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It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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I'm reading a book by Ian McEwan called "The Children Act" which I think shows how incredibly important religion is in some people's lives. So important that they are willing participants in this "inerrancy" doctrine.

The story concerns a High Court judge (a woman) who often deals with disputes about children. The one case that soon begins to overshadow the judge's life has to do with a 17-year-old boy, actually just three months shy of his 18th birthday, who has a rare form of leukemia. Due to his and his parents' deeply held religious beliefs, they wish to forego cancer treatment because it involves a blood transfusion. So the judge could intercede and force the necessary treatments to save the boy's life, but it would go against everything the family believes and would also lead to the boy's ostracization from his religious community. I don't know how the story ends at this point, but McEwan is one of those rare literary writers who makes us see the shades of gray in the real world. It's never as black and white as we often think.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Due to his and his parents' deeply held religious beliefs, they wish to forego cancer treatment because it involves a blood transfusion.
there it is, a stupid misreading of a verse :furious: :slap:

so much of what diminishes the joy of living can be traced directly to bullshit.

doesn't matter if it's well meaning, or sincerely held, it's life diminishing bullshit.

and the media keeps pouring forth a torrent of distraction as if their owners don't want us to sort all this bullshit out. :yes:
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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youkrst wrote:
Due to his and his parents' deeply held religious beliefs, they wish to forego cancer treatment because it involves a blood transfusion.
there it is, a stupid misreading of a verse :furious: :slap:

so much of what diminishes the joy of living can be traced directly to bullshit.

doesn't matter if it's well meaning, or sincerely held, it's life diminishing bullshit.

and the media keeps pouring forth a torrent of distraction as if their owners don't want us to sort all this bullshit out. :yes:
I don't think anyone can say there is a right or wrong interpretation because it's really the belief itself that matters and staying true to that belief. I think that's why Young Earth Creationists continue to believe the earth is only 6,000 or 8,000 years old, contrary to all evidence. To change their stance is to show weakness and lack of faith. Indeed the 17-year-old boy in THE CHILDREN ACT sees it as a test from God.

Another component to this kind of belief is yielding to religious authority. The Jehovah's Witnesses in the book are deferring to a doctrine introduced in 1945 that says blood transfusion goes against God's will. It's a non-negotiable religious stand and that those who respect life as a gift from God do not try to sustain life by taking in blood, even in an emergency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%2 ... ansfusions

It sounds unfathomable, I know, to stay so rigid to a religious doctrine. The judge in the book, a non believer, comes to accept that the boy knows his own mind and decides to respect his wishes. Though I haven't finished the book. Maybe she changes her mind.

This would be a great book to discuss on BookTalk. McEwan is a fabulous writer.

https://www.amazon.com/Children-Act-Ian ... 110187287X
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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McEwan, I had thought, was firmly in the skeptics category. In his autobiography, Christopher Hitchens includes McEwan in his circle, along with Martin Amis, James Fenton, and Salman Rushdie. It does really sound as though McEwan has stretched himself in this novel, and done what perhaps only a good novelist can do when it comes to extending empathy even to people whose beliefs might shock or repel us. I'm gonna read this one.

I have to put in a plug for Martin Amis. I've read only Yellow Dog, one of about a dozen novels he has written. The book is remarkable for its range, from fiercely satirical to almost farcical to genuinely tender. He has a power of invention the equal of which I haven't come across lately. The reading is challenging at times, but I never felt that he was being difficult for its own sake. Most of all he realizes that a novel is to entertain us while it enlightens us. The commentary on current mores and culture is very sharp.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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DWill wrote:While some atheists think that God is something problematic in itself, for me there is so much elasticity in the concept that there's little sense in opposing it.
Hi DWill, I really appreciate you starting this thread, which raises some important questions.

