So you're just defining "religion" as something that's not rational. If it's rational it's not religion. 

What argument do you have to show this is true, and not just begging the question?

---

I also don't know what it means to apprehend something religiously. 

How can you be sure that such a thing won't be rational?

I think revelation is an important concept here.  A revealed truth is a fundamental truth about reality that is communicated directly to a mortal by the divine.  So religiously apprehending something, I think, would require some elevated communication, beyond that achievable by mortal to mortal, and it must communicate a fundamental, or perhaps important truth.  Take Jesus' command to turn the other cheek.  People can read that and have a response of wth?  How does that makes sense.  But if turning the other cheek is an important truth, getting it from a divine authority can bypass our critical filters.  So, the same would apply to stories, allegory, and parable.  If Jesus' parable about the sower communicates an essential truth that couldn't be communicated non-narratively, then it is a more religious narrative than one which simply relates an easily accepted more through the medium of story.

So a person reading, say, Martin Buber or Simone Weil, and feeling these are very wise writers but with no expectation of divine revelation, is not apprehending their books religiously?

[Angrboda]

I think revelation is an important concept here.  A revealed truth is a fundamental truth about reality that is communicated directly to a mortal by the divine.  So religiously apprehending something, I think, would require some elevated communication, beyond that achievable by mortal to mortal, and it must communicate a fundamental, or perhaps important truth.  Take Jesus' command to turn the other cheek.  People can read that and have a response of wth?  How does that makes sense.  But if turning the other cheek is an important truth, getting it from a divine authority can bypass our critical filters.  So, the same would apply to stories, allegory, and parable.  If Jesus' parable about the sower communicates an essential truth that couldn't be communicated non-narratively, then it is a more religious narrative than one which simply relates an easily accepted more through the medium of story.

So a person reading, say, Martin Buber or Simone Weil, and feeling these are very wise writers but with no expectation of divine revelation, is not apprehending their books religiously?

I'm being simplistic here, knowing that even Ninian Smart's 7 dimensions of religion at times is inadequate for the complexity, but I think ultimately religion is about situating your life in relation to the divine, a higher power, a deeper, imperceptible order, or some transcendent dimension of reality. So, no, I wouldn't consider the experience of reading Martin Buber or Simone Weil religious (I haven't read either, so I'm making an educated guess about the content). Nietzsche, on the other hand, maybe. I feel the same way about it that I feel about free will or emergentism; if there is a mundane, mechanistic path to the goal, then it lacks the indeterminism that defines them; if a reading isn't extra-mundane, then it's not religious.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not now nor has it ever been impossible to create a religion of x - x defined as any collection of things religiously apprehended that any given person could find absolutely no quarrel with.  

AKA, good fundamentals.

The problem is what it would mean to religiously apprehend things. That isn’t going to be rational. And if it is merely being used as a synonym for passionate or emotional then you are redefining what is normally meant by a religion. Religiosity and religiousness are not necessarily the same thing. And we are normally referring to the former. Anything can be done ‘religiously’ or zealously or passionately. And if you are just saying that a collection of beliefs believed in passionately can be good then I have no quarrel with that but that is not what is normally meant by religion. Important not to equivocate.

If you feel as though a thing is sacred, anything, that's religious apprehension.   There's nothing more to it.  A-religious and irreligious people report the experience at about the same rate as overtly religious people, amusingly enough. People also refer to it as the sense of the numinous. You'll probably be passionate about whatever it is if you have a thing like that (I'm speaking in the general here, not personally of you), sure.  It would actually be weirder if people weren't emotional and passionate about something that meant that much to them.  

For religion, though - a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, things set apart and forbidden, which unite a community into a moral whole.  Religious humanism meets those criteria.  There's really no end to potential religions of x - which, imo, is what makes the poor quality of our familiar religions so alarming. We might, for example, note that a person who goes to some natural park might and have a profound experience, and on the basis of that profound experience they may devote significant time or even their entire lives to the preservation of that place where they had that experience, they may develop a world view premised on it, and on their efforts to protect it..and they may find other people with similar experiences and similar efforts and this becomes their community. That community might go out into the world and preserve more, and recruit. This might escape our detection as a religion if it;s just the one guy, or one small mostly seasonal mountain town of volunteers - but if it isn't a religion from the moment just two of these folks meet each other it's on it's way to either becoming a religion or failing to be what it could have been for some unforeseen reason. Maybe the place gets blown up for a mine - and the community dissipates. It's happened over and over again. The desecration of a sacred site being a catalyst for the dissolution of a religious community.

[Belacqua]

extra-mundane

I wonder if you have a view here of "revelation" as being a disembodied voice, or privileged visual representation shown to us, by an active agent separate from us, of something from out of our normal world. I can see how people might think of it this way.

Through history, many people have seen no clear boundary between the mundane and the divine. The divine is immanent in the mundane. God is not separate from where we are. To see God is not a removal to another location but a change of perception -- particularly, a strong and selfless attention. Revelation, therefore, is not a picture show from another world but an accurate view of where we are. 

