I am skeptical that the original intention of the story is to make such claims.
I’m not sure the original intention is quite what matters.
Suppose a religion is made up by outright fraudsters. If someone says “look, this religion says X and Y and Z, which we know are not true”, is it any refutation of that argument to say “well, sure, but the original authors of that story knew X and Y and Z weren’t true”? Of course not.
If the story in Genesis 3 was deliberately made up by people who did not believe there had ever been a talking snake, with the intention that subsequent readers or listeners would take it as historical, then the situation is the same as in the previous paragraph.
If it was made up with the intention that readers or listeners would treat it as fiction (or perhaps I should say fable or myth), then indeed their epistemic situation was just fine and I have no particular objection to it—at least not on these grounds. But if (as I think likely, and it sounds as if you agree) subsequent readers or listeners ended up treating it as history or something like history—why, then, that indicates that those subsequent readers or listeners had terrible epistemic hygiene; isn’t that highly relevant in evaluating other parts of the belief system those people have handed down to us?
I don’t know of any large populations with non-terrible epistemic hygiene.
The relevant issue is not the epistemic hygiene of the populations, but of (so to speak) the process by which any given body of ideas reaches us. In the case of the Bible, on entirelyuseless’s (plausible) hypothesis we find that at least some of it reached us (in its role as Sacred Scripture, no less) by being treated as reliable history by people who had no good reason to think of it as more than a fable.
Not every body-of-ideas exhibits such crass indifference to truth in its history, though of course it’s by no means only religious ones that do.
find that at least some of it reached us (in its role as Sacred Scripture, no less) by being treated as reliable history by people who had no good reason to think of it as more than a fable.
So the presence of the talking snake in the story is evidence against the rightness of the religion, for reasons that can be (albeit needlessly rudely and uninformatively) expressed as “ha ha, your religion has talking snakes, how ridiculous”.
Just to be clear, what exactly is your point in this thread?
So the presence of the talking snake in the story is evidence against the rightness of the religion, for reasons that can be (albeit needlessly rudely and uninformatively) expressed as “ha ha, your religion has talking snakes, how ridiculous”.
I don’t see how that follows from your previous comment. And in any case, I continue to disagree with that statement.
what exactly is your point in this thread?
Let’s go upthread. That was my first comment and I still stand by it.
While we’re restating our positions: I (1) agree that the talking snake is a long, long way from being the best reason for thinking that Christianity-as-traditionally-understood is badly wrong, but (2) think “conditional on sufficiently strong magic” misses the point, because the talking snake is not portrayed as talking on account of any sort of magic.
And I suggest that we leave it there rather than engaging in further rounds of clarification and/or nitpicking.
If the story in Genesis 3 was deliberately made up by people who did not believe there had ever been a talking snake, with the intention that subsequent readers or listeners would take it as historical, then the situation is the same as in the previous paragraph.
That assumes that it’s always the goal of an author to tell the average reader the truth. As early as the 12th when Maimonides writes his Guide there’s the idea that the Torah is purposefully written in a way that the average reader doesn’t get it’s secrets. Only wise people are supposed to understand it. If a story successfully throws off a reader that isn’t wise it might have done it’s job.
Yes, that’s true, it might. Someone who embraces an esoteric version of (say) Christianity that takes all the silly-sounding things in it to be coded messages designed to be mostly misunderstood does indeed hold a position that isn’t vulnerable to attack on the basis of how silly the stories sound.
I don’t think that was the sort of scenario entirelyuseless had in mind, though.
If a story successfully throws off a reader that isn’t wise, but people who aren’t wise still get to go to Hell based on not acting as demanded by the story they don’t understand, then the writer is being a major jerk.
I agree about the case of deliberate fraud. For example it seems likely to me that Joseph Smith knew that he was inventing the Book of Mormon, and the fact that he knew that is not a defense of Mormonism; if anything it makes things worse.
Genesis and similar things seem a bit different to me, in at least two ways: 1) having no access to the origin in that case, I don’t have any particular reason to suppose dishonest motives, and 2) there are many aspects of the accounts that look idealized, in a way that isn’t terribly reasonable for someone who is trying to delude people. In other words, I suspect something like this: the author thinks, “Of course no one knows what really happened. But I’m guessing it was something like this. And of course everyone else knows that no one knows, so they’ll know that this is a guess.”
But if that’s the case, historically those authors were mistaken. People didn’t just know they didn’t know, but assumed the accounts were accurate even in a detailed way, for the most part, even if there were exceptions to that kind of interpretation even e.g. in the early church.
