Dumb liberals who hate Jesus

By Rod Dreher • January 18, 2012, 12:24 PM

Robert Wright, a fallen-away Baptist and science writer, explains why it’s dumb for secular liberals to mock Jesus and Jesus-lovers. Excerpt:

Prominent among the political adversaries of secular liberals are religious conservatives, the more extreme of whom consider themselves to be at war with the prevailing culture. They may homeschool their kids (though not all homeschoolers share this attitude) or in other ways try to wall themselves off from this culture. When secular liberals who shape the culture fulfill the religious conservatives’ stereotype of them as threatening–by, say, seeming to ridicule Jesus, or seeming to ridicule Tebow’s faith–conservatives will be more inclined to stay within their walls, avoiding engagement with the secular world. So they’ll find it easier to reject the entire liberal agenda, ranging from gay rights to uncensored science education in the public schools. (Don’t get me started on the damage that I fear Richard Dawkins is doing to science education in the heartland by embodying a false equation between Darwinism and a militant, contemptuous atheism.) In short, when liberals are seen as ridiculing Christianity, they’re energizing their adversaries and making it harder to turn adversaries into allies, or at least neutral parties, on particular issues.

It’s hard for me to emphasize how correct Wright is here, from my own experience. When people believe you despise their God and them for believing in God, they will listen to nothing else you say. Richard Dawkins and his devotees are the best friends anti-evolution Christians have. They make Christians who are persuadable about the ability to reconcile their faith with evolutionary biology believe that to reject Biblical literalism is to take the side of nasty snots who hate Jesus. For so many people on the Dawkins side, it’s more important to publicly register their utter contempt for Jesus people than to persuade others to join their side, or to show a decent respect for others, even those you believe to be foolish.

89 Responses to Dumb liberals who hate Jesus

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Polichinello says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:04 pm

What you are trying to express in rather imprecise language is that Darwinian evolution is able (to some extent) to trace back the development of the human body to earlier living organisms, and that there was no need for God to step in directly at any stage to tinker with it.

But in Genesis He did tinker with it. He stepped in after the creation of the living creature to specifically create man. Now, does this mean he literally formed man from the mud? No, I don’t think you have to read Genesis like that, but there is an intervention that sets man apart from every other beast of the field and to have dominion over them, said offer to expire upon consumption of a certain specified fruit.

All this is necessary to Christian anthropology, but Darwin’s theory says there is no special difference between men and animals. The Descent of Man is written to demonstrate just that. And if you and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals (as the song goes), then the Fall and Salvation are out the door.

Now, the other answer is that He just set this all in motion and stepped back, but that’s just postulates a weak deism, and not a very efficient one at that. You can say that all this is beyond our understanding, and take it on faith that there’s a good involved at the end, but I don’t see how you or any other human can make that judgment better than the next guy who says otherwise.
Polichinello says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Crucially, however, it is not an article of Christian faith that “God is *needed* to explain man’s existence” (as something distinct from the rest of creation).

No creation, no fall, no need of salvation or the Christian faith.
Polichinello says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Polichinello, what you are actually arguing against is Naturalism, not biology.

No, I’m fine with both naturalism and biology. What I’m saying is that you can’t accept Darwin’s naturalistic theory of the world and still hold on to the supernatural belief in Christ, at least not in its more orthodox forms.

Also, bear in mind that your scriptural quotes come from a time when the existence of the divine was something of a given. It was a question of what form God took or expressed himself, but if you don’t really need God to explain the physical, life or man himself, then you don’t have a lot of the intellectual framework orthodox Christianity depends on. Forgive me, but it becomes about as tenable as the astrology page. If it helps you get through the day, fine, but it’s not very compelling.

Not that I find most atheists likeable. They generally tend to be a bunch of annoying supercilious SWPLs, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wrong here, either.
Joseph R. Stromberg says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:24 pm

The natural history of any online discussion of this type which I have seen (and that’s quite a few) runs like this: 1) someone raises a doubt about the truth of some proposition entertained by naturalists; 2) would-be defenders of science leap forth, expressing how “astounded,” etc. they are that anyone could be so stupid, ignorant, moronic, etc.; 3) their opponents show good manners at first; 4) tired of the naturalists’ insults, the other side adopts the same tone and things deteriorate rapidly.

