I made no assumptions, your claims conclusively demonstrate ignorance of the subject matter, and your hostility is objectively based on this ignorance.
Do you assume that everyone who sees the Church as an oppressive institution is "irrational" and "ignorant"?
No, only those who demonstrate their ignorance and irrationality, as you have.
I sincerely encourage you, purely in the interest of holding an informed opinion, to look again at your claims. In Science we are expected to assess a suspect theory from an objective basis, which includes considering arguments in the context of the advocate's stated premises. Why should our opinions in any other field be handled differently? If you want to use history as a stick with which to beat Christianity then you need to make sure you're using solid, objective history (and not just the one-sided ramblings of a historian with pre-determined outcomes).
You've gone from merely displaying arrogant ignorance to abject bigotry. At least, if you are willing to accept "irrational hostility to a group or individual on the basis of ignorance" as a valid definition of bigotry.
That aside, Slashdot is not the place to explain that everything ever written, built or said is subject to interpretation, nor that an "image" is utterly different to a clone (unless your mirror produces a fully functional copy of you every morning while you shave), or even that your refusal to admit any cultural assumption is evidence of those cultural assumptions (ie refusal to recognise that you are a man formed by your times).
Then there's the fact that your last claim is dismissed by anyone who has seen Pope Benedict on television in the UK last year, or Australia and before that the US in 2008, or all over continental Europe - and he was only elected in 2005. If anything, one could construct a comparable argument about the "first world" powers (such as the US and the European Union) wielding science as a "tool... to keep the [third world] rabble in bondage"... but that would be too far off topic.
I am afraid you are horribly mistaken and woefully ignorant. Allegory is one of the four classical modes of biblical interpretation dating from antiquity, and was employed by the Church Fathers (such as St Augustine in the IV century).
The real issue is when Protestantism arose, and in order to discredit the teaching authority of a continuing, hierarchical Church turned the Bible into a book that dropped out of heaven and had to be understood literally by anyone who could read.
Since America is the first (and only) nation in the world to have been Protestant from the beginning (rather than Catholic/Orthodox and then becoming Protestant) your cultural assumptions about the treatment of Scripture are so out of whack with the rest of the world.
Misleading initial claim. The funding restrictions apply to embryonic stem cells (ie lines sourced from aborted human fetuses) - no such restrictions hinder research involving "adult stem cells" (human pluripotent stem cells). hPSCs have proven far more effective in terms of positive results, but attracts very little attention compared to the far less successful embryonic stem cell research.
I found it interesting that while the article (second link) claims that these can be induced from both "embryonic and induced human" stem cells, the abstract of the paper itself (first link) names only "human pluripotent stem cells" (ie "adult stem cells") and makes no mention of embryonic cells.
Both links refer to the one study, by the same people, so why does the second mention embryonic stem cells when the paper itself (or at least, the abstract) does not?
I respond that they have no idea what a university education was for over its thousand year history.
I respond that neither do you - because for most of their history, universities were job training schools intended to produce lawyers, judges, priests, government functionaries, etc..., etc... That they produced 'cultured' and 'well rounded' graduates was a happy accident, not an intended result.
You appear to understand neither the history of the university nor my own claims. I didn't claim to define the object of a university (though my last comment about Dante and Shakespeare may have implied it). The object of the university was not "to produce lawyers, judges [etc]" but doctors of law, masters of theology, teachers of philosophy. The university is the place for the advancement of all knowledge - the fact that men who are so well trained in the substance, theory and history of law (cf Jurisprudence) also tend to be excellent practitioners of the law is the happy accident.
Priests were not trained for priesthood at universities but seminaries (for the last five centuries, before then privately by the bishop or his canons at the cathedral chapter). The study of medicine grew naturally from the academic study of science (which is perhaps the faculty closest to its origins in philosophy). Government functionaries, until very recently, hardly studied at university at all - they were privately tutored in the classics, arithmetic etc being examined by this paper.
Perhaps I should just refer people to Bl John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University", published just forty years before the exam we're discussing was given - already this wrong-headed idea of the university as an expensive finishing school had cropped up.
