Is religion a "social evil"?
What are the worst blights facing our society today? A version of that question was asked 104 years ago by Joseph Rowntree, one of Britain's most famous Quakers. Rowntree thought the "scourges of humanity" facing his world were poverty, war, slavery, intemperance, the opium trade, impurity and gambling. A new poll commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asks a similar question of the UK population today, and the results could have Mr Rowntree turning in his grave. The "dominant opinion", according to researchers, is that religion is a "social evil" which leads to intolerance and ignorance.
Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society is claiming a victory of sorts; the public, he says, have had it with religion. I suspect that religion will continue to flourish long after the National Secular Society has ceased to exist. But the question people of faith need to ask is why the public today are so distrustful of religious believers. One answer to that question is the public's perception of religious people as Victorian nay-sayers who oppose scientific progress and bemoan the diversity we now see in so much of our society. One respondent in the study said: "Faith in supernatural phenomena inspires hatred and prejudice throughout the world, and is commonly used as justification for persecution of women, gays and people who do not have faith."
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~56~RS~)
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It's very well having people calling for more diversity (whatever that is ... ), but people of faith (as you call them) need to have the freedom to stand up for the truth. Look at the Jerry Springer business. Should we have rolled over and taken that lying down? Or Blueprint? Or the sex on tv nowadays? Or the legalisation of every sin in the Bible? Where does it all end?
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Thank you PTL for that blurb against Blueprint, thereby confirming that a portion of believers are indeed Victorian nay-sayers who oppose scientific progress and can't handle science having disproven their fairy tale literalist beliefs. And that their desire to hang on to their unrealistic beliefs forms an obstacle to our progress.
Interestingly, other UK polls have shown that even many religious people view religion as a source of tension, as the number of people who think so exceeds the number of non-believers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/dec/23/religion.topstories3
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2368534.ece
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Religion seems to be biting back these days. Gone are the good old days when it sat happily in the corner sipping on shandy only piping up the odd turn when inadvertently asked for its opinion by the drunk who missed last orders. It is now being attacked from outside and within and needless to say it can't just sit back and say nothing, so on comes the tired old diatribe that pits one religion against another, one community against society as a whole, one man against his neighbour. I recall someone once described going to war over religion as ?fighting to see who has the better imaginary friend.? I suppose it is an irony that, in terms of tolerance, it proves time and again not to have any. Is it a social evil? No, it?s just the god-squad buying their stairway to heaven.
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Hmmm. I think religion *is* the drunk who missed last orders. Taxi!
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The first line of the article says alot;-
"A CHARITY set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century - religion."
Ironically Steve Chalke et al ate still showing the church is at the forefront of the battle against slavery/trafficking.
ie "stop the traffik"
Churches are generally a very practical and positive addition to any community in the programmes they offer for mothers and toddlers, youth groups, pensioners groups etc.
Many go much further.
An elder in my church says that if the church in his town came out of community work the entire sector in the town would collapse.
I'm just off to help at the English lessons for foriegn nationals in our church this evening...
PB
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PB
The flip side of this
"A CHARITY set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century - religion."
Is that many from the literalist/Bible Bible believing churches supported slavery and segregation and did so well into the 20th century. Let me add that I am *not* saying that all Christians were like this.
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PTL / PB
We (christians) need to be careful before we flag up our ?successes?. For every claim of virtue there is a counter claim of evil.
Will suggests ?the question people of faith need to ask is why the public today are so distrustful of religious believers? and gives a possible answer. I would suggest another one:
The trouble with a lot of popular christianity is that it is high on its own sub-culture and low on substance.
Here are some examples of what I mean. I will restrict my comments to the public face of popular christianity in Northern Ireland as in doing so I am only critiquing my own community.
(1) Love your enemies. Sounds good doesn?t it? Until we think through the problems of the last 40 years. Some might argue that ?true? christians weren?t responsible, but there *was* a lot of religious (christian) rhetoric fired about. Anyway true christians are supposed to love their enemies not simply avoid them. Silence isn?t always a virtue.
(2) Caustic grace. Yes I know its a contradiction, but it sounds something like this. ?God loves you, but because you?re not as good as I am, you?re going to hell, so sharpen up and act like me.?
(3) Millions of pounds spent on buildings and sound systems and tiered seating and magazines and the creation of our own version of the music world (when ?secular? musicians are usually better) and a bundle of other stuff, in an attempt to be relevant while at least half the world starves. I could probably stop right here!
(4) A disengagement from the community around us. It?s all very well talking about mothers and toddlers and stuff, and even anti-slavery movements but this wasn?t always the case. We should face the fact and be honest about it.
(5) Quoting an elder in your church, doesn?t, unfortunately, amount to much, he is one of us. The church normally says good things about itself. Maybe when an atheist social worker says the same thing we might have earned the right to crow a bit more.
(6) Fundamentalists. Harsh, self-righteous, egotistical, often violent. We ought not to recognise them as defenders of the faith.
Honest self-examination is called for. Will asked a question, we should attempt to answer it, not simply offer apologies.
The point PTL, is not whether diversity is right or wrong, the point is that we, the religious, are deemed to be the problem.
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Petermorrow, you ended your post saying
'we, the religious, are deemed to be the problem.'
While I'm an atheist and have little appreciation for any flavour of christianity or indeed most other religions that I know of, there are distinctions. I think if all believers were like you, far fewer atheist would feel the urge to speak out against religion.
greets,
Peter
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Sorry Peter K
Just because a believer makes contrite noises doesn't make him less dangerous - I agree with Sam Harris that the moderates only give encouragement to the fundamentalist nutters!
.
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Hi allybalder,
As I wrote, I have no thirst for beliefs. But if ALL believers were like petermorrow, there would be far fewer problems.
I'll agree with you that that is not realistic, that the practical reality is that a certain percentage will turn into dangerous nutters.
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Of course Peter M may be an a journey to ecuminism, agnosticism, secularism, and god help him - Atheism and Humanism - or maybe we're setting him up for attack by ptl, pb et al
I suppose that's pretty courageous on his part?
.
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Allybalder
Are you trying to be funny with regard to Peter Morrow or are you lacking in the manners Peter Klaver has?
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No David - neither! - hopefully Peter - and even you are open minded and are on a journey - as I have been and still am!
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Allybalder,
Where are you going?
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D
I asked first!
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Allybalder,
You said that you were on a jouney.I said no such thing.
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These humanists on the blog will have a long time to wait before true religion dies out. How many humanists are there anyway?
To answer Will's question: I think the reason religion is falling in the public's assessment is that so few church leaders actually lead. We need leaders prepared to stand up and be counted and to take on the secularising aspects of our society. Where is rowan williams? He's practically an atheist, isnt he?
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What is the worst blight our society is facing today? When I was young it was television. Television disconnected people from each other. It killed the art of conversation. People sat in front of what was euphemistically called "the boob tube" until they were buggy eyed. Today, I think it is the computer. The computer has made it possible for people to entirely escape the real world and hide in a caccoon that is completely impenetrable only coming out to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. Why if I were not sitting here at my computer right now typing on a keyboard looking at a screen imagining I am communicating with other people, I could be doing something useful, productive, intelligent...like watching television :-)
Religion? There are good religions and bad religions. At least I think there are. There must be some good religions out there somewhere? Anybody know of one? Somebody help me out here. Maybe among the Hopi Indians...oops, it is not politically correct to call them Indians (we only called them that because Columbus thought he'd found a passage to India when he discovered the new world, I learned that on television.) Hopi Native Americans. There, that's better. Wanna see me make it rain?
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ptl said
These humanists on the blog will have a long time to wait before true religion dies out. How many humanists are there anyway?
Compare the influence that religion has today to that of even fifty years ago.
Then in Ireland at least 90% would have attended church regularly - now I doubt if it is 15%. Do you really think that trend can be changed?
I have three children and six grandchildren and I doubt if any of them are believers - of course the g/children are all under 10 so there's still a slight danger they will be corrupted!
Education! Education! Education!
.
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If the influence of religion is reduced, I blame weak leadership amongst church leaders. We need more direction and strength.
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PTL.
Don't blame your leaders.
The people are waking up to your snakeoil, thats all.
I think Christianity and the other fairy tales have had a pretty good run to last as long as they have without a shred of proof.
Come on in Religion - your time is up...
The future's bright, the future's enlightenment.
Have a great weekend.
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Religion is not all bad, and certainly there are many individual believers doing good works. But the survey clearly implies that as a social force it has on balance a malign influence.
(1) Divided society:
Northern Ireland is a paradigm. Children in schools are divided on religious lines, Christians in churches are divided on religious lines, Catholics and Protestants live largely in segregated areas; there is segregated sport and culture.
Not all this division can be blamed on religion: a clash of nationalisms is also responsible. But when religion and nationalism combine, there you have a pretty lethal cocktail.
(2) Intolerance
Throughout history, religions have shown their intolerance by preaching hatred against their enemies and persecutions of heretics, women, gays etc. They have only become more tolerant in those countries like the UK where they have become less powerful. Where they retain power in some countries, their influence is generally pernicious.
Intolerance in NI is endemic to the society. A well-known religious leader, referred to by Germaine Greer last night on Let's Talk as one of the two 'bad men' ruling the province, has in the past referred to the Pope as the 'anti-Christ', and of Catholics he has said that they 'breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin'. Has he mellowed in his old age? Or is he still preaching this poison from the pulpit? I would be interested to know
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Hi Brian
"Has he mellowed in his old age? Or is he still preaching this poison from the pulpit? I would be interested to know."
I presume you are referring to 'Dr. Chuckle'!?
From what I hear there are plenty of empty seats pretty close to his pulpit.
Maybe you could go along!
Then again....
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Allybalder (post 9)
A noise is something like whoosh, woof, baa, tinkle, grrrrrrr. The literary description for words like this is onomatopoeia. I have tended to avoid these words on this blog as it is not an online version of the Beano.
I should also say that I don't feel particularly contrite.
I haven?t read any Sam Harris, but have come across his website. If what you attribute to him is correct, "that the moderates only give encouragement to the fundamentalist nutters!", then it would appear that I am only a colour on a spectrum of danger. Possibly pastel, or a lighter shade of pale, or possibly more FUN than MENTAL, but in DA house of danger none the less.
Funny, I hadn?t thought of myself as culpable for 9/11, but there ya go, we learn something everyday. Should I turn myself in? Seems to me though, that it's a bit like blaming science for Josef Mengele. But you'd need to have no brains to do that. With no meaning **none at all!**
Interestingly I see from your comments to david that we are both pilgrims. Common ground, eh!
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MarcusAurelius2
It's raining here now.
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Some people - believers or atheists - are fairly nasty pieces of work. Many more people - believers or atheists - are very nice people.
The truth: some people are bad, but far more are good. Thinking in terms "religion is a social evil" or "unbelief is a social evil" is the sort of shoddy black-and-white thinking that causes "social evil" in the first place.
G.Da
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G. Da,
You are quite wrong. Reducing everything to a matter of personalities is one of the things that is wrong with the world. At this level, emotions, hatreds and personal animosities come more into play and trivialise and sour every issue. Why would we bother to debate on this blog or why would you bother to read it if it was merely a matter of who got one over the other? Aren?t you seeking understanding, the truth etc? Or you just playing a game?
Truth matters, and if religion is untrue, then religious people have a false conception of the world and they are living a lie.
Moreover, if you reduce everything to personalities you will not understand the social, economic, political and ideological forces which influence behaviour.
Do you deny that religion is a divisive force in NI?
Steven Weinberg said: "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things ? that takes religion".
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Hi Brian
It's weird, isn't it, how we can agree and disagree all at the same time.
Truth matters - Yes, absolutely yes! Firm unfaltering, unwavering agreement.
Reducing everything to personalities - Yes, dangerous, especially if we look no further than the moment.
Do ideologies influence behaviour - yes, but people also influence ideologies, especially bad people.
Is religion divisive in NI - Yes. I pointed this out in post 7, and almost got called courageous for doing so.
"Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things." - Yep, more agreement.
"for good people to do bad things, that takes religion" - Yes this is true too, does religion corrupt people? - Yes - but other things corrupt too, like money for example. The list of course is a bit longer so to limit it to religion is a bit 'Sam Harris' - (see my post 24, also see your post 22)
I notice however, that one variation of the statements is missing, and I guess that here we might disagree.
Whatever is it going to take for bad people to do good things?
And yes, I know there's more than one answer.
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I agree that Weinberg's remark is a simplication. You are quite right. Money corrupts, ideology corrupts power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). Religion is not the only source of malignity in the world, but nevertheless it is one of them.
A humanist/agnostic/atheist would probably argue that it would be better for the world if people were generally more sceptical and less certain of belief.
If Germaine Greer is correct and the two partners in chuckledom are bad men, then they have done a good thing, but there is no evidence that religion was the motivating factor.
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petermorrow #25
Now that you understand my power, you'd better be nice to me, all of you. Get me piqued and I just might visit NI with 40 days and 40 nights of it again...or an ice storm...or a freak hurricaine....or a swam of locusts. How about frogs? brianmcclinton #29 you are right, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ooooh it feels good to have this much at my command.
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Jesus, talk about missing the point.
G.Da
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MarcusAurelius2
Request from my children. Could you make it snow here tonight, they're bored.
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Geordie_Da
I don't think Brian McClinton is claiming to be Jesus.
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petermorrow #32
Of course I could make it snow tonight. I could make it snow this very second. If you the wicked people of the world continue global warming, I just might make it snow in some places and it will never stop. How would you like...an ice age. I haven't done that one even on a small scale in about fifteen thousand years. Well maybe just a tiny one here and there but they don't count. Maybe I'll bring back the mastadons and wolly mamouths while I'm at it. William will have some living fossils to enjoy.
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Marcus,
Living fossils? Why, you surpass yourself!
Anyway,
Should Caesar permit, I'll go. I've been at this computer too long. I've forgotten my wife's face and I barely know my son.
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McClinton isn't Jesus?
Well there goes my belief system.
G.Da
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Geordie_da, Mcclinton isn't Jesus? Next I suppose you're going to say I'm not god. You'd better watch it. One blink from me and pffff, you don't exist. I've had my on you for awhile already anyway. Remember, I am everywhere and I know everything. I know what you do, what you say, what you eat and drink, even what you are thinking. Who am I? Why I'm the CIA of course. :-)
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I think religion isn't a bad tging. I think it's something in what a human being has to trust. It gives someting to beleive in. I't's part or our existence, part of our values.
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I object to the suggestion that the National Secular Society is not eternal. However, I agree that religions are probably going to survive in some form or other for a very long time. Not because any one of them is correct, but because us humans aren't going to give up our liking for them too easily.
The word 'evil' has connotations I could do without, but I do think that religious ideologies detract more than they contribute.
Religions are straining to hold on to their credibility as the world changes faster than religions are adapting. The current reactions of the religious leaders to these threats seem to be counterproductive, actively encouraging divisiveness and opposing progress to hold onto political influence. I suspect this has a lot to do with religion turning up on this survey.
Our brains are amazing things but our higher functions are all too easily switched off by older, more basic traits such as fear and tribalism. For all its appeals to our good side, religions can be a dangerously easy way to directly access our mental weak spots.
Religion feeds tribalism by inventing additional ways to divide us for, as I see it, entirely unnecessary reasons. People in Northern Ireland were not fighting over transubstantiation, but the tribes were maintained by religion's ability (and eagerness) to separate us - taboos on inter-marriage, etc. There will always be tribes, but to invent additional ones seems a luxury we can ill afford.
Over-investment in ideologies, religious or not, always seem to lead to problems. If the system is seen as always much more important than any of the people in it then more of those people will get hurt. Religious ideologies have an additional risk factor in that their priorities do not need to be grounded to demonstrable entities. If nothing is more important than your immortal soul or you think you are doing your god's work then it is easier to justify going to extremes. A person who thinks that their god will reward them for killing would be much further out on their mental limb if religious institutions didn't regard enforcing interpretations of the will of the gods as a reasonable thing to do.
