I found this site through the posts on decoherence and many-worlds; I haven’t yet read them all, and look forward to doing so. Also enjoyed the posts on Bayesian rationality.
But I was disappointed by this one. The main reason is that it implicitly reduces all religious phenomena to matters of belief, which I think is a mistake.
To be clear about where I’m coming from: I don’t hold any religious beliefs. Nevertheless, I think that much of what goes on in religion is psychologically or sociologically beneficial. And I think that religious language is often misconstrued (by religious and nonreligious people alike) as expressing beliefs, when it actually (or also) functions in other ways. (It expresses certain kinds of attitudes and perspectives.)
Eliezer’s main point is to deny that religion can’t be disproven. In order to do this, he paints a picture of religion as essentially a set of beliefs. Addressing people like me who want to save some non-epistemic subset of religion, he says “The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept.” I want to make two points about this.
The first is that even if it’s true, it says nothing about the value of modern people pursuing such non-fact-based activities. Explorations of attitudes and global perspectives can be pursued via religious language in much the same way as it is pursued in non-religious art, literature, poetry, etc.
Eliezer takes “ethics” as the core of the non-fact-based questions. His argument against religious ethics is that the Bible contains elements that conflict with contemporary ethics, which has “progressed” since the Bible was written. The argument simply ignores the fact that religious ethics also progresses. In other words, Eliezer implicitly focuses on fundamentalist religion; but many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a literary background to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account. Eliezer seems strangely unaware that many modern religious people have fought against slavery, for women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
In fact, he seems unaware that such rational revisions of traditional attitudes have been going on for thousands of years—and this leads into my second point: the separation between myth and morality is not something new. The prophets Hosea and Amos explicitly reject mythology when it overshadows morality; they make fun of people who think that animal sacrifices can atone for bad deeds, or that religion essentially depends on anything beyond morality. The book of Deuteronomy contains many revisions of earlier material in Exodus, turning laws from a mythic to an ethical rationale. And the Talmud contains countless examples wherein Biblical morality is reversed, explicitly or implicitly.
So I think Eliezer is doubly wrong about the orthogonality of religion and factual questions.
I clicked on a link in this post to “believing in”. I expected to find an acknowledgment of the purely non-epistemic sense that this phrase often carries (“I believe in the right to organize”,”I believe in myself”, “I believe in America”). Instead I found arguments against people who hold factual beliefs without or despite evidence. But I would hypothesize that many people who affirm beliefs without evidence are actually just affirming an attitude which they are used to expressing in the misleading belief-language. For many, “belief in God” expresses solidarity with a particular community and a set of attitudes toward the world and other people.
The main fault I find with Eliezer’s analysis is that it appears blind to the literary character of many Biblical texts. He says “The vast majority of religions in human history…tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they’d actually happened.” But this is also true of literature in general. It in no way implies that authors or readers of the stories take them literally. Anybody who thinks that Ezekiel literally expected bones to rise from graves, or that the author and audience of the story of Balaam’s ass took it differently from, say, Aesop’s stories, is operating with a deficient view of how stories work.
Final point: Eliezer sets himself against those who posit “wonder” as a basis and/or effect of religious language. He finds no (or very little) wonder in ancient texts. But from a philosophical point of view, I would nominate a different emotion as the essential religious category: gratitude. The most positive attitude toward the world or one’s life must contain gratitude, even when what one is grateful for is something as vague as life itself, and even if one posits no metaphysical entity toward which one is grateful. And ancient religion certainly expresses such global gratitude.
You are, of course, correct that one can approach the Bible (or any scriptural text) the same way one approaches Aesop’s fables, or the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, or the Watchman graphic novel—that is, as a collection of stories that reflect the concerns and ethical and aesthetic sensibilities of a particular culture at a particular time.
It’s certainly possible.
That said, the religious community I grew up in encouraged us to interpret the fossil record in ways that were consistent with the stories in the Bible, even when that required ignoring scientific evidence and in some cases common sense.
