How can Christians not admit Christianity is all a pile of garbage when ...?

[coffeeveritas]

I think it's kind of ridiculous to read a book of stories and poetry as a constitution for enforcing morality, but that's just me.

Why are you a Christian then if you think the Bible is just stories and poetry?

Well, regardless if you're a Christian or not, the Bible just is a book full of stories and poetry (well, and some letters in the last part). Those are just the genres the books of the Bible fall under. I think the real difference is whether you decide to use those stories as something to inform your moral, metaphysical, and epistemological imagination, or try and use them as a literal book of laws to be enforced modernistically and uncritically upon everyone.

I see it as the difference between using a great work of literature to inspire your own art, and using it to practice diagramming sentences. It's the same words either way, but if you pin them down you lose the fecundity of the language.

[Reforged]

Define "metaphysical" and how Bible stories would inform me of it please.
Then define "epistemological" and how the Bible stories would expand on my understanding of truth, belief and justification.
I would also be intrigued to learn how taking the Bible literally could ever lead to a sane world view.

I think it's kind of ridiculous to read a book of stories and poetry as a constitution for enforcing morality, but that's just me.

Why are you a Christian then if you think the Bible is just stories and poetry?

Well, regardless if you're a Christian or not, the Bible just is a book full of stories and poetry (well, and some letters in the last part). Those are just the genres the books of the Bible fall under. I think the real difference is whether you decide to use those stories as something to inform your moral, metaphysical, and epistemological imagination, or try and use them as a literal book of laws to be enforced modernistically and uncritically upon everyone.

I see it as the difference between using a great work of literature to inspire your own art, and using it to practice diagramming sentences. It's the same words either way, but if you pin them down you lose the fecundity of the language.

[coffeeveritas]

Define "metaphysical" and how Bible stories would inform me of it please.
Then define "epistemological" and how the Bible stories would expand on my understanding of truth, belief and justification.
I would also be intrigued to learn how taking the Bible literally could ever lead to a sane world view.

Hello Raphiel Drake, I don't believe we've had any sort of exchange as of yet, nice to make your acquaintance!

Here are the definitions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology


The terms themselves, however, don't really convey what I'm talking about unless you add the modifier "imagination" as I did in my post. I'm not using the term "imagination" in a childish way, but as it has been used in contemporary philosophy to convey the unique creative impulse and way of proceeding that each person has. It's a post-postmodern adaptation of the phrase "worldview" that has typically been used, but which failed to communicate the artistry of the human psyche. I was basically just saying that the stories of people throughout history reflecting solemnly on a mystical world and divine being that they encounter, as well as how they struggle to find a way of life and relation can teach us something about how we live and think now. It's the translatability of art through time.

As far as translating the Bible literally goes, I was saying that doing so was insane. It's not a constitution; it's not something that can be read literally. So reading it literally doesn't lead to a sane "worldview".

Some very apt questions to be sure, hope I was able to clarify.

[Abracadabra]

Well, regardless if you're a Christian or not, the Bible just is a book full of stories and poetry (well, and some letters in the last part). Those are just the genres the books of the Bible fall under. I think the real difference is whether you decide to use those stories as something to inform your moral, metaphysical, and epistemological imagination, or try and use them as a literal book of laws to be enforced modernistically and uncritically upon everyone.

I see it as the difference between using a great work of literature to inspire your own art, and using it to practice diagramming sentences. It's the same words either way, but if you pin them down you lose the fecundity of the language.

I would certainly tend to agree with your general view.

The only problem is that when it comes to the Bible, it's no different from anything else. You say, "I think the real difference is whether you decide to use those stories as something to inform your moral, metaphysical, and epistemological imagination,... or..."

But you may as well stop right there.

I would absolutely not use the Bible to inform my moral standards.

Sure you I can find many things in the Bible that I agree with morally. But at the very same time I can find many things that I grossly disagree with.

And this would be true of all mythologies. I could certainly say the same thing about the Greek Mythologies, or mythologies associate with Wicca. Or even philosophies associated with religions like Buddhism, etc.

Many of the things I don't about the Biblical picture come from the Old Testament. So I would reject most of the stories of the Old Testament as being highly immoral by my own personal standards. And these are things that the God of Abraham not only approved of, but in most cases actually created as his moral standards.

The only parts I tend to agree with would come from the Christian New Testament where Jesus actually renounces a lot of the immoral crap from the Old Testament. But even the New Testament makes Jesus out to be what I personally consider to be an immoral "God". Especially if certain things are taken as they are actually written.

