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.
In fact, they are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum, as physics seeks to eliminate the observer.
The problem is that you don’t understand his answers. What is not clear is if you are trying not to understand based on your atheist worldview or simply incapable of understanding. It could be either.
Ah — from this, it seems to me that on your view, the demythologization urged by liberal theologians like Bultmann, Tillich, and Buber is contrary to “the very definition of spiritual” — and you know that because “the very definition of spiritual” is, of course, yours!
Do you understand his answers?
KN, you are acting foolishly and coyly, apparently trying to defend your atheism. Yet you would use theologians against a theist?!
Ok, pick a text from the Torah, the scripture of (some of) your ancestors (excluding the atheist socialists), which you have said (did you, that) you actually believed in as a child. Show us what ‘spirit’ &/or ‘spiritual’ meant there. 27 uses of ‘spirit’ are counted in the Torah in English translation of one version that I just digitally ‘searched.’ Otherwise, it’s just you, KN, USAmerican naturalist empiricist anti-compatibilist atheist Jew, making stuff up.
Your po-mo philosophistry exposes itself at its most ignorant and disenchanting on this particular topic. So, please try a different tack. My comment here still holds: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-varieties-of-religious-language/comment-page-28/#comment-89420
newton,
For the most part, yes.
Gregory,
Suppose you tell us, then, whether Erik believes there was a global flood that killed everyone on earth except eight people. Note that this question does not ask whether the Bible says this or whether other people believed it at one time. And it uses words just as they are commonly used in contemporary English.
Then, please tell us what Erik thinks the Bible said about this matter. Thanks in advance.
ETA: Note that I really am waiting to hear some of these thoughtful, meaningful discussions that can happen among theists, where everyone is always on the same wavelength.
I could start a thread for you and Erik to get things going, if you like.
walto,
Your question shows you don’t understand. Maybe you need sign language?
Gregory, Your answer is exactly what everyone would have predicted. Substanceless and insulting. But it certainly indicates that you have no idea what Erik is saying either–even though you apparently would like to spend some quality time with him in a dark room.
walto,
If people might take you seriously, do you not think, as you showed here, reviewers of journals to which you submitted papers would not say you have no idea what you are talking about. You sound like an uneducated religiophobe.
Which part you don’t understand might be helpful, care to elaborate? Thanks.
Yep.
Amazing how Erik has possession of the One Ring. Erm, the One True Definition.
Stalking again, Gregory. How sad.
You should see someone about your issues. Maybe one of those spiritual leaders you seem to think would be so helpful. Surely there’s someone in your world who can help lead you out of the maze of hatred and obsession you’ve constructed around yourself.
Please do write and let us know your progress.
Just practicing for your comedy routine, then?
newton,
Are you worth comedy or tragedy? Pity? Inhumanity. Probably. That’s atheism. Hopeless. Wrong direction. You’ve already heard enough ways to turn around.
Thanks, newton! 🙂
In whatever sense I would endorse “naturalism” and “empiricism,” I doubt they are similar to the senses you would assign to those terms. My (heavily qualified) endorsement of those terms is grounded in American pragmatism, and that is not a tradition of philosophy with which you seem to be at all familiar.
I have no idea what “anti-compatibilist” means here.
As for what I think about “spirituality” and “the spiritual,” I see no reason not to endorse Kovel’s characterization previously cited. The fact that he converted to Christianity has no bearing on that, since as he rather candidly admits, there are idiosyncratic motives in his personal history that prevented him from affirming spirituality in Jewish terms.
Furthermore:
(1) the insinuation (it is no more or less than that) that liberal Judaism fails to reconcile in a satisfactory way the expression of spiritual yearnings with the epistemic demands of contemporary science or the political requirements of modest secularism or post-secularism can hardly be supported by anyone who lacks any familiarity with the history, practices, and institutions of liberal Judaism;
(2) the idea that any defender of liberal Judaism is thereby somehow complicit with any assertion or argument associated with Ayn Rand is utterly absurd, and suggests something quite close to mere bigotry.
You get a bit lost when you don’t have any personal information to insult with. Be glad to consider what you are selling,maybe you could outline your beliefs.
Kantian Naturalist,
You’ve proven you can ‘doubt’ just about anything, KN, including truth, beauty and goodness. That’s certainly not a credit to you in your confused atheism.
Is ‘liberal Judaism’ a code word for atheist Judaism in your grammar, KN?
Kovel converted, KN. Do you really think he didn’t ‘convert his mind’ and concepts too?
Your failure to provide clarity on what you mean by ‘spiritual reading’ or even simply to give content to ‘spiritual’ is a telltale sign of your philosophistry. Go back to Chinukh.
