How can anything outside of Bible, not be labeled as an opinion?

Question

I'm asking this question after reading many questions that talk about opinions and purpose of this site. When looking over questions I find many questions that were answered but I would classify as Opinion versus other questions that were closed that feel exactly the same to me. When quoting from Bible two people can interpret it differently.

Based on ones denomination and background different beliefs (opinions) are formed. I was born and raised in Russia during Soviet Union when people were sent to jail for distributing Bibles, attending churches, being pastors and so on. When people of different denominations end up in same prison they would call each other brothers and worship God together. Once Soviet Union collapsed and everyone was out of prisons, people that were brothers became worst enemies claiming that other person is going to hell.

Growing up I was part of Baptist Church and many ideas like ("speaking in tongues") were considered of the devil. Later after moving to different city and attending Pentecostal church I was exposed to opposite ideas. Pastors were reading same Russian Bible but were preaching different ideas.

Jesus is cornerstone of Christian faith, but because we can't ask Him directly we rely on Bible. But Bible is left to interpretation of people. So how can one person say that he is giving an answer versus another person giving an opinion.

What exactly is the "Christianity" that is being asked about and answered here? At first I thought this site was for more specific questions like: "How old was Adam when he died?" or "How many kids did King David have?" or "What nation enslaved Jews during the book of Isiah?" The question that I'm finding are the ones that "Christians" who ever they are now, can not agree on. Therefore I'm finding it very confusing how this site was able to become part of SE network. It is possible that I'm not understanding everything correctly as I'm not native English speaker and I could be losing something in translation.

To take the matter one more step further, when growing up we had 1 Bible, now there is hundreds of translations. Some of the translations are very similar, there are some that should be burned (but that is not the point of this discussion). In that case, for an answer to be right answer should it not come from Hebrew or Greek original?

Back to original question: What exactly about Christianity is not an opinion? And at what point opinion stops being and opinion and becomes correct answer?

Answer 1

Trouble understanding the the primarily opinion-based close reason in the context of this site seems to be trending today. Let me see if I can clear a few things up in regard to it. First lets take a look at the stock copy:

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

Please note that this is just stock copy used across over a hundred sites on the Stack Exchange network. Some of these sites are technical, some are scientific, and a handful are religious (this one as well as Judaism and Islam). There are a few other categories as well, but my point is there is a huge variety of subjects that share the same generic set of close reasons.

So the question becomes:

"What do we mean when we use that close reason here?"

There are a huge variety of theological traditions represented on this site. The only filtering going on for something to be topical here is that the doctrinal teaching has to come from an established group that uses the name 'Christian' to define themselves. This means that we very definitely do not share any common creeds or beliefs.

Incidentally even "The Bible" is not useful as an authority here. I personally very strongly believe that the Bible is the final authority for all things doctrinal. In this I subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith which puts it like this:

IV. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

X. The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

However there are two problems faced by this site that my agreeing with that confession does not solve:

1. Not all 'Christian' traditions believe this.

   However wrong you and I may think they are, large swaths of people do not believe the Bible to be infallible, inerrant, or sufficient in its teachings. This site is about those other traditions too.

2. The Bible itself needs interpreting.

   This is a tough pill to swallow, so allow me to come back to this...

How do we resolve these issues?

Most crucially, we have some limits in place for questions. Rather than asking about all of Christendom and it's related heresies, we require that questions have a limited scope asking inside of specific theological traditions or otherwise reducing the potential scope of answers to subset that can be reasonably answered in this format. We have some other guidance on the matter of questions on this meta site. This post is particularly important:

What makes a good focused question?

Another way of putting this is that we don't handle truth questions. This might seem counter intuitive given the fact that Christianity is all about truth. The tricky part for now folks to grok is that this site is about Christianity as a thing in itself, _not about the things that Christianity is about.

This is easier to see in answers than it is in questions.

Answers we like to see appeal to established teachings rather than to "truth".

Lets try an example on for size:

Q: Who should preside over a Sunday service?

