The OP mentions the very long history of humans, many tens of thousands of years, including an evolutionary process, according to modern science.
For me one of the big issues that therefore arises is that 'The Fall' must be a myth. Or at least have happened gradually.
With no "Fall' our 'sinful nature' is something different to 'standard evangelical doctrine'.
And therefore the Gospel message ends up as something different from standard evangelical doctrine.
What, therefore, do we need saving from ? Did Jesus have to be executed and rise from the dead for me to be saved??
The OP mentions the very long history of humans, many tens of thousands of years, including an evolutionary process, according to modern science.
For me one of the big issues that therefore arises is that 'The Fall' must be a myth.
FWIW, I fall firmly into the camp of holding that in this kind of context, myth ≠ untrue. To the contrary, a myth is a story that, while not factual, conveys truth. So even if the story of Eden, Adam and Eve is myth, in my view that doesn’t at all mean it doesn’t convey truth.
The OP mentions the very long history of humans, many tens of thousands of years, including an evolutionary process, according to modern science.
For me one of the big issues that therefore arises is that 'The Fall' must be a myth.
FWIW, I fall firmly into the camp of holding that in this kind of context, myth ≠ untrue. To the contrary, a myth is a story that, while not factual, conveys truth. So even if the story of Eden, Adam and Eve is myth, in my view that doesn’t at all mean it doesn’t convey truth.
But what is that truth? It's certainly not the one Christianity traditionally taught, of a paradise lost and the coming of death and decay into the world.
The OP mentions the very long history of humans, many tens of thousands of years, including an evolutionary process, according to modern science.
For me one of the big issues that therefore arises is that 'The Fall' must be a myth.
FWIW, I fall firmly into the camp of holding that in this kind of context, myth ≠ untrue. To the contrary, a myth is a story that, while not factual, conveys truth. So even if the story of Eden, Adam and Eve is myth, in my view that doesn’t at all mean it doesn’t convey truth.
But what is that truth? It's certainly not the one Christianity traditionally taught, of a paradise lost and the coming of death and decay into the world.
That’s the question to meditate on when it comes to myth, isn’t it?
From my perspective, and for starters, the reality of human resistance against trusting God and of human rebellion against God, and the ways in which that resistance and rebellion both alienates humanity from God and interferes with what God intends for creation (including us).
FWIW, I was wasn’t really ever taught that the Genesis narratives are about the truth of “a paradise lost and the coming of death and decay into the world.” That isn’t, at least in my experience, the view Christianity traditionally taught. It’s a view some, even many, Christians—in my experience primarily evangelical Christians—have taught. I was taught the Genesis narratives are about loss of relationships with God. To the extent death entered into the equation, it was mainly spiritual, not physical, death that was meant.
Religious truths are ideals that one set of human beings negotiated into a system, and what subsequent sets of human beings attempting to abide the same system continue to negotiate in the face of completely different variables.
@Merry Vole you appear to be taking 'standard evangelical doctrine' to be some kind of 'norm.'
Seeing as 'standard evangelical doctrine' (whatever that means) arguably only took on its recognisably modern form in the 1700s, there was a lot of Christianity around before that.
FWIW @KarlLB St Augustine of Hippo didn't take the Genesis creation account literally.
That doesn't mean he'd have understood it in modern scientific terms of course.
Our respective mileages will vary but I don't lie awake at night mithering about the differences in modern scientific understandings and what people may or may not have believed about how the world came into being in times past.
The whole thing doesn't stand or fall on that. But then I'm not at all 'scientific' so tend to approach things in an arty and 'mythopoetic' kind of way.
@Merry Vole you appear to be taking 'standard evangelical doctrine' to be some kind of 'norm.'
Seeing as 'standard evangelical doctrine' (whatever that means) arguably only took on its recognisably modern form in the 1700s, there was a lot of Christianity around before that.
FWIW @KarlLB St Augustine of Hippo didn't take the Genesis creation account literally.
That doesn't mean he'd have understood it in modern scientific terms of course.
Our respective mileages will vary but I don't lie awake at night mithering about the differences in modern scientific understandings and what people may or may not have believed about how the world came into being in times past.
The whole thing doesn't stand or fall on that. But then I'm not at all 'scientific' so tend to approach things in an arty and 'mythopoetic' kind of way.
Thing is - I am, and to the extent I've indulged in self-discovery I've realised just how much the scientific mind set is just how I think
Christianity has to be able to make as much sense to us sciency bods as it does humanities types, surely? Or are we the Greeks asking for wisdom that apparently God doesn't approve of?
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
And yes, I am a scientist.
Genesis makes excellent sense to me when I look at the state of the world and what people are and do.
