The book is holy, but the what the priest says, goes. — Vera Mont

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27) — Jesus

I'm not in the business of defending any church, priest, or book. But look, the story says what you say! Only it says it more forcefully. That is interesting, is it not? Either you are influenced by the story, or the story has something to say about humanity that is universal. Or perhaps you can think of another explanation story about the story.

My priority remains ensuring that I don't surrender my skepticism and critical thinking to unsupported conjectures and the esoteric imaginings of others alive today or in the past. — universeness

Yes, I rather gathered that was your story that you live by and defend. I certainly don't want to force another on you, but I'd be grateful if you could see your way to letting us talk about some other stuff.

I have been involved in discussing many topics in this forum, AI, Politics, Physics, Cosmology, Logic, Socialism, secular humanism, theism, religion, trans rights etc, etc. There are one trick ponies on this site, especially of the antinatalist variety, but I am certainly no one trick pony, or only capable of defending my atheist viewpoints alone. I assumed you would be happier that I was trying to connect the theism being espoused by some, to your OP that claims atheism is a dogma that causes religious fundamentalism when all religion is trying to do, is assist people to live moral lives in some benign way. :roll:

4. Pretend not to notice that religious texts, although they do not clearly make the fact/value distinction, are primarily concerned with 'first philosophy' – how one should live, what virtues to cultivate and what vices to resist, and what values to hold to one's heart and live by. — unenlightened

Do you consider dictates that start with 'thou shalt' or 'thou shalt not,' open for discussion, gentle moral guidance, benign advice?
What 'other stuff' do you suggest I am preventing discussion on?

All of the approaches I suggested come down to "This is what I do!" (Wittgenstein) or Hume's version (in response to the problem of induction), that even though the objection is irrefutable, we are going to continue in exactly the same way anyway. I think he thinks that means that the objection is trivial or futile.

The objectivity of fact only requires justification if one intends to maintain the separation between fact and value. A practice can be held up as evidence in an attempt to justify a fact as objective, — Metaphysician Undercover

I thought that's what you meant. Alternative strategies are 1) to find a way of "desubjectifying" values or 2) undermining the distinction between objective and subjective. Which one is best, I'm not sure.

The means cannot be truly "factual" if this is supposed to mean objective, because the means are justified by the end, and the end is justified as being the means to a further end. — Metaphysician Undercover

If "if p then q" can have a truth value, does that not mean that it is objective. It is certainly true that if want to catch a train, you should go to a station. Why is that not factual - and objective?

A tyranny? Can you give me an example of what you think their main complaint might be? — universeness

Loss of freedom. Being forced to do what they don't want to do.

Interesting. The challenge is how do we determine what is intrinsically worthwhile and what is not? This has to be based on a value system which is open to challenge. — Tom Storm

I don't know what people say now. I think in Peters' time it was thought that an activity would qualify if there was universal agreement. That is weak because you can pursue the same activity both for its own sake and for some further end. I see two possibilities, which are the explanations offered in math and logic. First, there is the medieval view that axioms should be "self-evidently" true, as in Euclid. That's less popular nowadays. Second, they are arbitrary, but in effect justified by the usefulness or interest of the system they produce.

Can you think of anything available to humans that is not natural? I don't know how far this gets us in practice. I tend to think that if we can do it or make it, it's natural... Whether it is 'good' or not is a separate matter. — Tom Storm

That's a perfectly tenable view. I'm no fan of the idea that certain practices are "unnatural". What I had in mind is the idea that we have certain motives built in and will therefore pursue them come what may. The idea is that these are the things that we need to do to survive (or reproduce). It is hard to reject the idea that for an organism to pursue it's own survival (and, by extension, flourishing) does not require justification. Whether it is rational for other organisms to allow that, is another question.

If defer to rabbinic interpretation as much as you'd defer to a literary critic. — Hanover

I wouldn't consult either on how to live, any more than I would consult them on water filtration.

At this point, I think I'll take a break before starting a new thread.

But the conclusion of this thread for me at least, is that personal identity is always a narrative, always questionable, and always made out of whatever social constructs are available. And social constructs are fictions we have to believe. You know like money, property, government, marriage, and who the good guys are.

To live in time is to live a narrative that is always negotiated, never entirely free or original. This is of course the story that I am telling, and I am illustrating it with a cultural artefact of undeniable power that is also a story of personal identity – an identity that changed the world.

