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In the Beginning, there was the Book. Information was lost in translation and re-writing, but the fundamentalists do not want to hear this: the Book was considered by them to be ethernal and literally true.
Religious-minded philosophers, poets, mystics and scientists always held distinct views from the fundamentalists, besides differing among themselves. The rational/literal views of Spinoza, Averrois, Saint Thomas, Calvino and Luther could not be more different from the mystical/poetic views of Emily Dickinson, Saint Tereza of Ávila, Rumi, or Omar Khayyam, but the faithful could well say that they represented distinct aspects of the same truths.
It is possible to believe in the truth of Genesis without being:
1. A creationist
2. A republican or
3. a Fundamentalist
Try to be a little more tolerant.
I don't see how it's possible to believe in the Book of Genesis without being a creationist. The only way for that to be true would be to ignore everything from "In the beginning" to the fall of man, and I think that that's a considerably important part of the Book, and of the Bible.
Accidental repost.
Accidental repost.
There are several literary styles present in Genesis. The first few chapters are written in poetry. 7 days says sections. When it gets to Abraham it switches to historical narrative. The context is very important here. The message of Genesis is that God made the world (not HOW he made the world, thats up to scientists to figure out) and that he has a plan for the world and is still involved in the world.
But then that's exactly the creationist view, no? I still fail to see how one can not be a creationist and still believe in the Book of Genesis.
A creationist believes in a literal seven day creation. On the other hand it is possible to look at the literature and understand that the 'creation story' is a poem and very open to figurative interpretation eg that it may well have taken billions of years to come about.
It doesnt even matter how long it took because that is a topic for scientists. The first part of Genesis is concerned about WHY people are around and WHO made them, not HOW they were made.
So, how many angels, exactly, can dance on the tip of a pin? All this howling and baying about a non-falsifiable proposition like the Genesis. Why? The turtles all the way down, or any other "beginning of the world" story, is just as valid as the next one. Oh, and mine alone is the one and only true story about the beginning of it all. I know, because my gods told me so... So there, all you worshippers of false gods...
"So, how many angels, exactly, can dance on the tip of a pin?"
Hmmm... Sounds familiar. But even if if the exact figure could be determined there still would be further questions:
1) Would the angels who are on the tip of a pin but who don't know how to dance count? "Can dance", I know, but they could always try. With a good lawyer...
2) How many of them would be male and how many female? (special question for Byzantines).
3) How many angels would vote Democrat and how many Republican? (special question for Americans). It's not an idle question, you know: http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/jesus-democrat/
4) Would they have syndicates?
5) Would those angels be like this http://www.google.es/imgres?q=barbarella+angel&num=10&hl=es&tbo=d&biw=12...
Like this http://www.google.es/imgres?q=angels&start=243&hl=es&tbo=d&biw=1280&bih=...
Like this http://www.google.es/imgres?q=angels&start=116&num=10&hl=es&tbo=d&biw=12...
Or like this http://www.wallpaperez.org/es/movie/zoom/Angels-and-Demons-1786.html
Or allsorts, like the liquorices? (this is my bet)
(I leave the purely theological discussion about your gods and my gods for another day.)
Well, for the angels below, the pin would have to be really big... and sturdy, too...
Wow. Is THIS what they call Theology ? I should really have considered it in college. Sounds even more fun than physics !
No, not really. This section is about angélologie or Christian angelic hierarchy [*], a very special branch of the Tree, and the thread is about Biblical history and exegesis. Heavy theology is even worse; if I were you I would go back to physics!
[*] I'm not kidding. Look:
The unsubstantiated claim that only recently have thinkers begun to treat Genesis as literally true is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Over two millennia ago, Jesus Christ treated the book of Genesis as though the events recorded in the book had actually, literally happened. In Matthew 19:4-6, his statements confirm his belief that Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden did exist. In Luke 17:27, he references Noah and the Flood as historical events. In the same way, the Apostle Paul builds on the basic doctrine of Adam's sin to explain the state of mankind.
Additionally, perhaps the author of this article could have done the bare minimum amount of research regarding the Christian view of Genesis' authority. For example, a quick search of the internet would reveal that many Christians take the position that the second chapter of Genesis is a supplementary account of the first chapter. Rather than contradicting the events of the first chapter, the second chapter takes a more detailed and human-focused approach of the Creation process.
The Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer wrote an excellent work on this subject entitled "Genesis in Time and Space." The thesis of this book is that the events of Genesis are presented as historical in nature (rather than poetic), and thus they should be treated as such.
I'm not a fan of reading apologist from a philosopher. I'm more interested in reading peer-reviewed scientific articles that say that Genesis should be taken literally. It's pretty telling when you compare the thousands of articles spanning over 150 years of biological research, 100 years of geological research, 70 or so years of physics and astronomy with the inconsequential amount of research backing a literal interpretation of Genesis.
But pointing that out usually leads to accusations that the scientific community is "biased" as if all the geologists, biologists, physicists, and chemists get together every year to bar fundamentalists from publishing.
Whatever, I guess seasoned Evangelical literary critics are on the same level...
" Over two millennia ago, Jesus Christ treated the book of Genesis as though the events recorded in the book had actually, literally happened. In Matthew 19:4-6, his statements confirm his belief that Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden did exist."
How on earth could Jesus Christ not believe what His Father inspired? And since the Three Persons (His Father, Himself and the Holy Spirit) were, are and will be co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial, He, Jesus Christ, inspired all that, along with His Father and the Holy Spirit, so how could He (They) not believe that Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden did exist?
Unless they practised the Division of Labour, of course, but so far as I know Christian apologetics does not mention this.
Ahem, what about the Unitarians?...
Just think in what Calvin did to poor Miguel Servet...
John Adams and Jefferson were Unitarian, weren't they?
And I am similarly not a fan of reading an interpretation of a piece of literature from a scientist. Genesis is not a scientific theory and it is possible to believe in its truth without being a creationist.
Let the scientists refine theories on geological ages and evolution and let Genesis talk about God and ancient history. These two can happily co-exist, Connor is correct.
This article and Connor are both talking about Christian fundamentalism which interprets the bible literally, and the literal interpretation of Genesis is creationism. Christian fundamentalism/creationism cannot coexist with the body of scientific literature from any major peer-reviewable subject, and if it wishes to argue on behalf of itself in a scientific ring, it is more than encouraged to, but given the lack of supporting scientific articles for a literal interpretation, it's unlikely that that is the case. That's my argument.
Your argument is something different, but since you are not taking the creationist stance, there is very little relevance to it in how it relates to anything on this page.
1. Christian fundamentalism is not the point of the article, it is a review of a book on Genesis.
2. My views are entirely relevant: Scientists stop trying to use creationist bashing to disprove Genesis (it doesnt work). Creationists, Gensis isnt a scientific theory on world origins.
3. Connors main points, which you have missed is that the article is poorly researched particularly on CHristian views on Gensis throughout the ages and on the apprent contradictions in early Genesis. He is correct.
Re: Calvin vs. Servetus
Yes, that black stain will not be removed from Geneva's otherwise glorious history. It really was as sad as it was awful. Although, Monsieur Cauvin, thought that, all that was predestined, and burning Señor Serveto was God's will, really... What a bastardus persona that Cauvin fellow was; and his equally crazed followers...
Servet (or Serveto, Servetus, De Villeneuve, Revés—sounds Hungarian—or De Villanueva, if you prefer), was very honest, very intelligent, very brave and very... stubborn. Well, he was Aragonese-Navarrese and they are famous for that. The Spanish Inquisition was after him since the early 1530s, after he published his De Trinitate Erroribus, which is the main reason why he changed his name so often. Had they been able to arrest him and take him to Spain, his fate would have been even more horrible, for they would have tortured him before burning him at the stake. These Christians, often burning each other on purely theological matters...
As for Calvin (Cauvin if you prefer), he's not my cup of tea either, but he meant well...
" These Christians, often burning each other on purely theological matters..."
Ahem, you are not suggesting that they should have been a bit more utilitarian, and not waste freshly roasted meat, are you?...
Oh, by the way, the Templars were burned for their money - it was just a lame pretension that Le Roi cared about Christian morals. So, money is also a motivator among "these Christians" for burning each other at the stake. We have empirical evidence in history to that effect.
No, of course I am not suggesting such a thing, who do you think I am? But cf. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be burnt and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot" (excuse the typos).
I do believe you, but I never said that Christians often burned each other ONLY on purely theological matters. That would have been very boring. Anyway, I obviously referred to those greedy, cruel and terrible times, not to these happy, fraternal and peaceful times.
Take care of your throat, remember, it's December!
"Take care of your throat, remember, it's December!"
I mean... something like this:
"John Adams and Jefferson were Unitarian, weren't they?"
I have to answer my own question. I was sure about Jefferson, but not about Adams, I looked it up. Good people. They even died on the same day, month and year!
I like Unitarians, but they are a small minority, most Christians are Trinitarians. J.S. Bach composed many beautiful cantatas for the Sundays after Trinity, but not a single one for the Sundays after Unity... :-(
A historic recording,
Good quote. When I look at the collection of writings as a collection of thoughts by and of humans, and not anything else, I don't mind reading the thoughts of the Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth); and the Proverbs.
" Anyway, I obviously referred to those greedy, cruel and terrible times, not to these happy, fraternal and peaceful times."
Yes, these happy, fraternal and peaceful times...
Misquote, actually. I apologize to King Solomon or whoever...
I am usually familiar with names and etymologies but here you got me. "Qoheleth"? I knew it was Hebrew, but had to look it up. Ach so! I confess that I am a very Graeco-Roman guy, I had enough with Ἐκκλησιαστής), but today I know more than yesterday. Thanks.
Yes, I too like the Ecclesiastes and the Proverbs. The Psalms as well. Actually, I think that Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 is one of the wisest things ever written.
Happy, fraternal, peaceful... and disinterested times!
Does anyone else identify the similarity between the logic of Spinoza's theory on the ambiguity of Genesis and Einstein's theory of relativity? A quick google search verifies that he was an influential character in Einstein's life.
Book of Genesis is the autobiography Phil Collins should have written!
[crickets chirping]
This heated discussion would be much shorter if most of us had not been abused intelectually as children with religious teachings/strong influence. There are several studies showing the higher the education level (maturity), the less prone to be religious.
Faith is a spiritual experience, not an intellectual one. I doubt that what you say is true but it is, in any event, irrelevant.
At some point education becomes just another rut. IMHO, a man who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison.
It is an unanswerable question whether the Buddha had a high IQ. I am sure it matters, though, to you much more than the actual compassion of his teaching. Maybe you are a member of Mensa. (
"Faith is a spiritual experience, not an intellectual one."
Indeed it is. That is why the less likely something is to be true, the greater the faith required to believe it.
I agree with you completely faith is a spiritual experience, not an intellectual one. Anyone who take one for the other should not be in the conversation.
However, I think for either experience to denigrate the other is unnecessary. Should Orange tell Apple: Hey! Your cider is not as good as my juice?
I disagree education is a prison. If you truly believe that to be the case, then you don't know what education is, IMHO.
Incidentally, no memeber in Mensa can be terribly bright, because none of them questions the validity of the Intelligence Test on which thier admission is based. That is mighty dumb enough. I learned that from my education, not spiritual faith.
Lastly, why do you have to be so anti-education?? Can you respect other folks' valuing education? Your analogy of someone who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison is really sour to the point of rude, with all due respect.
I have respected and enjoyed so many posts you write, because they were not only knowledge-based but enchantingly written. I sometimes, though not always, wrote a brief "thank you" reply. To those posts of yours, I had nothing further to add I would consider of value and so "thank you" was the only thing left to say.
But your attack in this post on folks who value education is hard to comprehend.
What is the origin of your increasing sourness?
If someone values education and spends his own efforts and labor, not to mention money which he has earned laboring all his lives at a job he either enjoyed or not, into obtaining further education for himself, the person hurts no one, does he? He has not taken something from you to benefit himself, has he?
Why are you such a curmudgeon? Is old age the only reason? Or is it something else?
You simply missed the point entirely.
Why so personal? "Curmudgeon " . . . "sourpuss" . . . "old age" . . . these are attacks on personality.
Do I value education? I think so -- but it is one experience in life and can be limiting. Those who are celibate give up sex. Those who embrace sex give up the experience of celibacy. Every choice you make is both liberating and, at the same time, limiting.
All education comes with a Devil's Pact. You will know a great deal -- but in order to know it you must cease to know something else. If you turn to the Right it means you have foregone what may have lain to the Left. Learning in the West has become entirely a matter of scientific analysis and that has done wondrous things. But, it has extinguished trust in knowledge that comes to us through simply belonging to the Universe.
I've often wondered at the confidence so many have in education. Perhaps you have heard it said "We live in a remote area of an unimportant galaxy on a mundane planet that orbits a third-class sun." What is left unsaid, but is assumed, is "And, our minds exactly correspond to the structure of Reality." If we are so cosmically insignificant how is it, then, that what we know is exactly in line with what is (literally) universal? After all, our minds did not evolve to understand Reality -- they evolved to find nuts, berries and small, edible mammals. If this is so, then all our education imprisons us as much as it liberates us.
Education brings another danger -- hubris. Virtually every spiritual leader in human history has said that acknowledging that one does NOT "know" is the real beginning of wisdom. (I do not mean that specific, technical knowledge is useless or misleading. I DO mean that all education involves choice and each one made forecloses many others.) These men and women claim to have seen far and they are consistent in one thing -- to really "know" one must first disenthrall oneself from what one THINKS one knows.