Christianity has to be able to make as much sense to us sciency bods as it does humanities types, surely? Or are we the Greeks asking for wisdom that apparently God doesn't approve of?
Of course it should make sense to sciency types. I’d hazard a guess we all know many sciency types for whom is does make as much sense as it does to us humanities types; I know I do. We have such sciency types here on the Ship, @RockyRoger and many others.
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
Yes. The fact that quantum physics is fundamentally probabilistic makes it different from our everyday intuition that has been trained on the behavior of macroscopic objects, but that doesn't at all mean that it doesn't make sense.
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
It (fairly) accurately models reality and makes testable predictions that stand up to scrutiny. That's all the sense that can be asked of a scientific theory. Is it intuitive? No.
We don't and can't know what form the fall had. We can speculate in an sf/fantasy vein, but conditions on the other side of any fall may be literally unimaginable and possibly incompatible with physics and biology in the current universe.
I think if we have grounds to think the rest of Christianity true and the rest of Christianity implies some sort of fall, it must have been outside time.
What form does "the fall" have since the Adam and Eve story is not true?
This, basically.
Here's one possibility: it's an allegory about how our ancestors used their God-given faculties in the Divine image and likeness, over time, to become inclined to think that they could figure out for themselves how to know what's good and what's not. An inclination we still need to be saved from.
As a non-sciency type I have no idea how sciency types deal with these things only that some appear to do so.
That said, I've come across some sciency types try to explain the Fall in ways that don't sound particularly scientific to me.
Like hominids suddenly becoming aware of good and evil one Thursday afternoon hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I'm happy to let the scientists work this one out.
It was actually a Tuesday.
Faiths, religious beliefs, make sense of the human condition, a way of being and help in times of trouble.
I like the old WW 1 joke about the two guys in a ditch hidiing from the barrage. One complains about it. The other replies, 'If you know a better hole, go to it!'
To 'rationalists' I tend to say, 'All your beliefs, habits, practices make sense, do they?'
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things? How do you resist evil in your own heart?
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
It (fairly) accurately models reality and makes testable predictions that stand up to scrutiny. That's all the sense that can be asked of a scientific theory. Is it intuitive? No.
I tend to think of science as something of a continuum with observations at one end and "engineering" type knowledge at the other. Some way along the continuum is the realm of interpretation/paradigm/theory and these are in relationship and negotiation. In some senses you cannot have paradigm/theory without observation/method but in another sense you cannot do the observational stuff without working through a particular paradigm. Much of scientific knowledge remains within this interpreted realm and never becomes engineering.
So it does not mean anything to say that a model accurately fits reality unless it has become engineering, and theoretical physics clearly has not.
On the other question, I have been thinking about dogs and their apparent untaught knowledge and behaviours. Taken to the sea for the first time they will start moving in a certain way to swim the doggy paddle.
I think the human mind has evolved this urge to seek meaning and create stories. As a species that comes naturally to us.
Generally I think we have a tendency to try to retain as much knowledge as we can so new information is used to patch over the places where the previous ideas got worn out, so you have this mental garment which is heavily patched and includes parts that do not really fit properly together.
Two excellent posts from Basketactortale. Thank you.
We do indeed live by stories we tell each other - myths, fairy tales, legends, riddles.
Great religious leaders tend to be great story tellers.
As were, say, Richard Feyman, Darwin or Freud.
Two excellent posts from Basketactortale. Thank you.
We do indeed live by stories we tell each other - myths, fairy tales, legends, riddles.
Great religious leaders tend to be great story tellers.
As were, say, Richard Feyman, Darwin or Freud.
But unless the stories are communicating something meaningful or interesting then they're just stories. Hence my question as to where the stories lead us in the light of, well, if you like, other stories.
I'm perfectly happy to see Genesis 3 as a description of what people are like - if you want everyone to have blue fingers just paint a bench blue and put "wet paint, do not touch" on it. But Christianity has built more on it than that. It's described the whole of creation as tainted. It's described the events as the start of sin, of death and of suffering, and even of animal predation. We need to relook at that in the light of ancient dinosaur fossils with tooth marks.
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
It (fairly) accurately models reality and makes testable predictions that stand up to scrutiny. That's all the sense that can be asked of a scientific theory. Is it intuitive? No.
So it does not mean anything to say that a model accurately fits reality unless it has become engineering, and theoretical physics clearly has not.
The posts you are replying to refer to "quantum theory"; the most advanced parts of the semiconductor and communication industries routinely rely on engineering built on various quantum theories or have to mitigate effects predicted by the same theories.
So sciency stuff, like quantum theory, makes sense, does it?
