Methodological atheism
Gareth McCaughan
on the basis of "methodological naturalism": you don't have
to be a naturalist[1] to do science, but as a matter of
procedure you act as if you are one. It seems to work
pretty well.
This isn't about that, but about something that, for me,
fits in the same mental pigeonhole.
*
I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
Why? Because when you read it with the assumption that it
has to be right, you're going to be greatly inclined to
interpret it in a way that makes it fit with what you
already think and how you already live. So if there's
something there that could radically challenge you, you're
in danger of brushing it aside and thinking "well, obviously
*that* can't be the right way to read this: it doesn't make
any sense".
(Another reason is that if the atheists are right and
the whole thing *doesn't* make any sense -- or if, on
a smaller scale, the liberals are right and the particular
passage you're looking at doesn't make any sense --
then you're more likely to be able to spot that with
this approach. You may consider this an advantage or
a serious danger. Or both. Anyway, it isn't the point.)
Of course, you can't stop there (if you're a Christian,
which I'm assuming here): you need an understanding of
the Bible and of the rest of the world that tally up
somehow. So, having read whatever-it-is like an atheist,
you then need to return and read it like a Christian.
*
This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
to me it seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested
in comments: do you think it's too dangerous? have you
been doing it for years? is the idea already there in
Ignatius or someone?
*
Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
*
[1] In the sense of "a person who believes there's nothing
other than the natural world".
--
Gareth McCaughan Gareth.M...@pobox.com
.sig under construc
Debbie
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
>one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
>you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
>no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
>suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
>
>Why? Because when you read it with the assumption that it
>has to be right, you're going to be greatly inclined to
>interpret it in a way that makes it fit with what you
>already think and how you already live. So if there's
>something there that could radically challenge you, you're
>in danger of brushing it aside and thinking "well, obviously
>*that* can't be the right way to read this: it doesn't make
>any sense".
<snip>
>This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
>to me it seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested
>in comments: do you think it's too dangerous? have you
>been doing it for years? is the idea already there in
>Ignatius or someone?
I often suggest that people, even those who think they are familiar
with the Bible, most of all those who spend a lot of time and effort
in "Bible study", read it the way they'd read a novel - just sit down
and *read* it, without making any attempt to analyse, theologise or
inject interpretive models. It's not *that* long compared to some
novels, and anyone who has read LotR is well up to handling a text of
that size and complexity.
One advantage of doing this is that you get a sense of how it all fits
together (or not) and a broad perspective on the detail. There's a
great danger that people who only ever do "bible study" on selected
chunks can't see the wood for the trees.
Bible studies done in this way tend to distort the way the Bible is
understood.[1] I once saw a diagram of the human body drawn to
illustrate how many nerves there were in each area - the picture had a
huge tongue, enormous fingers, lips and genitals, small legs and a
very small back.[2] I think that subjecting individual parts of the
Bible to detailed scrutiny causes that kind of distortion if it's not
backed up by a regular reminder that there is no hierarchy of value in
the text of the Bible itself.
[1] The same may be true of lectionary readings, too.
[2] I rather hoped to find a copy on the www, but failed.
--
Debbie
Urban Theology Unit, Sheffield
Views expressed in this email are my own and are not
necessarily those of the University of Sheffield or UTU.
Gareth McCaughan
> One advantage of doing this is that you get a sense of how it all fits
> together (or not) and a broad perspective on the detail. There's a
> great danger that people who only ever do "bible study" on selected
> chunks can't see the wood for the trees.
>
> Bible studies done in this way tend to distort the way the Bible is
> understood.[1] I once saw a diagram of the human body drawn to
> illustrate how many nerves there were in each area - the picture had a
> huge tongue, enormous fingers, lips and genitals, small legs and a
> very small back.[2] I think that subjecting individual parts of the
> Bible to detailed scrutiny causes that kind of distortion if it's not
> backed up by a regular reminder that there is no hierarchy of value in
> the text of the Bible itself.
This reminds me of Donald Knuth's approach: choose a moderate
number of verses by some statistical technique (purely at random
would work, but stratified sampling is better) and see what
they tell you about the overall priorities of the Bible. He
wrote the following about the results of one study along these
lines, looking at <everything> 3:16.[3]
| Perhaps the most interesting thing that I learned from studying
| the 3:16s, which are largely a random selection of verses, was
| that the balance of topics they address is rather different from
| the things that are most often preached about in churches, or most
| often associated with the Christian religion.
|
| For example, lots of people associate religion with prohibitions,
| like "Don't have sex". Sure enough, three out of the 3:16s have
| something to say about sex -- that's 3 out of the 59. One of them
| glorifies sex; another one brings out the important point that
| childbearing is painful; and the third one is about morality and
| holiness. Another one of the 3:16s warns us that drunkenness has
| its down side.
|
| On the other hand, at least five of the 3:16s talk about
| worship. Five of them talk about God's spirit, four about
| spiritual peace, and four about Bible study itself.
|
| The curious thing is that only two of those verses deal with
| the supposedly central doctrine of salvation, about heaven;
| and one of them, John 3:16, was not found by randomization[4].
| [...]
Somewhere else in the same book he remarks that there's
not much war and violence in the verses he selected,
either, despite the widespread perception of the OT as
bloodthirsty.
[1] NMF.
[2] NMF.
[3] When chapter 3 didn't have 16 verses he counted on into
chapter 4. When there wasn't a chapter 3 he skipped the
book. The quotation is from "Things a computer scientist
rarely talks about, lecture 5.
[4] Knuth chose 3:!6 rather than, say, 2:34 because John 3:16
is a famous verse. He wanted to be sure that there would
be at least one really good one in the pile :-).
Mike Williams
>I once saw a diagram of the human body drawn to
>illustrate how many nerves there were in each area - the picture had a
>huge tongue, enormous fingers, lips and genitals, small legs and a
>very small back.[2]
>
There are several different versions, such as:-
http://www.nervana.montana.edu/academics/courses/bio426/homunculus%20copy.jpg
http://abone.superonline.com/~FGBilimMerkezi/Homunculus.jpg
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/brain-homunculus.gif
--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
Paul Hardy
<snip>
> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
> to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
> in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
> every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
> won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
> to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
I'm sure you are right. Suspending one's critical faculties is very
likely to have an impact. Tell me, have you tried reading the Qu'ran
like a Muslim and the Bhagavad Gita like a Hindu? Did you gain a
coherent understanding?
Paul
Gareth McCaughan
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>
> <snip>
>
>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
>> to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
>> in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
>> every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
>> won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
>> to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
>
> I'm sure you are right. Suspending one's critical faculties is very
> likely to have an impact.
Your irony is noted. I remark that this is exactly what
one generally does when reading fiction, so it's not
as if I'm suggesting anything that's either outlandish
or dangerous.
> Tell me, have you tried reading the Qu'ran
> like a Muslim and the Bhagavad Gita like a Hindu? Did you gain a
> coherent understanding?
Not to date, but I expect it would be very interesting.
Kevin Donnelly
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
This is an important enquiry. I think in childhood I learned bits of
the Bible by heart almost at the same time as I learned to read. There
was a scripture calendar in my home one year, headed "He shall give his
angels charge over thee...." embossed in blue and silver. What my mother
had learned the same way was passed on to me. Sunday school hymns used
bits of scripture too, and the old Wayside Pulpit posters supplemented
that learning, so almost inevitably I inherited some sort of literalist
understanding.
By somewhere around the age of 23 I had come across alternative
approaches to the Bible and was quite puzzled, especially since I felt
drawn towards some kind of ministry. Fortunately I sought advice from a
theological college principal I had met. He recognised the problem, no
doubt having met many such enquiries. He recommended the Abingdon Bible
Commentary, published twenty years before, which I then bought and still
have.
That had many valuable articles, including an outstanding one,
the Bible as a Library of Religion, by F.C. Eiselen Many years later,
teaching in an inner city school with an often indifferent and sometimes
hostile staff, not to mention pupils from varied backgrounds, this
approach was a lifeline. Since the science and humanities curricula
were banging on about evolution, kids of course asked about the Genesis
stories, about which my secular colleagues were sometimes ignorant,
prejudiced or both. In discussion it then became fairly easy to explain
the difficulties which face the compulsive thinker, regardless of what
kind of -ism they believed in. Fortunately Manchester's adviser on RE
was a splendid support in all this, which backed up my college tutor's
advice to use the "sitz im Leben" approach wherever possible.
One remarkable result of all this for me has been a holistic
view of the Bible that I find compelling and demanding in a way that the
old approach did not.
KD
--
Kevin Donnelly
Angela Rayner
Gareth McCaughan wrote:
> Scientific investigation is sometimes described as working
> on the basis of "methodological naturalism": you don't have
> to be a naturalist[1] to do science, but as a matter of
> procedure you act as if you are one. It seems to work
> pretty well.
>
> This isn't about that, but about something that, for me,
> fits in the same mental pigeonhole.
I think I see why you say that it fits into the same pigeon hole.
I've spent time letting your post drift around in the back of my mind
and I still cannot say well what I understand the problem to be, but I
do think that there is one. I looked up "naturalism" to see if it
would help my quest. Dictionary.com defines naturalism as:
(1) "Factual or realistic representation, especially:
The practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human
life in literature.
The practice of reproducing subjects as precisely as possible in the
visual arts."
(3) "Philosophy. The system of thought holding that all phenomena can
be explained in terms of natural causes and laws."
My guess is that you mean one or both of these options. The problem
that I have is that I am not sure whether or not it is possible to
describe precisely the actual circumstances of human life in
literature (or in speech for that matter). It comes down to the fact
that we are creatures of our environments. If we had lived 500 years
ago, we would not necessarily think the thoughts that we do now. It
troubles me somewhat that one cannot do science unless on pretends to
be a naturalist. I suppose that the ideas of naturalism must so
strongly be built into science that it's not possible to do science
without taking on the presumption that "all phenomena can be explained
in terms of natural causes and laws" or something similar. I wonder
whether that makes it difficult to be a scientist and a Christian. I
presume that God is not thought to be either a natural cause or a law.
God breaking into our world, being begotten and yet "made man" is
not something we can explain in terms of natural causes and laws, but
I digress. I will also pick up on the other part of the definition
which states that naturalism is "The practice of reproducing subjects
as precisely as possible in the visual arts.". I want to ask how one
knows whether one has reproduced one's subject precisely. When the 4
gospel writers looked on or heard eye witness accounts of the passion,
was their concern to reproduce what happened "as precisely as
possible" in their literature or were they attempting to tell a good
story or both? Why can't a good story be science? Does one require a
good story (perhaps a metaphor) to be present before one can make the
mental leaps necessary to do good science? And finally, how does one
know what a "natural law" is or what these "actual circumstances" of
human life are? What if we disagree to begin with about the "actual
circumstances" of human life so that it's not possible for you to
depict them? As a Christian, do I (or should I) have different
"natural laws" to those of a scientist? I presume that I should not
if I intend to do science as well as the best scientists. Maybe we
have to return to Aquinas' understanding of theology as science :-) I
digress again. I want to know what "factual representation" really
is. Is there a "way things are" that in all circumstances is there to
be represented? I think that in hard sciences, there sometimes is,
but it is only known by working within the boundaries of certain (not
always obvious) axioms. That would seem to indicate only that there
is a "way things are" within certain boundaries and that seems
self-evident. How much does our language determine "the way things
are"? Perhaps these scientific axioms are the things called "natural
laws", but it seems to me that what some people think are "natural
laws" are not natural at all. Being a Christian means that what I
understand to be "natural" is not necessarily what a non-Christian
would understand to be "natural" or even, amusingly enough, what
another Christian would understand as "natural". Whose narrative is
determinative? There might well be a "way things are", but do any of
us know it and how do we know if we do?