The thing omitted in that observation however is that until only this very generation, being able to recall with precision what one has learned was a crucial skill in any kind of study. Moderns don't bother remembering anything (even their own phone number) because they can just "look it up". High school students unceasingly complain about having to learn the first principles of mathematics "because I can just do it with my calculator" - how much more in any other discipline (which is not so clearly procedural as mathematics) would students need a "specific education" if there is to be any hope of them learning further?
I do think that universities are mostly to blame here, having flocked to the fashion of generating money-spinning faculties (like "commerce" and "journalism") while abandoning the faculties that gave the university its identity for centuries (philosophy, history, theology).
There are some overlapping faculties (such as engineering) which both teach a mostly technical discipline while also requiring a more advanced theoretical foundation, and these probably do still belong at the university... but perhaps the time is coming when we will have to look more closely at the "BS/BA only candidates" and the "graduate studies material". Actually that's already happened, with a sharp divide between the undergrads who happily toddle off to their careers in industry and never darken the doors of the academy again, and the lifelong academics who seem never to leave at all.
Perhaps the thing I find most objectionable is the indignantly anachronistic egalitarianism on display in the comments here, for the most part by people who know nothing of education (or scholarship in general) beyond their own experiences as a one-time student. Latin and Greek are not "stupid shit" put up as a wall to keep the unwashed masses out, they were (and remain) an exceedingly useful foundation for any advanced study in any discipline with a European vocabulary. At the turn of the (last) century, French may well have taken a dominant role in European correspondence but it only worked because everyone worth writing to had a working knowledge of Latin and Greek.
You clearly haven't looked at the paper. This is for people who want to begin university studies, not end them.
Then there's the fact that the internal combustion engine (driving a car) is based upon entirely 19th century physical principles - unless you're using that new Mass Effect car from India.
Quite frankly, people of average intelligence back then look far more intelligent by our standards because they had to learn everything without the tools we have today - no typed essays, no wikipedia, no sound recording, no calculators. Just scroll down past the Latin, Greek and History sections to the mathematics and tell me if you can work all that out by hand. They hand-wrote and memorised everything, something I think nobody under 50 could do today (even with a doctorate).
A lot of the comments so far are of the tack that "Greek and Latin are useless" or "CS majors don't need to quote Dante". I respond that they have no idea what a university education was for over its thousand year history. If you think you only go to university to learn how to write programmes and get a job in an industry, the 19th (and even 12th) century university man would tell you to get an apprenticeship - the early 20th century university man would tell you to go to a technical school.
Greek and Latin are still the most useful languages available for educated speakers of English because they allow you to decode almost any term in the English language, especially technical terms. Quoting Dante's Mediaeval Italian may make you as good a computer scientist as quoting Shakespeare's Elizabethan English, but the you will also be just as cultured - and I don't think anyone who understands what a university is for can claim that a cultured CS (all other things notwithstanding) is worse than an uncultured one.
Your dismissal of religious scholarship (specifically biblical scholarship) has, apparently unintentionally, also dismissed the scholarship of every non-technical (ie, not physical sciences or engineering) field. You seem not to realise that what you have described is exactly the same for archaeology, music, fine art, literature, philosophy. Your claim that "there is no evidence, no data, only opinion" demonstrates an ignorance of scholarship and standards of proof for the humanities.
It would appear that none of you have a working definition of Faith as someone who actually practices it would hold. Might I suggest you read St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica? The relevant section is II-II Q4 (second part of the second part, question 4). "On the virtue of faith itself". St Thomas is difficult for the unfamiliar, but if you are genuinely interested in understanding that which you criticise do give it at least a second read through.
If you are open to St Thomas' reasoning within the scope of his premisses, you will see that faith is anything but "an idea with no evidence to back it up", "unearned and not subject to revision" (especially in the Christian context).
Of course for every one person willing to do the above there will be three "Sheldon Coopers" who are self-proclaimed experts in every field ready to dismiss all I've written as worthless drivel. Alas.
Sorry, mystical crap still required. If "your body" is "your" property, do you still exist to own property when you are dead? If you have a soul, then your identity does not vanish (along with all your rights) at the moment of your death. If you don't, then your identity (the "you" to whom your body belongs) ceases to exist when the body dies, along with all rights.
Therefore, if you want to claim any kinds of rights at all (including the right to own property, though it's far from highest on the list) you really do need some "mystical crap".