A: All believers are priests and have equal standing in the eyes of God, services should be a a collective effort between all participants. The systematic rituals of the Old Testament have been abolished and all are free to worship as they see fit.

A: The ordained minister or elder should preside over services, directing the people as they join corporately in worship and maintain order according to Scriptural principles seen in both the Old and New Testaments.

A: Sunday is the wrong day to be worshiping. In should be Saturday in keeping with the Jewish Sabbath established it the Old Testament. Modifying it after the Resurrection as a day of celebration was a mistake.

Etc...

Do you see where that is going? Nowhere.

Of course I have an answer I believe to be true, but that doesn't mean all Christians agree with me. This is what we sometimes call a "truth question" and do not like to see on this site. These often get closed with the primarily opinion-based close reason, not because there are no good answers but because it is not specified whose good answers are being sought.

Here is an example of a question that is not primarily opinion-based:

Q: How do Quakers manage their worship services?

A: Quaker worship services begin when the first person enters the room and takes a seat. Everyone is expected to enter reverently during a period known as "expectant waiting". […] Spoken messages may occur many times during a meeting, or there may be none at all. Such a message is delivered by an individual, but is understood to be coming through that person from God. […] At the close of worship, someone will signal the end by shaking hands with a neighbor. (source)

Do you see how that question is definitively answerable in a way that the last example is not? I am not a Quaker, but with a little research I could verify that the answer is indeed representative of that groups beliefs. Whether they are true in an absolute sense of God's will for worship is beside the point. The question is not about what is absolutely right or wrong, but about Christianity. It is now verifiable in a way that the first question is not.

This is what we mean by NOT being primarily opinion-based: answers are derived directly from extant Christian teachings and it is unnecessary to solve the mysteries of the universe to verify them.

Cue inevitable objection about the Bible being the authority...

I already started this topic by stating what I believe about the Bible, so please don't take this as a cop out wishy-washy answer. I have a higher regard for the authoritative nature of Scripture than the majority of people contributing to this site. The hard hard fact is that Scripture is not unambiguously clear on all points, and even the points it is clear on are only clear in the context of several significant presuppositions that not all people professing the term 'Christian' make. It is my belief that it is only with the help of the Holy Spirit that we can discern truth from its pages. Not everybody discussing it and even using it has this advantage. Additionally even those of us that do are still partially blinded by our own sinful natures and often DO get it's interpretation wrong. Even when we aren't blind and have the right help, it takes some care to rightly handle the word of truth. There is a whole field of study devoted to the analysis and interpretation of the Bible, Hermeneutics, and there is even a Stack Exchange site devoted to that field.

In the context of a church and the lives of Christians, it is proper to search out the truth of all matters and seek to understand and apply the Scriptures rightly. That is not what this site is for. This is not a church. We are not even all Christians here. This site is about the convoluted social and religious entities that call themselves 'Christian'. Use it for learning about the various branches of Christianity, but not for learning how to be a proper Christian.

Answer 2

Well, actually, everything about Christianity is somebody's opinion. Here on this site we try our best to stick to describing those various opinions. We try not to take sides and appear like the site supports one opinion over another.

In a different post I have outlined 6 of the most common question types on this site that are unlikely to be closed. At this point, reading through that can greatly help you.

Basically, this site is mostly about what Christians say and practice. It is not about, and will never be about determining which of the various opinions on any topic are true and from God. That would make us a Church, which we don't want.

The example questions you gave are acceptable to ask, but you might get downvotes because they are very simple, non-technical topics and are easily found elsewhere on the internet or from actually reading the relevant Scriptures. The very purpose of Stack Exchange is to make the internet better. Making content that is basically a duplicate somewhere else on the web does not accomplish that. So the more technical and difficult to answer a question is, the better it is.

