[RD] Ask a Theologian V

[El_Machinae]

I suspect the Zulu dont call baboons ape men

No, probably not. But then it's a probability question. Is it reasonable to assume that they've maintained an accurate oral tradition for 10s of thousands of years? You need only look at oral distortions within known human history to see how quickly 'telephone' occurs. It's an odds game, when we analyse the data.

 

[Plotinus]

Apologies, as usual, for taking a while to reply. Things have been very busy.

Like I said, that depends quote a bit about what we imagine God "decreeing" that torture is immoral entails, and ambiguity on this point is where a good deal of trouble with DCT involves.

Now, let's assume for the purposes of this argument, that we are accurately deriving moral facts from experience.

Now, if we can do this, we can only come to these moral facts through the peculiar nature of of what we experience. To build on the example of torture, as a general rule, we can understand torture as unethical because of very specific facts we can ascertain or reasonably believe about reality: including the pain it causes, the tendency to produce further evils in the victim and perpetrator and most importantly, the inherent dignity of man (which we can derive from other facts about existence). All of this, so far, is still an inherent part of God's creation.

The key question then, is whether ethical facts derive from God's design of the universe as an incidental part of the design, or an integral part of it.

I think most Christians would probably believe these moral facts to be an inherent part of God's scheme for this world, rather than an unwelcome byproduct.

If this is true, we can't talk of the ethical facts we derive from experience as independent of God's will. God designed the facts of the universe to include certain moral facts, as was his intention.

All of this makes sense to me.

Which brings us by "What does it mean when god decrees something ethical?" Do we mean that god simply says such a thing is so, but nothing about the universe is altered in any way?

If that is the case, we've run into a problem of God having two wills: He has willed that certain ethical facts be in place, as an integrated and possibly even logically necessary part of his universe, and then he has also willed that exactly contrary moral facts also are binding.

It creates two wills of God: One the creator, who infused this universe with evident moral laws at it's design, who's will is continued to be made manifest by the functioning of the universe according to his design, and the continued existence of his moral facts through the existence of his creation. The other the proclamator, who issues a decree
running contrary to the will of the creator, and standing athwart his design and his moral laws.

I still don't see how this follows. You're envisaging a situation where God, as creator, wills into existence a universe in which (for example) sticking toothpicks into people's fingernails causes them terrible pain. And, perhaps as a direct and necessary consequence of this fact, together with other facts that God chooses to actualise (as creator), doing such a thing is morally wrong. That all seems to make sense. So what decree does God the proclamator issue that runs contrary to this? As proclamator, doesn't he simply command his creatures not to stick toothpicks into each other's fingernails? Now I can see an argument to the effect that such a proclamation is redundant, and that perhaps God's role as moral lawgiver is actually identical with his role as creator, if the moral laws supervene necessarily on the natural laws and other things that he actualises as creator. In such a case, any additional lawgiving that God does would merely repeat what he's already determined about right and wrong. So, for example, when God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, he's not issuing new moral laws, he's merely articulating the moral laws that he set up in his creative act. That seems plausible to me.

But what I don't understand is the notion that God's moral lawgiving could, or even must, run counter to his will in creation. Can you give an example of how it might work?

On the other hand, these moral facts can't really be spoken about as "apart from God's commands." If you're saying torture is abhorrent "apart from God's command" you can't base it on anything, because any facts that exist are there and arranged as god willed it. You are simply drawing on god's command, given in the creation and design of the universe.

Not necessarily, because theists traditionally believe that there some facts independent of God's will. Necessary facts - the archetypes being the truths of logic and mathematics - are independent of God's will. One might hold, as G.E. Moore did, that moral truths are necessarily true. If that's so then they're not among the facts that depend upon God's will. This was Leibniz's position, which he defended with a modified form of the Euthyphro argument, which I think I mentioned a page or two ago.

Is there anyone else who seems to think the derivation of moral facts from the universe is entirely compatible with DCT?

I don't know enough about it to say, but I would tentatively guess that it seems likely, because - as I said above - it seems to me to be a plausible sort of position to hold. (I mean that it's plausible as a form of DCT, of course - it would still be subject to the various criticisms that any version of DCT faces.)

This is two questions.

1) Factual primer--Who, What, Where, When, and especially Why? A good lay reference source would be nice.

2) What is the historical and theological significance? Particularly, what are the common erroneous conceptions about the book?

