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Ch. 5: The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False

#64: Mar. - May 2009 (Non-Fiction)
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Robert Tulip

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Interbane wrote:RT: "...the physical scientific structure of the precession of the equinox sits at the empirical basis of the Christian theory of time."You have that backwards. The men who wrote the bible included some cosmology, nothing more. They theorized over whatever patterns they saw in the sky. I don't remember what happened with the thread where we were discussing this, but during that time, your arguments convinced me that there is no special connection between the bible and cosmology.
Those who wish to follow this line can look at our discussion on the Satan, Venus, Christ and The Gas Giants thread in the discussion of Milton’s Paradise Lost. I’m sorry that my argument convinced you of the opposite of what I was saying, as the argument actually has an immensely strong and simple empirical basis. You say ‘there is no special connection between the bible and cosmology,’ but the twelve jewels at the foundation of the New Jerusalem are symbols of the twelve signs in reverse from Pisces to Aries. This symbol can have no meaning except for the precession of the equinox through the Great Year. This makes perfect sense. Placed together with all the other symbols of Pisces and Virgo as symbolising the Christian Age, the twelve jewels show that the precession is indeed the basis of the Christian doctrine of time. The fact that this argument is counter-cultural does not make it false.
RT: "The ‘idea of Christ’ is summarised in the prologue of the Gospel of John, where Christ is identified with eternal rationality, through the concept of logos – word or reason."So, we can do away with Christ and the rest of the bible and focus on eternal rationality, and the problems that it poses. Correlating the two is either wishful thinking or taking the bible for divine truth.
There is a path of reason between these errors of imagination and credulity. Reading the prologue as scientific enables us to define Christ as the imaginary perfect man in tune with eternal reason. An actual existent Christ may be possible, but Christ may not necessarily have existed except as the archetype of many different human experiences.

Whether the Son was incarnate in a human being is not relevant to the scientific logic of Christ as the perfect man, because the incarnation is equally meaningful as myth or history. The meaning is in the myth, and any history is a bonus. If the Gospel narrative is fictional, we still have the idealised picture of how a perfect man would behave in those circumstances, which has immense ethical value.

No wishful thinking is required, only a debate on whether the fable of Jesus presents a believable picture regarding how Christ – defined as the incarnation of eternal reason - would have behaved in those circumstances if he existed.

Getting back to Hitchens, one could even dispute that existence is a necessary predicate of God for Christianity. This is akin to how Bishop Jack Spong and author Tom Harpur promote a non-theistic Christian faith. Entities exist, but it is very hard to say that ideas that are not entities exist. For example, do numbers exist?
RT: "The point of the Bible is that if we all lived according to eternal rationality then the world would be perfect."No, that is one interpretation amongst millions. That it is pragmatic and morally correct is nothing more than the process of natural selection of the interpretation.
Really? What do you mean here? In fact, orthodox Christian faith holds that our world is fallen from grace, and in need of redemption through a perfect man. John’s Prologue defines the perfect man as the incarnation of eternal reason. The idea of redemption “thy will be done on earth as in heaven” is that our planet can be transformed to conform with the eternal reason of the logos. The precessional theory of time suggests that these 2148-year long physical periods of our planet set the cosmic framework for the historical tapestry of fall and redemption in Christian faith.
I doubt we'd be discussing the evils of the bible as the same divinely inspired writing you claim to see.
Are you suggesting here that on balance the Bible does more harm than good? I don’t really think you can blame the gospels for the evils of the church.
RT: "The shadow is cast by the cyclic structures of the cosmos."The only reality the 'shadow' portrays is the mechanical workings of celestial bodies according to natural laws and forces. It can all be explained mechanically, without exception. Why disillusion yourself by claiming to see god in there somewhere?
I suppose I am looking for a mechanical God, marking the inexorable wheel of time. We humans are also ultimately in tune with that celestial mechanism.
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RT: "...the physical scientific structure of the precession of the equinox sits at the empirical basis of the Christian theory of time."

You have that backwards. The men who wrote the bible included some cosmology, nothing more. They theorized over whatever patterns they saw in the sky. I don't remember what happened with the thread where we were discussing this, but during that time, your arguments convinced me that there is no special connection between the bible and cosmology.

Interbane’s point stands. The bible uses astrological imagery, but certainly was not the originator of these concepts.