In Australia they reasonably expected to find ample space to grow food, build shelter, get a recognisable life going. Later they unreasonably expected to strike gold on the first turn of the shovel.
But on Mars, they can't even expect a bucket of air, let alone food to hunt or trees to chop down and live under. Not even close to the same thing.
Just for the sake of objectivity - did the authorities believe the hormone therapy a punishment or a treatment? If they thought it a treatment (since homosexuality has throughout all of human history been considered more a disordered inclination rather than a calculatedly malevolent crime) then it would be more appropriate to attribute the authorities with a benevolent intent (curing a problem) rather than a(n arguably) penal intent (exacting retribution for wrong done).
I appreciate your interest to my contribution! You have made an excellent distinction between the interpretations of people with different ecclesiological (Puritans vs Catholics) and philosophical (neo-anthropologist) backgrounds.
There is no denying that at its most basic level the Song of Songs discloses a very intimate and detailed sexual relationship. This first point is of great importance because it is the lens by which all other potential insights from the text are examined - for a Puritan Christian, to whom all sexual matters (for argument's sake) must be a hidden, perhaps even shameful affair, the inclusion of this book is at best an embarrassment and at worst an account of Jewish depravity.
For a (catechised) Catholic on the other hand, this book is conclusive proof against the claim that the Catholic religion hates sex - indeed, an entire book of the Bible happily glorifies in sex, and speaks to the joy of what Catholics believe sex should really be (namely, the fullest body-and-soul expression of eternal love between husband and wife).
It's a lot harder for first-language Anglophones to speak about the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians (since their cultural milieu and theological heritage have developed so differently to ours in the Latin West), so please forgive me for leaving them aside.
In my experience most people (believers and non alike) have no exposure to the more obscure books of the old testament - if it doesn't feature Adam and Eve or Moses, people generally don't know about it. This means that when they do stumble upon it, they are generally unprepared - they don't know what to make of it, what it means, why it's even in the Bible. If one is not familiar with the characterisation of God as the victorious bridegroom delighting in his wife, or Israel as the "land that will be married" (both from the Psalms) how can they be expected to read the Song of Songs as God delighting in his eternal marriage to Israel?
This comes back to my point previously about intrinsic and extrinsic consistency - with a text as obscure and confusing as the Song of Songs, one must be suitably prepared to fit it into the greater framework of Sacred Scripture - familiar enough with the other books of the Bible to fit this one into its proper place, and interpret it in light of the others. If taken by itself, without that greater context, then the Song of Songs absolutely does become nothing more than ancient erotica.
But then, returning to context Christians (and Jews, and in a slightly different way Moslems) believe that each book of scripture is divinely inspired, and has a rightful place in man's religious duty to God. Since erotica for its own sake is a selfish act (one that aims at gratifying oneself alone, rather than ordering all things to the greatest good), to conclude that the Song of Songs is simply ancient, self-gratifying erotica places it at odds with the belief that the entirety of sacred scripture is right and good.
You could probably tell me more about what this means to an agnostic, if you have lasted through my ramble. Apologies for my lack of brevity, I sometimes value comprehensiveness at the expense of straightforwardness.
or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text?
Let's assume learning and experience are requisite to understanding the Bible. That still doesn't answer the question of What learning you think is required. I just have a measly Liberal Arts bachelors. Does that disqualify me? How about Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church? Since he has specific learning and experience with the Bible, should I defer to his views?
Let me go back to my original post, first of all, and enforce a distinction that I originally made - a particular level of understanding is necessary to understand the Song of Songs. Your question conflated the necessity of learning to understand the Song of Songs with the whole Bible, which is not what I claimed. If we are to talk about the whole Bible, then I would immediately say that different levels of learning are necessary for different books - and the Song of Songs would be at the high end of that range.
Your (and my) Bachelor of Liberal Arts would put you in a better position to critically interpret certain phrases and idiomatic expressions than, say, a Bachelor of Science or high school student. It would not do us much (or even any) better on matters of theological interpretation, since it involves no study of theology.
This leads into the question of the quality of learning - Mr Phelps may claim to be learned in matters theological, but what is the quality of his learning? Are his beliefs intrinsically and extrinsically consistent? Are his theses defensible?
