Why Most Famous Bible Scholar is a Problem for Christians | Dan McClellan

Oral reading/discussion of this blog, so you can be spared having to read all of this: 

Regarding: 


RE: "The problem is that Dan wont debate or respond to Biblical experts, myself included, who disagree with him without appealing to dogmatism. He says the texts of the Bible are just texts with no meaning, but then he tells people to take the Bible seriously to see what is being said/expressed. He doesn't understand how apocalyptic prophesy is structured. He doesn't understand moral fluctuations of priority in the Old Testament as well as moral principle transitions of both Testaments and he doesn't believe you can get a worldview from the Bible because he is wholly ignorant on normative ethics in religious philosophy. He'd have to make the same claims against Hinduism too. Dan is gambling on the notion that every Christian is a dogmatist and he's lost that bet before." - Heyman5525 ----------------------------------------- As for "how apocalyptic prophecy is structured.": It's not. It was, in all cases, just random religious writers and characters ... trying and failing to make predictions about: Future and satisfying resolutions ... for their own subjective hopes, fears, and religiosities. There was no guiding format or formula for uttering "prophecy" that those writers were writing under. If you heard there was, then you heard something a more recent religious group invented as a retcon to artificially generate structure and then to impose that upon the texts. ------------------------------------------------ Re: "He doesn't understand moral fluctuations of priority in the Old Testament." -- First, those texts are not "the Old Testament". They are merely "The" testament OF a later mainstream Second Temple Judaic religious culture. Framing that body of texts as the intro to your very different religious culture's "Bible" ... is the same as Mormons framing your "Bible" as the divinely intended intro to the Book of Mormon. People in your religion feel obligated to humor your religion's framing. But nobody else does. I'm certainly not about to. Now, as for "understanding moral fluctuations of priority" in that body of texts, ... You are not qualified to speak on this. You wanna know who is? I'll give you two examples. 1. Lewis Black. Here, he explains the basic nature of your misunderstanding:

2. Christine Hayes. Here, she explains how that religious culture's moral paradigm was being continually updated. She also explains how they justified it:

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Re: "... as well as moral principle transitions of both Testaments " Let's be clear about this. A timeless, all-knowing, perfectly wise, perfectly ethical, being of unlimited power, ... would not experience "transitions" in his moral principles. Nor would it/he/she/they author confusion among humans about any such principles. Literally every moral principle that someone today can understand and incorporate into their personal lives, or into their larger society, ... is something ancient people could have done the same with ... IF those principles had been imparted to them by a source they trusted. Humans did not need to be slowly, messily, and painfully inched towards moral progress... if any "God" was available and active in their lives. Nor was anything written in Hebrew or Christian texts ... new to humanity. Everything said in those texts ... was said earlier by entirely alien (alien to them) cultures. Everything said in those texts ... was borrowed and adapted from pre-biblical/non-biblical societies. ---------------------------------------------- Re: "he doesn't believe you can get a worldview from the Bible" -- He is correct. And how do I know that? I'll explain how (all) language works in a moment. But first, I'll make these essential observations: 1. "The Bible" doesn't exist. Many competing "bibles" exist. But there is no version that stands out as superior in its content or means of expression. Nor is *moral authority** an objective, ethical, or rational concept. 2. If language works the way you think it works (btw, literally all tenured University linguists know that you're wrong about how language works), ... Billions of Bible-venerators who obsessively and naively place themselves under "biblical authority" as either ideologically inherent or at least morally infallible, ... would all be able to reach consensus about what the essential teachings are. Instead, in reality, ...

"No Two Persons Ever Read The Same Book". This absolute fact precludes the possibility of any two people basing their lives on the same book. We do not "know" the same texts. Even members of your own family do not "know" any of the same people you know. We only "know" the holographic representation that our own unique minds generate to represent people who exist "out there". ------------------------------------------- Re: "... because he is wholly ignorant on normative ethics in religious philosophy." -- I'm not even going to dignify that. --

