Religion is for cowards and pedophiles of childrens minds

If you didn't witness Adam and Eve you would have not done that about 5000 years ago. Perhaps you're talking about not witnessing the evolution of man. In either case you would have to be over 5000 years old and you don't look a day over 15.

 

Okay if you insist on that; then the theory, although interesting, is hogwash.

I would say that most of what is authored is intended to have a correct interpretation and if you really feel that everything authored has no correct interpretation; I suggest that the next time you get in trouble with the law, you try and sell that theory to the Judge.

 

i believe Mrs.Rosa parks would like to discuss how "correct" some laws and interpretations can be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_parks

 

I think you may have missed the boat on this one.

This is what we are discussing:

 

i know im lost and confused as usual......just throwing my 2 cents in

 

And worth every penny of it!

 

It was in reference to OWB's claim that the Bible is self-interpreting. He doesn't seem to understand that Barthes' "death of the author" arises as a condition of language, rather than as a result of the condition of the author. Or he does understand that, but finds it inconvenient to the idea that there is one correct interpretation of a text. He has now declared Barthes "hogwash", although he seemed happy enough to humour him when it looked like there was a way for his theory to somehow not apply to God.

If you read back through the thread you'll find some interesting arguments made by him, to the effect that, because God is omnipotent, I should expect and assume that He will be immune to this, even if He is writing in a human, non-omnipotent language and using human authors to do so.

It seemed also significant (if we are taking the Bible literally rather than seriously) that if God was truly omniscient and omnipotent, He would have forseen that He would at some stage need to write a clearly understandable manual for human life in the form of the Bible, and perhaps not divided the human population by language as punishment for building the Tower of Babel (especially since He knocked the Tower down as well anyway!).

Or, alternatively, realising the limits of language, God could quite reasonably have written a version of the Bible in every language, rather than writing one "correct" version knowing that it would then have to be translated fifty or so times to reach others. OWB is no doubt aware that the version of the Bible he reads is not the original transcript, and that translation, even really good translation (of which the KJV Bible, for example, is not an example) necessarily changes the inference and nuance of what has been said. Multiply that out 50 times, and I'd put money on any original intention of the Bible having been lost.

If there's anyone who can't complain about people misinterpreting His words, it's God!

 

Of course the Law is open to interpretation. Have you never met a lawyer?

In all seriousness though, the text of the Law is subject to the same issues of reading as any book (Bible included). As a result, because it's more important that people understand the law than it is to preserve the aesthetics of the language in which it is written, most civilised countries with a sizeable population will have taken time and care to have their laws translated by someone who has an understanding of these things. We'd ultimately rather be sure that someone has understood the Law than have people sentenced for crimes without even knowing it and telling them after the fact that they just didn't get the "correct interpretation". Why is it that the Law, usually seen as so harsh and unforgiving, extends this humanitarian courtesy to those who defy it, while God will not even do the same to those He supposedly loves?

Now, obviously it's not as important that people understand the Law of God as it is that they understand the Law of the Land. But if it was as important, surely to rigorously stick to one text, or to allow any old mook with a cassock to translate it, would be incredibly irresponsible! You've only got to look at the text of the Bible to see that it is not presented with precision and clarity. Whether that has ever been the case is beyond my scope to argue, since I don't claim understanding of the original language of the Bible. But from what I've seen translated to modern English from the original language (rather than translated from the original language through millennia-old Latin to the English of the 17th Century), it seems that poetry and gravitas were far more important than just telling people what they supposedly really needed to know.

If you can find a country where the Law of the Land is as laden with metaphor and symbolism, and poured over by thousands of scholars just to establish what it's meant to mean, rather than constantly amended to ensure that it is understandable and free from metaphor and impermanent allusions, I'll consider retracting my position. But even then, I doubt that you'll persuade me that the Bible is a good way to convey "one correct interpretation", when even something as cold, clinical and soul-destroyingly dry as the Law cannot avoid containing within it some small room for manoeuvre.