The philosopher Zenos Clark is quoted by William James ("Varieties") as saying: "The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy [or, I suppose, education] is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there) -- which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning."
"Remember what peace there is in stillness."
I value education and almost certainly have as much as anyone on this web site. But, as I aged I became aware that this education limited as well as enhanced my understanding. Do you have a pair of binoculars? If you do, you may have noticed that the more powerful they are the narrower becomes one's field of vision. In the West, nothing has a higher power of resolution than science -- it has given us an excruciatingly limited field of view.
By all means, value education and spend as much effort and labor -- to mention money -- as pleases you. I did. But, from time to time, recall that each thing you decide to be true precludes all the other possibilities you might have embraced. Perhaps it is better to attain as much education as one can -- but you may from time to time hear Peggy Lee singing, "Is That All There Is?"
What a load of generalised rubbish. Maybe people will stop "missing the point" if you had offered some actual points of discussion, rather than making up a bunch of vague metaphors and regurgitating some "deep" quotations. To me, you seem like the very people whom you decry for only presuming their own wisdom, else you would back up your claims with reason, not rhetoric.
I am with @ianuus,
I still think you are rude and mean to say someone who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison . Terrible words to come out from someone supposedly more mature than a frat brother.
Besides, you too miss the point. People who love to learn find JOY in learning. It isn't about showing off or taking pride. It is you who threw up the issue of pride. They didn't.
Your original statment was insulting to all those who love learning. That is why I got personal. You are a sourpuss. Big time.
Thank you for the purile Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Kirkegaard? Actually IMHO the non religious tend to be narrow minded, arrogant bigots, that are thralls to the self congratulatory (I'm so better than everyone else) insecurity of the psuedo-intelligentsia. If you don't believe in God, why should it bother you that others do? And don't trot out the straw man of the persecuting fundamentalist, they tend to be far more charitable than any of the pompous posters in this thread.
There are innumerable studies that show quite clearly the close link between educatiional attainment and a belief in a God.It is hardly surprising:why should an educated person believe in Bronze Age fables?
Well said. FWIW, I salute your taking the time for contemplation and your linguistic dexterity. However, while your confidence in the words you use is to me at once enviable, I find myself at the same time not a little unsettled. As you might expect.
You wrote, "IMHO, a man who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison." I'm not sure about IMHO, but am prepared to ignore that as a literary convention, rather than an attempt at establishing your sincerity. I was taught what you write is always your opinion, be it ever so humble, unless you place your text in parentheses and duly cite your sources.
That aside, I see this statement more as a provocation, to get a reaction. And it worked. There are always a few regulars on hand hereabouts, like Statler and Waldorf, ready to pounce on perceived 'impropriety' and 'unwarranted critique'. (Many a true word is spoken in jest.)
I think language feels so deceptively simple because our brain is such an efficient data cruncher.
The fallout of that is that we invariably fail to remember that, in spite of what it feels like, words have no meaning, are not born wrapped in a precise definition, but rather have meanings (always plural) applied to them after they are out of our mouth. Applied by producer and consumer. For each participant, the specific meaning 'takes shape' post facto and ad hoc, subject to individual circumstance, context and a whole host of other factors, over which neither has any control.
Hence: "But you said …"; "I thought you meant …"; "I know what I said, but what I really meant …", etc. ad nauseam. If 'communication' really were as simple as it feels, humanity would look more like we were all permanently stoned, smiling blithely into the middle distance, like in one of those love-ins of the sixties.
Therefore, whereas I may claim to easily "make sense", in this case, of the assertion that a man who is proud of his education is like a prisoner proud of his prison, others simply cannot.
It all depends on what we each understand, at any given moment, by "her education" viz-a-viz "my education"; what role "education" plays in the public perception; what makes me a prisoner; what meanings can be attached to "being proud" and what it is to be proud of the 'wrong' thing.
At each subsequent moment, all that instinctively digested analysis – without our being remotely aware of the sugar our brain is burning to get there – can be disowned in an instant and replaced by a totally different narrative. That's not to say we are inveterate liars or perpetually confused. But it does rather suggest, to me at least, that our thinking is infinitely flexible, whereas whatever we say is immediately and irretractably fixed, as though in aspic, and can never accurately represent what we now believe we might then have thought, when first we spoke.
"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." Literature, in any language, is replete with such allegorical paradoxes. It's easy to see ourselves confined against our better judgement, such as in a marriage whose flame has gone out, or in a dead-end career. Certainly in an ideological orthodoxy derived from what some might like to call a "liberal education".
At the same time, while we may feel trapped (who hasn't?), we can nevertheless be mighty proud of our 'ordinary' role in life, or of a regular suburban house, like all the others, with the obligatory lawn and the white picket fence. But, tied to a mortgage, the term 'gilded cage' springs readily to mind. Whether as a teacher, athlete, doctor, preacher, scientist, parent, we can all suddenly come face to face, most insidiously in the early hours, with Peggy Lee's haunting refrain, "… is that all there is?"
My best consolation for that is to say to myself, we have no evidence to suggest that our purpose is any 'higher' than that of any other species, ie, to survive long enough in order to breed (to replicate our genes). All the rest is make-believe. Which is not to denigrate what we hold dear. All that make-believe is precisely what gets us out of bed in the morning. To drive through traffic I make myself believe what I "ought to know".
It's what I do to make use of an elevator or wait patiently for a bus. I believe in the correct time, without really knowing whether it is. I don't even know when or where I was born. (I wasn't there.) All I have is this here Birth Certificate and some word-of-mouth testimony. And I have no choice but to believe what it says right here on the label of the things I eat. To that extent, I hold 'religious belief' as no different from 'scientific fact'.
To me, faith is nothing more or less than the capacity to believe this and reject that. My faith enables me to make-believe that which I am persuaded I need to know. After I'm gone none of this will "amount to a hill of beans".
But not before.
I read your reply again. There is one sentence in it I do not disagree with, and I want you to know. It is this sentence:
Virtually every spiritual leader in human history has said that acknowledging that one does NOT "know" is the real beginning of wisdom
The rest is applying that wisdom.
Those studies show also that the relationship between faith and education has a U shape. Religiousness tends to decrease with secondary and postgraduate education, but it increases again when you go up to the PhD level.
Apparently, some education makes you more skeptical about the faith you have been taught, but intense education makes you better able to understand the truth in it.
Let me try and explain this in terms an arrogant person can understand.
Certain things are not matters of intellect -- they are matters of spirit. A great painter need not be an intellectual and, in fact, very few of them were. What prompts them to create great art is an inner vision that they then manifest for the rest of us.
By many standards Emily Dickinson was poorly educated -- certainly by our standards. She virtually never left Amherst and if she took courses in logic or physics then she left no record. She wrote some of the greatest English poetry of the 19th century.
Wordsworth -- of whom you probably never heard -- was well-enough educated but he had no especial regard for the intellectual world around him -- which was bursting with the first fruits of the scientific revolution -- but answered, instead, to an a sensitivity to the natural world and the moral lessons he felt, rightly or wrongly, that it offered.
In his "The Moon and Six-Pence" Somerset Maughm limned a portrait of Gaughin (fictionalized) as a not particularly bright and certainly not well-educated man who responded to color and line in a deeply instinctive way.
You probably have never head of any of the above people but what unites them -- and countless others -- is that their deepest and most creative impulses are spiritual and not intellectual.
Religion falls into the same category. It is the response of the heart to its puzzling existence in the Universe. A St. Francis or the Buddha did not try to think their way into Heaven. They felt, pondered, and responded.
I am sure that all of this is utterly beyond you. Is the poetry of Dickinson and Wordsworth "true?" Is the palette of Gaughin's paintings "true" or "false?" Are St. Francis' teachings on simplicity of life and character and kindness toward others demonstrably "true" or can these values be falsifed?
Do most people love their mates because they have backed up their feelings "with reason, not rhetoric?" Or, do they respond instinctively to a bond that forms despite their "game plan?"
You seem to me like a spiritually impoverished person -- mundane and unimaginative, a sort of Jerry McGuire "Show me the money" type. Sinclair Lewis wrote a book about the sort of bird you are back in the 1920s but I am positive you never heard of it or, if you have, recognized yourself as the title character.
You seem very, very proud of all your education. I am sure it has made you a better person than those around you. Please take a moment in your busy life and stoop to help them.
You miss the point -- again. You are so much in the western analytical tradition that murders to dissect. (The very reason I wrote earlier that "A man who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison.")
You can't wait to apply the "learning" that knowing one does not know is the beginning of wisdom. You immediately and officiously rush about to "apply" what you have learned. Application, in fact, consists of just shutting up and putting away the analytical baggage that comes with mundane education and responding unaffectedly to Creation. (This may be the reason that Jesus warned that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven one must come to it as a child. You want to come to it as a physicist.)
You are simply locked inside the four walls of intellectualism as it happened to evolve in the last few decades of the 20th century. Were you born in another century you would have an entirely different outlook -- and you would be just as "right" as you are now.
So whats your problem :) ?
Oh come on, everyone's heard of Dickinson and Wordsworth. "Because I could not stop for death/ he kindly stopped for me/ the carriage held but just ourselves/ and immortality" is pretty cool, but Wordsworth, not so much - a bit too Romantic kitschy for me, but that's more personal taste than objective critique. The others I'll admit to not knowing - however my realm of artistry is not in literature but in music - shall we discuss a Mahler symphony? Or the Goldberg Variations? What about Bruckner, Skyrabin and Shostakovich? I think they're pretty neat too. But enough about me, now to the matter at hand.
Your great fallacy is that you take a statement which is true, then assume its converse is false. It is certainly correct that many artists arose without formal education. What you have concluded from this, however, is that someone with a formal education cannot be creative and innovative, being bound by the shackles of his dogma. This is utterly wrong.
First, let me challenge you on artistic grounds. Many artists have mastered the norms of the day through their education, and this understanding allowed them to develop and mold these conventions. Was not Beethoven a master of Papa Haydn's symphonic form before he injected it with passion and personality? Was not Schoenberg a master of the decadent late-romantic tonal form before he created the twelve-tone system? I visited the Getty recently, and there was an exhibition of Klimnt's sketches - you could clearly see how his style was rooted in his early education before melding it with his own creativity. You seem to hold the assumption that the only kind of creativity is inspired in a delphic moment, which is simply not true. Creativity can also arise from understanding - to know the system, and then to analyse, deconstruct, reconstruct, manipulate and personalise it, which many great artist have done.
Second, your beef with education seems to lie with the sciences - that science's relation to the natural world leaves no room for creativity and "spirit". This can only come out of a life of misunderstanding of the noble art of science. Perhaps you've taken Mr Gradgrind's approach to education too close to heart? Anyway, the spirit of creativity is very alive in the sciences - art is a struggle to understand the human condition, and science is a struggle to understand the natural world. Both involve questions which need to be answered by the act of creation - be it a novel or a formula. The driving force behind the creation in science is none other than the human spirit, which seeks to know and understand, which sets us apart from all other animals. To take a simple example: the greenness of leaves does speak to people in a spiritual way, and artists may write of that - but understanding why leaves are green, and understanding why the greenness of leaves speaks to people, that is something quintessential to the human spirit, and scientists write of that. I hold the spirit of science, the thirst for understanding, in as much reverence as religious people hold God. Just because something is falsifiable does not mean it cannot be spiritual.
I find it rather amusing that you decided to ask me if Dickinson's poetry is "true". I can quite easily answer yes. A part of art's beauty is that it resonates with my own thoughts and experiences - it reflects my "truth". In this way, I do find the words of "Because I could not stop for death" quite true - the restrained inevitability, the depth of ambiguity between the concepts of death, immortality and eternity, the sort of nonchalant acceptance of death, all reflect a part of my current view of death and thus are quite "true". In fact, I can see this "truth" as a major factor to my enjoyment of many pieces of art - the famous "Komm, susser tod" aria reflects a similar theme to the poem; my internal musings on authoritarianism can be summed up by Koestler's Darkness at Noon; a lot of these works' value is that I see truth in them. You, however, do not seem to understand this part of art.
Religion, while being an attempt to explain the inexplicable, I think fails at it on a purely spiritual basis. I object to religion, but I shall not go to much into depth here, as the point was about the spiritual value of education - a simple summary is that I find the idea of an exogenously given set of values and morals rather repugnant, compared to one which we work out ourselves.
Once again, it seems to me that you haven't really experienced any spirituality firsthand, and thus have resorted to quoting things which you have read and the analysis of others in order to seem wise, leading you to make rather wrong conclusion about the nature of spirituality, and the nature of things which are spiritual - most obviously the nature of education. Furthermore, let me once again remind you that to hide behind name-dropping is no way to make an argument; leave that to the hipsters bragging about their latest underground band.
" Both involve questions which need to be answered by the act of creation - be it a novel or a formula. The driving force behind the creation in science is none other than the human spirit, which seeks to know and understand, which sets us apart from all other animals. To take a simple example: the greenness of leaves does speak to people in a spiritual way, and artists may write of that - but understanding why leaves are green, and understanding why the greenness of leaves speaks to people, that is something quintessential to the human spirit, and scientists write of that. I hold the spirit of science, the thirst for understanding, in as much reverence as religious people hold God."
And, this is EXACTLY what I mean by a prisoner being proud of his prison. I doubt that the greeness of leaves speak to people "in a spiritual way." In fact, I don't think they make a peep.
