The Dan Barker Paradox
Dan Barker (b. 25 June 1949)
[quote=Dan Barker]The best way to become an atheist is to read the Bible[/quote]
A penny for your thoughts.
[quote=Dan Barker]The best way to become an atheist is to read the Bible[/quote]
A penny for your thoughts.
Comments (55)
-- Attributed to Winston Churchill, though it's hard to know for sure if he actually said it.
I'm glad to see you've left mathematics behind for the moment. :cool:
Point well made despite the minor controversy.
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."
What paradox?
(Worked for me by age 16.)
Interesting that you don't see a paradox. That in itself seems worth investigating.
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.
:zip:
[quote=Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a] 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."[/quote]
:fire:
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:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/FYDFBXx/1613515479030.png
[/img]
Switch a few words and it's the Thirty Years War.
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.
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.
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.
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!
You need to take it from there. Where does the trail end?
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.
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, Mah?bh?rata, 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).
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..."
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.
:up:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is what I meant by how Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed were limited by extant social, cultural, political paradigms. They all had a vision of greatness - a being/state of perfection which they called Yahweh, God, Allah - but this idea of greatness was, in a way, severely constrained by the environment in which it was born.
It's quite apparent, if one gives it some thought, that religion was/is a reaction to the familiar misery of human existence - all the myriad ways in which we could be and were/are inconsiderate, selfish, greedy, hateful, etc., in short evil/bad - and what is really depressing about it all is that all these alleged prophets ended up endorsing the very practices (your list above) that they should've been condemning.
At this point what I'd like to do is offer a suggestion; don't take it as an indictment of religion itself but as an unsurprising case of man's imperfect nature. We can't throw out a good idea just because the person who thought of it wasn't, and the people who adopted it weren't, perfect exemplars of whatever that idea is.
My take on religion, at least in the way it's presented in the preceding paragraphs, seems to hint at, if not openly assert that, religion is man-made. What else explains the many flaws, suspiciously human-like, that litter the theological landscape? However, for me, even if I'm severely rebuked for it, the very fact that someone, that too in the bronze age during which people probably had other pressing matters to deal with, took the pains to think of a ethics/morality, its complexities notwithstanding, redeems all the flaws religions suffers from. It's a feat as miraculous as a blind man acquiring the power of sight.
Thus, even if it's true that "The Bible fails egregiously in terms of moral values" it mustn't be forgotten that it counts as one of the first steps made by humanity into the world of morality/ethics and that being so, mistakes should be the norm rather than the exception. The Bible means something - it's a record of the pioneers of morality - and for that it must be given its due recognition/respect/admiration.
Quoting 180 Proof
Bravo!
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't see the point of denying an obvious fact - morality was born in the human mind, perhaps heart is a better word. Before humanity entered the world stage good and bad didn't exist. Nature, as we know it, is red in tooth and claw, the law of the jungle is a no-holds-barred fight to the death. In other words, like it or not, we, humans, are the foundation of morality, we're the representatives of good in the world, we're the source of goodness, we're the torchbearers who bring or, more accurately, are supposed to bring light into an otherwise dark universe.
Perhaps your resistance to the idea that humans are the foundation of morality arises from the fact that humans, despite how I've presented them above, are also the worst offenders - no other living organism can be attributed with as much needless violence and cruelty than humans. I have no choice but to accept this of course but at the same time you'll have to concede the fact that no other living organism has a sense of right and wrong, the so-called moral compass is distinctly human. Thus, drawing from the latter half of the preceding sentence, I take the position that humans are the foundation of morality, we are the moral face of the universe.
No. I'm resistant to your claim, Fool, because (a) it's incoherent and (b) is inconsistent with the mediocrity principle without sufficient warrant.
So what? Astrology was "one of the first" attempts to explain the world in terms of the wider, encompassing cosmos. Nonetheless it's useless for scientific or ethical inquiry. Like biblical religion.
The story I prefer to tell myself is one of metacultural development from mythos (infancy) to logos (adolescence) to ethos (adulthood) to philosophos (maturity) ... such that biblical religion aka "divine, or sovereign, right" is nothing but atavistic, infantilizing, (therefore eusocially effective at religare) mythology. Doesn't ethics as a secular discourse begin with the dialectic of mythos & logos, or the latter as critique-epoch? of the former?
I'm simply pointing out that the the beginning of anything, including ethics, will consist of missteps, faltering, stumbling, fumbling, teetering and tottering and this rather colorful description fits religion like a glove does it not? Doesn't religion look like a clumsy attempt at ethical philosophy? It does to me and so there's nothing surprising let alone shocking or appalling about the results - a poor performance on the part of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was simply unavoidable and the reasons for that could be that they, in a way, themselves stumbled upon the subject of ethics and they had nothing to go on but their intuitions - philosophizing was never a part of their world so, couldn't be brought to bear on what were probably simple gut-instincts on ethics.
