Self-reference
Wednesday 19th July
Do you know what bugs me so much about so many pieces of Christian promotional literature? Shall I tell you? Yes, I shall.
The thing which bugs me most about so many pieces of Christian promotional literature is the level of self-reference. Now, maybe Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and FSM literature are similar - I don’t have a huge amount of experience of being handed those in the street, but it’s the Christian literature I am most aware of.
What do I mean by self-reference?
I mean phrases such as (the fictional): “Christianity is the best religion because, as it says in Mandy 3:05 - ‘Jesus is really great and saves everyone’” and “It is absolutely necessary to denounce homosexuality because Trevor 4:12 says ‘It is absolutely necessary to denounce homosexuality’”
I’m being a little extreme here, but the point I’m trying to make is that this is extremely ‘closed loop’ thinking. Certainly, those justifications are valid for anyone who sees the bible as a truth. Probably, the people writing such leaflets can’t see the problem in the logic.
However, if you come out of the loop and are ambivalent or even hostile about the veracity of the bible, then how will reference to those very books help to sway your belief or understanding?
There’s also the alienation factor. Bible passages are not the easiest literature to read at the best of times and using them in a logical argument has a detrimental effect. If you’re asking someone to question their belief system and very being, then surely using simple language would be a benefit? Then they only have one major mental obstacle rather than multiple.
If there is no way to promote Christianity without reference to itself, then maybe it doesn’t have such a strong argument in its favour. If there are ways to do this - and I’m sure there are - why do more people not do it?
An open invitation to Christians - update your literature, eschew the self-reference, and bring us some accessible and logical argument!
I can see what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure how something can be promoted without reference to itself. How are other books promoted other than by using quotations and synopses? Food is advertised by promoting its nutritional content. Analgesics are promoted by referring to their pain-relief qualities.
JG
19 Jul 06 at 10:37 am
Good point - I guess I should say “without referring ONLY to itself”.
I think your examples are maybe ‘outside the loop’…
Outside the loop: “Memoirs of a Goat Herder” is an excellent book full of sinister malice and tension. Geoff Stanley, The Times, 2006
Inside the loop: “Memoirs of a Goat Herder” is an excellent book because the introduction says “This book is excellent”.
stu
19 Jul 06 at 10:41 am
Using self references to promote an idea based on a book is fair enough I think, however I can see your argument. It jsut goes round and round in circles. If you are trying to “convert” someone who doesn’t trust the source material there is a fundamental problem with the promotion.
With food, the nutritional content is placed on the packaging by the promoter, but no-one can really argue with the source material. Food companies also sometimes publish outside source reference material (ie, vegetarian society, freedom foods mark, organic status, fairtrade etc) to corroborate how good they are.
I think at universtity, they said that references to many sources gave the article a more rounded viewpoint, and that we had to read around the subject as well as the particular idea we were discussing.
sarah
19 Jul 06 at 10:45 am
as tony said in re-evaluations 1:3
‘yay verily and all that, if we do that there will be nothing left to throw at them and they’ll all start turning to home-spun religions which are basically paganism but they feel comfortable with like pouring lager and leaving a spliff and a bunch of flowers on the lamppost that your mate wrapped himself around or fastening on to lines which sound good in a pop song. verily’
henry
19 Jul 06 at 10:48 am
I do see your point and I agree with in 100%. To me their has never been a logical argument in religion…. I’ve always looked at all religion as a form of brainwashing… When a person is born they have no concept of who or what God is… this information is only fed to them from others…
Mr Hedgehog
19 Jul 06 at 11:10 am
I’m not sure they have no concept of God… I think there’s something primeval in there, otherwise I find it hard to believe that so many people would be searching for him/her/them.
stu
19 Jul 06 at 11:18 am
I don’t see it as brainwashing. It’s comforting to think there is something out there and comfort is a good thing.
sarah
19 Jul 06 at 11:27 am
There is an excellent section about “comfortable delusion” in Scott Adams’ God’s Debris
stu
19 Jul 06 at 11:33 am
Surely for many people, if not all, “Christians” (with a capital C), “Christianity” is the Bible. Without it, would there be “Christianity” - the Religion? Therefore what else could they refer to? There isn’t anything…..is there!?