Nearly all scientists are competent journeymen who follow rules of inquiry laid out for them before they were born. A few --- Plack, Einstein, Bohr come to mind -- do more than put one foot in front of the other. They change the nature of Reality. Nearly all others are solid,systematic plodders who conduct experiments of more or less value and hope to publish in one or another academic journal. They may be excited by the inquiry. Well, people are deeply, deeply excited by the Green Bay Packers and so, if I follow you, that is their peak spiritual experience.
And don't wave Beethoven at me. (Read JWN Sullivan, "Beethoven: His Spiritual Development.") A musciologist could sit you down in front of Hayden's manuscripts and walk you through them note by note and you would just produce bad Hayden. Beethoven later denied Hayden taught him much -- the Ninth Symphony is not Hayden Improved. It is an original spiritual vision that would have astonished Hayden.
I'm glad you enjoy Klimt -- so do I. Then, all you have to do is take a really, really lot of art appreciation courses, pick up some tips (too bad Bob Ross is dead) and in a few years YOU will be shown at the MOMA. Or, far more likely, everything you do will be transparently derivative -- your education will have imprisoned you.
In my opinion, 99.9999% of scholars are pedants. They become encapsulated in their discipline and the result is that they become narrower in outlook and feeling. They may be clever, witty and oh-so-much-fun to be with: but they remain charming pedants.
Throughout the (increasingly nasty) ripostes to a single sentence I wrote there has been a common theme: scholarship equals spirituality. I am afraid I am too old a veteran of academic warfare to believe this. Scholarship in western universities is nothing but a game. Anyone not certifiable can get a PhD in virtually any subject -- especially the non-STEM areas -- by putting one foot in front of the other for five or six years. I remember one doctoral disseration I encountered entitled "The Wisconsin Dairy Industry to 1890," in which the subject was explored teat by teat. What a triumph of the human spirit.
I have extensive experience in both academia and business. They are simply different educational settings. Virtually everyone with whom I did business was a Republican. In academia, virtually every colleague was a Democrat. Their respective educations imprisoned them with in a world-view that was concocted before they were born, which they inherited and from which virtually none ever dissent.
Before I leave you to go outside and enjoy a tete-a-tete with the leaves I will add that I am struck with the anger manifested by those who are convinced that education is always liberating and creative. It can liberate -- but it also narrows. The emotional response has been so intense that I can only belive that they have invested their personality in their degrees and must defend one to defend the other.
BTW, have you seen "Paint Your Wagon?" There is a song entitled "I Talk to the Trees." I think you'll like it!
Thank you for your remarks - which were not vituperative. But, I assure you, I did not make that statement about education in jest or to be provocative. I was, in fact, astonished at the response.
Why, after all, is this such a flash point? I did not say that education was worthless or that we are fools to be educated. What I DO believe is that intense, formal education inculcates a mind-set that forecloses other philosophies or world-views. I suggest that the prime reason Muslims and Westerners clash is not over specific articles of faith but because each society mentally inprisons its population. The West, in the thralls of Heroic Materialism, is temperamentally incapable of understanding a world-view that rejects materialism and understands reality in terms of the numinous. There are many, many such instances in history. No group of politicians in the 20th century was, on the whole, better educated than the Bolshevists --and no group was so completely imprisoned by that very education.
I conclude from all the howling that people today carry their self-esteem in their educational credentials. If, naturally, one sees that education as limiting as well as broadening then this impeaches their very personalities.
Time was, we esteemed ourselves from what we knew of our character or faith. Today, the marker is an M Ed. No wonder we're in trouble . . .
Most of the work I do now I do pro bono. That is foregoing about $40,000 per annum. No tax deduction for charity. Pure ProBono. Do you know what Pro Bono means?
Secondly, I do additional volunteer work in Nursing Homes. I play music for the residents on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc.--- you know, folks abandoned by our society, sometimes including their own children --- you know, Ahmmmmmm --- self-righteous "Christians", may be not you, but certainly folks we read from in these blogs who are more interested in proving they are right while the "wrong" people go about doing the dirty work of being rignt?
I otherwise try to get 7-hours sleep every day. My body needs it.
Thank you for your reminder though about doing good instead of talking good. Likewise to you. :)
And BTW, I am indifferent to my education, neither proud or not proud. In fact, I am rather embarrassed because I think it is not adequate. For exmaple I know little about economic theories. I know nothing about quantum physics, etc. Too many to enumerate. I am a little satistied with the education I have thus far but only to the extent it informs my actions and enbles me to do real things for real people (like play music for dying folks in Nursing Homes, and talk to folks when they speak in English or in my native tongue.
I hope now you will lay off about my education. OK?
Most of the work I do now I do pro bono. That is foregoing about $40,000 per annum. No tax deduction for charity. Pure ProBono. Do you know what Pro Bono means?
Secondly, I do additional volunteer work in Nursing Homes. I play music for the residents on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc.--- you know, folks abandoned by our society, sometimes including their own children --- you know, Ahmmmmmm --- self-righteous "Christians", may be not you, but certainly folks we read from in these blogs who are more interested in proving they are right while the "wrong" people go about doing the dirty work of being rignt?
I otherwise try to get 7-hours sleep every day. My body needs it.
Thank you for your reminder though about doing good instead of talking good. Likewise to you. :)
And BTW, I am indifferent to my education, neither proud or not proud. In fact, I am rather embarrassed because I think it is not adequate. For exmaple I know little about economic theories. I know nothing about quantum physics, etc. Too many to enumerate. I am a little satistied with the education I have thus far but only to the extent it informs my actions and enbles me to do real things for real people (like play music for dying folks in Nursing Homes, and talk to folks when they speak in English or in my native tongue.
I hope now you will lay off about my education. OK?
Should Orange tell Apple: Hey! Your cider is not as good as my juice?
No, but Orange should tell Apple: Hey! Your cider isn't wine, its just juice!
You wrote in your reply, accusing me of this: You are simply locked inside the four walls of intellectualism.
Referring to my previous post re my pro-bono and volunteering work.
In my pro bono work, I am in touch one-on-one with professionals who deal with victims of war trauma and other types of trauma (e.g., rape, incest,child abuse, domestic violence). I am in touch with reality as real as it gets - the dark side- from the victims and survivors point of view, and the bright side - views of folks who prove day-in day-out their humanity and compassion in true deeds, not emty talk.
In my volunteer work, I am in touch one-on-one with folks who lanquish in the last days of their life journeys, reminiscing, introspecting, sharing with me their pains, cheers and tender sorrows. I listen to them, with my heart.
I think you are more than a sourpuss. You are a humongous hypocrite. Terminally trapped in your own couldron of vinegrette marinade, projecting your own unreality on others you know nothing about, others who sweetly and happily reside and work, quietly, without gongs and cymblas, outside that couldron.
I believe I have tapped all your non-physical capability both in hardward and software, including this last - and this is the reason for my bidding farewell to you - your heart. It is dead before its time.
I know what "pro bono" means. It is Latin for "Cannot find a job."
I will be happy to lay off your education. I never, in fact, mentioned it.
As for your work with those in need, this commendable activity rather makes my point. It is spiritual in nature and the quality of either your education or intellect, relative to others, is irrelevant. I suspect you extend yourself into community with these unfortunates out of compassion and mercy. These are the most important qualities a human can possess -- and one can possess them without so much as being able to read one's own name.
The tone of the comments here distressed me. So many preened themselves on their intelligence and education and were quite sure that THEY would not fall for any "fairy tales." One encounters these people in life -- determined, above all, that no one put one over on them. Education becomes a sort of suit of armor against faith, belief or emotion that does not accord with what one was taught -- and there is precious little effort needed to convert a suit of armor into a prison.
Compassion is a spiritual dare -- not an intellectual achievement. It is a leap of faith. And, according to at least one poster, only the unintellectual are susceptible to acts of faith (the rest of us need proof!)
If we are lucky, he is right.
My dear Mr.Andros,
Although I am not quite your age or alleged age (said to be "80-something), I am half-retired. I maintain a half time practice. Is that OK with you? It may hurt you a little to learn that I am not out of a job or cannot find a job. I am sorry. .
Even as I am half-retired, people in touch with my profession seek me out for consultation because I am known to be good in what I do.
In my forensic work my fee is $400 an hour. Minimum $3,000 thousand dollars for a forensic report, depending on its complexity. Psychological testing is charged per test, depending on what test is relevant.
As a shrink, my fee is lower -$185 for a 50-minute session. My psychotherpy clients are rich people. They pay.
Since you are a person who is given to denigrate people for not educating themselves for the sole purpose of making money, I am sorry to inform you that my education, pride or no pride, which qualifies me for doing the work I do, bring in big bucks if I had gone to schools solely for money.
Most of my consultation work pertains to clients (forensic ) or patients (psychology) who are indigent and cannot afford fees. I waive them. I do that because the people need the money more than I. I enjoy a reasonably comfortable life after a 25-year long career. Right, you, with your self-righteous vision and 3-inch apperture exposure, may not believe what I tell you, but I am NOT the only rich, non-freeloader Democrats there is in America. We give, not just get get get get and complain about taxes being raised..
It may interest you to be informed that the vast majority of indigents in American society who are served by non-profit agencies are white like yourself. Granted, unlike you (I am assuming) they are on drugs, they dropped out of school,they have no employable skills. BUT what they have in common with you is a mentality that tells them all the ills that have ever visited upon them in their lives is everyone else's fault - the Dems', the immigrants', the atheists', the intellectuals', the gays, people who read, people who teach, people who watch PBS, people who befriend the Big Bird, after exhausting all those, their mother's, their father's, their son's, their daughter's, thier cat's, their dog's. Everyone you can name except the only person who is responsible - themselves.
I waive their fees and I pay taxes from my earnings and investments. The taxes I pay contribute to their health. safety and welfare. Meantime I help them without charging them a fee.
My wisdom about people learned from a long professional and extra-professional life, is that people who do good deeds seldom advertise them, let alone preach for others to do them, while practicing something else themselves.
You are so under-exposed and so sour and so mean-spirited. Many your God have mercy on you. And I will pray for you to my God.
A. Andros,
I have been reading this conversation of yours with other posters, especially with ashbird. I would have liked to participate, but I didn't want to intrude, so all I could do was and is to recommend your posts, for generally speaking I agree with you. By the way, I spent more years of my life getting rid of much of what I had studied at two universities than the years I actually spent studying it.
This person's recent 'magnum opus' in bold has finally shown me the kind of person she is and has decided me to participate, and it's much easier for me to cut and paste the comment I just posted than type something very similar again, for I am tired and I want to log out.
Mind you, I am not trying to "help you" (it's obvious that you don't need any "help") and I am not looking for trouble, I just had to say this, it's a matter of principle, especially after having bought much of what this person was selling...
Accrux in reply to Accrux 13 mins ago
Except the last paragraph, half in jest, half serious, I withdraw everything I wrote above on my Dec 2nd, 07:26 post concerning ashbird. I feel like a stupid with my gentlemanly generosity, offering a lot and asking much less just to please her. I just read this person's conversation with A. Andros on the "The starting point" thread http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21567326-where-did-book-gen...
the "expand 25 [+] replies" part. Five or six consecutive long posts sent to Andros, some posted twice, almost all the text in bold (which is almost as bad as using all caps), probably thinking that in that way her arguments will weigh more...
Telling stories about her academic credentials, her professional activity, how good and great she is, how much money she earns, etc, virtually advertising herself (for Heaven's sake, only a URL or an e-mail address offering a discount to Economist.com discussion forum posters were missing!).
Resorting to argumenta ad hominem,—obviously lacking solid and cogent argumenta ad rem.—, hubristic, self-righteous, exhibitionist... and I was apologizing to a person like this because of two (excessive, I admit) JOKES concerning a couple of emoticons/words in one of her posts? (see above).
I am really glad she didn't reply and we didn't sign the "armistice" I proposed, after reading this magnum opusof hers I would have felt like a real idiot."
The thread http://www.economist.com/comment/1778816#comment-1778816
I have been blogging for a little over two years on TE. I have not revealed my credentials or the $ I make, etc. etc. etc. ever. They weren't relevant to anything. Until Andros' myriad accusations of me in his string of posts in THIS thread.
In America, a person has a right to defend himself and confront his accuser. In defending and confronting, civilized people use facts, not insinuations.
I have thus used the facts relevant to his accusations in this thread.
Andros said Someone who is proud of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of his prison. . I told him pride was not what I held. The joy in learning was.
Then Andros said I should do some volunteer work. To which I answered I have since my semi-retirement.
Then Andros insinuated the reason I do charity work was I couldn't find a job. To which I countered with the facts of what I actually gave up in dollar terms to help folks in need, not the other way around.
You clearly had some gripes against me. This is a community board. Rancor and animosity are not uncommon when people have different views.
But I have no idea why you join in to smear me.
This is all I care to say or need to say. All is on record. Readers can judge if you have taken things entirely OUT OF CONTEXT in this thread.
In any event, I am not the first to react to Andros's mean tone of voice. By no means. You can intrude in those blogs and threads if your research is more extensive and complete.
Oh BY THE WAY, I don't give out a URL or an email address to anyone here, never have, never will. Maybe you have, I don't know. A handful of commenters certainly have. But I have not. That is not the reason I blog on TE - to solicit busness.
Accrux, you said very strange things to me in one post before your proposal of "armistice". In my judgement, you are not the type of character even in virtual reality I care to have further interactions with. Please accept that.