The presence of so many alternative interpretations should make believers reluctant to impose their version on others and more critical of those who do. The religious should see the need to discredit the taking of actions that impose on others based on revelation, not just seek to draw the line at bombing. Take the Catholic ban on contraception. Most Catholics in developed countries use their freedom to quietly ignore this ruling, but do little to object to its imposition in countries where the Church has greater political influence.
If religion is to hang around, my hope is that it transforms into a more personal, spiritual affair. The big religious institutions look past their sell-by dates. We would all benefit if they stopped acting as god's enforcers.
I would be happy for the NSS to go extinct first if it is due to the religious seeing the benefits of a level playing field. This does not require the elimination of religion.
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Yes, William's remark about the NSS was rather unkind. Polls show that religion is declining in Europe. Where it is 'flourishing', to use William's word, is largely in theocracies or societies like the US and NI where it has for centuries had a largely malign influence. Is that what you want, William? More theocracies or more Northern Irelands?
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The problem I seem to have is that even when I seek to offer a self-examination of religions as I did in post 7 we still have to put up with, ?Ahhhhhhhhhhhh religion, run away!? as if it were the most probable cause of all evil.
Interestingly in today?s Sunday Times there is a report on a new book published about the on going problems of organised crime in NI. It makes interesting reading, suggesting that in order to keep everyone on board during the peace process that the government ignored, paramilitary crime. The book is by Jon Moran, lecturer in criminology at Wolverhampton University. According to the report, Moran suggests,
?It makes no sense to say that crime levels are falling in Ulster.?
?The variety of drugs offered for sale on the streets of Belfast has increased?
?People argue that buildings are not being blown up by terrorists but in terms of organised crime things are getting worse?
This has nothing to do with religion. Furthermore this kind of evil exists all over the world. Could we broaden the debate please?
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DEEP UNEASE OVER
LOSS OF 'MORAL COMPASS'
- claim from same survey.
Can humanists help?
Interesting how opposing camps can take such contrasting views on the same story.
Here is the Christian Institute on this same poll;-
"British society lacks common values and is plagued by selfishness, greed, drug and alcohol misuse and family breakdown, according to a widespread survey of Britons.
"The responses to an on-line survey conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) revealed a deep sense of unease about the issues troubling modern society, with many feeling that Britain had lost its 'moral compass'.
"The JRF ran the consultation on 'modern-day social evils' 100 years after its Quaker founder, Joseph Rowntree, identified as the key problems of his age poverty, war, slavery, intemperance, the opium trade, impurity and gambling.
"The new survey, which invited responses last year through a website, showed that people still ranked drugs and alcohol, poverty and inequality highly among the key 'evils' threatening modern society.
"These were all linked to family breakdown, which made a new addition to Mr Rowntree's original list, along with crime, immigration and young people as either the victims or the perpetrators of social evils.
"Behind the more concrete concerns, many of those responding to the survey identified social attitudes of individualism, greed, a decline of community and a decline of values as major social evils.
"One respondent said: "Everything seems to be based around money and owning things. The more you have, the more successful you are. There's nothing wrong with having enough, but there's pressure on people to go for more and more."
END OF CI ARTICLE.
I think it should also be pointed out that a website poll may not be the best at gathering an objective sample, as we saw when Dawkins won person of the year on this site a while back and some of the behind the scenes antics associated.
PB
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Hello peab,
"Interesting how opposing camps can take such contrasting views on the same story."
This should not surprise anyone. Among certain groups of christians (most prominently the dishonest, distorting, fundamentalist YECs, you represent them well) it is common to completely ignore the overall storyline and grasp at the last tiny straw that does not adhere to the overwhelming 99+ % rest of the conclusions. For instance, you have quote mined Darwin about the eye no less, to argue against Darwinian evolution.
The pdf about the poll does extensively mention the negative views people have of religion. People are quoted as talking of religion as for instance
'undermines social cohesion' and 'a force for separating people'
'we should not be making any political or educational decisions based on religion'
'children should be taught to derive their conclusions from evidence and logic, not the ravings of deluded idiots'
'promote strong beliefs for which there is no objective evidence [and] undermine rational behaviour'
So you have focussed attention on another group of christians who have no problem with resorting to dishonesty to shore up their own views.
Thank you once again peab, you truly are the Flying Spaghetti Monsters gift to atheists.
Peter
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I take it you had a nice wkdn then Pete?
;-)
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Original Pb:
I think the blog story took the item from the Sunday Times NEWS report of the poll which appeared in the NEWS section of that paper on 20th April. It stated that the 'dominant opinion' among 3,500 people surveyed was that religion was a 'social evil'. The Christian institute seems to have omitted this 'evil' from its list, if your quote is full and correct
However, without seeing the survey report, neither of us can comment on whether or not the ST report is accurate and that the dominant opinion was that religion is a 'social evil'.
It is clearly listed as one of these evils, according to the people surveyed, whether you like it or not.
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Brian - I agree that it would be helpful to see the report itself.
My question still stands though - what alternative moral compass have humanists got and can they point to a precdent in history where it has worked?
PB
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Religion Ahhhhhhhhhhhh run away.
OK guys, let's assume there is no god.
Let's assume that religion is a construct of the mind doing more evil than good.
If this is true, it would have to be a construct of a mind over which the gods have no control, as there are none.
This evil, this religion, this faith would have to be the construct of a 'secular' mind.
In the end, if there are no gods, it is only humans who are evil.
Now, I've tried a little self examination, so its over to you!
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Peter:
The word ?evil? is problematic and I prefer to use the word ?bad?. I think that on balance religion as a source force has tended to encourage the bad in us more than the good.
This badness that religion tends to inspire comes more from the dogma than from the character of the people who preach it or the people who enact it. For example, if the sacred text says: ?thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? (Exodus 22:18), and people burn witches, this testifies to their ignorance, gullibility and obedience to authority rather than necessarily any bad intent. The same applies to messages such as ?kill the infidel? or ?stone homosexuals?.
These are examples where religious belief encourages people to do bad things. Religion tends to thwart many of the good qualities below.
Original Pb:
My own moral compass has a number of points, of which four are outlined below
NATURE
Human beings are social animals, which means they are capable of good and bad. Life?s task is to develop the good qualities of sympathy, kindness, understanding etc., which arise out of a desire for the caring, love and mutual aid than most other animals also display, and to minimise the bad qualities which are also present in nature.
REASON
Reason gives us the ability to sympathise with another?s situation because we have to think out what it would be like to him or her in that situation. To empathise with others is to use our reason as well as our compassion. Reason also means that we take into consideration all our relevant desires and not just the desire that happens to be strongest at the moment. In other words, it involves us thinking about the consequences of our actions. We are rational in proportion as our intelligence informs and controls our desires.
FREEDOM
Mill put this as a basic moral principle, and he was right. We should be as free to think and do what we want so long as we don?t harm others: ?over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign?. The extension of people?s freedoms in Europe in the second half of the 20th century bears Mill out. The first half ? of dictatorship, excessive obedience to political authority, denial of rights, censorship of all opposition ? led to the madness of Auschwitz and the Gulag.
HAPPINESS
Mill?s principle of freedom is not one of selfish indifference. He makes it clear that if we think others are wrong, we should remonstrate, reason, persuade and entreat. And the reason is that liberty is not an end in itself. it is not to be protected for its own sake but because it leads to greater happiness for ourselves and others. The free development of individuality, of unique capabilities, of people?s differences as well as their similarities, is a means whereby each person becomes valuable to himself and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.
Mill said that human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
If humankind followed Mill?s path, instead of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed, I think we would be a happier race. Robert Ingersoll said that happiness is the only good. An exaggeration, perhaps, but it is a better message than that found in most ?sacred texts?.
Now don't pick on something I didn't mention and make it the focus of your reply. Instead, address some of my points, please, and give us a clue as to your moral principles.
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Thanks Brian
Your moral compass, in brief seems to be;-
That religion tends to thwart the following qualities;-
NATURE or mutual kindness
REASON or emphathy and self-control
HAPPINESS or the freedom to develop
I respect your request for a reasonable response Brian.
The Christian faith (and others) teaches loving your neighbour as yourself as half of its main creed. And it practises it. The Jubillee 3rd world debt cancellation campaign, stop the traffick (against slaver), Wilberforce, Red Cross, Salvation Army etc etc etc are just some of the examples.
While of course there are exceptions, they are just that. Countries with christian foundations demonstrate the highest humanistarian standards in the world today; countries with humanist foundations don't.
Countries with humanist athiest foundations have arguably the worst record in human rights in history.
The pursiut of happiness in and of itself is a selfish pursuit. The Christian faith teaches that fulfillment comes from serving others. It is not incidental.
thanks for the chat Brian, I appreciate the fact it is civil.
sincerely
PB
I dont think mutual kindness is the norm in nature to be honest. I see many predators and prey and in my experience there is a serious engine within man to exploit and abuse each other where there is no real deterrent.
(I dont deny men can also be self sacrificing).
2)
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petermorrow.
I don't think religion is 'the most probable cause of all evil' or is entirely bad, but I do think it causes significant problems that are reasonable to explore on a thread titled 'Is religion a "Social Evil"'. I thought you made some good points in your original post, but they were a call for internal, self-examination and so I don't have much to contribute in that vein.
If you look at the most recent religions, such as Mormonism, it is easier to see their human origins and yet they have thousands of sincere followers who testify to their religion's authenticity. If you accept that any of these recent arrivals are human institutions then it should be easier to view them from the perspective: "If none of the claims are true, is that a sensible way to go about things?"
As I do not accept any of the god claims, I fully agree that any of the harm that humans do is caused by humans. But we are also responsible for the good we do as well - we are a mixed bag. I already rejected the word 'evil' in relation to religion precisely because I believe it to be a product of humanity, not some malign force. We have no gods to blame. That means that we have no gods to help either so we have to be self-critical. If we are to improve we have to try to get as realistic a view as possible of our strengths and weaknesses.
As I outlined in my earlier post, religions are not sufficiently well protected against our weaknesses and, in fact, rely on some of them in order to survive. They are not the product of minds doing evil, but have been slowly adapted and revised as they passed through many generations.
Rule by Royal decree survived for centuries but was superseded by democracy as we think it serves society better and has more controls against misuse. This change did not come easy and it is clear that our current system is still far from perfect. One human construct that seemed obvious at the time and, no doubt achieved great things along with its excesses, was rejected for what we now judge to be a better set of ideas. Universal suffrage is barely a century old but we already take it for granted.
Any human system, from democracy to the highway code, can be critiqued on its performance and altered as necessary - if PR looks more effective than 'first past the post' we can change it and review what happens. These are deliberate human constructs so we can make deliberate human changes if we feel the collective need. However, it is much harder to do this dispassionately with religion. The belief in an external source makes it resistant to this sort of deliberate amendment - unless you can convince enough people you are speaking on behalf of that source.
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Original pb
I think your postscript ruined your good para about loving Christians etc. I agree that religions are not all bad and some good things have been done in their name. But it is also a feature of most religions to be negative and censorious and to want to stress the bad aspects of our nature, as you cannot resist doing in your postscript, which I expected.
Far from wrecking human rights, humanism is the basis of their development in most western societies. You keep mentioning the abolition of slavery, forgetting that for nearly 2,000 years Christianity sanctioned and practised it. It is present in both the Old and New Testaments, where slaves are told to obey their masters ?in all things? (Titus 2:9), ?just as you would obey Christ? (Ephesians 6:5).
What you also fail to grasp is that the campaign to abolish the slave trade and slavery in the UK was led by dissident and nonconformist Christians often accused of being hopelessly naive by their mainstream counterparts. The majority of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers, following the philosophy of people like Thomas Paine, born a Quaker but describing himself as a Deist (?I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church?; ?My country is the world, and my religion is to do good?). The first parliamentary petition against the slave trade was presented to the British Parliament by 300 Quakers in 1783. In Ulster it was liberal and republican Presbyterians/C of I like Russell, Drennan, Neilson and Mary Ann McCracken who opposed slavery, not the reactionary elements who won through in the mid-19th century.
In the west, Orginal Pb, we are all humanists now in the sense that the humanist agenda, which can be traced back to ancient Greece and China, has largely triumphed. Freedom; reason, democracy, tolerance and human rights have all succeeded and are all testimony to the veracity of the humanist project. To be sure, there have been setbacks: the dominance of religion in the Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages created what Charles Freeman calls ?the closing of the western mind?: ?the Greek intellectual tradition... was destroyed by the political and religious forces which made up the highly authoritarian government of the late Roman Empire?. The early 20th produced a new authoritarianism, often religious in character, which created yet more destruction. Since 1945, Humanism, which is the very antithesis of authoritarianism, has once again reasserted its supremacy. The triumph of humane values is the product of Humanism, not the outcome of monotheistic religions.
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Thanks Brian
I appreciate your civil response.
To be fair to me, the post script was a PS which never was.
It was a para I drafted but then thought I had deleted - hence no "PS".
On slavery and Christianity I have to disagree.
The early church had a large percentage of slaves because of the solidarity the church showed with them.
ie Paul said slave and free, male and female Jew and Greek were all equal in Christ.
And many NT writers in opening their letters described themselves as slaves of Christ. This was not an accidental turn of phrase.
Most people make your mistake without ever reading carefully the only book in the bible dedciated to slavery.
ie Paul's letter to Philemon.
It is a case study in freeing a slave which Paul circulated to all churches and which was retained in the canon.
There were constant slaves revolts in the Roman Empire and Paul had to be clear not to sympathise; political revolution is against scripture as well as extremely dangerous during those times. God is not the God of chaos!
Instead Paul deliberately instigated a revolution of love within the church on this matter and historical records show this had a major impact on the early church, who largely complied. The serious impact of the church on the Roman Empire at all levels is a matter of record.
While people often used scripture to justify slavery - and oppose it - theologically, only God will have the final say as to whether those responsible were truly his disciples.
I respect the fact you have given Wilberforce and friends their place, but you would not for a second sympathise with their biblical beliefs.
I understand the book of Philemon was widely published as a stand alone leaflet to oppose slavery in America, fyi.
You will also notice that slavery in the bible is not the slavery you understand.
It was primarily a social security safety net and a form of community service for criminals and POWs.
Kidnapping someone for slavery in the OT carried the death sentence. Paul wrote that slave traders would not inherit the kingdom of God.
Neither can I see at this time any explicit sanction of the trading of slaves as a commodity in the bible. Very much to the contrary.
So condeming slavery in the bible could be construed as similar to condeming prison sentences, community service or a social security system in our culture.
You will notice the absence of prison sentences under the OT law?
I sympathsise with your apparent worries over theocracies etc and I applaud the many valid contributions of those without faith who have helped shape our culture.
But you will notice all the athiestic regimes of history also had access to the humanist ideas which you claim came from China and Greece - and none of those socities have much of a humanitarian record without the magic ingredient of judeo Christian faith.
It is my understanding that this becomes startlingly apparent when you examine history on a person by person basis.
The scientific revolution is a good example, it was led by numerous Christians who saw it as an expression of their faith. This is beyond serious contention.
I understand British political economic, social and legal culture all follow a similar pattern.
thanks Brian
PB
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PB
What "atheistic" regimes are you talking about? Since atheism is simply a statement, not a religion, philosophy, way of life etc I don't know what would qualify as such a regime?
Slavery was gone over with you before. I am delighted that you have found the passages in the Bible which you believe rule out slavery. However many, many Christians in the past and some to this day still support slavery/racism/segregation. Take the southern states on the USA in the last century. These were not atheistic regimes, nor liberal/secular rather they were Bible-believing and they believed that they were right 100% , they were speaking the word of God. You could also take the eg of pre Apartheid South Africa.