Aoj
19 Jul 06 at 11:50 am
To AOJ’s comment - yes there is: There’s one’s own personal experience of God. The trouble with that is, you generally need to believe in God / Christianity in the first place before you recognise the experience for what it is. As an analagy, to someone who doesn’t know of the existence of morse code, a pretty flashing light may never be any more than just a pretty flashing light, but to someone who’s in on the secret, it could be full of meaning and message.
My Christian faith is based on personal experiences I’ve had with God - having established that belief, I then turn to the Bible to see what God says about a variety of subjects.
But no argument with Stu’s basic concept - too many Christian preachers use arguments which are basically “The Bible is true because the Bible says it is”.
Gottle
19 Jul 06 at 12:01 pm
OK Gottle, I accept that and, yes, that is a valid point. However……I would still argue that it’s the Bible which puts the label of “Christianity” to your experience. That’s your reference point. If you had had those experiences but had not the faintest idea that the Bible existed, or knew any of it’s contents from any other means, would you still have called it an experience of/with “God”, rather than “a higher being”?
Aoj
19 Jul 06 at 12:16 pm
Promoting something in terms of itself, fine. PROVING something in terms of itself, less fine.
The bible is the word of God because Ezekiel 25:17 says “Yea, I will smite upon thee with great vengeance if you don’t think the bible is the word of God” - that’s not logical.
(I completely accept the personal experience of God btw, he shows up all over the place)
The experience of God can be lifechanging, and is often enough to make the experiencer feel a great need to get others to experience it. Unfortunately it doesn’t automatically endow them with people skills, logic, or critical thinking. In fact the Bible asks you to have faith, so critical thinking is actually slightly discouraged. Proof denies faith, so in some interpretation proof should be avoided! Bad churches also discourage critical thinking, the Roman Catholic church/spanish inquisition being a prime example. Think critically and we’ll flay your bollocks off till you confess you are satan, then we’ll burn you at the stake.
Traditionally the scientist has been heretic. This is nothing to do with Truth or God, (though the scientist believes it is purely about Truth) and everything to do with power and politics. The church bosses like a nicely manageable flock who don’t ask too many questions… so if someone says something that causes (a small doubt) x (umpty million congregation) then that’s mighty inconvenient and must be stamped out. In modern times so many scientists are disparaging rather than sincerely curious about religion that it’s easy for a believer to feel besieged.
uh.
In short, if it were logical it would be a lot more hard work to defend it. Since it’s based on faith and BY DEFINITION the enquirer doesn’t have any, then it’s nice and easy to form whole arguments!
sweavo
19 Jul 06 at 1:21 pm
To be fair, I think that this is inherently true of all religions. Faith offers guidance, and asks you to believe and follow its teachings as an act of, well, faith.
Another example would be Sharia law - the primary source of which is of course the Qu’ran. Of course, Sharia does go a step further and also relate to reports of the early Muslim way of life, but most principles for a persons way of life is grounded in the Qu’ran. The justification, of course, is that because it is written in the Qu’ran, this is the way it must be done. Because the word of the book is absolute, it is difficult to question the rules imposed without fundamentally questioning other aspects - either it is all true, or none of it is.
The same is true of the self-referential literature, but perhaps taken to an extreme. Because the Bible implores us to “pray continually” (Thessalonians 5 : 17) but Jesus encouraged his followers to pray in secret (can’t remember the source for this one, think it is Matthew). This isn’t truly contradictory, as prayers may be internalised (and therefore secret) or continually may mean on a regular basis, rather than all the time.
But this is where I feel it hits a stumbling block. Once we start to self reference ourselves we run the risk of contradicting other mandates, especially when they are taken out of context. Do we pray secretly, or pray all the time?
Or do we lock ourselves in a cupboard, throw away the key, and pray that no one finds us?
Kouros
19 Jul 06 at 1:25 pm
I’m not convinced the mesage was to pray in secret, the message was more “don’t pray to show everyone how holy you are…” in other words, praying is not a “public” activity but a private one.