It (fairly) accurately models reality and makes testable predictions that stand up to scrutiny. That's all the sense that can be asked of a scientific theory. Is it intuitive? No.
So it does not mean anything to say that a model accurately fits reality unless it has become engineering, and theoretical physics clearly has not.
The posts you are replying to refer to "quantum theory"; the most advanced parts of the semiconductor and communication industries routinely rely on engineering built on various quantum theories or have to mitigate effects predicted by the same theories.
Well that does not necessarily mean anything relating to a model mapping reality. If you think about it, all methods require accepted engineering. When you use a mass spectrometer, that's obviously quite a large piece of engineering. That does not in itself mean that the observation-interpretation matrix does not then apply and conclusions drawn are engineering-level knowledge.
By the way, "engineering" in the sense I am using here is shorthand for the kinds of knowledge that survive daily testing. So buildings stand up because we understand material science to the extent that it fails in predictable ways within certain limits. There are other aspects of science that are similarly repeatably true, for example much of chemistry.
But there are other things that are layered interpretations which cannot themselves be tested and which never reach the level of reproducible, predictable knowledge.
Some things by their nature are simply not reproducible or falsifiable. And by their nature can never be "engineering"-type knowledge, the best we can say is that the current explanation seems to fit the evidence that we have, until another better explanation comes along.
Two excellent posts from Basketactortale. Thank you.
We do indeed live by stories we tell each other - myths, fairy tales, legends, riddles.
Great religious leaders tend to be great story tellers.
As were, say, Richard Feyman, Darwin or Freud.
But unless the stories are communicating something meaningful or interesting then they're just stories. Hence my question as to where the stories lead us in the light of, well, if you like, other stories.
I'm perfectly happy to see Genesis 3 as a description of what people are like - if you want everyone to have blue fingers just paint a bench blue and put "wet paint, do not touch" on it. But Christianity has built more on it than that. It's described the whole of creation as tainted. It's described the events as the start of sin, of death and of suffering, and even of animal predation. We need to relook at that in the light of ancient dinosaur fossils with tooth marks.
On this I would suggest that maybe you have it the wrong way round. There is no category of "just stories", stories are simply the way that we make sense of the world around us.
That's the function. The theology you describe is not something I understand, but clearly it makes sense in a certain context and answers very specific kinds of questions.
Which is not really any different to the way science works when you think about it. For example we might say that medical science knows that symptom A is caused by condition B. Which is one level of explanation. Beneath that might be a pharmacological explanation. Which might have a genetic explanation. Which might be something about chemistry and bases in the RNA or DNA. Which might rely on something about physics and atoms. Which might be something about subatomic physics.
Each of these areas of science have their own paradigms and explanations, some of which may not neatly work with the explanations above or below them. They are stories we tell each other to understand the phenomena we study. Explanations at each level can change and be rejected without fundamentally toppling everything else - changes of understanding theories of subatomic physics do not suddenly mean that medical science stops working.
By the way, "engineering" in the sense I am using here is shorthand for the kinds of knowledge that survive daily testing. So buildings stand up because we understand material science to the extent that it fails in predictable ways within certain limits. There are other aspects of science that are similarly repeatably true, for example much of chemistry.
I know exactly what you mean, and I'm saying that the fields I'm referring to are using quantum theories in exactly the same way.
By the way, "engineering" in the sense I am using here is shorthand for the kinds of knowledge that survive daily testing. So buildings stand up because we understand material science to the extent that it fails in predictable ways within certain limits. There are other aspects of science that are similarly repeatably true, for example much of chemistry.
I know exactly what you mean, and I'm saying that the fields I'm referring to are using quantum theories in exactly the same way.
Some say there is Kuhnian paradigm shift currently happening in Cosmology
Anton Zeilinger, who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on quantum entanglement and quantum information science, confessed that even physicists working in this new field consider foundations to be a bit dodgy: “We don’t understand the reason why. Must be psychological reasons, something like that, something very deep.” Kay admits this much when he writes: “Yes, many people think the debate is over and Bohr won, but that is actually a social phenomenon.” In other words, the orthodoxy is not philosophical, it is sociological. It has very little to do with Bohr and the Copenhagen interpretation.
Two excellent posts from Basketactortale. Thank you.
We do indeed live by stories we tell each other - myths, fairy tales, legends, riddles.
Great religious leaders tend to be great story tellers.
As were, say, Richard Feyman, Darwin or Freud.
But unless the stories are communicating something meaningful or interesting then they're just stories. Hence my question as to where the stories lead us in the light of, well, if you like, other stories.
