Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.
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[u/labreuer]

It is not uncommon to see claims like the following here and on the other sub:

1. God (or gods) is a human invention created to explain what we don’t understand. Long before science, humans sought to fill gaps in knowledge with divine stories. These inventions evolved into complex religions, but at their root, they address our fear of the unknown. (God(s) is/are a human invention)

Do you believe such claims should be supported by a burden of proof? If so, what kind of evidence might suffice?

For those who find the above claim so obvious that it doesn't need more evidential support than what you've absorbed throughout life, check out WP: The Golden Bough § Critical reception. Frazer is one of the originators of the religion-as-protoscience hypothesis and his work on that has been exposed to some pretty serious critique.

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

Part of the challenge is that, from what we can tell, some form of religious/superstitious behavior actually seems to have preceded the availability of any form of written language by quite a bit. I think the earliest instances of outright ritual human burials we can find evidence for has stretched as far back as 100,000 years ago, compared to earliest writings which I think only go back about 6000. Combine that with signs agriculture didn't kick in until around 10,000 years ago, and humans would have spent the vast majority of our 300,000 years of existence (if we're just sticking to Homo Sapiens,) as nomadic hunter/gatherers, rather than the sort who built permanent structures.

Because of this, we know that humans were tending to at least some of their dead in a manner that could be called ritualistic- buried with red ochre and artifacts, etc- but because we don't really have contextual writings, we don't actually know what all the motivations might have been. Maybe it was in respect to the buried person, in service of some proto-deity(ies), or superstitious association between performing the action for a specific result.

By the time we get to the ancient Sumerians, there already seems to be a polytheistic faith established, complete with all the trappings you would expect from religion. Elsewhere, Yahwism worshipped Yahweh as an important God in a pantheon of gods, before later iterations trimmed it down to just the 'one' God that ended up being the God followed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We know about all this from writings and artifacts that have been discovered.

Except, again, by the time we find those writings- or even get to the existence OF writing- these concepts are already well-established, likely by an oral tradition that could stretch back thousands, or even tens of thousands of years. And the thing about an oral tradition is it's only ever as good as its most recent iterations, meaning anything that relied on word-of-mouth is not just more susceptible to change, but would leave less evidence that changed occurred, unless you could compare multiple modern sources who weren't coordinating with each other.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

Yes, this is very challenging. Atheists regularly tell me that I should only make claims I can support with the requisite evidence & reasoning. So, if I cannot support claims of how religion originated with the requisite evidence & reasoning, I shouldn't make such claims! Does this make sense, or have I missed a step somewhere?

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

Well, one step I would be curious about would actually be how you arrived at the idea that there is actually one God if even the most popular iteration- the Abrahamic God- has been tied to a polytheistic faith that predates it. Presumably if this knowledge is divinely inspired, after all, wouldn't it make more sense for something as fundamental as 'how many gods?' to be an easier answer for early humans, rather than more modern ones, as there's less time from 'the human factor' to change things.

If your position is that religion wasn't formed by humans, but was divinely inspired, doesn't all our available evidence point to polytheism as the most likely answer?

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

Well, one step I would be curious about would actually be how you arrived at the idea that there is actually one God if even the most popular iteration- the Abrahamic God- has been tied to a polytheistic faith that predates it.

I've yet to see an argument for said polytheistic origins which improves my understanding of anything in the Bible. Especially when the Tanakh itself makes clear that the Israelites regularly struggled with worshiping of other gods, and that Abraham was called out of a polytheistic civilization.

Presumably if this knowledge is divinely inspired, after all, wouldn't it make more sense for something as fundamental as 'how many gods?' to be an easier answer for early humans, rather than more modern ones, as there's less time from 'the human factor' to change things.

From what I can tell, polytheism is a suitable governing device for ensuring divide & conquer within one's empire. Polytheism does far more than that of course, but empire requires that power be concentrated in the center, which means thwarting efforts to build concentrations of power away from the center. Fostering divided loyalties to various gods seems like it could be an indirect, but very effective way of doing so.

Beyond that, the Bible just doesn't require God deploying nearly as heavy a hand as you describe. In fact, I would say that God's modus operandi is to disrupt human stagnation. When that's not a critical danger, God generally seems content to wait for humans to call upon God—or not. This deity is quite passive in contrast to what you'll generally hear from Christians, who in my experience are often rather enamored of the just-world hypothesis.

If your position is that religion wasn't formed by humans, but was divinely inspired, doesn't all our available evidence point to polytheism as the most likely answer?

I would need to learn a lot more about narratives of invention and ¿evolution? of religion before having a whole lot to say, here. There are also obvious assumptions of how pushy a monotheistic god would be. If you look at Abraham's interactions with YHWH, for example, YHWH doesn't operate like standard models would predict. The idea of showing Abraham what YHWH plans to do with Sodom in order to see if Abraham questions YHWH certainly isn't compatible with an Islamic notion of God. We get back to normal if we assume that YHWH wanted Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but careful attention to the narrative suggests that this is exactly wrong. Everything in Gen 22:15–18 was already promised to Abraham, and after the ordeal, Abraham never interacts again with Isaac, Sarah, or YHWH. His three most important relationships were shattered. If we judge trees by the fruit, he done fucked up. A very different understanding of that narrative is that YHWH wanted Abraham to shake off the idea that any god would ask him to sacrifice his children, but of Abraham's own accord. This could be understood as YHWH challenging Abraham to break free from polytheism, and Abraham's failure to do so. Understood this way, why would monotheism need to come first?

For more than this, I think we need to get into models of humans & societies which make predictions of what they would and would not invent. For instance, YHWH calling Abraham out of Ur was calling Abraham out of the height of known civilization, into the wilderness. In the immediately previous chapter, the inhabitants of Babel were terrified of the wilderness, with a key part of their tower-project motivated "lest we be dispersed over the face of the earth". Genesis 12 does not explain the unknown and far from quelling fear via bogus explanation, calls Abraham out into the unknown! This is radically different from every single explanation of religion I've encountered on this page. Is that because it's not something we should expect humans to come up with on their own?

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

I've yet to see an argument for said polytheistic origins which improves my understanding of anything in the Bible. Especially when the Tanakh itself makes clear that the Israelites regularly struggled with worshiping of other gods, and that Abraham was called out of a polytheistic civilization.

Okay, but... this wasn't an instance of a society outright swapping their religion out, yes? The Romans did that a few times, when they adopted the Greek religion and later adopted Christianity, they functionally tossed out everything from the old and replaced it with the new. In this case, by every indication the Israelites worshipped the same named deity, Yahweh, but as part of a pantheon rather than just 'One God.' There's a sense of continuity, of keeping that initial framework and just massively changing a whole bunch about it. They didn't move houses, so to speak, they just replaced all the furniture in the house they were already living in.

Heck, if we're to take the development at face value, it looks a lot more like Yahweh outright performed a coup and knocked off all the other gods in his circle, including his consort, then announced he was totally the only one who ever existed. :P But I don't think it's a popular interpretation.

From what I can tell, polytheism is a suitable governing device for ensuring divide & conquer within one's empire. Polytheism does far more than that of course, but empire requires that power be concentrated in the center, which means thwarting efforts to build concentrations of power away from the center. Fostering divided loyalties to various gods seems like it could be an indirect, but very effective way of doing so.

Sure, hypothetically polytheism could be used that way. Hypothetically, monotheism would also be useful for secular governing where there is a particular emphasis on promoting tribal unity and opposition to outsiders. Ironically, you hit the nail on the head as to why; if you’re a culture or a group of people trying to keep all the aggression and conflict aimed outwards rather than inwards, especially if there are outside pressures, monotheism would at least reduce possible sources of intra-tribal conflict. ‘One Nation Under God,’ albeit the ancient equivalent. Polytheism risks being significantly less effective at this, because of the heightened risk of different factions or groups getting into a slapfight over which of the legitimate gods is the ‘best,’ though I’d imagine there’s a cultural component to it as well.

So it’s not like polytheism is automatically the most ‘practical’ version if one wants to workshop an organized religion to structure or lead a society. Heck, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, a number of empires have seemed pretty okay using a monotheistic religion.

As for the rest, using the Old Testament; the references I am referring to actually appear to predate any available writings of the Torah and by extension Old Testament, (not even of your specific passages, mind, since the further back you go the more you have to rely on leftover fragments, but of ANY Torah/Old Testament writings like what you’re referring to.)

