{"id":1854,"date":"2015-01-29T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/eidos\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2015-01-29T10:58:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T14:58:59","slug":"learning-from-fiction-what-is-wrong-with-fundamentalists-and-atheists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/eidos\/2015\/01\/learning-from-fiction-what-is-wrong-with-fundamentalists-and-atheists\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning from Fiction: What is wrong with fundamentalists and atheists?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The man who cannot learn from fiction because it is not literally true is like the man who cannot watch an event on television because it is not \u201cliterally\u201d before his eyes. He is missing the truth in the representation of reality.<\/p>\n

Fiction has taught me as much as n0n-fiction.\u00a0That\u00a0Hideous Strength, Jane Eyre,\u00a0<\/em>the myths of\u00a0Republic,\u00a0<\/em>and any film by Tarkovsky have given me truths and those truths have helped me. There exists, however, a certain weirdling that hears \u201cfiction\u201d and thinks: \u201cfalse story.\u201d Once I met a weirdling Christian who believed all the parables of Jesus must be \u201cliterally true\u201d or the weirdling would not be able to trust Jesus. I began to worry about telling this person a joke unless the joke were based on a true story. After all when I said, \u201cWhy did the chicken . . .\u201d I never prefaced it with \u201cjust kidding, there was no chicken, no road, and no other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Be<\/a>
Be Not Deceived<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet for every Christian I have met with this idea, I have met a score of atheists. Much Internet criticism of Scripture rests on showing some part of the sixty-six books of the Bible (filled with many genre) is\u00a0fiction.\u00a0<\/em>What are examples? Jesus told parables. Apocalyptic literature (parts of Daniel and all of Revelation) are written in hyperbolic images that are not \u201cliteral truths.\u201d Poetry is . . . poetical. Even the \u201chistory\u201d of the Old Testament is history as the ancients understood history, not as we understood history.<\/p>\n

When I wear a costume to a party, anyone deceived by the costume to think: \u201cLook a starship captain!\u201d has made a category error. Be not deceived by the statue of John Wayne at the Orange County Airport: John Wayne was a real man, but\u00a0this is not John Wayne.\u00a0<\/em>It is a work of art, a fiction, but one can still learn about John Wayne or at least our perceptions of Wayne from it.<\/p>\n

And, yet, though the Orange County Airport contains this fiction and is even named \u201cJohn Wayne\u201d when \u201cJohn Wayne\u201d was not\u00a0even\u00a0<\/em>the man\u2019s real name<\/i>, I can still fly on planes and trust them. The blend of fiction and fact in the airport does not confuse me: I fly on real planes and learn real truths from actual sculptures.<\/p>\n

In the same way, the Bible is literally true if you read it literarily. This is so obvious that one wonders how the fundamentalist or the atheist (of this sort) reads most works of literature . . . only to discover that they often do\u00a0not read fiction.\u00a0<\/em>At the best, such folk think of fiction as entertainment, the way some film goers cannot discern the difference in seriousness and intention between a film such the Passion of Joan of Arc\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Legally Blonde II.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Reading any complicated work of literature is hard, but there are silly objections educated people can dismiss if they simply use the same reading skills to the Bible they apply to Shakespeare. Here are five of those superficial objections:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all, if this part is fictional, or might be fiction, how do we know this other part isn\u2019t?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

One way to tell the difference is to learn the clues of genre. If a story starts \u201cOnce upon a time\u201d, English readers know what is coming and that what is coming might be important, meaningful, and insightful, but it is not going to be \u201chistory.\u201d Biblical and other forms of ancient literature contain such genre clues to educated readers. Any good book on hermeneutics can give you those rules.<\/p>\n

Next, one must ask: does the message or intention of the account\u00a0depend on\u00a0<\/em>the (literal) truth of the account. If the message of Jonah is that God is a God of love, reaching out even to the enemies of God\u2019s people, the truth of this message would\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>depend on whether Jonah was a \u201creal person\u201d or was swallowed by an actual whale. There are other reasons to think Jonah historical, but the central message of the story is not one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we know\u00a0what to believe<\/em> if this work is a fiction?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

A reader always must ask: what is the author intending to say in the story. If I intend to tell you the\u00a0actual history (in the modern sense of the term)\u00a0<\/em>of the world, then my work had better be accurate. But suppose that Plato is telling us an allegorical creation account in his\u00a0Timaeus\u00a0<\/em>for teaching purposes. Can\u2019t we accept what he is saying if the allegory is persuasive to us\u00a0as an allegory?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Nobody thinks that the story of men trapped in a cave (the famous cave analogy) of Book VII of the Republic is literally true, but I have reflected on it for twenty-five years (or more!) and received insight into the human condition. If I can do this for Plato, then can\u2019t this be done for the allegorical or parable parts of Sacred Scripture?<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could God deceive me about the nature of this book?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

