Near the final scene of the 1993 Joel Schumacher film, Falling Down, Robert Duvall has cornered Michael Douglas, who plays a laid-off defense-contracting engineer who has gone on a murderous rampage. Douglas looks at Duvall and asks incredulously, “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?” And he really doesn’t know.
I’ve been corresponding with a Christian minister who asks a similar question. He’s genuinely puzzled as to why humanists in general or gays in particular would associate Christianity with bigotry and prejudice. A few excerpts:
Who should I hate? In the end, it seems that I must either hate them all or none of them. The word of God and the inward testimony of God both tell me that I must hate none of them – even when it is necessary for me to oppose them…
And I think you have correctly perceived that I do not hate you. And, I find that the ability – the necessity – to love my opponents and to wish always for their best good, is tied directly to having placed my ultimate hopes beyond the present reality. If I thought this was all there was or ever would be, I think I would be decidedly more capable of hate. If I thought it was all about evolution – which,it seems to me, hinges on the quest for momentary advantage – I believe I could hate – that being after all, only a chemical phenomenon that is either useful or not at the moment and virtually immune to concepts like virtue or morality…
In the meantime, I hear from folks on your side of some issues that I do hate. I am prolife and therefore, ipsofacto, I hate women. If what they mean is that if I had my complete way, I would restrict certain freedoms even though it places certain barriers and limitations before individuals and classes of people who would like to operate without that restriction, then we don’t have the same definition of hate. I could introduce you to several women who have had abortions, who either previously were or currently are pro-choice, who yet would sign any affidavit you cared to craft swearing that I love them. (Emphasis mine)
And,
Please believe, it is not a matter of hurt feelings. I don’t have any particular desire to be obnoxious to you or your compatriots. I am not afraid of spirited debate. But part of my agenda is both to understand and confront the (to me totally upsidedown seeming) notion that Christianity breeds hate, contempt, and ignorance. If I am not yet skilled enough to communicate across this great divide without fostering the impression of ignorance and hatred despite my own clear conviction that I hate none of you (whether or not I’m ignorant may be more in question), then it is probably best to keep my mouth shut a while longer. (Emphasis mine)
And,
I feel that homosexuality is a moral problem. I do not, for what it’s worth, feel the need to take that issue to law and regulation. I don’t think the moral problem of homosexuality is worse than my own moral problems. I am not – at heart – a legalist. And I’m not trying to start a new issue between us on either abortion or homosexuality. And I know that presenting a similar list of homosexual people who would sign the ‘He does not hate me’ affidavit wouldn’t make any real difference. The assertion seems to be that I hate a class of people regardless of my relationship to any particular individuals.
I suggested throwing his agenda open to the community at SEB for response and he replied:
I don’t mind if you post the paragraph. I would be interested to see what would happen. I don’t really think you misundestood this – only a product of a quick communication – but to clarify, I’m only partly worried about offending anyone. I’m more worried about the cultural divide. I have seen missionaries do harm because they were eager to impart the gospel before they understood the target culture. This is not what you would call a missionary venture, but the same principle applies.
Really, Christians are the bad guys? How did that happen? Aren’t Christians, by definition, the good guys? Can anyone explain?
He’s all yours, folks. He wants to know. Can you help him understand?
New Dave & Positive (to the extent your concerns overlap)
I believe default probably is the correct term for reasons I will explain shortly. But (even if I make it all about genetics – which it isn’t) it is certainly not necessary for me to regard all genetic deviation as anathema. Some deviations don’t come with concentrated health risks or increased vulnerability to certain temptations. Some deviant groups (red haired people, flat footed people) are not making efforts to restructure the societal understanding of the nuclear family. And – the last time I checked – red hair wasn’t a behavior and it isn’t considered politically incorrect to believe that the problem of flat feet may be alleviated. As to short people; I’m only 5’8. Watch it!
It is perfectly true that Positive’s sources in the AAP say that homosexuality does not seem to be a matter of choice. It is also true that the AAP did not dig very deep even into the studies they cited. By some definitions, for instance, twin studies suggest that only about 48% of identical twins are non congruent where sexual orientation is concerned. It is well documented however, and a fairly regular criticism in the scientific community, that this figure has to ignore sampling issues. It turns out that more homosexual twins routinely volunteer for such studies than either heterosexual or non-congruent twins. When the sampling bias is eliminated it seems that more like 70% of identical twins are non-congruent in terms of sexual orientation. Note: these congruence figures apply only to situations where at least one twin is homosexual. In the most recent studies in Sweden where they sought to eliminate sampling errors by including all sets of twins in the country, non-congruence rises to about 91% – which puts the rate within range of the natural variation in the general population. This suggests that genetics is either a minor factor or possibly a non-factor.
Even the AAP admits that if genetics is a factor it has to be seen as part of a complex combination involving environment (pre and post-natal), trauma – the exact nature of such complexities being – unclear. But they are becoming more clear. For instance, here are two emerging theories about such complex combinations. A. In some cases of twins, one twin manages to hog the lion’s share of the blood depriving the second twin of nutrients, hormones, etc., necessary for normal development. B. In cases where a particular woman has given birth to several male children in a relatively short period of time, something resembling an allergic reaction is set off which causes the woman’s body to attack a male fetus late in the sequence via antigen storm which may kill the poor child or, in less severe cases only prevent the normal masculinization of the brain. These are both only hypotheses currently being tested. Nevertheless, they represent something of the current state of scientific thought about the origin of homosexuality. If we thought that such processes were responsible for flat feet or a tendency toward alcohol and drug addiction, what would we do? However you feel about that, the concept of default may not be so incorrect after all.
And – coprophagy! What a hoot! You really should pick your examples more carefully. Were I to try to dine on cow manure, I would find the practice harmful. I’m not designed for it. At any rate, thanks for the only slightly backhanded compliment.
Positive,
Correct – attack the person not the logic.
Then, OK, lets take it that you don’t care if homosexuality is a matter of choice, even if it comes with specific health and crime risks. What choices do you care about? You’re going to have to draw the line somewhere.
If the universe is meaningless, then what ultimate difference if people are stoned to death? It matters only to those who care about it – admittedly those being stoned and people like you and I who would, for whatever reasons, object. But if the universe is meaningless and morality is a matter of consensus (it cannot always be about consent or no crime would ever be punished) and the consensus is for stonings, on what grounds do you object?
My wife and her biting patients are not a non-sequitur. It has been decided that the civil rights of her patients outweighs her right to reasonable protections. You didn’t write those laws? There’s a profound justification. I didn’t write the Texas sodomy laws either!
Nothing about the nature of our secular governance has escaped me. The influence of the majority, particularly in a representative republic, on public values does seem to escape you.
Google post-secularism in Sweden and inform yourself.
Positive and Your Might Overload (to the extent that your concerns overlap),
When you get done with picking poison cherries and really want to talk about religion, let me know.
I’ll consider your disconnect between Darwin and Hitler for a bit.
Your Mighty Overload,
I’ll look forward to your thoughts on Perez.
Leguru,
Wow. If only I could define all Christianity according to my own experience – how much easier this discussion would be! After all, I’ve never done any of the things you all seem so hot about. But yes, at least this much is true. Most things are black and white with me.
But that is exactly what you have done. If you do not follow the Catholic Church, you must be following some direction that your own experiences dictate. In fact, your picking only those parts of the Bible that you think are currently applicable is also attributable to your own experiences. When you come to understand how your interpretation of “Christianity” is a fantasy you have developed because of your own experiences and study, you may see how it is possible that others reject that fantasy. It may also help you to understand why those who follow your, or some other brand of, “Christianity” may be viewed as “bad guys” by others. When the fantasy that you follow leads to acts that harm someone only because of that fantasy, that makes you look like the “bad guy.”
Peace.
Oh, you mean like the multiple wives and concubines that Solomon, or David, had? Please review Betty Bowers’ explanation of “traditional marriage” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
And that was only from the Bible! Imagine all the other cultures’ ideas added in to that mix. Exactly what do you find “traditional” about marriage???
Peace.
Several thoughts, in no real order.
Gays spread disease and crime… I suppose Jews and Gypsies are next on that list?
Religious people tend to commit more crimes. I suppose its time to restrict religion? I wouldn’t think so, but your logic would indicate that this is needed.
But, alright, let us say that gays have higher rates of disease; in light of this claim, one would imagine that the Christian response would be to provide further love/care/attention to gays, not less. And in fairness many Christians do. But Terry is apparently not that kind of Christian. Bad guy?
You didn’t write the tax sodomy laws… sounds like you might if you were in power. I, on the other hand, haven’t said a thing about the legal rights of people with certain disorders that might lead them to cause injury.
Civil rights equals carte blanche for biting… Thankfully the Segregationists never managed to come up with that Strawman. I see no reason to believe that if a person has a difficulty controlling himself that his health providers should not have some information pertaining to this risk. Saying so does not affect the legitimacy of civil rights. Hurting others is not a right, whether the injury is intended or due to a disorder. Lynching someone is not a civil right; MLK wasn’t marching for the lynchers.
People with disabilities should have rights, clearly, but certainly they should not be left to endanger others. I do not believe that the violent or the insane should be left uncontrolled, since they are acting without proper reason or logic or regard for others. Similarly, a fetus does not have the same civil rights as an adult, since it has no sense of logic or reason, since its brain has not yet developed these capacities; which is why abortion should be legal in most cases; at least following mine and Terry’s logic. I’m sure Terry will agree…
Your average homosexual isn’t a crazed person who bites random strangers. Making that comparison, or comparing homosexuality to alcoholism, are pretty good examples of demagoguery and dehumanizing propaganda prevalent in conservative religion. Bad guy?
“the consensus is for stonings, on what grounds do you object?”
Certainly not on Old Testament grounds; the Old Testament writers certainly loved stoning.
At any rate, to tie two points together, I think we see in Terry’s attacks on the concept of civil rights why religion does not in itself provide one with adequate ethical and moral character. Atheists do not claim moral infallibility, but I believe that most of us through reason and logic and common sense try our best. To say that we have no guarantee that our moral instincts are correct would be a redundant statement, since this is also true of the religionist; whether he wants to admit it or not. Blind faith in arbitrary laws and mythological figures and in virgin births (which Terry has apparently shied away from defending) does not make a person infallible. As stated earlier, it is a fallacious appeal to consequences to state that lack of belief in God leads to moral relativism; this false dichotomy does not make God any more or less of a reality.
And your points about Hitler and Darwin are ridiculous. What are you even attempting to prove in trying to make this link? That evolution is not true? That evolution and Nazism are the same thing? That belief in evolution is wrong, despite the evidence? That atheists are evil because we admire Darwin, though we do not claim that he was infallible, and though plenty of theists admire him as well? Where is this leading to; other than your desperately resorting to the intellectual bankruptcy of this stale and pathetic religious tendency to attack Darwin? Is Galileo next?
And I’ll be sure to research post-secularism in Iran as well. Iran is a fucking utopia now.
Leguru,
While your response was still untrue, it did not speak to my point. I meant only that I have never killed, maimed, or tortured anyone. I have never absconded with funds dedicated to the ministries I have worked with. I am not divorced. I have no drug or alcohol problem. There is no possibility that I have children aside from the three raised in my home. There are no prostitutes out there who can see my picture and say – That guy’s a preacher? Well, not on Friday nights or out of town conventions! etc. The ills of religion and/or the religious community you all continually point to are no part of my life and no or little part of the lives of most of the Christians I know personally. We all (at least initially) want to do some of those things but the gospel helps us refrain and ultimately changes us. If your anecdotal experience as a homosexual has merit then I fail to see why my anecdotal experience as a Christian should not. That was my point. You seem to understand that I’m right even though you didn’t understand what I said.
