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Taken from the Chat Room at Conservapedia: (Not really. This is satire.)
Pro-nukeLuke: Add to Job's punishments him being a conservative Republican in 2008. I4I-Kid: That's good PNL but what can we do to make the whole crucifixion thing be more pro-Capital punishment? Pro-nukeLuke: I'm not sure. Perhaps make sure that the thief they release instead of J---- be struck by lightening or something. I mean, we don't want any hint of parole going on in this thing. Creation1: Dude, stick with the Old Testament. That's where God was all Kick-$$ stuff. Now, where should we put the anti-dinosaur stuff? Have the serpent planting fossils before Eden, or a few lines about how those animals, large and ungainly, who were too slow to answer God's call, drowned in the flood. Great reptiles who thought they were too big to fail, failed. Liberty219: Hold on. Too big to fail? Lets not go cross purposes here. My company is too big to fail and if I need the government to bail me out I don't want some Christian brethren to question my God given right to a couple Billions. We are talking my bonuses here, and if I lose my bonuses, the church doesn't get my money.
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I think any reasonable person would object to the grounds upon which people argue in favor of any religious belief. Religious terminology appears, at least to me, to be designed to stifle logical inquiry in favor of hand waving acceptance. And you provide the perfect example, blaming someone else for not appreciating the vast range of meaning in a single phrase, rather than attempting to broaden your point of view by expressing that meaning yourself. Why should it be on someone else to provide you with the benefit of the doubt when dealing with a concept they don't find compelling?
The problem for me, and I suspect for KoM, is that your (as in religious believers) grounds for such a conversation include assumptions I am not willing to take for granted, and yet this sticking point is constantly couched in the idea that I am *incapable* of making those assumptions. In order to deal with the discussion on your terms, an atheist would first be forced to concede the entirety of his reservations against your beliefs, at which point there is no useful discussion at all. In fact, I'm fairly certain discussion on this is actually totally useless, and that is why religious beliefs, and other belief systems in which logical bases (read: plural of basis) for understanding of one's own motivations are abandoned, are so dangerous.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Okay. So your argument with me on this is that you don't like my understanding of Scripture in general. Also, you fail to understand the range of things that "divinely inspired" can mean.
No, my argument is that you make up evidence to suit your pre-existing prejudices, and then act as though the prejudices are being confirmed by divine revelation. And then you object when others do the same thing. I do find your set of prejudices more congenial than those of the Conservapedia, but that's beside the point. Cheating is cheating.
Edit: That said, even if we accept your formulation of the issue, would you like to say what your problem is with the Conservapedia approach other than "not agreeing with their understanding of Scripture"? I trust you'll grant them their right to have their own interpretation.
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What evidence do you think I have "made up"?
Let me try another example:
I think that the second amendment was a bad idea. I think that, given that the founding fathers were talking about muzzle-loaded single shot guns, that it shouldn't apply to automatic weapons. I think that the "militia" part is the important part of the amendment.
I can believe this interpretation of the Second Amendment. Other people can disagree with me. People in charge of interpreting it can have their interpretation encoded into law.
What none of us can legitimately do, is erase the amendment from the Constitution and pretend it wasn't ever there.
Orinoco, lots of human experience is not logical.
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Technically, there should be some form of amending formula that defines who can change the Constitution and remove that.
If you expand this comparison, you can think of each religion as having its own amending formula (Pope, series of Prophets, etc.). From this perspective, as an outsider, I can't say I find an obvious reason to prefer amending a religion via Wiki rather than the other approaches. If anything, aside from actual conservatives involved, this would seem to be a refreshingly transparent approach.
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Orincoro, I have often felt the same way about religious people. But there are two avenues - reject religion because religious people are stupid. Or find out what religion REALLY is about.
My friend's dad always used to say - "don't confuse Jews with Judaism" - just because a whole lot of people call themselves religious doesn't mean they reflect what the religion is truly about.
KMB's example on amendment isn't bad. I'm in law school right now spending a ridiculously long time learning the exact method in which we apply rules and interpret laws in this country. There are bad judges that don't use the system correctly and use personal intuition to Judge, and they are often overturned. The point is, you need to learn the system, and a system is often complicated.
In Orthodox Judaism there is a traditional method of interpretation. It hasn't changed very much. The fundamentals, the basics, have been the same for a very long time. There is disagreement, but the method for interpretation stays the same.
Most of what you and KoM say is the reason for my dislike for newer movements in religion that try to change and reinterpret. I think that it is often intellectually dishonest. (I prefer Islam and Mormonism, or original Christianity where God changes His mind instead of the people).
