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Scientific Atheism

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Folks, I promise it’s the last quote from Twitter I’ll post today but please listen to this preacher. She’s giving the exact same argument verbatim that we were given in anti-religion classes in the USSR. I felt a jolt of recognition because I heard all this before in classes called “Scientific Atheism” that were obligatory in Soviet education.

The only difference is that in the USSR it wasn’t fashionable to be this emotional but the argument is identical. It’s so weird to hear it in English, you have no idea.

Another big difference is that the Soviets were very open about wanting to eradicate religion. So at least they were honest in this regard.

30 responses to “Scientific Atheism”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “wasn’t fashionable to be this emotional”

    I have no religous faith and I’m cool with that, but this woman seems hopelessly stupid and I cannot understand why any religous institution would give her a platform for her, obviously stupid and misinformed, “analysis”….

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  2. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    All civilizations start with men and are at first the result of purely masculine endeavours. All civilizations in decline collapse through the ascent of women, first, and the spread of the androgynous right before the very end.

    We’re done for here.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      True civilization began with monogamous marriage. Everything else wasn’t really civilization in my opinion.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Every other system basically depends on killing off large numbers of men in warfare, regularly, and/or slavery.

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  3. Random reader Avatar
    Random reader

    Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit. (Matthew 15:14)

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  4. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Most human mating both past and present was and is not monogamous

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      That mating doesn’t drive civilization. Even insects can do it, so its civilizational potential is nil.

      I’m talking about civilization as something that’s far beyond the mere survival of the species.

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Woman preacher = opinion automatically rejected.

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  6. mitchellporter Avatar
    mitchellporter

    What exactly are people objecting to here? The part where she points out what crucifixion meant in its day? The part where she says, I don’t want to tell you to go forth and suffer and die?

    Regarding the latter aspect, I think it’s common enough for a pastor or preacher to say, today we’re going to discuss a part of the Bible that I am uncomfortable with, or that seems to be making unbearable demands. She is talking about a passage – take up your cross and follow me – which might lead people who are susceptible to extreme moral appeals, either to get caught up in a neurotic mess of guilt and self-doubt (am I really a good person because I don’t want to sacrifice myself), or to just go and experience instant martyrdom. And we don’t know how she completed that thought – the clip cuts off and we don’t see the original context.

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    1. Avi Avatar
      Avi

      She may be a preacher but she’s no pastor: she’s a woman.

      All religions are patriarchal: per se and by definition. If they’re not patriarchal they are not religions but merely cults.

      This is basic anthropology, not a matter of personal conviction.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      On a very basic level, there’s constantly stuff in the Bible that refers to future events long before they happen. Jesus knew he was going to be crucified because he is the Son of God. Many preceding events in the Bible announce the birth, the crucifixion and the resurrection. It’s a text where everything, starting with the Book of Genesis, presages the story of Jesus. Everything announces his coming. There’s nothing shocking about Jesus telling his disciples “take up your cross” before his crucifixion. This is how the entire Bible is. This is its whole point.

      This woman is a pastor yet she doesn’t seem to have read the Bible.

      And then there’s the favorite Communist line about how “Christians wear the symbol of their leader’s torture on their necks.” The Son of God dies in the most humiliating and painful way available at the time. That, too, of course is purposeful. He recovers the lowest of the low for humanity in a lesson to all of us about human worth. That’s what we wear around our necks. It’s a reminder of the infinity of God’s love because God gave up his only son for such martyrdom for our sake. To give us dignity and eternal life.

      A Christian preacher should know these very basic things that a Sunday school child can rattle off easily.

      Liked by 1 person

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  7. Col. Potter Avatar
    Col. Potter

    She’s asking questions about Biblical text, as I would certainly expect a smart and engaged priest/minister/preacher/rabbi to do. And she’s encouraging her congregation to ask questions. “Diseased Christianity?” A religion where you’re actively discouraged from asking questions is diseased.

    If you’re indeed performing exegesis on scripture, then yes, sometimes your questions may appear… simple? Even stupid? Ah, but as people noted on this blog when our president asked… let’s say, idiosyncratic questions about ingesting bleach to battle COVID, there are no stupid questions. And she’s not questioning that Jesus knew He’d be crucified, she’s noting that the disciples wouldn’t have known that yet.

    I have Jesus questions, too, comes to that. In Mark 11:12-25, He curses a fig tree that bore no fruit, and He was hungry. Is that just to show that Jesus as a human experienced all the human emotions, including getting “hangry”? Seems really random.