J

As others have mentioned, I don't know much about the Old Testament. However, I have a colleague who specialises in the book of Job, so I asked him.

It seems that one of the major misconceptions about Job is that there's straightforwardly a book called Job. But in fact there are many, many versions of the story, some quite variant. This is true even within the Bible, depending on which version you're using. The Septuagint version of Job differs quite a bit from the Masoretic text. Moreover, the Masoretic text itself is dubious in many places: the Hebrew is mangled and sometimes barely intelligible.

As a good introduction to the book of Job and its historical and theological importance - including how it's been read, interpreted, and rewritten - my colleague recommends The Book of Job: A Biography by Mark Larrimore. This looked to me like a good layman's introduction, with arty roughly cut pages to boot. For a more in-depth academic analysis he recommends The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations by Carol Newsom, which seems much weightier.

What was your experience of getting an MA in theology with a background in not-theology? How common is this among people who pursue them? I'm at a point where I'm interested in pursuing theological scholarship in the future, but circumstances aren't really favorable to me getting a BA in religious studies.

I don't have an MA - I have an M Phil, which is a two-year master's that's half taught and half researched. So it's a little like a normal MA plus an MA by research, I suppose. At that stage I did have a background in theology. My BA was in Philosophy & Theology, with equal weight to both. I had found that I generally preferred philosophical topics, but my favourite topic of all was patristics, which is why I did an M Phil in theology rather than philosophy. It was in modern theology with particular reference to patristics. I couldn't do an M Phil in patristics alone because I didn't have the linguistic ability.

It's perfectly possible to do an MA in something theological or religious without having a BA in that subject, but obviously it will depend on what it is. I doubt, for example, that you'd have much success doing an MA in modern systematic theology without having studied it at BA level. But someone could easily do an MA in psychology of religion with a purely psychology BA; or, say, an MA on the religious imagery in Milton with a purely English BA. I think that sort of route is not unusual, because there's so much crossover between religious studies and other subjects. But it will really depend on what kind of thing you want to do.

Inspired by the latest Crusader Kings II patch, where they're portrayed as a Nestorian heresy that supports gender-equality and incest while worshiping Lucifer (as well as God and Jesus) [and as such, most of the fanbase seems to want to play as them....], I'm rather curious about what the Messalians actually were. Wiki give an outline, but, as usual, is rather lacking in depth. Can you provide any more detail Plotinus?

I'm amazed and pleased to hear that a group as obscure as the Messalians have made it into video games. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like they've had justice done to them! The major problem with the Messalians is that we don't really know anything about them. Like most ancient heretical groups, nothing of their own works survives, at least not definitely. The closest we have is the work of Pseudo-Macarius, an author traditionally identified with one of the Egyptian desert fathers but actually from Syria. His work is now thought to represent a kind of Messalianism-lite, though whether this means that he is really a moderate Messalian, or a non-Messalian with similar ideas (perhaps deliberately opposing full-blown Messalianism), or a true Messalian whose text has been toned down by later editors, or a true Messalian who hasn't been toned down because the Messalians weren't really very extreme anyway, or what, no-one really knows.

What we know of the Messalians comes from hearsay in authors like Epiphanius of Salamis, who was, to put it briefly, a nutcase; and more reliable people like John of Damascus, still an opponent. So we can't really be sure what they believed. They seem to have believed that the human person is the site of a constant war between God and the devil. They thought, or at least are said to have thought, of this in overly physical terms. So the devil actually dwells physically within people, and so does the Holy Spirit; they're said to have thought that even going to the toilet counted as a way of ridding yourself of sinfulness. They believed that only through constant prayer could one be sure that the Holy Spirit would remain within, keeping out Satan - and this is where the name "Messalians" came from, from the Aramaic for "praying people". They are said to believe also that it's possible to sense, physically, whether the Holy Spirit is within you or not.

How much of all that is a fair description is of course anyone's guess. I'm pretty sure that they didn't support gender equality (something unheard of among ancient Christians) or incest (something that ancient Christians were traditionally accused of all the time) or devil worship. It was standard in antiquity for people to accuse their enemies of things like this: consider for example the charges made against Athanasius of Alexandria by his enemies, such as murdering someone and cutting the hands off the corpse to use in witchcraft. (The man in question wasn't even dead, since Athanasius was able to produce him, alive and well, and with both hands intact.) So one really can't, unfortunately, put much stock in the lurid accusations made against groups condemned of heresy like the Messalians.

