You went to great length there to show that ancient (pre-Hellenistic) religion was actually indistinguishable from culture.
I absolutely love the description of the Old Testament as a “stream-of-consciousness culture dump”, that’s exactly what it is.
But then you somehow go on to derive from this that it is incorrect that “religion cannot be proven or disproven”.
But if we agree that religion in antiquity was indistinguishable from culture, how are you going to defend that a culture can be “disproven”? Ancient Hebrew culture is just that, a culture, just like Aztec, Sioux, Celtic or Vedic culture. How are you going to “disprove” that?
Except perhaps you are confusing “religion” and “theism”, and suppose that theism is in some way central to religion.
But then you should say theism, which is completely detached from picturesque Iron Age culturescapes. For theism, you should focus on Hellenistic and Roman authors, who said intelligent tihngs such as “credo quia absurdum”. You aren’t going to “disprove” Augustine by making fun of Elijah.
But while you focus on theism, you should make very sure not to confuse “theism” with “contemporary naive US Bible-thumping”. It is a great fallacy in much of what I read from US atheists that they tend to equate “religion” with “theism”, “theism” with “monotheism” and “monotheism” with “braindead biblical literalism”.
I understand that much of US atheism is tied up in fighting a political war against conservative bible-thumpers.
But it is a bad sign if people start confusing this political war with actual religious philosophy.
So you wish for a society where there is a notion of “marriage” based on the historical institution known by that name, but both separate from religion and detached from the sex or gender of those choosing to register. This is of course your right, and within your powers you can exert influence that may or may not result in your desired outcome. But nothing about this changes the fact that the word “marriage” historically describes an institution that very much depended on both sex and religion. And accepting religion as a simple historical and ethnological given, I frankly don’t see any room to “disprove” anything about it: You are perfectly free to disapprove, but that’s not the same as disproving anything.
Oh, by “disprove” you mean you do not believe that the world’s myths are factual records of historical events? I don’t know how the Iron Age Hebrew priesthood would have reacted to this idea, but every intelligent religionist from Plato onward would just have smiled at your naivete. Yes, there are the less intelligent religionists, like, say, Torquemada or Jack Chick, but if you are interested in criticizing a philosophy, shouldn’t you out of intellectual integrity talk to its most intelligent proponents instead of having a field day with the idiots in its camp?
I grew up with lots of intelligent people who believed the Bible. Chick tracts are considered to be slightly exaggerated for comic effect, but the same basic premises actually constrain anticipation for many believers today: heaven or hell after death, demon possession as the cause of (at least some) mental illnesses, angelic protection as a result of prayer, instant healing as a result of prayer. There’s actually a robust, sophisticated, highly self-respecting culture (or set of overlapping subcultures) of biblical literalism in the US.
To be honest, I have a hard time reconciling the idea of intellectual integrity with someone who claims to be religious and yet freely admits that their own religion’s myths are not true.
You went to great length there to show that ancient (pre-Hellenistic) religion was actually indistinguishable from culture. I absolutely love the description of the Old Testament as a “stream-of-consciousness culture dump”, that’s exactly what it is. But then you somehow go on to derive from this that it is incorrect that “religion cannot be proven or disproven”. But if we agree that religion in antiquity was indistinguishable from culture, how are you going to defend that a culture can be “disproven”? Ancient Hebrew culture is just that, a culture, just like Aztec, Sioux, Celtic or Vedic culture. How are you going to “disprove” that? Except perhaps you are confusing “religion” and “theism”, and suppose that theism is in some way central to religion. But then you should say theism, which is completely detached from picturesque Iron Age culturescapes. For theism, you should focus on Hellenistic and Roman authors, who said intelligent tihngs such as “credo quia absurdum”. You aren’t going to “disprove” Augustine by making fun of Elijah. But while you focus on theism, you should make very sure not to confuse “theism” with “contemporary naive US Bible-thumping”. It is a great fallacy in much of what I read from US atheists that they tend to equate “religion” with “theism”, “theism” with “monotheism” and “monotheism” with “braindead biblical literalism”.
I understand that much of US atheism is tied up in fighting a political war against conservative bible-thumpers. But it is a bad sign if people start confusing this political war with actual religious philosophy. So you wish for a society where there is a notion of “marriage” based on the historical institution known by that name, but both separate from religion and detached from the sex or gender of those choosing to register. This is of course your right, and within your powers you can exert influence that may or may not result in your desired outcome. But nothing about this changes the fact that the word “marriage” historically describes an institution that very much depended on both sex and religion. And accepting religion as a simple historical and ethnological given, I frankly don’t see any room to “disprove” anything about it: You are perfectly free to disapprove, but that’s not the same as disproving anything. Oh, by “disprove” you mean you do not believe that the world’s myths are factual records of historical events? I don’t know how the Iron Age Hebrew priesthood would have reacted to this idea, but every intelligent religionist from Plato onward would just have smiled at your naivete. Yes, there are the less intelligent religionists, like, say, Torquemada or Jack Chick, but if you are interested in criticizing a philosophy, shouldn’t you out of intellectual integrity talk to its most intelligent proponents instead of having a field day with the idiots in its camp?
I grew up with lots of intelligent people who believed the Bible. Chick tracts are considered to be slightly exaggerated for comic effect, but the same basic premises actually constrain anticipation for many believers today: heaven or hell after death, demon possession as the cause of (at least some) mental illnesses, angelic protection as a result of prayer, instant healing as a result of prayer. There’s actually a robust, sophisticated, highly self-respecting culture (or set of overlapping subcultures) of biblical literalism in the US.
To be honest, I have a hard time reconciling the idea of intellectual integrity with someone who claims to be religious and yet freely admits that their own religion’s myths are not true.