When the Israelites lobbied for a king, God told them it would be a problem, including the part about monarch’s general proclivity for harems.
Positive,
I’m not real sure who you were responding to but, whoever it was, you seem to have confused that individual with me. I’ll try to respond in a way that brings things back to what I actually said.
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I do or would not extend love, care, and help, to homosexuals. I will simply relieve you of that particular worry. I have. I do. I will. But – in addition to the many conventional human kindnesses I may extend: if homosexuality is seen as a disorder, which you granted for the sake of the argument, not to mention a definite health risk and, from my perspective, a sin; then compassion would include encouraging people to seek an exodus from the lifestyle.
I wasn’t seeking to justify anything by pointing out that I didn’t write the Texas sodomy laws. I was trying to show the futility of your saying that you didn’t write the laws my wife has to abide by. Your response only confirms my assertion.
But I think I caught it in there that you think my wife should be advised which of her students has AIDS, Hepatitis, etc. Well, that is not the state of the law. It is a little disingenuous to call this simple statement of fact a strawman. My wife works with handicapped preschoolers. (It might be an interesting question why so many handicapped preschoolers have AIDS and Hepatitis.) You seem to indicate that some of the civil rights laws governing her interactions with them are a bad idea. To what degree is secularism responsible for it?
What I would actually write into law if I had the authority is another question but I repeat – there is often a difference between a sin and a crime or, a just plain bad idea. Consider it from a less emotionally charged perspective. Do you want the government more or less involved in regulating smoking? Criminalize the substance? More taxes on the practice? Allow smoking and non-smoking bars/restaurants/bowling allies? Is your car a private property zone? Then, let’s talk about trans-fats. How many personal behaviors and choices do you want regulated, to what extent, and who gets to decide?
Then, back to the more emotionally charged issues. So, a fetus has no right to life (that is the specific right that must be the center of this particular question – not the right to privacy or the right to bite but the right to life) because it possesses less (I personally do not accept the statement that a fetus has zero reasoning) logic and reason than an adult. The same is true for a newborn or a one year old or children with various medical conditions. Where is the line of demarcation? Who gets to set it? On what basis?
Since I did not say that the average homosexual was a crazed person who bites random strangers I have no need to defend such a position. As to homosexuality and alcoholism, if you contend that both have at least a partial basis in genetics, then the only comparison I made is sound.
Citing the Old Testament on the subject of stoning is a mere refusal to answer the question. On what basis do you object in the midst of a meaningless universe?
Lastly, I believe I said I would consider your proposed disconnect between Darwin and Hitler for a bit. I still am. But I can answer your question to this degree at least without messing up my considerations. I was not making any of the points you guessed at. Rather, I was saying that Hitler’s practices were probably justifiable if physics and genetics are the arbitrators of ethics and morals. Darwin seems to have caught on to something of that sort at least by the time he wrote The Descent of Man.
Almost forgot. I’m unsure what makes you think I a backing away from the doctrine of the virgin birth. All I said was that developments in science make the absurdity heuristic less rather than more forceful on that and similar issues. Then you did the name calley thing.
Terry
Your reference, here, to the gospel, could also mean your “conscience” or your understanding of humanity. If you feel that the gospel is the “power” that prevents you from doing evil, good for you. If you find, at sometime in the future, the gospel may not be as powerful as you now deem it to be, would you then begin to do those evil things? If someone follows another philosophy that helps them to lead a good, moral life, does that mean that the philosophy is false because it does not “come from God?” Do you see what I am getting at?
Peace.
All that I wrote was in response to something which you posted. But, in regards to Darwin and what science tells us about ethics; perhaps you are thinking of another poster, but I have not said that science gives us insights into ethics; your response is misplaced. I believe I said the opposite; that science generally does not teach us about ethics. I believe I said that Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, is true regardless of the fact that it led to the creation of atomic weapons. What we do with science is up to us; science cannot teach us right from wrong. I think I already gave my take on how we should develop our ethical beliefs, and how ethics certainly do not come from religion.
Of course, I have not yet read Sam Harris’ new book. He apparently tries to address this subject of what science teaches us about morality. It should be interesting to read, even if we might not ultimately agree with Harris.
As to the rest of your post; suffice it to say that I found your response on the virgin birth disingenuous. And you did not answer my objections. Name calling? I don’t recall name calling, though I don’t particularly care enough to go back and check. I think for such a long debate there has been remarkably little “namey calling”, Ms. Palin.
Oh, wait…
Anyway, while both homosexuality and alcoholism have roots in genetics (so do blue eyes and susceptibility to certain cancers; it is an irrelevant comparison) to suggest that there is a similarity between alcoholism, a debilitating life-destroying disease, and homosexuality is ridiculous. Ditto the comparison to cigarette smoking. I don’t need to recite the typical-liberal praise of the brave homosexual who loves another person and wants to start a family, etc. etc. That is all trivial; the main point is that they have a right to that behavior, and they are not harming anyone. That they might have higher rates of disease is not a cause for censuring them, quite the opposite. To play this two faced game about how dearly the Christian loves homosexuals but about how there should be some level of restriction on their lifestyle is hypocritical. Again, we can point to higher crime rates among religionists, to religious terrorism, to abuse scandals and so on. I would not call for restrictions on religion.
A fetus, prior to the third semester (90% of abortions take place prior to that point) lacks, for instance, a cerebral cortex. It does not yet have the function that will allow it to develop consciousness, thought, language, etc. But, if a fetus deserves legal rights then I suppose your wife’s patients deserve the right to keep their condition secret, despite their own lack of rational thought. And I suppose radical animal rights activists are correct that killing animals is murder; animals might not have our capacities of thought or reason, but life is apparently life. I had a steak not too long ago, I suppose I should be in prison with the abortionists. Didn’t Jesus eat fish?
But, unless you can demonstrate that Catholic hospitals or Jewish hospitals do not have similar policies, or unless you can demonstrate that religious theocracy would prevent us from having these laws for these patients, I don’t have the slightest idea why you consider these laws a problem specific to secularism. Patients have rights, and perhaps advocates for these laws might have good arguments for why they exist; but all of these points are rather trivial in a discussion about the merits of secularism or civil rights. Civil rights are crucial, and saying so is not somehow a position exclusive to atheists.
From your first post, you can see the reason for your formation of a fantasy to explain your world view. You sell yourself short, and humans in general short, when you fail to see how you could be moral if you discovered that there existed nothing beyond this present reality. This pressures you into creating a world in which you would be comfortable, i.e., a world in which morals are dictated by some being superior to humans. It does not mean that such a world exists in reality, only that you must create such a world to be comfortable. The reason you are seen as a “bad guy” is that you fail to understand how others do not need to create such a fantasy to be comfortable and try to either force your world view on others (laws), or to convince others that your world view is better than theirs (invent a religion). Does this help to elucidate why some may view Christians as the bad guys?
All,
Since the question of the church and Hitler keeps coming up in one form and another, I have done some research. I’ll share my conclusions. Note: the research I have done so far mainly applies to the Catholic Church in Germany. There are parallels to the experience of Protestants at the time but I’ll have to do more research before I’d say much more specific than that. Apologies in advance for the length. More conventional posts at the end of the research.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January, 1933. National Socialists did well in the elections that year and got a hand on the reigns of power. They immediately set about squelching government resistance and working toward a set of special elections which were advertised, right out in the open, as possibly the last elections Germany would ever need. Up to this time, the episcopate of the Catholic Church had recognized Hitler’s potential for evil and gone so far as to place a restriction on Catholics – they could not join the National Socialist Party and remain in the good graces of the Church. Now Hitler was in power and the episcopate had choices to make.
With choices, there are always factors. Consider the following as a partial list.
*The official Vatican policy was to remain absolutely neutral in all matters of politics and
government – good Catholics could be good Catholics under any government;
democratic or authoritarian. Neither German society nor the Catholic Church
immediately recognized the exceptional nature of the National Socialist regime. It was
just another government and surely, normal governmental influences would tame even a
man like Hitler.
* The Vatican inspired attitude toward government was compounded by the fact that, in
the wake of WWI, Germany had been determined to build/rebuild a sense of nationalism
and patriotism. The Church wished to demonstrate that good Catholics were good
patriots.
*Under the Weimar Republic there was a constitutionally assured partnership between
church and state. The Catholic leadership was conditioned to believe promises of a
continued place at the table and, to be honest, the flow of goodies (subsidies, etc.).
*There was a pervasive spirit of aggressive materialism in Germany. The church had not
been exempt. The Catholic leadership was an extremely secularized form of Christianity
much more likely to seek worldly/pragmatic solutions than spiritual/Biblical ones.
*Atheistic Communism was (and had been for some time) seen as the biggest
threat to German society and the National Socialists did a good job of selling themselves
as the best defense against Marxism. The National Socialists capably represented the
burning of the Reichstag in February as a signal for a general Communist uprising.
*The Nazis had a strong line of propaganda asserting that positive Christianity was a
vital foundation of German society and a necessary institution for the preservation of
morality. Few, besides those closest to Rosenberg, actually understood exactly what was
meant by positive Christianity: No Old Testament and a New Testament scrubbed of
mythological elements, a church anchored in blood, race, and soil. Within the
secularized episcopate, much of this sounded good anyway. When individuals like
Cardinal Bertram sounded a warning, they were either ignored or belittled.
At the crucial moment in March, 1933, the Bishops issued The Fulva Declaration (hundreds of declarations came from the regular Fulva meetings but this one will always be THE Fulva Declaration) dropping the restriction against membership in the National Socialist Party and approving the Enabling Act which allowed the National Socialists to proceed with their special elections.
Conservative Catholics, including most priests, were confused and appalled. Their leadership had just supported and entered into negotiations with the man who, not long ago, they had represented as the incarnation of evil. The only difference now was that this man was in power. Did that suddenly make him no longer evil? An excellent question for secularists! The bishops issued lots of statements explaining the position of the church toward government and detailing the good things (mostly patriotism) about the National Socialists which the Church could encourage without approving the less good things.
The National Socialist Party did not worry over such distinctions. They had the declaration of the bishops in hand and considered themselves on good terms with the church. The Party immediately began to purge the government and pay back its enemies. Brutality was obvious even in these early stages. The bishops opined that these were temporary problems – the wind of change – and would soon settle. Further, they maintained that some carnage must be borne if the threat of atheistic communism was to be met – many of Hitler’s early victims were far leftists.
While making extensive, if vaguely worded, promises to the Church, Hitler and his inner circle privately despised Christianity. In reference to Rosenberg’s growing project, Hitler said, ‘One is either a German or a Christian. You cannot be both…We need free men who feel and know God in themselves.’ (H. Rausching, The Voice of Destruction, pp.49-50.
Hitler’s views on such matters were not exactly secret. He was on record as believing that the Church should be tolerated for a time because, among other reasons, religion generated loyalty to the state and devout soldiers were considered the best soldiers because they would risk all. This toleration was to last only until a better and fully operational religion (national cult) could be set in place. Until then, the existing Church with its established infrastructures was the best game in town. (Mein Kampf)
It also must be acknowledged (with shame) that the bishops hardly blinked an eye when Hitler plainly announced (in the same March 1933 speeches) his plans for liberating Germany from the golden chains of parasitic Jews. He promised to behave toward the Jews as the Church had (or would have liked to) for the past 1500 years. To their credit, the priests had more trouble accepting this than the bishops.
