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.
I point out that the reading did not require an allegorical reading until the ordinary reading became insupportable. That is not intellectually honest.
This is simply false. How can I convince you that it is false?
Would you also say that ignorance is a form of intellectual dishonesty?
btw, you and hotshoe_ contradict each other. But don’t let that stop you.
No, we don’t contradict each other. How can I convince you of that?
Yes, it’s false that Pequod sailed from Philadelphia. It’s also false that Pequod sailed from New Bedford, because Pequod (as written) never existed in the real world of New Bedford.
I don’t think fiction has a “literal meaning”. I think fiction has a surface reading (which may be cast in plain literal or figurative language) and in most cases has subtextual and symbolic readings as well.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that “meaning” is … umm … meaningless at the literal level of a fiction work. Literally, the letters, words, and sentences just tell us the specific narrative details. But meaning, if any, is what we draw out, from our own reactions to the narrative, from things the author says about their work, from our mental comparisons of the story to life lessons we’ve already learned …
“Meaning” is extra-textual.
Okay, I get that restricting the usage of the word “meaning” like this may be unworkably pedantic. But I don’t think you’re doing truth any favors by giving an overly-charitable interpretation to Erik’s misuse of the word “literal”, when he says he is talking about the “literal meaning”.
He’d be much better off to say the bible (at least, Noah’s story) is a work of fiction and has no literal meaning at all.
Except, that for 18 centuries, every christian did think it was a literally-true history of the world. Kinda hard to go back in the time machine and change that now.
And your point is still valid even if the allegorical reading co-existed with the ordinary reading before that time.
Aesop’s fables predate christianity. No one ever believed that the fox actually spoke out loud to the crow, or that the crow was actually so flattered that it dropped the cheese. Which is why we don’t have to retract Aesop’s fables in the face of modern science.
But funny enough, almost every christian prior to 1800 believed that Noah actually built the Ark described and actually herded every pair of animals into it prior to the Deluge as the ordinary reading says. They may have believed it had an allegorical reading as well as a literal one; but they most certainly did believe in the literal, as evidenced by the enormous hardship and cost they expended searching for the physical evidence they were sure must remain of such a global event.
Now, they have to pretend that everybody knew Noah’s tale was just a morality fable all along, just like Aesop.
They’re either ignorant or lying about their own religious history. Wonder why.
Equivocation. A solid percentage of Christians–maybe the majority–believe something like Ken Ham’s version of the Bible
The only reason some don’t is because science has short circuited the link between story and reality. There is no clue in the text.
There is poetry in the Bible, and parables, but their style is quite different.
Two words: you can’t.
Two more words: Ken Ham.
More words:
I will retract my use of “every” in the phrase “every word” because even the most obdurate fundies recognize that there are some words in scripture which are intended as figures of speech / poetry. What I meant is clear enough, that shouldn’t be the source of your ignorant claim that what I said is false.
Biblical literalists believe in a literal history recorded in the bible having happened in our real world. IF you have a different definition of biblical literalism, take it up with your fellow christians. They’re the ones who are wrong, not me.
No, we don’t. You’re either confused about the meaning of “contradict”, or you’re not paying attention to what you’re reading.
Too bad.
Maybe you’re suddenly being over-literal.
What happened to your christian talent for reading the real meaning of the plain text?
My statement that you quoted says it happened, and states the reason why I think it happened. The reason defends the claim that it happened. Or do you have a different definition of “defend”?
You are full of it when you put it this way. I always acknowledged the literal meaning. Correspondence with reality (surely your idiosyncratic definition of reality, not reality in its complete sense) is another matter.
Of course I understand that what you actually mean is that “literal” is correspondence to reality, but you are not really putting it this way, are you? So, you are full of it when you put it the way you do. The correspondence-to-reality view is applicable to textual analysis only with qualification, not always (it depends on the genre), which is why philologists don’t take this as the first sense of “literal”. Engineers may have a different opinion.
I must admit it was even careless of me to give the impression that literal interpretation is true (full stop). Because, let’s face it, literalist fundies tout the literal interpretation (regardless if they agree or deny that it is any interpretation) – and it’s false, because it excludes or distorts the spiritual meaning.