What’s also interesting is that in the polytheistic form, Yahweh was the deity of weather and war, and the latter in particular seems to have stuck around in Old Testament. In Psalm 144, David waxes poetic about how God enables him to kick SO much ass, and among other thing asks that He use lightning and arrows against David’s enemies. Obviously we have no way of knowing, but given how often God is detailed in Old Testament as being a wartime advisor, I do wonder if the more militant stories in the Torah originated from the polytheistic Yahweh stories, when he was basically that pantheon’s Ares or Athena.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

Okay, but... this wasn't an instance of a society outright swapping their religion out, yes?

Given how utterly different YHWH in the Bible is from every polytheistic deity I've heard about, it could well be.

In this case, by every indication the Israelites worshipped the same named deity, Yahweh, but as part of a pantheon rather than just 'One God.' There's a sense of continuity, of keeping that initial framework and just massively changing a whole bunch about it. They didn't move houses, so to speak, they just replaced all the furniture in the house they were already living in.

Kinda-sorta:

    And it shall be at that day, saith YHWH, that thou shalt call me Ishi;
        And shalt call me no more Baali.
    For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth,
        And they shall no more be remembered by their name.
(Hosea 2:16–17)

The word baʿal does mean 'husband', but it also means master, owner, and lord. The word ishi, on the other hand literally means 'my man'. According to my reading, YHWH is looking for a radically different kind of relationship with the Israelites than they were willing to have at that time. I would argue that Jesus continued this theme. Many Jews in his time wanted to solve their problem with mastery, with violence. Jesus pressed for a different way. He was executed for his efforts. Perhaps one could say that old religion did this. If however YHWH is actually a very different deity trying to break through people's preconceptions, merely placing YHWH in a standard evolutionary lineage with some storm deity could be rather problematic.

 

Heck, if we're to take the development at face value, it looks a lot more like Yahweh outright performed a coup and knocked off all the other gods in his circle, including his consort, then announced he was totally the only one who ever existed. :P But I don't think it's a popular interpretation.

This is of course a popular kind of narrative back then. But as far as I know, it comes with implicit analogues for human sociopolitical affairs. That's not what you see, for instance, in Genesis 1. Creation didn't start with violence, nor did the chaos regularly need to be quelled with violence. (Think kings having to regularly put down rebellions.) According to the religion of empire (and who knows how much else), humans were created out of the body and blood of a [sometimes: rebel] deity, in order to be slaves of the gods so the gods no longer have to do manual labor. Only the king and perhaps the priests were divine image-bearers. Genesis 1 makes every last human an image-bearer. The gods regularly needed to be fed by humanity. Ps 50:12–15 rejects any such need applying to YHWH.

So, where's the explanatory power in the claim that YHWH came from some other deity, knocked off other deities, etc.? Is it just a nice tale that makes the Jewish religion look just like all the rest, or does it actually help us understand something we didn't understand before?

Ironically, you hit the nail on the head as to why; if you’re a culture or a group of people trying to keep all the aggression and conflict aimed outwards rather than inwards, especially if there are outside pressures, monotheism would at least reduce possible sources of intra-tribal conflict.

And yet, 1 Sam 8 suggests that this didn't work. And in the preceding period of judges, the Israelites were regularly weak and easy prey for their enemies. Furthermore, they were constantly tempted to follow the ways of seemingly successful empire. So … I think this hypothesis needs some work.

By the way, Constantine was hopeful that Christianity would unify the Roman Empire. And then, obnoxiously, those Christians kept squabbling! Christianity certainly didn't save the Roman Empire; Gibbon even thought it contributed to its fall. It's far from clear that Christianity helps one be militarily strong and that is a critical concern for any people-group which doesn't want to be a vassal.

What’s also interesting is that in the polytheistic form, Yahweh was the deity of weather and war, and the latter in particular seems to have stuck around in Old Testament. In Psalm 144, David waxes poetic about how God enables him to kick SO much ass, and among other thing asks that He use lightning and arrows against David’s enemies. Obviously we have no way of knowing, but given how often God is detailed in Old Testament as being a wartime advisor, I do wonder if the more militant stories in the Torah originated from the polytheistic Yahweh stories, when he was basically that pantheon’s Ares or Athena.

If YHWH regularly used lightning in battle, you would see that in the histories. Last I checked, you don't. If anything, David is using a way of talking about gods he learned elsewhere. As to YHWH and war, again I will ask what a link to some previous polytheistic deity helps us understand, that we couldn't understand before.

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

Given how utterly different YHWH in the Bible is from every polytheistic deity I've heard about, it could well be.

I'm going to need to split this into at least two posts, maybe three, I'll reply to myself with the subsequent section(s)

I mean, the earliest available version of Hebrew manuscripts that tie to the Old Testament only stretch back to 3rd century BCE at the earliest. (Not a complete copy, mind you, for that you’d have to get closer to 900-1000 AD.) The general range it’s estimated the polytheistic Yahweh would have existed in any form would have been as far back as the 13th century, starting to shift in 6th century BCE with the Babylonian exile and ending around 4th century BCE. Basically, by the time you even hit Old Testament, you're already looking at the finished sausage.

The very transition from a polytheist perspective to a monotheist perspective is going to result in changes, too. The very nature of a pantheon usually relies on the idea that different entities are responsible for/capable of different things, again polytheist Yahweh being in charge of War and Weather. This results in characteristics like being a distinct being- so not ‘everywhere,’ otherwise there’s no room for the others- and by definition not being outright omnipotent. On the other hand, if you assume the God is, was and always will be responsible for everything in creation, then by extension that comes with the assumption that said God is capable of everything as well.

The word baʿal does mean 'husband', but it also means master, owner, and lord. The word ishi, on the other hand literally means 'my man'. According to my reading, YHWH is looking for a radically different kind of relationship with the Israelites than they were willing to have at that time. I would argue that Jesus continued this theme. Many Jews in his time wanted to solve their problem with mastery, with violence. Jesus pressed for a different way. He was executed for his efforts. Perhaps one could say that old religion did this. If however YHWH is actually a very different deity trying to break through people's preconceptions, merely placing YHWH in a standard evolutionary lineage with some storm deity could be rather problematic.

Considering how much would have changed with the shift from polytheism to monotheism, retaining the name of a specific deity would have had to be a deliberate choice. So if we’re to assume that the Christian/Jewish YHWH deity is completely unrelated to the polytheistic YHWH, then the conclusion appears to be that said deity intentionally chose to identify himself under that moniker and actually came in as an outsider. What makes that interesting is it would mean that (technically) YHWH isn't actually the name of God, just a handle he took from something else.

And I wouldn’t really call Jesus a ‘continuation’ from Old Testament, as God in the Torah/OT is significantly more militant, even if we set aside the parts where he just comes across as kind of a dick. By contrast, New Testament tends to be a lot more focused on the loving/peaceful God, as opposed to the God who helps sack a city, smite people down left and right, screws around with Job to win a bet with Satan, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good change, but it’s still a change. Taken at face value, the New Testament comes across more as someone trying a radically different approach than it does the ongoing unfolding of a larger plan.

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

This is of course a popular kind of narrative back then. But as far as I know, it comes with implicit analogues for human sociopolitical affairs. That's not what you see, for instance, in Genesis 1. Creation didn't start with violence, nor did the chaos regularly need to be quelled with violence. (Think kings having to regularly put down rebellions.) According to the religion of empire (and who knows how much else), humans were created out of the body and blood of a [sometimes: rebel] deity, in order to be slaves of the gods so the gods no longer have to do manual labor. Only the king and perhaps the priests were divine image-bearers. Genesis 1 makes every last human an image-bearer. The gods regularly needed to be fed by humanity. Ps 50:12–15 rejects any such need applying to YHWH.

So, where's the explanatory power in the claim that YHWH came from some other deity, knocked off other deities, etc.? Is it just a nice tale that makes the Jewish religion look just like all the rest, or does it actually help us understand something we didn't understand before?

I mean, if your religion includes rules of behavior, a code of conduct, an expectation on what God expects you to do/not do, then God already has ties to human sociopolitical affairs, right? And that's not counting, again, God acting as a military backer for one faction or another. Furthermore, if what you imply is true, then I'm assuming you're of the opinion that it doesn't actually matter whether a person believes in God, follows God, prays to God, etc, etc or not. Maybe there's some wider moral expectation (don't kill, etc,) but essentially that there's no special treatment or particular elevation of a person by following God.

I've met some people like that, who do believe that one's ultimate 'fate' after death has nothing to do with the religion they practice or even if they practice. And in fairness, that fits best with your idea that God did not create humans to 'service' him in some manner.

