Grumpy said:
“I am a real Christian,” Jefferson insisted against the fundamentalists and clerics of his time. “That is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”
He was apparently guarded in discussing religion probably to protect himself from scorn by the fundamentalists of his day. His Deism is reflected in the phrase "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitles them" (Declaration of Independence: every nation is entitled to self-detemination, that is). The phrase "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" touches a little more on a universal sense of a deity, but it's interesting that he didn't say "God" or "God who created them", etc. Of course there is other evidence of his Deism. But he seems to have intentionally hid it.
I like this point you make about Jefferson because he perhaps the most important of the Founders, and he clearly separated religion from State within his own persona. Yet he extracts the most valuable lessons any religion could teach - in regard to compassion for others - and condenses this into this highest ideal of compassion - freedom. He seems to evoke a kind of maturity that transcends the patronizing nature of many churches, especially those of his day.
JDawg said:
If one is already able to see the fallacy of the faith, then one can also see that the "good" ideas are not exclusive to, nor particularly effectively professed by, the Nazarene.
I agree with both parts of what you're saying. Other folks have echoed the second part by pointing to Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, prophets, the universal golden rule, etc., as examples of figures other than the Nazarene.
As for the first half of this, it speaks to a bigger issue, the way different religions can be at odds with each other (as in religious wars) when the "good ideas" were essentially the same, yet they are blind to the other side just because they are so sure their own beliefs are absolutely true.
I would add to this that I think this is the most dangerous element of a patronizing church that subjects its believers to psychological abuse or manipulation. It's dangerous because a lot of people are not emotionally or mentally well enough to cope with the pressure, or else they may be borderline or fully mentally ill. This blind sense of righteousness (unable to see the fallacy of their faith) can lead to serious, even violent, consequences.
Without a doubt the peaceful ones may still withdraw into a state of mental deterioration in which the real world gets wrapped up in some kind of cocoon, and then it's fairly easy for them to enter that hardened state of denial - which we still see today among the deniers of evolution, for example. These folks may not be violent, but they are preying on the vulnerable minds of the young and impressionable and in a few cases it's probably practically criminal.
But as you noted, simply because they are unable to see the fallacy of their faith, they will probably never acknowledge that Jesus is not the first nor the last to set out a moral code.
DaveC426913 said:
I do believe the United church is based on the principle that Man cannot really follow God. That Jesus is the one to follow, as he is able to set a human example.
I suppose you mean that God is invisible, plus God is too lofty to make a role model (believers can't emulate the turning of sex offenders into pillars of salt for example). Jesus brings a human nature to the formula, so he makes for a better character for a role model. In the stories he is put into situations anyone might encounter (or could imagine in their worst nightmare encountering), then he sets the standard by his reaction to the particular situation.
Since I understand that the writings evolved out of a particular tradition and under the stressful circumstancs of the second destruction of the Temple, I see this as a matter of practicality - that they needed to pull themselves out of a hole, so the creation of a mythical Son of God, possibly from a legendary character that resisted the Roman desecration of the Temple, fits well with your idea, since there certainly were people of all stripes who influenced the story that we know today, and among them, of course, would have been the priestly followers of the early Christian movement.
The Esotericist said:
But to be absolutely fair, I haven't read them in their native language, and again, much gets unfairly interpreted with political bias, doesn't it? Likewise, I could never hope to render a judgement on the works of Mohamed, I'm sure most English translations are bias to one extreme or the other. But these prophets aren't venerated for nothing.
I hadn't thought of it so much as political bias until you mentioned it, but obviously in the broadest sense that had to have been the most critical factor of all. It's interesting how you stated this. Suppose anytime any of us had ever picked up any religious text, that we were magically able to comprehend it in its native language. The next level of difficulty is whether we would understand it in its historical context, as if we could magically become acutely aware of all the issues of the day that each writer was speaking about or influenced by. And even if we didn't have that insight, most of our discussions on religion would probably develop into scholarly investigations into their history in an effort to make sense of the context. At some point we would probably treat religion on a much more investigative level, and ideas like fundamentalism would probably never have materialized. I could go so far as to speculate that world religions might have evolved into some kind of socially responsible philosophical societies.
Your last statement is interesting because the choice of who to venerate was sometimes entirely political. If we look at some of the texts that never made it into the canon (of the Bible) we can see that alternative theories were out there and people were apparently following them at the time but they have been "selected out" of the doctrinal DNA by some kind of process, and some of those were certainly political.
Photizo said:
without faith it is impossible to please Him
Of course an atheist doesn't sense a "Him" to please, nor a reason to please a divinity if it existed, since a God would not be lacking in anything, and would not be seeking pleasure of any kind, especially from a lowly earthling who exists on an infinitesimal scale in comparison the machinery of the Universe. Besides, taking on a belief like this at the expense of the best of human capabilities - reason, perception, knowledge, for example - is counterproductive, illogical and not consistent with a sense of "best practices" that a superior Being ought to be operating under.
Thus for the atheist it becomes impossible to believe in Him.
Adstar said:
Only God is Good. We are saved by believing not by being good.
That's a particular interpretation, but not in the words of Jesus Christ himself who will throw you in a lake of fire if you do not do all the good works he enumerates, also called the beatitudes (Mt 25). It is sometimes claimed that you are not saved by good works alone. Missing from this is the clear statement by Jesus that you will be damned if you don't.