By late July, Hitler had initialed drafts of a concordat with the Vatican. The German bishops told the Pope that accounts of Nazi brutality against recalcitrant priests were propaganda. It is not entirely clear whether the bishops were displaying ignorance (perhaps willful) or dishonesty. As it turned out, hundreds of those recalcitrant priests died in the concentration camps along with the Jews whose persecution they could not stomach. Either way, the concordat went through, including Article 33, which forbade priests and members of religious orders to join political parties!
The Center Party – which included almost all the bishops – knew that where political influence was concerned, their goose (barring a goose step) was cooked. They had alienated the priests and much of the rank and file below them, been essentially sold by the Vatican (for the promise that if the Church would just continue to trundle off to cathedrals for mass and keep their noses out of politics, policies, and public values, they would be SAFE.) and been ousted by the political entity they had helped bring to power. The bishops were made to swear an oath of loyalty to the regime and a promise to keep their clergy in line. A separate exempt pastorship was set up for the army under the auspices of a state appointed bishop. The promises of pastoral access to state run prisons, hospitals, etc., were violated – first at the concentration camps but increasingly at all state run institutions.
The bishops responded by writing statements of reconciliation which French Historian Robert d’Harcourt characterized as ‘Professions of loyalty seasoned with vinegar…trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, to flatter the hangman and console the victim.’ (The German Catholics, p. 84)
The concordat was ratified on September 10.
To give the flavor of the worst of the secularized, Tubingenized, Christian thought, consider Karl Adams (renowned theologian) ‘Now he stands before us, he whom the voices of our poets and sages have summoned, the liberation of the German genius. He has removed the blind folds from our eyes and, through all political, economic, social, and confessional covers, has enabled us to see and love again the one essential thing: our unity of blood, our German self, the homo-Germanus.”
With the ink of the concordat still wet, the Nazis began to move against Catholic controlled organizations and Catholic friendly Press. These efforts stepped up considerably with the outbreak of the war. Many Catholics who had, thus far, trusted their bishops, began to have second thoughts. The straw that broke the camel’s back for many of the priests was the appointment of Rosenberg as official supervisor of spiritual and ideological training for the Party – read now, the entire government. A rash of anti-Catholic appointments to positions of power followed. It was at this point that National Socialism began to be referred to as Neo-paganism.
In response to the growing recalcitrance of the priesthood, the Party began trials of members of religious orders for violations of foreign currency laws – a classic case of create the crime in order to begin prosecution – and sexual perversity (guess which one) describing monasteries as breeding places of filth and vice. Campaigns against confessional schools followed quickly. Though it took them until 1937, the Vatican publicly protested violations of the concordat. The strongest objection was to the principle that moral right = whatever is advantageous to the people. The Gestapo confiscated copies of the Vatican statement and shut down presses that produced it. They seemed to think it important that rank and file Catholics not be aware of a rift with the Vatican. Hitler considered voiding the entire concordat but was advised that the Party still needed the Church for a bit longer. The bishops adopted the strategy of absorbing Nazism. Even they choked a little on Rosenberg. The bishops did not get any credit for their accomodationism. The Party wasn’t interested in their support at this point. The Party wanted the Church (bishops included) to keep their noses completely out of politics, policy, and public values. Do the chanting kneeling thing and then, shut up!
The priests didn’t shut up. Consider, as an example, the following statement by one Father Muckermann, ‘A great moment has arrived for the church. The rights of man are in danger. Nobody dares to speak up against those dictators who treat man like a slave. Nobody, in the face of the concentration camps, the murders, the assaults on liberty, utters the divine command: This you may not do! Were the church to speak it, she would fulfill her high calling and the answer would be an enthusiastic echo all over the world.’
Or, Walter Gurian to the bishops on the final solution, ‘The effects of this silence is to bewilder Christians and to disillusion most bitterly non-Christians, who might otherwise have been converted but actually are losing all confidence in the church as a result of her failing to show her disapproval of flagrant injustice. Needless to say, in this case silence does not mean consent, but it gives the impression that if only formulas and methods could be found that guaranteed the church her outward existence and a certain moral influence on individuals…the battle would be over!’
But when war broke out in 1939, such voices were largely lost in the din. The bishops were penny committed to whatever number of pounds followed. The statements that had the most effect for the rank and file Catholics was the bishops insistence that even while the wrinkles were being worked out of the National Socialist system, good Catholics must be good patriots and support the German war effort. This argument became especially powerful in 1941 when Germany attacked Russia. The Party still maintained that it was the only defense against or answer to atheistic communism. When progress waned in Russia, the support of the bishops finally began to wane as well – at least to the extent that they ceased encouraging Catholics to pray for victory and began to encourage them to pray for peace.
When the bishops finally began to take seriously information received from priests on the scene (or imprisoned in concentration camps – or from the diaries of dead priests – shot in the streets or gassed in the camps) concerning brutality to Polish Catholics, starvation of Russian prisoners, mass shootings of hostages, etc. they wrote actual protests. There was no response from the Party. They wrote pastoral letters encouraging good Catholics to object to these atrocities – while still supporting the overall war effort as good patriots. The mixed message predictably fizzled.
And, there was much argument, the state of information technology being what it was. Who could say if the Poles had first afflicted their German minority or fired the first shot? Did Holland and Belgium violate their agreements of neutrality? And, once enlisted in the army, Catholic soldiers – all soldiers – were under the pastorship of the state appointed Rosenbergian Army Bishop.
The practice of Euthanasia (the elimination of non-productive eaters) nearly provided a tipping point. At first the program was covered up. When sick, elderly, etc. were disposed of, the family received letters to the effect that their loved ones had died of natural causes. But word leaked out – again mostly due to recalcitrant priests before and after they were denied pastoral access to state run hospitals (now all hospitals) and prisons. At first the bishops branded the Euthanasia program as another rogue project that needed to be weeded from the over all good National Socialist garden. No one was having it. A sermon by one Father Galen against both program and Party went viral (for the day). The Vatican threatened to violate its established policy of neutrality and issue condemnations. The Euthanasia project was suspended – after the elimination of 70,000 or so non-productive eaters.
But, this victory won, everything went back to normal. The bishops were able to say a weed had been pulled. The Vatican maintained neutrality. The priests were unheeded by the Party. And, the timing had the advantage/disadvantage of coinciding with the onset of war with Russia. Worse: the Vatican (even when the final solution reached Rome) and the bishops who had risked themselves at least a little on the behalf of the sick and aged, continued to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jews.
It must be noted that this was not true of Catholics in general. Apart from the efforts and heroic sacrifices of the German priests already referenced, French, Belgian, & Dutch bishops fought the oppression of the Jews and led Europe wide Catholic efforts including secret operations conducted by the priests and the monasteries to rescue Jews.
Some historians wonder whether in some alternate universe in which the church stood her ground on biblical principle rather than practicing political vacillation, she did not emerge stronger. More than one historian recalls the words of Swiss Theologian, Hans Kung, ‘..the church being of men, is forever under the temptation to make herself at home in the world, to regard her worldly success as the coming of the kingdom of God, to be intent on making herself secure and powerful and free from opposition and persecution.’
Even a few agnostic historians nail the central issues for the church. i.e. the church is in the world to preach the word of God, continue the work of Christ irrespective of cost, and constitute a moral force. But the Church also is a human institution with an interest in self preservation and, expansion. The problem arises when the former aims are forgotten in deference to the later. Then, the gospel becomes a liability rather than a source of strength.
Nor is the problem as new as the New Testament Church. Consider the parallel with the Sadducees and their problems with the Old Testament as a liability in their political accommodations with a series of foreign powers, most notably, Rome.
Neither did the problem end in mid twentieth Century Germany. You (SEBers) are fond of asserting that the church either was complicit with the Nazis or ineffective against them. (Then you complain about my being too black and white!) The church Europe wide, and at the level of the priests compared to the bishops within Germany, resisted. True, the spiritual effectiveness of martyrdom generally relies on a metrology somewhat foreign to secularized pragmatists.
But the very kinds of secularized ‘cafeteria’ Christianity you say is best, is the kind that failed so signally in the face of the National Socialists. In fact, I have heard different ones of you say that if Christians would only trundle off to their Sunday observances and keep their quaint and antiquated notions out of public policy, morality, and values – you would find us considerably less objectionable. Hmmm…
If the argument is that the Vatican’s effort to maintain political neutrality and the secularized version of Christianity to which the German bishops adhered played right into Hitler’s hands, and that the even more secularized designer religion offered up by Rosenberg was an abomination, I offer no counter argument.
But if the question concerns what made portions of Christianity complicit with or ineffective in the face of the National Socialists, then surely the answer is not for the Church to be herded into the same blind alley again!
Leguru,
Once more – I’m saying that my anecdotal experience of Christianity CAN’T be used as proof of the existence of God or the general efficacy of the gospel. In exactly the same way, your anecdotal experience of homosexuality doesn’t constitute anything resembling a definition or a counter to the points I raised.
Positive,
Everything you posted was addressed to a misinterpretation of things I posted. And I got it – you don’t want to answer the question. But, if two major life shaping experiences are genetically rooted, then it’s ridiculous to say they are not similar. How do we select which behaviors people have a right to – as we certainly don’t think they have an unlimited right to any and all behaviors – genetically rooted or not. And – while we believe people have a right to their religion – we nevertheless place restrictions on the exercise of religion. There are already restrictions on homosexual behavior – on all sexual behaviors. So the only question regards the degree of restriction. Many behaviors are restricted, or at least advised against, or discriminated against on actuarial tables or Leguru’s beloved bell curve because of health and social risks. Why is it irrelevant (or hate speech or a denial of civil rights) to want an honest societal assessment of homosexuality?
A fetus, an embryo, whatever stage you want to back it up to, from the moment of conception, has the genetic blueprint that will allow it to develop consciousness, thought, language, and etc. If you want to argue about the point at which that blueprint calls for and produces a cerebral cortex, you can stop throwing the term disingenuous around. By the way, if the possession of a cerebral cortex is the deal breaker, I imagine the cow your steak came from had one.
Harris, it seems to me, is more true to his principles. If transcendentalism is out and materialism is in, then you are kind of stuck in the ethics and morals department. Humanism seems to me something of a poor port in the storm. The basic argument is that ethics and morality is a by product of humanity. But what is that basic argument itself based on? Why, it’s based on a package of assumptions concerning non-material items like free will, meaningful rationality, the idea that human dignity and flourishing are important, that there are significant common bonds uniting people across biological, social, and geographical boundaries, etc.
