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.
BruceS,
I take it that you are saying there, Bruce, that you don’t believe the Bible is literally true (i.e., like a CNN report might be, occasionally).
I agree with you. Some refuse to plainly say one way or the other, however. Why do you think that is? And why do you take such evasion to be just dandy?
Walto said:
Perhaps you are looking for the wrong kind of correspondence.
Walto said:
Perhaps it is “evasion” in the sense that you might consider it “evasion” not to answer ‘Do you still beat your wife?” with a yes or a no. There are some things that cannot be “plainly said” in the sort of language you are requesting, and would certainly not be understood from that kind of perspective.
Erik,
So you are (still) claiming that the biblical flood was an historical event.
Please answer the simple, straightforward 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. If you lack the minimal intellectual courage to answer it directly, feel free to retract your claim.
walto,
Indeed. I could make an argument that those of us trying to get a straight answer out of Erik are treating his ideas with far more respect than those who want to shelter him from having to clarify his claims.
Some possible answers to your penultimate question:
1. What looks like evasion might be answering the question from the framework the poster was using all along and which the questioner does not yet understand. Of course, it would be nice if the answerer explained that. But perhaps the answerer thinks the questioner should try harder to understand what he is questioning rather than thinking everything must be answerable in the CNN framework.
2. A refusal to take on the role of the witness being cross examined. Internet forums are not trials, or political campaigns, or debates to be one or lost. Although I have to admit I’m likely in the minority in my views on the fun and value of scoring debating points in internet forums.
3. The answerer is having some intellectual fun at the expense of a questioner whom the answerer reads as not having gotten the point yet. Now I realize that that kind of fun is NOT something Gandhi would go in for, although who knows what he would have done anonymously on the internet?
4. The answerer really is being evasive.
In answer to your last question on why I think what some perceive as simple evasion is “just dandy”, I read Erik’s replies as some combination of 1, 2, 3. Not much in 4, if any.
But that of course all that is explaining me, not Erik.
The response that while some text may not be literally true, it has other merits, is fine. You tell me from what “kind of perspective” you want the book understood, and I’ll do my best. What’s not fine is the constant weaseling.
In the immortal words of John Lennon, “Just give me some truth.”
I don’t think that “everything can be answered in the CNN framework.” There are other than declarative sentences in the Bible and like texts, and many of the sentences that are declarative, are poetic or metaphorical or hyperbolic.
BruceS,
There’s nothing wrong with that. Neither is there anything wrong with asking for clarification when one sees what appears to be a contradiction.
If you think that of my posts, you are misinterpreting my views. I’m not angry that Erik refuses to answer a direct question about his claims. I do consider his deliberate evasions to constitute intellectual dishonesty and cowardice. When people are demonstrating enough respect for your argument to address it, common courtesy and intellectual integrity require that you engage in honest debate (or retract your claims).
I, too, am interested in understanding others’ views. The only way I know to do that is to ask them about them.
This comment is a good example of why I feel that you are defending intellectually dishonest behavior. What is your basis for criticizing attempts to get a straight answer from a clearly evasive participant but not criticizing that evasive participant’s refusal to support his claim?
BruceS,
A major thread of this discussion is about a specific claim that Erik made, namely:
That has nothing to do with how anyone else reads the bible. It is a claim that the biblical flood actually occurred.
When asked for clarification on the time, scope, and outcomes of this supposed event, Erik evades answering.
I did read your posts that way. But of course, that is only how the appear me. Based on your clarification, I’ll retract my comment about angry.
Well, I don’t think Erik is being intellectually dishonest or evasive. That is, I don’t think he is defending a CNN interpretation of the bible (I’m avoiding the word “literal” because he has explained he means it differently from that).
For details on evasive, see my reply to Walto.
And, just to emphasize, I can speak only for how I read Erik, based of course on my attempts at textual analysis of his posts!.