This either demonstrates (as you say) a deficient view of how stories work, or (I think more likely) that they were not approaching the Bible purely as a collection of stories.
Would you disagree?
Do you think that specific religious community was atypical?
There is a wide range of ways of interpreting mythic material, both between religious communities and between members of a single community.
In two of the three branches of American Judaism, as well as many varieties of Christianity and amalgams such as Unitarianism, not to mention Buddhism, etc., respect for science is encouraged—and thus the stories must be held to be stories, even if they are very special stories for the community. Such communities are radically different from those in which the Bible is treated as a source of scientific knowledge.
Nevertheless, there are communities in which the children literally believe in Santa Claus, while the adults know it’s a myth. And there are countless other ways of mixing up more and less literal interpretations. The same parent who disbelieves Santa Claus may take the story of Jesus’ resurrection literally. And a group of people can recite language together, which some of them treat metaphorically and others literally.
So the point isn’t what is “typical”, nor how a majority might have approached the text at a given point in history, it’s that there are examples of religious thinking that are, for those who understand them, orthogonal to questions of fact. Historically this has often been reflected in the difference between exoteric and esoteric subtraditions. Those who know the “inner meaning” of the texts no longer treat them literally. Such esoteric subtraditions are far from a modern phenomenon, as Eliezer’s argument would imply.
I certainly agree that if I use as my reference class for religious communities and individuals only those which readily acknowledge the fictional/mythical/metaphorical nature of the language they recite and its orthogonality to questions of fact, I end up with prior probabilities for assertions about religious communities and individuals that are very very different from those the OP ends up with.
You seem to be further implying that there’s some good reason to use that reference class, rather than the reference class of all communities and individuals that self-identify as religious, or the reference class of those that approach their texts and traditions non-metaphorically.
I’m not really sure how you are justifying that second claim.
By way of analogy—I freely agree that, within the community of people who claim to be Jesus Christ, there exist individuals who are no more delusional than the average person and who are, for example, playing the lead in Jesus Christ: Superstar, or various other things along those lines.
But to challenge on that basis the idea that claiming to be Jesus Christ is indicative of being delusional, and to dismiss the question of how typical those examples really are of people claiming to be Jesus Christ as beside the point, is misleading to the point of simply being wrong.
I don’t understand the claim you take to be unjustified, that there’s a “good reason to use that reference class”—use it for what? My point is that there are valuable religious practices, yes. I distinguish them from the affirmation of supernatural beliefs, including the belief that one is Jesus or that the earth was created in 6 days. I am not challenging any assertions about the truth or falsity of any beliefs. Maybe my comments are out of line with the spirit of a website devoted to the rationality of beliefs, but it seems to me that some of you may hold a mistaken belief about the nature of religious language, namely that it primarily functions as a representation of beliefs.
If you are asking for me to justify my view that there are valuable religious practices, I don’t think this is the place for it, so I’ll just say that there are valuable works of philosophy written in the context of religion, and valuable insights about ethics and aesthetics that are sometimes transmitted in religious education (especially when they are only nominally related to the pronouncements of ancient texts).
Use it for calibrating my expectations about a specific religious community in advance of further specific data… for example, about its likely influence on the cognitive habits of its members.
Anyway, I’m not challenging the claim that there exist valuable religious practices. I even agree with it.
The mixing of perspectives within a community (as I noted) makes your example problematic, but I agree that some easy cases exist: for example, a church that preaches “faith healing” for sick children may be expected to run into a specific set of difficulties, not shared by a church that tells everyone to reinterpret texts for themselves in the light of reason. And again, I agree that pronouncements of people claiming to be Jesus may be taken as indicators of delusionality. Both cases involve belief, whereas I claim that in religion, non-propositional linguistic behavior, is more significant than propositional (as regards unusual beliefs).
I’m waiting to see if anyone disagrees with my main assertions, that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon.
