As with any other subject that people are passionate about, religion has its reactionaries who subconsciously categorize interlocutors into generalized positions. There are Christians who will infer from your lack of belief in Christianity as a whole that you think everything Christian is necessarily false, bad, or useless. This is, of course, a logical fallacy.
If we consider, for the sake of argument, that Jesus of Nazareth was not divine, but rather just an influential man with a unique philosophy, what are we to make of The Bible? On the face, we can easily see that The Bible has been an extremely influential book over the course of the last couple millennia. It has guided monarchs, captains, housewives, and terrorists alike. The answer to the question of whether or not The Bible has value should be plainly obvious. An enormous amount of value has been derived from this collection of works along every step toward the development of Western civilization.
At this point the distinction between the believer and the nonbeliever can be drawn. The believer, in general, thinks that The Bible represents divine truth and embodies a supreme infallibility, whereas the nonbeliever may simply concede that it has philosophical value. It seems reasonable to claim that The Bible has a great deal of potential value when applied to the betterment of an individual or a community. The nonbeliever might say that it is akin to some of the great Greek classics — purposeful fiction with the goals of teaching lessons or leading by example.
Seen in that light, The Bible looks like an interesting object of study for the religious and non-religious alike. Too often the lines are blurred between nonbeliever and vehement oppositionist, leaving religious followers ill-equipped to have productive and insightful discussions with someone who happens to arrive at a different conclusion and who perceives different value from the same object. It would be nice to see a widespread decrease of reactionary and presumptuous judgments by all parties involved.
The bible has philosophical value insomuch as it has ethical value, though.
Metaphysics as a branch of philosophy is downright jested in the Bible.
Philosophy of Mind, too.
These branches, and others, were commonplace in the Helenic world, well before the bible was written, but the bible seems to ignore other philosophies, instead of building off them or contrasting them properly.
Ethics, sure. Definitely. I’ll happily grant that the ethics portrayed by Christ seem to be an excellent model for future ethicists and ethical people alike, but that is not to say that there are not better systems.
Take Thomas Jefferson, for example, third president of the US. Didn’t like the hocus-pocus aspects of the bible, so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible was born: an ethical/moral system based around the life of Jesus Christ. Seems decent enough.
Fact of the matter is, though, the various churches all need people to believe in the metaphysical mumbo jumbo and divine intervention and miracles and all that. It keeps people going to church.
Ethics won’t do that on its own. Ethics’ll teach you otherwise.
Agreed. It would be a difficult argument for the claim that The Bible is the best source of ethical values, but there is indisputably some value to be derived.
In addition to ethics, however, I can see shades of the philosophy of mind. Perhaps this is a stretch, but at least in the practical sense, behaviorist and folk psychological explanations run rampant throughout. Of course we wouldn’t say that it teaches modern philosophy of mind as such, but rather that it serves as a data point when studying the various positions involved with the philosophy of mind.
I think you are entirely correct in fingering metaphysics as a completely contradictory realm, though. What The Bible teaches with regard to metaphysical subjects is almost completely divergent from modern philosophical metaphysics, and as you pointed out, the former has the agenda of accruing believers and retaining their faith in the Church.
It would be nice to see a widespread decrease of reactionary and presumptuous judgments by all parties involved.
Amen Brad!
You might find Asimov’s commentary on the Bible to be well worth reading. You can borrow it from me if you’d like.
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The phrase “what the Bible teaches” is problematic; it assumes that there is a unified authorship that seeks to get a single point across. Yet we know the Bible is simply a collection of writings by different authors, each writing from their own perspective in their own time and circumstance. Notably, there’s a big difference in style, time of origin and subject matter between the Old and the New Testament. The latter is particularly interesting to me, as much of it reveals the philosophy and metaphysical concepts held by Jesus of Nazareth. Interestingly, there are many similarities with certain Eastern beliefs (innate divinity of humans, sanctity of all life, nonresistance, tolerance).
It’s all a matter of interpretation in the end, and unfortunately, as the centuries passed, the Christian church(es) focused less and less on the core aspects of Jesus’ message.