Kantian Naturalist and I have been hopscotching from thread to thread, discussing the nature of religious language. The main point of contention is the assertoric/disclosive distinction: When is religious language assertoric — that is, when does it make claims about reality — and when is it merely disclosive, revealing attitude and affect without making actual claims?
I’ve created this thread as a permanent home for this otherwise nomadic discussion.
It may also be a good place for an ongoing discussion of another form of religious language — scripture. For believers who take scripture to be divinely inspired, the question is when it should be taken literally, when it should be taken figuratively or metaphorically, and whether there are consistent and justifiable criteria for drawing that distinction.
Argument from consequence, or some such. Perhaps assuming your conclusion.
Start by assuming that scripture must be true.
Allow any tortuous reading reading that makes the truth of scripture possible.
???
Prophet.
Erik,
My sincere thanks for your honesty and clarity in laying out your position here. If only this had been your second comment on this thread…
I think this is the crux of the problem, and confirms my long-held suspicions about the reasons for your strangely recalcitrant behavior here. I would be interested in hearing from the theists on this subject:
Do you agree with Erik that one must require that ‘none of the layers is false’ in order to have any way of distinguishing scripture from fiction? Is it impossible that there might exist sufficiently-inspired scripture?
From my “quasi-atheist” perspective (h/t Gregory), this seems to be an overly strict / inadequately nuanced position. I’m off to a Christmas Cantata this evening: I think I will ask some of my theist friends about this — certainly safer than discussing politics right now…
😮
E4clarity
Might I point out that “committed to a position” is usually incompatible with honesty and integrity? I suppose you are being honest about what your position is, but your position is at the heart of what leads to endless religious wars.
Every revealed religion has a scripture. The Abrahamic religions all have scriptures that just absolutely, positively have to be true. They are all the final word of God. No amendments or additions allowed.
🙂
While this might be the received dogma of the Abrahamic religions, all of the sane theists that I have discussed this with in person (including ministers/priests ordained in three distinct Christian denominations) maintain that the situation is rather more subtle.
I’m not sure why you insist on (3).
It always seemed obvious to me, even back when I was an evangelical Christian, that the Adam and Eve story was fiction, the Noah story was fiction, the tower of Babel was fiction, the book of Job was probably fiction (a morality play), and the book of Jonah was likely fiction. Oh, and the book of revelation was mostly fantasy (as a kind of fiction).
Can’t you recognize the genre from the writing?
Sure, there are parts of scripture that are less clear cut, where there is probably a lot of embellishment but perhaps some basis in history. To me, it never seemed a problem that there was some fiction in the mix.
I have been fortunate not to have encountered a lot of insane theists, except on the internet.
But we would not be having this conversation (and possibly this site would not exist) were it not for the one percent or so of theists who are both insane and prone to employ violence or bullying to impose their ideas on others.
Erik,
I’m not the one refusing to answer direct questions, cowboy. Tone down the accusations lest you be seen as a hypocrite.
My position is that I would like to know exactly what you are claiming happened when you say “Anyway, of course it [the biblical flood] occurred. The Bible has been found historically reliable.” The reason for my interest is that I do not understand how anyone can hold such a position. I’d like to learn what evidence people who do hold that position find convincing.
The reason I’m asking for more details is because this isn’t my first time discussing this topic. No two theists have the same conception of their gods or of the stories in their holy books. You yourself wouldn’t commit to a timeframe for the biblical flood that I found on a creationist site. So, before we can talk about evidence you need to specify exactly what you mean by your claim: timing, extent, and consequences of the flood you say really happened.
More generally, my position is that I enjoy vigorous debate. I’m happy to subject my arguments and evidence to scrutiny and will do so as soon as you clarify exactly what it is you claim happened. If I make a claim, I accept that I have the burden of proof. If people have sincere, honest questions about my claims, I accept that I have an obligation to answer them. If people challenge my arguments or evidence, I accept that I have to address those challenges. If I can’t or won’t do these things, I understand that the only honest, honorable response is to retract my claim. I expect that same dedication to rational discussion from others. I agree with you that playing by the rules is the moral thing to do.