Free will? If the issue is investigated scientifically, it must be investigated reductively – that is, taken apart until it disappears into chemical reactions and electromagnetism. In other words, to the extent that science can speak to free will at all, there is no such thing – all our actions are chemically and mechanically determined. But then, surely, the actions of the sociopath are no less chemically and mechanically determined than the actions of the philanthropist. Do chemicals have morals? (The word philanthropy is based on the word ‘love’ – another item that essentially goes away if reductive materialism is the measure.) If rationality itself is just another deterministic by product, then –
Ultimately, ethics and morals have a transcendent origin, in which case they are not strictly up to us, or a material origin rooted in the properties of matter itself, in which case, they are not up to us, or, they are only what we say they are. If that third option is to have any real meaning then we have to operate on the assumption that we ourselves are something more than material. Else wise, you’re really back to option two. But, just for fun, let’s exempt your humanistic secularism from the purview of your materialistic reductionism for just a moment. If ethics and morals are just what we say they are, then the consensus is all that matters. The consensus, the localized version or long term trends, cannot be wrong. And the vast, world wide, civilization long trend of that consensus is that morals and ethics have a transcendent origin and shouldn’t be monkeyed with. The historical trend seems to be that homosexuality is the non-favored option. The historical trend and the current consensus – including several local variations where national autonomy is allowed – as long as the consensus is that such autonomy should be allowed – cannot itself be immoral or unethical – it is the very definition of ethics and morality – it’s only what we want.
Change it? Well, given materialist assumptions, be my guest. Change the consensus if you can. Just quit pretending. Quit pretending for one thing that we members of the current consensus are – or can be – bad guys. Evil, if such a thing can truly exist in a reductionist materialist worldview, is just another name for bucking the system.
Terry
Once again, God is not at fault, but humans that claim to represent Him. You are still dancing around the central issue, namely, is there a God, and if so, which humans REALLY represent Him? How convenient to blame humans when the Church does something wrong, and give credit only to God when the Church does something right. You still fail to recognize that in both instances it is the humans which are doing something, NOT God.
Peace.
If the Catholic Church held to its traditional values it would be a terrorist organization by our modern standards. Killing civilians of different religious backgrounds because they are “witches” or “heretics” or “heathens” while attempting to impose theocracy on the western world would probably land the pope on the same wanted list as Bin Laden. Cafeteria Christianity is the only form of Christianity that can coexist with the modern world, depending on what form it takes. Ditto Islam.
Such as?
I’m sorry… were you not the one speaking earlier about the failures of Darwinism to address moral issues? Now, instead, you are attempting to base your legal and ethical positions on genetics? Credibility fades so quickly.
I can respond to your question on the obviousness of the queer/drunk freaks-of-nature connection with a new answer, but I am satisfied with the answer that I have already provided. Homosexuality, alcoholism, blue eyes, long noses… all genetically related. Your heterosexuality and mine are also genetic. That something has been passed on genetically is, in and of itself, an irrelevance to the question of whether that something is positive or negative or neither. You are merely attempting to sneak in an association of homosexuality with a life debilitating disease; it is unseemly and you are attempting it in a highly hypocritical fashion given your earlier statements (which I agreed with) about how science cannot teach us about ethics. As I said earlier, if we need to restrict homosexuality to decrease the level of AIDS then we will do so after we ban religion to decrease the level of crime and terrorism.
I wasn’t aware that a cow could develop a human cerebral cortex. But the human mind has unique properties that other animals and which the human fetus, up to a certain point, does not have… such as the faculties that will allow it to argue nonsense in the name of religion. I was not aware that everything with a ‘blueprint’ (which would presumably include sperm cells as well) deserves legal rights. I suppose George Carlin was wrong when he said that “not every ejaculation deserves a name.”
I like Peter Singer’s view on abortion; a human fetus is
At any rate, you will simply have to pipe down about your anti-abortion views, since the majority of Americans (the majority being the only important factor in your estimation) do not want to ban abortion. You don’t want to be an elitist, do you?
I haven’t read Harris’ new book yet so I cannot comment on his positions. As for my positions…
Well, firstly, transcendentalism (by which I assume you mean God, heaven, the spiritual world) is a non-starter, since it does not exist or cannot be proven to exist. Whether we try to form moral principles based on reason (which is the actual state of things and which is what I am in favor of) or whether we abandon all laws since we cannot prove them objectively… our starting point will remain in materialism, since everything else is simply the wet dream of those who cannot deal with reality… those people who believe in the virgin birth and then fail to provide genuine reasons for why they do.
Are chemicals (which is what we are indeed made of) unworthy of morals? Does the possibility that we do not have free will (which religion does not guarantee us either) mean that our sense of morality might be fictive? Perhaps. But in our day to day lives we will try to formulate laws and ethics based on evidence and logic. If it turns out that they are artificial and that ethics are imaginary and that they have no meaning; all we will have done is created a society of laws and ethics which might make our lives, for the most part, a bit easier. But what will not provide us with objective morality is arbitrary faith claims.
If free will is non-existent because it disappears in the face of chemical and electrical laws that still does not make shooting your neighbor in the face a good behavior… even if it is in theory out of your hands. Shooting your neighbor causes harm, it is not something that you would like to have happen to you (golden rule), it is not good for society… we can create some standards, even if they are not provably true and even if we counter-intuitively have no ultimate control over ourselves. The human belief that 1+1=2 does not become wrong merely because some people might argue that we came to that conclusion without free will.
It is interesting how, regardless of the conversation, your conclusions always seem to end up with an attack on homosexuality. I suppose homosexuality needs to be mentioned ahead of murder, rape, torture, slavery… which all happen to be endorsed by the “objective morality” of your Bible. Perhaps that is where the ‘bad guy’ characterization comes from.
Perhaps… or we could use a more realistic definition of the term, one that does not ignore brain science, for example. It is not necessary that the concept disappear merely because we no longer believe in a supernatural explanation, such as cupids. Lightning still exists, even if we understand it in more scientific terms than the Greeks who would have attributed it to Zeus.
As for your contempt for minority rights, which does not seem to be a Christian position; so be it. I have explained my support for civil rights, and other people more eloquent than you and I have done so as well.
Again, Black or White. What if ethics and morals are only what we say they are, based on societal and humanistic principles that promote the well-being of most members of society. And what if those principles include compassion, which is to encourage and support the well-being of even those on the fringes of society, so long as their actions are not harmful to themselves or others. And what if EVERY society on the planet, including “Christianity”, arrives at a similar conclusion. Does that indicate that “God” dictated those principles, or does it indicate that those principles are inherent in every human being, excepting perhaps sociopaths? Please try to see through your biases so you can understand the whole picture. If you persist in claiming only “God”, namely YOUR god, can elevate humans, perhaps you can also see why such an exclusionary philosophy would make you appear to be the “bad guys” by any casual observer outside your culture.
Peace.
Positive & Leguru,
I think my credibility is intact. In part, in looking at things like genetics, I am trying to discuss the implications of your proposed ethical/moral system. My own beliefs about right and wrong are revelatory – as we all know. But even for me, genetics – understood from the perspective of design – has some implications. For you, genetics ends up being almost everything unless you presume that in producing sentient human beings biology has finally transcended itself. If that is the case, then you base your values on a set of scientifically improvable assertions. Again, the only way science can examine these assertions is to reduce them to their constituent chemical and electrical properties – the negation of transcendence. And it seems you have little more to offer as justification for your insistence on the non-material than Paschal. It’s OK if my operative beliefs aren’t true because all I’ve done is make our lives a bit easier.
The question you refuse to answer is On what grounds, in a meaningless universe where morality is what we say it is, do you object to a society’s consensus that it can best protect itself by stoning certain lawbreakers?
I never said your cow had a human cerebral cortex and in your original remarks you didn’t specify the word human either. That would make the argument rather circular. And I agree that Singer’s position is much more rational than any attempt to classify a fetus as not (or not yet) human. I have said so before. I further agree that there are circumstances under which the killing of humans is morally acceptable. Shooting your neighbor in the face may occasionally be very good for society. And, as per your rather shallow understanding of the golden rule, it is, unfortunately, possible that I could enter into states where, by my present judgment, I would very much wish that someone would shoot me in the face. Obviously, it can be judged that killing large numbers of our fellow humans can be extremely good for society. I don’t deny any of that and neither does the Bible.
If I were arguing it from your side, and as per Singer’s larger body of writing, any killing of any human is justifiable if it benefits the larger society. In a real population crunch, the protection of fetuses under almost any circumstances, including ignoring the protests of people who didn’t want to bear a child for whatever reasons, would be appropriate. More kids would be, after all, what was needed to make our lives a bit easier. Going back to Genghis Kahn, he needed more people for the good of his society. In those circumstances, the death penalty for homosexuality would have to be understood differently than currently.
At least, all this and much more like it is true unless there is some larger overarching factor that curbs mere pragmatism. You believe in such a factor and it is just as non-material as the core of any religion. It has the further disadvantage of being circular. It has the crippling disadvantage of being at odds with all experience. If things are truly inherent to the human condition, it is inarguable that killing and injustice are as inherent as any other behaviors or values you might name.
Terry
Right and wrong are revelatory… sorry, rational people do not take their ethical principles from those who claim to hear voices or see visions. I do not consider Charles Manson an ethical source but perhaps that is a sign of my shallow atheism; perhaps I should have more faith.
I will again have to caterogrize your position on genetics as a hypocritical non sequitur. I suppose left handed people are also immoral in that they are not bending their nature to fit in with mainstream right handed society. I also appreciate your highlighting that, for you, genetics is designed by a higher power; the genetics which predispose us to cancers, heart disease, and your dreaded alcoholism and homosexuality. Your geneticist deity sounds a bit more like the devil; but then so does your Biblical deity.
I did not say that my ‘operative beliefs’ are true or not, I said that I try to come up with logical conclusions for ethical positions and I believe that this has more utility than listening to the iron age mythologies. I never claimed, however, that my ethical beliefs were factually true, and I am open to other perspectives. That is not a non-materialist position. Nor is it the position of the religionist, who makes fallacious appeals to consequence and then asserts that he is better grounded and non-circular because he bases his ethical positions not on reason but on the likely schizophrenic dictates of ancient peoples who admit that were hearing voices.
I don’t believe that my comments on the golden rule match your disingenuous categorization of them, but then I’m sure you don’t either. If I advocated suicidal murder sprees via the golden rule then I am indeed surprised at myself. And I am glad that you believe that you agree with Singer, but he was not advocating killing people against their will, which was actually the opposite of his point in that given paragraph. If Singer has advocated policies similar to China’s one child policy I am not aware of it, but Singer obviously holds opinions that I do not agree with, such animal liberation. I was merely agreeing with his pro-choice stance… emphasis on choice, which does not involve forcing mothers into abortions, which is a distinction that anti-choicers are often quick to blur.
And Genghis Khan also believed that he was doing the will of heaven; he would be on your side in the great camp of revelatory ethics. Hitler was also fond of speaking about how he was doing the will of Providence (he believed that Providence had saved him from many near-death experiences) and your admission that you and your Holy Bible view the killing of large numbers of people to be beneficial for society puts you in his company. Your Bible speaks of slaying women, children-to speak nothing of what awaits them in the next life-and raping the survivors; again, if reason is not the most definitive way of formulating ethical beliefs, it certainly can do no worse than the revelatory approach.
I do not necessarily subscribe to the sentiment of the famed Steven Weinberg quote, but for those who do agree with it Terry would seem a good case study: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil — that takes religion”
Primitive societies found primitive punishments. That was right for those societies, not good, but with small numbers and limited data, it was a logical choice. When I was a child, I believed as a child. When we mature and have vastly larger data bases available to make decisions, I would hope that society can evolve to the point of seeing the value of humanistic principles that benefit greater numbers of our society, including altruism and compassion. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I see you are fond of Reductio ad Absurdum for many of your points. Many of us are able to see through such arguments.
Peace.
decrepitoldfool, May 25, 2010 at 1:52 PM: “Tyler, seriously… What The Fuck?”
