To protect a necessary fantasy, II

The quiet, private response I quoted Sunday wasn't the last one I received. A very similar one followed on Monday, right down to one of the same Bible quotations and including the statement that "it would be great if you could ponder these thoughts in regards to the Bible." (The earlier writer had hoped "that you will think about these verses.") I wonder whether they attend the same church.
    The second writer (let's call her by the Greek letter Nu) also said:

If [the Bible] is not the inspired word of God then it is all bunk and none of it is trustworthy. Because it claims to be the inspired Word of God and Jesus says we live by these words that proceed from the mouth of God. If it's not from the mouth of God, making it inspired, then it's all a bunch of lies and Jesus is a sham. If Jesus is a sham, we don't need the Bible anyway, because He is the Reason it matters. But we know that's not true.

    I replied that I'd actually thought about the whole thing quite a bit and even had a dream about it. I gave Nu links to Sunday's and Monday's posts. And I added:

By the way, I'm afraid that "The Bible is all bunk" does not follow from the fact that some of its statements are false, including the one about its being inspired. You're claiming too much. Or, rather, making a simple logic error.

In very short order, I received a more lengthy reply, but one that made no reference whatever to anything I'd written, as though Nu might not even have glanced at my posts. She started right off with "Morris, Please carefully consider these issues in regards to the Bible...." It was, of course, most annoying that I was expected to be the one doing all of the careful considering. What was Nu doing?

Nevertheless, I bit my tongue and as calmly as possible made a thoughtful reply:

I hope (against the evidence) that you would like to understand where I'm coming from, and would be willing to look at the weaknesses in your own position in order to honor good sense and rationality. While I think that you have (or can readily obtain) all of the resources you need to do that, I'll try to help you in my own modest way by responding to each of the points in your email.

    Accordingly, I'll pair my comments here with Nu's original paragraphs (in italics):

Regarding the necessity of having God as [the Bible's] source, we can consider prophecy. Who else but God could know what would happen hundreds of years in the future? What mere human could get 300 prophecies correct about one person (Jesus) over a period of hundreds and now thousands of years? No one could have concocted fulfilled prophecy.
    It's rather easy to "fulfill" prophecy in a text written hundreds of years after the one in which the prophecies were made. As for "prophecies" that hadn't yet occurred in the second set of writings (the New Testament), it's rather easy to "predict" events if the predictions are vague enough.

The Bible’s insight into human nature and the solutions it provides to our fallen condition are also evidence of its divine source. In addition, the Bible’s honesty about the weaknesses of even its heroes is evidence that it isn’t just a human book. By contrast, we tend to build ourselves up in our own writing.
    So, Shakespeare's works were inspired by God too? My appreciation for Shakespeare grew a lot lately in the course of my reading Frank Harris's memoir, My Life and Loves (1931). He considered Jesus the greatest man who ever lived (primarily because of his teachings on compassion), and rated Shakespeare right up there with him.

As further evidence that the Bible is God’s word, we can note its survival and influence throughout the last two millennia despite repeated attempts to destroy it.
    So, Plato's dialogues and Aristotle's writings (and the writings of other contemporaries of the Old Testament and New Testament authors) were also inspired by God?
    And what about the evil influences of the Bible, the murder and persecution of Jews—the ones who killed Christ!, the slaughter of Muslims during the Crusades, the persecution of "witches," the racking and burning at the stake of heretics, the showing to Galileo of the instruments of torture to force him to recant his scientific findings, etc.? We may be seeing Muslim atrocities in our age, but the Christians had their ages too.

What Scripture proclaims about itself finds confirmation in our experience. For example, the practical changes it brings in individuals and societies are evidence that it is true.
    Ditto with respect to innumerable written works. Was Montaigne inspired by God? Spinoza? And many others....

One more note. We have the testimony of Jesus about Scripture whose resurrection is evidence that He knew what He was talking about!
    Say you.

Morris, There is much evidence that the Bible is true and that it is indeed the Word of God.
    As I've already agreed, there is truth in the Bible. But there is also falsehood, statements for which there is no credible evidence. Contradictions, both parts of which cannot be true, by definition. People have always picked and chosen what parts to believe and let guide them, what parts to ignore as stupid or wishful (or even immoral). What parts do you yourself ignore?

