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.
No, this directly contradicts your claimed belief that there has been a real-history “global” flood.
It matters not one bit how anyone interprets Genesis or calls it “Noah’s flood” – or calls it something else.
What matters is the physical evidence which any kind of “global” flood would have left behind – evidence that three hundred years of geologists haven’t been able to find, because there never was any such “global” flood.
Sure, we quite often find evidence of (multiple) local floods in various places. That doesn’t help you at all — because you’re the one who wants there to have been a “global” flood — although god only knows why you’d want to believe such a wackadoodle thing — and you have zero evidence there ever was any such thing (no matter what name it was called in whichever pseudo-history/scripture/folktale you happen to believe in).
That’s not at all true. Anyone can attempt to interpret them.
But most of this thread has nothing to do with interpretation of the bible or of religion. Most of this thread has been devoted to your claims about floods actually happening.
Or from any other source than scripture, for that matter.
Midrash Rabbah. This is evidently not reaching people. Exegesis does not hang on mid-air. The tradition is recorded and the mainstream is easily verifiable.
But it isn’t evidence for anything actually happening, nor does it seem to influence modern orthodox theology. Rabbinical tradition is one of many traditions.
My understanding of Jewish thought (imparted to me by a Jewish roommate) is, Two jews, three opinions.
Of interest on this point, Luke uses completely different words to describe the decree compared with the words used in Genesis. This can partly be explained in that the two pieces are written in different languages (Genesis in Hebrew and Luke in Koine Greek), but such an explanation discounts the fact that the New Testament writers were fond of calling back to OT stories by using the same phraseology. So It would seem the writer of Luke specifically chose “all the world”, likely because Caesar actually used that phrase and thought of his domain as all the world. The Genesis writer has no such reason for using “all the Earth” and “covering all the highest mountains of the Earth to a depth of 15 cubits”. That’s a pretty specific claim. It is also impossible for it to be an historically accurate account.
And almost every theist on this planet acknowledges that some parts of scripture as written were “fiction” – that is, that they were never meant to be taken as any kind of truth on a literal level, but as a moral/spiritual lesson only.
Of course you’re free to pretend that those people aren’t really theists, because they don’t happen to believe the extreme that you do, but they certainly consider themselves faithful to their own traditions of christianity, islam, hinduism etc.
Maybe you should consider that you are wrong about the definition of scripture. You are a fallible human being, after all. You might, just possibly might, have this one tiny detail wrong. That would not mean the entire rest of your faith is wrong — well, I think the entire rest of your faith is wrong, but not because it would fall apart if you allowed any word of scripture to be “true on spiritual level” without being “true on literal level”.
And since you believe that there was indeed a ‘global” flood, but state that it was not the same flood as described in Noah’s tale, then you have no scriptural authority for your global-flood belief to begin with. Which makes your whole temper tantrum about atheists disrespecting scripture worse than pointless. It’s your distraction.
We don’t believe what you say because what you say happened is impossible nonsense.
If the global-flood tale is in scripture, then scripture’s not literally true (which is fine with everyone theists included except you), and your belief in a global flood is factually wrong. If the global-flood tale is NOT in scripture, then the existence of scripture is a moot point, and your belief in a global flood is still factually wrong.
Unless your god not only miracled the flood into existence but miracled all the evidence away afterwards. Is that your global flood belief?
I have to admit that the more Erik explains, the more confused I get.
He now appears to be making claims about history that are unsupported by geological evidence, they aren’t even in the Bible. He’s taking rabbinical ramblings as authority above scripture.
So, you believe there was a global flood at some point on the planet earth because of something in the Midrash Rabbah. Fine. Got it. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?
I mean, IMHO, it’s kind of a cuckoo reason for someone living today to believe in some really incredible geological claim, but at least we now (FINALLY!) know what your evidence is for thinking there was a global flood.
Do you think there was a Golem?
I’m confused. Is Midrash Rabbah scripture, or is it fan fiction?
And both above the very planet which his god created and which stands before our eyes in physical evidence that god never flooded its whole creation.
Idolatry, that’s what it is. Erik idolizes the words written by some old men over the word of his god made visible in the rock layers and living things of his god’s green Earth.
What did his god say about idols?
I’m pretty sure god is not happy with Erik here.
Oh no, don’t call it that. You besmirch the name of all decent fan fiction. And all indecent fan fiction too 🙂
Rabbinical ramblings or scriptures, you have to interpret them both. And interpret rightly.
Earlier you said
But it matters if you interpret rightly or wrongly. Not everybody is able to interpret scriptures, certainly not rightly. Scriptures say so. Therefore there’s a tradition of exegesis by which one must practise and measure oneself.
If non-theists would acknowledge scripture as distinct from fiction, it would be possible to walk through some text with them, but no hope of that here.