You claimed Terry has “done a lot of good in the world.” Let’s say this is so – And? Lots of people have done a lot of good in the world. Here’s the difference – most of them don’t do it while at the same time doing a whole lot of bad in the world, like making a living off of mind fucking people under the banner of one of the most vile institutions humans have ever devised.
Seriously… what the fuck…
Yeah, I get it. You’ve known Terry for a lot of years, and when he’s compared to other pieces of shit, it hits home hard. But your discomfort with the reality of the situation doesn’t change the fact that he’s a piece of shit.
Okay, so, let me boil it down to this: Sure, Christiniaty claims to be the inspiration behind a lot of good deeds. And it is. But it is also used to justify hate, and let’s use an example: Fred Phelps. He claims the Bible supports what he is saying! If that is not so, please point out to us where Fred is wrong. If you cannot, then that would seem to support my past assertion that the Bible will apparently support pretty much any stance that is not directly/inherently anti-Bible. And if it’s that morally ambiguous, then I stand by my prior statement that a guide that’s that open to interpretation is effectively useless as a guide.
Right, NewDave. If a believer is interpreting the Bible to fit his wishes then he is indeed thinking for himself. Thinking for yourself may be an atheistic sin, but that is still what you are doing. If you are thinking for yourself then you don’t need a Bible… to do good or bad. “The devil can cite scripture” as they say.
What New Dave and Positive have said. The only difference between the morals “Christianity” claims, or at least your brand of same, and the morals of any other religion or non-religion is that you say that “God”, or at least your brand of same, has inspired prophets to teach said morals. Once again, we come to the point of PROOF that “God”, or at least your brand of same, actually exists. Since that proof consists of personal testimony, perhaps there is no god, only individual experiences of what some claim to be god. Again, we are reduced to morals taught by men, most of whom have some agenda. Now Terry’s claim that his brand of morals is different or better than any other culture or religion, or non-religion, is based on some kind of proof that his God exists and has, in fact, inspired his prophets. Still waiting for that proof, Terry.
By the way, has anyone noticed this has become the number one Most Popular Post?
WHOO HOO!
Peace.
There’s been a lot of very interesting discussion. Terry is very literate, and been (pleasantly) surprisingly willing to engage on an academic level, that which is typically held literally undebatable. “You question The Word? How DARE you!!” et al. Terry’s talking to us on our level, which has engendered said discussion.
Terry,
Apologies for beign out of the loop for a while. Been exceptionally busy at work, business trips, etc etc.
Anyway, I noticed this
Wow! If you don’t mind me asking, why did your God make the world this way? Why make people who he knows with foresight (you believe in an omniscient God, right?), who are going to cause so much pain to others, that shooting them in the face is the moral decision (and why the face, aren’t there better ways of dealing with problems than by killing?)?
It comes back to the problem of evil. Either your god can do nothing about the unnecessary suffering in the world, or he can and but chooses not to.
I know some people use the apologetic that this is “the best of all possible worlds”, and that suffering is necessary, but that just poses the question at another level – why would an omnipotent god require suffering to achieve his goals?
Tyler:
Terry is a human being capable of self-deception – a condition we all share. I dropped back from this thread earlier because I just didn’t know what else to say to him directly. Over 800 comments and he’s still whinging on about Hitler. He knows the Reich banned atheist lit – no difference. He knows Germany was a “Christian” country – nope, no difference.
Or take the issue of slavery – please. If he were to just admit the bible is at most neutral on slavery, he’d have to admit that biblical morality is a human social construct. Well, he wouldn’t have to, but it would be a logical consequence of that first admission; I just don’t think he can. I’m reminded of Upton Sinclair: “It’s hard to get a man to understand something if his paycheck depends upon him not understanding it.” In Terry’s case it isn’t just his paycheck but the esteem of his life’s work. As I said, it’s a rhetorical Möbius strip: he does not appear to have moved a millimeter in the length of this entire discussion.
But before you assign “piece of shit” status, some comparisons are worth making. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has dedicated his entire life and “ministry” to spreading lies about a specific group in society and promoting discrimination against them. Newt Gingrich has written books on morality when the word does not mean what he seems to think it means. Michele Bachmann, well… you know.
Terry has specifically disavowed discrimination against gays, come out in favor of gay marriage, and through whatever circuitous path passes for logic manages to find the bible as against slavery today. He has blind spots, but he holds some important positions I agree with and his focus as a person has always been helping vulnerable people in trouble. I have seen him at that work.
He has blind spots, yes, but there are individuals (I just named three) whose lives are defined by who they hate, who persistently encourage that definition, and I reserve the “piece of shit” status for them. You of course are welcome to stir your own recipe, but that one is mine.
Defend his mythology, though, or its role in morality? Not a bit. Like Maxwell’s daemon sorting atomic particles at different energy levels, Terry attributes human good to god, and human evil to humanity; the result can hardly be other than a perception that humanity is, without divine intervention, irredeemable. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the sooner we are done with it, the better. It is a corruption; it makes evil of otherwise good men.
Steven Weinberg said; “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” I would amend that: for good people to do evil things, requires a cult of personality. The personality in question may be an actual person, like Hitler or Stalin, or a mythic being.
Positive & Leguru,
Well, I’m glad to see you guys are coming around! But it’s not just your ethics which cannot be proven and are not true, per se. It is the basis of your ethics. From page one in this debate and consistently throughout it, I have been labeled the bad guy because I base my ethics and morals on things not provable as true. I guess we’re all bad guys now. Which has been one of my points – you employ a hopeless double standard. And though I’d be curious to see the operative differences between ‘right’ and ‘good’ in Leguru’s system, you are admitting that stoning adulterers was once ‘right’. That has the effect of throwing out most of your criticisms of the actions of Christians and other theists in ages past. I’ll take that as a start. (Admittedly, your frequent questions about revelations from those past ages providing moral guidance to the modern age remain. One step at a time.) By the same lights, without some overarching factor, it seems obvious that stoning adulterers or making homosexuality illegal could become right again. Human dignity? Says who? It’s hard to insult what can’t be demonstrated to exist. Doesn’t that sound like something you would say? As admitted frequently before, my understanding of humanity and our needs is structured by the doctrine of the fall – which has the advantage of not being contrary to experience.
Positive, I notice that you are having an increasing amount of trouble with accuracy. I didn’t say your atheism was shallow. I said your understanding of the golden rule was shallow – which I do indeed believe. But since you bring it up – I thought by your all’s definition atheism is always both shallow and narrow, an inch wide and a millimeter deep, the ultimate non-factor, affecting and effecting nothing.
As to the effects of religion on behavior, Freeman Dyson is much more accurate than Steven Weinberg. For that matter, so is Guenter Lewy. But aside from that, what, in your ethical system, precludes the killing of some particular large number of people from being good for society? Remember before you answer that you admired Singer’s inclusion of fetuses in the ‘people’ group and his reasoning on which ‘people’ it was OK to kill. Let’s see, that’s about 1,000 ‘people’ per day in the US alone which would match the total number of deaths wrought by the inquisition over 500 years in – one week, every week, week after week. Even if I account for your insistence that 90% of abortions are early, which is fairly meaningless if you accept Singer’s position, late term abortions will top the half-millennia work of the inquisition every couple of years.
By the by, the majority of babies in Sweden are now born out of wedlock.
Terry
Jeebus, it just makes me sad, how much you misunderstand this point after it’s been explained in 100 different ways. It is the claim to special status, to superiority of ethical basis – in the face of all evidence to the contrary – that makes Christians the bad guy. Some, more than others; the ones who want to break down the wall between church and state, and most of all the ones gloating over how us sinners will “roast in hell”. You’ve spent your whole life as a scholar, this point shouldn’t be so difficult.
Coming around to what? I never claimed that my ethics are objectively true, which is what Christians claim. Nor did I say that I have the right to impose my views on others, which is also a Christian position. I may believe that religion is wrong, but I do not try to ban it. I will not call myself a good guy as a result, but I will not refrain from calling the dominionists the bad guys. If you put yourself in their company, then so be it.
Well, you’ll just have to keep praying for it. And don’t forget those left handed heathens.
“the doctrine of the fall – which has the advantage of not being contrary to experience.”
And of being contrary to logic and history. The human condition is no better or worse since Jesus’ alleged sacrifice, which supposedly appeased the blood thirsty YHWH in the wake of the original sin. Furthermore, the traditional orthodox view is that fall of man brought death into the world; I do not think that I need to give a biology lecture to note that death pre-dates humanity.
Funny, I’ve noticed that you have had trouble with accuracy from the outset.
But I did not say that you called my atheism shallow, I merely self-deprecatingly called myself a shallow atheist because I know that my reasoning and comprehending abilities are not as keen as yours; if I were to take my ethics from schizophrenics, then I would cease to be shallow. I do wonder though, if people with visions always have the right answer, then why do you not believe in Muhammad? I’m sure it has nothing to do with the random culture that you happened to be born into.
But, to your point, if my understanding of the golden rule is shallow, then so was Jesus’ I suppose.
I did not say that the fetus is a person, nor did Singer. Singer said that they are human beings, which I agreed to. I suppose I would explain the distinction this way; find me a cow or a chicken that can think and reason on our level and I will say that he is a person and deserves legal rights. A fetus cannot, so it is not a person. A human being who is alive but brain dead does need legal rights either. I grant that I may be giving these words my own unique spin, but that is how I look at it. Gays may be the incarnation of evil-as opposed to religious terrorists and clerical pedophiles-but they should have legal rights.
I suppose I would not consider late term abortions to be murder, but I think some restrictions should apply given their development. Still, if the mother’s life is at risk and there are no alternatives then abortion should be permitted.
Should I take your silence as an admission that Charlie Manson is as credible an ethical source as the Old Testament prophets or St. Paul, or that a deity responsible for our genetics would be intrinsically evil? Fair enough, Terry.
Oh, Happy #1 SEB thread post history… day.
Let me just add, again, that coming to a position through reason is preferable than coming to it through faith. When the religionist understands this difference he might comprehend why religion and it’s arbitrary decrees are no longer a consideration in law making and other important societal matters. You have to come to that reality if you want to avoid the “bad guy” appellation.
See how nicely you danced around this one, again. Morals or ethics can be “right” for a culture because the culture is immature or temporarily not operating from a base that involves the will of most of the inhabitants, i.e., a dictatorship. Viewed from the long view of human history and successful cultures that have somewhat matured, morals and ethics that are good for humanity and also right will emerge. No need for divine intervention. But for morals to be wrong and destructive of a culture, it takes a dictatorship or theocracy to impose such morals and ethics. THAT is where the label “Bad Guys” can be applied. Unless, you have proof of the existence of your “God” that goes beyond individual experiences and testimony. Still waiting.
That point of proof is vital. If I say; “My morality is secular, and not tied to an inarguable standard” you are welcome to argue that I am wrong about any given point. Over time, progress is made this way.
If I play the “God says!” card then discussion is shut down. God says women should be silent when men are speaking. God says gays are horrible people. God says we should start this war. God says anthropogenic global warming is false. God says AIDS is a punishment. God says all the people in that other religion will burn in Hell. God says slaves should be obedient to their masters. God says people with no religion can’t be trusted. God says lots of stuff.
For some reason the fact that I can’t even demonstrate that God exists at all, let alone that I know what He thinks about this, that, or the other thing, doesn’t matter.
You guys got it all wrong. Proof and reason are trivial, hearing voices in your head is what counts. Revelatory ethics, god damnit.