Many many Christians have held to this definition.

This has its roots in Neoplatonism. The idea is that our minds are narrowed down, though in fact are inextricably a part of the whole. The function of the senses is largely to filter out most of what's out there, but in special moments may open to admit a larger view. (Much spirituality from India echoes these ideas.)   

If this is how a person thinks of religion, then what we call divine is different only in degree and not kind from our regular non-divine experience. "Religious apprehension," in this view, would be regular apprehension, turned up to eleven. 

You're right that Nietzsche is relevant here in that he reverses this traditional view. Whereas a traditional Neoplatonist would say that a complete, unfiltered view of the world is of perfect order and brings joy, Nietzsche says that such a view is of chaos and brings madness. For him, the purpose of great art is to present us with the true knowledge of this chaos in an ordered way we can withstand.

[The Grand Nudger]

It appears to have it's roots in human psychology.

[vulcanlogician]

I really appreciated your post, RBP. I don't agree with much of it, but that's okay. I think it comes from a place of honesty, makes proper concessions, and tries its best to be reasonable... that goes a long way with me. I felt like I should say that before I offered some counterarguments:

First of all I haven't seen any evidence that the resurrection didn't occur, so we can speculate all day long but all we have is the accounts in the bible. Since the Jewish leadership of that period attempted to discredit the resurrection they were never able to come up with the body.

You're off to a rocky start here. But I disagree with FM that this counts as antisemitism.

The problem I have with this is the same problem I have with every "for all we know, x might have occured" arguments. It's a weak argument. It says almost nothing. We have blind spots in our understanding of history and reality. You could put anything in any one of these blind spots.

The four gospels all written by different people that apparently had first hand knowledge are quite compelling. Not only the we have the apocrypha's with many more first hand accounts the life of Jesus, and of the Gnostic believers. 

Another user has already addressed how unreliable first hand accounts can be. So I won't beat a dead horse. But I share that user's concern. Also, it's possible that the Gospels have only two primary authors. "Mark" and John. Plus a team of editors that went to work adjusting them through the centuries. The first oder of business: multiply Mark into three separate Gospels, and then let the editors put their own specific spin on things.
   

The bible began as a narrative about the history of the Jewish people. To me the laws the Moses laid down were what I consider Mosaic laws, somewhat like our governments do today. That's why folks like the Muslims still murder homosexuals, thank goodness most have evolved beyond that.

What? The Jewish OT advises us to kill homosexuals. That isn't something specific to the Quran. The question isn't why Muslims kill homosexuals, it's "Why don't Christian and Jewish societies?" I think we have a clear answer in that regard: secularism.

To me the ten commandments are basic common sense laws. 

It's not common sense to acknowledge one god above all others. History is full of pagans. Nor is it common sense not to create graven images. When we get to murder and theft, that shit is common sense. You basically have like 4-5 common sense laws in there. And some could be improved upon. I want to think that if God actually wrote a law... that it couldn't possibly be improved upon by some random internet schmuck, but here we are.

The law against adultery. I will concede up front, adultery can be destructive in some circumstances. Sometimes it is done with hideous and hateful or ignorant intent. But in some marriages, it's a pressure relief valve that actually preserves marriages and the love between couples. (BTW, I'm not saying this for selfish purposes as you theists sometimes imagine. I've never been married. And if I did marry would probably never commit adultery. These are things I've recognized through life experience/ observing others.) But if that's true, adultery can be good or bad, how do we capture the spirit of forbidding the bad while allowing the good? How about, "Do not betray a person with whom you've made obligations." To me, that sounds like a better law. It covers the things the adultery law fails to, and also includes some fairly important other things.

As for the creation story, well that is problematic to say the least. 

Agreed. That could be its own thread. (And has been numerous times.)

I went through college in the late sixties, many things that were considered scientific facts have been proven incorrect. Does that mean that I consider all the books of that era worthless, of course not.  In the sixties psychologist treated homosexuality as a mental illness, today it is considered normal. 

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. The other side is I see many problems with the fundamentalist beliefs. 

I've read plenty of the Bible. I even like some of it. Ecclesiastes, Job, Matthew, and James, for example. I've read plenty of it, and was taught much of it growing up. You should talk to Mister Agenda and others who know it pretty well (way more than I do). They are atheists, and yet have pretty much memorized the Bible, some of them. There are quite a few of them around.

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

Man, I have listened ad nauseum to pretty much every nde argument out there. I have read all kinds of articles, published studies, you name it. I read like a whole Stephen King novel about the stuff just because one user CDF (the lion, RIP) suggested I needed to just to make an informed opinion on the matter. But despite my fatigue, I'm willing to give it another go-round... mostly because you seem like a sincere person who strives to make good arguments. I think the best way we could start this is in a thread where you explain what you think is the best support for ndes, and then we address the concerns from those of us who aren't unconvinced. You may want to label the thread [Serious] to keep the conversation on track.