by Vincent Skolny
A couple months ago, Unreasonable Faith published one of my articles explaining why all Christianity is necessarily Self Projection as God (SPAG). A common confusion about (or maybe a regular misrepresentation of) SPAG is that it applies only to fundamentalist or ultraconservative Christians who attempt to harmonize the bible.
That’s not the case.
Harmonizing Passages
In some sense, SPAG depends on an incoherent bible. A true and cogent religious revelation would make faithfulness possible. Lacking one, faithfulness is a meaningless term and the Christian, to be a Christian, must construct a god and define faithfulness to it.
That’s the point of the confusion: Self Projection as God is necessary because the bible is unintelligible and false, but it doesn’t depend on the Christian’s effort to harmonize the bible. It only depends on the Christian’s decision to rationalize the bible.
Once that decision has been made, the methods of rationalizing the incoherency will vary just as the SPAGs’ contents will vary. They’ll vary with individual Christians, but they’re all Self Projections as God.
Remember that Christians agree only that some parts of the bible don’t count. They don’t agree what those parts are nor do they agree on what to do with those parts. All Christians won’t proceed in the same manner, but they will each proceed with the same purpose: to rationalize the bible in a way that’s personally pleasing.
Some Christians do that by attempting a biblical harmony. Most do not.
Of course, the fundamentalists’ preferences in harmonizing the bible are SPAGs. Some fundies try to harmonize the bible around the idea that God wants to save all humans. Others try to harmonize it around the idea that God arbitrarily saves some and condemns others. The bible says both, so it’s “harmonized” according to which sort of god a particular fundamentalist prefers.
But why is that different from the liberal Christian who SPAGs a universalist god and simply doesn’t believe the verses about hell and has no interest in harmonizing them?
How are either the fundy or the liberal unlike the moderate Christian that declares god chooses for salvation those he “foresaw” accepting his offer of salvation and explains away opposing verses with clever hermeneutics or nifty biblical criticisms?
Aren’t they all doing exactly the same thing—choosing which parts of the bible to embrace and how to deal with pieces that don’t fit?
If they’re not, why do they each have proof texts?
The difference between fundies and liberals and every Christian on the continuum between them isn’t the fact of SPAG. The difference is in the verses they choose to SPAG and what they do with the verses that don’t fit their SPAGs—whether forcing the pieces in (fundies), throwing the pieces away (liberals), or trimming the pieces to shape (moderates).
SPAG doesn’t depend on the Christian denying that the bible is rife with contraries and contradictions, but only upon her or his unwillingness to reject the bible and its (SPAGged) god because of that fact.
The Liberal SPAG
Let’s consider the most liberal thinking Christians among the confessing populace, the ones that not only accept and even embrace the errors, but also reject the physical and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It would be gratuitous to name the bible verses and passages that say otherwise — from the legends of empty tombs, through claims of physical manifestations of the risen Jesus like the famous tale of Doubting Thomas, to Paul’s declaration that if Christ is not risen, then Christians are the most pitiable of all humans — yet the liberal Christian rejects the physical resurrection, choosing instead to believe a spiritual resurrection, a metaphor of social liberation, or simply no resurrection at all.
Still, that Christian (rejecting what the majority of Christians declares to be the central doctrine of faith) remains a Christian and does not reject the tales of Jesus as he or she rejects the tales of Zeus or Thor or Allah.
The resurrection-denying Christian still embraces as ultimately true both the bible and the god that it reveals. As does every other Christian, she or he does so precisely according to his or her own needs and preferences.
All Christianity is Self-Projection as God.
Vincent Skolny is an entrepreneur and founder of The Avangelism Project
Much of what you wrote is fair, but I was surprised that you make no mention of liberal Christians like Marcus Borg, for instance, for whom the aim at least in theory is not to pick and choose what one likes, but apply historical criticism to early Christian writings.
Also, many liberal Christians, precisely because they appreciate myth as myth, can appreciate and even learn from texts from other religious traditions.
Thanks for the comment, James.
I think Borg falls widely under the “most liberal thinking Christians among the confessing populace” that “embrace the errors.” The tools he uses are unique, but he’s really done nothing more than throw away what he doesn’t like and reconstruct the bible to arrive at a peculiar Jesus story to which he attaches meaning.
Thanks for posting; Avangelism is a concept that deserves to be widely known.
I’m happy to be published here. Thank you. :)
James F. McGrath, if a liberal Christian can learn from other religious texts, wouldn’t that make them a little less Christian, and a little bit more Pantheist?
No.