You talk about artistic inspiration, but for me to be inspired by the New Testament I would need to reject most of its tenets, not the least of which would be the very claim that Jesus was the "sacrificial lamb" of the God of Abraham sent to be crucified to 'pay' for our sins.

For me personally, that very action right there would be a highly immoral thing for any supposedly loving benevolent God to be associated with, much less for it to be his own designed plan.

So I most certainly wouldn't turn to the Bible for moral guidance. On the contrary overall I would condemn it as being grossly immoral for the most part.

~~~~

And this brings us to a very interesting question indeed.

Why should a person need to seek somewhere else for moral guidance?

Is it assumed that people cannot possibly have a sense of morality of their own that they need to seek moral ideas from other sources?

Clearly, most people decide for themselves what they consider to be moral. In fact, I personally hold that most "Christians" actually prefer the moral values of Jesus over the highly immoral values of the God of Abraham.

Take Jesus out of the picture and they want nothing to do with the religion.

The God of Abraham instructed people to judge each other and to stone sinners to death. The reason Christians like Jesus so much is because he rejected those teachings and instead taught people not to judge others and not to violently kill others as being 'sinners'.

The God of Abraham instructed people to seek revenge of equal value as in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Jesus rejected that teaching and taught people to forgive one another and to turn the other cheek when someone does you wrong.

Jesus was the complete opposite moral value system from the God of Abraham. Yet, the Hebrew fables attempt to meld these two stories together by proclaiming that Jesus was the demigod son of the God of Abraham.

To me that's ludicrous right there. It just automatically destroys any good morals that Jesus might have tried to bring into the picture.

Besides, it makes no sense to pretend that a good-natured demigod could somehow make up for a immoral God. Even if Jesus was trying to be far more highly moral than the God of Abraham, that would help matters much at all.

In the end, we are the ones who decide what we will accept as being 'moral' or not moral. In fact, when a Christian tries to 'defend' the morality of the God of Abraham, all they are attempting to do is convince people to condone that level of immorality as being 'reasonable' based on the idea that the people who were being 'punished' supposedly deserved the punishments that were being delved out.

But that's ridiculous.

If people should already have an innate sense of morality, why should they need to justify immoral crap?

I personally feel deeply sorry for anyone who actually needs to turn to any outside source for a sense of morality. That only shows that they have no sense of morality of their own.

It would be like someone turning to Adolph Hitler for moral values and then trying to justify everything that Hitler does using lame excuses that Hitler must have a justification that what we just can't know.

Those kinds of arguments are truly pathetic.

People who need to turn to an external source for a sense of morality are truly in bad shape. And if they have no sense of morality of their own, then how could they ever know if the source they turned to was moral or not?

They couldn't.

So when a person even suggests that they are turning to religion for morality all they are doing is confessing that they have no clue what constitutes morality in the first place.

[coffeeveritas]

I would certainly tend to agree with your general view.

The only problem is that when it comes to the Bible, it's no different from anything else. You say, "I think the real difference is whether you decide to use those stories as something to inform your moral, metaphysical, and epistemological imagination,... or..."

But you may as well stop right there.

I would absolutely not use the Bible to inform my moral standards.

You see the harsh Old Testament stories, the insane stance on contraception, the condemnation of homosexuals, the weekly sermons filled with guilt and shame designed to manipulate people, and in light of all of that you don't want to get your morality from anywhere near all that madness. That's cool, I would avoid all that too.

I wouldn't actually try to derive moral "standards" from the Bible either. I was talking about imagination. I'm thinking of looking at the Bible the same way historians and scholars look at philosophers. They're only interested in the views that the philosophers held that were different than the culture around them, the others they were just copying and that's not terribly interesting. I think there are many beneficial ways that we can see life-altering echos of real love and goodness in the ways that Bible exemplifies grace beyond the world of its time. It's also more than just morality for me, i.e., the other categories that I mentioned. The people who need to have the moral imagination shaped are the ones protesting gay funerals.

And this brings us to a very interesting question indeed.

Why should a person need to seek somewhere else for moral guidance?

Is it assumed that people cannot possibly have a sense of morality of their own that they need to seek moral ideas from other sources?

. . .

So when a person even suggests that they are turning to religion for morality all they are doing is confessing that they have no clue what constitutes morality in the first place.