As for the larger topic at hand, ... I agree that Dan needs to work on how he explains how the mind of any reader creates meaning. But I know what he means. And he's 100% correct about how that works. Every writer meant ... something. Every writer tried to fully preserve their understanding of whatever they thought, heard, saw, etc.. But neither oral nor written language has that power. Words do not "contain" or "preserve" meaning. They merely *represent* meaning. This isn't an "atheist" viewpoint. It's a scientific fact. It's also a raw fact of the human experience. Whatever one person's words mean *to them* will often *not* be what those words will mean to people hearing (or reading) those words. Any given listener may be hearing something different from what was meant. In most cases, listeners will have no way to discover the difference between what they heard (or read) **vs** what was meant. We all have a unique language map in our neurological wiring. What any given word or phrase means to me ... will be heavily shaped by which concepts and feelings are neurologically wired (connected by neuropathways) in my literal head. Various words (in the form of spoken sounds or inked squiggles) generate meaning in our minds (when we read or hear them). The meaning generated (in a mind) by each word or phrase ... will be generated spontaneously, due to many different factors. Among the mechanisms that create "meaning" in the mind of a reader is: The context of the reader's own mentally associated concepts and feelings. If I utter a dry-fact statement like "dogs exist", there is still a lot of room for misunderstanding in a religious text, because "dogs" might be a metaphor. If it's a metaphor, there is a nearly limitless range of ideas I might "have in mind". I might mean "people who need to be trained to perform certain tasks". I might mean "people who can't be trusted". I might mean "people who beg for scraps of literal food". I might mean "people who bed for scraps of kindness". I might mean to imply they *are* or *are not* worthy of that kindness. I might mean "people who are less human than I". I might mean "people whose life has less value than mine". I might mean "people who are always looking for a leg to hump and some territory to mark", Or I might just mean literal dogs. The context of a story or saying is not reliably useful as a way to determine the meaning of a story or saying, because there are always many things going on in each story, and also a broader (available) context for a "bigger picture". There are also many things going on in a reader's life that they are being "called upon" (by religions) to assume is the focal point of what's being said. We all listen and read through a perceptual lens biased by many facets of biology and formative life experience. At the same time, we are all vulnerable and prone to experience the illusion of objectivity about the intended meanings of those texts. Whenever the texts say something mundane about objects and events, it is **probably* being literal and just setting the stage with characters, events, and objects. This is usually a prelude to delivering a "life lesson" that expresses a writer's own subjective views and values. In every case, a writer's views and values have been shaped by factors such as: * Common and unique biology. * Formative influence of how they were parented as children. and * The influences of their religious and secular culture. This is precisely why their words literally *can't* map directly onto any reader's perceptual and experiential paradigm. To make matters (unintentionally) worse, ... Whenever the texts get around to delivering "life lessons", they often blur the lines between literal concepts and figurative meanings. We often have no objective way to know when a writer has moved between literal to nonliteral expressions. The various writers also (habitually) failed to clarify what their cultural idioms, metaphors, and allegories are supposed to mean. This is probably (partly) because they only expected people in their religion, culture, education level, and era ... to be reading any of it. But it's also because they misunderstood the limits of written and spoken language ... as a means of communicating concepts between humans. What they expected their words to do ... is more than words can actually do. A "God" would have known better. A "God" could have done better. And thus, a "God" would be grossly irresponsible to rely on such means of disseminating concepts throughout our world and over the ages. But humans? It's simply **the best they could do**. So then they can't really be blamed for the inherent lack of better options. This leaves readers to subjectively "intuit" what the meaning is ever really supposed to be. Who, then, is the most qualified among us to estimate probabilities for meaning in those texts? Specialized, PhD-level, secularly trained, and rigorously peer-reviewed scholars. -Not religious figures or institutions. To make matters worse, ... Churches are skilled, via so many generations of refining their brain-hacking and lens-shaping methods, ... at making their sheep-class perceive whatever meanings a church wants them to perceive. All "believers" have been fed piles of misinformation (and disinformation), which (for the most part) goes unrealized. All "believers" are also reading those texts with **assumptions** about: * The origins of source texts. Who first said certain things, and what was their intent? * The reliability of source texts. Does any given