Regarding your elasticity observation, people equate God and fate, as in statements such as “thank God”, which mean that whatever happens is the will of God. That does not attribute personal attributes to God, in the sense of imagining that God is a personal, intentional, wise benevolent creator, but seeing God as fate does imply that God is omnipresent and all-powerful, attributes that apply to the laws of physics as much as to the traditional mythological supernatural conception of God.
DWill wrote: God can be the militant super-human of the Old Testament or just an idea with little definition.
In one sense, whatever people hold as their highest value is their God. That opens the problem of distinguishing between true and false Gods, which religion analyses in terms of idolatry, saying that the true God is real whereas false Gods are idols. When we idolise possessions, fame, beauty, youth and other secular values, religion asserts that these temporal values are lesser than the eternal values of God, such as faith, love, hope, justice and truth. I think it is important to recognise that the Old Testament vision of God as a Jewish national defender was changed in the New Testament with the idea of a new covenant. Our definition of God should be open to discussion, and should importantly reconcile with observation about truth.
DWill wrote: I find if far more possible to oppose without exception one of the foundations of fundamentalism, inerrancy of scripture, and to say that whoever espouses this conviction is contributing to a scourge that continues to make the world a worse place than it needs to be.
When inerrancy means literal rigid magical belief it is evil. However, inerrancy also has a deeper symbolic meaning, that the Bible should be revered as a source of wisdom. There are obviously ideas in scripture which are unreverable or contradictory. For example it is not possible that the ministry of Jesus occurred literally as described in John and the synoptics. And yet there is value in regarding the Bible with faith and awe, since that attitude can help to see how these corrupted human texts point to a deep ethical meaning about the nature of human existence on our planet.
DWill wrote: You don't have to be someone who will commit extreme acts fueled by his belief that every word of the Koran, Bible, or Hindu and Buddhist scriptures is true, in order to be part of the problem. Just by holding what is by definition an extremist view--that some ancient writings can be held as eternally true--you give cover and lend legitimacy to those who would, for example, celebrate making sex slaves of Yazidi women because the Koran instructs them to, or who would gather to protest military funerals because the U.S. military condones homosexuality.
“Some ancient writings can be held as eternally true.” If we apply that rubric to the Sermon on the Mount, or to the Last Judgement, those texts in Matthew 5 and 25 present a set of values that are profoundly counter-cultural, and which empower the text with great authority as a challenge to prevailing belief and practice. I get that is not what you meant, but I raise this to show how the religious attitude of high respect for an ancient text can have enduring merit.
DWill wrote: An important support of inerrancy for many is prophecy. This belief in prophecy overwhelms normal thinking. When in our right minds, we know instinctively that the future is unfolding from innumerable inputs and is therefore unpredictable. The fact that some individual may say or write something that is later judged to have come true is neither prophecy nor prediction; it is at most a good, educated guess and may not even be that, since whether it became true involves an often uncertain and controversial interpretation of the present. It should be noted that the guesses that were plainly wrong tend to peel off, out of people's conscious regard, and are not mentioned. Henry Ford was wrong that history is bunk, but there should be no reluctance to say that prophecy is bunk. In this regard we can put the religious scriptures in the same bin as Nostrodamus and Jean Dixon. Not to deny that in their apocalyptic forms they have a certain grandeur that has captured, or enslaved, the imaginations of far too many people.
Nice comment, but I fear you are being overly reductive about the meaning of prophecy. You would not say that my “guess” that night will continue to follow day is “bunk”. And yet there is a total continuum from such obvious simple prophecies through to the sort of predictions for which you are trying to reserve the Biblical concept of prophecy. My prophecy that it will rain tomorrow is less certain than that the sun will rise, and even less certain predictions can be mentioned. Where all this ends up is with the idea that what you call “a certain grandeur” (ironically a phrase from The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin) can be seen in apocalyptic imagination. I personally think that apocalyptic imagination reflects deeply accurate intuitions. So to compare them with the complex beauty of evolution is highly apt. But the problem is that the degraded literal forms of apocalyptic prophecy are junk, which blinds people to the possibility of a deeper allegorical wisdom.
DWill wrote:
It is in fact amazing that, while almost everyone would deny inerrancy to the speech of any living person, they so willingly grant it to speech that is enshrined in scripture. I know, the reason is God Said It or God whispered it to someone who wrote it down. Funny how God became silent after that, never amending or adding to his books.
The sense that the Bible contains eternal wisdom is something that can be respected even if we see it as flawed. To say that 2+2=4 is an inerrant truth is hardly controversial, except that the word inerrant has been coopted by a politically conservative church movement making it an unacceptable rational term, rather like salvation and glory. Lewis Carroll’s analysis of glory is a great case study regarding how inerrant belief operates in practice.
DWill wrote: The dodge that the moderate religionists use to avoid repudiating inerrancy is that the extremists are hijacking the scriptures, taking them to mean literally what they do not say. Unfortunately, the scriptures often say exactly what the extremists assert. The only honest way out of this dilemma is for the moderates to be upfront on the matter, to state that being wrong is endemic to anything ever said or set down in writing. And the current idolatry of sacred writings would be over.
Now you are making extreme comments. Error is not endemic, even it if is widespread.

