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.
If there was a global flood, and one uses surviving records of multiple civilisations to support it, clearly there weren’t just 8 Middle-Eastern survivors. So inconsistency remains.
If one instead supposes that everyone lived in one place but subsequently spread, one has some explaining to do regarding the engine of substantial genetic variation which subsequently occurred in this very limited time period – not just to Homo, but to every drownable organism on the planet, plus plants. One would expect to see evidence of a bottleneck in some species but not others distributed consistently with their susceptibility to flooding. One doesn’t. Whichever way you try to piece together this story, something requires a hammer and chisel to make it fit.
It is possible that the South American story was influenced by tales told by early Christian visitors.
Erik’s suppositions that physics has not disproved the Israelite cosmology seem dubious. One requires a suspended canopy capable of delivering 8km of liquid water (about 4 billion cubic kilometres). Steam occupies a 1700 times greater volume than liquid water, so the depth of the canopy would be greater than the present diameter of the earth (a rough calculation, ignoring spherical geometry, changing density and other gases).
The pressure at the base of this canopy would be the same as the pressure at the bottom of an 8km ocean. So Noah et al might burst as the pressure moves from above them to below, at a rate of about 30 feet an hour. That’s not a massive decompression, but I’m not sure the body really adjusts that readily.
Finally, the potential energy in a suspended canopy is vast. Make it fall at that rate, it heats up the earth to an unsustainable degree. In fact I think that this would limit the fall – once the atmosphere has heated up above 100 degrees, no more could get down. So it stays there, one hell of a greenhouse gas, if any heat could get in, or a blanket preventing loss of radiogenic heat.
And indeed, one is essentially supposing that God had this water on standby just in case!
On reality: I was trying to ask a question regarding whether textual analysis led to a sort of relatively about reality. Is there an objective reality, eg one revealed by science, which we should judge a textual interpretation against? I presume that we have already taken the purpose of the text to be to discuss such a reality, and not to make, eg, an ethical or spiritual point.
Or does textual analysis lead to some variant of linguistic relativity?
In earlier posts, you said that textual analysis should also be applied to scientific texts. What sort of purposes for the text and conclusions about how or whether the text speaks to an objective reality does that lead to, in general?
Another question about text analysis after a bit of setup.
Some possible reasons for similar flood stories:
1. There was one common flood which all cultures with flood myths experienced.
2. There were a series of local floods which each culture used as basis for its myths.
3. One older culture started the flood myth. and that story spread to others. (Contact of ancient and distant civilizations though trade was more common than is sometimes thought.)
4. Cultures independently invented flood stories and punishment as a way of social control. Flood catastrophes were used based on first-hand experience of the dangers of living near rivers. Or perhaps fossils of water-dwelling creatures were noticed and entered the explanation.
Has textual analysis been applied to trying to find evidence for any of these (or other) explanations? For example, by tracing commonality in texts and relating it to the age of texts, can we find a small number of originating myths and trace their spread?
Are you saying that they use this type of bible literalism as part of their arguments in the political arena? I don’t see that. Some examples:
On evolution: the arguments I see are based on science denial or on attempting to say knowledge is relative to presuppositions and the presuppositions of science are no better than those of religion.
On climate change: again, I see arguments against this as based on science denial or on claiming that God has granted dominion of earth to man to do with as man pleases.
On LGBT marriage: the arguments I see are based on appealing to traditional definitions of marriage (perhaps based on religion for the source of that definition) or on saying that forcing a religious civil servant to treat LGBT people equally infringes on the religious freedom of the civil servant.
I think all of these counter arguments are wrong. I think the best way to deal with them is to argue them on their merits, not to discuss bible literalism.
I’m not sure if you are saying my posts have made excuses for intellectual dishonesty. If so, I don’t see how.
When it comes to the intellectual honesty of Erik’s views, I personally don’t even understand them well enough to say anything about that. I suspect that is because he brings a framework of scholastic philosophy and textual analysis to forming and explaining them. I understand neither of these.
In any event, I see his views as bearing no resemblance to those of American fundamentalists like Ken Ham.
And Erik’s views are definitely not uninteresting to me.
Just exactly how do you know what the Israelite cosmology was? Please be specific.
