Lazy Atheism?

[The Magic Pudding.]

When I was a child listening to Mass, I remember thinking that his words to Peter "on this rock I build my church" was clearly metaphorical and only make sense if he didn't actually intend to start a church.

How old a child?

[Belacqua]

My original point was really that it doesn't actually take in-depth analyses of the Bible or theology to prove that religion is wrong.  I think both sides get lost in the details when there's a huge neon sign flashing in front of us.  If Genesis isn't literal, then why would we think any other part of the Bible is literal?  Actually if we can point to many things that are demonstrably and obviously false, it's at least a reasonable theory that the entire text is unreliable.

Laziness, or picking one's battles?

I think you're making a category error. 

Apparently you think the Bible was intended to be something like a science textbook, or a newspaper article. Just the facts. There seems to be a sort of assumption that the better a book is, the more it approaches the instructions that come with Ikea furniture -- absolutely clear, incapable of misinterpretation, and purely functional. 

Why people believe that I don't know.

Have you ever read Plato's Symposium? This is more along the lines of the literature that isn't intended to have easy clarity. In this book, after an introduction that makes it clear how historically unreliable the narration will be, a series of characters make speeches on a single topic, completely contradicting each other. After the final speech, the sexiest boy in town, extremely drunk, crashes the party and complains that Socrates won't fuck him. Then they all go to sleep. In the morning Socrates gets up and goes to the gym. The end. 

This is one of the most important, influential, and beautiful texts in all of history. If it didn't exist, Western thought would be different. No definite conclusions can be drawn from it, and it is still a fantastically wise book, and continues to be worth reading and re-reading. 

The Bible is more like that.

[Fake Messiah]

Apparently you think the Bible was intended to be something like a science textbook, or a newspaper article. Just the facts. There seems to be a sort of assumption that the better a book is, the more it approaches the instructions that come with Ikea furniture -- absolutely clear, incapable of misinterpretation, and purely functional. 

Why people believe that I don't know.

Because it's common knowledge

[brewer]

My original point was really that it doesn't actually take in-depth analyses of the Bible or theology to prove that religion is wrong.  I think both sides get lost in the details when there's a huge neon sign flashing in front of us.  If Genesis isn't literal, then why would we think any other part of the Bible is literal?  Actually if we can point to many things that are demonstrably and obviously false, it's at least a reasonable theory that the entire text is unreliable.

Laziness, or picking one's battles?

I think you're making a category error. 

Apparently you think the Bible was intended to be something like a science textbook, or a newspaper article. Just the facts. There seems to be a sort of assumption that the better a book is, the more it approaches the instructions that come with Ikea furniture -- absolutely clear, incapable of misinterpretation, and purely functional. 

Why people believe that I don't know.

Have you ever read Plato's Symposium? This is more along the lines of the literature that isn't intended to have easy clarity. In this book, after an introduction that makes it clear how historically unreliable the narration will be, a series of characters make speeches on a single topic, completely contradicting each other. After the final speech, the sexiest boy in town, extremely drunk, crashes the party and complains that Socrates won't fuck him. Then they all go to sleep. In the morning Socrates gets up and goes to the gym. The end. 

This is one of the most important, influential, and beautiful texts in all of history. If it didn't exist, Western thought would be different. No definite conclusions can be drawn from it, and it is still a fantastically wise book, and continues to be worth reading and re-reading. 

The Bible is more like that.

The problem arises with the claim of bible inerrancy and god infallibility. You might not claim that but very many believers do. Can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure how one is going to split that baby.  If Adam and Eve aren't literal, then Christ's sacrifice becomes pointless.

Not necessarily. There's a school of thought that Adam and Eve are simply representations for humanity. In fact, in Hebrew, the word 'adam' functions as a pronoun for both an individual male and for all mankind. That said, it's not implausible that Christ's sacrifice is for the atonement of the sins of humanity, not for the 'original sin' of two people.

We can blame Paul for the confusion.

Boru

Yes, I'm aware of such views, but I don't think they square the circle. For one, then you have God responsible for man's sins being the creator of imperfection.

[The Grand Nudger]

Cain and abel are similar takes. Farmer and shepherd. It's no surprise, then, that the pastoralist source insists that god preferred the shepherd to the farmer. That the farmer then went on the represent the thing they hated most - cities, fences, urban people. Same fight continues to play out in the us from barbed wire in the open west to barbed wire in the rio grande. I guess it's just a coinkydink that self identification with the one strongly correlates to self identification with the other.

