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.
The problem is that often enough when you categorically reject an interlocutor’s statement, you use the exact same formulation, “I’m not sure…”
First, can you elaborate what the connection is between “I do not know” and “open mind”? I see no connection.
Second, I can easily concede that you do not know. But the problem is that you tend to assume that when you do not know, then we must be talking about something unknowable in principle. In other words, when you don’t know, then you assume that I don’t know either. This is as objectionable as any argument from ignorance.
Due to the aforementioned issue, your hypotheticals do not come across clearly enough as hypotheticals. Instead, they come across as propositions pertaining to a yet-to-be-completed theory or argument.
Maybe it’s because you are trying to keep an open mind, i.e. you are doing your best to not know…
Seriously, your question only makes sense when you prioritize the literal interpretation above religious and spiritual exegesis of the scriptures. But when we are properly talking about scriptures, then the priority is precisely the other way round. To pose the question that you are posing, you must presuppose agnosticism or atheism, i.e. you must take it for granted that scriptures are just a piece of random literature, like embellished biographies or patriotic/propagandistic folklore or sheer fiction.
Provided that you only acknowledge literature of those other genres and that you do not acknowledge religious scriptures in proper right, then obviously scriptures can be as reliable to you as those other genres, as reliable as embellished biographies, folklore or sheer fiction. The reliability of the text is determined by its genre. Some fiction can be pretty revelatory, like Goethe’s Faust, but by the very definition of “fiction”, it cannot be (historically) reliable, except by accident.
This is precisely the impression you are conveying by “Yes, archaeology has confirmed this or that event/location described in the Bible/Iliad, but this does not mean it’s accurate/reliable.” You treat it like fiction, so you are excluding any chance of reliability by definition!
See, when you upgrade your perspective a bit and, as a minimum, you treat scriptures like folklore invariably intended to convey something socio-culturally real, even though not always historically accurate, the problem of reliability changes accordingly. On this view, findings of archeology etc. provide a direct measure of reliability of the text, not at all accidental! This is a substantial upgrade compared to the point of view of mere fiction. Logically, when you upgrade your perspective even further and you treat scriptures like scriptures, not as anything else, then the definition of reliability is again upgraded accordingly. If scriptures pertain to religion or spirituality (and religion or spirituality is real), then there is such a thing as religious or spiritual reliability. We can talk about it when you get that far.
I would like to point out the fans of fiction seldom kill or imprison non-fans.
Erik,
So, when do you believe that this flood you claim occurred actually occurred?
I understand your claim now to be that the biblical flood wiped out all humans on the planet except for the people on the ark. Is that correct?
If you will be kind enough to answer the question about when this event supposedly took place, that may enable us to determine the minimum geographic scope.
Erik,
I’m perfectly open to the thought that Scripture is reliable with regard to religious truths, whether or not it is reliable with regard to empirical truths of history that can be confirmed by archaeological or geological evidence.
The more interesting question to me is whether we can or should distinguish between religious truths per se and ethical truths as expressed in a variety of metaphors, symbols, parables, and so forth.
If the sole teaching of Scripture is some version of the Golden Rule, then that would push one towards the second interpretation. So if there are religious truths in Scripture over and above the ethical truths it conveys, there would need to be something taught in Scripture over and above the Golden Rule itself.
It is, I submit, an ethical truth that the essence of morality is the I-You encounter and the essence of immorality is the I-It relation. And one can — as Buber of course did! — take that to be the central message of Scripture.
What is a “religious truth,” and how are THEY confirmed or disconfirmed?
On literal reading, the flood occurred when Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month. (Genesis 7:11)
I don’t know. It’s the opening to a line of inquiry, that’s all. But I agree that confirmation is a criterion of truth, so without that, we can’t say whether we have any truths or not.
I don’t know how scripture could be reliable with regard to religious truth, considering that it fails utterly to convey simple things like what to do, what not to do, and what to believe. Same for revelation.
Bearing in mind your point about “open mind” earlier, I must ask: Do you mean to say that we shouldn’t distinguish between them or that you actually don’t know if we should?
Well, I know. You mean to say that we should distinguish ethical truths, metaphors, symbols, parables, and so forth, but religious truths are “ambiguous” or whatever, impossible to distinguish and eventually we should give up. Right?
But on this interpretation, religious truths would be identical to ethical teachings in literary form. Aesop’s fables would be equivalent to the Bible.
Ethics taken dead seriously is a good beginning for religion, but it’s just a beginning. Ethics means following virtues and duties as a matter of principle, but religion means assimilating and embodying the fruit and essence thereof. And this is still but a single aspect of it, and even this put reductively.
