Thank you. You might want to point out to your sincere-sounding mother that it is MAN with MAN's doom-and-gloom Doom's Day Clock with its hands set close to striking the dark midnight hour.
I am curious about your view of Revelation.
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I am curious about your view of Revelation.
infrabenji
Active Member
I agree, it’s definitely man bringing about the end of the world. Thanks Amazon lol. That’s just it I had no formal opinion on revelations and I couldn’t reconcile the rapture or place the rapture at a specific point in the events of the book. The denomination for which I was a burgeoning pastor some 20 years ago believed in the rapture and had it pegged mid-tribulation. A lot of people don’t know that many denominations require uniformity of belief as set forth by the leaders of denomination and their findings. It wasn’t optional what I could or couldn’t teach. I even got a talking to for attending a service at a pre trib congregation on a Sunday I wasn’t scheduled to preach. I refused to teach and endorse something I couldn’t back up scripturally so I left my pastorship in the way one says they quit when it was that or get fired lol. I think a lot of churches are probably more open minded now and allow for people to come to their own conclusions. At least I hope so. I haven’t been to church in a long long time. I think the last service I attended was at a messianic congregation in Vancouver. Have you heard of the messianics? Not Jews apparently but they really really want to be. At least that’s what I got from it lol.
Interesting ^above^ thank you.
In Scripture, I find both: fleshly/national Jews and then also ' spiritual Jews ' as found at Romans 2:28-29.
Want to be ' spiritual Jews ' because since Pentecost the 'spiritual Israel of God' is the Christian congregation.
No longer necessarily by fleshly descent, for Jerusalem 'above' is Now the seat of government - Galatians 4:26.
This 'spiritual nation' (Christian congregation) is Not a nation found located on any map.
Notice how Peter describes this ' spiritual nation ' at 1 Peter 2:9; 1 Peter 2:5.
So, Not a literal Israel, nor literal Jew by flesh, Not an Israel by boundaries or borders on Earth.
I do find what Jesus taught is 'uniformity of belief' as set forth in -> Scripture - John 17:17.- 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
Jesus taught that Scripture is ' religious truth ' and Jesus (what he taught) is: the way, the truth and the life.
Jesus, as our model or example, he drew the word picture for us as to what is the conclusion.
Fake 'weed/tares' Christians draw their own conclusions, whereas the genuine 'wheat' Christians would do as the people of Acts of the Apostles 17:11 did: to search or research the Scriptures daily to see if what they were hearing was really found in Scripture.
Yours is basically the liberal protestant worldview
Whig history - Wikipedia
The gist of the whig history ideology, as described in your reference, is “an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from a dark and terrible past to a ‘glorious present’.”
Here is what I said:
“As to your point, Religion has clearly evolved throughout history.
...
It is a long, slow process weaning humanity away from its primitive beginnings, where all aspects of human life were bound in religious myth, to a gradual acknowledgement that humanity is solely responsible for its collective actions and that it is incumbent upon humanity to take responsibility for its collective self.”
...
It is a long, slow process weaning humanity away from its primitive beginnings, where all aspects of human life were bound in religious myth, to a gradual acknowledgement that humanity is solely responsible for its collective actions and that it is incumbent upon humanity to take responsibility for its collective self.”
I do not see where I have characterized the past as ‘dark and terrible’, nor the present as ‘glorious’.
My use of the term primitive was in the context of relating to an early or original stage or state. My use of the term evolve was in the context of developing gradually over time.
Do you not agree that there has been a change in religious belief as well as a change in humanity more broadly, gradually, over time? If you agree, then there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that observation and stating it plainly. What would be your purpose in erroneously assigning emotional value judgements to my statements?
Upon further examination, it seems that the definition or use of myth academically is varied and specific to a particular academic discipline. This leaves us with lots of ways to use myth and what we may be referring to when we use it. This means that we still have to take care not to create false equivalencies by using different meanings of the term and treating them as equal or the same.
What do you consider the narrower meaning of myth to be in popular usage? I would think common usage would involve using the word in many different ways as opposed to a more restrictive way.
For easy reference, your definition of myth:
“Myth: an explanatory narrative that is not objectively true.”
Perhaps it would have been better for me to say that propaganda fits under your definition, along with concepts like national myth, urban myth, political myth, religious myth, etc. I would consider your definition a very broad definition that would include positive, negative, or neutral connotations. Would you agree? The key element is that myth is not objectively true.
I have included my comments above, that are being referenced.