I think also that you are confusing the situation that applies to Islam and Christianity. In Islam, it is indeed true that the extremists apply a literal reading of the Koran. However, Christianity is far more complex, since the conservatives tend to ignore many of the inclusive teachings of Jesus in favour of a return to Old Testament values of eye for an eye and treating only property-owning males as persons.

A great irony in regard to inerrancy in Christianity is that the New International Version of the Bible, beloved of supposed inerrantists, actually changed Biblical verses to fit in with current conservative dogma. So they use the language of inerrancy as cover for making their political opinions absolute, not as a real basis of respect for the actual text of the Bible.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Fri Sep 02, 2016 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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I'm off topic but please bear with me. Having just wiki searched both Ian McEwan and Martin Amis I gotta say I'm intrigued by both. I'd be interested in an official discussion of either guys work.

I was off on the PK thing, my bad and my apologies for bogus information.

Thirdly is inerrancy necessarily tied to literalism? seems to me extremist do not need real faith just an excuse to go over board.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Robert Tulip wrote:A great irony in regard to inerrancy in Christianity is that the New International Version of the Bible, beloved of supposed inerrantists, actually changed Biblical verses to fit in with current conservative dogma. So they use the language of inerrancy as cover for making their political opinions absolute, not as a real basis of respect for the actual text of the Bible.
The same thing has been done with the King James version. "If it ain't King James it ain't the Bible."
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Robert Tulip wrote:DWill wrote:
I find if far more possible to oppose without exception one of the foundations of fundamentalism, inerrancy of scripture, and to say that whoever espouses this conviction is contributing to a scourge that continues to make the world a worse place than it needs to be.

It's hard to know where to start with this tread as there are so many subjects that need in depth analysis. I agree that the actions of Isis and the horrific acts of such as Boko Haram are a real problem. The thing is though, that as far as I know the vast majority of contemporary Muslims believe the Koran is the inspired and inerrant word of Allah, but clearly don't interpret it in the way Isis do.
So is it the idea of inerrancy per se that is the problem?

Geo brought up the Mcewan book focused mainly on the Jehovah's Witnesses teaching on blood and transfusions and how it impacts various people in the novel. They believe in inspiration and inerrancy but so too do many evangelicals and it's the official position of the Catholic church.
In other words the overwhelming majority of Christians do not see what the J.W's see in the same scriptures they hold to be inerrant and inspired.
It's a strange interpretation. The blood in Leviticus represents the life of an animal sacrificed. But how does a blood donor's blood represent the sacrifice of the donor's life? It obviously doesn't.
It is tragic when lives are lost due to these kinds of misunderstanding of the texts.

The danger is when views of minorities are taken as representative of the majorities who also hold to inerrancy but don't believe the texts justify the minority interpretation.

But what is Mcewan up to? I looked at several reviews of his book "The Children Act" and they all agree that he is taking a polemical stance,representing the Judge Fiona Maye as the voice of secular humanist reason wisely battling bullheaded religious ignorance and it's unethical choices.
For sure J.W's do sometimes tragically lose their lives unnecessarily by refusing lifesaving transfusions. Isn't the saving of life a Christian value as Jesus often stated?
It seems though that British law already covers this issue.

http://www.uhs.nhs.uk/HealthProfessiona ... sions.aspx

Faulty link here. Try googling; Clinical law updates. Young person refusing blood transfusions, for the article.

So it seems that Mcewan makes his centrepiece a 17 year old who is not in immediate danger, but there's a window of time of days at least.If it was immediate danger it seems that the law already overrules refusal of transfusion by a minor or their parents.

He throws on his judges bench an unrelenting avalanche of cases of stubborn religious people jeopardizing the lives of others.

But don't non religious people have custody battles over children and sometimes doesn't one of these parent do a runner to places and jurisdictions unknown too, taking the children with them?

He seems to have picked up on a high profile case in England of conjoined twins and their Catholic parents unwillingness to agree to an operation to separate them,saving one life at the expense of the other.
The medical view was that both would die within months if delivered conjoined but one had a good chance of surviving if separated
.
The court ruled to operate and as expected one died and the other survived and is doing well 16 years later.