I'm perfectly happy to see Genesis 3 as a description of what people are like - if you want everyone to have blue fingers just paint a bench blue and put "wet paint, do not touch" on it. But Christianity has built more on it than that. It's described the whole of creation as tainted. It's described the events as the start of sin, of death and of suffering, and even of animal predation. We need to relook at that in the light of ancient dinosaur fossils with tooth marks.
On this I would suggest that maybe you have it the wrong way round. There is no category of "just stories", stories are simply the way that we make sense of the world around us.
That's the function. The theology you describe is not something I understand, but clearly it makes sense in a certain context and answers very specific kinds of questions.
Which is not really any different to the way science works when you think about it. For example we might say that medical science knows that symptom A is caused by condition B. Which is one level of explanation. Beneath that might be a pharmacological explanation. Which might have a genetic explanation. Which might be something about chemistry and bases in the RNA or DNA. Which might rely on something about physics and atoms. Which might be something about subatomic physics.
Each of these areas of science have their own paradigms and explanations, some of which may not neatly work with the explanations above or below them. They are stories we tell each other to understand the phenomena we study. Explanations at each level can change and be rejected without fundamentally toppling everything else - changes of understanding theories of subatomic physics do not suddenly mean that medical science stops working.
Yeah, I don't call those explanations stories though. My mental map of the world (my story by your definition) has buckets for "fiction" where stories go and "non-fiction" where explanations go and while something in the story bucket may help understanding of the explanation bucket, and explanations themselves may be approximate and provisional they remain separate concepts. I maintain that way of seeing the world is as valid as "everything is a story".
To 'rationalists' I tend to say, 'All your beliefs, habits, practices make sense, do they?'
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things? How do you resist evil in your own heart?
Are these questions only for rationalists?
Why is your assumption that there is evil in their hearts?
As a non-sciency type I have no idea how sciency types deal with these things only that some appear to do so.
That said, I've come across some sciency types try to explain the Fall in ways that don't sound particularly scientific to me.
Like hominids suddenly becoming aware of good and evil one Thursday afternoon hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I'm happy to let the scientists work this one out.
It was actually a Tuesday.
Faiths, religious beliefs, make sense of the human condition, a way of being and help in times of trouble.
I like the old WW 1 joke about the two guys in a ditch hidiing from the barrage. One complains about it. The other replies, 'If you know a better hole, go to it!'
To 'rationalists' I tend to say, 'All your beliefs, habits, practices make sense, do they?'
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things? How do you resist evil in your own heart?
The way you put quotes around rationalists sounds like you despise them.
It's great that for you "Faiths, religious beliefs, make sense of the human condition, a way of being and help in times of trouble."
For some of us they don't. Not unless we can be sure they're true. Which we can't.
I don’t to be honest know whether it's my scientist mind or my autistic mind that forces my thoughts this way. Both scientists and autistics as groups have lower than average religiosity, so it could be either. Or both. Or neither.
To 'rationalists' I tend to say, 'All your beliefs, habits, practices make sense, do they?'
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things? How do you resist evil in your own heart?
Are these questions only for rationalists?
Why is your assumption that there is evil in their hearts?
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
By the way, "engineering" in the sense I am using here is shorthand for the kinds of knowledge that survive daily testing. So buildings stand up because we understand material science to the extent that it fails in predictable ways within certain limits. There are other aspects of science that are similarly repeatably true, for example much of chemistry.
I know exactly what you mean, and I'm saying that the fields I'm referring to are using quantum theories in exactly the same way.
Some say there is Kuhnian paradigm shift currently happening in Cosmology
In it's origins, maybe, although all the original protagonists are long dead, and even the more speculative ideas like supersymmetry are over a generation old at this point. So far the contradictions don't amount to a crisis, and the signs aren't good if you are waiting for various quantum theories to be 'replaced' wholesale, most of the physicists in that article are just speculating about additional explanatory mechanisms. Meanwhile, plenty of current tech relies on phenomena like wave/particle duality that people may find counter intuitive.
Sorry with my bad wording. When I wrote 'evil in your heart' I meant everybody's hearts. In my experience rationalists are usually better than us religious types who realised we needed help!
Rationalists are better ..what? better - at what?
I certainly acquired a lot of guilt in my evo days. (But experienced also the love and acceptance I needed)
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
Not that rationalists ever do that.
(Actually can we just stop and admire the hubris of calling your position "rationalism", as if anyone who disagrees with you has ipso facto abandoned rational argument?)
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
Not that rationalists ever do that.
(Actually can we just stop and admire the hubris of calling your position "rationalism", as if anyone who disagrees with you has ipso facto abandoned rational argument?)
Point of order - I believe the term "rationalist" was introduced into the discussion by @RockyRoger rather than being claimed as a description by anyone.