If people create narratives that are not objectively true, then they are creating myth per your definition of myth. If they are stating a subjective value choice and citing objective truths to support the adoption of that subjective value choice by others, that would not be creating a myth. These two conditions are not equivalent.
This is a common tactic that you employ. To incorrectly assign an ideology to a comment. You seem to be saying that to acknowledge that, over the course of history, there has been a change in the level of objective knowledge of the world, there has been a change in religious belief, that there has been a change in types and size of human society, that such acknowledgement constitutes a belief and adherence to the idea of a “progressive teleology”. I can only assume that “progressive teleology” means that there is an improvement in a system by design, purpose, or goal, all of which I would presume requires some agency.
All I can say is that one can observe a change in a system without assigning a design, purpose, or goal.
Can you indicate where I have expressed agency design, purpose, or goal in the observed changes I describe?
You are simply documenting my observation that these beliefs change and evolve over time, with a particular focus on one branch of beliefs. Other branches have also changed and evolved over time.
It is not inappropriate to look at all these branches of belief, see the similarities in their purpose and function in society, and observe how they change over time. This is how we learn about things.
You are confusing the purpose and function of religious myth with how any one individual interacts with, and uses religious myth. The purpose of creating the religious myth was not to be reinterpreted and contextualized according to future realities. Religious myth creation is, in essence, to create a ‘myth of the gaps’, to provide a cause, nature, and purpose of the cosmos that was beyond the ability to be discerned objectively at the time the myth was created. Reinterpretation and contextualization was required by continual change in the objective understanding of the cosmos, as well as the size and complexity of societies.
And through much of history, public acceptance of societal religious myth was not voluntary, but compulsory. General acceptance of religious myth is still compulsory in places today and many conflicts around the world involve clashes between adherents of different religious myths.
Religious myth is not equivalent to subjective value choice. There is a difference.
Augustus
…
This is why the category of religion obfuscates more than it enlightens. This is simply not accurate regarding religious myth and is really a simplistic caricature of Abrahamic monotheism. So a misunderstanding of one type of religion becomes the paradigm for all religions despite the fact they are fundamentally different in nature.
Religion is not like a primitive scientific theory, it is a tool for social cohesion and the transfer of intergenerational knowledge as heuristic. They are more products of evolution over time than top-down purpose driven creations. Ancient peoples were not driven by the modern scientific notion of objective truth to anything like the extent we are today.
Religious myth evolved in oral cultures which are fluid and adaptive. It was not immutable scripture to be taken literally as objectively true. Even in scriptural religions, texts were frequently taken allegorically including creation myths.
Scripture was never an instruction manual, but an esoteric and multi-layered text that needed to be worked out by fallible humans and new meanings and 'truths' would always be discovered over time.
For example, a common view was there was a book of scripture and a book of nature with a 2 way relationship between them. Scripture helped you understand the world you lived in and the world you lived in helped you understand scripture and, ultimately, god. Understanding could only be gained by 'reading' both books together.
The idea that fixed beliefs were 'prescribed' by the myths and one could only choose to comply or reject is simply not true even in scriptural religions, and certainly not in adaptive oral traditions.
I'll reply to your other points later, but might take a couple of days as I don't have much time at the moment
I'll reply to your other points later, but might take a couple of days as I don't have much time at the moment
Not a problem. I understand completely.
Quite fascinating that you want to keep thrusting the scope of the conversation firmly in the Western Christian box. That human beings and human society are complex is not being denied or challenged. Religious myth and society change over time. We can look at the diversity in religious myth we see today and work our way backward to see how these religious myths have changed and also gain some clues as to how they have begun. I would argue that there is so much more shared in the beginnings than you seem willing to concede.
Where does your reference to ancient peoples begin? Is it 2,000 years ago? Is it 5,000 years ago? What about 100,000 years ago?
Well, it seems we are in agreement that religious beliefs evolve over time.
As to scientific notions of objective truth, no, that is a recent improvement. (yes, this is my subjective value choice)
However, the default setting of every organism is to obtain objective data about the surrounding environment. That is the function of an organism's senses, to gather information that will aid the organism in its survival to reproduction. Human beings, however, have the capacity to be anticipatory; to recognize patterns of linked events and therefore take preventative actions to greatly enhance survival. The strong instinct to anticipate threats and effectively control them is limited by the capacity to gain adequate objective information. Human awareness of uncontrollable events conflicts with a strong impulse to control or mitigate those uncontrollable events. The resolution seems to be the creation of “myths of the gaps”.