Demythologization is not quite the same as de-spiritualization, don’t you think? And it’s certainly not the same as saying “spirituality” where it cannot really apply. I have my concerns about liberal demythologizers like Robert Price, but in the end of the day he is making a rather simple point: Myth is not history one to one – which is pretty much the same point that I am making. History and myth are different genres. Where I differ from him is when he says “We cannot say this was historical…” I’d say we cannot say it was unhistorical either, both given historical criteria and spiritual.
Gregory:
When have I ever so much as hinted that I doubt the value and importance of truth, beauty, and goodness?
The only way you could attribute to me any doubt about truth, beauty, and goodness is if one thought that the value and importance of truth, beauty, and goodness was only intelligible within a non-naturalist framework. If I doubt anything here, it is this: I doubt that it is possible to demonstrate that the value and significance of truth, beauty, and goodness is intelligible only within a theistic or otherwise non-naturalist framework.
No; I was using “liberal Judaism” as an umbrella term for Reform Judaism, Reconstructionism, Jewish Renewal, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.
I have no idea. All the interview tells us is that he felt alienated from Judaism for two reasons: the first had to do with idiosyncratic features of his own family, and the second had to do with how the leadership of American Jewish institutions has been complicit in the destruction of Palestinian people.
That second point resonates with me quite deeply. The main reason why I’m not active in any Jewish organizations is because I regard Zionism as a moral disaster and the Israeli government as engaged in crimes against humanity. I have learned the hard way that no synagogue wants someone who holds that view. It was the Zionism that drove me away from institutionalized Reform Judaism in the first place, even though I still identify with its principles.
On that particular point I think I’m more on Bultmann’s side. I think that when we get confirmation from archaeology about some event or person described in Scripture, that’s of intellectual interest only.
Knowing that Troy was a real city doesn’t really affect our appreciation of the aesthetic and moral dimensions of the Iliad; likewise, even if the Flood was somehow loosely inspired by oral traditions about the melting of ice dams following the end of the last glaciation, it’s neither here nor there.
I hadn’t heard of Robert Price. I looked at his Wikipedia page. Apparently he doesn’t think that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. On the face of it I’m skeptical of such extreme “mythicism”. But he did co-author (with his wife) a book about Rush, and that certainly counts in his favor.
Now, I have originally maintained a similar point when I said that the literal interpretation holds the lowest priority. However, it is not totally irrelevant that literal interpretation is not false. And the text is not ahistorical. It’s just that historicity (which is there sure enough) is not the main point. Thus it’s not fiction, not even historical fiction a la Gone With The Wind. And aesthetical dimension does not make it spiritual. A distinct spiritual dimension makes it spiritual.
As I said before, gregory, i’m willing to stack up my publications against yours any time you get the balls to do it. You’re quick to insult, but even quicker to run away.
Kantian Naturalist,
KN, it’s worse than pointless to feed that troll. You should do no more than remind him that he’s a dim-witted narcissistic bully with nothing of substance to say to anyone ever and then move on. Responding to his remarks as if they contained anything but bile, whining and puffing is silly. Better to just disinfect after one of his sprayings and get a snack.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
We can say the Noachian Flood was definitely unhistorical. Given everything we know about our physical reality, it never happened and never could happen sans miracles. You have to be plumping for the miraculous history not only of the inundation itself but the source of the water (not glacier ice melt nor ice-dam collapse could suffice for a “global” flood, no matter what you’ve been led to believe by flood charlatans misusing actual science) AND the disposition of all that excess water afterwards (something no believer has ever been able to explain) AND the distribution of all the plants and animals which would have had to migrate thousands of miles across denuded continents from whichever refugia/arks/rafts they had survived upon (and migrate within human history, without anyone noticing or commenting, hmm) AND genetic evidence that the most recent bottleneck of humanity was 10,000 persons or more about 70,000 years ago — it’s impossible that our widespread ancestors, after the Out of Africa dispersal, were nearly wiped out by a hypothetical “global” flood. These are all things you must explain with miracles in order to pretend that a global flood occurred at any time in human history.
It never happened. Not unless your god used a nearly-endless string of miracles to create the Flood then to clean up all traces of it (except the remnant tales) just to trick all the rational people yet to be born, who would eventually go searching for evidence of the storied Flood and find none.
I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t worship a trickster god like that if it came to me on bended knee.
Any “spiritual” meaning you can attribute to Flood tales has to stand on its own. It cannot borrow legitimacy from someone’s fake “historical criteria” whereby you pretend some global Flood really happened in our existent world.