I agree with the last point, that these facts are highly relevant. As I said e.g. about the resurrection, Christians definitely distinguished all along between beliefs about the interpretation of Genesis and actual creedal beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were very certain about the Genesis story, for the most part, nor the fact that their certainty was religiously motivated. And that is prima facie a pretty good argument that the whole religion is false. I didn’t say that there aren’t arguments like that, just that this does not account for everything.
I’m not sure the original intention is quite what matters.
Suppose a religion is made up by outright fraudsters. If someone says “look, this religion says X and Y and Z, which we know are not true”, is it any refutation of that argument to say “well, sure, but the original authors of that story knew X and Y and Z weren’t true”? Of course not.
If the story in Genesis 3 was deliberately made up by people who did not believe there had ever been a talking snake, with the intention that subsequent readers or listeners would take it as historical, then the situation is the same as in the previous paragraph.
If it was made up with the intention that readers or listeners would treat it as fiction (or perhaps I should say fable or myth), then indeed their epistemic situation was just fine and I have no particular objection to it—at least not on these grounds. But if (as I think likely, and it sounds as if you agree) subsequent readers or listeners ended up treating it as history or something like history—why, then, that indicates that those subsequent readers or listeners had terrible epistemic hygiene; isn’t that highly relevant in evaluating other parts of the belief system those people have handed down to us?
Translation: they were human.
I don’t know of any large populations with non-terrible epistemic hygiene.
The relevant issue is not the epistemic hygiene of the populations, but of (so to speak) the process by which any given body of ideas reaches us. In the case of the Bible, on entirelyuseless’s (plausible) hypothesis we find that at least some of it reached us (in its role as Sacred Scripture, no less) by being treated as reliable history by people who had no good reason to think of it as more than a fable.
Not every body-of-ideas exhibits such crass indifference to truth in its history, though of course it’s by no means only religious ones that do.
And..? So what? I am not sure I see the point.
So the presence of the talking snake in the story is evidence against the rightness of the religion, for reasons that can be (albeit needlessly rudely and uninformatively) expressed as “ha ha, your religion has talking snakes, how ridiculous”.
Just to be clear, what exactly is your point in this thread?
I don’t see how that follows from your previous comment. And in any case, I continue to disagree with that statement.
Let’s go upthread. That was my first comment and I still stand by it.
While we’re restating our positions: I (1) agree that the talking snake is a long, long way from being the best reason for thinking that Christianity-as-traditionally-understood is badly wrong, but (2) think “conditional on sufficiently strong magic” misses the point, because the talking snake is not portrayed as talking on account of any sort of magic.
And I suggest that we leave it there rather than engaging in further rounds of clarification and/or nitpicking.
That assumes that it’s always the goal of an author to tell the average reader the truth. As early as the 12th when Maimonides writes his Guide there’s the idea that the Torah is purposefully written in a way that the average reader doesn’t get it’s secrets. Only wise people are supposed to understand it. If a story successfully throws off a reader that isn’t wise it might have done it’s job.
Yes, that’s true, it might. Someone who embraces an esoteric version of (say) Christianity that takes all the silly-sounding things in it to be coded messages designed to be mostly misunderstood does indeed hold a position that isn’t vulnerable to attack on the basis of how silly the stories sound.
I don’t think that was the sort of scenario entirelyuseless had in mind, though.
If a story successfully throws off a reader that isn’t wise, but people who aren’t wise still get to go to Hell based on not acting as demanded by the story they don’t understand, then the writer is being a major jerk.
The average person isn’t supposed to get his knowledge by reading himself but by listening to his rabbi/priest.
I agree about the case of deliberate fraud. For example it seems likely to me that Joseph Smith knew that he was inventing the Book of Mormon, and the fact that he knew that is not a defense of Mormonism; if anything it makes things worse.
Genesis and similar things seem a bit different to me, in at least two ways: 1) having no access to the origin in that case, I don’t have any particular reason to suppose dishonest motives, and 2) there are many aspects of the accounts that look idealized, in a way that isn’t terribly reasonable for someone who is trying to delude people. In other words, I suspect something like this: the author thinks, “Of course no one knows what really happened. But I’m guessing it was something like this. And of course everyone else knows that no one knows, so they’ll know that this is a guess.”
But if that’s the case, historically those authors were mistaken. People didn’t just know they didn’t know, but assumed the accounts were accurate even in a detailed way, for the most part, even if there were exceptions to that kind of interpretation even e.g. in the early church.
I agree with the last point, that these facts are highly relevant. As I said e.g. about the resurrection, Christians definitely distinguished all along between beliefs about the interpretation of Genesis and actual creedal beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were very certain about the Genesis story, for the most part, nor the fact that their certainty was religiously motivated. And that is prima facie a pretty good argument that the whole religion is false. I didn’t say that there aren’t arguments like that, just that this does not account for everything.