    Also, His analogy in Mark 7:14-23 doesn’t really hold water with regard to “clean food.” And usually Jesus’ analogies are pretty on-point. I think He just wanted Himself some shrimp.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      If I, in my capacity as a professor of Spanish, say “oh, wow, you are right, there is more than one past tense in the Spanish language, I never noticed this before”, wouldn’t this mean I’m disqualified from practicing my profession?

      Or if a doctor who examines you is shocked that you have 2 kidneys and not 5, wouldn’t that be disqualifying?

      Somebody, please bring that great meme about the entirety of liberal discourse consisting in liberals pretending not to understand things, thereby making discourse impossible.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        We tell our students that “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” but we don’t mean that. We are trying to put them at ease but we know it’s untrue.

        Imagine a doctor saying, “I’m sorry, but what is this strange outgrowth in the middle of your face? Is that a tumor?” A doctor who asks this about a nose is similar to that preacher who is stunned by the central tenet of her doctrine.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          As for the fig tree, my friend, aren’t you a literature professor? The tree is a metaphor. Jesus points out that the religion of Israel is barren and bears no spiritual fruit.

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          1. Col. Potter Avatar
            Col. Potter

            Metaphor, shmetaphor. He cursed a tree that was just going about its tree business. Or to lean on Bertrand Russell for a moment:

            “Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. ‘He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time for figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,”…and Peter… saith unto Him: “Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away”.’ This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in matter of wisdom or in matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.”

            The whole metaphor explanation strikes me as spin, handlers, and PR–ooh, Jesus really lost it with that tree, what do we do with that? “It’s a metaphor.” Okay, for what then? “Jews. Temple. Faith. Lack of faith. Keep it terse, it’ll sound deep.”

            Come to think of it, not too far removed from Trump being the greatest Kennedy Center expert ever, Biden being sharp as a tack, and Harris being supremely qualified.

            Oh, here’s a joke: an aged Jew enters a store specializing in elaborate and expansive Christian symbols. He points to a large crucifix and asks, “How much, please?”

            “That’s one of our finest,” the storekeeper replies. “Two hundred fifty.”

            The old Jew nods. “And how much without the acrobat?” he asks.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              I have a student who completely lost it when he discovered that the events described in a novel never happened in real life. He said he felt defrauded and made to feel like a fool. True story. Several professors tried to explain the nature of fiction to him but it was useless. The student continued being mortally offended by having to read a book which “said things that are completely meaningless because they are not true.”

              One professor tried to solve this problem with an analogy. “You watch TV series, right?” he asked. “So it’s like that.”

              The student looked at the professor with contempt.

              “No, it’s not like that,” he said venomously. “That’s a show. And this is a book. A book isn’t supposed to be untrue.”.

              He was so angry he actually threw the book at a wall and stormed out. We still haven’t processed how to respond to this pedagogically.

              But ok, this is a young kid, working class. I get it. I do not, however, expect to see college professors being incapable of processing the concept of figures of speech.

              I’m really stumped right now.

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              1. Avatar
                Anonymous

                Evangelicalism is super into *extremely literal* interpretation of scripture, except where it would require people to, say, give up all their wealth to the poor and follow Christ. That part is of course metaphorical (eyeroll).

                Not being able to handle the idea that scripture contains multiple levels of meaning and we might, possibly, need the help of over a thousand years of church tradition and context to understand it is… the American norm, unfortunately.

                -ethyl

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Yes, I’m seeing a strangely literal approach which, even on the level of basic textual analysis, doesn’t work. In complete isolation from everything that came before or after, the fig tree story is, indeed, weird. Like any scene from any novel!

                But of course it’s easier to decide that the millions of Christians throughout history are idiots instead of trying to understand what the text is actually saying and why it moves so many people.

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              3. Avatar
                Anonymous

                “decide that the millions of Christians throughout history are idiots instead of trying to understand… “

                This is a classic conceit of protestantism: the idea that scripture was compiled *by* an already-existing church *for the use of* that church, and can’t be properly understood outside that context… it’s foreign to them. This blows people’s minds, like there was an underlying assumption that the Bible arrived, fully formed, in the tomb at the resurrection. Jesus said a lot more things than were recorded in Scripture. Sure, “why did Jesus say this?” is worth asking. What’s also worth asking is “why did the early church fathers decide this particular thing was important enough to include here?” Unless Jesus was extraordinarily sparse with words, then this story got passed down because multiple people deemed it more important than any number of other things they could have recorded instead. Nothing made the cut without good reason.