Perhaps not. But it certainly puts the Bible on equal footing with other religious texts that make contradictory claims. I assume that what allows someone to remain a Christian while learning from these other religions is the rejection of those parts that contradict the Bible, just as they reject the parts of the Bible that does not agree with their particular SPAG.
It’s more than that.
If a Christian were to profess belief in the god(s) of other religious texts, that person could be rightfully called a few things, but pantheist would not be one of them.
Polytheist, believing in many gods.
Pluralist, believing that there are many names and many stories, but all of them bear witness to one god.
Traditional Christian professing that Christianity does not have a monopoly on the Kingdom of God, God’s revelation, or truth.
Perhaps that’s what the comment was getting at and just used the incorrect term, pantheist? I’m not sure, but regardless, appreciating and learning from other religions does not make a Christian a pantheist.
This is such a gross and obvious reduction of what we Christians do that it’s impossible to engage you in any constructive dialogue about your claims.
Vince, on your site you claim to be a former preacher. I don’t know of what stripe, but I’m going to guess conservative based on the way that you misrepresent liberal and progressive Christianity. But even if I’m wrong on that point, I think I’m on firm ground when I say that you must know full well that the comment I quoted above reduces the Christian experience of owning one’s own faith through interacting with Scripture, tradition, and the church so far that it breaks dialogue.
In other words, have fun with your strawman.
@brgulker
The only thing that breaks dialog are dishonest believers who have little interest in considering that they could be wrong. If you don’t agree with the quote you posted, why not tell us why, or show how it breaks down.
I second that. The “reduction” is not obvious to me. Please explain.
“As does every other Christian, she or he does so precisely according to his or her own needs and preferences.”
nomad, with respect, if you think the process for me can be simply and accurately be reduced to “this feels good, so I’ll believe it,” then there’s probably not much more I could say.
I prefer pepperoni pizza over sausage pizza. I prefer Christianity over Islam. In both sentences, “prefer” can be used properly and accurately. But they hardly describe the same process by which I arrived at the “preference.” Vince portrays matters of faith as “picking and choosing” what bible verses feel good to the particular person. Certainly that is (a small) part of what’s going on, but it’s hardly the only thing going on.
” if you think ”
I’m not asking you what “I” think. I’m asking what “you” think.
“Certainly that is (a small) part of what’s going on, but it’s hardly the only thing going on.”
Fine. What’s the “big” part?
Fine. What’s the “big” part?
I will only speak for me. Years of studying Philosophy. Years of studying Psychology. Years of studying Biblical Scholarship and Biblical Criticism. Years of studying Systematic Theology. Years of seeking advice and council from people of different faith (and sometimes nonfaith) perspectives. This list could go on.
Sure, at the end of the day, I “prefer” some beliefs over others in that I’m choosing what to believe and what not to believe. But the process of arriving at those choices can not be accurately described by the word “preference,” as it’s commonly used in the English language. As I said, I prefer pepperoni pizza.
The process I’ve briefly described simply cannot be whittled down to “picking and choosing verses.” Have I picked and chosen verses? Well, I wouldn’t put it that way at all, but yes, I have. Is that all that’s happening? Hardly. In fact, it’s one of the least important pieces of the things I mentioned.
I will only speak for me. Years of studying Philosophy. Years of studying Psychology. Years of studying Biblical Scholarship and Biblical Criticism. Years of studying Systematic Theology. Years of seeking advice and council from people of different faith (and sometimes nonfaith) perspectives. This list could go on.
Then please continue the list because I don’t see anything here that is anything other than giving you background for which verses you prefer over others. Full stop. Your education has given you a filter that you read the Bible through and because of that filter you have constructed a version of Christianity that speaks to you.
And that’s fine – I think that is the kind of process of self-discovery that every human being needs to undertake for themselves. But that tells you about yourself. To then turn that around and say that your discoveries – your personal filter – somehow puts you so in touch with some kind of underlying universal truth that is true for everyone else (and when you call that “universal truth” “God” and prop it up to make it the creator of the universe who has a plan in motion for all of us that’s EXACTLY what it looks like you’re doing) seems very wrong to me. What your education has shown you could be a universal truth, I suppose, but it’s completely unprovable. And my own wanderings through psychology, philosophy, comparative religion, physics, mathematics and other areas have led me somewhere completely different than you clearly are. Does that mean that you’ve found universal truth and I haven’t? Or does that mean that I’ve found universal truth and you haven’t? Or, and this might just be crazy talk, does that mean that perhaps there’s no such thing as universal truth in areas like this and every person is on a journey to find what works best for themselves?