In any case, you seem to be blackmailing me in the style of some ugly tabloid. May I ask what is your motive?
Did I misunderstand your "I know what 'pro bono' means. It is Latin for "Cannot find a job"?
In my understanding, "Pro bono publico" (English: for the public good; usually shortened to pro bono) is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service.
Based on my understanding as stated above, I had taken your sentence as insinuating I could not find a job and that was the reason I did pro bono work. I reacted to that "insinuation".
If indeed I made a mistake about any "insinuation", that is to say you were merely alluding to something entirely unrelated to me, then I certainly owe you an apology because all my posts subsequent to it had no place.
But you still should tell me why you would offered such a strange phrase in your opening sentence in that reply.
What you said about compassion being a spiritual dare and not an intellectual achievement had seemed to me to be such an obvious thing as to require no express statement. When I read it, I thought you were lecturing me. So perhaps that was another misundertanding too.
Andros, spiritual experience and intellectual experience are two separate experiences. That was the first thing I wrote in reponse to your post at the top of THIS ENTIRE THREAD. WE HAD NO DISAGREEMENT.
Because of that separation, a person with 10 doctoral degrees can be a moral scum while a person who, as you put it, "can't write his own name" can be a moral nobleman. That is something crystal clear to me and has been since I was a child.
I am not sure I would describe compassion as a "spiritual dare". There is no dare (or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "dare"). I think compassion is simply in all of us. All we need to do is to allow it to reveal itself. So many big words used, and such a big deal made of compassion. One simple word will suffice: kindness. I always hearken to Corinthian 13.1.
In summary, I have used some very harsh words in my replies to you based on two reactions: One, the prison statement. Two: the Can't find a job statement. I felt very injured by both. Hence all the facts I pulled in to defend myself.
Notice I have not enagaged in any theist v. atheist debate elsewhere under this blog. To me, it is a completely fruitless debate. My view is simply that whatever religion one puts one's faith in, as long as deeds of compassion emerge from that faith instead of deeds of greed, violence and hatred, it is a good faith and I respect it.
Well. . . you are "half-" something. I GUESS it is retired.
MY fee for forensic work is $4000 an hour -- minimum $20,000. (My fee structure is based on my childhood lemonade stand for which I priced lemonade at $50.00 a cup. My marketing theory was that "I only have to sell one!" I didn't sell any -- just as I have not yet had a forensic customer -- but I'm confident about the future.)
I do NOT have a three-inch aperture. Well, I did at one time but Preparation-H really helped!
Your "wisdom about people" is admirable -- and I mean in your extra-professional life as well. I agree with you -- after reading your long description of all your kindly acts -- "that people who do good deeds seldom advertise them."
I may be sour. However, I am NOT underexposed -- I solved that problem by buying a bigger raincoat.
1) For the record: I have not sent you anything, so you were not notified of anything concerning me, and I was addressing A. Andros, not you.
2) I don't care about what you have done or not in the past, I am referring to what you have done NOW. A very long and ugly thing and an intellectual botched job.
3) As dishonest people usually do, you try to address only some of the issues while you ignore the others.
4) My reference to the URL, etc was ironic, you are advertising yourself in such a way that I said that only that was "missing". And of course I have never done such a thing myself, among other reasons because I don't sell anything, as you do.
5) "In America"... and in Europe and other places. Please don't come to me with your naturalized American flag-waving new patriotism. By the way, I bet I know scores of things about the US much better than you do.
6) I don't have "gripes" against you. Only three days ago I was offering you my hand and you didn't even reply. Fortunately, because this 'Magnum opus' of yours have totally changed my opinion of you. You live in a very paranoid world and you always have bêtes noires (Mr Fox, A. Andros, &c. and now perhaps Accrux). There isn't any conspiracy against you or the Han people and I haven't joined anything. Sorry, this is not China, no government control or censorship here. This is a free discussion forum and, within some obvious limits and abiding by Economist.com's Terms of use, anyone can say anything about anything and anyone. You keep a very high profile, if you don't want people to refer to you, just keep a lower profile.
7) Yes, let "readers" judge. Not sockpuppets or just-registered ones, if possible. Look ashbird, you keep giving yourself away. This is not a stage
and you are not a prima donna. singing before her audience.
8) No bold typeface this time? No wonder, you must be exhausted after your show, or perhaps I made you feel ashamed of yourself.
9) I never stalked anyone and I am not going to stalk A. Andros now. I don't care what he says elsewhere. I read his posts and yours here because I too was posting on this thread, otherwise I wouldn't have seen them. But let me tell you something: if I were a judge or a moderator, after reading his posts and yours I would side with him, not with you, among other things because he reasons much better, is intellectually superior to you (that hurts, doesn't it?) and doesn't need to write five or six consecutive posts written in boldface to support his arguments.
10) You wrote
"Accrux, you said very strange things to me in one post before your proposal of "armistice". In my judgement, you are not the type of character even in virtual reality I care to have further interactions with. Please accept that.".
Sure I "accept" that, and is also what I want after reading your magnum opus (or one of your opera magna, I don't know), but I have to tell you again that I did not send you anything and I did not address you, YOU just sent me something and are addressing ME, what's the matter, are you incapable of categorizing things correctly? Such a perfect and, above all, expensive education for this?
11) As for the "strange things" I "said to you" and the strange things you told me, well, I provided the link to that thread (see above) for anyone interested to read, I don't have anything to hide, on the contrary.
12) "Blackmailing you"? "ugly tabloid"? Look girl, you have seen too many movies. Look for help, you obviously need it.
13) As you can see I don't need boldface, uppercase or five long, consecutive posts as you do, among other reasons because I am not obsessed with you as you are with A. Andros.
14) You told A. Andros: "Although I am not quite your age or alleged age... ". I see. I think I will have to reconsider your Chinese origin or alleged Chinese origin, your American naturalization or alleged American naturalization, your academic credentials or alleged academic credentials, etc, etc, etc.
15) Just three days ago you told me:
ashbird in reply to Accrux Dec 1st, 19:44
Your impression is incorrect. You did Not come across as r,c,or p. You came across as infinitely likably striaghtforward. I hope this impression is mutual.
How ephemeral things are, by Jove!
I just want to say THANK YOU for your reply.
At this point, your couple of decades or so of years over me has given you more "wisdom" than I have, and certainly grace at a juncture where it is critically needed. In comparison, both in me pale. Not to mention wit. Preparation-H is useful for many people, and certain I need a bigger raincoat myself, preferrably made of Teflon.
As I said, I have always admired your prose. Last but not least, there is gold to be mined in old age. Please treasure it.
16) Some embarrassing (for you) facts. I posted my comment at 07:20 and you were NOT notified by TE because I did NOT send it to you. There were no other posts sent to you by anyone else. 73 minutes later, at 08:33 you had already
a) Detected my post.
b) Read it.
c) Processed it and interpreted it.
d) Written your long reply.
e) Posted your comment.
What is this, Die Wacht am Rhein, the Watch on the Rhine? You really live for this thread and for A.Andros, don't you?
So k.a. gardner was right, after all:
k. a. gardner in reply to Accrux Nov 29th, 06:24
I await the day The Economist starts a new blog called "ASHBIRD: Musings from a huge ego with too much time on her hands
Recent excerpts from ahsbird's Collected Works:
ashbird in reply to Accrux Dec 1st, 19:44
Your impression is incorrect. You did Not come across as r,c,or p. You came across as infinitely likably striaghtforward. I hope this impression is mutual.
ashbird in reply to Accrux Dec 4th, 08:33
Accrux, you said very strange things to me in one post before your proposal of "armistice". In my judgement, you are not the type of character even in virtual reality I care to have further interactions with. Please accept that.
In any case, you seem to be blackmailing me in the style of some ugly tabloid. May I ask what is your motive?
ashbird in reply to A. Andros Dec 4th, 04:01 :
You are so under-exposed and so sour and so mean-spirited. Many your God have mercy on you. And I will pray for you to my God.
ashbird in reply to Accrux Dec 4th, 08:33 :
In any event, I am not the first to react to Andros's mean tone of voice. By no means. You can intrude in those blogs and threads if your research is more extensive and complete.
[She is virtually inviting me to stalk A. Andros and join the "crusade" against him. By the way, I never heard his "tone of voice", so I can't judge.]
A. Andros in reply to ashbird Dec 4th, 14:00
Well. . . you are "half-" something. I GUESS it is retired.
MY fee for forensic work is $4000 an hour -- minimum $20,000. (My fee structure is based on my childhood lemonade stand for which I priced lemonade at $50.00 a cup. My marketing theory was that "I only have to sell one!" I didn't sell any -- just as I have not yet had a forensic customer -- but I'm confident about the future.)
I do NOT have a three-inch aperture. Well, I did at one time but Preparation-H really helped!
Your "wisdom about people" is admirable -- and I mean in your extra-professional life as well. I agree with you -- after reading your long description of all your kindly acts -- "that people who do good deeds seldom advertise them."
I may be sour. However, I am NOT underexposed -- I solved that problem by buying a bigger raincoat.
Good humour, excellent wit and intelligent irony, I must say.
ashbird in reply to A. Andros 1 hour 33 mins ago
I just want to say THANK YOU for your reply.
At this point, your couple of decades or so of years over me has given you more "wisdom" than I have, and certainly grace at a juncture where it is critically needed. In comparison, both in me pale. Not to mention wit. Preparation-H is useful for many people, and certain I need a bigger raincoat myself, preferrably made of Teflon.
As I said, I have always admired your prose. Last but not least, there is gold to be mined in old age. Please treasure it.
[my clip. I always like to add musical illustrations]
[My comment: she feels I could become an even greater "danger" for her than A. Andros, so now she will try to forget what she said in the past to him and about him and will try to seduce him. She already tried to seduce me and failed.]
I would NEVER buy ashbird a used car!
"faith is emotional not intellectual"... that is total bullshit. Most of the great Christian Theologians were incredibly intellectual. There has been more philosophy based on religious interpretation than those based on secular observations. Nietzsche would not exist except as an antithesis to religion. Hegel was very religious. Kierkegaard I already mentioned. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Dante Algheiri, Shakespeare, even good ol' Darwin, were all heavily influenced by religious intellectual debate. If you care about the interpretation of the world and finding the essence of being, it involves emotions and intellect. Without the juxtaposition and subsquent fusion of the two, there is no worthwhile interpretation to be had. So, yeah, that whole "faith is emotional not intellectual" is just a cop out for people who can't reconcile their life experiences to their faith. Because, well, the Christian worldview is irreconciable with historical fact and life experience.
"Education brings another danger -- hubris." So does the lack of education. I've been both a field hand with a high school diploma and an executive with a college degree. In both states I was dumb as a stump and arrogant.
Ob behalf of the Curmudgeon-American community, I welcome you if you'll join. We don't mind a shriveled, old, intemperate, overeducated smug sourpuss or two. Mainly because we don't hold meetings.
Uh, no. I think Ashbird was saying that (s)he sees his or her education as a good thing in her life, and not as a prison. That's as personal as calling Jesus my Lord and savior. Why do you need to assume Ashbird's attitude ("You can't wait to" "You officiously"?) Speaking of hubris, I think you don't know everybody. But I can't be certain.
"16) Some embarrassing (for you) facts. I posted my comment at 07:20 and you were NOT notified by TE because I did NOT send it to you. There were no other posts sent to you by anyone else. 73 minutes later, at 08:33 you had already"
You can sign up to be notified when someone replies to a comment.
Man, i wouldn't taunt anyone for magnum opera and then have left this comment. In the time you spent researching that you probably could have forgotten another a three credits worth and your haircut from 1973.
"You can sign up to be notified when someone replies to a comment."
You don't understand a thing, do you?
"Comment notifications
Email me when
Someone replies to a comment I have written"
Not "soneone replies to a comment I have NOT written"... Einstein.
I have been notified of your comment because YOU sent it to ME, if you had sent it to someone else or even to yourself I would have NOT been notified. Do you understand it now?
"Magnum" is singular, "opera" is plural. If you write Latin do it correctly , otherwise do not.
Do not project yourself onto others, that would have taken YOU a lot of time, no doubt, but it took me just a few minutes. When you do serious researching and write things for years, that's an extremely easy thing to do, especially a minor thing like this.
"could have forgotten another a three credits worth and your haircut from 1973."
Your original comment reads:
Doug Pascover wrote:
"16) Some embarrassing (for you) facts. I posted my comment at 07:20 and you were NOT notified by TE because I did NOT send it to you. There were no other posts sent to you by anyone else. 73 minutes later, at 08:33 you had already"
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You were wrong, but it was a polite reply and I would have replied politely. What made you edit it and add the rest? Do you want to look tough? Don't bother to do that with me, I have met many really tough people, in my real life and on the Internet, and they don't impress me.
More Latin for you: verba volant, scripta manent. Notice the plural.
And, let us kiss across cyberspace and make-up. Let us not let a few electronic rasberries, one way or the other, spoil a pleasant correspondence -- I always read your posts.
Kindest regards and best wishes.
I don't know everybody -- just everything. :)
Thank you, Andros, for your reply.
If you are sincere in this, I accept.
Likewise, kindest regards and best wishes to you.
I was sincere when I said there is gold to be mined in old age and you must treasure it. I had no reason to dishonor you. Honoring age is a practiced virtue in my culture, 3000 + years old dating back before Confucius' time.