(Wikipedia says that the Rationalist Association merged into the British Humanists last year. Meanwhile people from the Less Wrong movement have founded their own Rationalist society, which given the beliefs associated with Less Wrong is entertaining.)
(Wikipedia says that the Rationalist Association merged into the British Humanists last year. Meanwhile people from the Less Wrong movement have founded their own Rationalist society, which given the beliefs associated with Less Wrong is entertaining.)
Yeah, but it read as if you were having a go at @The_Riv for describing his position thus, which he didn't.
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
Not that rationalists ever do that.
(Actually can we just stop and admire the hubris of calling your position "rationalism", as if anyone who disagrees with you has ipso facto abandoned rational argument?)
We could do that, if only I had described my position as rationalist. And I'm not sure I'm being disagreed with as much as I'm going unanswered, as you did above. It's Pee Wee Herman. You're a Loner, @Dafyd, a Rebel.
Sorry with my bad wording. When I wrote 'evil in your heart' I meant everybody's hearts. In my experience rationalists are usually better than us religious types who realised we needed help!
I think it would help a lot if religious people took pains to include the words "I believe" in the things they say, especially about people who don't share their beliefs. There's a big difference in saying, "How do you resist evil in your own heart?" and "How do you resist evil I believe is in your own heart? Or, to your correction: "How do you resist evil I believe is in everyone's hearts?" ISTM that strikes quite a different tone. It's really not at all in the religious' purview to ascribe evil to other people's hearts, and I believe they really should stop doing that.
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things?
Can you unpack this a but further? Do you mean contrasted against what Christians understand gets them up in the AM? Please also appreciate how intensely I'm avoiding the NSFW jokes about 'getting up in the morning' and 'doing good things.'
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
Not that rationalists ever do that.
(Actually can we just stop and admire the hubris of calling your position "rationalism", as if anyone who disagrees with you has ipso facto abandoned rational argument?)
We could do that, if only I had described my position as rationalist. And I'm not sure I'm being disagreed with as much as I'm going unanswered, as you did above. It's Pee Wee Herman. You're a Loner, @Dafyd, a Rebel.
Firstly, I never said you had described your position as rationalist. The 'you' in my parentheses is the generic you ('one' in formal English), not the vocative.
I was thinking of someone like Hitchens (honorary associate of the Rationalist International according to wikipedia), whom you have frequently cited as if his opinions are of interest.
Secondly, I don't know what is going on in your second sentence. You may wish to be clearer. Or you may not. There were no questions in your post to be answered or unanswered.
Thirdly, your reference to Pee Wee Herman appears to belong in Hell.
To spell what I was saying out: Religious people do indeed sometimes make arrogant claims of the 'speak for yourself' variety about non-religious people (you're right - I wasn't disagreeing with you directly), but then atheists and agnostics and so on sometimes make arrogant claims about religious people. Your post seemed to me to imply that religious people are uniquely prone to it. If I was wrong about the intended implication, I retract my remark.
There may be a context which “ain’t necessarily so” for people without faith. But it’s a famous context from MacBeth, who is feeling deep despair and nihilism.
“ "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing”
Personally I don’t believe that people without faith have no reason to get up in the morning. Motivation to “do life” can come from many sources.
But despite having been written centuries earlier, it is a good critique of what Russell described as his foundation of unyielding despair. Living without any hope that life has some purpose must be very difficult. Life has to signify something.
There may be a context which “ain’t necessarily so” for people without faith. But it’s a famous context from MacBeth, who is feeling deep despair and nihilism.
“ "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing”
Personally I don’t believe that people without faith have no reason to get up in the morning. Motivation to “do life” can come from many sources.
But despite having been written centuries earlier, it is a good critique of what Russell described as his foundation of unyielding despair. Living without any hope that life has some purpose must be very difficult. Life has to signify something.
That's not a basis for belief though. It's a basis for wishing there were a higher power, even for hoping there is. It's not a basis for believing there is. Things don't exist just because we don't want them not to.
I agree KarlB. It’s a basis for avoiding despair. Somehow.
Whether one has faith or not, despair can be very destructive.
It can be liberating. The things that matter to you still matter because they still tickle the pleasure centres of your brain. And you don't have to worry whether you're upsetting some god somewhere.
I'll be honest; a godless universe is more appealing than the one fundamentalists believe in where the vast majority of existence is the vast majority of humanity suffering in Hell.
Unfortunately, by the same "wishes don't make reality" the fundamentalist God possibility can't be eliminated either.
I’m sure you’ve realised by now that I’m not a Fundamentalist. I do believe that Fundamentalism is deeply flawed. I moved on from that over 4 decades ago.
So I’m presuming that somehow you think all Christians must be tied in some way to that flawed understanding.
