Parameters

Madame M:

Although we will walk our own path, as you allude to we could do a lot worse than following Emerson/Carlyle or Lewis/”The American Woman.”

One can (as others HAVE) get into all sorts of discussion, speculation, and disagreement about the “true” nature of the Christian Old Testament: Examples being 1) it’s just an ethnocentric, culturally focused, and narrow view from what would otherwise be a rather tangential Middle Eastern people who got notoriety because they eventually wrote their oral history down and then guarded it with zealous and slightly xenophobic fervor; to, 2) that the Hebrews’ deity figure was a powerful alien who has since moved on, to, 3) their deity was an actual deity-like figure, but was not “God,” as evidenced by the many emotional and seemingly human drawbacks possessed by said deity, to 4) their deity WAS God, but in avatar or reduced consciousness form (similar to, although not identical, to William James’ concept).

Leaving aside those (and other) discussions, I think it worth mentioning that, whatever one believes about the work, not only were the Hebrews in many ways the first meaningful democracy of the times, and proponents of what was then pretty rare monotheism, but they espoused concepts of social justice and responsibility for one’s fellow man that were, let us say, rather uncommon for the period but that have laid a foundation for many things we accept in principle today.

I agree with you that were I to attempt to discern the nature of God, I would say God is relational. If, as Rabbi Harold Kushner said, “humans are the language of God,” then it would be reasonable to surmise that God is at least the best of what we humans are about, and relationships and especially friendships are at (or near) the top of the list.

Even if we were to decide to have our discussion on the assumption of “The Bible” as the ultimate authority, we would then have to first decide on that Bible. I don’t necessarily mean the common choice between King James, New International, and Revised Standard versions, but on agreement of the decision points (and decisions made) as to what works constitute that Bible. And then we would have to agree on which primary sources hold sufficient researcher rigor to merit inclusion in those works. And then we would have to agree on which translations deserved (and deserve) merit, a daunting task considering not just translations from Hebrew, Aramaic, ancient Greek, Latin, and Old English, but agreeing on which subjective decisions were the correct ones (ancient Greek and Hebrew can have multiple meanings for the same word, a nightmare for translators even where sufficient context is available, which often isn’t the case). Deeply learned theologians become veritable Tasmanian devils going round and round on these, and their disagreements are the stuff of endless (and occasionally interesting) debate. But even if we could somehow come to some a priori assumptive agreement on all this, we would then have to address directly “the Bible as ultimate authority” facet, which would then bring up the old Protestant/Catholic schism where one declares a book as the sole authority, and the other says authority can’t be solely from a book since an institution (and the people in that institution) decided what is included in that Bible. And these determinations are separate from an assessment of the many “gold nuggets” that exist in the many versions, and why even skeptics often agree that for those things, nearly any of those versions rank as great books.

Although entirely unrelated to the specific subject, physicist Richard Feynman has an interview discussion where he describes the general problem, an interview which has now become semi-viral on YouTube.

As for nature and natural desires, I am not completely sure of what you mean, but perhaps they can be included by my comments below. Similarly, since I neither necessarily accept nor necessarily reject (neither in part nor in toto) the other parameters you have listed, no exclusion may be necessary there either. Great and learned people have held deep religious views, and great and learned people have held non-religious (and occasionally even anti-religious) views, and furthermore, the definition of religious here is somewhat separate from the definition of spiritual.

So does that leave us theological free-for-all? I think so, but don’t know for sure, as I do not know your definition there as well, lol. Regardless however, I hope the discussion does not take on the character of “poison”! :) But we can jump parsecs to another subject if you like. There are so many!