Short version: the naturalists lower the tone at the outset and everything inevitably goes to Hell. This happens with law-like regularity.

I suppose someone could do a dissertation to see if this description is correct.

On another matter, there is no form “creda” in Latin. The 3rd conjugation 2nd sg. imperative is “crede” (plural “credite”). Subjunctives, which also might serve, are 2nd sg. “credas,” pl. “credatis.” You pick these things up reading the Vulgate.

(Sorry to seem petty, but I’m hoping to be admitted to the petty bourgeoisie someday.)
Carlo says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:43 pm

“All this is necessary to Christian anthropology, but Darwin’s theory says there is no special difference between men and animals. ”

Again, I apologize for being snarky, but this is absurd. How can you say that with a straight face? Don’t you realize that you are making a humongous philosophical extrapolation from a biological theory? Can’t you make elementary epistemological distinctions?

Darwin theory says that BIOLOGICALLY there is no special difference between men and animals. And who ever questioned that? The biblical claim is precisely that man is a meta-biological creature, so how can you disprove that based on biology? Don’t you see the glaring contradiction?
JonF says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:46 pm

Re: You can have one or the other, not both. Dawkins may be a bit of snot, but he’s right about this. In the end, it’s Darwin or Christ.

Quite a few us– myself certainly– and Rod (I think)– and a number of other posters here do manage to have both Christ and science, including Mr Darwin. That simple fact refutes your grandiose claim. Science at its base is empirical: all claims must be tested against hard reality. Yours above fails that test right out the gate.
wassercom says:

January 18, 2012 at 5:56 pm

I’ve found that believers (of the religious variety) have little problem reconciling the fact of evolution with their theology. Specifically, they are willing to concede that the earth is more than 5000 years old and that humans are descended from lower life forms.

The problem arises when you start talking about the underlying mechanism of evolution: completely random mutations that can cause either great harm (look at the panoply of awful genetic diseases we have to deal with) or, very rarely, a survival advantage that gets passed on. Why God would choose such a blunt, and often cruel, tool to create life on earth is a philosophical challenge…at least for me.
JonF says:

January 18, 2012 at 6:04 pm

Re: According to evolution, we are an accident. We have no more intrinsic value than the bacillus that causes malaria

The first does not follow logically from the second. And indeed, you are making an excessively strong claim even in the first statement, though certain atheists do make that claim, but it is not, strictly speaking, scientifically true since it is a philosophical statement not a scientific one.
However it is perfectly possible to find beauty and worth and value and meaning even in pure randomness. Moreover science does not deal with those questions at all, so when you make that jump you have left science behind and are treading the ground of scientism, which is simply a metaphysical pose masquerading as science.

Re: There’s no meaning or plan behind man’s development. Christian theology, OTOH, says God created everything with a plan in mind, and man is the crown of that creation.

You are also overstating what Christian theology posits. It does posit that God created everything (but does not insist on the how of it), and it only makes a limited claim for humankind: that we are the best and most God has created so far on this world; Christian theology does not presume to claim that God has not created other wonders elsewhere, and might not create greater things in the far future– any theology that did that would be replacing Christian piety with human arrogance. Moreover our theology assures us that even we humans will someday become something much greater than we are.
Finally, thinkers as diverse as Teilhard de Chardin and CS Lewis have managed quite easily to reconcile Darwinism with traditional Christian theology.

Re: Darwinian evolution shows teleology isn’t needed to explain man’s creation.

When the muon (a fundamental particle) was discovered one of the great physicists quipped “Who ordered that?” Because the muon was not needed to explain anything, and in fact is still quite unnecessary (as are several other apparently fundamental particles). So yes, “unnecessary” things are not prohibited in science. Moreover, science itself is not a complete explanation of the world; it gives us the “how” (on a provisional basis only), but leaves aside teleological questions. That does not mean teleology is irrelevant, only that science does not investigate it.

Re: problem is that that Genesis account, and later Christian writers, all depend on the main point of the story: that God specially created man for a special purpose.

Our purpose derives from our future, not from our past. (Note: that is true of purposes in general: they point forward, not backward).

