Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. We agree on another thing– any movement, religion, political party, or “cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion” which asks you to check your brain at the door is dangerous.

Aggressive and hateful voices are not the most plentiful in any religion or movement, they’re just the loudest. Your courtesy and thoughtfulness prove that.

Funny you should mention Joshua– I’ve had it on my mind in this conversation. It’s probably the hardest book in the Bible for me to read– very violent. But I know that many of the cities the book says were destroyed were not actually destroyed– you can see that in the books of Samuel. Why the discrepancy?

The language of Joshua and most of the Torah is very late; it shares the language characteristics of books written right before or during the Babylonian exile. To me what the author of Joshua was saying was, “Terrible things are about to happen, things that seem to make no sense (the wiping out of the kingdom of Israel and the exile of the inhabitants of Judah). These things are not random events. Be ruthless in holding to what you believe. These bad things are not the final word.” The message worked; Judaism was, as far as I can tell, the only local Middle Eastern religion of that time that was able to jump from being tied to one locale to being universal. It survived by being as adamant in its beliefs as Joshua.

Thank you for this discussion. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

Love

George

“Finally, I have a great deal of respect for fairy tales. They are the delivery system of choice for folk wisdom, concealed in an outlandish tale which foolish people can ignore.”

I feel this way about fairy tales, and also about religions. But I don’t feel that the folk wisdom passed down in fairy tales (or religions) is always a positive message. I’ll take your example:

“Take “Cinderella”, for instance. Ninety-five percent of people laugh it off as something stupid and move on. The other five percent get the message– “Treat even the least of people with respect; you don’t know who they really are, or what they will become in the future.”

I think there is another, stronger, message in Cinderella: “If you find yourself in an abusive situation, don’t take action to get yourself out, instead be obedient to your abuser, don’t complain, wish really really hard, and rescue will come magically.” To me, this is ancient society setting up the expectation in little girls that they should grow up to be docile obedient sheep, and that prayer is better at solving problems than action. This is not a message that I want to send my own children in our modern day and age.

As another example I’d like to use the “Veggie Tales” movie “Josh and the Big Wall” that was sent to my childen by my fundamentalist brother-in-law. It retells the story of Joshua using cute computer-animated vegetables as the actors, it protrays Jericho as a castle topped by slurpee-throwing peas who taunt Joshua in French accents (a la Monty Python), and overall it’s very clever and funny. It’s been given quite the fairy-tale spin. But the film is quite clear that the central message of the story is “do what god tells you, even when it doesn’t make any sense” And they conventiently leave out the uncomfortable part about god ordering Joshua to slaughter every man, woman, child, and animal in the city afterwards.

So I see fairy tales and religion each carrying a mixed bag of good lessons (be kind, work hard, play fair, children can be unexpectedly wise) bad ones (you can’t escape destiny, faith and prayer are more important than actions, never ever be disobedient – even when your ruler is a tyrant, it’s good to abandon your responsibilities to follow a prophet) and downright dangerous ones (Women are responsible for evil, witches must be burnt, I’ts OK to kill nonbelievers, or even your own child – if god tells you to). I am working very hard with my own children to help them sort out these mixed messages out for themselves.

I think our view of people in general is not really that different. You see the “light of God” shining out of people, regardless of which faith they belong to. I see it as the “light of Humanity” shining out of people, regardless of whether or not they believe in the supernatural. The level of basic human decency I see in a person seems totally unrelated to which god or gods they do or don’t believe in.

Well, I think I’ve droned on long enough. George, it’s been refreshing to have a serious talk online with a Christian who does not bible-thump and preach at me. Thank you. I’ll sign off of this thread now, it’s gotten so long. But I will be lurking around this site in the future, so we may talk again.

First, apologies to readers. I want to answer Greg, but it’s going to take a bit of writing to do so.

I apologize for not making myself clear. I was talking about personhood, not individuality. Individuality talks about the basic unit of human society, comparable to how the ancients spoke of atoms in physics. Personality is that which is inherent and unique, that which is self and no other, a persistent and unique identity. We are both human beings, and as such we are individuals; you cannot divide us further without destroying the fact that we are human beings. Personhood is what makes me George and you Greg, what makes us uniquely George and you uniquely Greg, and not just faces in a crowd.

