Dawkins : "I'm a cultural Christian".

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Professor Richard Dawkins has said the he is ' A Cultural Christian'.
In a news story on the BBC website, he declared that he has no wish to see Christmas cancelled, or see Britain lose any part of it's Christian heritage. This may come as a surprise to some, but his website tends to direct its venom towards the more negative aspects of religious belief.

These include the Catholic Church's stance on child molesting priests, it's opposition to contraception, and its condemnation of gay people. Yet Protestant believers come in for criticism too. It isn't simply a belief in Adam and Eve that Dawkins criticises, it's the Old Testament's account of Joshua's conquests, the concept of Hell and the moral standards taught in the O.T. that also provoke his ire.

Well, my take on it is as follows -
the Jews didn't really do the conquest of Canaan like the Bible says,in fact they didn't conquer Canaan at all - Joshua's campaign was largely a propaganda exercise done in a later period;
the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment rests upon misinterpretation and misunderstanding of certain Biblical passages, as well as a certain amount of Hellenistic influence;
the sexism, racism and homophobia are all there in the Torah, but the Jews themselves got over a lot of it before Jesus came along and finished the job.

If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society. We can dump all that stuff and still have a version of Christianity that is different from Atheism. And, yes, I would be happy to explain the specifics in the comments - if I get any:)

Comments

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Its impossible to "lose" their heritage.

Preserving our religions is as important as preserving our cave paintings.

I would take exception at the word "venom".

If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society.

Indeed. "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ..."

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Your last comment seems to contradict your first one.

People have lost their heritage, and even most church going Christians would be at a loss who believe the bible are at a loss to explain how the Scriptures actually came down to us, never mind the fact that Sheol and Gehenna are two different things.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Its impossible to "lose" their heritage.

Can't speak outside my own experience, but that doesn't hold for the indigenous people here. Although, they didn't "lose" their heritage so much as have it taken from them. When you're rounded up into a mission and not allowed to speak your language, sing your songlines, dance your dances and tell your stories, you forget these things pretty quickly. There are people alive here who spoke a language as a child; that language is now dead beyond the few words these people can dredge up from their memories, yet 60 years ago it was a vibrant living language (and the language is a metaphor for culture, or heritage). In the space of one lifetime, tens of thousands of years worth of heritage has been lost.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Can anyone think of a more useless stance than "I don't want to see Christmas cancelled"?

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

"I like pie."

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Now now people, I'm not crazy, I have no desire to cancel Christmas... see how reasonable I am?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you're not the target audience with that statement. To a certain segment, there is a very strong belief that atheists have an agenda of getting Christmas cancelled.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I don't think looking at Jewish history shows very much change-over from sexism and homophobia, and the period of Sargon, King of Assyria pre-dates racism by a few thousand years.

The statements about there never having been an Exodus or Conquest do note that the Israelites *are* first mentioned historically in a military fashion and they were strong enough to make Assyria take notice.

Hell is owed less to Germanic than to Zoroastrian influence.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I should have said Hellenistic but the word comes from the heathen Goddess of the Dead, so Germanic works too.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I don't think looking at Jewish history shows very much change-over from sexism and homophobia, and the period of Sargon, King of Assyria pre-dates racism by a few thousand years.

Isaiah 56: 1-3 does show a big improvement on the Torah in one respect. As do lots of other verses, but LJ is slow loading up.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society."

No it wouldn't.

You would end up wasting a lot of class time on what is in the end a rather boring and difficult subject and in the end by the 2nd week of summer vacation 90% of students would have forgotten everything in the class. By the time they were 25 years old 90% of them will barely even remember taking classes in that subject and the majority who do won't remember many (if any) of the specifics correctly.

The fact is that this sort of information is just not relevant to the lives of the average school kid and as such they will just remember enough of it long enough to pass the test and then everything gets thrown out in the garbage and replaced with whatever is actually important to them.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't the negative influence of religious mythology. It's crap theology. Like yours.

'Crap' theology?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you can explain the anachronisms and errors in the OT some other way, Pastor, but to me it seems that the Torah was not written by Moses , but by some other person or persons at a later date.

maybe around the time the book was 'lost' and then 'found' in the reign of Josiah. See 2 kings 22:1-20. Was it really 'lost'? or did they find several versions and tidy it up a bit, amalgamating two separate stories on Noah's Ark - one with two of every animal, and one with seven 'clean' animals being sent aboard?

Of course, the OT is riddled with contradictions.

The Divine Name that is rendered 'Jehovah' in the KJV is actually YHWH when transliterated from the Hebrew into English.
Abraham did not know the name of YHWH, so we are told in Exodus 6:2&3. Yet Abraham himself names a place 'Jehovah -jirah' in Genesis 18:20, 21. How did this happen, do you think?

But apart from the facts, what about the moral standards of the OT as a whole? Deuteronomy 23;3 forbids a Moabite from entering into the congregation of the people of Israel down to the tenth generation. So it's nice to see such a harsh edict ignored to admit Ruth, and also allow her great grandson David actually become king. naturally, if the book of Deuteronomy were actually written , even in its present form , a long time after David and not before him, we don't get a problem then, we just have the problem of explaining it now.