The point is that Christains have supported slavery in the past-that's a fact and it's not the same thing as saying that all Christains supported slavery. The same way that I would say not all Christains are like Paisley, Falwell, Bob Jones etc
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Brian and Non-plussed
I appreciate your willingness to engage with the debate. Neither of you tend to respond at the level of personal attack on this blog. (I almost wrote blob !) Unfortunately others do.
Brian you prefer the word bad. OK, I can run with bad, even though the poll apparently found it necessary to use the word evil. It was on that basis that I used it. I assume that by bad you mean flawed rather than vile.
You say, ?This badness that religion tends to inspire comes more from the dogma than from the character of the people who preach it or the people who enact it.?
I?m genuinely not sure I see the distinction. Are you saying that, generally, people are influenced to do bad things because of bad ideas?
Non-plussed
I agree religion can cause significant problems, this was part of the reason for my initial post. It was an attempt at a bit of honesty, in the hope that some other christians here might say, yes, hands, up we?re not all we claim. And that a few humanists might do likewise. You have come closest.
You are honest enough to recognise that you have no gods to blame and that humans are responsible for both good and bad. I can respect that point of view.
Where I struggle a little, and it is one of the reasons I am a christian, is that I see no ultimate escape from human badness in the process of critique and deliberate adjustment. Yes, I recognise the gains that have been made through time by the religious and the irreligious, but it seems to me that if humanity has capacity for good and bad, then we shall always have the bad with us, and sometimes, the bad is really bad.
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Original Pb,
I?m afraid you?re very much on a losing wicket about slavery. The facts are: it is sanctioned in the Bible and many thousands of Christians had slaves. Biblical Christianity kept slavery alive in the west by giving it an ethical respectability. As Dylan Dog suggests, leaders of the southern states, both political and religious, frequently cited the Bible in defence of slavery. Check out Reverends Alexander Campbell, Nathan Lord and Bishop John England as examples.
DD is also right about South Africa. The early Dutch, German and Huguenot settlers in South Africa were deeply religious. As Brian Bunting writes: ?The Bible was the fountain of their faith?. Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid were essentially spiritual principles. The Afrikaners believed that they were the elect, whereas the native Africans were, like the children of Ham, condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Dutch reformed churches were in the vanguard of racism in South Africa. They gave apartheid the stamp of moral approval by backing it to the hilt on the ground that it was God?s will. The mixing of races, according to the 1966 General Synod of the NGK (the largest of the churches) ?must be resisted with every resource as wrong and sinful?.
It was this narrow and crushing Puritanism that poisoned the minds of white South Africans for centuries. So, yes, Peter, people are influenced to do bad things by bad ideas. And puritanism is a bad idea that has greatly influenced Protestantism in Ulster for centuries, so much so that even as long ago as the 17th century, when Ulster Presbyterians attacked Cromwell?s Toleration Laws, John Milton?s ire was raised. What particularly annoyed him was that these ?blockish Presbyters? from ?a barbarous nook of Ireland? were daring to ?brand us with the extirpation of laws and liberties; things which they seem as little to understand as aught that belongs to good letters or humanity?. Has much changed in the intervening 350 years? If the Pope is still regarded as the ?anti-Christ?, you really do wonder how much progress has been made.
Nice people often have nasty minds because their thoughts have been corrupted by nasty ideologies. That arises partly from an excessive willingness to believe and share belief with others. Greater freethought and scepticism would greatly assist people in thinking more consistently with their better nature.
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Hi Brian
So all religious people only do bad things but all humanists do only good things?
Sorry, Brian but a primary school child could do better than that.
Anyway, on slavery, you havent engaged with anything I have said.
So here is some food for thought on the matter which William posted for a thread on this blog in March last year;-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2007/03/shibboleth_on_slavery.html
Shibboleth is to Will and Testament what The Stig is to Top Gear. He's a masked crusader who occasionally pipes up to do battle against hermeneuticial abuse and theological misunderstanding. This week, our very own biblical Stig has been exercised about some commenters' views on slavery and the Bible.
IS THE BIBLE PRO-SLAVERY?
One hesitates to even begin delving into this topic. It is one of those issues where one set of people assume that the bible is invariably dark, bizarre and oppressive whilst another set of people assume that the bible must invariably conform to the canons of modern western liberalism. The truth is somewhat more nuanced, and we can only trace some general contours of the issue here.
The background to the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, was one where all the major cultures practiced and endorsed slavery. Whether it be the Egyptians of the mid second millennium BC or the Romans of the first millennium AD, slavery was a norm within society. Ancient Israel was not an exception to this, and even a cursory glace within the pages of the OT demonstrates this point. The OT law codes - for example the section known as the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21 and following) - contain many laws regulating the keeping of slaves. One will look in vain for any text in the OT that simply and unequivocally condemns slavery, because the OT assumes slavery as a basic social norm.
In ancient Israel, the majority of slaves were actually Hebrew citizens who fell into debt and were forced to voluntarily enter into slavery on a time limited basis. Manumission was automatic after seven years or at other set times. The remainder of the slave populations seems to have been foreigners captured in war, which must have been a fairly insignificant number of people for most of the history of ancient Israel.
Scholars of the socio-economics of Ancient Israel note that if the lists of people recorded in Ezra are representative, the ratio of free people to slaves was about 5:1 , and that no part of the Israelite economy was dependant upon slave labour. It is assumed that most slaves were employed in non-skilled domestic labour.
Where the OT differs radically from the norms of the Ancient near East is that the good treatment of slaves is demanded and the human rights of slaves are upheld in many key OT passages. This was particularly true for Hebrew citizens who had temporarily become slaves, but many laws protecting the rights of foreign slaves are to be found in the OT. These include legal protections for foreign women who became slaves in Israel. See, for example, Exodus 21.20, 26, 27; Leviticus 19.20.
In conclusion, the OT does not denounce slavery as a social institution, but it does recognise slaves as human beings who were to be protected from abuse. So, whilst it may be far in advance of the practices of the Ancient world, it does not conform to modern sensibilities.
The New Testament has relatively little to say upon the issue of slavery. Most of the NT references are metaphorical, likening the relationship of Christians to their Lord as one of joyous, liberating slavery. This paradoxical language was apposite to its cultural milieu and does not imply an endorsement of slavery. Paul makes it clear that slave trading is abhorrent and places slave traders in the same category as murderers (1 Timothy 1.10 ? some versions say kidnappers, but kidnapping for purposes of slavery is intended).
Nevertheless, some readers of the NT are critical of the fact that there is no outright and whole-scale condemnation of slavery.
Paul wrote against a cultural setting that denied that slaves were actually full human beings, but rather just relatively worthless chattels. Paul writes so as to wholly undermine this belief system. Paul had to be somewhat circumspect in what he said, lest he be construed by the Romans as a dangerous social revolutionary, but his words were radical in their context. He does not call upon Christian slaves to rise up against their earthly masters, nor does he call upon Christian slave owners to set slaves free. Rather, Paul adopts the strategy of encouraging both to see one another as children of Christ and to respect and love one another for that reason. Paul gently pressurises Philemon to release Onesimus on the grounds that it was wrong for a Christian to keep another Christian as a slave.
Paul?s words had the desired effect, and the patristic writings record that most Christian slave owners abandoned the practice on the grounds that it was impossible to keep a fellow Christian in slavery. For this reason, it was common for slave owners in the recent past ? in 19th century America for example ? to deny slaves access to the New Testament or to anything other than bastardised forms of Christianity.
William Crawley
ENDS
Thanks Brian
PB
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PS slaves in the New Testament were primarily household servants with manual labour in that culture being done by casual labour often hired on a faily basis.
PB
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Original pb:
?So all religious people only do bad things but all humanists do only good things??
I certainly didn?t say that nor could I be rationally interpreted as saying it. But what I WILL say is that without religion MORE people would do MORE good things and FEWER bad things. Is that clear?
As for slavery, I think we have all heard your take on that before. It is historically inaccurate. The Christian church became the biggest slave owner in the Roman Empire. Popes kept slaves until the eighteenth century. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107-117) refused the request of Christian slaves to have their freedom purchased out of the common fund. Augustine (c. 354-430) taught that slavery was God's will and that Christianity did not make slaves free but made good slaves out of bad ones. (The City of God 19.5). Early in the 11th century Pope Benedict VIII condemned the children of priests to be slaves and Pope Clement did likewise to the whole population of Venice in 1309. Pope Paul III decreed slavery for all Englishmen who supported Henry VIII of England. Papal licenses were granted to the Kings of Portugal in the fifteenth century to conquer "heathen" countries and reduce their inhabitants to "everlasting slavery." As it says in Psalm 2: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance (as slaves), and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron."
Altogether, more than eighteen hundred years of Christianity supported the notion of slavery.
English North Americans embraced slavery because they were Christians, not in spite of it.
- Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century.
Slaves were often badly treated by their Christian owners. But at least you do admit AT LAST that slavery is sanctioned in the Bible. Haven?t you heard of the Ku Klux Klan? Read some of the slave stories. Here?s a couple from the American South. I can give you lots more:
Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
?In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting and there experienced religion. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was made a class leader and exhorter...
I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin whip upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote the passage of Scripture, "He who knoweth the master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." (Luke 12:47)?
I prayed for freedom twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs?.
Moses Roper,
Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper (1838)
?There are several circumstances which occurred on this estate while I was there, relative to other slaves, which it may be interesting to mention. Hardly a day ever passed without some one being flogged. To one of his female slaves he had given a dose of castor oil and salts together, as much as she could take; he then got a box, about six feet by two and a half, and one and a half feet deep; he put this slave under the box, and made the men fetch as many stones as they could get, and put them on the top of it; under this she was made to stay all night. I believe, that if he had given this slave one, he had given her three thousand lashes. Mr. Gooch was a member of a Baptist church. His slaves, thinking him a very bad sample of what a professing Christian ought to be, would not join the connection he belonged to, thinking they must be a very bad set of people; there were many of them members of the Methodist church. On Sunday, the slaves can only go to church at the will of their master, when he gives them a pass for the time they are to be out. If they are found by the patrol after the time to which their pass extends, they are severely flogged.?
When Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern Presbyterian Churcch issued this statement in 1864: ?We hesitate not to affirm that it is the peculiar mission of the Southern Church to conserve the institution of slavery, and to make it a blessing both to master and slave." The Church also insisted that it was "unscriptural and fanatical" to accept the dogma that slavery was inherently sinful: it was "one of the most pernicious heresies of modern times" .
So stop trying to justify the unjustifiable and rewrite history to suit your conscience, please!
And what about apartheid, Pb? You haven?t answered it. Do you deny that it was religiously as well as racially inspired? Do you deny that Afrikaner leaders, from the time of Kruger and even earlier, were nearly all Calvinist to the core and believed that apartheid fitted their religious creed? Perhaps you will be telling us that apartheid, like slavery, was 'a kind of social security system.
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PB!
"So all religious people only do bad things but all humanists do only good things?"
That was not what Brian said nor myself. We are simply pointing out the fact that a lot of Christians in the past supported slavery/racism and could quote the Bible chapter and verse to support their views. I made the point in my first post here that I was *NOT* saying that all Christains supported this view but as ever...
It is *you* PB you are seeing this in absolutes eg., all atheists bad and all Christians good. That is as much nonsense as your opening statement.
We are not criticising you PB only pointing out an historical fact.
And PB if you wish to point out articles by Will Crawley, check this one out...
ps. please note my comment at m4
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Ooops the link is...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2007/03/how_to_be_a_theological_racist.html
To reiterate PB I am delighted(and I am sure Brian too) that you find slavery abhorrent and racism too. We are simply pointing out that the Bible has been used(and still is in certain cases) to support slavery.
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PB - Brian
First PB, it should be obvious from a good deal of my posts that Brian and I disagree. However suggesting that he holds the view that, "all religious people only do bad things but all humanists do only good things?" is misleading. At the very least the 'all' and 'only' words are a misrepresentation. Brian has also said:
"Religion is not all bad, and certainly there are many individual believers doing good works." - Post 22
"Money corrupts, ideology corrupts power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). Religion is not the only source of malignity in the world, but nevertheless it is one of them." - Post 29
Does Brian like religion? I guess it's safe to say, probably not; Brian might even be happy with a resounding no, and on that point he differs for you and me. However, making the statement you did is 'only' going to loose you credibility.
Atheists and Christians do not disagree on everything and setting up false dichotomies is detrimental to society. I said on another thread that Christians are called to seek the peace of the city, this is something we can and should do with non-believers.
Brian, what you did say was, "that without religion MORE people would do MORE good things and FEWER bad things." post 58
This is interesting. Back in post 54 I said that I genuinely struggled to see the distinction between bad dogma and bad people. I'm still not sure I am clear. Surely if dogma is a human construct then bad dogma extends from bad people?
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petermorrow.
Ideology's ability to radically reorder a person's value priorities is what leads to the 'good person doing bad' scenario. Gods, souls, eternal punishment and glorious leaders can be made to seem so much more important than any mere mortal concern - protecting them above all else might result in the worst of outcomes for the best of intentions.
There were a couple of recent cases in the states where parents watched their children die slow, painful deaths without calling for a doctor because they are convinced that, if they prayed hard enough, Jesus would save them if that was his plan. I think it reasonable to suspect distorted values caused by wrong beliefs, rather than simply say these are bad people. The origin of these beliefs may also have been sincere, if extreme, interpretation rather than deliberate desire to do harm. Ideas can almost take on a life of their own, as a succession of people develop and extend an initial set of assumptions. There seems a greater danger of this the fewer chances there are to test the claims of a belief system.
I don't think we can completely escape from our ability to do great harm, but feel our best chances of preventing it is to fully understand the circumstances that bring such horrors about.
When looking at what Hitler was able to 'achieve', I don't view this only as the dangers of one lone madman, or some peculiarities of the Germans - it could happen anywhere given the wrong circumstances and points to how fragile our veneer of civilisation can be. On a recent edition of 'The Big Questions' someone claimed that the existence of a real, non-metaphorical devil was the 'only reasonable explanation' for the crimes of Hitler. As someone else pointed out on the show, such an appeal to external causes only reduces our chances of understanding what really led to these events and what checks and balances would help prevent a repeat.
Such horrors can happen without religion, Stalin managed it, but religion is no defence against it. Hitler used religious rhetoric, enlisted support of the church to gain power, built on centuries of Christian anti-Semitism, and had his plans carried out in a majority Christian population. This does seem to weaken the case for religion as an antidote to such dangers.
Religion adds particular risks as it encourages acceptance of undemonstrable claims, reinforces divisions, and resists predictable change. Deliberate human systems will not solve all problems, but should at least be easier to adjust. I do not know to what extent any system can protect us, but would prefer to have more ability to influence their development than is possible with religion.
For comparison, not as a proposed replacement, consider the scientific method. Science could easily have kept an authoritative structure, given the many big egos involved in its development. Instead it presumes that people make mistakes, scientists sometimes see what they want to see and maybe even cheat. The whole system is set up to encourage challenge and testing. New papers are checked by anonymous peers. After publication, others try to reproduce the claim, or find holes in the data. The fastest way to get a Noble prize is to supersede an accepted theory. By setting the system up in recognition of our faults it helps protect against them. This is a very artificial system that can be tough on the people involved but, because the expectations and benefits are clear, everyone co-operates.
We have moved from discussing the truth claims of religions to their utility. In this vein, I would hate to think that the only way that we can have functioning societies is by inventing lies to get us to behave. Some American neocons talked of needing a Great Myth in order to bind the nation - post cold-war this meant finding a new enemy so the population pulls together to face the external threat. This seems too cynical to me.
