Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Viking]

Especially since religious people are so fond of the old Brothers Karamazov argument that if there is no objective morality, then everything is permissible. And then they say you can interpret the bible any way you like. So much for "objective" morality.

My own opinion is that there is an "objective" morality - based on the ethics of reciprocity - but the exact ambit of this in any particular situation can never be known with absolute certainty; you can get pretty close however.

It seems to me that it is you & Viking who are making the "all or nothing' type argument: you seem to want religious types to be literalists, or find their opinions incoherent.

No.

1) How can you (the non literalist) reconcile the brutal and immoral bits of the bible with your view of the bible as a source or morality or as a guide/tool for morality.

2) How can you (the non literalist) decide which bits are "true" and which bits are "false". And if you use outside sources, why can't I use Tom Sawyer or Don Quijote just like the bible when cherrypicking?

3) If you can't give me a definitive way of differentiating truth from allegory in the bible how can I determine the allegorical value or the truth value of any passage. (e.g. concluding that samaritans are decent chaps rather than concluding that morality rather than status/reputation ultimately decide a mans goodness)

4) And if you decend into Deism, why are any of these books worth any more than their value as either kindling or litterature?

I'm not trying to impose a literalist view on anybody and argue against that strawman. I'm trying to figure out how non-literalists can reconcile the text to their own morality?

[Viking]

Especially since religious people are so fond of the old Brothers Karamazov argument that if there is no objective morality, then everything is permissible. And then they say you can interpret the bible any way you like. So much for "objective" morality.

Just because the Bible can be difficult to interpret at times it doesn't follow that there is no such thing as objective morality.

And really the moral lessons of the Bible are pretty damn easy to pick out 98% of the time.  Honour God, turn the other cheek,  treat others as you would treat yourself, give to poor...

You are a lawyer, you should not be making a basic mistake like this... Unless of course you are not going to argue your implicite point in that statement and agree with me that objective morality is not found in or through god/the bible.

[The Minsky Moment]

I dont' agree I'm arguing against a literalist strawman. I'm saying

1) The Bible has no moral value if I'm the person deciding which bits are relevant to morality.
2) The Bible has no truth value if I'm the person deciding which bits are true and which bits are allegorical.
3) The morale and redemptive value of allegorical bible stories are dependent on their truth.
4) If the Bible is to have any moral or factual value I should be able to find the morale and fact without picking and choosing which bits I like and can prove.

The Bible is collection of historical texts; those texts have played a historical role regardless of what your individual opinion of them may be.  The fact is that the texts that comprise the Bible have influenced the way people in the "Western" world thought about moral problems for centuries, and that the content of the Western philosophical tradition as it exists today is a product of that historical process.

[The Minsky Moment]

2) How can you (the non literalist) decide which bits are "true" and which bits are "false". And if you use outside sources, why can't I use Tom Sawyer or Don Quijote just like the bible when cherrypicking?

I doubt that many thoughtful people would deny that there exist texts outside the Bible that can inform or do inform moral and ethical judgments or action.  Certainly works of fiction can serve this purpose in addition to works of non-fiction.

[Pat]

Writings on the lives of Muhammad and the Rashidun emerge in the early 8th century.  (although there are early Christian sources which mention his name).  Which is to say, they were written easily within the lifetimes of many people who also would have lived during the Caliphate of Muwawiyah, who in turn lived contemporaneously with Muhammad in his youth.  If Muawiyah invented a fictitious person "Muhammad"  his own contemporaries would know this to be utterly false, which makes it hard to believe.  But if he did not connive with such an invention, then those alive during his reign would have been easily been able to put the lie to any later effort to invent such a personage.   It strains credulity to imagine such an extraordinary hoax being perpetrated.

This contradicts what is said by Ohlig.

Karl-Heinz Ohlig: All the information we posses on the origins of Islam is taken from later texts – "biographies" that were written in the 9th and 10th centuries. One of these texts, the Annals of at-Tabari (10th century), is also the source of further histories. As such, we lack any corroborating contemporary texts for the first two centuries.

Which are these early documents that are unknown to Ohlig?

And to what end - if (hypothetically) no Muhammad existed - why not ascribe the tenets of Islam to the widely respected (and powerful) Rashidun Caliphs?  Why invent from whole cloth a character of an illiterate merchant of no particularly distiguished lineage?  Why not ascribe the role of prophet to the rich and presitgious Abu Bakr or the literate and athletic Umar?