Where they are, you should, and where they are not, you should not defer - but always do so thoughtfully.
It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel
So what is "sufficient" for understanding the Bible? Why is simply reading it not good enough?
What is sufficient for understanding legislation? An anatomy textbook? Slashdot news items?
Is the ability to read enough to ensure you understand the meaning (obtuse and profound) of the above examples, or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text?
It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel.
But hey, EVERYONE knows that Slashdot is filled with self-taught genius experts in all fields, particularly philosophy and theology.
Yup.
I've heard the rhetoric. I'm unpersuaded. Giving someone a fair go doesn't mean agreeing with them. It means listening to their arguments, and then drawing a conclusion.
The conclusion I've drawn is some Americans are bat-shit crazy when it comes to their insistence on not having universal health care.
Coming to such a conclusion is your right, especially if you have given their arguments a fair hearing and drawn your conclusions on that basis.
Personally, I believe the argument isn't as much against universal health care reform as the model currently proposed. If someone offered you a free car on the condition that he get unlimited access to your wife, would you take the car? Surely you would say "there are better ways to get a car". That's what I believe these Americans have in mind - health care reform is an objective good, but the things that are being packaged with it mean that in this instance they must turn it down.
The earth is not 6000 years old. The Holocaust did happen. The current US health reform does not include death panels. These are verifiable facts. Anyone claiming anything different is claiming objective reality does not exist. This is the very definition of delusional.
Mart
I am afraid you are consistently incapable of distinction. Or reading.
You said that people are delusional for professing to believe A, B or C. I said that this is nonsense, because people may profess to believe something, anything, without being delusional. I could profess to believe that I am a porridge and not be deluded, but you are too caught up in being the sole arbiter of fact to see this.
I'll make it simple for you by restating my point a couple of comments back: before ridiculing others for their beliefs, take a moment to try and understand what exactly it is they believe. Otherwise, simple folk like yours truly will come along and help you to show everyone else just how arrogant and invincibly ignorant you are.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you assume "irrational" and "ignorance"?
I made no assumptions, your claims conclusively demonstrate ignorance of the subject matter, and your hostility is objectively based on this ignorance.
Do you assume that everyone who sees the Church as an oppressive institution is "irrational" and "ignorant"?
No, only those who demonstrate their ignorance and irrationality, as you have.
I sincerely encourage you, purely in the interest of holding an informed opinion, to look again at your claims. In Science we are expected to assess a suspect theory from an objective basis, which includes considering arguments in the context of the advocate's stated premises. Why should our opinions in any other field be handled differently? If you want to use history as a stick with which to beat Christianity then you need to make sure you're using solid, objective history (and not just the one-sided ramblings of a historian with pre-determined outcomes).
You've gone from merely displaying arrogant ignorance to abject bigotry. At least, if you are willing to accept "irrational hostility to a group or individual on the basis of ignorance" as a valid definition of bigotry.
That aside, Slashdot is not the place to explain that everything ever written, built or said is subject to interpretation, nor that an "image" is utterly different to a clone (unless your mirror produces a fully functional copy of you every morning while you shave), or even that your refusal to admit any cultural assumption is evidence of those cultural assumptions (ie refusal to recognise that you are a man formed by your times).
Then there's the fact that your last claim is dismissed by anyone who has seen Pope Benedict on television in the UK last year, or Australia and before that the US in 2008, or all over continental Europe - and he was only elected in 2005. If anything, one could construct a comparable argument about the "first world" powers (such as the US and the European Union) wielding science as a "tool... to keep the [third world] rabble in bondage"... but that would be too far off topic.
I am afraid you are horribly mistaken and woefully ignorant. Allegory is one of the four classical modes of biblical interpretation dating from antiquity, and was employed by the Church Fathers (such as St Augustine in the IV century).
The real issue is when Protestantism arose, and in order to discredit the teaching authority of a continuing, hierarchical Church turned the Bible into a book that dropped out of heaven and had to be understood literally by anyone who could read.
Since America is the first (and only) nation in the world to have been Protestant from the beginning (rather than Catholic/Orthodox and then becoming Protestant) your cultural assumptions about the treatment of Scripture are so out of whack with the rest of the world.