What proof do you have to show that it isnt the Word of God?
    I'm afraid that the burden of proof was on you, and it appears that you have let it just slide off your back [possibly with a little push to get it going]. While I don't claim that I've proved anything, over the past two or three years I've introduced a lot of moral, judicial, and scientific evidence that at the very least throws tremendous doubt on tenets of religious faith. Better yet, I've frequently cited the excellent works of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, who say it so much better and more thoroughly than I do. And Bertrand Russell. And even Thomas Paine. My blog is more for my own entertainment (and keeping myself alive, as I wrote on September 21) than to convince anybody else.

"One final thought for today"—I hadn't noticed that that was the subject line of Nu's note (the one with the above italicized paragraphs); she may have been saying that she hoped for no reply. I do think so now, for in the time that I've been writing this post, I've heard from Nu again, this time with the explicit opening,

This will be my final reply to you on this subject

and closing,

This requires no response, please. [italics mine]

Not having had time to carefully consider the five hundred words in between, I won't comment further on Nu's latest.

To protect a necessary fantasy

As I lay ruminating in the early morning hours of yesterday, the realization that Gamma was telling me "So there!" wasn't the only thing that came to me. I had a dream in the hour or two that followed. I can remember only two, maybe three things about it.
    Two African-seeming personages were speaking to me (I wasn't "on screen"; they faced my dreaming mind, so to speak). I understood that they were father and son, the father being the primary speaker. He was astonishingly striking (only his head was presented), his face as long as a horse's, the distance from his eyes to the tip of his nose four or five inches and the distance from there to his lips another four inches. A sort of totem pole face. [I am reminded this morning, by Wikipedia, that the totem pole derives from "cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America"—that is, Chief Seattle's people.]
    I wish I could remember the older man's words. At the time of my dreaming I understood that he was telling me there was a religious key of some sort that would unlock the mystery of the "So there!" folks I wrote about on Friday. Glad of this knowledge, I made a mental note to write about Friday afternoon's email interchanges and revisit that day's post. Yesterday I found that writing about the interchanges was enough for one post. But today....

Today I'll try to articulate the beginnings of a "religious" understanding of the "people who don't want the truth," as my old friend the judge characterizes them.
    It seems to me that whatever belief they espouse with their voices raised and their faces red (at once threatening opponents and brooking no debate) is their talisman. A talisman (from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary) is:

An object bearing a sign or character engraved under astrological influences [!] and held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune, something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects

    "The scientists [who say the evidence shows that Cameron Todd Willingham did not murder his children] are 'latter-day supposed experts'" absolves Texas Governor Rick Perry. I did not put an innocent man to death!
    "There is no global warming" averts the potential catastrophe threatening the Earth. We and our descendants are safe!
    "There is no credible evidence of evolution" wards off an unimaginable horror. We aren't the descendants of monkeys!
    "Obama does not meet the constitutional requirements of being a naturally born American" is the magical charm that might avert the evil of our having a "black" president. Obama will be disqualified!
    "The Bible is true" is a talisman with enough magic for all exigencies. Suffering will be rewarded! Evil will be punished! We will not die, but will live forever and ever!

To the people wearing these talismans about their necks, the things to be averted are to them truly evil. Unimaginably, heart-sickeningly so. To be avoided at all costs, not least the cost of the truth:

Governor Perry did put an innocent man to death. "In a clemency plea four days before the execution, Willingham's attorney raised questions about the forensics. Perry has said he examined the information. But he did not delay the execution."
    Human activity is raising global temperatures.
    We evolved from simpler life forms.
    Obama is our legitimate president (and arguably more legitimate than George W. Bush, given the extraordinary fact of his having been appointed by [a 5-4 vote of] the U.S. Supreme Court).
    Suffering often goes unrewarded.
    Evil often goes unpunished.
    We are all going to die, not to awake again.

If, as seems to be, religion is a support system for mutually assuring people's most profound protective fantasies, then a whole variety of lesser sorts of delusionary practices would seem to serve the same purpose. A pertinent project for cultural relativism would be to discover what it is about a particular culture that explains its members need for the culture's distinctive fantasy. In other words, what is it about the people who seem to need to believe, for example, that President Obama is not legit that defines their culture, over against the rest of us, who accept the fact that he is our legal, elected president?