source-text material accurately preserve the earliest oral versions of the rumors and legends they are writing down? * The accuracy of translation(s). This matters because it is literally impossible for any translator(s) to translate from those mostly-dead ancient languages into any modern language without imposing their own subjective biases. [and] *The assumption that a reader's own understanding of a word or phrase is the same as what translators (or prior authors) meant to convey. This causes readers to build concepts in their minds that differ from the authors' intentions. There is no way we can avoid any of this, except to avoid those collective utterances entirely. Now, sometimes scholars have a great amount of **academically and logically justified confidence** that any given reader is wrong about some specific block of texts. And yet, sometimes scholars are divided on an issue because multiple theories are academically plausible. This means readers are simply wrong to think those texts are * reliable expressions of original meaning and *"speak for themselves". Laymen and church leaders alike are grossly unqualified to assess the **probabilities of intended meaning** for the texts they are trying to build their lives around. Realizing this from an academic standpoint, many will appeal to a magical solution called "the guidance of the Holy Spirit.". In reality, this accomplishes absolutely nothing except to camouflage fallible human intuitions as "perfect moral authority" that it would be "wrong to question (or refute)". Meanwhile, literally nobody is qualified to justify certainty about the totality (not even close to the whole) of those texts' meanings; - especially not to justify claiming they know what all the authors wanted every reader to think, feel, and do with their lives. -Not that we should be trying to build our lives around what ancient goatherders and slave-traders claimed to "know" about life. -Nor did any of the writers intend for humans thousands of years later to even be talking about any of it. The Hebrews didn't presume to offer anything "from (any) god", for any outsiders. - Neither did the "Jesus" character in *The Epic Adventures of Super Jew. [*Public Domain series. No rights reserved.] "Paul" (possibly a fake identity with a fake bio, for an unknown writer to ghostwrite behind) tried to change that by making it possible for other ethnicities to become part of the Judaic religious ingroup, with more lenient terms and conditions, in a more Rome-friendly re-invention of Judaism. The unknown author of "Luke" went even further, to reinvent the Jesus-cult's iteration of Judaism to be Rome-friendly. None of the 1st and 2nd Christian writers or characters thought of their writing to be part of the creation of a "Bible". Nor did any character (not even Jesus) predict, authorize, or anticipate the creation of a "new testament canon" or Bible 2.0. None of the stories about Jesus talk about a hope or promise for anyone at all *except* for properly religious/ethnic Jews. Nor do we even know what Jesus' secret teachings would have been. It was (by definition) a "mystery cult". According to at least one of the "gospel" writers, only trusted inner-circle members were allowed to know the details of their most secretive beliefs. This was probably to avoid consequences for being seen as too "heretical" to established Judaic culture, and (possibly) too dangerous to Rome. As a result, we barely have clues as to what the real people (or fictional characters) would have believed. Assuming any such "Jesus"-and-friends existed in real life, nobody bothered to write down anything firsthand. Why not? Because the pretense (or actual beliefs) the writers wrote under ... was that the literal end of the world was going to happen in their lifetime. #ProphecyFailed So there wouldn't be any future generations (per their false prophecies) to leave any instructions or records for. Nor are there any logically or ethically sound justifications available to humans ... to conclude that any literal omni-property Being(s) actually authored any of it. ---------------------------------------------------

Re: "He'd have to make the same claims against Hinduism too." -- And indeed he would, if asked. ------------------------------------------------ Re: "Dan is gambling on the notion that every Christian is a dogmatist" -- No. He has never expressed or assumed any such notion. -------------------------------------------------- Finally, ... " and he's lost that bet before."" -- He'd have to make that bet before he could lose that bet. More importantly, ... Every argumentative assertion you've made here only has relevance to religious dogmatism. Literally none of it is anything a non-dogmatist needs to be defended or justified about. Those issues simply don't apply to their positions. You say Dan doesn't realize that. But he does. I've heard him say so, directly. But at the same time, he shouldn't need to. Because any arguments against dogmatism .. AUTOMATICALLY only apply to anyone being dogmatic. With that being the case, you should probably ask yourself why you wear the shoes of dogmatists while simultaneously decrying them. The very distinction you accuse Dan of failing to make ... are the distinctions you yourself are failing to make.

It would seem that you're a dogmatist who doesn't realize he's a dogmatist.

It looks like you're projecting that dysfunction as a reflex, to protect your own ego from the feelings of cognitive dissonance he has inadvertently triggered.