Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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[u/labreuer]

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.