I have tried to limit these comments to what I can infer from your comments on this topic.
I think your evaluation of the bible is a good starting point to understand that everyone makes choices about morality and the meaning of life on their own. Atheist, or believer, quaker, jehova’s witness, scientologist or pastafarian. We all make our moral judgements based on our cultural background and personal experience. We are influenced by the things we have experienced in the past whether it be the bible or “don’t worry be happy”, but the ultimate moral authority within each of our choices is own decision making process.

What we can see explicitly in your case is where you have developed a moral framework to live your life by and rejected all interpretations of the bible except those that fit your personal world-view. Undoubtedly it is a just way of life, but it is not based on the bible, rather, you have selected portions of the bible that apply to your moral framework and endorse those while ignoring the others. You have decided which rules you will follow from the bible, the bible has not told you what is right and wrong. That is just like me. I decided what is right and wrong, only I don’t bother to consult the bible and burden myself with having to ignore what it says.

People all around the world do this on a regular basis, but you have gone through the trouble to evaluate your thought processes and know specifically which things in the bible appeal to you and those that do not, then you mentioned some of them here on this board. This is not wrong, but it does show that your reading is a subjective experience and does not translate into a universal key to unlock goodness in humanity. You have interpreted these portions of the bible to fit the meanings you desire.

Likewise many religious believers who maintain the bible is to be read literally are able to rationalize away the portions of the bible that they do not agree with by saying that those portions are allegorical.

However it is not stated that the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be understood as allegorical. Historically, the bible is read to be literal truth. So if you assert that the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be allegorical then it is a decision you made in defiance of commonly held belief.

The same tactic you employ to utilize portions of the bible to validate your moral framework can be used to justify hate and destruction, as so often has been the case in the past. Note the Westboro Baptist protestors, the mormon notion that dark pigmented skin reflects sin, and many other examples. I’m sure anyone could compile a suitably long list.

You are selecting very specific and narrow portions of the bible to endorse. What of the rest?

It seems that you are a well educated individual who still desires that the bible be relevant as more than a simple moral story telling device. You desire that it contain a higher truth, or be more important than other teachings. But it does not, and it is not.

You could scour any literature you chose and pick out some small gleaming morsels of goodness and hold them up as an ultimate path to world peace, and perhaps in an ideal world they might lead to that, but it does not validate the work as a whole.

The world can be understood on it’s own terms and does not need the crutch of mysticism. The shadows on the cave wall is poetic and sounds suitably cryptic but does not impress me very much.

The world is exactly the way the world seems to be. Just because matter is comprised mostly of empty space does not change the fact that you cannot walk through a wall. The wall IS solid. If we see things dimly, it is just because we have not shined a light in the right direction. Not being able to determine the exact location or speed of an electron simultaneously is a result of our current limitations, not a limit built into the cosmos. There is order in the universe owing to the patterns of behavior inherent to energy. If we look long enough, and with enough care we can know these patterns.

Essentially what the bible ends up being is the cover of a 2001 Dodge Ram owner’s manual, but when you open the book, you see a few pictures of the truck in question and discover the rest is a mish-mash of snipets depicting how to carve wood, how to make nachos, how to do a handstand and how to weave.

No doubt there can be some value in these snipets of information, but it certainly was not an owner’s manual to a 2001 Dodge Ram.
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RT: "...the argument actually has an immensely strong and simple empirical basis."

The empirical basis of how the cosmos works mechanically is not what I'm criticizing. Neither is the fact that ancients saw signs in the heavens and used them in architecture. What I'm criticizing is the idea that there is anything more to it. So what if ancient astrologers has a modest accounting of the heavens and used their findings to write the bible and in architecture?

RT: "Reading the prologue as scientific enables us to define Christ as the imaginary perfect man in tune with eternal reason."

Then there will be nothing of what he says that is less than eternally reasonable? If what you say is indeed scientific, this is how it can be falsified, since that is an attribute a scientific hypothesis must have. Let's hope the people who scripted his dialogue in the bible didn't write in a single sentence that is less than eternally reasonable!

RT: "For example, do numbers exist?"

Numbers exist in two ways, one way is that they are found in nature in 'instances', and the other is that we take those instances and 'abstract' them to manipulate them via mathematics. To say that 'numbers' are a shadow of reality is acceptable for our abstractions, but we must not forget that we arrived at those abstractions by observing the instances of nature. Your idea of a god is nothing but a shadow, there is no instance in reality that it reflects.