It seems to me that the only way to know what the Israelite cosmology was it to examine the text itself. The problem with that is we can only read with 21st century eyes.
It is very difficult to understand what an ancient Hebrew would take from the passages in question. I find that I need to often clarify and explain what I write to folks living in the same culture and time.
I am skeptical of anyone who claims to not only know what the ancient Israelites thought about cosmology but also to know that they were obviously wrong.
Surely you could grant it’s at least possible that you are the one who is mistaken about what they believed.
peace
Not me — Allan Miller posted that.
FWIW, I think Erik is making a different point than bible literalism of the Ken Ham variety with regard to ancient cosmology. And I’m not sure exactly what Erik’s point of view is.
I don’t. KN made the statement that it involved separation of the waters, and Erik said this:
“How is the fact that their flood story matches with their cosmology a deeper problem? A cosmology that science has not disproven. At best science has not confirmed it.”
If Erik is simply saying that science has not disproved their cosmology because we have no idea what it was (!), obviously I have nothing further to say on the matter. That, however, did not appear to mine eyes to be what he was saying.
It is probable that the people writing it did not know how unlikely their stories would prove to be on a naturalistic interpretation. Perhaps we need a Bible 2.0 for the modern age.
Not what I said. I was taking the stance If they thought X, here is why X is unsustainable. Anybody who thinks X has the same difficulty with it. Modern people have less excuse.
I don’t know what they believed. But if anybody believes that a ‘water canopy’ is sustainable, they have a scientific issue to deal with. Water has not changed its properties (or has it…?). I’m not arguing against a strawman position if it turns out the Israelites did not believe it. Only if no-one does, which is patently not the case.
Peas.
You are assuming a priori that text did not have divine authorship. If the author was omniscient he would if course know how the stories would sound to everyone’s ears .
I would agree, I just don’t think a ‘water canopy’ is found anywhere in the text or in the mind of the ancient Hebrews.
peace
Erik,
I am trying to clarify your claims concerning the flood. You are repeatedly and deliberately evading the simple, straightforward question I and others are asking. You even deleted it from your response. Here it is again:
Now, the Bible does say that only eight people survived the flood. Do you believe that to be true in reality? Note that I am not asking about what the text says — that’s very clear. Do you contend, as part of your claim that the flood was an historical event, that in reality those eight people were at one point in time the only living humans on the planet?
A simple yes or no will do.
Kantian Naturalist,
Don’t forget the thermodynamics of the event. Once you know how much water was needed and you know the timespan in which it fell, you can calculate the heat transfer that would have taken place. Then the true believers get to explain how a wooden boat didn’t immediately burst into flame.
BruceS,
I see those arguments, too, but I’ve also seen the literal truth of the Bible used as “evidence” that evolution is wrong.
Even in the cases you mention, demonstrating that their myths are unsupported by, and often contradicted by, the scientific evidence is valuable in swaying public opinion.
I was reading you as defending Erik’s evasions and refusals to answer simple questions about his claim that the biblical flood was an historic event. If that was not your intention, I apologize.
Just a misunderstanding, don’t worry about it.
Perhaps you’ll find this interesting
What Happens When the ‘Moral Majority’ Becomes a Minority (Atlantic)
Whereas I am frankly amazed how Hebrews make some physical details fit. Prior to the flood there’s no mention of rain in the Bible. After the flood, rainbow is mentioned as a new phenomenon. What if the water was in form of heavy steam in the atmosphere and the flood consisted in “clearing the air” of the steam, so to speak?
Our current scientific knowledge may not fit with the story, but as people here keep saying, our current scientific knowledge is open to corrections. Soon enough it’s past scientific knowledge. It happens when you build too specific conclusions on unknowables and false assumptions.
Last thing first, we have precisely NOT taken the purpose of the text to be a discussion of scientific reality. If we did that, we would be worthless as textual analysts.
The flood story, inasmuch as it is a narrative, surely gives the appearance of description of external reality, but in our times we make a distinction between fiction and non-fiction. You may ask, which one is it? The correct answer is that in those times they did not make the distinction. Ancient genres are synthetic, fit for many diverse purposes. The example of folklore is instructive.