BruceS,
Our comments crossed in time, I think. Here, again, is what Erik claimed:
He’s saying the biblical flood really happened. He has not retracted that claim despite being given ample opportunity. Why do you think he doesn’t mean exactly what he wrote?
I interpret Erik’s “of course it occurred” in the light of KN’s linked post to Discovery on the historicity of local large floods. I suspect Erik may be been already familiar with the gist of that article.
BruceS,
The original comment from Erik is here:
Why would you think that it had anything to do with KN’s linked post? Erik is making a clear claim about the flood as described in the Christian Bible.
On a related note, how do you justify thinking that Erik is not being evasive when he has repeatedly avoided answering direct questions about his claim from DNA_Jock, walto, petrushka, and myself? His behavior is hardly that of a frank and honest interlocutor.
On top of that, he’s crabby, condescending, and often nasty to (the saintly) KN (who carries his water dutifully, in spite of that nastiness).
I won’t have it, I tell you! X>{
Back then there was nothing like CNN and nobody had any need for it either. They didn’t have that kind of genre. It’s our job to figure out their genre, instead of expecting them to follow ours. The prevalent attitude here seems to be that since the flood stories don’t record events the way we do, then they must be false.
Genesis 1:6 “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” In Hebrew cosmology, this indicates a shield of water or steam in or above the atmosphere prior to the flood. This shield collapsed to earth and was experienced as flood.
KN’s complaint against this point was that such a shield would prevent satellites from flying. Except that Hebrews had no need for satellites, same as for CNN. We can have both, because there’s no shield any more.
Anyway, concerning life spans, if the water shield held back cosmic and solar radiation (of which Hebrews didn’t have a clue about, they were simply reporting their tradition/revelation), then the life spans could have been ten times longer than now. When modern scientists determine the age of ancient people, they of course project modern people’s symptoms on the remains of ancient people…
Really? So mitochondria wouldn’t have problems with said “shield” in place? Radiation from rocks wouldn’t exist? Or what?
This is just nonsense, and you feel no need to back up your pseudoscientific declarations.
Beyond everything else that’s wrong with the “water canopy,” it would cause a terrific greenhouse effect, and everything alive would end up boiled.
Yeah, hm, what a shock, find similar effects, assume similar causes. Kind of goes with the DNA evidence that many infectious disease agents have had at least tens of thousands of years of relationship with humans, but what’s that to your hermeneutics (which have never been shown to have any credible structure as you meander around, from one worthless claim to another)?
Glen Davidson
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The above might be “fun”, BruceS, but it’s hardly “intellectual fun” (your #3).
And regarding your #1, I suggest you re-read the first paragraph I quoted.
Which leaves us with not wanting to be cross-examined.
Not sure how that differs from evasion…
Anyhoo,
This.Is.Awesome
FWIW, it’s my understanding that the water canopy gave many ancient Hebrews a number of the powers of Aquaman. It was also the basis of that portion of the Poseidon myth involving Sebastian the sea crab.
OK, I understand you read him differently than I do.
I am only trying to explain why I don’t believe I am knowingly defending someone who is evasive or intellectually dishonest by explaining what I think is a reasonable reading of Erik’s posts. It could be wrong reading, but it is my honest and best judgement of the matter.
Thanks. As you say, it appears the writers, or perhaps some subsequent explainers, tried to have a consistent world view, although it obviously is not [ETA:}
ourmy world view.Nor do I think it meets our standards for scientific acceptance, although I don’t think that is important for understanding the meaning(s) of the story for its intended readers, or for us.
ETA: just to be clear, I don’t think humans of the past could have lived much longer lives than us. Further, and on a percentage of total human population basis, most lived much shorter lives than we do.
Erik,
Well, this is the problem I alluded to earlier. If there is such a quantity of ‘real’ water, in whatever phase, above the earth, then it acts as a blanket for radiogenic heat, or a greenhouse gas in the unlikely event that solar radiation gets through.
