RESPONSE TO SARA

Submitted by Bart Willruth (United States), Sep 18, 2006 at 10:29

SARA

We are speaking past each other and are certainly not communicating in any meaningful sense. I will take it upon myself that I am not communicating clearly. But let me clarify some things.

You are under a misunderstanding when you speak of me and my fellow Jewish agnostics. I am not Jewish. I am a former Christian theologian, formerly believing in such tenets as the infallibility of scripture, born again, justified by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and associate editor of EVANGELICA magazine. Trust me, I understand your perspective clearly.

I am not making an exact equivalency between Islam and Christianity. Here me clearly, Islam is evil. It has no redeeming values. It has brought ignorance and poverty to its adherants and danger to its foes.

Since the Enlightenment, Christianity has been generally more tolerant than in the 1500 years which preceeded it. It is not in the same category in its effects as Islam.

I don't wish to argue theology. It is an internally contradictory discipline and based upon arbitrary premises.

The similarity between Islam, Judaism, Christianity, animism, Hinduism, et al is not primarily to be found in the content of their teachings. Rather, it is to be found in the foundation of FAITH which underlies them. Is faith a proper means of acquiring knowledge? The two most important questions each of us needs to ask in all things are:

1. What do I know?

2. How do I know it?

If I answer that I know that my great grandfather's spirit inhabits the oak tree outside my hut, and that I know it because the respected members of my tribe told so, you can be sure that I belong to a primitive culture which believes in spirits (whatever they are), that they inhabit natural objects (in some unknown manner) and that I "know" these things by faith. Faith, as a method of "knowing," whether in this simple example or in the example of the truth of the Koran, or of the truth of the doctrine of the trinity, is never removed from its base which is to take the word of the person making an extraordinary claim over the judgment of a rational mind. Faith, as a method of "knowing" requires the suspension of necessary skepticism when confronted with any mystical claims. Faith, by its very nature, is not exercised primarily in its object eg God, spirits, gnomes, or in particular doctrines. Rather, faith is always exercised in the veracity of another human being.

It is useful to keep in mind a word of advice from the philosopher Ayn Rand: "Check your premises."

In your case, your faith has several derivative levels or premises:

1. You believe that there is a god.

2. You believe that god has revealed himself

3. You believe that some particular men in antiquity have been the recipient of that revelation.

4. You further believe that they transmitted that information without error, without human coloring or influence, and that the material they wrote was preserved throughout the many layers of copying so that we know exactly what they wrote originally.

5. You believe that the early church sorted through the various competing writings and infallibly chose the ones which were authentic while discarding the others.

6. You believe that the method of interpretation used by fundamentalists is the correct one.

In brief, here is some food for thought. Item one is an arbitrary statement and is a conclusion rather than an an axiomatic premise upon which to build a line of thought. Item two is arbitrary as well. Neither one nor two has evidence behind them. Premise three is a faith claim. It is unknowable. Many of the men in question are anonymous, made no particular claim to having received any revelation, and cannot be questioned as to their motives or veracity. Premise four is a faith statement which is more than most of the individual documents claim for themselves. It flies in the face of the evidence of historical circumstantial influence which is quite obvious. It requires a belief in magic. And the changes in the ancient texts through various successions of hand copying, whether accidental or deliberate are so numerous as to make certainty as to the content of the original texts impossible. Premise five is a really long shot. Suppression of documents occurred. Documents were argued over and were received or discarded on the basis of political power and through majority vote of committees. Premise six is using an innovative principle of interpretation of scripture only 100 years old. It has no precedent in the entire history of Christianity until 100 years ago. Not in the early church fathers, not in Catholic history, nor in historical Protestantism. It is an American invention. Its late rise to prominence among Evangelicals should give pause to anyone adhering to it. That weakness alone makes the conclusions you reach as to the place of Israel something which can disappear just as quickly as it came into being in the last century.

Check your premises. They aren't quite as defensible as you might think.

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