OK, so I think get this, God (although they don't say which one) is a nasty, homicidal, smiting God who kills vast numbers of innocent babies in religiously inspired terrorist incidents and hurricanes because people aren't reading his autobiography, kinda tough love, however I see the link; but Bridges?
So we're passing over tornadoes, wars, atomic weapons, volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues, asteroids and black holes and going straight for "bridges", I wouldn't have thought the world-wide death toll in "bridge disasters" is all that large compared with these other things so is God an amateur civil engineer in his spare time?
might explain a lot...
12 comments:
I think it's that nasty God that is so useful to atheists...
Assuming (I think it's reasonable!) that this is an American sign and knowing that nation has a habit of being quite parochial, my guess is that this one http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6920000/newsid_6927200/6927214.stm might be the bridge concerned. Here's the Wiki article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge A bridge collapse killing 13 would make big news if it happened over here, but I'm surprised I don't recall hearing about it.
Faced with apparently meaningless disasters, people make meaning. Sadly some of those people make dodgy meaning. I can recommend Jesus on the subject, as that's not how he saw things. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+13:1-5&version=NIV
All the best
Gary
the bridges of madison county?
Nasty god that is useful to atheists?? Didn't someone religious put up this sign? Hence the admonishment to read that silly, pick-and-choose book?
Hi G, You are right he is useful, but he is also the one we're threatened with on occasions like these and so I feel the response is invited and warranted.
I think my point about disasters is that there are perfectly good explanations for them, it's religion that feeds off our natural instinct for anthropomorphism, especially when the ones making the "meaning" are ignorant of the real reasons.
Is religion's desire to mislead people like this OK? you seem to be side-stepping (i.e. Lisa's point) and laying the blame for "dodgy meaning" at the feet of the victims, where do these ideas emanate from?
It's religion (including the main ones, like Catholicism in the case of Haiti) that are the source of this fear mongering and exploitation, the words of the new Arch Bishop there (the previous one had a cathedral fall on him) said it clearly, he said God is speaking to Haiti and he has chosen the means of an earthquake to do it. So he is claiming it was a punishment, just like the clowns who put this billboard up.
This kind of thing is nothing more than primitive shamanism, demonstrably false and worthy of the exploitative witch doctors of old; there is nothing compassionate that I can see in making such threats.
Do me a favour Steve, I can't side-step a point before it's made. What am I? Quantum or something!
I think it's a stupid, ignorant poster and totally uncompassionate. And I think the fundie wallies behind this poster *are* useful for atheists. Because they let atheists characterise all people of faith as being that dim. And they're more dangerous for the people of Haiti, because they tap into the belief that if something completely random goes wrong for you then you are somehow behind it. Which means that the kind of idiot that puts that poster up won't help people who are suffering.
In the case of Haiti of course there are also human as well as natural reasons why it was so bad. But the people that suffered weren't the ones who caused that situation. The Jesus I follow believed in giving preference to the poor. And once again the poor suffer disproportionately - the same size earthquake in San Fransisco or Japan won't have a tenth the effect.
As for "pick and choose" - that's what I do with the Bible, sure. It's collectively between 3,000 and 2,000 years old. It was written by a group of people trying to make sense of the world with far fewer insights into the natural world, and psychology, and many other ologies than than we do. So I take it for what it is - a narrative of growing and developing faith.
But given so many people died when that bridge collapsed, I don't think it's that funny to make a pun about it.
Hi G, yes sorry about that, you are right you're not quantum (nice idea though!) - I should have said that you didn't address this point, but perhaps you didn't intend to so my bad.
I think the main response to things like Haiti and other disasters is to offer practical aid and support, as much as possible, as you say this is your position and I think that is a moral and ethical position, no discrimination and no favouritism just help.
I think the problem that I have with the "fire and brimstone" brigade is that they hide behind the same "flexibility" (for want of a better word) that you are espousing, i.e. this notion of picking and choosing, you clearly pick moral philosophy to follow, but if you're fundamentally OK with the principal of selection then you also have to accept that people will pick the immoral bits to follow, I suppose that's the thing that doesn't compute with me.
Yep, Steve, that's the problem for me too. If you pick and choose which parts of the behaviour manual to adhere to, you're not actually using the book to guide your moral choices. You're starting with some pre-existing moral beliefs and just using the manual as a justification for doing what you want, which is why people simply contort themselves a bit over the text and then can do either x or ~x in the name of god.
And it happens from the fire and brimstone people all the way to the liberal christians (or whatever the other end of the spectrum is called) - I can't see any difference in the methodology.
Well put Lisa.
Steve and Lisa
Took a while to get back - I was hoping to post something a bit more thorough but work, church and family came first... But I'll post something substantive on my blog one of these days and ask you over.
Anyway - quick summary I think.
In the trendy liberal parts of the C of E that I was educated in (though I'm neither trendy nor liberal) we call it "Theological Reflection".
That means (or should do) drawing on a whole series of sources: scriptural, social, scientific, historiographic, literary and insights from society and other religions, then praying for the Spirit's insight and trying to see what insights we draw.
Personally I would always go to the 2 so-called Dominical commandments - "love God" and "love your neighbour as yourself" (both of which Jesus quoted from the Old Testament - they're not new from Jesus and they're not new in the OT either - they're pretty well universal in faith). And I would add to that the tendency in the Bible to favour the weak, the alien and the dispossessed.
And then I'll read the Bible through that lens. And where the Bible is contradictory, or utterly bloodthirsty, I'll try to find out why. Generally there's a good reason. And in the OT it's normally down to the need of a small tribe in the ancient Middle East ensuring it stays in existence. The post-modernist tribe would have lasted about ten minutes in that environment - massacred and all their pashminas stolen while they tried to come up with a truly ironic way to work out how to organise their defences.
None of this is new - most of it goes all the way back beyond St Augustine, for example, who himself was aware of the inconsistencies.
But I see the Bible as a narrative of a people's awakening to God - not as a set of proof-texts that can be allied to every situation. That also means that I tend to read the Bible for meaning before I read it for ethics. Ethics is mutable, contextual and time-dependent, and so as far as I'm concerned it will always be secondary.
Just remind me how y'all work it out now?
cheers
Gary
G it really sounds like you're just making my point for me, although in a bit more flowery a style. :-)
Hi G, thanks for your comments.
I can certainly appreciate the desire to seek a decent philosophy to live ones life by, I think to some extent we all have that desire, but the thing that baffles me are the mental contortions theologians seem to go through in order to "find" representations of the current (moral) zeitgeist within ancient texts, it just seems so unnecessary.
You are right about this being an old conundrum, I think we're essentially discussing the problem of evil or where morality comes from, Epicurus seemed to have it nailed quite a while ago!
It strikes me that what you are proposing isn't so much "faith" i.e. with all this picking, choosing and interpretation it seems (from an outsiders perspective) much more akin to something like the scientific method (albeit constrained), i.e. model, interpret, discard things that don't work, refine etc.
I think it's a better approach, still somewhat hamstrung but certainly better that the literalism of the fire and brimstone lot.
Well, Steve, I was - when all's said and done - a scientist so it wouldn't be surprising if my model of theology had reflections of a scientific method. But it's also the kind of theological method taught in proper theological colleges as well. I've never attended a theology lecture where someone said "the Bible says x so you'd better believe it". Maybe they're just the ones who shout loudest.
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