doubtingthomas

He said that no one knows the day or the hour, and I don't see how that voids the verses where he does promise a return with the lifetimes of his disciples.

I wonder what your interpretation of this passage is?

"They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation"
2 Peter 3:4

They seem to have expected the return within the lifetime of their fathers who would have been the generation Jesus promised his return to.

Mageth

jbernier:

I respect your views on the dynamics of religion.

To me, of course, the changing concept of the Biblical God throughout the Tanakh, into the NT, and through the centuries up until now, indicates that God is just that - a concept - that is molded and modfied by humans according to the times. So yes, the God concept and religion needs to be dynamic, if they want to survive and be meaningful and applicable to the society. No actual God is necessary to explain this evolving concept of God.

You might be interested in reading Karen Armstrong, if you haven't. Her two books, A History of God, and The Battle for God, give an excellent account of the evolution of the Abrahamic God concept and the rise of Fundamentalism, respectively, in the three major Abrahamic religions.

In the latter, Armstrong talks about how Biblical literalism and "inerrancy" is a modern phenomenon, basically a result of, and at the same time a response to, the rise of Rationalism and the "modern era."

funinspace

Alas, the defender can quibble endlessly with semantic word games.

Magus55, you care to quibble with the Flood fantasy happenning 2400-2200 BCE? Your perfect cannon claims it. I've asked before, and you seam to want it to happen somewhere further back in time, but never bothered to explain how that works within a Bible without errors.

Godless Wonder, yep I need to remember the recent work in Antartica. Old arguements gathering dust...

DK

jbernier

Funinspace,

Your experiences with fundamentalists are not dissimilar from mine (the exception being fundamentalism is not a major cultural force here in Ontario). But, yes, I agree: For the most Christians in NA behave in either an ethically reprehensible fashion or say nothing while other Christians behave in an ethically reprehensible fashion.

And that is precisely the point of why I articulate my theology the way I do. One of the single biggest problems is inerrancy - people are content to say "Well Paul says X and therefore X is the case". Truth be told I think that they often do so more to justify the fact that they already believe X before even consulting the text - in short the text is justification after the fact. The problem is that the Biblical text does support violence, genocide, etc., at numerous points - and no amount of exegetical acrobatics will get one around that fact. The question is not "Does the Bible say some pretty awful things?" but rather "How should 21st century Christians respond to those awful things?" Instead of trying to resolve contradictions in the Biblical texts we should resolve to live with the tensions generated by these contradictions because that is what life is all about - living with tensions, contradictions, uncertainties, inconsistencies, etc.

Some people in the "Why assume inerrancy?" thread have told me that I write very coherently and clearly. That is intentional, something I self-consciously strive towards. Why? Because there has generally been an opposition between professional Biblical scholarship and theology on one hand and the average lay Christian on the other. This is largely because Biblical scholars and theologians have produced work that is generally so esoteric and inaccessible as to be functionally meaningless in the life of the average lay person. Hence why my research interests in Religious Studies have been gradually shifting more towards ethics as of late - my hope is to eventually produce ethical reflections on the Biblical texts that can simultaneously incorporate the "state of the art" in Biblical scholarship and political philosophy on hand and yet be accessible to the average lay person on the other. Essentially what I think is needed is the democratization of theology.

All this is to say that a large part of the problem is that there has long been a sharp gap between the theological reflection in which professional theologians and Biblical scholars engage and that in which the average lay person engages. I would like to see this gap narrowed and see an increase in ethical reflection and awareness amongst lay people. Interestingly, I see the internet - and this type of forum - as a very powerful tool that can be used in moving towards this goal.

jbernier

The last sentence, of course, is correct: Indeed, "No actual God is necessary to explain this evolving concept of God." Simultaneously, though, neither does this evolving concept of God necessarily mean that God is not actual. For instance, our understanding of atoms has definitely changed since the days of the Epicureans - does that mean that it is just a concept, a sign without a referent? Surely not. It just means that we think differently about atoms than we did 2000 years ago.

Perhaps one could say that faith is precisely that step of saying that one believes that the possibility that this history of the concept of God in some way refers to an actual God is the actual state of affairs - in short, saying "God might exist, God might not; I know that both are possible; yet I will choose to say that God exists." That does not prove God's existence of course - which is precisely what makes it a step of faith.

I am familiar with Armstrong, although I have not gotten around to reading any of her work as of yet. I do like what I heard, however.