Literal interpretation true to the text (and to genre; am I the only one here who understands the importance of this? certainly the only one who uses the word “genre”, nobody else even sees it) is true, i.e. such is a true interpretation. This way of putting it seems to convey the same meaning as in Catholic Catechism, which was unfamiliar to me.
Yes, (1)-(3) are true. Looks like you have stopped misreading me. But this may be a deceptive impression because of the way the others are attacking me.
Thanks for referring to the Catechism. I have never read that thing earlier.
I certainly feel like accepting the latter part (in quotes) without any qualification. And the former part too, when it says that the literal sense is “discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation”, it explicitly rejects the rigid engineerial analytic-philosophy understanding of “literal” that prevails among the audience here.
However, regarding your challenge that the literal sense is the most important, take a look at what the Catehism says immediately next:
Certainly these other senses are at least as important as the literal sense. Of course, I acknowledge that, insofar as we are dealing with scripture, these other senses must not deviate from the literal sense.
All interpretations must harmonise with the literal reading, but I’d argue that this does not make the literal sense most important. Why? Because ultimately what matters is the meaning, not the letter.
The spiritual truth can be obtained by direct revelation, without scripture. I trust you believe in saints, so you also believe in illiterate saints. Illiterate saints have the grasp of the spiritual sense (of the scriptural or religious truths) without scripture, so they don’t rely on the literal sense at all.
The literal sense is for those who don’t have revelation, but are in search for truth – it’s the overwhelming majority, but not everybody.
Very confusing, all this.
As someone whose first language also isn’t English, can someone explain to me the difference between a text being literally true and it being factually true? Because I sense that this is where people are talking past each other.
fG
The problem is that most likely you don’t actually do the reading yourself. Do you? You want someone to put the token in your machine soul to see if it checks the ‘right’ button for you. But after so many years of disenchanted atheism, making excuses against ‘religious meaningfulness’, that button is nowhere to be found without great effort, including ‘do the reading yourself to see it’.
Wow, is that an ignorant, false and completely unbelievable statement. Where do you live, in a closet in Louisiana or south Florida, USA?
Ken Ham’s ‘biblical literalism’ is rejected by the majority of Abrahamic believers worldwide. Literalism is an ideology, not an ‘official guide for reading Scripture.’
Why don’t you try to read Ecclesiastes (it’s quite a short book) or the Proverbs of Solomon, petrushka, and come back with something more than the Dawkins school of infantile self-deluding Scriptural exegesis? Or has the old, bitter cynic stubbornly chosen that no other ‘intelligence’ is any longer possible for her?
First year university students who occasionally read Genesis in their ‘liberal arts’ foundations courses have a far better understanding of the limits and possibilities of ‘literal’ and alternative hermeneutics than the activist anti-theist detractors here.
Uggh. European residents, so provincial, acting as if their unimportant corners are representative of the large world. Thinking themselves sophisticated, while boorishly claiming that the only stupid christians are swamp-dwellers from the US south. If only, god, if only that’s all we had to deal with. Stupid christian biblical literalists are everywhere (yes, even in Gregory’s nation, but he might have to get off his high horse to notice any of ’em.)
Meanwhile, right at this moment Africans are murdering “witches” because the christians tell them to, tell them that witches literally exist and that the bible handed out by christians says in plain words not to allow witches to live.
No allegory. No alternative hermaneutics. Just good old fashioned biblical literalism in action.
Even if this was so so what?
Prior to the 1st century it would hard to find a Jewish scholar who thought the Messiah’s reign would be a spiritual one. I would argue that they were missing the clear straightforward meaning of the text.
peace
You wish this was so simple. The Bible itself (and every other scripture I know of) distinguishes between “heavenly” and “earthly” things, beings, truths, purposes, everything. The truly faithful people are supposed to either prioritise “heavenly” over “earthly” or to have them in harmony.
Problems arise when the harmony is (mis)understood as literal sameness, overlooking the distinction. This is what historically happened. Exoterically (i.e. on common-folks interpretation) religion has always been just a power game of rulers above people and people against each other, where words are used as motivational slogans pro and anti “causes” – precisely like in all ideology, including atheism. But on esoteric interpretation, there are careful distinctions drawn every step of the way – between social and individual, external and internal, above and below, and the priority is given to individual-internal-above as the focus of personal spiritual practice, disregarding how the world may look at it. The distinction between “heavenly” and “earthly” in scripture hints at the esoteric interpretation, but the majority either misapplies it or never makes it.
