"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

-- Attributed to Winston Churchill, though it's hard to know for sure if he actually said it.

A penny for your thoughts — TheMadFool

I'm glad to see you've left mathematics behind for the moment. :cool:

:lol: You have the high ground.

Point well made despite the minor controversy.

The best way to become an atheist is to read the Bible — Dan Barker

I've heard this quote for decades attributed to many people including Twain.

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” Isaac Asimov

Many people have agreed with this though bitter experience. Especially those Christians who leave their faith. I heard a Jesuit priest putting it in reverse:

"The stronger the faith, the less likely it has been spoiled by knowledge of Scripture."

The best[?] way to become an atheist is to read the Bible — Dan Barker

What paradox?


(Worked for me by age 16.)

What paradox? — 180 Proof

Interesting that you don't see a paradox. That in itself seems worth investigating.

This quote drives me to another one from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges when he said about Bible: "it is a good novel to read to" referring it just as a normal "book" not a holy one.

Why? Since scripture cannot be sufficient, corroborative, evidence of any of its claims on its own, it's subject to critical cross-examination in part and as a whole, and in so far as its found wanting – untrue or incoherent – this is grounds to doubt, then disbelieve, its sine qua non claim that 'there is a g/G which "reveals"' (i.e.authors, authorizes ... "inspires") 'its written word'. In the RC context of my (mostly) Jesuitical education this well-grounded, unavoidable, doubt made me an apostate, and only a few years later clearly a (negative) atheist studying comparative religion and philosophy, from which I've developed further on in the decades since. "Barker's Paradox" is no more of a paradox than reading idealist philosophy can make one a materialist (vide Feuerbach & Marx).

Some people find the Bible so comforting, but I find it the exact opposite. Even last night, I got stressed out by someone writing a long quote about the devil. But I do think that the fundamentalist religious people and their interpretations are the ones who really lead people to atheism.

To all The Bible can't be held in one mind...

To all The Bible can't be held in one mind... — TheMadFool

:zip:

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him:

"Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot."

Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying:

"That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it." — Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

:fire:

To all The Bible can't be held in one mind... — TheMadFool

The list of books for which this might be true would be immense.

A good story. Although, you also have to see the ironic humor in how faith often works instead in this one:



Switch a few words and it's the Thirty Years War.

:up: :clap: regarding the following:

"That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it." — Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

The way Hillel puts it, it gives us the impression that religion is rather simple at heart and every holy book written or conceived of is just a long-winded discourse - sometimes to the point and other times beating around the bush - on a single a rule predating many of the world's current great religions, that rule being the golden rule viz. do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. I daresay that all religious texts can be made sense of in this way; if your view on the matter are true, assuming my reading is correct, we maybe able to slowly chip away all that's superfluous and incidental from scriptures and what we're left with, at the end of that process, could be the golden rule. So far so good.

I wonder how Dan Barker would respond to your comment and Hillel's insight? Barker seems to be much concerned with the many contradictions which he alleges the Bible suffers from. By his reasoning another, more suitable, title for the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran, is "Contradiction" and he wants nothing to do with them.

If Hilel is correct then Barker would be the unfortunate victim of a deceptive misdirection - he's been led astray, led away from the real message of religion and distracted by the superfluous and the incidental at his own peril.

Nevertheless, to be fair to Barker, the holy books seem to have been written by folks who were doing their very best to get a crucial message across to the people but they themselves seem to have lost their way in the maze of past and then extant paradigms and what came out of that falls short of the mark.

:rofl:



Barker is right about the content of "holy books" – they are self-contradictory variations on Hillel's lesson (thus "the rest is commentary" or attempts to clarify by "beating around the bush" telling fantastical, cautionary tales (myths)). For me several years of close reading guided by some erudite nuns & priests taught me to see the gaps, inconsistencies, poetry, didactics, fraudulant/editorial amendations for the propagandistic handiwork of early church councils (committees) that they are. Reading "sacred texts" in their profane, historical, contexts had exposed them – along with the religion they were canonized to retroactively justify – as nothing more than an anthology of myths and not historical, demonstrable, or credible truths; I became an atheist from bible-study, not merely because I'd learned from reading the bible that it's a "contradictory" palimpsest of several sloppily translated ancient languages; rather I'd also learned from study that none of the bible's most significant contents have been historically or empirically corroborated in the millennia since Constantine's Bible (& Nicene Creed) or the Tanakh (Septuagint) were first established.