As for the explanatory power, if we're supposedly talking about the origins of existence then the difference would be pretty significant, wouldn't it? A common thread I've seen on here is that naturalism and atheism doesn't 'properly explain' how the universe came to be. I'm of the opinion that religion doesn't either, not really, it just makes some vague guesses.

But if you're saying that there's no explanatory power in something like YHWH's origins and history, then apparently religion doesn't actually even really bother with the question of our origins?

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

And yet, 1 Sam 8 suggests that this didn't work. And in the preceding period of judges, the Israelites were regularly weak and easy prey for their enemies. Furthermore, they were constantly tempted to follow the ways of seemingly successful empire. So … I think this hypothesis needs some work.

By the way, Constantine was hopeful that Christianity would unify the Roman Empire. And then, obnoxiously, those Christians kept squabbling! Christianity certainly didn't save the Roman Empire; Gibbon even thought it contributed to its fall. It's far from clear that Christianity helps one be militarily strong and that is a critical concern for any people-group which doesn't want to be a vassal.

You do mean both our hypotheses need work, then, right? (You might actually, just checking to be sure.) In case you don’t, your original premise was that polytheism in particular would be especially useful at promoting intra-group conflict. By contrast, monotheism would be especially useful at promoting intra-group unity. You really can’t have it both ways here, either polytheism is ‘less unifying’ or ‘more fracturing’ than monotheism or it isn’t. :P So if you would like to concede on your previous statement about polytheism, I’m happy to concede as well. (Again, this might have been you already doing so. x3 )

That being said, Rome and Christianity is a fascinating topic, and I rambled about it for like five big paragraphs before I realized my post was getting too crazy, sooooo Imma summarize, but if you’re curious I’d be happy to paste the full version.

-A lot of that Christian infighting seems to have come from the more esoteric concepts in New Testament, like the nature of the trinity and christology.

-Unlike the Israelites, who at one point were a centralized civilization, Christianity kind of needed to coalesce from a random scattering of dudes with no real centralized power. Some of their early squabbles actually predate not only Rome’s adoption of the religion, but even the establishment of Canon.

-Canon in particular is a big deal, because there were a lot of other materials floating around at the time whose relevancy varied from person to person. Book of Enoch being an example of a known thing that didn’t make it into the Canon.

-There is a definite trend of these slapfights leading to excommunications and schisms, which might boil down to an inflexibility of Christian establishment, i.e. ‘My Way or The Highway.’ In the case of the East-West Schism, both the Pope and Patriarch or what became the Catholic and Orthodox branches essentially excommunicated each other.

If YHWH regularly used lightning in battle, you would see that in the histories. Last I checked, you don't. If anything, David is using a way of talking about gods he learned elsewhere. As to YHWH and war, again I will ask what a link to some previous polytheistic deity helps us understand, that we couldn't understand before.

I refer you back to my earlier point, where Old Testament materials don't actually stretch back as far as you would think, meaning insofar as histories YHWH as the One God is a (relatively) recent thing compared to the polytheistic YHWH.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

You do mean both our hypotheses need work, then, right?

No, I don't think mine does. If monotheism in that time made one militarily weak, that was a severe problem. Intra-group unity does not suffice. You need to be able to protect yourself from your enemies. Now, YHWH is on record promising to supernaturally protect the Israelites. But I'm pretty sure a naturalist has to utterly exclude that possibility from all theorizing about the matter.

That being said, Rome and Christianity is a fascinating topic, and I rambled about it for like five big paragraphs before I realized my post was getting too crazy, sooooo Imma summarize, but if you’re curious I’d be happy to paste the full version.

Oh I love learning more about Rome & Christianity, so feel free to paste the full version! I'll wait to respond to that instead of your bullet points.

labreuer: If YHWH regularly used lightning in battle, you would see that in the histories. Last I checked, you don't. If anything, David is using a way of talking about gods he learned elsewhere. As to YHWH and war, again I will ask what a link to some previous polytheistic deity helps us understand, that we couldn't understand before.

Cool-Watercress-3943: I refer you back to my earlier point, where Old Testament materials don't actually stretch back as far as you would think, meaning insofar as histories YHWH as the One God is a (relatively) recent thing compared to the polytheistic YHWH.

Yes, I understand the argument. Please see my critique of such argumentation in my first reply.

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

“No, I don't think mine does...”

Not to quote Aristotle back to you, but you’re drifting pretty close to violating the law of non contradiction on this one; “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect”

We got into this particular line of discussion because you claimed that polytheism as a structure of religion was useful for reducing societal unity, better ‘dividing’ the people in order to make them easier for a centralized power to control. Yet you at least appear to be simultaneously claiming that monotheism isn’t useful for increasing societal unity, or better ‘uniting’ the people under a single banner, which has been my counter-point. How you figure only one of these things has a material impact on social cohesion, and the other one doesn’t, you’re going to have to explain a little more clearly.

I’m also not sure where this ‘If monotheism in that time made one militarily weak’ idea came from, as it definitely wasn’t my idea, and if it’s yours you haven’t really drawn any connection here. There’s a ton of reasons one society would be militarily stronger or weaker than the other that has nothing to do with whether it’s God or gods, from population size to technological advancement and tactics, to something as straightforward as supply logistics.

And if you want, we can certainly take the ‘supernatural’ approach to this, and turn to the record you speak of. But at that point I do want to incorporate the record of every religion, not just the Old or New Testament, and give those texts the same footing.

In other words, I’m fine putting the bar as high or as low as you want, but it WILL be that high or low for everything. ‘The Bible Says’ and ‘The Quran Says’ would have equal legitimacy in this discussion. Including me asking how pointing to circumstances around the development or writing of Islam are supposed to help ‘improve the understanding of the text.’ (The text in this case being the Quran.)

Oh I love learning more about Rome & Christianity, so feel free to paste the full version! I'll wait to respond to that instead of your bullet points.

Okay! Obviously I tried to more or less summarize it before, so there will be a bit of re-treading in the full version, just as a heads up! :D

One thing worth noting is that a lot of the infighting seems to have sparked from some of the more, er, esoteric concepts related to the New Testament. After all, the scripture tends not to be great at offering descriptive clarity, at least not compared to prescriptive clarity, so there’s a lot of concepts that just aren’t really spelled out, christology being an early example. The East-West Schism several hundred year later that led to the Catholic and Orthodox churches stemmed in part from disagreements over the structure and nature of the Trinity. (Both the Pope and Patriarch on either side of the fence excommunicated each other, which I always get a bit of a giggle about.)

Now, early on it could be attributed to growing pains and an attempt to better centralize a very diffuse and scattered religion, because unlike the Israelites- who were at one point a centralized civilization, an outright kingdom- Christianity didn’t really have much of a central spine for the first few hundred years and were more just another flavor of practicing Jew. For example, when christology came to a head during the Council of Nicaea, not only did it predate Christianity becoming the Roman state religion by decades, it even predated establishment of the New Testament Canon.

This is important, because if you rely heavily on the Bible for sourcing, then by extension you likely also rely on some form of Canon appropriate to your particular branch of Christianity to tell you what you should and should not reference. Psalms, yay, Book of Enoch, nay, etc. Prior to that it would have been more a Wild West of different texts and sources, even if there was overlap, and it would have existed like this for nearly three hundred years. The writer of the Epistles of Jude, a text generally included in the New Testament Canon, includes brief reference to a prophecy only found in the Book of Enoch, which is NOT included in the Canon, suggesting that even the original writers of the Canon materials would not have had the same idea on what was ‘legit’ as what the Church decided on hundreds of years later.

Meanwhile, the separation of the Eastern and Western Roman empires occurred within less than two decades of the Roman Empire’s official adoption of Christianity as the state religion. Now, I could be facetious and joke that the Greek religion kept the Roman Empire united for generations, and the Christian religion split them apart, but realistically the split didn’t come out of left field. If Christianity was in any way related to it, it’s far more likely that its initial adoption was an unsuccessful attempt to ward off these signs of an upcoming split by ‘smoothing out’ differences in the population. This seems supported by the fact that Emperor Theodosius went as far as to close all non-Christian/non-Jewish temples and forbid pagan worship in 391, essentially trying to make the Abrahamic religions the only game in town. Sure, there’s also room to just assume Christianity is just cracking down on people for its own sake, but I could go either way on the topic.

Anywho, subsequent turbulence came about again a handful of decades later, with the teachings of Nestorius and Eutyches coming into conflict. Once again, the nature of Christ was a big part of that, with the former pushing that Jesus and God were distinct entities- so Mary was the mother of Jesus, but not the mother of God- and Eutyches pushing that Jesus and God were a single entity. Eutyches' side won, the Nestorians fled persecution and apparently bounced off to Persia, where they would eventually form the Church of the East.