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Peter:
Bad dogma does not necessarily emanate from bad people. It may derive from:
FEAR
There is fear of the unkown, fear of death, illness, natural disasters, other people. 'Slaughter the Amalekites' may derive from the call for a pre-emptive strike, based on the fear that the Amalekites were trying to do the same to the Jews, or vice versa. Similarly, a call to attack Iraq may have derived from a fear that Iraq was a threat to the west (a mistaken idea, of course).
DESIRE FOR CERTAINTY
In this world of complexity, irrationality, chaos, chance, arbitrariness, etc, there is often a srong desire for something that will make sense of it. "I am the one and only true god, and all gods are false and must be destroyed" because 'they' are errors and lies and untruths must be crushed and destroyed.
DESIRE TO COMBAT 'EVIL'
All sources of evil must be wiped out. Witches are evil and must be burned, heretics likewise, and gays must be stoned to death.
ARROGANCE
we are the chosen ones, and others who are different are bad, or inferior or not deserving of equal rights: slaves, blacks, Catholics ('the pope' is the anti-christ') or Protestants (they don't have 'proper churches' - the pope).
Of course, the dogma originates with writers. Most of the people who readily accept the dogma do so for similar reasons to above but also because they are gullible and too readily obey 'authority' because it is written down in 'holy writ' or spoken by a figure 'in authority'.
Which brings us back to what I said before. We need less belief, more scepticism, more doubt and more questioning of authority, if we are to make a better world.
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Of course I fully accept that Brian did not use absolute terms in comparing the historical moral impact of religion and faith.
However he most certainly is arguing in favour of the generalisation that religion is a social evil.
However this is not sustainable.
For example, how many millions were killed by the athiestic regimes of the past century?
I dont think any historical faith incident can come even close to that.
So for a balanced view of the matter this has to be acknowledged.
Interested parties might also google the Clapham Sect to see the impact on all aspects of UK this society had in education, animal rights, slavery, education, penal reform, industrial health and safety etc etc.
It was a direct growth of the ministry of John Wesley, who is widely credited with saving England from the horrors of the French Revolution.
Regarding slavery Brian,
We seem to be at cross purposes. You are saying that many people who claimed to be Christians down through history supported slavery and argued for it from the bible.
No dispute there at all.
My argument is that if you dont take verses about slavery out of context to suit your argument, but instead look at the complete package of what it says, there really is no argument.
It is quite clear that the bible actually argues AGAINST slavery in the Christian church in the manner of a progressive internal church revolution.
This is the clear purpose of the Letter to Philemon and its presence in the canon.
It is also quite clear that the biblical perspective on slavery could NEVER have supported the kidnapping and commercial trade in slaves.
So you are quite correct in your historical analysis but completely incorrect in your understanding of the whole counsel of the bible.
You will note the passage above previously published by the BBC on this matter was by a biblical scholar and not William Crawley.
we might also ask the question as to who gave the most support to slavery down through history, people of nominal or no faith, or people of committed faith?
Did humanists or athiests not have a strong hand in the slave industry in history?
This seems to be a huge blind spot in this debate.
PB
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There's my sweet peab,
'we might also ask the question as to who gave the most support to slavery down through history, people of nominal or no faith, or people of committed faith?
Did humanists or athiests not have a strong hand in the slave industry in history?
This seems to be a huge blind spot in this debate.'
Peab, when countries like the European powerss and the US were dealing in slaves, the number of atheists would have been very low. Until Darwin made it clear that the coming about of life had nothing to do with any god(s), very few would have denied gods existence. So there would have been few humanists or atheists to do any slave trading.
Your post is classic peab-like. Come up with a thought that is unfounded, don't check anything by looking it up (heavens forbid), pose the question if your thought isn't true, and as long as others don't instantly provide evidence to the contrary (which you'd invariably ignore) basically assert it as being so. And if not asserting it 100% certain in this post yet, your follow-up posts undoubtedly would have done so.
Live with it peab, slavery was present for a long, long time under christianity, carried out by many, many christians.
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"we might also ask the question as to who gave the most support to slavery down through history, people of nominal or no faith, or people of committed faith?"
Those of a committed faith-that is what the evidence shows PB and guess what they were(according to them) 101% right that the Bible supports slavery/racism and quoted the Bible chapter and verse to support it. In the deep south of the USA they were hardly nominal, they were mostly Southern Baptists!
Incidentally a lot of the justification for slavery/racism in Christianity was based on the two creation myths in Genesis. In that darker skinned people were "pre-Adamite" created before real people and therefore "sub-human".
I am delighted PB that you find slavery/racism abhorrent, however many Bible-believers in the past(and some in the present would disagree).
BTW PB remember this passage?Deuteronomy 21:10-14 the kidnap, rape and forced slavery of foreign slaves?
Anyway what is an "atheistic regime"? strange since athiesm is not a philosphy, political point of view nor way of life?
Oh good to see that you do not deal in absolutes!
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DD - quote mining again, to use your phrase?
I dont pretend Deut 21 is easy to understand.
But this much is certain - it is clearly designed to stop Israelites raping women on the battle field.
Before they could take such women as wives they had to strip them of their beauty so they were not simply lusting after them.
Then they had to wait a month to decide whether they wanted them as wives.
If you shave all a women's hair and treat her as a human being for a full month before you take her as a wife - not a sexual plaything that is entirely different to raping women on the battlefield and leaving them there.
Jews did take other Jewish women for wives in similar manners.
So you see why this Jewish woman argues that Deut 21 is anti-rape legislation;-
http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/journal/vol1n1/v1n1elma.htm
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Errr no PB that is not an eg of quote mining, I simply gave the passage!
You have proved Brians point about religion PB, it can force otherwise good people to do believe evil.
If you cannot see what is wrong with kidnapping women(after killing their families), shaving their heads and using them as sex slaves then I truly pity you.
In any case in the 19th Centuries the main supporters of the slave trade were those from the Bible-believing tradition-the fundamentalists who believed in the inerrant, unchanging Bible and they were 101% right!(that is not to say that I believe they were right).
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Pb:
Hitler, of course, was not an atheist but a believer in 'positive' Christianity. The regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were not cruel because of atheism but because of the positive ideologies which they embraced. Look at the faces of Chinese boys adoring Chairman Mao as they recite the Little Red Book. This has absolutely nothing to do with atheism, which is negative and sceptical, and everything to do with their totalitarian notions of the 'good' society that united the people and dehumanised inferior or uncooperative others or outsiders.
Which again proves my point: one of the greatest threats to humanity is a totalitarian ideology, whether religious or political: the tragedy of belief to which I referred.
If these 'regimes' had been purely atheistic, then they would have been far more humane.
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Hi Brian
On the point of self-examination I raised earlier in response to the theme of this thread, is there anything questionable about atheism?
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Peter:
Of course, much depends on definitions of terms like 'atheism'.
I would make two points. First, the atheism which says that there is definitely no prime mover/force is too dogmatic. I don't think we know the answer to that question.
We have to be agnostic in this sense. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion states that, like Einstein, he is religious in that he is aware there may be things of beauty and sublimity that our mind cannot (currently) grasp.
Second, atheism is negative and therefore by itself is a poor guide to ethics and morality. We do need a positive philosophy, but in my view it should be liberal, flexible, provisional, tolerant, open and democratic, not rigid or all-embracing. It should cherish freedom of opinion and diversity.
In other words, it should be 'humanist'.
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Brian
Would it be fair to suggest that by humanist you mean, that which is best for humanity?
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Peter,
Yes, but that is a very loose phrase open to multifarious interpretations. Christians believe that Christianity is what is best for humanity; Muslims believe that Islam is; Adolf Hitler thought that Nazism was.
Humanism stresses 'humane values' such as love, kindness, freedom, equality, reason, tolerance, dignity democracy. It is not a censorious, oppressive or restrictive philosophy. In other words, 'what is best for humanity' is what brings out the best qualities in humanity.
I have said before that the Christian message of love is a good one. It is a pity that:
(a) It is mixed up with other elements that are less loving, much of which is in the Old Testament.
(b) It is a dogma as well as an ethic. "Believe in me or else..." etc.
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Most of what I could say has already been said.
One minor quibble. While Southern Baptists often supported slavery, one of the most vocal theological defenders of slavery was a Calvinistic Presbyterian, Robert Louis Dabney. He's a major influence on neo-Confederates and Reconstructionists/Dominionists to this day. (I think there was someone who used to comment on this blog who quoted him several times in the past...)
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DD
The first point you need to recognise is that this law was a major step forward in the nations at this time, where rape on the battle field was normal.
The second that you need to remember is that this is not endorsed conduct for those under the new testament. Galations, Romans, Hebrews.
The third is that you need to demonstrate what the moral standard is against which you are measuring; this law undoubtedly stopped much injustice and suffering in its day.
You argued that Deut 21 endorses
Kidnap rape and forced slavery of foriegn women.
But asking a tenative question is not the same as demonstrating your point to be true.
I agree that kidnap rape and forced slavery is wrong. However I believe that forced slavery as an alternative to prison is another matter.
We also need to be careful in that when you speak of slavery you mean people kidnapped to be treated and kept as animals and used for degrading work. But in the OT law these were people who volunteered for social security, or were working off debt or criminal offences or were POWs. The vast majority were Jews who were freed after seven years and set up in business by law at their masters cost.
There were mainly household servants and had a range of legal rights to protect their health and safety.
But if you want to argue that the OT advocates passage endorses rape you would have to take all the legal passages on those matters into account too, otherwise you are taking a verse out of context on a pretext.
For example, Exodus and Deut have other passages protecting women from rape which I would think could not reasonably be isolated from this passage.
Does this passage Deut 21 therefore endorse sex with women against their will.
It is certainly not explicit in the passage.
There is also no suggestion that these women would be "sex slaves" if the process was completed they were wives with full legal rights as such.
You might start by reading the scholarly article I referred you to by a Jewish women in order to add some depth to your understanding.
PB
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It is certainly not explicit in the passage... esp when taken in context with the rest of the standard anti- rape legislation.
PB
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Pb:
Trying to argue that the Bible does not fully endorse slavery is like trying to argue that Adolf Hitler didn't fully endorse anti-semitism in Mein Kampf! And we know what that led to...
Many fully fledged Christians interpreted it as sanctioning slavery. If it didn't, then obviously they didn't understand their Bible or it wasn't very clear on the subject.
"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery" - Rev Alexander Campbell.
It seems to me that you are arguing that all those thousands of Christians for over a thousand years who had slaves and treated them badly misunderstood the Bible. Why wasn't it written more clearly, then. Does God like ambiguity. Does he not mind that he may be interpreted to mean the opposite of what he intends?
Oh, dear!
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DD
Can I qualify on Deut 21?
I think it is possible this passage might allow sex with a woman against her will, but I dont think you or I are qualified to comment here and now.
Primarily because there is so much other anti-rape legsilsaiton in the bible that cannot be easily divorced from this passage just like that.
But I am firmly stating that this legislation was introduced to stop battlefield rapes I would challenge you to find any other nation with such human rights at this time.
Brian
I never said the bible did not fully endorse slavery.
I said it deliberately phased it out.
I also said that your definition of slavery was radicallly different to that in the OT, so we are talking apples and oranges, if there is no qualification.
To underline the point;-
1 Tim:10
8 But we know that the law is good if someone uses it lawfully. 9 We also know that the law is not made for good people but for those who are against the law and for those who refuse to follow it. It is for people who are against God and are sinful, who are unholy and ungodly, who kill their fathers and mothers, who murder, 10 who take part in sexual sins, who have sexual relations with people of the same sex, ***WHO SELL SLAVES***, who tell lies, who speak falsely, and who do anything against the true teaching of God.11 That teaching is part of the Good News of the blessed God that he gave me to tell.
PB
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Pb:
It is the liberal and secular state and societies, not the Bible, which we have to thank for ending slavery. Also, it is liberal and secular state and societies, not the churches, which stand as the guarantor of freedom and human rights. The truth is that human rights were and are being achieved today not because of the Bible but in spite of it.
Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Southern Confederacy in the USA stated: "It (slavery) was established by decree of Almighty God and is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments from Genesis to Revelation". He was right. Here is a list of references, some of which you have twisted to suit your own conscience (e.g. Deut.):
Exodus: 21:4, 7-9
Lev: 25:44-46
Deut: 15:11-17
Proverbs: 29:19
Joel: 3:8
Matt: 10:24-25
Luke: 12: 46-47
Luke 19:11-27
John: 13:16
1 Corinthians: 12:13
Galatians: 3:28
Ephesians: 6:5
Colossians: 3:11, 16
1 Timothy: 6:1-2
Titus: 2:9-10
1 Peter: 2:18
A couple of comments from above.
"When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money."
? Exodus 21:20-21
So, not only does the Bible explicitly allow beating your slaves but it also allows you to beat them to death, just as long as the slave does not immediately expire from the beating but lingers for a few days before dying. Pretty nasty, eh?
Now turn to this passage in the New Testament:
"The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes".
? Luke 12:46-47
Here Jesus works slavery into a parable as if it were the most natural thing in the world, favourably comparing God to a slaveholder who beats his slaves for not obeying him.
You talk about the meaning of the term 'slave'. It means someone who is bound in servitude as the property of another, or who is treated as subservient to another and made to work 'as a slave' on their behalf. Under these definitions, slavery is definitely sanctioned in the Bible. There?s no earthly point in denying it.
And let us not forget that in Genesis 3:16, as a result of the 'Fall', the wife is to be henceforth ruled over by her husband, thus relegating women to the status of a slave ? precisely how they were treated, by and large, for most of the next 2,000 years of Christendom ? and sanctioned by the Bible.
Now, what about racism in South Africa. Come on, tell us that the Christian racists there also sadly misintepreted Holy Writ. There's an awful of misinterpretation of the sacred text by Christians over the two millennia. Have they sorted out the true meaning yet?
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I posted the following on the Expelled thread but PB wanted it copied here. Happy to oblige.
I found your posts attempting to justify biblical kidnap and rape to be truly appalling.
Even you must see that something is wrong when in order to justify despicable moral instruction in your holy texts you are reduced to claiming it as a bit better than what went before and now superseded.
Humans improve their standards by small degrees, gods are meant to do better.
And you think our legal system is "of course" derived from the morality of this era?
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PB
I am truly shaking my head in disbelief in your attempts to try to justify the kidnap(after the murder of her family), forced subjugation and rape. You state it was to stop battlefield rapes and you ask you corroborating testimony from other cultures!? That's pretty disgusting PB, but the thing is PB I don't think you are a bad person-never did but I think you are a great example of what Steven Weinberg said: "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things- that takes religion".
In any case PB, it was your Bible-believing buddies who supported slavery.
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DD
In summary,
I think my best take on Deut 21 at present is this.
It was normal practise for societies in this area at this time to rape women at will on the battlefield.
This regulation in the law was clearly aimed at stopping this by Israelites.
Anyone who wished to take such a woman FOR A WIFE had to strip her of her physical beauty and care for her for a month before made her his wife.
This put the brakes on battlefield spur of the moment lust/rape.
The female Jewish scholar quoted above argues this is anti-rape legislation.
Can anyone answer WHY?
It does not advocate the procedure, it regulates it.
Was this law a social evil for the time and place it was given? Absolutely not - on the contrary it was a great leap forward in human rights for the region and epoch.
There remains the question (for me) as to whether Deut 21 would have been required to have been obeyed in conjunction with other anti-rape legislation in the OT which would seem more in common with modern sentiment - but what foundation is there for that?
Are you so civilised today DD, Brian, Non-plussed when you support dicing up unborn babies in the womb or killing elderly people? Or perhaps none of you do????
