Okay, Jesus. Very Christlike.

"And whoever shall not receive you or hear your words, shake off the dust of your feet when you depart from that house, or that city."

Or try to shake some of the cobwebs out of your head concerning what religion is, and what it appeals to.

And what is that? You've been ascribing various characteristics to religion and belief that myself, Craig and rivertown don't recognize or acknowledge.

No idea if you're a fan of The Lord of the Rings, but there's this outstanding lecture series on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. This specific episode seems worth sharing for a few reasons: you've trivialized the value of stories and myths, defended rationalism and purchased Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It's a 26 minute watch, so I definitely understand if you don't want to dedicate the time to it, but it is worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McnaNqj_vA4

Should there be no spaces for people to take religion seriously? You need to visit a subforum about religion and bash people for being open minded about Christianity? These are the actions of a tyrant.

Religion is generally a bunch of just-so stories that are attempts to account for origins, purpose, morality, and above all, to defend against anxiety of not actually knowing, generally invoking supernatural beings and powers in so doing. So when we have a perfectly pat, omniscient, unchangeable, authoritarian source, voila, all uncertainty just vanished at the conscious level. But the actual anxiety rages in the subconscious, making the conscious claims all the more vehement and cocksure.

Ask a zealot about The Great Mystery, and he has the stone cold answer. He got it from the first century, or the Aztecs, or Muhammad, or a teepee on the American planes, or western New York in the 1820s, or any cult leader will do. This is the religious impulse -- a superstitious bluff that we know, pre-science, sans science, sans any evidence or reason. Other than the reason, of course, of indoctrination, tribalism, and the need to convince oneself that they know, that they are the ones in the right holy club.

I haven't trivialized fiction. It can be put to great use as long as one is distinguishing story and fable from history and reality. I've read TLOTR pretty much as a favor to a friend who is a huge Tolkien fan. I liked "The Hobbit" much better; the writing was more delightful and enchanted, by far. And I've studied in depth Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment." I reread Lewis' LW&W just a week ago. So my question to you is:

Are the Bible stories the same "magical world" (the lecturer's term) that Tolkien and Lewis' stories are?

You are of a mind with the lecturer, Ryan Reeves ... in his camp, so to speak?

There's a lot to respond to in your last comment and will have to do that later but can answer these two question real quick.

Yes, though it goes far deeper. The Tolkien and Lewis stories are extensions of the the Bible, mythologies and fairytales with the Christian worldview being of central importance.

No, not necessarily. I liked this lecture series and enjoy the videos on his channel. I'm not an evangelical and don't see eye to eye with him some things, but we do share a lot of common ground.

Revelations scrupulously translated into myth.

Then did the following events actually happen, are they magic stories or real events:

1. Jesus feeds the multitudes with two fish?
2. Adam and Eve with Eve created in the Garden of Eden?
3. A serpent and donkey talked?
4. Jesus calmed the wind at will?
5. Jesus healed the blind and the sick?
6. Jesus supernaturally visited Paul on the road to Damascus?
7. The resurrection?
8. David and Goliath?
9. Noah's ark?
10. Samson and Delilah?
11. The Flood?
12. The Genocides?
13. The stoning of homosexuals and unruly children and non-virgin women?
14. The Great Commission?
15. The Fall of Man?

Calling them "magic stories" trivializes them. Do I think the Bible is historically accurate? No. We kind of went over that already. However, the Bible does blend history with myth. Some Biblical scholars think the reason historical figures like Pontius Pilate and King Herod are found in the Bible is to date the stories to the period in which they were written, but there may be other reasons. Some of the stories may also be built around actual historical events. There may have been a great flood and stories grew from that.

The stories communicate moral truths. They are filled with wisdom and act as a map to help get a person from one place to another. There is much to explore. In Jungian terms, the moral truths are part of the collective unconscious. An individual or group of individuals had revelations (aha moments). These are built into humans through both biological and cultural evolution. They are part of a shared human experience and passed down through the generations via stories, parables, proverbs, etc.

This is exemplified in the Garden of Eden. Jung didn't believe that humans could create their own morals. He believed that we discovered them like archeologists, but trying to build them like architects was a mistake. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from tree of knowledge of good and evil, it led to the Fall. They don't get to decide what is good or evil.

And it’s not just stories though which life communicates moral truths. Some moral truths are viewed to be too important and are instead ritualized.

For instance, take the ritual of circumcision where the protection of the masculine member is removed. Covering is associated with femininity and exposure is associated with masculinity. The moral truth is the following: To become a Jew, or a chosen one, is to become fully male which is achieved through exposure to death.

Life was unwilling to risk the Israelites fumbling this important truth, so a rule and ritual was imposed on them.

Well I want to shout "Wow" over those responses. Once the stories are non-literal, the reliability of the whole system goes out the window ... including salvation, the need for salvation, the existence of the supernatural source allegedly behind it all, the resurrection, heaven, hell. Because it's made up. You don't bet to blur the line between actual events and fiction and then treat it like its the ultimate reality of the universe.

The idea that craig1120 has the stone cold answer to the need for circumcision is flippin' joke. It's one of the biggest jokes I've ever seen. The only thing stone cold about it is the absolute desperation to see himself as "the answer man" on god's nature.

When I asked if they were magic stories or actual events, I was referring to the lecturer's term of "stories from a magical world."

Yup, stories can communicate morals and wisdom. One thing you don't get to do is make up stories, add in a god, add in heaven and hell, and in the need for salvation ... and then conflate that with what's up in the world when it's not story time, except for, obviously, as fictional artistic ideas.

All the 15 points I listed above are fictional and/or immoral. The foundation of the religion is fiction. Of course, it is archetypal fiction that comments on life, humanity, morality, meaning, etc. This does not elevate it to an uber reality any more than any other such story.

