Bridging the Gap

[Silmarien]

My point is simple, w/o Yahweh's 10 commandments, prophecy, and a resurrection, you may want to call yourself something other than a Christian, as all such claims go hand and hand by definition to the topic really. But do as you please, it is a free country. It just does not appear consistent with the belief system is all....

I don't really call myself a Christian, but I no longer call myself a non-Christian either. Part of me accepts it, part rejects it, and I think that's perfectly normal. I'm not sure why you think that I reject the Old Testament when I keep on saying I'm fine with progressive revelation, though. There is every possibility that I'm moving towards a more Catholic understanding of Scripture, though I don't expect that to happen over night. I have bigger concerns, like the Incarnation.

(Rant beginning..... now) What I find more intriguing however, is the us (vs) them mentality. Meaning, Christian (vs) not Christians. I find it interesting that I place questions here. Some answer like you, and some answer differently and even contradictory to you. But I see no in-fighting between conflicting faiths (fundamental on one end, and you on the other). Instead, I see 'agree', 'like', and 'winner' being added to such posters; as long as the post has some Christian label associated.

Not quite. If someone says "don't take Genesis literally" and ends up with a handful of "agrees," those ratings are almost certainly coming from other people who don't take Genesis literally, not those who do. Different people are rating different posts--it's not everyone constantly agreeing with everyone.

I push Christians from time to time on various issues, but I think most people are going to save that for the theological sections of the forum. You will see the occasional flare-up even here, though. Usually over ID or Creationism.

But yeah, I have noticed a fair amount of tribalism on both sides.

 

[devolved]

Christian umbrella seems to incorporate prophecy as a staple or prerequisite to the belief system.

There is a vast difference between various schools of "hypothetical Christianity", and the cultural reality that such hypothesis formulate when these result in human actions or inactions.

Thus, if you are looking at the "Christian theory", that's not where Christianity resides at its core. The theory is there to structure a behavioral reality by analogy.

Thus, what you get in any case is a story. That story packs archetypal paradims. These archetypal paradims then structure human behavior and relationshps, and allow for progressive development of complex human structures like nations, economies, corporations, etc.

Each of these entities is built on some sort of grand narrative that people subscribe to, and it forms the pyramid of human reality, with orthodox archetypes at the bottom, and more progressive concepts at the top.

If you are looking at the Bible from the "top-level" progressive pov of scientific reductionism ... You essentially conform to funamentalism when it comes to understand ing what such narrative means for you right here and right now.

None of the people who insist on literal resurrection here saw Jesus. They likely have not even had a vision like Paul. They are reading a narrative and structuring a hypothetical scenario. But such scenario has no bearing on their actual reality when it comes to their behavior that such stories structure.

Therefore, whether they like to admit that or not, what matter is not that story was 1:1 reality, but whether they believe that such story packs and communicates viable behavioral program for them to follow, and that they actually follow that paradigm. The "literalness" of the story wouldn't change the nature of the program as it applies to their lives.

Hence, when you are trying so hard to prove to them that Bible is literally incorrect... You are barking up the wrong tree. The literal correctness has no bearing on behavioral concepts encoded in the stories, and these concepts communicate to people on a very primitive level of conceptual understanding.

For example, there's a music that drives fear, there's a music that gets you to dance and releases adrenine. There's a music that gets you relaxed. Music communicates on different level. It bypasses your analytical structure of the brain and goes directly to "emotional" one. Religious archetypal concepts are kind of like that. These communicate at a different level.

That's why religions exist. These link the subcontious genetic knowledge to the memetic structures that expand on that simple genetic concepts.

So. A question for you would be. Let's say the Bible is not literally true. It is likewise not an arbitrary creation. It's a compounded and polished stories that pack behavioral concepts of archetypes that allowed for human progress as comples societal structure.

If the above is the case... What would that mean for you?

 

[Steve Petersen]

There is a vast difference between various schools of "hypothetical Christianity", and the cultural reality that such hypothesis formulate when these result in human actions or inactions.

Thus, if you are looking at the "Christian theory", that's not where Christianity resides at its core. The theory is there to structure a behavioral reality by analogy.

Thus, what you get in any case is a story. That story packs archetypal paradims. These archetypal paradims then structure human behavior and relationshps, and allow for progressive development of complex human structures like nations, economies, corporations, etc.

Each of these entities is built on some sort of grand narrative that people subscribe to, and it forms the pyramid of human reality, with orthodox archetypes at the bottom, and more progressive concepts at the top.

If you are looking at the Bible from the "top-level" progressive pov of scientific reductionism ... You essentially conform to funamentalism when it comes to understand ing what such narrative means for you right here and right now.