So, now that you know where I’m coming from and now that you’ve seen how to directly answer questions, I’d like to move this discussion on to the point where we can discuss the details of your claim and any evidence you have to support it. In order to get there, I need to understand exactly what it is you are claiming as historical reality:
1) When did the flood you claim happened occur?
2) Was the flood global? That is, did it cover all the planet simultaneously as described in the Bible?
3) Immediately after the flood were there only eight people alive on the entire planet?
Thank you in advance for succinct, direct answers detailing your actual claim and your actual position.
ROTFL!
Perhaps in Erik’s native language reply and answer are not synonyms.
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/reply
Neil & keiths, Do you really think your worldview, i.e. your atheism, has nothing *whatsoever* to do with your un-spiritual/ anti-spiritual line of questioning in this thread? Or are you simply oblivious as persons to such ‘humanistic’ and ‘theistic’ things?
Thank goodness you’ve ‘graduated’ from that! 🙂 But did you really need to over-shoot into fully ‘skeptical’ atheism as compensation? Most of the world doesn’t associate easily with USAmerican evangelicalism, like stcordova clings to here in his IDism/YECism. But we are nevertheless still ‘human,’ i.e. believers in the spiritual world, including nature, even as it is properly or poorly expressed & understood in ‘religion.’
Why are you so anti-religious now, Neil?
No, most of the world where religion is practiced associate with a non-Christian fundamentalism.
Said the computer programmer to the philologist! LOL!! 😉
And upon leaving the evangelical sectarian church you once attended, did you give the Catholic or Orthodox churches a chance?
I’ve met many a person in this world who defines themselves merely *against* what they believe instead of accepting *any* kind of positive ‘belief’ or ‘faith’. To call Neil ‘faithless’ may not be accurate. But in so far as he identifies himself as a mere ‘skeptic’, there’s not much or even nothing positive in his worldview to commend.
(And please don’t try taking a ‘sociological humanist’ worldview posturing against a theistic sociologist, coming from a mere mathematical programmer, Neil. Such would be a pitiably-laughable and regrettable endeavour!)
That’s a fragment of a sentence, taken out of context, and presented as if it were said as a complete sentence.
And perhaps I should add that I grew up in Australia, so this was never American evangelicalism.
I am not anti-religious. You need to stop making up stuff.
petrushka,
That opinion is far from the truth. (And you’re guardian ‘devil’ admin is helping you hide from it too!)
Neil Rickert,
Is it not true then? Fair enough, it was in Australia. But you considered yourself an ‘evangelical Christian’ in Australia in your childhood, is that not true? You attended an ‘evangelical’ church, likely with your family and were baptised according to Christian tradition there. Anything ‘wrong’ or ‘out of context’ there? The rest of the sentence wasn’t nearly as relevant to this thread.
Well, you sure come across that way to me. You’ve been dismissive, caricaturing, attacking and generally doubting of religion here at TAMSZ, while moderating obviously in favour of atheists and anti-theists against theists. Or maybe, then, it is more accurate to say you are anti-theology?
There’s that out-of-context “quote” once again. I guess that’s what we should expect from a fake sociologist. Real scholars don’t do that.
My reasons for dropping out of Christianity applied equally to the catholic and orthodox traditions.
Neil Rickert,
I guess it’s ok for an admin to call me a ‘fake sociologist’ when he is a mere computer programmer who doesn’t understand what most believe think, feel and believe outside of the narrow agnosticism in which his life now dwells.
Not more posturing by a ‘know-it-all’ programmer!? 🙁 I doubt (read: am skeptical) you knew a single thing about Orthodox Christianity when you deserted the sectarian evangelical church of your childhood. Most Anglos know next to nothing about Orthodoxy, even in their adulthood (assuming Neil Rickert is now an adult).
Gregory writes:
It’s interesting how those who worship a loving, merciful god are always ready to characterize those who don’t share their beliefs as less than human.
Gregory writes:
Yeah, Neil, respect Gregory’s authoritah! (Please read in Cartman’s voice for full effect.)
Yeah, I noticed that fabrication of Gregory’s.
What a shameful example he makes.
Well, we don’t have to actually poke a finger into the Emperor’s naked buttocks to recognize that all the courtiers are lying about the fineness of his raiment.