I just wasn't a fan of the - "you religious people" thing. Not all religious people think this way.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Technically, there should be some form of amending formula that defines who can change the Constitution and remove that.
If you expand this comparison, you can think of each religion as having its own amending formula (Pope, series of Prophets, etc.). From this perspective, as an outsider, I can't say I find an obvious reason to prefer amending a religion via Wiki rather than the other approaches. If anything, aside from actual conservatives involved, this would seem to be a refreshingly transparent approach.
Amending the constitution to repeal a previous amendment is not the same as removing it. If you look at a copy of the constitution, you can still read the 18th amendment.
Many religions do have methods for changing doctrines. That is not the same as changing the texts.
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quote:What evidence do you think I have "made up"?
Cherry-pick might have been the better word; but a woman whose basic justification for belief is "I choose to believe" should not attempt to argue for the excellence of her evidence. Making things up would actually be an improvement; it would at least show some commitment to the idea that conviction should be based on evidence.
When the Constitution is 2000 years old and it is obscure what the writers meant by "bear arms", "people", and "militia", your analogy will hold a lot more water. Especially if someone tries to claim divine inspiration for the text, although this admittedly is happening right now.
If the Conservapedia people's "understanding of Scripture as a whole" tells them that passage X is illegitimate, on what grounds do you object to their ignoring it?
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I don't object to their ignoring it - I think they ignore plenty already; I object to their re-writing it so they don't even have to ignore it. I object to pretending it isn't there.
What "evidence" do you accuse me of cherry-picking, then?
ETA: Also, are you thinking that "divinely inspired" necessarily means somehow dictated by God?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't know that it would. You brought it up.
Oh, you misunderstand. I was using "change" in the general sense including adding lines, modifying lines, and deleting lines, as in a changelog.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Orinoco, lots of human experience is not logical.
A handwaving aphorism. I believe illogical things because I am illogical by nature? It's tautological.
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The attempt to use logic arguments to combat the idea that not everything can be reduced to logic amuses me.
I was not using that to defend my belief of things that are beyond logic. I was just stating and with the implicit gentle suggestion that you reconcile yourself to it.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Orincoro, I have often felt the same way about religious people. But there are two avenues - reject religion because religious people are stupid. Or find out what religion REALLY is about.
I can't speak to the way religious people actually think. I think the body of religious doctrines and practices, as well as religious language, exist to make sure that they are also incapable of expressing, to themselves or others, the true nature of their beliefs. Ultimately I conclude that the probability is that their beliefs are simply indefensible as they have been presented to me- and the argument that I would have to be a believer in order to understand is rather useless to me. I might as well have to be a year older to understand how someone older than me thinks- I can only be me. The problem is that the substantive reasons for having religious beliefs, while I understand them logically and in the historical context, are incompatible with the reasons claimed by religious believers, in the same way that any element of human action is often most poorly expressed, (or wrongly interpreted) by the actors themselves, to suit their own purposes for acting and justify their actions. Yet science often shows us, with compelling material evidence, that the things we believe motivate us, or the things we claim as motivations, are often immaterial to our actual decisions.
What I'm getting at is that a person's belief structure is not very important to anyone other than that person, because all people act according to a set of priorities that is subject to a natural amount of variation, and is not effected, in my opinion, by free will. Meaning, essentially, that in order to reconcile the fact that you are a Jew and a believer in your religion, and the fact that you were born into a Jewish family, you have to accept that this belief structure was imposed upon you by your environment, and is therefore not reflective of your own nature, but rather the nature of your religious and familial heritage. I don't believe that given that set of circumstances, you are actually capable of expressing your personal reasons for believing what you do, because you don't *have* personal reasons for believing what you do. Your believing it is an expression of the will of your community, and not yourself. Having arrived at this conclusion, I have rejected any need for a religious community for myself. However, given that my parents are themselves transcendentalist Christians (which is in many ways closer to Buddhism than to Catholicism), it appears that I was *already* born into an environment that rejected the need for a religious doctrine in favor of a naturalist philosophy.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: The attempt to use logic arguments to combat the idea that not everything can be reduced to logic amuses me.
It's sad that the best you can muster is to shrug and mock me for who I am. I at least attempt to share my perspectives, but I don't see you doing that.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't know that it would. You brought it up.
Oh, you misunderstand. I was using "change" in the general sense including adding lines, modifying lines, and deleting lines, as in a changelog.
