BookTalk.org

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:The supernatural error that became enshrined in church dogma arose more as a social response to mythic coding of nature, not strictly because of that coding as an evolution from it.

I fear I did not follow that. What is the distinction being made?

The question here is the relation between supernatural error and encoding of cosmic description of nature. I was responding to your paraphrase of my views, where you suggested I was saying “the supernatural error arose because of the use of mythology to express this view of nature, then was installed in power by authoritarian literalism.”

My point was that the errors of Christian myth did not evolve directly from the Gnostic coding of nature, but arose as an ignorant misunderstanding of Gnostic philosophy. The ignorant church wished to use the Christ Myth as the basis for a mass movement, so felt free to distort the original cosmic ideas against their own populist agenda, including through the Big Lie that Jesus really lived.

Harry Marks wrote: An organising theory does not have to be a single unified theory. It can be a simple notion such as "heavier things have a stronger desire to fall, so they fall faster than lighter things."

This discussion opens up the comparison between religion and science in terms of paradigm theory. You are citing here the obsolete false paradigm of Aristotle as an organising theory for why things fall. While the idea you cited may seem simple, it is untrue, and so generates false predictions.

The same thing happens in religion where people incorrectly believe that mythical fantasies are historically true. There are serious ethical consequences of religious error, such as people believing that going to heaven means it is okay to destroy the earth, not to mention the connections between Islamic ideas on jihad and terrorism.

Harry Marks wrote: Many disciplines have begun with chaotic observations which gradually gathered evidence, and the organising theories tended to arise because there actually was an organising principle at work.

But as with Aristotle’s false theory of motion, his organising theory arose because he lacked method and interest to test his assumptions. The same thing happens in religion, where people find a theory to be emotionally comforting so lack interest to check its truth.

The actual organising principle is political and emotional comfort, not the truth of the mythical claims. When we apply scientific organising principles, the rationale behind false beliefs emerges as very different from what their adherents think.

Harry Marks wrote: Kepler's Laws are apparently unconnected observations, gathered from Brahe's data. Newton used Galilean mechanics to put together an overall account of their common structure because he was analyzing the real phenomenon of gravity which actually explained them.

How the modern scientific paradigm of orbital motion evolved is a fascinating case study. Kepler had not theorised the inverse square law which provides such a comprehensive and elegant explanation of planetary motion in the theory of gravity, but what he did have was a rigorous focus on evidence and coherence, such that his laws of elliptical motion were able to accurately predict planetary positions, providing a distinct improvement from Copernicus who stuck to the ancient theory of circular motion.

We are seeing a similar paradigm shift occurring regarding the facts and implications around Christian origins. We are now at something of a Kepler-like stage, with books such as those of Carrier and Doherty cataloging the severe incoherence of the belief that Jesus was historical, and preparing the way for a new overall account of the common structure, much as Kepler did for Newton. My view is that astronomy is central to this emerging overall explanation of ancient religious cultural evolution, and the neglect of astronomy in the analysis explains why a compelling explanation has not yet emerged that proves broadly persuasive.

Harry Marks wrote: It remains to be shown whether there is such a single natural structure which can make sense of all use of supernatural talk. As I have said, I rather doubt it.

Astronomy does not explain all use of supernatural talk, given that much superstition has other local causes. However, I think there is a compelling argument that astronomy explains Christian eschatology, which in turn provides the intellectual framework for all Christian mythology.

Harry Marks wrote: Humanistic psychology, as represented by Maslow and Frankl, have gone a long way toward providing a useable framework without the supernatural. Those two were wise enough not to engage the issue of the supernatural, but have a lot to say about the relationship between facts and ultimate sources of meaning.

My reading on the relation between facts and meaning has been more in Rollo May (The Cry for Myth) and Carl Jung (Man and his Symbols). Their work is a line of thinking that does engage the supernatural from a scientific perspective, interpreting mythical claims in a psychological framework.

Harry Marks wrote: Making the unconscious conscious is a less promising path, in my view, because, like Tillich's "broken myth" it presupposes some internal perspective which is outside the perspective which finds meaning in the old connections.