Re: No creation, no fall, no need of salvation or the Christian faith

Original Sin (the corruption of human nature) is observable fact, even if one does not call it that. Evolution does not dispute the obvious fact that we humans are far from perfect and capable of awful deeds. The tale in Genesis an allegorical account (it even reads that way) and does not need to be literally true for us to need salvation.
TTT says:

January 18, 2012 at 6:09 pm

Erm, Joseph, have you read this thread? The TITLE was “Dumb liberals who hate Jesus.” I’m hard pressed to find these alleged good manners you claim to have seen in these discussions. Why don’t you show me an example? Most of the science / secularism posters have asked for a consideration of a broader history, which most of the “you dumb liberals!” side seems unwilling to discuss or engage upon. You can’t discuss history with someone more interested in emotive lectures.

What kind of “good manners” do you believe were on display in, say, the Dover ID trial? Do you know that the definitive account of that event is titled “Monkey Girl”? And if so, do you know why that title was chosen?
jaybird says:

January 18, 2012 at 7:06 pm

The tale in Genesis an allegorical account (it even reads that way) and does not need to be literally true for us to need salvation.

This is a big sticking point that I think both atheists and fundamentalists are right to insist on: If we can read Genesis allegorically, I don’t see any reason why the Gospels can’t also be read the same way. Some poster earlier made the C.S. Lewis-inspired argument that the Gospels are “The Myths that are Fact.” I don’t see how this is anything other than special pleading. It’s just spectacularly unconvincing to anyone who doesn’t already believe to say “well, yes, yes, miracle-working, dying-and-rising god-men are a dime-a-dozen in ancient near-East mythology, but in this case, it actually happened.

To put it another way, if the idea that Original Sin supposedly came into the world by a talking snake convincing two people to eat a piece of magical fruit is strictly mythical, then why can’t the expiation of that supposed sin by a magical blood-sacrifice also be regarded as mythical?
MH - secular misanthropist says:

January 18, 2012 at 7:20 pm

Given the confluence of Christianity and the Republican party over the past thirty years, is it any wonder that people on the other side of the political spectrum view both with animosity?

Also, if you look at the ARIS surveys the long term trend favors the nones. The atheists have figured this out, and are feeling their oats. Hence the muscular rhetoric as they try to win converts. Of course this proselytizing will alienate people, but isn’t that the flip side of Republican Jesus?
J says:

January 18, 2012 at 7:21 pm

When people believe you despise their God and them for believing in God, they will listen to nothing else you say.

You keep asserting that the New Atheists are out to win converts and elections, Rod. That contains assumptions they don’t share.

For one, atheism is properly reached by deconversion rather than conversion, by diminishing and abandoning the warrants for belief in castles in the air altogether rather than shifting belief around to more nicely built ones with more amusing rationalizations. For another, the New Atheists consider religionism on par with e.g. meth addiction- the people who make it their identity can quit it for periods of time. However, unless they truly dry out and solve the sad reason they fell into it, they inevitably relapse. Just like accommodating meth addicts, the New Atheists believe going out of their way to be kindly to religionists is ultimately in vain, the harsh confrontations are inevitable and must at times be sought out. Because experience shows that untruth and truth can have armistices but never coexist in a true peace.

The New Atheist game is not to persuade religionist Christians to profess evolutionary theory as a new article of faith, which is merely a rearrangement of desires and rationalizations and the moving of lips. It is to identify and demonstrate the incoherence and lacking integrity and intellectual marginality of religionists and religionisms in the world. Especially to the young, and notably the young of religionists. Spittle-beflecked screeds excoriating Dawkins and convicting him of imaginary crimes and insults ultimately do that job rather well for him.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 18, 2012 at 7:44 pm

I was once offered a book by Ken Hamm, which ranted at length on the theme that children raised in good Christian homes go to college and learn about evolution and lose their faith. I immediately pointed out to the man who offered me that book, that this is very easy to understand. All their formative years, they have been taught that evolutionary biology and the Bible are incompatible. Then, they go to college, and learn that there is indeed a tremendous mountain of evidence for evolutionary biology, developed by tens or hundreds of thousands of researchers, over a period of 150 years plus, a field which outshines by far the primitive efforts of Charles Darwin to explain the empirics only beginning to be identified in his lifetime. Naturally, they conclude that the Bible must be wrong. If they had been raised more sensibly, they would not have felt impelled to abandon their faith.