I do not understand what you are saying. Do you mean that, when the LDS doctrine of polygamy (to choose an example that we know) changed, rather than saying, "This has changed. Here is why it has changed", they should have pretended that it was never different and that it always had been as it is now?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: The attempt to use logic arguments to combat the idea that not everything can be reduced to logic amuses me.
It's sad that the best you can muster is to shrug and mock me for who I am. I at least attempt to share my perspectives, but I don't see you doing that.
Oh, Orinoco, I apologize for hurting your feelings. I didn't mean to mock you, just the idea. I should have been more careful.
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quote:But there are two avenues - reject religion because religious people are stupid. Or find out what religion REALLY is about.
Falsely dichotomise much?
quote:I don't object to their ignoring it - I think they ignore plenty already; I object to their re-writing it so they don't even have to ignore it. I object to pretending it isn't there.
And yet you somehow manage to forgive the Jews for pretending that the New Testament isn't there, or isn't sacred.
quote:What "evidence" do you accuse me of cherry-picking, then?
Any part of the Bible that shows your god as a bloody-handed tribal idol gets ignored. Anything said even by Jesus or Paul that disagrees with your view of sexual morality, out it goes. And I might note that you've stated that the supernatural parts of the Bible are not your reason for believing in supernatural things, so that part of your belief presmably has made-up evidence or none at all. I don't know which is worse, but either is disgusting.
quote:Also, are you thinking that "divinely inspired" necessarily means somehow dictated by God?
I don't see the relevance.
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quote:And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
13And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will not: for thy nationality is not American, and you tresspass here upon our soil. And immediately the man full of leprosy departed from the Land of Jesus, and bothered him no more.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I do not understand what you are saying. Do you mean that, when the LDS doctrine of polygamy (to choose an example that we know) changed, rather than saying, "This has changed. Here is why it has changed", they should have pretended that it was never different and that it always had been as it is now?
Not really, I don't especially care what they say.
Or a bit gentler, I'm sure it matters a lot to Mormons (as in *not* outsiders) what was the original doctrine and whether there really was a change/new revelation/whatever.
But from an outside perspective, it doesn't seem to matter all that much. The religion changed from promoting the practice of polygamy to not, whether that is a "addition" or "deletion" isn't of interest to us on the outside (unless we're historians or something similar).
What I am saying is that in this case it changed by prophet (or revelation, whatever), but there is little reason for outsiders to necessarily prefer that approach versus change by Wiki.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: ... I think the body of religious doctrines and practices, as well as religious language, exist to make sure that they are also incapable of expressing, to themselves or others, the true nature of their beliefs.
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I don't know of any Jews who don't believe that the New Testament exists; why should I have a problem with them not believing it is sacred?
Putting text into context, trying to understand where they came from and what the writer had in mind when he wrote them, making decisions about how certain writings apply to me - all that is not the same as pretending they don't exist. It is even different than ignoring them.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: ... I think the body of religious doctrines and practices, as well as religious language, exist to make sure that they are also incapable of expressing, to themselves or others, the true nature of their beliefs.
quote:And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
13And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will not: for thy nationality is not American, and you tresspass here upon our soil. And immediately the man full of leprosy departed from the Land of Jesus, and bothered him no more.
quote:I don't know of any Jews who don't believe that the New Testament exists; why should I have a problem with them not believing it is sacred?
I don't think the Conservapedia editors are going to be pretending that the liberal translations don't exist, either. But they are certainly within their rights to decide that parts of them are not sacred, just as the Jews do with the NT as a whole; and why should they study non-sacred writings to learn about sacredness? The NT is a text that was produced by people who thought of themselves as Jews producing a within-the-rules addition to the Jewish religion. How come the Jews are entitled to ignore it completely, rather than study it for context and footnote with "Completely wrong"?
But if you dislike that example, how about them Apocrypha? At some point a church council went through the then-existing sacred texts and said "That one is ok and goes in the official Bible; that one is not sacred, chuck it out." No footnotes were provided. Was this procedure legitimate?
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I think that you and I have different ideas of what the Conservapedia editors are doing. That is okay.
Honestly, I am not crazy about the fact that much was thrown out or lost in the centuries before the canon was closed. As I understand it, most of the decisions about what was considered canonical was more a declaration of what was already consensus, but I do fear that bias could have been part of those decisions.
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It sounds like you haven't met a lot of very well thought-out religion people. You presented a view of religion where you believe that people are not capable of freely arriving and their religious conclusions because they are heavily influenced by environment. Okay. But just because a person has an environment does not mean they are not capable of free will.
