Why don't you concur?

One doesn't have to be religious in order to understand how at least some of the religious concepts work. (Nor does such understanding make one religious.)

You objection only holds as long as we take for granted that god does not exist (so there's no source of holiness).

That's deriving a theme from the story, but it doesn't show the historicity of the events — Hanover

What do you mean by "showing the historicity of the events"? Showing that Eve was created out of Adam's rib?

The point I've made is that there are inconsistent accounts in the Bible that render historical accuracy impossible, so unless you're willing to posit the ancients were incapable of identifying those inconsistencies, you have to conclude the purpose of the stories was not to convey factual accuracy, but it was to convey a particular theme, exactly as you've noted.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event.

And you take things like that as evidence that the writers of the Bible "didn't really take those things literally"?

The issues you describe are issues concerning the transition from oral culture to written culture. These issues aren't specific to the Bible.

It's perverse to suggest the ancients weren't interested in factual accuracy. If anything, the fact that they kept multiple less or more diverging accounts (witness testimonies) of the same event that indicates that factual accuracy is what they cared about.
Witness testimonies usually differ one from another to some extent, such is the nature of witness testimony. In matters that depend on witness testimony, the most one can do is record whatever witness testimony is available, and leave it at that.

Who is this public? Tell me.

So a holy book would be holy even if human beings ceased to exist then? — Janus

Yes.

The other side of that is that religions posit entities and realms that are not publicly observable, and theories, like karma, rebirth, enlightenment, resurrection, divine judgement and so on, which are not inter-subjectively testable. — Janus

You still haven't answered my question:

Again, it depends on who those others subjects in the "inter-subjectively speaking" are. Who and what are they?Does just any random person, regardless of age, education, socioeconomic status, etc. qualify as your potential fellow subject? — baker

A life is an evolving theme or style, not a random lurching from one meaning to the next.

You seem to miss the essential role that style plays in allowing us to venture forward in life. — Joshs

I think you underestimate the daily struggle for survival.

I can say that this thread has shaken out some pretty crazy and entertaining posts, and I do thank you for your contribution in that regard. — Hanover

I do hope that your bad faith will somehow come back to haunt you.
But if it doesn't, then that's just proof that might indeed makes right, and you actually have nothing to complain about.

Gay men perhaps display a less guarded posture with perhaps more relaxed musculature; they seem a bit more carefully groomed; slightly better put together clothing -- regardless of what they are wearing; a more open sort of verbal expression. Perhaps one is more likely to find gay men at an art gallery than a used car auction, but I know people who contradict that. Gay men do seem to regard (see, evaluate) other men more carefully than straight men. — Bitter Crank

A homosexual man told me that most homosexual men are macho types like heterosexual men.

In my experience, the quickest way for a woman to find a good friend is among homosexual men. But I don't think this has to do with the man being homosexual per se, but rather that he, as a person, had to work through some quite difficult things (due to "not being ordinary"), and if successful, emerged as a decent, sensible person.

The most sensible persons I have known have all been homosexual men.

No. At a philosophy forum, you should do better than that.

Can you overcome shyness? Yes, but the underlying disposition is still there. One simply learned to channel it. — Joshs

Thinking of such traits as permanent might actually be a coping mechanism.

I think people are more flexible and more malleable than the official discourse acknowledges them to be.

People on the autism spectrum don’t line to be considered pathological. They prefer to be considered as having a cognitive style. One can say the same of those with Wilson’s syndrome and many other inborn dispositions that give distinct personality profiles. Is autism a belief that one could or should outgrow?

Life is hard enough. Thinking that one should be accepted and respected "for who one is" is for the most part a dangerous idealism.

Will you drop yours?

More importantly, mine is a genuine question. I'm actually not sure whether you understand what I'm talking about. There have been discussions about identity at the forum, but I don't recall correctly whether you participated and to what extent.

You re lucky you have the luxury of not having had to grow up a feminine acting gay male who was endlessly reminded by his male and female peers of how non-trival, non-superficial and non time-wasting gender behavior was to them. And it was precisely because they assumed my behavior was merely an arbitrary and silly choice, a learned phenomenon, that they were able to justify their ridicule and bullying to themselves. — Joshs

What do you know of my growing up, or of my present?!

We are born with many personality traits that are robust and stable. to recognize them in others is to see their style, the art of their being with you. Recognizing the art of their personality style allows you a greater intimacy with them. Gender behavior is an art of being, and not seeing it deprives both you and others of this intimacy of relation.