One more fact correction- this one regards me: I really really do not like to flaunt whatever it is the education I have. Degrees are stuff schools insist on foisting on a student when he/she completes a course of study. After all the money they received and the sweat you expended, they give you a piece of paper. Degrees also help a person make a living so he/she does not become a free-loader in society; this is a reality we all have to deal with unless we had kicked the bucket the same moment we were born. A degree may even, if one is lucky, enable the actual making of the concrete, positive contributions to society one wished to make when one undertook the studies.
I also believe, to clarify myself, formal education is not the marker of value in a person. Deeds are.
Thoughts precede deeds. Thoughts drive deeds. That is why thoughts are crucial for deeds. Thoughts are the reason why knowledge is preferred over willful ignorance, why its pursuit is less morally reprehensible than willful ignorance. In my own case, my willful ignorance concerns politics. I had not a bean of an idea what politics was all about. Belatedly I made some efforts to learn, however against my taste, "against" because to me it is as distasteful as it is incomprehensible.
I also believe, and THIS is my faith, that good things know no labels. Labels are trappings for the undiscerning. Among the undiscerning are found both the "educated" and the "uneducated", whatever "educated" means.
The last proves that in the final analysis, education is not about the mind or goes to the mind, but about the heart or goes to the heart. What is educated is not the mind but the heart. I can cite many thinkers with impressive names who have said the same, including saintly educators who died on crosses and sinly educators who languish in prisons, the kind with bars that are not metaphors. But everyone reading in this thread is beyond that level of professorial hogwash.
I wish all of you well. To ALL of you, my very best wishes.
I have no reason to "seduce" anyone. I have not come to the TE blogs with any other intentions than to learn for myself, however harsh that learning experience may turn out, and to share with others who care to read what I write what I tentatively know which, in my judgment, might be of value.
Withering !
Took me a bit to track down where this reply of yours came from. Can you tell me what you meant to say?
I know what the word means but am not educated enough to undertand what it means in your mind.
Simply, you gave the guy the response he deserved. Have a good evening.
Thank you, femi. I appreciate your support and reply. You have a good evening too.
Hello again; the Economist didn't notify me when you replied so I had not checked up on the comment until now. Anyway...
First off, if you do not see the Grace of God in a nice wooded vale on a sunny afternoon, then I cannot help you :(
Second, you seemed to have misunderstood me; I do not think that intellectualism and education will instill a creative spirit upon all whom it touches, but rather that those with the creative spirit will not be hampered by any education that they receive - hence my counter-examples at your proposal.
Following from this, it is needless to say that your interpretation of my replies as being "scholarship equals spirituality" is quite wrong. Me saying "there is spirituality in scholarship" does not imply "scholarship equals spirituality". Once again, much like your previous mistake with "spirituality can be attained without education, therefore education confines you to a life without spirituality" these are basic logical fallacies you're making - and I doubt even the most unversed in formal education will contest that - which, somewhat ironically, limit you to quite a narrow view of what education could and should be.
As to your proposal that education can both liberate and narrow - I would say that this is only true where education was not conducted properly - in that case it is the fault of the educators, not education itself. To use the people whom you mentioned before - Einstein did not conjure up Relativity out of thin air; no muse dropped Planck's constant into his head - these theories, which you take to be unshackled by education, are results of observation (or mathematical formalities) and the subsequent formulation of new theories which allows us to marry evidence to our understanding of the world - the Scientific Method, the cornerstone of science education. Education did not bind these people - it provided a crucial platform from which they could make the creative leap from evidence to theory. Calling education a "prison of the mind" just because some old academic somewhere will not let go of his dogma is like calling religion an evil because some fanatic somewhere blew himself up in the name of Zeus.
I would like to ask, for all your academic veterancy, have you actually had any experience with STEM? I do not really consider the example you cited, a business dissertation, to be quite "academic", more vocational - a market report rather than expanding man's understanding of nature. On a similar note, I can certainly understand your point of view if you deal with the liberal arts more, because (in my rather unqualified opinion) it lacks a unifying creative framework like the scientific method in STEM, and is rather focused on easily dogmatised opinion. As Koestler says - the most important quality for horrible totalitarian dictatorships is an unyielding faith in the righteousness of one's own opinions - this, however, is something the scientific method actively tries to prevent.
To be honest, though, the most angry person here seems to be you - your eagerness to patronise and your passive-aggressive ad-hominems betray you, whereas I've only offered helpful advice on how to formulate your arguments so they actually make sense.
I talk to the trees, but they do not listen to me? That one? Nice tune, but it's no Sondheim.
P.S. You are quite correct, I would be horrible at playing Haydn. - I'm not quite a fan, and I can't really capture his intended nuances that well. I do much better with Bach and Beethoven.
From time immemorial man has tried to subjugate and control other men.The concept of GOD is the most useful tool conceived by man to achieve this dominance.Religous texts have accordingly been used to justify just about all killing ,racial superiority and even slavery.This is so when society was organised along kin and family lines,in tribal societies nation states and empires.The people who did the killing and subjugation were divinely inspired and doing GOD's will and were the righteous.The killed and subjugated people were deemed to be receiving their divinely ordained retribution for being wicked and sinful.Hopefully with the gradual banishment of religon/GOD from the phsyche of mankind and subsequent enlightenment occasioned by scientific progress this type of divine ordained violence will peter out.
I read this sort of thing all the time -- religion causes conflict and is the cause of "divine(ly) ordained violence." But, there is evidence that this is false.
During my lifetime the following conflicts occurred: WW 2; Chinese Civil War; Greek Civil War; Suez Crisis; Arab-Israeli Wars (3 in all); Congo Civil War (several); Biafra Civil War; Syrian-Lebanese War (in the '70s); Iran-Iraq War; Falklands War; Honduras-Guatemala War (the "soccer war"); Algerian Revolution; Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya; Malayan-British Conflict; Indonesian Civil War ('65); Vietnam; First Gulf War; Second Gulf War; Rhodesian Civil War; Rwandan Civil War (Hutus v. Tutis in '94); Panama Incursion; Granada; Russo-Chinese Conflict ('69); Indian Pakistani War ('65 &'71); Syrian Civil War (in progress); Somali Civil War (take your pick); Chad-Libyan War . . . well these are just the ones I recall and I am sure I overlook quite a few.
In this entire list what stands out is that there are virtually NO religious wars. The Israeli-Arab wars are fought over land and not religion (which is why Egypt could sign a peace treaty once it got the Sinai back) and the Indian-Pakistan Wars were not religious wars but a series of border conflicts that got out of hand and were resolved without reference to religion. Other than these few dubious examples, all the wars listed since 1939 -- the most warlike period in human history -- were caused by differences in political ideology, local political differences (the civil wars) or border disputes and disputes over resources. And, it should be noted that the greatest conflict by far -- WW2 -- was begun in Europe by a German regime that was utterly hostile to religion and especially toward Christianity.
That religious violence occurs in history is something we all know. But, it occurs FAR less often than critics of religion contend and these same critics overlook countless instances in which religious scruples either discourage conflict or limited the violence of such conflicts. For instance, the nominal Christian scruples of the Kaiser's army limited violence largely to military targets while the non-religious Nazis were utterly uninhibited, actually depraved, in their use of violence. Or, compare Czarist Russia -- in which 19th century political executions number in the few hundreds due to religious scruples -- with the millions murdered out of political motives by Stalin. In fact, no single ideology in world history was as consistently atheistic as "scientific" Marxism and this "science" was used to justify the greatest killing spree ever (see "The Black Book of Communism.")
One hopes that before posters declaim on "From time immemorial" that they will -- to use a Biblical phrase -- actually cite chapter and verse to support their arguments.
So killing Jews in WW 2 had nothing to do with religion ? It certainly was not about land.
The on going Sunni Shite massacres have nothing to do with religion?
Bosnia ?
India Pakistan as nothing to do with Muslims vs Hindus.
Institutionalized Antisemitism in Arab nations does nothing to inflame the drum beats of war.
Sryia ? Please you cannot be serious.
I disagree with the idea that the Nazis were atheist. Hitler was Christian though lapsed, and they were fine with religion that didn't conflict with the state.
Without religion, good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. With religion (and leadership cults) good people do bad things.
An example from a famous study,
"General Lin, who founded the Chinese Kingdom 3,000 years ago, went to war with his army to conquer a land. They came to some great cities with high walls and strong fortresses. The Chinese War-God appeared to General Lin in his dream and promised him victory, ordering him to kill all living souls in the cities because those people belonged to other religions. General Lin and his soldiers took the towns and utterly destroyed all that was in therein, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Do you think General Lin and his soldiers acted rightly or not. Explain why?
The question cost Professor George Tamarin his chair, and made him the last victim of Joshua's conquest of Jericho. For he asked it as part of a sociological survey of Israeli schoolchildren. He then gave them an account of Joshua's campaign to claim the Promised Land from its existing inhabitants.
The two stories are, of course, almost identical. Some 60 per cent of the Jewish students insisted Joshua was quite right, but 75 per cent thought General Lin was wrong. The outcome, Tamarin contended, showed that chauvinism influences moral judgment and that uncritical teaching of the Bible forms prejudices."
You could do this with any religion with a long history. X kills Y women and children, was X right or wrong?
Most people say X is wrong.
[Survey questionee's God] told X to kill Y women and children, and he did so, was X right or wrong?
and the problem arises.
You could do the same for Chairman Mao. Religion and dictators demand obedient belief. It's the idea that it's ok to let some external figure, God, the Great Helmsman etc. supersede your personal moral compass. This is not optimal.
No . . . killing Jews had absolutely nothing to do with religion. If that were the case then conversion to Christianity would have been a way out for the Jews. Was it?
The Nazis simply did not care whether a Jew was religious, irreligious or "converted." National Socialism was based on "racism," and NOT religion and the literature (e.g. Saul Freidlander) that supports this premise is so extensive that to assert otherwise flies in the face of seventy years of scholarship. You appear to have smacked it right between the eyes and the resulting splotch is not attractive. (I could cite several dozen other books, e.g. "The Racial State," or "The Coming of the Third Reich" on this topic but I doubt it would matter to you.)
Bosnia -- I'll give you that one. Not Darfur.
No, the Subcontinent wars were NOT religiously motivated. The one in 1965 was over Kashmir (land dispute) and the one in 1971 was a failed attempt by India to destroy Pakistan as a potential military rival.
Arab antisemitism is loathsome -- but the Arab-Israeli conflict (quite another thing) is kept alive by the question of who occupies Palestine. This is a land dispute, not a religious dispute, and Egypt and Jordan both walked away from the war once certain border rectifications were made.
Syria??? I believe that all combatants in this one are Muslim. The issue is not who is more Muslim but whether the Assad family will remain in power. Both Shia and Sunni are trying to rid Syria of that awful clan.
For a person of such settled and unyielding beliefs you seem to actually know relatively little about the dozens of wars since 1939. Perhaps you are young and poorly read.
If you were a Christian and someone said convert to a Muslim or I will murder your would you?
Apparently Jews did not prefer this option when the Church presented a simliar deal......your point is a weak argument.
If a Sunni Kills a Shia its over religion, be it the same religion, but a different strand.
Dafur was Arab Muslims killing black Christians.
How old are you, 80 ?
Nazi hostility toward religion -- and especially toward Christianity -- is fully documented. Stalin, too, was a lapsed Christian but we do not usually associate the Great Terror with a religious crusade. National Socialism hated ANY institutional endeavor that was not categorically under its control. The current standard reference is Richard J. Evans three-volume work on the Third Reich and I will cite one passage: "[F]or all the ideological in-fighting, one objective had remained clear from the very outset: the regime was determined to reduce, and if possible, eliminate the Churches as cetres of real or potential alternative ideologies to its own." ("The Third Reich In Power" [New York, 2006], p. 254.) Dozens of other historical works can easily be referenced that maintain the same theme. But, this involves scholarship -- not just assertion.
You overlook just how appallingly bloody WW2 was and how much of the violence was non-military in nature. The same was true of Stalin's regime, the murder total for which ran into the tens of millions. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II may have been fools -- but they were not psychopaths. Nicholas was head of the Orthodox Church and took his responsibilities seriously. Wilhelm was immersed in an aristocracy that was uniformly Christian. It is very facile to say "Well, it was all just hypocrisy" but that ignores the restrain on violence both these well-armed regimes showed 1914-1918 and the lack of restraint that marked their non-religous successors from 1939-1945.
I often think that in discussing this or any other great issue it is helpful to be learned in the literature before making sweeping statements.
I miss your point. That option-- conversion -- was NEVER offered the Jews as a way out.
I am hold enough to have seen more than half of the 20th century.
Sorry I was unclear. I wanted to address the myth that Nazis were aggressively atheist, which they weren't. They were aggressively against centers of power outside their control. Thus churches were a target within Germany, but not because they were churches, but because they had lots of public support. If it had been a network of Moose lodges or Shriners or temperance societies, they would have been just as hostile.
I agree with your response to Rumbaclave about the Nazis caring about race and nationalism while religion was incidental to them.
They did support churches if they saw them as useful. During the invasion of Russia, they supported a revival and expansion of separate orthodox churches in Belarus and the Ukraine.
(reference: http://www.cnewa.org/default.aspx?ID=51&pagetypeID=9&sitecode=US&pageno=1)
I think you're missing the difference between Stalin and Hitler vs. their predecessors. Both of them were Utopian idealists committed to building their version of a "better world." They also both had seen war first hand. The participants in WW1, by contrast, were playing at war in Wilhelm's case or were totally removed from it in Nicholas's case.