Where Dr. Markus Gross discussed the Buddhist influence on Islam, Professor Kropp explained the Ethiopian elements in the Koran. Independent scholar, traveller, and numismatist Volker Popp argued that Islamic history as recounted by Islamic historians has a Biblical structure –the first four caliphs are clearly modelled on Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The Muslim historians transformed historical facts to fit a Biblical pattern. Popp also developed a fascinating thesis that Islamic historians had a propensity to turn nomen (gentile) (name of the gens or clan) into patronyms; a patronym being a component of a personal name based on the name of one's father. Thus Islamic historians had a tendency to take, for instance, Iranian names on inscriptions and turn them into Arabic-sounding names. Having turned Iranians into Arabs, the next step was to turn historical events connected with the original Iranians which had nothing to do with Islamic history into Islamic history. For example, Islamic history knows various so called Civil Wars. One of them was between Abd-al-Malik, his governor al-Hajjaj and the rival caliph in Mecca by the name of Abdallah Zubair. The evidence of inscriptions tells us that the name Zubayr is a misreading. The correct reading is ZNBYL. This was made into ZUBYL by the Arab historians. From ZUBYL they derived the name Zubair, which has no Semitic root. The real story is a fight between Abd al-Malik at Merv and the King of Kabulistan, who held the title ZNBYL. This took place between 60 and 75 Arab era in the East of the former Sassanian domains. The historians transferred this feud to Mecca and Jerusalem and then embedded the whole into the structure of a well known story from the Old Testament, the secession of Omri and his building the Temple of Samaria.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589


The humble background of Mohammed (a merchant) would also mirror the humble background of Jesus (a carpenter).

[Viking]

If you want to learn morality great litterature and philosophers are great places to start. The Bible is probably better than a randomly chosen text for that purpose as well. Leave out god and "truth" then I'm happy to include the bible.

My problem is with God and the belief that the bibles is either written by or inspired by or written by men inspired by god.

[Barrister]

If you want to learn morality great litterature and philosophers are great places to start. The Bible is probably better than a randomly chosen text for that purpose as well. Leave out god and "truth" then I'm happy to include the bible.

My problem is with God and the belief that the bibles is either written by or inspired by or written by men inspired by god.

Well that's just fine for you then.  Many other people feel that way.

Others however do not.

[Neil]

If you want to learn morality great litterature and philosophers are great places to start.

Incorrect.  If one wants to learn morality, one needs a teacher.  And only I am morally absolute.

[Malthus]

No.

1) How can you (the non literalist) reconcile the brutal and immoral bits of the bible with your view of the bible as a source or morality or as a guide/tool for morality.

The Bible is not a single work with a single author but rather a collection of texts written over a very long period if time.

Some parts (particularly the Book of Joshua) were evidently written from the POV of a rather primitive and bloodthirsty type; others (See; Ecclesiastes) were evidently written by a poet-philosopher.

I have no problems finding Ecclesiasties more helpful and interesting than the Book of Joshua as a moral and ethical guide.

"All is vanity and a chasing after wind". He could have been writing about Languish. 

2) How can you (the non literalist) decide which bits are "true" and which bits are "false". And if you use outside sources, why can't I use Tom Sawyer or Don Quijote just like the bible when cherrypicking?

Who said you can't?

3) If you can't give me a definitive way of differentiating truth from allegory in the bible how can I determine the allegorical value or the truth value of any passage. (e.g. concluding that samaritans are decent chaps rather than concluding that morality rather than status/reputation ultimately decide a mans goodness)

No one can "give" you a definitive guide. Basically, that's your task - akin to attempting to become wise. 

4) And if you decend into Deism, why are any of these books worth any more than their value as either kindling or litterature?

I generally do not equate "literature" and "kindling".

I'm not trying to impose a literalist view on anybody and argue against that strawman. I'm trying to figure out how non-literalists can reconcile the text to their own morality?

The same way one reconciles anything to one's own morality. Judge the text against your morals, and judge your morals against the text.

[dps]

God (pbuh) can eat the cake and have it.

That's why they call him omniscient.  

Uh, no, that's why they call him omnipotent.  They call him omniscient 'cause he knows where the cake is.  All of the cake.