Arioch said:
The Law of Moses wasn't just the Big Ten, it was all of the Hebrew laws, all four hundred and thirteen(sixteen?) of them. This includes all of the evil ones too and is an endorsement of slavery.
Yes I think a lot of Christians don't appreciate the full extent of what Mosaic Law entailed. And although the majority of the rules are for nitpicking things like dietary restrictions - which no Divinity could logically give a damn about - there are those glaring laws that endorse slavery, stoning and infanticide, etc., that undo the sacredness of ideas like taking care of your parents and looking out for others. I would put this as the #1 reason for Christians to abandon their beliefs and adopt the atheist position. It renders the idea of this particular moral code arbitrary, contradictory if not useless.
gmilam said:
The message I always took from Jesus was/is one of peace, compassion and forgiveness. I may be guilty of cherry picking the quotes I like, but I also try to remember who his audience was.
I was going to ask you a serious question about the audience of his day, but I can't get past the "naughty boy" clip you threw in from Life of Brian. I'm equating his audience in that scene with your comment above and laughing at the thought of it. That was a perfect selection to nip this whole thread in the bud in a hilarious. . .yet strangely profound. . .double-take on what it means to be serious at all.
Adstar said:
If one ignores the Bible one will not be following Jesus. Because the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus and God are One.
Of course the question wasn't how to follow Jesus, but how to follow his humanist doctrine.
Even if I believed in a Divinity, I wouldn't be able to equate the Bible with the Word of God, since it contains myths, legends, fables, superstition, and errors that don't make sense coming from a Divine Mind. For example, the Land of the Cush is in Somalia, so the rivers in Iraq would have to flow into Saudi Arabia and climb some hills in Yemen then part the Red Sea to get to the land of the Cush. That's just one of countless things that a Divinity would know better than to say.
The Bible never claims to be the Word of God. The idea of the Word in the opening of the Gospel of John is as close as it gets. I question that translation, since the word for Word is
logos which (in that context) could also mean legend, proverb or substance. Substance is an interesting possible translation because it has a reserved meaning among Stoics of that day which fits with the ontological excursion into
Theos, and which turns the chapter into a kind of tutorial on how to understand Christianity if you are starting out as a Stoic, which many early Christians may have embraced simply by virtue of Hellenization.
Also, since there are other sayings of Jesus that are preserved outside of the Bible, I think you could rely on them just as well and take away a good humanist moral advice. The Gospel of Thomas may qualify.
Yazata said:
I find it kind of ironic that the louder sort of atheist often seems to define "true Christianity", its beliefs and its practices, in ways that are pretty much indistinguishable from how the Christian fundamentalists define them.
Yes I think the mellower Christians are often forgotten in the melee of trying to connect facts together. I think they are overshadowed by the fundamentalists who glorify ignorance, and are so glib about their insidious effect on society. The mellower folks may even constitute a majority of all believers. There may be a tendency to stereotype, but I think a lot of that is accidental, especially when the issue may be chasing a basic trend, like brainwashing.
gmilam said:
I have to disagree with this. I don't feel any anger towards Christianity. There are some flavors of Christian that I find distasteful, but I didn't like them even when I claimed the label of Christian. Although it is difficult to return "good vibes" towards someone who tells me I'm going to burn in hell. I could see how that gets interpreted as "anger and hostility".
I take issue with the grip that fundies have over the impressionable minds of their followers. It's brainwashing. My dislike for preying on vulnerable minds probably is received as hostility, even when I'm trying to be reasonable. By the way, you ARE going to burn in hell, specifically for bring the Life of Brian to church and playing it in the Sunday School class while the parents were in the bingo parlor. And your punishment: for eternity you get to play the role of Socrates, drinking the chalice (the Holy Grail!) of hemlock, for the crime of corrupting the minds of the youth.
Yazata said:
This is the kind of increasingly nominal Christianity that the Christian fundamentalists arose in reaction against, emphasizing the literal truth of the Bible in its entirety and the need to affirm a definitive set of fundamental theological doctrines without which, in their estimation, one can't truly be a Christian.
Yes, I would go with that definition from a clinical perspective, one that skirts what I just admitted to above. I suppose you could say that this is the one rationale that swallows all other rationality - that a system just as you described can be cast in concrete and then at least the debates are over. Your definition also fits well with what the courts have said in the anti-evolution cases - about religion being untestable. The mellower religions might have at least a degree of falsifiability simply because they haven't been so strident about imposing the structure you mention.
wynn said:
The people who swear by the "literal truth of the Bible" tend to swear by the literal truth of the KJV (or some other particular translation). I yet have to find a self-professed biblical literalist who is actually fluent in Hebrew, Old Greek and Latin. Actual bliblical literalism would require quite a bit of study, which I am sure most Christians just don't have.
Other impediments are deficiencies in history and a general study of language, literature and mythology. Of course if there's anything credible Bible scholars will typically agree upon, it's the understanding that the Bible was handed down by tradition, leaving the idea of literalism not only moot but seriously flawed. In defense of their system, and as a working version of an institutional confirmation bias, literalists tend to discredit scholars and scholarship in general. Some groups have even formed their own think tanks from like-minded quacks that routinely publish apologetic tracts expressly to disavow scholarly works, simply by posing as experts themselves.
One of the definitive rationales that covers all the bases simply claims "everything I need to know is in the Bible".