Misleading initial claim. The funding restrictions apply to embryonic stem cells (ie lines sourced from aborted human fetuses) - no such restrictions hinder research involving "adult stem cells" (human pluripotent stem cells). hPSCs have proven far more effective in terms of positive results, but attracts very little attention compared to the far less successful embryonic stem cell research.
I found it interesting that while the article (second link) claims that these can be induced from both "embryonic and induced human" stem cells, the abstract of the paper itself (first link) names only "human pluripotent stem cells" (ie "adult stem cells") and makes no mention of embryonic cells.
Both links refer to the one study, by the same people, so why does the second mention embryonic stem cells when the paper itself (or at least, the abstract) does not?
Sounds like dirty scientific politics to me.
I respond that neither do you - because for most of their history, universities were job training schools intended to produce lawyers, judges, priests, government functionaries, etc..., etc... That they produced 'cultured' and 'well rounded' graduates was a happy accident, not an intended result.
You appear to understand neither the history of the university nor my own claims. I didn't claim to define the object of a university (though my last comment about Dante and Shakespeare may have implied it). The object of the university was not "to produce lawyers, judges [etc]" but doctors of law, masters of theology, teachers of philosophy. The university is the place for the advancement of all knowledge - the fact that men who are so well trained in the substance, theory and history of law (cf Jurisprudence) also tend to be excellent practitioners of the law is the happy accident.
Priests were not trained for priesthood at universities but seminaries (for the last five centuries, before then privately by the bishop or his canons at the cathedral chapter). The study of medicine grew naturally from the academic study of science (which is perhaps the faculty closest to its origins in philosophy). Government functionaries, until very recently, hardly studied at university at all - they were privately tutored in the classics, arithmetic etc being examined by this paper.
Perhaps I should just refer people to Bl John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University", published just forty years before the exam we're discussing was given - already this wrong-headed idea of the university as an expensive finishing school had cropped up.
The thing omitted in that observation however is that until only this very generation, being able to recall with precision what one has learned was a crucial skill in any kind of study. Moderns don't bother remembering anything (even their own phone number) because they can just "look it up". High school students unceasingly complain about having to learn the first principles of mathematics "because I can just do it with my calculator" - how much more in any other discipline (which is not so clearly procedural as mathematics) would students need a "specific education" if there is to be any hope of them learning further?
I do think that universities are mostly to blame here, having flocked to the fashion of generating money-spinning faculties (like "commerce" and "journalism") while abandoning the faculties that gave the university its identity for centuries (philosophy, history, theology).
There are some overlapping faculties (such as engineering) which both teach a mostly technical discipline while also requiring a more advanced theoretical foundation, and these probably do still belong at the university... but perhaps the time is coming when we will have to look more closely at the "BS/BA only candidates" and the "graduate studies material". Actually that's already happened, with a sharp divide between the undergrads who happily toddle off to their careers in industry and never darken the doors of the academy again, and the lifelong academics who seem never to leave at all.
Perhaps the thing I find most objectionable is the indignantly anachronistic egalitarianism on display in the comments here, for the most part by people who know nothing of education (or scholarship in general) beyond their own experiences as a one-time student. Latin and Greek are not "stupid shit" put up as a wall to keep the unwashed masses out, they were (and remain) an exceedingly useful foundation for any advanced study in any discipline with a European vocabulary. At the turn of the (last) century, French may well have taken a dominant role in European correspondence but it only worked because everyone worth writing to had a working knowledge of Latin and Greek.
You clearly haven't looked at the paper. This is for people who want to begin university studies, not end them.
Then there's the fact that the internal combustion engine (driving a car) is based upon entirely 19th century physical principles - unless you're using that new Mass Effect car from India.
Quite frankly, people of average intelligence back then look far more intelligent by our standards because they had to learn everything without the tools we have today - no typed essays, no wikipedia, no sound recording, no calculators. Just scroll down past the Latin, Greek and History sections to the mathematics and tell me if you can work all that out by hand. They hand-wrote and memorised everything, something I think nobody under 50 could do today (even with a doctorate).
A lot of the comments so far are of the tack that "Greek and Latin are useless" or "CS majors don't need to quote Dante". I respond that they have no idea what a university education was for over its thousand year history. If you think you only go to university to learn how to write programmes and get a job in an industry, the 19th (and even 12th) century university man would tell you to get an apprenticeship - the early 20th century university man would tell you to go to a technical school.