As an example of how ingrained and ubiquitous this behavior is, think of all the many superstitious behaviors we see people frequently engage in. For example, I knew medical residents that would get angry if anyone commented on how quite a call night seemed to be going. The admonition was that to speak of it would surely jinks them and result in a change in circumstance for the worst. We see this in many aspects of life in situations where the possibility of undesirable events cannot be controlled or prevented. When it is out of hands as to whether such events might occur. This is the driver for the beginnings of religious myth. Those “myths of the gaps” created at the dawn of humanity’s verbal stage will then evolve and change in many ways, some of which you describe.
Scripture never an instruction manual? I guess you never went to Sunday School.
As for oral cultures, you seem to imply a lot more fluidity in belief from generation to generation than I think you can document. You really seem to be downplaying the perpetuating effect that indoctrination of children in society to society’s belief systems has.
You also fail to appreciate that for many cultures historically (and some still today), a public rejection of societal religious belief was a capital offence. The choice you want to suggest was not a reality for the majority of human beings. Frankly, I would suggest that it is only relatively recently, in pluralistic societies, that we really see the kind of fluidity that you describe.
I am not familiar with whatever it is you are referring to here.
To suggest that scripture such as the Bible does not prescribe belief begs incredulity. How often on RF do we see such prescriptions quoted? Quite often. Certainly different denominations will address all the varied prescriptions in differing ways. To choose whether or not to comply.
Beyond that, in a religious family, how easy would it be for a child or young adult to reject the beliefs of the parents without there being some emotional cost? For my grandparents it was unthinkable.
I think you are literally ignoring all the factors that, historically, have been in place to limit choice regarding religious myth. Any sort of widespread freedom to choose without social cost is a relatively recent historical phenomenon and certainly not available outside of pluralistic societies.
This is at the core of what I would like to explore.
To summarize your position, humans cannot function without ideology, all ideology is justified by myth, and all myths are not objectively true.
If no ideology is objectively true, and there are many existing and often conflicting ideologies, and an ideology is required to function, how is one to choose an ideology? Can we choose, or must we accept only the ones to which we have been indoctrinated?
Can we make value judgements between different ideologies? What are the criteria? How are the criteria to be determined? In essence, how do we choose between fictions?
How would you define faith?
Would an expressed faith in anything constitute a religious belief?
Augustus
…
Yes
We choose the fiction which most appeals to us. That is likely a product of culture, personality, socialisation and experience. It doesn't require 'indoctrination', but most people are significantly a product of their environment.
We certainly make value judgements, that is the very essence of choosing an ideology. We define ourself as much by what we oppose as by what we believe in.
How do you decide which values are superior to other ones? How do you justify your ideology to yourself and others? On what grounds would you consider this justification to be something other than a fiction?
Augustus
…
My point was that you are taking Abrahamic monotheism (actually more like a modern American version of fundamentalist Protestantism) as the paradigm case for religion.
This clouds your evaluation of the role of myth in non-modern, American fundamentalist Protestant circles.
What religious views would you say you have been most exposed to in your lifetime?
You seem to be treating it as some kind of primitive precursor to modern scientific theories.
While what you say may be a function of some religious myths, it is certainly not the primary function of myths in historical religions.
The key role was to bind communities into fictive kinship groups via shared systems of meaning, tradition, ancestry and community reinforced by ritual and mutual obligations.
This requires some transcendent concept that makes the individual part of something bigger than themselves or their family. The same is true for secular ideologies
Our senses are not built for objectivity. Not even our vision works that way, let alone our cognition.
Which is darker, square A or B?
You argued that myths were not created to be reinterpreted and contextualised which is not even true in Abrahamic religions.
That was just one example of how even scriptural religions were constantly being reinterpreted, and always have been:
Book of Nature - Wikipedia
The Bible 'prescribes' very little.
Different groups interpret it in different ways and create communities around this.
Myths being constantly adapted is not about 'freedom to choose' as that seems to assume there was a difference between the religious and the secular.
If there is no distinction between religious and secular, rejecting the religion was rejecting the community and that which binds it. It is more akin to rejecting the laws of a modern country, than being a matter of private belief.
A value choice is not a fiction. I oppose the ideology of might makes right because 1) I recognize that I am not the mightiest and therefore would be very vulnerable under such a system. 2). I can empathize with others who would also be vulnerable under such a system. Those realizations are objective criteria and not fictitious. Additionally, I am objectively aware that not everyone shares the exact same needs, wants, and desires and therefore there is potential for inherent conflict in groups of two or more people. I find conflict and strife undesirable and therefore value political systems that maximize my ability to obtain my needs, wants, and desires while minimizing or eliminating conflict. These are choices based on objective realities.