Once Jews were emancipated in the French Napoleonic Empire, and there was a creation of a secular space - Judaism lost many of its members. Judaism now is a struggling minority, surrounded by 4 religions, each with a billion followers. People fall away, leave Orthodox Judaism, intermarry all the time.
In my close circle of friend (all growing up in the same environment) - 3 of my 6 best friends have walked away from Judaism. Happens to be that I think I surround myself with friends who are very well thought-out, and it's likely that the actual ratio is lower, but still. To claim that free will doesn't apply because you grow up in an environment is a little much.
The seminaries I attended all disparaged the "leap of faith." We were taught that intellectual honesty is the most important thing in Judaism. And that if you use all your faculties, intelligence and otherwise, to reach a conclusion that is the opposite of Judaism - not only will God not hold you accountable, but you will be considered true and good (whatever those concepts mean for the purposes of this discussion).
I was taught that faith does not mean belief - faith means loyalty, as in faithfulness. Nowhere are you supposed to believe for the sake of believing.
So as a religious person, I am not a fan of the impression religious people sometimes people give off, of simple mindedness and the like. Just as I'm sure that atheists don't like when other atheists give off the impression of being insecure jerks using elitism as a defense mechanism.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I think that you and I have different ideas of what the Conservapedia editors are doing. That is okay.
Well, what is it you think they are doing, then, that's so bad? Can you give a specific example of a bad decision they've made?
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quote:And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
13And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will not: for thy nationality is not American, and you tresspass here upon our soil. And immediately the man full of leprosy departed from the Land of Jesus, and bothered him no more.
Excellent one!
Thanks! I was kind of proud of it.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: And Jesus, a young white man who looked in no way jewish, climbed up to the Temple Mount and said...
Exactly!
Steven Colbert has also discovered this initiative. He note that a truly conservative Bible would include mention of him and suggested this to his viewers.
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Oh dear. The admin people over there are really going to have a handful once Colbert's minions have their way with it.
Edit to add: check the recent changes link on the site. Colbert's foot soldiers have already unleashed havoc.
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Now Texas was tightly shut up. No one came out, and no one went in.
Then the Lord said to Jose, "Have priests carry trumpets, and march around the wall seven times, and the wall will collapse, and your people can go straight in."
Jose spoke to his people, and the seven priests blew their trumpets, and the walls fell, and the people went straight in.
But lo, the Minutemen were there, and instead of trumpets, they had guns, and Jose's people were turned back, and those that did not flee were forced to build the wall again, and for less than minimum wage.
And the Lord said unto Jose, "Fooled you!"
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I love the part where they ended up thinking it would be a GREAT idea to replace pharisees with liberals.
quote:I made a slight adjustment to Chapter 3. A previous translator tentatively used "intellectuals" as a sub-in for Pharisees. In an effort to capture the flavor for conservatives, I suggest changing Pharisees to "the Self-Proclaimed Elite" or maybe just "the Elite." Given modern culture, I think this is more accessible and has a less benign/neutral connotation than "intellectuals." --PiousMan
Your suggestion is good. Thanks for your insight. Further improvement in translation may be possible.--Andy Schlafly 11:28, 6 October 2009 (EDT)
Thanks Andy! When I looked at it, "self-proclaimed Elite" was a little too clunky so I replaced it with "Elite" and "Elitists." I'll let people take a look at how that flows in Chapter 3 before I change it in any other verses. --PiousMan
"Liberals" seems to fit the bill nicely, in my honest opinion, if we're talking about self-proclaimed elites such as our dear president (though as an American expat not sure if I can say that!) DerickC 12:59, 6 October 2009 (EDT)
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Nu, "liberals" is one thing, but "elite" or even "academics" doesn't strike me as a really terrible suggestion. "Pharisees" is really kind of un-informative for the modern reader - it doesn't have the connotations, or indeed the denotation, that it had when the stories were being written. I'm reminded of Asimov's suggestion that, in the story of uth, "Moabite" should be replaced with "Black", on the grounds that "Have you fought with any Moabites lately? Seen any Moabites stealing jobs, or moving into non-Moabite areas?" (That was in the sixties; today perhaps the better substitution would be "Mexican".) The point is that the Moabites were an enemy or at least an alien people, and for such a one to show the loyalty that Ruth does is rather a different story than just some random sectarian with no modern connotation. Likewise, what's a Pharisee to your average Bible reader? Just a label, no more. But to the writers, it had all sorts of connotations.
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And similarly, in the story of the Good Samaritan, to a modern reader "Samaritan" is just a label. Nobody has ever fought a Samaritan, or made fun of a Samaritan at school, or whispered in corners about the filthy sexual habits of Samaritans. But they were a heretical sect! If the story was relabeled "The Good Mormon", or better still "The Good Moslem", it would recover its original punch.