RT: "Are you suggesting here that on balance the Bible does more harm than good?"

You misunderstand, though johnson did a fine job of explaining. What I meant is that, given all possible interpretations of the bible, why do you choose one that is rational and good? Why not choose one that is irrational and evil? There are many shades of gray in between. Natural selection of interpretations as I wrote, implies you'll tend toward an interpretation more in line with the former, for obvious reasons. You then call that 'the point of the bible', but I doubt there is a point as such, it's simply one interpretation amongst millions.
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Interbane wrote:So what if ancient astrologers has a modest accounting of the heavens and used their findings to write the bible and in architecture?
You would 'so what' enlightenment?

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Johnson and Interbane, many thanks for continuing this dialogue on whether the metaphysical claims of religion are false. With Hitchens, you make a series of invalid inferences. A key illogical step in your argument, as I pointed out earlier, is the elision from “SOME metaphysical claims of religion are false” to “ALL metaphysical claims of religion are false.” The first is demonstrable, the second is not.
johnson1010 wrote: your evaluation of the bible is a good starting point to understand that everyone makes choices about morality and the meaning of life on their own. Atheist, or believer, quaker, jehova’s witness, scientologist or pastafarian. We all make our moral judgements based on our cultural background and personal experience.
But, some moral judgements are good and some are bad. Pastafarians invent a logical faith which fails the test of Ockham’s Razor, as do Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists. The question here is whether Christianity necessarily fails this test. Moral judgements are not based only on personal experience, but also on shared observation and reason. In this sense, the goal of objectivity is that rational judgement should base values on facts. As a coherent system of thought, atheism seeks to base its values on facts, arguing that Christianity’s values are based on fantasy. The conflicting views are incompatible.
We are influenced by the things we have experienced in the past whether it be the bible or “don’t worry be happy”, but the ultimate moral authority within each of our choices is own decision making process.
Yes, from the modern humanist framework of autonomy, but no if we argue a moral authority can be external and objective. In a sense, Darwin argued for such an external basis in the theory of cumulative adaptation, and Dawkins develops this with his observation of the genetic basis of empathy in The Selfish Gene. “Our decision making process” need not be purely subjective and arbitrary.
What we can see explicitly in your case is where you have developed a moral framework to live your life by and rejected all interpretations of the bible except those that fit your personal world-view.
The question here is whether an objectively valid moral framework can be found in the Bible. Hitchens rightly derides creationism as an invalid moral framework, but wrongly deduces that the Bible does not conceal a deeper meaning which is compatible with science.
Undoubtedly it is a just way of life, but it is not based on the bible, rather, you have selected portions of the bible that apply to your moral framework and endorse those while ignoring the others. You have decided which rules you will follow from the bible, the bible has not told you what is right and wrong.
I am applying a rational criterion to the selection of Biblical ideas, namely whether they are compatible with science. This approach is compatible with the metaphor in the Bible that the path to heaven is narrow and difficult but the path to hell is broad and easy. It is not about ignoring wrong ideas, but rather explaining why they are wrong and destructive.
That is just like me. I decided what is right and wrong, only I don’t bother to consult the bible and burden myself with having to ignore what it says.
Your decisions about what is right and wrong sit in a deep cultural context, where you largely accept the consensus values of like-minded people. Decisions do not occur in a vacuum. The Bible is at the centre of the theory of value of western civilisation. It deserves the courtesy of assessment to evaluate its merits, rather than the simplistic ‘some parts false, all parts false’ approach.
People all around the world do this on a regular basis, but you have gone through the trouble to evaluate your thought processes and know specifically which things in the bible appeal to you and those that do not, then you mentioned some of them here on this board.
You have not engaged with my claim that the Beatitudes, The Lord’s Prayer and the Last Judgement are at the centre of biblical faith. I am suggesting these texts can function as a prism to assess the merits of other parts of the bible.
This is not wrong, but it does show that your reading is a subjective experience and does not translate into a universal key to unlock goodness in humanity. You have interpreted these portions of the bible to fit the meanings you desire.
The meaning I desire is the reform of theology in accordance with the findings of modern science. Whether this approach may lead to a universal key to unlock goodness remains an open question. It certainly looks a far better option than the atheist rejection of theology on principle.
Likewise many religious believers who maintain the bible is to be read literally are able to rationalize away the portions of the bible that they do not agree with by saying that those portions are allegorical.
