Former fundamentalist 'debunks' Bible

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/05/15/bible.critic/index.html

Ehrman, a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a biblical sleuth whose investigations make some people very angry. Like the fictional Robert Langdon character played by actor Tom Hanks in the movie "Angels & Demons," he delves into the past to challenge some of Christianity's central claims.



In Ehrman's latest book, "Jesus, Interrupted," he concludes:

Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.

At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.


He was raised in the Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Kansas, and became a fundamentalist Christian at age 15 when he met a charismatic Christian youth group leader who reached out to him. Ehrman says he later persuaded his parents to embrace a more conservative brand of Christianity.

[izquierdista]

1. Reached out?

Was that reach above or below the waist?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

2. Something meant to be taken on "faith" can't be debunked

There's nothing to debunk because the debunking is immediately delegitimized by the "have faith because god works in mysterious ways" retort.

Edit: spelling

[cosmik debris]

7. It's like debunking pro wrestling. n/t

[struggle4progress]

3. Jesus is just alright with him

To the author of "Jesus Interrupted," the man from Galilee was a radical Jewish prophet, not God. But in an interview, Bart Ehrman says history doesn't have to undermine Christian faith.
By Gary Kamiya

... You say you don't believe that pursuing this kind of scholarship impacts one's belief. But I have difficulty understanding that. Once you begin to view the Bible as being humanly constructed, and study the history of how the biblical canon was constructed, it requires a mental schizophrenia to view the contingent, all-too-human doctrine that emerged from this process as something that contains the ultimate truth about the nature of reality. How do you reconcile those two ways of looking at the world?

Well, yeah, I can see how it would seem like schizophrenia ... But there are a lot of Christians who simply don't have that view of the Bible ... It's almost a peculiarly American version of Christianity that says that to be a Christian you have to believe in the Bible. It's actually a modern invention, located in America and wherever American missionaries have gone out. But historically, Christianity has never been about belief in the Bible. So that historical problems don't shake up people who have a historically grounded understanding of the Bible.

I take your point that there are many sophisticated Christians who don't believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. And yet, in order to be a Christian, one has to subscribe to the fundamental tenets that are in the Bible. That's not really an option, is it?

Well, you know, part of it comes down to a debate over what really is a Christian. A lot of sophisticated Christian thinkers, theologians and biblical scholars would say that you shouldn't have an essentialist understanding of Christianity. You can't just define Christianity and then gauge whether somebody is that or not. I have friends who don't believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead. But they still call themselves Christian, and they still believe Jesus is divine. They have a different understanding of what it means to be Christian from an evangelical understanding of what it means to be Christian ... http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/04/03/jesus_interrupted/

[54anickel]

5. Great article. Thanks for posting the link. n/t

[skepticscott]

8. Ehrman may have a point

that no particular version or description of Christianity can necessarily claim to be the one "true" version. But the question that remains unanswered by those who embrace certain aspects of the Bible and not others to cobble together their faith is, on what rational basis do they make those choices? If they're just choosing things that make them feel good or that seem right to them, without regard to any authenticity, while rejecting things that may have more scriptural support, what do they even need the Bible for in the first place?

[struggle4progress]

10. I cannot really answer your questions because I do not fully accept the underlying premises.

To me, religion represents what one choses as having an importance that cannot be negotiated away -- and standard religious groups approach such non-negotiable importance in mixed manner, which may incorporate appeals to standard texts, appeals to traditions, appeals to personal revelation, and so on. The significance resides, I think, not in an intellectual certainty that one has chosen some one "true" version, but rather in the possibility that the combination text-tradition-revelation can help one to live an authentic life that respects what is really important

Of course, living a real life (as opposed to merely dreaming) means that one must have eyes open to material realities, which constrain human options at every turn: our free will and our creativity are exercised in the context of our significant limitations. And when making some choices, it is better to obtain whatever facts one can first -- though we have no infinite luxury in doing so. But in choosing what we decide has ultimate and non-negotiable importance in our lives, perhaps more than mere rationality is required: rationality is, after all, only a half-brain activity. I'll concede instantly that there can be some value to asking suspiciously, Am I choosing this only because it makes me feel good or only because it seems right to me? -- but I do not take the point of view that I must reject a decision, merely because I had no better grounds for it, than that it made me feel good or seemed right to me

[skepticscott]

11. That might make a particle of sense

if there were any aspects of their religion that the kind of believers I'm talking about really DID regard as non-negotiable, but there are none such that would still be recognized as "religion" when everything else is stripped away. if you'd been paying any attention at all on this board, you'd have noticed that quite a while ago.

Nice try at erudition, but lousy success at saying anything meaningful.

[struggle4progress]

12. so it goes

:shrug:

[skepticscott]

13. Now THAT was meaningful

by comparison, anyway.

[struggle4progress]

14. "It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one

forget the other saying: that it must be lived -- forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position." -- Søren Kierkegaard, Journals 1843

The manager, at a ranch I once worked at long ago, had a cowhand version of this, about the fellow who always rode facing backwards on his horse so he could see where he'd been

If you simply want to sneer that so-and-so cannot give a completely rational account of his/her philosophy, then of course it is easy enough to do so, since no one has the infinite luxury of developing a thorough rationalization of his/her motives and views -- and for that reason the sneer is lazy and cheap

The point of my prior post was that one makes existential choices, that those choices must be made in the actual moments of life-as-it-is-lived, not in a nonexistent timeless abstract world, and that the verbal-logical hemisphere of the brain provides only half of the available mental resources for making the necessary existential decisions. A person might try to make some philosophical meta-decisions, establishing the basis on which s/he hopes to make future decisions in specific situations: this involves deciding in some general way what is really important, which is (in my view) an essentially religious decision

I think I said something like that clearly enough the first time. Expectedly, you merely come back with what sounds like a standard list of talking points -- and I find it boring to respond repeatedly to the same crib sheet

[skepticscott]

15. And Kierkegaard is right because......

he's Kierkegaard? Or because he happened to say something you could quote that supported your argument, without actually having any support itself, being merely a cute and erudite declaration (as opposed to an argument), that lesser beings are simply supposed to accept as self-evidently true?

And please...can you do no better than the tactic of dismissing what someone else has said by slapping the label "talking points" on it? That tactic was old almost before it was new, and is a symptom of either deep intellectual laziness or of knowing that you're in a losing argument.

[struggle4progress]

16. *yawn*

:boring:

[earthside]

4. Very Good Book.

I just finished reading it yesterday.

Ehrman is an easy to understand writer ... I am quite impressed with his style.

In this book he lays out the facts of the case clearly: the New Testament is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. This is a tough book for literalists and fundamentalists.

I recommend this book if "debunking" the Bible is a subject that interests you ... or if you want a better understanding of what is really going on in the New Testament from an historicial-critical perspective.

[MountainLaurel]

6. It's sitting on my "to read" shelf

I'm trying to decide whether I want to tackle Jacoby's "Freethinkers" first.

[piratefish08]

9. I just received this book from Amazon last week - I also ordered Godless by Dan Barker

I am almost done Godless and would highly recommend it as well - Barker was an evangelical preacher for almost 20 years before becoming an atheist...

I plan to start Jesus Interrupted this afternoon...