I find these contradictions liberating rather than confounding. If the bible contradicts itself then it forces you to question what the REAL message is. This questioning, if done sincerely, becomes a dialogue with God and for me that’s what “praying all the time” really means. It’s through the shortcomings of the received wisdom that you are forced to seek and to question, neither of which is in itself a sin, though the person with the collecting tin may disagree.
sweavo
19 Jul 06 at 2:39 pm
Also the Bible has been translated many times, and even the original words have subtly changed their meaning over the centuries.
Take, for instance, the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery”. When that was written a female was under the control of either her father or her husband. In this respect it was adulterous for even a bachelor to sleep with an unmarried girl, because he would be sinning against her father. Nowadays, however, it wouldn’t be considered adultery if neither was married.
Trying to prove a religion/faith is as impossible as trying to prove that one’s mother is the best in the world. I have total faith that mine is, but many people seem to think theirs is …
JG
19 Jul 06 at 3:21 pm
Oh absolutely (both Sweavo and JG). Sweavo this was kinda my point, but as usual I think I rambled and failed to actually get around to it. If one bit can be misconstrued, what about anything else… and if they’re not out and out lies theyare in error, which does draw into question the absolute validity of the text.
However (and I will make pains to say this) it doesn’t mean that there isn’t truth, only that one aspect isn’t true. Which supports Stu’s argument against “Christianity is the best religion because, as it says [so] in Mandy 3:05″
Absolutely also JG. The Bible has been translated adjusted, had various sections omitted and rejigged countless times. In contrast, moving back to Islam (why am I so obsessed with Islam? I was brought up a Baptist…) the Qu’ran is supposed to be read in the original Arabic - to read a translation is considered a lesser version of the text.
This has two major problems - as with your scenario about adultery, things change, even on a subtle level, which have an impact against the meaning of the text.
But in order to understand the original version of the Qu’ran, as it relies upon a very primitive form of Arabic, someone needs to translate the meaning for you, based on the best interpretation possible either from their own opinions or what was taught to them. Which may or may not be flawed, of course.
Trying to prove a faith is indeed impossible. But I would suggest that we shouldn’t really need to do that anyway. The more interesting question to me is to look critically at what is so different about various faiths - and once stripped of all the pomp and circumstance, whether the naked ideas and teachings are actually rather similar.
I rambled again, didn’t I?
Kouros
19 Jul 06 at 3:56 pm
Hmmm. Interesting notion of biblical contradictions being stimulating (i suppose to the mind), liberating in fact, rather than confounding. Excellent point there, Sweavo. SO one ought to work it out for oneself? I quite like the Dalai Lama’s quote:
“We must take direct responsibility for our own spiritual lives and rely upon nobody and nothing… If another being were able to save us, surely he would already have done so? It is time, therefore, that we help ourselves.”
For me that offers more comfort and security than anything I’ve read in the Bible because it reminds me that I have the cognitive capacity to look after myself (not that I always do) and therefore am in a good position to help others. Basically it makes more sense to me than any “guide-books”, but it doesn’t set me up with the whole religeon of Buddhism.
Given all that, I can only smirk and fondly remember Life of Brian: “Yes! We’re ALL individuals!”
Omally
19 Jul 06 at 6:17 pm
I agree with Mallers
Also it needs saying, as JG alluded to, the bible was written down many centuries ago and reflects the language and politics of the time (and even recent eg King James, times). There is nothing wrong with passing on rules and wisdom, but we move on and some rules, human, not god-given (if there is such a being)need to move as humanity evolves. How are rules written for a tribal society in the middle east, 2000 or more years ago applicable to us? Humans have been to the moon, developed Quantum Physics etc etc
If you want self reference try rap. Bloody nonsense
lordhutton
19 Jul 06 at 7:41 pm
The 10 basic rules from the OT, hutters, are the only ones that are really needed to make even modern society run smoothly, and yet allow individual freedom.
As far as the various religions go, I like to imagine a beautiful cut diamond in the blackest of space, with a single light at the centre of it. No two people will see the refracted light in the same way - but it’s all one light from the same source.
JG
19 Jul 06 at 8:47 pm