Religious fictionalism: believers without 'the belief'?

idea · Dec 9, 2019

shunyadragon said:
Being a Creationist website is NOT the point, .....

What is the point of religion?
Is the point believing a certain set of dogmas?
or...
Is the point of it all refining one's character, becoming more kind, selfless, hard working, honest, disciplined etc.?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I like that Jesus taught his greatest lessons in parables - in fictional tales - just stories. I think Aesop's fables have taught more valuable lessons to refine humanity than any debate on creationism has....jmo.

It seems a true spiritual person should be more concerned with "how can I become a more refined person in the here and now" than concerned with "how can I prove that xyz actually happened in the past".

shunyadragon · Dec 9, 2019

idea said:
What is the point of religion?
Is the point believing a certain set of dogmas?
or...
Is the point of it all refining one's character, becoming more kind, selfless, hard working, honest, disciplined etc.?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I like that Jesus taught his greatest lessons in parables - in fictional tales - just stories. I think Aesop's fables have taught more valuable lessons to refine humanity than any debate on creationism has....jmo.

It seems a true spiritual person should be more concerned with "how can I become a more refined person in the here and now" than concerned with "how can I prove that xyz actually happened .in the past".

None of the above. The point is the Church Fathers and the authors(?) of the NT believed in a literal Genesis, and Sola Scriptura.

idea · Dec 9, 2019

shunyadragon said:
None of the above. The point is the Church Fathers and the authors(?) of the NT believed in a literal Genesis, and Sola Scriptura.

I just do not understand how a book could be the sole source of authority for faith and practice. I thought the point was having faith in God, not faith in a book.

There is faith in what is not seen... but for things which are seen, things which are real, it would be mis-placed faith to reject what is real... A God of truth would not ask followers to reject reality. Humility is being willing to learn, grow, and admit being wrong.

I'm sorry, but this is the kind of thing leading so many to lose faith in God. To tell everyone they cannot believe in God unless they also believe in the flood, and in creationism, and in a flat earth, and all the rest.

What is real is real. If anyone is going to have any belief in anything at all, it cannot conflict with what is real.

BilliardsBall · Dec 10, 2019

shunyadragon said:
Again, this is arguing from your belief that it is fact when their is no evidence that it is factual. In this discussion I am not arguing for or against in a biased perspective. I am only saying you are making assertions based on 'belief,' when the acceptance of your interpretation of scripture is only meaningful to those that believe as you do. Inreality Christianity in it's many varied (often conflicting beliefs) forms is a matter of faith and belief and not 'fact.'

For those that do not believe as you do will simply conclude 'Christian simply love is being hassled (?),' or a view more coherently rational.

Huh? The author of 2/3 of the New Testament STATED, no "interpretation" is required, that belief in the resurrection is an essential fact and core doctrine. It's not a matter of my "faith" or yours.

shunyadragon · Dec 10, 2019

BilliardsBall said:
Huh? The author of 2/3 of the New Testament STATED, no "interpretation" is required, that belief in the resurrection is an essential fact and core doctrine. It's not a matter of my "faith" or yours.

The Baha'is believe in a spiritual Resurrection, not the physical Resurrection of traditional Christinaity, but nonetheless I acknowledge bothar 'beliefs' based on faith, and not factually documented in history.

BilliardsBall · Dec 10, 2019

sealchan said:
Yes

No one alive today knows anything about Jesus except through hearsay.

Many of these same people demonstrably deny the miraculous stories of the divinity of Krishna and the Buddha with the same standard for determining certain knowledge as they do for knowing Jesus is divine

The four gospels themselves are not in agreement on events

The four gospels were written decades after the events in question

The different gospels show signs of copying from a written source

The differences between the gospels reflect the author's unique perspective

The gospels show signs of having borrowed from myth from other cultures

There is no archeological evidence for the resurrection nor any evidence that resurrection is even possible

Start with your first sentence, if you would:

No one alive today knows anything about Jesus except through hearsay.

12 individuals/teams contributed to the New Testament, and other wrote apocrypha, about the Lord Jesus Christ.

In what court are scrolls that equal hundreds of pages of written documents, citing times, people, places and events, considered "hearsay"?

BilliardsBall · Dec 10, 2019

columbus said:
Sure.
Side A depends upon hearsay and the logical fallacy "argument from population".