8km of water above your head, even as 13,000km of steam, exerts the same pressure and a similar light-attenuating capacity as that same water condensed as liquid ocean. It is very dark on the ocean bed. Pressures are substantial. These would be the conditions at the earth’s surface. And converting that potential energy into kinetic energy in order to allow the rain to fall at that rate would release an enormous amount of heat, boiling the ark.
And again, one wonders why God kept all this water in reserve for just such an eventuality.
I have already admitted in posts in other threads that I have a sense of humor that others might not share.
Otherwise, I’ll leave it what I said to Patrick in my last post to him.
Which quantity?
How?
Does it? Why would solar radiation get through?
How do you know?
All these questions are rhetorical. I am not interested in the answers. The point is that you are mighty sure of yourself. This means that you with absolute certainty presuppose that the constitution of the planet was the same then as now. It doesn’t occur to you that if the water was up there, then the planet was built very much differently.
I’m sure you can easily explain this thing away too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjietgsBDY It’s impossible, therefore it doesn’t exist. Have fun.
I have all along maintained that the literal reading is the least important. It’s certainly the least interesting for me. You guys perhaps enjoy yourselves when you read scripture like history, like science fiction or like CNN, but I don’t. I hoped that somehow some way we would eventually get around to treating scripture like scripture, but evidently not. You are unable to read it even like folklore, like memory of humanity, which would have been almost close enough. Hopeless. Even KN got tired of you.
That’s why the tripe about you caring least about the literal matters lacks traction. You defend the literal using the junkiest YEC pseudoscientific “arguments,” indicating that you don’t really care much about the truth. Why I’d care about what you say about hermeneutics, when you mess up trivial factual matters, is a mystery.
I do think that BruceS and KN and you have a point about the text not being read right by many here. But when you can’t come to terms with the fact that the literal makes no sense, you’re not likely to understand the origins of the myth at all well–apparently it had little to do with actual events, save that floods were known.
What nonsense. We learned from the evidence that nothing unusual (in the sense of physics) can be found using geology, rather what happens is apparently what did happen in the past. One hardly needs absolute certainty to recognize that science finds oil, ancient myth doesn’t.
It doesn’t occur to us that paleontology and geology would not show some marked differences had such a bizarre scenario existed back then. You’re like the IDists, a very different mechanism blends seamlessly and without any evidence (other than probability claims) with limited present mechanisms in the evidence, as if that makes any sense at all.
Glen Davidson
Erik,
Nonetheless, you have claimed that biblical flood literally happened. You still need to either clarify and support that claim or retract it.
I hope we get around to treating claims about actual history seriously enough to clarify them and support them. I’m just waiting on you.
Yeah, that whole expecting you to discuss things honestly and forthrightly bit is a real bummer, huh?
Perhaps the confusion could be eliminated by a simple disclaimer :
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Well if you are tired of this topic but still want to discuss your thoughts, I’d be interested in more on what you think of science and scientific texts, which you’ve only hinted at in posts here.
From what I can understand, you are not going to be in the majority on these topics when it comes to the posters at TSZ. Not by a long shot.
But that has not stopped you so far.
Back when? You seem to know the date of the flood, whereas I’d be very cautious about it. As to “such a bizarre scenario”, the flood story happens to be universal. Your stance is “Everybody in the world was lying. I know better.” Lucky you.
Unfortunately I have no positive thoughts about Anglo-American so-called science which equals physics, occasionally includes biology too, but nothing else. Everywhere else in the world, all sciences are science, history, literary science, psychology, philology, etc. Reductionism is rampant among Anglo-Americans.
Erik,
You seem to know that the biblical flood actually occurred, even if you won’t say when you think it happened. Since you won’t answer that question, please clarify your claim by answering this one:
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.
I don’t think it is correct to characterize mainstream Anglo-American views from philosophers and scientists as seeing science as being restricted to just physics and biology. And I don’t think reductionism is the majority position, although that would depend on a precise definition of the term.
Physicalism probably is the majority view, though.