@ Positive:
RAMEN!
Peace.
All,
Sorry to have been incommunicado for a bit – Christmas is a busy time for me.
New Dave,
Thanks.
Your Mighty Overload,
As to the location of the shot – I inherited that from Positive. I don’t personally know any Christians who employ the ‘best of all possible worlds’ apologetic. I, at least, find it unbiblical. The message of the Bible definitely contends that this is not the best of all possible worlds – not at least since Genesis 3 – and that a better one is in the works. Beyond that, I wouldn’t categorize the argument as the problem of evil if I thought there was no God and no overarching meaning to the universe. In that case, there can be no evil. It may be, of course, that you employ the term ‘evil’ in a provisional sense for the sake of my world view. If that’s so, fine. If not, you’d have to ask yourself whether you really believe in anything that can be called evil and why? But, given that, even I am not so black and white as to consider the existence of evil and imagine that the only options are:
A. God is impotent against evil.
B. God chooses not to do anything about evil.
Again, I realize you employ provisional hypotheses in view of my beliefs and that your conclusion is a third possibility – there is no God. But even that does not cap the list of possible answers. You think the argument from evil is a problem for believers because you think you have exhausted the options. You haven’t.
DOF,
I’m not sure I have misunderstood the point. I said that, from page one, one of the cited evidences of bad-guyness has been basing ethics on things not proveable as objectively true. From page one – the second post, in fact, (The Christian is a bad guy) “because anyone using a work of fiction to justify their actions vis a vis others is on undefendable territory.”
Others have echoed that simple theme.
Even in your more nuanced position in which the problematic ratio of ‘claims to credibility’ expands from original sources to subsequent behavior, the root problem of sources remains. After all, anyone who would employ a bronze age survival guide to twenty first century moral dilemmas, has a source problem, right? And obviously, his behaviors and his attitude toward them are related to (rooted in) the source. And, in the discussion of those who claimed, even lacking belief in God, that theistic ethics are, nonetheless, good for society, you maintained that you absolutely could not take comfort in things that were not in some sense, provably true.
I understand the other nuances. I just don’t understand how they eliminate this core objection – unless we both start with the assumption that the Bible is not objectively true.
Positive,
I am not, of course, praying for a return to stoning or filled with any sort of desire to persecute homosexuals. I’m telling you, that at the end of the day, there’s nothing in your ethical system, to preclude those things becoming morally and ethically acceptable again.
You may presume whatever you like about my thoughts on Charles Manson – so long as you don’t mind being wrong.
Your understanding of the golden rule remains shallow.
Of course you want to impose at least portions of your ethical and moral beliefs on others. It’s called society.
OK, now your ethics require a distinction between human beings and persons. And a brain dead human being is no longer a person – never mind that our understanding of ‘brain death’ may be less than complete – and needs (deserves?) no legal protection. I guess then, it is not a moral or ethical problem if the employees of institutions that care for brain dead (non-person) humans vent any sexual desires they may have at the (non) expense of the (non) person. Shoot! If any of the employees happen to be bent that way, let them bring their pliers and ice picks to work and have a ball! For that matter, I say let ‘em punch a hole in the non-person’s skull in and suck the all important human (but not personal) cerebral cortex out with a vacuum cleaner! Anesthesia? Who cares! If it’s good enough for the fetal non-person…..
Leguru,
Once again, I cannot prove the existence of God to your satisfaction. There’s no point trying. But, straighten me out if I got this wrong. In your distinction between right/wrong and good/bad: in an immature society things can happen that are right but not good because the society doesn’t know any better. In a more mature society, the same things are both wrong and evil because we know better and the things are imposed against our informed consensus. Is that what you’re saying?
All,
It seems to me that you have a radical misperception (admittedly shared by some Christians) concerning the Biblical view of law and regulation. I’ll save that for later. For the purposes of this discussion, the problem is encapsulated by a society in which Christianity has become the consensus and a world in which theism has largely become the consensus. ***Dave wrapped his head around this early on in asserting that there was a point at which the Christian consensus could not legitimately be objected to because they were us. Admittedly that picture has shifted somewhat, but, the last time I checked, the American consensus is still in the Christian camp. That has to have ramifications for national values.
Happy New Year
Terry
Must have been a very busy Christmas for Terry, as he did not seem to put much effort into that post.
While we keep raising the question of distinctions, I must keep asking what the distinction is between the supposed revelations to a Moses to those of a Muhammad and then finally to a Manson or even a Son of Sam. They all had visions, they all acted upon those visions, all of their visions involved killing somebody at some point; why is Manson not given tax exemptions but Abrhamaic religionists are?
You indicate that the comparison is wrong; how so? I know that you (as you note in your message to “all”) take the puerile view that numbers and majorities matter in these debates; is it then your contention that Moses is merely a better source because more people support and believe in him than they do Manson? Manson’s inability to be a good salesman and to attain billions of converts makes the difference between his being a psycho con and Moses being the infallible truth? The Lord indeed works in mysterious ways. God will apparently have to convert to Islam in the next few decades.
And, on this question of consensus, what then gives you the right to be anti-abortion when the majority of Americans (last I checked) support abortion rights to some degree? Vertiginous.
If a brain dead person is euthanized then so be it, though I agree that precautions should be taken that we have some measure of assurance that they would not otherwise recover. As for the rest of that, well, I might not have a problem, for example, with putting down a dog or killing and cooking a chicken but certainly some measure of care should be taken to cause as little pain as possible; I would apply the same standards to a ‘brain dead’ person. Breaking their skulls may be a very Biblical thing to do, but our modern society probably would find it unseemly.
You haven’t explained why my views on the Golden Rule are shallow. Nor did you make it clear how my “do as little harm as possible” mentality would allow for killing gays at some point (though I believe that you intended that to be a response to Leguru.)
But, then, you haven’t explained much of anything in your latest post. I hope that we find you a bit more lucid in the New Year.
Abrahamic*
Since mine are also shallow, I’ll take a crack at it. Apparently a logical extension of the concept of “as you would have them do unto you” is that if you were unknowingly committing some evil, if you were in your right mind you’d want someone to stop you. Even by killing you, if necessary. OK, fair enough. And in a deeper understanding of the Golden Rule, that loophole allows for anything up to and including divinely-ordered genocide.
I am a believer in God but I don’t feel that I have a mental illness and I find it insulting that someone would assume so. I don’t hate anyone if they chose a different path or if they don’t believe in a god at all. I didn’t vote for G. W. Bush (and if I were old enough at the time, I wouldn’t have voted for his daddy either). I believe gays have the same rights as any other person. I respect government and admire the separation from Church and State. I have a degree in linguistics and minored in mathematics. I love all the sciences and value the scientific method. I never used my faith to attempt to undo scientific truth and discovery. The problem is that there are stupid people and they seem to find their way into churches, synagogues, mosques, universities and the government. It even angers me when Christians in the U.S. claim that they are attacked for their faith when the rest of the world has “real” problems. They may not be familiar with what happens in Uganda, China, or even parts of Eastern Europe. They are oblivious it seems, for that I think that’s why it appears they have a mental illness but not because there exists the possibility of a Creator.
Four points;
1) What evidence do you have for this god? Why should anyone believe your claims?
2) A delusion is not a mental illness. Rather think of it as being convinced of something which just ain’t so.
3) If a person told you they believed in pixies, would you not think something was a bit “off” with them? Would you respect their beliefs, especially if they tried to make that belief law?
4) Who cares (other than you) that you are offended? You don’t have the right not to be offended. You know what offends me? Priests raping children and being protected by the church. Being told I am a sinner and deserve eternal punishment for being a non-believer. Childhood indoctrination. The fact that the Dalai lama’s regime owned slaves. Many things offend my sensibilities – and while I have the right to complain about it, people have the right to ignore me.
Positive,
Yes, as a matter of fact it was a very busy Christmas – thanks for cutting me slack. It might well have been better simply to say – No time, I’ll post later. The new year hasn’t gotten much less busy yet so, I have waited till I could take a little more time.
I’m still a bit curious as to your stance toward the brain dead, human, non-person. Why is it unseemly to break that non-persons skull but OK to do it to the fetal, human, non-person? And if it’s OK to kill, cook, and eat other species of non-persons, can it be done with human non-persons? If a brain dead human non-person does recover, then, does his/her life go from personhood to non-personhood, and back to personhood? I suppose it may be argued that there are some considerations that go with being human whether or not one rises to the threshold of personhood, but that would seem particularly unsatisfying to me. Can medical students do practice surgeries on brain dead human non-persons? Certainly, the pain could be managed. Back to eating, there are probably sectors of the poorer in the global population who would appreciate the protein. I guess we’d have to see if it was cost-effective. And there’s still the matter of personal gratification at the expense of the brain dead human non-person. BTW, I think you misspoke in your last post when you said, “I would apply the same standards to a ‘brain dead’ person.” I think you must have meant “…’brain dead’ human (non-person).”
The golden rule? DOF hit one aspect though he bent it toward an inappropriate conclusion. I’ll give you another – more in line with where DOF was trying to go. The golden rule is not intended to prevent justice – regardless of how little any of us might personally wish justice not to be rendered to us. I’ll add, Matthew 7:12 begins with the word, therefore and ends with, for this is the law and the prophets. It pays, then, to check the precedents and antecedents and ask appropriate questions. That may be enough to consider at one bite.
How can ‘do as little harm as possible’ get to killing or repressing gays – or any other identifiable group? By reckoning that the presence of the group represents the greater harm, i.e. not doing something about the group does harm. I don’t know exactly how secularists feel about Ed Burke’s famous and pithy quote, but I think it probably applies. We already practice the philosophy. To an extent, it’s a question of degrees. To an extent, it’s a question of sacred cows. At any rate, secularism is, at base, about momentary advantage. Has this been hidden from you somehow?
Manson vs. Abraham & Moses: To the specific question of tax exemptions – these have been granted to Abrahamic religionists because secular governance (virtually a Christian invention) has deemed that said religionists will use the dollars in a way that tends to the present good of the human community. The same secular governance looked on the Helter Skelter crowd and reached a different conclusion. You may argue the merits of those conclusions but that is the answer to the specific question.
As to the more general question of the whopping Abe and Mo dish out to Charlie in the competition for the hearts of humanity, well, that is a bigger matter. It might well be asked of Imperial Rome or my own blue painted barbarian ancestors. I believe you might still profitably ask the question while you google post-secularism in Sweden. To call it salesmanship is a little simplistic. Even a true believer like myself knows that religion is a two way process. There is both divine revelation and human seeking. I realize you would eliminate one of those propositions. Either way, humanity sifts competing truth claims and issues judgment. The historical process of that sifting has resulted in widespread theism with Abe, Mo, and especially, Jesus, at the top of the heap. (The Son of Man trumps the son of Sam!)You may call the numbers game puerile if you wish. It changes nothing. If morality is only a matter of human consensus then it is, by definition, a numbers game. You have yet to offer a more demonstrable basis. Again, a true believer, like myself, will look at the historical consenses and say, Well, of course. Others, even while bemoaning that the puerile numbers game hasn’t gone their way, will say something akin to – I’m sure those grapes are sour anyway! And, while on the topic of numbers, you might recheck the probabilities concerning the need for God to convert to Islam.