Personhood, the idea of unique identity, was developed as the result of a debate over the Christian Trinity which spanned several centuries. Theologians had to figure out how there could be three beings– Father, Son, Holy Spirit– but only one God. In the end, they simply concluded that , even though each member of the Trinity was fully and indivisibly God, yet each possessed something unique, undefinable, but real in nature. They called that elusive quality “persona”, which is the ancient name for the masks people wore in Greek theatre. The late Roman empire codified the concept under the Emperor Justinian. That,in turn, inspired philosophers in the early modern period, such as Locke, to speak of the unique and unalienable rights which vest in persons. And we, in turn, accept personality to an extreme degree. Under our law, we even grant personhood to corporations, which can never be individuals.

Personhood is a tough concept, partially because it is so familiar. We see it as normal, and we project it on other cultures. But, unless you know Aristotle, it’s a very difficult concept to define and discuss.

I spoke of Buddhism being misunderstood in the West, and especially in America. Personhood is one of the reasons we have trouble understanding Buddhism, because Buddhism lacks such a concept. Nirvana is not liberation of an individual being, but liberation from an individual being. The closest Buddhism comes to discussing personhood is when it discusses the srota, the stream of events which gives rise to the illusion of individuality.

As for the name “Israel”, I spoke from a theological and Biblical standpoint. In the Torah, Israel first refers to Jacob, the individual. Then, in the Exodus story, it refers to a root source or being; Exodus speaks constantly of the “children of Israel”, even though the events described in Exodus occur hundred of years after Jacob’s death. In Deuteronomy, Moses uses “children of Israel” and “Israel” interchangeably. Even later texts refer simply to Israel the individual, as a synecdoche .

In the same biblical and theological framework, the physical territory of Israel is usually referred to as “the land of Canaan”.

Finally, the people who comprised Israel as a political whole were called Hebrews before entering Canaan, Israelites in Canaan, and Jews after the Exile.

Israel thus is a collective whole, a composite being, of whom the Israelites were part. As you well know, it’s not an expression of nationhood; that concept didn’t appear until late medieval/early modern Europe.

Sorry about droning on this way. Greg rightfully pointed out that I needed to clarify my statements about personhood and individuality.

Love

Bro. geo.

As an anthropologist, I totally disagree with this. You cannot pigeon-hole societies like this. There is ample evidence that individuality existed before 300 CE.

Also, when you say “the Jewish nation was the name of a single individual” it is still not clear whether the earlier uses of “Israel” were in reference to a homeland or a people.

The Old Testament lies on the other side of an almost uncrossable divide. The whole idea of personhood, of unique and permanent individuality, didn’t fully appear until after about 300. People back then tended to think of human societies as we think of organisms, and the suffering and death of individuals simply wasn’t as important. (It’s interesting that the name for the Jewish nation was the name of a single individual, Israel.) It’s an intellectual divide which is especially difficult for twentieth-century Westerners, who prize individuality.

Regarding other religions, two thoughts.

First, I used to help out at a conference of Buddhist and Christian contemplative teachers, one where people would get together for a week and talk about a single topic, like suffering. When the different people were using words, they were saying completely different things, but when they were acting, they were very much the same– courteous, kind, humorous, humble. I thought of the description of an enlightened person from the Tao Te Ching– “alert as a warrior in enemy territory, cautious as a man walking on ice, kindly as a grandfather, courteous as a guest.” The description applied to all of them. Experientially, I decided whether a person was of God was shown by how they treated other people; especially, how they treated other people whom the world considered unimportant, culpable, flawed.

Theologically, I follow the reasoning of Origen, an early theologian. When people say Jesus Christ, they don’t realize that they are saying a paradox; a man executed in his thirties, who never went more than a hundred miles or so from his humble birthplace, and the Christ, the eternal light of Reason, the creative principle of God, which was with God and was God, the basic strata of intelligence, the ground of all being, which is above us and in us and through us. You only know about Jesus if you read the Gospels, but the Light of God shines equally into all people at all times and in all places. Therefore, though others may not know Jesus, they still may know the Light, practice the Light, teach the Light.

Regarding damnation, you have to be very careful about declaring other people damned or saved; it’s God’s prerogative, not ours. Christians should remember the thief on the cross, who was neither baptized nor confirmed nor graced by the Spirit, but was still promised a place in Paradise, simply because he was kind to a dying man.