 

[Mouthwash]

Plotinus, what are your thoughts on this theory?

I think of cults as testbeds for new civilizations and new ways of life. In times of change, when the old ways are failing and the civilization is falling, cults may be well-positioned to expand and become the new normal. I suppose this is the memetic equivalent of marginal species who exploit mass extinctions to become genetically dominant -- cults provide memetic diversity. This is apparently what was going on in the declining years of Rome, and I see indications that something similar is happening today.

Specifically: do you think that it can accurately relate to how Christianity became so pervasive, as opposed to any of the minor Jewish messianic cults that preceded it?

And sorry to resurrect this old argument, but your explanation no longer makes sense to me now that I've went over it again.

That's assuming a naturalistic explanation for aesthetics, though. You're right that one can't use beauty as an argument for God's existence, but you're wrong about the reason. The reason isn't that beauty is just in our heads; it's that beauty could be just in our heads. The fact that we think things are beautiful is equally well explicable whether or not God exists. But you can't assume that the naturalistic explanation is true if you're considering the question whether God exists or not, because again you're begging the question - you're assuming an answer.

Well, yeah, but I'm not doing it without good reason. Empirical evidence (e.i. neuroscience) suggests that beauty, as human perceive it in everyday life, is a mental construct. So, if the idea of God depends upon similar primitive anthropomorphisms, then it isn't any more intellectually respectable than the Law of Attraction.

Why not? Richard Swinburne thinks that personal explanations are intrinsically simple, so the explanation "God did it" is simpler and therefore explanatorily more useful than an alternative naturalistic explanation (other things being equal).

Taken to a logical endpoint, this would result in solipsism. What could be more personal than that?

And besides, what are we to make of Aristotle and his belief that things fell towards the Earth because they wanted to? A prime example of an anthropomorphic theory that was later replaced by a non-anthropomorphic theory.

 

[Flying Pig]

And besides, what are we to make of Aristotle and his belief that things fell towards the Earth because they wanted to?

That's a bit of a sloppy translation; he said that all things naturally belong on the earth, and all things naturally tend towards moving back where they belong. It's no different from 'like charges repel, opposite charges attract': phrasing that as 'like charges want to move away from each other' is just bad expression.

 

[Mouthwash]

That's a bit of a sloppy translation; he said that all things naturally belong on the earth, and all things naturally tend towards moving back where they belong. It's no different from 'like charges repel, opposite charges attract': phrasing that as 'like charges want to move away from each other' is just bad expression.

OK, but there are plenty of other examples.

 

[ParkCungHee]

No, probably not. But then it's a probability question. Is it reasonable to assume that they've maintained an accurate oral tradition for 10s of thousands of years? You need only look at oral distortions within known human history to see how quickly 'telephone' occurs. It's an odds game, when we analyse the data.

Actually, oral traditions can be quite reliable in places, especially when they're self-consciously oral. The problem here is, oral tradition distortion and preservation doesn't really work this way. We're taking an event that wouldn't have seemed extraordinary over a hundred thousand years ago, and have it passed down through linguistics changes in order to produce a story that's readily interpretable by speakers of a foreign language without reference to the context of anything else about Zulu culture, including the rest of the story.

At the same time, for such an old oral tradition, it seems to lack for any degree of universality. The only references to anything like it I could find was here which references a text referencing a collection of folklore by this man, who's also been associated reptile conspiracy theories.

The only other related source I could find was in the much older crank Gerald Massey, but he claims that according to Zulu "Khaffirs" baboons were once humans, who now carry their hoes on their back in the form of their tails.

So for what's supposed to be a hundred thousand year old story, we have only a scattering of references, in a very specific culture, which is a relatively recent development in South African history, but one which can be interpreted without reference to any larger piece of Zulu culture or, again, the larger context of the story.

It doesn't even matter at this point the reliability of oral story telling, the problem here is that there's not even an attempt to listen to the oral story telling.

EDIT: Sorry for the derail Plotinus, but Oral History is my speciality and I actually forgot which thread this is.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Hi Plotinus, a few questions, if I may, forgive me if they've been asked before in some form, I checked the index in the first few posts to make sure.


Firstly, concerning their Manicheans, I'm aware of their possible influence on "heretical" Christian groups such as the Cathars and Bogomils (I've done a research paper on the Manicheans, though focusing mainly on Manicheism in East Asia, so I'm not too knowledgeable on their European counterparts), but what influence, if any, did they have on mainstream Christian groups, including the big three Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants?


