Hitchens: Christianity is a fraud if it’s not literally true

[Mr Clingford]

...Here we have a good essay on different types of Biblical criticism:really pretty good.

Thanks for your detailed reply. It seems I am a scholarly conservative bloke. BTW I am impressed that you have sorted your theology as I am still at it after 20 years. I studied some theology at Leeds university 15 years ago but my learning and memory are a bit spotty.

As for modern biblical scholars, we have John Shelby Spong, Bart Ehrman, Paul Tillich, Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, Karen Armstrong, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Miller, Marcus Borg...

I have come across some of those names and their viewpoints a little. Hve you come across http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng11.html? I find this kind of thinking makes more sense that Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

I think we all know where this is going. The "controversy" about whether or not the historical Jesus actually said he was the son of God is pretty much the same controversy that exists between teaching evolutionism and creationism, except for the fact that most people don't know enough about it to realize this. It's certainly possible to find other scholars who will say that the argument is unresolved (the Tektonics page is certainly one place to start), but I don't see that they have a leg to stand on.

I don't know the site so I shall have a look.

IThe real problem with questioning biblical inerrancy (which is finally what this boils down to, IMHO) is that it finally leads to the conclusion that (per JSS's wiki page) "theism has lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature." This is not where a lot of Christians want to go.

I understand the analogy of unravelling a ball of string until there is nothing left, but IMHO I'm not sure that it is accurate as the Bibles are only a part of faith. I agree that some people just don't want to question much.

Having had a brief look at the Tektonic site, at least it is against the rapture but then it appears to go with Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. Oh well.

 

[Beerina]

What do you mean by "God"? A deistic creator who has nothing to do with Earthly affairs is the only remotely plausible god, and if he/she/it exists . . . who cares? It's sort of irrelevant.

I am 100% sure that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is a bill of goods sold to gullible fools every day, while the sellers laugh all the way to the bank. No, make that 99.999999999%

You cloudy-minded waffler, you!

 

[tsig]

It's not exactly original to Hitchens - 1 Cor 15:14-19

A followup:

"1 Corinthians 15:14-19 (English Standard Version)

14And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that(A) he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and(B) you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who(C) have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only,(D) we are of all people most to be pitied"

Can we accept Paul as an authority?

 

[Cicero]

And yet Hitchens had his children baptised.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Hmmm. You might get an argument over that one.

Oh, believe me, I argue this point incessantly with many skeptics on this forum.

In fact, I'd say I am in the minority. But then so are atheists and agnostics combined yet we are still confident we are correctly interpreting the evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Assuming you know what most agnostics think is more credible. I'm as open to the possibillity of Zeus as I am any other god. It's just a different way of saying the same thing.

Yeah, well I've never discussed this in pages and pages of threads so how would I possibly know what the argument is.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
What about luminiferous ether as a universal claim? The universal statement, through numerous experiements, was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be false. We know now that light travels through a vaccum and not through a medium. This is consistent throughout the cosmos.

You seem to lack a bit of awareness about the scientific process. Theories, which is what you are referring to, are never "proved" in science. That would be bad science. Instead, one draws the best conclusion based on the evidence one has at the time.

This is the argument agnostics make. One cannot disprove gods exist therefore one cannot say they do not.

But if that were true then we could not say gravity exists either. Because we cannot prove a theory.

All of this becomes a mere semantics argument at some level. I can conclude gravity exists and that it is a fact. But it is unsaid, yet accepted, that future evidence could lead us to shift paradigms about the nature of gravity.

I can conclude the evidence clearly supports all gods are myths. That is a fact. I don't need to prove gods don't exist to conclude that fact. It need not be said future evidence is possible which could change that conclusion. It's a lot more probable we could have a paradigm shift on the nature of gravity than we will ever have any evidence gods actually exist.