The court was right and the parents wrong in this case, but cases and circumstances do vary. It was a matter of conscience for the parents however misguided.
The Catholic church does hold to saving the life of the mother when it's the baby in the womb or the mother's life, so I don't understand their stance in this case.
But in fact the hospital offered the parents an abortion to begin with and it was when this was declined that it was referred to the High court.
So secular British law quite easily accommodated the death of both children, but when refused, the saving of one or none became big news.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0929/p7s1.html

Mcewan is piling it on as if it's raining these kinds of unusual cases. Further when asked about his new book "Nutcase" featuring an 8 month old baby in the womb who seems to be remarkably erudite and whether he was making a pro-life statement, he refused to be drawn into that controversy.
His only comment was, "I'm from a generation that largely took for granted a woman's right to make a decision on this,provided that this is done early enough."
So it's "taken for granted" without any legal or ethical analysis such as he applies to the cases in his novel. And the secular ethical legal system he touts accommodates the killing of unborn babies on a grand scale daily, but he's worried about rare cases of conjoined twins and J.W's refusing blood transfusions.
Here's one review which is not untypical, on his book "The Children Act" I recommend for Geo to avoid it so as not to give the ending away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/books ... cewan.html

There's too much to cover here in one post.



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Last edited by Flann 5 on Fri Sep 02, 2016 10:47 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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I agree that the actions of Isis and the horrific acts of such as Boko Haram are a real problem. The thing is though, that as far as I know the vast majority of contemporary Muslims believe the Koran is the inspired and inerrant word of Allah, but clearly don't interpret it in the way Isis do.
Believing the words are inerrant isn't mutually exclusive to different interpretations. It's not as if each reader of the holy text is perfect, able to assimilate every word and understand every phrase. There are a large number of biases at play, where various passages stick out to one person but not another for all different reasons. Emphasizing some text over other text leads to different interpretation, and regardless of the emphasis, both are inerrant.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann 5 wrote:

It's hard to know where to start with this tread as there are so many subjects that need in depth analysis. I agree that the actions of Isis and the horrific acts of such as Boko Haram are a real problem. The thing is though, that as far as I know the vast majority of contemporary Muslims believe the Koran is the inspired and inerrant word of Allah, but clearly don't interpret it in the way Isis do.
So is it the idea of inerrancy per se that is the problem?

Geo brought up the Mcewan book focused mainly on the Jehovah's Witnesses teaching on blood and transfusions and how it impacts various people in the novel. They believe in inspiration and inerrancy but so too do many evangelicals and it's the official position of the Catholic church.
In other words the overwhelming majority of Christians do not see what the J.W's see in the same scriptures they hold to be inerrant and inspired.
Hi, Flann. Yes, I acknowledged that the vast majority of those who go along with inerrancy aren't going to commit criminal acts or radical actions. But I am in tentative agreement with Sam Harris here. Harris, as you probably know, told us that the religious moderates are part of the problem despite their peaceability and anodyne rhetoric. They provide a base of legitimacy for those who would do great harm under the cloak of religion. "Cloak of religion" is wording that will indicate that I'm not saying that genuine, if perverted, religious conviction is the driver with all adherents of IS, Boko Haram, or Hindu terrorists. There are many excuses used for trying to dominate others. But the mantle of religious extremism, i.e., that the holy texts are inerrant, is a political aid to these groups that helps in recruiting. There needs to be a larger cause advertised if any of these groups are to succeed.

All that the rest of a religion's believers can do is claim that the scriptures the extremists use to justify their actions do not say what is claimed. My point is that the scriptures often do say what is claimed, and that the moderates' denial of that fact simply shows their unwillingness to let go of inerrancy, which in turn makes them a much less powerful force against their wayward brethren. I think that in the clear light of day, inerrancy is revealed as extremism even if those holding that view aren't extremists in action.
It's a strange interpretation. The blood in Leviticus represents the life of an animal sacrificed. But how does a blood donor's blood represent the sacrifice of the donor's life? It obviously doesn't.
It is tragic when lives are lost due to these kinds of misunderstanding of the texts.

The danger is when views of minorities are taken as representative of the majorities who also hold to inerrancy but don't believe the texts justify the minority interpretation.
There are other situations, though, that don't require strange interpretations to produce tragic results stemming from inerrancy. Your reliance is on common decency and common sense, as well as on an understanding that some things were simply different in ancient times. We wouldn't do today some things that were done then. Relativism, in other words, is correct to a degree. Yet the need to continue with inerrancy persists. Why?

I think I'll hold back on McEwan until I've had a chance to read the book.
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