Religious teachings (truths) unfold as cosmogony and they culminate in soteriology. And there’s a host of other stuff in between and around.
I meant that perhaps there are good reasons for making this distinction but I don’t know what those reasons are.
Not quite — I mean that there’s an open question (for me, anyway) whether or not there are genuine religious truths that should be distinguished from ethical truths expressed in religious symbols and metaphors.
Yes, that’s the upshot of a humanist reading of Scripture. What I’m interested in here is what the humanist interpretation of Scripture misses.
I’d like to hear more about what you mean by “assimilating and embodying the fruit and essence thereof”.
That makes sense to me.
I think that the unity of that cosmic teleology, from cosmogony to soteriology, combined with the thought that the unity of our own individual lives only makes complete sense in terms of the cosmic teleology, is at least the common core of the Abrahamic traditions. I don’t know if there’s anything analogous to it in Buddhism, for example. But Buddhism often strikes me as being more like a philosophical school in the Greco-Roman sense than like a religion in the modern Western sense.
Erik,
Is this what you believe to be historically accurate?
When does that translate to in our current calendar?
Why are you dragging this out instead of directly answering my questions?
Questions about “historically accurate” and “our current calendar” are extratextual.
We agreed to discuss the literal meaning. Your questions are extratextual. Extratextual is beyond literal.
That’s a really interesting claim! I’m puzzled as to what you mean by that.
If “extratextual” issues can’t help settle the literal meaning of a text, then what does? What’s the hermeneutics of literality, so to speak?
I recognize that this is a side issue, since we agree that the literal meaning is the least important aspect of sacred texts. But we might disagree as to whether the literal meaning has to be true. I’m happy with a text being literally false and yet spiritually true — I’m not sure if you’re happy with that or not. (I suspect you’re not, but would like confirmation.)
Hmm, an interesting way of putting it. Okay, so you are unsure about the reasons for making the distinction between religious truths and the rest. But how about the distinction itself? What if the distinction is not made, but it rather is? What if religious truths are distinct from ethical truths, symbols, etc. and you happen to be uninformed about it? Considering your otherwise impressive credentials, I cannot help but suspect that there’s something else to it than being uninformed.
“Upshot” seems to mean, on the face of it, “a good thing”. (English is not my first language. Not second or third either.) Luckily I looked it up and it seems to mean merely “consequence”. Okay.
Here’s a simple thought exercise for you. Instead of humanist reading, try scholastic reading. Concerning Torah, try Conservative or Orthodox reading, then Samaritan reading just for fun. Find out the upshot of each, taken sincerely. You should easily identify plenty of stuff that is missing in the humanist interpretation.
If you go through the thought exercise, I will not need to tell.
Yes, it’s the same in Buddhism. Even though Buddhist terminology seems to deny “soul” and “spirit” and “God” which are absolutely vital to any theology, there’s a trick to it. Statements like “There’s no soul” etc. are still statements about soul etc. They are the actual tenets of Buddhism. Thus Buddhism revolves around the same theological concepts and constitutes a proper theology and it ultimately is a religion in full sense, not a mere philosophy. Cosmogony and soteriology should be easily discernible by looking at the four noble truths. The doctrine of dependent origination is a kind of creation story. Nothing is missing.
A small history lesson. Buddhism nearly replaced Hinduism in India for a while. It could only do it by being (almost) equally complete system of both ritualistic religion and spiritual practice, not to mention a rigorous philosophy with metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, esthetics, etc. the way Hinduism is.
The difference between Advaita Vedanta (the subtlest and also most popular Hindu school of philosophy) and Buddhism is difference in name only. According to Advaita Vedanta, soul and spirit are identical. In Buddhism, neither exists – the essence of every thing is emptiness. So, Buddhism ends up saying in a different way that soul and spirit are identical. Buddhist philosophy mostly took shape in debate/dialogue with Vedanta and both are far more refined than any Western school of thought will ever be. In my assessment, Neoplatonism comes closest.
Nice.
Erik,
So what? I’m asking what you believe when you say the Christian Bible is literally true.
You seem to be mistaking me for someone else. I am trying to understand the details of your claim that the Christian Bible is literally true, generally:
and specifically:
You challenged me to “Feel free to disprove it.” In order to take that challenge, I need to understand the details of your claims. So, once more:
When did this flood supposedly occur?
You claim that the biblical flood wiped out all humans on the planet except for the people on the ark, correct?
Patrick, I think I can translate.