Furthermore, at least for me, Hillel the Elder's (negative) "Golden Rule" is a principle or ideal he distills as the most intelligible, abiding, lesson to be found in the Torah, which 'more than a century later' rabbi Yeshua also teaches (distorted by gentile translations) as "the whole of the law". The story of the gentile "Good Samaritan" makes plain that the so-called "First" mitzvah is superfluous, or irrelevant. No g/G is needed to do good and thereby be(come) good. Some recognize this lesson early, and some like Dan Barker understand later.

Religion, whatever said and done, seems to have, on the whole, two sides to it. One is the quite obvious moral dimension we have a love-hate relationship with and the other is the rather obscure aspect to religion which has been approached circumlocutously for the simple reason that it's ineffable, indescribable, inexpressible, and the like.

Could it be that the ancient authors of the holy books were trying very hard to find the foundations of the good in the ineffable and in doing so wrote books whose contents seem to be, well, all over the place, touching upon as many topics as were known back then, all in an effort to ground the good in that which they knew so little about that they didn't even have a consensus on what to call it?

Surely such a state of affairs is a recipe for utter confusion and if Dan Barker is right, that's exactly what is apparent in scriptures.

wonder how Dan Barker would respond to your comment and Hillel's insight? Barker seems to be much concerned with the many contradictions which he alleges the Bible suffers from. By his reasoning another, more suitable, title for the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran, is "Contradiction" and he wants nothing to do with them. — TheMadFool

Errr... no. The general argument is not just contradiction it is content. Barker's quote, which has been around for decades before he was born, refers to the knowledge you gain about God if you actually read the anthology of fan fiction books anthologised in the Bible. The God described is a morally depraved mafia boss, a mass murderer of innocent human beings, a supporter of slavery, rape and torture, a bully and a coward. It's enough to put you off your gefilte fish.

Trying to eff the ineffable? – yeah, that's poetry. Multiple "authors" for each of the 66-70+ books, countless mis/translators & redactors. Nothing credible, some nuggests of memorable 'cautionary tales' gleaming in the fossilized, ignorant dung of Ages. So what's your point, Fool?

Trying to eff the effable? – yeah, that's poetry. Multiple "authors" for each of the 66-70+ books, countless mis/translators & redactors. Nothing credible, some nuggests of memorable 'cautionary tales' gleaming in the fossilized, ignorant dung of Ages. So what's your point, Fool? — 180 Proof

The point, if there's one, is this: people were grappling with two issues viz. ethics and, how can I put it, that which has no name, the so-called Hashem which, if memory serves, simply means name. I don't know how the two ended up under the same roof so to speak but the truth is they did and the problem then becomes to, in a way, weave a coherent story around and about them but, as you can see, this is nigh impossible for one party is, well, outside the domain of everyday experience while the other is, if one really looks at it carefully, just a matter of ouch! and hahaha!

And so ... ?

And so ... ? — 180 Proof

You need to take it from there. Where does the trail end?

And so ... ? — 180 Proof

It just seems so out of character for a book compiler even at that time to include in a tome mutually contradictory accounts, beliefs, positions, whatnot unless there existed a very good reason for what is, any way you look at it, a very confused book (I'm talking about the Bible). We have a problem - the good book is in chaos. We have a conclusion - the good book is false. I proffer an explanation - they were tackling a problem that leaves even the greatest minds speechless viz. the profound mystery that the universe is.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca

The bible was assembled and canonized (along with the programmatic "Nicene Creed") at the behest of the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine (and decades later by Emperor Theodosius I). The "problem" it was dealing with was political power – establishing a totalitarian organizing doctrine (like the Avesta, Tanakh, Mahābhārata, Quran, etc) by inscribing 'myth & moralizing' (Nietzsche) in order to justify the subjugation-indoctrination of the masses and scapegoating of – blame-shifting to – 'enemies' within & without (Girard).

All that you mention - the politicizing of religion - came much later, after religion was an entity in its own right. Of course, given how useful it is as a means of control, rulers and regimes were quick to associate themselves with the divine - the marriage of religion and politics was inevitable, the two were, in a way, made for each other. But, we digress...

I seem to have trouble finding the proper descriptive word for the non-ethical side of faith that I referred to. All I can say at the moment is that it's the ineffable aspect of reality, the one thing scientists like Richard Dawkins and religious hardliners alike see eye to eye on viz. that there's something about the universe that evokes in us, as many know it, "...a sense of awe and wonder..."

