Would it have any value if the bible is a fairy tale?

Post Reply New Topic

In a few threads Awsomeglorious has posted this link to a paper written by Daniel Dennett whom he names a favorite in the favorite philosopher thread. After one of the postings I read it, and found to be so incredibly full of BS that it was funny.

I will give just one example:

What is interesting about this is that he invents an imaginary benighted literary critic, to hold that opinion, yet he might have been referring to J.R.R. Tolkien who wasn't exactly a critic and (I think) fell one step short of knighthood, but did use the word subcreation in his essay "On Fairy Stories" as well as words like magic and enchantment. He also used the term secondary belief to describe a mindset where the story is so good that you do not have to suspend disbelief: where the reader can enter the subcreation and believe that beings like hobbits, elves and goblins actually exist, while he is there, even though he knows, in the real world, that they do not.

The only other internet forum where I come close to my abysmal post count here in a Harry Potter fan site. I joined it a few days after the sixth book was published and stopped posting a few months after the seventh was. There were two reasons for this: I thought the last book was so bad that the story wasn't discussing any more, and after starting this thread I learned that I was in a clear minority of the membership if not the moderators of the site on how the story should be read. It is interesting reading if you would like to know how a lot of people think an undisputed fairy tale should be read.

You can think of the Bible as a fairy tale, I have no problem with that, but if it is to be of any value you have to be willing to at least suspend disbelief. If you can or will not do that and disbelief needs to be (as Tolkien put it in the same essay) hanged drawn and quartered, then it has no value.

Some of the material in the Hebrew TNKH is first rate literature. For example Song of Songs is first rate erotic poetry.

For example: My beloved is mine, and I am hers, see her feed among the lilies.

I had that read at our wedding (53 years ago), read in Hebrew. Very moving.

ruveyn

I consider Dennett's statement here to be thoughtful and relevant, as he is trying to get us to think about mental properties, and question to what extent the mind is actually creating a useful construct rather than representing reality. In this, I agree with Dennett that many things that the mind uses really are useful constructs rather than just representations of reality. I can see how one might consider Dennett a mixed bag though, because Dennett likes using intuition pumps more so than arguments in many cases because he views projects to prime our intuitions more important than arguments.


That is an interesting post. You're invoking the "Death of the Author" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author in literary theory, which I consider quite interesting and I kind of agree that you can have some right to reconstruct the story as you please on these issues. I will say that I tend to be very very cynical towards these efforts as often they are done carelessly and without regard to a lot of the overall story.(which to me can start seeming like a cut and paste job than serious effort to understand a text on its varied levels, just think about terrible fanfics)



Well, the Bible is without question more than a "fairy tale". It is an epic story. A symbol. A very rough philosophical system for making sense of the world. The history of a people. A book of moral lessons. An important cultural icon. Even a story that has been reconceptualized at times, such as with Milton's Paradise Lost and other works.

I find myself curious as to the reasons why people believe that they must suspend disbelief when reading a story.
Most people i know agree with that concept too. They need to "crawl into" a movie to really "get" it... I can't say that i haven't crawled into the right movie now and then.. but for me to do so, they have to be movies that the plot is something that I can logically see as a physical possibility that could follow from my current state, or the world's current state.
So.. in no ways could I "crawl into" Lord of the Rings, though I have to say i enjoyed it thoroughly, but never once did my mind actually see a dwarf or elf as a real thing... Instead I saw them as what I believe Tolkein intended, representative of the races of the world (coming together to save themselves in the midst of crisis)
Didn't matter what specific race the humans/elves/dwarfs represented, they were pure abstractions, and that was fine.

Now, regarding the bible as a fairy tale. (or a Faerie Tale) It has merit so long as either you a) don't believe it, or b) are able to stop believing it, once you step out of reading it.
The problem is that most adherents of it, claim that it is absolute, and that it is the ONLY philosophy with merit. It cannot have value from that perspective either. But then again that is nothing different than believing the story to be true, after you've read it... Being caught in the story, so to say. Good stories have the ability to do that too, and I guess by that definition it is one of the best ever written, even if the most harmful.
However when taken as a single alternative for viewing life, morality, etc... Or to describe the life and morality of those that went before us, then it certainly can have great merit.
One simple method for understanding the story in a larger context, would be to read the Apocrypha as well, as the various books contained therein (and excluded by the church, long long ago) do contain veiwpoints in contrast to the supposedly single viewpoint in the 66 books of the NT & OT combined.
There are Apocryphal books of both the OT and the NT, but the ones excluded from NT are far better in showing the varying viewpoints that can be presented from one single story.
I'm tempted to try to quote and cite issues that might be relevant however, i'm far too rusty, and it's been far to long since i did read them and I could not do it justice.

The Bible is the last word in bronze age pre-scientific thought.

It has some excellent poetry and imagery in it, but as a guide to reality it is not as good as -Lord of the Rings-.

ruveyn

And I know a lot of people have your attitude too Exclavius. I think it was about two decades ago that film audiences started developing the “hear I am, entertain me" attitude and now it is getting into kiddie-lit. Most of the more mature readers in that forum saw very strong hints of deeper themes coming in the story, something to give their children something to think about , and all their hopes were dashed when it was finished.

