16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; 18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
Sorry to spread my Christian-flavored ideas around, but it reminded me. :3 The old joke among me and my siblings, when I was growing up, was that we would proclaim ourselves to be “the humblest one” of us all. I thought it was a joke, until I grew up and interacted with people who actually adhered to a similar philosophy...
Very well-written post, sir. I greatly appreciate the ones where you take a common word or phrase, and reduce it to its proper and true state.
Actually, what this really reminds me of is a recent altercation between me and a roommate. The word at the heart of this altercation was “selfishness”… my erstwhile roommate (subleaser, really) said that my and my wife’s decision to fail to renew their lease was “selfish”, because, apparently, in our religion we are supposed to give everything we have to anyone who asks of it. Logically, it can be well demonstrated that this does not follow; if we were to be “charitable” under this definition, we would give all our shelter and money to the starving and homeless, and die of starvation and exposure.
Logically, it can be well demonstrated that this does not follow
That is possible, but you didn’t show it. Who knows what would happen if we gave all our shelter and money to the starving and homeless? Perhaps they’d listen if we asked for it back, or a miracle would produce more? And how do we know we aren’t supposed to die of starvation and exposure?
There are certainly biblical statements implying one shouldn’t. There may even be two or three pages worth of such excepts for every one page implying the opposite, but once the principle of explosions explodes you, there’s really no putting the pieces back together.
If the logical demonstration depends on assuming something at all like biblical consistency, you can say so, but biblical quotes are worthless for some purposes because it may be assumed there is one supporting P and one supporting ~P for a great many things. This is true for the Old Testament alone, the New testament makes it exponentially worse, which is like having a fatal wound or disease be exponentially more fatal than fatal...I can’t even imagine adding the Book of Mormon to the mix.
For this reason biblical quotes are not ideal, unless there is doubt that any passage supports a particular position, or there is some other good reason. But the default assumption is that if there is a debate, biblical quotes can be found to support any side.
In any case, one should be careful to not accept a false dichotomy that arose from a clash of two opinions, but to seek better alternatives, particularly those similar to the opposing position, and to throw away fake justifications that worked against the real interlocutor, but not the idealized one.
I thank you for your caution, but my argument was actually non-Biblical in nature, and it was a proof by contradiction. Ran something like this:
So, you think that I should give away everything to those who ask for it, without exception? Every resource I consume is a resource that is then unavailable for others who ask for it. Therefore, in order to give away every resource I might have otherwise consumed, I must not consume any resources, and therefore dies. Your moral system prohibits suicide. Therefore, your original proposition is inconsistent with your professed morality, QED. Also therefore, get out of my house before I call the cops.
I apologize for the ambiguity; I did not mean to explicitly ascribe any moral valuation to committing suicide, though I should hope it could be inferred that I do not, in fact, advocate suicide. :P
As for “the homeless giving it back”, why, to even ask would be selfish!
I hadn’t myself understood why I disliked one style of biblical quotations until I had to explain it to you.
Other reasons for biblical quotes are fine, such as showing how telling a story several times and differently has an effect, or showing something about how people then likely thought, or having an old source for “Nothing new under the sun”, etc. There’s nothing about the books that makes quoting them magically a bad thing to do, it’s just that there’s enough contradictory stuff (probably in Exodus or Numbers or Deuteronomy alone, much less the Pentateuch, much less the Old Testament, much less...) that saying there is Biblical warrant for something similar to one’s position is the most unspectacular thing one can say. A quantity of quotes from among sources showing preponderant and/or broad and consistent would be something else and as valuable as perhaps a small quote from a dissimilar source, but by definition that’s not something that fits in a reasonable amount of space and is more of a thesis paper.
The first sentence of this comment is the important one, we can probably constructively generalize from it.
As an atheist in hiding knowing the bible well can be extremely useful though. Due to how you can support nearly any position using biblical quotes, it becomes a lot easier dealing with strongly religious people when you disagree with them if you can argue based on their own priors. Telling someone about a logical fallacy, information colelcted using carbon dating, etc only works when they actually assign weight to your sources.
Another bonus, when people find out I am an atheist and I have been liberally trolling them for years it might shake up their faith in the community if I am lucky, but I am not sure how I would test this.
A big problem with trying to pull wisdom out of the bible and similar is that there is a whole pile of cultural context that is either gone, or requires large amounts of study to discover.
Like someone a thousand years from now who has somehow dug up an old blog post that strongly asserts that “The Cake is a Lie!” you’re missing a massive portion of the story. And you can justify almost anything you want to just by filling in the missing bits differently.
