Religion, why do you believe?

[bankside]

I didn’t claim that the approach was to be uniform throughout nor did I claim that there wasn’t some distinguishable manner of interpretation when taking the text in question and its context into consideration. My only point was in those claiming, by fiat, that it is somehow objectively the case that Genesis at a minimum with respect to supernatural claims – as was asserted earlier – was meant to be taken metaphorically, at least regarding its supernatural claims. What begs the question to any outsider is just what methodological protocol one is using to evaluate which supernatural stories are to be taken as true (in the literal sense) and which aren’t. If there is evidence to show the nuances of interpretation such that one is able to reasonably discern author intent on the part of how miracle references are to be seen(i.e. literal, metaphorical or otherwise), then I’ve yet to come across it or hear someone make a case for it.

And so when one even begins to make an assertion like, “The Creation Story in the book of Genesis was never meant to be read in a literal sense” one would hope this belief rests on at least some historical verisimilitude regarding the interpretation by leaders of the early church. Although, it should be noted, there is a vast difference between author intent and original meaning – akin to how other, more contemporary texts are approached (e.g. the Constitution and the jurisprudence used to interpret said document).

I've known people who will make outrageous claims in conversation and then when the audience is not receptive, they will qualify the claim..."Just kidding!"

I think that is what we are seeing in religion. Faced with a more informed and sceptical audience, various religions are trying to hastily reformulate their historically settled literalism into a pleasant metaphor.

I would even be all for that if they would scrap the claims to supernatural edifice on which the whole thing rests, but none are so bold as to do that.

 

[StevetheGnosisGiant]

because I believe in God.


Next.!!!

 

[poolerboy]

The Creation Story in the book of Genesis was never meant to be read in a literal sense

It should be noted that the Catholic position does not allow the story to be seen as pure metaphor.

Source: http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).

The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).

 

[Kulindahr]

I wouldn’t. There is no textual basis anywhere in the Hebrew Bible or elsewhere for claiming that Moses ever wrote any of the Torah (Pentateuch). Even Bible translations admit this in their preface of the chapter.

OTOH, there's nothing to say that he didn't -- except the material after his death.

It’s certainly clear, at least by the Documentary Hypothesis, that several sources (e.g. Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and so forth) and a web of redaction generated the texts we have before us.

Ever hear of the "Rainbow Bible"?
It's a text that demonstrates that there is virtually no agreement at all on what belongs to J, E, D, or P. That's why the Documentary Hypothesis is merely a hypothesis: it's more conjecture than scholarship.

It should be noted that the Catholic position does not allow the story to be seen as pure metaphor.

Source: http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

Metaphor is not the only other option. The first creation account is a royal chronicle, the other is -- I can't recall the actual designation of the type -- an agrarian morality-tale sort of thing. The interesting thing about both is that within the parameters of what those types mean to convey, both can be read as literally true; that is, the lessons meant to be conveyed are still there if the material is taken as literal. The second is closer to parable than to anything else we're familiar with; the first is more alien, but can be thought of in a way as a topical summary with poetic flavor.

The article is correct that both accounts hold firmly that there was a first set of parents, from whom all humans are descended. That is not a figurative matter, even though other parts may be taken so (e.g. the manner in which the first woman was made).

Therein lies another reason I believe the Bible to be what it claims to be, i.e. a revelation from the Creator: understanding it requires actual thought. In my book, no Creator worthy of the name would just let His creations be mentally lazy, and no claimant to deity who isn't the Creator is worth consideration.

 

[poolerboy]

Ever hear of the "Rainbow Bible"?
It's a text that demonstrates that there is virtually no agreement at all on what belongs to J, E, D, or P. That's why the Documentary Hypothesis is merely a hypothesis: it's more conjecture than scholarship.

The fact that it's considered a hypothesis does not imply whatsoever that it is entirely a guess based on no evidence. Similarly the Four Source Hypothesis (or Modified Two Source Hypothesis) is overwhelmingly supported by New Testament scholars because of its convincing explanations of the extant evidence. Could it be wrong? Sure. But absent a better explanation it's going to remain the leading one, which is why it (as well as the aforementioned one) appear in numerous translations of the Bible in its prefaces.

Metaphor is not the only other option.

I was mostly addressing the statement based on Catholicism which is the purported religion of the one who posted the statement.

Therein lies another reason I believe the Bible to be what it claims to be, i.e. a revelation from the Creator: understanding it requires actual thought. In my book, no Creator worthy of the name would just let His creations be mentally lazy, and no claimant to deity who isn't the Creator is worth consideration.