I agree, although that may be because I have been reading too much Putnam (and Boyd) lately.
Specifically, under a type of minimalist conception, the evaluation of truth can depend on the context and purpose of inquiry. Hence, there could be several, parallel ways of determining the truth of statements of (say) biblical text.
Putnam calls this conceptual pluralism.
I understood Erik as approaching the text this way, although like KN that meant I was puzzled by some of his posts.
But based on his latest, I understand him to say that, at least for Scripture and a theist, there is an presumption of truth for empirical (and other) readings, although I would guess there still might be a need for close reading and interpretation to determined the exact empirical claim.
I don’t think this is a necessary position for a theist. For example, I believe that Putnam himself is a practicing orthodox Jew and I presume he would take the conceptual pluralist approach to the text as well.
Yes, that seems right to me.
I, too, am puzzled as to why Erik said what he did.
To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always to be ready to believe that what seems to us white is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.—Ignatius of Loyola
Apparently, Erik is following in Ignatius’ footsteps.
BruceS,
Yes, Putnam is an interesting case to consider here — though his conceptual pluralism comes at the rather high cost that he can’t maintain any coherent realism (or so it is often alleged).
Well, he certain claims to be a realist, or at least a scientific realist, and says he never departed from that claim, although I guess he has changed what he means by it several times.* As for moral claims, I think is not a realist, or he is a realist in a different sense, for he wants to have “objectivity without ontology”.
Speaking of multiple conceptual/interpretive realities, Massimo Pigliucci has a three-part blog series that may interest you. He attended a conference on whether multiverse and string theories can be scientific theories even if they are never testable. It was organized by Dawid (who argues they can in his book) and by Ellis and Silk, who wrote a nature paper arguing against Dawid’s position.
———————–
* On Putnam: since my main interest is to explore the arguments on all sides of a philosophical issue, I find reading about Putnam’s ideas very efficient, since he provides one-stop shopping.
KN,
Since “believe that” and “believe in” don’t work, why not consider using “as if” language?
For instance, instead of “we are God’s partners in improving the world”, why not say something like “I feel a sense of cosmic purpose, as if there were a God who had partnered with us to improve the world”?
Then you are clearly reporting a feeling and not making a claim about external reality.
It sounds like keiths saying to KN: “Stop kidding. Please be on my atheist team.” 😉
http://forward.com/culture/14256/spiritual-encounters-of-a-philosopher-of-science-02570/
It sounds like he is occasionally Jewish too, and is ready to change his mind about that as well; they’re just ‘religious feelings’ to him.
Gregory:
No, it’s about communicating his feelings and beliefs accurately, whatever they are.
Sure. It’s like an atheist saying that he believes ‘x’ is true while admitting that he acts “as if” ‘x’ is not true.
According to your description, Putnam seems to be saying that truth is relative and that’s all there is to it. Not so to me.
It’s true that truth seems different to different people, naturally so. However, this doesn’t mean that truth is variegated like this, as if the different conceptions and perceptions of truth were exactly of the same value. (If truth fit Putnam’s conception, there should have been nothing to argue about at all in this thread.)
For example when you touch a hot stove, you get burned, but a person whose nerves on the limb are dead will feel nothing when touching the stove. These are different perceptions of the same thing, but you can further verify, even though with difficulty, whose perception is more correct. Perception is one thing. Correct perception is another thing. Reality is layered like this.
You mean that religious wars are a display of dishonesty and of lack of integrity, while irreligious wars are somehow different?
And weaseling, squirming and making oneself appear different from what one is is quite honest and integral? How did you arrive at such a conclusion?
You may not like my position, but 1. I have laid it out for you (=honesty) and 2. I defend it against differing positions (=integrity).
When you dislike someone’s position, does that make that someone dishonest? This would mean that when I dislike your conceptions of honesty and integrity, it should make you automatically dishonest. I operate differently. Instead of simply disliking your position, I am giving arguments to refute it.
So, evangelical Christians are just enthusiastic about a certain book of fiction. Does the term “religious” apply to a Harry Potter fan club in the same meaning as when you refer to an actual church or congregation, with equal ease and frequency?
