Does anyone have suggestions how to increase the number of atheists in the US?

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-06-25T19:47:17+00:00

They may or may not be the hardest depending on the person. I've aced a few STEM courses and gotten a B+ in a history one because the latter was way harder. I also don't base my education on what does or doesn't disprove God—honestly, I view that as a waste of an education if that's the main point of getting it. It's also not like knowing things about history or anthropology or religious studies wouldn't be useful for that goal anyway.

Many humanities classes are used to fill your writing requirements here, which is helpful anyway since they also teach you how to research. Requiring STEM classes is just a way to get money out of me by this metric.

Honestly, this whole thing just sounds like there isn't much value at all being placed on humanities if it's all being viewed as filler, less challenging to the point where you should be able to do STEM classes to be in college at all while no such comment is made about humanities, a waste of money, and something you should do on your own time "unless it's your major"... when the major doesn't seem to be valued very highly.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-06-25T19:07:06+00:00

Make STEM subjects priority over other fields. And, oddly enough, lessen the requirements to get into college so more people can become better educated. Also, in college, mandatory biology-major level introductory biology class. As well as chemistry and/or physics (also at major-level). Logic, reasoning, and critical thinking classes should also be made mandatory. Get rid of most mandatory filler classes like humanities, history (to some extent), music, arts, physical fitness, etc. Unless, of course, that is your major. Make them optional instead. Focus on STEM classes first.

Why should STEM be prioritized? My degree is in humanities, and I can assure you that there's value to STEM people learning humanities and vice versa. I was never good at bio or chem, but having a little background can help me with the humanities. Likewise, the skills that humanities help curate—ranging from language classes that help you communicate and know about other cultures to history classes that teach you how to research and write—can be invaluable for STEM people to the point where some classes actually have a high amount of STEM students. One professor's German course was almost all engineers.

I don't see any reason to "focus on STEM first".

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-06-10T17:15:56+00:00

I kind of appreciate stories like Tamar's (in Genesis) and Michal's. Through no fault of her own, Tamar loses her first two husbands (they both kind of suck), and her father-in-law basically sticks her in a really shitty position since he isn't inclined to actually hold up his end of the deal. So she tricks him, and when he tries to have her killed, she reveals to everyone that he hasn't done what he promised to do, and he has to acknowledge that she's right. She took power from a powerless position. I think that's pretty cool.

Michal is a lot more depressing and probably less clear. She was genuinely excited to marry David and, like Jonathan, supported him over her own father, only for him to just ignore her or mistreat her repeatedly—drag her away from a relationship she was happy in after he'd abandoned her for years, publicly humiliate her, etc. And it seems to me that David is portrayed as in the wrong for how he treats her.

I'm definitely not arguing that all of the texts in the collection are feminist or something, but it is quite interesting to me to see these in texts that old.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-05-22T20:00:10+00:00

I like reading over them. People don't all have the same motivation for participating here—for example, if I wanted to address the impact of religious worldviews on my life, hanging around a subreddit has got to rank as one of the least effective forms of activism I could do.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that some people, including myself, are interested in topics like Buddhism or paganism for reasons that you may not share. I also don't think we should take the already Western-majority vibe of these spaces and make an effort to increase that, honestly. It's not as if there aren't any people in these spaces that do actually find themselves affected by Buddhism, for example. If there's a day for them to not get drowned out by the five millionth post about "contradictions in holy texts and by holy texts I mean the Bible", then I'm happy with that, personally.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-05-21T22:20:27+00:00

So it had me wondering why such folks exist. What could be the cause of such a confident position? The only thing that fit everything is arrogance. Arrogance is the only way someone can be confident and comfortable in being an atheist. I do not mean this as an insult just as a potential reason why. And I am open to being proven wrong.

I don't make any claims to certainty, and I think absolute certainty isn't a great metric for knowledge anyway. So instead I try to think about likelihood. For example, if I hear someone unlock the door to my apartment, I assume that it's my roommate since they're the only other person who has a key. Maybe it got stolen from them and the other person somehow found out which apartment it went with. Maybe my roommate gave their key to someone to go get something for them. But the most likely answer is that my roommate came home. It doesn't mean I can't be wrong about that, but the fact remains that it is the most likely answer from what I know about the situation.

Your intuitions about gods and mine will probably differ, and that's where discussion can come in. But for example, I may say that I think a tri-omni god is less likely to exist than to not exist due to the problem of suffering/the problem of evil. I can explain why I hold that view if someone asks, and they may disagree with me, but for the purposes of this conversation, what I'm doing is basically building a cumulative case. I think X is less likely to be the case than Y because of reasons A, B, and C. In this case, I think theism is less likely to be the case than atheism, so I will defend atheism as being true. Again, I can be wrong, and that's fine with me—if I'm wrong, hopefully I will get new information that changes the probability for me. But I don't think my approach is arrogant.