Most of us live in an uncompleted story, the hero or heroine has yet to triumph, yet to meet their nemesis. But as a hint or a tease, I suggest the universal complete story of the story of human identity is to be found in outline, beginning in genesis and concluding in the crucifixion and resurrection. Next time...

The story, which is what each person is, is radically subjective - "my priority". As such it is not in the purview of science, or of rationality, those are priorities one might have, but their priority cannot be 'objective'. All of this is my story, which i have borrowed and relay to anyone who has ears, "let them hear." Nothing to see here, you've heard it all before.

Notice though, that this ultimate end is not susceptible to rationality, because it cannot be transformed by rationalization into the means for a further end, and this is what is required to make it rational. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems, after all, that we do have similar aims - escaping from the infinite hierarchy. That has to be promising.

I'm afraid I find myself a bit confused and lost amid all the messages. I've taken a screenshot of one of your messages which seems to explain what you're after. I shall take some time to read it and think about it.

World government based on human rights with effective enforcement? As things stand, many people would experience that as a tyranny. But perhaps we wouldn't care?
— Ludwig V

A tyranny? Can you give me an example of what you think their main complaint might be? — universeness

Loss of freedom. Being forced to do what they don't want to do. — Ludwig V

But this claimed 'loss of freedom' would have to be justified in a global system where all stakeholders can take their basic needs for granted, for free, from cradle to grave.
I am positing a resource based global economy, administered by a global democratic, secular authority of, for and by the people, which demonstrates fully open governance, under strongly entrenched checks and balances, which ensure that any nefarious, narcissistic, autocratic intrigues are revealed and countered asap. I don't think such a system is infallible or impossible. I think it would actually be very simple. The initial way that the almost money free USSR Gosplan worked, was a good model, that was soon corrupted by greedy, nefarious managers and politicians.
I don't see why individuals would lose any fundamental freedoms or have to be forced to do anything, but I have discussed this before in other threads.

To live in time is to live a narrative that is always negotiated, never entirely free or original. This is of course the story that I am telling, and I am illustrating it with a cultural artefact of undeniable power that is also a story of personal identity – an identity that changed the world. — unenlightened

What's that to do with dogmatic atheism?

Absolutely nothing!

But try telling them that!

But try telling them that! — unenlightened

Whom?
I became an atheist directly through the Jesus story. "They" may have had other reasons. We really are none of us reading from the same chapter of the same edition of the same book in the same language.
I just wondered, idly, as one does when not painting signs, how this all relates to the title of the thread.

Whom? — Vera Mont

The dogmatic dullard atheist cocksuckers, of course. :wink:

I became an atheist directly through the Jesus story. — Vera Mont

Was it Twain who said, 'The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible?' Anyway it's a common path. The Bible when read does convert a lot of folk to atheism - you encounter this is secular circles all the time. But of course the key is to find the right sophisticated interpretive framework to transmogrify the book from a lowbrow literal interpretation to efficacious exegetical insight - Marxists would say the same thing about Marx. You just need the right interpretative framework, Comrade.

But of course the key is to find the right sophisticated interpretive framework to transmogrify the book from a lowbrow literal interpretation to efficacious exegetical insight — Tom Storm

IOW Turn a straightforward tribal mythology with a heretical post-Greco-Roman twist, into convoluted apologetics for an odiously oppressive death-cult. I guess you could... but I doubt it would convince me.

Marxists would say the same thing about Marx. — Tom Storm

I haven't heard them do so. And I don't see why they'd need to.

I haven't heard them do so. And I don't see why they'd need to. — Vera Mont

Neo-Marxism is the name for this school - usually an attempt to provide a more modern, sophisticated account. But amongst the Marxists I've known getting 'the correct' interpretation/reading was often the topic du jour and a source of acrimonious debate.

Thanks. By sacrifice I meant the temporary death of Jesus, the 'blood sacrifice'. — Tom Storm

That whole aspect of Christianity has never made any sense to me either.

You take away whatever you take away; you interpret however you want to interpret; it says whatever you want it to mean; it's as exactly as profound as you want it to be.
Bah! Good fiction doesn't yield to "textual analysis" - it says what it means to say and you either get it or you don't. — Vera Mont

Great literature is often characterized by ambiguity, by layered allusions, by the possibility of multiple interpretations. Textual analysis can unpack some of the imaginable interpretive possibilities. Perhaps the author had in mind just one interpretation, perhaps not. If the author is not around to ask then we can only make more or less educated guesses as to whether the author intended just one meaning or not, and it she did, what that meaning is. Perhaps the author did not know precisely what she meant when she wrote.

