Re: ArkivCD's don't seem to sound very rich

On Jul 16, 6:20 pm, "Frank Berger" <frank.d.ber...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Kip Williams wrote:
Bob Harper wrote:

I can't decide whether you are being deliberately or only
accidentally obtuse. I mean, a 'fossil record' of the supernatural
would seem to be a contradiction in terms, don't you think? Besides
which, to demand a

By definition, any sort of proof is for lesser things, those things I
call "reality."

literal, and only a literal, interpretation of Scripture is really
insufficient, don't you think?

Only if you subscribe to the theory that if it can be proven or
understood, it's just not good enough.

Re Charles Williams's novel, surely you don't think I was proposing
that it was a theological text! You really ought to read it before
you sneer, however.

I thought your explanation was sufficient to show that it was yet
another fictional account of hell, like Dante's, which many seem to
accept as an adjunct to the bible. It shows that there is no end of
inventiveness when it comes to deciding what sort of eternal torment
awaits those who don't believe [whatever].

Of course, one of the specific characteristics of the Sacrament of
Penance is its inviolability. The seal of privacy is absolute, and
many priests have gone to their deaths rather than reveal what has
been said in the box. So your attempt to tie it to Jim Jones or
Stalin's show trials is really not on.

Reveal to outsiders, yes. Does that matter, when it comes to the
control they exert over their believers?

Well, yes, I think you've made it clear that you don't care for
'religion'. That's your right. But I do think you need to entertain
the notion that there just *might* be a bit more substance and
complexity to the matter than your materialistic worldview supposes.

Yes, there might. I doubt it will be a white-bearded patriarch whose
lofty pronouncements are undercut by the nasty, brutish, petty
revenges he is said to indulge in in the text your faith and many
others endorse.

Don't you see how arrogant this fairly typical response of non-believers is?
Standard Judeo-Christian theology holds as a matter of faith or assumption
that God is omnisicent, omnipotent and benevolent.  He simply *can not* be
"nasty, brutish or petty."  

Well said!
That shows clearly that the object of reverence is not the deity or
divine truth or whatever, the object of reverence is *what people
decide they want or have to believe*.
In other words, they don't believe in "god", they believe in their
belief system.

Your characterization of Him/Her that way denies
the underlying assumptions, which is not very scientific on your part.

You don't have to get very "scientific" to observe that people assume
all sorts of things they want to assume or believe, even if it is
clearly contradicted by the same body of scriptures they assume to
believe in.

 To
be fair, you would have to study the theological literature, Christian and
Jewish, written explicity to deal with (you may say, rationalize) the
apparent "discrepancies" and then evaluate that literature on its own
logical merits.

Very true - as literature. Literature written by men about belief
systems made up by men, constantly changing and reinterpreted, edited
and redefined, recast in whatever form is opportune in a given context
for given purposes. But every time and at every stage, it is "the
truth"!

You don't have to believe, but you can't make fun of what you (a
non-religious scholar) see as inconsistencies, while religious scholars can
explain how they are not.

Sure you can. People can twist almost anything to fit their purposes,
and that is what theologians have done for millenia. And some of them
are really good at it (see above).
That, of course, is one of the most important elements of organized
religions - you can't really understand them, only the "pros" really
do, and in that way, they justify the existence of a class of priests
and theologians and other professional reinterpreters and word-
twisters and ceremony performers in which the power to decide what is
"truth" and what is not is concentrated, and with that, the power to
manipulate people in the ways which are desired.
Clever, but all too transparent at the same time.
.

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