If it’s the latter, then when you call your own personal found truth “God” then I suggest that you’re doing exactly what Vince suggests.
Jer: “you have constructed a version of Christianity that speaks to you”
well said. Every “religious” person constructs their own personal Jesus – their own heavenly Father. Brgulker may have his personal Jesus a little more refined and cosmopolitan than most. Nevertheless it is a powerful psychological construct – so powerful it would lead you to gleefully blow yourself up or spend 20 hours in a soup kitchen feeding the poor or kneeling down before statues practicing the something we call prayer: how to do nothing and still think you’re helping :)
Essentially, “pick and choose” is a cheap and tawdry way to describe the education, research and questioning and agonizing soul searching you’ve done.
At the end of the day you still believe and still consider some verses to be more true/correct than other verses.
Yet you disagree with article?
You have studied and debated internally and externally which virtues and aspects of god sound like they’re true and modeled yourself after what god you’ve created that is true to you in the process. You can’t really put that in a different category just because someone describes it with less complexity. I mean, we are speaking English here, you don’t say well, that might be true for some people, but not for me! I really studied it hard before I made my choices.
I wrote a lot more that I think is still relevant in the last post about SPAG. I don’t really make an exception for religion. I have concluded, however, this message about SPAG is not news. It may seem like news to Christians, who carefully assume their way is the only way and if they were to choose another, they would be damned to hell. Many do not know how they choose, or that they can choose – you want people to join your church instead of the one on a different corner, and the things that you tell them about your church and the things they believe in there are either going to appeal to who they are or not. If the pitch does appeal, they are finding the warm cozy god that they PREFER over another variation of the personality and will of god. Hey, this god they talk about in this church really won me over. Just like you PREFER one brand of underwear over another brand – they don’t pinch and ride up and the elastic lasts the longest, these aspects are important to you, while some may say they don’t come in any other color but white, and choose another brand. You are both deciding what defines an ideal pair of underpants, and using preferences to settle on one or another, two different styles. They are both underpants, but you wouldn’t try the kind he likes better, and he is stifled by yours. Neither of you sewed them yourself, but the market listened to consumer preferences and made them to sell to you, and they both sell pretty well to people who wear underwear.
Who has the straw man? Is this not how it is with Christianity? Or all religions?
Theists would surely love your blasphemous analogy of underwear to their personal saviours! ^_^
I don’t read anything in the quote you cited to imply that the “preference” isn’t based on thought or research as you seem to indicate yours is. Nonetheless, a preference is a preference whether based on a gut feeling or on educated research.
My deeper question is why you think your preference is right or true.
FWIW, based on my own experience as a former liberal christian, I think far for christians go with a “this just feels right” approach than the drawn out reserach approach you describe.
Really, the dishonest card again? That one is tiiiiiiiired. I can assure you, I’m not a dishonest person, though somehow I doubt you’ll believe that. But regardless, can’t you do better? If you’re going to start your comments to me with insults, at least be creative.
As to my willingness to consider if I’m wrong or not, well, since you’ve already written me off based on one comment, I’m not even going to bother.
Here’s why the dialog breaks down:
The onus is on the person making the assertion. Here’s the assertion that has been made, not once, but twice here at UF by Vince: that all believers necessarily project themselves as god.
I’ve bolded two words in order to emphasize the magnitude of the claim. Vince has made a claim about millions and millions of people (all) and on top of that claimed that his conclusions about how Christians think and act are the only, and in fact, necessary conclusions.
The only supporting argument that he made here (and it’s essentially a repeat of what he offered last time) is that believers “pick and choose” from the bible.
Here’s his entire argument, in a nutshell:
Believers don’t believe every single thing in the bible. Therefore, all believers necessarily SPAG
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. The connections he draws with liberal Christianity are, by his own admission, irrelevant.
In the first place, it’s a strawman — because it reduces the Christian experience to a matter of preference, which is simply is not — at least not necessarily and certainly not for all. I’ve written in the comments and forum here, as well as my own blog, about what my own experience of faith has been. It certainly has not been, “This is what feels good to me, so I’ll believe it.” In the second place, it’s a complete non sequitur. The conclusion simply does not follow from the premise.
IMO, for these reasons, there’s literally nowhere else to go with the conversation. Vince is consciously choosing to misrepresent my faith, and on top of that, he’s telling me that his misrepresentation is the only and necessary possibility. In other words, there is literally nothing I could say that he would consider, because he’s already discovered the ultimate, finally, and only logically possible conclusion.
