Finding Truths in the Bible

Once again it is after 1:00 AM before I started writing my daily post. I know that once I stop writing a post a day, I will probably just stop writing posts altogether. I really shouldn't write about political or religious topics because they make me depressed.

....

I wrote for an hour and decided to delete the post. I don't think that it possible to discuss nuanced ideas in social media.

I wrote for another hour and deleted the bulk of the post. Modern pundits have turned the subject of religion into torture.

The Key Influences on the US Founders

The United States was founded in 1776. The US Founders had an extremely limited library. They had a liberal arts education which would encompass Aristotelian logic as presented by Antoine Arnold and Isaac Watts. They were deeply interested in the Roman Republic and they studied the Bible.

I believe that these three elements are the keys to understanding the classical liberal mindset.

I suspect that founders were inspired by several key elements of the Bible. I will examine two.

The first is that God used Moses as an instrument to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt and that God laid the foundation for the law.

The second idea is that Christ died on the cross to free people from sin and usher in a state of grace.

I believe that these two ideas are key to the classical liberal outlook of the US Founders. The US Founders claimed that human liberty was endowed by the Creator of the universe.

The ideas I mentioned led to a long tradition that is often called Natural Law. Modern thinkers on the left and right attack anyone who discusses ideas related to religion. But we have to find a way to discuss the ideas if we want to preserve the ideas at the foundation of the United States.

How Can We Preserve These Ideas in an Age of Non-Belief

The Founders had a limited library. I suspect that most people in colonies simply accepted that the Bible was true.

In the Internet Age we have piles of conflicting information about Biblical times at our finger tips. We are overloaded with conflicting claims about what happened in Ancient Judea.

Notably, there are claims that the archaeological records do not back up the stories of Moses or of Jesus.

I've come to believe that the best approach to presenting the stories of Moses and Jesus in an academic setting is to read the stories as if they were made up by scribes who wrote the Bible.

Please note. I am not saying that the stories of Moses and Jesus are fiction. I am saying that the best way to present the stories in an academic setting is to examine them as if they were fiction.

The core idea behind the story of Moses is that our liberties come from God but that to maintain our liberties we need to live in accordance with the law.

There are numerous complex ideas swirling around Jesus. NOTE: The New Testament was written in Greek and seems to incorporate a great deal of Greek Philosophy.

The core idea behind Jesus is that God somehow took on human form and became man. The Greeks would say that God was one in being with the father, and this would make sense.

I think that it is easiest way to approach this idea today is with a thought experiment. One should ask: what would happen if God took on human form and walked among the people?

Would God be interested in gaining temporal power? Why would the God that created the universe want temporal power?

Would God want to become wealthy? Why would the God that created the universe care about the petty wealth on this earth. There are whole moons made of diamond and the gold floating around in the heavens exceeds that on earth.

I personally find that the ideas of The Bible come alive if one accepts that most of the stories were produced by thought experiments. This approach to reading invites people into examining the ideas behind the work.

Jesus as the God of Truth

I have heard many people called Jesus the God of Truth. In a previous post I mentioned that many ancient philosophers had examined the concept of a god of truth.

Our minds are filled with ideas. We have an inkling that some of our ideas are true. Others are likely false. Unfortunately, there is a huge disconnect between our brains and the world and we do not see clearly which ideas are true and which are false.

Ideas exist within minds. A god of truth is some sort of mind-like entity that contains true ideas.

It is interesting to imagine Jesus as The God of Truth.

What would happen if the God of Truth were to walk among us?

I suspect that the experience would be something similar to the story of Jesus. When Jesus walked among the priests, intellectuals and rulers of Judea, he exposed their hypocrisies and they became angry.

In this post I mentioned that, when examining the Bible in an academic setting, one should examine the possibility that the story was fiction.

I should examine the possibility that the God of Truth that I am holding in my mind is not true.

Does the possibility that idea of a God of Truth isn't true destroy the value of the idea of a God of Truth?

Personally, I don't think that it does.

The Pursuit of Truth

To end this post, I decided to jot down a few ideas about the pursuit of truth.

I admire people who actively engage in the pursuit of truth.

The pursuit of truth starts with the assumption that people do not start with truth.

If we had the truth; why would we need to pursue it?

The Bible is a well designed collection of works. People throughout the ages have found wisdom by reading and analyzing the Bible. The book has been extremely influential in Western history. For that matter a large number of important ideas originated from the Bible. Many bad ideas originated in The Bible as well.

I like to use the metaphor that the direction that a train is facing is often a better indication of where it is going than the itinerary of where it has been.

If you are in Denver and want to go to Chicago, it is better to hop on the train facing Chicago than to hop on the train that just came from Chicago and is pointing towards California.

For the picture I took a photo of a toy train on a Bible. I did this to portray that idea that the Bible is a great starting point in the pursuit of truth.

steambib.jpg

Pursuing truth starts with an acknowledgement that one does not have truth. Here is a fun idea. Some people call Jesus the God of Truth. When Jesus said "follow me" he is asking people to pursue truth. He is not telling people that they somehow magically have truth.


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