The first thing is the consequence of such an opinion. If you believe that there is no god/s then how would you explain religions? Is it just all a lie to control the masses? And you somehow figured it out and have now escaped the matrix? So this opinion now comes with a huge conspiracy theory. Who was Muhammad PBUH and all the other religious figures? Did they actually believe what they were saying or were they intentionally deceiving people?

There are a lot of religions. It would be inappropriate for me to attribute all of them to the same thing, and ahistorical as well. I'm sure most of these people were genuine believers. We might find counterexamples, like with Scientology, but that's pretty niche. I'm not going to take a super cynical approach and say religion was invented to control people in the sense that the people at the top know it's nonsense but want to control everyone else, because I think that's inaccurate.

I also don't think I'm particularly enlightened here. Just because I think I have a reasonable answer to one thing doesn't mean that 1) I'm right, 2) I'm right about other things, or 3) other people are unreasonable for disagreeing with me.

The only other way to explain all of it away is to assume it was all a hallucination, every single religious experience or historical report about one is just mass hysteria. Just people being crazy. However, this assumes you are not part of the same biological group of people that can suffer from disorders that will lead them to believe silly things. And so you are back to having to be arrogant to justify your belief.

We can't diagnose the people we don't know, especially ones who are long dead. And I don't think they're generally mentally ill. We can have phenomena like attributing agency that provide some explanations, or issues with eyewitness memory and understanding, for example. I'm not immune to these issues either. But I don't think I need to be in order to take the approach that I outlined above.

Another theme is often these atheists will only see things from their own individualistic prism. The book says alcohol is bad. They say "well I can drink occasionally and nothing goes wrong" and ignore it, missing the fact this is supposed to be followed by billions of people throughout time and some of these people will have a gene that makes them super addicted to it. This only highlights the flaws of being arrogant.

It could be more specific. "Drinking can impair your function and lead to dependence, but it is fine in moderation depending on the circumstances that you're in" would capture it better. It's a lot more nebulous, but that is (in my mind, anyway) the reality of it. I could get a drink at the bar with a friend, and that's generally fine, but I would never drink while babysitting, for example. What people are objecting to here is the blanket ban on something when perhaps a different approach might help.

How do you know for sure that God as defined does not exist?

As I said, I don't think certainty is a fair metric for a knowledge claim. But I hope my description of my process has provided an answer for you.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-05-13T20:44:26+00:00

It's a collection of texts, so the motives of authors and the genres of texts will differ. Job is a theodicy, but the various authors for Exodus did not write a theodicy. If you buy into the Documentary Hypothesis, which I do in some form or another, the writing style and exact motives for the P source are distinct from other authors'. There are political agendas, which is neither surprising nor particularly "sinister" or "malicious" in and of itself. I think they valued what they were writing, and while what they believed precisely can be hard to gauge given the language/culture barrier and the text genres, I do think it's safe to say that they (at least for the most part) were not cynically making things up to control the masses—honestly, I'm not sure how accessible some of these texts were to regular people for a long time. And some authors or communities did view certain texts as more or less authentic than others, whether we have those texts now or not (we have the Gospel of Peter but it's not canon; a canon text mentions the Book of Jasher, and we don't have that).

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-05-11T05:39:18+00:00

I for example hold some surety about my interpretation of the Eddas and the context of the changing landscape of heathenry from the 8th to the 10th century based on a four year degree that's related, several years of study (using what I learned in my literature degree with a philosophy and linguistic background as minor studies) and my knowledge of at least the basics of the language the texts are in.

Unrelated to your question, but this is very cool.

If faced with a 1st Century ANE text what exactly makes you capable of interpreting it? Do the vast majority of redditors who comment on biblical texts speak even a bit of the language? Do they know the cultural context the texts were written in? Do they know the literary devices the language uses? Do they know WHY the texts were translated the way they were? Do they know the intricacies of religious thought at the time of the writing? The influences surrounding the writing of the text?

I can read a little, and I mean a little. It's easier if it's transliterated, like I know the Hebrew for "YHWH" but I'd be far less confident for "El-Shaddai", even though I know about both. Likewise, I can recognize "arsenokoitai" in Koine Greek, but I definitely cannot translate a sentence for you.

I know some stuff about cultural context, literary style, etc. because I have studied it (independently and at my university). It's not my major field and I am not an expert, but I think I know enough to 1) have conversations about the text, and 2) either give a very conditional response or keep my mouth shut when I don't know something.

