Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Isaac and Ishmael
My old post from Blog Against Theocracy Day still generates interesting comments:
I have so many things I want to say but don’t know where to begin. First of all I am not very educated but still have opinions. I may not say this with the right words but hope you can figure out what I am trying to say. With so much hatered (which I don’t understand ) for the Jews and what they have gone through in Germany isn’t it amazing they have a state and manJews from all over the world are returning to the Land God gave them (Israel). Isn’t it amazing that most of their neighbors hate them and want to destroy them. They don’t have much land and in the bible God called it there land. I can’t help but wonder what all this means. I can’t help but believe what I have heard being said by others that it has something to do with Issac and Ishmael? I also am like many who can’t make since out of alot of things in the bible but it says that his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. To think that all the stuff going on seems to be over such a small piece of land and people really makes me wonder if we aren’t in the last days. Would like to here your comments. thanks, karen
Excerpted from my response to Karen’s comment:
Does the Middle East turmoil have anything to do with Isaac and Ishmael? Yes and no. Yes, because many fundamentalists (Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike) believe in the literal truth of the story. No, because in fact the story is myth and is being used by the respective parties to justify bloodshed on the grand scale, to murder their brothers for the sake of a belief and to make that murder “holy†and not base.
Hagar and IshmaelIf you are a powerful ruler and you want to make a grab for land and resources, how best do you mobilize your armies? Appeals to Nationalism work at times (see Nazi Germany), but appeals to religious inevitability work even more commonly. This land is ours because God gave it to us. Those people are bad because they have been our mortal enemies for thousands of years. Try, instead, to get your armies excited over the thought of resources and land — wealth in which they will not share — and see how far you get.
I fear that Christian “End Times†thinking is fully capable of bringing on the End Times. Christian Fundamentalists are well on their way to controlling the US military. Learn more here.
Yeah, I’m one of those traitorous scoundrels who believes homegrown fundamentalism poses a greater risk to America than the Islamic variety. I would like to think that Democratic victories in ’08 will reverse the tide, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Many things worry me about faith-based thinking. This is one of the big ones:
I also am like many who can’t make since out of alot of things in the bible but it says that his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
In my writing life, I have constructed some truly convoluted, illogical, and befuddled plots, and so I can understand the allure of hand-waving. Faced with overwhelming internal inconsistencies, how better to resolve a plot crisis than to employ a deus ex machina? Yet with regard to the Bible, the deus ex machina becomes not just the plot but the author, too. God wrote the Bible. God’s Mind is unknowable, His ways, mysterious. If any portion of God’s Book confuses you, deal with it, suck it up. What’s the point of faith if you don’t have to exercise it occasionally?
Uncomfortable with the idea that the Bible has human authors? It may be controversial in some circles, but it isn’t a fringe idea — it falls well within the bounds of solid scholarship. (The link leads to a post regarding Professor of Archaeologoy Israel Finkelstein; see also this interview with Richard Elliott Friedman, biblical scholar at the University of Georgia.)
I think the humans who wrote the Bible knew they had devised an illogical and self-contradictory mess and intentionally wrote themselves a way out. Make God the author, put Him beyond the scope of human reason, and the focus on inconsistencies becomes not just unnecessary, but heretical as well.
D.
I remember when I was a kid that the Vietnam War was a sign of the last days. That Y2K would be the end of all things. That the fall of the Soviet Union was a symbol of the apocalypse. Haley’s Comet. Hurricanes. Carter in the White House. I’m sure the French Revolution sparked end of the world rhetoric. As did a gazillion other things.
There’s a lot of money in gloom and doom – look at the Mega Disasters and Nostradamus shows on the History Network and Discovery. Look at all the news time – and money – spent on Y2K. Get folks riled up and afraid the other guy’s gonna bring the end of the world, then they all hustle quietly along with their heads down. And buy more stuff to make the fear go away.
As long as Daytimer keeps making calendars, I think that we’re all gonna be okay. Wars happen, even religious fruitcake ones, natural disasters befall us, and our politicians are corrupt, yet somehow we keep surviving.