But I will let you respond to this before I mention Uriah the Hittite, and the Gibeonites. Because these accounts also support my hypothesis, that the Torah in its present form was unknown to the people of David and Solomon's time, and was actually written or compiled in the days of Josiah.

I would agree that the popular version of Hell, complete with fire and brimstone, is 'crap theology', as you put it.

I would simply say that Josiah turned the Valley of Himmon into a rubbish dump, and had brimstone used to stoke the fires there. It became a symbol for an ignominious fate, as executed criminals were thrown there, rather than being given a proper burial. The language of the Old and New Testaments were taken up by readers who didn't know the history behind the texts.

Do you dispute any of this, and if so on what grounds?

Re: 'Crap' theology?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what you're on about. I was talking about your crap theology -- including your crap soteriology, your crap Christology, and your crap ecclesiology -- not your third-hand dilletante's understanding of textual criticism.

Re: 'Crap' theology?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Really? His understanding of current (non-fundamentalist) mainline form criticism seems pretty spot-on. Where is he wrong specifically?

Re: 'Crap' theology?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

including your crap soteriology, your crap Christology, and your crap ecclesiology -- not your third-hand dilletante's understanding of textual criticism.

Well, maybe we can talk about those subjects some other time.
Right now , I am saying that the Torah is saying that Abram / Abraham did not know the tetragrammaton, YHWH, which was in fact one of the Divine Names of God.

However, he actually names a place and included the tetragrammaton in the place name. So, how come?

Also, I am surprised that you do not know that there are two accounts of the loading of animals into the Ark in the Bible. I suggest you go look at Genesis 6: 19-22, then go compare Genesis 7:1-3. please come back to me when you can explain this clear discepancy between the two accounts, for one says that seven of every clean beat went in , not just two.

Even so, let us go straight to David and discuss him.

You are aware that his great grandmother was a Moabitess, are you not? So how come he was allowed to be King over Israel? Were not the Moabites forbidden to come before the Lord, down to the tenth generation ?

And, for the record, Uriah the Hittite was one of the seven races slated for destruction . yet this guy marries anice jewish girl and has a house quite close to the kings palace in Jerusalem. If he is supposed to be killed, how oome the prophet nathan gets all indignant ith David, and how come David does not say " take this heathen dog out and stone him to death "? After all , he wants this man's wife, nd if the Law is already written , he can invoke that Law and thus achieve his ends with a degree of legitimacy. The fact that he doesn't supports the idea that the Law code was not present in his day in its present form.

Do you understand my argument, Pastor. If you do, please specifically refute it.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

"still have a version of Christianity that is different from Atheism"

Something like Buddahism perhaps? Keep the teachings, but no divinity?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I love Handel's Joshua.

Especially the circumlocution of Jericho: magnificent music with lots of festive trumpets and drums. But it's the quiet moments in the music, when Joshua calls to the Sun to stop it's path in the sky, and Handle does slowly rising rhythmic undulating pattern going up the scale that stops on a single suspended note when Joshua commands the sun to stop "Oh thou bright orb."

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Unless I was singing in them I have never enjoyed "cantatas" no matter how magnificent the music is.....I will never forget my first (and last) time sitting through (which I didn't) the whole of "The Messiah".

[telemann.livejournal.com]

:>

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Oh, you could even allow for the virgin birth , and the Divinity of Jesus on the grounds that these are faith bases and not fact based beliefs.

but if you want to stay purely in the historical facts , then Josiah created a rubbish dump in the Valley of Himmon - it was a real place, previously used for idol worship. By stoking fires with brimstone to burn the rubbish , including the bodies of executed criminals, he created the concept that was called 'Gehenna' - a place of abandonment and shame. this later became understood as a place of torment by Christians who had no idea of the history of the place mentioned in 2 Kings 20, and the Protestant and Catholic versions of hell came about.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

The problem with historical "facts" they have a tendency to change: existence of Troy and the Hittites come to mind.
The problem with dealing with "facts" that are 2-4 thousand years old is that there are so many interpretations of incomplete evidence. Egyptology is rife with this kind of thing.
Your remark to PL about the torah not being in existence until Josiah is nothing but speculation.
I am reminded of the council of theologians who sat around and voted on which of the sayings of Jesus were in fact attributed to Him.


For the record. I have thrown a snowball in hell (Ghenna).

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Your remark to PL about the torah not being in existence until Josiah is nothing but speculation.

I am saying that the books of the OT contain many contradictions and discrepancies. Also, i am pointing to the fact that the rrecord itself reveals that the Torah was ' lost and found'.

Even if we ignore the fact that iit was ' rediscovered' , we need to explain why there are so many contradictions in this 'infallible' book.

Was David allowed to be king or not? Were seven or were there two sheep aboard the ark? Did Abram /Abraham know the name YHWH?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, you could even allow for the virgin birth , and the Divinity of Jesus on the grounds that these are faith bases and not fact based beliefs.

So there is nothing reliable about the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

I love fake histories.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the Romans were given much of their legendary history by external agents. Much of what is doled out to school children in America about America is bowdlerized so that fewer of them will resist the draft and more will volunteer for military service.

Much of Jewish culture comes from its surroundings. Egypt supplied circumcision, Babylon supplied the Deluge, and Persia supplied heroism.

I disagree that Jews have gotten over sexism, racism, and homophobia.