For one, I'm fairly certain that you don't want to be intimate with the majority of people on this planet. I'm fairly certain that you don't want to be intimate with me, heh.

For two, the topic of this thread seems to be particularly close to your heart,and associated with trauma, which might still be too fresh to discuss this topic at a forum like this.

Good for you. I've made my point. — Tom Storm

This still doesn't mean that those who question the nature of human identity are "resenting or undermining people for who they are".
Do you understand that?

There are few things less noble than resenting or undermining people for who they are. — Tom Storm

... people for who they are?

The way the term "identity" is used in discussions of people's identity, is a misuse, compared to what the term means in logic. At best, it's a misleading use.

"Identity" implies permanence, context-independence. A square is a square, even if it s among a thousand circles, and a circle is a circle, even if it is among a thousand suqares, or looked at under UV light, or whatever. Human "identity" is not like that, because human "identity" is subject to change, subject to arising and cessation, and it's context-dependent. The same person is sometimes a teacher, a patient, a customer, a husband, but not all at the same time in the same place; sometimes, their skin color is relevant, other times, it isn't. And so on.

Things that are subject to change are not fit to be regarded as self.

The larger issue concerns what it is we are born with when our parents fist. — Joshs

This is just the starting point, the initial "cards one has been dealt". After that, development can proceed in many ways.

how our personalities differ from each other, how one has a temper and the other is shy.

Having a temper or being shy used to be considered marks of bad character back in the day, and a person was expected to eliminate those marks. Nowadays, the terminology has changed ("having a temper" falls under "emotional dysregulation" and "being shy" falls under "social anxiety" or "risk aversion") but those are again and still, considered undesirable traits.

If you were to simply deny gender-related claims but support the idea that personality traits give us global styles of perception that are robust, then I would say your thinking and mine weren’t far apart.But my guess is you want to deny any connection between personality and cognitive style, because when it comes down to it, gender is a personality style.

I see no reason to think that either personality or cognitive style are permanent or pervasive.
It's sometimes convenient to think they are. And many people tend to persist in theirs, so this makes for the impression that they are permanent and pervasive.
But on the other hand, people who want to improve thier life are told to "change their mindset", "overcome limiting beliefs" and such, which goes to show that neither personality nor cognitive style are necessarily (deemed) permanent and pervasive.

What determines someone to be a man or a woman? Genotype? Phenotype? Psychology? Social role? Naming? — Michael

No, the question is what determines the importance of whether one is a man or a woman, or something other.

Personally, I think gender/sexual distinctions are important for organizing social and economical life, primarily for practical reasons. So that people know which public toilet to go to, or which part of a clothing store to go to, and such.

Beyond that, I think issues of gender/sexual identity are trivial, superficial, transitory, and a waste to invest into. Regardless if it is a heterosexual woman investing into making herself look particularly female, or a heterosexual male investing into making himself look particularly male, or someone undergoing a sex change operation. Things like that are a waste of money.

You act like deciphering intent and motive is all that difficult. — Hanover

No, aggressively projecting onto others is easy.
Your favorite is to presume ill will by default and to act in bad faith. So you "are" always certain about what the other person is thinking, eh.
You don't talk, you don't listen, you impose. You hit first, and if the other person doesn't fend off your attack to your satisfaction, you consider yourself to be right and to know the truth about the other person. Facts be damned.

Rather typical for a lawyer, but not conducive to open and meaningful communication.

And I can dress like a Dark Sith Lord and demand that you address me as "My master". What is so special about sex/gender that people can identify as a sex they are not, but identifying as something else you are not, well that's just crazy?
— Harry Hindu

Ask yourself: why is the above laughable rationalization more important to me than being friendly and somewhat accomodating to transsexuals? Why don't I want to be friendly and somewhat accomodating to transsexuals? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Transsexuals and some other groups are demanding uneven, non-reciprocal relationships with people who are not part of their category.

I'm supposed to be accomodating and friendly toward a trans, but the trans doesn't have to be accomodating and friendly toward me. No shit.

They seek no gain from making you believe they're a woman. — Hanover

Of course they do! That's the whole point!!

They make themselves look like a woman in order to get the social and economical benefits that women have.

Some examples:

In poor Asian countries, many young men transition into women because this way, they can more easily find work as female(-looking) singers, dancers, and prostitutes.