It's one of the religions. Which is to say, one of the systems created by man, that can be grouped into the perennial philosophy, that attempt to describe the unknown via story, superstition, magic, wild guesses, poetic language, imagination ... whatever else.

I've noticed lately a whole new level of apologetics. Richard Rohr perhaps on the forefront of it, in which they are throwing out much of the dogma, adopting a strongly psychological perspective. At first I was impressed. Then I realized it is just like hired guns attempting to adopt the religion to reality, instead of just looking at reality. It's, "Okay. I have to keep the religion. Now how do I meld reality with the religion in such a way so it won't appear utterly obsolete? How do I apologize while incorporating enough of reality to bring it out of its pre-medieval origins."

It's really rather astounding the extent to which critical thinking is adjourned in presupposition. Not you guys ... a guy on the show tonight. He insisted that Jesus had to be real because you can't invent characters from whole cloth, they have to be based on someone real. Ra said, "How about Hercules? Was he based on someone real?" "No, no, no" says the true believer.

So wait a minute. You just said that characters have to be based on someone real to support your Jesus belief, and then you said, no, of course Hercules is not based on someone real. Ra, one of the few prominent atheists I like, failed to do what they always fail to do: he didn't connect the dots for the guy and tell how he just completely failed to think realistically and critically and logically and sensibly and reasonably. How he failed to employ the standard he just declared to smuggle in the truth of the religion. "No, no, no ... Jesus walked the earth. Everybody knows Jesus walked the earth" was his next argument.

Ra didn't say: "What's good for Jesus is good for Hercules," or anything of the sort. He counted on the guy to have some modicum of critical thinking on the subject. But the religious lack exactly this on the subject of their religion and their religion only. And religion counts on and flourishes on this. The guy is convinced that Ra didn't have any particular point with his Hercules comment, and was just utterly oblivious to how he was presupposing or why that would matter.

I began to reply and then deleted a few sentences. We're talking past each other. There's so much to respond to, and I'm getting tired of this conversation. It's not practical and will go on and on and on and on. But since this thread was originally about G. K. Chesterton and an excerpt from one of his books, I'll use it to share some quotes of his every now and then, and others can discuss them if they want.

“Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”

― G.K. Chesterton

What that would mean is supposed non-fiction is not as true as purported, which of course is true. What it doesn't mean is that fiction is any more true in and of itself. It's still fiction, though representative of some real things, perhaps.

But the quote is based on a blatantly false premise. People are not looking for truth, and not looking for truth in reading fiction. They are looking perhaps for something more dramatic than real life, more entertaining, something diversionary (opposite of truth seeking), etc. in a novel. The use of that quote like that is the same attempt to smuggle in the truth of the religion already discussed, and an attempt to jumble up what reality is.

No one is a truth seeker across the board, so I'm not claiming anything like that for myself in any of this, or for any other human being. Socrates: no. Plato: no. But there are levels, a spectrum across which people rank. Chesterton looks like "Rohr very very light."

I just came across a Chesterton quote in my own journal from about a decade ago:

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."

It reminds me a bit of the famous "new eyes with which to see" Proust quote, which I love. If we are worthy sojourners, we don't end up where we started, we don't cling to first takes. We didn't have the final answer in Sunday School any more than we have final answers to anything in the first grade. There is a sense in which we are wasting life if we act like we do, which both quotes seem to affirm.

In leaving our home turf, we gather wider perspective, then upon returning home with don't presuppose everything that once seemed so obvious. So if we are willing to separate from that "homeland" in thought and mind, without the preconceived idea of running back to it soon, we are sojourning.

The world and life are very spiritual. That any one discipline or belief system nailed it perfectly thousands of years ago and is the one true belief is just a dogma.

I've been intrigued by In Search of Lost Time since I first heard about it (from a Norm Macdonald interview) but tend not to read such long works when it comes to novels. Maybe I'll try Swann's Way one of these days. Have you read them?

I'm not familiar with that Chesterton quote but did find the essay that it's in. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treme...s/Chapter_XXXI

The introduction in his book The Everlasting Man sheds some light on his sentiment about this:

These last few paragraphs from his essay about Rudyard Kipling offer some more perspective on his thoughts:


Sticking with the quotes: “There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.” ― G.K. Chesterton

Which one are true believers generally? Which one are cult members? Which one are all the religious who presume their own religion just ipso facto like duh obvious is reality? Which one are the scientists who look forever forward toward new information and understanding versus those who look backward for immutable truths and laws allegedly handed to our ancestors by magical/supernatural characters?

You seem set in your ways when it comes to the belief that using science to look forever forward toward new information and understanding is somehow a better means of achieving those goals than exploring ancient religious texts. What kind of information and understanding are you referring to? Scientific, of course, but science will never help us to discover what's genuinely important in life. We have to look elsewhere for answers. The scientific progress that many put on such a high pedestal may very well be what causes the end of life on Earth as we know it. I don't dream of a utopian society, and I'm not so unaware of humanity's nature as to think it's possible for science or religion to get us anywhere close to that, but I do value the inner life and the idea that what helps put individuals' souls at peace is a good thing. The way you argue the value of science over religion is zealous and dogmatic, but you don't see that. Even your view of what religion is is carved in stone.

Also, here's the essay that quote is from: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanci...Arnold_Bennett

Notwithstanding the fact that I personally am obviously more set in my ways and more biased than most theists, which group, those arguing for their god or those arguing toward whatever the truth turns out to be, is more forthright? Every theist I've ever encountered all their arguments are tailored toward defending their god instead of just arguing toward whatever the truth turns out to be. And that's indoctrination, and that's the game for the myriad of holy clubs that preposterously all presume their own to be the true one.

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.” ― G.K. Chesterton