For me, modern cosmology and biology do not destroy Christianity--they push it toward a deeper, more cosmic, more relational and a less literal understanding of creation, humanity and the universe.
That's what I would have said if I could have found the words.
That's not a basis for belief though. It's a basis for wishing there were a higher power, even for hoping there is. It's not a basis for believing there is. Things don't exist just because we don't want them not to.
Wishing and hoping are only an eyelash away from believing.
As I've got older, I'm happy with wishing and hoping. More than anything, I desperately want to meet my Dad again in whatever form he is now. When in Church, I feel very close to him, probably because he was a church minister and that's where I tend to place him in my memories.
Our preacher last week said "I believe passionately in evolution" - which I liked, because he was distancing m himself from the fundamentalists, while still following Jesus.
I’m sure you’ve realised by now that I’m not a Fundamentalist. I do believe that Fundamentalism is deeply flawed. I moved on from that over 4 decades ago.
So I’m presuming that somehow you think all Christians must be tied in some way to that flawed understanding.
Why?
I don't. It was an aside. There are many possibilities and I was just musing about how desirable they are or are not, and observing that their desirability had no bearing on their truth.
Comments
For me one of the big issues that therefore arises is that 'The Fall' must be a myth. Or at least have happened gradually.
With no "Fall' our 'sinful nature' is something different to 'standard evangelical doctrine'.
And therefore the Gospel message ends up as something different from standard evangelical doctrine.
What, therefore, do we need saving from ? Did Jesus have to be executed and rise from the dead for me to be saved??
But what is that truth? It's certainly not the one Christianity traditionally taught, of a paradise lost and the coming of death and decay into the world.
From my perspective, and for starters, the reality of human resistance against trusting God and of human rebellion against God, and the ways in which that resistance and rebellion both alienates humanity from God and interferes with what God intends for creation (including us).
FWIW, I was wasn’t really ever taught that the Genesis narratives are about the truth of “a paradise lost and the coming of death and decay into the world.” That isn’t, at least in my experience, the view Christianity traditionally taught. It’s a view some, even many, Christians—in my experience primarily evangelical Christians—have taught. I was taught the Genesis narratives are about loss of relationships with God. To the extent death entered into the equation, it was mainly spiritual, not physical, death that was meant.
Seeing as 'standard evangelical doctrine' (whatever that means) arguably only took on its recognisably modern form in the 1700s, there was a lot of Christianity around before that.
FWIW @KarlLB St Augustine of Hippo didn't take the Genesis creation account literally.
That doesn't mean he'd have understood it in modern scientific terms of course.
Our respective mileages will vary but I don't lie awake at night mithering about the differences in modern scientific understandings and what people may or may not have believed about how the world came into being in times past.
The whole thing doesn't stand or fall on that. But then I'm not at all 'scientific' so tend to approach things in an arty and 'mythopoetic' kind of way.
Thing is - I am, and to the extent I've indulged in self-discovery I've realised just how much the scientific mind set is just how I think
Christianity has to be able to make as much sense to us sciency bods as it does humanities types, surely? Or are we the Greeks asking for wisdom that apparently God doesn't approve of?
And yes, I am a scientist.
Genesis makes excellent sense to me when I look at the state of the world and what people are and do.
This, basically.
Yes. The fact that quantum physics is fundamentally probabilistic makes it different from our everyday intuition that has been trained on the behavior of macroscopic objects, but that doesn't at all mean that it doesn't make sense.
It (fairly) accurately models reality and makes testable predictions that stand up to scrutiny. That's all the sense that can be asked of a scientific theory. Is it intuitive? No.
I think if we have grounds to think the rest of Christianity true and the rest of Christianity implies some sort of fall, it must have been outside time.
That said, I've come across some sciency types try to explain the Fall in ways that don't sound particularly scientific to me.
Like hominids suddenly becoming aware of good and evil one Thursday afternoon hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I'm happy to let the scientists work this one out.
Here's one possibility: it's an allegory about how our ancestors used their God-given faculties in the Divine image and likeness, over time, to become inclined to think that they could figure out for themselves how to know what's good and what's not. An inclination we still need to be saved from.
It was actually a Tuesday.
Faiths, religious beliefs, make sense of the human condition, a way of being and help in times of trouble.
I like the old WW 1 joke about the two guys in a ditch hidiing from the barrage. One complains about it. The other replies, 'If you know a better hole, go to it!'
To 'rationalists' I tend to say, 'All your beliefs, habits, practices make sense, do they?'
What gets you up in the morning to try to do good things? How do you resist evil in your own heart?