                If we think it sounds dumb, it’s not because we’re smarter or better than the compilers of Scripture. It’s because we don’t understand the story.

                -ethyl

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              4. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Yes! I don’t know in other churches, but in ours it’s a tradition that the priest explains these connections between different parts of the Bible during sermon. This is why I was shocked by the preacher in the video. She seems to not know any of this. Her approach is that Jesus is just some guy who said some things which are sometimes good and sometimes not. This is typical Arian heresy. Which she seems also not to know.

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            2. random reader Avatar
              random reader

              There are entire books written on Scripture, and more specifically Gospel exegesis, going back to early centuries. If you had a true desire to understand this passage there is literally two millennia worth of explanations and thinking done on this. But you are not serious.

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  8. Col. Potter Avatar
    Col. Potter

    I do not know, so I cannot point to, anything that I have written so far that indicates that I am “incapable of processing the concept of figures of speech.” I even listed in my previous comment the typical things Biblical scholars explain what the barren fig tree is supposed to represent. (And if I am so incapable, then it would seem that the much-more-brilliant-than-either-of-us Bertrand Russell had the same problem.) It’s just that particular metaphor doesn’t work for me. And this is largely because Mark is quite specific about one detail: it wasn’t time for figs yet.

    Let’s take this slowly. If it were time for figs, and Jesus was hungry, and the tree was barren, we could conceivably get a good metaphor going. It’s time for figs, Jesus has every reason to expect figs, but somehow this is a backward and recalcitrant tree. And yes, we have to anthropomorphize and give the tree human agency (sort of the reverse of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree), but we could say, see this tree, which is supposed to be bearing fruit right now, is behaving like the faithless in the Temple, and withholding that which should rightly be the Lord’s.

    But the tree was not supposed to be giving fruit! Because it wasn’t time for the tree to give fruit! So the metaphor evaporates! (Metaphorically speaking.) It’s a punk metaphor. It’s a crap metaphor.

    And your whole diatribe to me opens up about 20 different cans of worms about whether or not what we read in the Bible regarding what Jesus said and did was true. I have my own thoughts about that, but that’s a big emotional and spiritual investment for many.

    And finally, the acrobat joke? That’s a stone cold classic. I’m starting to think oldcowboy and I are the only ones around here who have (and try to apply) something resembling a sense of humor.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s not miraculous if the fig gives fruit in season. It’s not supernatural. It’s completely mundane. Jesus is preparing his audience for a miracle. An entirely unnatural miracle that isn’t supposed to happen.

      Forget the religious aspect, and look at this as any text. A rifle that appears in Act 1 has to shoot in the closing act. Jesus, whether you see him purely as a literary character or a real being, is trying to get exactly this reaction out of us. But it’s not possible! we are supposed to say. You are expecting something unreasonable, unnatural, something that doesn’t exist. Jesus is preparing us for the most anti-natural act of all, which is resurrection. All of the stories lead up to it. And that’s exactly how any work of literature functions. You think it’s a crap metaphor because you are approaching the story in isolation from the denouement.

      As for Bertrand Russell, he was writing in service of a goal and humorously. Why you see his texts as a revelation and don’t see the Bible as one is a different issue entirely.

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  9. Col. Potter Avatar
    Col. Potter

    “It’s not miraculous if the fig gives fruit…”

    Haven’t been able to respond for a while–special needs family, complete with their special needs, is challenging for a late-diagnosed (at 60) autistic guy. Lots of running around, redirecting, and trying to avoid violence from the youngest (12)–also autistic, with below low average IQ. (This is a big reason I don’t care for the term “retarded” or “retard,” as I was trying to explain to Avi when he hit me with an attack because of… something, some time back. Which, I guess, is just Avi being Avi. And there is the benefit of having “Avi hits me with a baseless attack” on my bingo card, so do I win a game here and there.) And my wife has increased stress at her job, so I’m taking time from my work to deal with that, and she doesn’t really have anyone to take things out on except me, so, the temptation to find the tallest point in town and jump the hell off it is a strong one. But so it goes.