Theorising a new perspective is exactly what occurs with a paradigm shift, and does always involve bringing material to consciousness which previously was unknown and therefore unconscious. Where the ‘old connections’ as you put it are entirely unreal and mythical, such as for example the virgin birth, or Jesus sitting at the right hand of God in heaven, bringing the underlying meaning of these myths to conscious awareness is a highly promising path for better explanation.

Harry Marks wrote: I think terms like "unconscious" are going to have to be replaced by more explicit propositions such as "instinctive" or "repressed" or "raw perception".

Unconscious is a perfectly explicit term. For Aristotle and Kepler, the facts of the law of gravity as discovered by Newton were unconscious, even though Newton’s formula operated in the universe before he made it conscious. The same principle applies in paradigm shift in religion, with new analysis able to explain the underlying real drivers of ideation in ways that were previously unknown.

Harry Marks wrote: The fragmentation brought by modernity's lack of structure is the child of the fragmentation brought by the violence of the pre-modern world, and the denial of the value of that violence by its major religions.

This recognition of cultural trauma appears to be a good explanation of the high value that the modern theory of liberal tolerance places on cultural relativism, the idea that no single truth can reconcile or measure conflicting perceptions of truth. Put in those simple stark terms, relativism is absurd, since contradictory propositions cannot both be true, as proved in logic by the law of the excluded middle. However, relativism has strong cultural drivers from the historical reality that people have claimed access to truth in ways that have been false, so relativism is more a counsel of political humility than a statement of epistemic logic. As is typical with the formation of mythology, cultural relativism bleeds across into epistemic relativism, since advocates of tolerance wish to say that intolerance has no ethical or logical grounds.

Harry Marks wrote: Astronomy has nothing useful to say about managing aggression, the problem of adultery (cuckolding) for child-rearing, the enforcement of reciprocity in altruism, or the relationship between integrity and enforcement.

My view on this, which I am still gradually forming, is that the key theme in astronomy which is relevant to evolution, including the cultural evolution of values, is the orbital drivers of climate. This is a massive scientific topic which I consider provides the basis for the emerging paradigm shift around mythology. As we start to analyse real questions of how unconscious drivers operate at the level of the slow orbital causes of climate change, we can bring to explicit conscious awareness how these planetary cycles can and do in fact govern the overall instinctive direction of the formation of myth, including enframing our social ethical values.

youkrst wrote:

Harry wrote:Christianity is compatible with scientific reason, even in its literal, supernaturalist forms.

oh really
"Satan is a fallen angel who rules the world" is compatible with scientific reason?
you might have to break it down for me Harry, because i am having trouble putting it together.

Sure. Self-assertion and aggression are clearly pervasive, and one can make a good case that they "rule the world." That is why setting one power against another, in a system of checks and balances, is the only system which has managed to restrain the arrogance of power.
Satan embodies those forces. Even claiming that there is a literally real supernatural force behind their appearance and success is not a refutable hypothesis. It is not useful for science, but it is compatible with doing science, and believing in science as a viable process.
I would not argue that every fool thing ever said by a cleric is consistent with science, but the whole point of the "god of the gaps" observation is that there are still gaps. There are significant scientists who have also been Christians, and they have to let go of Biblical inerrancy, but that is still possible in a literalist framework.

Robert Tulip wrote:My point was that the errors of Christian myth did not evolve directly from the Gnostic coding of nature, but arose as an ignorant misunderstanding of Gnostic philosophy.

Okay thanks, I was able to follow you this time.

Robert Tulip wrote: You are citing here the obsolete false paradigm of Aristotle as an organising theory for why things fall. While the idea you cited may seem simple, it is untrue, and so generates false predictions.

Believe it or not, I knew that. My point was a response to your observation that we need a structure to ask questions and organize information. I am agreeing with you, but pointing out that the structure does not have to be unified or complete. Or, for that matter, correct.

Robert Tulip wrote:But as with Aristotle’s false theory of motion, his organising theory arose because he lacked method and interest to test his assumptions. The same thing happens in religion, where people find a theory to be emotionally comforting so lack interest to check its truth.