Greek and Latin are still the most useful languages available for educated speakers of English because they allow you to decode almost any term in the English language, especially technical terms. Quoting Dante's Mediaeval Italian may make you as good a computer scientist as quoting Shakespeare's Elizabethan English, but the you will also be just as cultured - and I don't think anyone who understands what a university is for can claim that a cultured CS (all other things notwithstanding) is worse than an uncultured one.
Your dismissal of religious scholarship (specifically biblical scholarship) has, apparently unintentionally, also dismissed the scholarship of every non-technical (ie, not physical sciences or engineering) field. You seem not to realise that what you have described is exactly the same for archaeology, music, fine art, literature, philosophy. Your claim that "there is no evidence, no data, only opinion" demonstrates an ignorance of scholarship and standards of proof for the humanities.
It would appear that none of you have a working definition of Faith as someone who actually practices it would hold. Might I suggest you read St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica? The relevant section is II-II Q4 (second part of the second part, question 4). "On the virtue of faith itself". St Thomas is difficult for the unfamiliar, but if you are genuinely interested in understanding that which you criticise do give it at least a second read through.
If you are open to St Thomas' reasoning within the scope of his premisses, you will see that faith is anything but "an idea with no evidence to back it up", "unearned and not subject to revision" (especially in the Christian context).
Of course for every one person willing to do the above there will be three "Sheldon Coopers" who are self-proclaimed experts in every field ready to dismiss all I've written as worthless drivel. Alas.
In other words, I'm not going to write a peer-review quality thesis for your "+5 insightful". And you know it.
I'm not so hooked on /. cookies to do the work for you.
Your argument is flawed, because they are already a large military power who have repeatedly demonstrated their desire to conquer the world.
Sorry, mystical crap still required. If "your body" is "your" property, do you still exist to own property when you are dead? If you have a soul, then your identity does not vanish (along with all your rights) at the moment of your death. If you don't, then your identity (the "you" to whom your body belongs) ceases to exist when the body dies, along with all rights.
Therefore, if you want to claim any kinds of rights at all (including the right to own property, though it's far from highest on the list) you really do need some "mystical crap".
Or, as I prefer to call it, metaphysics.
In Australia they reasonably expected to find ample space to grow food, build shelter, get a recognisable life going. Later they unreasonably expected to strike gold on the first turn of the shovel. But on Mars, they can't even expect a bucket of air, let alone food to hunt or trees to chop down and live under. Not even close to the same thing.
It wouldn't stop blocked editors from simply re-registering and continuing their noble and righteous correction spree.
Just for the sake of objectivity - did the authorities believe the hormone therapy a punishment or a treatment? If they thought it a treatment (since homosexuality has throughout all of human history been considered more a disordered inclination rather than a calculatedly malevolent crime) then it would be more appropriate to attribute the authorities with a benevolent intent (curing a problem) rather than a(n arguably) penal intent (exacting retribution for wrong done).
There is no denying that at its most basic level the Song of Songs discloses a very intimate and detailed sexual relationship. This first point is of great importance because it is the lens by which all other potential insights from the text are examined - for a Puritan Christian, to whom all sexual matters (for argument's sake) must be a hidden, perhaps even shameful affair, the inclusion of this book is at best an embarrassment and at worst an account of Jewish depravity.
For a (catechised) Catholic on the other hand, this book is conclusive proof against the claim that the Catholic religion hates sex - indeed, an entire book of the Bible happily glorifies in sex, and speaks to the joy of what Catholics believe sex should really be (namely, the fullest body-and-soul expression of eternal love between husband and wife).
It's a lot harder for first-language Anglophones to speak about the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians (since their cultural milieu and theological heritage have developed so differently to ours in the Latin West), so please forgive me for leaving them aside.
In my experience most people (believers and non alike) have no exposure to the more obscure books of the old testament - if it doesn't feature Adam and Eve or Moses, people generally don't know about it. This means that when they do stumble upon it, they are generally unprepared - they don't know what to make of it, what it means, why it's even in the Bible. If one is not familiar with the characterisation of God as the victorious bridegroom delighting in his wife, or Israel as the "land that will be married" (both from the Psalms) how can they be expected to read the Song of Songs as God delighting in his eternal marriage to Israel?