Secondly, I am not too well-read in the Bible, but could reincarnation/rebirth be justified somehow, from the Bible? Or, perhaps, have there been passages in the Bible some have used to argue that the Bible says reincarnation/rebirth is a thing?


Thirdly, I am sure you've heard of the so-called Gospel of Judas. Is it really a thing? How important is it, in regards to interpreting Judas?


Fourthly, do you know how the historical Nestorian Church (in Central and East Asia) might have been influenced by eastern religions and thought, such as the big three of China, i.e. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism? I am vaguely aware that Nestorian Christianity in China, for instance, was often expressed in terms familiar to the Chinese (such as calling Christian religious text sutras), not too different from what the Manicheans did, but I'm not aware of any influence beyond that.

 

[_random_]

Secondly, I am not too well-read in the Bible, but could reincarnation/rebirth be justified somehow, from the Bible? Or, perhaps, have there been passages in the Bible some have used to argue that the Bible says reincarnation/rebirth is a thing?

"Gilgul" is a term used for Reincarnation in some schools of Judaism. I first heard of it when I was at an Orthodox Jewish wedding, and the rabbi suggested that the couple may have been married in a previous life. That definitely threw me off a bit. I don't know much about Kabbalistic interpretations of the Tanakh, but I believe that some interpret the Book of Jonah as an allegory for reincarnation and use the idea of reincarnation as a justification for Levirate marriage. And both of those really only work if you're already presupposing reincarnation is true.

In New Testament terms, I suppose Matthew 11:14 could be interpreted as reference to reincarnation, and it probably has been at some point, but given that such teaching would be hugely anachronistic in first-century Judaism and that Jesus never seems to advocate for reincarnation elsewhere, it seems safe to assume he wasn't speaking literally there.

I am vaguely aware that Nestorian Christianity in China, for instance, was often expressed in terms familiar to the Chinese (such as calling Christian religious text sutras), not too different from what the Manicheans did, but I'm not aware of any influence beyond that.

There's a book in my (Eastern Orthodox) church library called Christ the Eternal Tao, specifically associating the Tao with the Logos of John 1 and expanding that association. I believe Plotinus addressed it elsewhere. Which isn't specifically what you asked about, obviously, but it's in the same general field of interest.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Apparently some of the smaller Mormon denominations (non-mainstream-LDS) believe in reincarnation, at least according to Wikipedia.

 

[Plotinus]

Plotinus, what are your thoughts on this theory?

Specifically: do you think that it can accurately relate to how Christianity became so pervasive, as opposed to any of the minor Jewish messianic cults that preceded it?

Without knowing much about the sociology of religion, I'd say it seems a plausible general claim. Certainly in times of uncertainty and social breakdown people do look for new movements offering new answers and certainties - just look at the association of extremist political movements with such periods in history.

I'm not sure it makes great sense as an explanation for the rise of Christianity. It rather depends on when you're talking about. If you mean in a first-century context, then within Judaism there was obviously tremendous upheaval, and this upheaval saw Judaism being effectively consolidated and re-invented in two main new forms, namely rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. But this was pretty much forced on them given the destruction of the Temple. Also, of course, it's uncertain just how Jewish Christianity was after the first generation.

In the subsequent centuries I can't really see grounds for attributing the rise of Christianity to the collapse of civilisation. There was a sense in some quarters that the world was old and dying and that civilisation was in decline, particularly in the third century; you get this idea in some of Cyprian's letters. And of course there was a serious crisis in the Roman empire at this time, which saw among other things half of the western empire splitting away temporarily. However, I don't think there's much evidence that this period saw an increase in interest in Christianity. If anything, Christianity did its most important growth in the first and second centuries and then stagnated in the third, before enjoying more explosive growth in the fourth and fifth centuries after its adoption by the imperial government.

So overall I suppose I'd say I disagree with the quotation as an explanation for the rise of Christianity, though it may be generally true.

And sorry to resurrect this old argument, but your explanation no longer makes sense to me now that I've went over it again.


Well, yeah, but I'm not doing it without good reason. Empirical evidence (e.i. neuroscience) suggests that beauty, as human perceive it in everyday life, is a mental construct. So, if the idea of God depends upon similar primitive anthropomorphisms, then it isn't any more intellectually respectable than the Law of Attraction.