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So, instead of teaching people what those words meant, you think it makes sense to just change them?
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Isn't the Bible like the most important historical source of its eras? I'm pretty sure even most die-hard atheists should be against such intentionally biased censoring and editing of a text like that for any reason.
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It's not exactly censoring. After all, they're not trying to eradicate other translations; they're just making their own.
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KoM, I wasn't a particularly dedicated student of the Bible or any related history, but I learned enough about the "Samaritan" and "Pharisee" labels to easily understand their roles in the stories. I wouldn't get anything more out of a more modern label. (One of the chief values of scripture is the way a lot of it requires the reader to adopt a studious mindset, anyway. [IM-agnostic-O])
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: So, instead of teaching people what those words meant, you think it makes sense to just change them?
As Armoth said, teaching people what all those Hebrew and Aramaic words meant is certainly an option, yes. But if you're doing a translation, I must say I don't see it as particularly bad to just translate rather than add five layers of bible-study nights and footnotes.
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quote:So, instead of teaching people what those words meant, you think it makes sense to just change them?
Actually, I think I might agree with KoM here. At least sortof. I think this is a case where extensive footnotes might be useful. Teaching someone "okay, this is what a Samaritan is" and then telling the story is very different from saying "And then the good Mormon did this..."
Even when you explain the word, it still will not have the punch that a native word will. It'll still feel like this weird word you just learned as opposed to something real that you truly understand. I don't know enough about the context to know whether Mormon or Muslim or Elite or Intellectual are actually appropriate, but if you ARE trying to tell someone the story keeping as much context as possible, then I think including a version of the Bible that uses modern words but has extensive footnotes to explain what they originally were and what they meant would be useful.
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quote:Originally posted by jebus202: Isn't the Bible like the most important historical source of its eras? I'm pretty sure even most die-hard atheists should be against such intentionally biased censoring and editing of a text like that for any reason.
Quite so, I'm in favour of an accurate translation, as outlined above. If people actually read the bible in its own words, rather than what two thousand years of glossing over the uncomfortable parts have made of them, there'd be a lot more atheists in the world.
quote:KoM, I wasn't a particularly dedicated student of the Bible or any related history, but I learned enough about the "Samaritan" and "Pharisee" labels to easily understand their roles in the stories.
Yes, yes. Anecdotes by Hatrackers are completely useless in this context, because everyone here is at least two sigma above the general population in education level and well-read-ness. (Is that a word?) You have to think about the impact on the average working Joe, or more likely Jane, who bags at Wal-Mart before going to his Bible classes. And besides that, I just plain do not believe that your understanding of "Samaritan" from context had the same visceral impact as being told about "The Good Arab" or "The Good Gun-totin', Palin-votin' Redneck" would. When Jesus told that parable, his listeners - who were, you should remember, a damn sight more prejudiced than the average StormFront neonazi of today - would have felt a shock just at the juxtaposition of "Good" with "Samaritan". There's a reason Jesus was unpopular, you know! He went about telling people that they should make peace with hereditary enemies of centuries' standing! No footnote is going to get that sort of impact.
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"Sigma" here refers to defects per unit or something else? (that was the first google result that came up, and it seemed close but not identical to what you were talking about).
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quote:Originally posted by jebus202: Isn't the Bible like the most important historical source of its eras? I'm pretty sure even most die-hard atheists should be against such intentionally biased censoring and editing of a text like that for any reason.
Define "important historical source." In the sense that it is a source which is important to history, then yes. In the sense that it competes with non-religious historical sources for facts from the same period, hell no.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: "Sigma" here refers to defects per unit or something else? (that was the first google result that came up, and it seemed close but not identical to what you were talking about).
Sigma is physics jargon for what other people call "standard deviations".
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Sure maybe it doesn't give great historical facts, and I'm certainly no expert on it, frankly the term "2000 page slipping pill" comes to mind when I try to attack it. But given the fact that there is precious little documentation of any kind that survives from that long ago, I always understood it to be extremely important for getting an idea of the customs and societies of the authors of the texts. Much like the Odyssey is historically important because it gives a view of Ancient Greek culture, even if the plot is fiction.
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Sure, but for a serious study of that nature you would go to the originals anyway, not to translations made for Joe the Wal-Mart bagger to read in his evening class. Translations are almost irrelevant to the historical use of the bible; they are almost the only game in town for the religious use.
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Thanks! I was kind of proud of it.