Do we get to count internet posts?
He’s come up here before. People will entertain just about any idea. 😉
Minor detail. Any land flooded as a result of melting glaciers is still flooded.
Gregory,
No, the problem is that Erik continues to evade answering these simple questions that would serve to clarify his claims:
1) When did the flood you claim happened occur?
2) Was the flood global? That is, did it cover all the planet simultaneously as described in the Bible?
3) Immediately after the flood were there only eight people alive on the entire planet?
I hope that he’ll tire of demonstrating his intellectual cowardice and engage in honest discussion soon.
Walto has a gazillion of those in a variety of Yahoo groups (and probably elsewhere).
Good question. But the answer is NO. So, for example.
would NOT count as a publication. On the other hand it’d be great example of dimwitted bullying, and constitutes about 90 percent of Gregory’s internet posting and self-puffery. So he’d be likely to win any contest in that arena, certainly.
So you agree with the theory that the flood is ongoing as we speak, it has only receded a little.
No, Erik, that’s a dopey thing to say. Too many reasons why it’s dopey to list them all, but start with the fact that it’s not “global” in any realistic sense of that word. When all of the ice on Antarctica is completely melted (it could happen) the sea level will rise about 70 meters, which is a lot — but it still won’t be a “global” flood. All the continental land masses will still be standing above the sea water. And although the result will be “flooded” coastlines and low river valleys a long ways inland, no one who lives through sea level rise would call it a flood. It’s too gradual, too easily avoidable — just pick up your furs and your spears and move to higher ground — it is absolutely not the kind of traumatic phenomenon which starts legends of heroic survival to be passed down through the generations as a flood myth. Noah’s Flood was not inspired by glacial ice melt, no matter what you wish to believe. The fact that we have had some ice-melt sea level rise since the end of the last little ice age provides absolutely no support for your cockamamie idea that the Biblical Flood has any basis in real history.
And again, it reveals that you are willing to equivocate with your own, previous, statements that the Bible tale should be read for its spiritual meaning more importantly than as “literal history”. If you’re that concerned with so-called spiritual truth, give us a hint what you think is the important meaning to be gleaned from the horror show of Noah. Quit trying to defend the indefensible idea that it really happened as real history — and tell us why we should do anything but scoff at the ignorance you display. Lay your spiritual wisdom on us, Erik. Don’t just tell us there is some spiritual wisdom, somewhere, invisible to everyone but you and your best buds in school.
It’s like a deaf person shouting “I can’t hear you!”
Erik,
That’s quite at variance with your claim that:
And your more recent doubling down:
Two of the distinguishing, essential features of the biblical flood story are that it covered the entire planet and that only the people and animals on the ark survived. That’s quite a bit different from local floods.
Please clarify exactly what you are claiming by answering these simple questions:
1) When did the flood you claim happened occur?
2) Was the flood global? That is, did it cover all the planet simultaneously as described in the Bible?
3) Immediately after the flood were there only eight people alive on the entire planet?
Erik,
Scoot over and make some room for Mung on the hot seat.
Hi Erik,
I’m deaf. Could you please talk louder?
I have been saying the same thing since page 2. What’s the contradiction?
Genesis 8:13-14:
Erik, you’re a walking demonstration of the stupefying effects of religious belief.
Erik,
I’ll be happy to answer your question once you have clarified exactly what it is you are claiming. From this:
and this:
you seem to be claiming that the biblical flood was an historical event. To ensure that I understand you correctly, please answer these simple questions:
1) When did the flood you claim happened occur?
2) Was the flood global? That is, did it cover all the planet simultaneously as described in the Bible?
3) Immediately after the flood were there only eight people alive on the entire planet?
Try typing. It carries better over the ‘net.
I’ll be happy when you find the posts where I actually answered your questions, showing actual willingness to have dialogue. But you won’t, of course.
At the risk of violating a sacred rule, I don’t believe you.
I’ve been following the thread for quite a while and have not seen anything that could be construed as an answer.
Except that I rely on the concept of textual universal, (ETA:) which is folkloristics, not religious belief.
That nonsequitur further confirms the stupefaction.
Erik,
You have never answered my simple questions. Please do so now:
1) When did the flood you claim happened occur?
2) Was the flood global? That is, did it cover all the planet simultaneously as described in the Bible?
3) Immediately after the flood were there only eight people alive on the entire planet?
Your questions are as simple as “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Erik, to Patrick:
No, they’re as simple as “Are you married?”, “If so, when did you get married?”, and “How many people attended the wedding ceremony?”
That you are so frightened of them speaks eloquently of your utter lack of confidence in your beliefs.