Been mulling over how different epistemologies are different kinds of relationships - I will take this up elsewhere - and as I mulled over the relationship with fundamentalists to scripture it seemed to me their idea of epistemology not only differed in terms of process - from, say, an empiricist - but also in responsibility. In usual epistemology one may wonder ‘How can I know X is true’? and the focus is on what ‘I’ do and does it make sense and ‘I’ am responsible. I come up with a process I can trust. I Think, perhaps only implicitly, a fundamentalist views scripture as having the responsibility. The issue is not ‘How can I know this is God’s voice?’ but rather that God’s voice has such Power that it overcomes me. It is responsible for my knowledge. The scripture knows into me. (I Think there is complexity here and that pride hideth under the seeming humility of this epistemology, but I want to set this aside for a moment and pretend, with the fundamentalist, that scripture, as they experience it, is responsible).
My interest is not to bash this epistemology nor is it to support. I just realized that I found it an interesting idea. To those highly critical of fundamentalists it may be ‘obviously wrong and stupid’, but I would like to leave a Little space around that and just try to understand it as a phenomenon. Further I have a gut feeling that many of us do this, though perhaps not with scripture, though I haven’t got beyond this gut feeling yet.
I Think it is an interesting idea that the knowledge would not be the individual’s responsibility.
Also there is an implied intimacy - and one that Cuts against modern lay-scientific models - where the information, the informer, the informed are not separate.
This may seem obviously wrong from a modern perspective, but I Think looking at a knowledge model that is not based on
separate monads Learning at a distance about other separate monads
might be useful.
Fundamentalists simply believe that a certain interpretation of the bible is itself divine, and that the bible is divine.
Faith, on the other hand, has many meanings. Faith in the sacrifice of Jesus is what is supposed to get you saved.
However, belief that the bible is perfect kinda got added to the mix.
Then there is the idea of faith in your church organization.
The fundamentalists in general feel we are all responsible for both our beliefs and actions.
I think you’re talking about a form of faith, not fundamentalism.
Trusting the bible that it can’t be wrong, and trusting that the people interpreting it aren’t wrong.
Some people might call it faith. But when I have asked Christians, on the fundamentalist end, about how they know that scripture is God’s Word, they talk about the Power of the Words, of how they just know, that the text carries that impact. It is not something they are doing. If I try to shift the focus to how do YOU know that your sense scripture is God’s Word - iow what for us might be raising and epistemological issue - this line, in a sense, gets rejected. They are not claiming to have special insight; it is the text itself that overwhelms them. It carries the knowledge that what it is to them. I Think this is different from faith.
Faith would be a kind of choice to Believe without evidence. But this is knowing directly, however the ability is God’s not their own.
We may call that faith, but I am working from inside their perspective and to me it is different.
Of course many of these people as people in general do not give consistant messages, and faith may get brought in.
But I have encountered this relation to scripture that does nto sound like how faith is described when the existence of God is the issue, for example.
Here there is no being overwhelmed by direct knowing, in most cases. It is a belief despite the lack of such experiences (and also what could be called evidence).
Sure. And I am not saying you are wrong, just that I encounter a different kind of epistemological claim (also), and I realized I found it interesting.
Is this a phenomenological question i.e. what is the scripture like for a “fundamentalist” ? [Incidentally the f-word often perceived as a fighting word in my experience]. Anyway I posed your question to a guy I’m corresponding with who believes the Bible to be infallible. If he answers I’ll relay his response.
It’s partly a phenomenological issue, given that some, at least, have a particular experience of reading scripture as opposed to secular or not supposed to be written by God texts. But I am focused on the epistemological difference with other epistemologies, given this phenomenology, and what this might say about knowledge, humans, identity, assumptions of distance (in knowledge models and otherwise)…
as far as fundamentalism, it was a term coined by a religious person and then taken up by opponents also. Going back to fundamentals, as they saw and see it, as opposed to modern interpretations and looseness.
I grew up with fundamentalists, and was one for half my life. And I have asked the question, “How do you know it’s God’s Holy Word?”, and never once has the answer been, “Because of the power of the words.”
In fact, this is the first I’ve ever heard of this answer.
Really? Odd, interesting. What do they answer?
And just to be clear, what I Heard was more like, it was clearly God’s voice. Or they recognized God’s voice, or knew it was the Word of God.
When I followed this up with how they knew, they put the responsibility on scripture and God.
IOW they did not say ‘I have divine insight and so I have the skill to know’ or anything else of that nature.
“The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” That’s what I heard. As to how the Bible became The Word of God they answer, thru direct revelation from God by inspiration. They can’t provide proof of this, it’s just accepted, and THEN they say how wonderful the Bible is.
As to the voice of God in it … they hear the voice of God at many times, and places.
As far as I’m concerned they’ve gonna Bible crazy … and are proud of it.
This is also my experience of fundamentalist thinking. It was often so blunt that you became gobsmacked and couldn’t really offer any opposition because it was quite clear that you were talking a different language or something. Something like people who always see the sky as being green and couldn’t understand how you could say it was blue (it is blue isn’t it?)
They have to take their Bible as the Word of God by faith. There’s no other way. There’s no way to prove it. It’s a fundamental article of the faith.
They don’t even know how God inspired it. Was it auto-writing by control of the hand? Did God dictate it directly into the scribes mind, so the scribe was just a stenographer? They don’t know. They treat it like it fell straight down from heaven.