The fact that a work of literature requires thought is not evidence of divine creation. Moreover, it's a rather botched reason when said documents which are often said to be divinely inspired aren't even divinely preserved. We don't have originals; not even initial copies. Moreover, the archaic languages they're in make it exceedinly difficult for lay persons to access them (especially around the time they were written in since illiteracy was rampant) and the translations make it nearly impossible to understand significant nuances of the text -- accessible only to biblical scholars knowledgable in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and so forth.

 

[AsianDream]

Right you lot, just why do you believe?

I think they believe because there is an evolutionary advantage in being able to have faith in a higher power - even if there is no evidence at all for this.

This also enables the extreem form of moral hypocrasy that enables those in the USA to completely ignore the fact that they live in a land that was stolen from it's historic owners.

So for any discusion of the "moral standing" of the USA - in a histrolical perspective - you can't ignore the fact that this was a land taken by force (and genocide) from the people that originally owned it.

In some ways - no wonder it's now populated by religious fundamentalists - where around 50% believe (according to opinion polls) the idea that the world is 10,000 years old.

Is it any wonder that many of us in the rest of the world still view the USA as a dangerous destabalising force - rather than the champions of good that they see themselves as.

The US adiction to the most purile forms of religion being just one aspect of this - Just as their addiction to Oil is also a major problem for the rest of humanity.

 

[bankside]

So for any discusion of the "moral standing" of the USA - in a histrolical perspective - you can't ignore the fact that this was a land taken by force (and genocide) from the people that originally owned it.

By which I assume you mean the Dutch...

They were the first people in North America who both had the concept of land ownership and who created colonies, which were then extinguished and taken over.

 

[Nishin]

Kulindahr, you're always very passionate in sharing your researches and thoughts about the bible... I remember reading long posts of yours about how Genesis "should" be apprehended... and I read your replies to me below... but I 'm still not too sure as of how they address my questions...

The original audiences generally knew.
That's one reason this should be a very hard and fast rule: any church which does not educate its preachers in the original languages so that they can read most things in those languages isn't to be trusted.

Who are the original audiences ? When the books were compiled during a period of time nobody agrees on but that is at least centuries long? Is it not too large and convenient a period of time not to be tempted to believe words will have been amended, rewritten, edited in favor of political gains that could be made of such editing?
How even feasible is it to be able to learn all the different languages involved, understand all the historical and cultural contexts involved, to be able to discriminate between man's words and God's words?

... and how is such process universal at all??

A quick exercise in reason should tell you that such a thing is impossible.

Deliver them to all humans around the planet in the very same language, and you get confusion because not all of them speak it.

Whose fault? Tower of Babel anyone?

Fix that, and deliver it in the same exact text, and you get confusion because they don't all have the same culture.
Wipe out cultural distinctions, too, and deliver it in one language and one text, and you still get confusion because you have local differences in experience.
Wipe out local differences in experience... and forget about it; at that point we're talking about puppets, not human beings.

Deliver it in different text to adjust to the local language, culture, and/or experiences, and you get confusion because it's no longer the same thing.

Although not being a believer, I would find it a bit blasphemous to assume an all-mighty God wouldn't be able to do something exactly as he wishes... following that logic I am led to believe that if God did NOT deliver a message clear enough to be understood by everyone around the earth, then he certainly did so on purpose...

Maybe I have not thought this well enough but I think there are things in humanity that are universal, things like love, respect, well-being, peace, harmony, fear, loneliness, despair ... such feelings are the same to every human, it's only objects of said feelings or their expression that may culturally differ... wouldn't an almighty God, who has the ability to talk to every human soul and knows what makes humans what they are, be able to let every one of them know of his existence would he wish to ?

Examination of the three requisites reveals that the only way God could make a revelation that would have a decent chance of being understood as He meant it would be to a group of people with a shared experience and substantially homogeneous as to language and culture. That's one of the reasons I believe the Bible: it fits the way things would need to be to get a message across to humans as we find ourselves.

This logic doesn't convince me at all... history proved that there can't be less heterogeneity than when a group of people pretend to detain the truth (ie Abrahamic religions) ... and it certainly doesn't explain why the Bible is more worthy of being believed in than Hinduism's Rigveda or Zoroastrianism's Avesta...

The only "revelation" I'm expecting from Him is "I am God, I do exist"... nothing more... there is no need for hundreds of pages of does and don'ts. Such revelation certainly seems easy to make... and would be a necessary first step for whatever may come next.

And some people take inspiration from only their system, and try to assert that everything else is false....