Polichinello needs to read, or take another look at, C.S. Lewis. He pointed out that when a prayer is answered, there is always a series of physical, observable, phenomena which are necessary to delivering whatever was sought. Therefore, an answered prayer is just as good evidence that prayer doesn’t work, as an answered prayer. Similarly, evolutionary biology identifies a host of empirical events that, if there is a God who created all there is, necessarily resulted from the divine command. Genesis, for example, reads “Then God said, let the water bring forth the living thing that hath life…”

One thing science hasn’t begun to settle is why the initial, complex chemical reactions that resulted in self-replicating life occurred. The best articles I’ve read are quite consistent with Genesis. As for humans, while it is more than obvious that our bodies and physiology evolved from primates, there is no biological explanation for our unique dominance, technological capacity, etc.

Dawkins has smugly argued that the Son of God will be found buried in the rubble once evolution is accepted, and Polichinello appears to agree with Dawkins, but Dawkins is indulging in tautology. The Son of God may have had everything to do with why we are different from all the other animals. In fact, there are some curious facts about human evolution. For millions of years, primates capable of making primitive tools advanced very little, but some 50,000 or so years ago, a small number went through a genetic bottleneck, physically isolated from all the others, and emerged with language, art, new techniques… Science doesn’t explain how this happens, and it certainly doesn’t prove that there is a God. But we walk by faith, not by sight, n’est-ce pas?
John E says:

January 18, 2012 at 8:04 pm

The problem arises when you start talking about the underlying mechanism of evolution: completely random mutations that can cause either great harm (look at the panoply of awful genetic diseases we have to deal with) or, very rarely, a survival advantage that gets passed on. Why God would choose such a blunt, and often cruel, tool to create life on earth is a philosophical challenge…at least for me.

The God of the Old Testament is well known for using blunt and cruel tools to work His purposes – just ask the First Born of Egypt.
Rod Dreher says:

January 18, 2012 at 8:05 pm

TTT: Erm, Joseph, have you read this thread? The TITLE was “Dumb liberals who hate Jesus.” I’m hard pressed to find these alleged good manners you claim to have seen in these discussions.

Erm, TTT, the title was a snap characterization the Bob Wright post. Wright is a secular liberal who is calling his own side dumb, or rather, calling dumb those on his own side who insist on making cruel fun of the religiosity of their opponents.
JonF says:

January 18, 2012 at 8:07 pm

Re: If we can read Genesis allegorically, I don’t see any reason why the Gospels can’t also be read the same way.

I can (and do) read pagan Greek accounts of creation and Original Sin (e.g., the opening of Pandora’s Box in response to Prometheus stealing fire) as allegory too. Does this mean that I must read ancient histories of Alexander the Great as allegory too? I really do not get the logic here. “If one is allegory, all must be allegory”? Huh?
jaybird says:

January 18, 2012 at 9:01 pm

I can (and do) read pagan Greek accounts of creation and Original Sin (e.g., the opening of Pandora’s Box in response to Prometheus stealing fire) as allegory too. Does this mean that I must read ancient histories of Alexander the Great as allegory too? I really do not get the logic here. “If one is allegory, all must be allegory”? Huh?

Well, do you also believe any miraculous claims about Alexander the Great? I think that’s the relevant forest you’re missing for the tress here. I have no problem believing that their was an itinerant Jewish preacher in 1st century Palestine who was executed by the Romans for the crime of sedition. It’s the many other, miraculous claims in the Gospels that seem to me to be no more or less mythical than Genesis.
MH - secular misanthropist says:

January 18, 2012 at 9:05 pm

JonF, it’s more like “why should I believe any particular myth is true when there’s no way to tell them apart?”

Also this notion that original sin or the brokenness of human nature is an observable fact is a bit of hand waving. Brokenness implies a comparison to a standard, but what is that standard? A theistic belief system obviously uses God, but an atheist would agree with Protagoras that man is the measure of all things, so they’ll ask compared to what?
Sands says:

January 18, 2012 at 10:11 pm

“If one is allegory, all must be allegory”? Huh?”