I don't know what empirical evidence you're referring to or how it undermines a non-naturalistic explanation for aesthetics, so it's hard to respond to this. At any rate, it's not about anthropomorphism, it's about explanation. To say that the beauty of a piece of art derives ultimately from the divine form of Beauty itself isn't really an anthropomorphism, it's an attempt to explain why we consider some things beautiful. And I agree that it's probably not a very good explanation. Even so, I don't think that the concept of God depends on or derives from it. I'm sure there are many people who don't agree with such a view but who still believe in God.

Taken to a logical endpoint, this would result in solipsism. What could be more personal that?

I don't see why that would lead to solipsism. Swinburne just thinks that to say something happened because a person caused it is, other things being equal, simpler than saying that something happened because things other than persons caused it. He also thinks that God is a very simple being (even compared to other persons), and therefore that saying that God did something is an intrinsically very simple hypothesis. Since he also believes that simpler explanations are to be preferred to complex ones, other things being equal, he concludes that "God did it" is (sometimes) a good explanation. Now there are all kinds of problems with this chain of reasoning, but I don't see how any of it relates to solipsism, which is the withdrawal into oneself and failure to interact with others.

And besides, what are we to make of Aristotle and his belief that things fell towards the Earth because they wanted to? A prime example of an anthropomorphic theory that was later replaced by a non-anthropomorphic theory.

As Flying Pig said, Aristotle didn't really think that. But even if he had, what would it show? It would show that people have sometimes appealed to personal explanations and they were, on those occasions, wrong to do so. It wouldn't show that it's generally wrong to appeal to personal explanations. E.g. right now I'm assuming that the words I see on this very forum have been typed by various persons, and not simply come together through the operation of impersonal forces. That is a reasonable assumption to make and (very probably) the correct explanation.

Firstly, concerning their Manicheans, I'm aware of their possible influence on "heretical" Christian groups such as the Cathars and Bogomils (I've done a research paper on the Manicheans, though focusing mainly on Manicheism in East Asia, so I'm not too knowledgeable on their European counterparts), but what influence, if any, did they have on mainstream Christian groups, including the big three Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants?

I think they may have had some influence on Nestorian Christianity. Christianity and Manicheism were closely associated in central Asia, where they spread along the trade routes into China and mingled with Buddhism. But this is a subject about which I know very little.

Their influence on western Christianity is, I think, minimal. I would guess that the main influence, such as it is, would be via Augustine, who famously was a Manichean for some years before returning to Christianity and writing a series of works against the Manicheans. Some have argued that despite his rejection of their ideas, they still influenced key elements of his theology, particularly his strong sense of original sin and inherited guilt, which is in some ways reminiscent of the Manichean notion of the substantial reality of evil. I don't know how plausible this interpretation is. Certainly Augustine's understanding of original sin was stronger than was usual at the time, but it can also be seen to have precedents in other Christian authors such as Ambrose and Ambrosiaster.

So, basically, the answer is that I don't really know, but I don't think there was much influence.

Secondly, I am not too well-read in the Bible, but could reincarnation/rebirth be justified somehow, from the Bible? Or, perhaps, have there been passages in the Bible some have used to argue that the Bible says reincarnation/rebirth is a thing?

I don't know of any passages that have been used in this way, at least not classically. Certainly there was some belief in reincarnation in the early church, most famously in the case of Origen (though what he believed wasn't really quite like what people mean by "reincarnation" today). I would say that Revelation 21:1 is perhaps the closest passage, stating that there will be "a new heaven and a new earth". Origen seems to have taken this claim literally to mean that there will be a new universe, in which everyone will live again; followed by another one, in which everyone will live again; and so on through innumerable ages until it all finally ends. However, I don't know whether Origen specifically appealed to this verse in support of this idea, and indeed it's not certain precisely what Origen believed on this score anyway. It's possible to interpret Origen in a much more traditionally orthodox way than is usual (Henri Crouzel does, as I recall, even arguing that Origen didn't believe in universal salvation).

Thirdly, I am sure you've heard of the so-called Gospel of Judas. Is it really a thing? How important is it, in regards to interpreting Judas?