Just out of curiosity, let’s do some actual research on petrushka’s statement that a “solid percentage” of christians believe in a biblical literalism (like Ken Ham’s) and compare it to Gregory’s puke about Florida/Louisiana. Not that I have any desire to defend the US bible belt, but the truth — nationwide polling data, church locations, and church attendance — is that christians are a strong majority in every state of the US.
Of those self-identified christians throughout US, more than one quarter (27%) answer affirmatively to this statement of belief:
“The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”.
An additional third (31%) answer affirmatively to this statements of belief:
“The Bible is the actual word of God, but multiple interpretations are possible.”
Note: This does not rule out literalism for key issues like Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, etc.
Most of the remainder of christian respondents affirmed this statement:
“The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.”
The first group is by itself a “solid percentage” as petrushka says. The first two groups put together (believing something in the neighborhood of Ken Ham’s actual-word-of-god bible reading) is more than a simple majority.
So, petrushka is proved correct and Gregory is of course proved uninformed in his slur about petrushka
Well, he’s not wrong about it being “unbelievable” 🙁 It’s literally unbelievable that in a civilized world, in the 21st century, a quarter of the population are still snared in biblical literalism. Yes, unbelievable, but a fact nonetheless.
That’s christians for ya’.
No peace.
Go away. Go argue with your brethren and sistren who don’t interpret the bible the way you do and don’t see the “clear meaning” you see.
Once y’all figure out who actually has got the correct interpretation of god’s word, once y’all are in complete agreement with every other christian, feel free to come back and let us know.
Exactly the non-believer’s point.
It’s not our fault you can’t get the majority of your fellow believers to elevate their interpretation of your scripture.
They take it literally, word for word. They think there literally was an earthly physical (not “heavenly” metaphorical or allegorical) Adam and a physical Eve who mated in a garden not long ago, from whom every human is descended, because the words of the bible say so in a surface reading. Maybe they’re supposed to read it some other way, but they don’t.
Go yell at them. Quit yelling at us for their mistakes.
Put your hearing aid in, hotshoe. Erik clearly isn’t yelling. You are the one displaying atheist rage, as usual.
As a sociologist, I’ve checked the survey numbers many times. Louisiana & south Florida have high rates of teaching ‘creationism’ in schools. petrushka was wrong to suggest “maybe the majority” and as I said, once one gets outside of the USA, the so-called ‘solid percentage’ (based on the sometimes misleading survey questions) turns into a much, much smaller number (e.g. Mung’s ‘vine’ dialogue shows how silly hyper-literalism is). Have you ever lived for more than a year outside of the USA, hotshoe or petrushka?
The ‘European provincialism’ point is pretty humorous, considering the schizophrenic inferiority/superiority complex displayed by so many US citizens.
If you folks really were sincere in wanting to challenge biblical literalism as ideology in the USA (which it doesn’t sound like you really are), without aggressive anti-theism involved (as a few people here, to their credit, like KN and of course Lizzie, have displayed), then you’d look into BioLogos and perhaps try participating there. BioLogos is an openly theistic organisation against biblical literalism and YECism, as are many Abrahamic theists.
It’s obviously convenient, just as it is for IDists to ignore or misconstrue people who promote ‘theistic evolution’ or ‘evolutionary creation’, to simply make one’s targets ‘biblical literalists.’ Erik has patiently and clearly shown people in this thread other ‘hermeneutic’ alternatives to literalism. But the aggressive anti-theist atheists simply don’t seem willing to understand him.
As for the dark-hearted grandma at TA/SZ, it seems suitable to remember: “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” I wonder what made hotshoe hate God so much, which mere ‘rationalism’ or ‘scientism’ cannot possibly explain.
That’s definitely true. (And I’ve taught that course as a TA.)
I am trying very hard to avoid misreading you. I have no doubt that we are firmly opposed on fundamental issues, but I think it is important to understand what those issues are and what reasons we have for the oppposition. But the understanding depends on correct interpretation of what the other person is saying.