↪180 Proof All that you mention - the politicizing of religion - came much later, after religion was an entity in its own right. — TheMadFool

Why do you say this? How do you know? Whether the "Ten Commandments" at Mt. Sinai or "Nicene Creed" at the Council of Nicea, those scriptural religions were templates for social-political organization. (Islam is even more explicitly political and martial from the start, btw.) I'm not talking about minor eccentric cults but organized systems of worship-control (re: sacrificing & scapegoating). Remember that the Catholic Church produced its bible & creed tailored (in part) to the requirements of Caesar – power before dogma – not the other way around.

Switch a few words and it's the Thirty Years War. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Why do you say this? How do you know? Whether the "Ten Commandments" at Mt. Sinai or "Nicene Creed" at the Council of Nicea, those scriptural religions were templates for social-political organization. (Islam even more explicitly political and martial from the start, btw.) I'm not talking about minor eccentric cults but organized systems of worship-control (re: sacrificing & scapegoating). Remember that the Catholic Church produced its bible & creed tailored (in part) to the requirements of Caesar – power before dogma – not the other way around — 180 Proof

From what I can gather, it looks like people were fed up, exasperated as it were, by the continual appearance of tyrants, bigots and despots in the political arena and a few of them decided enough was enough and invented a system - religion - with an ethical theme as a counterweight to unlimited power in the hands of man and what it can do. To achieve this, power wasn't taken out of the equation but rather transferred from man to a celestial being, god. I know not why? Perhaps power is one of those things that fall into the category of necessary evils; suffice it to say that the founders of theistic religions wedded power and goodness in god as a failsafe against tyranny, despotism, and bigotry. The irony then is that in exchange for an assurance against human dictatorships, we accepted a celestial one with god as paramount leader.

The late Christopher Hitchens would've approved.

Politics and religion, the nexus between them, is not what I want to discuss. What I want for you to do, if you feel yourself up to it, is give your views regarding what I said about how the Bible could be a sincere attempt to ground a simple ethical insight as embodied in the golden rule in that which elicits in us a "...sense of awe and wonder..." If memory serves you subscribe to a view that considers the universe to be disappointingly indifferent to our plight which means that the Bible's failure was a foregone conclusion - there's nothing about the universe that hints at the existence of a moral dimension to it.

That said, take into account a simple fact - we, humans, are a part of the universe, and morality/ethics matters to us and ergo, the universe has, through us, an ethical side to it. In other words, the search for a foundation for ethics/morality begins from our doorsteps and terminates at that very spot; we - humans - are the ethical foundation of the universe. In a sense then though our "...sense of awe and wonder..." is directed outwards, to things external to us, what actually is most awesome and wonderful is that very thing that experiences the "...sense of awe and wonder..." We need to look inwards, the answer is, in a way, the question.

To achieve this, power wasn't taken out of the equation but rather transferred from man to a celestial being, god. — TheMadFool

Except that this is not what happened. The power was held entirely by human beings - by a very strong political force complete with an army and a figurehead, absentee CEO

The bible fails egregiously in terms of moral values. Within its books ethnic cleansing, genocide, patriarchy-misogyny-marital rape, homophobia, slavery, authoritarianism, self-abnegation, poverty-masochism, neurotic guilt, superstition, scapegoating (purgitive lynching), vicarious redemption via human sacrifice, denialism, etc are advocated and even in some cases ritually memorialized. Bronze Age barbarism co-opted by – transfigured into – Iron Age statecraft.

... a simple fact - we, humans, are a part of the universe, and morality/ethics matters to us and ergo, the universe has, through us, an ethical side to it. In other words, the search for a foundation for ethics/morality begins from our doorsteps and terminates at that very spot; ...

Agreed.

And yeah, I subscribe to absurdism (Zapffe/Camus) with respect to moral judgment, though the 'genealogy' of my ethical naturalism (e.g. Spinoza, Peirce-Dewey, Philippa Foot) begins with epicureanism and then extends through spinozism with refining detours through humeanism, nietzscheanism & pragmaticism. Immanence sans transcendence (i.e. cranes, not sky-hooks). Moses & Jesus, Plato & Augustine have nothing to teach that isn't 'otherworldly' (i.e. nihil as per F.N.), or, as Dennett might say a 'sky-hook' for tyrants and other (malignant, bad faith) fantasties.

... we - humans - are the ethical foundation of the universe.

I'm not gonna leap off that faith-heap with you, Fool. Not only doesn't this statement follow from your naturalist observations, but Nature, of which we're a part, long precedes and far exceeds 'human existence' so much so that saying we're it's "foundation" (of any kind) is like saying birds gliding on the wind are the aerodynamic foundation of the sky or mating fish are the procreative foundation of the sea. :sweat: This 'immanent sky-hook' you're desperately grasping at, Mad Fool, is oxymoronic and anachronistically violates the mediocrity principle.