(I highly recommend the book George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War http://www.amazon.com/George-Nicholas-Wilhelm-Three-Cousins/dp/B005ZO622G, for it's history of how WW1 started and how incredibly surprising it was that it didn't happen sooner)
Also, you mention restraint. They used mustard gas. How much of that restraint in WW1 was due to the fact that the fighting was localized to a single strip of land running north to south. No fire bombing of cities and no massive sieges. It's not that they showed restraint as much as they lacked the imagination for carnage of their successors.
Also, you've overlooked the second bloodiest conflict in human history, the Taiping rebellion which was fought based on one man's religion.
India Pakistan war was definitely a religious war. The very country called "Pakistan", and hence its borders with India, and hence the "border disputes" were all created, because Pakistan's creators did not want to live in a pluralistic and Hindu majority Nation. The very edifice of the country was founded on Islam and negation of other religion (read Hinduism) or secularism. Following years saw flood of Wahhabi/Salafist ideology. And the country even started claiming Persian / Arab ethnic roots.
God is one of those basic concepts that help a group of people take over a broader group of people, maintain its dominance on that broader group, and reinforce it over time.
The 'God' concept is particularly helpful to the dominant group in defining 'Us vs. Them' issues.
But God is not alone in this category of useful political-cultural concepts that mankind has produced, as multiple dictatorships, horror regimes and bloody conflicts have proven.
A 'living god' can do the job equally well as a mythological one, starting from Roman emperors, through pre Columbian rulers in the Americas, some Chinese emperors, a German fuehrer, a Soviet 'Sun Of The Peoples', a North Korean sexy fat guy, etc...
The following is an example of a prayer to such a living god, which shows that what is referred to as 'religious sentiment' is not necessarily god given (enjoy!) ;)
O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.
---A. O.Avidenko
The Taiping Rebellion fits into the category of a war of religion -- combined with local opportunism. It is a good argument for the religion=war side.
Stalin actually never was close to real combat. He mucked around in Poland in 1921 but mostly stayed out of harm's way. Hitler was personally courageous and knew war well. Pity is, he also liked it.
That the combatants of WW I were "playing at war" would have been news to the 9,000,000 dead.
Mustard gas showed a throwing off of civilized restraint. Your point is a very good one. But, note this: civilians usually came through WW I pretty well (in terms of physical well-being.) Germany occupied much of France and HUGE swaths of Russia. A cause of the initial lack of partisan warfare by Russians against the Germans in 1941 was the memory -- and this was true in Poland -- that the occupying Germans of 1914-1918 behaved decently. In fact, several districts were nostalgic for the Germans (Ukraine.) There was some German "frightfulness," such as occurred in Belgium, but the Kaiser's men fought a clean war.
Stalin and Hitler were indeed UTOPIANS -- that is what made them murderous. But, in general, utopianism is inconsistent with Christian theology that stresss the world's fallen nature. This, in itself, prevented merciless utopianism in the West for almost twenty centuries (small outbursts such as in Munster excepted.) Once, though, humans were regarded as endlessly maleable --and devoid of souls -- there was no limit to the use of violence.
Thank you for your observation re Taiping -- I completely overlooked that one!
You all miss one point. Nazis hated Jews not because of their religion. However, why? They were filthy rich. Why were they rich? Well, when for all Catholics the New Testament forbade them to charge interests, while Jewish Old Testament allowed them to do it. That is why, Jews were always rich.
And you say it not because of religion? Shame.
I thought that the last of your tribe were found dead in the bunker.
No . . . the Jews were not "filthy rich." You can prove this for yourself by consulting any of the millions of photos that survive of prewar Jews in Poland and Russia. Some Jews were rich, but far, far more were poor and a significant number were destitute.
Germany had a population, a small one, of assimilated Jews and a few had succeeded financially. So had I.G. Farben -- not a Jew, right?
It cannot be said to often: Not all Jews are rich, not all Scots are thrifty, not all Irish are drunks (well, not all of them) and not all Italians play the mandolin. We hear the cry of "racism" entirely too often and I am a little weary of it being tossed around like a grenade. However, now and then the real thing DOES show up.
"Shame" is right.
Utopianism is a kind of religiousness. People will do anything to create a better world tomorrow, just as people will do anything for a better world in the afterlife.
Ok that's a bit specious. But Utopianism like religion holds an ideal as supreme and any act can be justified in pursuit of it.
Basic personal human kindness and empathy is a biological trait. It doesn't need religion to exist. It evolved when people lived in small groups thus it doesn't function as well in modern societies with lots of strangers.
When I say playing at war, Wilhelm was an utter disaster. He fired Bismark, let the Reinsurance treaty lapse (a secret treaty that said neither Russia or Germany would interfere if either one got into a war with a third party that wasn't France or Austria, and generally treated statescraft as play where he was the protagonist. The adults in his cabinet could see that concurrently trying to court England while building a navy that the Royal Navy would see as an explicit threat was pointless.
People died specifically because the rulers did not take war seriously in WW1. They didn't research it, (I read a 1906 copy of the Seige of Port Arthur written by a British correspondent with the Japanese army, and it's like the Western front in miniature with the Japanese initially doing suicidal charges against Russian trenches before gradually moving to an artillery and sappers model), they didn't have clear political objectives, and they were Utopian in the idea that they saw the honor of the nation as more valuable than the lives of that nations citizens.
What a load of regurgitated nonsense!
The most violent, in-human, dreadful societies that have ever existed (and still exist) are the ones founded on the notion that there is no God and that man's thoughts and actions have no consequence after death.
The Nazis were biological racists, not religious ones. Generally a lot of them were originally Roman Catholic, but their ideological hatred of the Jews was rooted in pseudo scientific dogma concerning biological race, not in hatred of Judaism. Therefore, for instance, Adolph Eichmann could honestly profess to be interested in Jewish culture, whilst at the same time be actively involved in exterminating what he saw as the Jewish "race".
The dominant strain of anti-Semitism (and, indeed, anti-Muslim/Arab bigotry in US/Israel) that is current today is cultural/religious/political. From a biological racist point of view, Arabs and Hasidic Jews are the same.
While I don't agree with the with the original commenter's assertion that war and religion are linked, I certainyl take issue with your decoupling of wars and religion. If you think that the Indian Pakistan wars didn't have a large religious aspect to it, you're insane. Yes they were fightin over land, but the reason they saw each other differently was because they were of different religions. The Libyan Chad war did start because of Christian and muslims fighting during th Chadian civil war. Biafra was essentially a Christian vs muslim conflict, indeed the Nigerian civil war was. The soccer war lasted a couple of days, the whole Balkan conflict you missed out, Sri Lanka too. The congolese war of course has religious and tribal fighting there. You leave out some genocides, such as the muslim Cham during pol pot's regime or during the Lebanese civil war (feel free to add your own in here). Religious violence occurs. Quite often.
I also take issue with the idea that the Nazis were irreligious and that the Tsarists were a political force decoupled from religion. In the 1870's Jews were banned from Moscow, and the reason that they sided with the Serbian nationalists during the first world war may be because they were co religionists (ya huh!). I did enoy your "few hundred because of religious scruples", it's good to know that in a largely homogenous religious nation that the majority of killings will be political and the killing of minorities will be in a minority, numbers wise, as if, religious hatred was not more wisepread.
But the Nazis, I could go on about Russia, but let's get to the meat of it, the Nazi's hatred, absolute blind hatred, did not come out of nowhere, it was preached in the churches that the Jews killed Jesus (it was in Latin, but it was to be repeated every Sunday), and don't let us forget that the churches did protest about euthenasia of the mentally retarded in the 1930's but were silent and handing out communion during the 40's when their traditional enemies were being killed. The fact that the communists were seen as godless meant that the churches did whatever they could to demonise them and dehumanise them, and this was played out very very publicly in the Spanish civil war. The nazis referred often to the communists as being godless. 94% of Germans were religious, and to say that Nazism was hotile towards religion ignores how selectively they were hostile. Jehova's witnesses were persecuted, Catholics, and Lutherans were not, yes some Catholics did go to the camps, but not because they were Catholic. There was a decree to shut down the abbeys and monastaries, but this was never carried out and Hitler intervened. There were even Christmas messages from Stalingrad. It's a huge, often debated topic, but the Nazis, yes, they were religious, even if Nazism itself was not a religion.
Now for the record. I also disagree with the original poster's idea that religion fosters violence and wars. Any idea that people use to identify themselves, can be used to foster an "Us" vs "everyone" ideology. This can be religious but it can be racial and it can be nationalistic.
how ironic, the most violent , in-human,dreadful societies that exist today are the religious ones!!
Its the law (the legal system) which makes successful/peaceful societies. when when u mix up religion with state .thats where the things go wrong.
In historical times, religion was needed because legal infrastructure was not fully developed..but today religion is outdated!
you need to correct the facts regarding 1971 India-pakistan war ..1) it was not an attempt by the India to crush immediate western neighbor..India dint start it 2) it dint fail India..Pakistan surrendered and a new country of Bangladesh came into existence
Extraordinary revisionist history! I know America has a movement to rewrite history and science from a Biblical perspective,but this is ridiculous.
The non-stop conflicts in the Middle East are fuelled by religion:Jews and Palestinians have no reason to fight except because of misplaced religious ideas based on their "holy" texts and Jewish ideas about land based on what God told the "Prophets" thousands of years ago.
Conflicts in South Asia have been since Partition,and are,based on the religious divide between Hindus and Muslims.
Africa is splintering between Christians and Muslims in a new religious imperialism-witness the further bombings in Nigeria this weekend.
I wonder where the Nazis got their anti-Jewish message from? Nothing to do with the old idea of the Jews killing the Christian Messiah? And I wonder why both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches supported the various Fascist movements in Europe at the time,and why the Papacy continued to help Nazi war criminals escape after the war?
Bizarre comment-in that case,why are virtually all the conflicts around the world today based upon conflict between Christians & Mulsims,Jews and Muslims,Muslims and Muslims,Hindus and Muslims?
The old seeds of conflict,which were based on nationalism and racism,have sadly been replaced in the modern world by religious conflict.
Thank you.
Thank you!
Thank you!!
I've gone hoarse saying this time and again. As a student of military and modern history, one can also confidently state that the greatest series of wars prior to the last century - the Napoleonic Wars - had nothing to do with religion whatsoever and were orchestrated by a man and regime that were plainly hostile to religious orders. Ditto for the most violent revolutions (French and Russian).
I'm delighted to see such a post that is as calm in tone as it is logical in persuasion. If it even provokes a small number of people to look beyond the myth often repeatedly (rather startlingly even by intelligent people) of "greatest wars caused by religion" as see how historically false it is, it will have been well worth it.
Oh and which Arabs are those ?
The ones that shop at Nordstrom's in Beverly Hills or have Medical degrees from Harvard or the ones that like to strap on bombs and blow themselves up ?
For all of us reading this article both believers and atheists, the most basic fact is that in 80 years time all of us will be dead. For an atheist death is the end of his or her existence. Though he or she cannot prove it beyond any doubts but he or she has many convincing reasons to believe so. For a believer, death is the beginning of eternal happiness in the timeless dimension with God, the saints, angels etc. The believer cannot prove it beyond any doubts but he or she also has many convincing reasons to believe so. Now let´s look at the utilitarian aspect. What do I gain or loose living without faith in God? What do I gain or loose living with faith in God? Each one should weigh the options in his or her privacy, if the gains outweigh the loss as a good economists take the right decision.
You refer to Pascal's wager which may have some fundamental problems with it. One is: if there are many faiths available which one to chose? The other one is more fundamental. God may be unhappy with such trade approach. Even if he/she/it/they/? is not then for a person to have emotional help from their faith in time of need the faith must be real i.e. not based on weighting benefits and costs. This said organized religion is (or was) doing exactly what you describe. Society at large has benefits if majority of its members fear God - this is especially true in difficult times.
What you say, GOD is about economy and opportunism? Some believe Coca Cola is the taste of life. Is it just the same as to believe in GOD?
Faith in any one or multiple gods is something one either has or has not. It' not a question of rational decision making. Pascal's wager is an empty bet, because the extension of it is that one must believe in all gods to cover every possible outcome, yet many gods are mutually exclusive. I'm also sure most gods would not appreciate such a cynical pretence at faith.
"There are many faiths available which one to choose?"
It is a process of elimination. Luckily we can get off to a head start by rejecting the one that claims that its god created the world in 6 days 6000 years ago. That one is at least proved wrong by science.
Add to the fact that all religions 'started' at some time and I doubt we're through inventing new ones one would have to believe in all the past, present and yet to be invented gods. Also, given what a small dust-speck our planet in in the vastness of the universe we need to believe in all the gods revealed and as-yet-unrevealed from all the cultures on all the worlds in all the universe past and present. Just to make sure the bases are covered. Crikey!
The Bible is a most interesting book, but I find that as a whole, religions, past and present, are a phenomenon whose existence contributes to showing the fundamental falsehood in the notion of 'God', or 'gods'.
For all of us reading this article both believers and atheists, the most basic fact is that in 80 years time all of us will be dead. For an atheist death is the end of his or her existence. Though he or she cannot prove it beyond any doubts but he or she has many convincing reasons to believe so. For a believer, death is the beginning of eternal happiness in the timeless dimension with God, the saints, angels etc. The believer cannot prove it beyond any doubts but he or she also has many convincing reasons to believe so. Now let´s look at the utilitarian aspect. What do I gain or loose living without faith in God? What do I gain or loose living with faith in God? Each one should weigh the options in his or her privacy, if the gains outweigh the loss or vice versa as a good economists take the right decision.