FWIW, on the You Tube Republican Debate the other day, Guillani was the only one to say that he thought much of the bible was allegory and fable. The others who answered the question about ‘believing Every Word’ – Romney and Huckabee – said they believed it was the literal word of God.
Hey, it knocks two guys off my potential list. 😉
I caucus in a month! ARRGH!!!
Ever read 999 A.D.? Back then, there were people that were sure the end of the millennium was going to be the end of the world. The then-Pope was considered by some to be the anti-Christ, and a lot of other events convinced some of these people that they were living in the last days.
I think there were similar feelings around 1666. But, of course you have the Great Plague, the Great Fire and so on that gave some validation to those living in the stricken areas.
Meh. I believe that the Bible is God inspired, but human written, which means God told it like it was, and humans fucked it up.
Still, I like the Bible, I like to study it, learn about it and what other people think it means, and then figure out my own opinion on stuff.
Yeah, I’m a Christian, and I believe God speaks to my heart, but I also know that I’m an idiot and I get it wrong sometimes when Steve tells me something and he’s right across the room.
So the Bible as a whole is a way for me to do some research and find out if what I’m thinking is true lines up with scripture [as a whole, not just one or two verses… good grief, how many wars have been started over that stupid shit?]
As to whether the stories of Genesis or the prophecies of Revelation are literally true… I don’t know and I don’t really care either way. The stories have value, even if they’re just myths, because they teach about deeper truths, so who cares?
And if they are literally true, I don’t understand why Christians who believe it find it necessary to argue with the people who don’t, because the Bible [especially if it’s literally true] specifically states that arguments about that kind of thing are ridiculous, fruitless, and make people hate each other, which also is not okay… according to the Bible.
Yeah, so anyway, I like the Bible. It makes me happy to have something outside of myself and my conscience to go to.
Although I’ve also found that whatever attitude you go to the Bible with is the one you will find confirmation for, so you know, I guess I’d better hope I’m a good person, or that I never have any power in the world [Mwahahaaaaaa!!!]
I dunno. I can’t point to anything concrete, but I know that I’ve experienced a shift in my life and a new hope and strength that wasn’t there before.
I don’t know for sure if everyone can find that through Christianity, or if everyone has to find their own path, or if everyone can find it through true Christianity, but there’s so much fake stuff it’s hard to find, or what.
I wish I had the answers but I don’t. I guess the best I can do is muddle through and hope that my muddling will help someone else find it, too.
Or at least be good for a giggle.
Very interesting and thought provoking. Personally, I’m convinced adherence to this kind of fascism is a symptom of illiteracy and poor education–people who can think don’t fall for this kind of stuff, those that can’t think are sheep for slaughter.
I am concerned about the implications of this thinking in the military. But I think your link missed the fact that the military is all about making lethal sheep which makes them a ripe recruiting ground. Which came first, the military group think or the fascist ideology?
M
My earlier comment was made without reading your links first. Oops.
I read them, and I think I might be able to explain some of the rationale behind why Christians are okay with the whole sacrifice thing.
Understand, it’s just my opinion, and in no way am I trying to convince you that it’s the ‘right’ view, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to at least explain why Seder and the crucifixion don’t bother us as much as you think they should.
I’m going over to my blog to do it, though, because I have a feeling it’s going to be long. I haven’t written it yet, though, so I’ll let you know when it’s done, if you’re interested.
All done with part one.
Best take on religion I ever read? Bob Heinlein – love the guy or hate him, he pretty much spiked that baby:
“History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.”
…and…
“A religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. The great trouble with religion – any religion – is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak certainty of reason- but one cannot have both.”
Your implication is, I think, that if religious beliefs can be misused, then religion itself is somehow suspect.
But surely political beliefs kill people just as efficiently – we must have Communism in Russia! Democracy in Iraq!
Do you think that we should all become political atheists?
“Do you think that we should all become political atheists?”
My answer would be absolutely, yes, in the public arena. Religious decisionmaking is based on faith and belief. Gods (and those inspired by gods) have no need to explain or justify – faith and the Word of God alone support and justify their acts. In political terms this is what we’d call tyranny. I don’t like religious tyranny any more than irreligious tyranny.
So – no dictatorship of the proletariat AND no dictatorship of the saints.