A dialog requires conversation partners. I, nor any other believer regardless of their specific perspective, can have a meaningful conversation about a strawman that is presumed to be the only possibility. In Vince’s view (or at least the one presented here), the conversation is already over — all of us SPAG, and the only thing left for us to do is realize it, admit it, and renounce our faith.
I can’t have a dialog with him any more than you could have a dialog about atheism with Jehovah’s Witnesses who showed up on your doorstep. Sure, you could try, but at the end of the day, would it have really been a meaningful dialog? Or, would it be much more likely that all involved were just spinning their wheels?
It might be hard for you to see it from inside, but it’s true. You would leave that church if it told you something you’ve already decided wasn’t true, wouldn’t you? Another church tells you about a cool new god and you don’t believe it, right? Are all possible gods true or just the one you think is the best?
I think you are mixing up the word preference somehow. You may agree to things that make you less comfortable, but you’ve decided they are the right way to go about worship. I am having a hard time understanding how you are not seeing this, except that you have found your religious beliefs especially truer than any other way to go about it, and think that somehow is more special than how Vince described it. I am always saying that the farther away you get from a fundamental biblical god, the less plausible god gets, not more, and this fundie god isn’t so plausible to begin with, or else people wouldn’t try to outsmart and improve upon him. So yeah, if you are thinking and studying these messages with any degree of intelligence in the matter, you are consciously drawing out of it what you want to get out of it, and putting back in what you agree to put back into it, for god’s sake. You are projecting a god from your own mind, agreeing with the god you would listen to. I guess that sounds a little disrespectful, so you get heated, but that’s what you do.
Here are my old posts from Vince’s last article:
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/10/13/christianity-is-self-projection-as-god/#comment-66350
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/10/13/christianity-is-self-projection-as-god/#comment-66354
The second was in response to you but you didn’t follow up. I can’t keep saying the same things every time… well I can, but I don’t have time to repeat myself, just because this issue keeps coming up.
Brgulker is just airing his persecution complex again. “Look at the mean atheists, they are saying things that are essentially true but in a mean way, boo hoo.”
I see that, but I can also understand why he thinks he’s the exception. I guess everyone thinks they’re an exception when someone makes a blanket statement. When people follow along with what “feels right,” maybe he’s saying it’s not what feels good to him, but rather that he studied and concluded a god that seems most possible, admittedly a process most do not go through. It is rather like, he wanted something he saw in the store and rather than impulsively buy it, he studied items like it, looked for consumer reports and reviews, checked his bank account and ultimately bought a more practical item, not the best one or the one he thought would really make him happy. It’s not different, but I can see why he thinks that it is.
The problem is we invariably and regrettably associate Christ with “church”, ie religious pooh and its all too obvious after reading Vince’s sad and all too common story that he was, for a long time caught in a religious formality which is always oppressive, life sucking (suffocating) and the very thing that JC saved his harshest rebukes and repudiations for, ie the “religious” leaders and religion. Mix in seminary, a bunch of pious churchy folks and functions and all that’s left is a lifeless form and ritual, good for him for getting out!
What he doesnt yet realize is that this thing he calls “deconverting” is actually a move toward God who is Life and Liberty and who would have us free from the binding shakles of religion. Vince couragously followed his heart in rejecting the very thing that was the source of his oppression. He thinks he rejected Christ but no, when we follow our hearts into freedom we (ironically and unknowingly) always move toward Him because that’s who He is…Freedom. His (real) journey is not over, just beginning.
So, in a sort of reverse awakening or epiphany which is really a healthy revolt and unshackling of the chains that had held him down for so long he thinks he has some new revelation, ie SPAG (religious pooh in reverse) and that vengeance on his former captors (religionists) provides some measure of justice, retribution for time served in its merciless grasp and so he now crusades against the former tyrants. This too will wane in time, will fade as it will provide no more relief to him than did his prior religious experience no matter how stringent and devoted he now appears.
And so man runs himself in weary circles until he comes to the very end of his tired self. Then, only then he has a visit, a Visitor.
Nah, I associate “christ” with baloney and make believe and a irrational fear of the unknown.
If you get what SPAG is trying to… sorry, to me, SPAG means spaghetti, so it makes me too hungry to use the term. SPAGAP (Self-Projection as God as Pasta).