"What do I gain or loose living without faith in God? What do I gain or loose living with faith in God?"
The answer I give to myself is: "I gain a life that's more BS-free than it would be had I chosen to believe this stuff about God(s), or anything else that people are trying to make me believe, including commercial and political ads, PR, dubious scientific theories, etc."
Living a BS-free life is a goal that's extremely hard to achieve, and it may be impossible, but it's worth trying, if only to prove to yourself that you are a real, free, and thinking individual.
As for the offer to dwell with God, the saints, and angles in a timeless dimension - Thanks but no thanks. No offense, but it sounds tedious, and there's always the downside (risk) or ending in a timeless dimension with a bunch of sadistic devils armed with sharp pitchforks!... The alternative consisting of spending time with seventy virgins sounds exciting on the surface, but not if you give it some more thought, in my opinion (again, no offense to anyone).
As for spending time in Valhalla with the god Odin and a bunch of inebriated warriors fighting each other...- not interested.
Knowing my decomposing corps will serve as nutrition to worms, fish, birds and even plants is good enough for me. It's recycling in its most basic and best form - Eternity for real.
positive vibrations too you .
"The alternative consisting of spending time with seventy virgins sounds exciting on the surface, but not if you give it some more thought"
I've given it some more thought, and I'm still liking the idea...
re Pascal's wager:
"When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die."
According to the Bible the Earth is 6426 years old since creation.
According to Science the Earth is over 4.5 Billion years old.
Conservatives believe in the former. Ask any Congressman from the South.
The Educated believe in the latter. I have a paperweight rock on my desk that is over 3 Billion Years Old. It sits on paperwork that is much newer, but seems overdue by a million years.
Simple Question to determine a person's Philosophy, Religion and Values:
=> There is chasm of billions of years that separates us.
The Universe is 14 billion years old and matter was so dense that at its beginning it was the size of a single atom. Time stood still until the Big Bang and expanded at Planck time. E=MC2
Try and explain that to your average GOP Tea Bagger from the south over a beer
Isn't that a bit facile? Have you actually asked "conservatives" about their cosmology? Or, do they "all look alike" to you? There is no reason why a fiscal conservative would hold geological opinions any different from a fiscal liberal. There is simply no connection between an opinion on appropriate tax rates at specific income levels and whether the Ordivician did, indeed, precede the Silurian.
You make a broad statement unsupportable by evidence -- then reward yourself by proclaiming to be "one of the educated."
Personally, I find this attitude one of the most distressing qualities of many -- I do not say "all" -- liberals. Many, such as yourself, assume that you are smarter than those with whom you disagree if not actually more moral. Perhaps you are. Or, perhaps you are arrogant with self-approbation.
Humility is not a bad outlook on the world for even the most "Educated" (I note that you put your peer group in caps.)
You should cut the crap. This conversation has nothing to do with fiscal conservatism, fiscal liberalism, tax or income.
If you can't answer cogently please do not answer at all. It was "Connect the Dots" who put the word "conservative" in play (without defining it), not me. You extended the confusion by adding the "Tea Baggers."
Isn't it a bit churlish to put ideas or terms forward for discussion and then recoil when someone else refers to them?
I think it is.
Try explaining it to yourself. Time did not "stand still." Time did not exist.
Do you live in the USA ?
I would think not as you seem out of touch.
46 % of the country believes in Creationism and vast majority are conservatives from the South.
Time has always existed. Space and Time are Circular. It just was not able to move, just as light is in a black hole. It exists but cannot escape due to the density of matter.
It's an unfair generalization but it's based on a bit of data
58% of the sampled Republicans agreed with "God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years" 31% agreed with "Humans evolved in a God guided process." and only 5% believed that "Humans evolved without God."
Now while some people who believe in evolution may vote Republican because they're fiscal conservatives, over half of Republicans are creationists. (41% of democrats, 39% of Independents)
I'd be interested if there is a poll which disagreed with this one.
I always find massive irony that petroleum companies donate massive amounts of money to politicians who disbelieve the origins of petroleum. You'll have a creationist country where all the petroleum engineers and geologists are foreign.
I've lived in the USA nearly all my life.
I am familiar with religious fundamentalism and have published in peer reviewed journals on the topic and delivered papers at various scholarly conferences as well having been associate editor of the standard reference work.
What is your source for "the vast majority are conservatives from the South?" And, define "conservative." Is it fiscal? Religious? Sociological? . . . what?
I doubt I am too much out of touch.
Your clueless..........
Let me be more specific. Look at the election results for the Presidential elections going back to Reagan and then review the GOP platform embracing fundamentalism for each election cycle. If you cannot see a correlation between fundamentalism and the Southern GOP voting block then there is no debate here as I cannot make a blind man see.
Based on Gen. 2:4 it can be said that the meaning of "day" is not necessarily 24 hours (see also Heb. 4:4-8). I am a Bible believing Christian, but I have no problem with the universe being 14.7 billion years old. But it might not be. Correct science is a hard thing to come by, so what seems true today may be disproved tomorrow. The point is God had something to do with the beginning of our world, and he has something to do with you and I today. I am one of those who have experienced Him, and I wish the same for you.
And you appear to have trouble with English. Perhaps it is your second language. The contraction for "You are" is "You're," not "Your."
Do you by any chance work for a Nigerian institution that offers extraordinarily high yields in return for some trivial personal information re credit cards and SS number? Your style of writing is what leads me to ask.
No, but I am IRS licensed Tax Professional and Registered Investment Advisor with an MBA.
Would you like to discuss fiscal policy ?
I'd be delighted! I am a retired CEO of a Financial District company with hundreds of millions of dollars under management, have held seats on three corporate boards, did my own MBA work and met regularly with the regulatory and rating agencies.
I also know how to spell.
You can be anything on the Internet.
"I am familiar with religious fundamentalism and have published in peer reviewed journals on the topic and delivered papers at various scholarly conferences as well having been associate editor of the standard reference work."
Wow! Impressive. You obviously are very proud of your education. And really too bad you now are imprisoned.
I'd be delighted! I am a retired CEO of a Financial District company with hundreds of millions of dollars under management, have held seats on three corporate boards, did my own MBA work and met regularly with the regulatory and rating agencies.
I also know how to spell.
Wow! Impressive! All that education! Self-taught no less! And CEO and Financial District and hundreds of millions of dollars and three corporate boards.... You sound you are proud of your education.
A wise man said a person who is pride of his education is like a prisoner who is proud of being a prisoner. I am so sorry to hear you were a prisoner.
Wise man also said with all that education and accomplishment, you should think about stooping to help the poor and the unfortunate.
Wait, wait, you have done that before, I mean,stooped to help the poor and needy. You taught English in Hispanic Ghettos....you know...you talked about that not once, not twice, not three times....but whenever there was an occasion to tell it, you told it.
Wise man said a person who does good deeds does not advertise them. You must have been doing ads for AA Exceptionalism
Is it a bigger raincoat you need or a MIRROR?
I nearly took you as sincere and then realized you were all sarcastic. Here's the same back to you for your spiritual enrichment.
The Economist is wise in dabbling into religion and God because they know that this issue, above any contemporary issue of finance, politics, society, will provide the most interest and response and thus clicks on their sites. Why, because, God indeed has put eternity into the hearts of all mankind and TE is a benefactor of it.
And also wise in dabbling into " The penis".
Nobody really cares about any of this in a way that actually matters, so TE has provided an article that takes up space and is irrelevant. This space could have been devoted to a similar discussion of the Koran. Why not? Is a discussion of the historical veracity of the Koran not relevant? Too scary to talk truthfully? Islam is a dictatorship in the way that Catholicism was in Martin Luther's time. Time to open the doors and let in some light.
it's an interesting articles, even for an atheist like me.
Religions have so much power in this world, they are responsible for most of the conflicts and hates crime, debuking some of their myths could only help us to control it.
Religion is like a weapon as it can be used in a way that makes people die earlier then they should have - it is hardly the religion however that did the killing or you argue for divine intervention being the root of all evil?
The Koran doesn't share the same problem of internal inconsistency.
It has factual errors and celebrates reprehensible acts but it was codified and standardized within two hundred years of it being written. It was written (or "heard") in Arabic as is the modern version, unlike the Bible which was translated several times through several languages. The definitive modern version of the Koran was made 18 years after Muhammad's death, this is unlike the Bible which is a selection of older texts selected by several committees of catholic bishops over several centuries.
So an article like this one for the Koran would be about content because for better or for worse, it's meant to be in there and the words mean now what they meant then.
Religion is the excuse, the pretexte.
I, personally, think most people who became fanatics and zealous, in any religion, did it to allow their rage, hate, sadism and hunger for power over others to be justified.
few did it by faith but history shows us it usually religious are a mean to power
Over the past 100 years or so much, probably most, of institutionalized killing happened at the hands of governments explicitly proclaiming themselves to be atheist or very hostile to religion: USSR, China, the Nazis, Cambodia under Pol Pot, North Korea, and others. And some of those countries are still imprisoning, torturing and murdering Christians and other religious believers. You atheists are dangerous (present tense!)!
Christians are destroying the futur of kids, holding them backward by teaching them insanity like inteligent design, creating conflicted minds, pushing them to homophobia, intolerance and such dangerous cliche like "every muslim is a bad man."
One of your example above, the Nazis are one of the worst example what religion, or the hate of another can push mankind to mass murdering.
During the last presidential election, the good Christians have been vomiting hate like we were in midle age.
Reconciliation and Relationship with God, comes by faith alone. This faith is the miracle and overwhelming strength of those who follow Christ into relationship with God. Faith is the bane of the rationalist and humanist who can't seem to see through the veil, and are vexed by such an incomprehensible concept as faith so much so that they close their hearts and minds to the wisdom and simplicity of God. Nonetheless, each has been made by Him, and He has put eternity in the hearts of all, so there is always hope of seeing beyond the veil, even for the least discerning and ardent combatants to God. He is waiting patiently.
Baltic Man
One thing has puzzled me and perhaps you can explain it to me. God sent His Son Jesus Christ to an obscure tribe in the Middle East. Why did he not send His Son to far more numerous and earlier civilisations such as the Egyptians,the Mesopotamians,the Chinese and the Indians of the Indus Valley ?
Furthermore science has shown us that the Earth is an incredibly inconspicuous speck in the Universe. Are there myriads of Sons of God out there in that vast Universe ? Physics has vast territories to explain but where is Heaven ? Is it somewhere out. in Dark Matter or Dark Energy ? And Hell - where is it ( it seems to of the chart now )
Jesus became human at that time and place because it had been already documented he would do so in books such as Isaiah, Malachi, et al. Check out Isaiah chapter 53 (written hundreds of years before Christ) and have a discussion with a Jewish friend.
Thank you for accepting your religion as a matter of faith, and not attempting to use 21 century logic and science to try to prove it. Respect, and may your god go with you.
What a wonderful book review. TE serves its readers well by publsihing this article. To judge any economic theory or policy as a success or failure requires philosophy, some sort of standard for right and wrong. The Bible fulfills exactly this fucntion for rational human beings across cultures. Therefore, the purpose of the literature found in the Christian Holy Bible is a relevant discussion topic within the intellectual realm of economics.
Believing in God and living under His laws leads to a happy life. Is it not happiness that we all are seeking here on earth? The greatest law of God is to love Him and to love your neighbour. His laws can be misrepresented and misused. And who is your neighbour? Anyone around you who is in need. It is true that throughout history many men and women have misused God´s laws to harm their neighbours, God allows this to happen because He wants us all entirely free such to the extent that we can even wreck this planet if we so desire. I think the problem lies with either of the two extremes. Atheism (No God) and Terrorism (Hurtful God). The God of Jesus Christ is a Loving God. What TE should try to do with its religious reporting is to encourage the believers to live by the principles they have freely accepted. Ridiculing God doesn´t solve any problem. By the time you have 6 billion human beings without Faith in God, without any restrictions in their moral life. That is the real danger. I always keep giving this example, how come it is only religious people who still think that a 3 weeks old human being should be given the chance to live.
I love it ! Of course an absolute Believe in God (and the bonus of Eternal Life) could lead to "a happy life". Simply get on one's knees every Sunday and pray to God and feel great afterwards. As a doctor I find it curious that the devout are often the most eager to cling to life - surely they should welcome the prospect of Heaven ? ( I suppose you would say that they might have doubts that they were virtuous enough )
I suppose the fact that I was inculcated with Judeo-Christian morals makes me live a sort (though imperfect) moral life. At least I am not seeking my "reward" hereafter.
Emekaobioli ! I anticipate a carefully reasoned response from you - I am sure you will be following up your post.
I'm happy that your faith brings you comfort, but fail to see the relevance of foetal age to this topic. It seems the reason you "keep giving this example" must be that that's the point you always want to make.
I don´t why TE loves writing about religion and God. They leave aside the economics, finance and politics they should focus on and delve into religious reporting. And all these atheists would start writing comments claiming they don´t believe in God but bitterly contesting that God doesn´t exists as if their fantasy world of no God is falling apart. Yet they all claim indifference, yet an article about God on TE is heavily commented by people who don´t believe in God. We who believe in God, who know Him, relate with Him, live for Him, experience His Love and Care and look forward to spending eternity with Him know that the bible is not just a book. It is a selection of inspired writings, it has to be read in context and with Faith and even still for interpretation we have to rely on Sacred Tradition of the Church. TE says religion should be personal, yet they start ridiculing my faith on their web page. If you want to know the transforming force of Faith, read the lives of Saints (for example, Mother Teresa, St Josemaria Escriva, John Paul II). They are seemingly contradictions in some texts of some books of the bible. We know but these come from transmission process, these writings are hundreds of years old. Have been copied severally. But a reading of all the books in its entirety at the very least leaves you with the feelings that there is something special here.