The phrase "emotionally comforting" is rather condescending here. Not that you in particular are guilty of this condescension: I hear it a lot from skeptics. "Giving a valid moral purpose to life" still falls under that category, but it evokes a totally different response, if you see what I mean. If I went around saying you believe in astrotheology because it makes you feel good to think you can replace religion with something ecologically oriented, that would be the same brand of condescension, if you see my point.

Robert Tulip wrote: The actual organising principle is political and emotional comfort, not the truth of the mythical claims. When we apply scientific organising principles, the rationale behind false beliefs emerges as very different from what their adherents think.

Right. That's what it means to say they are "mythical." It means they function - in my view they link understanding of fact to rationale for meaning and motivation. That may sound easy, but try it some time and you will see it isn't.

Robert Tulip wrote:We are seeing a similar paradigm shift occurring regarding the facts and implications around Christian origins. We are now at something of a Kepler-like stage, with books such as those of Carrier and Doherty cataloging the severe incoherence of the belief that Jesus was historical, and preparing the way for a new overall account of the common structure, much as Kepler did for Newton.

I don't think that is what we are witnessing. First, "severe incoherence" is not even close to an accurate description. Serious gaps, yes, but ask any historian about gaps and you will come to understand they are more likely than not. Incoherence happens when ad hoc modifications proliferate to explain facts which do not fit with the paradigm. That is not what you find for the work of scholars such as Crossan and Ehrman. They have had to clear out some of the underbrush of apologetics, but that is not the same as spinning ad hoc explanations which do not fit a historicist perspective.
Second, Carrier is scathing about Doherty (not that you don't find similar things between apologists and secularist historicists, or between one historicist and another) and similar inconsistencies breed like rabbits, because there is not a single causal structure just waiting to organize all the observations. By now there may be more theories of how a "Christ-myth" originated, or of apocalypticism in general, than there are theories of who the "historical Jesus" really was. The truth is that the gaps in our data and the complexity of the movements being studied make for a more-or-less impossible task of evidencing the true source of the Christian church.

Robert Tulip wrote:My reading on the relation between facts and meaning has been more in Rollo May (The Cry for Myth) and Carl Jung (Man and his Symbols) [than in Maslow, etc]. Their work is a line of thinking that does engage the supernatural from a scientific perspective, interpreting mythical claims in a psychological framework.

I haven't read either work, but I have read a lot of R. May and a fair bit of Jung, especially as quoted by Campbell and others, and I think both of them are first-rate interpreters of human seeking and the mysteries around it.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: Making the unconscious conscious is a less promising path, in my view, because, like Tillich's "broken myth" it presupposes some internal perspective which is outside the perspective which finds meaning in the old connections.

Theorising a new perspective is exactly what occurs with a paradigm shift, and does always involve bringing material to consciousness which previously was unknown and therefore unconscious. Where the ‘old connections’ as you put it are entirely unreal and mythical, such as for example the virgin birth, or Jesus sitting at the right hand of God in heaven, bringing the underlying meaning of these myths to conscious awareness is a highly promising path for better explanation.

Well, as I have been saying, time will tell. If you are going to include finding more facts as "making the unconscious conscious" then it is a somewhat shapeless category that tells us little. The point I was trying to make is that the forces at work in myth are not necessarily unconscious in the sense of Freud's libido or Jung's anima and animus.
Yes, if there is a connection to be made between seeing the world a certain way and doing the right thing, there are likely to be some unconscious processes that make it work or there would be no unpacking to do. But a very large share of those connections work consciously. Much of the raw material of religion is "sayings" (such as in the book of Proverbs). These work like Aesop's fables: capturing some useful truth about the world in a simple and memorable package.
And when we are not able to see "the mechanism," as it were, it may not be because of anything unconscious, but is apparent if you simply ask the question. Why did the Church latch onto the Virgin Birth? I doubt if it was an unconscious purity need - I think the urge to claim purity was as plain in that case as in the RCC "immaculate conception of Mary."
Recognizing psychological motivations needn't have anything to do with mysteries or over-arching invisible structures of archetype.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: I think terms like "unconscious" are going to have to be replaced by more explicit propositions such as "instinctive" or "repressed" or "raw perception".

Unconscious is a perfectly explicit term.

Not in my view. Too many things get swept up into that bin. Yours is the first time I have seen an application claiming that scientific truths were present in the unconscious before being recognized, which gives it a fourth category of mechanism.