Thank you, I read all of those. What I find is that you are able to focus on some of the non-propositional uses of religious language—like cheering for one’s affinity group—yet your attitude toward such utterances is still to treat them as false propositions. I would suggest that someone who emphasizes the absurdity of her own language (that is, absurdity from a factual, propositional perspective) is trying to shift attention away from the propositional and toward an aesthetic sensibility.
If we expect science and get art, we will be disappointed; but if we look at linguistic behavior in its variety, we learn to expect more emotional expression and social interchange, less representation of facts.
I also find that you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, etc. I would especially recommend to you Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.
This isn’t really a post to be taken in isolation. I think you’ll find some if not all of your objections are addressed throughout the rest of the antitheism posts.
I must agree with GabeEisenstein 100%.
It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
I must also note that Gabe did not get any meaningful reply to his point “that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon”. He was told to “read all antitheism posts”. Well, how about a link to a specific paragraph in a specific post that addresses the very specific issues he raised?
Namely, why do people keep focussing on debunking fundamentalist religion (reinterpret the fossils, believe in talking snakes, etc.) and then pretend they have debunked “religion” or “theism”, completely ignoring the deep intellectual history within religious thought dealing with exactly these questions?
(“you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, [and].… Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”)
Where in the “antitheism posts” do I find a treatment of these aspects, and why is everything I come across always tailored to debunking fundamentalism instead of dealing with the questions that will crop up if you ignore the fundamentalists and talk to religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent?
And even apart from points that may be covered in other posts which I have not seen, GabeEisenstein has pointed to a number of glaring flaws or mistakes in the current post standing on its own, which would merit some attention in themselves, first of all the implication that religious ethics has not evolved over the centuries, and that it’ts a choice between the Iron Age and atheism. That’s a false dichotomy if I have ever seen one.
The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques.
Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.
It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
As it stands, no spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it. But some spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it.
It’s hard to argue against flat-wallpaperism. Point out the ruin of its tenets, and people push the bubble elsewhere, and still claim the name “flat-wallpaperism” as if it were the same as the old belief. There’s nothing wrong with showing the problems in flat-wallpaperism even though some individuals call themselves flat-wallpaperists and make idiosyncratic mistakes about what people believe and believed, starting with how other flat-wallpaperists view and would have viewed (for historical figures and previous generations of believers) their liberal “flat-wallpaperism”.
religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent?
If they weren’t at all intelligent, they wouldn’t be dumber than the fundamentalists. They set their bottom line, confabulate and assault the English language by pretending with labels to a relationship with the past and other religious people they don’t have,
“(Assuming the Bible is a valuable moral book, which upon reading should enhance our precommitment to liberal ideals), why is the Bible so valuable a moral book, despite its words, and how does reading it provide information that reaffirms liberal ideals?” is a question whose answer is poisoned by its false assumption as “(Assuming the Bible is a communication from a deity,) what is God trying to tell us with these words?”
many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a literary background to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account
“Many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a corocodilian wallaby to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account.” There are some problems with the preceding sentence. One is that “corocodilian wallaby”″ is not a good synonym for “literary background”. The words are a lie. The other problem is quite similar, but it applies to the word “religious” as it is used in the crocodilian wallaby sentence and in the quoted sentence.
I found this site through the posts on decoherence and many-worlds; I haven’t yet read them all, and look forward to doing so. Also enjoyed the posts on Bayesian rationality.
But I was disappointed by this one. The main reason is that it implicitly reduces all religious phenomena to matters of belief, which I think is a mistake.
To be clear about where I’m coming from: I don’t hold any religious beliefs. Nevertheless, I think that much of what goes on in religion is psychologically or sociologically beneficial. And I think that religious language is often misconstrued (by religious and nonreligious people alike) as expressing beliefs, when it actually (or also) functions in other ways. (It expresses certain kinds of attitudes and perspectives.)
Eliezer’s main point is to deny that religion can’t be disproven. In order to do this, he paints a picture of religion as essentially a set of beliefs. Addressing people like me who want to save some non-epistemic subset of religion, he says “The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept.” I want to make two points about this.