If you would acknowledge the physical evidence from the (theist) geologists/physicists/biologists as distinct from scripture, it would be possible to walk through some reality with you, but …
Interestingly, google’s third result for a search of “Midrash rabbah global flood” is a book by Daniel Friedmann, The Broken Gift, which states unequivocally that Noah’s flood did occur, relatively locally (which agrees with what Erik claims). He even includes a helpful map which shows what would have been underwater (if their choice of flood depth were true)
Friedmann is strangely reasonable, though:
I’d like to know why Erik believes Friedmann’s restatement of the Midrash idea about Noah-local flooding while disbelieving Friedmann’s scientific statement that there never could have been a global flood.
Why, Erik?
You say you believe there was a global flood (for some not completely clear definition of “global”) Why? Which specific lines of text and which specific pieces of evidence lead you to feel that way? What’s your specific reply to Friedmann’s evidence that there never could have been a flood which covered the whole earth?
Don’t be too general. That’s not helping you at all. You’re supposedly an educated scholarly sort. Show your scholarship by citing specifics.
Erik, no one interprets scripture correctly. People have been killing each other for thousands of years to prove this.
It would have been easy, had you known how to read my comment on what is currently page 30 in this thread. I said Midrash Rabbah right there. But not easy when you don’t know how to read. And very hard when you think answers are non-answers but you never explain why.
Anyway, you ask certain questions because they are interesting to you. On my part, I answer certain questions because they are interesting to me. Dialogue works insofar as we have an overlap of interests. Don’t expect me to answer questions that you imagine should have something to do with my position, but actually don’t. And in return to my explanations of my own position, I expect you to explain your position too. That would be dialogue. Until then it isn’t.
Friedmann is evidently talking exclusively about the literal level. “…the atmosphere would have contained so much water vapor that we could not exist under its pressure.” This point would apply to a near-historical global flood, but it doesn’t apply to world cycles.
[emphasis added by DNA-Jock] and replies
Yet another utter falsehood. On page 30 you cite Midrash Rabbah as the source for your commentary regarding the “Jewish traditional exegesis”, but you explicitly refuse to offer your opinion on the historicity of the Flood, whining
A bit of nitpicking:
I never quoted Friedman or asked about him. That’s someone else.
World cycles is gibberish. You can believe anything you want as long as you are clear about what you believe.
But it would be dishonest to mix beliefs based on scripture with beliefs that are consilient with geology.
You have not yet been asked to defend your statements about floods scientifically. Just clarify what they are.
I think progress has been made, even though Patrick’s questions are not fully answered.
Although the details of your flood stories differ from Ken Ham’s, your methodology seems to be the same. Ignore the last 200 years of geology.
I take it from that post that the global flood you say occurred (because of a mention or mentions in the Midrash Rabbah) was not a “near-historical global flood.” Can you explain what a “near-historical global flood is” and why the global flood you say occurred (because of the Midrash Rabbah) was not “near-historical.” Can you also explain what you mean here by “world cycles”? Thanks.
Is the Midrash more authoritative than the Bible?
Point of clarification: within Orthodox Judaism, the Midrash is the key to how one reads Torah. An Orthodox Jewish rabbi would say that one cannot understand what a passage from Torah means without studying the relevant Midrash. It’s not that one is more authoritative than the other but they are indissociable — that is, again, according to the perspective of Orthodox Judaism.
So Judaism has its Ken Hams. No surprise. One of my daughter’s best friends is orthodox. She’s been to about 20 dinner parties at my house and never eaten anything. Even though we accomodate vegan friends.
Apparently good religion justifies bad manners.
I’m sorry, but that strikes me as deeply intolerant remark. Your daughter’s friend is not permitted to eat anything, by the strictures of her religion. If you don’t keep a kosher kitchen, you can’t accommodate her requirements. And there’s nothing wrong with that — and there’s nothing wrong with her restrictions, either. Tolerance is a two-way street — if you want your choices to be respected by others, then you have to respect their choices. Whether you agree with those choices is irrelevant.
Also, comparing Orthodox Judaism to Ken Ham is doubly ignorant. Orthodox Judaism is a millennia-old tradition of interpretation grounded in close textual analysis and moral reasoning. Not even Orthodox Jews believe that there is one correct interpretation for every passage in Torah. There are debates among rabbis about how to read a passage recorded in the Talmud itself. The fact that Orthodox Judaism makes claims that are contradicted by our best science (and prescribes social roles that seem oppressive to contemporary humanists) is no reason to besmirch its intellectual seriousness.
Ken Ham, on the other hand, is part of the proud Protestant tradition of making up whatever he wants. He’s not grounded in any tradition and he’s not interested in discussing alternative interpretations.
