Kantian Naturalist and I have been hopscotching from thread to thread, discussing the nature of religious language. The main point of contention is the assertoric/disclosive distinction: When is religious language assertoric — that is, when does it make claims about reality — and when is it merely disclosive, revealing attitude and affect without making actual claims?
I’ve created this thread as a permanent home for this otherwise nomadic discussion.
It may also be a good place for an ongoing discussion of another form of religious language — scripture. For believers who take scripture to be divinely inspired, the question is when it should be taken literally, when it should be taken figuratively or metaphorically, and whether there are consistent and justifiable criteria for drawing that distinction.
Neil Rickert,
Erik is willing to make a claim about the past, namely that the biblical flood was an historical event. I’m simply asking for clarification — does he mean by that claim that at one point in the past only eight humans were alive on the entire planet.
I don’t see why you object to this question. If this were about anything other than religious beliefs, I doubt there would be any evasion on his part or support for that evasion by you and Kantian Naturalist.
I’m not sure I understand this. Personally, I do not think all stories about the past are equally valid as history. We make decisions based on how things work, and we base how thinks work on history.
Possibly off topic example: Someone posted on Facebook a home crystal growing experiment that advised children to mix bleach and ammonia. Does it matter what history tells us about this mixture? Is textual analysis sufficient?
Does textual analysis justify asserting the equivalence of the ice age with a water flood? Someone is off the rails here.
Yes, I think I see your points and they make sense to me.
If by “any other comment” you mean to throw the floor open to wider questions, I am interested in how any concept of realism interacts with the types of text traditions you link to scripture and (separately) to science.
I’m not sure that’s true. Eric seems to think the ice age caused the extinction of a species that most biologists think was ideally adapted to the ice age. There’s some divergent thinking going on there.
I know about a bit about virtual particles. Some more about virtualizing applied to computers. Are virtual points something mathematical?
It’s like asking whether the story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree is about a bing cherry tree or some other kind of cherry.
Personally, when I read the Noah story, I took it to be fiction (something like a fable). But several years later, someone suggested that it might have been about a local flood. Should I have asked that person whether there were only 8 people alive? Would that apply to just to local region or the entire planet? It seems to me that such questions are a bit too specific.
I also dismissed the Adam & Eve story as fiction. But I remember (in a religion class) a student asked who Cain married — was it his sister? And the teacher suggested that maybe he married somebody from a neighboring town.
It turns out that there are all sorts of way of interpreting those Bible stories. So what’s the point of demanding very explicit details about one particular way of interpreting the stories?
Yes.
Compactification (mathematics) — Wikipedia.
Neil Rickert,
The difference is that Erik has claimed that it is literally true and hinted that all humans other than those on the ark were wiped out. I’m simply asking for clarification of his claim.
The multitude of possible interpretations is why I’m asking for clarification of Erik’s claims. I’m asking a very simple, straightforward question that can be answered with a yes or no. I have no idea why you find that so offensive. Frankly, Erik’s evasions are what I consider the impolite and improper behavior here.
Umm, because the very anecdote you just related reveals what is the point of “demanding” details about one of the stories. The founding story of christianity is that Adam and Eve are the parents of every human alive — and not incidentally, that we all inherited a burden of sin from Eve (ordained basis for misogyny there, no thanks you shitty manipulative god) — there cannot be any “neighboring town”, because there aren’t any other people besides the two which god has created plus their born descendants.
The fact that some dissembling teacher blithely answers “neighboring town” to avoid the issue of Adam’s children committing incest (for generations at least until the great-grandchildren could breed with their cousins-twice-removed) doesn’t make that a valid “way of interpreting” the original bible story.
WIth the benefit of hindsight and science, we know that there really were other people around, even if god miraculously poofed two of his creations into a special garden somewhere. Depending on when one wants to imagine this miraculous poofage occurred, we can say “Adam” and “Eve” were sent into a world peopled with hunter-gatherer clans, or perhaps proto-agricultural herding settlements, or perhaps a culture sophisticated enough to be worthy of the term “neighboring towns”. SO in that limited sense, the dissembling teacher could be right; IF you can imagine miraculous poofage concurrently with known anthropologic reality, then Cain did not necessarily commit incest.
