tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post1262257756008448211..comments2023-06-19T04:35:06.263-07:00Comments on Skeptic's Play: In which I defend Biblical contextualismmillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05990852054891771988noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-91101570193739684902009-01-08T09:12:00.000-08:002009-01-08T09:12:00.000-08:00Deciding which belief system is "truly" Christian ...Deciding which belief system is "truly" Christian is a different point than understanding that Christians must have *some* point of divine authority to differentiate themselves from atheists: They must *know* something, somehow, that atheists cannot know. If it's not knowledge and truth, then it's just about preference; if religious believers want to call their religion nothing more than pure preference, the atheists have won.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-83597965220824711702009-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:002009-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00That's a good point. People usually take it as do...That's a good point. People usually take it as dogma that the Bible is "special" and then try to figure out what that means after the fact. Unless you define "special" very weakly (ie, "culturally important"), there are lots of ways the dogma can go wrong.<BR/><BR/>Going back to my original point (which I have trouble remembering, since I wrote this months ago), I was basically saying that it's entirely possible to have some internally consistent system to "pick and choose" from the Bible, and that this is not really less true to religion. There are plenty of Catholic beliefs which are based on tradition or Church authority (ie the assumption of Mary), and have a flimsy basis in the Bible or none at all. This does not make those beliefs non-Christian, unless you go by the fundie definitions of Christian. Even fundies, whether they admit it or not, must choose which parts of the Bible to emphasize, and their choice is based on tradition, authority, intuition, or <I>something</I> outside the Bible. Historical analysis is one system that I consider to be legitimate, and it is no less "true to religion" than, say, Church authority. The problem is that religious people do not limit themselves to legitimate systems such as historical analysis.millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05990852054891771988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-91396235227076362722009-01-07T17:36:00.000-08:002009-01-07T17:36:00.000-08:00What can they mean by "special" except what I desc...What can they mean by "special" except what I describe in my comment: "There are truths we can find out only from reading the Bible, that we cannot determine using only human rationality."<BR/><BR/>I've seen this with every religious "moderate" I've met: Whether it's abortion, gay rights, women's rights, free speech, there's always <I>something</I> that's immoral or unethical <I>because God says so</I>, not because of any rational or humanistic considerations.<BR/><BR/>Scratch a religious moderate and you'll find <I>something</I> he's "fundamentalist" about. And if you can't, then in what sense is he religious?Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-19746627090149332852009-01-06T09:22:00.000-08:002009-01-06T09:22:00.000-08:00Barefoot Bum,I think you are oversimplifying or ov...Barefoot Bum,<BR/>I think you are oversimplifying or overgeneralizing what religious people say about the Bible. (In the meantime, I may be guilty of overgeneralizing in the opposite direction.) Not all religious people say the Bible is authoritative, at least not in the same sense you mean it. Religious people may <I>say</I> that the Bible is special, but if they ultimately treat it as a work of human literature, to be analyzed historically like any other, then I would judge them by their actions first and semantics second.<BR/><BR/>Of course, real problems do arise from the semantics. Because people think of the Bible as special, they tend to overvalue its moral value, its literary value, and its historical reliability.millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05990852054891771988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-38074870676484242832009-01-05T18:10:00.000-08:002009-01-05T18:10:00.000-08:00My own beef with many moderate religious people is...My own beef with many moderate religious people is how they quite plainly use non-religious reasons to distinguish between good and bad in both religious and non-religious subjects, and yet cannot admit it and claim that their moral sense all comes from religion. Similarly, it seems quite silly when some consider the Bible to have some sort of special status when they quite clearly <EM>don't</EM> treat is as especially different.<BR/><BR/>Not all moderate religious people are that way, although I often wonder where the rest think they get their beliefs from. The funny feeling in the back of their head?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9124539381685751273.post-5059117592047944762009-01-05T16:16:00.000-08:002009-01-05T16:16:00.000-08:00You've completely missed the point. If you adopt t...You've completely missed the point. If you adopt the premise that the Bible is a work of human literature, then your analysis is completely correct.<BR/><BR/>But that's not what religious people <I>say</I> the Bible is: to them it's <I>not</I> a work of human literature, it's special, privileged, <I>authoritative</I>: There are truths we can find out <I>only</I> from reading the Bible, that we <I>cannot</I> determine using only human rationality. And it is precisely when the Bible <I>contradicts</I> rationality that it can possibly have authority.<BR/><BR/>But if that's true, then your basis of determining the good from the bad by your human rationality is just as flawed as saying that the implications of the double-slit experiment are absurd, totally contrary to common sense, therefore the experiment should be taken metaphorically.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.com