From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: If Genesis is Fiction
Date: 2 Jan 1993 05:34:16 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

In article <1992Dec31.214108.6772@aurora.com> isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
>[Wayne Folta writes]
>> And if you delete the Flood, which the Bible paints as quite literal, what
>> about Creation? If Noah was not real, what about Abraham or Jesus? If we
>> can throw out Genesis as fiction, then we can throw out Sin, Redemption,
>> the First Cause, the reason for evil in the world, ... In short, we can
>> throw out Christianity. This "Evangelical" is slitting his own throat.

	I really like your reply to the above. I would like to add that
I think Wayne's real concern is with the power his beliefs should have
over others' actions rather than his own or anyone elese's spiritual
growth. It is said that the test of love is to let go of the beloved,
to allow it to leave forever. You make that point below.

>Fourth, and (IMHO) most important, it appears that *you* are slitting your
>own throat, or at least strangling it.  You have chosen an extremely
>inflexible method of interpreting the Bible.  Lumping together everything in
>the Bible, as you appear to be doing, would make it impossible to admit an
>error in your interpretation of just one part of it.  What possibility then
>do you have for spiritual growth?

	He would not appear to be as concerned with anyone's enlightment
as much as with the authority of his reading of the Word. He must not
believe in the intelligence or good nature of others so that he wishes
to dictate to them how they should act based on his authority. His heart
is in the wrong place. If he trusted in the essential good nature of
his fellow men, as Luther must have in seeing the Bible translated into
the common language of each, then he would allow them the needed flexibility
in their reading of the word. The conflict between the authority of
some and the individuality is at the heart of the degeneracy of the Judeo-
Christian and Islamic spiritual traditions.

>Too many people equate faith with belief, when in fact the two ideas are
>more nearly opposites.  Faith (to me, anyway) means knowing that, when the
>time comes, I'll be all right when I let go of things--of possessions, of
>control, of old ideas.  Do you have the faith to let go of your beliefs
>about the Bible to go in search of better beliefs?

	I always struck me as queer that people who wanted us to understand
the Bible would allow themselves to confuse its language with the language
of a law book or of a scientific journal, as if it needed to be objectified.
To me this is the biggest tip off to their authority trip, their lack of
love for their fellows, and their spiritual shallowness.

>And finally, do you believe God created the world or not?  And if so, then
>why should the Bible, which is third-hand at best, take precedence over
>God's original word in the Earth itself?  If you throw out the evidence in
>the Earth, you have no choice but to throw out all of Creationism.

	The Bible, even if it is the Word of God given to prophets is
the filtering of God's word through fallable human hands. It is by
no means clear that if God spoke to mere mortal men, that they always
got it right, or even if they did that the language they use to express
it to us is entirely comprehensable to us. Certiantly taking them
literally at their word is but a fool's formula for the truth. If we
are to consider reading the Bible a subjective feat at best, then
the insistance of Literalits, or others who claim to have the
absolute truth from reading it, such as Creationists, is based again
on an authority trip than anything else.

	And this sort of thing has seriously weakened the value of
religion where it has taken the lead. I have suggested in the past
that it is a central flaw of Near Eastern religions, to be too
concerned with authority of a theocratic nature and too little
concerned with the spiritual truths contained in the symbolic
figures in the sacred texts. In my view the authority of the Bible
is not a problem, nor is the historical truth of events, even in
the New Testement, a worthy pursuit. We have Creationists and
Catastrophists basing their whole argument on the presumed historicity
of the texts, this is beside the point when you are looking at the
texts and other texts from other faiths as lessons in spirituality
and personal enlightment. Western religion has become too concerned
with authority and it seems that the concerns of many Christians is
with moral order or prescription rather than with spiritual growth.

Bruce Salem

Newsgroups: talk.origins