tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post3157680443317820123..comments2024-03-22T06:23:38.156+00:00Comments on Birmingham Skeptics: Adam does AlphaBirmingham Skepticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457491922023498093noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-82321956111518726332011-03-25T20:47:22.685+00:002011-03-25T20:47:22.685+00:00I agree - you can't rationally hold the Bible ...I agree - you can't rationally hold the Bible itself in reverence as an untouchable work without contradictions (some Christians derogatorily refer to that as "Bibliolatry"!) Whether you believe it's divinely inspired or not, that doesn't necessitate perfection - presumably such Christians think we're divinely inspired too, but are we perfect...?!<br /><br />And yes, as I said in my earlier point about what you think of Jesus - if you accept he's historical that doesn't mean you accept he's divine; that's where faith comes in - we should always critically question our faith on the basis and validity of various factors, but we can't prove or disprove his divinity. Otherwise we'd all be automatically believing / disbelieving robots without even the need to think critically, which would be worse than having to watch Big Brother on loop or be force fed by Noel Edmonds.Abbyhttp://www.facebook.com/a.bottrillnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-29569905322211965412011-03-24T11:55:43.527+00:002011-03-24T11:55:43.527+00:00Many thanks, everyone, for your responses.
Regard...Many thanks, everyone, for your responses.<br /><br />Regarding historicity, I think Jesus may well have been a real man (although there are historians who throw doubt on whether he ever existed) but there's a huge difference between accepting that he was a real man and accepting that he was not only a real man but also the son of God who was born of a virgin, performed miracles and physically returned from the dead. These things - which are, as we have established - pivotal to Christianity, are what demand faith. Our only (accepted) source of information about them is the Bible, something which we know to have been written by people, and people with various agendas at that. It's my understanding that Christians believe that the people who wrote the Bible were being guided at every step by the Holy Spirit - as too, presumably, were all the subsequent translators - but this is hard to reconcile with even an occasional factual error such as the bat being listed as a bird, not to mention the rewrites and modifications that I understand to have occurred along the way as different authorities came to political power. Taken alongside what we know of the powerful human urge to explain existence and the immense human capacity and propensity for storytelling, it is no mean feat for a rational person to accept these core teachings as facts. (Not impossible, as intelligent skeptic Abby shows, and I am happy to accept that at the end of the rationalization process it is evidently achievable.) Even "living memory" is fallible and malleable and quickly distorted as we know from the very recent story of John Frum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum<br /><br />And yet, most rational people are happy to live their life according to many of the teachings attributed to Jesus. I think that's what Adam Rutherford was getting at: God gave me an analytical brain, but when I use it to spot that there's something distinctly fishy about the Bible, and cannot bring myself to pretend otherwise, I find myself automatically condemned to eternal torment.<br /><br />@Patrick: Christianity as taught by Alpha may not be pick-and-mix, but as Andy's possible 22,000+ variants of Christianity suggest, there are plenty of Christians in the world who do pick and choose, at least regarding the details. In fact, I'd say that there are probably as many variants as there are Christians. One elderly Christian lady I know, in addition to rejecting the entire Old Testament, has recently decided to reject all the gospels except for Mark as that's her favourite. I bet they haven't counted that!Elainenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-53063470020270974892011-03-23T23:53:21.433+00:002011-03-23T23:53:21.433+00:00Yes, we were chatting about different Christian de...Yes, we were chatting about different Christian denominations the other day and mentioned the differences in styles, emphases, etc. that are found between them, and how the centrality of the cross is the main thing that keeps a "Christian" denomination "Christian" (some adherents of Catholicism, for example, can be called into question there, whilst other Catholics would feel the same as other denominations about the ramifications of the cross).