This comes back to my point previously about intrinsic and extrinsic consistency - with a text as obscure and confusing as the Song of Songs, one must be suitably prepared to fit it into the greater framework of Sacred Scripture - familiar enough with the other books of the Bible to fit this one into its proper place, and interpret it in light of the others. If taken by itself, without that greater context, then the Song of Songs absolutely does become nothing more than ancient erotica.
But then, returning to context Christians (and Jews, and in a slightly different way Moslems) believe that each book of scripture is divinely inspired, and has a rightful place in man's religious duty to God. Since erotica for its own sake is a selfish act (one that aims at gratifying oneself alone, rather than ordering all things to the greatest good), to conclude that the Song of Songs is simply ancient, self-gratifying erotica places it at odds with the belief that the entirety of sacred scripture is right and good.
You could probably tell me more about what this means to an agnostic, if you have lasted through my ramble. Apologies for my lack of brevity, I sometimes value comprehensiveness at the expense of straightforwardness.
or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text? Let's assume learning and experience are requisite to understanding the Bible. That still doesn't answer the question of What learning you think is required. I just have a measly Liberal Arts bachelors. Does that disqualify me? How about Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church? Since he has specific learning and experience with the Bible, should I defer to his views?
Let me go back to my original post, first of all, and enforce a distinction that I originally made - a particular level of understanding is necessary to understand the Song of Songs. Your question conflated the necessity of learning to understand the Song of Songs with the whole Bible, which is not what I claimed. If we are to talk about the whole Bible, then I would immediately say that different levels of learning are necessary for different books - and the Song of Songs would be at the high end of that range.
Your (and my) Bachelor of Liberal Arts would put you in a better position to critically interpret certain phrases and idiomatic expressions than, say, a Bachelor of Science or high school student. It would not do us much (or even any) better on matters of theological interpretation, since it involves no study of theology.
This leads into the question of the quality of learning - Mr Phelps may claim to be learned in matters theological, but what is the quality of his learning? Are his beliefs intrinsically and extrinsically consistent? Are his theses defensible?
Where they are, you should, and where they are not, you should not defer - but always do so thoughtfully.
It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel So what is "sufficient" for understanding the Bible? Why is simply reading it not good enough?
What is sufficient for understanding legislation? An anatomy textbook? Slashdot news items? Is the ability to read enough to ensure you understand the meaning (obtuse and profound) of the above examples, or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text?
It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel. But hey, EVERYONE knows that Slashdot is filled with self-taught genius experts in all fields, particularly philosophy and theology. Yup.
Or is it "safe", in an Islamic/Arab country?
I've heard the rhetoric. I'm unpersuaded. Giving someone a fair go doesn't mean agreeing with them. It means listening to their arguments, and then drawing a conclusion.
The conclusion I've drawn is some Americans are bat-shit crazy when it comes to their insistence on not having universal health care.
Coming to such a conclusion is your right, especially if you have given their arguments a fair hearing and drawn your conclusions on that basis.
Personally, I believe the argument isn't as much against universal health care reform as the model currently proposed. If someone offered you a free car on the condition that he get unlimited access to your wife, would you take the car? Surely you would say "there are better ways to get a car". That's what I believe these Americans have in mind - health care reform is an objective good, but the things that are being packaged with it mean that in this instance they must turn it down.
I am afraid you are a moron.
The earth is not 6000 years old. The Holocaust did happen. The current US health reform does not include death panels. These are verifiable facts. Anyone claiming anything different is claiming objective reality does not exist. This is the very definition of delusional.
Mart
I am afraid you are consistently incapable of distinction. Or reading.
You said that people are delusional for professing to believe A, B or C. I said that this is nonsense, because people may profess to believe something, anything, without being delusional. I could profess to believe that I am a porridge and not be deluded, but you are too caught up in being the sole arbiter of fact to see this.
I'll make it simple for you by restating my point a couple of comments back: before ridiculing others for their beliefs, take a moment to try and understand what exactly it is they believe. Otherwise, simple folk like yours truly will come along and help you to show everyone else just how arrogant and invincibly ignorant you are.