Side B is based on science, like nobody comes back from the dead and leaves any evidence. It's never happened. Although, on the other hand, lots of people(the majority actually) don't find the New Testament particularly credible. And if you ask them why they don't they'll explain it. But they do(sorta) believe something else, about God and afterlife and such, similar to Christian beliefs.
Similar to Christian beliefs, but different and mutually exclusive. Jesus didn't both die on the Cross and Resurrect, while also faking His death and moving to India.
The latter is the second biggest religious teaching about Jesus's post-Crucifixion life.

It's more plausible than yours, to me.

Although neither is as plausible, to me, as the possibility that Jesus died, and people made up stuff about Him afterwards that wasn't really true.
Tom

In what court are so many written documents citing people, places, times and events "hearsay"?

Augustus · Dec 10, 2019

exchemist said:
What also interests me, as someone with a science background, is the supreme irony that Enlightenment "rational" thinking, applied to religion, led to a demand for intellectual rigour in belief which led some groups to think that biblical literalism was logically necessary for their belief - and thus to the rejection of science!

Interestingly, some historians of science have proposed that increasing literalism actually contributed to the development of modern science:

Historians have also found that changing Christian approaches to interpreting the Bible affected the way nature was studied in crucial ways. For example, Reformation leaders disparaged allegorical readings of Scripture, counseling their congregations to read Holy Writ literally. This approach to the Bible led some scholars to change the way they studied nature, no longer seeking the allegorical meaning of plants and animals and instead seeking what they took to be a more straightforward description of the material world. Noah J Efron

columbus · Dec 10, 2019

BilliardsBall said:
In what court are so many written documents citing people, places, times and events "hearsay"?

In what court is a copy of a 400 year old document, making wildly incoherent and internally inconsistent and implausible(unevidenced) claims, by anonymous authors, even considered "hearsay"?

It isn't.
Tom

exchemist · Dec 10, 2019

Augustus said:
Interestingly, some historians of science have proposed that increasing literalism actually contributed to the development of modern science:

Historians have also found that changing Christian approaches to interpreting the Bible affected the way nature was studied in crucial ways. For example, Reformation leaders disparaged allegorical readings of Scripture, counseling their congregations to read Holy Writ literally. This approach to the Bible led some scholars to change the way they studied nature, no longer seeking the allegorical meaning of plants and animals and instead seeking what they took to be a more straightforward description of the material world. Noah J Efron

That is very interesting and I would not mind reading a bit more about this idea. I had not, up to now, thought that literalism among Protestants became important until far later, in the c.18th and 19th. It seems never to have applied to the Church of England, but then that church spans a wide spectrum from something close to Calvinism through to almost Catholicism.

Augustus · Dec 10, 2019

exchemist said:
That is very interesting and I would not mind reading a bit more about this idea. I had not, up to now, thought that literalism among Protestants became important until far later, in the c.18th and 19th. It seems never to have applied to the Church of England, but then that church spans a wide spectrum from something close to Calvinism through to almost Catholicism.

The idea is discussed in much more detail in Peter Harrison's The Bible, Protestantism and the rise of natural science:

The revolution which gave rise to a proper natural history was not the result of new facts or observations, nor of the discarding of irrelevant and extraneous material, but of a change to the mental field in which generally accepted facts were located... A change took place in the sixteenth century which challenged the assumption that the purpose of the material world lay in its referential or symbolic functions. Henceforth the quest for the divinely instituted purpose of nature is diverted solely into the search for its practical utilities. The literal approach to texts precipitated this change of attitude towards the world, while the literal content of key passages of the Bible further motivated natural philosophers in their quest to master nature. In particular, narratives relating to dominion over the earth were now read as literal imperatives, attempts were made to restore the original paradise once enjoyed by Adam, and the lost language of nature was actively sought.

exchemist · Dec 10, 2019

Augustus said:
The idea is discussed in much more detail in Peter Harrison's The Bible, Protestantism and the rise of natural science:

The revolution which gave rise to a proper natural history was not the result of new facts or observations, nor of the discarding of irrelevant and extraneous material, but of a change to the mental field in which generally accepted facts were located... A change took place in the sixteenth century which challenged the assumption that the purpose of the material world lay in its referential or symbolic functions. Henceforth the quest for the divinely instituted purpose of nature is diverted solely into the search for its practical utilities. The literal approach to texts precipitated this change of attitude towards the world, while the literal content of key passages of the Bible further motivated natural philosophers in their quest to master nature. In particular, narratives relating to dominion over the earth were now read as literal imperatives, attempts were made to restore the original paradise once enjoyed by Adam, and the lost language of nature was actively sought.