But in that case, no surprise that teacher does not have the courage to go on to the next obvious question: When “Adam’s” children interbreed with a few of the millions of humans already existing around them, who also have their own living descendants uncontaminated by “Adam’s” genetic line, in what possible sense could we say that “Adam” is anything special?
The genesis story loses its whole point as the basis for a sin-denouncing christ-redeeming religion. When it turns out that I am not descended from him but from some other people in one of those “neighboring towns” I am not to be condemned for Adam’s bullshit sin; I don’t have anything to repent; I don’t need to be redeemed; the whole christian project is based on literal nonsense.
And all because of asking “explicit details about one particular way of interpreting the [story]”.
Of course, getting confirmed christians to actually examine those details (eg your teacher thoughtlessly brushing off the question) is a whole ‘nuther project … but as many (most?) atheists who were once christians themselves will tell you, it’s those kind of questions which made them realize how pointless and downright heartless their religion is.
Gotta start somewhere.
I’m willing to listen to a literal non history book rendering, if anyone is willing to put one forward. I’ve lost track of the times I’veth asked.
I have to say I was horrified by the old testament as a child and never got over it. When I figured out it was fiction, my horror attached itself to the people who seemed to believe it and thought it was a good idea.
Exactly.
Posting from in flight WiFi. Something new.
Some of the weaseling here seems really silly (or rather, obviously a function of religious bias) to me.
So we’re talking about the past. Suppose somebody says to me, “Over the last 50 years, the Atlanta Hawks have been the best team in the NBA.” I may want to know if he’s kidding, crazy, speaks a different language, has odd criteria for “best” or whatever. So I may ask, “What do you think makes a basketball team good? Championship rings? Wins? Point differential? Players sent to All Star games? Number of fans that show up to games? Etc.”
If our criteria turn out to be similar, I may ask, “Are you serious? Do you really mean that the Hawks have been regularly better than the Lakers, the Celtics, the Pistons and the Bulls? Why do you think this?” Etc.
That’s how people find out what the hell other people are talking about. It’s not weird. It’s not unfair. It’s not complicated. It’s not rude. And it’s not inappropriate because we’re talking about the past. It’s also not necessarily uninteresting because it’s not a deep philosophical question–although it may be uninteresting to people who don’t care about basketball.
Are you guys well?
Double post.
ETA: I’ll use this space, I guess.
I forgot to mention the apology for Erik according to which we shouldn’t ask him anything, because he might not know what he thinks. That’s a beaut: what prevents him from saying “I really don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about that”?
So many defense attorneys; so many bad arguments.
It wasn’t that long ago that KN gave a nice exposition.
And the more B.S. the weightier it is!
Mung,
From your mouth to God’s ear.
You should support that claim or retract it. 😉
I think that “pleading the fifth” has taken on a new meaning here at TSZ.
Not even Mung is a fundie. Makes him boring. Sorry.
TSZ is no doubt well prepared to deal with people who want to treat the Bible as a science text. People who want to treat it as a compilation of religious texts need not apply.
Yes, I often quote the Bible to support my claims. I try to average at least one Bible verse per post.
But no one cares what you think, since what you think rarely tracks with reality anyways.
Revelation 2:6 Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Faint praise.
Not even wrong, and not interested in being shown to be wrong.
Some people mistakenly refer to this blog as “The Skeptical Zone.”
Comments like this aren’t likely to convince Gregory that you’re not all a bunch of inbred bigoted southern rednecks.
Edits ahead – I mistook WJM for Mung
Bonjourno boys. Good weekend all?
So I’m wondering what is the right interpretation of the bible and who do you know that? How come you’ve got it but other Christians don’t? Also why would an entity with an infinite skill-set choose to communicate so badly? Because we’ve got Barry and KF saying Jesus stuff is some of best supported historical events ever, and you know, it really isn’t.
My wife’s a Razorback!
Bullshit.
You don’t know that Mung. Put her straight! testify! We wont bring up that many Christian’s disagree with you.
No – that’s “special pleading the fifth” that has taken on the new meaning.