On the questions you have in mind, the ones that appear to be opinion based, typically, the community will try to answer from the given perspective. For example, you can ask pretty close to any question you want if you frame it so that acceptable answers are only from a Baptist perspective. Now that doesn't mean only Baptists can answer, but it does mean that any good answer must represent the Baptist point of view. For questions you might see that do not have a "doctrinal perspective" it is assumed that a general, common Christian answer is preferred. This works only on non-heated issues. You can't get away with "What is the Christian stance on abortion?" but you can ask "What is the Baptist stance on abortion?" You can ask "Was the Trinity still a Trinity when Jesus died?" and it will be answered from a general, "mainstream" perspective because the very large majority of Christian denominations agree on the Trinity doctrine.

Concerning Greek and Hebrew, you are welcome to quote in Greek and Hebrew, but that opens doors that another whole site exists to handle. If you do, then please provide an English translation as well; most of us do not know Greek and Hebrew well enough to comprehend it. Personally, I almost always quote NIV, unless the question asks for or quotes a different version. I have seen the community here use the NIV, KJV, NKJV, ESV, NLT, NASB, and RSV and nobody complained. Many also like to link to Bible Gateway because there is an easy to use tool to look at the verses in a large number of other translations, including non-English.

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Sometimes, I'll note, that an answer can justify and keep open a question that would otherwise be closed, but you should not depend on that. This, for example, is really too broad of a question which is similar to opinion based, but my answer to it is unbiased and close enough to comprehensive that the community left it open. But you should always try to not ask questions like that one. If you notice, it was from a new user that has never been back since, so we can't hold it against him.

Answer 3

I agree with your dilemma. Frankly, I think the people who manage many of these Stackexchange sites are tying themselves in knots over questions like this.

Not to be argumentative, but take Caleb's answer above, that a question like, "Who should provide over a Sunday service?" is a matter of opinion that cannot be definitively answered, but "How do Quakers manager their services?" is a question of fact that can be answered.

I am not a Quaker and know very little about Quakers, so if I wanted to answer the second question, I suppose I would find a book about Quaker practices. If I wanted to answer the first question, I would reference the Bible. So ... why is a book about Quaker practices written by I have no idea who an authoritative source, but the Bible is not an authoritative source? On what basis do we say that X is an authoritative source and Y is not? Is that a matter of opinion?

It's obviously true that people read the Bible and come away with different interpretations. But then, it's obviously true that people read the International Standards Organization Graphics Interchange Format File Specification version 3.2 and come away with different interpretations. As a software developer, I can assure you that people can and do routinely have different interpretations of technical manuals, and this routinely causes trouble. Is the rational response to say that therefore the truth is unknowable? Or to say that we should study hard to find the truth or work to reach a consensus?

There is a valid distinction between "fact" and "opinion" if you want to say that "fact" is things that are, at least in theory, verifiable, while "opinion" is what cannot be tested in any conceivable way. Like if I say, "Football is more fun to play than baseball", I am stating a personal preference which is not subject to any sort of test. (You might redefine "fun" in some way to make it testable, like "more people say it is fun on our survey" or "causes more neural activity in the brain". But that's not the claim I originally made: you can't answer a question by substituting a different question that is easier to answer.) On the other hand, "Such-and-such disease is caused by a virus" is a statement of fact. It may be that today no one knows if that statement is true or false. But it is reasonable to suppose that with sufficient research, medical scientists could find the answer. The fact that no one knows the answer doesn't make it an opinion: it's still a fact. Doctors involved in research on this disease may disagree strongly about what they think the most likely answer is. In that sense they have "opinions" about the ultimate truth. But that sort of opinion is a very different thing from "football is more fun than baseball".

Indeed, one could argue that all knowledge is "opinion". Everything we know about history is based on what somebody, maybe hundreds or thousands of years ago, wrote in a book. How do we know that that book is accurate? Maybe the writer is deliberately lying to make his own nation or his own philosophy of life look good. Maybe he's doing his best to tell the truth but the situation was confusing and he didn't really see what happened. Etc. Science has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for gaining knowledge. But scientific theories come and go all the time. What was considered "proven science" a hundred years ago is often laughed at as hopelessly out of date today. Scientists are fallible humans who make mistakes just like all the rest of us. There are frauds in science as in any other field, and there are plenty of scientists who are so sure that their theory is right that they leave the contradictory evidence out of their reports as "obviously experimental error". Etc.