It strikes me that these conclusions depend on accepting the theory of truth you posted about earlier.
Is that fair?
I am not saying it is a black and white matter. I certainly still find some of Eirk’s posts somewhat confusing and perhaps contradictory.
Of course, I myself have many posts in those categories.
Although I did not set out to make them that way.
KN, I’m not impressed by the antiquity of ideas.
And food bigots are food bigots, regardless of how ancient the tradition.
Lots of brutal and nasty practices have ancient roots and religious approval.
Food laws are, among other things, designed to separate one tribe from another and make mingling and assimilation difficult or impossible. Eff ’em.
I am genuinely surprised by this defense of baneful Orthodoxy based on “intent’. I can’t see that it matters that the “intent” of the orthodox rabbis is to devote their lives to serious study when the inevitable result is encouraging their followers to believe in ever more pernicious nonsense. To be honest, encouraging is far too nice a word for what they do, in the confines of their closed society. Mafia-style enforcing is a far more apt term for it.
If anything, Ken Ham comes out better by comparison, although only because his religion/ethnicity didn’t force him into a ghetto which then feeds the orthodox mindless loyalty and shunning of outsiders. I give slimy Ken absolutely no credit for his intent – which is no doubt narcissistic and amoral – but his effect is not so damaging because he has to play nice with the big-tent christians.
High-minded child abuse by lying to them about our real world (albeit with the intent of instilling the wisdom of the Torah) is child abuse. Teaching a young man that he should be a parasite on his community to spend his whole adult life studying the Torah is child abuse. And teaching a young woman that she can never be a man’s equal in becoming a rabbi is also child abuse of a different flavor.
Your willingness to scold someone for not taking into account the abusers’ “intellectual seriousness” is disturbing.
Ype.
And Orthodox kosher keeping – compared to other food fetishes – has the particularly nasty bonus of keeping women subservient. Not for them the freedom to take the kids to the park then stop in McDonalds for a quick snack to keep them from getting cranky before dinner.
It’s almost as if kosher were designed specifically to augment the Torah message that women are unclean and unworthy.
Firstly, I’m not defending every aspect of Orthodox Jewish culture. I made that clear in my point about how their conception of social roles is inconsistent with contemporary humanism. I was making a specific point about why it is conceptually problematic to assimilate Orthodox Judaism with Ken Ham’s idiosyncratic version of self-promoting young-earth creationism.
Secondly, I don’t see how bigotry towards bigots is any better than any other kind of bigotry. If what you want is to cultivate an ethos of cultural pluralism, then some allowance must be made for social conservatives as well — otherwise the position is no more inclusive and tolerant than any other theocracy.
Thirdly, I wonder if it’s actually condescending towards Orthodox Jewish women (and me) to say that they are being oppressed by virtue of accepting their prescribed social roles. This conversation is reminiscent of the debates about the headscarf ban in Paris (and, going further backwards in time, to fights between white liberal Euro-American feminists and Third World feminists). Who is to say whether French Muslim women are being oppressed by their communities? Presumably, it is for them to say! Saying that a woman is forbidden to wear a headscarf seems just as disempowering (and hence anti-feminist) as saying that she is required to wear one. No doubt some Orthodox Jewish women do feel oppressed — and there are also Orthodox Jewish feminists who are reforming Orthodox Judaism from within — and there are also Jewish feminists who leave Orthodoxy — and every other permutation.
Imposing a very specific conception of ethical life on these communities in the name of secular humanism does not seem consistent with either secularism or humanism.
The modern definition of hell is separation from God.
Hell on earth is deliberate, calculated separation from other people. In other words, tribalism.
Since the content of religion is bullshit, I feel free to judge the cultural practices of religion (however ancient and venerated) on an even plane.
The practices of orthodox Jews are no more sacred or valuable to me than the practices of Tennessee snake handlers, or Nazis, or republicans. Practices are practices. They stand or fall on their own merits.
People can eat whatever they want, but I am not going to stand by and be lectured about bigotry by someone who thinks my kitchen isn’t holy enough.
I will, however, defer to my children regarding their friends. (My daugher even traveled to Israel for this friend’s wedding.)
I have no interest in forcing other people to conform to my ideas about manners or cultural norms. But don’t ask me to respect what I don’t respect. I have the right to be offended also.
Tribes have been at war with each other for as long as there have been social animals. If you wish to promote peace, you need to accept that change and accommodation are required. That works both ways.
Side note:
About 20 years ago we participated in an organization called CISV. The local organization hosted a summer camp for 11 year olds from around the world. We wound up keeping a couple of Egyptian boys for a week.
We figured out pretty quickly that we wouldn’t be serving any pork products, but one day they asked for pizza. We asked what they wanted on it, and they said tuna. Canned tuna was okay, so we took a can to Dominoes and asked them to put it on a pizza. Everything worked out, and a couple years later, the parents visited. Apparently we were not perceived as bigots.
