There are many people who chose to base their lives around a particular religious text. This religious text may contain writing composed thousands of years ago (in the case of the bible, composed over thousands of years). They choose to use this text to determine what they eat and wear, who they marry and who they don’t, what their particular sexual practices are, how they spend their leisure and money, and what particular fantasies they hold about the future. Whenever there is an issue to decide, there is always a written authority. In recent years, with increasing secularisation, the gap between the majority of society and those claiming to adhere to an ancient text has become increasingly wide and noticeable.
Believers in a text may feel secure in that apparently tight framework. However, to the rest of us (and to the believers themselves if they would only think outside of the box), there are at least four problems with their position.
The first problem concerns the authority of the person or persons behind the text. What is the objective evidence that the person or persons should have the right to dictate to me thousands of years later? Why should I take the views of a first century religious teacher on women, for example, as authoritative for me today?
The second problem concerns the reliability of the text. How can I be sure that the text that I have today is the one that was actually written down. In relation to the bible, for example, Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus is a very accessible account of how the text was changed, partly through scribal copying errors, and partly through a desire to influence doctrine. It also clearly demonstrates that some of verses in the New Testament do not even exist in the earliest manuscripts. Just because a book said that it was so or that someone said something doesn’t mean that it was so or that the person said it.
The third problem concerns consistency. Although millions of people claim to live by a particular book, I would suggest that none of them follow that book completely and usually find a way round parts that they think absurd so they can argue it doesn’t apply to them. As has been argued many times, Christians latch onto verses in Leviticus about homosexuality, but completely ignore hundreds of other verses relating to diet and clothing and family responsibilities. Very few Christians keep the laws about worshipping on the Sabbath (Saturday). They will find verses to justify just about anything, and their opponents will find verses to justify disagreeing with their original justification. If these books are supposed to be divinely inspired communicating a clear message (as opposed to being written by individuals originating in different cultures in different time periods and therefore bound to be in conflict) why is there so much difference and inconsistency about their application.
The fourth problem concerns cultural interpretation. Scholars are constantly trying to find ways of re-interpreting texts to make them more relevant today. So, for example, in trying to ‘get round’ the ‘hard teaching’ about women not being permitted to preach in church from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and to Timothy, scholars argue that Paul’s teaching was reasonable in the context of the time. Women were poorly educated, and there was a lot of temple prostitution in Corinth. Paul was concerned with preserving the ‘purity’ of the doctrine in the young church. My concern is not with that argument as such, (it seem perfectly reasonable), but with the fact that it has had to be made. If for over a thousand years Christians have got this wrong, and now have to be enlightened, what else is there that needs to be re-interpreted? What other parts can we say were reasonable at the time, but unreasonable today.
Part of me (OK a small part of me) was slightly encouraged to read of two developments in the Muslim world this week in relation to their interpretation of their text.
First, 20,000 Islamic clerics got together and termed terrorism un-Islamic. This is significant because the move has come out of the Deobandi camp, one of the largest groups of traditional Islam in south Asia (and one of the most maligned in the west). Deobandis are the sect that many people believe are in charge of British mosques, and a strand have been previously linked to the Taliban by some analysts.
Secondly, according to the BBC, Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion. The country’s powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. The Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.
It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted. Some Muslim theologians believe certain sayings in the Hadith – the key source for Sharia law – were never uttered by Muhammad, but rather introduced hundreds of years later, and feel that others need to be viewed in the context of their time. They are also concerned that some can be used to justify more fundamentalist elements of Islam, such as the oppression of women. Felix Koerner, an advisor to the project, explained these concerns to the BBC: “Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation. You can find messages which say ‘that is what the Prophet ordered us to do’. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition.”
While I am pleased that there are some in the Muslim world aware that interpretations of their texts are causing problems and are attempting to begin to do something about it, a much better solution would be to abandon the texts altogether. If you are having to re-interpret them to make them acceptable to civilized society, then surely you are creating them to fit in with the meaning that you want, rather than submitting to them. And as soon as you start creating the meaning you want, you have lost the allegedly divine plot and might as well give up the charade altogether.