Well, psychologically speaking everyone gets there morality from someone else. There is no well of purely objective moral fact that anyone is drawing on, unless you have some sort of believe in a moral soul that was shaped by some sort of god. Evolutionary psychology tells us that humans learned to adapt "morality" as a way of functioning efficiently as a society and therefore increasing the likelihood that the tribe would survive. The codes for each tribe would vary widely and so the conclusion drawn is that each tribe inevitably influences what its members see as "moral." Everybody's getting the way they think and the sense of right and wrong from someone; humans are communal animals. Right now many people are being formed in that way but the media, but that still counts as ideas that are being put out there by another person. So even if you have subsumed your morality into your very being, you still got it from someone else.

When I say I use the stories of the Bible in an intentional way to shape my moral imagination (as well as other things, but you seem to be focused on morality), I'm deliberately choosing the things that influence me. I of course also have people that I am in community with that discuss these things, as well as books from authors I trust, and my own experiences and reflections that all serve to shape my imagination. I was suggesting the Bible as an ingredient that has been important to me, but there are lots of ways to find goodness, hope, healing, and love. So once again, you really don't have to use the Bible if you don't want to, you're fine.

[chi pan]

and tell me, what facts are there to prove athiestic cosmology? what tests? i don't want to hear dating methods unless you have some evidence of them proving 100% that they have accurately dated something they already knew the date of that was over 2000 years old. if not, it's not a proven test.

Every damn bit of evidence we have in every damn field of scientific enquiry you can name points to an old universe.

NONE of it points to a young universe(except in the fevered imaginings of cretinist "scientists" desperate to perpetrate any lie in support of their fairytale)

Ok sorry I missed this one that was addressed to me it's hard to see when many conversations are going on at once. Anyways you say every Bit of evidence in every field is evidence of an old earth. Since this is an absolute statement it's easy to prove wrong. The theory of gravity does not support an old earth therefore the statement you made is false. I know you will say this is not what you meant but that should teach you to be careful with absolutes. As for what you ask me for (evidence for a young earth), I can give an example. I'm sure you know all about carbon dating and all that and how carbon 14 is made in the atmosphere. It is estimated by most scientists that it would take about 50,000 years to reach equilibrium to the point where the amount of carbon 14 produced and the amount decaying are equal and the amount of existing carbon 14 remains constant. The problem however is that we have not reached equalibrium yet. The amound of carbon 14 is increasing. This fact not only proves a young earth, but it it could explain how measurements of objects thousands of years old could be inaccurate. I have presented my evidence and I also expect you to do the same rather than saying "it's everywhere."

[Abracadabra]

So even if you have subsumed your morality into your very being, you still got it from someone else.

How can you be so sure of that?

For me personally it may very well be that I got my morals from my mother. I most certainly didn't get them from my dad.

Of, they could have simply been my own personal choices too. In fact, I actually did make a conscious choice that I wanted to be a "good person" quite early in my life. I actually made that choice quite consciously. Almost like you'd chose what career you might want to go into.

However, when it came to defining what is meant by a "good person", I don't feel that I needed to look to anyone else for guidance on that. On the contrary I intuitively knew that to be a "good person" simply boils down to "Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you". I didn't even get that idea from anywhere. From my perspective it's just the obvious thing.

If I'm going around doing things to other people that I wouldn't want them to do to me, then I could hardly consider myself to be a "good person".

So I'm not convinced that I got my sense of morality from anyone other than myself. As far as I can tell it was my own personal decision based on my own personal idea of what being a "good person" means to me.

After all, if the core philosophy truly is based on "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", then why would you need to look to someone else for a model on that? You should be able to know immediately what is "good" or "bad", etc., based entirely on how you would like to be treated by other people.

There would be no need for any outside role model or influence at all.

So when you say, "So even if you have subsumed your morality into your very being, you still got it from someone else.", how can you be so sure of that?

What makes you think that an individual couldn't come up with their own moral values based entirely on how they would like to be treated?

I feel just the opposite of your view. I feel that there is really no need at all to look outside of yourself for moral values. Yet, you seem to be taking the stance that everyone must necessarily get their moral values from an external source.

What's your reasoning behind that?

[Reforged]

Define "metaphysical" and how Bible stories would inform me of it please.
Then define "epistemological" and how the Bible stories would expand on my understanding of truth, belief and justification.
I would also be intrigued to learn how taking the Bible literally could ever lead to a sane world view.

Hello Raphiel Drake, I don't believe we've had any sort of exchange as of yet, nice to make your acquaintance!

Here are the definitions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology


The terms themselves, however, don't really convey what I'm talking about unless you add the modifier "imagination" as I did in my post. I'm not using the term "imagination" in a childish way, but as it has been used in contemporary philosophy to convey the unique creative impulse and way of proceeding that each person has. It's a post-postmodern adaptation of the phrase "worldview" that has typically been used, but which failed to communicate the artistry of the human psyche. I was basically just saying that the stories of people throughout history reflecting solemnly on a mystical world and divine being that they encounter, as well as how they struggle to find a way of life and relation can teach us something about how we live and think now. It's the translatability of art through time.

As far as translating the Bible literally goes, I was saying that doing so was insane. It's not a constitution; it's not something that can be read literally. So reading it literally doesn't lead to a sane "worldview".

Some very apt questions to be sure, hope I was able to clarify.

The terms themselves, however, don't really convey what I'm talking about unless you add the modifier "imagination" as I did in my post. I'm not using the term "imagination" in a childish way, but as it has been used in contemporary philosophy to convey the unique creative impulse and way of proceeding that each person has. It's a post-postmodern adaptation of the phrase "worldview" that has typically been used, but which failed to communicate the artistry of the human psyche. I was basically just saying that the stories of people throughout history reflecting solemnly on a mystical world and divine being that they encounter, as well as how they struggle to find a way of life and relation can teach us something about how we live and think now. It's the translatability of art through time.

As far as translating the Bible literally goes, I was saying that doing so was insane. It's not a constitution; it's not something that can be read literally. So reading it literally doesn't lead to a sane "worldview".

Some very apt questions to be sure, hope I was able to clarify.
[/quote]

Pleased to meet you too Coffee.
Don't worry, I knew what they meant. I wanted you to explain how The Bible gave us insight into either.
Imagination is great when it comes to works of creativity, however, it is no measuring device for what is. You said that The Bible could be used to understand the metaphysical and the epistemological but I fail to see how that is the case. I would agree that The Bible should be kept around for insight into the workings of mythology or the primitive mindset but I can't see any other use for it. Any morale message it presents is quickly contradicted by itself and the contradictions far outweigh the morale messages. As for insights on the metaphysical it provides only severely biased interpretations, none of which can be seriously considered to have any philosophical value. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we define what knowledge is. The Bible makes no attempts to establish what knowledge is preferring instead to replace it entirely with belief. That is not a mind-set that cares for truth or justification.

I think you need to seriously consider if that is a good thing for anyone to learn. If we are to use imagination for the scale of how valuable the Bible is then we should not look at it as anything other than a work of great creativity, a work of art but a myth nonetheless. To use imagination to weigh up philisophical, logical, moral or factual value would be a gross error of judgement.

[coffeeveritas]

Pleased to meet you too Coffee.
Don't worry, I knew what they meant. I wanted you to explain how The Bible gave us insight into either.
Imagination is great when it comes to works of creativity, however, it is no measuring device for what is. You said that The Bible could be used to understand the metaphysical and the epistemological but I fail to see how that is the case. I would agree that The Bible should be kept around for insight into the workings of mythology or the primitive mindset but I can't see any other use for it. Any morale message it presents is quickly contradicted by itself and the contradictions far outweigh the morale messages. As for insights on the metaphysical it provides only severely biased interpretations, none of which can be seriously considered to have any philosophical value. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we define what knowledge is. The Bible makes no attempts to establish what knowledge is preferring instead to replace it entirely with belief. That is not a mind-set that cares for truth or justification.

I think you need to seriously consider if that is a good thing for anyone to learn. If we are to use imagination for the scale of how valuable the Bible is then we should not look at it as anything other than a work of great creativity, a work of art but a myth nonetheless. To use imagination to weigh up philisophical, logical, moral or factual value would be a gross error of judgement.

Hmm. . . That's still not the definition of "imagination" that I'm thinking of. I'll have to find a good article on post-post modernity to link you to.

As far as the metaphysical goes, are you aware of an account that is not severely biased? Of course the Bible is a biased account, all accounts are biased. I was saying there was a way to encounter the bias in the Bible through your own bias and come up with a more informed bias.
As for the moral, I believe I addressed that in an earlier post on this thread.
As for the epistemology, that has been a part of theology since the beginning. Of course you probably wouldn't like the writings of Justin Martyr, since his is a very Christian epistemology. Nevertheless, modern writers such as Rob Bell would say that "all truth is God's truth," or translated out of religious language, "there are truths present in the world which all share a common truth-source." Once again, probably not one you would like all that much, but it does show that people have used Scripture as a jumping off point for epistemological reflection. I'm going to guess you would disagree with most of it, but it can lead to some beneficial ideas.