So who’s the bigot. Someone who goes out of the way to accommodate dietary restrictions, or someone who cannot be accommodated?
It is simply unwise to give even the slightest nod towards religious belief or practice.
If you even associate yourself with Judaism, even in it’s more benign form, you will be painted as the worst sort of bigot.
So eff you too. I am quite willing to give the nod to religious practices.
I expect reciprocity. You come to my house for dinner, and I work to accommodate your dietary restrictions, you do not insult me.
I point out that Muslims, today’s bad guys, did not insult me in my own home.
Perhaps you only thought you understood the dietary restrictions.
I fully expect this post to go to Guano as it addresses the poster and the post.
I understand them. I don’t accept them. I have no problem with people following traditions, but please don’t tell me I’m the bigot in this situation.
Certain religions have consciously and deliberately set themselves apart and made it difficult or impossible to socialize with “heathens.”
This is, in and of itself, no different from refusing to socialize with someone of the wrong caste, the wrong color. I don’t give a damn how ancient the tradition is. It’s bigotry. It is a poster child for bigotry. It is the screaming essence of tribalism and xenophobia.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t support using government force against people for their fashion choices, so I’m with you that far. The question is, can a person raised in an overtly misogynistic culture, denied education, and subjected to physical threats and abuse really be said to have chosen freely?
I’d say obviously not, but I don’t know what the solution is.
Yeah, that’s probably fair. I don’t think you can have an intelligible philosophical discussion with somebody who doesn’t hold something like a correspondence or redundancy theory of truth.
I’m with Dawkins here. I find it amusing that people could raise their children to be afraid of hell, or afraid to eat in a heathen’s home, or afraid to doubt or ask questions, and then accuse outsiders of bigotry for not approving.
The question is not about the use of force. The question is about the force of disapproval.
This looks like a peculiar definition of bigotry.
So, you managed to accommodate an Egyptian boy nicely. Neither thinks bad of the other. Good for both of you.
You cannot bend a Jewish girl to enjoy your hospitality. Therefore she’s a bigot. Why is it a requirement that you should be able to serve some food to her? Is it some ancient tradition at your place, going back generations, that every visitor should get a meal, and when the visitor doesn’t want it, she’s a bigot? If it’s not some ancient cultural thing, then why are you doing it and judging people based on it? But if it is an ancient cultural thing, then why is your culture better than hers?
Some things simply don’t mix. Not everything can be accommodated. To me it looks like a fact of life. To you perhaps life is a bigot, forcing such a fact on you.
That’s usually what happens when you accept a dinner invitation.
Now I am a white male. Suppose I accept a dinner invitation from a co-worker who is black, show up at his house, and refuse to eat.
Don’t give me your ancient traditions shit. What I describe is traditional where I grew up.
That’s the point I was making.
Answer my question about accepting a dinner invitation and refusing to eat.
Are you terrified by the Amish?
How is that relevant? If an Amish person accepts an invitation to have dinner at my house, is he or she likely to refuse to eat?
I was already reminded of earlier discussions about this. The issue on masking the face is not, in my view, entirely the free choice of someone who, for whatever reason, wishes to hide their face from view. There is the additional consideration for those that are rendered uncomfortable in social encounters with a masked person. Obscuring the face in a social context is more than just being rude. How can I be sure I am talking to a particular person? There are no facial expressions to read. It’s a complex issue but I’m not convinced by cultural arguments here.
That sounds suspiciously close to the “right” (scare quotes intentional) not to be offended by new ideas which seems to be becoming more common on university campuses in the US, leading to “trigger” warnings and other dubious practices for those intending to be scholars.
My take would have been that the person was interested in knowing and talking to you, and was willing to forgo a meal in order to do so.
But I’ve been accused of being too charitable. So YMMV.
Really? I don’t quite see the equivalence. Could you elaborate?
So possibly the communication failures in this thread are at least partly due to different understandings of how language means and what truth is. Not that that is meant as some great insight — I am sure it occurred to most.
On what you mention about the prerequisite theories of truth for an intelligible discussion.
Earlier in the thread I said that perhaps only a believer could fully grasp religious discussion. That idea came from Putnam’s early-90s lectures on Pragmatism — an Open Question (the section on Wittgenstein). According to my notes, a fuller paraphrase would be:
Religious claims are not badly formulated empirical claims, and a deep understanding is not possible from outside that language game. The value of a form of life cannot be fully ascertained by those unable to share its evaluative interests.
This is Putnam’s understanding of how to read Wittgenstein, and I understand him to be agreeing with it.
Putnam holds a form of the deflationary approach to truth, I believe.