My problem here is when Christians like Shelbi say “Christians are okay with the whole sacrifice thing”. IF they’re saying “I’m OK with the Christ-like sacrifice that I may be called to make of myself”, then, fine. BUT if they’re saying “I’m OK with the Passover-like sacrifice that God may ask me to make of you and your children”, then I’m not so okay with that.
Isn’t that what the original post was all about? That if religion was just about love and peace and the Golden Rule, then, wow, super. But if religion works the way I understand tha religion is supposed to work, you don’t get to pick and choose. You have faith and God takes the wheel. So if God says, love thy neighbor, you love thy neighbor. If God says: thy neighbor is an abomination, and you must smite him and his down to the infant in the cradle…well…
THAT’s what’s so scary. At least as an atheist I have to ‘fess up to being a right bastard myself. I can’t just throw up my hands and say “It was God’s Will..!”
Marianne, I’m not sure you’re addressing me or FDChief.
My main point, perhaps my only point, is that there is one indispensable ethical commandment: the Golden Rule. The rest is window dressing. The more we complicate things (by building religions), the more we raise the possibility of harm to others.
Trouble is, the Golden Rule doesn’t address people’s fears of death. Hence the need for religious Mysteries.
FDChief, Yeah, I’m okay with sacrifice of myself in a Christ-like way. Not so much with the second statement, though.
There are some crazy-assed freaks who claim to be Christians who believe that way, but believe me when I tell you, those people are not following the Bible. Yes, they claim to be, but they either don’t know any better, or they’re lying.
I’ve answered what I believe the passover was about on my blog[although it’s very long… sorry].
I hope it makes some sense.
Shelbi’s answer is a very erudite exposition on the events of Exodus 3 through 8. It is a pretty good discussion of the events recorded in the Torah. But his money graph is here:
“I submit to you that the Egyptians knew what was coming, even if it’s not written, and that some of them did what God said, but most didn’t, because they chose to ignore the warning. Is that so surprising? How many of us know smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, but we smoke anyway? How many parents smoke around their kids, or smoke during pregnancy, but do it anyway, even though they know they could cause their children to have asthma, or die of SIDS, or have low birth weight, or any number of other illnesses?”
Here’s my response:
Hmmm.
OK – let me make ABSOLUTELY sure I understand what you’re saying.
The reason that all those Egyptians died is that they were ALL guilty (except for the kiddies). That they made their choice, they didn’t prevail on Pharoah to release the Jews (not sure how you do this in a monarchy, but, whatever) so they got what was coming to them.
So, assuming you agree – do you consider yourself guilty of the dead Iraqi kids shot down an an American checkpoint in Baquba because you did not prevail on George W. Bush to withdrawl our soldiers from that country?
I’m trying to make a point here…
1. Pharoah was a jackass. Smite away.
2. Pharoah’s counsellors sound like they aided and abetted the jackass. Sounds like a worthwhile smiting-by-proxy.
3. The firstborn kid of Pharoah was the Pharoah-in-waiting and part of the royal system. I suppose if you’re willing to stretch this to guilt-by-association, then another smiting is in order.
4. But the other firstborns? By your definition every single household in Germany should have lost their kid in 1945 because they sat on their hands while Hitler went wild. Every American firstborn should have died in 1890 for the wrongs done to the Indians, every Japanese, every Hittite…
The problem I see here is the problem all monotheistic religions have got to deal with. You have only one God, you’ve got to load the guy down with ALL the attributes of life and nature. Which, as we all know, is often cruel, unfair, capricious and wrong.
The polytheistic religions can whistle up subgods and godlets to take the blame for this stuff. The even more sophisticated preChristian religions – the Greek pantheon or the Norse – even admitted that their gods were vicious, cruel, random and even insane, just like the world around us.
But as a Christian, you have to try and shoehorn this wretched slaughter of every swinging dick in Egypt – including people hundred of miles away from the scene and tiny day-old infants – into the notion that it wasn’t “God’s faultâ€. The contortions are interesting but hardly enlightening.
Good effort. But the Passover story remains a horrorshow, and if God is caught loitering near it, He’s gonna get done for suspicion. Sorry.