And this is before you even get into the biblical religions having all gone through historical phases where they deliberately filled in the cultural bits incorrectly for political reasons.
The best thing I’ve found to do with it is set God = Truth, and remember that someone’s story being included isn’t an assertion that they had everything right. There’s plenty of satire in there too. Most of it exceedingly subtle. Something about criticizing the powerful being a potential death sentence so they had to make it look like praise. But if you actually lay out the statements and evaluate them as a whole instead of individually it paints a different picture.
Like when you suddenly realise that they’re praising Solomon as being a great king by describing the grand temple and palace he built, but if you pay attention to the descriptions of each it seems that he not only built the palace out of grander, more expensive materials, he built it as a mirror of the temple with his throne room in place of the holy of holies… And suddenly the description of the man’s character takes on an entirely different tone if you know anything about what the relationship between God and the King was supposed to be.
And yet various branches of bible-based religions spent hundreds of years using Solomon as part of their description of a “Godly King”. Because it fit their political narrative and kept the peasants in line.
In short, Biblical stories are like any other repository of folk wisdom. The only way to find the truth in there is if truth is what you’re actually looking for and you don’t stop until it makes coherent sense. And this whole site is dedicated to showing all the ways in which human beings generally aren’t actually looking for the truth… So… Good luck?
There is a difference between not consuming anything and giving away anything if asked.
said that my and my wife’s decision to fail to renew their lease was “selfish”, because, apparently, in our religion we are supposed to give everything we have to anyone who asks of it.
So apparently in his religion one is supposed to give away everything if asked, but nothing is implied if one is not asked.
That is a good point, but the error comes in my statement of he problem, not in the argument. Otherwise, why would we ever give to charity, unless explicitly asked to? What would constitute “asking”, anyway? Could we pass by a homeless man on the street and, as long as he didn’t actually say anything to us, safely ignore his sign?
Otherwise, why would we ever give to charity, unless explicitly asked to?
I don’t understand. Mostly, because your argument is along the lines of: A, because if not A, then why B? And B,” and I can think of many other reasons for B, not merely just A or just one besides A. How is this not an argument from incredulity? You’re accusing the roommate of unflinching hypocrisy, but I don’t see it.
Then perhaps I was incorrect in my accusation. I apologize that I’m not able to present my side more clearly; this happened a while ago, and the data is muddled.
Matthew 6:16-18:
Sorry to spread my Christian-flavored ideas around, but it reminded me. :3 The old joke among me and my siblings, when I was growing up, was that we would proclaim ourselves to be “the humblest one” of us all. I thought it was a joke, until I grew up and interacted with people who actually adhered to a similar philosophy...
Very well-written post, sir. I greatly appreciate the ones where you take a common word or phrase, and reduce it to its proper and true state.
Actually, what this really reminds me of is a recent altercation between me and a roommate. The word at the heart of this altercation was “selfishness”… my erstwhile roommate (subleaser, really) said that my and my wife’s decision to fail to renew their lease was “selfish”, because, apparently, in our religion we are supposed to give everything we have to anyone who asks of it. Logically, it can be well demonstrated that this does not follow; if we were to be “charitable” under this definition, we would give all our shelter and money to the starving and homeless, and die of starvation and exposure.
How strange the unflinching hypocrisy of mankind.
That is possible, but you didn’t show it. Who knows what would happen if we gave all our shelter and money to the starving and homeless? Perhaps they’d listen if we asked for it back, or a miracle would produce more? And how do we know we aren’t supposed to die of starvation and exposure?
There are certainly biblical statements implying one shouldn’t. There may even be two or three pages worth of such excepts for every one page implying the opposite, but once the principle of explosions explodes you, there’s really no putting the pieces back together.
If the logical demonstration depends on assuming something at all like biblical consistency, you can say so, but biblical quotes are worthless for some purposes because it may be assumed there is one supporting P and one supporting ~P for a great many things. This is true for the Old Testament alone, the New testament makes it exponentially worse, which is like having a fatal wound or disease be exponentially more fatal than fatal...I can’t even imagine adding the Book of Mormon to the mix.
For this reason biblical quotes are not ideal, unless there is doubt that any passage supports a particular position, or there is some other good reason. But the default assumption is that if there is a debate, biblical quotes can be found to support any side.
In any case, one should be careful to not accept a false dichotomy that arose from a clash of two opinions, but to seek better alternatives, particularly those similar to the opposing position, and to throw away fake justifications that worked against the real interlocutor, but not the idealized one.
