The Problem of Revelation

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Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

Helsing posted:

Now, second problem: you're dead wrong when you claim that Christians aren't bothered by the problem of revelation. Many prominent Christians (Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, etc.) discuss at length how Christians struggle with their beliefs in God. I guess there must be some Christians out there who never struggle with any self doubt but I think they are very much in the minority. Becoming a Christian does not free you fear or doubt: part of being a Christian is struggling with those feelings on a continual basis. It seems like your outsider perspective is causing you to attribute a degree of confidence, inner peace and calmness to the Christian pscyhe that doesn't exist in practice. I mean, I hate to say this, but chances are if you became a Christian then you might feel better for a short amount of time but pretty soon you'd be right back where you are now.

This is all pretty much true. And it's been a thing all the way back to St. Augustine et. al., and pretty much everyone who didn't actually meet Jesus or at the very least St. Peter or someone like him.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 00:40

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:28

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

See, this is one of the most exhausting problems of Christianity as a whole. Everyone plays by a different set of rules. When I talk to Biblical literalists, I find one set of problems. Then I bring up that problem to other Christians, who tell me, "no no, the Bible is not the literal Word of God, it's just a guidebook". I'll ask about one passage, and one group will say "of course we follow that!" but another will say, "no, you see, you have to read it from this perspective, which makes it actually say this.

The thing is, not "everyone" plays by different sets of rules. There are in fact really two ways of looking at Scripture - there is looking at it with a sense of history and perspective, taking into account everything that caused that scripture to be in the first place, what it meant when it was written, what it might mean to us today, etc. This is the way Scripture is viewed by the Catholic church, the mainline Protestant groups such as the Anglicans, most Lutherans, etc. that grew out of the Catholic Church, and the Orthodox. Then you have this other, more recent way of looking at Scripture, which is the modern and frankly very American way of viewing it as 100% literal truth as read in opposition to all other things. It is this latter form which you seem to have a problem with, and which you should have a problem with, because it's bullshit. You should pay it no mind, because it has no more bearing on what the Bible actually is or means than people who think that Atlantis is real are the arbiters of all that Plato taught. You can quite happily and forever forget any "literal" interpretation of the Bible if you want to seriously explore it or Christianity outside of the sociological realm, because such interpretations are bunk, hooey, nonsense, and a waste of your time.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 19:37

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Here's another question; if you're not a literalist, why be a Christian? I mean, if you see the Bible as not divinely inspired, but rather a collection of possibly historical accounts and musings on God, why follow the big conclusions it presents any more than the religious text of any other book? Like, it doesn't seem to make sense to say, "well this book was written by regular people and it isn't necessarily true, but I believe wholeheartedly the part about Jesus being divine." Why? And why is that same conclusion not applicable to the Koran, the Vedas, the Book of Mormon, etc? I'm looking for a non-literealist Christian response to this, by the way. What convinced you? Revelation? How do you know it was revelation, and not your community, or the fact that you'd been a Christian since childhood, or something else?

Some guys met and followed Jesus and believed Him to be the Messiah. They spread the word about this to other people who thought them credible enough to believe and so on and so forth down the generations to the current day. That's nothing to do with being a literalist or not a literalist, but everything to do in believing people who were there and close to the action.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 22:14

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

VitalSigns posted:

Why don't we believe the people who were there and were close to Mohammed's action? Especially since their original first-hand accounts actually survived instead of being cobbled together from tales like a game of telephone.

Your question is a bit loaded. First of all, we do believe in accounts of Mohammed's life, which is why he is generally agreed upon as being a historical figure (just like Jesus). Second of all, "cobbled together from tales like a game of telephone" does not at all describe the accounts of the earliest Christian writers, such as the writers of Mark, the Q source, or Paul.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 00:08

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

No, I feel this is sort of a crucial argument.

I guess one of the reasons I'm arguing from a Biblical literalist perspective is that I'm kind of in agreement with them in that if you don't view the Bible as a direct revelation from God (via inspired prophets or what have you), there's really not much reason left to believe the stories it presents.

There are accounts of witnesses attesting to the validity of Joseph Smith's revelation, but you (I assume) don't really take the Book of Mormon seriously. Why not? Looking at whether the book is 100% perfect and consistent is not necessary, because apparently divinity or inerrancy is not a requirement for its message to be true. If your threshold for religious truth is "some people are recorded to have witnessed these divine events" then you pretty much have to believe every religion ever.

Greek myth is presented as real history, yet you reject it. The prophet Mohammad - in addition to merely existing, which is not the point being argued, and you know it - is reported to have been visited by an angel and instructed to write the Koran, yet you dismiss the religion as being untrue. What is the difference?

If the Bible is essentially no different from any other religious text - it is the suppositions and speculations of many people on the subject of God, but not divine, and not inerrant - then why do you believe even in just its central story, and not any other's?

The Bible is very different from other religious texts, though, which is why I maintain you can't look at it from a literalist perspective. That's what I keep trying to get across to you - it's an entire library of books, each needing to be taken on its own merits. This is different from the Book of Mormon or the Koran by the self-definitions of those books on the very face of it. Seriously, stop thinking of the Bible as a unitary work for just a moment.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 23:35

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

CommieGIR posted:

For sake of argument: The Book of Mormon is a collection of stories too. Outside of Joseph Smith being a pervy con-artist, why is it 'false'?

You just treated the BoM in the same way he is treating the Bible.

The Book of Mormon is self-referential, claiming itself as a complete work full of the complete truth, based on revelation. Like I've mentioned, the Bible is not like this. There is nothing in the Bible that says, for instance, "This is the Bible, it is %100 literal truth, given by God to man, etc. and so forth". What is is instead is a bunch of different books that happen to be bound together for ease of perusal.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas

Yes and?

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 00:07

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

....???? Are you just trying to be on purpose dense or what? The Vedas are a collection of texts just like the Bible. Not a "unitary work" but a collection, developed over centuries. This disputes what you said, where the Bible

because

I don't believe I said the Bible was different from all other texts, but it is different from a great many others. If you want to discuss the vedas, fine, but that's a different conversation from discussing the Bible as a non-literal unitive text, which is incidentally what you seem to be hung up on.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 00:34

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:28

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Hmm. So are you of the opinion that worshiping the wrong God, following the wrong faith, even believing (as part of said wrong faith) that Christianity is heretical - none of that is a problem for God? Doesn't matter, we're all saved regardless?

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2014 22:39

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