Yes, it is a thing. Irenaeus mentions a lost gospel of this name. A gnostic gospel of the same name was discovered and published to great fanfare about ten years ago; whether it's the same book that Irenaeus talked about is uncertain. Either way, it's a gnostic work that gives us more information about gnosticism in perhaps the third century (as I recall, there isn't much in there that can't be found in other gnostic texts, other than the focus on Judas). It doesn't tell us anything about the historical Judas - it's far too late and obviously legendary.

It follows a fairly standard genre in gnostic writings, which is a "gospel" that actually consists of Jesus giving esoteric teachings to one or more selected disciples, who will transmit this secret knowledge to their followers, distinct from the exoteric teachings given to the rest of the disciples which will be transmitted to the unwashed masses. Different gnostic groups seem to have identified with different disciples. The choice of Judas in this case is rather unusual, but perhaps makes a sort of sense, given that he is the obvious "outsider" among the disciples in the usual narrative.

Fourthly, do you know how the historical Nestorian Church (in Central and East Asia) might have been influenced by eastern religions and thought, such as the big three of China, i.e. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism? I am vaguely aware that Nestorian Christianity in China, for instance, was often expressed in terms familiar to the Chinese (such as calling Christian religious text sutras), not too different from what the Manicheans did, but I'm not aware of any influence beyond that.

Here again I don't know much about it, and indeed very little is known of Nestorianism in China anyway. I found a paper by Hans-J. Klimkeit ("Buddhists and Manichaeans in medieval central Asia", Buddhist-Christian Studies 1: 46-50, 1981 - available on JSTOR) which gives some information on this question. He says that Nestorian Christianity did indeed express itself in terms drawn from Chinese Buddhism, but that it seems not to have actually changed its doctrines. In particular, Christianity retained a strong doctrine of physical resurrection, and continued to emphasise it despite being criticised for it in Buddhist writings.

Klimkeit says:

The Christian documents from Central Asia reveal two basic trends. On the one hand there is an interpretatio buddhistica, an increasing attempt to adapt to Buddhist terminology. Such adaptations go to such an extent in the case of Chinese Nestorian documents that the distinction between both religions is almost blurred. The Christian texts in Chinese call themselves Sutras and they employ the imagery and the notions of Mahayana texts almost to the point of losing their identity. Yet on the other hand basic articles of faith are never relinquished, such as the belief in the corporeality of the Christ and the belief in the resurrection. Especially the last idea, so foreign to both Buddhism and Gnostic Manichaeism, is emphasized repeatedly. In the Sogdian Christian documents this notion comes to the fore. In the Sogdian text C6 from Turfan, St. George, the Christian opponent of the Buddhists, is rebuked with the words: "He brings before us (demon)-like men, and he says, 'I have resurrected the dead.'"...

...the concept of the resurrection of the saviour from hell remains foreign to Buddhist imagery which utilizes other notions of redemption. But so central was the belief on the part of the Christians, that the Nestorians, even in formulating the core of their faith in Sino-Buddhist terms, laid heavy emphasis on renewed corporeal life. Thus in the Jesus-Messiah-Sutra ("Hsu-t'ing Messiah Sutra") the Lord of Heaven (Hsii-po Jehova) is described and the life story of Jesus is related. The description of his death makes it clear that at that time "the graves were opened and men received life."

He goes on to say that Manicheism was rather different, in that the Manichean texts not only use Buddhist language and imagery but seem to adopt their ideas as well, to the extent that it can be hard to tell whether a text is Manichean or not.

This is something I'm hoping to look into a bit more in the next month or two, though (I'm putting together a course for next year in which I hope to touch on this area), so I'll see what more I can dig out!

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't know what empirical evidence you're referring to or how it undermines a non-naturalistic explanation for aesthetics, so it's hard to respond to this. At any rate, it's not about anthropomorphism, it's about explanation. To say that the beauty of a piece of art derives ultimately from the divine form of Beauty itself isn't really an anthropomorphism, it's an attempt to explain why we consider some things beautiful. And I agree that it's probably not a very good explanation. Even so, I don't think that the concept of God depends on or derives from it. I'm sure there are many people who don't agree with such a view but who still believe in God.

It's probably my own misuse of terminology that's confusing you here.

I don't see why that would lead to solipsism. Swinburne just thinks that to say something happened because a person caused it is, other things being equal, simpler than saying that something happened because things other than persons caused it. He also thinks that God is a very simple being (even compared to other persons), and therefore that saying that God did something is an intrinsically very simple hypothesis. Since he also believes that simpler explanations are to be preferred to complex ones, other things being equal, he concludes that "God did it" is (sometimes) a good explanation. Now there are all kinds of problems with this chain of reasoning, but I don't see how any of it relates to solipsism, which is the withdrawal into oneself and failure to interact with others.

