Suffering Job prayed to go there, why? If this is a literal place of fiery torment, why is Job asking to go there?

Job thought that God was the one causing his suffering, so he asked him to send him to She’ol, why?
Isaiah 38:18 ” For it is not She’ol that can laud you, death itself cannot praise you.
Those going down into the pit cannot look hopefully to your trueness”

The bible has just given us the answer as to what She’ol is, the pit, the hole where someone is buried, the definition of She’ol is the entire region or resting place of all the dead people that have died since the begining. Job knew that, and he asked God to take his life until his wrath turns away because Job was in agony.

She’ol is a place of inactivity.
Ecclesiastes 9:5-6
” For the living are conscious that they will die, but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.
Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun”

And in what state is She’ol in?
Ecclesiastes 9:10
” All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She’ol the place to which you are going”

That is the description that the bible gives on what She’ol’s status is, for a place of torment there seems to be absolutely nothing going on there.
That’s why is says to do whatever you wish to do with your very hands, meaning while your still alive, because in She’ol there is nothing, because while you are dead you are not conscious.

I’m getting a bit sick of talking in circles, so I’m going to have to stop here. If Sam Harris has a valid point here, then like him, you don’t seem able to articulate in the space available precisely what it is.

I will answer a few easy-to-answer questions, though.

You think the United States is unusual?

Yes, I do. US-style Evangelicalism is a minority, and largely unwelcome, phenomenon outside the United States.

Having said that, there certainly is a growth in Africa, largely due to the “mission” work of US Evangelicals. I put “mission” in quotations because they seem to be opposed to what most Christians think of by “mission” work. That’s a whole other rant, though.

Does the Episcopalian church reject the virgin birth as a whole or are you generalizing from a few examples of bishops not believing in it?

Neon Genesis is not strictly correct that the Episcopalian church “rejects the virgin birth”. The church doesn’t have an official position on the matter as far as I know.

There is, however, something of a rough consensus that pretty much all English-speaking Anglicans who have expressed an opinion on the topic, including the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, seem to agree with. The consensus is that belief in the virgin birth is not a requirement for Christianity.

There are, of course, find dissenters. Being a fairly large group worldwide, the Anglican communion does have an Evangelical wing who disagree with the consensus of the majority. However, Anglican Evangelicals on the whole tend towards the emerging church movement rather than US-style Evangelicalism. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Sydney in Australia.

The church has 2 million members, that’s not a lot in the scheme of things.

Or, to put it another way, 77 million members worldwide. Anglicanism is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and only just beating Methodism (about 75 million), the Reformed Churches (mostly Presbyterians and Congregationalists, around 75 million) and Lutheranism (about 70 million).

They don’t have a lot of members in the USA, but they have more influence than you might think.

Incidentally, you might be comparing Anglicanism with the Southern Baptist Convention. I said earlier that Christianity in the USA is unusual. Of all of the non-small churches in the world, the SBC is by far the most unusual.

For example, it’s probably the only Christian church with more than half a million or so members which is not a member of any international communion or other ecumenical group. It’s not a member of the WCC, not a member of the NCC and not even the World Baptist Council. In this sense, that the largest church in the United States is not in any way “mainstream” as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Thanks for an engaging discussion, Aj.

I didn’t ignore the paragraphs. I just didn’t have enough time to respond to them in my last post, as I had to leave in a hurry when I typed up my last response. Yes, there’s a lot of nonsense in ancient times, but so what? There’s lot of nonsense in modern times too. Please don’t get me started on ranting about why Zeitgeist is a horrible movie. But you miss my point that just because there’s a lot of nonsense that’s attributed to Jesus doesn’t mean you can’t draw inspiration from the verses attributed to Jesus that is NOT nonsense while discarding the non-nonsensical verses or do you think loving your neighbor is nonsense?

The nonsense of modern times isn’t collected into books that are then given authority by massive organisations and groups of organisations with massive membership, telling everyone it’s inspired by God, and the characters involved had direct lines to God, while they are encouraging and actively engaging in indoctrination of children.

If Christians were only reading Jesus as a historical figure that said some nice things (e.g. The Sermon on the Mount) like Thomas Jefferson thought then there would be no problem. Although as Thomas Jefferson found out, if you cut down the gospels so that it only includes those nice things then you’re not left with much.

Expect that’s not the representative view of Christianity as Christianity has never had a single representative view. Modern fundamenalist Christianity as we know is a modern invention that was created in response to the Enlightenment. As Karen Armstrong points out in her book The Bible-A Biography, fundamentalist Christianity in fact did not exist before the 19th century, contrary to the claims of fundamentalists. The Episcopalian church which Spong belongs to, for example, rejects the virgin birth and there were many Christians in the ancient world that didn’t believe in the virgin birth myth. The Gospel Of Mark, which is the earliest canon of the gospels, in fact does not say anything about Jesus being born of a virgin and this was written before the virgin birth was made, so I guess according to your logic, the author of the Gospel of Mark must not be a true believer. Likewise, not all Christians believe Jesus is God. In the fact, the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the bible at all and was made up later by the Catholic church.