I was more curious as to what lay behind statements like this:
When modern scientists determine the age of ancient people, they of course project modern people’s symptoms on the remains of ancient people
Do you think it is unreasonable to use our best current science, eg regarding human biology, to draw conclusions about the humans of the past?
Wow, you seem not able to read simple English well. It was not a definite statement at all, rather deliberately vague, because it’s not the slightest bit clear when you think/thought that the idiotic YEC scenario of a vapor canopy may have existed.
Whereas you’re happy to say that something specific may have been the case, while being too vague to be pinned down by the evidence. Yes, it’s the typical weaselly way.
BS, it’s not universal. It’s not clear that the Sumerians had the story prior to getting it from Semites, and at the least it wasn’t a part of their major mythos.
And I was referring to the bizarre vapor canopy nonsense, which you’d know if you read properly. How many cultures had that claptrap?
Oh really, so I think that myths are lies? You either are very poor at understanding the written word, or you’re simply making shit up.
Glen Davidson
Here’s a source that notes the many cultures lacking in flood myths
Looks legit, as far as I can see.
Glen Davidson
Must raise left eyebrow to keep the Universe in balance now, in regard to this, apparently from Erik…
Think this through. How do we know about those ancient floods? From geological evidence, not folklore. Floods happen. We can recognize their effects, even when they occurred a long time go. There is no evidence of any global flood.
I’m not quite sure that’s right. What we call “the humanities” is what Germans call Geisteswissenschaften (literally “the sciences of spirit”), as distinct from the Naturwissenschaften. Which is to say that Wissenschaften means something broader than “science” in the Anglo-American sense — something more like “an organized body of disciplinized inquiry”.
The debates in German philosophy about whether there’s a methodological distinction between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften are much the same as the debates we have in the Anglophone world about whether the natural sciences offer us more reliable or better knowledge than the humanities — or just a different kind of knowledge.
But that’s separate from whether the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, astronomy, geology, etc.) are reducible to physics. For a long time reductionism seemed to be the dominant view — an article of faith, as it were — but by the mid-1960s reductionism was hotly contested, and remains so today. I myself think reductionism is false, and there are many philosophers who agree — and also many who think who it is true.
A quantity of water sufficient to cover the present highest mountains to a depth of 15 cubits. Of course the mountains may have been lower then. Maybe Ararat was 15 feet high.
Have you noticed how much cooler it is on cloudless nights?
??? Probably wouldn’t. That’s why I said ‘unlikely’. You think the surface of the planet was dark then?
Scaled-up physics. Atmospheric pressure exists because of the weight of the column above us. If that column consists of an equivalent of 8km of water per square inch, then we would experience that pressure. A given quantity of steam weighs the same as that quantity condensed.
So you are devoid of intellectual curiosity. You want the biblical passage to be true, and toss out any scenario that makes it work. Any consequences of such a scenario that people point out, and your fingers head straight for your ears. Fine.
One would have to suppose many things besides. It’s not just the planet being made differently. Water would need to have different properties.
I dare say. But you keep making fact-claims: The existence of multiple flood myths is corroborative. There was a water canopy. Ice dams burst. People started dying younger. These can be challenged. Why be upset when people challenge fact-claims? The defence ‘How Can You Be So Sure?’ is a weak one. How can you be so sure that the flood story has a basis in history? How much knowledge are you prepared to dismiss to retain that? You may not be interested, but I am.
As scripture, what does the Flood story tell us?
I say it occurred, because the other option would be to say that all our ancestors were liars. This would make us liars too, genetically, you know. But I see that you are okay with that option. So be it.
Not really. In continental Europe, both sides of the debate are recognised as sciences (Wissenschaften). It’s understood that every science has its own methodology, appropriate to the respective field of inquiry. In Anglo-American debate, reductionists say that only physics has “the scientific method” and they handwave all other sciences away as non-science.
I wish there were any sign of non-reductionism in the current discussion.
It would do good if the challengers knew how to challenge. Challenges based on best current scientific knowledge can be easily dismissed for two reasons. First, tomorrow there may be a totally different best current scientific knowledge (such as yesterday there was an announcement that Mars has water on it after all, after several prior contrary announcements during the past half century).