None of the people who insist on literal resurrection here saw Jesus. They likely have not even had a vision like Paul. They are reading a narrative and structuring a hypothetical scenario. But such scenario has no bearing on their actual reality when it comes to their behavior that such stories structure.

Therefore, whether they like to admit that or not, what matter is not that story was 1:1 reality, but whether they believe that such story packs and communicates viable behavioral program for them to follow, and that they actually follow that paradigm. The "literalness" of the story wouldn't change the nature of the program as it applies to their lives.

Hence, when you are trying so hard to prove to them that Bible is literally incorrect... You are barking up the wrong tree. The literal correctness has no bearing on behavioral concepts encoded in the stories, and these concepts communicate to people on a very primitive level of conceptual understanding.

For example, there's a music that drives fear, there's a music that gets you to dance and releases adrenine. There's a music that gets you relaxed. Music communicates on different level. It bypasses your analytical structure of the brain and goes directly to "emotional" one. Religious archetypal concepts are kind of like that. These communicate at a different level.

That's why religions exist. These link the subcontious genetic knowledge to the memetic structures that expand on that simple genetic concepts.

So. A question for you would be. Let's say the Bible is not literally true. It is likewise not an arbitrary creation. It's a compounded and polished stories that pack behavioral concepts of archetypes that allowed for human progress as comples societal structure.

If the above is the case... What would that mean for you?

Sounds a bit like Joseph Campbell. Problem is, what happens when myths no longer keep up with current knowledge of the world?

 

[devolved]

Sounds a bit like Joseph Campbell. Problem is, what happens when myths no longer keep up with current knowledge of the world?

I think that our understanding of "myth" is a myth in itself, in which case I would depart from Campbell, and go along with Carl Jung, or even Whitehead. As such, I would disagree that Judeo-Christianity (along with some occult views out there) is your typical strain of myths. As such, these are not in line with our "knowledge of the world", because I don't see these to be about "the world".

I'm actually in a process of writing a book about it. The basic premise is that Judeo-Christian story is not a story about origins of the Universe and humanity, but rather a story about conceptual origin of human psyche and precursory development of the dominant Western paradigm that we have today.

My argument is that these stories are constructed to resolve our "internal dissonance" rather than informing us about external reality. And that's the context in which these stories fit well without losing transcendent significance in terms of conceptual God, and the importance of religion and spirituality.

In short, the "God-brain" creates a persona, but that persona has issues when relating back to that "God-brain". Christian religion is about reconciliation of these two aspects of our being.

 

[Steve Petersen]

I think that our understanding of "myth" is a myth in itself, in which case I would depart from Campbell, and go along with Carl Jung, or even Whitehead. As such, I would disagree that Judeo-Christianity (along with some occult views out there) is your typical strain of myths. As such, these are not in line with our "knowledge of the world", because I don't see these to be about "the world".

I'm actually in a process of writing a book about it. The basic premise is that Judeo-Christian story is not a story about origins of the Universe and humanity, but rather a story about conceptual origin of human psyche and precursory development of the dominant Western paradigm that we have today.

My argument is that these stories are constructed to resolve our "internal dissonance" rather than informing us about external reality. And that's the context in which these stories fit well without losing transcendent significance in terms of conceptual God, and the importance of religion and spirituality.

In short, the "God-brain" creates a persona, but that persona has issues when relating back to that "God-brain". Christian religion is about reconciliation of these two aspects of our being.

 

[devolved]

View attachment 244729

In short... Judeo-Christian story could be about processes going on inside of your head, as opposed tow what's going on "outside your mind" in terms of reality of literal God/devil/angels/etc. The similarities in narrative could be coincidental and subjective, but personally I found these difficult to overlook when I began research ing a tangent subject of neuro-psychology (not the bicameralism analogy I'm using below).

I don't subscribe to Jaynes' bicameralism, but it would be a good example of what I'm talking about:

Bicameralism (psychology) - Wikipedia

Concept is similar. If you ask about "who am I", inevitably what you are has to do with mechanism of your mind, whatever you think it is. When we discuss religion, we tend to think about it as human mind attempting to describe the mechanism of external reality via some anthropomorphic concepts.

On the other hand, it could be the opposite. It could be human mind externalizing the description of its own mechanism and preferences into a narrative story, just like it externalized process of memory and computational tasks (via writing and technology, etc).

We seldom think about that angle, because we actually live in the fiction of "I", the fictional abstraction of the mind as a mechanism. As I began researching related data in psychology and neurophysiology there seems to be plentiful similarities between the "religious story" and the mind structure. So, it's a subject well-worth exploring.

My argument is that religion is more about what's inside your head (as description of processes and ways to mitigate and organize these for "optimal function" of the mind) than outside of it. I hope it's more clear.

To give a bit more of a hint...

“3-Brains-in-One” Brain | PsychEducation