How do you choose? If the very first book of the Bible is no more literal than a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, at what particular point do you start taking the Good Book seriously?
sdb says:

January 18, 2012 at 11:33 pm

Sands,
The answer is hermeneutics. Do you believe that tree’s have hands? Of course not, David’s language in the Psalms is poetic. How do we know? If I can take David’s language as poetry in Psalms, must I take Paul’s language in Romans poetically as well? Of course not! The genre’s are different.

But even within a straightforward narrative, one can use metaphorical language. Is Jesus really a door and a vine? Of course not, these are metaphors. What about his use of hyperbole and parables? If Jesus uses hyperbole in one passage, but I assume that everything he says is hyperbolic? Of course not.

If Jesus’s claim that he is a vine is a metaphor, should I not take it seriously because he wasn’t speaking literally (Amelia Bedelia is perhaps a useful object lesson of the kinds of trouble you can get into if you take language too literally!). Clearly, taking the Bible seriously demands that read the text in such a way that we distinguish among the genre’s in the bible – a responsible hermeneutic distinguishes among poetry, allegory, myth, historical narrative, etc… in the text. This shouldn’t need saying – this is conservative hermeneutics 101.

The controversy, such as it is, is over how to determine which texts are allegorical and which are historical (Job and Jonah inspired some debate amongst conservative protestant exegetes). How the first 11 chapters of Genesis are to be understood is also controversial, but it is worth noting that Augustine didn’t take this text particularly literally, B. B. Warfield (the guy who literally wrote the book on Biblical inerrancy and helped found the fundamentalist movement) thought Darwin’s model of evolution was consistent with a biblical understanding of creation, and Calvin’s (yes that Calvin) commentary on Genesis (particularly his discussion of the greater and lesser lights) is worth reflecting on – namely the description of creation in genesis is not technically rigorous as it is written for the common man.

Needless to say, the inclusion of non-literal genre’s in the bible does not necessitate a hermeneutic free for all.
sdb says:

January 19, 2012 at 12:14 am

Back in the 90′s the NABT officially defined evolution as, “The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.” Alvin Plantinga and others pointed out that it is impossible to know from science whether evolution is unsupervised and impersonal. My understanding is that those two words were dropped due to their metaphysical baggage.
sdb says:

January 19, 2012 at 12:26 am

One last comment on this thread… it is worth noting that there is actual data on why conservatives and religious believers are underrepresented among academics and scientists (respectively). Ecklund’s work shows that childhood religiosity predicts adulthood religiosity just as well for scientists as it dos for the general public. In other words, the reason that most scientists aren’t religious believers, is because religious believers don’t pursue scientific careers (in academia anyway) at the same rate as more secular people. Where is exactly this selection effect kicks in wasn’t clear in the papers I’ve see thus far.

There is longitudinal data looking at why conservatives are underrepresented among academics. It turns out that the selection effect is determined by one’s political outlook in high-school. The suggestion that conservatives do not pursue academia because the are more interested in making money, are less intelligent, or get married earlier were not born out by the data presented by Fosse et al.

Given the overlap among political conservatives and religious believers, I suspect a similar effect is at work. The data suggests that Wright’s intuition about the effect of Dawkins and his ilk are correct.
Joseph R. Stromberg says:

January 19, 2012 at 1:57 am

TTT: I read a number of blogs. I can’t read all of them. On the ones I do read — leftist, liberal, *sane* conservative [= not neo-con], and libertarian — it is usually the secularists who start the name calling. That is my observation. As some comedian turned warmonger used to say, “I could be wrong.” Nor can I guarantee that either side will always be civil in these discussions.

But the fundamental issue may turn out to be scientism — an issue bigger than saying that Darwin might have been a bit hasty. It’s about the claim that the 17th-century turn in philosophy got something important quite wrong in throwing out formal and final causes. You don’t have to be a Straussian to see that, and indeed we had any number of American writers (good God, we don’t expect that here) who knew this long before Strauss graced us with his ambivalent presence on our shores — e.g., John Wild [Episcopalian, phenomenologist & realist], Mortimer Adler, Fr. Toohey, Fr. Brennan, and others. The more interesting biologists — Paul Weisz, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and Marjorie Grene — have understood the necessity of ‘Aristotelian’ categories in biological science. Teleology is like Freud’s ‘repressed’: it always comes back to bite you in the arse.