I tend to think of science as something of a continuum with observations at one end and "engineering" type knowledge at the other. Some way along the continuum is the realm of interpretation/paradigm/theory and these are in relationship and negotiation. In some senses you cannot have paradigm/theory without observation/method but in another sense you cannot do the observational stuff without working through a particular paradigm. Much of scientific knowledge remains within this interpreted realm and never becomes engineering.
So it does not mean anything to say that a model accurately fits reality unless it has become engineering, and theoretical physics clearly has not.
I think the human mind has evolved this urge to seek meaning and create stories. As a species that comes naturally to us.
Generally I think we have a tendency to try to retain as much knowledge as we can so new information is used to patch over the places where the previous ideas got worn out, so you have this mental garment which is heavily patched and includes parts that do not really fit properly together.
We do indeed live by stories we tell each other - myths, fairy tales, legends, riddles.
Great religious leaders tend to be great story tellers.
As were, say, Richard Feyman, Darwin or Freud.
But unless the stories are communicating something meaningful or interesting then they're just stories. Hence my question as to where the stories lead us in the light of, well, if you like, other stories.
I'm perfectly happy to see Genesis 3 as a description of what people are like - if you want everyone to have blue fingers just paint a bench blue and put "wet paint, do not touch" on it. But Christianity has built more on it than that. It's described the whole of creation as tainted. It's described the events as the start of sin, of death and of suffering, and even of animal predation. We need to relook at that in the light of ancient dinosaur fossils with tooth marks.
The posts you are replying to refer to "quantum theory"; the most advanced parts of the semiconductor and communication industries routinely rely on engineering built on various quantum theories or have to mitigate effects predicted by the same theories.
Well that does not necessarily mean anything relating to a model mapping reality. If you think about it, all methods require accepted engineering. When you use a mass spectrometer, that's obviously quite a large piece of engineering. That does not in itself mean that the observation-interpretation matrix does not then apply and conclusions drawn are engineering-level knowledge.
By the way, "engineering" in the sense I am using here is shorthand for the kinds of knowledge that survive daily testing. So buildings stand up because we understand material science to the extent that it fails in predictable ways within certain limits. There are other aspects of science that are similarly repeatably true, for example much of chemistry.
But there are other things that are layered interpretations which cannot themselves be tested and which never reach the level of reproducible, predictable knowledge.
Some things by their nature are simply not reproducible or falsifiable. And by their nature can never be "engineering"-type knowledge, the best we can say is that the current explanation seems to fit the evidence that we have, until another better explanation comes along.
On this I would suggest that maybe you have it the wrong way round. There is no category of "just stories", stories are simply the way that we make sense of the world around us.
That's the function. The theology you describe is not something I understand, but clearly it makes sense in a certain context and answers very specific kinds of questions.
Which is not really any different to the way science works when you think about it. For example we might say that medical science knows that symptom A is caused by condition B. Which is one level of explanation. Beneath that might be a pharmacological explanation. Which might have a genetic explanation. Which might be something about chemistry and bases in the RNA or DNA. Which might rely on something about physics and atoms. Which might be something about subatomic physics.
Each of these areas of science have their own paradigms and explanations, some of which may not neatly work with the explanations above or below them. They are stories we tell each other to understand the phenomena we study. Explanations at each level can change and be rejected without fundamentally toppling everything else - changes of understanding theories of subatomic physics do not suddenly mean that medical science stops working.
I know exactly what you mean, and I'm saying that the fields I'm referring to are using quantum theories in exactly the same way.
Some say there is Kuhnian paradigm shift currently happening in Cosmology
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/18/4/685
With regard to Quantum theories, some argue that the paradigm we have is the result of a Kuhnian paradigm shift:
https://physicsworld.com/a/paradigm-shifts-positivism-realism-and-the-fight-against-apathy-in-the-quantum-revolution/
Yeah, I don't call those explanations stories though. My mental map of the world (my story by your definition) has buckets for "fiction" where stories go and "non-fiction" where explanations go and while something in the story bucket may help understanding of the explanation bucket, and explanations themselves may be approximate and provisional they remain separate concepts. I maintain that way of seeing the world is as valid as "everything is a story".
Are these questions only for rationalists?
Why is your assumption that there is evil in their hearts?
The way you put quotes around rationalists sounds like you despise them.
It's great that for you "Faiths, religious beliefs, make sense of the human condition, a way of being and help in times of trouble."
For some of us they don't. Not unless we can be sure they're true. Which we can't.
I don’t to be honest know whether it's my scientist mind or my autistic mind that forces my thoughts this way. Both scientists and autistics as groups have lower than average religiosity, so it could be either. Or both. Or neither.
There's an incredible amount of hubris in the idea that religious people may ascribe their beliefs onto other people.