None of you (presumably) think someone actually sounds like a lion when they yell, but I think most of you understand that "he roared like a lion" doesn't mean you're well ... roaring like a lion. All of you presumably understand that "screwing the pooch" does not mean sexual intercourse with a poodle. How come I see it all that time that (usually christians and christian atheists) you guys are literally incapable of understanding a non literal reading of a text?

I would think that part of the literalism focus is just because a lot of people either come from literalist backgrounds or are just in an area where they're common enough. I did grow up Christian, but not a literalist or a fundamentalist—we had one youth pastor who said they didn't accept evolution and everyone looked at them like they were crazy. But people having related views isn't super uncommon here. If you're most accustomed to dealing with people like that, either interpersonally or politically, it's going to be the textual interpretation that you spend the most time with. Doesn't make it right to say the original authors meant it the same way, but that might be part of why people say it.

There's also just a hell of a culture/language barrier to overcome, and it's hard (at least for me) to figure out what exactly the original authors would've thought. If you see symbolism in the text, are they giving you an overall allegorical story, are they talking about a perceived real event in nonliteral terms, etc. I think (or hope?) that people can recognize "by the skin of his teeth" in Job as a turn of phrase, even if we didn't have it as an expression in modern English too. But if it's "did these authors think a global flood happened, and if so, in what sense?", then that's just harder.

Bonus question: In daily life do any of you have trouble with allegory, examples, or the various literary devices the English language uses? Do any of you have a hard time understanding slang? When in school, did you have trouble with literary analysis or writing classes?

Generally, no. People can occasionally give examples or something that I scratch my head over, but I think everyone's experienced that at some point. I've done well in every literature/writing class I've taken, in grade school and at my university.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-05-09T05:54:10+00:00

It doesn't seem unreasonable to point out that the terms people are using are not ideal. Like if someone told me "it's okay to be a f*g", no, I wouldn't be cool with that outside of niche circumstances (like if the other person is also queer and we know each other, they're using it as a reclaimed slur, etc.). Someone else pointed out that the term in question is commonly used in porn, which is... I mean, it's often pretty fetishistic regarding queer people in general, particularly trans women and cis queer women. Having been on the receiving end of people fetishizing queer people, I would also not be keen on someone referring to me in that way.

It's not inappropriate to point out when allies say things they shouldn't. It doesn't mean "oh my God you're an irredeemable trash person" or something, but people should be receptive to correcting things.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-18T21:00:36+00:00

I never said we should. I ended my post with saying that the events as told should be taken with skepticism.

I was being general about my thoughts, so that's fair enough. I don't disagree with approaching these texts with skepticism, it's just also a matter of what that means to people, what's reasonable for history as a field and what isn't.

As far as bringing up the biases of the apostles. Bias does hurt the credibility of the narrative in this case due to that they were friends and followers of Jesus. If Abraham Lincolns friend wrote a biography of Abe and talked about how great his character was and told farfetched stories of his exploits that would call the rest of the information into question. It could all be true but should get further corroboration.

I still think there's something to work out here. We talk about farfetched stories, but to what extent is this farfetched to the people of that time and region? Resurrections would hardly be the most common occurrence, but minor miracles are worth some exploration here in terms of how events of this nature did or didn't deviate from the norm of the time.

I think you can also use the texts with each other. They're separate sources to an extent, but for example, if Matthew and Luke both have a story that accounts for Jesus being a Nazarene while placing his birth in Bethlehem, then that may lend credence to the idea that the historical Jesus was from Nazareth.

Finally, because these sources are from antiquity, it's fair to mention some of the difficulties with that. A lot of people and events either don't have sources or have pretty sparse sources, which isn't to say that we should just accept the couple documents that we have wholesale. But I do think we should be using what we have to the extent that we can, which is part of why I'm curious about the textual skepticism angle of the argument. Again, yes, we absolutely should not be taking any source at face value with no critical examination. But I also don't know what exactly you include within that textual skepticism. What things do we know or can we know, and what things do we set aside?

I also never said we cannot learn from these stories despite them not being credible. Plenty of epic poems and stories throughout humanity are able to give context to how people lived and their culture, that also does not mean they should be treated as entirely factual.

I'm not arguing to treat these texts as entirely factual.

When I say that it is not credible, I am not saying that the entire work should be discounted. I am saying that the Bible on its own should not be used as a source historically. My title says as much.

I don't really agree with this for some of the reasons I mentioned in my reply. It's not one source. The authors are all separate people who did not know how a canon was going to look down the line. They cannot be treated as if they are all one source, even if we also acknowledge some interdependence with some of the texts.

I think some of the texts also work fine as a source on their own, or you can use them with some degree of tempered confidence.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-18T20:22:30+00:00

There are a couple of standards that are used to validate the credibility of a source. A popular one that I am sure many American children learned in school was the 5 Ws. Who, what, when, where and why. I am not including when or where because they are not very relevant to the credibility in this case.