As to specifics, voodoo is a great deal like Greek polytheism, and probably comes from the same source. I don’t know if you have ever read The Metamorphoses by Apuleius, but a voodoo practitioner would feel at home in the story. Almost all of voodoo has to do with manipulating flawed and dangerous minor deities either to get what you want or to hurt other people. As you get further and further away from the Caribbean, it gets more and more debased, a mere panopoly of charms and poisons.

As a rule, I have tremendous admiration for Buddhism. I feel that I did not understand the New Testament writings of Paul until I studied Buddhism. I find, though, that Buddhist teachings are almost completely misunderstood in the West, and especially in America.

Finally, I have a great deal of respect for fairy tales. They are the delivery system of choice for folk wisdom, concealed in an outlandish tale which foolish people can ignore. Take “Cinderella”, for instance. Ninety-five percent of people laugh it off as something stupid and move on. The other five percent get the message– “Treat even the least of people with respect; you don’t know who they really are, or what they will become in the future.”

Love

George

I agree that the most of the latter part of the Old Testament reads like real life, not a Fairy Tale. But I don’t find ancient chronicles of tribal warfare convincing evidence for the existence of a god.

I am glad to hear that you have done such extensive studies of other religions. I wish that everyone would do that before proclaiming themselves “true believers”. I am really curious, though. I hear thundering Fundamentalist preachers proclaim that you don’t need to think, just believe, and that everybody else who does not believe is going straight to hell. You don’t seem to fit into their mold. Given that you are (I am assuming) a Christian, but you are clearly one who has thought deeply about it, how do you feel about those other religions now? Is Voodoo a Fairy Tale? How about Buddism?

I never meant to imply that you had not read the Bible. In fact, I assumed that you were well-read. My remarks were about the postings I saw at De-Conversion, both Christian and atheist.

Your description of the Bible matches mainstream Protestant academic analysis– “higher criticism”.

I couldn’t agree more about the brittle nature of fundamentalist teachings, Christian and otherwise. If you’ll excuse another Bible reference, the first sin in the Bible is not when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it’s when Eve misunderstands what God asked of her, and loses faith as a result.

And– just to set the record straight– I believe that Genesis 1 and 2 are fairy tales, in the best possible sense; seemingly innocent and simple stories which discuss deep existential problems which we humans have to face. Further, I think the author of them had that in mind; Genesis begins with “In the beginning” (once upon a time), and the Hebrew of Genesis 1 is a weird singsong, not found anywhere else in the Old Testament. And “Adam” and “Eve” are symbolic names- Earth and Life.

Finally, regarding other religions, I studied Tibetan Buddhism for several years, Karma Kagyu Buddhism. In the process I studied other forms of Buddhism as well, namely Theravadan and Zen. I am a graduate of Shambhala Training (website http://sti.shambhala.org/)which is based on what could be called a fairy tale. Having spent most of my life in New Orleans, I am very familiar with Voodoo, an animist religion, although I have never practiced it. And I spent kindergarten through 12th grade in a Jewish school, though I myself am not Jewish. That’s where I learned Hebrew.

“The later books are more and more the actual records of the history of a bronze-age warlike mideastern tribe, with the records of the wars of their kings, and pronouncements of their prophets. Since it was written by those who were there, or at least not so far removed from real events, divine appearances are rare to non-existent.” Sounds like real life to me– not a fairy tale at all.

Spoonman, I am intimately involved in church programs that pour a tremendous amount of money out to the poor– paying utility bills and rent, tutoring children, sponsoring local public schools, paying for healthcare, housing the homeless. I accept that there are Reverend Ike-types in Christianity, preaching the gospel of wealth. You should accept that the majority of time and dollars spent on the poor come from the religious.

Patrick, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Billboards like that don’t make the faithful feel childish and immature. They simply provide an opportunity for the faithful to talk about their faith to others; it’s a pop-fly to anyone with any religious training. And, parenthetically, it puts non-religious people in a terrible light. If you really want to make religion go away, try benign neglect.

Love

George

By the way, why don’t we see Atheists renting out more billboards, or tv advertising time, or radio advertising time? Is it because its an ineffective way to influence people or because atheists generally don’t really care what other people believe in?