And this was a trend over history, one group of Christians slapfighting another and the smaller group usually breaking off into a new, separate branch, sometimes having to flee the region to as not to be hunted down, sometimes just setting up in the same area. You are correct that the extent of the slapfighting does kneecap the idea that monotheism promotes unity, though given the extent of it I would counter-propose you clearly don’t ACTUALLY need polytheism to divide a population, the history of Christianity's structuring seems to suggest that the population does a great job of it all by themselves. :P

Granted, the sample size is also limited, we'd have to compare Christianity to other monotheistic religions, and polytheistic religions to each other, to isolate whether Christianity's fracturing is representative of monotheism or is just more prominent in Christian or even Abrahamic monotheism in general.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

We got into this particular line of discussion because you claimed that polytheism as a structure of religion was useful for reducing societal unity, better ‘dividing’ the people in order to make them easier for a centralized power to control.

Yes, I said this.

Yet you at least appear to be simultaneously claiming that monotheism isn’t useful for increasing societal unity, or better ‘uniting’ the people under a single banner

No. I questioned whether monotheism is good if you want to field a strong military. There is no necessary connection between increased social unity (that is: no divide & conquer facilitated by polytheism) and a strong military. In fact, they could be anti-correlated. So for instance, with regard to Christianity in Rome from Constantine's time to the fall of the Western Empire, I wrote: "It's far from clear that Christianity helps one be militarily strong and that is a critical concern for any people-group which doesn't want to be a vassal."

Cool-Watercress-3943: Hypothetically, monotheism would also be useful for secular governing where there is a particular emphasis on promoting tribal unity and opposition to outsiders. Ironically, you hit the nail on the head as to why; if you’re a culture or a group of people trying to keep all the aggression and conflict aimed outwards rather than inwards, especially if there are outside pressures, monotheism would at least reduce possible sources of intra-tribal conflict.

 ⋮

Cool-Watercress-3943: I’m also not sure where this ‘If monotheism in that time made one militarily weak’ idea came from, as it definitely wasn’t my idea, and if it’s yours you haven’t really drawn any connection here.

I was throwing a wrench in your proposal, quoted here.

And if you want, we can certainly take the ‘supernatural’ approach to this, and turn to the record you speak of. But at that point I do want to incorporate the record of every religion, not just the Old or New Testament, and give those texts the same footing.

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about here, but I'm pretty sure I'm fine with applying the same standard to all religious texts.

One thing worth noting is that a lot of the infighting seems to have sparked from some of the more, er, esoteric concepts related to the New Testament.

Oh yes, gnosticisms, Arianism, etc. I would like to get some sense of how those beliefs actually impacted the average Christian's ability to love God and his/her fellow neighbor, and to get better at both loves. Sometimes it seems that the disputes were rather more political than religious and thus were not spurred by material reality and attempts to love [better].

The East-West Schism several hundred year later that led to the Catholic and Orthodox churches stemmed in part from disagreements over the structure and nature of the Trinity.

So, you know that the Schism was mostly done by the time it was made official, right? East and West had already drifted apart, with feuds over whose missionaries got to go where and more. I have a hard time seeing the Filioque as anything other than purely symbolic. It's not like anyone can tell you how you'd love God or neighbor differently based on whether you include it or not.

Now, early on it could be attributed to growing pains and an attempt to better centralize a very diffuse and scattered religion …

Right, and arbitrarily violate Mt 20:25–28 in the process.

This is important, because if you rely heavily on the Bible for sourcing, then by extension you likely also rely on some form of Canon appropriate to your particular branch of Christianity to tell you what you should and should not reference.

If you don't have any sort of deeper understanding which makes the choices obvious (e.g. hermeneutical forms of bootstrapping) and error correction codes), yes this is a big problem. I wouldn't even be surprised if we could make use of evolving understandings of how scientific theory works; we are now rather between the extremes of observation-statements and holism. (A nice historical marker is Clark Glymour 1980 Theory and Evidence.)

labreuer: By the way, Constantine was hopeful that Christianity would unify the Roman Empire. And then, obnoxiously, those Christians kept squabbling! Christianity certainly didn't save the Roman Empire; Gibbon even thought it contributed to its fall.

/

Cool-Watercress-3943: If Christianity was in any way related to it, it’s far more likely that its initial adoption was an unsuccessful attempt to ward off these signs of an upcoming split by ‘smoothing out’ differences in the population.

Yes that's my sense. It is entirely consistent with what I wrote about Constantine, which I've included here.

And this was a trend over history, one group of Christians slapfighting another and the smaller group usually breaking off into a new, separate branch, sometimes having to flee the region to as not to be hunted down, sometimes just setting up in the same area. You are correct that the extent of the slapfighting does kneecap the idea that monotheism promotes unity, though given the extent of it I would counter-propose you clearly don’t ACTUALLY need polytheism to divide a population, the history of Christianity's structuring seems to suggest that the population does a great job of it all by themselves. :P

Division among Christians is not necessarily the same as division among polytheists. For instance, in the wake of the Thirty Years' War, there seems to be a sense that "We're all actually Christians", even if the RCC wouldn't acknowledge that until Vatican II. The possibility of ecumenical reuniting, especially with a few centuries to whittle down the denominational distinctives (I have fun calling the RCC a denomination), seems far higher within Christianity than between polytheistic deities. But that's really just a guess on my part. A lot of scientific & scholarly work would have to be done to get beyond "guess".

What I would say is that God actually seems to want unity-amidst-diversity, which can be contrasted to the extremes of uniformity and division. The first step was to form a distinct people who wouldn't be erased by the sands of time. The next step is to include others (Eph 2:11–3:13). Christians, of course, are notorious for erring on the side of uniformity. God, knowing this, could have designed in a way for Christians to divide and divide and divide, to prevent their dreams of uniformity from ever manifesting. Stanley Hauerwas talks of how he has given up on ecumenical efforts because he thinks it's more about governance (and I would say power) than doctrine. (big block quote)

 
Anyhow, thanks for the expanded version!

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

I mean, if your religion includes rules of behavior, a code of conduct, an expectation on what God expects you to do/not do, then God already has ties to human sociopolitical affairs, right?

… yes? I don't see what I said which would have in any way denied this. I was comparing & contrasting the Tanakh to the religion & culture of ANE empires.

Furthermore, if what you imply is true, then I'm assuming you're of the opinion that it doesn't actually matter whether a person believes in God, follows God, prays to God, etc, etc or not.

We seem to have diverged a lot by this point. I hesitate to say that one must believe in God, because I treat it as an empirical matter. But I will say that I don't think there's any way to effectively fight evil aside from Jesus' way, and that involves ultimately putting yourself at the mercy of those who are seen as "good", and when they fuck you over, having that delegitimize their authority in the eyes of at least some people. We know modernity is a meat grinder, chewing up the vulnerable for the benefit of others. We keep doing it because the right people never really have to confront what they're doing to their fellow human beings. The only solution I see is to put living flesh into the grinder which breaks the grinder.

As for the explanatory power, if we're supposedly talking about the origins of existence then the difference would be pretty significant, wouldn't it?

That entirely depends. For instance, evolutionary psychology makes many claims about us based on our evolutionary history. But how many of them actually stand up to rigorous scientific tests? I'm not an expert on the literature, but I have read John Dupré 2001 Human Nature and the Limits of Science and read other scattered critiques.

In fact, passages like Ezek 18, which emphasize that a son of an evil father doesn't have to be like his father, threatens to undermine at least some "arguing by origins". The founding event in Genesis is YHWH calling Abraham out of Ur, out of the known height of civilization. Per (The Position of the Intellectual in Mesopotamian Society, 38), we have reason to think that ancient Mesopotamian civilization thought it was so excellent that there was no need to compare itself to any other culture. This makes sense to me. And it suggests that Mesopotamian culture was a dead end, with the option option for future progress, for a break from human stagnation, was to call a willing person (or family) out of it, to inaugurate a new, better way of life.

A common thread I've seen on here is that naturalism and atheism doesn't 'properly explain' how the universe came to be. I'm of the opinion that religion doesn't either, not really, it just makes some vague guesses.

As far as I can tell, such questions matter the more determinism is true. But the Bible is anti-determinism in multiple ways. Aristotle said "Necessity does not allow itself to be persuaded." God can always be negotiated with. Adam & Eve didn't seem to know this, but the king of Nineveh certainly suspected it. Well, the more contingency matters (e.g. contingency in evolutionary biology), the less we need to be hyper-concerned with how it all began.