NB - Clearly as a Christian, I must think that the story I'm telling
is a true one, but I'm not clear what (is there a plural of what?) I
mean when I use the word "truth" at the moment. Neither am I aware of
how I would show that somebody else's story was untrue or even how one
makes sense of the world outside of using the language one has been
trained to use. I don't know if it's possible to make sense of the
world outside of language. All I know is that it helps if one's
language can somehow be internally coherent. I do not know if there
is a "way things are" or a "way things were". This probably sounds
like a rather deep existential crisis, but I think it's a crisis
shared with a great many other people, and for some reason, despite
not knowing all of this, I know that I would not be any surer of
knowing even if I did know so I think things will resolve quite
happily :-)
> I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
> one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
> you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
> no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
> suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
But I think this is an appalling way of reading the Bible. Why should
attempting to read (and I say "attempting" because I think it
impossible) without a story be a good thing to try and do? How does
one know how one would read were one an atheist anyway? How is the
Holy Spirit supposed to enable us to read in this way? What does the
Holy Spirit think about being relegated (and I assume that this must
be what happens) when one is to attempt to read the Bible as an
atheist might read? One cannot pray "Dear Lord, please help me read
as an atheist in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen." We have to read the Bible as our churches teach us to
read the Bible because otherwise we're at risk of thinking that we
each have minds that can be made up without training. How are we to
know how to identify truth? Well, we're supposed to believe that
Jesus is the truth. If Jesus is the truth and Jesus is the head that
makes up the body, the Church, then we're going to darn well hope that
our churches have access to the truth in a way that as individuals we
do not. I know the problems in this regard. What if we do not think
our churches teach truthfully? Well, what are we doing in those
churches if we think that? But, yes, neither can we choose to leave
those churches because without a story, how will we identify
faithfulness elsewhere? There is not really an answer here I don't
think. We must submit ourselves to the authority of the Church in
order to think as the Church thinks *in order* to have the mind of
Christ. I'm sure people will disagree with that. I can't think of a
way of making it more agreeable or digestible. It seems to bear all
the hallmarks of fundamentalism when I suggest that people cannot
think for themselves, but I'm not convinced that what we think is
"thinking for ourselves" really is that at all. Besides, if we are to
read how the Church reads (and of course, different churches read
differently), then why would we be reading as atheists?
I think your way of reading assumes that this sort of "neutrality" is
good, although you might say that I am wrong because you are not
aiming for neutrality, but merely at understanding the argument from a
different side. Either way, I think the project is not likely to
succeed because we cannot become unstoried people. I know we are all
multiply storied people, but I'm not sure we can be storied theists
and atheists at the same time. Maybe you would say that you are not
attempting to become "unstoried", but to accept the stories of
another. But how can you accept the stories of another without being
trained to do so? (Side note to self: Is the assumption I'm making
that one is required to be trained to speak and to read and to listen
one that you would accept? Do you even know to what I refer? Will I
remember to what I was referring when you ask me about it?) But, why
would you put yourself in the position of being trained to use the
language of another person if you did not see their stories as true?
One would not bother learning to lay bricks or play a musical
instrument if one had only glass with which to build one's house or
one thought the musical instrument made an appalling sound.
> Why? Because when you read it with the assumption that it
> has to be right, you're going to be greatly inclined to
> interpret it in a way that makes it fit with what you
> already think and how you already live.
But attempting to read as an atheist is just another way of reading
with the assumption it has to be right. I don't think Christians can
really read like atheists anyway. Why should we think the Bible is
legitimately read when divorced from the context of the Church? Is
the Bible, the Word of God, read with the light of the Holy Spirit and
in the wisdom of the Church not disturbing enough? Should we not gasp
open-mouthed at the sheer audacity of Scripture to make us think
thoughts that we do not want to think? "Blessed are the poor." We
(at least I) secretly wonder how on earth the poor are blessed. "Sell
your possessions and give to the poor." Darn it, we're going to have
to come up with a way to get around that one. What about us being
"friends with God"? I still find that a disturbing claim.
Besides, is not attempting to read like an atheist or agnostic another
way of secretly interpreting in a way that makes it fit with what you
already think and how you already live? If you always do that anyway,
it's just another way of conforming to the status quo.
> So if there's
> something there that could radically challenge you, you're
> in danger of brushing it aside and thinking "well, obviously
> *that* can't be the right way to read this: it doesn't make
> any sense".
Hopefully not, if you're being shaped by the Holy Spirit. If you can
read the Bible as a Christian without it being radically challenging
then there's a possibility that you are ignoring the promptings of God.
> (Another reason is that if the atheists are right and
> the whole thing *doesn't* make any sense -- or if, on
> a smaller scale, the liberals are right and the particular
> passage you're looking at doesn't make any sense --
> then you're more likely to be able to spot that with
> this approach.
I'm afraid I simply don't agree. What if it only makes sense (as I
think it does) within a certain context? If an atheist hears in
Church the words "He is risen", then he/she may think "what a load of
twaddle". I wouldn't believe I was really eating the body and blood
of Christ if I didn't think that Christ had been raised from the dead.
Neither would I take Paul's exhortations to be joyful or not to
boast seriously if I did not believe that Christ really had been
raised from the dead. How are you going to know if the passage really
doesn't make sense if you've suspended the faculties (if that's
possible) by which you would normally read what makes sense or not.
To the world, we know that Christianity won't make sense. It's
foolishness. It's supposed to be foolishness because the standards of
Christ turn the world's wisdom on its head. The world says "get
rich", the Bible seems to think that the camel mightn't pass through
the needle if you're rich. The world sometimes says "if you don't
have a special someone, you're a no-one". Paul says "it's better to
marry than to burn"... a hardly positive statement about marriage and
more of an endorsement of singleness. The world says "create your own
identity... be who you are" and the Bible seems to say "your identity
is in Christ." The world says "follow your heart" and Christ says
"No. Follow me." We say "choose what to do with your life" and
Christ says "Make disciples". Atheists don't read as Christians do
for good reasons.
> You may consider this an advantage or
> a serious danger. Or both. Anyway, it isn't the point.)
I think it's a bizarre and somewhat impossible exercise. Maybe I do
think it's dangerous, but probably not for the reasons that I would
used to have considered it dangerous.
> Of course, you can't stop there (if you're a Christian,
> which I'm assuming here): you need an understanding of
> the Bible and of the rest of the world that tally up
> somehow. So, having read whatever-it-is like an atheist,
> you then need to return and read it like a Christian.
Again, I have all sorts of questions. You don't read "like a
Christian" because you are a Christian and you can never not be a
Christian. You'll only end up reading "as a Christian trying to think
like an atheist". This might have some intellectual fun factor, but
I'm not sure if it will be at all helpful. You cannot read as
somebody else reads because you are not somebody else. Sometimes I
wonder whether you can even have successful conversation with somebody
else? Often I think you can because your points of reference are
similar enough, but if one is not careful, one might not even notice
that one has failed to communicate. I almost wished you'd at least
put the Christian reading first, rather than the atheist one, but I
don't wish that because I think the whole project is a mistaken one
anyway. I want to say "you can't start there if you're a Christian".
Your starting point has already been decided for you by the training
you've already received anyway.
> *
>
> This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
> to me it seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested
> in comments: do you think it's too dangerous? have you
> been doing it for years? is the idea already there in
> Ignatius or someone?
I think this way of reading is a product of modernism and indicative
of modernist assumptions, eg. one can read as another reads without
training. I would say it was dangerous, not because you might
suddenly discover an untruth in Christianity, but because in divorcing
oneself from one's story, one has no criteria by which to judge
anything and thus there is the danger that one will not see the wood
from the trees, the truth from the untruth. One will not really see
anyway because one might have forgotten that we call those things
trees. This is a danger just as much for atheists as for Christians.
Interestingly enough I hold that one is more likely to discover
untruths if one has been trained faithfully in one's own tradition
than by attempting to adopt the tradition of another. (I'm not sure
why I hold this because I'm sure some people would claim that one is
unable to "climb out of the box" due to indoctrination.) But
indoctrination is very different from receiving the very best training
of one's tradition.
> *
>
> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
> to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
> in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
> every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
> won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
> to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
This presents just the same problem for atheists as it does for
Christians. How will one know when one is thinking like a Christian
anyway?
> *
>
> [1] In the sense of "a person who believes there's nothing
> other than the natural world".
Oh bother. I only just noticed this footnote. I think the post is
still on topic, but if you think that having read this footnote might
have changed some of what I've written, please feel free to say.
Sorry if I sound polemical and defensive, but I'm extremely
uncomfortable with the suggestions you propose.
ciao for now
--
Angela Rayner ><8>
"Beginning a conversation does not require suspending all our previous
beliefs or agreeing to appeal only to premises that would be accepted
by any "sane" person. Indeed, genuinely suspending all one's own
beliefs--trying to wipe the slate clean--seems itself a recipe for
insanity."
William C. Placher
Tim Martin
> I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
> one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
> you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
> no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
> suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
I think this is a good idea, and as an atheist I'd certainly encourage more
Christians to do it. In fact, if more Christians did this I don't think I'd
complain about Christianity quite so much. :-)
> This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
> to me it seems obviously sensible.
To far too many Christians it seems to be a completely alien idea to them.
What I find interesting is that even otherwise intelligent Christians seem
to find this idea strange.
> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
> to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
> in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
> every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
> won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
> to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
I've done this on a few occasions, and it's quite interesting, sometimes
even enlightening. Unfortunately it's the same Chinese-food enlightenment I
get from postmodernist fiction - twenty minutes later I feel hungry again.
Tim
Steven Carr
> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
which will help me solve my personal problem?
> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
> to read a decent chunk of it.
Are there any chunks which are decent?
> You'll find that this helps
> in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
> every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
> won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
> to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
I think Homer Simpson summed up the overall idea best 'Boy, what a
preachy book. EVERYONE's a sinner! Except this guy.....'
I found that reading a decent chunk of Revelation did not help me get
an overall idea of what was going on.....
I did read Exodus when I was very small, and got a reasonable idea of
it. It never occurred to me that people thought these things were
true.
Tim Martin
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>
> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
> which will help me solve my personal problem?
If that's what you understood Gareth as meaning then you obviously didn't
read his post very well.
>> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
>> to read a decent chunk of it.
>
> Are there any chunks which are decent?
Presumably Gareth thinks so, which is why he's encouraging you to do it. You
have the choice whether to trust him or not.
> I think Homer Simpson summed up the overall idea best 'Boy, what a
> preachy book. EVERYONE's a sinner! Except this guy.....'
:-) Very funny. But it would be sad if that were the best your understanding
about the bible ever got.
> I found that reading a decent chunk of Revelation did not help me get
> an overall idea of what was going on.....
>
> I did read Exodus when I was very small, and got a reasonable idea of
> it. It never occurred to me that people thought these things were
> true.
I suspect a Christian would tell you that if you're serious about enjoying
the bible you should start with the gospels - that's certainly what they
always told me.