Folklore comes closest to the genre of scripture. Folklore does not concentrate on discussing scientific reality, but it is not random fiction either. Folklore provides practical explanations for customs and traditional work methods – not always in accord with science, but surely in accord with people’s way of life, befitting their natural environment. And it also gives expression to popular sentiments, yearnings, and shared beliefs about everything. Folklore is the popular memory and the soul of the people.
“Is there an objective reality, eg one revealed by science, which we should judge a textual interpretation against?”
There certainly is common ground between us and the text which allows us to approach the text, for example the fact that we can read it in the first place. And there are realities against which to judge the veracity of the text, to tell whether it’s a forgery, concoction, propaganda, or an authentic statement.
The judgement about how authentic it is depends on what you take it to be a statement of. If you take the flood story to be a historical event word for word, character for character, day for day, then you cannot accept it of course. But I take flood stories, if not always scriptural, then at least as a memory of humanity expressed in folklore. By all evidence they are a textual/narrative universal.
Erik,
That conflicts with your previous claim:
Are you retracting your claim that the biblical flood was an historical event?
If not, please answer the simple question that has been posed to you repeatedly:
Now, the Bible does say that only eight people survived the flood. Do you believe that to be true in reality? Note that I am not asking about what the text says — that’s very clear. Do you contend, as part of your claim that the flood was an historical event, that in reality those eight people were at one point in time the only living humans on the planet?
A simple yes or no will suffice.
1. …I take flood stories, if not always scriptural, then at least as a memory of humanity expressed in folklore.
2. You are aware that the flood story is in Genesis, Torah, Old Testament, aren’t you? It’s common to Jews, Christians, and even to the Chinese.
Where’s the conflict?
No. Does “folklore” mean to you it didn’t actually happen? And the Bible’s version, for one, is more than folklore.
Erik,
Your habit of removing content then asking disingenuous questions is hardly conducive to civil discussion.
Here’s what I quoted of what you wrote:
Note the part I bolded and compare it to your previous claim:
The two bolded sections conflict.
Of course, you could simply man up, state your claims clearly, and answer the simple question:
Now, the Bible does say that only eight people survived the flood. Do you believe that to be true in reality? Note that I am not asking about what the text says — that’s very clear. Do you contend, as part of your claim that the flood was an historical event, that in reality those eight people were at one point in time the only living humans on the planet?
Your continued evasion is not intellectually honest behavior. Do try to summon the minimal intestinal fortitude required to support your assertions.
Patrick,
You seem to me very uneducated and full of blame compared to Erik. You have been quite unfair, perhaps without knowing it. Spreading your own anger and feeling of injustice here is unnecessary. Can nothing uplift your attitude? (Hint: Don’t try to out-rationalise people who are far more intelligent than you. The dearer human story goes beyond rationality and science.)
1. Education or intelligence? Pick one.
2. Why don’t You, Patrick and Erik take an accredited IQ test and wager on the outcome with me? I’m backing Patrick, obviously. You therefore have two chances compared to my one. 😉
Thanks.
fifthmonarchyman,
Therefore the author knew it would sound like baloney to anybody with a smattering of basic physics? Hmmmm …
Erik,
It is as if I wrote nothing but my name.
I’m not an expert by any means but I think I have smattering of basic physics and it does not sound like baloney to me.
But then again I don’t see a “water canopy” in the text so maybe we are reading two different bibles. Perhaps you are reading that Bible 2.0 you mentioned
peace
Gregory,
Thank you for sharing your feelings.
Richardthughes,
Dude, you’ll make me blush.
Patrick,
Shhhh!!!! I smell money.
They’re observations based on your communications. I don’t pity you, Patrick, for your infirmities. It just sounds like you don’t know or understand what you’re talking about. Facepalm is needed regularly when you respond to Erik. Did Patrick really say that, as if he (merely his IQ!) knew something most people don’t? Atheism doesn’t do you any good, just more unnecessary suffering. Religious language is not the devil many atheist-skeptics here make it out to be. It is ‘human’ (and perhaps even divine) after all, even as evolutionary anthropologists (devil take most of them) say.
Patrick has failed to win Gregory’s endorsement. *adds this fact to the Bayesian super model* – the odds of you being right have just gone up, Patrick.