God does not deceive the man who is ignorant: ignorance deceives a man. If we insist on reading a book badly, the book will seem bad. If we demand that a text be plain without doing the plain old hard work to master the text, then the problem is not in the text.<\/p>\n

In the same way, the fact that some Christians read badly does not justify critics of Christianity in taking a bad reading as the true reading. Surely nobody is foolish enough to believe that the Bible is \u201ca book\u201d when it is a collection of (at least) sixty-six books.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t this fiction like some older or other religious fiction?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are generally one of three mistakes being made by the person making this claim. First, he or she will often claim that Jesus is like some person \u201cA.\u201d \u201cA\u201d was \u201cborn of virgin\u201d or \u201crose from the dead.\u201d However, if you ask if we have\u00a0any texts about that person predating the coming of\u00a0Christianity to the region, the answer is (usually): \u201cno.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We know that some movements, such as neo-Platonism, borrowed Christian themes and images and \u201cpre-dated\u201d their stories in their (losing) intellectual competition with the next faith. If god \u201cA\u201d\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>really like Jesus and isn\u2019t just \u201cJesus\u201d in pagan garb, we would find texts older than Christianity making the claims. This is rarely the case.<\/p>\n

Second, the comparisons where they are valid are superficial: compare the \u201craising from the dead\u201d of Osiris and Jesus. They are nothing alike except the fact that both were dead and then were not dead. Almost any literate person can tell the difference in tone between the Egyptian myths of Osiris and the Gospels.<\/p>\n

Finally, Christianity is true, so it is archetypical. We are telling a story (a true story) about the world: creation, fall, redemption, and glorification. If it is true, then we anticipate\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0culture tapping into some element of those truths. We do not claim to be unique, just to tell the story best, in the most complete manner, and in a way that is (historically) true where it needs to be.<\/p>\n

Jesus rose from the dead: really.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this account is like a\u00a0known\u00a0<\/em>fiction, shouldn\u2019t we believe the Bible account to be fictional?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Generally lurking around this argument is the assumption that miracles are dubious or that we know they do not happen, but I hate to accuse atheists of confusing one argument for another.<\/p>\n

Bluntly, fictional stories are the basis for true events all the time. We often live literally! I married my wife patterning the relationship after that in Wuthering Heights\u00a0<\/i>and then later in\u00a0Jane Eyre.\u00a0<\/em>My marriage is no less real because of intentional similarities to fictional relationships.<\/p>\n

Finally, we all accept that some fictional stories are deeper, truer to reality, than other tales. The relationships in Twilight<\/em> are less true to reality than the relationships in\u00a0Saving Alaska,\u00a0<\/em>though both books are fiction. Some fiction is better written, more profound, than other fiction for the purpose of learning. Anybody can see this with even the trashiest fiction: 1970\u2019s Spiderman comics are much less profound that 21st century Spiderman comics.<\/p>\n

Both are fiction, but one is more developed and more sophisticated. Homer is more intellectually interesting than Homer Simpson, though both are probably fictional characters. The next time a fundamentalist Christian is confused about \u201cfiction\u201d, \u00a0ask if Jesus is made of wood because the Savior said He was \u201cthe door.\u201d Ask an atheist if the \u201cCourtier\u2019s Reply\u201d is useless or the Gettier Problem is nonsensical because both rely on \u201cfictional tales\u201d to make a point.<\/p>\n

One rule has never failed me: the person who confuses \u201cfictional\u201d with \u201cfalse\u201d is a dullard.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The man who cannot learn from fiction because it is not literally true is like the man who cannot watch an event on television because it is not \u201cliterally\u201d before his eyes. He is missing the truth in the representation of reality. Fiction has taught me as much as n0n-fiction.\u00a0That\u00a0Hideous Strength, Jane Eyre,\u00a0the myths of\u00a0Republic,\u00a0and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-on-books"],"yoast_head":"\nLearning from Fiction: What is wrong with fundamentalists and atheists?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The man who cannot learn from fiction because it is not literally true is like the man who cannot watch an event on television because it is not\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/eidos\/2015\/01\/learning-from-fiction-what-is-wrong-with-fundamentalists-and-atheists\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Learning from Fiction: What is wrong with fundamentalists and atheists?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The man who cannot learn from fiction because it is not literally true is like the man who cannot watch an event on television because it is not\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/eidos\/2015\/01\/learning-from-fiction-what-is-wrong-with-fundamentalists-and-atheists\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Eidos\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-01-29T12:00:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-01-29T14:58:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/eidos\/files\/2015\/01\/IMG_0046-300x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Mark N. 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