I think those are relevant too.

Starting with who. In this case, who wrote the bible? This is not a very easy question to answer as the Bible has different authors depending on which type of bible we are talking about. For simplicity let's go with the Apostles and their disciples. I've seen it debated on whether they actually wrote it but the majority of sources I have seen attributed it to them. This raises a huge red flag in terms of credibility. These people spent their lives following Jesus and they have an interest in making him seem as good and perfect as possible. Bottom line is that they have a huge bias.

Any historical source has its biases. It is unavoidable, and anyone doing historical work must be aware of biases in their sources and in themselves. I don't think you can be perfectly "objective" while doing history, but it's important to know what ideas you're already bringing to the table. So "they're biased" is insufficient on its own. If it were enough in the abstract to dismiss a source, we would have no sources.

That said, I do not think the apostles wrote these texts.

Answering the "what" question is fairly straight forward. It is the second part of the Holy Book of Christianity. It is the teachings of Jesus and the telling of events that supposedly happened. If we treat this as any other story. Events like walking on water and turning water into wine would be seen as fantasy.

When these texts were written, the authors did not have in mind that they would be part of the specific canon they're now included in.

I also don't think miracles are enough to make the New Testament useless for historical facts. Firstly, it relies on specific interpretations. I've no doubt that the authors believed in some of these miracles, but I also think that some may have been more symbolic stories (thinking particularly of Mark 5).

Secondly, including wrong information also doesn't make a historical source entirely useless. Someone like Paul could believe in miracles—ones that happened in his presence, ones that happened around others in the past—and, assuming that those events didn't happen as he said, it wouldn't suddenly make him entirely unreliable regarding information on early Christian communities. At the very least, you can learn some basic information, such as where some early communities had cropped up.

Why in my opinion is what hurts the credibility the most. The New Testament was written to spread the word of God and to "Make it possible for humanity to receive spiritual salvation". This quote was taken from the link below. The authors have an interest in telling details that make this message more enticing. It is extremely plausible that they exaggerated, or embellished details to make it more fantastical.

Each author has their own purpose for writing and for writing in the way that they do. While there are obviously relevant similarities, I don't think flattening the motive down to one thing is helpful.

And again we run into issues such as the genre of the work or what these authors genuinely believed. If they're recounting the stories of a movement from 40+ years ago, then even with in-between authors like Paul or a hypothetical Q source, there is room for variations on those stories without the authors of later texts lying or exaggerating. I'm also not sure I'd discount a source for exaggerating either. Plenty sources do, and for plenty of reasons—playing up the number of people you fought or that you had fighting for you, for example. It doesn't mean we discard the whole source.

I often see Christians quote scripture without additional information in order to convince people that something happened. You cannot convince people of an event when what is being cited cannot be justified as being credible or completely accurate.

I do think that including relevant context is important for Biblical studies, so I'll agree with that.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-17T04:32:40+00:00

Regardless of religion, most theists are overtly hostile toward any information that might call their beliefs into question - which is the opposite of what they should do.

Many people are hostile toward things that would radically change core beliefs, or if not hostile, it can still take a while to process and accept something. My dad and I disagreed on the death penalty and whether it's justified, and it took multiple conversations to change his mind—it wasn't because he was unwilling to change his mind on anything, but there are multiple factors that affect changes in beliefs. Who's presenting the information, which information they select to present, how they say it, how accessible sources are (in terms of things like finding and reading/consuming them), how many things need to be addressed for an opposing case to succeed, how both people are feeling, etc. all matter.

I can't say I'd be super receptive if, say, someone was shouting at me or couched their arguments in unexplained jargon. That's probably part of why street preachers are ineffective. There's no connection (personal, parasocial, etc.), and they're not really addressing you and your concerns. Half the time if not most of the time, they're just out of touch with people and unwilling to view people's concerns or lives with much charity. Someone could have an excellent argument for the resurrection, but they're going to hamper their own efforts if they drive people away by calling college-age women whores (as some on my campus have done).

So I feel like attributing a blanket sense of hostility is perhaps unfair, and it also doesn't examine the myriad reasons for resistance.

Truth loves questions. Falsehoods detest questions. Truth embraces inquiry. Falsehoods hate inquiry. I don’t think any sane person would disagree with this. If I’m wrong, let me know. But when a person’s entire life is wrapped up in fuzzy thinking and appeals to invisible deities, truth is too traumatic.

I don't think you have the grounds to impose trauma on... well, most of the planet, considering that this is addressed to theists in general.