Robert Tulip wrote:This recognition of cultural trauma appears to be a good explanation of the high value that the modern theory of liberal tolerance places on cultural relativism, the idea that no single truth can reconcile or measure conflicting perceptions of truth.

Oh, my, now here I think you are seriously off track. Cultural relativism is a fact: driving on the right side of the road is criminal in the U.K. and required in the U.S. Whether it applies to the wide range of things claimed to be a matter of relative values is a more difficult question, but it does to at least some.

This is a general phenomenon about values - two contradictory values can both be correct. Driving on the left is the correct side - in one context. Driving on the left is the wrong side - in a different context.

You may hold out hope that we can someday spell out a complete system of when different values rankings are appropriate, but in the meantime tolerance and relativism are far from absurd. They are necessary! (In a world in which all contingencies are known with certainty, tolerance may be second-best to a system of exact specification of when to use particular values, but in a world in which these are not known, then tolerance is first-best. See how that works? "It depends" is a really useful phrase.)

I think relativism is frequently claimed to be absolute truth, which is not only self-contradictory but overdoes a good thing. But it is rather important that we all recognize that truth about values does not work the same way as truth about facts and causal relations.

Robert Tulip wrote:However, relativism has strong cultural drivers from the historical reality that people have claimed access to truth in ways that have been false, so relativism is more a counsel of political humility than a statement of epistemic logic.

I will settle for political humility.

Robert Tulip wrote:As is typical with the formation of mythology, cultural relativism bleeds across into epistemic relativism, since advocates of tolerance wish to say that intolerance has no ethical or logical grounds.

In general "harming others" is not tolerated in any ethical system. The problems are mostly about what we classify as "harm" and when the "others" somehow don't count (such as when they are themselves likely to harm someone.)

Robert Tulip wrote:My view on this, which I am still gradually forming, is that the key theme in astronomy which is relevant to evolution, including the cultural evolution of values, is the orbital drivers of climate.

I suggest you look instead at the factors which influence the relative value of reproduction with small broods vs. reproduction with large broods. Investment in culture is clearly what pushed humans over the entropy barrier to find lifelong mating, mutual self-restraint and co-operation to be worthwhile goals.

I'm enjoying following (or trying to--no fault of the presenters) the discussion. Just a minor point on Harry's last post. I have the impression that Richard Carrier credits Earl Doherty's Book Jesus, Neither God Nor Man with setting him off on his own quest to show that Christ came first, then Jesus.

DWill wrote:...Christ came first...

it's interesting (to me at least)

that Christ means

The Christ (/kraɪst/; Ancient Greek: Χριστός, Christós, meaning "anointed"

and krst a far earlier egyptian idea

Although KRST wasn’t a title in ancient Egypt meaning anointing, mummies were nevertheless anointed with the most expensive embalming oils. Even Jesus was anointed with these oils after his crucifixion by the women closely associated with him in life. Mark 16:1

not saying anything i've just posted proves anything.

it's just that i find it interesting in the context of the whole seemingly neverending body of material surrounding ancient mythologies.

Harry wrote:Even claiming that there is a literally real supernatural force behind their appearance and success is not a refutable hypothesis.

there are many hypotheses that are not refutable.

that doesn't mean they are worth considering.

and the particular hypothesis you mention

Harry wrote:...there is a literally real supernatural force...

seems to be one that has done great damage.

but to me even the word "supernatural" sounds a mild alarm of sorts.

it's unnecessary as i can account for things without resorting to it.

just my thoughts.

Harry wrote:and they have to let go of Biblical inerrancy

yes, because it is a demonstrably false assertion.

youkrst wrote:

DWill wrote:...Christ came first...

it's interesting (to me at least)

that Christ means

The Christ (/kraɪst/; Ancient Greek: Χριστός, Christós, meaning "anointed"

and krst a far earlier egyptian idea

Although KRST wasn’t a title in ancient Egypt meaning anointing, mummies were nevertheless anointed with the most expensive embalming oils. Even Jesus was anointed with these oils after his crucifixion by the women closely associated with him in life. Mark 16:1

not saying anything i've just posted proves anything.
And I might add to your final statement that using any words at all from the Bible to support even just an observation is a shaky move if one has denied that the work has any information to give us. Now, you may protest that you've never said that. It is, though, a strong impression that I have, sorry if it's a mistaken one.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote: You are citing here the obsolete false paradigm of Aristotle as an organising theory for why things fall. While the idea you cited may seem simple, it is untrue, and so generates false predictions.

