luvluv

Granted, Typhon but the notion that the universe was created was the pretext for the question I was asked.

Just one digression:

What exactly was the "core" belief that Jesus was added to if he was a later addition?

David Bowden

I feel I must repeat my earlier question, luvluv; it seems not to have attracted your attention in my last post:

Do you have a method for helping us to distinguish byproducts of critical thinking and human imagination from "progressive revelation"?

How, I wonder, do you know whether a person who is convinced that their concepts were received via revelation, actually did? Do you believe, as Mohammed did, that he got his God-concepts via revelation? If not, why not? If so, how does that reconcile with Christian revelation? The same with Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. If you believe, as Aquinas did, that he got his God-concepts via revelation, then: why? (And: were they all equally revealed, or just some of them, and how can you tell, when Aquinas couldn't?) How exactly do you tell the difference between those who are themselves convinced and are right about it, and those who are convinced, but wrong? I am keenly interested in your answer to this question.

Also, just for purposes of clarification: you do believe Quakers to be Christians, luvluv? I ask because not all Christians believe that about them, and it might help me better to understand your method and position to know a little bit about what you consider the outside edge of Christian orthodoxy.

While I believe this is technically a red herring, given that we were talking about the knowledge of God, and not of the ethical superiority or precedents set by Christianity in ethics, I'll bite. I'm not sure who the first person was to advocate women's suffrage, but I do know that it was unheard of in ancient Israel, while Plato, I believe, recommended it in the Republic. (I speak under correction if anyone can cite him to the contrary; my copy's out of range.)

I do know that the "extreme-liberal" activists (for their time) who advocated women's suffrage in modern representative government were, at first, secularists and infidels whose ideas grew out of the Enlightenment. Folks like John Stuart Mill were anything but Christian, and he, with other infidels, led the way to reform in this area. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other matrons of the woman's vote also wrote against Christianity and the Bible.

Certainly, the strong resistance to women's suffrage came not from secular, but from Christian, leaders. On which side of the issue did God stand? Well, from a theological standpoint, firmly against, until enough Christians finally came to believe that women should vote. I believe a similar case could be made for Christianity's overall resistance to abolitionism. That is not to say that all seemingly good Christians stood against reforms; surely they did not. But, I'm reminded of a claim Mill makes in his treatise On Liberty:

"It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor."

Unless it can be shown that Mill is misinformed on this matter, I do not feel a need to believe that Christianity, or any religion, rightfully lays exclusive claim to moral high ground. Humans can be moral, and can make headway in moral theory. Some of these moral pioneers are Christians, some are not. The fact that Christians gave us some moral advances no more proves the truth of that religion than the fact that Mill's moral infidelism proves Christianity's falsehood. They are separate issues.

The fact that Christians could stand on opposite sides in any moral issue, and cite scripture and theology in favor of both sides, does not seem to me like a proof of Christianity's revealed truths, but rather its imperfect morality and its subjectivity to change under community pressure and solid reasoning, even when that pressure or reasoning is secular in origin. This makes Christian moral evolution part of the human story, rather than some uniquely gifted system from an Almighty being.

Like I stated above, this is a red herring, but I hope I've put it in proper perspective.

The OT's authority, for those who believe that it contains the foundational truth about God, comes traditionally. I'd love to be able to answer this question more fully, but since I don't personally consider it authoritative concerning God, I can only refer you to Jews and others who believe in the OT's primary authority in those matters (early Christians, to be sure). Perhaps what I said in my earlier post will serve a rhetorical defense of OT authority concerning God's nature:

"How would God's true people acquire or form their conceptions of Yahweh, around a generation or two or ten prior to Herod the Great? Is it not our OT (and perhaps the rabbinical interpretations of the time) that they would rely on? Would those conceptions be accurate? If not... what in the OT is inaccurate, and by what authority do you make that call?"

Because it is the traditional primary source for information about Yahweh, anything that gainsays its claims must be well-justified, or else there seems to be no reason to consider as orthodox anything other than exactly (and only) what the OT says about him.

To answer your second question, it's not that I believe that the OT cannot be questioned. Quite the opposite; I believe its authority concerning God ought to be questioned. I should perhaps have made this explicit statement earlier.

Instead, I accept that most believers in Yahweh do not believe that its teaching about God can be corrected or modified - or if they do believe in some superceding authority, then, along with anyone else for whom the OT speaks definitively of the God of western religion (including atheists who don't believe in such a God but wish to understand what believers think about Him), they would ask for substantial justification in replacing any OT element with some later teaching. Is this distinction helpful?

And luvluv, I'm wondering, do you believe that what is said about God in the OT is authoritative, or not? Are there limits to its authority, in your opinion? If so, what limits are placed on it, and most importantly, how do you know when something or someone has superceded its authority and said something more true about God?