 

You don't know who your talking too,you don't know how old I am. And even if I was lying are you saying your lies are more believable than my lies? I don't think so.

 

with seeing i meant experiencing ( i wasn't beeing that silly ).

anyone can make up many things.
i think it's only interesting if it has been deduced from reality.
is it deduced from reality?

 

Actually, I was just humoring you.

Okay lets make this simple for you. How many “correct” interpretations does the sign “All employees must wash their hands before returning to work” have? It seems to me only one and yet God didn’t even write that one.

And why not? Why would he even bother to write the Bible, if it was open to any interpretation and had no meaning except what the person reading it thought it meant? Why would anyone one write anything?

You write knowing that Barthes' "death of the author" is “true” and yet expect a somewhat “correct” interpretation of what you’ve written. Why is that?

You really can’t have it both ways, either human language is subject to Barthes' "death of the author" or it’s not, whether God divided the languages or not.

It’s funny that you should mention translating the Bible. It just so happens, the Bible is easily translatable and is the most translated book in human history. It has been translated in whole or in part in over 2000 languages.

How can there be misinterpretation? If Barthes' "death of the author" is true then there can be no misinterpretation.



PS It’s nice to see you’ve returned to your game; I was worried, you were starting to wander a bit but then maybe that was my fault.

 

Well, I’m not telling people I’m over 5,000,000 years old. I’d have to go pretty far to be that unbelieveable.

 

Sorry, I didn’t think you were being silly. Here just replace seeing with experiencing. Like this:

Many things that have been made up are interesting to me, although I guess it could be argued that everything made up or not is deduced from reality or what a person believes to be reality.

Anyway, I had to go back and see what we were talking about. I believe this is it:

Whether it is deduced from reality or not, it’s what I experienced.

 

And yet Barthes' "death of the author" applies to the law as well and thus there is no “correct interpretation” of the law. Like I said next time you go to court just mention Barthes' "death of the author" maybe the Judge will just let you go

The majority of what is written everyday is intended to have only one interpretation; if someone misunderstands it, that doesn’t mean that they have a new “correct interpretation”, it only means they misunderstood.

Again funny you should say that, seeing as in many cases the law of the land is based on the law of God.

Since your agenda in reading the Bible seems to be to find things that support your belief in atheism and since people generally find what they're looking for, I can see why you’re overlooking the easy to find truths in the Bible.

Once again your looking for something that’s just not there. The Bible is not and was never intended to be cold, clinical and soul destroyingly dry as the Law. It was intended to be alive and breathe life into those that read it. As for room to maneuver, the Bible is a book of freedoms not a book of restrictions.

 

I do understand what you're saying. I'll be honest: the theory is primarily aimed at works of literature. I would imagine that, from a linguistic perspective, one would argue that interpretability can be reduced (although still not to "zero", i.e. one correct interpretation) by careful concatenation of words, the avoidance of "poetry", etc. "All employees must wash their hands before returning to work" is, for example, more specific than "All employees must wash their hands", even though it is likely that the intention behind both phrases would be the same.

I find it amusing though that you think that the Bible is as or more specific than this. I mean, I've not read it cover to cover, but I've read enough to know that that would be utter nonsense.

Why indeed.

That is, of course, hogwash, since the fact that a word has a fluid and dynamic meaning does not imply that a person can simply decide it means whatever is convenient to them at that time. As I said earlier on in this thread, words acquire meaning the same way that we understand a "fact" to be "true" - language as we learn it is little more than a series of many interlocking educated guesses. Were you expecting something more?

And as for your question "Why would he even bother to write the Bible?", there are a number of possibilities. One is that God intended the Bible to be interpreted, without a correct meaning. Another is that God didn't write the Bible. Another still is that Barthes is a tool of Satan sent to discredit the word of God. Pick whichever you want; not because every interpretation is correct, but because it doesn't actually matter which one you choose.