Is the Hidith(never heard of this word until now) linked to the Koran. There is no mention of FGM in the Koran, or in the Christian bible as far as I’m aware.
Another very interesting post thinkingman.
Will be in touch.
onethoughtfulwoman
According to the BBC site
the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.
I like the idea of “giving up the books” altogether, no matter if it`s the bible, the koran, … I am just wondering whether we then have to give up the “secular books”, too, this means giving up the “peer-reviewed science papers”.
I agree with you that it doesn`t make sense to put up any book or written text as “holy text” and make it absolute.
But to me this includes “believing in science and scientific papers” as well.
I am afraid that at least for us as humans there is no way of KNOWING what is good and what is not, and no book can tell us that, and no scientific paper either.
geomatix
I suppose there are two major differences between science journals and religous texts.
1) Science journals are verifiable and open to change. They are not setting themselves up as absolute and are willing to change if presented with different evidence.
2) They write about what is verifiable, and not what is not verifiable. They are therefore not making dogmatic statements about the unknowable.
athinkingman, I agree with you when it comes to scientific journals writing about facts or answering questions that start with “How”, like “How do stones fall down?” and it is answered by the gravitational law.
But there also seems to be something like a “science religion”, that is trying to answer the “why” questions, too, or the questions about what is good and what is bad.
How can science answer these questions? To me the most important question is “Can science prove what IS a delusion and what is not?”. People like Dawkins seem to think so. Also as far as I understand most of psychiatry is based on the same assumption (delusions are the major feature of schizophrenia and that is the most serious mental illness).
To be honest I do not completely understand what Dawkins is saying, yet. But if he is right, would that mean that everyone who is not an atheist is delusional, therfore classify him as schizophrenic and give him neuroleptics?
geomatix
As I understand Dawkins, the key thing is that he is willing to change his views in the light of evidence - not just in answer to the ‘how’ questions, but in relation to any ‘why’ questions as well. There is no rigid dogma, just theory, investigation, evidence, and conclusions based on the best fit, and the balance of probability.
I would also want to argue that there are levels of delusion - hey, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I would posit something of the following:
organic dellusion, involuntary, and with a physical cause;
cognitive dellusion, voluntary in the sense of clinging to a belief which is irrational.
The former deserves our compassion and treatment. The latter deserves or challenge and reasoning.
athinkingman, I think I agree with Dawkins that “fundamental christianity” is something to stay away from. But to me it looks like he replaces it with “fundamental atheism”.
At the moment I am trying to understand Dawkins arguments. So far I do not see how science can answer the “why” questions, or any questions related to “good” or “bad” or what we should do or not. To me it looks like good or bad is something that comes from a SUBJECTIVE perspective, something that I know when I look inside myself, related to feelings, believes, experiences, … But I do not see how science which is by it`s very nature objective, can know what is inside of me.
So I think I can say “I BELIEVE that this action is good”, but I cannot say “I KNOW that this action is good”. The second statement for me is “fundamentalism”, no matter whether christian, islamic or atheist fundametalism. The evangelical christian version of fundamtalism is “I KNOW this action is good because the bible says it”. The catholic version is “I KNOW this action is good because the pope says so” and the atheist version is “I KNOW this action is good because science says it”.
The bible was written by human beings, the pope is a human and scientific papers are written by human beings, too. And I don`t see a way how any human being can KNOW what is good.
geomatix,
I think you correctly outline a significant issue of absolute knowledge of what is good and what is not. Of course the subject is subjective irrespective of a belief system or indeed a non-belief system in the case of atheism. However, in my opinion it’s probably fair to say that of all groups it can really only be atheism that could approach the conundrum in the state that it truly exists. That is to say, it would require nothing less than atheism to truly understand that the concept of good and bad cannot truly be abstracted successfully to a third party, be it book or person or society.
Good thread, given me much to think about.