There may well be, but that paper just details one of the many competing explanations for dark matter.
In it's origins, maybe, although all the original protagonists are long dead, and even the more speculative ideas like supersymmetry are over a generation old at this point. So far the contradictions don't amount to a crisis, and the signs aren't good if you are waiting for various quantum theories to be 'replaced' wholesale, most of the physicists in that article are just speculating about additional explanatory mechanisms. Meanwhile, plenty of current tech relies on phenomena like wave/particle duality that people may find counter intuitive.
I certainly acquired a lot of guilt in my evo days. (But experienced also the love and acceptance I needed)
(Actually can we just stop and admire the hubris of calling your position "rationalism", as if anyone who disagrees with you has ipso facto abandoned rational argument?)
Point of order - I believe the term "rationalist" was introduced into the discussion by @RockyRoger rather than being claimed as a description by anyone.
(Wikipedia says that the Rationalist Association merged into the British Humanists last year. Meanwhile people from the Less Wrong movement have founded their own Rationalist society, which given the beliefs associated with Less Wrong is entertaining.)
Yeah, but it read as if you were having a go at @The_Riv for describing his position thus, which he didn't.
We could do that, if only I had described my position as rationalist. And I'm not sure I'm being disagreed with as much as I'm going unanswered, as you did above. It's Pee Wee Herman. You're a Loner, @Dafyd, a Rebel.
I think it would help a lot if religious people took pains to include the words "I believe" in the things they say, especially about people who don't share their beliefs. There's a big difference in saying, "How do you resist evil in your own heart?" and "How do you resist evil I believe is in your own heart? Or, to your correction: "How do you resist evil I believe is in everyone's hearts?" ISTM that strikes quite a different tone. It's really not at all in the religious' purview to ascribe evil to other people's hearts, and I believe they really should stop doing that.
Can you unpack this a but further? Do you mean contrasted against what Christians understand gets them up in the AM? Please also appreciate how intensely I'm avoiding the NSFW jokes about 'getting up in the morning' and 'doing good things.'
I was thinking of someone like Hitchens (honorary associate of the Rationalist International according to wikipedia), whom you have frequently cited as if his opinions are of interest.
Secondly, I don't know what is going on in your second sentence. You may wish to be clearer. Or you may not. There were no questions in your post to be answered or unanswered.
Thirdly, your reference to Pee Wee Herman appears to belong in Hell.
To spell what I was saying out: Religious people do indeed sometimes make arrogant claims of the 'speak for yourself' variety about non-religious people (you're right - I wasn't disagreeing with you directly), but then atheists and agnostics and so on sometimes make arrogant claims about religious people. Your post seemed to me to imply that religious people are uniquely prone to it. If I was wrong about the intended implication, I retract my remark.
There may be a context which “ain’t necessarily so” for people without faith. But it’s a famous context from MacBeth, who is feeling deep despair and nihilism.
“ "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing”
Personally I don’t believe that people without faith have no reason to get up in the morning. Motivation to “do life” can come from many sources.
But despite having been written centuries earlier, it is a good critique of what Russell described as his foundation of unyielding despair. Living without any hope that life has some purpose must be very difficult. Life has to signify something.
This is getting personal. Dial it down or take it to hell please.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
That's not a basis for belief though. It's a basis for wishing there were a higher power, even for hoping there is. It's not a basis for believing there is. Things don't exist just because we don't want them not to.
Whether one has faith or not, despair can be very destructive.
It can be liberating. The things that matter to you still matter because they still tickle the pleasure centres of your brain. And you don't have to worry whether you're upsetting some god somewhere.
I'll be honest; a godless universe is more appealing than the one fundamentalists believe in where the vast majority of existence is the vast majority of humanity suffering in Hell.
Unfortunately, by the same "wishes don't make reality" the fundamentalist God possibility can't be eliminated either.
I’m sure you’ve realised by now that I’m not a Fundamentalist. I do believe that Fundamentalism is deeply flawed. I moved on from that over 4 decades ago.
So I’m presuming that somehow you think all Christians must be tied in some way to that flawed understanding.
Why?
That's what I would have said if I could have found the words.
@KarlLB said -
Wishing and hoping are only an eyelash away from believing.
As I've got older, I'm happy with wishing and hoping. More than anything, I desperately want to meet my Dad again in whatever form he is now. When in Church, I feel very close to him, probably because he was a church minister and that's where I tend to place him in my memories.
Our preacher last week said "I believe passionately in evolution" - which I liked, because he was distancing m himself from the fundamentalists, while still following Jesus.
I don't. It was an aside. There are many possibilities and I was just musing about how desirable they are or are not, and observing that their desirability had no bearing on their truth.