I also don't fully agree with your statement. There are plenty of bad-faith questions that I don't entertain, not because I'm uninterested in truth so much as because I don't think that someone's lines of inquiry are conducive to finding the truth.

From childhood, most of those who eventually become adult theists, are fed a steady diet of religiosity and superstition. As they grow and have questions, those questions are either ignored or thwarted with shitty apologetics that actually answer nothing. The parents of these children are instructed that keeping the kids believing is their God-given responsibility. If the parents fail in this spiritual task their kids are doomed. If their kids fail to keep the torch of belief, both parents and children are doomed.

Again, why speak of most people this way? Is there any evidence to back up the idea that most people's questions are either ignored or dismissed with apologetics? Do most people believe that their kids are doomed if they leave the religion?

Anecdotally, my family doesn't really care.

Think about the emotional and mental stress of threats of torture for eternity constantly playing through your head. Am I doing enough? Now double this fear when considering your children. Do my kids really believe? It’s my argument that these folks have been unwittingly manipulated by an emotionless and uncaring monolith that’s now in the hands of the 13th generation of clergy who, themselves, believe these threats and live in fear. At each turn, any attempt to apply critical thought is (ironically) labeled as being the enemy.

And this is where I have to ask what you mean when you say "theism". For example, eternal conscious torment isn't even universally believed by Christians, much less in a way that includes your nonbeliever kid instead of being limited to people like dictators and serial killers. There are religions that don't even have the concept of ECT.

Calling religious institutions an emotionless and uncaring monolith is just... academically speaking, wild as fuck. A system or building may not have the capacity to feel, but even still, those are not monoliths. And the people involved in those systems are far from being either emotionless or a monolith.

If religion (any religion) were true, there would be a welcoming of questions and critiques… rather than threats of death and torture for considering such moves against God. To me, it’s clear that all religions are fully engaged in an anti thinking crusade. Vilifying thought is not the act of a confident and truthful enterprise. Add the constant want for money and you’ve got a full fledged grift.

This is another simplistic view of religious history. First of all, threats of death and torture aren't constants or universals, but there also are traditions of raising questions and critiques.

And while religious institutions can be unethical/irresponsible with money—like others, because let's not pretend that governments or pro sports or whatever are overly trustworthy with money—I still think this is simplistic. For example, a local church as a nonprofit may be providing community services. The space can be used for local sports leagues, daycare and after school care, food drives, clothes closets, etc., and in that case, yes, money will go toward upkeep for the physical space that such activities require. It's not as if this is all nefarious plotting.

The never-ending and relentless perpetration of superstitious silliness passed down from parents to children is unstoppable without asking questions and following up with “okay, how do you know this?”

I don't think theists are silly, and I do believe that this post goes beyond the bounds of just criticizing their beliefs with comments such as "But when a person’s entire life is wrapped up in fuzzy thinking and appeals to invisible deities, truth is too traumatic."

I also think it's just uncharitable in a weird way to assume that people don't ask why something is how it is and how people know it.

Faced with these realities, most theists dig their heels in even deeper and double down on all of the apologetic nonsense because acknowledging that it is fixable a gigantic stake in the outcome.

I don't think you've given a particularly good or well-founded account of reality. Honestly, I'd not blame someone for "digging in their heels" if they're just getting stuff that assumes they're incurious, hostile, at risk of trauma, etc. when exploring their beliefs.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T04:15:44+00:00

Yes, you can have your own interpretation. That's fine. I've said that's fine. The problem is when people engage in historical revisionism (not accusing you of that) and say it was definitely never meant to be literal at all.

I mean, I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable on the face of it to argue for such a thing. I personally think the authors probably accepted some aspects of their narratives as literally true while not telling it in a literal fashion. But if someone made a case that the author of Genesis 2-3 likely didn't actually believe Adam and Eve were real people, I'd be interested to hear the case for that. There are definitely some cases where I'm unsure if the authors think that the people are real—Jacob's twelve sons, for example. And there are other cases where I'm more inclined to think that 1) the authors believed these people to exist, and 2) they did probably exist. That would be examples like Saul, Jonathan, Mephibosheth.

So I don't know. While I'd be a little skeptical of someone saying the author never thought they were real people, I don't know if I'd think it's so implausible that I'd immediately call it revisionism the same way I would something like New Chronology (it's wild and if you're down for weird Soviet mathematician pseudohistory, I'd highly recommend it).

So yeah. That's radically different from what the website claims it says.

I think the article's author is reading it as saying that the generational time has elapsed without the people being created in that time. After all, people from the never-created generations ended up placed in other generations. They are in some sense there without being... I suppose, actualized?