Well, I didn't create this web site. I haven't paid anything to support it. So if the people who set it up and are maintaining it and are paying the bills want to impose certain rules, that's their privilege. Frankly I come and go from this site because I think a lot of the rules are just, well, silly.

Sure, some questions are so big and controversial that posting them on a site like this would be unproductive. Like if someone asks, "Which is right, free will or predestination?" or "Was Jesus really God come to Earth?" or "Did people evolve or were they created by God?", those are questions about which many smart people have written many books over thousands of years. A site like this couldn't begin to scratch the surface on everything that's been said on the matter. The best answer would be to point people to some of the many books on the subject. Even if somehow the people on this site came to a consensus on the right answer to such a question, one could easily find a thousand other sites that come to the opposite conclusion.

But insisting that the site be limited to questions that have a single, provable, definitive answer seems to me to limit it to somewhere between "reference questions" and "nothing". The original poster lists some examples of very specific questions, like "How old was Adam when he died?" But even these are not answerable by the standard that some are insisting on. We could say that Adam was 930 years old when he died, according to Genesis 5:5. But oh, wait, we're not allowed to rely on the Bible as an authoritative source. So what could we possibly give as an answer to even such a simple question? I'm sure an atheist would say that the question is meaningless because there never was any such person as Adam, or that if there was any such person, and he lived thousands of years ago, he probably died at about 30 or 40 because that's how long he thinks most people lived back then. Even if the question was rephrased as, "How old does the Bible say that Adam was when he died?", there are plenty of people who say that the text that we have has been corrupted over the centuries and the original might have been quite different. Okay, how about, "How old does the King James Version of the Bible say that Adam was when he died?" Maybe that's answerable, though even there some could say that the word "years" doesn't really mean what you think it means, or that he found a copy that has a different number and most scholars insist that's a mis-print but he believes it was the original, etc.

Okay, super long post. But probably no one will read it anyway.

Answer 4

TL;DR: Asking for Bible quotations on specific topics should not automatically be considered "opinion-based"

I know I'm late with this, and I'm also not an active member of this site (nor do I fit the primary demographic as identifying as Christian), but please accept this as sincere input from an outsider's viewpoint.

Even though I am not a Christian, I see this site as a potential source of useful information. I have friends and family that are Christians of various denominations, and, not having been raised Christian, I think the idea of having a resource to learn more about other people's beliefs and faith is helpful.

I get why saying "this is what the Bible says" can be contentious. I understand that inter-denomination arguments are something that has the potential to create significant friction within this site.

But for people like me, who merely want to know more about specific aspects of the religion in general, the restrictions of either asking for the interpretations of a particular denomination, or of asking for support for specific interpretations, is a significant barrier.

As an outsider, I fear asking something like "what is the biblical basis for arguments against x?" would come across as critical (particularly in the context of "My wife is a Christian, and I am not... what parts of the Bible say she is wrong to marry me?").

Similarly, asking "what is the Lutheran Church's stance on inter-faith marriages?" isn't particularly useful to me, as we don't only interact with Lutherans. In my area, Christianity is an overwhelming majority, and has a daunting variety of denominations, including Lutheran, Quaker, Catholic, Protestant, Mennonite, Amish, and many others.

Furthermore, I know some people who identify as non-denominational Christians. It seems like the current policy would largely exclude them for not being able to specify a single applicable denomination. Just because someone is raised Lutheran doesn't mean that Lutheran teachings and interpretations are the only ones they'd ever accept, or even that they automatically accept all Lutheran teachings.

What is useful to me is having a better understanding of how Christians are likely to react to hearing that my wife and I are married. It won't change our marriage, and knowing that some denominations or individuals may believe such a thing is prohibited won't cause us to hide who or what we are, but if I understood the source of those beliefs and opinions (in this case, the relevant bible passages), I would be better able to understand those around me, and hopefully have more positive interactions as a result.