As for the others here, it seems to me that they are trying to hold you personally responsible for things said and done by people other than yourself. Apparently they are under the impression that you are a Christian (though I don’t believe you’ve ever actually said that you are, have you?), and as such, you are responsible for defedning the stupidest things that any Christian has ever said (e.g. the remarks about Ken Ham).
Quite frankly, Erik, I don’t believe you are being treated fairly here.
Wow, your ageism is really raging, gregory. The sexism, though a bit more veiled, is also ugly. Are those attitudes considered really hip in Europe these days?
I guess the sexism is ‘Abrahamic’: you’ve got the Bible on your side there. But the ageism? IIRC, there are a ton of geezer heroes in the Bible.
I don’t want to generalize on that issue, but I will say that he’s been treated much more fairly by you than you have ever been by him. That ought to be completely obvious to anybody who has read your dialogues. He’s treated you like shit repeatedly, but to your credit, you (in Jesus-like or milksop-like fashion—take your pick!), have always turned the other cheek.
I disagree. Firstly, we don’t actually know how the ancient Israelites understood their own texts. There are, in fact, really interesting debates about whether the Greek poets and their audiences “really believed” in the Greek gods. I see no reason why the ancient Israelites could not have taken the same attitude towards the gods of the Hebrew Bible that Homer took towards Zeus — whatever that attitude was.
Secondly, “allegorical” readings of Genesis are really old — at least as old ats St. Augustine, and possibly as old as St. Ambrose. Which means that Christians have been reading Genesis allegorically for almost as long as there has been Christianity. It was important to them to read a passage metaphorically when the plain sense of the passage contradicted what was firnly established on the basis of reason and evidence, though one sometimes suspects that this was because they did not want to be exposed to ridicule.
(Tangent: Ambrose and Augustine were in the unenviable position of trying to reconcile the mythological cosmogony of 1500 BC ancient Near Eastern warrior-shepherds with the philosophical, proto-scientific cosmogony of 300 AD Roman citizens. The Old and New Testaments are so different that it is hardly surprising that the Gnostic solution was so popular for so long despite having been ruled a heresy in light of Augustine’s Neoplatonic solution. I think that one can appreciate the intellectual consistency of the Gnostic solution even though it did fuel Christian anti-Semitism well into the 20th centur, having been among the foremost intellectual influences on Nazi mythology.)
Thirdly, and most importantly, the very distinction between literal and allegorical interpretations of sacred texts is itself a very recent innovation, conceptually speaking.
It arises in response to widespread access to the Bible following the invention of the printing press, and in response to criticisms of Thomistic semantics (see The Domestication of Transcendence by Placher, and in response to the newfound conviction of European modernity that knowledge consists in measurement (see The Measure of Reality by Crosby).
Only at the dawn of modernity — in the 16th centuries and following — do we see a Protestant insistence on reading the Bible “literally”, i.e. without the mediation of a tradition that instructs you as to which parts are factual, allegorical, mystical, etc., as well as an insistence on correctness of measurement as a guide to objective reality.
When Archbishop James Ussher gives us a date of 22 October 4004 BC as the creation of the world, he isn’t picking that number out of a hat — he gets that date by carefully addding up all the ages of all the people mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. That’s a very rationalistic, scientific way of approaching the Bible. It’s not the hermeneutics of Augustine or Aquinas.
Except that I never claimed the text being literally true. At my worst I said that the flood literally occurred.
I think that we are talking past each other due to two different senses of “true”. It can mean “factual, true to fact”, but in this case it means “correctly interpreted/read, true to the text”.
There’s a substantial overlap in these two different senses of the word “true”, which exacerbates the problem, but the priority is crucial. Patrick and Keiths presuppose that if they don’t find archeological or geological data for a global flood at the specific date, then the text is debunked. But is the text really allowing for these presuppositions? I am not good at chronologies, so this is the last thing I would discuss, but the description of the flood allows for reasonably limited events. If those in the ark were to survive, the flood could not be too drastic. Then again, every major civilisation has a flood story, so, if they are talking about the same event, then it must have happened. Or should we call everybody a liar (yet somehow maintain that we are better)?
