But hang on Diver Dan. That assumes that religion has something sensible to say about ethics as it applies to physical beings, namely, humans.

But religion has no more presumptive competence to speak on ethics than any other branch of knowledge has. In fact, it has less, because, starting from nonsense, and gobbledegook, and fictions, and confusion, and blind faith as to propositions of fact, things don't get any better when it goes from such premises to its conclusions about morality.

Take out of the Bible all the parts that refer to physical facts, and what is left is the undisputed relevance of the Christian religion to human beings.

I have some sympathy with the position of committed Christians as they try to come to terms with sacred texts written thousands of years ago, and apply them to contemporary circumstances involving enormous scientific advances, in a way that makes sense of those texts without rubbishing their religion. This is no easy task when unaided by some more recent & reliable spiritual clarification. It requires a significant move away from a literalist approach to these texts, even though the words used in those ancient texts must be to some extent rooted in a historical framework. Gradually Christians are finding ways to reconcile these texts with confirmed scientific discoveries: eg evolution. This increasingly involves the acceptance that what might have once been regarded as a material fact in those texts may be inaccurate as such, and that that which was literally described as a material fact may rather have a very significant spiritual meaning or a primary spiritual meaning. But this is very difficult if there is no acceptance that there is no conflict whatsoever between true religion and proven science, and that they both approach the same matters from different perspectives using different methodologies. You simply cant use the scientific methodology to determine metaphysical, spiritual or moral issues, just as you cant use the spiritual/metaphysical approach to determine scientific facts. A constructive, enlightened approach can be the only result of an acceptance that the two aspects are in all cases complimentary rather than in competition. This is the necessary starting point. It is in fact taught by some more recent religions - eg the Baha'i Faith. It does not deny the great value of these ancient sacred texts as religious and moral texts, given the time & state of learning within which they arose. But it does allow the present believer to move on and and value religion in modern society, recognising its essential contribution given the limitations of the scientific approach and its potential for abuse, but only when religion is shorn of all superstitions, false interpretations and out-of-date human accretions that still hold it back.

Graham N

That looks suspiciously like bait-and-switch, Sells.

>> It is crucial that we understand the words of the creed “Was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried” as an actual historical event.<<

When you referred to the same Creed in your article, the excerpt you used ended with "and became man". A key point, I suspect, that moved the narrative from the (to me) tarradiddle of "eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made etc.", into the limelight of the real world's stage.

What happened to your assertion that "This series of statements are [sic] obviously metaphysical statements"?

It now appears that you have nominated a point at which history intersects with science. And suddenly, science goes out of the window.

Yes, it is highly likely that there was a Jesus. I'm not - necessarily - disputing that. And yes, there is a possibility that he was put to death by the Roman satrap.

But to make religious sense of your "actual historical event", would it not also be necessary to buy into the whole Lazarus/loaves'n'fishes/cured lepers bits too?

So do we have an example of historical reality - that Boaz will latch onto like a demented leech - or do we simply have an extension of the metaphysical world that you previously described so neatly?

The one that makes it unnecessary for science to ask awkward questions about surface tension on the Sea of Galilee, for example.

Stephen Hawking has just published a book in which he demonstrates that there is no god, that the universe created itself because of gravity. This fact tends to make many of these comments rather silly.

God is a figment of man's imagination, one combined with large amounts of wishful thinking.

Get over it and live in the real world. You might be surprised how good it is!

P.S. Anyone who suggests that religion is necessary to generate a moral compass is clearly deranged.

Peter,

You have discovered the Enlightenment. Good.

The problem is in the debate between episte and mythos, it is the Chtistian Church that was to draw first blood claiming to be the custodians of knowledge going way back to the fourth century, when the other gospels were desrtoyed to hide the debates over the trinity and the divinity of Jesus.

Up until c. 190 Jewish Christianity was not especially dogmatic. Dogmatism came about with institutionalisation leading to Nicaea and beyond. When the Bishoporic grew large more organisation was required.

I do agree with you that ancient scriptures (not only Christian) need be read in their context and many of the stories and myths are allegorical, Though, many Christians do take their Bible literalliy still.

I think George's mature comment (if reprenent him correctly) holds that the non-naive Christian will NOT look to the God of the Gaps. Once science has explained the origin of the physical universe, life and consciousness; the non naive Christian or other theist must look beyond science in way that God competes with other theories for where reality is bounded/limited. The theist we see that extra step. The atheist and sceptic will see the explanations of sceince a closed boundary.

Though a sceptic, I do think the transcendal thought embedded in religion and myth allows to adopt a template to think beyond the classical mechanics of the nineteenth century. Herin, we can substitue more esoteric realities (e.g. quantum mechanics) in lieu of the thousands of religions.

"To say that before the Enlightenment men thought that the Bible was the only source of knowledge is to mistake the kind of knowledge that it represents."

Well, let me ask once again the question that never seems to get an answer: WHAT knowledge? All I want is one agreed-upon fact derived from religion which could not have been derived from reason, logic and common sense. Just ONE? Peter? runner? Diver Dan? Just what is this wonderful religious knowledge that reaches the parts other knowledge cannot reach? Surely you can provide one single example?

"An insight given to us by Iris Murdoch is that the reason we have such a fascination with 19th century English novels is that the characters that are portrayed are set against a moral background that was a residue of Christian faith. This makes the narrative interesting to us because we see what virtue and vice are like."

But of course 99.9% of all the novel written in the Victorian era are completely unread today, at least partly because many of them have a heavy-handed paternalistic moral absolutism which makes us cringe in embarassment and distress. If Murdoch's point was that much more nasty and appalling things can happen to people in theocratically-dominated societies, then I totally agree. Burnings at the stake, public humiliations and being outcast from society are much more entertaining to read about than, say, no-fault divorces. But that doesn't mean that any of us want to bring them back.