Comments on Deism For the Modern Mind: YouTube - Deism FAQ: God and the Natural Universe

Mark,There is the possibility of allegorical/mythi...

2008-08-25T06:05:00.000-04:00

Mark,

There is the possibility of allegorical/mythical readings of the text, but an ahistorical and psychological approach is problematic on a few different levels. To make it short, it is insulting to those who "own" the text, and it often finds wisdom in the text that really isn't there.

As to whether or not I've eaten from the tree, all I can say is that there has never been a point that I remember when I viewed God as a bumbling single dad who wasn't sure what was going on in his own garden. ;)

I truly get why Jung, Campbell, Hoeller, et. al., are popular. Modern man lives largely without meaning and with a tremendous amount of angst. But the solution for a miserable teenager is not to revert back to the fantasy of childhood, it is to keep pushing forward to the maturity of adulthood. To do this, childish things must be put away. Even if we find "deeper meaning" to something relegated to childhood, it still is just a toy. We are best just to put it down and move on. Certain views of God in the Bible are childish and not fully-developed. They represent stages of immaturity that we must grow beyond. Allegorizing them only can hold us back.

Joel: At a very early point in your own personal ...

2008-08-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

Joel: At a very early point in your own personal life, you ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Did that happen in history or metahistory? Was it rationalism or mysticism?

I read the story as neither. It's allegory. It's metaphor. It's mythology.

Mark,While a good education on the literary and cu...

2008-08-24T22:08:00.000-04:00

Mark,

While a good education on the literary and cultural elements of the Bible is necessary to be able to give any coherent statement on it, you do realize that simply by saying this you are making biblical education itself more important than the Bible.

Since a literalist interpretation of the Bible is not feasible, we have to choose between two basic hermeneutics: either rationalism or mysticism. Mysticism is willing to accept the events of the Bible, in the words of Barth, as something that happened in "metahistory." But real events are either historical or not. They don't happen differently in the ozone for a few enlightened people to observe while the rest of us sarkikoi see only an illusion. You simply can't have it both ways.

And say what you want about Genesis 1, it is still a crude three-tiered cosmology with traces of pagan astronomical idolatry. Reconciling it with evolutionary biology is impossible. Understanding the texts in the context in which they were written is one thing. Excusing some of their contents when they embody an ethic or philosophy of God that our current consciousness has moved beyond is another. We have to come to terms with themes of patriarchy, genocide, and magical thinking because such ideas still have an effect in the world. To excuse them by explaining them away as part of a past cultural context does nothing for addressing these problems today.

While I dislike many of the approaches other Deists take because they are largely uneducated on the Bible and only read it in their current context, we still come back to the issue of inspiration. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." is a major idol to smash in order for people to be able to use their God-given reason. My hope is such videos act as conversation starters or get people doing some research and coming to conclusions for themselves.

-Joel
(a Deist who reads his Bible daily)

Bob, Joseph Campbell taught me another way of look...

2008-08-24T21:44:00.000-04:00

Bob, Joseph Campbell taught me another way of looking at the talking snake story. As with all mythology, the story is really not about something that happened to someone else in some other land. It is about me, and it is about you.

Like Adam and Eve, we began our existence in a blissful and unified paradise. Soon, however, as newborns, we began to "taste" pairs of opposites -- duality. Cold and heat, light and dark, hunger and food, good and evil. We wre "cast out" into a world where we must work, and suffer, and eventually die.

However, if you read the story, you will find there is a second tree in addition the more famous one. Yahweh, who set up the couple to "eat" and experience duality in the first place, reveals that eating from the second tree would allow them to experience oneness and infinity and to be gods themselves.

As I understand it, this is our goal in life, and I think this is the same thing you are aiming for through "deism" and "beauty."

Mark,it is truly a shame that more people do not s...

2008-08-24T21:09:00.000-04:00

Mark,

it is truly a shame that more people do not share your views on the Bible. Living in the south, I know that many people believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Many people believe that each and every word of the bible is fact, and this is a tragedy.

As to whether facts and fiction become twisted and combined in texts, this is probably the case more so in non-fiction, than in fiction. I find many examples of non-fiction recounting factious facts and events. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Gibbon) is a prime example. However, I find it more rare for fictional texts to portray factual events, especially in recent times. But as text age and facts are forgotten, fictional texts do take on the air of believability. Perhaps this is way people are able to believe in talking snakes and vengeful gods.

Thanks for your thoughts, they have truly left an impression upon me.

Bob, I would suggest that the line between fiction...

2008-08-24T20:30:00.000-04:00

Bob, I would suggest that the line between fiction and non-fiction is not as sharp as some may think. Some things in 'fiction' are truer than the things recounted as 'fact'.

Also, the 'the Bible' is collection of 70-some texts or more, many of them redacted from a combination of earlier texts. There is no overarching representation that every text in the Bible is a factually accurate account of daily life. C'mon -- a talking snake in Genesis 2? Many parts of the Bible are clearly written to be understood as allegory or mythology. Any child would understand this literary winking, even if fundamentalist adults do not.

And meanwhile, in Genesis 1, there is a beautifully compressed and startlingly keen version of evolution and a cosmic God. It takes study to understand that these are two separate stories from two separate kingdoms at two separate times, stitched together into an inclusive whole. Meanwhile, other parts of the Bible brilliantly collapse the histories of entire nations and present it instead as happening to individual persons.

I feel that Anderson's annoyance would be better directed at the literal fundamentalists who misunderstand their own holy texts, rather than at the texts themselves, which must be understood in the context of their own times of writing and compilation.

First, however, he would do well to study the things he is criticizing.

Mark, I can't say that I disagree with most of the...

2008-08-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

Mark,

I can't say that I disagree with most of the points that you make. I would only suggest that perhaps we think about the type of audience Mr. Armstrong was talking to.

You view the bible as a work of art, and that it is. But many people view the bible as a literal word of God, and this is not only an injustice, it is an insult to the Creator. Both of these ideas must be brought into context in order to view the bible rationally, and with reason.

Perhaps there are three opposing viewpoints concerning the bible; a work of art, the literal word of god, and an insult to the true Creator. Maybe, one day we can all look at the bible as a great work of literary art, like that of Homer or Joyce. But first we must move past the idea of the bible being non-fiction.

Falsies in the Bible? (Just kidding ;)I watched th...

2008-08-23T19:49:00.000-04:00

Falsies in the Bible? (Just kidding ;)

I watched the video and I strongly disliked it. Armstrong takes an uninformed, unimaginative, literalist approach to attacking the Bible. He just scoffs superficially at a short list of subjects and dismisses them out of hand, along with the entire Bible. You get the impression that he has never read the Bible, let alone studied it.

The Bible is a complex tapestry of texts, written over a span of more than a thousand years in many disparate kingdoms for a wide variety of purposes. It incorporates literary forms ranging from mythology to poetry to numerology. In ticking off a few examples of stories that don't obey his limited perception of reality, Anderson displays a startling ignorance.

He's completely not getting it. You have to wonder if he would apply the same crude science to the writings of James Joyce or Pablo Neruda, or to a Bob Dylan song. It's easy to picture him disproving Bugs Bunny cartoons based on the laws of physics.