UPDATE: This post was written in a rush. I’m not sure about the choice of the word “theology” here. Maybe “religion” might have been a better choice, or I could have talked about something like “mythos” or “mythology” instead. Whichever. Hopefully the thoughts I’m sharing are understood irrespective of the imperfect word choice. Words are never perfect…
Science is concerned with facts, with understanding how things work. This focus is what requires the removal of personal bias, logical fallacies, and thorough empirical testing of theories.
Theology, on the other hand, the way I see it, is mostly concerned with results. Borrowing words from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, 5-7) slightly out of context, theology is measured by the fruit it bears. An “argument from adverse consequences” might be a logical fallacy if you’re looking for the facts, but seems to be fair game in the world of theology. One regular on this blog suggested theology and religion will be replaced by philosophy. I do disagree. I think there’s a large piece of psychology involved. Seeing the psychology books on “my” pastor’s shelf is inspiring. Theology is, in my opinion, an example of memetic engineering: interpreting stories in ways that bring value to humanity.
Of course, if there’s one thing that is more frightening than scientific illiteracy amongst certain Christians, it must be theological illiteracy. Rampant theological illiteracy is the reason why Dawkins has a point, despite not writing a very good book. 
My mind is still milling on the topic of hell, I’m trying to find the best way to approach the topic. The purpose of the Childhood Indoctrination post was to serve as an intro to a short “blog arc”. Ditto for the tribalism posts, something to refer back to in some of the planned posts. The next post should have been written and published already, but my time is somewhat limited right now. (You know, holiday commitments and all, I have to go and see stuff… go play tourist.) I might get the post written on Monday or Tuesday, I hope. In the mean time, I’ve found a couple of interesting sources for more info, and am writing this post, in part, to share one of them.
Brian McLaren has written a book titled The Last Word and the Word After That, investigating the matter of hell in a dialogue. There is an interesting article on this matter on open source theology, which I will probably be drawing from numerous times, like I draw from Eagleton’s review. Now how does one get the typical Christian to read an article like that? Or books like that? Merely linking to it or recommending it is not enough. *sigh* (That *sigh* hides an explicit request that people with a “belief in the doctrine of hell” will go read that article.)
One snippet relevant to the topic of this post:
As the intersexual poet Pat says of hell: ‘Its purpose, not its substance, is the point’ (26).
Purpose. Myths works like that: mythological stories communicate ideas, they communicate “truths” rather than facts. This is their purpose, and this purpose is far more important than how close the story lines up with historical fact or with empirical reality.
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14 responses so far ↓
1 Ben-Jammin' // May 11, 2008 at 5:30 am
Which definition of theology are you using?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theology
FWIW, I just finished Jon Haught’s God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response To Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. At some point I’ll post my thoughts about it.
2 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 5:56 am
Consider this:
Often religious questions are answered with “it must be so, otherwise so-and-so”… argument from adverse consequences.
The thought came up while I was contemplating what I want to mention in an upcoming post on hell. “Hell must exist, because there has to be some kind of punishment for bad people.” A sense of divine judgement, belief in hell came from an argument from adverse consequences.
“You have to believe in God, otherwise the world goes down the gutter”. There are many examples.
As usual, I’m going with “functional definitions”, caring more about how things function in practise, than I do about typical wordings of definitions. The “What is God?” series hasn’t talked about classical definitions like “omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient”, being concerned more about “What is God, functionally, to the believer”.
3 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 7:34 am
Shucks, I’ve now written two posts that I have doubts about publishing.
First wrote one, and thought, naah, leave that one unpublished, it was good to write, to calm my mind. So then I write a second… and now I think the same of that one. Doh. I need a review board or something…
4 Kenneth Oberlander // May 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Ben-Jammin.
I would like to see what you think of the Jon Haught book. Do you have a blog address?
Thanks.
Hugo:
This is why they are called myths: stories, heavily edited, retconned, massaged, added to, subtracted from, transformed, manipulated and otherwise not true. They communicate “truths” (to use your terminology) that are wrong. The only importance I can attach to such stories is historical and contextual value. The inheritance of myth can be used to trace human migration and trade over time in the same manner surname inheritance can; they are artefacts and antiques of the past; hence their historical value. Contextual value in the sense that these myths also show the worldview of the humans who created or inherited these myths. They can give us a glimpse into how human morals have changed over time.
I’m not claiming that there are methods of “truth” transmission that are infallible. I am saying there are ways that are less fallible than myths.
5 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I think you underestimate the usefulness of myth. What about parables?
I wish people could be less negative about myths. It’s because “myth” has such a negative connotation that people don’t like their valued/cherished stories labelled as such. If “myth” weren’t a negative dismissal, but rather a kind of praise for a story, a pedestal for a story, people might be more open to elevating their stories to myth status.
Take the Wikipedia article on Myth:
That is the sense in which I want to use the word. But the popular usage messes with that:
Well, now I’ve practically duplicated Wikipedia here. I’ve been planning to write a post on this topic. It irritates me endlessly both that fundamentalists take myths as literal facts, and that atheists dismiss myths as “worthless lies”. What the hell is wrong with humans in this world? Grrr…
6 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 4:20 pm
(Or conversely, what is wrong with me?)