I guess to sum up – the God of the Bible DOESN’T make sense. It’s the “good husband/father/serial killer” deal – great to his family, a nightmare to the “others” or those who break the rules. Hmmm…sounds kinda like…say…a desert tribal patriarch..? D’ya think…?
Naah.
I’m real OK with Christians who come flat out and admit this – our God is a Freudian horror of contradictions and wierd “thou shalt nots” that make no logical sense, and in the hands of a manic our religion is like giving a loaded gun to a crazy monkey. They just believe in it and can’t justify or explain it. Those people I can deal with – deal with like I’d deal with a potentially violent, heavily armed manic (soft voice, no sudden movements, you know the sort of thing…) but at least I know where I stand.
What I DON’T get is the kind of Christian who tries to “explain” this stuff. What the heck can you do. Arguing gets you nowhere, cause how do you argue faith? Using logic and the historical record is like turning George Foreman loose on a fifth-grader. It’s like trying to teach German irregular verbs to a bear. It only frustrates you and seriously annoys the bear.
So, Shelbi, damn, man, it’s a God thing. God doesn’t explain, he just smites. Take a lesson from the Big Guy. You’ll sound dangerous, but at least not incoherant or unhinged.
Wow, FDChief. Way to take a few words from various parts of my post and smoosh them together to make them say what you want.
It’s a tiny bit ironic, don’t you think?
By the way, I’m a girl.
(Sorry to keep highjacking your blog, Doug).
By the way, I’m a girl.
You bet she is, FDChief. You should hear her talk about her Brazilian.
(Sorry to keep highjacking your blog, Doug).
But we’re so close to resolving all religious strife in the world! Just a few more posts!
HA! This, Doug, is why I love you so much. You’re just too freaking funny!
Just a feeeewwww more dead heathens/apostates/renunciates/infidels and the Faith will be Pure!
“Way to take a few words from various parts of my post and smoosh them together to make them say what you want.”
So, Shelbi, are you saying that WASN’T your point? That’s what I got, that those Egyptians got what was coming to them because the Pharoah was a bad Daddy, like those smokers or the SIDS parents. Am I wrong? Did they offend? Were all those renegade heretic infant Egyptian babies an abomination in the sight of the Lord and had to pay the Blood Atonement?
Enlighten me. Why DID they have to die?
Disregard the above post.
I just read Shelbi’s last post over at her blog and thought, damn, man, this isn’t worth losing a drop of sweat over. So I’m gonna stop now and go away. Sorry, Shelbi – girl – to have caused you any stress…I thought I had finally met a Christian that could explain the contradictions of the God deal in a way that makes sense to me, and you seem extremely bright and literate. But it’s not worth the disputation. So…placetne, magestra.
Why DID they have to die?
*waves hand frantically*
oooh! oooh! oooh! I know this one!
To make a point.
“To make a point.”
(Grieving Egyptian mother) Ouch! Damn, dude, wold it have killed you to have, like, left a post-it on the door or something, y’know, instead? It’s not like we can’t read plain heiroglyphics, we’re heathen but we’re not STUPID…
FDChief: I didn’t be should we be atheists in our politics – and I absolutely would want a separation of church and state – I phrased that badly. I meant: Is it therefore wrong to hold political beliefs?
Doug: Lots of things. If I’ve got your golden rule right, it’s that my moral sense should rule my own actions. ‘Don’t do things that you know are hateful.’ Something like that?
If that’s it, it wouldn’t work for me as a complete moral code. Makes rape, murder, child molestation all fine, as long as the instigator is not morally bothered by their own actions. Must have picked you up wrong.
Secondly you say – ‘the more we complicate things, the more we raise the possibility of harm to others.’ (That ‘possibility’ is a sneaky word.) To start with, that’s just an assertion. We can’t know that. We can’t ever know if Christianity has done more harm than good, if Communism has done more harm than good, if the banking industry has done more harm than good. And to avoid complicated systems on principle, just because they may do harm, seems a bit Luddite.
But I think the point I was trying to make is that I wonder whether you’d accept your own arguments if they were related to a belief system you did accept.