I insist on #3 because that makes a distinction between the two groups. There is a distinction, isn’t there? What other distinctions would you identify? That the Bible is older literature than Harry Potter series? That the wearing of wizard clothes is an older tradition in Christianity than among Harry Potter fans? Just that? Something more?
If I’ve given that impression, it is due to limitations in my explanation and understanding; Putnam definitely does not consider himself a relativist. He is trying to find a middle path between relativism (or even skepticism) and full-out metaphysical realism (existence of “the God’s-eye view”, roughly speaking).
I understand his conceptual pluralism as linked to Wittgenstein’s language games in the sense that the truth of statements depends on the domain of discussion and hence the language game being played. Within a domain, he looks to pragmatist ideas to guide proper approaches to successful inquiry. In particular in science we can achieve a form of realism by having to accommodate the causal structure of the world, and by having our terms refer in some sense due to this accommodation (wording owes something to Boyd). However, just to be clear, Putnam does not accept a standard pragmatist theory of truth.
The relevant point to this discussion is that these language games take place in parallel so that truth depends on the game being played. In particular, if we are playing a CNN-style of empirical evaluation of claims, then one could conclude that the flood story in the bible is false. On the other hand, if we are trying to understand the story from folklore or theistic perspectives, the statements we can make and their truths could differ.
That is how I tried to understand your position; that is, as parallel, independent language games. But I now understand that to be wrong, although I cannot say I fully understand your latest. For your latest appears to involve dependence between these perspectives in the sense that a theists trying to understand Scripture must have the presumption that statements in any domain must be true, or at least cannot be lies (which I think amounts to the same thing).
Forgive me for stating the obvious, BruceS, but if your interest is *only* in Varieties of Religious Language as a mere ‘philosophical issue,’ then you are not likely to find satisfactory answers in what Erik is saying. As I recall, you are not a philosopher, but (if I remember correctly) now taking interest in philosophy in your retirement, there is a caution on getting bogged down in jargon (KN is by far the best example of this on TAMSZ). For example, in your recent post you used the terms ‘relativism,’ ‘realism,’ ‘pragmatism’, ‘pluralism’, ‘skepticism’ and ‘accommodation.’ Yet all of these terms have multiple meanings, within the framework of the philosopher, individual or community who is using them. It is too much to ask that simple references to Putnam or Wittgenstein suffice to get across your message in such a venue as a public blog, and indeed here where most of the atheists are openly anti-philosophical or just philosophy-stunted!
May I recommend an alternative strategy, if you are indeed interested in Varieties of Religious Language on a personal level, not just ‘academically’? As you have said, you live in Toronto. Please find below 3 links to organisations in Toronto that can give you more insight and dialogue, hopefully to assist you in seeking wisdom and understanding, than you’ll likely ever get from reading (relativistic, pluralistic) Putnam or Wittgenstein (or KN’s disenchanted naturalistic crew of Sellars, McDowell, Rorty, Churchland, Davidson, etc.). As it does not seem you are Judaist, there is no clear reason to follow such a confused ‘philosophistic’ worldview, even while KN is the only ‘professional’ teacher of philosophy here, who does not seem in his ‘secularism’ to at all really be interested in Varieties of Religious language with a ‘spiritual interpretation’ and ‘commitment’.
http://www.islam.ca/
http://www.icscanada.edu/
O/T here Neil but I cannot find the original exchange between you and Mung on a recent Nature paper relating Godelian incompleteness and physicists’ computations of spectral gaps:
Scott Aaronson has blogged about it, basically saying this is a correct and well-known result, but pointing out two wrong conclusions one might incorrectly draw:
First, the result does not say—or even suggest—that there’s any real, finite physical system whose behavior is Gödel- or Turing-undecidable.
Second, the result does not say that any particular question physicists want an answer to—for example, the million-dollar Yang-Mills mass gap problem—is Gödel-undecidable.
If there’s a wrong conclusion to be drawn from mathematical reasoning, you’ll see it here first, from our resident mathematical reasoner.
If not here first, perhaps at UD, or ENV.
I haven’t read any “Harry Potter”, so it’s a bit difficult to comment.