Why did God allow Deut 21? He was constantly tempted to destroy Israel because of their disobedience and I (and Matthew Henry) think he thought this was the best he could achieve with the Israelites at this time. Christ says God allowed very lax divorce in the OT "because of the hardness of their hearts" but that this was rescinded under Him. In the OT men could divorce women very easily but Christ condemned this as an abuse of the law and called for marriage to be permanent, save for adultery etc. So it is clear God saw some OT law as very suspect.
The church is advised not to follow OT law in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews BTW. The NT in its own right does however make clear conduct and practises that are and are not acceptable in the church, some of which does echo OT law.
You will notice in Will's entry on slavery quoted above, the early Patristic writings showed that Paul's writings were largely successful in removing slavery from the early church.
This does not challenge the fact that many people later used the bible to justify a different type of slavery. But people like John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, would be one example of an unbeliever who was heavily involved too
To lay the blame fully at the door of the church is too simplistic, especially as the church (Wilberforce and Wesley) overcame it.
Brian -
you are completely missing the point.
Please name the humanists who ended slavery in the UK and invented the freedom of the press.
I put my money on Wilberforce and William III, two men who professed belief in Christ.
The role of the media in British society began under legal reform with William III.
I am sorry but, the ten commandments are most certainly the basis for UK law.
This is historical fact. No argument.
Brian you just keep on talking and talking and dont listen to a word.
The passages you quote are quite valid but you are willfully refusing to understand what all the passages together actually say.
This is actually what fundamentalists do!!!
Can you acknowledge that 1 Tim forbids commercial slave trading and kidnapping, for example?
If anyone wants an objective OVERVIEW on slavery on the bible, read the article posted by William Crawley on behalf of a scholar in post 56.
The passage you quoted about beating slaves resolved that anyone who beats a slave to immediate death will pay for murder.
If the slave died days later it is legally defined as manslaughter because it is presumed that the owner did not intend to kill his slave.
This is NOT an intruction to beat all slaves to within an inch of their life, but highlights the defence of the owner that he is unlikely to want to kill the slave as he would be costing himself money. It is a fair point by any standard.
In another passage, if the owner knocks a slaves tooth out the slave walks free etc etc.
All the passages are there Brian but only in an analysis such as post 56 or post 52.
You are plucking passages out at random which are quite valid but you are willfully refusing any attempt to understand the whole.
PLEASE CAN YOU PROVIDE A LIST OF HUMANISTS FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODS TO SEE WHAT THEY WERE DOING TO IMPROVE THE LOT OF SLAVES;-
1) The time of ancient Israel (the Jewish law broke new ground in their rights).
2) The time of Paul in the Roman Empire (Paul taught the church that slaves were equal to their masters, trading in slaves would exclude one from heaven and he promoted a case study in freeing a slave, into the NT canon ie the Letter to Phileom).
3) The time of Wilberforce who was backed by John Wesley and the Quakers in abolishing slavery in the British Empire. Wilberforce was also backed by hymn writer John Newton.
4) Abe Lincoln who could not speak highly enough of the bible, also fought for the freedom of slaves.
5) Today, Steve Chalke is heading up Stop the Traffik, and international coalition against trafficking. The Salvation Army had a high profile campaign against sex slavery in Germany during the world cup. My church is active on the ground in tackling trafficking in our own community.
Please all of you supply the athiest heroes who have made any difference in these epochs in fighting for slaves???
Brian please give everyone your long list of athiests who were fighting for slave rights today?
Does this list of 4 epochs demonstrate religion as a social evil Brian?
Waken up please...
PB
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PS just to repeat Brian, the passage about beating slaves was not an instruction to beat slaves but an assurance that anyone who killed a slave would pay for either murder or manslaughter.
Was that a social evil at that time do you think Brian?
PB
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I just posted this on another thread but thought it should be copied here too.
PB
Non-plussed
Listen very carefully.
Enc Britannica quotation: "...while Christian emperors continued to uphold the legality of slavery, the Christian church accepted slaves as equals, admitted them to its ceremonies, and regarded the granting of freedom to slaves as a virtuous, if not obligatory, act.
"This moral pressure led over several hundred years to the gradual disappearance of slavery in Europe."
I have a bone or two to pick.
The first one is how is it you only accept reality when proven by [Christ's] scientific method and yet all of a sudden you have started delivering me moral absolutes about rape and kidap?
Where do these values come from? What authority have you for them? How does the scientific method demonstrate that these are valid?
I see your worldview unravelling, but of course, we had already established that by definition it could never have integrity because it is explicitly founded on chance and chaos.
The second is that you are jumping much too quick to proclaim a victory about what the bible says about slavery.
The question on that thread is "Is religion a social evil?"
I have clearly demontrated that both OT law and NT teaching were constantly improving the lot of slaves, in comparison to the surrounding cultures, to the point of freedom, as demonstrated by the Enc Britt Quote above.
IN all epochs these teachings were groundbreaking moral goods not evils, compared to the prevailing culture.
I am not saying *I* approve of Deut 21 which regulates the taking of wives in war, but I am saying, at the time Deut 21 was not a social evil but a social good, because it restricted and controlled the practise in a way that I understand was head and shoulders above rival nations.
I know this may be obvious but I am going to state it anyway.
Judeo-Christian faith can never be held responsible for creating slavery.
Slavery predated judiaism and was and is widespread across the globe today.
The staw man insinuated by the athiests here, by default, is that judeo Christian faith invented perpetuated, monopolised and still defends the worst types of slavery.
In reality I think it would be more accurate to argue that slavery thrived IN SPITE of the Christian faith, based on the evidence presented.
William Crawley's preferred scholar on the matter (In is religions a social evil thread) says Paul's teachings all but removed slavery from the early church.
This is echoed in the Enc Brit, which also gives Paul the credit for removing slavery from Europe!!!!
So is the Christian teaching on slavery a social evil or not non-plussed.
Please give us all a clear answer!
;-)
Why did God create imperfect law? If you actually read the NT it is clear. Hebrews and Galations and Romans teach that the law was "a schoolmaster to point men to Christ" and that the progressive old and new covenants were a gradual revelation to point to the perfection in Christ and to demonstrate that the law could never perfect man. There is no news, mystery or controversy in this. It is very, very, basic stuff.
I can trumpet the 10 commandments because they are proven to work. Just because the NT church is not obliged to keep all OT law that does not mean it is of no value.
I think it is logical to argue that if the NT phased out OT slavery it might be logical to take its lead on that without too much thought.
I have also listed the activities of Christians in campaigning for slaves through numerous epochs on that thread and asked you what humanists were doing at each stage.
In fact, what are humanists doing today about slavery/trafficking?
I will not hold my breath.
I only listed 7 of the commandments due to time pressures (as I clearly stated) and as an illustration.... I think I have made the point clearly enough with only 7 mind.
I could go on...
If you were to answer all 11 of my points in post 287 I might consider your request genuine. You could add a 12th, what happens to your personality/consciousness after you die?
The fact that "none of the 7 points I raised needed God to figure them out" is very very lame for you non-plussed.
It seems to show serious desperation.
It is very easy to say how obvious they are after you have benefited from a legal system hundreds of years old that is based on them... Benefit of hindsight etc..
I am still waiting for the strictly Godless authority from which you would base the legal system of your utopia, and preferably some precedent to show it actually worked at some time or place.
All the work to be done is on your side and there is plenty of it, so I will let you go on.
I take it from your comment that this has been "a very productive conversation" that you felt you made - and needed to - make up a lot of lost ground in our debate with me.
I accept the compliment.
PB
Enc Britannica quotation: "while Christian emperors continued to uphold the legality of slavery, the Christian church accepted slaves as equals, admitted them to its ceremonies, and regarded the granting of freedom to slaves as a virtuous, if not obligatory, act. Thismoral pressure led over several hundred years to the gradual disappearance of slavery in Europe."
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The bottom line is PB that you are trying to justify the disgusting-and we are meant to be "moral-less".
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Brian - Non-plussed
I can think of a number of NI people who have been/are active in tackling slavery/trafficking today in Northern Ireland.
Former MLA Esmond Birnie and David Simpson MP, both committed Christians,
Sister Mahony, who works on the streets around city hall;
Mr Carlin of the Catholic Anti-Slavery Network;
Rev Rebbeca Dudley, whose groundbreaking research on the matter was taken in evidence by the NI Affairs Committee and headed up this matter with the Human Rights Commission.
I would be very interested to hear what the NI humanists have been doing on this matter in the same period???
William Crawley rebuked you all for being obsessed with attacking religion and suggested you get some positive ideas. The best Mr Klaver could think of was giving Dawkins books to MLAs.
So...
If many of the leading lights in NI regarding slavery/trafficking are openly people of faith, is their faith then a social evil???
I would be very interested to hear Brian explain how they might do an even better job without their faith.
The best place he could start is by showing what the NI humanist clubs in NI have been doing on this in recent years as they obviously havent had the blinkers of religion to hinder their moral excellence and political activity.
Im all ears Brian.
But from someone who argues in favour of incest I will not expect much sense....
PB
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Pb:
Your interpretation of Exodus 21 is nonsense. Why can?t you accept that the Bible was written in a primitive, barbaric age and as such reflects the primitive, barbaric attitudes of that age? No sensible interpretation can deny such things without doing violence to the text itself, and nothing can be criticised as having been ?taken out of context?. The bee in your bonnet to absolve the Bible from support for slavery is really an entirely futile endeavour. The God of the Old Testament is a cruel God, and expects his people to be cruel, as frequent references to the treatment of women, non-Israeli tribes and even the Israelites themselves (Abraham?s sacrifice, the slaughter of the Mideanite women and children, the flood, Jephthah burning his daughter alive as a sacrificial offering for victory, etc) make abundantly clear. Indeed, God frequently orders his people to commit genocide. You seem to imagine that God, who treats Israel?s enemies and women so badly, not to mention the Israelites themselves at times, wants everybody to treat slaves more humanely! Now that would be a real twist in the tale.
At times, you seem to believe that the Bible was ghost-written by God and its code of ethics is ?objective?. But this implies that whatever it says about slavery is God?s unchanging word. So the dissident Christians who campaigned to abolish it were misguided and all the millions of mainstream white Christians who supported it and practised it were therefore correct all along! Why do you support those Christians who worked to abolish slavery if the unerring Bible sanctions it?
At other points (its code was ?a great leap forward for its time?), you seem to imply that morality is relative and that the Bible was an ancient document, though a little advanced for that era. Again, ?so it is clear God saw some OT law as very suspect?. Obviously, the laws you don?t like were not God?s laws. Talk about having your cake and eating it!
A good example of your double standards is the Biblical condemnation of homosexuality. This is taken literally. Thus Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." In other words, homosexuality is wrong. Now take Leviticus 25:44: "And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have - from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves". In other words, you can buy slaves so long as they are from neighbouring nations. If you use Leviticus to justify a condemnation of homosexuals, then I?m afraid you are a supporter of slavery. But, of course, slavery is a lost cause, at least in the UK, whereas gays are still treated unfairly, so they probably deserve it.
Your interpretation of Exodus 21:20-21 is bizarre. Let us take the whole chapter, where the guidelines for the buying, selling and treatment of slaves is given. God says in verse 4 that if a male slave marries, his wife and children shall remain with the master when the slave departs because technically speaking they belong to the master. That?s a bit cruel, is it not, Pb? If the slave is imprudent enough to protest because he loves his wife and children and wants to stay on, the consequences can be pretty drastic. In verse 6 the master is directed to "Bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever". Phew! Pretty savage, eh? In 7-9 God even instructs men how they are to go about selling their own daughters into slavery. In 20-21, to repeat, God clearly says that if the master beats a slave to death, the master shall be punished. If, however, the severely beaten slave lingers on for a day or two, the master is off the hook. Then God says in 28-32 that if an ox gores a slave, the ox's owner shall give the slave master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned to death. Poor thing! Obviously, God is not kind to oxen.
The NT is no better than the OT. 1 Tim. 6:1-2 ?Let slaves regard their masters as worthy of all honour." Matthew 10:24 and John 13:16 remind us that slaves are never better than their masters. In Titus 2:9-10 slaves are ordered to ?be submissive to your master and give satisfaction in every respect". Also look at Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 which say, ?Slaves obey your master." Of the venerated Ten Commandments to which you refer, numbers four and ten recognise and therefore give tacit approval to slavery.
Peter, Jesus' favourite disciple, directs slaves to obey and fear their master without question, even though he may be cruel and unjust (1 Peter 2:18). This directive is repeated in Ephesians 6:5. In Exodus 21:26-27 and Proverbs 29:19 God tells the masters how to punish their slaves.
The early Christians supported slavery. John Chrysostom wrote: ?The slave should be resigned to his lot, in obeying his master he is obeying God?. St Augustine wrote: ?Slavery is now penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance?.
In the 18th century Edmund Gibson, Anglican Bishop in London, made it clear that Christianity freed us from the slavery of sin, not from earthly and physical slavery: ?The freedom which Christianity gives, is a freedom from the bondage of sin and Satan, and from the dominion of men's lusts and passions and inordinate desires; but as to their outward condition, whatever that was before, whether bond or free, their being baptised, and becoming Christians, makes no manner of change in it?.
Christian support for slavery was often based upon interpretation of passages which might be accurate or inaccurate but, as I have already stated, the ambiguity allows for it. Take this example. We read in Genesis 9 that Noah's son Ham comes upon him sleeping off a drinking binge and sees his father naked. Instead of covering him, he runs and tells his brothers. Shem and Japheth, the ?good? brothers, return and cover their father. In retaliation for Ham's ?sinful act? of seeing his father nude, Noah puts a curse on his grandson (Ham's son) Canaan: ?Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers" (Gen 9:25). Over time, this curse came to be interpreted that Ham was literally ?burnt?, and that all his descendants had black skin, marking them as slaves with a convenient colour-coded label for subservience.
Some of those in the vanguard of the abolition of slavery were religious, and some were not. The Christian supporters of abolition in the 18th and early 19th centuries were in a distinct minority of Christians. The Quakers were generally regarded as hopelessly naive in their opposition to slavery by most other Christians.
The agnostics and atheists who supported freedom and human rights were the majority of atheists and agnostics. You have to accept that until very recently few prominent people have openly declared themselves as non-believers. This is especially true of MPs. Many of the known figures were first and foremost writers. Human rights had their roots in the 18th century Enlightenment and early 19th century reformers who were all atheists, agnostics or deists: in France, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, D?Holbach; in America most of the Founding Fathers, like Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin; in the UK, Hume, Bentham, Mill.
Atheists/agnostics who have worked on behalf of human rights in the modern era are too numerous to list in full. Here?s a sample:
Graham Allen MP, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tariq Ali, Shulamit Aloni, Baba Amte, Dan Barker, Lord Birt, Noam Chomsky, Nick Clegg MP, Robin Cook, Andrew Copson, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Baron Desai, Frank Dobson MP, Albert Einstein, Barbara Ehrenreich, Oriana Fallaci, Robert Fisk, Baroness Flather, Michael Foot, Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Nadine Gordimer, Mikhail Gorbachev, Germaine Greer, Roy Hattersley, Christopher Hitchens, Lionel Jospin, Ludovic Kennedy, Neil Kinnock, Gladys Kinnock, Wujud Lafti, Richard Leakey, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Miller, Mo Mowlam, Taslima Nasrin, Pandit Nehru, Conor Cruise O?Brien, Harold Pinter, Mary Robinson, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Bertrand Russell, Brian Sedgemore MP, George Soros, Baroness Turner, Arnold Wesker.
I am still waiting for your response on Christian racism in South Africa.
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DD
what is your moral standard you judge from?
if Godlessness is so modern - it isnt - then you have no authority or evidence that your ideas can mould a good society.
Israel was a very small nation in a region where battlefield rape was normal.
So why do you pick Israel out for condemnation for taking steps to improve the rights of women during battle?