Let’s try again. No, John, you’ve got it all wrong when you think you have it right. You are using terms to define the god you believe in. You want from him what you tell him to give you, and you feel it because you are calling what you feel “god.” If god is light, love, freedom to you, good for you. You are telling someone who doesn’t have the crazies like you that his journey is just beginning and that he will arrive at christ one day – HOW DARE YOU! Where did you get that addled idea that others have the same emotional garbage that you do about your imaginary friend? Most of us do comprehend that religion, or church, is a set of funky “rules” that don’t make sense and commit to a restraint of a community by being taught to behave by some priest figure, and I think in a philosophical way, fucking understand the difference between that and hallucinations that you describe. It has a power over you because you welcomed it, because you interpreted what you think is real. There is no need for you to hammer away at people, and there is certainly no reason at all for you to rewrite the article in John C language. That is SPAVS (Self-Projection as Vincent Skolny), and you have some nerve talking for other people like that.
Thank you for articulating exactly what I wanted to say about John C’s arrogance and presumption.
No arrogance, no presumption but heaps and heaps of personal experience in this area for many years now. Besides, I’m only deducing from his own website and story, the rest is pretty easy to put together if ya know how things go in these saga’s.
All the best Karleigh and Happy Holidays to you and yours.
But then again, by your own admission you’ve been an “atheist your full life” so you have never believed, nor “deconverted” so the only “reasonable” conclusion one may arrive at regarding the topic at hand is that you really dont know, you couldnt possibly know could ya? So, maybe someone who’s been dealing with this sort for a quarter century may (just possibly) have some insight that you do not, crazy I know but nevertheless it remains at least a mild possibility.
Merry Christmas (Happy Holidays) Kodie, I really do appreciate and value you even though we differ, but hey we could start a new world trend just the two of us by caring for one another-anyway! Just a thought, all the best.
But I still don’t see why this self-evident, internal truth doesn’t reveal itself spontaneously everywhere, but must be, necessarily, given by someone with at least a modicum of knowledge of it.
I mean, people built airplanes in France, America and New Zealand, independently, and flew their respective crafts without ever knowing someone else did, because aerodynamics holds true for everyone, everywhere. But people don’t spontaneously discover your inChrist: instead, they end with a myriad vastly different gods. Why is that?
Just two quick points. First, no religious or cultural tradition is hermetically sealed. Christians have always drawn on and interacted with contemporary religious and philosophical currents. And so to say that doing so makes one ‘less Christian’ means saying that Christianity has always been ‘less Christian. But in that case ‘less Christian’ than what?!
Second, religious traditions are like cultures. If I am open to learning from other culures, am I automatically ‘less American’? That sounds like the viewpoint of nationalism rather than reason.
It’s a really eclectic religion to begin with; a synthesis of Judaism, Paganism and Zoroastrianism.
And Hellenistic philosophy, to boot!
You are on the right track.
“‘less Christian’ than what?!”
Than tradition.
Any religion is susceptible to being less of what it is/was when tradition is altered.
But there is no static tradition. It is not as though Christianity has been the same thing unchanging for 2,000 years, or even for a century at any given time. Sure, there are conservative who CLAIM that they preserve tradition faithfully and without change. But the claim should not be accepted uncritically, and under careful examination will prove to be false.
Tradition is never is static. It only has the illusion of being so. But its still tradition.
Well, if Christianity were a true path, are people getting closer to it by interpreting it in the current age or farther away from it? If people still don’t have this hammered out for sure over 2000 years later, why are they still trying? How do they know they’re doing it right and someone else is doing it wrong?
That’s not the same thing as nationalism, sorry, or a culture. It has a cultural significance that cannot be denied, but people don’t act as though that’s what they’re in it for. They want meaning and salvation and heavenly rewards. Anything they get in that regard all for turning their life to christ is whatever they think feels most right. The message doesn’t come from god, even if they claim to hear it.
“Signs” and any prayer that appears to have been answered in the affirmative lead them if they want to see signs, and do not lead them there if they choose to ignore these signs as coincidences. I can right now, say “god, send me a sign for the serious question I’m about to ask” and report back a series of events, voluntarily agree to be stunned and a little freaked out at the “accuracy” of these events, and hypothetically get right with the lord after that. I won’t, but that’s generally what happens. I know some freaky mormons who got married because of a fortune cookie. Does that make sense to you? You’re allowed to disregard “signs” unless you agree to adhere to them, watch them, base your life decisions on them – that’s just doing what you wanted to do and looking for a handy excuse. If I told you the Chinese food gave them food poisoning too, well, do you think they followed that sign and decided not to get married? I don’t have that answer, but I feel very strongly they would have ignored that sign because they wanted to listen to the fortune cookie instead.