Tim
George Russell
> I often suggest that people, even those who think they are familiar
> with the Bible, most of all those who spend a lot of time and effort
> in "Bible study", read it the way they'd read a novel - just sit down
> and *read* it, without making any attempt to analyse, theologise or
> inject interpretive models. It's not *that* long compared to some
> novels, and anyone who has read LotR is well up to handling a text of
> that size and complexity.
I think this sounds like a good idea. The main problem though is that
the Bible is rather bitty, so if you try to read 20 pages in one go you
will probably forget about 90%. I managed to read through the Bible
in under two years by making it a rule that I always read at least a
little bit (normally at least a chapter) each day. Unless you are busier
than I am, it's pretty easy to find time to read at least one chapter; I
usually did it over breakfast, but you could try reading the Bible on the
toilet, if that's not too blasphemous.
Simon Woods
news:572eea83.03042...@posting.google.com...
> I found that reading a decent chunk of Revelation did not help me get
> an overall idea of what was going on.....
It has been said that reading the Bible is like looking in a mirror (James
1:23). Perhaps a deep and secret thing has been made manifest to you.
> I did read Exodus when I was very small, and got a reasonable idea of
> it. It never occurred to me that people thought these things were
> true.
What a memory!
BTW, I'm still waiting for my powers of reasoning to develop (in case you
hadn't noticed!) and I'm X years old (where 0<X<70+)
David Anderson
> you could try reading the Bible on the
> toilet, if that's not too blasphemous.
If it's good enough for Martin Luther... :)
David Anderson
David Anderson
> I've done this on a few occasions, and it's quite interesting, sometimes
> even enlightening. Unfortunately it's the same Chinese-food enlightenment
I
> get from postmodernist fiction - twenty minutes later I feel hungry again.
Hmm... what do you mean by postmodernist here?
Kafka? (I know you haven't read Borges.) Beckett? Sterne?
Did you see Adaptation? How about Unforgiven? (Both of those are
postmodernist IMHO.)
David Anderson
David Anderson
> Dictionary.com defines naturalism as:
>
> (1) "Factual or realistic representation, especially:
> The practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human
> life in literature.
> The practice of reproducing subjects as precisely as possible in the
> visual arts."
Dictionaries are often inadequate when it comes to recording nuances of
meaning, and this seems especially inadequate. In literature, naturalism
carries overtones that the depiction is positively anti-idealistic: i.e. it
shows people who are miserable and selfish becoming even more miserable.
There are lots of problems with naturalism as an ideal in the visual arts
which I'm sure I don't need to tell you about.
David Anderson
Gareth McCaughan
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>
> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
> which will help me solve my personal problem?
Er, no, though you're welcome to try it. Most Christians
don't do that these days. (I don't know whether there was
ever a time when most did.)
Gareth McCaughan
[SNIP: discussion of "methodological naturalism" which is
unfortunately mostly irrelevant because Angela, despite
being the good scholar I know her to be, didn't read the
footnote :-)]
>> I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
>> one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
>> you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
>> no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
>> suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
>
> But I think this is an appalling way of reading the Bible.
Them's fighting words, pal. :-)
> Why should
> attempting to read (and I say "attempting" because I think it
> impossible) without a story be a good thing to try and do?
I'm going to interrupt you here, because I think it's possible
that some crucial words didn't reach you with quite the meaning
I intended them to have. "One of the first things". Not "the
only thing". I am not proposing, in the least, that we should
rest content with the "uncommitted" reading that would result
from reading the Bible in this way. Only that this "uncommitted"
reading is a useful resource.
OK, back to your questions.
> Why should
> attempting to read (and I say "attempting" because I think it
> impossible) without a story be a good thing to try and do? How does
> one know how one would read were one an atheist anyway? How is the
> Holy Spirit supposed to enable us to read in this way? What does the
> Holy Spirit think about being relegated (and I assume that this must
> be what happens) when one is to attempt to read the Bible as an
> atheist might read? One cannot pray "Dear Lord, please help me read
> as an atheist in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
> Spirit. Amen."
I'm not sure I'm proposing attempting to read "without a story".
I'm proposing that one thing we should do when reading is to
set our story aside briefly, so that our own story doesn't
dominate our reading more than it ought. We're necessarily
reading within that story, but we have some choice how that
within-ness affects our reading.
I am not saying that we should try to emulate exactly the
way an atheist would read, and indeed we probably shouldn't.
For instance, some atheists might be unable to read the
Bible without a sense of hostility, and I don't think that
would be a good thing to emulate even briefly. (I can imagine
odd circumstances in which it might be, but they aren't
what I had in mind.) Since I'm not proposing a very exact
emulation, I don't think it matters that we don't know with
great confidence just how an atheist would read. We have
*some* idea, and that suffices.
The Holy Spirit will help us in whatever way the Holy Spirit
chooses to help us; far be it from me to put the Spirit of God
in a box. One possible way in which this might happen: by
enabling us to read with greater clarity of thought and to
see places where what-we-think-we-know doesn't match up with
what's in the text. A real atheist would see them only as
evidence of the wrongness of the Bible; our attitude will
have to be different; but in the atheist-reading phase I'm
proposing, it's enough just to note the inconsistency.
I don't think there's any reason why we can't pray something
along the lines of the prayer you mention, though I wouldn't
put it in quite those words. How about "Lord, please help me
to read this without trying to conform it to my own understanding,
and to pay attention only to what it actually says, so that
after I've done that I can look more candidly at how it affects
my life"?
I understand that it seems blasphemous to take something
we should love and try to look at it neutrally. Here's an
analogy. I am told (I'd be interested to know how truly)
that when learning to draw or paint it is important to learn
ways of seeing *shapes* rather than *things*; so that you
can transfer those shapes to the page and not be distracted
by your knowledge of what the things you're drawing really
are. (For instance, something that's a right angle in reality
may need to be represented as an acute angle on the paper,
and you might need to let go of your knowledge that what you're
drawing is the right-angle corner of a house in order to
draw the shape that's actually visible.) Let's suppose that
I'm not woefully misinformed here, and imagine an artist
who wants to make a (realistic) drawing of his or her beloved
spouse. In order to do this, our artist will need to look
at her or him as a mere collection of shapes, at least
temporarily. The final result, we hope, will be a drawing
that somehow embodies not only the spouse's appearance but
also the artist's love; but on the way there it's necessary
to become "neutral" and "impersonal" for a while.
> We have to read the Bible as our churches teach us to
> read the Bible because otherwise we're at risk of thinking that we
> each have minds that can be made up without training.
(You've been reading Hauerwas, yes?)
We all have minds that *are*, constantly, made up without
training. This may be a good or a bad thing, but it's not
really negotiable. And it's not clear to me that such
training as we have really qualifies us to make up our
minds, especially in theology.
> How are we to
> know how to identify truth? Well, we're supposed to believe that
> Jesus is the truth. If Jesus is the truth and Jesus is the head that
> makes up the body, the Church, then we're going to darn well hope that
> our churches have access to the truth in a way that as individuals we
> do not. I know the problems in this regard. What if we do not think
> our churches teach truthfully? Well, what are we doing in those
> churches if we think that? But, yes, neither can we choose to leave
> those churches because without a story, how will we identify
> faithfulness elsewhere? There is not really an answer here I don't
> think. We must submit ourselves to the authority of the Church in
> order to think as the Church thinks *in order* to have the mind of
> Christ.
Well, if we abandon individual attempts to understand the Bible
then indeed the sort of exercise I described is a waste of time.
But then, so is reading the Bible in the first place. (Hauerwas
has suggested that we don't have the *right* to read the Bible
ourselves.)
> I'm sure people will disagree with that. I can't think of a
> way of making it more agreeable or digestible. It seems to bear all
> the hallmarks of fundamentalism when I suggest that people cannot
> think for themselves, but I'm not convinced that what we think is
> "thinking for ourselves" really is that at all. Besides, if we are to
> read how the Church reads (and of course, different churches read
> differently), then why would we be reading as atheists?
We are the Church. How the Church reads is partly dependent
on how we read. We should be aiming not only to read as the
Church reads, but to *improve* how the Church reads. Perhaps
it's arrogant to suppose that we can do this by improving
our own understanding; well, then I must be reckoned arrogant,
because I do indeed suppose that.
One way in which we can improve our understanding is to
try to break through assumptions we don't notice we're
making. I propose that "reading as an atheist" may sometimes
help to do this.
> I think your way of reading assumes that this sort of "neutrality" is
> good, although you might say that I am wrong because you are not
> aiming for neutrality, but merely at understanding the argument from a
> different side. Either way, I think the project is not likely to
> succeed because we cannot become unstoried people. I know we are all
> multiply storied people, but I'm not sure we can be storied theists
> and atheists at the same time. Maybe you would say that you are not
> attempting to become "unstoried", but to accept the stories of
> another. But how can you accept the stories of another without being
> trained to do so?
I think you misunderstand my reasons for proposing this
exercise. It isn't, mostly, a matter of understanding the
atheist viewpoint, though that might be valuable too.
It's a matter of reading in a way that enables us to see
things in the Bible that don't fit with our preconceptions.
Our ultimate response to this should generally be very
different from an atheist's, of course.
> (Side note to self: Is the assumption I'm making
> that one is required to be trained to speak and to read and to listen
> one that you would accept? Do you even know to what I refer? Will I
> remember to what I was referring when you ask me about it?)
Is "you" in that parenthesis "self" or me? :-) I'd say
that reading and speaking and listening all benefit from
training, but that if by "training" you mean to imply
formal training of any sort then that's too narrow. And
I'd say that we can *at least partly* train ourselves,
and that the exercise I'm proposing may help in that
process.
> But, why
> would you put yourself in the position of being trained to use the
> language of another person if you did not see their stories as true?
> One would not bother learning to lay bricks or play a musical
> instrument if one had only glass with which to build one's house or
> one thought the musical instrument made an appalling sound.
One part of the training of a piano tuner is in the ability
to listen not to the notes but to the beats between them;
to do this you need to abandon your musical sensibilities
for a while. The purpose of tuning a piano is to enable it
to make better music. I hope the analogy is clear.
>> Why? Because when you read it with the assumption that it
>> has to be right, you're going to be greatly inclined to
>> interpret it in a way that makes it fit with what you
>> already think and how you already live.
>
> But attempting to read as an atheist is just another way of reading
> with the assumption it has to be right.
Eh?
> I don't think Christians can
> really read like atheists anyway. Why should we think the Bible is
> legitimately read when divorced from the context of the Church? Is
> the Bible, the Word of God, read with the light of the Holy Spirit and
> in the wisdom of the Church not disturbing enough?
Alas, most of us are often blind to the light of the Holy Spirit
and deaf to the wisdom of the Church, at least in part. If we
were all perfectly in tune with the Spirit and the Church then
the sort of thing I describe would probably not be necessary;
but I, at least, am not.
> Should we not gasp
> open-mouthed at the sheer audacity of Scripture to make us think
> thoughts that we do not want to think? "Blessed are the poor." We
> (at least I) secretly wonder how on earth the poor are blessed. "Sell
> your possessions and give to the poor." Darn it, we're going to have
> to come up with a way to get around that one. What about us being
> "friends with God"? I still find that a disturbing claim.
All this is good.
> Besides, is not attempting to read like an atheist or agnostic another
> way of secretly interpreting in a way that makes it fit with what you
> already think and how you already live? If you always do that anyway,
> it's just another way of conforming to the status quo.