Why wouldn't it? Solipsism is the most personal explanation there is, far more so than positing the existence of an external being. I actually think it might go beyond that- your thoughts, your sensations, literally are reality.

As Flying Pig said, Aristotle didn't really think that. But even if he had, what would it show? It would show that people have sometimes appealed to personal explanations and they were, on those occasions, wrong to do so. It wouldn't show that it's generally wrong to appeal to personal explanations. E.g. right now I'm assuming that the words I see on this very forum have been typed by various persons, and not simply come together through the operation of impersonal forces. That is a reasonable assumption to make and (very probably) the correct explanation.

This is becoming way too hard for me to follow. I'm just arguing on intuition. So I'll just link you to this and ask you for your thoughts. I don't think he's right, but I'm interested in a religious scholar's view.

(There are a lot of links, but don't click on most of them; he's way too into digression).

 

[Plotinus]

Why wouldn't it? Solipsism is the most personal explanation there is, far more so than positing the existence of an external being. I actually think it might go beyond that- your thoughts, your sensations, literally are reality.

When I say "personal", I don't mean it in the vernacular sense of something very important to you. I mean it simply in the sense of involving a person or persons. An explanation that invokes myself is no more "personal", in this sense, than an explanation that invokes an external person.

This is becoming way too hard for me to follow. I'm just arguing on intuition. So I'll just link you to this and ask you for your thoughts. I don't think he's right, but I'm interested in a religious scholar's view.

(There are a lot of links, but don't click on most of them; he's way too into digression).

He is right - probably - that religion is just one manifestation of various common human mental tendencies. He's obviously wrong that religion is necessarily irrational. He's also deluded if he thinks that there's any chance at all of eliminating religion. As a general rule, when someone talks about tooth fairies and Santa Claus in the context of a discussion of religion as if they're directly comparable to religious belief, then it's not an honest discussion.

 

[Agent327]

I don't know of any passages that have been used in this way, at least not classically. Certainly there was some belief in reincarnation in the early church, most famously in the case of Origen (though what he believed wasn't really quite like what people mean by "reincarnation" today). I would say that Revelation 21:1 is perhaps the closest passage, stating that there will be "a new heaven and a new earth". Origen seems to have taken this claim literally to mean that there will be a new universe, in which everyone will live again; followed by another one, in which everyone will live again; and so on through innumerable ages until it all finally ends. However, I don't know whether Origen specifically appealed to this verse in support of this idea, and indeed it's not certain precisely what Origen believed on this score anyway. It's possible to interpret Origen in a much more traditionally orthodox way than is usual (Henri Crouzel does, as I recall, even arguing that Origen didn't believe in universal salvation).

Isn't the Second Coming (and in fact Jesus' physical resurrection) and Christian burial practice based on the idea that the dead will be physically resurrected? (That is, of course, different from the Indian concept of reincarnation, but it is a very literal reincarnation nonetheless, I should think.)

 

[Plotinus]

Isn't the Second Coming (and in fact Jesus' physical resurrection) and Christian burial practice based on the idea that the dead will be physically resurrected? (That is, of course, different from the Indian concept of reincarnation, but it is a very literal reincarnation nonetheless, I should think.)

Yes. Origen was notorious for not really believing in the physicality of the resurrection - whether this was a fair interpretation of him or not, I don't know (but suspect not). On this kind of view, I think that people are reincarnated in each successive universe to lead normal lives, with the resurrection proper happening at the end of the final cycle. But again, it would be a mistake to suppose that Origen ever gives a clear explanation of the system, at least in his surviving works, so we can't be sure what he really thought.

 

[Mouthwash]

He is right - probably - that religion is just one manifestation of various common human mental tendencies. He's obviously wrong that religion is necessarily irrational.

Yes, but I'd like to know why. He argues that anthropomorphisms are a central part of religious belief. (I probably should have linked to this one instead of the other one).

 

[Plotinus]

Yes, but I'd like to know why. He argues that anthropomorphisms are a central part of religious belief. (I probably should have linked to this one instead of the other one).