The first is that even if it’s true, it says nothing about the value of modern people pursuing such non-fact-based activities. Explorations of attitudes and global perspectives can be pursued via religious language in much the same way as it is pursued in non-religious art, literature, poetry, etc. Eliezer takes “ethics” as the core of the non-fact-based questions. His argument against religious ethics is that the Bible contains elements that conflict with contemporary ethics, which has “progressed” since the Bible was written. The argument simply ignores the fact that religious ethics also progresses. In other words, Eliezer implicitly focuses on fundamentalist religion; but many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a literary background to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account. Eliezer seems strangely unaware that many modern religious people have fought against slavery, for women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
In fact, he seems unaware that such rational revisions of traditional attitudes have been going on for thousands of years—and this leads into my second point: the separation between myth and morality is not something new. The prophets Hosea and Amos explicitly reject mythology when it overshadows morality; they make fun of people who think that animal sacrifices can atone for bad deeds, or that religion essentially depends on anything beyond morality. The book of Deuteronomy contains many revisions of earlier material in Exodus, turning laws from a mythic to an ethical rationale. And the Talmud contains countless examples wherein Biblical morality is reversed, explicitly or implicitly.
So I think Eliezer is doubly wrong about the orthogonality of religion and factual questions.
I clicked on a link in this post to “believing in”. I expected to find an acknowledgment of the purely non-epistemic sense that this phrase often carries (“I believe in the right to organize”,”I believe in myself”, “I believe in America”). Instead I found arguments against people who hold factual beliefs without or despite evidence. But I would hypothesize that many people who affirm beliefs without evidence are actually just affirming an attitude which they are used to expressing in the misleading belief-language. For many, “belief in God” expresses solidarity with a particular community and a set of attitudes toward the world and other people.
The main fault I find with Eliezer’s analysis is that it appears blind to the literary character of many Biblical texts. He says “The vast majority of religions in human history…tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they’d actually happened.” But this is also true of literature in general. It in no way implies that authors or readers of the stories take them literally. Anybody who thinks that Ezekiel literally expected bones to rise from graves, or that the author and audience of the story of Balaam’s ass took it differently from, say, Aesop’s stories, is operating with a deficient view of how stories work.
Final point: Eliezer sets himself against those who posit “wonder” as a basis and/or effect of religious language. He finds no (or very little) wonder in ancient texts. But from a philosophical point of view, I would nominate a different emotion as the essential religious category: gratitude. The most positive attitude toward the world or one’s life must contain gratitude, even when what one is grateful for is something as vague as life itself, and even if one posits no metaphysical entity toward which one is grateful. And ancient religion certainly expresses such global gratitude.
You are, of course, correct that one can approach the Bible (or any scriptural text) the same way one approaches Aesop’s fables, or the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, or the Watchman graphic novel—that is, as a collection of stories that reflect the concerns and ethical and aesthetic sensibilities of a particular culture at a particular time.
It’s certainly possible.
That said, the religious community I grew up in encouraged us to interpret the fossil record in ways that were consistent with the stories in the Bible, even when that required ignoring scientific evidence and in some cases common sense.
This either demonstrates (as you say) a deficient view of how stories work, or (I think more likely) that they were not approaching the Bible purely as a collection of stories.
Would you disagree?
Do you think that specific religious community was atypical?
There is a wide range of ways of interpreting mythic material, both between religious communities and between members of a single community.
In two of the three branches of American Judaism, as well as many varieties of Christianity and amalgams such as Unitarianism, not to mention Buddhism, etc., respect for science is encouraged—and thus the stories must be held to be stories, even if they are very special stories for the community. Such communities are radically different from those in which the Bible is treated as a source of scientific knowledge.
Nevertheless, there are communities in which the children literally believe in Santa Claus, while the adults know it’s a myth. And there are countless other ways of mixing up more and less literal interpretations. The same parent who disbelieves Santa Claus may take the story of Jesus’ resurrection literally. And a group of people can recite language together, which some of them treat metaphorically and others literally.