As for coming out of suspension of disbelief (or even secondary belief) after closing your bible, I can tell you from personal experience that is the easiest thing in the world to do. That's not the problem. The problem is when people hire professionals to read it for them and tell them what it means. Most of them give them some really comfortable beliefs; I'm not sure what my favorite is. It is between Jesus being a reverse whipping boy and the king whips his sons ass when the commoners misbehave, and the one where if you say these magic words you go to heaven when you die and if you don't you go to hell but nothing else changes. I fear comfortable beliefs because of the very real possibility that I am lying to myself and what's worse, believing it. I question them all the time.

As a Christian, a liberal one to be sure, I would agree with Calvin - that in and of itself, the Bible is powerless. Christians have been brainwashed about the Bible - to the point that they confuse the word of God with the Word - the complete logos of God, so that instead of a holy trinity, we end up with a not-so holy quadrangle.

The Bible only has real power by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and it has always been so. You cannot read the scriptures and know that God is real except that the Holy Spirit reveals it to you. This is the true cornerstone of Christianity - the revelation from God about the identity of His Son - we cannot be regenerated without that personal revelation.

If you were to take the Bible off the table completely - let's say that the Roman Empire had succeeded in destroying every copy of scripture in existence, Christ would still be discoverable, because He Himself is the Living Word of God. The Bible is able to communicate that only because of its testimony of Christ (the Old Testament included). Our faith has nothing to do with the letter - it is all about the Spirit. Each conversion is a personal experience with the resurrected Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Destroy every Bible on Earth? Christ yet lives to reveal Himself to us. When a person preaches the testimony of Christ, he is delivering the Word of God, whether or not it is available in written form. Our faith is not in a book, but in a living Person. People who are far away from Christ have no grasp of this - that the Church Of God - that is, the true church, comprised of those regenerated by the will of God, is a spiritual establishment, not a human institution. The corporeal church often does more to conceal this than reveal it.

Change Christ/God to Mohamed/Allah in that, and you can say the same thing about the Islamic faith... There is no difference.
If you'll note my avatar, it's the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
How, if he is invisible do I know he's pink? Because his spirit reveals itself to me, and tells me so. And you are too far away from him, so you have no grasp of this. The church of the IPU , that is the real church, is comprised of those regenerated by the will of the IPU..... etc.

It's dogma. It's rhetoric. It's tripe.
No, I would have no problem putting a political philosophy down, so I shall have no problem putting a theistic philosophy down either, in the same, deserving way.

You have taken a book, intended as a guide and a reference. You have made that BOOK (and it's philosophy) into your god!
No, I apologize... you have not, the ones that you so openly admit brainwashed you, and the ones that brainwashed them, they did... They made your book a god! The world and humanity suffers for it!

I broke from that cycle years ago, and you can too. It took a pervert priest and over 10 more years of self-hate to open my eyes. But it doesn't need to take that much, it requires only self-confidence, self love, and seeing every glass as half full.

How do you know that your Church isn't a group of deluded people? Having a fantastic unproven belief is no guarantee of its truth. And quoting the Bible does not add an iota of veracity to the claim.

ruveyn

Living person? I was under the impression that Christ was brutally killed. Isn't tht why you use the cross as your symbol? Though I never understood why you would use the instrument of your God's death as a symbol.

Couple of theories on that one
a) It's a pity thing... like cutting your wrists for attention, fashion trends that make you look corpse-esque.
People have a fascination with death and morbidity. They notice it, and often look into it. Either way, it piques one's attention more than a warm fuzzy type of icon.
Oh... woe is me.. look, my god is dead on this cross I carry around... pity me.

b) It's a fear thing... Strikes fear into the hearts of the children, when they are most vulnerable. That way all their free will can be eroded and given over unto the church before they're old enough to know that they could have chosen otherwise.

c) Christians are just really morbid people? So intrigued by death, so infatuated with it, that they fine tuned the concept of immortality in heaven so that they didn't have to fear their darkest most morbid obsession. Then they could wear the icon of death about with them at all times.. safely believing that they could be fear free...

and finally, the Christian apologetic answer...
It's to remember the sacrifice.
Well, it's a STOOOOPID sacrifice.. so why remember it, other than for it's stoooopididity
Under the assumption (which is false, imo) that there was merit to Jesus' message, he could have done so much more had he gone on to live a full life, continuing his preachings, instead of letting those teachings be fragmented and bickered over for the next 350 or so years, until one man sat down and cherry-picked the writings about him (4 from over 30 known) that he liked the best, contained the least conflict, and best fulfilled the OT prophecies, and declared it to be true. If Jesus was so concerned for the message he taught, instead of the revenues and chicks his snake-oil show brought in, why the heck didn't HE right it down himself? Why didn't HE do something that would ensure his "true" message continued on. Why? cause he didn't give any more of a flying fig than Peter Popoff, Jimmy Swaggart, Tammy Faye Baker, and all the others like them. No... He was caught, tried of his crime, and justly executed. Good Friday really is aptly named.

It was Roman Death.

ruveyn

He got better.


Some theologians have written books basically about this topic.

Aesop's Fables have value--they've been turned into a number of entertaining cartoons.

And if it be a fairy tale? [I prefer folktale, but do not need to get picky]?

A. Well known truth - folk lit is a universal tool for socialization and communicating cultural and real world truths

B. Well known truth - folk lit preserves content from well before the entance into history of its bearers.

C. Well known truth - eyewitness accounts of certifiable events may turn into folktale a generation or so down the road.

D. Well known truth - the historian disregards oral history > folktale at his peril.

The problem, of course, as with anythink including Brer Hawking, is sorting kernel from chaff and untwisting distortions.

They also make a general point of wisdom or a moral point.

ruveyn