Same thing. If there’s anything like a true Christianity, it wouldn’t have to be dissected and studied – everyone would just agree. There would be no liberal sects or conservative sects. People get under the hood and fiddle around with well this might be god, that might be god. I feel really superstitiously in tune toward this particular god, and that one just makes me feel excluded, and the church is too modern inside. That’s a cultural leaning, yes.
If you want to compare that to being a “true American,” we go to the constitution. We can spend time interpreting the articles and the amendments, but that’s why we have a SCOTUS. Culturally, we have a few rights on hand that none of us forget, but not everyone understands them the same way: Freedom of Speech is a huge one. Some people would say Dissent makes you UnAmerican, and many would say that makes you MOST American. Freedom of Speech protects people who speak against the War in Iraq, who speak against the Health Care Reform, and/or who speak against having a black family next door, and to assemble peacefully. At the end of the day, we have rights and laws, but no promises when we are dead, no maker, just protections while we live in this land and provisions to evolve that to make the language more clear and applicable to the times we live in. It was written in language meant to apply to all times and to be clarified for unforeseeable situations.
Christianity doesn’t offer provisions other than when you die, you are “saved.” It’s not about deeds, so do what you will. It’s not about deeds, but god makes us be moral, so that without god, we wouldn’t have that ability. It’s not about deeds, but god gives us free will, and we use that free will to abstain from premarital sex, alcohol, and dancing. We don’t know, we’re just making it up and judging people who we can know by their fruits they are going to heaven like us or have got it very unfortunately wrong. Is the bible like the constitution, meant to apply to all times and be clarified for unforeseeable situations? An omniscient eternal god with a plan would have known it would not apply in the future, and know that humans would botch it – they botch everything since the beginning. If you do not believe in an omniscient god, I don’t know why you’d glorify him and try to figure out what he wants you to do.
You are taking one particular “conservative” Christian group’s definition of Christianity and assuming that all liberal Christians are interested in the same things and understand it in the same way. I thought we were discussing liberal Christianity for the moment.
That doesn’t make it less false. Not even a little.
I’m not really taking any particular view of Christianity, and I’m just using an example from what I understand, not saying you, if you are a liberal Christian, agree with the statements that I used for an example.
Let’s start with the bible, though. If followed to the letter, I understand it contradicts not only reality, but itself. If attempted to follow it to the letter, a Christian is very conservative indeed. While yeah, the bible also has some particular pearls of wisdom in it, it also includes something of a history of the region and some things that were true at the time, and some things that applied to the culture we are reading about. The liberal Christian, if I understand the term correctly, will dismiss large parts of this book as being inapplicable to today’s living, regional laws, allegory, myth, and crazy things they used to think before we understood the world and the universe better, but regards the wisdom as instruction or good philosophy, and retains the necessity of a supernatural god being. Even further away, you get weirdo Christian Atheists, who like the philosophy in particular but do not believe it is delivered from god, although they may believe Jesus was a real person like Gautama Buddha, Confucius, or Will Rogers, and said wise things. At least I can partially understand, they are just Christ fanbois, and not actually theists.
Where you are, being Christian and also being far far far from interpreting the bible literally, is a mysterious place to me. Buying it whole is obviously foolish to you, but you still buy it as god’s word. Was he writing a history book or a fable or an instruction manual? I mean, after discarding the parts that don’t fit in your life, you still manage to believe in god, don’t you?
As an atheist my full life, pretty much, I have asked myself hard questions about a possible god. You know, I don’t ignore god, I have wondered if I was wrong just to check myself. One of the things I used to think maybe why there are so many religions was that god told everyone about himself in whatever language they could understand, so instead of fighting, they should figure this out and get along. That didn’t hold water very long – people in different cultures made myths and fables to go by, this is common to humanity, and a god worthy of worship and glory wouldn’t have botched it. Any possible liberal variation of god I could come up with fails at being plausible. The conservative one is preposterous, you and I agree, but I think it’s probably the most sensible. Liberal Christians are easier to live amongst, but I don’t get the justifications. Once you start to form a more comfortable god to your liking, you are pro-actively making him up, just as the ancients did.
How about SPAE, Self Projection as Everything?
If we make assertions about who we are, or the fundamental nature of reality… all we can say is “don’t know.” The rest is making and holding ideas.
Truth!
People project their own egos and ASSumptions into everything. The idea that any “next world”, christian, new-age, anything, would be remotely like this life is ridiculous in the extreme.