I'm not sure what "that" is. If someone always reads like an
atheist or agnostic, they have more serious problems than the
one I'm trying to address and what I've suggested is not going
to help them. If someone always reads in a way that conforms
the Bible to their preconceived ideas, then reading in a
different way might be a good way of getting out of that
habit.
>> So if there's
>> something there that could radically challenge you, you're
>> in danger of brushing it aside and thinking "well, obviously
>> *that* can't be the right way to read this: it doesn't make
>> any sense".
>
> Hopefully not, if you're being shaped by the Holy Spirit. If you can
> read the Bible as a Christian without it being radically challenging
> then there's a possibility that you are ignoring the promptings of God.
Right. And I am suggesting a way -- a paradoxical way,
no doubt -- of making one way to ignore the promptings
of God less available.
>> (Another reason is that if the atheists are right and
>> the whole thing *doesn't* make any sense -- or if, on
>> a smaller scale, the liberals are right and the particular
>> passage you're looking at doesn't make any sense --
>> then you're more likely to be able to spot that with
>> this approach.
>
> I'm afraid I simply don't agree. What if it only makes sense (as I
> think it does) within a certain context? If an atheist hears in
> Church the words "He is risen", then he/she may think "what a load of
> twaddle". I wouldn't believe I was really eating the body and blood
> of Christ if I didn't think that Christ had been raised from the dead.
Yes, this is all true, and it would be a very serious objection
to what I said if I were proposing that we read like atheists
or agnostics all the time, or even most of the time. But I'm
not. We live, as you said yourself, within our Christian context,
and occasional "atheist readings" can't change that. But I don't
think it does us any harm to contemplate occasionally the fact
that these things look like twaddle from the outside. If -- as
I believe, as if I needed to say that! -- they are in fact not
twaddle and can be seen as not-twaddle within the Christian
community, then we shall see them so. But if in the end the
atheists are right and we are both deluding ourselves -- if
that meaning-in-context is *created* by the context rather
than *revealed* by it -- then we have more chance of noticing
if we occasionally reflect on how things look from outside.
>> Of course, you can't stop there (if you're a Christian,
>> which I'm assuming here): you need an understanding of
>> the Bible and of the rest of the world that tally up
>> somehow. So, having read whatever-it-is like an atheist,
>> you then need to return and read it like a Christian.
>
> Again, I have all sorts of questions. You don't read "like a
> Christian" because you are a Christian and you can never not be a
> Christian.
In which case you are reading like a Christian in the very
fullest sense possible. (As I use the word "like", X is like X.)
> You'll only end up reading "as a Christian trying to think
> like an atheist". This might have some intellectual fun factor, but
> I'm not sure if it will be at all helpful. You cannot read as
> somebody else reads because you are not somebody else.
All that follows from "you are not somebody else" is that
you cannot read *exactly* as somebody else reads. You can
still imitate, for any of a number of reasons, some aspects
of how they read.
> Sometimes I
> wonder whether you can even have successful conversation with somebody
> else? Often I think you can because your points of reference are
> similar enough, but if one is not careful, one might not even notice
> that one has failed to communicate.
That's always a danger. I find myself wondering whether the
same mightn't be possible even when in dialogue with oneself. :-)
> I almost wished you'd at least
> put the Christian reading first, rather than the atheist one, but I
> don't wish that because I think the whole project is a mistaken one
> anyway. I want to say "you can't start there if you're a Christian".
> Your starting point has already been decided for you by the training
> you've already received anyway.
I think there's some equivocation on the word "start" here.
My ultimate starting point (hmm, curious phrase) must of course
be a Christian one, since I am a Christian. For that matter,
I am all sorts of other things too. But, still, I may be able
to put aside some of these things for a while in order to
read more clearly.
> I think this way of reading is a product of modernism and indicative
> of modernist assumptions, eg. one can read as another reads without
> training.
Are modernist assumptions worse than post-modernist assumptions,
e.g. that one cannot read as another reads?
> I would say it was dangerous, not because you might
> suddenly discover an untruth in Christianity, but because in divorcing
> oneself from one's story, one has no criteria by which to judge
> anything and thus there is the danger that one will not see the wood
> from the trees, the truth from the untruth.
In case it wasn't clear: the danger I had in mind wasn't
that of "suddenly discovering an untruth in Christianity"
(if there are untruths in Christianity then we are better
off discovering them), but that of suddenly thinking we
discover an untruth when in fact what we see is not an
untruth at all. In other words, much what you describe.
> One will not really see
> anyway because one might have forgotten that we call those things
> trees. This is a danger just as much for atheists as for Christians.
> Interestingly enough I hold that one is more likely to discover
> untruths if one has been trained faithfully in one's own tradition
> than by attempting to adopt the tradition of another. (I'm not sure
> why I hold this because I'm sure some people would claim that one is
> unable to "climb out of the box" due to indoctrination.) But
> indoctrination is very different from receiving the very best training
> of one's tradition.
What would you say if it turned out that there was a
Christian tradition in which the sort of "reading like
an atheist" I describe was regarded as a useful practice?
(I have no reason to think there is one, by the way.)
> Sorry if I sound polemical and defensive, but I'm extremely
> uncomfortable with the suggestions you propose.
That's OK. Your comments are welcome, though I do think
you (1) completely misunderstood what I was suggesting
and why I was suggesting it, and (2) are at least as
severely in thrall to postmodernism as I am to modernism,
although your postmodernist assumptions are no better
than my modernist ones.
Mark Goodge
typed:
>Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>
>You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>which will help me solve my personal problem?
>
>> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
>> to read a decent chunk of it.
>
>Are there any chunks which are decent?
You won't know until you try.
Mark
--
--> http://www.FridayFun.net - now with added games! <--
"All the promises we break from the cradle to the grave"
Tumbleweed
news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
> >> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> >> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
> >
some(many?)atheists started from a position of believing (after initial
parental indoctrination) and were driven to one of disbelief by the
disconnect between the bible and reality.
--
Tumbleweed
Remove my socks before replying (but no email reply necessary to newsgroups)
Debbie
I write lectures that way...well, do the preparatory reading, anyway.
You can tell what my next lecture is on by the selection of books
stacked up on the cistern and the side of the bath.
Paul A Dean
> This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
> to me it seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested
> in comments: do you think it's too dangerous? have you
> been doing it for years? is the idea already there in
> Ignatius or someone?
I don't understand your advice. It seems like you're recommending
partitioning off in ones mind certain memories and knowledge. How is
it possible to read something and to not take into account all
approaches with which one is familiar?
The process of reading anything is to interpret it in all ways known
to the reader and to make a judgement as to conclusions, based on
those ways, in each passage. What other way is there?
--
Paul
Paul A Dean
> I often suggest that people, even those who think they are familiar
> with the Bible, most of all those who spend a lot of time and effort
> in "Bible study", read it the way they'd read a novel - just sit
> down and *read* it, without making any attempt to analyse,
> theologise or inject interpretive models. It's not *that* long
> compared to some novels, and anyone who has read LotR is well up to
> handling a text of that size and complexity.
>
> One advantage of doing this is that you get a sense of how it all
> fits together (or not) and a broad perspective on the detail.
I agree. I once read the bible straight through in two weeks (I was a
student and so had plenty of spare time). It was most useful.
--
Paul
Gareth McCaughan
>>> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>>>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>>>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>>>
> What some (many?) christians seemingly fail to appreciate is that
> some(many?)atheists started from a position of believing (after initial
> parental indoctrination) and were driven to one of disbelief by the
> disconnect between the bible and reality.
I don't know why what I wrote makes you think I don't
understand that. However, I should probably have
qualified my advice: it's intended for atheists who,
for whatever reason, are interested in the Bible.
Those who decided years ago that it has nothing useful
to say to them obviously won't be interested in reading
it, "like a Christian" or otherwise.
Paul A Dean
> I think this sounds like a good idea. The main problem though is
> that the Bible is rather bitty, so if you try to read 20 pages in
> one go you will probably forget about 90%. I managed to read
> through the Bible in under two years by making it a rule that I
> always read at least a little bit (normally at least a chapter) each
> day.
Would you read a novel over two years? I suggest it would have to be
a rather boring novel. I think that it's only worth doing if you find
it as interesting as a novel.
> Unless you are busier than I am, it's pretty easy to find time to
> read at least one chapter; I usually did it over breakfast, but you
> could try reading the Bible on the toilet, if that's not too
> blasphemous.
I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet, but
somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
--
Paul
David Anderson
news:Pine.SOL.4.44.030422...@orange.csi.cam.ac.uk...
> On 21 Apr 2003, Gareth McCaughan wrote:
>
> Gareth McCaughan wrote:
> > I claim that when you're studying something in the Bible,
> > one of the first things you should do is to read it as if
> > you're an atheist, or at least an agnostic: as if you have
> > no commitment to believing what it says, or doing what it
> > suggests, or letting it affect your life in any way.
>
> But I think this is an appalling way of reading the Bible. Why should
> attempting to read (and I say "attempting" because I think it
> impossible) without a story be a good thing to try and do? How does
> one know how one would read were one an atheist anyway?
There's a bit of a problem here, and I'm not sure that either of you have
quite managed to formulate what the problem we're trying to address is. The
last sentence does imply that I have managed to formulate the problem - it
does so incorrectly. :) Nevertheless, I'll have a try.
Firstly, the question of reading the Bible as an atheist... as opposed to a
Christian, as opposed to any religious believer or as opposed to an
agnostic? There are important differences. For that matter, atheist is a
rather meaningless word, being a negative. It suggests that there are
people who are just not Christians and don't have any positive beliefs. I
think that what Gareth meant by 'reading as an atheist' is probably better
phrased in his explanatory sentence: reading it as if you don't have any
commitment to letting it affect your life. You aren't putting your beliefs
in abeyance: you're merely treating the Bible as if it didn't ground your
beliefs.
I do agree with Angela that attempts to enter a belief-neutral state are
likely to prove illusory. I hope my reemphasis of Gareth's argument is
reasonable.
> We have to read the Bible as our churches teach us to
> read the Bible because otherwise we're at risk of thinking that we
> each have minds that can be made up without training.
There is a problem here which is the reverse of the problem you point to
above. It's not as if the only options are 'read the Bible as our churches
have trained us to' and 'read the Bible untrained'. We can't escape from
our cultural backgrounds - still part of our cultural backgrounds allows us
to criticise parts of our cultural backgrounds.
> I think your way of reading assumes that this sort of "neutrality" is
> good, although you might say that I am wrong because you are not
> aiming for neutrality, but merely at understanding the argument from a
> different side. Either way, I think the project is not likely to
> succeed because we cannot become unstoried people. I know we are all
> multiply storied people, but I'm not sure we can be storied theists
> and atheists at the same time.
I hope that Hauerwas would object to calling us 'theists' in the same way
that Nicholas Lash does. :)
> But, why
> would you put yourself in the position of being trained to use the
> language of another person if you did not see their stories as true?
Whose Language? Which Narrativity? :)
For those people unfamiliar with Stanley Hauerwas' footnotes, I am pointing
out that one of Hauerwas' favourite philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre, in his
book Whose Justice? Which Rationality? does engage with the problem of
someone who is trained within two different traditions. His example is
Aquinas, who is also one of Hauerwas' heroes. The point is that from the
perspective of both traditions you can show how both traditions fail to
reach their telos by constructing a new tradition that corrects them both.