A petite, balding man is generally not considered attractive as a man; but if he transitions into a woman, he makes for an average or even above average good-looking woman with the psychological, social, and economical perks that come with that.

If a woman is stuck in a lowly job or doesn't climb up in her career, nobody bats an eyelid; but expectations are higher for men. So some men, afraid of career failure, transition into a woman where career failure is not so heavily stigmatized.

Male-to-female athletes: those men couldn't cut in the men's league, but they can outperform women. (How about female-to-male athletes??)

What makes it unethical for a person to knowingly consent to the procedure? — Hanover

By consenting to such a procedure, they express their disdain for social norms, and they want their disdain to be respected by those who hold to the social norms.

They want to have a special place. They want to be one of the special categories of people who do not have to engage in mutually reciprocating and mutually acknowledging relationships with others. Historically, these categories have been the royals, the aristocracy, the clergy, and the generally wealthy and powerful. They could look down on the commoners and the plebeians and despise and abuse them, and it wasn't considered problematic to do so, they got away with it. Who wouldn't want to be in such a special category?!

I feel we are all here because we care about something. — Andrew4Handel

Feel it, brother!

But is their effect on us, or some of us, what makes them "holy"?
— Ciceronianus

What else? — Janus

No, it's their source that is holy, and because of their source, they are holy in and of themselves.

However, whether a particular person can recognize them as holy or not depends on this person's purity "of heart" or lack thereof.

The purpose of my objection is not to say who the burden of proof ought to be on, but instead to attempt to disprove the argument made by Flew that the burden of proof ought to be on the theist. — Jonah Wong

Which theist? The cradle theist, or the adult convert theist?
Because cognitively/epistemically, the two are categorically different.


Secondly, what if the theist doesn't consider himself thusly burdened to provide proof?

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents.
— baker

That's not why. — Hanover

I was addressing your point about those old stories not being taken literally by their writers.

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers.
— baker

The creation story (story #1 dealing with the 7 days of creation).

If they believed God is very powerful (and they apparently did), then I think it's likely it seemed entirely realistic to them that God would create the world and everything on it in seven solar days. I see no reason to think they didn't take the creation story literally.
Same with creation by God's word.

The decisive factor here is that they believed that God is very powerful.

The creation story (story #2 dealing with the Garden of Eden).

Which part do you mean? About Eve being made out of Adam's rib, or Adam and Eve being the parents of humanity?

As for the rib story, on account of their belief that God is very powerful, I, again, see no problem with taking it literally.
Also, if "rib" had a special meaning that is now lost to us, this adds another possible explanation for literal reading.

As for the second one, if Adam is taken to mean 'male ancestors of humanity' and Eve 'female ancestors of humanity', as we can gather from the context, there's no problem. The word "Adam" can be a personal name, or it can be a general noun meaning 'man' or 'human'. "Eve" cal alsobe a personal name, but the word literally means 'living being'. There are a few unspoken steps in this story (esp. the one about how incest was avoided). I can imagine they can be filled in if we would have more knowledge about origin narratives in those times (e.g. it seems most illustrative to explain the origin of a species by focusing on one couple).

The ark story (story #1 dealing with 2 of each animal coming aboard). The ark story (story #2 dealing with 7 clean animals coming aboard and 2 unclean animals coming aboard).

You need to be more specific. Are you talking about the size of the ark and how to build it; the actual number of animals; logistic problems with having so many different animals in one place; ...?

It's clearly etiological folklore.

And beavers used to be considered fish and thus suitable to be eaten on Fridays in the Catholic Church. Nowadays, we call it "etiological folklore", back then, it was science or common knowledge (and something else was considered "etiological folklore", although they probably didn't have this term for it).

Given the kind of knowledge of the world they probably had back then, it seems entirely plausible to me that the biblical stories were entirely realistic to them (!) and that they didn't take them metaphorically.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them.
— baker

I don't know what you mean by "profit from them."

Profit spiritually, in terms of being closer to God, having a better understanding for God, having a better reverence for God.

There are people with PhDs in religious scholarship who don't believe the texts are sacred. I don't think they would agree they've not profited from their efforts.

How do you think those people have profited from their efforts? In the sense of having a theme for their academic research and obtaining tenure?