If you took the time to read the post's you would understand that Pantheism, Stoicism, Espinoza's God are not atheistic views. They reject Monotheism but not a natural god which is what the universe is. I d'ont mean to be condescending but you should study this perspective before you reject it.
This is a book review: It's writing about the book and it's content, not about the existence of God. The author of the book writes about attitudes to the Book of Genesis and about studies of it. I doubt Saint Augustine and Martin Luther were atheistic fantasists. I don't share you faith, but am happy for you to hold it. Yet you see fit to call me a fantasist. Isn't there something about "motes & beams" ? Forgive me, but what is a book if not a selection of writings ? If you don't like TE, you don't have to read it, or post. Just as I don't have to read your books full of fantastical miracles and impossibilites. TE doesn't ridicule your faith, why would it need to ?
I recently read Einsteins biography. He embraced Spinoza's Pantheism (God) which is rooted in the ancient Greeks Stoicism. His view was that we as human beings do not possess the intellect to understand the energy of the universe and all of its laws. God is the Universe and we are all part of it. There is no Monotheistic entity that presides over it and makes decisions based on ones prayers. No separation of God and the universe. This is Spinoza's god.
Monotheistic religion is His view was based on beliefs of tribal people, simplistic and something to be rejected.
Read the Bible as a fairy tale written by hundreds of people. There is no word of god.
I would remind you that our tribal ancestors are the only reason we are here today... they were not simplistic by any means but rather highly sophisticated and efficient problem solvers, theorists, and speculators.
If, as you say, the universe is GOD, wouldn't everything in the universe be his Word?
Everything in the Universe is God, not Gods word. I think we may be saying the same thing.
God has no word. He is the energy, matter, space and time of the universe...Cosmology.
God does not look after people. God is the natural law of the universe and we are all part of it.
I definitely agree - however I think the universe is looking after each of us, all the time, and everything that happens is for our instruction. Quite comforting really :)
Read up on Stoicism and the Ancient Greeks.....I think you'll like it.
I am already a fan... Epictetus is a particular favorite! Philip k dick also wrote a work called the exegesis which is really fascinating - follows up on mystic philosophies from around the world in light of his own 'transcendent' experiences.
I will take a look.
The Bible IS NOT A UNITARY BOOK like the Koran. It is a literature of religious writings not A religious writing. Since it was compiled over two thousand years of turbulent and rapidly changing times, how could the message be simply literally consistent?? The biblical literature codifies and canonizes originally Oral Traditions and then later adds political satirical writings like the Book of Ester ( which NEVER MENTIONS GOD nor any kind of Divine Providence) as well as the cynical and worldly musings like Ecclesiastes and finally Supremely Universal and Humanistic Anthems like the Books of Job and Jonah ( in which the salvation of Non-Jews is strongly asserted to be as precious to the Almighty as the fate of Jews). All this marvelous diversity of spiritual thought decisively demonstrates that the Bible is NOT a BOOK and in fact is formally organized into 39 "Jewish" books and 27 "Christian" books by traditional scholarship.
Fair point, the bible is indeed a large anthology. Yet the faithful have declared it factual, and teach it as such. But what is the relevance of the anthology known as the bible ? This review is of a book about a book known as "The book of genesis" Is the "book of genesis" not a book ?
Not it is an Anthology too. Its material spans three thousand years of history and has numerous borrowings from Sumerian, Canaanite or Egyptian sources. See: The Ancient Near East, Princeton University Press.
So if genesis is a history anthology, compiled between 10 and 3 BC, spanning 3000 years, that would date creation at 3300 to 4000 years ago. Which doesn't agree with the Creationists' 6500, or the scientists 14b. Now I am confused.
The Official Jewish Chronology is 5773. In my view, and that of a NUMBER of Jewish philosophers and theologians that refers to the date of the beginning of WRITTEN OR RECORDED history. That interpretation would be consistent with what we know of early Middle East Civilizations by Archeology.
Even more confused: Another date, that may be the date of creation, or that of the start written or recorded history. Such precision, and what calendar is that using ? Presumably not BC/AD. Computer scientists date the beginning of time as 00:00, 01/01/1601 AD. What happened 5773 years before creation, or before the beginning of recorded history to start the calendar then?
I do not know how to make it simpler. Record keeping which we can access today commenced about six thousand years before present. Do you understand THAT?? If so, that is ALL the Biblical conception of TIME means! Maimonides and many other of the BEST medieval philosophers made a careful distinction between Biblical chronology and natural events which obviously LONG PRECEDED the record keeping the Bible is based on. What don't you understand??
Sorry: you still haven't expressed yourself clearly. At one moment its 5773, whatever that may mean, at another its 6,000 years ago. So is that 5773 BC, 5773 years ago (3761 BC) or what else ? That's to the date of record keeping, right? Not creation? Either way , there are a whole load of modern theists who disagree with you and are forcing school children to learn that Creation was an event that happened 6500 years ago. If you don't know how to express yourself, please don't SHOUT at me. I think it's all rather irrelevant since aboriginal rock art that is 10s of thousands of years old can still be read today.
According to Maimonides and other GOOD MEDIEVAL and LATER theologians, Biblical time is the birth of writing in the Middle East about 6000 years before PRESENT. Aboriginal records, Chinese records, Native American records, Neanderthal records and even other Paleolithic materials DID NOT contribute to the Biblical narrative except in terms of myths or legends ( The Great Flood) which were reduced to writing around six thousand years ago.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Of course the Book of Genesis is NOT meant as a scientific account of the creation of the world.
Actually the original "Fundementalists" (the people who wrote the early 1900s essays on the "Fundementals") understand that quite well - in fact several of the original Fundementalist writers were scientists themselves and supported the theory of evolution. The point of the essays on the "Fundementals" was NOT to pretend that man was created out of 4004 B.C. (or whatever) but support such such things as the existance of a BEING called God, and that human soul can exist after physical death - in opposition to the "Social Gospel" (what would now might be called "Libertation Theology")which argued in terms of collective (not individual) salvation, and a POLITIICAL (government created) heaven. Which, of course, always turns out to have a lot more in common with Hell.
It was not till the 1920s that Protestant "Fundementalism" really lost its way with things like the "Monkey Trial" - although even that is not as clear cut as Hollywood and co would like people to believe. "Hunter's Civic Biology" (the textbook illegally at the government school - there was, as far as I know, no law against such works being used in private schools) contained a lot more than the ideas of Charles Darwin - it also contained vicious racism and EUGENICS (stuff that shocked even the "Rednecks" in the South that Hollywood and the rest of the establishment elite hate so much). Charles Darwin would have hated the Nazis - but they would have loved books like "Hunter's Civic Biology", in fact the Nazis took a lot from the American Progressive movement (for example gassing the "inferior").
It was in fact "evil" conservative Christians (Catholics and Protestants) and Orthodox Jews who were the backbone of resistance AGAINST eugenics and other such in the United States. Again the truth is widly different to what Hollywood (and the univerisites and....) teach. It was, in fact, the Progressives and the "modernizers" who were open to such things as getting rid of the "inferior".
Still YES Genesis (and much of the rest of the Bible) is not a literal scientific or historical account.
However, I do not see why there is such a stress on Spinoza.
Spinoza was a theological pantheist (someone who denied the existance of a PERSON God - conflating God with "nature")and a philosophical determinist - someone who denies that humans are really beings (agents) with the capacity (the free will) to CHOOSE between good and evil.
Such a person is not a guide for Christians (Catholics, Protestants or Orthodox) or Jews (Orthodox or Reform) to follow. Or, indeed, for sensible atheists and agnostics to follow.
It there is no PERSON God it means a lot more than much of the Bible not being a literal scientific and historical account (even the Schoolmen in the Middle Ages understood that), it means it is NOT "inspired" either (for there is no God to inspire it).
And if there is no agency (if humans are not beings - if there is no free will) then the Bible can not be a guide to conduct either - as human actions are predetermined (not chosen). So "human" (not really human at all - more like a flesh robot) conduct is predetermined - and meaningless.
By the way - please no "compatiblist" nonsense. Either humans have the capacity to make choices (real choices) or they do not - if they do not (if there is no agency - no free will) there is no good or evil, no moral responsibility. Saying that things that are incompatible (radically incompatible) are "compatible" is just silly.
That is why I point out that atheists and agnostics should reject this philosophy - just as much as Christians and Jews should.
Your point is a VITAL ONE! A very serious problem with Islam is the strong concept of PREDETERMINATION and the concept that Allah is micromanaging EVERYTHING! What is there left for humans to do or more precisely use their minds to decide??? Serious Islamic scholarship on this Central Tenet and its profound moral and ethical implications exists but serious soul searching and challenging Islamic theology ENDED in the Fourteenth Century!! That is why Islam today is chaos masked by denial, deception, dictatorship, violence and intimidation. Not a pretty picture for societies which are acquiring Nuclear Weapons and the will to use them to resolve contradictions they can't face openly and constructively.
The questions raised in this article were raised, and answered, two centuries ago by German scholars such as Neander and Strauss. Since the first-half of the 19th century, scholars not wedded to Biblical inerrancy have known that the Bible, especially, the Old Testament, is a pastiche of Mesopotamian creation myths, Hebrew worship of a tribal deity and the flotsam and jetsam of the cultures in which the Jews were immersed. What we know as "Genesis" was probably put together sometime around the sixth century BC via the hands of various redactors (Harold Bloom argued -- unconvincingly -- that the chief redactor was a woman.)
There remain, of course, any number of Chrisitans, some Jews and also Muslims, for whom the account in Geneis is inerrant. For at least as many believers, however, Genesis is a compilation of inspirational poetry, folk tales, myths of creation and renewal -- along with the Jewish national epic.
That Genesis is full of ludicrous propositions and gross contradictions is obvious. Other important documents contain similar flaws. For example, the Declaration of Independence asserts that "All men are created equal" but this was written by a man (Thomas Jefferson) who held blacks in bondage.
One supposes that opinion on Genesis falls into, roughly, three camps. First are those who believe it word for word. Next are those who regard it as as silly fairy tale. Then, there are those for whom its chief characteristic is not literal veracity but a portrayal of a deity who interacts with his Creation. The first approach is demonstrably false. That leaves us with the next two and between them there is little to choose: neither is susceptible of proof.
Reading the Bible calls to mind the old critique "You will like this sort of thing if this is the sort of thing you like." Some are disgusted, others guffaw, others are utterly baffled but want to "believe" and still others will take Genesis as a good start by a primitive people trying to make sense out of the hot mess that is the world.
Thank you, Andros, for this very clear overview.
I think you make a very important point but would also like to emphasize that Hebrew beliefs were actually very different from Canaanite and Mesopotamian in that the Hebrew GOD has two aspects - the immanent and the transcendent - whereas most national gods at this point in time were exactly that - national or tribal deities.
The Hebrew belief system was revolutionary in that it posited a transcendent GOD and required worship to be directed to this GOD only. The ancient Egyptians had a similar belief but also worshipped gods that, to their understanding, existed as beings in the world and were not supreme, immortal, or even the original creators.
You point out that the Declaration of Independence has flaws too as if to imply this excuses the hateful nonsense that fills the Old Testament. The logical consistency of one document has nothing to do with that of another-- also no one claimed the Declaration was the word of God.
Second, you are technically right that the Bible's veracity is not susceptible to proof, but you seem to think this fact makes its truth and falsehood equally likely. I can say there is a teapot orbiting the sun, and you won't be able to prove it or disprove it. Does that mean there's a 50% chance I'm right? No, it means we have to use logic and evidence and be satisfied with (give or take) 99.99999% certainty that the teapot isn't there.
For all I know there IS a teapot orbiting the sun -- there seem to be any number of crackpots orbiting this web site after all.
The Bible's veracity is subject to proof in those areas where the Bible's veracity is subject to proof. We can disprove Joshua's assertion that God made the sun stand still because we know that the sun's "motion" across the sky is caused by the earth's rotation. We can prove the account of Creation to be false because there is, literally, tons of geological, cosmological, biological and palentological evidence that shows otherwise.
But, when Jesus says "The first commandment is that you shall love the Lord, thy God, with all your heart and all your will," what standard of proof would you adduce to falsify this statement? When Paul says "Love, Hope and Mercy endure . . . but the greatest of these is Love," is there some way to calculate the odds of his being correct?
Aren't we past the era when the local village editor would shock people at small-town dinner parties by asking how dinosaurs could fit in the Ark? That sort of thing was disturbing when Col. Ingersoll was in full fig and the Flora Dora girls were hot stuff but, really, do we really need to be told today that much of the Bible . . . Koran . . . Bhahavad Gita . . . are literally false? Of course this is so!
You may have a 99.99999% certainty that there are many gods other than Allah and that Muhammed was not their prophet. But, I, for one, am darned if I know how you could arrive at such a conclusion other than by a spirit of inner enlightenment.
"Then, there are those for whom its chief characteristic is not literal veracity but a portrayal of a deity who interacts with his Creation. "
Exactly. Put me in that camp.
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