I’ll concede that the virgin birth was not doctrine before the formation of the early church, and the various canonizations by the church fathers and later. Some Gospels didn’t make it into the Bible, and they were also varied, much of what is now common in Christianity wasn’t then. However this early period of the church with many different doctrines does not mean Christianity has never had a single representative view.

Does the Episcopalian church reject the virgin birth as a whole or are you generalizing from a few examples of bishops not believing in it? I’d like some surveys or some official documents declaring doctrine and canon like the Catholics have. The church has 2 million members, that’s not a lot in the scheme of things.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not about the belief that Jesus is God. Nontrinitarians believe Jesus is God, some don’t believe in the holy spirit, some don’t believe Jesus and God are two entities. The major Christian traditions believe in the Trinity.

The Unitarian Universalists…

Let anyone be a member and have no formal creed, they also number less than a million.

Nor do moderates believe Jesus is the speaker of absolute morality. I’ve already mentioned that Obama believes that the Golden Rule is found in all cultures and religions and among secular humanists, but you seem to just completely ignore anything I post that contradicts your argument.

It was the speaker of truth, and an example of absolute morality not the only expression of any morals that Christians agree with ever (the Old testament is older than Jesus for fucks sake). Not only are you responding to something I didn’t write again but you still managed to be wrong.

One minute you’ll say it’s not the mere existence of moderates that enables fundies but the actions of individuals that do. [CORRECT]

Yes, not only do I say that, not me, not Harris, not Dawkins said the existence of moderates enables anything, you made that up completely by yourself.

…then you turn around and say they’re enabling fundies by promoting faith…[CORRECT]

That's right, the action that enables extremists is the promoting of faith, already stated numerous times by me in this thread, it's in The God Delusion and The End of Faith.

…which contradicts your earlier denial that you’re generalizing all moderates given that most moderates have faith of some sort… [FAIL]

If I say something has an effect, and you say virtually all of that group does that something, how am I generalizing? No one is generalizing unless you are inferring that virtually all of the group does that something from specific cases you know about. Then the only person who could be generalizing is you.

And when I ask you how moderates enable fundies by promoting faith, then you turn around yet again and deny that’s what you mean. [FAIL]

Wrong: I count at least 5 times when I reaffirm this position, three times I explain it, and once I post an article written by Sam Harris explaining it.

I think I’ve tried to explain enough times already. It’s not that I change my arguments, it’s that you will not accept my arguments for what they are. I consistantly present the same viewpoint, and you consistantly misunderstand, and criticize the very same thing everytime that I have not said. If I was changing my argument then you wouldn’t be responding to with the same misrepresentation each time. Therefore to charge me with changing my arguments is a lie.

But you are changing your arugment. One minute you’ll say it’s not the mere existence of moderates that enables fundies but the actions of individuals that do. I then ask you how these individual moderates are enabling fundies, but then you turn around and say they’re enabling fundies by promoting faith, which contradicts your earlier denial that you’re generalizing all moderates given that most moderates have faith of some sort (the atheist bishop, Richard Holloway, would probably be one exemption). And when I ask you how moderates enable fundies by promoting faith, then you turn around yet again and deny that’s what you mean.

Christians view Jesus as God, born of a virgin, capable of various miracles, speaker of truth, and an example of absolute morality. Socrates was a man that might have existed, who has various ideas attributed to him. If you have trouble telling the difference between these attitudes then I can’t help you. If they don’t believe something like that then they’re hardly representative.

Expect that’s not the representative view of Christianity as Christianity has never had a single representative view. Modern fundamenalist Christianity as we know is a modern invention that was created in response to the Enlightenment. As Karen Armstrong points out in her book The Bible-A Biography, fundamentalist Christianity in fact did not exist before the 19th century, contrary to the claims of fundamentalists. The Episcopalian church which Spong belongs to, for example, rejects the virgin birth and there were many Christians in the ancient world that didn’t believe in the virgin birth myth. The Gospel Of Mark, which is the earliest canon of the gospels, in fact does not say anything about Jesus being born of a virgin and this was written before the virgin birth was made, so I guess according to your logic, the author of the Gospel of Mark must not be a true believer. Likewise, not all Christians believe Jesus is God. In the fact, the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the bible at all and was made up later by the Catholic church.

The Unitarian Universalists rejct the Trinity doctrine and believe Jesus was just a man and there were many ancient Christians, such as the adoptionists, who did not believe Jesus was God. Nor do moderates believe Jesus is the speaker of absolute morality. I’ve already mentioned that Obama believes that the Golden Rule is found in all cultures and religions and among secular humanists, but you seem to just completely ignore anything I post that contradicts your argument. You’re building a strawman argument against moderates by claiming they believe something that they don’t and your argument they’re not representatives if they don’t believe your outline of true Christian beliefs is just a No True Scotsman fallacy, as I already mentioned earlier. If you want to learn what moderates actually believe, you should visit the site religioustolerance.org, which I’m pretty sure I already linked to earlier. I also highly recommend reading the book Lost Christianities by Bart D Ehrman which explains in detail the diversity of ancient Christianity.