7 Kenneth Oberlander // May 11, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Well, a parable doesn’t fall under the definition of a myth as you describe it here ;-). To me, a parable serves as an expression of some aspect of morality, told in the form of an obviously fictional story. Myths, such as Genesis, or the Norse Niflheim, or the Greek Chaos, don’t try to exemplify any particular moral tale.
Well, this atheist has explicitly mentioned that myths are not worthless. Nor are they lies, in the sense that they aren’t deliberately being spread as truth. I just don’t think they are worthy of being elevated to the degree you seem to think. They are interesting, and some of them are marvellous stories. But that is all they are.
8 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 7:05 pm
True. I apologise for any madness and hyperbole earlier. I think much of it is still the after-effects of walking into a fundie lair last night. (I went to a braai.) The frustrations come out in all sorts of silly ways, especially as I refuse to let it come out in the way they’d expect, a way that would reinforce their silliness.
Looking back at your explanation of the value of myth and thinking about Genesis, from Genesis 1 and 2, to Noah’s flood, to the Tower of Babel… and thinking what other value I might find there. I’d maybe look into anthropological interests there, and something about the human psyche. How about how Rob Bell talks about Genesis 1:
Can you see value in that? Do you think he has a point? As a metaphorical story about the human condition? This would mostly be useful to those that are already Christians, that already have this story in their corpus, in their mythos. It’s a shared collection of “fireside stories” that can be used to discuss certain aspects of “being human”, i.e. the story can be a “tool”. Not that there aren’t better ways of discussing it, though, but stories do resonate with humans. We’re a story-telling species.
Oh, and note Rob Bell’s evasive techniques on not making a statement about whether it did happen or not. This is the unfortunate reality of trying to reach the most Christians. You build bridges, you present them. But you cannot insist that they have to cross. As soon as you do, the people that love that side of the river insist you’re a “heretic”, that you’re wrong, and they stop even listening or considering what you have to say. The very people the bridge needs to be presented to, stop even looking in the direction of the bridge. I take inspiration from this kind of thing on this blog. I’m trying to walk a fine line of not being too explicit. It keeps more fundies following and confused, while they ask my sister “so what is his opinion?” What they’re looking for: a simple label, so that they can decide whether to listen to you or ignore you. So I refuse to deal in labels. Let confusion reign, for educational/teaching purposes.
And yes, exposure to fundies make it very hard to stay on this difficult path, which is why I have these absurd knee-jerk reactions when I make sweeping and incorrect statements, and over-emphasize the value of myth. I’m trying to keep myself from falling into explicit anti-fundie rhetoric.
More silliness then: the story of the flood can be a story about “rebirth”. Yes, as can other fictional stories. The Matrix, for example? I’d love to elevate that to myth status.
On parables: of course, many of the myths you and I look at, would be “obviously fictitious” to us. But I know what you mean. I don’t think there are any people that would insist that parables were stories of things that really happened. (Maybe we’d be surprised though.
)
9 Hugo // May 11, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Sorry, Adam and Eve is Genesis 2 and 3, not Genesis 1.
10 Negate // May 11, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Imagination is important for us to be able to predict the future, and thus aids our survival. Perhaps this is why one should not look at theology from a viewpoint that it cant be empirical tested but from a view of what other benefits or drawbacks it has. Theology can also easily be a byproduct of being able to imagine things.
If any religion had objective standards, wouldn’t everyone be flocking to the same “true” religion? Instead we find that people tend to believe, to varying degrees, the religion in which they were indoctrinated. Hell probably plays a major role here. This is why I like Buddhism, it is just like reading about the life of jesus without the god which makes it more applicable to human experiences, allot scholars call Jesus the Buddha of the west.
11 Ben-Jammin' // May 12, 2008 at 1:43 am
http://rantsnraves.org/blog.php?u=310
12 Kenneth Oberlander // May 12, 2008 at 8:29 am
With reference to the Adam and Eve story, I’m not entirely certain that it is something I would want to teach kids, because it has little bearing on the human condition, to me at least…especially because it warns people off from searching for knowledge, not to mention the repulsive punishment of Adam and Eve’s children for the sin of their parents. So I can see it has historical value as the origin myth of Christianity, but not as a morality tale of the human condition.
I do agree that my approach, as you mentioned, makes it difficult to approach and positively engage fundamentalist thinkers.
13 Hugo // May 12, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Ah yes, what to teach kids. That is a whole ‘nother matter. Because all these fundamentalists, for all their talk of “becoming like children” (which is what Jesus taught, on entering the Kingdom), are unable to learn like children do. They are committed to their worldviews and their narratives. So when it comes to e.g. the Rob Bell quote above, it is something for Christians.
When it comes to things Jesus taught, and things to learn from early Christianity, I find it most remarkable how relevant it is, when you turn the tables around on fundamentalists. In that context, the teachings/lessons suddenly have so much relevance. Irony. And again, that’s something I hope to eventually blog about, further down the path of the “book exodus”. (The really good stuff is a couple of books down that journey, I’m insisting on tackling it chronologically.)
On raising children? I’ll probably not touch much on that topic on this blog, and rather refer curious people in need of some food for thought to Parenting Beyond Belief and the blog, The Meming of Life, for good food for thought.
14 Theology is Unavoidable for Christians (verses: Genesis 2 and 3) // Jun 25, 2008 at 11:51 pm
[...] how is this conclusion, this interpretation, reached? By appeal to consequences. Which is clearly fair game in theology. Maybe old understandings of God did not consider God to be as “infallible” as current [...]
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