Young ones are taught it’s the Word of God before they even know what’s in the book, and before they read any of it. They introduce it to new ones by instructing them to read the gospel of John. They don’t want them to start reading it from the beginning, where they’ll come into a vengeful warrior God. That comes later, when the hook is firmly set.
They use the Bible to prove it’s from God. They quote 2 Timothy 3:16 : “All scripture is given by inspiration (divinely breathed) of God…” In other words God breath the Bible. How He did that is anybody’s guess.
i got things like that. I then asked how do you know and kept pushing this. And that’s when, at some Point, they claimed to know, to recognize that it was God’s Word. That it had that Power or in some way was clear to them. So I am not denying what you are saying, but rather my experience was that if I pushed on it they gave the responsibility to the Bible. Not - I have spiritual insight and can recognize God’s Word - but rather that that is the nature of God’s Word or the Bible, that it is clearly him/his.
and note, I am not defending or attacking that position. I just find it interesting.
Thought it seems to me they tend not to simply say, I have no way of knowing except I have faith it is the Word of God. Some did say this, but most people I spoke to - and it tended to be more leadership than membership - would give attributes to the texts, that the Bible’s divine nature was palpable and self-evident. Note: I am not saying it is not faith on their part. I am however saying that what I found was that they did not fall back simply on faith, because that makes it seem like there is nothing obviously special about the Bible. They had faith in God even when they could not see hear from experience God. Faith was in the absence of experience. It was a faith anyway, regardless, situation. Belief in the Bible had to do with the nature of the Bible. That it was clearly the Word of God. Now some simply got confused and could nto offer me anything coherent - primarily members. But those who could manage to clarify under pressure of questions generally said something about scripture. If scripture has special, experiencable qualities, then belief in it be ‘right’ is nto simply faith to the believer.
I see what you are saying Moreno. Some tell me it has to be the word of God because of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled in it. That is just one divine quality they see, And from there it’s hook line and sinker.
Most don’t think about it. It’s just accepted without questions. And most start squirming when pinned down. Most don’t have an answer to how it’s the word of God. I recently had a Bible thumping fundamentalist tell me when asked about how the Bible is the word of God: “It’s above my pay grade.”
I’ve hit that one, though it seems to be more common in some Groups than others. That, of course, would be evidence. And if it could be demonstrated would Count as evidence even amongst atheists. Unfortunately for the fundamentalists there seems to be way too much interpretive leeway.
See now that gets interesting. Whose pay grade is it, then. His pastor’s? If it is one could ask how he decided it was his pastor’s and not Anothers, or not an Imam’s? I do understand that these conversations break down. In person I am pretty relentless, but also seem very nice and open, so I have pushed. At some Point people have to either attribute a skill to themselves, to someone else who they have the skill to recognize as an expert or attribute Powers to the scripture. Either the believer needs a kind of intuitive skill or scripture has a Power. There is no other option. Regardless of pay grade.
The Word of God is obviously written by humans, seeing we are the intelligence on Earth arent’ we? You are therefore asking how did they gain this intelligence and insight?
First is observation, observation of round bodies such as the moon and that light and darkness existed. This caused them to question…who/what were they questioning is obviously the question. This is why it relates to spiritual interpretation and also spiritual experience.
Ancient spiritual experience was gained through several methods, it is documented and studied through meditative practices and also somatic practices. Hence there has always involved 2 different forms of awareness. One is drugged induced information which would not gain the same brain wave lengths as natural meditative processes. Therefore soma takers have written very different versions of creation to those humans who practiced light meditation.
If you ask a human being if they believe in the Word of God, then you question what God actually represents to them. Obviously it involves spiritual teachings and reasoning, but also it involves their own self perception as a spiritual awareness. You are asking why a human being is aware spiritually?
As a human being who studied spirit, meditated, applied spiritual healing and received verifiable information involving other spiritual presences, I can only explain my own self experience. As you are not my experience then you will never understand yourself, for spirit is a self journey, just as established by spiritual teachers. It is very easy for someone who has not taken the journey of self experience to observe and be unrealistic in their own observations, only because they lack the actual experience. It is very easy to explain human experience as an experience that only involves brain matter and chemical signals…yet experience involves self expression at a personal level.
For a human being to have complete faith in a spiritual Creator is not a phenomena, and when other human beings apply for “proof” through this method of scientific evaluation, they will never gain proof because they use reason to try to explain spirit experience. Why would any human being want to quantify spirit experience unless they are in scientific pursuit of the experience itself…only because they want Creator? This is a fact that many Forums should realize…as many of the members on these forums are involved in scientific pursuit of this experience and are motivated to ask these questions.
Therefore if O a circle was used to imply Creator as a function, then only the function is being discussed through the observation and the means in which the observation was implied.
As the actual WORD OF GOD is written in English, this is simply a method of teaching the observations and not the method of teaching the actualization of the spirit.
I don’t Think we are the only intelligence on Earth, but I’m interested in what you have to say here.
Not really, but your answer will likely reflect on the issue, so go ahead.
I don’t Think this was on topic. Do you Believe scripture is the Word of God - channeled or otherwise accurately recorded by humans? If so, why do you Think this is the case? Is it just the Bible or is the Koran also the Word of God? If not both, how did you decide which one was the right one?
Human beings are the only intelligence because all intelligence belongs to the same spirit, which includes Nature also…therefore we can communicate with Nature.
Everything is Scripture, Scripture is “script” and it was an accepted method of teaching by Philosophers of all countries. The Philosophers would themselves argue over their own script, hence Scripture involves all writings.