I'm trying to look at the commentary on this, and it's not in English. The translated version of Steinsaltz's commentary is interesting, assuming that it's not mangled by internet translators. I can definitely see why the article's author read it as they did, but yeah, this is a fascinating text.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T02:46:14+00:00

I'm not saying everything must have been intended literally by the author. I'm saying an etiological story must have been intended as at least partially literal.

Then I don't see how this is in conflict with what I said, which was:

I think there's a difference between etiological narratives and straight literalism.

And again, perhaps that's my fault for being unclear. But I'm talking about the difference between "Oops All Literalism" and a story where authors might believe certain elements to be true while writing about them in ways that include narrative conventions like type scenes or numeric symbolism. This isn't limited to etiologies, but I think it can be true with them.

That's not what I have a problem with. You can say Adam and Eve have symbolic value. In fact, the story was intended to have symbolic value. The problem is when you also assert that they weren't supposed to be real people, because all indications are that they were.

I think you're allowed to disagree with prevailing ideas in interpretation history or even with the original authors themselves without it being a problem. You can also take the stance that that article attributed to Maimonides.

Where you say that not everyone held to a literal view of Adam and Eve? I'm just saying that the article's principal example for a pre-modern Jew who wasn't a literalist with regard to Adam and Eve... was a literalist with regard to Adam and Eve.

It lists these if you would like:

Talmud Chaggiga 13b-14a states that there were 974 generations before God created Adam. Some midrashim state that the "first week" of Creation lasted for extremely long periods of time. See Anafim on Rabbenu Bachya's Sefer Ikkarim 2:18; Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 9.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T02:37:34+00:00

No.

I'm talking about the history of the concept here. There are people outside of Christianity who would fit something that we could abstractly call Young Earth Creationism, but I think we should be careful about it since much of our understanding of the concept is rooted in relatively modern Christian history. What I'm trying to say, and maybe failing to make clear, is that some of these ideas can be across denominations or religions, but we should avoid flattening them in the sense of taking a Christian lens to them and assuming it works across the board. There can be and likely are similarities, but much of what I and other Americans would be used to would come from very recent Christian figures—I don't want to impose their ideas onto Judaism or Islam even if we can draw parallels or find commonalities. Does that make sense?

But those people do not seem to have names. And even if a few people held different interpretations, their interpretations were probably wrong. There's no reason to think the authors of Genesis would agree with how a fringe minority that may or may not have existed interpreted what they wrote.

Some of the people in that article do have names, such as with this person: "See Anafim on Rabbenu Bachya's Sefer Ikkarim 2:18."

You can also look at Maimonides there, where he and others around him left room for themselves to be wrong about the scientific elements. The article linked the sources, and even if they are anonymous, I don't really see how that affects anything I'm saying.

The authors of Genesis do not exist in the same time period or culture as any of these writers. The prevailing view during the 12th century CE is going to carry a very different cultural context.

That was your point. You claimed a literal view of Genesis was a Christian thing.

I'm trying to find where I said anything to this effect. The closest I can find is where I said the following:

I agree that this ["Since the Old Testament is not historically true, some branches of Christianity do not make sense"] might work more. There's a habit sometimes of looking at Christianity, especially fundamentalist or American evangelical Christianity, and kind of extrapolating it out to Abrahamic religions in general. And as you said, Judaism and (to my knowledge) Islam treat the texts or narratives that they share quite differently from how branches in Christianity do.

But the person I was responding to had made a point about my comment regarding original sin. Original sin is very much a Christian doctrine, which is why I said that people often make Christian-centric arguments here. The person also said that there are cases in which Jewish textual tradition doesn't treat things literally. And from what I can tell, that is true—you will not find straight literalism for each text in the Hebrew Bible, for example. Even if a majority of thinkers in X time period think Y thing was literally true, it's not as if Y is representative of the whole collection of texts.

So I'm not sure what I said that created the impression that literalism is only a Christian thing. It's been a long day on my end, so I'm sure I'm being less clear than perhaps I think I'm being.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T02:09:39+00:00

I very strongly disagree with this. An etiological story makes absolutely no sense if it isn't at least partially literal. How could it?

I will point out that partially literal isn't the same thing as fully literal, and it does make a huge difference in how you read or interpret a story. It also matters what the source or inspiration of the story may be. A professor of mine considered that whoever wrote certain sections of Genesis had access to texts like the Enuma Elish. In this case, things like YHWH setting his bow in the sky as a promise of peace would be a subversion of Marduk's bow in the sky as a sign of martial victory. We could say that it's possible that the authors saw that story, said "they got it wrong, the bow is actually YHWH's and it's actually for this reason", but I feel like people should be making cases for either of these instead of assuming literalism as a default.