I'm not sure what you mean by "Quietism." — Ciceronianus

Quietism (Latin quies, quietus, passivity) in the broadest sense is the doctrine which declares that man's highest perfection consists in a sort of psychical self-annihilation and a consequent absorption of the soul into the Divine Essence even during the present life. In the state of "quietude" the mind is wholly inactive; it no longer thinks or wills on its own account, but remains passive while God acts within it. Quietism is thus generally speaking a sort of false or exaggerated mysticism, which under the guise of the loftiest spirituality contains erroneous notions which, if consistently followed, would prove fatal to morality. It is fostered by Pantheism and similar theories, and it involves peculiar notions concerning the Divine cooperation in human acts.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm

Also, search Garrigou-Lagrange's Three ages of the interior life for "quietism" and "acedia". He classifies quietism as spiritual sloth, most dangerous to a person's spiritual progress.

These are the questions that in the end make us an authentically educated person: — spirit-salamander

1. What's the use of being an authentically educated person?

And just for kicks:

2. What exactly is an authentically educated person?

3. How do we know that it is so?

Oh, Polly, ἀγαθὸς καὶ σοφός, as usual.

You know, this could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But you just don't want to be friends. :wave:

The problem is that the more one disregards them, or interprets them, or treat them as metaphorical, the less "holy" they seem to be.
— Ciceronianus

But what you say hasn't been borne out. What has happened is the opposite, which is that the more they've been interpreted, the more they've been venerated. Jewish interpretation of the Torah has been imaginative for thousands of years and it continues to define a culture. — Hanover

What Ciceronianus said has been borne out -- for those who don't already believe.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them.

This is my experience as well. If I read and try to understand a sacred text that I don't already believe in, the text becomes more and more trivial to me. I have seen that when people who already believe read their sacred texts, their faith increases, their sense of the sacredness of the text increases.

The written word back then and all the stories they told were doubtfully for the same reasons we use them today, which is to accurately document and archive information for the public record. These folks were trying to figure out how their world worked and they came up with all sorts of fantistical tales, none of which they really took literally. If they meant for them to be taken literally, they wouldn't have had multiple different stories describing the same events. — Hanover

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers.

We can then work through which explanation is more likely in each case.

how could the authors of the ancient texts have taken the text literally — Hanover

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents.

If you read an old Indian text and it says something like "permeat your thoughts with goodwill as you permeat soap with water", what do you imagine by that? Back then, they had bath powder, which, prior to use, had to be mixed with water and thoroughly kneaded, like dough, to get a dough-like substance with which then people washed themselves.
"I slipped on soap" would not be a coherent sentence to a person back then, nor is it for modern people who use only liquid soap.

Then, of course, translation issues. Things can get lost and added in translation. For example, in my native language, the word for "moth" is the same as one of the words for "witch". In my native language, just from a sentence that means "At night, we sat at the fire, and sometimes, [witches] would visit us", it's not clear whether the word refers to witches or moths. Context is needed.


If the reader doesn't have a broad knowledge of etymology and cultural history, they miss out on such things and instead look for alternative explanations (such as the literal-metaphorical distinction) which only lead them astray.

It seems that most looked to philosophy for ethics. Epicureanism and Stoicism were quite popular among the elite during the Empire. — Ciceronianus

What about the ordinary folks?

The pick-and-choose approach to religion may cause issues for traditionalists, but why shouldn’t religion be approached in this way? — tryhard

Normally, religions work by the principle "Do x to get y." Ie. religions make promises, they make predictions as to what you will get if you put in the required effort.

For someone who picks and chooses in terms of religion, all this goes out the window, or at the very minimum, they have no guarantees that those who follow the traditional recipe have.

To determine the most effective vehicle for religious fulfillment, one should be proactive in exploring different perspectives from around the world and from various periods of human history.

"Effective" in what sense?

Effective in the sense that a particular idiosyncratic ecclectic mixture provides the greatest ego boost for some person?

How else are we to know which approach is most relevant to our own experiences of the world?

Religion/spirituality might actually have no bearing on what is most relevant to a particular person's experiences of the world. People differ from one another.

My primary worry with the pick-and-choose method of compatibility is that it seems to suggest that religious truth is simply what seems most agreeable to the individual.

Not only that; the ecclectic approach suggests that the purpose of religion is indulging one's ego. And what is more, indulging one's ego as it currently is, when it's still unenlightened.

Ultimately, the pursuit of religious truth is up to the individual. In this sense, picking-and-choosing pieces of information that seem most justified and crafting our own relationship to religious ideas is the only sensible approach to any pursuit of knowledge. We must consider different views, evaluate the evidence, and emerge with a redefined perspective of the world. With this, I see little danger given that the individual’s pursuit is truly based in reasoning rather than convenience.