I understood your point and responded but you seem to have ignored the two paragraphs dealing with your point where I clearly refute these charges and explain what is actually meant. The paragraph you are responding to was quite clearly dealing with your examples of “ancient” ideas that were unusual.

I didn’t ignore the paragraphs. I just didn’t have enough time to respond to them in my last post, as I had to leave in a hurry when I typed up my last response. Yes, there’s a lot of nonsense in ancient times, but so what? There’s lot of nonsense in modern times too. Please don’t get me started on ranting about why Zeitgeist is a horrible movie. But you miss my point that just because there’s a lot of nonsense that’s attributed to Jesus doesn’t mean you can’t draw inspiration from the verses attributed to Jesus that is NOT nonsense while discarding the non-nonsensical verses or do you think loving your neighbor is nonsense? By the way, is it just me or does it seem like when I type up a response to the Friendly Atheist blog, it takes forever to load the text as I type it?

OK, you make a fair point. Here in Australia, the figure is far smaller than that.

If you’re saying that Harris’ argument is intended to be limited to the situation in the United States, it may make a bit more sense. Not only is the mix of religion in the United States extremely unusual, the education system (with its control by locally elected officials) is virtually unknown elsewhere. I can certainly see how the threat is greater there.

You think the United States is unusual? If you look at the acceptance of evolution polls then European countries are far better than the United States. Yet also look at the lack of belief in a personal God, lack of church attendence, cultural “Christianity” vs doctrinal “Christianity”. Then the difference between the number of people believing that evolution is false, two, three times as much doesn’t necessarily reflect the religious opinion of a country. Do you think South America, Islamic countries, Russia, China, and Africa are better than Western and Northern Europe?

You may think that effort is better spent elsewhere. In many cases, you may be right. But all this is perfectly legitimate scholarship.

You are right, all legimate scholarship better spent elsewhere. Also all techniques not specific to theology, and not coming together in a way that makes theology a novel subject separate from secular study of religion. None of which would explain what has come, and is still coming out of theology. The absence of certain elements are more telling than the elements left in.

This undermines your own earlier point. If 40% of people in the United States still believe in creationism, then polling the general population is the worst possible way to gauge progress in science. If some large proportion of the general population believe that everyone in Columbus’ day thought the Earth was flat, polling the general population is the worst possible way to gauge progress in history.

I thought I made it clear that the point was not to gauge the “progress” of theology but to contrast the changes between theologians and non-theologians to establish your view of representative religious moderatism that includes non-theologians. At least now you’ve said one group of theologians (neo-Orthodox) is representative I have something to go on.

I think I’ve tried to explain enough times already. It’s not that I change my arguments, it’s that you will not accept my arguments for what they are. I consistantly present the same viewpoint, and you consistantly misunderstand, and criticize the very same thing everytime that I have not said. If I was changing my argument then you wouldn’t be responding to with the same misrepresentation each time. Therefore to charge me with changing my arguments is a lie.

Christians view Jesus as God, born of a virgin, capable of various miracles, speaker of truth, and an example of absolute morality. Socrates was a man that might have existed, who has various ideas attributed to him. If you have trouble telling the difference between these attitudes then I can’t help you. If they don’t believe something like that then they’re hardly representative.

I understood your point and responded but you seem to have ignored the two paragraphs dealing with your point where I clearly refute these charges and explain what is actually meant. The paragraph you are responding to was quite clearly dealing with your examples of “ancient” ideas that were unusual.

Apart from rigorously denying that Sam Harris or myself make any argument involving “the actions of all moderate Christianity as a whole” numerous times you still keep coming up with charges including it. All I can say is shut up and learn to read. I don’t repeatedly ask you for evidence of claims that you don’t make, e.g. Provide evidence that a leopard’s spots are always equal. You didn’t say it, so I don’t ask.

Then please explain what it is you’re actually saying because as far a I can tell, it’s just a lot of gibberish, since anytime anyone responds to your post and you don’t agree with the response, you simply say that’s not what you mean and completely change your argument. If that’s not what you mean, then explain what you mean instead of just saying that’s not what you mean. Because so far I don’t understand a single point you’ve been trying to make because you keep changing your arguments.

Also, describing religion’s approach to ancient revelation and doctrine as gathering inspiration is disingenous. Sam Harris working under very different assumptions, that are far more realistic. Believers view of prophets and messiahs are not the same as atheist’s view of Socrates.

How is moderates’ views of Jesus different than a non-Christian’s views of Socrates? Chris Hedge, for example, is a liberal Christian and compares Jesus to Plato in his book American Fascists. Do you even know what moderates believe or do you get all your sources about moderates only from Sam Harris?

Once again your examples are truly insane. Thomas Paine, Diderot, or Robert Ingersoll are ancient? Ancient? Ancient? Secondly, anything in the 21st century? Any older than a decade is in the ancient past?

You’re completely missing my point. My point is that if anything ancient should automatically be discarded in modern times simply for being ancient as you seem to suggest, then the majority of philosophy like Epicurus and Plato would also have to be discarded yet you don’t hold other ancient writings to the same standards that you do Jesus.