And thanks to ‘sdb’ for bringing some sense into the allegorical business. The Ancients thought in poetic terms and it wouldn’t kill us to try it. [No we can't -- we're the Americans, whose 'can-do' pragmatism always betrays us into setting up impossible phantasms of our own making, alongside our merely technical achievements. Voegelin may be of use here.]

Everything considered (as far as I know about it), I imagine that ‘directed evolution’ will prove the best line of investigation.
Dave D. says:

January 19, 2012 at 3:10 am

What’s annoying is that it’s not about respecting others as people, its about not insulting them to get a desired result (acceptance of liberal social ideas, preventing a Christian clash of civilizations.) If we just treat them nice, that might weaken their tendency to dig in and resist, and then they’ll swallow the medicine of the liberal agenda.

The end result really is the same, as is the goal. They just differ on the methods.
JonF says:

January 19, 2012 at 5:41 am

Re: JonF, it’s more like “why should I believe any particular myth is true when there’s no way to tell them apart?”

Well then, why believe the histories of Alexander (In the main, not in every detail), since you do not presumably believe the myths of Hesiod? I suppose you can say “archaeology”, but there’s far less of that corroborating those histories than you might think.

Re: Also this notion that original sin or the brokenness of human nature is an observable fact is a bit of hand waving.

Can you really tell me you see nothing amiss with humankind? Nothing? Even Voltaire, notorious secularist and and skeptic, knew better than that– hence an entire novel (Candide) lambasting the Panglosses of his day.
Roger says:

January 19, 2012 at 6:11 am

Is Bob Wright really just a secular liberal?

I doubt he is any sort of practising Christian but his big book is at its core a rehash of Teilhard de Chardin’s mystical view of evolution as God’s plan to unify all creation.

The problem is that we (or at least you Americans – we Godless Europeans have an entirely different problem) are now so polarised that sane, moderate and inclusive voices on both sides are ever more marginalised by the bellowing morons (and what else would you call the audience in SC that jeered Ron Paul for even mentioning the Golden Rule?).
Carlo says:

January 19, 2012 at 6:53 am

Sands:

” If the very first book of the Bible is no more literal than a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, at what particular point do you start taking the Good Book seriously?”

The fact that you seems unable to distinguish “literal” from “true” puts you firmly in the same hermeneutical camp as believers in Biblical inerrancy. Enjoy the company…
John E says:

January 19, 2012 at 7:29 am

Alvin Plantinga and others pointed out that it is impossible to know from science whether evolution is unsupervised and impersonal. My understanding is that those two words were dropped due to their metaphysical baggage.

And rightly so…
MH - secular misanthropist says:

January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am

JonF asked, “Well then, why believe the histories of Alexander (In the main, not in every detail), since you do not presumably believe the myths of Hesiod? I suppose you can say “archaeology”, but there’s far less of that corroborating those histories than you might think.”

The claim someone once lived and ruled over other human beings is not that out of the ordinary, so I don’t have a reason to doubt it. But when claims diverge from the reality I experience, I become skeptical. The New Testament talks of turning water to wine, casting out of demons, walking on water, miraculous creation of food, and the dead coming back to life. I’ve never seen any of that happen, so I assume it was all made up, like claims of miracles in other cultures.

JonF asked, “Can you really tell me you see nothing amiss with humankind? Nothing?”

Amiss or wrong as compared to what? You’ve asked me this before and I’ve said that there are things about humanity I dislike, but I’m a human doing the measuring, so that means evil is a word humans call things we don’t like. Now I’m not saying there is not an objective standard for morality, but we don’t seem to have access to one.
Sands says:

January 19, 2012 at 12:09 pm

Carlo,

If the very first book of the Bible is no more *true* than a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, at what particular point do you start taking the Good Book seriously?

