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Well, in the sense that the history of western literature shows that insisting on the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is a recent development, sure. Did Ovid think that he was recounting factual events? Probably not.
In fact, neither you nor anyone else knows why the stories that eventually came to be written down and included in the bible were originally told. We can't even know whether the people who eventually wrote them down attributed the same significance to them as the original tellers did.
We are story-telling animals, and we tell stories for many different reasons. Including telling them during the dark periods of the year to restless children who would drive everyone nuts if they weren't entertained. While you're entertaining them, might as well throw in a moral or two by means of a scary story...
All valid speculations about the motivations behind the stories without any clear indication for any of them. That is why they cannot just be summarily dismissed as fiction. As my Synthesis reveals, there are even valid scientific hypotheses that would lend credence to some of the spiritual implications of the stories therein.
Neither can you dismiss them as fiction. Someone with the mindset of a Norseman witnessing something we would take as not fantastic would be reported in ways that would seem fantastical. A man comes out of the clouds in a helicopter and lands in a field. He takes a 45 caliber pistol and shoots a rabbit. Then proceeds with the rabbit back into the clouds. The Norseman would probably have reported that Thor came hunting with his Hammer that throws lightning bolts and went back into the clouds.
I did not dismiss them as fiction. You are tilting at windmills of your own construction.
I am perfectly happy to accept that at least some of the biblical authors thought they were describing reality, as they saw/understood it. Others, probably not. But who knows?? We are all free to suppose and imagine and project and speculate as to what they really intended, all day long, and it will alter nothing. Once again, their intent or mindset makes no difference to my conclusion that there is no good reason to accept many of the bible stories as literal truth or an accurate depiction of events, without further substantiation of some sort.
I did not dismiss them as fiction. You are tilting at windmills of your own construction.
I am perfectly happy to accept that at least some of the biblical authors thought they were describing reality, as they saw/understood it. Others, probably not. But who knows?? We are all free to suppose and imagine and project and speculate as to what they really intended, all day long, and it will alter nothing. Once again, their intent or mindset makes no difference to my conclusion that there is no good reason to accept many of the bible stories as literal truth or an accurate depiction of events, without further substantiation of some sort.
We should have no real disagreement about literal interpretations of those things that make no sense literally. But the bold is a non-trivial concern since we have to try to place our minds in the same cognitive space their mind occupied to determine anything about what is written. Using our modern state of mind simply is not a valid standard to evaluate its likely import.
Our modern knowledge can be applied in two ways:
1. to denigrate and invalidate anything written, or
2. try to understand what most likely transpired as understood by the author.
Regarding pantheism. I wrote that rule. I am entirely responsible for it. It wasn't written because there is anything wrong with that belief, but because it was being pushed into every single thread, causing threads to go off topic while people argued about that one off topic comment. We finally decided to allow discussion in one thread, and we promptly had more than one member start spamming all the threads with it again. If the rest of you would ignore it when it happens, it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Thanks very for much giving us the opportunity to discuss it. I appreciate it.
As I've said before I wouldn't want the job that you do.
The way I see it is, Pantheism IS spirituality for some people. It's the very essence of what they believe and isn't that the purpose of the forum?
They see god in everything in much the same way that an atheist sees god in nothing.
If they bring it up in every thread, it's because from their perspective, what they believe relates to every thread.
It's a bit like having a forum about bread and baking with a person that's passionate about flour and bringing up their tried and tested flour into every thread, and because it gets annoying, restricting discussion about flour to one thread.
So all you're left talking about in the baking forum is oil, eggs and water but without the essence of what your are baking.
Not the best analogy maybe, but I'm just using it to illustrate what I mean.
I'm assuming threads going off topic into pantheism were getting reported all the time. I understand that is annoying. It definitely can be annoying when threads go off topic especially when you're the author of the thread.
I'm thinking that the people who were getting annoyed should either:
a. learn to be more tolerant of other people's viewpoints
b. learn to scroll on by
c. use the ignore feature
d. ignore the off topic comment
e. have some will power and use their own brains to ignore the poster
f. engage in debate about it.
g. engage with other posters instead
h. engage but bring the conversation back to the original topic.
I'm not averse to reporting other posters myself when things get annoying. But in a forum that is supposed contain spirituality I think a lot of people need to learn to be a lot more tolerant of views that are not their own.
My primary purpose for being here has always been to understand how other people think.
In terms of atheism I couldn't be less interested in some of the stuff that gets other peoples backs up, like which baker wouldn't bake who's cake because it went against their religion. I couldn't care less about that. I'm here to understand what people believe and why they believe it. That's the stuff I find fascinating.
I've learned SO much from being a part of this forum. I have definitely learned to be more tolerant of other peoples beliefs and get a bit of a handle on why people believe what they do. I think people should be should be able to continue to share what they believe, not for my benefit, but for other peoples benefit. I've been on here 10 years. I think I've discussed everything there is to discuss.