And I know that before the Iraq war, I read a lot of posts about Democracy (not here) that were quasi-religious in tone.
So I suppose I was asking, if someone argued that there was only one golden political rule – say – ‘Do what you feel a good citizen ought to do’ and no need to complicate that by buiding political systems, which raise the possibility of harm to others – would you not think that was a simplistic approach?
No problem, FDChief. It wasn’t the discussion that made me sad. It was your obvious anger at Christians [or maybe God?]which you communicated through your sarcasm.
I know Doug doesn’t agree with me, either, but he didn’t make me sad, because he doesn’t seem angry at Christians, only bemused by something he genuinely doesn’t understand [and I believe you, Doug, when you say you’ve tried. I wish like hell I had an answer for you, but you bemuse me!].
FDChief, you said you thought you’d finally met a Christian who could explain the God deal to you, but let’s be honest, here. You came to my blog with the intent of trying to show me all of your perceived holes in my faith.
You read a 3000 word post on Exodus and came away with the one sentence that pissed you off the most and interpreted it as the point of my entire post.
Of course I can’t know your heart or your true motive in coming over to my blog, but based solely on your words, that is the impression you gave.
I spent some time not too long ago arguing the same points you’ve tried to argue with me, and at that time, the only thing that wouldn’t have pissed me off to hear from a Christian was, “You’re right. My faith is a sham.”
When I got honest answers that didn’t agree with my point of view, I got pissed off. I didn’t ‘understand’ because it meant that if what they were saying was true, then I was wrong and needed to change everything I believed in.
That’s a difficult thing to do, but I did it. And the only reason I did was because at one time, I’d genuinely known the Christian God, so I knew what I would be missing if I walked away.
So anyway, there were parts of our conversation that I enjoyed immensely. I learned a lot about Exodus, and I absolutely loved writing down my thoughts, so seriously, I wish you well.
Marianne, the Golden Rule I learned was “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Even a sociopath would not condone someone killing or raping him. In any case, there will always be folks with psychiatric disturbances, folks who are under the influence of drugs, folks whose emotions overwhelm their rationality and who perpetrate crimes of passion. We still need laws to keep those individuals in line.
In practice, of course, this is all a pipe dream, since it seems most people are greedy and self-serving. Asking humanity to live by the Golden Rule . . . well, it’s like asking them to grow wings, I suspect.
“Is it therefore wrong to hold political beliefs?”
If you’re coming from the position that your political “beliefs” are the same thing as a religious “belief”, then that’s a problem. Because as the back-and-forth I’ve had with Shelbi shows, you can’t “discuss” or “debate” religious beliefs. Shebli feels that she’s looked at the Exodus story and gotten the meat out of that nut, and it tells her something about people and God, and that’s how she sees it. I look at the same story and get a whole different moral. No matter what we say we’re just arguing past each other, because Shelbi wants to get to one place (God is Good and does what’s best for us, even if we don’t understand the results) and I want to get to another (There’s a bunch of dead people over here and God’s over there admitting that he did it, how can he not be a callous murderer?).
The problem with dragging this into the public forum is that when you make your political opinions into “beliefs” there’s no compromising or arguing with them. Look at what happened to the GOP when they took up tax cuts, not as a social engineering tool or a form of public policy, but as an article of faith. Now we’re up to our ass in debt and there’s no way a Republican candidate can say, gee, might be a good idea to try to cancel a jet fighter or three and kibosh this crazy “zero out the inheritance tax” thing because the folks in the party pews will riot over the heresy.
Shelbi: You underestimate yourself – when I read your initial post on this thread saying that you were going to explain how the Exodus/Passover story could be reconciled with the conventional idea of a loving God I dashed over to your blog in hopes of hearing something other than an argument that eventually ended in something like “I know it’s hard to understand, but God is Good and I know there must be a purpose to these meaningless deaths that is just too big for me to understand”. But, for all that you did a helluva job dissecting Exodus, you left me hanging on that rope just like every other explanation of Biblical atrocities. It’s like Job, complaining to God that he’s getting no respect only to have God snark back about who is he to talk like that to a Made Guy, did he draw the leviathan out with a hook, etc. etc.