Nope. See either Socrates or Confucius for a "clumsy attempt" at ethics. Religion never makes an "attempt" in so far as philosophy raises questions from aporia, or dilemmas, where as scriptures, like myths, tell stories that purport to resolve all moral questions with (divine) "Mysteries" which, of course, merely beg the question (e.g. g/G says "do not bear false witness" ... ok but why? ... Because it's "the will of" g/G (Plato's Euthyphro)), or, in other words, just gaslighting whomever about whatever's at issue. Biblical religion doesn't "attempt" ethics, or philosophy, because in order to cultivate abject credulity in gullible masses its sermons need only massage somnambulent "belief" and avoid provoking thinking for oneself (i.e. reflective inquiry).
[quote=1 Corinthians 1:18-20, KJV]18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?[/quote]
I've generally not seen theism as providing ethics or moral thinking at all but it does have commandments or codes of conduct, which are vastly different and no more than traffic lights to obey.
This, my friend, is the right question. Morality doesn't make sense even for the best philosophers as you must already know.
Let's get the facts straight. We know, almost to the point of certainty, what to do and what not to do. The evidence for that comes from ubiquitous moral codes we have at our disposal even though we seem rather reluctant in following them and this reluctance which sometimes takes the form of open rebellion if I may describe it as such is telling. For my money, such a state of affairs comes about for the simple reason that we have no good answer to your/the question, "ok but why?"
This is not to say that people haven't tried answering that question. However, for mutliple reasons the answers have failed to do their job. This, I suppose, means something too but from where I stand it looks like we're going to open up a can of worms and I, for one, am not in the mood for helminths at the moment.
That's about all I'm willing to say at this moment. Have a good day. I'll get back to you when I can, if I can.
It's not a non sequitur. There's little to disagree on when it comes to the matter of the prophets of the Abrahamic triad being pioneers in ethics in re the existing moral paradigms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That can't be denied unless these three religions are not about morality (something worth exploring) or that Moses has nothing to do with Judaism, Jesus has nothing to do with Christianity, and that Mohammed has nothing to do with Islam.
We've, for reasons such as our own plight in a universe that's indifferent to the misery of our condition, latched onto moral aspect of these religions and failed to see the real import contained therein.
Quoting TheMadFool
I wish that were true.
Speaking relatively of course. Requesting for a charitable interpretation of my words.
Nicely worded.
For Quoting Tom Storm
to muse over.
Yes and no. :naughty:
Yes Abrahamic religions are not "about morality" but about – Kierkegaard is instructive here – "the teleological suspension of the ethical" or, in lay terms, obeying the "will" (PLAN) of the ALMIGHTY as "revealed" through (HIS) CHOSEN "messengers" "messiahs" & "martyrs"; why would only (#6-9) four out of ten of the "Commandments" on Mt. Sinai have to do with morality (as well as the vast majority of the other "600+ mitzvahs" throughout Numbers Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc say nothing moral) if 'Abrahamic faith' was "about morality"? And why these (generic) four moral rules which must have predated Mt Sinai as indispensable cultural norms for maintaining (ANY) large social groups as Hebrew tribes "wandering together for 40 years" had to have been (if only by implication of the story)?
:halo:
And no "we" haven't "missed the point of these faiths" as evidenced by countless "divinely inspired" decrees of their respective clerics (or holy lunatics aka "prophets") which have for millennia lustfully launched, and thereby have been servilely executed BY THE OBEDIENTLY FAITHFUL, persecutions, library burnings, inquisitions, crusades, jihads, heresy witch hunts/trials, slave trading, conquests (via forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, genocides), ad hoc justifications of all manners of tyranny & state sanctioned atrocities, schismatic bloodbaths, official murders for "blasphemy" and on and on. GOD'S WILL OR DIE (& BURN IN HELL). Haven't you heard, brothers & sisters – "the truth shall set you free" John 8:32 (à la arbeit macht frei):
[quote=sayeth THE SAGE OF BALTIMORE]Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.[/quote]
Inshallah ... Im yirtze hashem ... Deus vult ... :pray:
You're damn right! Amen. :fire:
This is clear even in the holy books. Simple divine command theory. I find it telling that God commands his people not to wear mixed fabrics or to eat shellfish but is fine with slavery. So we could add it is the divine command theory of a moral monster.