Thanks again for allowing us this platform to share our views.
This is the same problem you religionists have with religion -- an inability to control yourselves. If you had restrained yourselves and followed the rules, the rules wouldn't have been tightened so much. You did it to yourselves.
YUP ...we need to stay on target ... this is about stopping religion, any discussions on how other people beliefs address the topic that are not directly helping stopping religion is "doing it to yourself"
Thanks very for much giving us the opportunity to discuss it. I appreciate it.
As I've said before I wouldn't want the job that you do.
The way I see it is, Pantheism IS spirituality for some people. It's the very essence of what they believe and isn't that the purpose of the forum?
They see god in everything in much the same way that an atheist sees god in nothing.
If they bring it up in every thread, it's because from their perspective, what they believe relates to every thread.
It's a bit like having a forum about bread and baking with a person that's passionate about flour and bringing up their tried and tested flour into every thread, and because it gets annoying, restricting discussion about flour to one thread.
So all you're left talking about in the baking forum is oil, eggs and water but without the essence of what your are baking.
Not the best analogy maybe, but I'm just using it to illustrate what I mean.
I'm assuming threads going off topic into pantheism were getting reported all the time. I understand that is annoying. It definitely can be annoying when threads go off topic especially when you're the author of the thread.
I'm thinking that the people who were getting annoyed should either:
a. learn to be more tolerant of other people's viewpoints
b. learn to scroll on by
c. use the ignore feature
d. ignore the off topic comment
e. have some will power and use their own brains to ignore the poster
f. engage in debate about it.
g. engage with other posters instead
h. engage but bring the conversation back to the original topic.
I'm not averse to reporting other posters myself when things get annoying. But in a forum that is supposed contain spirituality I think a lot of people need to learn to be a lot more tolerant of views that are not their own.
My primary purpose for being here has always been to understand how other people think.
In terms of atheism I couldn't be less interested in some of the stuff that gets other peoples backs up, like which baker wouldn't bake who's cake because it went against their religion. I couldn't care less about that. I'm here to understand what people believe and why they believe it. That's the stuff I find fascinating.
I've learned SO much from being a part of this forum. I have definitely learned to be more tolerant of other peoples beliefs and get a bit of a handle on why people believe what they do. I think people should be should be able to continue to share what they believe, not for my benefit, but for other peoples benefit. I've been on here 10 years. I think I've discussed everything there is to discuss.
Thanks again for allowing us this platform to share our views.
Would that you were a moderator here, Cruithne even as an atheist. Unfortunately, the forum is adverse to theists and positive to atheists. The ones who are disadvantaged by the existence of pantheism or panentheism are the atheists because it removes their favorite tactic - asking for evidence of God's existence and eliminates their desired default. They would bring those up in every thread on every topic without fail. I suspect they were the ones who most strongly desired the ban or restriction to a single thread because they had no counter to them..
Would that you were a moderator here, Cruithne even as an atheist. Unfortunately, the forum is adverse to theists and positive to atheists. The ones who are disadvantaged by the existence of pantheism or panentheism are the atheists because it removes their favorite tactic - asking for evidence of God's existence and eliminates their desired default. They would bring those up in every thread on every topic without fail. I suspect they were the ones who most strongly desired the ban or restriction to a single thread because they had no counter to them..
This is insulting, Mystic, and it's not the first time you've flung this poo. The moderators do not make the rules based on what one group or another wants, and yet you keep on saying that. Flawed or not, the rules are made based on a) how the administrator wants the forum run, and b) what the moderators think will help to make the forum run better.
This junior high crap where the atheists say the theists are favored and the theists say the atheists are favored got really old a long time ago. We've heard it all too many times from those of you on both sides. At least we got a laugh out of it when one from each camp sent us DMs on the same day a couple of years ago complaining that we were favoring the other.
Would that you were a moderator here, Cruithne even as an atheist. Unfortunately, the forum is adverse to theists and positive to atheists. The ones who are disadvantaged by the existence of pantheism or panentheism are the atheists because it removes their favorite tactic - asking for evidence of God's existence and eliminates their desired default. They would bring those up in every thread on every topic without fail. I suspect they were the ones who most strongly desired the ban or restriction to a single thread because they had no counter to them..
I'm not sure the forum is positive to atheists.
We also have our own bugs to bear such as the aforementioned damping down of science talk. But I know that affects you as well.
The restrictions probably affect you of all people most so I'm not surprised you see it that way.
I just would like to be able to converse with people freely and civily is what it comes down to.
Debate and conversation is what keeps the world turning and progress happening. In a world with so much conflict we have to be able to talk to one another and see each others viewpoint. Sometimes it gets heated and that's the nature of debate.
But in the end positive things come out of it.
Some of the people I most respect on here have been theists. I still miss Woodrow, a shining star.
I'd just like to keep the conversation alive here.
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