I certainly do not value having my life impacted negatively by the fictitious beliefs of others.
You seem to advocate quite strongly for fictitious ideologies, for the adoption of artificial constructs of reality, presumably to create fictive kinship and social cohesion. It seems to, though, that this simply plays into our instinctual behaviors that will keep us perpetually entrapped in cultures based on us vs. them. Should we not endeavor to move beyond our base instincts, to rise above the reliance on tribalism for social cohesion?
Are you advocating that humanity should maintain the status quo, remaining balkanized in our separate fictions?
We are not discussing the role of myth in non-modern, American fundamentalist Protestant circles, whatever that is specifically referring to.
We are talking about what defines the broad category of religion under which all religion falls.
And here we are getting somewhere. Religion began before people began to write their religion down. The start of an historical record for religious myth is not the beginning of religious myth. The myths had long been evolving by that point. But for these evolved historical myths, how did they begin? Where did they come from? They originate in our earliest verbal societies.
What you describe is much later in the evolutionary process of religious myth. Prior to larger, more complex societies, there was no need to establish fictive kinship groups, everyone was kin. This is where religious myth begins, not in the middle of our societal evolution.
Really? That biological senses have limitations is not in dispute, one example being some visual systems being susceptible to optical illusion. But that does not mean that biological senses haven't evolved to provide organisms with objective data about the surrounding environment. Please.
Saying that scriptures are reinterpreted is not the same thing as saying that scriptures were created or designed to be reinterpreted.
All the conflict and strife that surrounds reinterpretation through history should be enough to document that.
Scripture can be characterized as both descriptive and prescriptive. And with every scripture there are fundamental prescriptions that are not up for discussion, certainly the existence of the mythical creator entity being one.
Augustus
…
And that requires discussing the role of myth across cultural and historical boundaries.
Your view seems to be heavily distorted by the role of myth in US Protestantism where scripture was a definitive 'instruction manual' and could be understood in a literalist sense purely with reference to itself.
This goes back to any medium, sized tribe, not 'complex societies'. Tribal societies have a mythical 'common ancestor' as any group who could expand more than actually genetically related people would have a massive survival advantage.
Building a larger group has far more evolutionary benefit than a 'god of the gaps'.
They are susceptible to illusions because they don't see the world as it is.
It is not objective data, it is subjective. Our senses develop from experience as our brains have to give meaning to the signals that we receive. Your brain is also constantly filling in gaps in this information, which is one cause of optical illusions.
If you have had a normal upbringing, your senses will tend to give a useful representation of what is out there, but if you raised a child in a strange experiment where you were constantly distorting their sensory perceptions then they would end up seeing the world very differently from you.
If we saw the world 'objectively' this would not be possible. It would also be an evolutionary disadvantage.
Back to modern US Protestantism as the default setting for religion
Much of scripture wasn't even designed to be scripture, let alone an immutable doctrine to be interpreted literally.
If you look at the Bible, it was written over centuries by various authors who were (re)interpreting and playing with existing traditions. Why should we consider that these authors thought they were creating definitive texts with permanently fixed, literalist meanings?
The books that later became the New Testament were not even considered scripture for several generations, and weren't even textually consistent, never mind fixed in meaning:
The second-century church tended not to conceive of the Gospels as discrete, theologically-shaped literary entities; this is a more modern notion of them. Narrative and sayings material even in Justin’s day represented separate streams of oral tradition, and these strands of Gospel material continued to have a life of their own separate from their joint literary incorporation into written Gospels. Consequently, it is possible, even natural, for the second-century [c]hurch of Justin’s time to think of the logia [sayings] of Jesus or the events of his life quite apart from the evangelical [i.e. Gospel] literature and to conceive of the Gospels as mere guardians of such tradition. The ‘orthodox’ Gospel literature represents not so much right interpretation, although this is not entirely absent, as correct circumscription and preservation
John Barton - A History of the Bible
I guess you've never heard of apophatic theology then
The statement God exists is cataphatic (it is a positive claim about god), where many apophatic theologians would refuse to make such a statement as statements about god can only be negative (he was not created, he is not human, etc).
Orthodoxy tends to develop over time as 'acceptable' doctrine narrows and becomes reified.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So are all the other choices.