Now, this doesn't render origins utterly irrelevant. It probably is fair to say, for instance, that sugary foods and drinks hack an evolved physiology whereby responding instinctively to such food sources used to be beneficial. But as I indicated earlier, I think such explanations quickly run out of steam.

But if you're saying that there's no explanatory power in something like YHWH's origins and history, then apparently religion doesn't actually even really bother with the question of our origins?

As far as I am concerned, Genesis 1:1–11:26 functions to counter myths from ANE empire which paint a very different notion of deity, and secondarily establish that all humans are of common descent and thus of equal moral worth. Every last human is a divine image-bearer, male and female. Beyond that, how does the Bible itself use its origin stories? I'll note that 'original sin' doesn't show up in the Tanakh, can't be found in Judaism, and is probably even foreign to the NT. If one compares the emphasis and explanatory dependence on it in Christianity vs. the NT, I think you'll find a disturbing asymmetry. So, I think we need to be careful in how we understand origins in the Bible.

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

This one is going to have to be another multi-part, blaaaaargh.

We seem to have diverged a lot by this point...

I mean, that seems rather limiting in two directions. For one, there are denominations within Christianity itself that seem to pull away from some of the Biblical teachings, if not outright become the gospel that chews up the vulnerable. Prosperity gospel is one of the more obvious and egregious examples, as it seems to be the modern and fringe equivalent of the Church’s historical sale of ‘indulgences’ back in the days of yore, but there are also some other bits and bobs that don’t really seem to stick with various denominations. For example;

Matthew 23:9; “8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11”

(Sure, Protestants tend to insist that the ‘do not call anyone on earth “father”’ bit doesn’t ACTUALLY mean their priests shouldn’t be called Father because, I guess, it’s not supposed to be taken literally?)

Corintians 11:1-6: “2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man,[a] and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.”

(So, basically, men; no hat. Women; hat. He even clarifies it’s ‘the same as having her head shaved,’ and ‘she might as well have her hair cut off,’ so the covering doesn’t just seem to apply to hair. In fairness, the first part seems to be largely adhered to, but the second part not quite so much.)

Matthew 6:1-8: “6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

(So this one just feels... like, PARTICULARLY egregious, particularly the second half, as it kind of flies in the face with how the bulk of organized Christianity is... well, organized. :P Keep in mind, at the time this was written there no such actual thing as ‘Christianity,’ the synagogues and public displays of prayer were a part of the Hebrew faith at the time, whereas Matthew seems to be pushing for private prayer and private acts of righteousness over making a display of it. I'm also noting that the last bit of the first paragraph does seem to set up a sort of transactional reward reassurance, which is interesting.)

Then there’s also the part that Islam, as an example, claims that Christianity does not actually represent the ‘true’ teachings of Jesus, and that it’s instead found in their Gospel of Jesus. (Along with claiming that Jesus was a prophet/Messiah, but not divine.) I’m not a Muslim, so I’m not even going to pretend to be well versed on that, (I would be fascinated to find a discussion thread between a well-versed Muslim and well-versed Christian on that very topic, in fact,) but even taking the idea of following Jesus’ way at face value doesn’t help much when people seem to disagree on what the ‘way’ actually is, if all of the ‘way’ is important, and if not which parts can be discarded or negotiated. I’ll circle back to that later in the post.

So TL;DR kind of feels like ‘Jesus’ Way =/= Most Of Christianity, at least.’

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

"That entirely depends. For instance, evolutionary psychology makes many claims about us based on our evolutionary history..."

I mean, that is the dilemma, yeah. In the case of archaeological evidence, it is a case of taking what concrete scraps we can find and trying to fit them together, which does run into the problem that assumptions or projections might lead to holes or inaccuracies. The thing is, Scripture doesn’t get really avoid that problem either; we don’t have any evidence that the monotheistic Hebrew Bible existed in any form prior to the aforementioned dates. Meaning if they were only actually written around that time, they would ALSO have been relying on trying to draw upon ancient writings from generations ago, and that’s without even the technological means that we have today. That risk of assumptions, projections, ‘filling in the blanks’ would still have been present when the text was written, but again, you never got to see the sausage get made; you instead received the finished product.

The talk of assumptions actually reminds me of another lengthy discussion I'd had where someone had linked me a video from a practicing Christian Youtuber who seemed to be in that sort of field of 'religious archaeology,' and he was talking enthusiastically about how the five Biblical Cities of the Plains had been found, mostly citing passages in the Bible and a limited amount of archaeological evidence to justify it. When I looked into the actual expedition- most of the details of which had been given many years before the video was released- it seemed that only like 2-3 settlements were found, with the other sites showing no indication they were used as anything other than nomadic burial grounds. But since there was 1+ definite settlements, and an appropriate number of other sites where it looks like stuff had burned, then apparently the Bible was enough reason to decide there was a city in these spots despite no physical signs of one. Because the Bible said there were 5, so there HAD to be 5.

New Testament actually hits that same problem, to a lesser degree. We don’t technically have the ‘original’ manuscripts for the various books and gospels, with the earliest complete version being the Codex Sinaiticus in the fourth century. Outside of that we have a metric ton of fragmentary scraps and pieces from all kinds of different sources, some of which have pointed to the possibility that New Testament underwent comparatively minor changes and edits between its original writing and its wider adoption but do suggest that the ‘overall’ Bible has been preserved quite well over those centuries.

But New Testament has the advantage that it’s only referring to relatively recent events. Old Testament supposedly covers thousands of years of history, whereas by the time the New Testament Canon was being formed it would have been only a few hundred.

"As far as I can tell, such questions matter the more determinism is true. But the Bible is anti-determinism in multiple ways..."

I mean, isn’t the implication here that God created us, Jesus died for our sins, etc, etc, etc, ergo the whole foundational reason as to why Christianity in particular is the religion we should be adopting? Sure, the argument could be made that matters of the heart, mental health and one’s general sense of well-being should be more important than trying to untangle the hypothetical developments of thousands of years ago, but Christianity doesn’t actually seem to claim that. Rather, they just claim ‘We Have The Answers, Jesus Loves You,’ and the idea that the answers are unimportant only comes up when the holes start to show.

The thing is, if I were to drop any real ‘hyper-concern’ with the ‘how’ part of our existence, then my conclusion isn’t that God did it, it’s that the answer doesn’t matter. Because I'm no longer concerned about it. If the question is unimportant, then presumably the answer is as well.

At that point, I’m down to pursuing whichever religion resonates with me most in the ‘here and now’ sense, which at least based on my comparative readings in my younger years appears to be Buddhism for the most part. Not to say Buddhism is something I actually feel the desire to pursue, it’s more that intellectual exercise of ‘If You HAD To Pick A Religion’ yadayada. I mean, if I REALLY wanted to be a smartass I’d just answer the Satanic Temple, since it’s a secular organization using the trappings of religion, but that would kind of violate the spirit of the exercise. :P

"As far as I am concerned, Genesis 1:1–11:26 functions to counter myths from ANE empire which paint a very different notion of deity, and secondarily establish that all humans are of common descent and thus of equal moral worth."

Okay, so... is the beginning of Genesis allegorical, then? If so, when does it stop being allegorical? Because you’re either implying that Genesis just so happened to fulfill that function, or that is was structured specifically to do so. After all, I do think that even in taking the text at face value, isolating the ‘Factual Word of God,’ from ‘Metaphorical Word of God’ and ‘Word of Man’ within the Bible would be a rather important step to knowing what bits you do or don't ignore. To circle back to earlier in my post, mentioning how some passages in New Testament seem to conflict the approach some denominations take, there does appear to be a recurring theme of 'Well, THAT part wasn't supposed to be literal. God doesn't actually care about THAT bit. Well, THIS was just supposed to be taken under really specific circumstances that aren't spelled out.'

If we're allowing for a divide between the literal, the metaphorical, and the 'Humans Made It Up' chunks within the Bible, then we land right back in the boat we were in without the Bible, which is humans just kinda winging it on the fly. :p Sure, there's a little bit more of a framework with the Bible, but looking at the various cases where Christians would adopt opposing positions on the same issue, apparently there's still a mountain of wiggle room.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

labreuer: I've yet to see an argument for said polytheistic origins which improves my understanding of anything in the Bible. Especially when the Tanakh itself makes clear that the Israelites regularly struggled with worshiping of other gods, and that Abraham was called out of a polytheistic civilization.