Once again, that's not my own assumption. Rather, it seems to be the assumption of most believers in Yahweh in general that the OT is the primary source of information about Him. As a result, I (wrongly) assumed that you assume something like this. If this is not an assumption you as a believer make, then my questions are: Why do you believe that the OT is insufficient, and: Doesn't that imply that the religious beliefs of OT believers are false to whatever degree they haven't accepted later 'revelations' or theological interpretation? How do God's people know when to dispose of earlier God-teachings adopt new ones? By what hallmarks are truer, newer theological statements distinguished from false ones which were previously accepted as true?

(And this raises a thorny question: what standard of theological truth allowed the earlier statements, now somehow known to be false, to be accepted as true?)

Then, it seems to me that you do not have a methodology that is reliable with regard to discerning the truth about God. Why, if you admit your capacity for error in these matters, should anyone believe anything you say about him - including the very basic statement that he exists and has the characteristics of the Yahweh described in scripture (or in the theologies drafted by any of scripture's putative refiners/"flesher-outers")?

Or, are some of your theological views (such as, regarding God's positive existence and his being beyond fully known by humans) beyond error?

I don't understand how you know this not to be one of those mistakes that should someday be discarded. Could you tell me how you know the difference between beliefs about God that are certainly true, and those which are less certainly true? And perhaps give me some examples of the latter...

Fair enough. I'll remain as skeptical regarding Yahweh's existence as I honestly can be, and I offer my skeptical services to theologians and spiritual raconteurs everywhere.

-Wanderer

[ July 04, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

luvluv

Well, again, I use personal revelation, corporate revelation, scriptural revelation, and historical revelation (I'll substitute this term for church history for the rest of this discussion). I reject Mohammed's revelation, firstly, because he was referring himself to Allah and not to Yahweh. Secondly, Allah as revealed to Mohammed contradicts Yahweh as revealed throughout history by all 4 criteria. I therefore assume that Allah is not Yahweh. The same goes, in my experiences, for some of the claims of Joseph Smith. (Like the existence of any one "true" church, or the notion that God can only directly reveal himself to one human being at a time. This is problematic within the Bible because many of the prophets were contemporaries of one another, and many Christians in all ages believed they could receive revelation directly from God without a human emmisary).

Some things in that are "revealed" in the Bible and through other mechanisms of revelation are not "revealed" at all. Direct contradiction is inconsistent with progressive revelation. Progressive revelation only occurs when former doctrines are "fleshed out", not when they are proven wrong. If they are proven wrong, they either never occured or were wrongly attributed to Yahweh.

For example, the law of an eye for an eye was a real progressive revelation, IMO, instituting the law of proportionality. It was a law to prevent over-retaliation for injury. The principle of non-violence takes this concept further and suggests that retaliation itself is morally wrong, not simply it's proportion to the offense.

This is an instance of progressive revelation. Now, if Jesus had said on the other hand, that an eye for eye should be changed to a head for an eye, that would have been a contradiction and not progressive revelation.

The problem was excessive retaliation, the initial solution was proportionate retaliation, and the latter progressive solution was no retaliation. A solution (like the one associated with the Muslim religion) that calls for aggression or harkens back to proportionate retaliation (lopping off hands for stealing and whatnot) contradicts, or regresses, previous revelation.

So I would argue that direct contradiction is grounds for distinguishing progressive revelation from human ingenuity. This is one of the reasons I incorporate Gandhi into the Christian fold. Aside from the fact that he himself often referenced Christ, most of his principles seem to build on Christs teachings rather than contradict them.

So my overall answer to your question would be that when someone claiming divine revelation has theories which contradict what all four sources of revelation say about Yahweh, that person is probably decieved (even if that person speaks from the pages of the Bible). If what he says builds on and progress previous revelation then that is evidence for belief or at the very least consideration.

(Incidentally I forgot one other means of acceptable revelation and that is the revelation of nature. I reject dualism, for example, because the universe does not appear to be the battle ground between two equally powerful contesting deities.)

I don't know much about them. What are their beliefs?

I will grant you that much of the women's liberation movement has proceeded outside of the religious support. That would be an exception to the rule I was positing. I don't know that the Christians so thouroughly outnumbered the secularists in this though, at least in the United States.

Human beings can stand on two separate sides of any issue. That is not really a testament about anything. I don't believe that, balanced against all measures of revelation (personal, corporate, scriptural, natural, and historical) that all Christians propositions are equally probable. That is a product of overestimating the value of one means of revelation (scriptural) and placing them above all others. Finding one verse in the Bible quite often does not even establish a principle when compared with other verses in the Bible, much less when compared to all other sources of revelation.

Parenthetical added.