The mythologies have always projected deities in humans’ own ugly image. Angels have hierarchies for Chrissake! The christian god is a self-centered, egotistical, very large and powerful, and rather nasty, person. The notion of god or christ as some kind of royalty or landed gentry – prince, king, lord, etc., is just as ludicrous. It’s projecting the human ego’s need for government, rank, position, power, and authority onto the entire universe…. and, of course, onto the christians’ mythology about the universe.
I think this argument is utterly ridiculous. How is this different from what every single human being does with their morality? If Christianity is necessarily self projection, then so are all moral choices, and so are all worldviews, no matter what they are. If that is the case, then it makes sense to regard self-projection as an underlying tenet of all morality: I do what seems right to me, no matter how I justify it to myself.
This might even be trivially true, but it effectively avoids any useful ethical moral or ethical standards. Making a blanket statement that all X are Y isn’t the problem, the problem is that this argument wants me to believe that all X are *nothing but* Y.
The major difference is that you have a supernatural belief and in part, at least, believe that you’re acting to favor him, and some people even believe their actions are caused by him. So when they get that nagging feeling they should help someone pick up the packages they dropped instead of walk past and hurry on their way, they might say that was god steering them right. When they don’t have the urge to kill someone every day, they think that absence of urge is due to their belief that Jesus is their savior, that without their belief, they would be filled with the urge to kill and no reason not to, or they’d be the tool of the devil in any case. It doesn’t matter that when they do sinful things, like, say, adultery – we’ll agree that nobody likes a cheater, right? – that it was because of free will, not that they stopped believing in Jesus and they immediately (once caught) ask forgiveness, because Jesus is handy that way.
On the whole, yeah, we all do have morals that we justify. Not everyone’s as good as can be, but they think they’re as good as they need to be or place that as a goal. It’s just that some people have a supernatural excuse, i.e. god’s ok with me looking at porn because I like to look at porn, vs. some other guy who claims he won’t look at porn because that’s committing adultery, i.e. when he looks at porn, he feels guilt and shame, an emotion he’s defined as part of his relationship with god rather than a function of his brain chemistry and maybe how he was brought up. The first guy doesn’t feel pangs, but rather justifies this beauty he looks upon as god’s fine creations (even if the boobs are fake).
Two similar guys who are atheists may have similar reactions, but they won’t define them or justify them supernaturally, that is, believe in a god who agrees with them, so whatever it is they end up liking to do or pray forgiveness, they’ll still get into heaven no matter what. The major difference is, we don’t believe there is a heaven. Whatever we do has to sit right with us as the ultimate – we are not designing a supernatural figure to give us permission to behave a certain way.
Yep. It’s that added layer of supernatural authority that’s the problem. It’s not just saying, “I think this thing is true,” anymore. It now becomes, “GOD thinks this thing is true,” which attempts to place ultimate moral authority on what are essentially your own personal preferences.
But here’s the thing. AS soon as we say that everyone thinks the way they live is the best way to live, we are all fundamentally doing the same thing. Tacking a God onto it is entirely superficial, but it seems to be the OP’s entire gripe. Shouldn’t the gripe be “Self Projection,” rather than “As God?”
Say you believe tenet X. You tell yourself that you believe X because of Y. You actually believe X because of Z (which is in all cases: because X is what you want to do.)
I believe tenet Q. I tell myself that I believe tenet Q because of R. I actually believe Q because of S (which is in all cases: because Q is what I want to do.)
What you are telling me is that the *only* problem is that I have chosen to justify my beliefs with R rather than with Y.
Telling me that I am wrong to choose R as a justification, and that I should instead choose Y, is actually really problematic because it “attempts to place ultimate moral authority on what are essentially your own personal preferences.
Why on earth should it matter how I justify my beliefs and actions to myself? Do my justifications matter if I nuke Tokyo? Not at all. Do my justifications matter if I go out of my way to save someone’s life? No: I’ve still saved someone’s life; they are alive because of actions I took. It doesn’t matter if those were the actions that made me happy, I did them, I can be judged on them, they can be productive and helpful or destructive and unhelpful no matter what my justification for them is.
Now, if we would like to shift the argument to something along the lines of “Christianity does not teach, nor do Christians do, morally acceptable things” then lets do that. I think that’s is a far more useful argument than “Christians are justifying their beliefs incorrectly, just like everyone else except for the people who realize that all morality is self-projection…” I’m tired of the argument, it is not meaningful.
You are tacking god on superficially, not us!
If you know what you want to do and you justify it with a god, you are the one making that god up, to say “I’ve done this act for god,” and because he’s GOD. If god were real, wouldn’t he tell you what to do? Would you have to figure it out on your own, and wait to hear back from him that it was right or very wrong thing to do?