It’s easy to disprove the text by disregarding its meaning and genre. It would be also very easy to prove it to someone by stretching it(s meaning and genre). The most complicated issue in the discussion is that I recognise scripture as a distinct genre, while nobody else does.
I take it that in England, the literal readings were pushed by “low churches”– while the “higher churches” (with Catholicism at the summit) told parishioners that they would be instructed on what the Bible meant–if they even bothered to read that old book at all (which they needn’t).
As I understand it, it was kind of a people’s rebellion against churchy authority (as well as against, music, ritual, fancy windows, incense, expensive clergy, etc.) that brought us Bible-thumping, speaking in tongues, etc. On the other side of the coin, that rebellion also gave us Quakerism–which was so anti-clerical, it dispensed with that class entirely and also turned away from texts old AND new in favor of individual parishioner mysticism.
That may be true, but what of it? I don’t regulate my interactions with others acording to the logic of quid pro quo.
I tend to think that if one acts out of a place of recognition of the humanity, autonomy, and alterity of the Other, then the other person is more likely to reciprocate. Even if they don’t, at least you know that you did the right thing. And I also think that one is always obligated to try to do the right thing, even if it hasn’t worked out in the past. There is always possibility.
I can always turn the other cheek right up until the point where the other person chooses to make it personal. Erik hasn’t done that yet.
I think that there’s something importantly right about this distinction. I will note, however, that it does need to be handled with a lot of care. For one thing, Spinoza makes this distinction between the “true meaning” of a text and “true to the facts” in order to undermine the authority of Scripture. For someone who thinks that there are religious truths in Scripture, the distinction between true meanings and factual truth is going to be a dual-edged blade.
Except that, from the fact that many major civilizations have a flood story, it doesn’t follow that they are all talking about the same flood. Major civilizations were built near rivers, because transporting goods by water is more energy-efficient than transporting goods by land. Rivers are prone to flooding. A flood that affected one civilization and inspired its flood narrative won’t be the same flood that inspired a similar narrative in a different civilization.
It’s not a question of callig anyone a liar. It’s more a question of understading how our cognitive architecture transforms usueful and important information into myths when there is no literate tradition and all information must be transmitted orally over the generations; see When They Severed Earth and Sky
Would you be willing to say more about this genre? I’m very interested in the concept of a genre and how genre-bending and genre-blending works.
Last I looked, there were 1.57 billion Muslims, the majority of which would qualify as fundamentalists on issues like evolution. Obviously they are not Christians, but they are Abrahamic. They have the same creation and flood stories.
Why not take a tour of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and ask people the difference between literal and factual? Or just take a tour of an immigrant community and ask if scripture is factually true or just poetic.
As for the unnamed moron who asked me to read Ecclesiastes, I refer him to my posts. He obviously has a reading comprehension problem.
By the way Gregory, have you ever been to south Florida? Perhaps your tiny brain cell seizes up on the word “south.”
I’m willing to entertain the possibility that the Gilgamesh flood story could descend from a flood associated with the end of the ice age. My understanding is the oceans have risen two or three hundred feet in the last six thousand years. I could be off a bit.
But we know stories can be passed down for three thousand years. It’s not crazy to imagine six.
But it would still be a local flood
But I will concede the Bible is poetic and allegorical. I’m happy to know that Eric and Mung and Gregory are grown up enough to admit that Biblical stories are not factual.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it agin: You’re a better man than I am, Kantian N!
Here’s what I have found,
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2440/the_muslim_theory_of_evolution
and
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/nov96.html
Evolution is just another creation story. Darwin only didn’t see where God would fit in. He didn’t think his story through thoroughly enough, that’s why.
7000 years even! http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/09/2015/research-shows-aboriginal-memories-stretch-back-more-than-7000-years
Which makes it all the more strange that people immediately forgot things like Babel and the fludde and went back to their bad old ways. Like Judge Judy says, if it don’t make sense it ain’t right!
Oh, Gregory, it’s so sweet of you to care about me. Bless your little heart!
I’m inclined to agree with that.
Fifth isn’t being treated entirely fairly either, but in his case he has brought some of it on himself with his silly assertion that having knowledge depends on his brand of Christianity.
There seems to be an assumption that all Christians have the same sort of simplistic view that Ken Ham offers. But that’s clearly wrong for both Erik and fifth.