Hmm. I might get that for Christmas. Thanks for the tip.

exchemist · Dec 10, 2019

BilliardsBall said:
Start with your first sentence, if you would:

No one alive today knows anything about Jesus except through hearsay.

12 individuals/teams contributed to the New Testament, and other wrote apocrypha, about the Lord Jesus Christ.

In what court are scrolls that equal hundreds of pages of written documents, citing times, people, places and events, considered "hearsay"?

The same court that recognises the works of Barbara Cartland as fiction, perhaps.

shunyadragon · Dec 10, 2019

BilliardsBall said:
In what court are so many written documents citing people, places, times and events "hearsay"?

In terms of the Bible the scripture cannot be used as 'first hand' evidence citing people, places and events of the time to be established as fact, because, first, we have no evidence that they were written at the time they claim. There is archaeological evidence, and Roman documents that can be documented at the time of the life of Jesus. Some of the this evidence documents some of the New Testament.

sealchan · Dec 11, 2019

BilliardsBall said:
Start with your first sentence, if you would:

No one alive today knows anything about Jesus except through hearsay.

12 individuals/teams contributed to the New Testament, and other wrote apocrypha, about the Lord Jesus Christ.

In what court are scrolls that equal hundreds of pages of written documents, citing times, people, places and events, considered "hearsay"?

Court? You think the pages of the New Testament have any value in a courtroom? No corroborating evidence (yes, physical evidence) for the events described? For all the other reasons I gave these documents would be totally discredited as being anything but fictions in a courtroom.

You are applying modern standards of factusl evidence to ancient literature...that's not going to work.

exchemist · Dec 11, 2019

sealchan said:
Court? You think the pages of the New Testament have any value in a courtroom? No corroborating evidence (yes, physical evidence) for the events described? For all the other reasons I gave these documents would be totally discredited as being anything but fictions in a courtroom.

You are applying modern standards of factusl evidence to ancient literature...that's not going to work.

Of course. Documents relied on by the courts have to be carefully verified - original signatures or certified copies etc, so that their provenance cannot be disputed. An unsigned text from an unknown person will have no value at all.

Courts are well used to the faking of documents - they encounter them every day in fraud cases.

BilliardsBall · Dec 11, 2019

columbus said:
In what court is a copy of a 400 year old document, making wildly incoherent and internally inconsistent and implausible(unevidenced) claims, by anonymous authors, even considered "hearsay"?

It isn't.
Tom

400 years?

Copy?

Incoherent?

Inconsistent?

Unevidenced?

All of the above is uneducated hearsay.

BilliardsBall · Dec 11, 2019

sealchan said:
Court? You think the pages of the New Testament have any value in a courtroom? No corroborating evidence (yes, physical evidence) for the events described? For all the other reasons I gave these documents would be totally discredited as being anything but fictions in a courtroom.

You are applying modern standards of factusl evidence to ancient literature...that's not going to work.

I was in Israel this spring and return there again in 2020--where much of my time will be exploring archaeological marvels that confirm countless items in both testaments.

And yes, in a courtroom, we can take 27 documents written by 12 teams of authors, lengthy, each document containing references verified by archaeology (people, places and things) as documentary evidence.

If you refuse this common standard, then we can say the the Caesars never existed, despite having no DNA but only their statues, panegyric literature that deifies and extols them, and some concrete structures.

Stop assuming the bible is evil/wrong because less than 1% of it describes the supernatural, with much of the other 99% being historical.

BilliardsBall · Dec 11, 2019

exchemist said:
The same court that recognises the works of Barbara Cartland as fiction, perhaps.

Then I guess the Caesars didn't exist either, since we lack DNA and only have panegyrics and some structures and statues.

syo · Dec 12, 2019

Vouthon said:
What is your opinion of 'religious fictionalism', the stance which holds that religious doctrines / beliefs are fictional discourse

The worst. Religion is real and not fiction, in my opinion.

Religious fictionalism: believers without 'the belief'?

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