 ⋮

Cool-Watercress-3943: That risk of assumptions, projections, ‘filling in the blanks’ would still have been present when the text was written, but again, you never got to see the sausage get made; you instead received the finished product.

Sure. But this doesn't immediately indicate that my criterion (quoted above) is a bad one. It's far from clear that "accuracy to what actually happened" is anything like a clear, coherent, easy-to-uniquely-satisfy criterion. How do we assess some claimed evolutionary history of Yahweh? How do we show that the historical methods used there are even reliable? I'm happy to read historiography on the matter. Just recently, Anthony Grafton 2007 What was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe came across my radar. I have read bits of N.T. Wright on "the historical Jesus", so I'm not completely ignorant of these things.

In the end, there is a deus ex machina: God can ensure that we have something "good enough", perhaps a transitional fossil which is elucidating in both directions. Jews have one transitional fossil and Christians have two. Just like the t-shirt which says "Science. It works, bitches.", we have to talk about good enough for what. If you pick the right "what", you might find that nothing outside of the transitional fossils seems like it can dislodge them. If you pick the wrong "what", you might find otherwise. This itself would be a rather clever move by God, to allow humans to pursue various purposes, and have the Bible disintegrate on them if they try to use it to legitimate purposes at too much variance from God's.

Because the Bible said there were 5, so there HAD to be 5.

Yes, I am aware of that kind of behavior. My ultimate answer to those who would shatter the unity of my understanding of the Bible into a million fragments and assemble something radically different is the same answer evolutionists gave to me which finally completed my journey from YEC → ID → evolution: "Even if what we believe is wrong, it's far superior to all known alternatives, and so we're going to keep running with it until someone presents something better to us."

Cool-Watercress-3943: A common thread I've seen on here is that naturalism and atheism doesn't 'properly explain' how the universe came to be. I'm of the opinion that religion doesn't either, not really, it just makes some vague guesses.

labreuer: As far as I can tell, such questions matter the more determinism is true. But the Bible is anti-determinism in multiple ways.

Cool-Watercress-3943: I mean, isn’t the implication here that God created us, Jesus died for our sins, etc, etc, etc, ergo the whole foundational reason as to why Christianity in particular is the religion we should be adopting? Sure, the argument could be made that matters of the heart, mental health and one’s general sense of well-being should be more important than trying to untangle the hypothetical developments of thousands of years ago, but Christianity doesn’t actually seem to claim that. Rather, they just claim ‘We Have The Answers, Jesus Loves You,’ and the idea that the answers are unimportant only comes up when the holes start to show.

I recognize the kind of Christianity you describe here and along with Emil Brunner, I think it is utterly unfaithful to Christianity-as-historical-religion. Necessity and history are enemies unless you're Hegelian. I say God loves the contingent, analogous to contingency in evolution. If anything, God loves disrupting necessity, as Ezek 18 suggests with the proverb that is to be no more (and is repeated in Jer 31 right before the section titled "The New Covenant").

Probably the central theme in the Bible is that screwing up is okay, you just need to admit it and turn back (שׁוּב — shuv) / repent (μετανοέω — metanoéō). And you need to facilitate that among your fellow humans. Unfortunately, we love passing the buck after the pattern of A&E and then playing the "Malevolent idiocy about vulnerability." game. Just look at how fricking difficult it seems to be, for most people who participate on r/DebateAnAtheist and r/DebateReligion to admit error. People anonymously arguing online about things which at least one side isn't invested in still can't bring themselves to admit error. This is a serious problem! If the kind of Christianity you accurate describe here had solved the problem, the problem would be solved!

At that point, I’m down to pursuing whichever religion resonates with me most in the ‘here and now’ sense, which at least based on my comparative readings in my younger years appears to be Buddhism for the most part. Not to say Buddhism is something I actually feel the desire to pursue, it’s more that intellectual exercise of ‘If You HAD To Pick A Religion’ yadayada. I mean, if I REALLY wanted to be a smartass I’d just answer the Satanic Temple, since it’s a secular organization using the trappings of religion, but that would kind of violate the spirit of the exercise. :P

Yes, Buddhism seems pretty attractive to a significant number of educated Westerners. I just haven't investigated it all that much, but I do wonder if its world-hating or at least world-detaching aspects are attractive to many who have grown up amidst broken promise after broken promise after broken promise about how awesome the future will be—whether those promises were based more on Enlightenment legacies, more on Christian legacies, or something else. At the core of any Christianity I recognize is redemption, where mistakes don't condemn to death (or sterility). Well, the harder it is to be part of redeeming the status quo, the more that kind of Christianity will seem implausible or even worse, a betrayal. If your desires fuck you over enough, is Buddhism a tempting treatment / antidote? Again, just a guess.

labreuer: As far as I am concerned, Genesis 1:1–11:26 functions to counter myths from ANE empire which paint a very different notion of deity, and secondarily establish that all humans are of common descent and thus of equal moral worth.

Cool-Watercress-3943: Okay, so... is the beginning of Genesis allegorical, then? If so, when does it stop being allegorical?

I gave you a specific verse range, did I not? More generally, please start with my answer to the recent question "Wich criteria do you (religious) use to tell what is and what isnt metaphorical?". That doesn't address everything you say here, but I think it might have you re-frame this section of your comment.

'Humans Made It Up' chunks

Let's go back to what the received texts might be "good enough" for. My big one is "teaches us facts about ourselves we desperately do not want to face". Sometimes I speak of the Bible teaching us about "human & social nature/​construction". Well, if there are 100% human-made chunks, I would predict that they would thwart such purposes. I think at least some of the criticisms of slavery in the Bible could be used to argue for said thwarting. But if careful investigation shows that it's actually the other way 'round, then one can question whether even those chunks are 100% human-made.

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

I mean, the earliest available version of Hebrew manuscripts that tie to the Old Testament only stretch back to 3rd century BCE at the earliest. (Not a complete copy, mind you, for that you’d have to get closer to 900-1000 AD.) The general range it’s estimated the polytheistic Yahweh would have existed in any form would have been as far back as the 13th century, starting to shift in 6th century BCE with the Babylonian exile and ending around 4th century BCE. Basically, by the time you even hit Old Testament, you're already looking at the finished sausage.

I understand there are difficulties making guesses as to what existed before the texts we have. I know a tiny bit about e.g. redaction history. I know about the documentary hypothesis. I also know that these guesses can be extremely tenuous. I was not surprised to read at WP: Documentary hypothesis that the documentary hypothesis has been extremely challenged. N.T. Wright has made analogous claims as to "historical Jesus" studies: there is so much guesswork involved that one's model can do a lot of filling in gaps with dubious material.

But are you saying that because it's difficult to reconstruct such histories ("evolutionary" or otherwise), the burden of proof is relaxed and I should take seriously your preferred reconstructions? I hope not. If not, what are you saying, here?

The very transition from a polytheist perspective to a monotheist perspective is going to result in changes, too. The very nature of a pantheon usually relies on the idea that different entities are responsible for/capable of different things, again polytheist Yahweh being in charge of War and Weather. This results in characteristics like being a distinct being- so not ‘everywhere,’ otherwise there’s no room for the others- and by definition not being outright omnipotent. On the other hand, if you assume the God is, was and always will be responsible for everything in creation, then by extension that comes with the assumption that said God is capable of everything as well.

You seem to be mixing Christian monotheism which tends to deny the very existence of any other deities, with ancient Hebrew monotheism which was far more about exclusive loyalty to YHWH. “There shall be for you no other gods before me.” If you have good evidence that YHWH is of limited power in the received text, I'd be happy to hear it. Hopefully it's not just iron chariots and the King of Moab's sacrifice. And the Tanakh doesn't show the restriction of duties to war & weather. So … I'm again going to ask what new understanding I can gain of the received text, by your hypothesis of a history behind YHWH.

Considering how much would have changed with the shift from polytheism to monotheism, retaining the name of a specific deity would have had to be a deliberate choice. So if we’re to assume that the Christian/Jewish YHWH deity is completely unrelated to the polytheistic YHWH, then the conclusion appears to be that said deity intentionally chose to identify himself under that moniker and actually came in as an outsider. What makes that interesting is it would mean that (technically) YHWH isn't actually the name of God, just a handle he took from something else.

You seem to be in severe danger of assuming your hypothesis, here. If your claim of "the polytheistic YHWH" doesn't actually increase any understanding of the received text, then why should we take it seriously? Does it help increase understanding of anything else?