Sure, it seems inevitable that we do this. But what justification do we have to call this "religion" (or "spirituality")?

I hope you're very handsome, because all this playing dumb doesn't make you look good.

No, you misread the source and direction of my view.
Basically, I think people should focus on work. Not on "developing identity" and pursuing luxuries.

I don't know how we come to terms with our Christian past, or if we can. Perhaps it's something like Original Sin is said to be, and is an unending proclivity of some kind. — Ciceronianus

Just to be clear: The underlying theme of this topic is about how to come to terms with one's Christian past, right?

"Unbiased" discourse? What is that??
— baker

Science, mathematics, logic, phenomenology. Any discourse which depends on observation and reason, and does not depend on authority. Any discourse, that is, that is in principle at least, defeasible and endlessly revisable, and wherein expertise can be gained by understanding clearly defined ideas, principles and observable or self-evident facts.

Any religion, including Buddhism, cannot be an unbiased discourse, because it depends on faith. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, but in order to respect intellectual honesty it should at least be acknowledged. Talk of "direct knowing" is a nonsense, inter-subjectively speaking, and can never constitute an unbiased discourse. — Janus

We've been over this at least once.

Just because a person has internalized a discourse to the point that it seems self-evident, objective, neutral, unbiased, doesn't make it so.

If you were raised in a strictly religious setting, you'd believe that the discourse you learned there depends on observation and reason, and does not depend on authority, and that it is in principle at least, defeasible and endlessly revisable, and wherein expertise can be gained by understanding clearly defined ideas, principles and observable or self-evident facts. (It's, for example, how a person's understanding of God is sometimes conceptualized in religion -- as a matter of (infinite) progressive revision and refinement.)

The internalization of the scientific discourse depends on faith. Learning science in school is the same kind of going through the motions as religious education.

Talk of "direct knowing" is a nonsense, inter-subjectively speaking, and can never constitute an unbiased discourse.

Again, it depends on who those others subjects in the "inter-subjectively speaking" are. Who and what are they? Does just any random person, regardless of age, education, socioeconomic status, etc. qualify as your potential fellow subject?

I think your failure to understand psychological gender in terms of a perceptual-affective style that we are born with comes from a larger inability to understand cognition in embodied terms , as attuned by an affective , valuative background , a pre-given global possibility space which contributes the particular relevance that experience has for us. You seem to think of behavior in atomistic, reductionist behavioral terms. This reminds me of Skinner’s attempts to explain language learning via stimulus response theory. What you’re missing is a ‘transformational grammar’ of personality. Your way of understanding behavior reduces it to disconnected conditionings and prevents you from achieving a truly intimate empathy with others. People arent stimulus response machines or Cartesian rationalizers. They are embodied sense forming pattern seekers, and gender is one factor in how we stylistically organize those patterns. — Joshs

*sigh*

The only thing I "fail" to internalize is a particular popular notion of gender/sex. I don't give it the kind of prominence and importance as many people do.

You make a very good rightwinger. It's quite enviable. No doubt evolutionarily advantageous.

Of course, the “bad guy” is always me. How predictable. — Apollodorus

How predictable. You cast the first stone, then cry foul.

But I’ve never claimed to be “spiritual”, have I? Besides, why would you want me to be spiritual, when by your own admission, you hate even the word?

Oh, my hating even the word doesn't impede my acknowledgement that religion/spirituality is evolutionarily advantageous.

Every little thing comes down to money. Companies scramble to present a PC image so as to avoid losing their share of the market. That's why I, a healthcare worker, have been trained to be sensitive to trans issues. — frank

Sure. But why should this political correctness extend to discussions at philosophy forums?

I understand that it is hard to embrace life without purpose and meaning. But whenever a meaning or purpose is created, dialectically there has to be some reasonable counteraction with the meaning and we fall into the endless cycle of creating and destroying meanings that don't even necessarily exist in the first place. Does that not lead to simply, pessimism? — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

Pessimism is a very broad term, hence it's useful to specify it further.

An individualist pessimist will simply be written off as "depressed" by others; he sees his lack of hope as a failing on his part, and not something inherent to the "human condition".

In contrast, a communal pessimist is not alone in his pessimism, he sees it as systemic and as inherent to the "human condition", with other people being "his fellow sufferers", "his fellow pessimists".