That’s better than being from Oklahoma, barely.
You need to be paying attention.it starts here.
hotshoe_:
Mung:
hotshoe_:
I probably just don’t understand what it means to be a “skeptic.”
Concept of realism? As in physicalism or naturalism? These are useless to textual analysis. On the other hand, metaphysical realism, the notion that metaphysical categories or distinctions, such as “form” versus “substance/content”, “entity” versus “characteristic/identifier”, “formation” versus “formulation”, etc. are real (=highly relevant) and indispensable in textual analysis. I’m a realist in the scholastic sense. I’m a rationalist (as opposed to empiricist) in the modern sense.
Mung, this is just more bullshit on your part.
The reason YOU CAN’T convince me that “it’s false” when I tell you
IS NOT because I fail at skepticism or I’m not willing to learn or am not “interested in being shown to be wrong” or any other bullshit you wish to make up about me. It is because I have already been proved right, It is because people do actually say that in public, and I have supported my claim above with quotes from people saying just that. Which you – goddamn it – clipped out of what you quoted.
That was a scummy thing for you to do.
I don’t know if you have any understanding of what “it means to be a skeptic” — but I am certain of one thing: you don’t understand the value of quoting someone honestly.
You owe me an apology.
And you probably owe yourself a time-out before you get tempted to spurt out another stupid one-liner.
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Edit all the blockquotes, deleted some extra-rude stuff.
LOL! 🙂
Otoh, you probably just don’t understand what it means to be a (non-denom) Christian who rejects IDism either.
Of those two options, I’d recommend not learning what it feels like to become a ‘skeptic’ (or cynic for that matter, like many atheist skeptics here).
But extra-rude stuff is your easily recognisable speciality, hotshoe.
hotshoe said:
No, Mung has demonstrably proven you wrong with his vine quote from the bible. Nobody, not even fundamentalist literalists, understand the bible (or any “word of god”) to be literally true in the sense that you are claiming because nobody holds that Jesus was an actual vine and his disciples actual branches, even though that’s what god (Jesus) said he and they were.
I haven’t even read the Bible and I can understand the simple logic of Mung’s quote and what Erik is trying to explain to you. I suggest that it is your concept of “Biblical Literalism” that is faulty here. I’m not a Christian and I’m at least getting a rudimentary new perspective on the basics of Biblical interpretation via this thread.
I have to admit that I have often thought of Christian apologetics the same way many cynics here view it, but Erik’s, Mung’s and 5MM’s thoughtful posts have made me realize my perspective has been two-dimensional. I’ve never even thought about considering religious scripture a genre with a necessary conceptual lens through which it should be read and understood, and I’ve never really thought about 5MM’s point about divine revelation being the only means by which knowledge can ultimately be attained.
It’s actually pretty interesting stuff if one can set aside their blinding anti-theistic, anti-patriarchical hatred.
Been away…
I agree absolutely, which is why I found Erik’s conflation of the Old Testament, the Flood narrative, and (until he edited it) Genesis so amusingly confused, and why I was disappointed to read your response “That sounds basically right to me”.
I also agree that, in the interpretation of the scriptural genre, it is the spiritual/allegorical/ethical reading that is most important, and the historical accuracy is less important. IIRC, no-one has disputed this.
HOWEVER, Erik has made the claim that the Flood narrative is historically accurate
and he has “supported” his claim with vague allusions to “archeological confirmation”, mammoths (who were too busy playing with the unicorns to get onboard, I guess), and arguments re the dangers of over-concluding from the absence of evidence. When pressed on specifics, he changes the subject, then later claims
All Patrick and I are trying to do is seek some clarification regarding what aspects of the Flood narrative that Erik thinks are historically accurate. His evasions, such as
sadden me.
Is this some irrelevant shibboleth?
I think not. Granted, it’s not an interesting question philosophically, but for those of us who live in countries where there is a powerful political movement eager to spend our money to teach our children that Genesis is historically accurate, it’s important to never give a free ride to anyone who makes such a claim.
It’s really simple, Erik need only retract the claim, and we can all move on to the far more interesting question of the ethical lessons taught.