I thank you for your caution, but my argument was actually non-Biblical in nature, and it was a proof by contradiction. Ran something like this:
So, you think that I should give away everything to those who ask for it, without exception?
Every resource I consume is a resource that is then unavailable for others who ask for it.
Therefore, in order to give away every resource I might have otherwise consumed, I must not consume any resources, and therefore dies.
Your moral system prohibits suicide.
Therefore, your original proposition is inconsistent with your professed morality, QED.
Also therefore, get out of my house before I call the cops.
I apologize for the ambiguity; I did not mean to explicitly ascribe any moral valuation to committing suicide, though I should hope it could be inferred that I do not, in fact, advocate suicide. :P
As for “the homeless giving it back”, why, to even ask would be selfish!
I hadn’t myself understood why I disliked one style of biblical quotations until I had to explain it to you.
Other reasons for biblical quotes are fine, such as showing how telling a story several times and differently has an effect, or showing something about how people then likely thought, or having an old source for “Nothing new under the sun”, etc. There’s nothing about the books that makes quoting them magically a bad thing to do, it’s just that there’s enough contradictory stuff (probably in Exodus or Numbers or Deuteronomy alone, much less the Pentateuch, much less the Old Testament, much less...) that saying there is Biblical warrant for something similar to one’s position is the most unspectacular thing one can say. A quantity of quotes from among sources showing preponderant and/or broad and consistent would be something else and as valuable as perhaps a small quote from a dissimilar source, but by definition that’s not something that fits in a reasonable amount of space and is more of a thesis paper.
The first sentence of this comment is the important one, we can probably constructively generalize from it.
As an atheist in hiding knowing the bible well can be extremely useful though. Due to how you can support nearly any position using biblical quotes, it becomes a lot easier dealing with strongly religious people when you disagree with them if you can argue based on their own priors. Telling someone about a logical fallacy, information colelcted using carbon dating, etc only works when they actually assign weight to your sources.
Another bonus, when people find out I am an atheist and I have been liberally trolling them for years it might shake up their faith in the community if I am lucky, but I am not sure how I would test this.
A big problem with trying to pull wisdom out of the bible and similar is that there is a whole pile of cultural context that is either gone, or requires large amounts of study to discover.
Like someone a thousand years from now who has somehow dug up an old blog post that strongly asserts that “The Cake is a Lie!” you’re missing a massive portion of the story. And you can justify almost anything you want to just by filling in the missing bits differently.
And this is before you even get into the biblical religions having all gone through historical phases where they deliberately filled in the cultural bits incorrectly for political reasons.
The best thing I’ve found to do with it is set God = Truth, and remember that someone’s story being included isn’t an assertion that they had everything right. There’s plenty of satire in there too. Most of it exceedingly subtle. Something about criticizing the powerful being a potential death sentence so they had to make it look like praise. But if you actually lay out the statements and evaluate them as a whole instead of individually it paints a different picture.
Like when you suddenly realise that they’re praising Solomon as being a great king by describing the grand temple and palace he built, but if you pay attention to the descriptions of each it seems that he not only built the palace out of grander, more expensive materials, he built it as a mirror of the temple with his throne room in place of the holy of holies… And suddenly the description of the man’s character takes on an entirely different tone if you know anything about what the relationship between God and the King was supposed to be.
And yet various branches of bible-based religions spent hundreds of years using Solomon as part of their description of a “Godly King”. Because it fit their political narrative and kept the peasants in line.
In short, Biblical stories are like any other repository of folk wisdom. The only way to find the truth in there is if truth is what you’re actually looking for and you don’t stop until it makes coherent sense. And this whole site is dedicated to showing all the ways in which human beings generally aren’t actually looking for the truth… So… Good luck?
There is a difference between not consuming anything and giving away anything if asked.
So apparently in his religion one is supposed to give away everything if asked, but nothing is implied if one is not asked.
That is a good point, but the error comes in my statement of he problem, not in the argument. Otherwise, why would we ever give to charity, unless explicitly asked to? What would constitute “asking”, anyway? Could we pass by a homeless man on the street and, as long as he didn’t actually say anything to us, safely ignore his sign?
I don’t understand. Mostly, because your argument is along the lines of: A, because if not A, then why B? And B,” and I can think of many other reasons for B, not merely just A or just one besides A. How is this not an argument from incredulity? You’re accusing the roommate of unflinching hypocrisy, but I don’t see it.
Then perhaps I was incorrect in my accusation. I apologize that I’m not able to present my side more clearly; this happened a while ago, and the data is muddled.