🙂 🙂
Well, not on my part. I never assume that anyone is as idiotic as Ham — not even Ham himself. I assume he’s a scammer who believes exactly as deeply or as shallowly as is necessary on any particular day to shear the flock.
What I do assume is that any self-identified christian who wastes their time arguing with me, trying to persuade me that they’re right, is one or another flavor of boor, aiding and abetting the undeserved privilege of (christian) religion in otherwise civilized society. Decent christians would argue amongst themselves (I know, some do) and shut up amongst everyone else.
The fact that they won’t shut up proves that they’re not decent; it doesn’t prove they’re simply fools.
I would have no problem with Eric’s stance if he would cease torturing the word literal.
That’s a Ken Ham word. If you think about it, there are lots of words (some associated with race or intelligence or sex) that have acquired meanings and implications that were not intended ten or twenty or thirty years ago, and which have become unusable in ordinary conversation. So just stop using the word literal.
But there’s another, deeper, problem with Eric’s and Mung’s school of exegesis.
It is that they get to decide what is historically true and what is allegorical. If an outsider tries to read the Jesus story as an allegory or parable, that starts another endless and pointless thread.
My point is that believers believe what they want to believe and will provide an ocean of verbiage to justify their readings. It’s all rubbish. The founding prophets of the Abrahamic faiths were plain speakers speaking to ordinary people. Yes, they made parables and wrote poetry. They sometimes engage in figurative speech.
But these utterances are distinctive and easily separated from their historical statements. The Bishop of Usher was not from Alabama.
hotshoe_,
That’s already been done. The ones who don’t agree are not True Christians ™.
Mung,
I’m not the one interpreting the text. Obviously even a purely literal reading requires some interpretation the part of the reader. That does not mean that all interpretations are equally literal. At some (fuzzy) point the interpretation diverges enough from the common meaning of the words that it can no longer be called literal.
That definitely appears to be the case. However, I am also basing my questions to Erik on this statement he made:
That is a clear claim that the biblical flood myth actually occurred. Can you read it any other way?
Erik,
All you noted was this:
Referencing other flood stories doesn’t support your claim that the biblical flood actually happened unless you can demonstrate that all of those stories are about events that took place at the same time. You haven’t done that. In fact, you’ve basically refused to state when you think the flood occurred, which makes your claim vacuous.
You also made the claim that the flood wiped out every person on the planet except for those on the ark:
That implies that every living human is a direct descendant of Noah, yet you haven’t yet answered DNA_Jock’s question of whether that is in fact what you believe.
Kantian Naturalist thinks I’m being hard on you by holding you responsible to support your claims. I disagree — I am showing you the respect I give to someone I assume is posting in good faith. If you want to retract either your claim that the biblical flood actually happened or that it resulted in the deaths of every human on the planet except for the eight in the ark, I have no objection. If you persist with those claims, I will persist in asking for details and supporting evidence.
Your move.
I disagree with the first sentence — evolution by natural selection is not just another creation story, but a well-confirmed explanatory model for some of the causal mechanisms that generate adaptation and speciation. Theories are not stories!
However, I do agree with the second claim. Darwin himself, coming from stolidly upper-class Anglican natural theology and armed with Lockean epistemology and Baconian model of scientific explanation, lacked the sensitivity to metaphysical distinctions that would have permitted him to see how evolution by natural selection is fully compatible with how divine power, understanding, and love prevents the contingent from lapsing into non-existence, moment to moment.
That’s not to say that I myself agree with the theistic response to the question, “why doesn’t contingent being lapse into non-existence?”, but it is to say that one can agree with the theistic response to that question and also accept the explanatory power of the theory of natural selection.
Tangent: creationists see conflict here partly because they imagine God to be a Demiurge — only benevolent rather than the malevolent Demiurge of Gnosticism — rather than a Creator in the Neoplatonic sense, as the necessary being that grounds all contingent beings. But also they see conflict here because they really do not understand what evolution by natural selection involves and why it is a better empirical theory than creationism.
Erik,
It might help here to bear in mind that the anti-theists you’re arguing with here are mostly American. In the States, “Biblical literalism” means something very specific: it means that the Bible consists entirely of assertions that are descriptively or factually true, epistemically on the same plane as assertions drawn from the study of history or any of the sciences.