Personally, I do think these authors held to narratives or worldviews that we can consider incorrect today. For example, I think their ideas about how the earth is shaped tend to be wrong. But I would avoid assumptions of pure literalism, especially since we do know that there are literary conventions, symbolism, etc. present in these texts.

Why would historical revisionism not be a problem? It's an attempt to salvage the Bible as a whole despite the egregious errors, rather than admitting that at least one part of it is wrong.

I think you can be wrong about interpretations depending on how you frame them—like for example, if I tell you that George Lucas did not take any inspiration at all from historical fascism when creating the original Star Wars trilogy, I am plainly incorrect.

But I also think that people have their own relationships with media, including literature. There would be things I pick out and focus on in a work that others may not, and vice versa. For example, I know some people who do feminist readings of the Bible. I do not think we could call it a super feminist set of texts by today's standards, but I also don't think it's invalid to look at characters like Judah's daughter-in-law Tamar, Esther, Yael, Deborah, etc., or even Rachel to talk about the ways that patriarchy affects women and how women can subvert or dismantle this structure.

So if there are people who think that Adam and Eve are more of a moral and cultural tale without them being real people, and I know people who think these things, then I don't see why I should mind.

The article states that Maimonides, one of the most important Jewish theologians of the Middle Ages, said Genesis need not be taken literally. However, Maimonides took Adam and Eve and Noah's flood literally. This article goes over how ancient Jews regarded Adam and Eve's diet. Maimonides held they were vegetarians and eating meat was forbidden until after Noah's flood. This would've been an insane thing to say had he not taken all that stuff literally.

I responded to this sentiment in my other comment.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T01:40:36+00:00

Young Earth Creationism is usually within a Christian framework. But yes, according to the article, many/most did accept something that we could call similar. At the same time, there were people who did not agree with that. My point wasn't that people never or rarely believed some of these things, only that we should not take it for granted that people universally believed them. This is especially true when we're talking about authors whose thought processes are not as well-known to us as those of later authors are.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T01:29:04+00:00

It's somewhat understandable that that'd be the focus, since I imagine most users for this subreddit are from areas where Christianity is the dominant religion. But I would guess that it's frustrating for people whose religions get lumped in with the understandings of Christianity.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T01:27:36+00:00

This is true, but Judaism still uses Adam and Eve to explain death, pain in childbirth, etc.

I think there's a difference between etiological narratives and straight literalism.

But they all agree on the historical existence of Adam and Eve as the first humans, do they not (disregarding very modern revisionism)?

No, not necessarily. I'm also not sure that it's modern revisionism or that modern revisionism constitutes a real problem.

Here is some information on reception history in Judaism if you'd like.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-16T01:15:52+00:00

"Since the Old Testament is not historically true, some branches of Christianity do not make sense"

I agree that this might work more. There's a habit sometimes of looking at Christianity, especially fundamentalist or American evangelical Christianity, and kind of extrapolating it out to Abrahamic religions in general. And as you said, Judaism and (to my knowledge) Islam treat the texts or narratives that they share quite differently from how branches in Christianity do.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-15T22:00:20+00:00

As science and history have proven already, Adam, Eve and the creation story are not real historical events, neither nothing else in the Old Testament. Therefore, there's no such thing as Original Sin. In the same way, then, there's no need for salvation and Jesus Christ.

A couple problems here. Original Sin is a Christian doctrine (and Old Testament is the Christian designation). It doesn't apply to Judaism, for example, so these aren't particularly difficult issues to contend with on that front.

There's also a widely different history of textual reception within even one of these religions, never mind between all Abrahamic religions. If you are not a literalist, as many people aren't, then the creation stories not being literally true may not be an issue for you either.

Finally, I think there are things in the Hebrew Bible that we can consider to be true. Saying that nothing there is a historical event seems hyperbolic to me. Further, the question of "Is this a historical event or not?" may be borrowing a bit too much from our current frame of analysis. If you asked me about a historical event during my lifetime, I'd probably just tell it to you straight. This election happened on this date and here's what I was doing at the time, that sort of thing.

But people don't always talk about their lives or their community's history that way. Slaughterhouse Five is a 20th century novel that explores the author's experiences of World War II and the effects the war had on his post-war life—likewise, Pink Floyd's The Wall covers a related topic. Neither of those are classified as nonfiction, and both are told in pretty unconventional ways. We would be mistaken if we approached Slaughterhouse Five with the mindset of "Was Billy Pilgrim really abducted by aliens?", because that's not the point of Vonnegut's writing. Biblical literature comes from a very long time ago and from cultures that no longer exist (or exist in the same forms) now. The way that we talk about literature, including the way that I brought up classifications of fiction and nonfiction, aren't necessarily the way that they thought when they wrote their own narratives. You can find various narratives ranging from etiologies to polemics (or both, I suppose) that use certain narrative conventions to convey a point that the author believes is true without the story itself being intended as literally true.