I see the scriptures as partly folk lore. A compilation of American folk lore would probably include the story of Rip Van Winkle (which is clearly fiction). The role of folk lore is different from the role of newpaper reports or of history books.
Scripture was written before Gutenberg. How we use and evaluate written material has completely changed because of Gutenberg. But we should not apply post-Gutenberg criteria to the evaluation of scripture.
In a way, that’s the point of Putnam’s comments on truth. We judge truth in terms of criteria. But the context affects the criteria that we use.
Harry Potter fans do not have congregations or services, and do not form political action committees.
To ask this question properly, you should be asking about Mormonism, or Scientology, or Islam, or Jehovah’s Witness, or Adventistism, or Raelianism.
For example, would you say that Joseph Smith receiving the golden tablets actually happened?
If yes, are you a Mormon.
In no, why not?
I agree that one cannot attain a deep understanding of a theistic viewpoint without participating in it, although I don’t think that means one cannot attain any understanding at all of it without so doing.
So when I want to try to move beyond an detached, limited, philosophical viewpoint, I agree that I should join such a community. But I would almost certainly stay with the one I was raised in, for which I maintain a deep respect. For reasons of privacy, I won’t say what that community was.
I don’t recall that Mung was involved. It was mostly an exchange between me and fifthmonarchman, in the thread “FMM design tool post 1.”
Right.
Sorry, Mung.
That was an excellent interview with Putnam! I read his Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life when it first came out and it made a deep impression on me. There’s a nice review of it here (on Academia.edu). Zelcer notes:
————————————
To understand Wittgenstein’s approach, consider first a rather traditional philosophical stance toward religious discourse that goes something like the following: Religious statements often appear to take stands on historical or ontological matters. We would ordinarily suppose that a historical or ontological fact-of-the-matter under dispute is true if and only if it corresponds to the way things are, andfalse otherwise. If one were nonetheless to believe the false or dubious statements,she does so non-rationally or irrationally; perhaps she believes on faith. There is considerable reason to believe that many ethical, historical, and ontological claims made by religions are false and can be easily shown to be highly implausible (consider, say, that the Bible endorses genocide as sometimes justified, claims that those on the ark with Noah were the only living creatures at one time or that the universe was fully formed in 6 days).Therefore people with these religious beliefshave them non-rationally—say, on faith.
Wittgenstein rejects this approach and refuses to accept that belief in religion is a conceptual confusion. Rather, considering religion as essentially “prescientific thinking” to be rejected by post-Enlightenment thinkers is itself an example of a conceptual confusion, a clear case of being in the grip of a picture (11). Wittgenstein sees this conceptual confusion as emerging from conflating a theory with away of life.The analysis in the previous paragraph treats religion as a theory whenit actually is and must be treated as a way of living, as “words only have meaningin the stream of life.” To take one example, the role that Jacob and Esau play in thelives of believers is wholly different from the role that empirical beliefs play (13).Conflating those two kinds of roles is itself a conceptual confusion.Wittgenstein charges those who are engaged in the philosophical project of proving or disproving religious claims of missing the point.
But it seems that pointing out that one is missing the point is not particularly helpful in the absence of a discussion of what the point is. So where Wittgenstein leaves us somewhat unsatisfied, Putnam begins to fill in some blanks and leads us in the direction of the point. Putnam explicates Rosenzweig’s, Buber’s, and Levinas’s key ideas in order to show what religious discourse actually is about and how such an explication can be got from their respective Jewish philosophies.
——————————————————————————-
This distinction between theory and way of life is precisely what I was trying to get at when I urged a divorce between metaphysics — which I’m happy to put with science on the “theory” side — and religion — which I’m happy to put with other existential practices on the “way of life” side.
It follows from this that while I do think that scientific theories can be true or false (contra other pragmatists and Popperians), I do not think that any religion can be true or false. To ask which religion is true, or which claims of religious discourse are true, is to miss the point.
(I am willing to accept the implication that many self-professed “people of faith” miss the point of the religious life. That should not be a shocking claim to anyone who has read Kierkegaard — or Dostoyevsky.)
Erik,
Untrue. You have utterly failed to answer simple, direct questions to clarify exactly what you mean by your claim about reality.