This is a good thing as it makes more of what one believes true. The
assumption is that no working tradition is entirely devoid of truth.
> You cannot read as
> somebody else reads because you are not somebody else. Sometimes I
> wonder whether you can even have successful conversation with somebody
> else? Often I think you can because your points of reference are
> similar enough, but if one is not careful, one might not even notice
> that one has failed to communicate.
I think this rather runs counter to your whole argument. We can read as
other people do because we are trained in the use of a common language. If
we couldn't read as other people do, then we couldn't read at all.
(Wittgenstein, etc.)
> I think this way of reading is a product of modernism and indicative
> of modernist assumptions, eg. one can read as another reads without
> training. I would say it was dangerous, not because you might
> suddenly discover an untruth in Christianity, but because in divorcing
> oneself from one's story, one has no criteria by which to judge
> anything and thus there is the danger that one will not see the wood
> from the trees, the truth from the untruth.
Actually, I would have thought that this is what would happen where reading
in the empiricist tradition possible, which it isn't. Incidentally, I think
that 'modernism' and 'modernist' normally refer to the literary modernist
movement of the early C20, which I take to be part of what we now call
post-modernism. What you meant by 'modernism' is 'modernity'. I don't
think there's a word for what you meant by 'modernist'.
Let's try to consider a general case. How do we read Shakespeare, Virgil,
Plato or the Bhagavad Gita? Some people have implied that religious
believers, Marxists, etc. can't read any of them because we impose our own
beliefs on the texts - as opposed to liberal secularists who don't have any
beliefs and anyway don't impose them on the texts. They naturally see that
all those people as they really are: liberal secularists.
Still there is a problem there. To object that someone reads Shakespeare
and makes Shakespeare end up believing what they personally believe is a
criticism, and it does further than just saying that they don't read
Shakespeare as believing what we believe. I think that they don't let the
difference between Shakespeare's beliefs and their own emerge: there's no
dialogue or encounter. This doesn't mean that the task is easy, or that we
can do so by leaving our beliefs behind - it just means that it's what we
try to aim at. (Of course, we might think that the plays don't tell us what
Shakespeare believed in sufficient detail to ascertain his attitude to
justification by faith or even epicureanism.)
It doesn't seem to me obviously impossible to read the Bible as if it
weren't our scripture - partly because hermeneutics as an intellectual
discipline started with the Bible as its object and then found that it
generalised to other texts, and partly because I don't think that the
distinction between scripture and non-scripture is so strong as to mean that
the two categories exclude each other.
David Anderson
Gareth McCaughan
> I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet, but
> somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
> attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
I don't generally find that defecation requires a great
deal of mental effort.
Tim Rowe
Carr) wrote:
>Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>
>You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>which will help me solve my personal problem?
IME, most Christians don't think much of that approach.
>> Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
>> to read a decent chunk of it.
>
>Are there any chunks which are decent?
Mark's gospel is a fairly popular starting place, with good reason.
>I think Homer Simpson summed up the overall idea best 'Boy, what a
>preachy book. EVERYONE's a sinner! Except this guy.....'
Homer is pretty much on the ball.
>I found that reading a decent chunk of Revelation did not help me get
>an overall idea of what was going on.....
If anybody reckons they've got Revelation sussed I treat them with a
great deal of caution.
>I did read Exodus when I was very small, and got a reasonable idea of
>it. It never occurred to me that people thought these things were
>true.
Exodus seems an unusual starting point, but I suppose I'm suggesting
the second book of the New Testament, which is even less obvious than
the second book of the Old Testament :-) Yes, some Christians accept
it at face value, and even those who don't tend IME to view it as
/based/ on factual events even if not a completely accurate
representation or intrpretation of those events.
David Ould
> Paul A Dean wrote:
>
>> I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the
>> toilet, but somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be
>> giving it due attention. I'd think this about any great
>> novel.
>
> I don't generally find that defecation requires a great
> deal of mental effort.
quite - and so get something lightweight to read.
Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the throne.
They don't need much effort and, if I run out of andrex, then an alternate
use for the book would not leave me disappointed.
'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
--
David Ould
www.livejournal.com/users/davidould
Kevin Donnelly
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>Steven Carr wrote:
>
>> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in
>>message news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>>
>> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>> which will help me solve my personal problem?
>
>Er, no, though you're welcome to try it. Most Christians
>don't do that these days. (I don't know whether there was
>ever a time when most did.)
>
though it never produced anything worthwhile as far as I recall. There
is the legendary warning in the story of a young man who tried it as a
form of problem solving, and got three answers;
Judas went out and hanged himself
Go, do thou likewise,
What you are going to do, do quickly.
The only real-life divination I can think of is a fictional
account, though possibly Thomas Hardy had seen such things. It's in Far
from the Madding Crowd, and is where Bathsheba wants to send a valentine
card and tosses a Bible in the air to decide who will be the recipient.
If it lands shut, the unfortunate Farmer Boldwood gets it, if it lands
open someone else does.
However, that's not the same thing as leafing through the Bible
casually and suddenly finding something life-changing. There are many
examples of this in Christian folklore.
KD
--
Kevin Donnelly
Peter R
> quite - and so get something lightweight to read.
> Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the throne.
> They don't need much effort and, if I run out of andrex, then an alternate
> use for the book would not leave me disappointed.
>
> 'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
I heard some of the dramatised version on our local Christian radio
station and I would suggest that your alternate use would be the
"better" one.
Peter R
Peter R
> > Tell me, have you tried reading the Qu'ran
> > like a Muslim and the Bhagavad Gita like a Hindu? Did you gain a
> > coherent understanding?
Gareth
> Not to date, but I expect it would be very interesting.
I suspect it would be downright impossible without a lot of training!
Peter R
Tim Martin
> On 22 Apr 2003 03:52:14 -0700, ste...@bowness.demon.co.uk (Steven
> Carr) wrote:
>
>>Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message
>>news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>>
>>You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>>random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>>which will help me solve my personal problem?
>
> IME, most Christians don't think much of that approach.
In Steven's defence I'd have to say that, to an atheist, it often *seems*
like this is what Christians are doing. It's possible they have a really
good reason for why they give this impression, on the other hand it's
possible that this really is what's going on.
Tim
Peter R
> > Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> > try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
> > Suspend disbelief for a while, preferably for long enough
> > to read a decent chunk of it. You'll find that this helps
> > in getting a coherent understanding: if you're stopping
> > every paragraph to think "what twaddle!" then your brain
> > won't take it in so easily and it will be much harder
> > to get an overall idea of what's going on. :-)
Tim
> I've done this on a few occasions, and it's quite interesting, sometimes
> even enlightening. Unfortunately it's the same Chinese-food enlightenment I
> get from postmodernist fiction - twenty minutes later I feel hungry again.
There is nothing to stop you going back and having another helping :-)
Peter R
Peter R
> > You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
> > random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
> > which will help me solve my personal problem?
Gareth
> Er, no, though you're welcome to try it. Most Christians
> don't do that these days. (I don't know whether there was
> ever a time when most did.)
I did it a few times and interestingly found it a mixture of very
helpful and very *un*helpful (never neutral). Of course I am far to
sensible to do it now days :-)
Peter R
Peter R
> > >> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
> > >> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
TW
> What some (many?) christians seemingly fail to appreciate is that
> some(many?)atheists started from a position of believing (after initial
> parental indoctrination) and were driven to one of disbelief by the
> disconnect between the bible and reality.
If you mean "disbelief" in the bible being the final arbiter of truth
then I am with you all the way.
If you mean it drove you to disbelief in God then I think yor logic
fails as I can't se how the "disconnection between the bible (or any
book for that matter) and reality" have anything meaningful to say
about the existence or otherwise of God?
Peter R
Debbie at work
>Debbie wrote (snipped)
>> I often suggest that people, even those who think they are familiar
>> with the Bible, most of all those who spend a lot of time and effort
>> in "Bible study", read it the way they'd read a novel - just sit down
>> and *read* it, without making any attempt to analyse, theologise or
>> inject interpretive models. It's not *that* long compared to some
>> novels, and anyone who has read LotR is well up to handling a text of
>> that size and complexity.
>
>I think this sounds like a good idea. The main problem though is that
>the Bible is rather bitty, so if you try to read 20 pages in one go you
>will probably forget about 90%.
No, no, read it like a *novel* - it doesn't matter if you forget bits,
leave bits behind or whatever. Just read - it shouldn't take
anything like 2 months!
Gareth McCaughan
> Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the throne.
> They don't need much effort and, if I run out of andrex, then an alternate
> use for the book would not leave me disappointed.
>
> 'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
Then why read them at all? :-)
George Russell
> Would you read a novel over two years? I suggest it would have to be
> a rather boring novel. I think that it's only worth doing if you find
> it as interesting as a novel.
The Bible is not one book but a collection of books. There are certainly
collections of books which I might read for longer than two years. For
example, I am currently halfway into Trollope's Palliser series, and while
I intend to finish them, I began more than 2 years ago. If I were a fan of
Walter Scott or Balzac I think I might take much longer.
> I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet, but
> somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
> attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
I'm afraid I find it hard to give books "due attention" anywhere. If I
sit down in a chair with a book my mind is guaranteed to wander after 10
seconds.
George Russell
> No, no, read it like a *novel* - it doesn't matter if you forget bits,
> leave bits behind or whatever. Just read - it shouldn't take
> anything like 2 months!
a halt on Leviticus, or skimming it a lot. I think I prefer the suggestion
I've come across of taking a selection of 11 or so of the books which have
an interesting consistent narrative, and reading those first to get the big
picture.
David Ould
> David Ould wrote:
>
>> Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the
>> throne. They don't need much effort and, if I run out of
>> andrex, then an alternate use for the book would not leave
>> me disappointed.
>>
>> 'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
>
> Then why read them at all? :-)
because many of the congregation here do. I need to understand it.
--
David Ould
www.livejournal.com/users/davidould
George Russell
> In Steven's defence I'd have to say that, to an atheist, it often *seems*
> like this is what Christians are doing. It's possible they have a really
> good reason for why they give this impression, on the other hand it's
> possible that this really is what's going on.
If by this you mean that some Christians are in the habit of picking out one
or two verses which happen to fit the case they are making at the time,
and totally ignoring any context, then I agree, and I wish they weren't. Of
course I never do it. :)
Debbie at work
Feel free, but it won't achieve the sense of perspective that reading
it like a normal book does. One can skim over quite a lot of LotR,
for example.
Dave Shield
> Tim Rowe wrote:
>> Steven Carr wrote:
>>> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>>> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>>> which will help me solve my personal problem?
>>
>> IME, most Christians don't think much of that approach.
>
> In Steven's defence I'd have to say that, to an atheist, it often *seems*
> like this is what Christians are doing. It's possible they have a really
> good reason for why they give this impression, on the other hand it's
> possible that this really is what's going on.
I suspect that for those Christians who come up with a verse for every
occasion, opening the Bible "at random" is very far from what they're doing.
More likely is that they've got a pre-defined list of "suitable verses"
to match a wide range of possible problems, and they're picking the
closest one.
If they're really good at this, they might well be able to open the
Bible at precisely the right place every time - so it could easily
look as if this is random. (Particularly if you then don't see the
relevance of the verse in question).
Dave
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>Paul A Dean wrote:
>
>> I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet, but
>> somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
>> attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
>
>I don't generally find that defecation requires a great
>deal of mental effort.