Why not condemn all the other nations which thoughjt that battelfielf rape was fine?
Israel's law was clearly a social good in that time because it broke new ground in the region in outlawing battlefield rapes.
PB
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Deut 21 DOES NOT LEGALISE ENFORCED MARRIAGE OR RAPE - CLAIM.
I did say previously that I did not actually see any explicit endorsement of this as enforced marriage or rape in this passage.
This chap appears to be picking up on this.
worth a read.
http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Deuteronomy_21:10
?...the Jews say that if she refused, and continued obstinate in idolatry, he must not marry her.? -Henry
1. It is all too infrequently recognized that this section of Deuteronomy actually represents the most humane extant law for the treatment of women and girls during warfare in the entire history of the ancient Near East. Rape of captive women by conquerors has been the inevitable consequence of military action throughout history. Deuteronomy makes it quite clear that such treatment of women ?even enemy women- was forbidden. The Mosaic legislation not only precluded soldiers acting on impulsive sexual desires on the battlefield, it specifically precluded selling captive women as slaves (no ?sex-slaves? here!). The only condition under which an Israelite soldier was allowed to have relations with a captive woman was that she be made a proselyte (which required her agreement) and that she be made a wife with all the rights and privileges accorded to any other Israelite wife. The couple, man and woman, were subject to all of the laws pertaining to Israelite marriage.
2. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 as Anti-Rape Legislation. No intercourse was permitted until and unless all the requirements and solemn rites were performed by both parties. Desire was not enough to legitimate intercourse with a captive female; there must be a willingness to allow her to become a part of one?s household and accord her all of the rights which belonged to a naturally-born Jew. Marriage could only take place after a period of mourning (the same mourning period pertained to Israel generally; cf. Num 20:29; Deut 34:8) . She was to be treated with humanity and sensitivity and could not be treated as a slave. Many ancient Rabbis maintained that the shaving of her head functioned not only as the standard purification rite accompanying freely chosen conversion, but also to make the captive woman appear less attractive, resembling a gourd or pumpkin shell, and this in his own house so that he would see her frequently (cf. Midrash Halakhah; Midrash Tannaim, Midrash Hagadol, bYevamot 48aff; Rashi; Maimonides, Toldoth Adam, and Torah Tmimah). If the marriage took place, it would only do so after a period of sober consideration and a willingness to make the same commitment which pertained to marriages generally.
3. Neither marriage nor conversion was forced. Israelites were prohibited from marrying any foreign woman, captive or not, unless she willingly underwent ritual purification by a solemn rite. The shaving of the head was specifically just such a rite (e.g. Num 8:7, etc.). The Midrash Hagadol stated that if the captive female did not wish to convert initially she was to be given twelve months to think it over. If she did not wish to become a proselyte, she faced the choice of living as a resident alien (non Jewish, but required to live according to the standards which pertained to Noah before the covenant Abraham or Moses; according to Midrash Hagadol if these standards were repudiated she would be killed, although it is apparent from Deuteronomy that if she had no place in Israel she was free to go: "you shall let her go wherever she wishes"). It is frequently considered inconceivable that a captive woman might actually view her conquerors in a positive light; the manner in which women and children were often -not just sometimes- treated in the ancient world, even by their parents, dispels this uncritical assumption.
ENDS
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Brian
I am asking who from your group of humanists in NI have been working against trafficking.
I await an answer.
PB
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Enc Britannica quotation:
"while Christian emperors continued to uphold the legality of slavery, the Christian church accepted slaves as equals, admitted them to its ceremonies, and regarded the granting of freedom to slaves as a virtuous, if not obligatory, act. Thismoral pressure led over several hundred years to the gradual disappearance of slavery in Europe."
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Brian
On the radio recently you argued in favour of incest.
Is this a social evil?
How would you protect children from being groomed by their father for sex?
PB
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Brian
Have you even read post 56?
PB
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to answer your question on South Africa, of course I would be strongly against this.
Paul and John teach the equality of all tribes before God.
But South Africa does not discredit God any more than joyriders discredit cars or napalm discredits science.
would you mind please...
What is your verdict on post 56 and the enc britt quote about Christianity and slavery, post 93?
Thanks
PB
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Pb:
Humanists in NI are always working for human rights. Indeed, it is a major humanist area. We have campaigned for children's rights, women's rights, ethnic minorities, terminally ill, gays, migrant workers, and modern forms of slavery in the Third World, either as members of a humanist organisation or as members of other organisations such as Amnesty, Oxfam, peace movement, membership of political parties. If we had the resources that some Christian organisations had, we would certainly do more.
Last year, the magazine that is now Humanism Ireland included several articles on slavery, past and present. It included one on the Ulster Christians who were campaigning for abolition in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The article pointed out that they were tapping into a tradition of democracy and anti-slavery that went back to the secular Enlightenment of the early 18th century.
You seem obsessed with a narrow concept of slavery. Perhaps you could define it. Is not the denial of the rights of many of those groups above not a form of slavery?
we will to differ on the Bible and slavery. I think there is ample evidence that the Bible approved of slavery. Do you think it disapproved? Does it condemn slavery anywhere? And if it doesn't, then you have to admit that the books included in it were fallible documents of their time.
Here's a bit from the the website Religious Tolerance:
"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts". Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.
"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral". Rev. Alexander Campbell
"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example". Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina
"The hope of civilization itself hangs on the defeat of Negro suffrage". A statement by a prominent 19th-century southern Presbyterian pastor, cited by Rev. Jack Rogers, moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
"The doom of Ham has been branded on the form and features of his African descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined". United States Senator James Henry Hammond.
Quotation from the 21st century:
"If we apply sola scriptura to slavery, I'm afraid the abolitionists are on relatively weak ground. Nowhere is slavery in the Bible lambasted as an oppressive and evil institution". Vaughn Roste, United Church of Canada staff.
Overview:
The quotation by Jefferson Davis, listed above, reflected the beliefs of many Americans in the 19th century. Slavery was seen as having been 'sanctioned in the Bible'. They argued that:
Biblical passages recognized, controlled, and regulated the practice.
The Bible permitted owners to beat their slaves severely, even to the point of killing them. However, as long as the slave lingered longer than 24 hours before dying of the abuse, the owner was not regarded as having committed a crime, because -- after all -- the slave was his property.
Paul had every opportunity to write in one of his Epistles that human slavery -- the owning of one person as a piece of property by another -- is profoundly evil. His letter to Philemon would have been an ideal opportunity to vilify slavery. But he wrote not one word of criticism.
Jesus could have condemned the practice. He might have done so. But there is no record of him having said anything negative about the institution".
Now what those Christian racists and apartheid in south Africa?
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Pb:
In the Bible Adam and Eve were the two first humans. Initially they had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain slew Able. Then in Genesis 4:17 a wife of Cain suddenly appears from nowhere. Who she was and from where she came is not mentioned: "And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and bare Enoch".
If this woman was not a daughter of Adam and Eve, then they were not the only people originally created. If she was a daughter, then Cain had incest with his sister.
Adam and Eve later had other sons and daughters: first of all, Seth (130 years later!) and then unnamed others for the next 800 years! Presumably there was a fair amount of incest going on during these centuries. If Enoch, the son of Cain, had a sexual relationship with one of Adam and Eve's daughters, the sister of Cain, that would have been incest with an aunt. In any case, it is difficult for a Bible literalist to keep incest out of this story.
Perhaps you can tell us how the 930 years of Adam managed to remain an incest-free zone. If incest is a 'social evil', then the Bible story promotes a social evil because it implies that the human race was built upon it.
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Pb:
We can all indulge in multiple posts and bombard the opposition.
Your attempts to absolve the Bible from immorality are ridiculous and self-defeating. You are dealing with a collection of documents that are a mishmash of history, myth, prophecy, poetry, parable and superstition. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, savagery and tenderness are inextricably bound up in its pages.
It offers 2 contradictory stories of creation in Genesis: 1 and 2.
Many of the people and events it relates are unsupported by external evidence.
Many of the stories can be found in the myths and legends of other cultures (creation, flood etc).
It contradicts science: ?the earth is set firmly in place and cannot be moved? (Psalm 93) etc.
The Song of Songs is a collection of erotic poetry.
The Book of Jonah questions the very practice of prophecy which is central to the OT.
Leviticus and Deuteronomy contradict each other.
The book of Ecclesiastes seems to have slipped in by mistake since it seems to reject life after death and man?s special place in creation.
The cruelties that the Bible claims God ordered, approved or committed make the book unacceptable to those who apply modern standards of morality, justice and humaneness.
A belief in Holy War was common to all Semites at the time and the story of Joshua tells us about one. Joshua put everyone to death at Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, etc, as ordered by God.
The bible is anti-women from start to finish.
It supports slavery (despite your protests to the contrary).
The OT is contradicted by the NT which preaches peace (largely).
The Gospels offer contradictory accounts of the birth of Jesus, the ancestry of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus.
Of course, there is no single book called the Bible. Instead there a`re collections of writings by up to 40 different authors spanning a thousand years. ?The Holy Bible? is in fact a myth.
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Pb;
Your post 96 is inane. the thread is: Is religion a social evil, as the survey answers suggest? The question here is: was apartheid bolstered by religion? I say yes.
So does Dylan Dog. Look at the various statements in support of it by the Dutch Reformed Churches, for example. Moodie (The Rise of Afrikanerdom) writes:"the divine agent of the Afrikaner civil faith is Christian and Calvinist". In 1982 the NGK, the largest of the churches, was suspended from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches because it espoused the 'heresy' of apartheid.
When slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire, the Afrikaner response to these threats to the 'proper relations between master and servant' was the Great Trek, a 'biblical' event in which a misunderstood people flee into the wilderness. Eventually, they founded the orange free State and the Transvall. The constitution of the latter stated: "the people will admit no equality between the white and coloured inhabitants either in Church or State".
What do you say? (we're not asking you what you think of apartheid). Why don't you pay attention to the argument?
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Oh for goodness sake PB!
We are not saying that all Christians are evil and support slavery(that was stressed and I thought that it was made clear but as ever with you...). As per usual you get the wrong end of the stick and run with it.
What we are saying is (and it dispenses with the Enc Britt quote-and lets face it PB you do not have the best of records in dealing with the Enc Britt-do you?) is that slavery/segregation and racism in the 19 and 20th centuries was supported in a large part by Christians specifically those from the group that you represent eg., Bible-believing Christians. We are *not* saying that all Christians supported these issues and do recognise that many Christians fought against these issues however...they were fighting not against liberal secularists but Bible-believing Christians. I do realise that this must be a deep embarrassment for you who sees this issue in such absolutist, black and white terms.
PB
I have my own moral code that has very little to do with the Bible. That is why it is great that I am not forced to wriggle in trying to defend slavery, rape and torture in Deut. I wish you could stand back and observe what it is you are trying to defend.
Never said godlessness was modern(if so I would not have told you about the Atomists) I said that it only became popular in our society in the 20th century. Free-thinkers and rationalists do have a great record in forming governments just look at the USA and our modern secular society.
Ps. PB settle petal-I see you have a post banned and have resorted to Argumentum ad CAPLOCK.
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As usual, peab has great difficulty absorbing the information presented to him. Maybe he'll be quicker to grasp things is they are presented to him though moving pictures:
http://dailymotion.alice.it/video/x1sev0_the-bible-endorses-slavery_politics
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Brian, DD, Non-plussed.
Time out Brian.
HAS FAITH BEEN A SOCIAL EVIL REGARDING SLAVERY?
There are far too many facts here about slavery and the bible which may appear to conflict.
If this debate is not to be a complete waste of time these need to be reconciled.
I will have a go first, and then you, if you are amenable.
The context of the debate is the question; Is religion a social evil?
1) You argue that "Christians" and churches have used and defended slavery much through history, using the bible to justify it. I agree entirely. We don't need to debate this point further.
2) You note that there are many passages in the bible which regulate and therefore condone slavery plus I would add that nowhere does the bible actually condemn slavery. We dont need to debate this point further.
3) You also say the bible is sufficiently ambiguous on slavery to easily allow its abuse.
My answer to that is that it depends on how careful you are to read the entirety of what the bible says on slavery. One can be determined to make money on slaves and use parts of the bible as justification - or indeed one can be determined to condemn the the biblical record on slavery without reading its full record. Neither position has any integrity from an intellectual point of view as both refuse to see the full biblical record in order to meet a predetermined outcome - profit or prejudice.
Your key points 1 and 2 are not at all threatened by me saying that the bible has always put up a fight for groundbreaking rights for slaves' in the times in which the OT and NT were written. I have established above that Pauls writings on slavery caused a quiet revolution against slavery which wiped it out of the early church and also Europe centuries later.
4) You seem to write from the position which at least almost allows people to believe that slavery was invented by the OT law. Of course slavery was worldwide at that time but the OT was groundbreaking in recognising slaves as humans and giving them many legal protections. Most were Hebrew and as such were freed after six years with a day off each week in their six years. Slavery here was primarily a social security net, and community service for debtors, criminals and POWs. Kidnapping people for slavery carried the death penalty. Paul's letter to Philemon was a case study in freeing a slave which was circulated to all churches; the Roman Empire was a slave economy and openly condemning slavery would have been a disaster, drawing down the wrath of the Empire.
5) It must be said that the greatest foes that Abe Lincoln and William Wilberforce came up against seem to have been merchants who were making money out of slaves, not churches or preachers, though certainly some/many approved of the trade. But many churches also opposed slavery. And Ulster for example was strongly anti-slavery though a small minority in it profited from the trade.
However the backlash against slavery was to come primarily from churches and people of faith....with secular influence too!
Enc Brit;-
"It should be noted, however, that the major decisions regarding the abolition of the slave trade were taken outside Africa and were responses to economic and political changes and pressures in Europe and America. Many of the Christian churches had never accepted the morality of trading in human beings, and the 18th-century Evangelical movements in Protestant Europe led to open campaigning against the Atlantic slave trade and also against the institution of slavery itself. These things were equally condemned by new secular currents of thought associated with the French Revolution....."
Again we note the battle was primarily on economic grounds, not religious;-
".... many African governments and merchants were no more inclined than many European or American governments or merchants to enforce or to observe the anti-slave-trade treaties that British officials wished upon them. They saw no reason why their economic interests, which were bound up with slavery and trade in slaves, should be subordinated to the new economic interests of British traders following what was to them the capricious decision that slavery and the slave trade were wrong."
6) So here are four landmarks from people of faith in slavery; Moses' OT law was a huge step forward for slaves' rights; Paul freed the early church and hundreds of years later, also Europe from slavery; William Wilberforce and Abe Lincoln (both men of deep Christian faith, though Abe was unorthodox) broke slavery in the British Empire and America. Those are arguably the four finest moments in the anti-slavery movement in history tp that point. And the fight goes on.
7) So is religion a social evil? Well regarding slavery, I contend that while judeo-christian faith was used to justify slavery (though the bible clearly condemns kidnapping and slave TRADING) many churches did condone it. However I also argue the driving force of slavery was really commerical greed and the Christian religion (actually a bastardised form of it) was primarily really just an excuse to cover the main motive - greed. If the four greatest figures in fighting back slavery in history were people of judeo Christian faith, (Moses, Paul, Wilberforce, Lincoln) you are going to have a hard time to convince me that judeo-christian faith, on balance, has been a force for evil regaring the plight of slaves down through history. But fire away in the interests of debate.
Deut 21 - TAKING WIVES IN WAR PASSAGE - TESTING OUR ASSUMPTIONS
There appear to be several assumptions we can bring to this text;
1) That the wife's family were murdered.
2) That she was forced to convert to judiasm.
3) She was forced into marriage/rape
4) That she was a slave
5) That our intial reading of the text is infallibly correct.