But I fear this is sidetracking the discussion here. And there have been recent threads on this subject. So I'm going to leave it at that. If anyone wishes to resurrect an old thread on the subject be my guest.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The era of higher Biblical criticism is usually thought to have begun with Jean Astruc (1684-1766), so it can certainly be said that it's nothing new. There's such a long list of scholars that I'm definitely not going to reprint them all, but David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) is another early pioneer; in his Life of Jesus (1835-36), he denied miracles, the integrity of the New Testiment, and the deity of Christ. Julius Wellhausen's (1878) Prolegomena was where we got the JEPD code (J is the Jehova source, E is Elohim, P is priestly documents, and D represents the later editorial work of the Deutoronomist or Deuteronomic school). This is why C.S. Lewis should at least have known better than to present the argument in the way that he did and to speak dismissively of higher biblical criticism (which he did do.) He knew that at the time, it could be said at absolute minimum that a lot of controversy existed, and he pretended that it didn't. Here's an excellent source on the earlier scholars:
a good page.

Rudolf Bultmann, Neville Clark, Raymond Brown, Charles Dodd (not the one you'll find in Wikipedia), and John A.T. Robinson did very important work in the mid-twentieth century. Here's a page about higher criticism as a whole: I know, I don't like Wikipedia, but sometimes you just have to use it.

Here we have a good essay on different types of Biblical criticism:really pretty good.


As for modern biblical scholars, we have John Shelby Spong, Bart Ehrman, Paul Tillich, Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, Karen Armstrong, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Miller, Marcus Borg...

Sounds like a history class is Christian thought, but I fail to see the relevance. Are you merely saying Hitchens wasn't the first to criticize the Bible. That would be a no brainer. I think I am missing something here.

I think we all know where this is going. The "controversy" about whether or not the historical Jesus actually said he was the son of God is pretty much the same controversy that exists between teaching evolutionism and creationism, except for the fact that most people don't know enough about it to realize this. It's certainly possible to find other scholars who will say that the argument is unresolved (the Tektonics page is certainly one place to start), but I don't see that they have a leg to stand on. The real problem with questioning biblical inerrancy (which is finally what this boils down to, IMHO) is that it finally leads to the conclusion that (per JSS's wiki page) "theism has lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature." This is not where a lot of Christians want to go.

No this is not the same controversy as any scientific paradigm shift (plate tectonics), or the non-controversy of science vs myth (evolution vs any religion's creation myth). All this is, is an argument over the interpretation of a mythical text.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yup. As I said...

Quote:
"The real problem with questioning biblical inerrancy (which is finally what this boils down to, IMHO) is that it finally leads to the conclusion that (per JSS's wiki page) "theism has lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature." This is not where a lot of Christians want to go."

Yep. It's pretty hard to maintain a belief when the advances of science reveal said belief to be a bunch of nonsense.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A followup:

"1 Corinthians 15:14-19 (English Standard Version)

14And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that(A) he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and(B) you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who(C) have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only,(D) we are of all people most to be pitied"

Can we accept Paul as an authority?

Case closed.

 

[Marduk]

And yet Hitchens had his children baptised.

thats a pretty standard protection against them becoming Vampires after death though isn't it

 

[Ethnikos]

And yet Hitchens had his children baptised.

That's a very interesting little tidbit of information!
Ordinarily, since the child can not speak for itself, the parent would have to give a declaration of faith, in order for the baptism to go forward. (not that I am an expert on Catholic baptisms)

 

[Lord Emsworth]

You don't seem to understand the difference between individual claims and universal claims. Saying "The Earth is flat" is not a universal claim, it is an individual claim (applying to only one planet); saying "It is impossible to have a flat earth/planet" would be a universal claim. Yes, you can prove that the Earth is not flat; but I defy you to prove that there does not exist, somewhere in this vast universe, a planet that is flat.

Nothing easier than that. Planets are spherical(ish) in shape. If you've got something flat, it is not a planet. (At least, not a planet in an unaltered state. Read: applying a huge press to, say, Mars doesn't count.)

Your arguments in regards to god are universal claims...you very clearly stated that you are talking about the entire universe, and the fact that it is impossible to prove that somewhere, somehow, a god of some kind does not exist in our universe.