>
Now that's a good one for the occasional sig....... <g>
Mike
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
http://www.trustsof.demon.co.uk
<><
For this is what the Lord has said to me,
"Go and post a Watchman and let
him report what he sees." Isa 21:6
<><
Dave Shield
> Debbie at work wrote (snip)
>> No, no, read it like a *novel* - it doesn't matter if you forget bits,
>> leave bits behind or whatever. Just read - it shouldn't take
>> anything like 2 months!
> Hmm, it might work, but I think the danger would be of either grinding to
> a halt on Leviticus, or skimming it a lot.
And?
If I was reading a novel, and came across a boring bit[1], then I
think it's pretty likely I'd skim that as well. If not skip whole
sections completely.
That doesn't affect what I might get out of the rest of it.
It's definitely an interesting idea, Debbie. I might well take a
stab at it, then next time I go away for the weekend.
Dave
[1] like large sections of The Princess Bride - the original, not
William Goldman's abridged version
Tim Martin
> Tim Martin wrote:
>> Tim Rowe wrote:
>>> Steven Carr wrote:
>
>>>> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>>>> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>>>> which will help me solve my personal problem?
>>>
>>> IME, most Christians don't think much of that approach.
>>
>> In Steven's defence I'd have to say that, to an atheist, it often *seems*
>> like this is what Christians are doing. It's possible they have a really
>> good reason for why they give this impression, on the other hand it's
>> possible that this really is what's going on.
>
> I suspect that for those Christians who come up with a verse for every
> occasion, opening the Bible "at random" is very far from what they're
> doing.
I don't know what the OP was talking about, but what I've observed most
often isn't actually "random". Often Christians will talk about the
significance they observed in a passage they were reading for another
purpose (for example as part of a daily bible reading program). Therefore
they've often found the verse without intending to.
While this is obviously different from reading the bible at random, it does
tend to seem like they're choosing things which suit them opportunistically
rather than searching the bible deliberately for guidance on the topic. I'm
sure you'll probably tell me that this is all guided by God or something,
but I'm just saying what it looks like from an atheist perspective.
Tim
Robert Marshall
> One can skim over quite a lot of LotR, for example.
Now that's (close to) heresy!
R
--
Not all those who wander are lost.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Robert Marshall
> Gareth McCaughan wrote:
>> David Ould wrote:
>>
>>> Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the
>>> throne. They don't need much effort and, if I run out of
>>> andrex, then an alternate use for the book would not leave
>>> me disappointed.
>>>
>>> 'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
>>
>> Then why read them at all? :-)
>
> because many of the congregation here do. I need to understand it.
>
You mean that if many of the congregation here read Barbara Cartload
(er Cartland) I need to too?
<faint>
I guess though your reason is, for you, working out where any theology
might have been imported from
Robert
George Russell
> While this is obviously different from reading the bible at random, it does
> tend to seem like they're choosing things which suit them opportunistically
> rather than searching the bible deliberately for guidance on the topic. I'm
> sure you'll probably tell me that this is all guided by God or something,
> but I'm just saying what it looks like from an atheist perspective.
You are quite right, but of course selective interpretation of evidence to fit
a preconceived theory is not confined to the Bible, nor to Bible-readers.
George Russell
>Hmm, it might work, but I think the danger would be of either grinding to
>a halt on Leviticus, or skimming it a lot.
to which Dave Shield responded (snipped)
> And?
Because skimming Leviticus might mean you miss something very important,
such as "love your neighbour as yourself" (19:18). I suppose it's
arguable that you'd better off with the Readers Digest Condensed Bible,
which one would hope includes that verse at least.
> If I was reading a novel, and came across a boring bit[1], then I
> think it's pretty likely I'd skim that as well. If not skip whole
> sections completely.
It's probably purely a question of taste, but I generally prefer to
either read a book from cover to cover, or stop reading it. Though
I too must own up to having skimmed portions of LOTR.
Tony Gillam
news:m1d6jdl...@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk
> You mean that if many of the congregation here read Barbara Cartload
> (er Cartland) I need to too?
>
> <faint>
>
--
Tony Gillam
tony....@lineone.net
http://www.bookourvilla.co.uk/spain
Sun, sand and sangria
Michael J Davis
>
>>>> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>>>> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>>>> which will help me solve my personal problem?
Can someone please remind me of the word (French in origin, IIRC) for
the process of getting guidance from the Bible by opening it at random?
Thanks,
George Russell
> Can someone please remind me of the word (French in origin, IIRC) for
> the process of getting guidance from the Bible by opening it at random?
I can do two Latin words, "Sortes Biblicae". See Brewers:
http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/1161.html
Gareth McCaughan
> In message <86el3u8...@g.local>, Gareth McCaughan
> <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>> Paul A Dean wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet, but
>>> somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
>>> attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
>>
>> I don't generally find that defecation requires a great
>> deal of mental effort.
>>
> ROTFL!!!!
>
> Now that's a good one for the occasional sig....... <g>
Not nearly up to the standard of Simon Crouch's
"Cambridge University Library is drowning in a
vat of custard", I'm afraid. (If you've forgotten
that one, ask Google. Bizarrely, it actually made
very good sense when he said it.)
David Anderson
> >>> Steven Carr wrote:
> >
> >>>> You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
> >>>> random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
> >>>> which will help me solve my personal problem?
>
> Can someone please remind me of the word (French in origin, IIRC) for
> the process of getting guidance from the Bible by opening it at random?
No. I do know that the process of getting guidance from the Aeneid by
opening it at random is Sortes Virgilianae.
David Anderson
Gareth McCaughan
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but
>> to me it seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested
>> in comments: do you think it's too dangerous? have you
>> been doing it for years? is the idea already there in
>> Ignatius or someone?
>
> I don't understand your advice. It seems like you're recommending
> partitioning off in ones mind certain memories and knowledge. How is
> it possible to read something and to not take into account all
> approaches with which one is familiar?
I'm suggesting a temporary change of attitude
rather than of knowledge: the idea is to drop
the presumption that what you're reading has to
be true, or right, or to affect how you live.
I repeat: to do this *temporarily*. The point
is to try to fool the inner censor that would
otherwise tend to reject interpretations that
don't fit with what you think you already know.
> The process of reading anything is to interpret it in all ways known
> to the reader and to make a judgement as to conclusions, based on
> those ways, in each passage. What other way is there?
I don't think I can answer that, because I don't
think I understand your description of "the process
of reading". When I'm reading something I am not
usually aware of interpreting it in all ways known
to me, whatever exactly that means. When reading
something unusually obscure or important or
ambiguous or subtle, I may make a special effort
to think of possible interpretations, but I
wouldn't generally want to enumerate *all* the
possible interpretations of anything larger than
a sentence or two; it would take for ever.
Be that as it may, your description seems to me
to be at quite a high level. My proposal is of one
way to help you not miss interpretations, and so
to provide better information for that "judgement
as to conclusions", which should of course only
be made once you've done more than to read the
passage in atheist mode.
Does that make sense?
Gareth McCaughan
> There's a bit of a problem here, and I'm not sure that either of you have
> quite managed to formulate what the problem we're trying to address is. The
> last sentence does imply that I have managed to formulate the problem - it
> does so incorrectly. :) Nevertheless, I'll have a try.
> Firstly, the question of reading the Bible as an atheist... as opposed to a
> Christian, as opposed to any religious believer or as opposed to an
> agnostic? There are important differences. For that matter, atheist is a
> rather meaningless word, being a negative. It suggests that there are
> people who are just not Christians and don't have any positive beliefs. I
> think that what Gareth meant by 'reading as an atheist' is probably better
> phrased in his explanatory sentence: reading it as if you don't have any
> commitment to letting it affect your life. You aren't putting your beliefs
> in abeyance: you're merely treating the Bible as if it didn't ground your
> beliefs.
Yes; that's the idea. I didn't mean to imply a
full-blown embracing of atheism, even as a temporary
measure. :-)
> I do agree with Angela that attempts to enter a belief-neutral state are
> likely to prove illusory. I hope my reemphasis of Gareth's argument is
> reasonable.
Yes.
David Ould
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, NOSPAMd...@stgeorges.org.sg wrote:
>
>> Gareth McCaughan wrote:
>>> David Ould wrote:
>>>
>>>> Personally, I'm reading the "Left Behind" series on the
>>>> throne. They don't need much effort and, if I run out of
>>>> andrex, then an alternate use for the book would not leave
>>>> me disappointed.
>>>>
>>>> 'nuf said - not a fan of those books.
>>>
>>> Then why read them at all? :-)
>>
>> because many of the congregation here do. I need to
>> understand it.
>>
>
> You mean that if many of the congregation here read Barbara
> Cartload (er Cartland) I need to too?
>
> <faint>
>
er, shouldn't that be <swoon>? ;-)
> I guess though your reason is, for you, working out where any
> theology might have been imported from
>
exactly
--
David Ould
www.livejournal.com/users/davidould
Bob Billing (AKA Uncle Bob)
> I can do two Latin words, "Sortes Biblicae". See Brewers:
>
> http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/1161.html
See also Cadfael (I forget which one) for a description of the process.
--
I am Robert Billing, Christian, author, inventor, traveller, cook
and animal lover. 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/
"It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book as a
woman is with child." CS Lewis - Till we have faces, Ch 21.
Robert Marshall
> Robert Marshall wrote:
>>
>> <faint>
>>
>
> er, shouldn't that be <swoon>? ;-)
>
I thought it was only the weaker sex that did that?
>> I guess though your reason is, for you, working out where any
>> theology might have been imported from
>>
>
> exactly
>
I'm afraid, I call it the left buttock series which rather ties in
with your proposed use for the paper
Robert
--
He is our homeliest home and endless dwelling - Julian of Norwich
Simon Woods
news:86d6jcy...@g.local...
> > you're merely treating the Bible as if it didn't ground your beliefs.
... kinda stark contrast between this suggestion and
"For I say to you that this which is written must yet be accomplished in Me,
"And he was reckoned among the transgressors"
or
"And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was
still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the
Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms about Me."
or, perhaps most poignantly,
"After this, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the
Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, I thirst."
Simon
Michael J Davis
<g...@tzi.de> writes
Thanks George, that isn't what I had in mind. IIRC, there is a common
english expression derived from the French (and Latin, no doubt) that
refers to the random opening of the Bible. And it's escaped me..... a
senile moment, I guess :-(
Mike
--
Michael J Davis
Personal email replies may be made to mi...@trustsof.demon.co.uk
<><
I have a photographic memory;
but then I forget to load the film
<><
Gareth McCaughan
> "Gareth McCaughan" <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:86d6jcy...@g.local...
>
>>> you're merely treating the Bible as if it didn't ground your beliefs.
Actually, I didn't say that. But never mind.
> ... kinda stark contrast between this suggestion and
>
> "For I say to you that this which is written must yet be accomplished in Me,
> "And he was reckoned among the transgressors"
>
> or
>
> "And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was
> still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the
> Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms about Me."
>
> or, perhaps most poignantly,
>
> "After this, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the
> Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, I thirst."
How's that, then? Are you yet another person to think I was
suggesting that we should always read the Bible as if we
aren't in any way committed to it? That's not what I
suggested. So let me set down again what I did suggest,
and try to make it clearer.
