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Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article ma
by lqet 8y ago
Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article makes obvious sense to me.
The difficulties translators have with any text should be a reminder of how painfully inadequate any language is as a mediator between two different brains. So much depends in context.
> Perhaps the first person to openly suggest otherwise was Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher, who daringly wrote that the books of the Bible ought to be studied in just the same way we would study Greek and Italian poetry.
This, 100 times. I am not a religious person at all. However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Yet nobody would ridicule Dante for assuming that hell lies in some cave in Tuscany. If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoA thousand years from now, perhaps Harry potter fans will be literally waging war on star wars fans
- 0_gravitas 8y agoAnd that the star wars religion will be split into three sects, one for each trilogy (all hail the prequels)
- lisper 8y agoL. Ron Hubbard fans are already waging war on anyone who crosses them.
- gus_massa 8y agoThe difference is that nobody was ever burn for proclaiming that Dante's work was just fiction. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying that these texts are "unrealistic" would get you in trouble.
- lqet 8y agoYou cannot blame the texts for being universal enough to be used as state philosophy during various times in the last 4000 years. And you certainly cannot use your point as an argument against religious texts in general. It was entirely possible to be executed for saying that Hitler's, Lenin's or Mao's texts were just fiction.
- tapland 8y agoThe Hitler, Lenin, Mao problems were temporary and not constantly ongoing for thousands of years while in essence defended pretty much world-wide. Not to mention the need for Hitler to have the support of the church.
- tomohawk 8y agoThe fact that people were burnt alive says more about the people in power than about any text. Certain people in power will always find ways to persecute people that disagree with them. See also, the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, Mao's Great Leap, and many other sad episodes where nasty people achieved power. There is no motivation in the teachings of Christ to burn people alive. Quite the contrary.
- Prologue 8y agoI agree with your first paragraph, but I really, really have to ask you: don't you consider the threat of being burned for all eternity, postulated by Jesus himself as a punishment for not believing not enough motivation?
- whatshisface 8y agoThat would be a motivation to believe yourself, or maybe to altruistically try to convert someone else, not to make the problem worse by getting someone else's burning started early.
- krapp 8y ago>However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. I don't think atheists would have a problem with anyone treating the Bible (or any religious text) as literature, since there would be a lot less religious violence in the event that religious doctrine couldn't be cited as an absolute authority. But, many modern Christians insist that the Bible must be taken literally, and that it should be taught as science, or presented as an alternative to science. Those are the people atheists are making fun of, and they deserve the ridicule. > If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above. What Karl Marx meant by that is not that religion makes people stupid and compliant (although sometimes it kind of can,) but that people use religion to soothe the burdens of life in an unjust and cruel world... and that the illusory comfort offered by religion often stands in the way of making real societal progress. People who believe that God alone will punish the wicked and reward the righteous and that every event, no matter how capricious or unjust, is part of some divine plan, will simply tolerate the world and trust God to change it, rather than try to change it themselves. And yet much of what could be considered progressive moral change in society has occurred in spite of religion, either through secular or scientific ideas pushing against religious authority and supernaturalism, or through reform within the religious community itself.
- lqet 8y agoI completely agree, and my paraphrasing of Marx was not against him, but against people using his quote blindly. But my original post was not about religion - again, I am no expert in any religion and don't consider myself religious - but about religious texts. But I might have massively (and shockingly) underestimated how much they are connected to the religion itself in the minds of many people.
- jackbravo 8y ago> What Karl Marx meant by that is not that religion makes people stupid and compliant (although sometimes it kind of can,) but that people use religion to soothe the burdens of life in an unjust and cruel world... and that the illusory comfort offered by religion often stands in the way of making real societal progress. People who believe that God alone will punish the wicked and reward the righteous and that every event, no matter how capricious or unjust, is part of some divine plan, will simply tolerate the world and trust God to change it, rather than try to change it themselves. This, a thousand times.
- ohithereyou 8y ago>Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Last time I checked, there weren't nations willing to go to war and religious orders wiling to persecute and murder people based on the works of Shakespeare, Dante, or Goethe.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoWhat about Hitler or Marx or Engels? It isn't just religious texts that result in wars.
- 0_gravitas 8y agoBut they do result in them often enough, dont they? Or are at least used to justify a lot of war-related actions.
- ohithereyou 8y agoThose texts were treated as religious texts in the regimes that followed them.
- scarecrowbob 8y ago"If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above." I generally agree with your take on how we should read these texts. However, nobody (that I know of) has been using Shakespeare to justify preventing me from buying whiskey on a Sunday. These texts are read as literal truth by the people where I live (rural Texas) and used to justify some pretty heinous things. So at the same time that we might wish to read these books as literature, I understand the impulse to dismiss certain modes of reading these texts as harmful. I don't know many folks who hate the literature itself, though I'm sure they exist somewhere; however, dismissing some exegetical modes seems reasonable to me.
- lqet 8y ago> These texts are read as literal truth by the people where I live (rural Texas) and used to justify some pretty heinous things. As a European who is pretty naive on this issue, I am slowly realizing how controversial my original post was as I am reading the responses here. I now regret writing it.
- krapp 8y ago>I now regret writing it. You shouldn't, you were completely correct, just not aware of how correct you were.
- DiffEq 8y agoExcept nowhere in the Bible does it say that you can not buy whisky on Sunday.
- pax 8y agohow else would/could be an atheist (or believer, for that matter) if not self-proclaimed? Does an atheist need external vetting to be a proper atheist? Also, what was the reason for the ironic quotation marks, do you imply those aren't real atheists?
- Retra 8y agoTo be fair, there is an argument to be made that a person's beliefs are better represented by their actual behavior under the conditions of life, rather than what they profess about them in hypotheticals. In that perspective, the best way to be an atheist would be to simply act like one.
- Prologue 8y agoAtheism is not a thing, it is not a religion nor a political position; it is not a cult where everybody acts the same, thus you cannot "act like an atheist". There are no actions you are required to perform in order to be considered an atheist. You can even go to church every sunday, as many atheists do, and still be an atheist.
- Retra 8y agoYou can "act like an atheist" by not making decisions which are based on the presumption that a deity will intervene. Pretty basic stuff here.
- vinceguidry 8y agoThis misrepresents religious belief. I don't make my decisions based on the presumption that a deity will intervene, and I do believe in God. In fact, making such a decision is called a leap of faith, and they're not to be taken lightly. When I'm not taking leaps of faith, that is, most of the time, I act the same way anybody would.
- Retra 8y ago
- nyolfen 8y agoin my experience, the atheists that mocked the unrealism of the scripture did so as a reaction to christian fundamentalists, who interpreted it literally and until recently wielded considerable political power