[Pat]

Especially since religious people are so fond of the old Brothers Karamazov argument that if there is no objective morality, then everything is permissible. And then they say you can interpret the bible any way you like. So much for "objective" morality.

Just because the Bible can be difficult to interpret at times it doesn't follow that there is no such thing as objective morality.

And really the moral lessons of the Bible are pretty damn easy to pick out 98% of the time.  Honour God, turn the other cheek,  treat others as you would treat yourself, give to poor...

I'm not saying there is no objective morality, either. But I'd say what objective morality does exist is that which is innate in man. The same innate morality that makes it so damn easy for you to pick out the meaningful moral lessons from the bible, and would make it similarly easy for you to pick out meaningful moral lessons from any similar text.


EDIT: Indeed, anyone who says morality is not innate, and one needs the rules of the Bible, must also explain how the Jews, before Moses received the 10 commandments from God, managed to wander in the desert for 40 years without all killing each other in conflict after they stole from each other and slept with each other's wives (etc). I mean, if they previously had no way of knowing that these things were bad.

[Barrister]

No one can "give" you a definitive guide. Basically, that's your task - akin to attempting to become wise. 

viking seems to equate great meaning with being easy to understand.  The Bible is many things, but straight forward it is not.

But just because it is hard to figure out it doesn't follow that there's no value to it.  From what I understand James Joyce is extremely dense and hard to understand - but that doesn't make his writings worthless either.

[Malthus]

God (pbuh) can eat the cake and have it.

That's why they call him omniscient.   

Uh, no, that's why they call him omnipotent.  They call him omniscient 'cause he knows where the cake is.  All of the cake.

The question is: can he make a cake so big, he can't eat it? 

[Viking]

No.

1) How can you (the non literalist) reconcile the brutal and immoral bits of the bible with your view of the bible as a source or morality or as a guide/tool for morality.

The Bible is not a single work with a single author but rather a collection of texts written over a very long period if time.

Some parts (particularly the Book of Joshua) were evidently written from the POV of a rather primitive and bloodthirsty type; others (See; Ecclesiastes) were evidently written by a poet-philosopher.

I have no problems finding Ecclesiasties more helpful and interesting than the Book of Joshua as a moral and ethical guide.

"All is vanity and a chasing after wind". He could have been writing about Languish. 

So you don't reconcile, you pick and choose.

2) How can you (the non literalist) decide which bits are "true" and which bits are "false". And if you use outside sources, why can't I use Tom Sawyer or Don Quijote just like the bible when cherrypicking?

Who said you can't?

I didn't say you couldn't, I asked HOW.

3) If you can't give me a definitive way of differentiating truth from allegory in the bible how can I determine the allegorical value or the truth value of any passage. (e.g. concluding that samaritans are decent chaps rather than concluding that morality rather than status/reputation ultimately decide a mans goodness)

No one can "give" you a definitive guide. Basically, that's your task - akin to attempting to become wise. 

So you can't give me a definitve way to separate fact from allegory.

4) And if you decend into Deism, why are any of these books worth any more than their value as either kindling or litterature?

I generally do not equate "literature" and "kindling".

I'm slightly baffled how you went from my "either kindling or litterature" to equating litterature to kindling?

I'm not trying to impose a literalist view on anybody and argue against that strawman. I'm trying to figure out how non-literalists can reconcile the text to their own morality?

The same way one reconciles anything to one's own morality. Judge the text against your morals, and judge your morals against the text.

Fair enough. But which text to judge your morales against? Well, with a text which presents a supernatually inspired morale foundation I'll insist on the truth of that supernatural source before even considering it a moral foundation. I'm sorry but a text which is based on an appeal to supernatural authority is not my first choice as a text to judge my own morals against.

[Viking]

No one can "give" you a definitive guide. Basically, that's your task - akin to attempting to become wise. 

viking seems to equate great meaning with being easy to understand.  The Bible is many things, but straight forward it is not.

But just because it is hard to figure out it doesn't follow that there's no value to it.  From what I understand James Joyce is extremely dense and hard to understand - but that doesn't make his writings worthless either.

So, I'm not quite sure, are you claiming that James Joyce was inspired by God to write a guide to human morality or are you claiming that the Bible is merely litterature?

And, as for intellegability. If it is impossible to understand what possible meaning can it impart? And if it is difficult to understand how can you be sure you understood it correctly?