Was Jesus married? (Religion)

by dhw, Friday, September 21, 2012, 19:55 (4446 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I have to say that from my position on the picket fence, the very idea of all these learned folk discussing, analysing, agonising over a scrap of ancient papyrus (genuine or not), and over the question of whether a man whose life story we cannot possibly trace with even the slightest degree of certainty did or did not have sex, makes me wonder if theology is not a form of collective madness.-DAVID: Theology can only know what is archeologically proven. Faith is not collective madness, unless the faithful recognize their beliefs are only that, beliefs.-Perhaps you meant "so long as the faithful recognize..." I would not dream of calling faith "collective madness". I see faith by its very nature as being individual (which applies as much to faith in a god as to faith in chance), and so long as it does no harm, it would be sheer arrogance to call it madness. But we are social beings and that is where theology comes in.
 
The main materials studied by monotheistic theologians are texts by other fallible humans, often written centuries after the events they purport to describe, in a language that is wide open to different interpretations whose accuracy can never be objectively confirmed. Perhaps "collective madness" is too strong a term, but I must confess to finding it difficult to take seriously the question of whether Jesus did or did not have sex. And yet theologians do take it so seriously that it has had a profound and probably very damaging influence on the lives of many. If we turn our attention to the vicious and destructive intolerance that runs through the history of these religions, right up to the present day, we can see that the source is theology: the authoritative pronouncements by fallible humans that their fallible interpretations of the texts written by other fallible humans represent the unknowable will of a divine being, assuming this being exists in the first place! This is not to deny the comfort, charity, love associated with these religions ... and indeed with most other religions and humanist philosophies. I am simply questioning theology's obsession with ancient, unreliable texts.-One can, of course, argue that collective faith in the authority of fallible human beings does amount to collective madness. This takes us way beyond religion into virtually every sphere of human activity. We are vulnerable to the misguidance of self-proclaimed experts in all fields.