<br /><br />Whether other details (aside from the cross) are claimed to be allegorical or not - the unscientific treatment of Genesis as literal, for example, which some atheistic critics assume is central to theism - can be important, but mainly if the details concerned affect the validity of the faith. For example, Jesus is written about as historical; if he turned out not to be, that would cast a great deal of doubt on the claims of Christianity in general. Similarly with the story of creation, which we know is unscientific if taken literaly; yet it's less a mere "choosing" to class that as allegorical, and more down to the fact that we can distinguish between the potential use of a literary style to refer to an event way back at the beginning of time, and the gospels' reporting of the life of someone who'd existed within living memory of plenty of people at the time of writing, many opposed to Christians and simply not believing in the deity of Jesus / supernatural reasons for why the tomb was empty, but not denying his existence. I do like [physicist and Christian] Wilson Poon's choice of words when, biographically referring to how he at one time imagined creation in a Genesis guise, he says his "biblical hermeneutics matured" and he was "cured" of creationism!*<br /><br /><br />* After “Googling” to avoid the wrath of copyright controllers descending on this blog!, this is from Poon’s chapter in the book Real Scientists, Real Faith (2009, ed. R. J. Berry, Monarch Books).Abbyhttp://www.facebook.com/#!/a.bottrillnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-19456654277217325472011-03-23T23:03:32.976+00:002011-03-23T23:03:32.976+00:00Thanks for this, Elaine. I do remember Adam's ...Thanks for this, Elaine. I do remember Adam's talk as one of the best at TAM. I find it quite amusing that even whilst attending the Alpha course, there are individuals picking and choosing which bits of the doctrine to accept and which to treat as allegorical. Maybe the remarkable statistic I heard on the radio the other day - that there are over 22,000 variants of the Christian faith - is not so surprising after all!<br /><br />On the other hand, maybe all that diversity is a sign that followers are applying their own critical thinking to the stories, as Abby's comments suggest...Andyhttp://www.twitter.com/andypicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-27648290444018855062011-03-23T23:03:18.062+00:002011-03-23T23:03:18.062+00:00@Abby They would say he needed his subluxations so...@Abby They would say he needed his subluxations sorted and that'll be £50 please and don't tell the ASA or Simon Singh.<br /><br />I very much enjoyed this post but was glad that I hadn't read Adam's stuff or heard what he said before I wrote mine. I think there are a lot of questions for Alpha and the style of Christianity that Adam and myself encountered.<br /><br />The church that I went to has a website where you can download recordings of sermons from that explain the justification for their views on homosexuality and the role of women in the church and within the family. They are anachronistic to say the least but can be justified from scripture, as could so many other things if you really wanted to.<br /><br />There is really no amount of convincing that I can think of that'd make me accept that this is right. But it seems to be an all or nothing package. It's not a pick and mix faith and in some ways I can respect that, but in most every other way I really really can't.<br /><br />@Abby I'm very glad that you are open to discussion and have a skeptical attitude. It's easy for atheists to paint believers as fanatics and concentrate on the extreme views that some hold.Patrick (@paddyrex)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7123899360714390074.post-62583284330190612912011-03-23T22:32:32.683+00:002011-03-23T22:32:32.683+00:00Another good post on the shortcomings of Alpha. Th...Another good post on the shortcomings of Alpha. Thanks Elaine - you might have seen my comments on Pat's last post, about my own church holding sessions for looking into things with a questioning eye, but since there are obviously several bad Alpha experiences such as this too, I think I'll feed this back to my church for its Alpha course. It does strike me as odd, though, that Rutherford thinks the mere "idea" of Jesus should be enough for Christians, whether Jesus existed & was resurrected or not (I personally wouldn't believe it if that was probably all a load of rubbish!) Despite the very nature of "faith", given that we don't have 100% proof of God's existence or non-existence, surely a good critical mind should still discount any line of thinking if there is little to suggest that its physical claims carry any evidential weight. Some scientists - and myself as a sceptic - have found faith by looking into these issues). In the meantime I think it's great for sceptics to be open-minded enough to have a look at things like Alpha. Perhaps we should also do a session on what those topical chiropractors would say about the guy in the Alpha logo struggling to carry that ridiculous question mark...Abbyhttp://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/a.bottrillnoreply@blogger.com