Discussion and DB (Sunday Forum)

by James, Australia, Monday, April 20, 2009, 15:23 (1497 days ago) @ Warren

Warren,

My comment was not about Ian but a more general comment that there is often no response even when a particular person has been addressed in specific response to what they have specifically said. I am quite happy to say again that it seems to me to be discourteous and if it is explained by some new form of etiquette peculiar to DB I would be I would happy to know about it.

I am not sure what you want in terms of etiquette. There have been many times when I have made some statement and there has been no response. Contributors may very well have thought, "Oh no, here he goes again" or "I agree with that", or "I don't agree with that, but I am not going to respond because I know what his reply will be", or "I'm a bit bored with all this", and many more. Does it really matter?

My question to Ian was, if the petitionary form of prayer is now " evolving" into the contemplative or meditative form of prayer (which seems to be favored by many on this thread) how does this fit in with the idea that the Scriptures and particularly the Old Testament are inspired?

Your response to that was,

I am missing the point of what you say here because I am mindful of Psalm 46 which says Be still and know that I am God. I have always understood this to mean that we should be contemplative from way back then and so I have a problem with the idea that contemplative prayer is dependent on Evolution in the usual sense of Evolution of the Universe and the whole human race.»

I have never said that the contemplative form of prayer was absent from the OT, but the predominant form in all the stories seems to be we are in awe of you and do me a favor type. I know you used the word "evolution", and I think that is appropriate, not in any biological sense, but in terms of a cultural evolution. I have already outlined where I think ethical standards have evolved for the better.

"Some books fixed in time” are the starting point. So I think that Claude Shannon’s Communication Theory is very relevant here in saying but the message that is sent is not the message that it is received. Most especially when the Transcendent is sending the message and it is the merely human that receives it. I then mentioned the specific role that Evolution might play. So the point to stress about Evolution for me is that it is our
understanding that is evolving so it is not the message that is evolving and getting better but our understanding of the message.»

I have stated before that the problem with the OT stories is that they have very mixed messages about God. One set of meanings out of a biblical story is wonderful and another set is quite horrible (the Exodus, for instance). Faith involves discarding the horrible for the wonderful, but Christians and Jews are not alone in that. All religions do the same with their sacred books.

If there is an "evolution", it has to be an even stronger rejection of the horrible meanings.

So the most important point for discussion seemed to me to be about
whether or not there is a case for revising our understanding of what “inspired” might mean. Which has the expectation that there would be some response in the form of yes or no or maybe.

I can't answer that. I know that most people in this forum would say that "inspired" is not the same as "dictated" as some fundamentalist Christians would claim. How about you tell us what you think is meant by "inspiration".