Thanks for your thoughts, Erik. I also enjoy your exchanges with KN and many of your other posts.
I do appreciate a dry, ironic touch in humor.
Although one never can be sure in such cases, can one? Especially in internet forums.
fifthmonarchyman,
I was responding to Erik. He supposed that the ‘Israelite cosmology’ involving separation of the waters has not been scientifically refuted. We were not specifically talking about anything in the Bible. What is in the Bible, if it is historically true, had to come from somewhere and go somewhere. Hence physics. If you have a smattering of it and you think that 8km of water suspended in the air (eta: or appearing from ‘the deep’) is not a problem, then good luck to you.
Peas.
Richardthughes,
Being right might make me unelectable, though. The bitter old man demographic is not insubstantial.
Patrick,
Well, I rather doubt Patrick is a ‘super model’. But ‘bitter old man’ sounds right, according to his own negative, blameful words. Despairing atheist is a sad case. Hurt embrace. Refuse light, grace, mercy and hope? Skeptic about-face.
I had all this out with Byers a bit back. Oh, sure continents can move a few thousand km in a hundred days. Oh sure thousands of metres of fine bedded sediment can appear from nowhere and accumulate in a few days. Oh sure sediment can turn into rock through nothing more than its water overburden. Oh sure a few km of water can appear from nowhere.
The question is: why bother with naturalistic explanations at all? They are clearly unsustainable. Why not just go for ‘it was all just one big miracle’?
Gregory,
Hey, I’ll take some of that! Hang on, I have to believe something I find unbelievable? Ah, right. To the pit with me, then.
It sounds like you welcome it. Culture of death.
More ageism from Gregory. I guess that must really be considered hip in Europe now among theists these days!
Gregory,
Actually, I’m working on compassion and awareness currently. I see you’re very attached to your misery. You should sit with that. Look at it deeply. Own it. Once you do, it tends to lose its power and dissipate all on its own. Give yourself a little mercy.
Richardthughes,
That and the intellectual dishonesty and cowardice. Clearly I have more attachments to address.
Only if you have not been paying attention. In my view, the flood stories among different people of the world confirm each other. But no other story than in Genesis has Noah, for example. So to you they would be in conflict and they would bear no resemblance. For you, resurrection of Christ compared to resurrection of Osiris would also bear no resemblance.
Actually, when you take the Old Testament to be historically true your way, then God acts, thinks, rethinks, and reacts every other day, sometimes even on a resting day. Hence miracles all the way. But you knew that.
One of the things wrong with ID is the assumption that you can reverse engineer material configurations and conclude – yup, this one is designed and that one is not. Neither laws of nature or miracles work this way.
In the actual world, laws of nature are continuous without gaps and miracles look seamlessly fitting the natural world after they happen.
Erik,
That’s not the conflict I’m talking about, which you well know since I bolded the parts I was referencing. In your usual . . . style you removed all context and failed to directly address what was written. Again:
Here you are saying that the flood was not an historical event.
Here you are saying the biblical flood was an historical event.
Are you retracting the previous claim?
And, just to be perfectly clear on what you are claiming, stop your craven evasion and answer this simple question:
Now, the Bible does say that only eight people survived the flood. Do you believe that to be true in reality? Note that I am not asking about what the text says — that’s very clear. Do you contend, as part of your claim that the flood was an historical event, that in reality those eight people were at one point in time the only living humans on the planet?
A simple yes or no will suffice.
No. You are misreading. Read again, “If you take the flood story to be a historical event word for word, character for character, day for day, then you cannot accept it of course.”
Now bear in mind that in support of the historical flood I mentioned that every great civilisation has a flood story. And now think. Keep thinking. Maybe you will in the end read right.
There were hermaneutically eight, Patrick, which means like 8,000 in some cultures. You’re not getting the structuralist, folkloric aspects, which are more acrid than assertoric. This may be a function of your advanced age, your lack of education, or your regular unfairness to Erik, who, as Bruce and KN tell us repeatedly, is really interesting if you stop trying to consider whether anything he ever says is (i) true or (ii) consistent with anything else he’s ever said.
Stop being so mean! (And maybe read some T.S. Eliot lit crit so you’ll understand what post modernism is.)