... which I don't think is a problem in the sense that it may help turn someone's blind (force-fed) faith into something thought about and chosen... well it does become a problem if they do pretend their own system is Truth and start proselytizing... I think that's what you were saying... ?

That's pretty lame, because if there is a Creator, it stands to reason that His character is going to show up in all sorts of ways, so it would be really, really difficult to put together a religion that was totally at odds with the true one -- in fact, if I found two that were utterly, thoroughly at odds, in opposition at every point, I'd suspect the universe of being dualistic!

Maybe there is not ONE creator, but several... maybe WE are the creators, maybe there is no creation and all of this is an illusion... maybe we are wasting our time debating about after-life instead of making the best of what we have now... who knows?

... I don't think anybody (human) does... that's my belief.

 

[kguy3387]

Nishin, The Creation Story in the book of Genesis was never meant to be read in a literal sense, and that is what the freaking christian fundamentalists do, they take the entire Bible very literally.Yes, even the Catholic church has its share of fundamentalists, and I'm not one of them.

I think if you read the first chapter of Genisis with a good understand of what science has to tell us about the nature and creation of the universe, it becomes all the more breathtakingly awesome. Let there be light," indeed!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090803.html

 

[bankside]

I think if you read the first chapter of Genisis with a good understand of what science has to tell us about the nature and creation of the universe, it becomes all the more breathtakingly awesome. Let there be light," indeed!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090803.html

The Hindus had some pretty breathtaking guesses as well with the universe being cyclically created and destroyed.

 

[Nishin]

^ They also knew about the atomic structure of the universe.

 

[bankside]

^ They also knew about the atomic structure of the universe.

They also guessed about the atomic structure of the universe. So did the Greeks.

 

[Nishin]

I will gladly stand corrected

 

[poolerboy]

Seeing those space images solidifies my belief in Zeus the Creator of the Universe, and the continuing of his creativity...Nothing can take that away from me, not even the logic[strike]s[/strike] of athiests and/or others.
If the beauty of the cosmos is evidence of God, then anything can be evidence of anything.

 

[hotatlboi]

It is offensive to change words that someone else has already stated. and BTW, the bolded sentence, all of creation including the entire Universe, is evidence of God's existance and his creative Power, Not Zeus, or any other so-called gods.

That statement makes no sense. What in creation is evidence of one being you cannot see as opposed to another that you cannot see?

It's astounding how people are unable to grasp the illogic of this.

 

[poolerboy]

It is offensive to change words that someone else has already stated. and BTW, the bolded sentence, all of creation including the entire Universe, is evidence of God's existance and his creative Power, Not Zeus, or any other so-called gods.

I did the alteration so you would get a valuable point. I see you've missed it.

 

[opinterph]

I did the alteration so you would get a valuable point. I see you've missed it.

Please do not misattribute quotes. Quotes imply a verbatim restatement of words posted by another member.

 

[poolerboy]

I purposely missed the point, because it wasn't valuable to me.

Echo chamber. Got it.

 

[Kulindahr]

Seeing those space images solidifies my belief in Zeus the Creator of the Universe, and the continuing of his creativity...Nothing can take that away from me, not even the logic[strike]s[/strike] of athiests and/or others.
If the beauty of the cosmos is evidence of God, then anything can be evidence of anything.

That statement makes no sense. What in creation is evidence of one being you cannot see as opposed to another that you cannot see?

It's astounding how people are unable to grasp the illogic of this.

No illogic involved -- you're comparing two different things, and in ignorance, too.

Zeus, according to the sources, was a being who was quite visible, quite material, not only part of creation but able to mate with human women. There was no claim ever put forth that he created anything other than his own offspring.

As to the beauty of the universe, putting forth a Creator as the cause is not unreasonable, though neither is it any more reasonable than the hypothesis that the universe seems beautiful because seeing it as beautiful is somehow a survival trait. The difference between those two is that one bears examination in the realm of evidence, while the other bears examination only in the realm of thought.

It's rather like the walls of Jericho, which fell down: proposing the hypothesis "God did it" is reasonable, as is "there was an earthquake" -- though the astute will note that these two are not mutually exclusive (neither are the two above).


Before the objections start, I'll point out that the former hypothesis, relating beauty and God, is actually more reasonable than the second: in our experience, the presence of beauty quite often points to the action of a 'beautifier' (in honesty, in our experience, when walls fall down it isn't totally uncommon for someone to have pushed them, either).

 

[Spensed]

^ Not every "Man". Paganism, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, etc. all have long traditions.