When you are served a parfait of ice cream and bullshit, the polite thing to do is prioritize the ice cream.
The facts of our exchange are as follows. It turned out that only the literal reading is open to discussion with you. For literal reading, the text itself is sufficient. My beliefs and “claims” concerning the flood story are in the text that Keiths has quoted in this thread and you can reread it any time in your own Bible which you surely have. I take no extratextual questions, because somebody in this thread put forth this principle, “If you’re interpreting it, then you’re not reading it literally.” So, don’t interpret, don’t inquire, just read it. If you have extratextual questions, you are departing from the literal reading.
Even when reading literally, it should become evident (for people capable of some reflection) that literal meaning is insufficient. For example, hardly any of the parables should be taken literally. Or the miracles. Should Christians go about making fig trees wither?
There are no hermeneutics of literality. Literality is what you have when you don’t have hermeneutics. The problems of literal reading teach you that you should find out about hermeneutics.
The literal meaning has to be true only for literalists. For those capable of some reflection, there are places where literal reading does not make sense. It’s properly neither true or false, it just doesn’t make sense. Then they “look closer” and find out the “true meaning”. This is the beginning of hermeneutics, i.e. of the other levels of interpretation.
Erik,
As I’ve said before, this ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy. I’m not going to go to the effort of debunking the flood myth only to have you come back and say “Oh, that’s not what I believe.”
If you’re ever in the mood to actually support your literalist claims, you know where to find me. You can start by answering the question of when the flood supposedly occurred. Even within 1000 years would be fine. Heck, I’m feeling generous, within 5000 years.
15 cubits seems awful precise for the overlayer. Likewise 300x50x30 cubits. Ah, but they are only metaphorical, non-assertoric cubits. You have to understand the cubit in the correct terms. A bit like the Tardis.
That’s an interesting claim. I used that phrase because I was trying to say that a literal reading (more precisely: an exclusively literal reading) is itself an interpretative choice. One chooses to read a text literally, or not — as well as choosing a further interpretative strategy, or not.
I think that there real problems, actually, with the view that reading a text literally is not itself an interpretative strategy. (Although not one that the literalist is aware of having.) For one thing, that view insulates the literalist from having to take seriously other strategies that disclose other possibilities of meaning, since the literalist can say that it is only the others who are “reading too much” into it, whereas he or she is “only reading it”.
There is no distinction between “reading too much into it” and “reading it” — there is only reading well and reading poorly. But there are many ways to read well, and many ways to read poorly.
Of course Noah’s Ark is bigger on the inside!
And if you consider how long people in Genesis lived . . . well, it’s pretty clear that we descended from Time Lords.
Which then raises the question: was Jesus resurrected . . . . or did he regenerate?
Actually, I wanted to ask you about this — “the essence of every thing is emptiness”. In a couple of places you’ve suggested that Neoplatonism comes close to Vedanta, and I found that a curious remark. But then I recalled a point you made a few months ago about structuralist linguistics. If I recall correctly, you pointed out that in structuralism, semantic content is constituted relationally: what a term means depends on its relations with other terms. Is that correct?
As I understand the teaching of “emptiness” — though perhaps this is a bad, Westernized interpretation? — nothing has its own wholly independent, self-subsisting existence or persistence. “Co-dependent origination” (the phrase I’ve seen used) of all beings (including “selves”) means that any thing is only in relation with everything else, and those relations are a constantly flowing Now. And it struck me that the interdependence of all beings in Buddhism is quite similar to the interdependence of meanings in structuralist linguistics. (Not that I have your expertise in either!)
Whereas Buddhism teaches the interdependence of all things, the dominant strand of Western metaphysics is that there is some fundamental level of reality that consists of independent, self-subsisting objects — whether primary substances, atoms, minds, monads, etc. (Though this strand of thought has sat uneasily alongside the emphasis on divine omnipotence as that which sustains all things in being and prevents all beings from lapsing into non-being, moment to moment.)
How much of what I’ve said thus far would you agree or disagree with?
As for Neoplatonism, I hadn’t understood the emanations as teaching a doctrine of interdependence of all beings. Is that what you’re saying? If so, would you mind explaining a bit more?
It seems pretty obvious that Erik wants to distance himself from literalist claims, but does not want to reject them outright.
I’m not particularly concerned about that choice of ambiguity.
That’s the best comment ever, at least for this thread.
Neil Rickert,
Erik has crushed KN’s disenchanted atheist Jewish quasi-intellectual philosophistry in this thread. Yet Neil wants to embrace sophistry too?