Second, flood stories are a textual universal. They can be seen as representative of the best current scientific knowledge of the time. And people of the time certainly knew what they were looking at as well as we know what we see right now, right? Because if not, then how can we be sure we know anything better than they did?
Therefore it looks like best current scientific knowledge doesn’t cut it, particularly when defined reductively.
After Gutenberg’s invention, there was CNN style reporting. Before Gutenberg, there was folklore.
Okay, that greatly oversimplifies things. However, Gutenberg changed the nature of literature (as the Internet is doing today). Some people don’t seem to be taking this change fully into account.
Writing appears to have been invented in Sumer as a way to keep business records.
Greatly simplified or not, there just is a host of genres prior to the printing press, from business and legalistic writings to histories and biographies, works of fancy, and great amounts of poetry, along with ancient science like Ptolemy’s works. In various chronicles you get what is portrayed to be something like CNN type reporting–at least if “state the facts” is what is meant–even if covering world news was hardly something they’d have done.
I just really can’t see how there’s a great break in writing when the printing press hits the West (unless one considers the great expansion of technical writing and how important that was to business/industry), although presumably novels are for mass consumption, thus appearing not only after the arrival of the printing press but as printing became cheap enough to make books for entertainment purposes. So sure, you’re going to get changes like that, but it’s not like it’s even mostly folkloric before that.
Glen Davidson
Erik,
Or mistaken. Or simply provincial.
No, that doesn’t follow. Dishonesty is a behavior.
Speaking of dishonest behavior, you are still evading the simple question I’ve been asking to clarify exactly what you mean when you say that the biblical flood occurred:
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. Show some integrity, finally.
So current science can never back a valid argument, if that criticism can be levelled. And there is no way you can be persuaded that any pronouncement you make is unsupportable. As much water as it takes, wherever it is needed, with whatever properties it requires, and whatever genetic, geological and migratory changes need to take place to erase all trace. That is how the Flood makes sense! It is not clear what a ‘challenger who did know how to challenge’ would look like.
And that water almost undoubtedly has the same properties as it does here on earth. Your defence of ‘maybe we don’t know everything’ is weak, and I don’t know why you prefer it to ‘it was a miracle’. Chiselling at reasonable inference in order to make reality fit what could quite easily be a myth is certainly a curious approach to fact-claims. Can naked girls trigger earthquakes? Maybe they can – we don’t know everything!
No they aren’t.
The only surviving eye-witnesses were on the boat, if we are talking of people. They weren’t required to have scientific knowledge; they simply observed an event (and somehow recorded it accurately, with no Chinese whispers in the retelling). It rains on non-scientists too. I don’t see any defence in relativism vis a vis science. If you are arguing that Hebrews were more right about scientific matters than we are, and somehow science will eventually conclude that they were right … that is a strange case. Not impossible, but improbable. I’d believe in a global flood if I lived through one. I would not need to be a scientist.
It certainly does not cut it against dogged denialism. As to reductionism – what’s reductive about applying geometry and physics to the issue of rainfall, fluid dynamics, geological strata or succession?
Erik,
You need to read The Relativity of Wrong. What you’re missing is that, unlike religion, science has a feedback mechanism that allows it to improve over time.
Dictionary definitions of “folklore” do emphasize that it is oral.
However, when I used the term, I was understanding it more in the sense of a mythology, as in “a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition of a group of people–their collection of stories they tell to explain nature, history, and custom”.
I think the following quote from that same Wiki article is relevant to this discussion because it indicates different approaches when reading the bible as folklore:
To understand all of its aspects, I think the flood story of the bible can and should be read that way. Further, one can also believe that a flood was used as a basis for the myth because of ancient local floods which the writers of the story had heard about from other folklore.
On Guttenberg:
I think that folklore in the mythology sense can be written or oral. I don’t see what difference printing presses make to that analysis.