As Christians, we are -- of course -- committed to taking
the Bible seriously. The details of this commitment vary
from person to person (doubtless more than they should);
for convenience, I'll summarize it as saying that in some
sense we're committed to (1) believing what it says and
(2) doing what it says.[1]
To do that effectively, we need first of all to *understand*
what it says. One obstacle to doing this is that we tend to
interpret the Bible so as to make what it says not be too
difficult to accept. This isn't just a matter of wilful
selfishness, by the way. If you believe (1) that what the
Bible says is true and (2) that the world is billions of
years old, then you must believe also (3) that any reading
of Genesis that involves the world being less than 10,000
years old must be a wrong reading. That's a matter of
logical consistency, and logical consistency is good. It's
not wrong to let our knowledge of the world affect our
reading of the Bible.
However, sometimes that "knowledge of the world" is wrong.
And, worse, sometimes our wrong "knowledge of the world"
is so deeply ingrained that we aren't *aware* that it's
making us filter out certain interpretations as we read
the Bible. In that case, we lose, because we aren't even
getting the *chance* to interpret the Bible in certain ways
that would challenge our assumptions -- because our
internal consistency checker throws them out before
we're conscious of them.
Sometimes the process is more conscious than that; we do
think of a particular interpretation, but quickly dismiss
it because it's obviously inconsistent with other things
we think we know. By the way, when I used the phrase
"knowledge about the world" I didn't mean to exclude
*theological* knowledge; some of the assumptions that
shape our understanding will be theological ones.
So, the problem is that sometimes interpretations of
the Bible that clash very hard with things we think we know
don't get a look in in our minds. We throw them out as soon
as we've thought of them, or even sooner. Sometimes this
may be a mistake, and if it's a mistake it's a *serious*
mistake because it involves our assumptions being badly
wrong.
I propose a way to reduce this problem. (I don't think we
can realistically hope to eliminate it completely). It goes
like this:
The overall goal is still, of course, to read the Bible
with the commitment to (1) believe what it says and (2)
do what it says.[1] But I propose that in order to (3)
understand what it says, we should begin by setting aside
commitments #1 and #2 temporarily, and trying to read
the text as if we had no commitment to it. Uncommitment
isn't the ultimate goal; it's a temporary measure intended
to help us see some things more clearly.
Reading -- so far as we can -- "without commitment",
we may be less in thrall to the need to interpret what
we read so as to conform to what we think we know,
and therefore more able to notice interpretations
that conflict radically with what we think we know.
When we have done this, we need to return (as it were)
to our usual selves, and take up again the commitments
we had before, and consider what we then make of the
difficult interpretations we have seen. We may decide
that they're just plain wrong, but at least we will
have done so consciously and deliberately. In a few
cases, we may decide that actually the difficult
interpretation is right. In that case, we have to
adjust either our assumptions or the strength (or the
nature) of those commitments.
The danger inherent in this technique is that we may
decide to lessen our commitment when we should be
revising our assumptions. (The opposite error is
also possible, but I think it's a lesser danger.)
The benefit is that we are more likely to notice
if either our assumptions or our commitments need
changing.
I am not advocating, at all, that we should *in general*
or *overall* try to read the Bible more like atheists.
I am saying that in order to read the Bible *as Christians*
more effectively, one useful step is to try to read it
without commitment, so that we can see interpretive
possibilities that our internal censors don't normally
let us see.
This advice will be useless to anyone who has no internal
censors. I suggest that anyone who thinks they're in that
position is kidding themself. It will be useless to anyone
who is so fully filled with the Holy Spirit as to overpower
those internal censors on all occasions. Anyone in that
position doesn't need my advice on this matter or on any
other. To the fallible remainder, I suggest that it may
be useful advice.
[1] For a fundamentalist, this will mean something like
"accept every apparent factual statement as telling
the absolute truth, every apparent ocmmand as an
inescapable imperative, and every action done by
characters we're meant to approve of as requiring
our imitation." For a liberal, it may mean something
like "wherever possible, see factual statements as
bearers of truth, even if sometimes obliquely;
see commands as embodying principles whose determination
requires us to consider how the commands worked in the
context of their time; and see what is done by the
characters in the stories as worthy of serious
consideration". Both of these are caricatures, of
course. Both these positions, and the continuum in
between, lead to the problem I describe; it may be
more serious for more conservative Christians.
Tim Rowe
wrote:
>Tim Rowe wrote:
>
>> On 22 Apr 2003 03:52:14 -0700, ste...@bowness.demon.co.uk (Steven
>> Carr) wrote:
>>
>>>Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote in message
>>>news:<864r4sg...@g.local>...
>>>> Incidentally, I'd give some converse advice to atheists:
>>>> try reading the Bible like a Christian occasionally.
>>>
>>>You mean if I have a personal problem, I should open the Bible at
>>>random and expect to find a prophetic Word of Knowledge from God ,
>>>which will help me solve my personal problem?
>>
>> IME, most Christians don't think much of that approach.
>
>In Steven's defence I'd have to say that, to an atheist, it often *seems*
>like this is what Christians are doing. It's possible they have a really
>good reason for why they give this impression, on the other hand it's
>possible that this really is what's going on.
Well, some evangelicals would expect to find something relevant to
their life in absolutely any Bible passage, but the "something
relevant" may not have anything to do with any specific problem that
sent them to the Bible in the first place.
George Russell
...
> As Christians, we are -- of course -- committed to taking
> the Bible seriously. The details of this commitment vary
> from person to person (doubtless more than they should);
> for convenience, I'll summarize it as saying that in some
> sense we're committed to (1) believing what it says and
> (2) doing what it says.[1]
> But I propose that in order to (3)
> understand what it says, we should begin by setting aside
> commitments #1 and #2 temporarily, and trying to read
> the text as if we had no commitment to it. Uncommitment
> isn't the ultimate goal; it's a temporary measure intended
> to help us see some things more clearly.
Gareth, I don't really see that this helps me very much.
Whether I choose to or not, there's always a part of my mind
that takes the atheist point of view when I read the Bible,
just as I imagine that an atheist reading the Bible now and
then has the thought "Well, what if it were true after all?"
And I don't deliberately try to suppress this atheist part
of my mind, since I don't think it makes sense to suppress
any rational argument, wherever it comes from. Where my
Christian commitment comes in is that sometimes, even where
there is a part of the Bible I find extremely hard to explain
(for example God's apparent instruction to Saul to massacre
innocent Amalekites), I do not regard that as immediate reason
for throwing the Bible away, but instead as a question I
can't answer, but which I assume must have an answer.
Now it seems to me that either I must already be your perfect
reader, or I am fooling myself. Most likely I am fooling
myself, but I don't see how I can help it.
Dave Shield
(about reading the Bible like a novel)
>>Hmm, it might work, but I think the danger would be of either grinding to
>>a halt on Leviticus, or skimming it a lot.
>
> to which Dave Shield responded (snipped)
>> And?
>
> Because skimming Leviticus might mean you miss something very important,
> such as "love your neighbour as yourself" (19:18).
And?
I don't think Debbie was suggesting this is the *only* way you should
read the Bible. It's likely that anyone who's been involved in
Christian circles for any length of time is probably fairly well
aware of what the Best Bits say.
A curl-up-and-just-read-it approach is (I presume) meant to
complement a "proper" study of the Bible, rather than to replace it.
>> If I was reading a novel, and came across a boring bit[1], then I
>> think it's pretty likely I'd skim that as well. If not skip whole
>> sections completely.
>
> It's probably purely a question of taste, but I generally prefer to
> either read a book from cover to cover, or stop reading it.
Oh, yes - I also prefer to read a book right through. It's got to
be pretty bad for me to give up part way through. (It took three or
four attempts to get through the Silmarillion as a youngster). And I
wouldn't normally skim over bits.
But I can remember reading something recently (though I can't
remember what :-() which included reasonable chunks of verse.
Now I'm not a great one for poetry, and have to read it "out loud"
(even if silently) in order to get anything much from it. Which
is somewhat slower than my normal reading speed. So I found that
I just skipped over the verse, and picked up again at the "proper"
story. I'd probably see skimming the genealogies, etc, in a
similar way.
Dave
Ian Collier
[snip everything]
Cor... I'm exhausted after reading that lot.
Welcome back, Angela. :-)
--
---- Ian Collier : i...@comlab.ox.ac.uk : WWW page below
------ http://users.comlab.ox.ac.uk/ian.collier/imc.shtml
Michael J Davis
<g...@tzi.de> writes
>Gareth McCaughan wrote (heavily snipped)
>...
>> As Christians, we are -- of course -- committed to taking
>> the Bible seriously. The details of this commitment vary
>> from person to person (doubtless more than they should);
>> for convenience, I'll summarize it as saying that in some
>> sense we're committed to (1) believing what it says and
>> (2) doing what it says.[1]
>...
>> But I propose that in order to (3)
>> understand what it says, we should begin by setting aside
>> commitments #1 and #2 temporarily, and trying to read
>> the text as if we had no commitment to it. Uncommitment
>> isn't the ultimate goal; it's a temporary measure intended
>> to help us see some things more clearly.
I think Gareth's post is a masterpiece and commend it most highly. I do
think that there are more ways of reading, even within his exposition.
For instance, there is the original author's intention and the perceived
intention of those written about, and in the case of, say, Exodus, there
is the intentions of those who were in opposition to the message. (eg.
Moses, and Pharoah.) One of the problems I have with certain
evangelicals (not necessarily represented on this ng) is that to them
the 'plain meaning' of OT passages is always in the light of the modern
Christian interpretation.
>...
>Gareth, I don't really see that this helps me very much.
>Whether I choose to or not, there's always a part of my mind
>that takes the atheist point of view when I read the Bible,
>just as I imagine that an atheist reading the Bible now and
>then has the thought "Well, what if it were true after all?"
>And I don't deliberately try to suppress this atheist part
>of my mind, since I don't think it makes sense to suppress
>any rational argument, wherever it comes from.
I agree that that is another approach.
>Where my
>Christian commitment comes in is that sometimes, even where
>there is a part of the Bible I find extremely hard to explain
>(for example God's apparent instruction to Saul to massacre
>innocent Amalekites),
Ah! There is an interesting exercise to be done, by looking at the
descendants of those and seeing what a nuisance they made of themselves
throughout the rest of the history. IIRC that includes Haman in Esther.
>I do not regard that as immediate reason
>for throwing the Bible away, but instead as a question I
>can't answer, but which I assume must have an answer.
>
>Now it seems to me that either I must already be your perfect
>reader, or I am fooling myself. Most likely I am fooling
>myself, but I don't see how I can help it.
No; there are still many other ways of approaching it, as with Ignatian
exercises, for instance.
Ken Down
Bob)" <uncl...@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> See also Cadfael (I forget which one) for a description of the process.
The Holy Thief.
God bless,
Kendall K. Down
--
__ __ __ __ __
| \ | / __ / __ | |\ | / __ |__ All the latest archaeological news
|__/ | \__/ \__/ | | \| \__/ __| from the Middle East with David Down
================================= and "Digging Up The Past"
Web site: www.argonet.co.uk/education/diggings
e-mail: digg...@argonet.co.uk
Debbie
<D.T.S...@csc.liv.ac.uk> wrote:
>I don't think Debbie was suggesting this is the *only* way you should
>read the Bible. It's likely that anyone who's been involved in
>Christian circles for any length of time is probably fairly well
>aware of what the Best Bits say.
> A curl-up-and-just-read-it approach is (I presume) meant to
>complement a "proper" study of the Bible, rather than to replace it.