Firstly, I don't "know" that Barthes' theory is "true", as you so eloquently put it. I suspect as much, based on the available evidence and the organic development of language.

Secondly, I do not "expect a somewhat correct interpretation" of what I've written. That is you assertion, and dead author though you may be, your intention in saying it is pretty clear. No dice, sorry. I'd be a fool to expect you to interpret what I've said the way I intend it.

Well, to be fair to you, this was merely an aside. You are absolutely right that this would apply whether there were a million languages or one.

However, I believe that Christian theology does posit the existence of a universal language, each word of which absolutely expresses every aspect and possible reading of its subject; this would be the language spoken in Eden, by all things, and understood by all people, which would subsequently be obliterated by God as a means to see that The Tower of Babel could not be completed.

That is, of course, only if one reads the Bible literally, rather than a series of fables. If the latter is that case, then the Tower of Babel is merely an attempt to answer the question "Why do we have different languages?" which the answer "Because a) God says so, and b) it was a sin for which you must atone by shutting up and eating your greens."

Did you think I was disputing latter? As for "easily translatable", any text is "easily translatable" unless it deals primarily with words and concepts that have no equivalent in the language into which one is translating the original.

I was referring purely to the perspective of someone who does believe that there is a "correct" interpretation. Which is still a world away from the Bible being "self-interpreting", by the way. Barthes doesn't presume that, because the author's intention is irrelevant, it never existed. That would be senseless. He does however say that that reading is not that be-all and end-all, and that what a reader finds in the text is as important as what the author thinks he put there. This is a natural progression from Freud et al's supposition of the unconscious, since it makes inevitable the conclusion that what we think we intend is not always what we do intend.

I've always tried to support those who have their beliefs ridiculed by those who do not even take the time to understand them.

 

I think Barthes' point is that the author doesn't get to get all butthurt if a text is misinterpreted as a result of him not being specific enough. Let's not forget that the language of the law - "legalese" - has been developed with specificity in mind. Can you honestly say that of English, or Latin, or ancient Greek, or Aramaic, or any other language in which God's word has supposedly come to us?

Strongly disagree. I believe the law of God and the law of the land to have been based on a common source. In both cases, if a law strongly opposed people's biological imperatives or social drives, it would be unlikely to be accepted whether it was enforced by God or by men with big sticks (or both). I believe this is the same reason that some of God and the Land's laws are observed more than others. Why else would we be so convinced that we should not kill, and yet so loathe to love our neighbours as ourselves?

Maybe I misunderstood what you intended by "self-interpreting", but I don't see how what you think is my "agenda" has to do with how I might read the Bible.

I am only as skeptical of the Bible as I am of the work of Richard Dawkins or Bertrand Russell or Albert Einstein. While I can't claim to have no bias at all any more than you can, is it so hard for you to imagine that the Bible was simply unpersuasive to someone who didn't expressly want it to be persuasive? Why would you assume that someone could only fail to read the correct interpretation as a result of some agenda, when you have no basis for believing this?

Except when it explicitly tells you not to do things and according to you has a correct interpretation, right?

As for the Bible being "alive and breathing life", I would like you to explain something to me. If the Bible has one correct interpretation, surely it would be logical for God (who is omniscient, omnipotent, and loves us, let's not forget) to write it in such a way that it did make that interpretation clear. Why wouldn't He sacrifice aesthetics for specificity? This book is telling people how not to go to Hell; why is it so important that it be "alive and breathe life", if in being so it is likely to be misinterpreted?

 

Extract from the Wikipedia entry for Søren Kierkegaard:

 

I was just saying that opposed to your usually clear and focused posts, there were a couple that seemed to ramble a bit and was concerned that maybe I was just being so unclear that it was throwing you a bit or else you were just getting bored or tired with the discussion. In any case, it's nice to have the clear focused you back.

 

The definition that I use for Faith is: the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld, which seems to differ somewhat from Kierkegaard's.

 

I try not to let boredom impair my focus.