It is a false dichotomy to argue that it either happened or our ancestors were liars. Were the tellers of Norse myths liars, or did they tell of actual witnessesd events? Stories can mutate, and tales told can become taken as fact in the retelling, with no intent on anyone’s part to deceive.
“Reductionism” is a term that takes on many meanings. I was understanding it in the sense it is used by philosophers of science. They will speak about explanatory reductionism and ontological reductionism.
The first roughly means the ability to translate explanations in a “higher-level” science (say biology) into cogent explanations in physics, even in principle. I would say very few philosophers would accept that type of reductionism.
The second roughly says that only in the entities of physics are real; those of other sciences can, at least in principle, be reduced to them. I think this position is more popular, but is still not the majority position.
On the other hand, as I read your criticism of reductionism as you see it in this group, it appears to me that you mean some form of scientism. By that term, I mean applying science where some other mode of explanation is called for. It also can mean claiming only scientific knowledge is “real” knowledge.
Actually, it in fact was mostly folkloric before the printing press, because the overwhelming majority were illiterate prior to the printing press. The balance turned maybe in the 19th century. Things look much simpler when you only consider the printed records. Hebrews are an extraordinary people who seem to have had an education system for literacy for everyone, but Genesis is still traditional folk stories (or revelation, which would require different argumentation), not eyewitness testimony by Moses or whoever the writer was.
The problem in this case is when people provide science as the only argument. I say, “The flood occurred, because the story is universal.” The response, “No, it didn’t, because science, nevermind the story.” Well, this just makes everybody a liar – by implication including those who appeal to science.
Except that they don’t know if it is there or isn’t. Right now they think they know. Last year they didn’t know. A century ago scientists thought there could well be humanoid aliens on Mars. Eventually they downgraded their hopes to bacteria. Then they thought it barren like moon, without any reasonable hope for even water. Now they think they saw water, “many times saltier than Earth’s ocean”. That’s just how science “works”.
If you think you have the right to trust your senses, then certainly they had the same right to trust their senses. But you only trust your own senses. Why?
On physicalism, life came from dead matter. This is utterly impossible, unobserved, but it’s believed anyway – because science!
That’s some great stuff right there, Erik. Let me summarize.
The best current scientific theories are crap because our knowledge develops, and what everyone thinks is true today might be discovered to be false tomorrow. OTOH, old folklore is not crap. In fact, it ought to be believed whenever it contains assertions that were widespread (“universal”).
In the words of Buckwheat, “O-Tay!”
In my own, “Keep this stuff coming!” I bet I’m now finding it as “interesting” as Bruce and KN do!!
The statement “ancient humans lived to be thousands of years old” can be interpreted as plain demographics in the same way that we would interpret “women live longer than men on average in the today’s developed world”.
Read in that way, I think the only reasonable position to take is that the statement is false. The science and reasoning are as conclusive as one should expect, as outlined by GlenDavidson in a previous post.
Sure, science is fallible. And some scientific statements are more provisional than others, like the nature of water on Mars you mention, which was recognized as an open question by science (hence the rovers). But that fact does not make it reasonable to ignore the much broader set of scientific knowledge which bears on how long human beings live and on the continuity of humanity biologically.
I agree with you when I understand you to say to understand the bible fully, we must analyse the text there from the viewpoint of the intended audience, understanding the culture and purposes of the writers and their readers.
But sometimes you come across as wanting to treat science text only in that way, and implying (at least to me) that science has no claim to be our best way of understanding the nature of the world where scientific knowledge applies to that nature.
If that or something similar is your position, I’d be interested in how you defend it. Simply saying science is fallible or that some scientific claims are more provisional than others does not work for me.
I think you’re beginning to glimpse something here…..
I can find someone to be interesting without thinking everything that person says is correct.
I take Erik seriously as someone whose views I want to understand and possibly learn from. I also think some of his views make sense and others (as I understand them) are nonsense.
Just making fun of someone won’t help me to understand him or her.