What the lady in Cairo regarded as absurd (a monkey having a human baby) has almost no relation to what educated people who believe in evolution actually believe. What Bill Mahers regarded as absurd (a talking snake) is exactly what many Christians actually believe. The two assertions of absurdity are therefore not alike in the way that you suggest they are.
I agree with your underlying point about the absurdity heuristic not working well, but do any of us not realize this already given what modern physics tells us of the universe we live in?
Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan, who took the form of a snake to trick Eve. Treating it as an ordinary snake that happened to be able to talk is probably as gross a misrepresentation as the lady’s misrepresentation of evolution.
“Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan,”
Without meaning to nitpick, what percentage of people who call themselves Christians do you think actually believe this? I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true. They probably also don’t believe that a man can survive for 3 days in the belly of a whale, or that donkeys talk (Numbers 22: 26-30). I’m not really sure how this is relevant here, except that maybe I’m trying to say that a talking snake is just so damned absurd that even people who say they believe it don’t actually believe it.
“I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true”
Have you asked them? Probably not, it’s considered rude to ask christians questions like that, isn’t it? (which is no doubt one reason why religious beliefs are able persist)
But if you did ask them you might be surprised by the answer.
Actually I suspect you are probably somewhat right: they don’t beleive genesis literally. However I suspect they don’t disbelieve it, either.
I actually don’t think religious belief has much to to with doctrine, and I don’t thmink many western christians ever actually sit down to assess exactly ‘what’ they believe, and what they don’t. Religion isn’t about believing silly things, it’s primarily about belonging. Belinging to a group that at a social everyday level is mostly harmless, and normally well intentioned.
About the Christians around me: it is not explicitly considered rude, but it is a signal that you want to challenge their worldview, and if you are going to predictably ask that kind of question often, you won’t be welcome in open discussions. (You could do it once or twice for anecdotal evidence, but if you actually want to know whether many Christians believe in a literal snake, you’ll have to do a survey.)
I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true.
About a third of Americans believe “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally,” explicitly contrasted with “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.” Your friends are probably not a representative sample of Americans, and even then, a third is a minority, but it is a rather large minority. I know people in this category.
The next question is whether they really believe it or just believe in belief. If you press those people, will they bite the bullet and accept talking serpents and donkeys, surviving in whales, and trumpet blasts knocking down city walls? Yes, some of them really will, and there are certainly communities where this remains a majority belief.
Even if they don’t believe in all that, they all still believe in a giant, invisible person that watches them when they do naughty things and talks to them telepathically in their head...
who lives on a cloud, and loves them so much that he will set fire to them for all time if the things are too naughty, and whose chosen people (a) are someone else, and (b) haven’t had the best couple of millennia.
I didn’t mean to imply that the snake wasn’t Satan or that it was an ordinary snake. Obviously that is what probably all Christians believe, and that’s what Mahers believes Christians believe.
But it doesn’t make it any less absurd to say a snake talked by explaining that it was actually a supernatural personification of evil that temporarily became a snake. That’s just piling absurdity on top of absurdity.
And like I said, the relation between what Christians believe and a snake talking is very direct, regardless of whether the snake was Satan, while the Cairo lady’s beliefs have almost no relation to what people who believe in evolution believe.
All I’m saying is that you could make your point much better by finding a stronger parallel.
There is of course zero evidence in the Bible for that point of view, and it contradicts itself internally, even beyond what would be normal given the source.
Going strictly by Genesis, the talking snake is really, honestly, just a talking snake. Satan isn’t even mentioned until much later.
It’s not actually important for the purposes of this discussion what the Bible says or not. What’s important is what people believe. If many Christians believe the snake was Satan, then it doesn’t matter what the Bible actually says when we discuss whether or not their beliefs are true, absurd, or, in some way, ridiculous.
In the same way, it doesn’t actually matter, for the purposes of this discussion, what evolution actually says, but, rather, what people who believe in evolution believe it says.
It does matter what the Bible says or not iff the same people who claim to believe the snake was Satan also believe the Bible is truth, since this would entail a contradiction.
That’s a good point, but, in that case, we should be making the judgement that they’re holding contradictory beliefs for believing the snake is Satan and the Bible is true, rather than make the judgement that they’re believing the ridiculous claim that there once was a talking snake.
I don’t know what actual Christians believe, but how could this be when god cursed that the snake would have to crawl on its belly for the rest of its days (“on your belly you shall go”), and yet later in the New Testament Satan walks with Jesus on earth to tempt him to idolatry with the offer of the kingdoms?
Besides, if it’s Satan, why punish snakes instead?
I haven’t talked about this with an actual Christian, but it seems to me that an erudite Christian won’t hold this view that the snake was Satan, especially when you can get rid of the contradiction by saying the snake was not Satan.