Neo-Marxism is the name for this school - usually an attempt to provide a more modern, sophisticated account. — Tom Storm

Their problem, not his. Marx made his observations and wrote what he saw in his own world, in his time. A lot of what he wrote is not relevant today, because it was disputes with thinkers and critics who didn't last. But he wasn't coy or obscure in his ideas.

Perhaps the author did not know precisely what she meant when she wrote. — Janus

Yes, they did, or they wouldn't have drudged out the third draft to make every word fit just where it's most effective. If you read what they wrote, get the veiled references, hidden jokes, allusions - terrific, you're the ideal reader, the one they were addressing all along. If not, and you get something different, that's okay too, if a bit disappointing. Being "unpacked" like a dodgy traveller going through Customs is no fun at all.

What you say may be true in some cases, but I think you are over-generalizing. Not every writer of fiction "drudges out the third draft" or necessarily has anything more than a general more or less vague sense of allusions and associations, although I'll grant that references and hidden jokes would likely be more definite in the author's mind.

Close reading will always reveal more layers than a single "literal" reading; and that is all I mean when I say "unpacking". You could call it 'excavating' if you find that more palatable.

Their problem, not his. Marx made his observations and wrote what he saw in his own world, in his time — Vera Mont

That's not the point. Author's intentions are transcended. The point is we have texts which are consistently reinterpreted and subjected to new understandings. That's how texts are generally situated across time. The idea that an important text only has one interpretation would be naïve. However the Bible stories began or were intended, they have have ended up something else, in fact many things over the generations. This is an unstoppable process.

Author's intentions are transcended. — Tom Storm

Along those lines, generally the interpretation of a poem isn't accomplished by cross examining the poet. That would imply the poem is a puzzle with a single answer for us to see if we can get it right

:up:

Not every writer of fiction "drudges out the third draft" or necessarily has anything more than a general more or less vague sense of allusions and associations, — Janus

Can you imagine a biologist or lawyer or horticulturist or historian doing a day's work for the sake of a general more or less vague sense of allusions and associations - let alone a year's work? Why do you think writers live in some kind of Cloud Coo-coo-land, incapable of composing a coherent idea, living in the hope that their steaming pile of meaningless verbiage will be laid out neatly and interpreted by some intelligent life-form?

Close reading will always reveal more layers than a single "literal" reading; and that is all I mean when I say "unpacking". You could call it 'excavating' if you find that more palatable. — Janus

I call it reading while awake. In some cases, it may be necessary to do it twice, because the author is smarter, wittier, better-informed or more subtle than I am. I never assume he just didn't understand what he wrote.

Along those lines, generally the interpretation of a poem isn't accomplished by cross examining the poet. — Hanover

Of course not. You either geddit or you don't.
He says (I think it's attributed to Browning) "When I wrote that, two of us knew what it meant, myself and God. Now, only he does."
Excavating, unwrapping, decoding, deconstructing or blasting it with dynamite may uncover something, maybe even something you find satisfactory - but not what was in the author's mind.

Author's intentions are transcended. — Tom Storm

IOW Don't matter what he wrote; I read into it what I need.

The idea that an important text only has one interpretation would be naïve. — Tom Storm

I guess it gets to be important by somebody appropriating it to a timeless cause.

This is an unstoppable process. — Tom Storm

Okay. Have at it! All those dead guys can't stop you or save their work, any more than they could from the Council of Nicaea.

If you don't agree that multiple interpreatations of literary works are possible I think either we must agree to disagree or we are somehow talking past each other, so I'll leave it there.

If you don't agree that multiple interpreatations of literary works are possible I think either we must agree to disagree or we are somehow talking past each other, so I'll leave it there. — Janus

Of course they're possible! Probable, maybe inevitable, especially if any amount of time passes from one reading to the next. And I'm sure each one serves a purpose. Sometimes, each interpretation serves a different purpose, a different agenda, from the last.
What I object to is reducing the author of a literary work to the unconscious amoeba at the bottom of its evolutionary pond.