ISTM that the intellectually honest approach would be, first, to admit that in the Passover story (and the Amalekite story and the Flood story and the…you get the idea) LOTS of innocent people die, that the reason they die is that God kills them. Whatever their “sins” or their actions, the reason they croak is because God smites/drowns/causes his servants to whack them. To try and wriggle out of taking the hit is like saying that it wasn’t your fault you hit that pedestrian because they were drunk and wearing dark clothes in the middle of the street at 2a.m. Okay – so their actions put them in the position to die. But you were there, in the car, and it’s THAT that killed them. If it happened to you, or me, we’d probably spend a looooong time, maybe a lifetime, agonizing and thinking about that death, wondering if we could have avoided it, worrying about what happened to that person’s family, wishing that we or he would have been somewhere else and the whole thing never happened. I’d like to think that a loving and caring, omniscient, omnipotent God would feel even MORE regrets about all those dead babies. But the evidence isn’t there. Sure, you say, he warns them and warns them. But in the end he pulls the trigger anyway. And rather than step up and just say: yeah, it was messed up, it was a bad thing, I’m sorry it happened – and stop there – you, just like every other Christian apologist I’ve ever read, goes on and works like a SOB to get God off the hook, the Johnnie Cochrane of theology.
And that kind of evasion DOES honk me off. It’s like listening to the Air Force spokesman explaining that we didn’t really mean to bomb those Afghan kiddies but, hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. ISTM that a hell of a lot of the really ugly parts of human history begin with a group of people convinced that their God/Allah/Jehovah has convinced them that the only good “other” is a converted other and that if a bunch of the “others” have to die in the process, oh well.
So what I had hoped to hear was something more like “You’re right. This IS a problem, maybe the God that I believe in DID do this bad thing, and here’s what I think about how that squares with his P.R. sheet…”
The tired old “It’s just a God thing, he’s too big and mighty for poor little me to understand, you and I just have to accept that those dead babies must have done something to deserve it…” is no better a justification for faith than Pilate washing his hands. Like I said before – your “explanation” explained nothing, and the resulting exasperating evasions just pissed me off.
But arguing faith is like arguing about crullers. You like raspberry, I like lemon, we just won’t ever agree.
I just hope that we’re never in a position such that raspberry crullers become the Orthodox Cruller of State and a longing for lemon becomes an excuse for the rope, the axe and the stake…
I should probably stop for a moment and differentiate between “faith” and “religion”.
Lots of people have “faith”. Faith, belief, morals, The Golden Rule…whether it’s in the Jesus of the Bible, Muhammad, Buddha, human society, shamanism. That faith can be a wonderful, uplifting thing. It can pull you out of yourself, make you more than you could have been without it – it can also make you an intolerant fanatic – but the bottom line is that your faith is your own, and as long as it stops at the end of my nose I could care less. I’ve got enough problems with MY faith issues…
But “religion”, that always seems to be another thing entirely. When you get a bunch of people together all believing in the same thing the first thing that seems to happen is that they circle around each other. The second thing is that the circle excludes those who don’t believe the same thing. It’s not always a hostile kind of exclusion, but just like sports and politics, it sets up one group over here and the rest over there.
And then, at least with the monotheistic type of religions, you always seem to get a heirarchy that develops; leaders, popes, imams, prophets, lamas and priests arise, and pretty soon it’s not just one person trying to talk to God alone in a room, it’s a “prophet” or a “revelator” telling the faithful what God has told HIM (and it always seems to be a him with monotheists. Hmmm…) and why it’s such a good idea that the faithful just salute and move out smartly.
This kind of religious organization can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, raise magnificent cathedrals…and also massacre the “others”, seize their lands, outcast the heathen…in other words, act no differently than any other human mob throughout history.
Based on the track record, I don’t trust a religious mob any more than I trust any other mob. So when I hear religions say stuff like “It’s what God wants, really, trust me, you don’t understand you just have to DO IT” I reach for my gun.
Faith? Lovely. Religion…mmmm…not so much.
“If that’s it, it wouldn’t work for me as a complete moral code. Makes rape, murder, child molestation all fine, as long as the instigator is not morally bothered by their own actions.”