But here are some questions;-
1) Israel was explicitly used by God to wipe out nations which had refused to repent and were sold out to child sacrifice, incest, sexual abuse of animals, communing with and worshipping demons, etc etc etc. Would her parents have been murdered or judicially killed?
2) I have not seen any evidence to support the idea that judiasm was imposed on people from other nations. Some argue that this religious conversion could therefore only have been voluntary. It is also noted that the soldier was forbidden by law to marry a woman who was not of his faith. So what evidence is there of forced conversion to Jehovah and could the marriage have proceeded if she didn't convert?
3) The norm in Eastern culture has been for arranged marriages where the wife usually has no say in who has sexual relations with her. Is this rape if her consent has not been sought? If her consent is not a factor in whether or not she married the soldier, would it have been sought in an arranged marriage?
4) The passage is explicit that she is not to be treated as a slave but given the full rights of a Jewish wife.
5) The hasty zeal with which athiests devour these few verses in isolation and rapidly form dogmatic conclusions is noted. But which is the firmer conclusion from this; that the bible is most definitely not the word of Jehovah, or that those devoted to opposing Him have come to the text with hasty and extreme prejudice?
6) Even if scholarship shows this passage to show imposed marriage, doesnt the legislation still show a massive jump forward for its time in forbidding battlefield rape in Israel? Remember this is not a command to takes wives in war but a regulation of it.
10 COMMANDMENTS AS BASIS OF BRITISH COMMON LAW
Alfred the Great (871) was key in forming British Common Law using the decalogue from Exodus. For example;-
Enc Britannica;-
"Alfred succeeded in government as well as at war. He was a wise administrator, organizing his finances and the service due from his thanes (noble followers). He scrutinized the administration of justice and took steps to ensure the protection of the weak from oppression by ignorant or corrupt judges. He promulgated an important code of laws, after studying the principles of law giving in the Book of Exodus and the codes of Aethelbert of Kent, Ine of Wessex (688-694), and Offa of Mercia (757-796), again with special attention to the protection of the weak and dependent."
Witness legal terms still in use or recent memory of use;- adultery, murder, theft, blasphemy, sabbath keeping, perjury etc etc
IMPOSING "CHRISTIAN" LEGISLATION
Non-plussed. I dont think this forum is about imposing anything. This is a debating forum not a legislative one; this is all about debate and persuasion. However regarding the fact that you think Christians should be more concerned about their conduct than laws...the conduct of the Christians I have seen here is generally very good. However regular athiest contributors engage constantly in personal attacks, sexual harrassment, vulgar intimidation etc etc. It is a case study in the impact of belief and unbelief in God.
Would humanists think twice about imposing their legislation on Christians? Should all Christians have their democratic vote and freedom of expression removed? The only alternative I can think of is some form of athiestic totalitarianism where religious and civil freedoms are restricted.What type of society and system do you envision?
As I said, Christian faith has tradition, precedent and form as a basis for legislation and forming desireable society. But athiesm does not. Nonthless, I defend your right to argue and vote as you wil, unhindered.
WILL THE REAL ALMIGHTY CREATOR GOD PLEASE STAND UP?
DD
If Brahman is the almighty creator God, please explain;-
1) How does such impersonal energy initiate and design creation with no intelligence or will?
2) Is the universe really an illusion, as belief in Brahman entails?
3) Why does the country in which it has greatest following lie in such extreme poverty?
PB
PS Not ignoring your most recent posts guys, will come back to them.
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PB
I am glad that you acknowledge that it was your fellow Bible-believers (like yourself) that supported slavery-I know it must be a great embarrassment to someone who see's things in such simplistic, absolutist, black and white terms. Indeed PB instead of wasting time on here perhaps you could maybe write to your fellow Bible-believers such as the Klu Klux klan, Christian Identity and Christian Reconstructuralism and correct them.
Oh dear PB! I am not saying that Braham is the all mighty sky fairy! I am simply going by claims of Hindus who see him as all-powerful, creator of worlds, omnipotent etc etc. Indeed all the head honcho gods claim to be all-powerful. Shifting the goal-posts yet again. And PB I do not see how a made up god such as YHWH an amalgamation or bastardisation if you will of various middle eastern gods and demons such as Baal could possible be all-powerful? after all he gets so much wrong such as the two creation myths of Genesis and on slavery.
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Brian DD
Contrasting accounts of events which either focus on a different perspective or come from different witnesses, are always going to contrast.
That does not mean they are wrong.
DD
You did suggest Brahman would qualify as an almighty creator God.
Dawkins asks how to distinguish between "gods".
I am suggesting that if you boil them down to the ones that actually claim to be almighty creator Gods you have very, very few.
At that point the character of the gods and their claims about creation, reality etc should begin to thin the field out very quickly, I think.
So DD, if you have struck Brahman out as a contender please supply your next challenger and we will have a look.
PB
PS The post was removed because it accidentally contained an email address.
PPS DD, yes, just dismiss Enc Brit when attributes opposition to slavery to Christians.
You make no attempt to engage at all.
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Hi Pb,
1. You really do need to define your usage of the term ?slavery?.
2. The period during which the Old Testament was written (1500 BC to 500 BC) was a time in the world when slavery was commonplace. Indeed, the Hebrews, for whom and by whom the Old Testament was written, were enslaved in Egypt (Exodus). Centuries later, many Hebrews were once again enslaved during the period of Babylonian captivity. By the time of Jesus, as many as thirty percent of the residents of the Roman Empire were slaves. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that both the OT and the NT comment on the relationship between slave and master. There is no specific condemnation of slavery to be found anywhere in the Bible. At no point does God express even mild disapproval of enslaving human beings, robbing them of what freedom and independence they might have had. On the contrary, God is depicted as both approving of and regulating slavery, ensuring that the traffic and ownership of fellow human beings proceeds in an acceptable manner. In many cases, the regulations display a horrible disregard for the lives and dignity of enslaved individuals, hardly the sort of thing one would expect from a loving God. Whatever you say, you cannot rewrite Deuteronomy 20. At other times, it seems more generous and advocates treating slaves well. The latter may be more advanced in its attitude than some groups, but what does that prove? Moreover, the contradictoriness is perfectly in keeping with a collection of writings spanning a thousand years.
3. In all communities in the past, there were men of compassion who urged slaveowners to treat their slaves humanely. This was not unique to Judaism or Christianity. For example, wanton cruelty in the treatment of slaves was forbidden by the Code of Hammurabi, one of the most famous of ancient documents. promulgated between 2100 and 1800 B.C.
4. Some individuals and groups even opposed slavery. The Cynics and Stoics in ancient Greece opposed it. Alcidamas, for example, said: "God has set everyone free. No one is made a slave by nature." Furthermore, a fragment of a poem of Philemon also shows that he opposed slavery. In his play Hecuba (424 BC) Euripides writes of slavery: "That thing of evil, by its nature evil, Forcing submission from a man to what no man should yield to?. These people, not the Bible, were well ahead of their time in opposing slavery.
5. According to Philo (20BC-50AD), the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, the Essene Sect actually renounced slavery altogether and practised a form of primitive communism, sharing homes and property and pooling their earnings. Furthermore, "not a single slave is to be found among them, but all are free, exchanging services with each other, and they denounce the owners of slaves, not merely for their injustice in outraging the law of equality, but also for their impiety in annulling the statute of Nature?.
6. On the other hand, it is clear that slavery is accepted in the OT and the NT as a fact of life. Let us turn to Paul. In the Epistle to Philemon, a runaway slave is returned to his master; in Ephesians 6, the duty owed by a slave to his master is compared with the duty owed by a child to his parent, and the slave is enjoined ?to be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, in fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ?. Parents and masters are likewise enjoined to show consideration for their children and slaves. All humans, of the true faith, were equal in the eyes of God and in the afterlife but not necessarily in the laws of man and in this world. Those not of the true faith were in another, and in most respects an inferior, category.
7. The European countries were the first to abolish slavery. Why? This was not primarily the influence of Christianity but of secular values. Contrary to the impression you are giving, Britain (1807) was not the first country to abolish slavery. Iceland abolished it in 1117, followed by Finland and Sweden in 1335, Portugal (1761), and France (1794).
8. There are many other aspects of this question than slavery, which at least in a formal sense hasn?t been an issue since the 19th century. By concentrating on slavery, you can imply that the ?social evil? is all in the dim and distant past. But not so, Pb, not so.
9. The thread is about religion ?as a social force?, not about individual religious people, many of whom have done good works, nor is it about individual non-believers, many of whom have also done good works. The issue is whether or not the social impact of religion is good or bad. On balance, the Christian religion has done more harm than good. It has sanctioned or implemented slavery, discrimination against women, anti-semitism, homophobia, the crushing of dissent, and censorship of literature, art and science. It has divided people against one another and incited wars, hatred and intolerance. It has brainwashed the young and endeavoured to close their minds to inquiry, knowledge and understanding. It has promoted fear and irrationality. It has done all these things ruthlessly when it had had the power to do so, and has only become more humane as its power and influence has diminished.
10. I have mentioned apartheid. So far you have said nothing about it. Apartheid, or institutionalised racism and segregation, was made respectable by the Dutch Reformed Churches, all of whom not only supported it and justified it on Biblical grounds but actually urged the government to implement it. They were in the vanguard of apartheid from the beginning. When the National Party (which ruled South Africa from 1948-1994) was formed in 1914, a number of DRC ministers joined it. In 1923 the NGK (the largest church, to which 80% of Afrikaners belong) passed a resolution approving partial racial segregation. In 1936 the Cape Synod of the NGK asked the government to prevent mixed marriages. In 1942 the Federal Mission Council of the NGK asked Smuts to tighten ?residential and economic segregation: ?It is the sacred conviction of the Afrikaner people and Church that the only salvation of the people?s existence lies in the implementation of this principle of race separation?. The call for separate living areas, or ?territorial apartheid, was reiterated by a national conference of the Dutch Reformed Churches in 1950.
Various justifications were offered for this policy of apartheid. Primarily, it was said to be God?s will. The different races of mankind were put asunder by God and should not be joined together by man. the mixing of races, according to the 1966 General Synod of the NGK, ?must be resisted with every resource as wrong and sinful?. A ?Christian state? should prohibit ?racial mixing and mixed marriages?. The mixing of races is sinful. There you have it literally in black and white. The 1974 Synod even advocated an extension of this prohibition to marriage between members of certain black ethnic groups.
Sure, Galatians 3:28 talks of everyone being ?one in Christ?. But the point of course is that in Calvinist terms the oneness in Christ is a spiritual unity which does not negate racial differences or colour boundaries in the world at large. The blacks had a part to play, but it was largely as the children of Ham (or Canaan, if you prefer): ?hewers of wood and drawers of water?.
South Africa under apartheid is a clear and tragic paradigm of the ?social evil? caused by an exclusivist religious ideology. Racism in SA has always had powerful theological underpinnings. The Calvinist world view shaped the Afrikaners? vision of non-whites from the beginnings. Afrikaner nationalism and Calvinist Christianity were fused in a poisonous cocktail.
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Brian
There is no evidence that the OT approves trafficking in people. Kidnapping for slavery carried the death penlty in the OT.
ref aparthied, I did say I condemned it and that Paul and John clearly teach racial equality before God in the NT.
I am not concentrating on slavery it was the athiests who raised it and contest it here not me.
Enc Brit and BBC's chosen theologian has herein confirmed;-
1) St Paul's writings saw the early church and also later Europe abandon slavery.
2) The primary opposition to slavery later came from "evangelical" Christians in Europe.
3) Common law was based on the bible
4) Western culture and morality was shaped by the bible.
ENC BRIT;- BIBLE IS CULTURAL ROOT OF WESTERN CIVILISATION. (This would include any sense of morality claimed by athiests in this culture).
"The Bible brought its view of God, the universe, and mankind into all the leading Western languages and thus into the intellectual processes of Western man.... The Bible in Latin shaped the thought and life of Western people for a thousand years.
"Millions of modern people who do not think of themselves as religious live nevertheless with basic presuppositions that underlie the biblical literature. It would be impossible to calculate the effect ofsuch presuppositions on the changing ideas and attitudes of Western people with regard to the nature and purpose of government, social institutions, and economic theories....
"The assumption of many people is that the Bible has lost much of its importance in a secularized world; that is implied whenever the modern period is called the post-Judeo-Christian era. In most ways the label is appropriate.... But the influence of biblical literature neither began nor ended with doctrinal propositions or codes of behaviour. Its importance lies not merely in its overtly religious influence but also, and perhaps more decisively, in its pervasive effect on the thinking and feeling processes, the attitudes and sense of values that, whether recognized as biblical or not, still help to make people what they are."
ENC BRIT;- CONSENT RARELY A FEATURE OF MARRIGE UNTIL 20TH CENTURY
"Until the late 20th century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but even in Western cultures (as the novelsof writers such as Henry James and Edith Wharton attest) romantic love was not the primary motive for matrimony in most eras, and one's marriage partner was carefully chosen."
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Brian
There is no evidence that the OT approves trafficking in people. Kidnapping for slavery carried the death penlty in the OT.
ref aparthied, I did say I condemned it and that Paul and John clearly teach racial equality before God in the NT.
I am not concentrating on slavery it was the athiests who raised it and contest it here not me.
Enc Brit and BBC's chosen theologian has herein confirmed;-
1) St Paul's writings saw the early church and also later Europe abandon slavery.
2) The primary opposition to slavery later came from "evangelical" Christians in Europe.
3) Common law was based on the bible
4) Western culture and morality was shaped by the bible.
PB
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ENC BRIT;- BIBLE IS CULTURAL ROOT OF WESTERN CIVILISATION. (This would include any sense of morality claimed by athiests in this culture).
"The Bible brought its view of God, the universe, and mankind into all the leading Western languages and thus into the intellectual processes of Western man.... Millions of modern people who do not think of themselves as religious live nevertheless with basic presuppositions that underlie the biblical literature. It would be impossible to calculate the effect ofsuch presuppositions on the changing ideas and attitudes of Western people with regard to the nature and purpose of government, social institutions, and economic theories...."
ENC BRIT;- CONSENT RARELY A FEATURE OF MARRIGE UNTIL 20TH CENTURY
"Until the late 20th century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but even in Western cultures (as the novelsof writers such as Henry James and Edith Wharton attest) romantic love was not the primary motive for matrimony in most eras, and one's marriage partner was carefully chosen."
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QUOTE: "I am not concentrating on slavery it was the atheists who raised it and contest it here not me".
You are very free and easy with your labelling of other people, Pb. Is this what Christianity teaches you?
In any case, do you even read your own posts? You ARE concentrating on slavery. Atheists, agnostics, humanists, sceptics etc have TRIED to raise a lot of OTHER issues, but you try to bring it back to your futile effort to defend the Bible against the fair charge of supporting slavery.
QUOTE: "Ref apartheid, I did say I condemned it and that Paul and John clearly teach racial equality before God in the NT".
You are not responsible for the whole history of religion. The question, to repeat, is not whether you yourself approve apartheid but whether the main white churches in South Africa did and the extent to which they used the Bible to bolster it.
You can interpret the Bible as you wish, but others will interpret it as they wish, and clearly there is enough material for racists and slave owners/supporters to use it as a 'moral' justification for their beliefs and practices. They would say that spiritual 'equality before God' does not necessarily imply 'equality before man' in the material world, and the existence of slavery in the Bible proves the point.
You keep repeating on other threads that many famoius scientists in the past were religious. But do you deny that the churches as institutions frequently obstructed scientific progress? Do you deny that they censored, tortured and even killed scientists who advocated ideas they didn't like?
Do you deny that churches also tried/try to censor literature, art and films they didn't like? Do you deny that the Catholic Church had some of the greatest works of literature on its Index of Prohibited Books? Or that some of the main Protestant churches through their influence on local councils and school boards have tried to ban books from school libraries or films and plays of which they did not approve?