Allegories can be tested against evidence, and deconstructed to find their moral messages. Literal readings of the bible are severely deficient in view of the massive quantity of scientific evidence refuting such readings as false. No such evidence exists to refute the ideas I have presented here.
However it is not stated that the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be understood as allegorical. Historically, the bible is read to be literal truth. So if you assert that the story of Adam and Eve is meant to be allegorical then it is a decision you made in defiance of commonly held belief.
This historical literalism is the error which Hitchens rightly identifies. So, defiance of commonly held error is necessary if we are to make any progress and not be beholden to past beliefs.
The same tactic you employ to utilize portions of the bible to validate your moral framework can be used to justify hate and destruction, as so often has been the case in the past. Note the Westboro Baptist protestors, the mormon notion that dark pigmented skin reflects sin, and many other examples. I’m sure anyone could compile a suitably long list.
No, the tactics are completely different. I am reading the actual Bible and arguing for its core messages, which are about love and forgiveness, the ideas which took Christ on the path of the cross. These ideas are not compatible with hate and destruction. Have you read Hitchens’ critique of the Mormons? It might be useful to open discussion on that chapter to illustrate how people use fantasy to justify a delusory moral schema. Religionists have not all found the narrow path.
You are selecting very specific and narrow portions of the bible to endorse. What of the rest?
Criteria such as the parables of the narrow path, the wheat and tares, the beatitudes and the last judgement provide a good prism for assessment.
It seems that you are a well educated individual who still desires that the bible be relevant as more than a simple moral story telling device. You desire that it contain a higher truth, or be more important than other teachings. But it does not, and it is not.
This is a statement of faith on your part to categorically assert the Bible contains no higher truth. It is a provocative rejection of Christian thought, where I would argue for a middle path to accept that at least some aspects of the bible contain a higher truth.
You could scour any literature you chose and pick out some small gleaming morsels of goodness and hold them up as an ultimate path to world peace, and perhaps in an ideal world they might lead to that, but it does not validate the work as a whole.
I am just looking at the central texts of the central book of the world. You are right these “small gleaming morsels” do not validate everything in the Bible, but they do provide a good context for assessment of the merits of the rest of the book.
The world can be understood on its own terms and does not need the crutch of mysticism. The shadows on the cave wall is poetic and sounds suitably cryptic but does not impress me very much.
I don’t agree that Plato’s Republic, the source of this allegory, is necessarily a mystical book. But it does show that the “own terms” of the world are often delusory. ‘World’ is an ambiguous term, referring either to the physical universe or the constructed systems of thought which inform worldviews. Your implication that we should abolish mysticism removes a large part of the basis to assess constructed systems. By some definitions, quantum mechanics is highly mystical. I similarly think there is a deep mystery in the structure of the solar system which we can investigate scientifically and which provides an empirical basis for the bible.
The world is exactly the way the world seems to be.
Another comment covering big lacunae. In philosophy, “the way the world seems to be” is understood as how it appears to human perception. However many perceptions are false. The way “the world is” is understood as the noumenal reality of how things actually are in themselves. Your equation of the phenomenal and the noumenal is a problem for epistemology. I agree with you that science has discovered much about how the world is, but it is a big jump to say the current worldview resulting from scientific discovery is exactly the way the world is. As Hamlet said, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt in your philosophy.
Just because matter is comprised mostly of empty space does not change the fact that you cannot walk through a wall. The wall IS solid. If we see things dimly, it is just because we have not shined a light in the right direction. Not being able to determine the exact location or speed of an electron simultaneously is a result of our current limitations, not a limit built into the cosmos. There is order in the universe owing to the patterns of behavior inherent to energy. If we look long enough, and with enough care we can know these patterns.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle may be more complex than you imagine. In fact, we cannot know the position and speed of an electron according to mainstream scientific consensus. Maybe there are other scientific mysteries locked with the opacity of the Bible?
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Robert Tulip wrote:In this sense, the goal of objectivity is that rational judgment should base values on facts. As a coherent system of thought, atheism seeks to base its values on facts, arguing that Christianity’s values are based on fantasy.
In a sense. It is a rather broad comparison. Depending if you consider atheism a movement as comparable to Christianity or not I suppose. I don't think that it is. There would undoubtedly be certain conditions you should have to meet to be considered a -ity as opposed to an -ism.