That brings up some interesting questions about other biblical statements that might be considered important from a religious perspective… within the scope of our flawed, human logic, of course.
Didn’t think about that. But this actually makes a lot of sense. This is the only way you can believe in those things. You completely ignore reason and take it all on faith.
You completely ignore reason and take it all on faith.
For me, though, it was worse than that—how do you “take on faith” a concept that isn’t even rationally coherent? That was always my question—what exactly is it that I’m supposed to be believing? Because if something doesn’t make sense, then I don’t understand it; and if I don’t understand it, how am I supposed to really “believe” it? And when people respond with “well you just have to have faith”, my response was always “yes, but faith in WHAT?” / “Faith in God.” / “Yes, but what do you mean by God?”
“You don’t have to understand to believe” never, ever, ever made coherent sense to me.
“You don’t have to understand to believe” never, ever, ever made coherent sense to me.
Do you believe in both general relativity and QCD? Do you understand the Universe? Until the map is indistinguishable from the territory we will have incoherent beliefs about things that we don’t fully understand. It’s the degree of confidence in our beliefs that matters. GR and QCD are incoherent, but we can have extremely high confidence in our beliefs about practical things using those theories. Black holes and dark energy less so.
I haven’t talked about this with an actual Christian, but it seems to me that an erudite Christian won’t hold this view that the snake was Satan, especially when you can get rid of the contradiction by saying the snake was not Satan.
My highschool theologist said that “a demon” (not necessarily Lucifer or any demon whose name is known) spoke through the snake. So I imagine there are a lot of open ways to resolve the contradiction:
Perhaps the snake is punished for allowing the demon to control it in some manner.
Perhaps only the particular demon is punished in this manner, not the whole of demonkind including the one that later tempted Jesus.
Perhaps the description of the curse/prediction is metaphorical, so “on your belly you shall go” is a metaphor of the demon living a filthy existence or something. After all “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” is supposed to be metaphorical of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
This suggests an improved absurdity heuristic: if somebody expresses a belief that seems absurd, first check whether they actually believe what you think they do. It might not be as absurd once you know what they actually believe.
They might really believe in a literal talking snake, but have you really lost much by giving the (temporary) benefit of the doubt?
What the lady in Cairo regarded as absurd (a monkey having a human baby) has almost no relation to what educated people who believe in evolution actually believe. What Bill Mahers regarded as absurd (a talking snake) is exactly what many Christians actually believe. The two assertions of absurdity are therefore not alike in the way that you suggest they are.
I agree with your underlying point about the absurdity heuristic not working well, but do any of us not realize this already given what modern physics tells us of the universe we live in?
Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan, who took the form of a snake to trick Eve. Treating it as an ordinary snake that happened to be able to talk is probably as gross a misrepresentation as the lady’s misrepresentation of evolution.
“Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan,”
Without meaning to nitpick, what percentage of people who call themselves Christians do you think actually believe this? I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true. They probably also don’t believe that a man can survive for 3 days in the belly of a whale, or that donkeys talk (Numbers 22: 26-30). I’m not really sure how this is relevant here, except that maybe I’m trying to say that a talking snake is just so damned absurd that even people who say they believe it don’t actually believe it.
“I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true”
Have you asked them? Probably not, it’s considered rude to ask christians questions like that, isn’t it? (which is no doubt one reason why religious beliefs are able persist)
But if you did ask them you might be surprised by the answer.
Actually I suspect you are probably somewhat right: they don’t beleive genesis literally. However I suspect they don’t disbelieve it, either.
I actually don’t think religious belief has much to to with doctrine, and I don’t thmink many western christians ever actually sit down to assess exactly ‘what’ they believe, and what they don’t. Religion isn’t about believing silly things, it’s primarily about belonging. Belinging to a group that at a social everyday level is mostly harmless, and normally well intentioned.
About the Christians around me: it is not explicitly considered rude, but it is a signal that you want to challenge their worldview, and if you are going to predictably ask that kind of question often, you won’t be welcome in open discussions.
(You could do it once or twice for anecdotal evidence, but if you actually want to know whether many Christians believe in a literal snake, you’ll have to do a survey.)
About a third of Americans believe “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally,” explicitly contrasted with “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.” Your friends are probably not a representative sample of Americans, and even then, a third is a minority, but it is a rather large minority. I know people in this category.
The next question is whether they really believe it or just believe in belief. If you press those people, will they bite the bullet and accept talking serpents and donkeys, surviving in whales, and trumpet blasts knocking down city walls? Yes, some of them really will, and there are certainly communities where this remains a majority belief.