Behind every original story is a person - somebody with a name, an identity - an aware, intelligent, purposeful individual. His or her story may be adopted by other people; it may be commenated, interpreted, changed, distorted, disfigured, transmogrified or whatever. But that shouldn't make the creative originator of an idea a mere passive conduit from one ear and one era to another.
Golding didn't understand Pincher Martin until Professor Eberheardt published that monograph on it... I just don't buy that!

I call it reading while awake. In some cases, it may be necessary to do it twice, because the author is smarter, wittier, better-informed or more subtle than I am. I never assume he just didn't understand what he wrote. — Vera Mont

When I studied aesthetics briefly back in the 1980's the dominant thinker was Monroe Beardsley. It was commonly held in lectures that the writer/artist may not always know what matters in their work or what their work is really about, or what makes it great or s/he may be unaware of a range of subtexts, humour or biases present in the work.

The idea that there is one interpretation - the author's conscious intention - is not often a key navigational tool for texts. Also times change and the work is necessarily understood differently - a work which starts as history may end up as literature (with the history no longer being considered relevant). Gibbon springs to mind. Some classic works are fecund in possible meanings and interpretations - like Shakespeare - and can be (and are) understood or contextualised quite differently with each new generation.

What I object to is reducing the author of a literary work to the unconscious amoeba at the bottom of its evolutionary pond. — Vera Mont

I think the choice of wording here is needlessly negative. It might instead be put that a classic work may be so fecund in aesthetic possibilities that it allows us to generate interpretive prospects and evolves in meaning and nuance over generations, staying relevant in new ways as culture changes.

But this claimed 'loss of freedom' would have to be justified in a global system where all stakeholders can take their basic needs for granted, for free, from cradle to grave. — universeness

There are two problems with this perfectly reasonable idea. Both are already at work in our world. I don't argue that the project is hopeless, only that the dimension of effective enforcement is critical, and that the tension between resolving problems within a legal and democratic framework and the exercise of force is inescapable.

I live in a country that adopted precisely this principle some 75 years ago. Ever since, nearly everybody had accepted it. But the welfare state had been a battle-ground over the question what "basic needs" are. One party tends to squeeze and erode it, the other tends to support and extend it.

By the way, the welfare state is not a matter of left vs right or socialism vs capitalism. It began in 1883 when Bismarck introduced the first welfare state legislation in Germany/Prussia. This was no socialist programme. It was implemented by aristocrats who recognized that it was the best way to keep the working classes in line. But perhaps you know that.

The idea of human rights, articulated and supported by a legal framework, has been a reality ever since 1945. There's an on-going debate about what exactly they should be. But powerful lobbies, religious and political, have never really accepted the idea and they are able to repress demands for their effective implementation over a very large proportion of the world.

Maybe consensus and acceptance of enforcement will be possible one day. I would love to be around when it happens, but I don't think I will.

Thanks. By sacrifice I meant the temporary death of Jesus, the 'blood sacrifice'.
— Tom Storm

That whole aspect of Christianity has never made any sense to me either. — Janus

I agree. But I think it is not just an odd doctrine. It seems to me to be actually immoral to destroy an innocent life in order to escape from guilt, (even if the victim volunteers). Once the sin has been committed, nothing can alter that fact. There are various things, practical and symbolic, we can do in order to go on living, but what really amounts to a resolution of the problem is a mystery to me. Time's a great healer, I suppose.

I think the choice of wording here is needlessly negative. It might instead be put that a classic work may be so fecund in aesthetic possibilities that it allows us to generate interpretive prospects and evolves in meaning and nuance over generations, staying relevant in new ways as culture changes. — Tom Storm

IOW, if it outlives its historical/cultural context, it will be appropriated by the generations that follow and put to their own purposes. That may be inevitable: those generations don't experience the circumstances to which the original text relates. The author doesn't experience the situations in which later readings will take place, and doesn't know how his work may apply to those times and people.
If future readers can relate it to their own lives in some way, fine. But that does not mean that the author himself didn't know what he meant when he wrote it; that he was a mere tool of the idea, rather than the other way around. (I'm not mad keen on scavengers of other people's creative output.)