So the point isn’t what is “typical”, nor how a majority might have approached the text at a given point in history, it’s that there are examples of religious thinking that are, for those who understand them, orthogonal to questions of fact. Historically this has often been reflected in the difference between exoteric and esoteric subtraditions. Those who know the “inner meaning” of the texts no longer treat them literally. Such esoteric subtraditions are far from a modern phenomenon, as Eliezer’s argument would imply.
I certainly agree that if I use as my reference class for religious communities and individuals only those which readily acknowledge the fictional/mythical/metaphorical nature of the language they recite and its orthogonality to questions of fact, I end up with prior probabilities for assertions about religious communities and individuals that are very very different from those the OP ends up with.
You seem to be further implying that there’s some good reason to use that reference class, rather than the reference class of all communities and individuals that self-identify as religious, or the reference class of those that approach their texts and traditions non-metaphorically.
I’m not really sure how you are justifying that second claim.
By way of analogy—I freely agree that, within the community of people who claim to be Jesus Christ, there exist individuals who are no more delusional than the average person and who are, for example, playing the lead in Jesus Christ: Superstar, or various other things along those lines.
But to challenge on that basis the idea that claiming to be Jesus Christ is indicative of being delusional, and to dismiss the question of how typical those examples really are of people claiming to be Jesus Christ as beside the point, is misleading to the point of simply being wrong.
I don’t understand the claim you take to be unjustified, that there’s a “good reason to use that reference class”—use it for what? My point is that there are valuable religious practices, yes. I distinguish them from the affirmation of supernatural beliefs, including the belief that one is Jesus or that the earth was created in 6 days. I am not challenging any assertions about the truth or falsity of any beliefs. Maybe my comments are out of line with the spirit of a website devoted to the rationality of beliefs, but it seems to me that some of you may hold a mistaken belief about the nature of religious language, namely that it primarily functions as a representation of beliefs.
If you are asking for me to justify my view that there are valuable religious practices, I don’t think this is the place for it, so I’ll just say that there are valuable works of philosophy written in the context of religion, and valuable insights about ethics and aesthetics that are sometimes transmitted in religious education (especially when they are only nominally related to the pronouncements of ancient texts).
Use it for calibrating my expectations about a specific religious community in advance of further specific data… for example, about its likely influence on the cognitive habits of its members.
Anyway, I’m not challenging the claim that there exist valuable religious practices. I even agree with it.
The mixing of perspectives within a community (as I noted) makes your example problematic, but I agree that some easy cases exist: for example, a church that preaches “faith healing” for sick children may be expected to run into a specific set of difficulties, not shared by a church that tells everyone to reinterpret texts for themselves in the light of reason. And again, I agree that pronouncements of people claiming to be Jesus may be taken as indicators of delusionality. Both cases involve belief, whereas I claim that in religion, non-propositional linguistic behavior, is more significant than propositional (as regards unusual beliefs).
I’m waiting to see if anyone disagrees with my main assertions, that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon.
Click through the “antitheism” tag for more. This is just one post.
Thank you, I read all of those. What I find is that you are able to focus on some of the non-propositional uses of religious language—like cheering for one’s affinity group—yet your attitude toward such utterances is still to treat them as false propositions. I would suggest that someone who emphasizes the absurdity of her own language (that is, absurdity from a factual, propositional perspective) is trying to shift attention away from the propositional and toward an aesthetic sensibility.
If we expect science and get art, we will be disappointed; but if we look at linguistic behavior in its variety, we learn to expect more emotional expression and social interchange, less representation of facts.
I also find that you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, etc. I would especially recommend to you Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.
Yvain’s parable.
This isn’t really a post to be taken in isolation. I think you’ll find some if not all of your objections are addressed throughout the rest of the antitheism posts.
I did not find that to be the case.