X>{
Gregory,
I appear to have no choice. Wave at me from your cloud as I descend.
Some posters here seem like cross-examining those who hold different positions, continually searching for quotes which they see as contradictions. And maybe sometimes they are contradictions; this is an informal forum and sometimes people express themselves poorly. I certainly do that often.
I find some posts read as though the authors are angry because their interlocutors refuse to take the role of a witness under cross-examination.
I personally am just trying to understand people with different backgrounds and viewpoints. Not necessarily to agree with them.
I also do think there may be some merit in what KN said in a previous post that Erik might be gently pulling KN’s leg in a few of his replies to KN. But so gently that I cannot be sure.
Erik,
So the Flood was a historical but miraculous event? It has left no trace other than in the myths of ancient civilisations, plus the Bible? One wonders why it was necessary to adopt such an elaborate approach. If you can do anything, you don’t need rain or boats. Nor do you need to do something, document it and then make it look as if you haven’t. But of course how can a mere mortal presume to know the Mind of God? It’s a test. I failed.
The myths must have been miraculously relayed also, since according to the ‘Actual Word Of God’ there were 8 survivors, based in the Middle East. There is no evidence of such a significant and recent population bottleneck amongst the peoples (or animals) of the world, nor any evidence that peoples in (say) South America descend from a post-Ark diaspora. God has taken care to erase the genetic evidence, but forgot to deal with the stories? My right eyebrow is raised, just a tad.
What is your less elaborate approach? “Everybody is lying and making stuff up, except me…”?
ETA: Maybe it helps when I say that there are two things continually mixed up in this discussion – the flood as a historical event on one hand and the flood story on the other. The flood story tells us about the event, but the story is not the event. You seem to require an equal sign between them, as if it were a matter of bookkeeping. I seriously have no idea how the flood physically passed, but it’s standard to attribute some trust to the testimony that is closest to the event. Even more so when there are multiple such accounts (the flood story is a stock example of a textual universal) and there’s other circumstantial evidence (in this case ice age). Historians of antiquity usually consider such cases pretty solid evidence. I see no justification to laugh it away the way you do.
I think that it’s a little bit tricky as to whether or not to interpret the text as testimony in the absence of corroborating evidence. However, in this case there does seem to be.
No. Nobody here is confusing map with territory. They are pointing out that maps may be more or less accurate and asking you whether you think one particular map is accurate in one particular aspect. That doesn’t require identity: it requires correspondence.
Erik,
No, I meant a less elaborate approach to ridding the world of its less desirable inhabitants, then covering your tracks, if you are an all-powerful, all-wise deity. One can of course retreat into the ‘presumptuous puny human’ gambit, but I wonder how you would view this text if it only existed in, say, Papuan folk tales.
Clearly, else you would laugh also. It simply seems to be stretching credulity that global folk history records an actual event of which there were precisely 8 middle-eastern survivors, yet it has left no physical trace in geology, nor genetic trace in modern genomes, and which returned animals to the land from which (according to the fossils beneath their feet) they originated. I don’t see folk tales as compelling evidence of something which has left no other trace. Cultural transmission is at least as valid an explanation as collective memory.
‘Historians of antiquity’ would not, I suggest, regard the testimony as real testimony without support. Genesis was not (AFAIK) written by eyewitnesses – unless one believes it was written by God. But I’m not sure how the Bible is protected from including non-divine words which could be mistaken for God’s.
As to the ice age, I don’t see the relevance. There have been many ice ages, the most recent set involving multiple advance and retreat over 3 million years, with the most recent retreat (perhaps temporary) 12,000 years ago. There is no trace of a global flood in Greenland or Antarctica, in cores going back 50,000 or so years.
I understand the issue as trying to read the bible in the same way one would read a CNN report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, instead of reading it as folklore (which may happen to include precise numbers).*
What does it mean for folklore to be true? Even if one reads the folklore as inspired (perhaps indirectly) from historical floods as in KN’s linked article, and even if there are precise numbers reported, does that mean that true folklore has to be accurate reporting as we might hope for from CNN?
However, I still have not figured out Erik’s reference to the suddenly shorter post-flood life spans.
———————
* I do take some posters at TSZ in other threads as reading the bible that way, eg Byers.