    Anyway… let’s go one at a time. First, would it help the conversation (and help the resultant pile-on–although again, “regulars pile on Col. Potter” is also on my bingo card, so there’s that) to say that I know there’s a God? I don’t see Christians as others or outsiders. I’ve communicated with God, and He’s responded. He has revealed Himself to me, and I believe. Obviously, it’s not in a way that I can offer worldwide objective proof–that’s where faith comes in. And yes, I had a Jewish upbringing and am still proud of my Jewishness, but I go to Catholic services regularly for the benefit of my wife and kids–nearest Jewish temple is about 50 miles away. So listening to Bible passages and scripture and interpreting them for a worthwhile life is important to me. I don’t see millions of, for all intents and purposes, fellow Christians as “idiots.” They’re trying to do what I’m doing, too, and I feel they deserve respect. Would that start to make this a conversation among civil people who might not agree?

    Second, let’s take the quote about Bertrand Russell: “he was writing in service of a goal.”

    Who the hell doesn’t? And geez, if Russell opens up a small window for me in a particular situation, why should that bother anyone? Don’t you want your writing to enlighten… people? Sometimes?

    Okay, third. Treating the Bible as a novel with Chekhov’s gun (a dictum he subverted himself with The Cherry Orchard, probably my favorite of Anton’s), and implied Freytag’s Pyramid…well, no. I don’t think I will, thanks. Why? Because we’re looking at many books dating back from between 1400 BCE and 400 BCE (the Old Testament) and roughly the 1st century ACE (New Testament). It’s not a story leading to a particular thing–it can’t be, because the “thing” didn’t exist when the story first started. It’s episodic, and epic–if anyone is a model here, it’s Brecht (who was also big on teaching).

    So the tree is an episode in Jesus’ epic story (told three different ways)–as a framing device for the cleansing of the Temple (Mark); as essentially the same story, but not placed to frame the Temple story (Matthew); and as a separate parable (Luke). John doesn’t tell the story at all (I think I’m on Team John at this point).

    Somewhat related–let’s take Jed, a slave owner in 1853 Georgia. He goes to church, reads his Bible, lives the life of a Good Christian. He reads in Ephesians, “slaves, obey your masters with respect and fear, just as you would obey Christ.” So he feels that his slave-owning is sanctioned by the Bible.

    You read and hear the Bible, and you find a story with all elements back to Genesis pointing to the climax of the resurrection of Jesus.

    I read and hear the Bible, and I come up with what I’ve been coming up with.

    In terms of textual analysis, you, me, and Jed are all the same. We’re equal. Not necessarily “morally” equal, but we’re doing textual analysis on a book that we believe will help us live better lives.

    Okay, now. As I knew would happen, I’m exhausted–my disability and disorder depletes and diminishes me fairly often, as disabilities and disorders tend to do. Time for a rest.

    Also, I hope things are going better for your mother–she’s in my thoughts.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      My friend, I might be completely mistaken but didn’t you say you were a literature professor? If you are, then I’m very puzzled by your idea that everybody’s reading of a text is equal to everybody else’s. If this were true, it would invalidate our entire profession.

      If the idea is that the Bible is not like any other text and does lend itself to everybody producing a reading of equal value, this is the foundational belief of Protestantism. I am not a Protestant. I do not share this belief. I think it leads to bad places. But I respect people professing it.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “everybody producing a reading of equal value, this is the foundational belief of Protestantism”

        Not the case in my experience…. of course different protestant divisions have different approaches here, but the ones I’m more familiar with are convinced that scripture has a single true meaning that can be eventually be discerned through careful study (which might involve a lot of fields).
        The consensus about some parts of the Bible might change over time but it’s not like everybody’s opinion is equal.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          OK, this sounds less nuts.

          I’m just honestly stunned. I’ve been reading and researching Rafael Chirbes for 25 years. Is my reading of a novel by Chirbes equal to that of an undergraduate student for whom it’s the first Spanish novel he read? My decades of study and intense thinking and research are worth nothing? So we are not only blank slates at birth. We get wiped out every night and arrive in the world completely identical to everybody else daily?

          I was not aware of this new iteration of blank-slatism.

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  10. Col. Potter Avatar
    Col. Potter

    You seem very interested in what I teach–yes, “literature” is in the title of a couple of my courses, so, sure. Your second paragraph jibes with what I meant.

    So, raised Jewish, now attends Catholic services, which leads to a Protestant understanding of Bible study. Makes perfect sense to me–at least as much sense as anything else I do.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      You make me sound creepy. I’m not that interested but I find it very strange that anybody who has any understanding of literature at any level would claim that every reading is equal in value. I expect this from some semiliterate individual who thinks that the Humanities are crap because they aren’t real but anybody who spends time with texts by default knows that there’s no equality among readings.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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