I must agree with GabeEisenstein 100%. It is annoying to keep reading arguments against fundamentalist religion phrased as arguments “against religion”.
I must also note that Gabe did not get any meaningful reply to his point “that orthogonal-to-facts religion can be valuable, and that it is not a modern phenomenon”. He was told to “read all antitheism posts”. Well, how about a link to a specific paragraph in a specific post that addresses the very specific issues he raised? Namely, why do people keep focussing on debunking fundamentalist religion (reinterpret the fossils, believe in talking snakes, etc.) and then pretend they have debunked “religion” or “theism”, completely ignoring the deep intellectual history within religious thought dealing with exactly these questions? (“you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, [and].… Wittgenstein’s views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”) Where in the “antitheism posts” do I find a treatment of these aspects, and why is everything I come across always tailored to debunking fundamentalism instead of dealing with the questions that will crop up if you ignore the fundamentalists and talk to religionist philosphers who are actually intelligent? And even apart from points that may be covered in other posts which I have not seen, GabeEisenstein has pointed to a number of glaring flaws or mistakes in the current post standing on its own, which would merit some attention in themselves, first of all the implication that religious ethics has not evolved over the centuries, and that it’ts a choice between the Iron Age and atheism. That’s a false dichotomy if I have ever seen one.
The point is not that there’s a dichotomy between Iron Age beliefs and atheism, but that moderate religious belief has its own issues.
If you allow yourself to identify with particular claims without regard to the actual evidence for them, you’re liable to end up accepting ridiculous claims out of affiliation. Modes of thought are habit forming; if you insist on finding some way to interpret biblical passages that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Christian, for example, you’re liable to also insist on finding ways to interpret data that will allow you to continue to affiliate as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, regardless of whether that interpretation is a rational response to the data. This can lead to anything from lost lives due to poorly considered legislation to getting yourself injured practicing bad martial arts techniques. Moderate theists rarely manage to sacrifice every factual belief attached to their religion required by actual deference to evidence, leading to positions like rejection of cryonics on the basis that it prevents access to the afterlife, or can’t work because it won’t preserve the soul. If they rejected every unsupported empirical claim, they wouldn’t be able to preserve their affiliation.
Further, moderate theists, as much as fundamentalists if not more so, form beliefs which don’t pay rent in anticipated experiences. This leads to fake understanding, and fake understanding cannot inform good decisions.
It’s unclear how much epistemic harm is caused directly by moderate religion, but moderate religion as well as fundamentalism is killed off by the sort of epistemic hygiene necessary to consistently make sound decisions conditioned on evidence.
As it stands, no spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it. But some spot in the wallpaper must have an air bubble under it.
It’s hard to argue against flat-wallpaperism. Point out the ruin of its tenets, and people push the bubble elsewhere, and still claim the name “flat-wallpaperism” as if it were the same as the old belief. There’s nothing wrong with showing the problems in flat-wallpaperism even though some individuals call themselves flat-wallpaperists and make idiosyncratic mistakes about what people believe and believed, starting with how other flat-wallpaperists view and would have viewed (for historical figures and previous generations of believers) their liberal “flat-wallpaperism”.
If they weren’t at all intelligent, they wouldn’t be dumber than the fundamentalists. They set their bottom line, confabulate and assault the English language by pretending with labels to a relationship with the past and other religious people they don’t have,
“(Assuming the Bible is a valuable moral book, which upon reading should enhance our precommitment to liberal ideals), why is the Bible so valuable a moral book, despite its words, and how does reading it provide information that reaffirms liberal ideals?” is a question whose answer is poisoned by its false assumption as “(Assuming the Bible is a communication from a deity,) what is God trying to tell us with these words?”
“Many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a corocodilian wallaby to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account.” There are some problems with the preceding sentence. One is that “corocodilian wallaby”″ is not a good synonym for “literary background”. The words are a lie. The other problem is quite similar, but it applies to the word “religious” as it is used in the crocodilian wallaby sentence and in the quoted sentence.