There I changed it for you. Now can you please tell me, and all my fellow non-believers, what parts of the Bible are *true*? I might make want to make a conversion someday, and I sure wouldn’t want to waste my time; I want to skip right to the parts that (you say) are true.
Carlo says:

January 19, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Sands:

I never said Genesis is not true. To the contrary: I implied that truth can be also expressed in non-literal ways. The problem with you and your fellow protestant fundamentalists is that you don’t understand literary genres…
Sands says:

January 19, 2012 at 3:10 pm

“…you and your fellow protestant fundamentalists…”

Yikes! That statement is literally untrue. And, dude, I mean literally.
MH - secular misanthropist says:

January 19, 2012 at 3:11 pm

Carlo, is the water to wine miracle described in John allegory or can that be read literally?
Carlo says:

January 19, 2012 at 3:36 pm

“Yikes! That statement is literally untrue. And, dude, I mean literally”

I agree. It is literally untrue. It is perfectly true if understood in the appropriate sense: you and they are PHILOSOPHICAL fellows (not religious).

“Carlo, is the water to wine miracle described in John allegory or can that be read literally?”

As you certainly remember from reading Dante, there are 4 possible meanings: literal, allegorical, spiritual and anagogic. In this case I think all four apply, but I am happy do discuss further if you like.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 19, 2012 at 4:52 pm

I’m agnostic about curing leprosy, raising the dead, and turning water into wine. Incidentally, many devout theists deny that Jesus did any of these things. They are called Jews. For some reason, most evangelical Christians who are quite certain that Jesus did all these things are deeply respectful of Jews, at present.

Ultimately, what distinguishes allegory from fact in metaphysical matters is faith, not proof and evidence. I don’t “have faith” that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. I have evidence of contemporary accounts, and subsequent elaboration, with some archaeological findings to back them up. There are many details that may or may not be accurate – but few would affirm as a matter of faith that any given tale is or is not true.

There is a difference between most religious stories and the Judeo-Christian-Muslim line of stories: God is One, transcendent, the creator of all that is, seen and unseen, rather than gods running around like warped superheroes with great powers and all too human motives. The details of this or that story, allegorical or historical, pale by comparison.
JonF says:

January 19, 2012 at 5:53 pm

MH:
Eveything we know and experience, we know and experience as humans via human senses and human minds. If that’s the tool you want to wield in the cause of skpeticism you should know that it’s a universal reagent, capable of dissolving all knowledge, right down to 2+2=4.

For my part I just accept that there’s no such thing as true objective knowledge, only (at best) things that many people experience and understand similarly. But there is an irreducible to reality and you’ll be less confounded if you can warm up to it a bit.
MH - secular misanthropist says:

January 19, 2012 at 7:51 pm

Carlo, I was just trying to get a feel for where you started to draw the line between allegory and possible historical narrative.

JonF, I see no need to be skeptical about reality or arithmetic because I see their practical utility, they don’t appear to violate my experience, and there’s a practical consensus about them.

I see major reasons to be skeptical about claims of the supernatural or metaphysical because I have never experienced it, and the claims conflict with each other. Basically I am an empirical skeptic which is not that radical a philosophical position. Also, I don’t understand your last sentence.

Siarlys Jenkins, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam may all claim to worship the God of Abraham, but each claims to be the true final revelation. This seems to be problematic and is compounded because each has further internal divisions. So the narrative seems less than clear to me.

Also many Hindus view their God’s as allegory and only the Brahman is real, so I think the difference is not as stark as you suggest.
Kevin Vail says:

January 19, 2012 at 8:26 pm

If you believed the Bible Rod, you’d know the natural man is an enemy of God, its plainly stated often within its pages and its obvious to any who has eyes to see.
sdb says:

January 20, 2012 at 12:53 am

Sands,
Do you take the Psalms literally when David proclaims that trees clap their hands in praise to God? Or when they say the Earth is not moved? If you can’t take the Psalms literally, how do you take any of it literally? One way is to analyze the genre – clearly the poetry in psalms uses many figures of speech that aren’t meant to be taken literally.

If you turn to the first two chapters of Genesis, it opens with an ancient near eastern literary style that is poetic. Notice the structure of the seven days:
Days 1-3, God makes the place for each of the items he fills them with in Days 4-6 and the rests at the pinnacle. These kinds of structures show up throughout the OT books (look at the structure of the book of judges and some of the other prophets) and tell us something about how the texts should be read. The genre of Genesis 1 is quite different than say the gospel narratives. So yes, in answer to MH, the story of Jesus turning water into wine is meant to be taken literally (consider Luke’s prologue). This is very different from Genesis 1 (indeed the first 11 chapters).