As for central idea of Christianity, it is a horror story.
God Omega creates A, B and C, then invents the concept of sin.
A&B commit a sin facilitated by C. This sets in motion a chain of events wherein J,K,L etc. must inevitably commit fresh sins that are invented along the way by the god and his agents.
The only means of relief from those sins is through the blood sacrifice of sinless entities: a bull, a young boy, a ram, a lamb....
The cumulative sins of a nation grow so enormous in the eyes of this grudge-holding, compound interest hoarding god that no amount of animal sacrifice can atone for them, and every individual member of the species of AB, down to the newborn babes, becomes guilty through the procreative act.
Solution: Omega implants within an unwitting virgin M a new entity, X, which is therefore born free of sin.
X must be sacrificed by R in order to appease the wrath of Omega on behalf of whatever may remain of the human alphabet - as long as they're duly grateful and obedient.

However it's spun - unpacked, excavated, commentated-on, encyclicaled or eviscerated - this story doesn't work for me. It is morally repugnant and aesthetically dissonant.
(The fact that this idea is not exclusive and original - to the nation which popularized it doesn't render it any more palatable.)

I don't have an issue with that. But there is another point to take into account. Some people talk about "hinge" propositions - ideas around which the debate turns, but which are never the focus of debate. I don't understand the ins and outs of this idea. A related idea is that of conceptual or grammatical propositions. Most people are happy to talk about analytic or a priori propositions. These relate to the language in which debate is carried on or to the ideas that frame the debate.

However that may be, for a debate to occur, there needs to be an agreement about what is at issue and what isn't and what counts as evidence or argument. These things are not dogmas merely because they are not at stake. They can be challenged at any time, but that amounts to changing the subject and that's the difference.

My point is that these are also protected, but legitimately. On the other hand, they can be challenged at any time, and to refuse such a challenge would be dogmatic.

Following this a little further, "dogma" used to mean simply doctrine or principle, but it now has a a value built in to it, so it means something like unreasonable resistance to a reasonable challenge (where what is reasonable can itself be open to challenge). That's my basic point. Unfortunately, one person's dogma is another person's evident accepted truth. So I wouldn't necessarily feel upset if someone called me dogmatic. I might just feel that the discussion was over and about to degenerate into abuse. — Ludwig V

True. And there's a sense in which looking for The Definition of something as vague as dogma, with its evaluative and emotive dimension, is foolish. It's not a precise word. As the various ideas put forward show! :D -- and you're right that dogma isn't necessarily bad, and just because something is unquestioned or in the background that also doesn't make it dogma. Which complicates identifying someone else's dogma even more!

Which complicates identifying someone else's dogma even more! — Moliere

Thanks. There's no smoking gun. One sign may be an undue willingness to find other people's opinions dogmatic. Another is undoubtedly avoiding engagement with the opposition's arguments (without good reason). But nothing is simple. On the whole, I prefer to avoid the term. It is used far too often as rhetoric - giving a dog a bad name.

Give me examples from the torah or talmud OR ANY OTHER SCRIPTURAL SOURCE, that you use to guide your own life and the life of your progeny but make sure the example is theistic in content or in 'spirit' and let it be held up to critical assessment by others. — universeness

But this just again misses the point. It's not that I'm evasive at all. You're just not following the argument or you're choosing not to. If I were to spill out massive amounts of theology (which I will for the sake of argument), am I really going to be interested in your cursory take of it, and do you not see that your take on it would be entirely irrelevant to the question at hand, which is whether I subjectively find value in what I cited? That is, the question is not whether it passes muster for you, but you've got the impossible task of convincing me that it's subjectively valueless to me despite my insistence otherwise

By analogy, can you not see the folly in trying to convince me I'm not actually inspired by the sunrise? That you may just see the cycles of time and planetary movement isn't relevant to me.

But, since you asked, let's look at Leviticus 19:16. This sets off the prohibition of not being a talebearer among your people, which, at first glance appears to simply be a simple proscription against gossip. Let's turn though to the Chofetz Chaim, the seminal volume on Leviticus 19:16 and see what it has to say. But, let's jump ahead to Chapter 10 for the hell of it, and see when such speech is permissible. Sometimes it's permissible you say? Yes, read on: https://torah.org/learning/halashon-chapter10/

Take a look at that and outline it for me. Your task isn't to show me where it's not valid or where the analysis comes short, but it's to explain to me why it's of no significance in my life, even if I insist that it is.

As for central idea of Christianity, it is a horror story. — Vera Mont

However it's spun - unpacked, excavated, commentated-on, encyclicaled or eviscerated - this story doesn't work for me. It is morally repugnant and aesthetically dissonant. — Vera Mont

:clap: :clap: