One of the oldest symbols of the Christian faith is the fish, chosen both for its simplicity of design and for the fact that its Greek name happens to make a handy acronym for the Greek phrase meaning “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” I think it’s time we re-purposed both the symbol and the acronym (in English) by using it to remind ourselves of the four all-too-human sources of information about God.
The F stands for Fantasy, the things men make up about God. We see this, for example, in the trinity. Some early Christians believed in the deity of Jesus, others believed in strict monotheism. Scripture was ambiguous, and could be used to support either side. Solution? Someone just made up the notion of God having a “triune” nature.
Or look at the recent idea that goodness is defined by God’s nature, and therefore He issues good decrees. That’s not anything that was revealed to any prophet or discovered by direct observation of God. Someone made it up in order to escape from the Euthyphro Dilemma. Even the classic “God works in mysterious ways” is an appeal to fantasy: the believer imagines that somewhere out there, beyond mortal apprehension, is some perfectly good reason why God does not behave in a way men would call “good.”
The I in FISH stands for Intuition, the feelings people have about God. “The Lord spoke to me and told me that there’s a man in this congregation who is struggling with pornography…” (I actually heard a woman say that in a church with about 300 people in it.) Mormons use this one a lot; they call it “the testimony.” People “sense” that God is real, and they “discover” His characteristics through their intuition and feelings. Sometimes the feelings get so strong they have to fall down and roll around on the ground, that’s how real God feels to them.
The S stands for Superstition, the act of giving God credit for things you see in the real world. Intelligent Design is the big example here: people don’t understand how the universe works, and so they just attribute everything to God. That’s not science, it’s superstition! But people use superstition as a means of making “observations” about God, whether or not He actually has any involvement in the things they’re giving Him credit for. (Hint: it’s no more difficult to give all the credit to Spongebob Squarepants, except that doing so would expose the inherent silliness of such an approach.)
Lastly, the H stands for Hearsay, all the stories that men tell about God and that, strangely, elude objective verification. The Bible falls into this last category, because some parts are verifiable and others are not, and the parts that tell us about God always fall into the latter category. These stories frequently include exaggeration, selective omission, misinterpretation, and other sources of error, and are remarkable for the way they consistently fail to reflect the kind of things that happen in real life.
And that’s it, that’s the only source of information we have about God. Four subjective, biased and unreliable sources of information, all based on fallible men.
Remember that the next time you see a bumper sticker with a FISH on it.
There’s always George Bernard Shaw’s spelling of fish: ghoti
gh – pronounced /f/ as in tough
o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women
ti, pronounced /sh/ as in nation
This should be made into a bumper sticker – the fish symbol with Fantasy, Intuition, Superstition, and Hearsay beneath it.
I would contend that ALL the Bible could be called hearsay. The original don’t exist. Nor the first copies, Or second generation copies. And the notes in any good study Bible reveal that they still don’t decide what it says because they can’t. Genesis for example was written centuries after the fact, (after Dan became a renamed city)after Moses was dead (“whose tomb is with us to this day,” and after the reign of the Kings started), by an unknown. If we graciously allow for the possibility of a revelation, the original writer got it. Thomas Paine would say that anyone who was told the story or heard it, now changing, it is hearsay.
And it takes a lot of F (fear), I, and S to believe in H.
Go FISH?
Ichthys
Idiotic Crappy Hearsay That Harms Your Something-or-other??
Sanity?
Society?
Sexuality?
Self-respect? (yes that one is a bit of a cheat)
Soul
😉
Next time you see an ichthys, rotate it 90 degrees so it’s standing on its nose. Does it remind you of anything? 😀
It’s not a coincidence. The Jesus fish isn’t a fish at all; it’s a vulva, a yonic symbol.
I thought you mean it’s a bomb.
I’ve heard that explanation as well. I must say I can’t verify if that really is where it came from, but it sounds plausible that a fertility symbol was “borrowed” from another tradition, and even if it wasn’t, the idea still makes me smile.
I agree it’s a somewhat dodgy claim, but not unreasonable. And it makes me smile, too.
Several years ago my wife and I took a weekend trip to Virginia Beach. It was in May and there were college kids coming to town for summer jobs.
Outside a shop on the Boardwalk that did henna tattoos some young women were discussing them and whether to get one. One of the selections was a christian fish.
I told an attractive young lady she should get the fish, have it on her tummy pointing straight down. She could tell the guys it showed the way to heaven.
Ah. But what is DARWIN an acronym for?
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/daruuin3.mov
Now you know!
If the account of that author is incorrect however, then there is nothing to destroy. Your presupposition is highly suspect, and difficult to prove.
“The Lord spoke to me and told me that there’s a man in this congregation who is struggling with pornography…”
I know, I know, I’m running out of hard drive space. Whats god planning to do about it, magic me up a bigger hard drive?
I guess that christian porn is when God makes it bigger.
No, in fact, God has punished you by driving up the prices of HDDs by drowning Thailand. See how He is?
I like the Christian fishy. Lets face it, any alternative to a man being tortured to death is an improvement, as far as symbols go. I don’t think the fish should be repurposed, so much as used way more often in an attempt to replace the former horrifying symbol of Christianity.
This is a lovely idea…. as a former mormon (sixth generation, return missionary) I hope you don’t mind my pointing out that Intuition is called “the still small voice” or the Holy Ghost which one listens to to “gain a testimony”. The testimony itself is the sum total of why you believe, including logic (m-/) and expirience.
The fish symbol has already been re-purposed. It demonstrates to other road users that the driver of the car with the fish is really, really inept at driving.
On no my good man. The Christian symbol is the CROSS.
The FISH is the symbol of DAGON.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/soi.asp