YES, people justify things they do all the time, but we are talking about a supernatural figure who is “unknowable,” yet whom you still find reason to worship, and by doing so, figure him to be a lot like you want to be, and favor things you like to do, and tells you not to do things you are tempted to do but twitch over whether to do them anyway because they feel good. If God was a god, you would know who he was and not create him as your imaginary justification. It creates a paradox (or something) where god cannot be real, or at least not really who you like to think he is. Reread your own stuff. It’s like you are missing it entirely.
My real gripe is that attaching an ultimate supernatural authority ends all discussion.
If I say, “I want to do X” and you don’t want me to do X, we can generally begin negotiations. If you say, “GOD wants me to do X” it generally ends the discussion before it can begin.
Look, I’ve been a deeply religious person. I know that for most religious people, even considering negotiation with another party when dealing with matters of faith is considered a failing. It’s why the abortion and gay rights topics are so full of vitriol. Generally, one side is absolutely unwilling to waver when the issue is seen as a moral imperative from GOD.
Now that I am no longer religious, I can’t really think of any current social issue I would take that same sort of absolutist stance on. There is no absolute moral authority, there’s just us trying to figure out how to keep the wheels from falling off of civilization. And I’m willing to do some give and take to keep that from happening.
Again, GOD is a problem because GOD ends discussion, it doesn’t begin it.
“So when they get that nagging feeling they should help someone pick up the packages they dropped instead of walk past and hurry on their way, they might say that was god steering them right. ”
They *might*, sure, but the argument is that they cannot do anything but assume that was god steering them right. And that’s silly.
I don’t think that’s what I said. I said some people think those twinges are communiqués from god. In the larger picture, those people really know what “the right thing to do” is, just like the rest of us who don’t believe in god. You might walk by instead – some justifications are you are late somewhere, they look like they can handle it, someone else got there first, and it’s not my job. Both theists and atheists run through this list in the example. Some theists back that up with a supernatural justification. I don’t know why you picked this out, because it’s not necessary.
Upthread somewhere, I link back to my two longer posts on the previous SPAG article that I think say most of what I have in mind. I don’t single out religious self-projection the way the author does, and this is nothing I haven’t already thought about a zillion times. Basic example – an atheist may be a racist, so there is no god justification here. He may think back to a “better” time in history when black people were “in their place,” and justify his racism to a time when things were “good.” So glorifying a period of history, rather than god, justifying his inner mood to a nostalgia rather than examining why he needs to feel this way. “That’s the way I was raised.” You know, you can change from the way you were raised, but many people glorify their upbringing as something they cannot choose to change. In effect, they are choosing to stick with it. I think in religions, some people feel this way also – they may be conflicted by some of the teachings, but feel no choice but to believe it, OR ELSE. This is not a preferable, comfortable version of god, but is still a matter of choice.
Yet some people find their home church very exclusive and judgmental so they seek a more inclusive church, and find the version of Jesus who accepts, for example, homosexuals, rather than portrays them as sinners at best. Does Jesus in the bible actually say anything about homosexuals, or is it in the language he uses that one can presume he meant to include them? Parts of the bible explicitly call for the exile or execution of gays, does it not? So this person ignores what the bible actually says, and finds a relevant passage to support how they really think.
Rather than thinking so independently of the bible, they go looking for support that god really said that and meant that. It contradicts what the bible actually says, but they justify that away. They choose against worshiping a god who says to hate gay people, and choose for a church that includes gay people. That warm fuzzy feeling of the person who did the right thing when they helped a stranger pick up their dropped parcels – that’s where that comes back in. “This feels like the right god to believe in, because it agrees with what I think.” Another may say, “this god sure is strict and vengeful, but who am I to question him?” They get that “gut feeling,” that they are worshiping the correct version of god, even though they two are different teachings and beliefs and interpretations. One feels not right about questioning god, and another feels very right that god will let them know when they found the correct version of him, according to their personal morals.
Where there’s basically just one conservative approach to the Bible (it’s authoritative), “liberal” is a much wider group, basically encompassing anyone who rejects conservatism. There is no single liberal view of the Bible.
I think a large swath of liberals would want to say that they believe the Bible (in a very general way) because it is true, where fundamentalists believe the Bible because it is the Bible. I might parallel it with an atheist who similarly believes (again generally) Darwin’s Origin of the Species because it happens to be true, not because it is Darwin’s Origin of the Species and therefore must be true. That’s a big difference, to be fair, isn’t it?