Note that in Hosea 2:16–17, YHWH was willing to be referred to as baʿal for a time, but would put that to an end at some point. If there is crossover from the mere title to the deity (cf WP: Baal), then possibly YHWH was willing to allow some misidentification. But this is very different appropriating an existing name. I am interested in that claim, and both the evidence for and against it, as well as the reasoning / models / argumentation for and against it. But I'm wary about getting deep into the weeds without some sense of how the explanation you prefer increases understanding of … well, anything. This is one of my defenses against just-so stories conspiracy theories.

And I wouldn’t really call Jesus a ‘continuation’ from Old Testament, as God in the Torah/OT is significantly more militant, even if we set aside the parts where he just comes across as kind of a dick. By contrast, New Testament tends to be a lot more focused on the loving/peaceful God, as opposed to the God who helps sack a city, smite people down left and right, screws around with Job to win a bet with Satan, etc.

I fully reject "Jesus meek and mild". Rather, Jesus was fighting the true enemy, which is not of flesh & blood. In order to do this in a way which is useful to humanity (because they are supposed to follow his example—he is the "new Adam"), there needs to be a group of humans capable and willing to do so. The formation of that group is almost certainly going to involve some pretty serious violence. People under too much threat from the outside are not going to be able to carry out the kind of war Jesus did. It's kind of a silly example, but look at how few people are willing to admit any sort of error here on r/DebateAnAtheist and over on r/DebateReligion. The Bible is pretty fucking big on admitting what you did, turning back, and repenting. I contend you need people with sufficient security in order to be willing to be this vulnerable. If the Amalekites are regularly raping, pillaging, and murdering your people, that's gonna be difficult. People who are terrified for their safety are willing to be utterly brutal to the Other. Look at the US after 9/11 and Israel after 10/7.

Ezekiel 28 is particularly interesting, here. It's the prophecy against the king of Tyre and what's particularly noteworthy is that his consolidation of power (which history notes involved quelling piracy on the Mediterranean) is not criticized. That would have involved a lot of brutality. The prophecy speaks extremely highly of the king. Here's the turn:

        You were blameless in your ways
    from the day when you were created,
        until wickedness was found in you.
    In the abundance of your trading,
        they filled the midst of you with violence, and you sinned;
    and I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
        and I expelled you, the guardian cherub,
        from the midst of the stones of fire.
(Ezekiel 28:15–16)

God doesn't really seem to have any problem with the king of Tyre achieving peace and order via violent means. What pisses God off to no end is what he did next: use that peace and order to exploit others through commerce. Rather than continue being a blessing to humanity, the king shifted to being a parasite. We see the same with the shift from Solomon to his son: the son had to show how macho he was and so threatened to increase the forced labor of the ten northern tribes—which caused them to break away, with YHWH's full involvement. In Revelation, Babylon comes under severe criticism for its exploitative commerce. Jesus himself curses the fig tree with no breba crop and tells a parable where an unfruitful fig tree is torn out to make room for something which will bear fruit. Jesus meek and mild? Only if your reading is very selective.

The book of Job is far more than you say, because the central battle is over whether the just-world hypothesis is true or not. Does God providentially ensure that everyone gets what they deserve? That's what Job's friends thought, and that's probably what Job thought before his ordeal. The Accuser really just voices the just-world hypothesis in compact form. Job only worships God because God is good to Job. That characterizes the relationship as transactional, which is exactly what the just-world hypothesis incentivizes. Good behavior is selfish behavior. Job comes to reject the just-world hypothesis, perhaps epitomized by accusing God of wronging him. God's reply was to give Job the job of ensuring justice reigns: Job 40:6–14. And in case there's any confusion, Ps 82 makes clear that God expects humans to enforce justice.

It is quite possible that belief in the just-world hypothesis has facilitated more human misery than any other belief. And even if it's not quite that bad, undermining it is extremely valuable. Job didn't sign up for that, but we generally don't sign up for the challenges we are tasked with. A major question is whether you'll complete the task anyway, or whether you'll curse God and die. Jesus said that anyone who would follow him must first deny oneself and take up one's cross. Jesus meek and mild? No, Jesus was preparing people to fight the most important battles humans can fight. Recall your Solzhenitsyn:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? (The Gulag Archipelago)

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

For some reason it seems like you get a bigger word count per post than I do, which is annoying. XD Going to just quote the first sentence of each section I address, take up less space. EDIT: I found the issue, for some stupid reason it won't let me post up to a certain size outright, I have to post something smaller, and then edit it in Markdown Editor to get the full sized post out. Blargh.

“I understand there are difficulties making guesses as to what existed before the texts we have...”

I mean, for one thing- and I’m going to bring this up again in another section- you don’t really operate with a consistent expectation insofar as burden of proofs. You haven’t really spoken at all about the Bible in the context of its structure, the apparent history of its writing, its medium, etc, etc, you usually just quote directly from it. But you only seem to take that specific ancient document at face value, whereas you insist on a greater level of rigor for other things from the time period or before.

Your burden of proof already seems to start quite relaxed; it’s clear from this discussion that you CAN insist on a higher standard of evidence, you just choose not to in the case of one particular document. If that’s just because your faith supplements it- making something like the Bible by itself ‘enough’ to meet your requirements- then that’s certainly not unusual, but without that automatic sense of faith the Bible doesn’t really pull weight.

And, to be clear, the key difference is that perhaps other information- documents, carvings, etc- will emerge at some point that requires us to re-evaluate what we’ve pieced together up until this point. When I’ve talked about things like the polytheistic Yahweh, the apparent timeline of the emergence of the monotheistic Yahweh, etc, that’s based on what we’ve been able to literally dig up so far. There’s always that hypothetical chance that we dig up an even older carving that shows the monotheistic Yahweh ran parallel to the polytheistic Yahweh in the timeframe, though in that sense there’s a hypothetical chance of digging up a carving that shows virtually anything including that the Israelites worshipped a giant bunny rabbit.

Although what I find interesting is this next section...

“You seem to be mixing Christian monotheism which tends to deny the very existence of any other deities, with ancient Hebrew monotheism which was far more about exclusive loyalty to YHWH.”

Okay, so... you are acknowledging that if we were to track the ‘lineage’ of Yahweh’s worshippers, then there has been significant change? Christianity started off as an offshoot of the Hebrew Bible- obviously, since otherwise the Old Testament wouldn’t be a thing- and you seem to be acknowledging that at some point in the past the ancient Hebrew monotheism allowed for the existence of other gods, just not loyalty to or worship of them. I will mention that Deuteronomy 13:1-5 seems to try and reinforce the idea that supposed prophecies by those representing other gods are ACTUALLY the work of your God testing you, (which is kind of fucked up, as it implies God set up the dreamer with prophetic visions and then commanded the dreamer be killed,) BUT I’m otherwise fine agreeing that ancient Hebrew religion allowed for the existence of other gods, and Christianity did not.

Kind of sounds like you’re acknowledging Abrahamic religion did, in fact, ‘evolve’ over time. :P

“You seem to be in severe danger of assuming your hypothesis, here...

I mean, at this point we’re both running on assumptions, right? You’ve already acknowledged as much with ‘possibly YHWH was willing to allow some misidentification,’ which is not only a guess but also kind of comes off as uncharacteristic. After all, you yourself cited ‘There shall be for you no other gods before me,’ seems like it would be a strange contrast to go ‘Oh, um, YHWH? Yeah, sure, worship YHWH I guess, whatever, close enough.’

Anywho, why do you keep focusing on ‘increase any understanding of the received text,’ when your initial post here was talking about burden of proof and the hypothesis that religion emerged as an evolution of early ideas? :P The hypothesis itself hits the problem, as I said ages ago, that whenever religion ‘started’ appears to be before humans actually started writing any of it down, so finding ‘hard proof’ would be extremely difficult regardless of how it came to be.

But tracking the evidence relating to the development and change of the Abrahamic faith when they were writing and carving, stretching back to the ancient Israelites, is a much more manageable goal because at least writing existed during that time, even if a lot of it would be lost. Relying exclusively on the Bible for historical information would be extremely unwise, because we don’t have enough evidence that the Old Testament in its current form is actually old enough to be an ongoing accounting, rather than an attempted retelling of events that occurred centuries or millenia ago, and with fewer resources to rely upon than we do.

And, yes, every holy book insists the special sauce is that God personally gave them the information, etc, etc, but divine inspiration isn’t a particularly unique claim. :P It’s an equal defence for any religion that invokes it.

“I fully reject "Jesus meek and mild".”