What gives me the right to be anti-abortion? For one thing, I am not a pure secularist. Nor does a belief in the need for a secular governance, even for a religious people, call for anyone to be a pure secularist. I am part of a larger consensus that there is a God and that humans are His creation – His children, and that the universe, as a creation, has meaning. It makes a difference. You will not find me blowing up clinics or shooting doctors or supporting those who do. But, neither will you find me standing blithely by and saying ‘Oh, well.’ while pure secularists try to force morality into a mold that ignores the consensus that there is a God. As a true believer, I’m willing to live as an outcast in a secular world, come to that. But I can’t think of no good reason why I should simply watch as secularists ignore/exclude large elements of the existing consensus – which was not the plan of those who founded our particular secular governance.
Terry
While cannibalism is a taboo in the western world (at least outside of Catholic circles… kidding), the reality is that if a person is indeed brain dead and no other food sources are available only the most anal retentive person would call consuming that individual to be an immoral act. And, continuing this oddly morbid direction that this conversation has taken, if a hungry nurse decided to take a bite out of a brain dead patient I would indeed object, if only for the sake of the family; I would say the same if someone were to consume the ashes of a dead person. On the other hand, if Keith Richards wants to snort his fathers dead ashes, mixed with cocaine, I wouldn’t call that a crime; and even if he had eaten his dead father’s flesh I would probably have called a psychiatrist rather than a police officer. Similarly, if someone were to kill a pregnant woman’s fetus without her permission I would object, not for any perceived legal rights of the fetus, but because of the emotional damage done to the woman and her right to have the child if she so wishes.
As to what should be done about those Catholics and their cardboard tasting Jesus, I will have to leave that question to someone else.
As for breaking their skulls open, which you seem unusually excited at the possibility of; as I noted, avoidance to causing pain would be the best policy, whether it be a brain dead human or a fetus or a horse or a seal. But if no pain-free alternatives are available (assuming a brain-dead person feels pain in the first place) then it is what it is.
As I said earlier, animal rights do not particularly concern me. If killing a cow requires hurting the cow severely I am sorry for the cow, but I would not see the need to give up steak if no other options were available. A Jain might object, might even call me a murderer, but that would be his problem, not mine. That would also be my response to retrograde Christians. I certainly do not see the need to ban abortion for the sake of a barely developed fetus, which in most abortion cases will probably have fewer capacities than that cow.
I do not recall saying that the golden rule should be used to prevent justice and I am sorry that you surmised that without any basis in what I’ve written. But, on the other hand, I do not understand your point about the law and the prophets, perhaps you can clarify that. I certainly have no doubts that you are already aware that the golden rule exists in many cultures and philosophies, including Confucian and Buddhist, and that regard for the golden rule need not require any consideration of Biblical prophets or laws.
It is probably not wise for religious conservatives to propose that we start brainstorming about which group will one day be such a threat to society that restrictive measures will need to be taken against them. Until gays produce anything remotely similar to al Qaeda or the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal, I will not be highly impressed with the religious conservative attempt to demonize gays. Generalized proposals to target a particular group of people are morally ridiculous and historically illiterate, regardless how you cut it. Your paragraph about gays and secularism tells me little, other than the latent blood lust that some conservative Christians seem to have towards gays.
As for tax exemptions; though I admit I sometimes have doubts, I tend to agree that religions should indeed have them. Not for any fictive abundance of good that they impart on society overall, but because I believe in religious freedom and, at the very least, I would not object to poorer or less well off churches receiving tax exemptions; so long as they stay out of politics. Part of the equation, which you neglected to mention, is that religions have tax exemptions in exchange for not getting involved in partisan politics; though so many churches are politicized at this point that they probably should lose their exemption.
At any rate, despite the importance of this tax issue, it was not the direction I was trying to take the conversation in. The point I believe I was making was that the origins of the Abrahamic religions in early Judaism are no less violent and no less contingent on visions than the origins of the Manson Family; indeed, going by the Bible, the Judaism of Abraham and Moses was much more violent than Manson’s cult. Religions of course evolve sociologically and become less fervent, less rigid and a bit more lax over time, as well as less violent. This has happened for most Abrahamic faiths (though not for large numbers of Muslims) and generally speaking few atheists would object to the existence of these tamed religions in our society, as opposed to the presence of the Manson Family. Should Abrahamic theists in America start to stone and rape in the name of their prophets, as we see in the around Middle East and the rest of the Islamic world, then those attitudes would change.
Perhaps at some point, unlikely as it might seem, the Manson Family would have eventually lost its violent and racist aspects. This, however, would not forgive Manson’s crimes nor would it make belief in Manson’s claims any more respectable. Similarly, that the bloody religions spawned by Abraham and Moses became somewhat less violent over time does not remove the fact that these men were killers who were hearing and seeing things, just like Charlie; believing in them is as foolish as believing in Manson. I would say the same for belief in Muhammad as a prophet.
By the way, I was amused by your parenthetical point that secularism is a Christian invention. If it were one would imagine that you would be fonder of secularism than you actually are. It also begs the question; why did Christianity lead to secularism if the Bible does not preach secularism? Perhaps it speaks to the absurdity of Christianity that it gave rise to so much secularism? I would imagine so; though I believe that secularism ultimately has a bit more to do with the Enlightenment and the influence of ancient thought. For example, Democracy and Republicanism, despite the propaganda of the Christian Right, appeared in ancient Greece and Rome; I do not recall reading of them in the Torah or the Gospels.
Anyway, returning to the earlier point, substantively speaking there is no more reason to believe in the Bible than there is to believe in Charles Manson’s raving delusions. Or, to put it in your language, there is no reason to believe in the sacred revelations received by Manson from a higher power that we mere mortals cannot comprehend. But, of course, we return to the numbers; because numbers apparently always trump substance. The majority of people on this planet for a long time believed that the sun revolved around the earth and they were apparently right according to Terry’s impeccable logic. It is a good thing for Christianity that Terry was not around during the time of the early Church; it might have occurred to him to tell St. Paul to not bother with his missionary work and to convert to Paganism, since the Pagans made up probably something along the lines of 99.9% of the empire while the Christians were a tiny powerless sect… and the majority is always right.
I will admit that I may have been wrong about Islam becoming the world’s largest religion. It seems a controversial subject at the moment, predictably, so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. At any rate, it would seem an absurd presumption to make that merely because Christianity (divided as it is among thousands of denominations) is the largest religion that this makes it correct, or that Islam would be any more believable if it managed to climb to the top. I recall that Jesus often spoke of the devil being the prince of this world, presumably because the majority of people were following the ways of the devil over the ways of God; I guess, by Terry’s numbers logic, the devil was right and God was wrong.
Your final paragraph is a good summation of everything that I particularly dislike about conservative religion. Lets put aside your fallacious argumentum ad populum, and lets put aside your fallacious comments about the existence of a god and a purpose for the universe which you have no evidence for. Lets put aside your silly martyr complex, suggesting that Christian conservatives who have dominated American politics for the last several years are somehow “excluded.” Lets also put aside your hypocrisy in saying that the Christian majority deserves special powers but not the pro-choice majority. And we will put aside as well your ahistorical appeal to the authority of the Founding Fathers, who were probably more wary of undue religious influence on government than most Americans are today. Let us instead focus on the legitimate arguments which you present…
Okay, see you next time.
“no other food sources are available”
Let me just emphasize that I’m thinking here specifically of a Donner party type situation. It is a pretty sad thing to consider, but as disgusting as it must have been I doubt anyone would call what the Donner party did immoral; they had no other choice.
Indeed, one of the many underrated gruesome aspects of the Old Testament is the lack of respect for the dead bodies of enemies. I can’t imagine a just God approving of people desecrating the dead, as we see in the Bible.
Wow.
I’m a gay Christian. I don’t think my religion is much threat to me, or has any hate for me. I’m able to understand that it’s thousands of years old, a product of its time, but with much timeless wisdom as well. I don’t agree with the interpretation many conservatives have of the Bible. I think sometimes, they are prejudiced when they condemn homosexuality. Other times, they honestly think they are doing the right and moral thing when they say that being gay is wrong. They often find it very difficult to say it’s wrong, and feel bad about it. I know that some of my close conservative friends feel bad saying they disagree with me, and feel torn, wishing they didn’t have to choose between approving of me and their religion. Other, more liberal Christians have no problem.
Personally, I don’t think liberal Christianity is a compromise. I think it is a more accurate understanding of the Bible for what it is, and God for who God is.
I understand why some see Christians as the enemy, but I think that this is changing as Christians become more aware. Check out this cool poem:
Well Hanna,
If you don’t think that your religion has hate for your behaviours, you haven’t been studying your bible very closely. I am not sure how many ways one can interpret “thou shallt not lie with a man as you do with women: that is an abomination”. Perhaps you can tell me how to reinterpret that little ditty in a more loving way?
I wonder whether you believe that homosexuality is inbuilt, or whether it is a choice? If it is inbuilt, doesn’t that suggest that god built you wrong? If it is a choice, well, you aren’t very much of a christian, disobeying god, are you? Of course, you probably already wear mixed fabrics….
Perhaps Hanna can read it literally and say that it doesn’t apply to women. Naturally few churches would agree…
Of course, she will also have to ignore where St. Paul says that women should not speak in church.
I find moderate religion to be a copout. If you can loosely interpret the Bible then the Bible becomes rather meaningless. Naturally some parts might not be meant to be taken literally; Jesus’ parables being obvious examples but maybe even some of the stories, like Adam and Eve. Who knows? But other parts claim to be binding, life-and-death regulations that you must follow; how do you go about ignoring those? And how do you ignore YHWH ordering genocide? They do not read as being symbolic; I fail to see where Paul is being symbolic in his scolding of homosexuals and women, or in his condoning of slavery.
If you are going to ignore the parts of the Bible which you do not like then you are in essence thinking for yourself. And if you can think for yourself, why do you need a Bible? And if you are merely searching for inspiration then why limit yourself to one book; particularly one that is filled with repugnant dictates and inane miracle claims? The Bible has some value in it, but a great deal of literature does.
Of course, with rare exceptions, I prefer moderates and cafeteria religionists to conservatives and literalists. If religion must survive then I hope it does so in the less-retar… the more moderate form.
Precisely what I was thinking Positive. The bible is pretty much the first Choose Your Own Adventure book. The ultimate moral salad bar, if you will. Heck, it contradicts itself in so many places you are forced not to take it literally!
Right. It is like a Rorschach test and you can read anything you want into it, just like a fortune cookie or Nostradamus. Whether it is belief in the rapture or purgatory or that masturbation is a sin; these are judgment calls which probably say more about the reader than the text. This is also true of extra-biblical literature; in Catholicism, for example, one also has to pay heed to the writings of the saints, the popes and the decrees of the many church councils. A modern Catholic reader will interpret those sources pretty much to his own heart’s content. He will be up to his ears in anti-Semitic writings and up to his waist in tolerant philo-Semite texts, and he can just take his pick of which he wants to use in his arguments.
It is funny though, if I can go back to the lesbian point; I was speaking with a bit of tongue-in-cheek yesterday, but I was thinking more about it and there really are indeed no direct Biblical condemnations of lesbians. It is always assumed (I figure probably correctly) that the condemnations of men are supposed to go both ways, just as when Jesus scolds men not to look at women lustfully it is assumed that he means the same for women. Yet so many of these ridiculous churches today claim to be literalist and fundamentalist; funny that they can be loose and not so literal in reading Biblical condemnations of gay men to include lesbians, but when it comes to Genesis they cannot use any common sense (as even St. Augustine did 1600 years ago) and infer that seven days does not necessarily mean seven days.