You're quite right. I think there are a lot of ways one can read the
Bible, and several ways one should. Reading it from beginning to
end, lightly, like a novel is one of the latter.
--
Debbie
Urban Theology Unit, Sheffield
Views expressed in this email are my own and are not
necessarily those of the University of Sheffield or UTU.
Kevin Donnelly
<tim@remove_if_not_spam.digitig.cix.co.uk> writes
Divination was the technical word I learned which described a number of
esoteric ways of gaining guidance. So the word for using the Bible in
this way might well be biblio- something. Doing research on so-called
common, residual or folk religion, I came across a number of fringe
practices, which ranged from random Bible-opening, to lucky charms.
horoscopes, biorhythms (which I'd like to know more about), ESP,
spiritualism, poltergeists, and of course the ouija board. Youngsters
in my school told me of sessions on their own or with local adults,
maybe relatives, with ouija boards which they found frightening.
My pastoral advice was to avoid such activities if they found
them disturbing. If pushed for an opinion, I would dismiss the ouija
board, but if the child's grandmother was the local soothsayer, that
called for tact on my part. It was usually possible to make a
distinction between genuine prayers for guidance, which is acceptable in
most faith traditions, and attempts to "bend" the divine will, which is
more properly regarded as magic. Keith Thomas wrote some useful stuff
on this years ago, so did Robert Towler, IIRC. So far as Bible-tossing
is concerned, this may be related to the urim and thummim in the OT, a
way of making difficult choices.
What seems to me to be the case beyond doubt is that the Bible
is full of divine revelation, or human experiences of the divine, so
that almost every page features passages which, as Quakers say, speak to
our condition. The common mistake seems to be to try and compel
unwarranted conclusions from such random methods. Here two heads are
better than one, or a support group including at least one with plenty
of common sense, and maybe a sceptic or two of the kind that visit ukrc
occasionally. Practices that go on behind closed doors in some
households might raise a few eyebrows.
However, a perhaps more intellectually refined version of such
matters is the province of the phenomenologist, ideas like eidetic
perception and epoche. I rarely meet such people now, but I continue to
be stirred by the capacity of the Bible writers to speak across the
centuries. Wasn't it J.B. Phillips, author of modern English versions
in the 1950s, who described his experience of translation as re-wiring a
house with the power still on? I can speak to that!
KD
--
Kevin Donnelly
Gareth McCaughan
> I think Gareth's post is a masterpiece and commend it most highly.
I'll set that alongside Angela's statement that my proposal
is "appalling" and "bizarre". I suspect the truth lies somewhere
in the middle. :-)
Gareth McCaughan
[I said:]
It sounds to me as if you've just internalized the
approach I described sufficiently that it seems
trivial. Good for you. :-)
Ian Collier
heard to say:
>Can someone please remind me of the word (French in origin, IIRC) for
>the process of getting guidance from the Bible by opening it at random?
No. But "bibliomancy" might count.
See also from Google a web page that coins the word "pyrothoracimancy". :-)
Ken Down
<ke...@kevdon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> biorhythms (which I'd like to know more about)
If you had a REAL[TM] computer, there are several programs I could send you
to calculate your biorhythms. Unfortunatly the science behind the idea is
distinctly dodgy.
> My pastoral advice was to avoid such activities if they found
> them disturbing.
Ouija boards should be avoided, no matter how you feel about them.
Nick Milton
wrote:
>If you had a REAL[TM] computer, there are several programs I could send you
>to calculate your biorhythms. Unfortunatly the science behind the idea is
>distinctly dodgy.
What irony, from a creationist!
Nick
Gareth McCaughan
> In article <e54SR5FI...@kevdon.demon.co.uk>, Kevin Donnelly
> <ke...@kevdon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> biorhythms (which I'd like to know more about)
>
> If you had a REAL[TM] computer, there are several programs I could send you
> to calculate your biorhythms. Unfortunatly the science behind the idea is
> distinctly dodgy.
It would be more accurate to say that there is no science
whatever behind the idea.
Tim Rowe
<ke...@kevdon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>horoscopes, biorhythms (which I'd like to know more about), ESP,
Martin Gardner has written quite a bit about biorhythms. Essentially,
a certain Dr Wilhelm Fleiss noted that the intervals between lots of
significant events were the sum or difference of integer multiples of
23 and 28 days, and theorised that these were significant rhythms of
life. Modern Fleissians have added a cycle of 33 days to get more
correspondences; that seems to be mathematical incompetence, becuase
/any/ integer can be formed from the sum or difference of /any/ two
mutually prime numbers. See "The Numerology of Dr Fleiss" in Martin
Gardner's "Mathematical Carnival".
Paul A Dean
> Paul A Dean wrote (snipped)
>
> > Would you read a novel over two years? I suggest it would have to
> > be a rather boring novel. I think that it's only worth doing if
> > you find it as interesting as a novel.
>
> The Bible is not one book but a collection of books.
I don't think that's actually true. At the various times of writing
the various bits of the bible there were no such things as "books".
They have never been published, as far as I know, as separate books.
Each "book" of the bible doesn't have its own central theme at the
expense of the greater central theme whereas other sequences of books
do. Many parts of the bible make little sense if not referenced to
the other parts. I think to all intents and purposes it's one book,
or maybe two if you separate OT and NT.
> > I don't know the mentality of people who read books on the toilet,
> > but somehow I have the feeling that it wouldn't be giving it due
> > attention. I'd think this about any great novel.
>
> I'm afraid I find it hard to give books "due attention" anywhere.
> If I sit down in a chair with a book my mind is guaranteed to wander
> after 10 seconds.
Who was it that said that he couldn't read books because if a book was
good he had to put it down to think about it and if a book was bad he
just put it down?
--
Paul
Paul A Dean
> Paul Dean wrote:
>
> > Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes:
> >
> >> This isn't advice I recall seeing anywhere else, but to me it
> >> seems obviously sensible. I'd be interested in comments: do you
> >> think it's too dangerous? have you been doing it for years? is
> >> the idea already there in Ignatius or someone?
> >
> > I don't understand your advice. It seems like you're recommending
> > partitioning off in ones mind certain memories and knowledge. How
> > is it possible to read something and to not take into account all
> > approaches with which one is familiar?
>
> I'm suggesting a temporary change of attitude rather than of
> knowledge: the idea is to drop the presumption that what you're
> reading has to be true, or right, or to affect how you live.
I think that either I'm doing this already or I'm incapable of doing
it :)
> I repeat: to do this *temporarily*. The point is to try to fool the
> inner censor that would otherwise tend to reject interpretations
> that don't fit with what you think you already know.
I see what you're saying and it's not that I think it would be wrong
to do it or dangerous etc, but I simply don't want to do it. It would
be like fooling the inner censor to read Dickens as historical fact -
such a method might throw up interesting truths in Dickens, but
there's no particular reason to do it.
> > The process of reading anything is to interpret it in all ways
> > known to the reader and to make a judgement as to conclusions,
> > based on those ways, in each passage. What other way is there?
>
> I don't think I can answer that, because I don't think I understand
> your description of "the process of reading". When I'm reading
> something I am not usually aware of interpreting it in all ways
> known to me, whatever exactly that means. When reading something
> unusually obscure or important or ambiguous or subtle, I may make a
> special effort to think of possible interpretations, but I wouldn't
> generally want to enumerate *all* the possible interpretations of
> anything larger than a sentence or two; it would take for ever.
It's when forming conclusions about what one is reading, rather than
more general reading. For example, if I'm reading the bible and I
come to a particular conclusion I often trace the line of reason
behind that conclusion right back to "God is", addressing each
assumption along the way comparing it to other possible assumptions
and so at the end you have a range of conclusions corresponding to
those other possible assumptions and the reader chooses one of them.
For one verse to do this properly takes about 10 minutes, but there's
no need to do it for the whole
> Be that as it may, your description seems to me to be at quite a
> high level. My proposal is of one way to help you not miss
> interpretations, and so to provide better information for that
> "judgement as to conclusions", which should of course only be made
> once you've done more than to read the passage in atheist mode.
>
> Does that make sense?
Yes, but I think it would be more difficult to "fool ones inner
censor" than to do a thorough "assumption analysis".
--
Paul
Gareth McCaughan
[I said:]
>> I'm suggesting a temporary change of attitude rather than of
>> knowledge: the idea is to drop the presumption that what you're
>> reading has to be true, or right, or to affect how you live.
>
> I think that either I'm doing this already or I'm incapable of doing
> it :)
Fair enough.
>> I repeat: to do this *temporarily*. The point is to try to fool the
>> inner censor that would otherwise tend to reject interpretations
>> that don't fit with what you think you already know.
>
> I see what you're saying and it's not that I think it would be wrong
> to do it or dangerous etc, but I simply don't want to do it. It would
> be like fooling the inner censor to read Dickens as historical fact -
> such a method might throw up interesting truths in Dickens, but
> there's no particular reason to do it.
If Dickens were as important as the Bible, it might be worth
doing that.
>>> The process of reading anything is to interpret it in all ways
>>> known to the reader and to make a judgement as to conclusions,
>>> based on those ways, in each passage. What other way is there?
>>
>> I don't think I can answer that, because I don't think I understand
>> your description of "the process of reading". When I'm reading
>> something I am not usually aware of interpreting it in all ways
>> known to me, whatever exactly that means. When reading something
>> unusually obscure or important or ambiguous or subtle, I may make a
>> special effort to think of possible interpretations, but I wouldn't
>> generally want to enumerate *all* the possible interpretations of
>> anything larger than a sentence or two; it would take for ever.
>
> It's when forming conclusions about what one is reading, rather than
> more general reading. For example, if I'm reading the bible and I
> come to a particular conclusion I often trace the line of reason
> behind that conclusion right back to "God is", addressing each
> assumption along the way comparing it to other possible assumptions
> and so at the end you have a range of conclusions corresponding to
> those other possible assumptions and the reader chooses one of them.
> For one verse to do this properly takes about 10 minutes, but there's
> no need to do it for the whole
That sounds like a very valuable exercise, though I'd advise
caution in assuming that you've really addressed every assumption
along the way...
>> Be that as it may, your description seems to me to be at quite a
>> high level. My proposal is of one way to help you not miss
>> interpretations, and so to provide better information for that
>> "judgement as to conclusions", which should of course only be made
>> once you've done more than to read the passage in atheist mode.
>>
>> Does that make sense?
>
> Yes, but I think it would be more difficult to "fool ones inner
> censor" than to do a thorough "assumption analysis".
That's an interesting suggestion. I suspect this is something
that varies from person to person.
Stephen Bull
> George Russell wrote:
> > It's probably purely a question of taste, but I generally prefer to
> > either read a book from cover to cover, or stop reading it.
>
> Oh, yes - I also prefer to read a book right through. It's got to
> be pretty bad for me to give up part way through. (It took three or
> four attempts to get through the Silmarillion as a youngster). And I
> wouldn't normally skim over bits.
Took me about 3 tries at the Silmarillion.
> But I can remember reading something recently (though I can't
> remember what :-() which included reasonable chunks of verse.
> Now I'm not a great one for poetry, and have to read it "out loud"
> (even if silently) in order to get anything much from it. Which
> is somewhat slower than my normal reading speed. So I found that
> I just skipped over the verse, and picked up again at the "proper"
> story. I'd probably see skimming the genealogies, etc, in a
> similar way.
I'm a bit like that with both verse and genealogies too.
Stephen