ETA: Evidence for the existence of unicorns
The deep (?) philosophical question of how discourse in the present relates to the past is interesting to me (if that is the question you meant to avoid and the one I take Neil to have alluded to).
Particular instances of that question with regard to bible miracles and whether they actually occurred in some everyday sense of the phrase are not interesting to me. I think they did not and there is not much more to hold an interesting discussion about. I understand people with certain religious views believe they did, but I don’t find discussions with such people on that topic to go anywhere interesting.
On the other hand, I am interested in understanding other aspects of the bible, eg the mythology, the spirituality, the relation to what the bible says about historical events versus what archaeology and secular history say.
I was groping to see if there is an possible relation between the discussion in Neil’s realism thread and textual analysis as you see it.
In that other thread, “internal realism” was discussed. I understand this position in analytic philosophy as saying that questions of realism are only meaningful within a given conceptual scheme.
I understand textual analysis as the process of examining a text to try to understand how a particular audience for that text, and in the context of a particular purpose, might make sense of the world.
So now: does “making sense of the world” correspond to a conceptual scheme for that audience and purpose? If so, does the issue of realism get addressed the same way; that is, we can only answer questions of what is real after we pick out the sense in which the audience understands the text for its particular purpose.
Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property; in the domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold authority over women and children.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Hatred is always wrong, but being opposed to patriarchy — whether one is a theist or not — is part of moral decency.
I check my notes that I wrote yesterday. But I cannot see what I wrote yesterday; I can only see what is there now. For all I know, the notes might have changed over night.
I do remember what I wrote, and it agrees with what I am reading. But, for all I know, my memory might have changed over night.
I don’t actually worry about any of this. I take our theory of the past to be pretty good. But the thought experiment does indicate that it is all inference from the present.
And, of course, we do revise the past. This is well illustrated by the claim that Paul Erdos used to make about being 2 billion years old: “I distinctly remember that when I was young, the earth was 2 billion years old. Now it is 4 billion years old. Therefore I must be 2 billion years old.” (that’s not an exact quote).
Yes, there are philosophical questions about the past. I’m not sure that they are particularly deep.
I don’t consider your system of morality valid, and I consider any proclamations of morality coming from you to be nothing more than rhetoric and politics, so…
IMO, the interesting thing about knowledge of the past is basically the same as the interesting thing about cognition, generally. It’s intentional. I.e., when conducting our lives, we don’t normally think about our thoughts, memories, perceptions, emotions (although we CAN do this too)–we think about what they are OF.
That is the mystery of consciousness, and it is as deep as philosophy gets.
William J. Murray,
Participation in this blog is entirely voluntary, William. The idea is that participants can discuss and argue differing points of view on a wide variety of topics. A comment that says effectively “I’m not listening to you” doesn’t advance the discussion much. Why not just ignore comments and commenters that you don’t want to engage with?
Ironic, considering that I take the exact same dismissive attitude towards yours.
But then your notes would not match your memory of what you wrote, unless your memory also changed and so changed as to just match your notes.
But then your memory would not match your notes, unless your notes also changed and so changed as to just match your memory.
Maybe both your memory and your notes changed. Even so, you can be certain the two match.
Or maybe you have no memory and when you read your notes you just think you have a memory of writing them.
But what you see there now just is what you wrote yesterday. So you start off in the wrong direction and it’s hardly any wonder you are soon lost.
Jeremiah 50:6: My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains; they have gone from mountain to hill; they have forgotten their resting-place.
Maybe one of these days you’ll create on OP on just what IDism is and why it should be rejected and that will help me make up my mind.
🙂
If it helps you at all, I’ve already rejected the idea that “Intelligent Design” is the way to convince atheists that there is a God.
Good thing I don’t come here to eat then.
Welcome to the extended mind thesis (Chalmers & Clark 1998).
I’ve already written a book about it. Surely this isn’t the place to discuss it. You just call it ID (when really, it is IDT) and swoon to it (do you still?), as if every theist should.
Better tell the Discovery Institute that in their ‘renewal’ of science and culture ‘battle.’ You’ve promoted their ideology in public under pseudonym; they might listen to you, before sticking their heads back in the mud of their double-talking movement.