Atheism

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  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Without epistemological certainty there can be no certainty of ontological reality. Moral realism remains an assertion.Fooloso4

    I don't agree with this assertion. Regardless, I am certain there is a moral reality. Certainty is a special class of knowledge in any event.
    Whether we know what is right doesn't affect what is right
    — Hanover

    If we do not know what is right we do not know if anything is right beyond whatever it is we assert to be right.
    Fooloso4

    And you comment is non-responsive to mine.
    Those who are convinced of their own moral certainty are now the majority of the Supreme Court and a large and powerful enough faction of the Legislator to determine what significant portions of our lives will be.Fooloso4

    I don't know their level of certitude regarding moral issues and neither do you
    The point is, what is regarded as the wisdom of the Bible does not conform to what you want it to. Where it does you call it wisdom, where it doesn't you reject it. I do think there is wisdom to be found but do not think it matches up with what you find.Fooloso4

    You have no idea what I derive from the Bible, Hamlet, or Winnie the Pooh.
  • Paulm12
    116

    I thought I'd step in and say I don't think I know any Christian or Jewish believers who literally think the Bible fell out of the sky, literally translated (in English). Pretty much everyone I've talked to has explained that Paul wrote the letters Corinthians, Ephesians, etc; different books, different authors, and of course, different historical contexts, which needs to be taken into account. I think it is all too easy for us, in a post scientific-revolution context, to expect early writers and those passing on oral history to preserve every small detail of the story as if it was some process to be able to replicate. This is not how history was told; for instance, battle records often exaggerated the number of troops on the enemy side. Historians know (and expect) this. Does this mean the battle didn't happen? No, simply that there may not have been a way to keep an accurate count, or that the exaggeration served a different purpose.
    As Conrad Hyers said,
    one often finds a literalist understanding of Bible and faith being assumed by those who have no religious inclinations, or who are avowedly antireligious in sentiment. Even in educated circles the possibility of more sophisticated theologies of creation is easily obscured by burning straw effigies of biblical literalism.
    The sad thing is, this seems to be what is going on here, which frankly does not belong on a forum dedicated to philosophy.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    I think it is all too easy for us, in a post scientific-revolution context, to expect early writers and those passing on oral history to preserve every small detail of the story as if it was some process to be able to replicate. This is not how history was told; for instance, battle records often exaggerated the number of troops on the enemy side.Paulm12

    Well, that's not all, is it? It's not so much about some details being lost in translation - its entire mythologies being recorded that did not happen. Moses not being a real person and not writing those books is but one issue. There are also no eyewitness records of the figure known as Jesus, with the gospels being written anonymously, decades after the supposed events. This is significant given the belief systems and philosophical positions people held and hold based on those stories.

    The sad thing is, this seems to be what is going on here, which frankly does not belong on a forum dedicated to philosophy.Paulm12

    One of the fastest growing expressions of Christianity in the world is Bible believing Pentecostals. They played a huge role in Trump's support and in helping to stack the Supreme Court and in advocating for education and laws to be changed to reflect a supposed Christian worldview. Interesting book on this by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a Christian writer, called Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. It's quite a big deal and can't be minimised as just being a few harmless stragglers. They even show up here regularly proffering ontological and cosmological arguments and sometimes anti-evolution beliefs, so there's that too.
  • Haglund
    802


    Sine diis mortua est natura
    Nulla natura
    Deos faciunt naturam chorus
    Non fun sine diis
    Fucking inutilem
    Scientia non scit stercore...
  • Wayfarer
    22.4k
    Christians just beg to be crucified, don’t they? And it’s so easy to oblige.
  • Paulm12
    116

    Yeah, and I didn’t mean to imply that there aren’t Christian biblical literalists out there (as there certainly are). It is more that the version of Christianity that I often see attacked by antitheists is a version of textual literalism that is held by a minority (of a minority) of Christians. For instance, many of those who argue for biblical inerrancy claim inerrancy only applies to autographical texts (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy).
    If someone is arguing against biblical literalism they are in agreement with a majority of Christians on this point. There have been almost 2,000 years of Christian, Jewish, Islamic scholarship on the matter (Origen, Hippo come to mind) on how figuratively/literally to interpret different parts of the Bible which unfortunately seems to get ignored in online conversations.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    I think there is merit in what you say about the more liberal traditions and I have sometimes argued this point myself, particularly after reading Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong on the subject of literalism three decades ago in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. But it remains the case that fundamentalist outlooks provide political and philosophical underpinning in powerful places in the USA, in India, in the Middle East and in Russia. And are not always Christian.
  • Fooloso4
    6k
    Certainty is a special class of knowledge in any event.Hanover

    All too often certainty can be a special class of delusion.

    And you comment is non-responsive to mine.Hanover

    It is. Only you don't see it because you assume the existence of the very thing in question.

    I don't know their level of certitude regarding moral issues and neither do youHanover

    Do you think that anti-abortion advocates doubt their own convictions?

    I do think there is wisdom to be found but do not think it matches up with what you find.
    — Fooloso4

    You have no idea what I derive from the Bible, Hamlet, or Winnie the Pooh.
    Hanover

    I do know how you define God. And I do know that there are several examples in the Bible that do not conform to your definition. So:

    Where it does you call it wisdom, where it doesn't you reject it.Fooloso4
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