Why are criticisms directed only at Christianity?
Quran, page 24, verse 5, The Dogma of Islam:
"In addition to the truths that the Muslim must believe, there are five duties that are prescribed for him: prayer, fasting, paying the tribute of the poor, pilgrimage to Mecca and holy war."
Removing passages from the Quran in which its fundamentalism and incompatibility with the West is explicit is Islamophobia, or facts? If you still have questions:
Quran, page 28, verse 4, The Style of the Quran:
"The world of the Quran is a male world. God speaks to men and speaks to him of women."
It is easy to criticize the religion that created the whole world that supports your freedom to come here to criticize that same religion.
It is difficult to criticize the strange enemy who, if catches you doing it, will end your existence.
I am definitely not criticising Christianity above all religions. My comment about people finding comfort in Christianity is based on the tradition I was raised in. Also, this particular thread was about the Bible.
Actually, I am interested in the whole discussion of comparative religion and my own thread on religion was meant to be general but the majority of people who engaged in discussion with me focused upon Christianity. Strangely, no one discussed Islam. Personally, I have never felt drawn towards Islam but I am not against it. I have friends who are Muslim and they are very open minded people. I think that stereotypes around terrorism do a lot of harm to perceptions of Islam.
Really, I am not against religion in general, but more interested in the esoteric side of religion, including Christianity, and the aspect of Islam which I would like to read more about is Sufism.
The same arguments used against Christianity can be used against Islam.
If your friends are Muslims, but do not follow the words spoken in their holy book - Quran -, they are not true Muslims.
Most likely, since your friends consider themselves Muslims, they would agree with this passage from the Quran, wouldn't they:
Quran, chapter 4, verse 34, The Women:
"Men have authority over women for what God has made them superior to and because they spend their possessions to support them. Good wives are obedient and keep their virtue in the absence of their husband as God has established. Those of whom you fear rebellion, exhort them, banish them from your bed and beat them. If they obey you, do not bother them anymore. God is high and great."
I really think you don't agree with this kind of thought...
(Indeed, I'm with my Quran in hands for this discussion)
OBS: I was not focusing on your sayings Jack. I used your comment to say what I wanted to say to everyone in the forum that acts like they know everything about religion, but only criticizes Christianity.
It is an interesting area of discussion and I have never discussed this side of Islam with the specific people who I know. The area I live in, Tooting, is Asian dominated, with a mix of Hindu and Muslim people, so I mix with Muslims on a daily basis. I really don't know how the fundamentalist aspects of the religion affect their lives. Muslim women and girls don't seem particularly oppressed. I imagine that it comes down to the cultural interpretation of the views.
I have to admit that I have never read any of the Quran. That is because I struggled enough with the Bible when I was a teenager, worrying about hell and damnation. The fear of hell is a bit separate from the political aspects of religion, although the ideas such as hell can be used to back up all kinds of political oppression. But, generally I see religious fundamentalism as a form of oppression.
Apart from Madfool's discussion about women's dress, Islam doesn't seem to be discussed much on the forum. I am not sure why.
Many of the pseudophilosophers who are part of this forum, insist on not touching on the subject of Islam precisely because they know that if the dogmas of this religion are debated, their views of "multiculturalism", "globalization", "integration of non-natives", etc... falls apart, because when you know the Islamic history, and about the theology of the Quran itself, it becomes explicit that the religion is not compatible with the West.
And therefore, if this religion is not compatible with the West, and they continue to defend its entering, they are not concerned with the good of the people under the regime of the religion, but with the political power that that religion provides.
A censorship tactic on their part that is easy to perceive is the use of the concept of "Islamophobia", which does not exist. What really exists is "cultural conservatism".
I think that you are correct to say that religion provides political power. I probably have not read that much about Islam to know its compatibility with the West. As I am living in a part of London where I am surrounded by Islamic people, shops and a mosque, I do wonder how it works, and I don't know. Perhaps the Muslims censor themselves in what they say, including what they reveal to me. So, on the forum and in real life there are probably many areas of conspicuous silence.
I became a Non-Theist from reading the Bible with a skeptical eye. But I later became an Agnostic after my introduction to nuanced philosophical thinking in college. Eventually, I became a Deist, due to the inherent evolutionary logic of Physics & Biology. Finally, I became an Enformationist after putting all of the above together.
Sorry, that progressive sequence of events is not as neat & simplistic as Barker's two-step epigram. Perhaps the complications resulted from combining self-doubt with Skepticism, in order to avoid the pitfall of Cynicism. That's my two-cents worth. :yikes:
Enformationism : all is Information; all is Mind; Enformation is energy + laws