Even if they don’t believe in all that, they all still believe in a giant, invisible person that watches them when they do naughty things and talks to them telepathically in their head...
who lives on a cloud, and loves them so much that he will set fire to them for all time if the things are too naughty, and whose chosen people (a) are someone else, and (b) haven’t had the best couple of millennia.
,’:-\
I didn’t mean to imply that the snake wasn’t Satan or that it was an ordinary snake. Obviously that is what probably all Christians believe, and that’s what Mahers believes Christians believe.
But it doesn’t make it any less absurd to say a snake talked by explaining that it was actually a supernatural personification of evil that temporarily became a snake. That’s just piling absurdity on top of absurdity.
And like I said, the relation between what Christians believe and a snake talking is very direct, regardless of whether the snake was Satan, while the Cairo lady’s beliefs have almost no relation to what people who believe in evolution believe.
All I’m saying is that you could make your point much better by finding a stronger parallel.
There is of course zero evidence in the Bible for that point of view, and it contradicts itself internally, even beyond what would be normal given the source.
Going strictly by Genesis, the talking snake is really, honestly, just a talking snake. Satan isn’t even mentioned until much later.
A talking snake that isn’t Satan? Don’t be absurd.
Since Satan does not exist, any talking snake you come across cannot be Satan. Q.E.D. and also, Q.E.F.
Pretty sure that was sarcasm.
It’s not actually important for the purposes of this discussion what the Bible says or not. What’s important is what people believe. If many Christians believe the snake was Satan, then it doesn’t matter what the Bible actually says when we discuss whether or not their beliefs are true, absurd, or, in some way, ridiculous.
In the same way, it doesn’t actually matter, for the purposes of this discussion, what evolution actually says, but, rather, what people who believe in evolution believe it says.
It does matter what the Bible says or not iff the same people who claim to believe the snake was Satan also believe the Bible is truth, since this would entail a contradiction.
That’s a good point, but, in that case, we should be making the judgement that they’re holding contradictory beliefs for believing the snake is Satan and the Bible is true, rather than make the judgement that they’re believing the ridiculous claim that there once was a talking snake.
I don’t know what actual Christians believe, but how could this be when god cursed that the snake would have to crawl on its belly for the rest of its days (“on your belly you shall go”), and yet later in the New Testament Satan walks with Jesus on earth to tempt him to idolatry with the offer of the kingdoms?
Besides, if it’s Satan, why punish snakes instead?
I haven’t talked about this with an actual Christian, but it seems to me that an erudite Christian won’t hold this view that the snake was Satan, especially when you can get rid of the contradiction by saying the snake was not Satan.
Actual response I got as a child in Sunday school, when I pointed out this and various other weirdnesses:
“God is more powerful than human logic. Just because something seems like a contradiction to you, doesn’t mean it’s a contradiction if God does it.”
That brings up some interesting questions about other biblical statements that might be considered important from a religious perspective… within the scope of our flawed, human logic, of course.
Didn’t think about that. But this actually makes a lot of sense. This is the only way you can believe in those things. You completely ignore reason and take it all on faith.
For me, though, it was worse than that—how do you “take on faith” a concept that isn’t even rationally coherent? That was always my question—what exactly is it that I’m supposed to be believing? Because if something doesn’t make sense, then I don’t understand it; and if I don’t understand it, how am I supposed to really “believe” it? And when people respond with “well you just have to have faith”, my response was always “yes, but faith in WHAT?” / “Faith in God.” / “Yes, but what do you mean by God?”
“You don’t have to understand to believe” never, ever, ever made coherent sense to me.
Do you believe in both general relativity and QCD? Do you understand the Universe? Until the map is indistinguishable from the territory we will have incoherent beliefs about things that we don’t fully understand. It’s the degree of confidence in our beliefs that matters. GR and QCD are incoherent, but we can have extremely high confidence in our beliefs about practical things using those theories. Black holes and dark energy less so.
My highschool theologist said that “a demon” (not necessarily Lucifer or any demon whose name is known) spoke through the snake. So I imagine there are a lot of open ways to resolve the contradiction:
Perhaps the snake is punished for allowing the demon to control it in some manner.
Perhaps only the particular demon is punished in this manner, not the whole of demonkind including the one that later tempted Jesus.
Perhaps the description of the curse/prediction is metaphorical, so “on your belly you shall go” is a metaphor of the demon living a filthy existence or something. After all “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” is supposed to be metaphorical of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
etc, etc.
This suggests an improved absurdity heuristic: if somebody expresses a belief that seems absurd, first check whether they actually believe what you think they do. It might not be as absurd once you know what they actually believe.
They might really believe in a literal talking snake, but have you really lost much by giving the (temporary) benefit of the doubt?