I have to heartily disagree here. Your defintion of believers in Yahweh would have to necessarily exclude all Christians. Under your definition of what is allowed to be believed about Yahweh (which must somehow be limited to the Old Testament) we would have to necessarily exclude everything Jesus, the apostles, and Paul said about Yahweh. That would effectively eliminate the majority of Yahweh worshipers from your definition of a Yahweh worshipper.

If the belief that Yahweh can only be defined from the OT is a belief that you do not hold, I wonder why it is relavent to our discussion?

At any rate, even if you push the problem back onto the shoulders of some sect of what would have to be Orthodox Jews who do not believe that anything other than the O.T. can be believed about Yahweh, I would have to ask them to explain why that is the case. I have to say, though, that I think you are grossly exagerrating in this particular case. I'm not aware of any demonination of Judaism that says that nothing that is not mentioned in the O.T. can be believed about Yahweh. I would estimate that those who believe such things would constitute a minority of Jews who themselves are the minority of believers in Yahweh. The idea that the O.T. is the only authority on what Yahweh is is not an idea that persists among Yahweh worhsippers.

Again, though, I would have to ask why that ever would be the case? The O.T. is a collection of scriptural records that were formerly stored in jars in no chronological or sequential order. There was no ancient authority that decided to compile them into a book, or that decided what books should be compiled and which books were to be left out, or that decided what order to put them in. All of these decisions, particualrly the sequential order, would have a large effect in what the readers of this new thing called the Bible would believe about Yahweh. All these decisions were made long after the writers of the OT were dead. Why give this relatively late work of editing such great defining power?

Again, the answer to ascertaining the validity of any purported revelation, including that in the Old and New Testament, is to be found in comparing it with all other forms of revelation.

I don't believe that anything that is truly the result of progressie revelation will ever be contradicted by succesive progressive revelation. I don't expect anything established by all forms of revelation to ever be contradicted but built upon. I don't think that progressive revelation will ever be proved wrong but will forever be proved incomplete.

It's simliar to your view of science. Of course one can always say that "one day evolution could be disproved". This is of course true, but you would probably say it would take something substantial to disprove it and that therefore your belief in it is more than justified. Someone might claim through progressive revelation someday something so beyond my beliefs that my beliefs will be inadequate (though, again, not contradicted) but until such time I am more than justified, taking into account all forms of revelation, in believing what I believe.

Again, it is not merely a matter of truth and nontruth. It's a matter of how much truth we know. I don't believe that certain facts about God will ever be proven to be false, but proven to be incomplete.

Much obliged.

luvluv

I'd like us to get back on track now if we could please folks.

Amen-Moses

Luvluv said:

".. think the mistake here is confusing the analogy with the reality. Our movment through 4 dimensional space time might appear, to a being who is able to exist in many more dimensions of space time, as the movement of something confined to 3 dimensions of space time might appear to us."

In which case he would not even percieve oure existance any more than we could a hypothetical flatlander, the reason for this is pretty obvious if you think about it for a while; i.e if something existed in time, length and width dimensions it would have no thickness as far as we were concerned so no method we have in our universe would allow us to detect it, similarly if a creature existed in all dimensions except time then from our perspective it would only be detectable for a time period of zero length which again means that we would have no way of even detecting such a creature.

(and it goes without saying that interaction with these hypothetical creatures would be impossible also, you cannot interact with something you cannot even perceive)

Strangely enough the same cannot be said the other way round, i.e a hypothetical 5 dimensional being would be perceived in our 4 dimensional frame of reference but although we could perceive it nothing we did to it would even register in its perception. (imagine if you will the flatlanders stabbing at you with a knife of zero thickness)

Amen-Moses

luvluv

I never said that God doesn't exist in time I said that God exists in all times. His time may have a "depth" and "height" whereas ours has only "length" or duration. This may account for some of the discrepancies.

I don't follow how a being that existed in more dimensions could not observe a being in less dimension. I could look at a flatlander, couldn't I? I never claimed that we could see God I claimed that God could see us.

I'd argue that God has other attributes other than T.O., and that unless you can show that the ability to perceive objects that operate in less dimensions than the observer is a logical contradiction, then God's omnipotence would allow him that ability.

Amen-Moses

No, it would be physical impossibility for us to perceive anything that has less than three physical dimension plus one temporal dimension purely because we would have no means with which to do so.

Think about it a bit, how could you percieve something without any height, width, depth or that only exists (in our framework) for zero time?

Amen-Moses

snatchbalance

god is a bunch of fucking shit, Yahwah or whatever you want to call it.

sb

Pomp

Hey, sb, your assertion really doesn't contribute anything to this discussion. Do you have a point?

tronvillain

Amen-Moses:
Well, something with one dimension would be completely invisible, but something with two dimensions could potentially be visible.