Answer the questions or retract your claim.
Erik,
Insist away, but either clarify and support your claims about reality or retract them. No other response demonstrates honesty and integrity.
It’s a moot point if there is a good evidence sacred writings are a lie. Example, consider the “Book of Abraham” by Joseph Smith. It has fraud written all over it and people still believe it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham
Smith couldn’t even read Egyptian hieroglyphs and pictures, much less translate them:
In contrast, consider the accounts of King Sennacharib in Biblical books of Isaiah, Chronicles, and Kings.
There was a lot of poetic language in that chapter, but it seems rather clear a bold historical claim is being made in the passage, namely there is a King of Assyria named Sennacherib and the king was killed by his sons and there is a city called Nineveh and there was a Jewish king named Hezekiah.
Nineveh and Sennacherib and the Jewish King Hezekiah might have easily been presumed to be fictions until the discovery of Nineveh and the Annals of Sennacherib.
So apparently some archaeologists take the passages in the Bible to have at least some literal significance regarding Sennacherib and Hezekiah. The genealogy of Jesus mentions King Hezekiah.
Hezekiah was about 14 generations after David, David about 13 generations from Abraham, Abraham about 11 generations from Noah, and Noah about 9 from Adam.
Here is a recent find:
http://news.yahoo.com/biblical-kings-royal-seal-unearthed-near-temple-mount-140028391.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
Notice the Egyptian Ankh (cross) on the seal. It indicates an alliance with the Egyptians.
There you have it, a scientific excavation lends credibility to one of Jesus ancestors! Doesn’t necessarily mean the Bible is true, but it does show there has some measure of reliability in the handing down of the sacred documents.
Apparently the preservation of the genealogies meant a lot to the Jews like genealogies means something to the descendants of the Mayflower. The associated histories also seem to indicate some level of reliability in their transmission.
As far as whether David or Moses were real, it seems there is some archaeological evidence supporting this, plus now the Jews are interested in Y-Chromosomal Aaron:
Joe mentioned he had no involvement in the Y-Chromsomal Aaron project:
Gregory,
Hey sweetie pie, I can always count on you to say the nicest things about your fellow human beings.
It’s possible that “son” may mean descendant, that is true, but in the context of Royal ascension, like the ascension of kings and caesars, there is good reason for literalism. There are some names omitted in one Biblical genealogy that are listed in others. This happens most likely when there is an estate dispute as to who are rightful heirs.
But we now have the potential for female mito-chondrial evidence that lends credence the genealogy to Adam and Eve since Lowe and Sheerer’s work on mitochondrial Eve indicated a date of 6,500 years corroborated by cattle Eve and doggie eve dates in the same ball park. So literalism as far as the genealogy to Adam and Eve have more forensic credibility than previously thought. Hence, I find a literal or mostly literal interpretation of the genealogies of the Bible (including those associated with Aaron and Moses, descendants of Levi son Jacob son of Isaac son of Abraham) to be reasonably credible.
There is some speculation the Cohen model haplotype may actually point to Y-chromosomal Abraham. In any case a Y-chromosomal Abraham would be rather compelling wouldn’t it. It will sort of be a vindication that Abraham was real (and Abraham was only 11 generations from Noah).
Additionally, as far as “son” being literal son, if the dates and ages of the patriarch are given as well as the ages of their sons and often the age when the son is born, it sort of makes the case for literalism stronger.
Do you take Jacob(Israel) son of Isaac son of Abraham as figurative or literal?
Exactly.
This rebuttal will no doubt be ignored by Erik – or replied to but not actually addressed – since he cannot possibly come right out and say that Hindu scriptures and Christian scriptures and Mormon scriptures are all equally valid scripture by his definition and therefore do not contain any “fiction” or untruths at a literal level. Erik is in a world of hurt and doesn’t even know it.
And for those who are sensible enough to recognize that old Joe was a con-man and his scriptures fraudulently written, for those who recognize that Scientology is a hoax perpetrated to play with USA religious tax exemptions and privileges:
Why do you think your preferred scripture is “true” or genuinely “inspired by god” and not just an older example of the same kinds of tribalism/cult-building processes which lead to Mormonism and Scientology?