Even after all of this you might argue that it is harmful. There are all kinds of evils in the world caused by people using Scripture to justify their own twisted self-righteousness. That's true, that's basically my entire childhood. The institutionalized church is the most evil, damaging thing I have ever encountered. There are also people like Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. who used Scripture to shape their imaginations and did some truly great things with it. There are people today doing the same things. I would say the Bible can be beneficial, not that it is always beneficial. I'm just thinking about what's possible, but if you are not comfortable with the Bible, that's fine too, don't worry about it.

---

So even if you have subsumed your morality into your very being, you still got it from someone else.

How can you be so sure of that?

For me personally it may very well be that I got my morals from my mother. I most certainly didn't get them from my dad.

Of, they could have simply been my own personal choices too. In fact, I actually did make a conscious choice that I wanted to be a "good person" quite early in my life. I actually made that choice quite consciously. Almost like you'd chose what career you might want to go into.

Well the idea that you get everything from someone is pretty common in psychology and philosophy now-a-days. All thoughts are based on data, where would you be getting this totally autonomous data apart from your senses?

As for making a decision to be a good person, you would have to have a definition of what you thought a good person is, which brings me to . . .

However, when it came to defining what is meant by a "good person", I don't feel that I needed to look to anyone else for guidance on that. On the contrary I intuitively knew that to be a "good person" simply boils down to "Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you". I didn't even get that idea from anywhere. From my perspective it's just the obvious thing.

In defining what you "intuitively" knew to be good you quoted Luke 6:31 straight out of the Bible. The "golden rule," as it is called, was popularized by Christianity in western culture and so most people would use it as their definition of what a "good" person is, while some other cultures have concepts of being a "good" person that are based on communal identity and honor. The fact that you used the golden rule as your definition of "good" shows that you are operating out of a subsumed idea.

After all, if the core philosophy truly is based on "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", then why would you need to look to someone else for a model on that? You should be able to know immediately what is "good" or "bad", etc., based entirely on how you would like to be treated by other people.

There would be no need for any outside role model or influence at all.

I agree that Luke 6:31 provides a great moral insight on how to empathize with others in your morality. However, how you "like" to be treated is a somewhat subjective standard, and the treatment you like may actually offend some people. Also, people with various psychological issues may have strange ideas about what constitutes "good" treatment, so there is some thinking to be done here.

[Abracadabra]

The fact that you used the golden rule as your definition of "good" shows that you are operating out of a subsumed idea.

No, it doesn't mean that at all.

On the contrary I had absolutely no idea at the time that any such "golden rule" existed. The fact that my natural intuitive feelings on the matter can be stated via the"golden rule" are pure coincidence.

In fact, all that goes to show is that the very concept of the so-called 'golden rule' is extremely natural and intuitive.

It didn't originate with Jesus. This idea was taught by Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and many others long before the rumors of Jesus ever came to be.

It's just a very basic common sense notion.

In fact, this is precisely how we can know that the Jesus rumors are false and that Jesus could in no way be associated with any "God of Abraham".

It makes no sense to believe that mere moral men like Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu and so many others would have realized far ahead of time that the Hebrew God was finally going to wise up.

The God of Abraham never taught anyone to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". On the contrary, the God of Abraham taught people to seek and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and to stone sinners to death.

Your assumption that a very innate common sense ideal would need to be subsumed from elsewhere is the error in your thinking.

Moreover, if they teach that crap in philosophy classes it only demonstrated how utterly naive they are. Where do they think the earliest humans came up with their moral values? Some one had to originate these ideas somewhere along the way before anyone else could subsume them.

So clearly the subject of philosophy has a gaping hole in it's understanding of things if it teachings that all ideas necessarily had to be subsumed from someone else.

Clearly someone had to be the FIRST to come up with an idea before someone could subsume it from them.

So beware of people who teach that they know what they are talking about.

Just think about it for a moment yourself and you'll clearly see that someone had to be the originator of an idea.

All ideas cannot have been subsumed from others.

In fact, to believe so requires a complete denial of human creativity.

So beware of what you 'believe' just because some establishment proclaims that they believe its true. Philosophy is one of the slowest disciplines to keep up with modern knowledge. They often become quite stagnated in older classical world-views that simply hold no merit in our modern understanding of things.

The study of philosophy often focuses on ancient philosophers and on philosophical thinking form the classical age, and it tries to build "atop" of those utterly false notions.

It's probably the least dependable academic study that you can point to in this modern day and age.