Thus a Biblical literalist (in the American sense) holds that the Flood really happened, that the Exodus from Egypt really happened, and so forth. These are all assertions that are, for the Biblical literalist, descriptively correct propositions with regard to past events in the actual world.
She may also hold that people only deny these factual assertions because they have been deceived by (take your pick) atheism, Communism, materialism, Satanism (no, seriously!), nihilism, “the temptations of the flesh”, etc.
If you have some time and idle curiosity, take a look at Answers in Genesis. That’s what “Biblical literalism” means in the contemporary American context.
In short, there is a meaning-in-use of “literal” that does not seem to be what you mean by that word.
Feel free to disagree, but maybe he understands that your concept of “support” is a little misplaced. I have told you that it is quite a lot misplaced.
The extent of archeological etc. confirmation of the Old Testament is about the same as for Herodotus. This includes the flood story – at least the toponyms are recognisable. By this measure, Old Testament is as good as Herodotus.
And you already know why I won’t tell you the date. It’s because I talk about the flood story. If the flood story doesn’t give you the date, then by demanding the date you are changing the topic away from the flood story – literally.
Well, here we disagree. Theories are another specific genre, constructed according to a standard for specific purposes. Just like all other texts.
The theory of evolution (on a more metaphysical level: emergentism) and the theory of emanation are astonishingly similar, have you not noticed? It’s easy to see the appeal of evolution, but I’d argue that the theory of emanation is easily superior and more sensible.
Yes, I looked up Ken Ham. That’s a literalist fundie, but seems to limit himself to creationism. Pro-stoning and doomsday fundies are more dangerous in my opinion.
ETA: I noticed there’s no way to correct the people when they take it as an admission that you are a literalist creationist when you bring up the word “literal” in favour of scriptures. They don’t know what “literal” means in traditional (pre-digital) textual analysis and they don’t want to know. I forgive them.
That sounds basically right to me — bearing in mind that there’s also a lot of folklore and mythology in Herodotus as well. After all, Herodotus wrote that there are griffins!
This might interest some of you: Adrinenne Mayor, in her The First Fossil Hunters, argues that Greek myths have their origins in how the ancient Greeks interpreted fossils. I believe she traces the legend of the Cyclops to mastodon skulls and the legend of griffins back to fragmentary reports of Protoceratops skeletons in Mongolia.
It is not unreasonable to conjecture that one basis for a global flood was the discovery of the remains of prehistoric marine life in mountains and other regions far from where any existing waters were.
This is just to say that when it comes to Herodotus, or Genesis, we should be willing to recognize both that the authors were reasonably intelligent people and that they lacked a scientific understanding of the world. They did the best they could in understanding the world in which they found themselves, given the evidence that they had available at the time and the methods available to them for comprehending that evidence.
A “Biblical literalist” is someone who thinks that the best understanding of the world from 1500 BC is on an epistemic par with the best understanding of the world from 2015 AD — and who thinks that the salvation or damnation of one’s eternal soul depends on accepting the former (because it is based on God’s word) and rejecting the latter (which is only “man’s word”).
I suspect that my disagree would begin with the idea that theories are texts — although texts can symbolically represent or describe the theory, the theory is not a text but a system of human conduct. But since the same could be said of myths and legends . . . well, now I’m not sure what to say!
Yes, I was struck long ago by the inverted but parallel relationship between emergentism and emanationism — the ‘bottom-up’ from matter to mind, vs. the ‘top-down’ from mind to matter.
I suspect that which is more sensible depends on how one understands the PSR. Emergentism is not consistent with the ontological reading of the PSR, and emationism is. So your preference for emationism over emergentism is consistent, by my lights, with your ontological take on the PSR.
On that we definitely agree!
Erik
Well at least you edited your post to back away from the claim that “Genesis is as good as Herodotus.”
🙂
The Old Testament is something of a mixed bag, re archeological confirmation. As is Herodotus.
Not sure that you can infer much from the recognizable toponyms in the Flood story, though. We really do have different ideas about what constitutes “support”, I guess.
Sooooo, at the end of the Flood, were the eight inhabitants of the Ark the only humans alive?