As far as I know, no human have in fact done something actually supernatural. E.g. the burning of withes are based on reality.
Augustus
…
What about the people we think that might does make right because they are the 'mighty' and who feel they have no obligations to people who are not related or connected to them in any way because humans are just animals and these supposed obligations are just ideologies created out of self-interest?
Those are 'objective' criteria by your definition.
Why is having your life devalued by 'objective' criteria any worse than having it devalued by fictions?
I don't advocate for fictions, I think they are unavoidable. One reason is that we need fictive kinship groups for social cohesion or we just get 'might is right'.
Humans will always be Balkanised because we are a diverse species with differing and often incompatible interests.
The idea that ideologies/religions/nations/etc. divide us is the wrong way round. Humans natural state is to be divided. It is only by ideologies/religions/nations/etc. that we get larger groups which we have a common interest in.
'Reality' just tells us we are atoms that became sentient by chance living in a purposeless universe and that our species will die out sooner or later.
The idea we can transcend our animalistic nature and become one big happy family if we just get rid of divisive myths is as fantastical as any religion (and is certainly a religious-type belief).
This is becoming a little comical as both of us feel the other is not looking at religious belief as a whole.
When focusing on Abrahamic scripture, whether one takes a literal or metaphorical approach, there are specific prescriptions, namely a belief in the creator entity, and while individuals may have personal doubts about the existence of the creator entity, scripture in no way encourages questioning its existence.
And really, it doesn’t matter. We are in agreement that religious myths are narratives that are not objectively true, that religious myth changes over time, and that religious myth often becomes tightly intertwined throughout a society's belief structure. We can trace how changes in either society or religious myth can affect both.
And yet we did not start out as medium sized tribes. I am not arguing that creating fictive kinship groups is not required for larger groups or that larger groups do not confer greater chance of survival.
Regardless of the size of the society and its complexity, there will always be the unknown and the risk of uncontrollable events. For this reason, there will always be a need for “myths of the gaps”. Our earliest, most primitive “myths of the gaps” simply evolve and change as societies evolve and change.
I think you should give this a little more thought. Vertebrate senses provide objective, if not complete, information about the world around the organism. Absent abnormalities, the biological senses provide reliable information within the specific ranges (visible light spectrum, audible range of sound waves, specific chemical receptors). Our senses do not develop, they are what they are, what develops is our catalog of experience, where we see the patterns in the data and we begin to catalog the objects we encounter along with our experiences.
When presented with limited information, the central nervous system will try to find a likely match. The obvious advantage is that it allows the organism to react faster than waiting for complete information to come in, either in identifying threats or potential food. The advantage of quick reaction outweighs the disadvantage of misidentification. Again, given close and careful inspection of something, maximizing the observable data of the thing in question, allows for accurate, objective conclusion at a macroscopic level.
For human beings, the sensory data is objective, it is what we think about that data that is subjective.
I have used scripture to broadly mean any religious text which may be an inaccurate use of the word. The fact is that these texts describe religious myth, myths that are not objectively true, that can evolve and change over time as society changes, and that in part, provide answers to unanswerable questions.
As for apophatic theologians, they are not questioning the existence of their creator entity. It still starts with the assumption of a perfect entity, that first and primary myth, the need of which is to answer those unanswerable questions.
Yes, those are objective criteria upon which they made a subjective value choice.
Acknowledging reality, what is objectively real, neither values or devalues one's life. Fictitious belief, beliefs built upon artificial constructs of reality, are harmful because they cannot be easily challenged and modified. This can result in societal stagnation and entrenchment of harmful beliefs.
Absolutely true. And we have to acknowledge and deal with that as best we can. If the wellbeing of humanity has always been up to humanity, then humanity must embrace that fact and make the best possible decisions based on what is real, to the best of our understanding. As that understanding improves, we can continually improve our value choices accordingly and not be trapped by ancient mythology.
You misunderstand. I agree that our default instinctual behavior is for human beings to divide into groups. I am saying that religions, ideologies, and nations reinforce and strengthen that divide.
We have, very slowly, been in the process of transcending our animalistic nature for millennia. And you are correct that as individuals, we are all as unique as snowflakes and there never has been, nor ever will be complete unanimity of value choices. However, it is much better to manage our differences based on a realistic understanding of human behavior as opposed to trapping ourselves in divisive myths. This is what we should be striving for.
I get the impression that you feel something would be lost if we were to abandon myth. I am curious as to which myths you feel must be preserved?