Street Epistemology is an approach I love of "guided metacognition," helping someone to think critically about a belief. That's often applied to supernatural beliefs, but not exclusively. Here's a fascinating conversation between an experienced SE practitioner and a pair of Mormon missionaries about the test for truth:
And eventually, Anthony drills down to the "test" not having any possible outcome which would demonstrate the hypothesis was incorrect. That leads easily to a confirmation bias: if you want it to be true (and if you're praying to the God, you likely do) then you'll likely be motivated to accept almost anything that happens as proof that the belief is true.
If you ask a Christian how they know the Bible is true, they're very likely to point you to something like this week's New Testament reading:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness....
2 Timothy 3:16
Of course, that's a circular reference – the "proof" holds weight only if you already accept the premise that the Bible is a reliable proof. If they have some outside foundation for their beliefs, it's likely in the form of a "test" similar to what Anthony encountered with the missionaries above.
Information about a holy book from outside sources can tell you a lot about it. For example, we know the Bible is a composite of many different books. But based on literary criticism, we now have a high degree of confidence that the Gospels are themselves based on earlier works which haven't survived separately. How much theories like this and the archaeology that supports them are discussed in the church varies widely. Some Christians can hold the information in tension with their beliefs; most selectively consume only that which reinforces the truth of what they already believe; and a few flat-out aren't interested.
Here's something I never heard in the church: The Old Testament books are also combinations, though rather than being different source works, the leading hypothesis that the documents were modified over time to produce the works we have now, the basis of the Jewish and Christian faiths.
According to this hypothesis, the original works reflected a theology similar to what we now know was common to most of the region of Canaan at the time:
- A chief god named El or Elyon, father of seventy divine sons
- Asherah, El's consort and mother of the gods
- Yahweh, god of storms and war
- A host of other major and minor deities
Israel first devoted itself primarily to Yahweh; then came to believe him superior to the other gods; and ultimately denied that there were any other gods. (Along the way, Asherah first became Yahweh's consort before becoming the idolatrous religion we see the true believers commanded to stamp out.) As these beliefs shifted, the scriptures were edited in successive phases to remove references to other deities or to reinterpret them as being about Yahweh.
But these editors didn't want to massively disrupt their holy book, so they also left a lot of things that give clues to the older now-displaced beliefs.
So the God of Abraham was probably El. The king of Salem, who was priest of El Elyon, now makes more sense. The sons of God who mated with mortal women. Abraham bargaining with God and talking him down from his plan to destroy everyone and everything in Sodom. Yahweh riding the storms and fighting the gods of other nations.
One trait that you see in religions with lots of gods is that the deities have relationships and imperfections. That is, rather than a single abstracted and perfect god as viewed in monotheistic religions, gods become much more human. They have flaws, make mistakes, change their minds, make petty choices, and so on. And the God of the Old Testament is definitely shown to have plenty of petty actions and moments of striking humanity.
This week's Old Testament lesson is one of those interesting sightings:
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.
25When the man saw that he could not overpower [Jacob], he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak. [...] 28 Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
- Genesis 32:24-26, 28b, 30a
Jacob wrestles with someone he recognizes to be God, and names the place Peney-El (literally "cheeks of God," but figuratively "God's face"). Yet this deity isn't a formless power – he's a person. He's a person who is losing the wrestling match until he resorts to divine trickery to overcome his stronger human opponent.
The Fifth Tenet says that we should align our beliefs to what we've learned from science, and not the other way around. As a Satanist, I feel like I have an obligation to consume at least some scholarly criticism of claims like these and try to understand what underlies them. And what underlies them doesn't actually seem to support the claims.
So I'm left laughing a bit at how many people fluff their credentials based primarily on their allegiance to an ancient Canaanite storm god who cheats at wrestling.
Hail Satan! Amen.