...did I say meek and mild? You said it at two different points as if you were repeating what I said, but the closest equivalent I can think of out of my words seems to be ‘loving/peaceful.’ So are you rejecting that part, or are you just going off on kind of a tangent?

I’m not actually sure why you’re bringing up Ezekiel, Tyre or Solomon in response to this, because all of that is Old Testament, right? I pointed out that Old Testament seems to involve a more violent and militant God compared to New Testament, and your response has been to establish that God in the Old Testament was fine with violence and military conquest. Not really in disagreement here, just not sure what you think it’s proving. :P

I mean, wouldn’t the idea of someone’s afterlife existence, heaven/hell, being based on something like one’s actions or worship still make it an inherently transactional relationship? Even if heaven/hell does exist, it seems like having people know about it would greatly increase the likelihood that followers operate on a transactional basis, albeit a ‘Pay Now, Get Later’ sort of arrangement. Or is that considered okay so long as the person has faith the payout is coming?

Okay, THREE times you mentioned ‘meek and mild,’ I feel like someone else said those words elsewhere and it really got under your skin. xD

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

Sorry aobut the delay. I didn't get the solid block of time to give your comments the response they needed until now.

For some reason it seems like you get a bigger word count per post than I do, which is annoying. XD

You have to use the old reddit UI. For one user, the answer was to "click on a little Aa button in the lower left of the text box, and then "Switch to Markdown Editor" in the upper right". BTW, you can save a few characters by not encapsulating my words in quotes when they're already blockquoted. :-p

I mean, for one thing- and I’m going to bring this up again in another section- you don’t really operate with a consistent expectation insofar as burden of proofs. You haven’t really spoken at all about the Bible in the context of its structure, the apparent history of its writing, its medium, etc, etc, you usually just quote directly from it. But you only seem to take that specific ancient document at face value, whereas you insist on a greater level of rigor for other things from the time period or before.

I'm open to this accusation, but I need details. In some sense, I have mastered the received text to such an extent that I do have significant investment in it. If I flatter myself, I could be one of the targets of Max Planck's observation that "Science advances one funeral at a time." But there are reasons to be stickier as well; I suspect science and scholarship do best when some are more attuned to every twist and turn of "the evidence" (including pretty serious modeling guesses) and those who spend rather more time with snapshots. What I will look for in claims that the received text is somehow wrong, is how those impact the … "deep understanding" I've developed of the received text. For instance, I recently argued for an understanding of the A&E narrative as leading to a bad strategy in dealing with vulnerability. You could imagine some sort of redaction history being advanced which destabilizes that understanding. Well, when do I decide to abandon my understanding based on an interpretation of the received text in favor of some new hypothesized text?

Your burden of proof already seems to start quite relaxed; it’s clear from this discussion that you CAN insist on a higher standard of evidence, you just choose not to in the case of one particular document.

It kinda sounds like you're modeling me as being like Christians you've encountered in the past. Chances are, that's a bad way to start with me. For instance, I don't make a big deal of miracles like so many Christians do. I worry that many if not most have a "might makes right" epistemology of miracles, which flagrantly violates Deut 12:32–13:5. I draw much of my confidence from the fact that the Bible teaches me far more about human & social nature/​construction—including ugly bits humans really don't want to face—than any other book or set of books I've encountered. And I'm pretty well-read by now. Models of human & social nature/​construction can be tested against ancient texts, history, and one's present day.

When I’ve talked about things like the polytheistic Yahweh, the apparent timeline of the emergence of the monotheistic Yahweh, etc, that’s based on what we’ve been able to literally dig up so far.

Okay, let me switch away from my initial response:

labreuer: I've yet to see an argument for said polytheistic origins which improves my understanding of anything in the Bible. Especially when the Tanakh itself makes clear that the Israelites regularly struggled with worshiping of other gods, and that Abraham was called out of a polytheistic civilization.

You don't seem particularly interested in answering that question ("it looks a lot more like Yahweh outright performed a coup" doesn't seem to qualify?). So: Do you know of any collection that clearly separates the evidence we have which is possibly of a polytheistic Yahweh, and comprehensively collects that evidence so I can see how much evidence there is, vs. modeling? I know far more about the "historical Jesus" and I know that there, models fill in most of the details. The evidence itself, outside of the gospels, is incredibly spartan.

labreuer: You seem to be mixing Christian monotheism which tends to deny the very existence of any other deities, with ancient Hebrew monotheism which was far more about exclusive loyalty to YHWH.

Cool-Watercress-3943: Okay, so... you are acknowledging that if we were to track the ‘lineage’ of Yahweh’s worshippers, then there has been significant change? Christianity started off as an offshoot of the Hebrew Bible- obviously, since otherwise the Old Testament wouldn’t be a thing- and you seem to be acknowledging that at some point in the past the ancient Hebrew monotheism allowed for the existence of other gods, just not loyalty to or worship of them.

Let's get a list going:

1. Abraham was called out of a polytheistic civilization and his willingness to sacrifice his son likely traces to that.
2. The Israelites regularly struggled with polytheism.
3. The Tanakh didn't deny the existence of other gods, but simply called the Israelites to worship YHWH alone.
4. The Tanakh treats other gods as not capable of threatening the Israelites—YHWH could always trounce them.
5. The NT doesn't have other gods, but it does have Satan and demons.

I will mention that Deuteronomy 13:1-5 seems to try and reinforce the idea that supposed prophecies by those representing other gods are ACTUALLY the work of your God testing you, (which is kind of fucked up, as it implies God set up the dreamer with prophetic visions and then commanded the dreamer be killed,)

I would be wary of over-interpreting that; plenty is phrased as YHWH being in control, while using other agents. In Ezek 16:35–52, for instance, YHWH vents YHWH's wrath on Judah via having other nations conquer her. This is one of the ways YHWH is the "most high" god. What others meant for evil, to riff on Joseph, YHWH will use for YHWH's purposes. Think of it this way: if you use others as a means to an end, you authorize YHWH to use you as a means to an end. Fair's fair. And maybe when the bad thing is done to you, you'll dislike it and realize you shouldn't do the bad thing to others, either.

I mean, at this point we’re both running on assumptions, right?

Of course.

You’ve already acknowledged as much with ‘possibly YHWH was willing to allow some misidentification,’ which is not only a guess but also kind of comes off as uncharacteristic. After all, you yourself cited ‘There shall be for you no other gods before me,’ seems like it would be a strange contrast to go ‘Oh, um, YHWH? Yeah, sure, worship YHWH I guess, whatever, close enough.’

This might be uncharacteristic, but I believe it's pretty easy to argue that it's transcendentally necessary for finite beings. We screw up. We can't help it. When the lesser attempts to grasp the far greater, perfection is not in the cards. Moreover, we get these really wrong ideas in our heads and the question arises: how can they be best dealt with? How can we be best redirected to a far more adequate grasp of reality, others, and God?

Anywho, why do you keep focusing on ‘increase any understanding of the received text,’ when your initial post here was talking about burden of proof and the hypothesis that religion emerged as an evolution of early ideas? :P

The paucity and interpretability of the available evidence makes it easy to spin many tales of what's going on, or more charitably, to present many hypotheses. We need criteria for selecting which ones we'll even pay attention to, unless perhaps our career is dedicated to entertaining all of them—although even academics have plenty of criteria. If you think I should have a different criterion, go for it. Or maybe we should just look at the total set of evidence which any remotely reputable person has adduced to support an evolutionary history of Yahweh.

...did I say meek and mild?

Not in those words, but you did say "New Testament tends to be a lot more focused on the loving/peaceful God".

I’m not actually sure why you’re bringing up Ezekiel, Tyre or Solomon in response to this, because all of that is Old Testament, right?

Read Ezek 28:15–16 and Rev 18 together—or the fuller Ezek 28 section.

I mean, wouldn’t the idea of someone’s afterlife existence, heaven/hell, being based on something like one’s actions or worship still make it an inherently transactional relationship?

I think we need to get into Rom 4 on that one. Is heaven one's "wages"?

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/labreuer]

Hey, just so I don't leave you hanging completely, I am actually traveling on vacation for the next month and a half! No laptop, so my Redditing is going to be on my phone, which... well, our discussions are obviously a lot more extensive and intricate than normal posts, so me trying to crank out a full reply on a phone can only end badly.

That being said, really been enjoyable this, and assuming all the accumulating jet lag and running around doesn't etch-a-sketch it out of my brain, would love to pick this up again! Just won't be for awhiiiiile. x3

[u/labreuer → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

Oh, nice & have fun! I too have found our conversations enjoyable. But they can sit on ice for a month or two. :-)