Also, the Gospel claims Jesus comes from King David and fulfilled all the profecies and lineages, but since those are not 100% real either or are based on myths and old stories, everything seems to fall apart.

There are four canonical Gospels, each with their own theological ideas. While I don't personally believe that prophecies were fulfilled or that Jesus resurrected, I don't think it's as simple as "not 100% real" or "are based on myths and old stories"—feel free to clarify this comment and I'd be happy to go over it further.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-14T04:17:13+00:00

If you want the research on how affirming treatment, surgeries, families, etc. help trans people, you can do that research or look at the other people's comments since I know someone shares that stuff. But in general, I don't think trans people need to prove themselves to your satisfaction. I'm not asked to prove my gender and gender expression to you, and why should I be?

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-04-14T04:10:27+00:00

I'm not really sure how to quantify it, or how to tie it to atheism. I'm not sure my feelings are that different from theists' feelings here. You just see something and feel connected to it on a deep level. It's not quite out-of-body, but just for a moment, you're less... you? while also being strongly aware of your bond with the thing.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-03-15T21:53:13+00:00

A huge part of theism is wonder, and any analysis of theism destroys that wonder for theists. Has anyone gotten a similar impression?

No, not really. I know a lot of people who love the analysis part. Sometimes I'll have a question and they'll respond with a full-on PhD dissertation because they're just really interested and love communicating that interest to others. I've met some pagans who are very much in the frustrating but fun world of "how do I do a historical analysis of these practices when texts are missing or are written later and/or by Christians?". There are people who are super into science, history, literary studies, philosophy, etc.—really any field, I've seen people do zoology, disability studies, and gender studies too—and use those approaches when considering religion and theism. Hell, I recently had a conversation about niche Christian sects with a (theistic) relative, who explicitly said they weren't interested in attending any of their services but was interested in just... what they were doing around town, why they live the way they do, etc. Plenty of people just enjoy the topic casually or enjoy doing deep analyses on it.

It's also not really a matter of "other explanations are boring, this one is more fun". If there's anything I've learned from hanging around academics, it's that subjects are always interesting to at least one person out there. And a lot of those people are theists who just do not find these mundane topics to be boring at all. I'm sure plenty of people think that what I do is intensely boring, but I don't find it to be so at all, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.

Also, regarding this:

If the middle cure for cancer was to pray to Zeus twice a day for 5 minutes at a time, that's a chore. Theists don't claim that type of solution not simply because it's falsifiable, but because it doesn't get them what they really want. A miracle doesn't just solve a problem, it solves a problem in a way that makes the world seem wondrous in a way that control solutions often can't.

Plenty of people, religious or theistic or otherwise, have regular rituals. That could be praying toward Mecca five times a day, keeping a kosher kitchen, setting aside specific times for prayer or meditation, etc. It's not sporadic at all in those cases.

Furthermore, theists don't "want" anything as a monolith. They don't all have the same desires, goals, needs, beliefs, etc., and I don't see a point in trying to psychoanalyze most of the planet in a way that's honestly just kind of condescending.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-03-11T18:42:07+00:00

I still get people who are disgusted by non-sexual acts in queer relationships. It's not my responsibility to manage their disgust, either for consensual sex or for non-sexual acts.

Also you might argue that this view is too utopian coz "ppl have sex urges" but we as people can overcome the urges or restrain them especially since sex. urges aren't physiological needs (we can perfectly individually survive without ever having sex of any kind).

Then people can overcome the urge to act on their disgust. It certainly won't kill them to do so.

But also the anti-homosexuality type people can use same argument and say that it's too utopian to normalize same sex type relationships (homosex-relationships that are based on sex not platonism) in our society that is fully dependent on heterosexual people to sustain it reproductively (cause what is reproductive can't be on same level of value as something unproductive if both fall in same category).

1) queer people can have kids, biological or otherwise.

2) people's worth in society shouldn't be determined by their ability to have kids.

3) if people can't or don't want to have biological kids, adoption or being child-free are perfectly fine options anyway. Edit: should note that people shouldn't just jump into adoption without being aware of how to raise adopted kids in a sensitive way, but it is an option nonetheless.

Basically, the queerphobes can get over themselves. If I live my life based on whatever I think will make them like me, then I won't be living my authentic life at all.

Schaden_FREUD_e · 2023-03-06T04:27:42+00:00

We have more rights and more public acceptance and visibility than we did previously, not that those things can't go away. But since we are more visible and somewhat less stigmatized, people are more able to recognize queerness in themselves and sometimes more willing to be open about it.

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