God doesn't exist anywhere in the universe anyway. You could show me anything in this universe or any other universe, but I at least, would never accept it as God itself. By definition not. I've always had the impression that God is understood to exists 'outside' of the universe.

Likewise with some of the substitutions:

Simply take "god" and substitute any other word, and you've got exactly the same argument:

It is impossible to prove that somewhere, somehow, a giant farting space dragon does not exist in our universe

It is impossible to prove that somewhere, somehow, a human who can live with their head cut off does not exist in our universe

With my understandig of "cut off," "live," and "human being" the phrase "human who can live with their head cut off" is an absolute non-starter.

It is impossible to prove that somewhere, somehow, a completely flat planet does not exist in our universe

It is impossible to prove that somewhere, somehow, a insert whatever does not exist in our universe

Square circles?

 

[Sunray Breaker]

All I see that he did was, according to wikipedia at least:

he encouraged his wife to hold a Seder dinner for their daughter.

But I don't recall hearing about a baptism. If he did a baptism AND Seder, that'd be hilarious.

 

[Cicero]

thats a pretty standard protection against them becoming Vampires after death though isn't it

Hitch was just hedging his bets.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I have to put it to athiests the same way I put it to religous fanatics. "Show me the proof." If you can't provide proof of God or proof of his absence, then who's to say anything about his existence at all? I don't understand how athiests can be so sure there is no God when there's so much about the universe left unexplained.

I would simply say that God is not a coherent idea. Nor will it ever be. And if there is no coherent idea, then there is nothing that this idea could refer to.

And besides, if something is unexplained then it is unexplained. Nothing more. And God doesn't explain it either. If something is unexplaind, the argument is over.

 

[Mr Clingford]

I would simply say that God is not a coherent idea. Nor will it ever be. And if there is no coherent idea, then there is nothing that this idea could refer to.

And besides, if something is unexplained then it is unexplained. Nothing more. And God doesn't explain it either. If something is unexplaind, the argument is over.

I'm not sure that my partner is a coherent idea, but I still end up sort of relating to her. I don't think I can explain her either. (I'm pretty sure she would say the same about me). We both exist, though.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I'm not sure that my partner is a coherent idea, but I still end up sort of relating to her. I don't think I can explain her either. (I'm pretty sure she would say the same about me). We both exist, though.

Yeah, you refer to a certain set of phenomena as your partner. That's ok.

 

[Vic Vega]

And yet Hitchens had his children baptised.

Evidence?

 

[Maia]

Sounds like a history class is Christian thought, but I fail to see the relevance. Are you merely saying Hitchens wasn't the first to criticize the Bible. That would be a no brainer. I think I am missing something here.

It was related to Mr. Clingford's question about biblical criticism-- here's what that post was:

Originally Posted by Maia
... Because of modern scholarship, however, one thing which definitely can now be stated is that the historical Jesus never said any such thing. So actually, this is very much on topic, because Lewis was a fraud.

Mr. Clingford:

I would be very interested to read about this as I am under the impression that what you say is not actually the case - what are your sources? Surely this argument is unresolved with some saying some passages are interpolations and some saying no they are original?

No this is not the same controversy as any scientific paradigm shift (plate tectonics), or the non-controversy of science vs myth (evolution vs any religion's creation myth). All this is, is an argument over the interpretation of a mythical text.

I think I would have been more accurate in saying that the controversy was "analogous" instead of the same. What I meant, though, was that it really can be said that higher biblical criticism is to lower as evolutionist thinking is to creationist. It changes everything about the way that the Bible is understood, and everything about the Christian worldview. For instance, the question of substitutionary atonement. What kind of sense can it possibly make without beginning from the accepted premise that there's some kind of original sin for which to atone? Or that God literally sent Jesus to earth as a human being who was also divine in order to provide that atonement? (None.) James Alison's theology is interesting (and at least he seems to be GLBT accepting, which is really nice to see), but he's starting from a spiritual-inerrancy premise, IMHO. I don't do this, and I don't think it can really honestly be done. I'm not so sure that everyone around here would agree with me either, but I definitely can't begin from any kind of biblical inerrancy at all.