He's assuming a lot of what he's supposedly showing. He's assuming that what he calls "reductionism" (how I hate that word) is true, and trying to explain why people nevertheless believe in "supernaturalism" even though it's false. He doesn't give any arguments there for the truth of reductionism or the falsity of supernaturalism.

The closest he comes, as I see it, is rather extraordinary: he claims that (assuming the truth of reductionism) supernaturalism is actually inconceivable:

But now we get to the dilemma: if the staid conventional normal boring understanding of physics and the brain is correct, there's no way in principle that a human being can concretely envision, and derive testable experimental predictions about, an alternate universe in which things are irreducibly mental. Because, if the boring old normal model is correct, your brain is made of quarks, and so your brain will only be able to envision and concretely predict things that can predicted by quarks. You will only ever be able to construct models made of interacting simple things.

This argument seems clearly fallacious. If my brain is composed of quarks, that doesn't mean that it is capable only of conceiving other things that are composed of quarks. You might as well say that because my brain is grey it is capable only of conceiving other things that are grey, or because it is smaller than a house (just) it is capable only of conceiving other things that are smaller than a house. And indeed people do at least seem to conceive of things that aren't made of quarks, namely pretty much any supernatural entity you care to mention.

And if the argument were sound, then it would follow that no-one actually believes in supernaturalism, and no-one actually believes in any religion. But clearly this isn't the case.

Moreover, in that piece, he doesn't really claim that supernaturalism or the religious beliefs that supposedly depend on it are irrational. He just claims that they're false, and tries to explain why people have them all the same. But this isn't the same thing. It's perfectly possible to believe something false, but do so rationally. This is why he's wrong, in the previous piece, to characterise religious belief as necessarily irrational. Rationality and irrationality are not characteristics of the contents of belief - they are characteristics of the reasons why people believe things. What is rational for one person may be irrational for another, because of different circumstances. E.g. if I constantly experience what appear to be me to be perceptions of ghosts, which constantly terrify me, and for which I can find no convincing naturalistic explanation, then I may be rational in believing that ghosts exist. Another person who never has any such experiences may be irrational in believing in ghosts. The reason why we think that belief in ghosts is, generally speaking, irrational is simply that the vast majority of people don't have such experiences. In the absence of drop-dead proof one way or the other, any belief could, in principle, be held rationally (or irrationally) under the right conditions. There is no drop-dead proof that God doesn't exist or that religion is false; it's therefore wrong to insist that anyone who believes in God does so irrationally. (It may well be the case that most people who believe in God do do so irrationally, but that's not the same thing; theism isn't necessarily irrational.)

I think he's broadly right in what he says here:

The basic error of anthropomorphism, and the reason why supernatural explanations sound much simpler than they really are, is your brain using itself as an opaque black box to predict other things labeled "mindful". Because you already have big, complicated webs of neural circuitry that implement your "wanting" things, it seems like you can easily describe water that "wants" to flow downhill—the one word "want" acts as a lever to set your own complicated wanting-machinery in motion.

Or you imagine that God likes beautiful things, and therefore made the flowers. Your own "beauty" circuitry determines what is "beautiful" and "not beautiful". But you don't know the diagram of your own synapses. You can't describe a nonmental system that computes the same label for what is "beautiful" or "not beautiful"—can't write a computer program that predicts your own labelings. But this is just a defect of knowledge on your part; it doesn't mean that the brain has no explanation.

So, yes, Swinburne is (I think) wrong to say that personal explanations are simpler than non-personal ones, the reason being that persons are in fact very complex things. However, Swinburne has an answer to this. Swinburne can say that although human persons are very complex, being made of quarks that interact in very complex ways (in fact Swinburne wouldn't accept this, but suppose for the sake of argument he does), it doesn't follow that all persons are necessarily made in this way. There could be persons who are immaterial and who could be much simpler than we are. Swinburne can still say that e.g. it is simpler to explain the existence of order in the universe by saying God did it than by any alternative explanation, because God is a very simple explanation even if human persons aren't. The problem is that Swinburne can't really show that God is a simple explanation. (He also can't really show that simple explanations are necessarily to be preferred to non-simple ones, other things being equal, but that's a different issue.)

 

[Mouthwash]

Two full books could have been written with the material you've put on these threads.

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks. Some of it may have found its way into one or two books in the past!

 

[Takhisis]

We do want our royalties, Mr. OP. Plus all the accrued interest.

 

[Plotinus]

Just deduct it from my next admin payslip.