The Great Divide: Not whether or not you believe in God, but in divine text

[poseidon]

One of my favorite radio hosts wrote an interesting article, arriving at the conclusion that the Great Divide in politics isn't whether or not you believe in God, because there is a religious right and a religious left, but whether or not you believe in a divine text.

The debate that followed was interesting, particularly from those who became incensed over it, citing judgements that were never made.

Does he have it right? Or, rather, is he off base? Why do you think that way?

[emeleel]

Ya know, I'd never really had the thought coalesce in my mind before, but now that I see someone say it, yep, I believe he's put his finger right on a very important point.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Very good point, but I take a teeny bit of exception with his wording here:

...between those who believe in a divine text and those who do not.

Like how a person's political beliefs fall on a spectrum, so do people's beliefs about the Torah or Bible - it's not a believe/don't believe question, it's a matter of to what degree a person thinks the entire text is divine.

[Redlass]

I'm about to go follow the link right now, but before I do, I'll throw something else in.

There are some pretty fine lines between believing in the divinity of God's Word. There are those who think that all of the Bible is literally true. There are those who believe it to be Truth that is taught in many forms--including poetry and other forms of fiction (and they'll point to the fact that Christ used fiction in the form of parables all the time. It was one of His favorite ways of teaching).

So I would argue that there is a huge divide even amongst those who believe in the divinity of the Scriptures.

[Redlass]

OK, after reading the article, I'd say that I disagree with him.

Part of this comes from being a Trinitarian. Some of what he calls following the heart, I would call listening to the Spirit. I would also argue that my support for gay marriages is in no way contrary to Scripture. It is not merely a desire to be compassionate (for one does not encourage a marriage out of compassion; marriage should never be entered into out of pity. Marriage is a sacrament because it is part of how God reveals Himself to us.). It is because while the Bible speaks out against homosexual rape, against orgies in which multiple men are having sex with multiple others, against pederasty, and against heterosexual men having extramarital homosexual relations, it does not forbid love between people of the same gender nor marriage between them.

Now, yes, that veers toward a different debate, but since that is one of the examples he gave--and perhaps one of the most defining ones--it is the one I'll use.

I would almost argue that it really is a difference between those who interpret Scripture literally versus those who believe it to be divinely inspired Truth.

[hymie[$]]

I disagree with him that believing in the divinity of the text is the cause of other right-wing beliefs. Rather, I believe that some people never overcome the prejudices and beliefs they learn while growing up by thinking through issues for themselves. Since there is no rational reason to believe in the divinity of some particular holy book, nor is there a reason to demonize gay people, it's not surprising that rejecting one such notion correlates with rejecting another. It's all just knee-jerkiness, and it occurs in every part of the political spectrum.

[eris esoteric]

Question: At what point does one cross the line from believing that the bible is divine, to worshiping the bible, at the expense of investigating the world that god has created, and trying to understand God's message to yourself in your own life? At what point do you stop using the bible as a guide, and start engaging in a literary form of idolatry?

[hymie[$]]

Here is a link to an article about Agudath Israel of Canada declaiming against gay marriage laws. Now, one of the fundamental tenets of Orthodox Jewish belief is that the laws of the Torah apply only to Jews. Non-Jews are bound at most to the seven Noahide laws, and some rabbinic opinions say that even those no longer apply. So why is an Orthodox Jewish group protesting a law which would allow gay people to marry? They certainly don't expect non-Jewish Canadians to abstain from pork, or shrimp, or cheeseburgers, or clothing containing a blend of wool and linen, or to not drive their cars on Saturday.

By their own tenets and belief in the divinity of the Torah they should have no reason for such opposition. What they do have is the typical right-wing hatred and fear of people who are different from themselves, and the urge to suppress the expression of such differences lest they become infected themselves. The fact that this is a hopeless task, given that homosexuality is universal, just drives that fear and rage further.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

A few months ago, a group of rabbis, Christian leaders, and Muslim leaders held a press conference in Jerusalem to object to a gay pride march and festival in the city. When I heard about that I shook my head, and thought, finally they've found something they can agree on, and THIS is what it is?

----------------------------

On the Prager article -- I don't really agree with all his characterizations of Judaism. With the caveat that all this is just as far as I know ...

Prager said

Jews and Christians who believe that God revealed the Torah, for example, are far more likely to believe that marriage must remain defined as only between a man and woman, and cannot be redefined to include members of the same sex. They believe that people are not basically good ...

I don't think that's a Jewish belief. If anything, I think the belief is more that people are basically good rather than basically bad, but I think it may actually be neither. It's more that people become good or bad by what they choose to do.

..., that human life, not animal life, is sacred (because humans, not animals, are created in God's image), and that murderers should be liable to the death penalty (the only law that is in all five books of the Torah is to put murderers to death).

I don't understand the logic of this. The death penalty is prescribed in the Torah for many crimes besides murder, notably for adultery, but there is no real-world support for that.

On the other hand, Jews and Christians who believe that people wrote the Torah are far more likely to support a redefinition of marriage, to view human nature as basically good (and therefore more likely to ascribe human evil to outside influences), to be more receptive to seeing human beings as essentially another animal, and to oppose capital punishment for murderers.

After all, what people, not God, wrote thousands of years ago should hardly serve as a guide to life today — especially when one's heart argues against it. The heart feels compassion for gays, for animals and even for murderers facing execution.

Prager seems to be saying here that compassion is at odds with believing in the divine inspiration of the Torah, that they are opposing ends of some spectrum, which just seems flat-out wrong to me.

And the heart wants to believe that human beings are basically good.

But Jews and Christians who believe in a divinely revealed Bible do not trust the heart as a guide to doing the right thing (indeed, that Bible repeatedly warns us not to). That difference — do I listen to my heart or to what I believe is God's word? — explains most of the differences between right and left. Much more than whether one believes in God.

Again, he's setting up the heart and God's word as opposites, as if in order to obey God one needs to harden, or at least ignore, one's heart. There's nothing in Judaism that I'm aware of that calls for this.

[Redlass]

In many ways, his article is just another way of saying that liberals are arrogant. He's trying to argue that conservatives are obedient and liberals are rebels. Conservatives rely on the wisdom of the ages while liberals are flighty and believe only in themselves.

None of which, of course, I agree with.

[drmomentum[$]]

Any group of people can be divided into two groups in innumerable ways.

I guess epiphanies are cheap these days.

-JP

[rmthunter]

Unfortunately, the link has expired, so I can't read the article.

Since I subscribe to a religion that doesn't have a text, it's hard to know where I fall on this discussion without being able to read the article.

Does a "divine text" somehow increase the validity of one's beliefs? It would seem so, to some minds, at least from what I can make out. I tend to see it in terms of "received wisdom," which leads to hierarchy, which leads to orthodoxy, which has its own problems, as we can see just by looking around us.

This struck me:

AuntieEmma said

Again, he's setting up the heart and God's word as opposites, as if in order to obey God one needs to harden, or at least ignore, one's heart. There's nothing in Judaism that I'm aware of that calls for this.

From what I understand of Christian teaching, that applies even more to Christianity, which, at least sometime in its past, followed a teacher who stressed compassion, community, and love, and what are those if not dictates of the heart? And actually, from what I know of Judaism, Em's statement is absolutely correct -- even on the Sabbath, one tends to the creatures under one's care.

Redlass said

conservatives are obedient and liberals are rebels

That's enough reason for me to be a liberal.