But, then, what the hell am I doing trying to find consistency in fundamentalist Christianity? I apologize.
To address the condemnation of homosexuality in the old testament: Christians are not bound by old testament law. We are not orthodox jews. Theologians explain that there is an “old covenant” and a “new covenant”. One is the covenant of law, which includes circumcision, as well as all the other laws in the Old Testament. The new covenant is one of grace, through Jesus, which is expressed through the commandments, “Love God and love your neighbor.” A Christian is under grace, under the new covenant, and doesn’t need to follow old testament rules and regulations, any more than a male Christian would need to be circumcised just because the Old Testament law would demand it.
Since I am not bound by old testament law, I am free to eat shellfish, have sex while on my period (yippee?), wear clothes of multiple fabrics, and think freely about my sexual ethics.
Does that make sense?
As for the Pauline condemnation of homosexuality, I believe that the rampant homosexuality which Paul was exposed to was of a promiscuous, adulterous kind…there wasn’t a monogamous, loving homosexuality at that time. There were little boy slaves being raped by older men, and people cheating on their spouses with their friends. Not only did Paul not have examples of committed, monogamous, homosexual love, but he was culturally a Jew (he had been a Pharisee, quite straitlaced, according to his letters) and did not have the insight into human psyche and human sexuality that we begin to have today. Paul was quite progressive in some ways- for example, he said that women were spiritually equal to men, a huge leap forward for women’s rights from Greek philosophical ideas in which women were malformed men, or Jewish ideas where women were men’s property – but he was still a product of his times. Even someone as progressive as Paul is no longer progressive two thousand years later.
The Bible is the work of multiple authors, and as such, is very human, as well as having a connection to God. It is the record of people’s encounters with and understanding of God, many authors, with a certain cultural outlook, and they are all male. It is obviously biased. Personally, I am happy with divergent readings. Why be such a legalist, and why be so anal retentive, that one has to focus on the little, tiny rules that are debatable? Jesus’ message was one of love and compassion. His harshest words were reserved for those who focused anal-retentively on rules, because he said they cared more about rules than love. The core of the Christian faith is that all people have sinned, so no one can judge anyone else. And that God loves every person enough to die in their place. And that we are called to love others as much as God does, so that we would be willing to give everything for our friends, even our life. In fact, we should be willing to give our life for our enemy. With that kind of noble aim as the core of my faith, all of the rest seems to become just semantics.
Also, you ask about God ordering genocide. I struggle with that as well. I just have to say that the times in 8,000 BC seem to be much harsher than our own, and that the Old Testament is heavily tainted with nationalistic bias. For your information, the sadducees, a major and influential Jewish group at the time of Jesus, did not even accept the jewish history books, and only accepted the Torah (the first 5 books of the bible) which greatly reduces the amount of violence in legitimate scripture. The pharisees accepted the histories as well. All scripture has a complex history, and can’t be read literally, because it needs to be viewed in historical context…that is what any honest scholar would do. Just becaue I’m not reading literally, doesn’t mean it is a “cop-out”. I think a much more simple reading, completely disregarding the actual meaning of scripture in its time, and where the scripture came from, is much less accurate, though evangelicals do it all the time.
I don’t ignore the parts of the Bible that I do not like, though I have a very difficult time with the idea of hell, since almost all of my closest friends and family members are nonchristians. It would be highly irresponsible of me to ignore the doctrine of hell in the Bible just because I don’t like it…and I can tell you, I don’t like it. But if I just ignore the parts I don’t like, there are dire consequences, because whatever the objective truth is will be true whether I believe it or not.
Though I also believe that some ignorance is unavoidable, since we are human beings, and that there is great wisdom in the following, applied to understanding of scripture (and life):
“[...]where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
-1 Corinthians 8-13
No, since when one reads the Old Testament in context it states that some of those laws are everlasting and that no one may add to or subtract from them. But, that said, I am well aware that Christians do not follow Mosaic law and why they do not; I’m pretty sure that I explained the reasons in an earlier post in this thread (obviously I don’t expect that you’ve read through this hyper-long thread, I sure know I didn’t when I started and it was a bit shorter then.)
And while YMO quotes Leviticus I’m pretty sure he knows that as well. Christians often play a double game of using the Old Testament when it suits them and then calling it out dated when that suits them; so the distinction is trivial. The point is that a just God wouldn’t have banned gays from being gay in Old Testament times either, nor does it make sense that a supposedly infallible and immutable God would suddenly change the whole structure of human ethics at a whim. Like I said earlier, maybe God will change his mind and ban the Internet next; Christians should be careful.
That is a generalization to presume that every gay person of the time was doing it in that sense. At any rate, that is not what Paul says. He speaks in broad terms of all men, not merely men who are promiscuous or adulterous or child rapists. If he wanted to object to promiscuity, adultery and child rape he would have condemned that behavior for all people and would not have specified gay relationships.
Obviously this is not a position that is original to you. Andrew Sullivan has tried to whitewash the Biblical condemnations of homosexuality as well. Obviously I prefer Sullivan and your version of Christianity to that of the pope or Pat Robertson, but as someone who takes an interest in history I find it ahistorical to suggest that homosexuality is not a “sin” in Christianity; it is in every Abrahamic faith, in almost every brand of Christianity, and Paul’s words are pretty clear. Naturally I do not view this as a bad reflection on homosexuality, rather I view it as a bad reflection on Christianity and related faiths and see it as one of many reasons why these faiths deserve no fealty (including the genocide, slavery, sexism and 0% of evidence issues which somehow disappeared from our conversation.)
That is quite the point. The Bible is the product of man, not of any deity, and it is ridiculous to treat it as a supernatural source of wisdom rather than as a cultural artifact riddled with errors and the bigotry and ignorance of antiquity. If you recognize it as the latter then the Bible should mean no more to you than it does to me or any other atheist or non-believer. With that admission I would rest my case, but of course we return to the inflated claims…
It is indeed the work of multiple authors from multiple centuries, multiple regions and indeed multiple religions. It is also heavily edited and its canon was decided on by many synods of councils throughout the centuries by bishops who would have regarded your lifestyle as an abomination. But we go from it being a book, or collection of books, expressing the flawed knowledge of ancient peoples’ (which is the view of any atheist) right back to it again somehow having a connection to a deity. Based on what? There is no more reason to believe that God inspired the Bible than there is to believe in the claims for any other religious text. I hope you at least admit that if you had grown up in India that you would likely be claiming this connection for the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads rather than the Bible.
A good message, but not a novel message, and not a message that distinguishes him as a claimant to divinity.
I could go into a long diatribe against vicarious redemption and scapegoats and human sacrifice, but I think Hitchens has the last word on that subject.
Well, fear not, as there is nothing objectively true about hell or any of the supernatural claims made in the Bible. And, since you mention it, there are many other scriptures which contain beliefs about hell, and many of those scriptures would put you in hell for worshipping the God of the Bible instead of their God. I could go more into that, but I think Homer Simpson had the last word on it… “What if we pick the wrong religion? Every week, we’re just making God madder and madder!”
When our species accomplishes this then there will be no more need for Paul’s religion which belongs to the childhood of our species. I could go more into that but, again, Hitchens has said it all on that issue and I would only be recapitulating his points. I would suggest reading his “God is not Great” book if you haven’t already.
“The Bible is the product of man, not of any deity, and it is ridiculous to treat it as a supernatural source of wisdom rather than as a cultural artifact riddled with errors and the bigotry and ignorance of antiquity.”
I quite agree with you. I don’t know why this makes me less likely to believe. I find it quite arrogant to mock at antiquity as if we are doing much better. Each era has its own blind spots and bigotries, and later eras will laugh at and look down at ours. I’m subjective, trying to peer beyond my cultural brainwashing to some kind of objectivity, just like you or anyone else is…and supposing I am some able to overcome my historical station to see everything from a Godlike scale is somewhat laughable. I’m just saying, we don’t know much…was it Plato or Socrates who made this point, far before there was a Jesus?
I also agree that I can’t pretend to know what Paul himself was exposed to in any detail, since I wasn’t there. Maybe that argument is weak. Here’s another one: Paul also believes in literal 6-day creation and a lot of other stuff I don’t, so he is more like a theologian who it’s good to gain insights from, rather than a God-man whose word is law…which seems quite obvious to me, but vaguely heretical in this post-Reformation, “The Bible is all we haaaaave!” atmosphere in which we live.
I agree with you that many other religions have good moral and ethical teachings. I am sure I would be more likely to believe those religions if they had been my cultural milieu, and I was surrounded by them growing up.
Have you been exposed to much western secular humanism? We all have our beliefs in many ways imprinted upon us by our culture, but I think that we are also capable of analyzing them ourselves….just like I am sure you have analyzed your own belief system, even though it is a huge prevailing current in society and is admired socially….smart people are secular humanists, right? It’s a good feel-good way to think, minus the existential angst. The angst got me bad, when I was an atheist. Maybe it doesn’t get you, and you really are sure that there is nothing more than the physical world, and you don’t long for spiritual meaning in a materialistic, capitalistic world. To me, I say, an eye made of atoms can see atoms, and a human spirit which is spiritual can yearn for or feel connected with spiritual realities…but you can only prove spiritual things to a human spirit, like you can only demonstrate physical realities on a physical level.
I know that atheists don’t believe in the resurrection and have reasons for not doing so, just like I believe and have reasons for believing. This is a complex world, and I suppose my own subjective experiences of God, miracles, and providence don’t hold water in this kind of discussion. I don’t quite know how to prove the existence of God…I am not able to do so. If anyone could prove or disprove God, the world would be a different place. Until then, we all are swaying in our hammock of subjectivity, swayed by arguments and experiences, until we die and find out.
However, I thought the thread was originally, “Why do people hate Christians?” and although I acted kind of like a jerk while trying to express myself here (I don’t mean to personally attack, you seem quite a kind and intelligent person), I don’t really know why people would hate all Christians.
Some Christians are jerks, and some are really sweet, and lots are in between. Just like atheists, agnostics, socialists, conservatives, and everyone else….it’s kind of ignorant to hate a whole group, rather than accepting the diversity and being open to getting to know the individual person. In this age of pluralism, why try to push your own opinion on others as if it is the only one? Some religious people do it, and some nonreligious people do it…it’s all arrogant and self-righteous, whether it comes from atheists or religious people.
I think it would be better to live in harmony and in acceptance of the worldviews of others. The current antireligious movement is foolish. Yes, people have killed in the name of religion, just like they kill in the name of democracy, equality, freedom, and lots of other things. People kill each other, religious or not. There has also been much good done in the name of religion. I think the effects of religion on history are so complex and wide-ranging, it’s not good to make a simplistic statement about it. For every person who was oppressed by the idea of hell growing up, there’s someone like my mom, whose faith is the only thing that keeps her going.
I’m sure you have lots of intelligent things to say about all of that, and I’m really looking forward to it, because everything else you’ve said has been challenging and interesting. I’m going to sleep, see you tomorrow.
p.s. “The childhood of our species.”
What are we moving towards? Better toys, as technology improves? Less killing? Yeah right…we’ve known it’s wrong to kill each other for thousands of years, and we still do it. Some amazing time where we actually put the morality of religion into use, and live in harmony, taking care of our poor? What is this brave new world without religion? Is it basically living with religious ethics, but without God? Or something better…?