I’ve heard this from other religious authors claiming that this moral relativisim is why religion is “needed” to keep the proles in line.
My problem with this is:
1. So why is it that everything we know about pre-Christian, pre-Islam, pre-Judaism humanity suggests that we were not moral cretins before these religions – and
2. in those areas where there is little or no religion, or in the cases of very different religions, people seem to have developed a pretty similar code of conduct. So murder will always be a Bad Thing, rape (to include any nonconsensual sex, kids and pets not being able to consent…), theft.
I’m with Doug – I think the idea that we can live by the Golden Rule is unreachable. Human history seems to be an endless struggle against what seems like a bottomless pit of greed, lust, hatred.
But the idea that we need some kind of “higher authority” to restrain us from atrocity implies that the prisons should be filled with atheists and agnostics to an abnormally high degree, and that we should observe much more laudable and admirable behavior from our devout friends, neighbors and associates than from the unchurched, and based on everything I see, hear and read, that just ain’t so.
Doug – I wasn’t being smart alec. I wasn’t sure what your ‘Golden Rule’ was, and when I followed the posts back, that seemed to be the rule you were referring to.
I still straightforwardly have issues with ‘Do as you would be done by’ as a complete moral code. Say Man X, genuinely has moral concerns about overpopulation, and is completely happy to be sterilised after having his first child. If I have a child, and he sterilises me, he’s acting within your golden rule, for good and altruistic moral reasons, but I’d be reluctant to label it as morally correct behaviour.
FDChief. Wow. I’m not American, so you lost me a bit with the tax cuts.
Butting into your conversation with Shelbi, I find the God of the Old Testament impossible to understand – he seems to condone something akin to genocide at several points.
I rationalise it by thinking that people wrote the Bible, and therefore it’s their interpretation of events. If you read some of the stuff from Kings it’s all – King X loved God, and ruled triumphantly, then lost faith and was defeated. Seems to me possible that the historian writing the piece deduced the loss of faith from the defeat, then wrote it in as fact. I suppose I’d imagine that a historian might believe that genocide was unthinkable unless condoned by God, therefore he could *know* that any genocide his people had undertaken must have had God’s blessing. But that’s a complete supposition on my part.
Alternatively – and this isn’t what I think, but it is, I think, worth thinking through – you have to consider that death might look different to God.
Perhaps if you could talk to babies in the womb, they wouldn’t fancy birth. They’re completely happy, all the needs that they can imagine having are met – birth is a painful and difficult process – and no-one ever comes back afterwards to tell them if the rumours of an after-life are true. Yet once you’ve been born, you don’t see birth as a bad thing. And one wouldn’t go back.
It’s a very silly analogy, but I think if you bend your brain, accept God as a given, then think what death would look like to him – does death still look like a bad thing?
I’m not sure about the last posts. I am a Christian, but I didn’t argue that religion is the only possible source of moral authority, and I’m reluctant to be cornered into defending a position I don’t hold, unless copious amounts of alcohol are to be involved…
Ugh. Enough already. This is making my head hurt.
I’m going to write today’s post now, and it’s gonna be about cute baby animals. So there.
But if the cute baby animals failed to heed God’s warnings…
OK, OK. I’m done. Really!
Wait…wait…on the death thing? I don’t know what’s on the other side of the curtain. I’ll find out soon enough, and there’s way to many things that can help me get there quick that I’m not all that excited about God being so careless with my life. I mean, He’s the Lord of Creation and the Master of the Universe and all I have is my little life, a mortgage and the inability to tap dance. Seems pretty petty of him to begrudge me my little bit just to make a point.
OK – now I’m REALLY done. I’ll go look at cute baby animals.
Cute baby animals sound good.
Very interesting discussion. I’m in the “Golden Rule” department myself. No need for God or faith there and you still get a nice world. Nicer than having all these different faiths fighting over whose faith is the “real” one. Personally I find the idea of nothingness after death a lot more appealing than having a review of my sins with St. Peter before getting into the Pearly Gates, or worse yet, not getting in and going to the Other Place. I do think all that is invented to keep people in line. It’s bad enough having reviews at work, who wants one at the end of their life? Nothingness works for me.