Anywho, my atheism is as lazy as it possibly could have been. Born that way. I'm as certain that there are no gods as believers are in gods - and for absolutely no actual reason in either case....in all likelihood. In the related but distinct category of religion...a similar possibility arises. Genuine religiosity, not superstition or what your family taught you, is largely dispositional. While we may be able to rationalize that disposition after the fact the stated rationalization is highly unlikely to have been operational in forming it. It comes from a compelling urge to take the world as you see it and make it the way it ought to be, or the absence of the same in our private experience.

It would be intersting to see how people responded to a world that came to them as it ought to be, would they be less religious? Is this the explanation for why religiosity and things hopelessly associated with it, such as gods, declines in a population as wealth and education increase? That it's not so much that we know better because we're wealthier and more educated (there are wealthy educated believers) - but that we feel better wealthy and uneducated and thus have less need of moralizing community to change the world in ways that we think would relieve stressors. Perhaps this is why christianity has turned into a faith without works. The god remains, the moral content is absent, and the effort is low. Conversely, perhaps this is why the white christian supremacists are so animated. The world is very far off how it ought to be for them, and it's full of stressors like other people calling them assholes when they're being assholes. For an identitarian, that's all the time.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Not necessarily. There's a school of thought that Adam and Eve are simply representations for humanity. In fact, in Hebrew, the word 'adam' functions as a pronoun for both an individual male and for all mankind. That said, it's not implausible that Christ's sacrifice is for the atonement of the sins of humanity, not for the 'original sin' of two people.

We can blame Paul for the confusion.

Boru

Yes, I'm aware of such views, but I don't think they square the circle.  For one, then you have God responsible for man's sins being the creator of imperfection.

God is responsible for man’s sins whether the Eden fable is taken literally or metaphorically.

Boru

[Jillybean]

My original point was really that it doesn't actually take in-depth analyses of the Bible or theology to prove that religion is wrong.  I think both sides get lost in the details when there's a huge neon sign flashing in front of us.  If Genesis isn't literal, then why would we think any other part of the Bible is literal?  Actually if we can point to many things that are demonstrably and obviously false, it's at least a reasonable theory that the entire text is unreliable.

Laziness, or picking one's battles?

I think you're making a category error. 

Apparently you think the Bible was intended to be something like a science textbook, or a newspaper article. Just the facts. There seems to be a sort of assumption that the better a book is, the more it approaches the instructions that come with Ikea furniture -- absolutely clear, incapable of misinterpretation, and purely functional. 

Why people believe that I don't know.

Have you ever read Plato's Symposium? This is more along the lines of the literature that isn't intended to have easy clarity. In this book, after an introduction that makes it clear how historically unreliable the narration will be, a series of characters make speeches on a single topic, completely contradicting each other. After the final speech, the sexiest boy in town, extremely drunk, crashes the party and complains that Socrates won't fuck him. Then they all go to sleep. In the morning Socrates gets up and goes to the gym. The end. 

This is one of the most important, influential, and beautiful texts in all of history. If it didn't exist, Western thought would be different. No definite conclusions can be drawn from it, and it is still a fantastically wise book, and continues to be worth reading and re-reading. 

The Bible is more like that.

Yeah I get it. Actually I do see the literary value of the Bible and am only criticizing the most literal interpretation of it. It's not actually me who claims the Bible is some kind of straightforward rule book - it's conservative Christians who seem to portray it that way.

[Jillybean]

When I was a child listening to Mass, I remember thinking that his words to Peter "on this rock I build my church" was clearly metaphorical and only make sense if he didn't actually intend to start a church.

How old a child?

It bothered me from a very young age (maybe eight or nine) but of course I couldn't yet articulate that I felt it was metaphorical. I just sensed something "off." I was Catholic and was taught that the Catholic church arose directly from this statement of Jesus, because Peter went on to found the Catholic church.

When I was six years old, I remember saying to a friend in the church yard that I didn't think the Old Testament stories we were learning about (like Noah's Ark) were any more real than the stories in a book of Greek myths I had.

Her response surprised me: "Yeah, that sounds right."

Kids are a lot more perceptive and more capable of critical thought than most adults think.

[Belacqua]

The problem arises with the claim of bible inerrancy and god infallibility. You might not claim that but very many believers do. Can't have your cake and eat it too.

You're right, there are many people who claim that. I have never denied their existence.

What I've been arguing on this thread is that complete literal sola scriptura interpretations of the Bible do not constitute the whole of Christianity. If someone were to argue that since the myths in Genesis are obviously false, therefore the whole of Christianity is worthless, I would argue against that. 

There are a lot of different kinds of Christians. They range from the simplest literalist to someone like William Blake, who claimed that Adam and Eve were never real people, but states or conditions through which individuals may pass. 

So I'm just against laziness, when used to pass judgment.