Let’s imagine it: “Hi, my name is Neil Rickert. I’m an atheist. But I’m still a nice person, trust me. 😛 Why don’t the vast majority of normal people around the world like me or believe me when I speak and act as if life is meaningless, empty, nonsense and that ethics are relativistic?”
Gee, that’s hard to figure out! 😉
For definitions of “crush” that include mincing, weaseling, avoiding, annd generally failing.
Gregory,
The Flood then, Gregory. Real or not? Global or local? Indicative of a deity that considers life meaningless or not?
Actually, I’m very much enjoying my exchanges with Erik, and I hope he feels the same way.
Perhaps Eric isn’t evading you.
I never say that.
This is why I do not take Gregory seriously.
Using his expertise in sociology and his knowledge of ism-ology, he has come out with that brilliant analysis of me. But it is mostly wrong.
So much for Gregory’s expertise.
Yes, indeed. For a bullshitter like Gregory who doesn’t care about being right, it is very easy for him to figure out. It is merely a matter of him making stuff up.
He’s crushing your sophistry, KN. How can you see it any other way? Enjoy it…until your incoherent atheism crumbles and finally you come around the back door to theistic truth. So far, you simply ‘don’t know’ and are ‘not sure’. At least you’re not as gullibly absolutist as the many other aggressive ‘grown up adolescent’ atheists at TA/SZ. Take that as a compliment. 😉
Gregory,
Now, there is an unfortunate image …
For gregory, the varieties of religious language are pretty much exhausted by repetitive insult, nonsense, pigeon-holing, fallacious reasoning, self-aggrandizement, faux piety and patent bullshit.
Not a bad assortment, if that’s how you want to represent religious thinking, I guess. But sooo boring and humorless.
In Eric and Gregory world, literal means figurative.
walto,
That’s it! Obviously humo(u)r is a bit of a matter of taste, but Mung aside one has to wade through an awful lot of po-faced earnestness to encounter a moment or two of levity from what I might term ‘the opposition’.
Understand the audience here. Humour abounds among people of good faith. Embrace it. Welcome it. Live it. We feel it with open arms; life’s often like that.
But among atheists, dark-minded and evil-embracing, weighing the world down with their emptiness and (oftentimes) despair, not so humorous.
You folks at TA/SZ certainly don’t even paint a funny clown face on your skepticism-atheism. The aggressive arrogant atheism here is far too ugly to bring smiles. Depressing. Desolate. Egoism. (Just ask walto & KN, atheist philosophists, as they wink emptily to each other. 😉 )
Gregory, the ambassador.
For ‘un-skepticism’? 😉
Gregory,
Cheer up, chuckles. Squeeeeee!
You are not generous enough to admit the failure of your refutation of the text, literally, as it’s written. You don’t find the date in the text, but you insist to know it? Then you are not reading literally anymore, by your own definition (which amazingly happens to coincide with mine, so this is a point we agree on).
As soon as you admit this failure, we can move on. But by moving on we will be moving away from the literal reading. And then I will move on the way I want, not the way you want. Because this is scripture after all, and if you have been paying attention to my exchange with KN, then you know that the manner of interpretation depends directly on the genre.
I maintain that scripture is a distinct genre. You don’t interpret a Shakespeare’s sonnet the same way as a shopping list. You just don’t, because of the genre. The same way, you don’t treat scripture like you treat a history book. Well, scriptures are written so that they permit such usage to an extent, but this usage cannot be exclusive and specialised the way modern science of history demands and expects. Insofar as scripture is its own distinct genre, such demands and expectations are misplaced.
Oooh, that’s quite a talent! Maybe even a miracle!
Of course it was a history until it wasn’t.
It became not a history book only when educated and intelligent people could no longer believe it was a history book.
Sort of like politicians’ promises after the election.
Actually, I’ve been working on lifting up the world with three quarters emptiness and one quarter pathetic philosophism.
But nary a word of thanks here. Sheesh. 🙁
One thing I’ve got to agree with Gregory about: You TAZ denisons are total rat bastards. X>{
Neil Rickert,
Indeed. It is my character flaw that I find that kind of dissembling the equivalent of blood in the water.
Erik,
Can you set a date with some decent error bars based on your literal reading of the text? The link I gave previously used the lifespans detailed in the text along with known historical dates to come up with 2304 BCE. I’m not asking for anything so precise. Based on the text, do you believe the flood as described in the Bible occurred sometime in the past 5000 years? 10,000?
You say it literally occurred. I’m just asking when you think it happened. For someone genuinely interested in supporting their claims, that’s not a difficult question.
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
Moved to Noyau.