Believe it or not, I knew that.

Hi Harry, you might consider my comment here as a sort of throat-clearing introduction for the mass readership that this thread attracts. I do appreciate that you have heard of Aristotle’s ideas. Please forgive me for trying to make this slightly obscure conversation more accessible through this context.

Harry Marks wrote: My point was a response to your observation that we need a structure to ask questions and organize information. I am agreeing with you, but pointing out that the structure does not have to be unified or complete. Or, for that matter, correct.

Organising evidence on the basis of untrue claims has all sorts of difficult implications. For example if someone tells me that Boston is west of New York, and I don’t know any better, I am liable to go off on a wild goose chase in response to this organising framework if my aim is to drive from New York to Boston. The same principle applies in all scientific and religious study: if our starting premise is false then we suffer from the 'garbage in garbage out' syndrome and our results will be worthless. It worries me that you appear to defend the value of an incorrect theoretical framework for organising information. That is just the problem of incoherence I am critiquing in traditional theology.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:But as with Aristotle’s false theory of motion, his organising theory arose because he lacked method and interest to test his assumptions. The same thing happens in religion, where people find a theory to be emotionally comforting so lack interest to check its truth.

The phrase "emotionally comforting" is rather condescending here.

Yes, because religious people believe all sorts of false and dangerous ideas purely on the basis of emotional comfort. The belief in Jesus Christ as personal lord and saviour, simplistic concepts of eternal life, damnation, the virgin birth, creationism, inerrancy, all deserve head-patting condolence for anyone stupid enough to take them seriously. Rational discussion of religious ideas needs to radically exclude literal absurdity, while retaining benefit of the doubt regarding people’s sanity and commitment to polite dialogue where the other party also participates.

Harry Marks wrote: Not that you in particular are guilty of this condescension: I hear it a lot from skeptics. "Giving a valid moral purpose to life" still falls under that category, but it evokes a totally different response, if you see what I mean. If I went around saying you believe in astrotheology because it makes you feel good to think you can replace religion with something ecologically oriented, that would be the same brand of condescension, if you see my point.

The point about condescension in intellectual discussion is that people have the opportunity to justify their views. I am perfectly happy to respond in detail to polite critique of my views, since I know astral analysis of myth is unusual and most people don’t know the reasons behind it. That is completely different from ignorant religious error, where people have been indoctrinated in a belief whose epistemic foundations are like a house built on sand. Your point about ecology is a very different brand of condescension from my approach to religious fundamentalism. Ecology forms part of a scientific value system, and criticising ecology on principle involves some rather dubious ethical assumptions which can be examined on a logical evidentiary basis.

Harry Marks wrote: "severe incoherence" is not even close to an accurate description [of the belief that Jesus was historical]. Serious gaps, yes, but ask any historian about gaps and you will come to understand they are more likely than not. Incoherence happens when ad hoc modifications proliferate to explain facts which do not fit with the paradigm. That is not what you find for the work of scholars such as Crossan and Ehrman. They have had to clear out some of the underbrush of apologetics, but that is not the same as spinning ad hoc explanations which do not fit a historicist perspective.

Harry, Carrier’s demolition of Erhman’s Did Jesus Exist? at http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026 and elsewhere is comprehensive, and illustrates that “severe incoherence” is a good description for both Erhman and Crossan, who maintain a purely emotional belief in Jesus against all evidence.

Harry Marks wrote:Carrier is scathing about Doherty

No, you are wrong. Carrier respects Doherty and acknowledges him as a major influence, while disagreeing on points of detail.

youkrst wrote: there are many hypotheses that are not refutable.
that doesn't mean they are worth considering.

Just to be clear, I was defending "compatible with science" or a scientific outlook, or something like that. Not "worth considering" which is a different kettle of eels.