Wait - I vaguely remember reading a part of Battle of God about two years ago (right before exams, which is why I read but did not finish, as I recall), in which she made that argument. Yes, I would substantially agree with that argument (having come to that conclusion through various other reading and research).

jbernier

Interestingly, it was precisely the issues of evolution, natural history and archaeology that led me to seriously question and eventually reject inerrancy (having been raised fundamentalist Baptist inerrancy was my "native tongue", you could say). From a very young age I loved archaeology and ancient history, including discussions about fossil humans. The fact that my undergrad is in anthropology is a reflection of this. But how to reconcile this with the Biblical text? That dilemma really is what has driven my entire intellectual life. I finally reached a point in which I had to say "One cannot reconcile them, at least not in the sense that inerrantists demand. One cannot quibble with the fact that we have found Australopithecines that are 4 million years old; one can quibble with particular readings of the Biblical text or with the Biblical text's prescientific understanding of human origins. Thus I had to move from inerrancy. Anything else would have been dishonest.

funinspace

Yep, similar dilema, different end destination.

On the debate issue, I stay clear of Carbon 14 dating, as it has been slandered. Most fundies are reluctant to openly debate things as simple as tree/ice ring research, since it is so simple conceptually. And the Genesis, verses are hard to defend, since they are also so simple. And amazingly (NOT) most of the fundies that visit here, also stay very clear of this issue and will engage. One Bible College Prof that I knew wanted to call the generations as periods, and had it skipping people, but couldn't explain how one could get such a torchured understanding out of the words.

DK

Mageth

Correct. However, the realization that "man" is a sufficient explanation for the existence of [the concept of] God and that God is not a necessary explanation for the existence of "man", while not disproving the existence of some god or another, does at least make the philosophical position of atheism justifiable.

Well, "choosing to say that God exists" is hardly a "step of faith" towards belief in God the way it's typically understood. I can "choose to say" God exists all day long without actually believing God exists.

I had a minister try to convince me that I could somehow just "choose to believe" in God if I wanted to. Balderdash to that, IMO. I can no more choose to believe in God than he could choose not to believe in God.

I'll ramble a bit on the topic:

I see two basic ways to come to belief in God or knowledge of God - one, through some rational path (including being taught from an early age that God exists, which was my experience), and two, through what one might call a "mystic" path, a path which I think is rooted in our subconscious mind, and thus more or less independent of higher-mind reason.

However, the mystical experiences that many if not most of us are susceptible to can be interpreted in a myriad of ways - see Jung and Joseph Campbell, for example. A problem occurs, however, when one takes what one's learned through reason and applies it to the mystical experience - instantly, your mystical experience becomes attributable to the God you've learned of through reason. Never mind that the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Moslem, and the tribal shaman attribute their experiences to the deities or non-deities they've learned of through reason.

Now, this ties back to the evolving concept of God I referred to. That concept evolved from people's interpretations of their mystical experiences, which were given "life", or expression, in the form of myth and ritual, to metaphorically express what otherwise could not be expressed. Unfortunately, many people now, and in the past, wrongly interpret the myths as literal history, and objectify the "God" that is in reality just a mythical projection of our mystical, subconscious experience. And add to that the various uses that many have found for religion and myth, e.g. for the unification of a society around a common mythos.

I hope that made some sense. I'm still working through my thoughts on this.

jbernier

Yes. I think that such contortions fail to respect the scientific data and the Biblical text for what they are - in short, one is imposing prejudgments on each.

jbernier

Absolutely. No question about that. My position is that there is no compelling philosophical reason to either accept or reject the existence of God, although one can certainly make arguments to show how one's own position may be more or less probable. Thus both theism and atheism can be defended on reasonable grounds (although note that I am equating "defense" with "proof").

Fair enough. Perhaps I should rephrase as "choosing to believe that God does exist", knowing that this position is only a possibility, not a certainty. Indeed, I wonder if one can really talk about this as act of faith if one believes that God must exist, that there be no doubt about or reasonable objection to this statement. What I mean is that in this case there is no sense of choice involved in the decision of faith but rather just mental assent to what one believes is incontrovertible.

This is all very true. I would agree that one can interpret everything in the Biblical text (or the Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita, etc.) in purely psychological, sociological, anthropological, etc., terms. Indeed, much of my own research centres upon the rhetorical dimensions of the New Testament writings - the ways in which the writers are engaging various ideologies, etc., in their writings. This sort of writing is very valid.

However, it does not negate the possibility that God, in some sense, was active in the communities and lives of those who produced said texts. Do I fully understand how this was the case? No. Can historical investigation ever prove this to be the case? No. Neither, however, do I believe it can disprove it. And that, I believe, leaves open the possibility for the decision to believe that God was present - but always with the recognition that that might not be the case. It is that uncertainty, I think, that enables the possibility for faith.