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Robert Tulip wrote:Yes, from the modern humanist framework of autonomy, but no if we argue a moral authority can be external and objective. In a sense, Darwin argued for such an external basis in the theory of cumulative adaptation, and Dawkins develops this with his observation of the genetic basis of empathy in The Selfish Gene.
I don't see how you can argue that Darwin ever advocated moral authority as external and objective when in fact Darwin saw moral sense as a product of evolution.

Darwin The Descent of Man: "No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery, &c., were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe 'are branded with everlasting infamy'; but excite no such sentiment beyond these limits."

I would be interested to hear about your sources of information here, not the least among other comments you have made.

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Grim: "You would 'so what' enlightenment?"

Nope, unless the context were that it was all divine inspiration. Context, context.


Robert, saying that all metaphysical claims of religion are false is a good example of skepticism. There is no reason to think any metaphysical claims are true, since there is no evidence through either empiricism or rationalism. The burden of proof isn't on Hitchens.

As an objective moral authority, evolution doesn't count. Our selfish genes reflect manifested altruism on the organism level, but this is an aspect of the propogation of genes. We find meaning in the behavioral forces that compel us to act certain ways, and call that meaning morality. It is evolutionarily beneficial for us to kill a competing male that isn't from our in-group, but such an act is overridden by our reason and declared immoral in today's society. This results from our understanding that what we consider an in-group versus out-group is relative, and to progress as a species we must consider all humans to be in-group.

The truest moral authority is then our reasoning. We must consider as best we can how another person wants to be treated, and treat them in that way. That it isn't objective doesn't reduce it's importance. To strive for an objective source is to never find the answer, which is subjective. We have to work with the tools we're given.

An example of this can be found in college courses that teach qualitative assessment. Quantitative(as opposed to qualitative) assessment is highly valued and has been used everywhere in corporate America due to it's objectivity. Recently, corporations are realizing that quantitative assessments do not accurately capture the values of what they are trying to assess. So they turn to qualitative assessment. The problem is that qualitative assessment is subjective, but even with this limitation, accurate and valuable assessments and deliberations can be made.

RT: "I am applying a rational criterion to the selection of Biblical ideas, namely whether they are compatible with science."

Whether or not biblical ideas are compatible with science seems irrelevant in this context. The discussion is about the ideas that aren't compatible with science, the metaphysical. This includes the connection you propose between the bible and the cosmos. Just because the workings of our solar system and the signs of the zodiac may be empirically analyzed, doesn't mean any proposed connection between that and the bible can be analyzed. A base of scientific analysis, mixed with a dash of magical metaphysics, and voila!, we have morality a la carte!

RT: "It certainly looks a far better option than the atheist rejection of theology on principle."

I don't reject it on principle. If you posted something here that lent any credibility to theology in how it applies to modern life, I would appraise it for what it's worth. To me, it isn't even an option, there is nothing there but man-made tales(which I don't consider theology). We may trust the wisdom of men who wrote the book in some cases, but that is a tribute to them as the authors, not to the bible as a book. When they wrote of such things as gods and resurrections and metaphysical connections, this is where you are searching for the key to unlock human goodness it seems(Christ is tied to the cosmos!). First, if there were such a thing as the key to unlock human goodness, it would be found in the areas written with pragmatic human wisdom, not metaphysical hodgepodge. Second, what makes you think such a key exists at all? You'll looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I fear.

RT: "Maybe there are other scientific mysteries locked with the opacity of the Bible?"

What a testament that would be to one or more of it's authors, who would have to have been far ahead of their time, similar to Da Vinci! It would be a shame for them to have hidden their discoveries in the bible rather than publish them openly. You say there may be 'other' scientific mysteries in the bible. Did I miss the first one that was mentioned? Or was is a cryptic allusion that you personally interpreted to represent a scientific idea?
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Interbane wrote:Nope, unless the context were that it was all divine inspiration. Context, context.
Regardless, you don't think that perhaps the ends may justify the means slightly?

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You may notice that in several posts i mention certain references in the bible that i do not deny hold some degree of truth. What i am saying is that these works should stand or fall on their own merit, as i said earlier. That means i should be able to pick up a copy of the bible right next to Atlas Shrugged and evaluate both on their content, not a pre- conception that one will automatically contain divine truth while the other is the mere scribbling of hapless humans.

My assertion that there is nothing special or transcendent about the bible is no different than your own assertion that there is.
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