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Peab, I feel so coldly ignored by you! I can see Brian is giving you a very tough time and I understand you need lots of time to try to come up with anything at all against his good points. But surely you're not just quietly conceding the points DD and I raised?! When are we going to get some love again?
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Brian - actually the question is - is religion a social evil?
Peter
What do you mean when you ask when are you going to get some love again - post 113?
What has this got to do with the debate in progress?
PB
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Pb my sweet,
Thanks for at least responding, that's less cold than being ignored altogether. Although I note the complete absence of any counter arguments to DDs, Brains or my arguments in the latter part of this thread. You are quietly conceding all of it then?
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PB
You telling me to listen carefully is hilarious.
If Deuteronomy is merely the record of Bronze Age human jurisprudence then it is entirely understandable that it is brutal by today's standards.
The problem arises from the claim that your god had a hand in defining their rules, the absence of which, you say, leaves the atheist position lacking integrity. If your god is responsible then we are entitled to contrast claims of this god as being the only source of objective moral standards against the low quality of his early work in this area. A perfect and timeless god can't be let off by saying it was all a long time ago.
Hence the need for all the mental pretzels on display here, such as 'progressive revelation' and 'slavery as welfare'. You are right to say such arguments are neither new nor advanced - quite the opposite. These poor fig-leafs for biblical inconsistency sound particularly inadequate when deployed against such depravity - as when you suggest that your all-powerful foundation for morality might make do with the position: 'I can't tell them to stop raping, but at least they're not doing it on the battlefield anymore'.
You wish to declare that the Bible is a source of divine moral wisdom and so need to blame its obvious major deficiencies on 'fallen' man. Your attempts to do so here seem to be further damaging any claims you might have wanted to make about the reliability of the Bible as a moral guide book. You previously said that Paul could not explicitly condemn slavery as he put political expediency above clarity. Now you say "God saw some OT law as very suspect" but it nonetheless was "the best he could achieve with the Israelites at this time". So, with all these deficiencies in your divine guidance, how can you be sure you are interpreting it correctly?
The 'New' Testament is now almost 2,000 years old - how much of this is timeless advice and how much is just the best God could achieve at this time?
If you accept that it is possible that Deut 21 permits rape but don?t think any of us "are qualified to comment here and now" you seem to be accepting that the Bible is not only compromised but contradictory and confusing. I thought you said your god was not " the God of chaos" - all the misinterpretations of his holy book seem to have caused a fair bit of it.
You still have given no satisfactory reason why your god had the confidence to unambiguously ban murder and coveting up front, but didn't feel so able to clarify his position on rape and slavery. Was it really a higher priority to sort out all those dietary restrictions first? The idea of an all-powerful moral god having a list of evils he can't quite bring himself to ban yet is especially implausible.
In order to justify the circumstances in Deut 21 you say "Israel was explicitly used by God to wipe out nations which had refused to repent?". You are invoking a religious genocide so you can maybe redefine murder as 'Judicial killing'?! You previously said that "theocracies are bad ? because all men are fallen and prone to excess" - does that not apply to the men in the OT? How can you tell which atrocities really are the will of your god?
You directly follow this with the claim that Judaism was never imposed on people from other nations - wiping them out for disobeying doesn?t count?
You question the absence of an authority for my values, but the authority you claim for yours seems a very mixed bag indeed.
You ask why I complain of attempts to impose religious beliefs on others. I already explained what I meant by this (in the post where I observed we seemed stuck in a loop, ironically enough) but it would include your willingness to frustrate research into disease due to your interpretation of "God's side of this argument"
I have said nothing that justifies your use of the phrase "atheistic totalitarianism". As I have explained, I wish believers to accept that laws impacting all of us should be determined based on a framework accessible to all, using criteria such as demonstrable harm.
If you accept that the evidence we expect in support your claim isn't available and that the moral guidance of the bible is contradictory and confusing, will you also accept that those who aren't convinced shouldn't be subject to bans based on "God's side of this argument"?
This thread's topic is 'Is Religion a "social evil"?' - one problem with religion is its ability to get good people to defend the indefensible. The same mechanisms that drive some to defend their god's involvement in historical atrocities is deployed by others to enable the commission of new ones.
You previously said: "Believers are not perfect in fact they are vulnerable to unbalanced sub cultures and non believers are often a good foil to them because they lack these cultural filters". This is an area where you are in need of such a foil, PB, but you perceive it as an attack rather than a signal to reassess.
You said: "I take it from your comment that this has been "a very productive conversation" that you felt you made - and needed to - make up a lot of lost ground in our debate with me. I accept the compliment."
DD already pointed out that you read the opposite of what I wrote, but the interpretation you give to this misreading could not be further from reality. If you think you are racing ahead, perhaps you are running in the wrong direction.
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Non-plussed
good to hear from you again, I am glad you have rejoined the discussion.
Can I start by clearly stating that I am not proposing to have the complete picture on any aspect of the bible, but I will share my best understanding of it.
This also includes a frank admission that I fully realise that I am as vulnerable to bringing assumptions to the text as anyone else.
But I must make clear this point, the limitations of the law were nothing to do with God.
It was the fallen nature of man that was the problem God was trying to deal with.
This is indeed the entire story of the bible from start to finish.
Every book and letter is God crying over man's inability and/or unwillingness to live up to his standards.
If you insist on insisting that Deut 21 is a permission to rape, you are obliged to answer if that applies to every arranged marriage the world has ever seen.
According to Enc Brit, free choice in marriage in the world was very rare until the 20th century.
Also, it was strictly forbidden for Jews to marry pagans and I have not been able to see any evidence that Israeli law or culture supported forced conversions - very much on trh contrary. It appears the hair and nail action in Deut 21 was a ritual disavowal of paganism and all the evidence I have seen from the biblical record is that this must have been voluntary.
ie if the woman declined this how could the man have married her? have you any answers or thoughts?
I am more than open for you to refute everything I say, as I will thereby learn too, but if you insist on dismissing it without engagement, you are again betraying violent prejudice you bring to the text.
Over to you. I repeat without apology that I doubt anyone on this blog so far is qualified in any sense to make definite conclusions on the full meaning of this passage. The effort you put into answering the questions I posed demonstrates this.
Of course I have much vested interest in defending my assumptions and worldview, but the floor is also open for you to destroy my analysis, provifing it is in an intellectually credible manner. ie you need more than sneering.
You are of course free to opine indefinitely, but the headling rush to judgement on it with no evidence of any type of study of the surrounding and related text speaks of violent prejudice.
No apology, I think that is quite clear.
You appear to be deliberately misconstruing most of what I have said, which is dissapointing for a seeker after hard and objective evidence.
I agree you did not advocate totalitariansm but I asked if that might be the implication of your argument.
Demonstrable harm seems like one good rule of thumb to base law on, and I would support debate and discussion around that premise, subjective as it is.
But I dont see how anything on this blog has stepped over this line nor how anyone here can be accused of imposing anything on you in this regard.
You appear to be setting up a straw man of persecution/victimhood in this forum which does not and cannot exist; we are not forming law here.
Proven track record in law and society would also be another reliable rule of thumb. Why should radical and unproven ideas be easily adopted if evidence in history shows them to be suspect, of if they lack supporting evidence?
Why do I get the feeling there is one big hidden idea/grievance bubbling away behind all your postings?
I am not saying theocracies are always bad, God used Israel for his purposes to stop wholesale child sacrifice, incest, sexual abuse of animals and demon worship in the middle east. Would your morality stand back and allow such to continue to children and animals?
However I am not saying I would vote for a theocracy personally. The NT does not given any specific direction for political Government, it is guidance for Christian conduct in society in which they are to be salt and light. I am entitled to a free opinion on it.
It is what I perceive as clumsy presumption and bias that you bring to the debate that I challenge, while welcoming your involvement in the debate itself 100 per cent.
Overall, I can see that believers and non-believers can have high levels of integrity and compassion, and that both categories can plumb the depths of depravity.
Athiests on this blog only pay lip service to this reality due to their agressive agenda. It is vintage Dawkins and we all know it has been left in tatters in the real world. Dawkins is an ambarrassment to many athiests and agnostics.
However, I repeat the point that the NT makes it clear that many who consider themselves respectable religious folk have the doors of heaven shut in their faces at the final judgement.
Billy Graham said the first thought he would have in heaven was relief that he made it.
If the sum total of your argument really is that religion, or Christian religion, really is in totality, a social evil, then I would ask you to demonstrate this, through the time and space of its existence. Can you attempt a balanced overview, good and bad?
You might also attempt an objective thumnail sketch of the evils perpetrated by athiestic movements over history, good and bad?
I am not in the least scared by acknowledging historical atrocities of supposedly biblically justified slavery, the crusades, apartheid, loyalist/republican terrorism, etc etc.
You seem to insist that there can be no such thing as an objective truth on what scripture really said about those matters; ie it could easily allow such evil; but again you show no evidence of having tested this hypothesis at all ie show no evidence with familarity of the overall biblical record or associated scholarship but instead show a hasty rush to judgment incompatible with your professed preference for the objective scientific method in divining truth.
Many of the points I have brought out in the this debate are very very very basic Christian doctrine and not at all contronversial. But you attack them as though I made them up myself at the weekend. It is all vintage and discredited Dawkins.
Perhaps you could explain and justify your worldview and the positive and negative impact it has had on world history?
I think I have said enough.
PB
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Referring to the Bible, you say that "Every book and letter is God crying over man's inability and/or unwillingness to live up to his standards". Look at Genesis alone, Pb, as William is about to do.
He makes a woman out of a man's rib. So his 'standard' is to make a woman from a man, even though the standard thereafter in nature is for a man to be made out of a woman. So nature is wrong, then? It's defying God?s law. No wonder God is crying.
He punishes a woman and all women, by multiplying their sorrow thereafter and ordering men to rule over them, because this woman ate an apple. Strewth! What a standard! Let?s punish all men for one woman?s fruit fancy!
Then he saw man's wickedness, whatever it was, and decided to punish all men by destroying them in a massive flood, apart from the family of Noah, who was a just man. How on earth this one just man survived long enough to be saved for the ark is a mystery in itself, let alone the familiar problems of how the eight people and two of every living thing survived on the boat. But, Pb, think on this: what sort of a God would sadistically and cruelly destroy all his creation bar a few just because they didn't turn out the way he wanted? Could he not even have just put them to sleep? Why drown the lot in a huge flood? And why all the other animals as well? Weren't they blameless? Are these standards worth living up to?
But his destructiveness hasn't finished yet. For next comes Sodom and Gomorrah, rained on from heaven with brimstone and fire, not to mention Lot's wife, who is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the fireworks as she flees the stricken city.
And then comes more destructiveness. He tells Abraham to take his only son Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him for a burnt offering on one of its mountains. Abraham complies, but as he is taking up the knife to slay his son, God says: "Ok, you passed my test. Sacrifice a ram instead" (poor ram, I say, what did it do to deserve this fate?). What kind of moral standard is this to ask someone to sacrifice their loved one as a test of his faith? A pretty sick joke, if you ask me.
These are only the first 22 chapters of Genesis. I haven't reached the slaughtering of the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (see Exodus 34: 13-17), the Midianites (Numbers), the unfortunate Amalekites (Exodus, Deut. Numbers, etc. etc) and the genocide conducted by Joshua.
These, Pb, are God?s standards as recorded in the Bible. If you think the writers are wrong, and were making it up, then where is God in this story?
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Hi Brian,
I have no wish to join the debate between yourself and PB, but biblical interpretation really isn't your thing. Is it?
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PB
You say you are glad to have me rejoin the discussion in a post directing the following at me: "violent prejudice", "sneering", "violent prejudice" (again), "clumsy presumption and bias", "agressive agenda".
There is a difference between arranged and forced marriage, but in any case I am not "obliged" to answer for any of it. By continuing in this vein you make it clear that you miss my point. The practices of Bronze Age peoples are not the issue, it is the attempt to justify your god's supposed involvement with them.
Pointing to incremental improvements as evidence for your all-powerful god's influence looks feeble. I've read Muslims making similar 'it was even worse before' arguments to justify Koranic morality and I don't see Allah's guiding hand in their incremental progress either, do you?
You simply repeat your assertion that 'fallen man' was to blame not God, but make no attempt to address the reasons I gave for finding this implausible and undercutting of claims of Biblical authority. I did not sneer, I made what I think are reasonable observations that you have not addressed.
I have constructed no "strawman of victimhood" and I cannot account for your feelings of hidden grievance. As it is blatantly obvious that this blog does not form law, it should be equally obvious that my concerns run wider than this. I am arguing that religions should refrain from political lobbying for theological positions. You have demonstrated why the level of certainty in revelation is insufficient for it to be imposed on others. In what way does this imply "atheistic totalitarianism"?
Again you justify genocide. You still have not said how you distinguish which atrocities really are the will of your god? 'Fallen men' claiming that god is on their side in battle is hardly sufficient evidence that their slaughter has been divinely sanctioned.
It would hardly be 'rushing to judgement' to doubt the existence of "an objective truth on what scripture really said". Your own comments in this thread seem to indicate acceptance that scripture is difficult to interpret, full of human flaws and compromises and has been used throughout history by religious institutions to defend positions you say it opposes. This long track record of competing interpretations seems sufficient to doubt that any one of them is definitive.
You said: "Many of the points I have brought out in the this debate are very very very basic Christian doctrine and not at all controversial. But you attack them as though I made them up myself at the weekend."
Did you miss the bit where I said: "You are right to say such arguments are neither new nor advanced - quite the opposite"? My low opinion of them isn't related to their age.
I will pass up on your invitation to write a history of world religions.
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Peter,
I have no wish to get into a long debate with you on this subject, however(there always is an however!) to be fair to Brian Christians have a problem with Biblical interpretation too. There are over 33,000 sects/religions etc within Christianity some of these are mutually exclusive. Indeed some were in violent opposition to each other because of Biblical interpretation and some of the abusive language used between Christians would make Richard Dawkins blush! Biblical interpretation is a problem as everyone thinks they have the right interpretation.
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Hi Peter:
I think DD summed it up pretty well. 'Biblical interpretation' isn't set in stone tablets, to use a biblical metaphor. Ask any Puritan and Catholic about blood and wine and wafers and bodies.
But, Peter, please try not to make cryptic comments. Is this a Christian habit? Explain yourself. What's wrong with mine?
Give us a sample of YOUR interpretation of some of the Genesis stories. And tell us what's true and what's merely a metaphor.
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Brian,
I'm not really sure how my comment can be considered cryptic, I merely suggested that your biblical interpretation was limited. Indeed, at times, it seems to be limited to focusing on the grimmest, most violent aspects of the story in order to make the point - see, it's bad isn't it. 'Bad Bible, bad Bible!!'
And in a way you are right, Mary Poppins it ain't, but none of life is Mary Poppins and the bible is a story of life. That in its-self ought to remove a lot of the text from the genre of mere myth.
DD is also right, "there is always an however", and that is all I was doing. I was saying hold on, there's an however; but I have no intention of limiting my writing to a literal stating of the facts as I see them, that would be dull. DD is also correct in suggesting that there has been much violent opposition in Christendom. Whether or not Dawkins would blush, I have no idea.
Indeed, I went further; please remember that on this particular thread I was the one who suggested, and then provided, some self-examination. And, way back somewhere along the line, I defended your comments on religion in reply to PB, who, I felt, had overstated his objections. I have never attempted to define christians as sweetness and light, in the main, we're much like everyone else, sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes indifferent, nor have I suggested that my interpretation is the right one.
Sometimes the bible is deliberately ambiguous and sometimes the interpretation is slippery. To the Western mind this is often unsatisfactory and therefore to some degree, without a Hebrew mindset, *all* of our interpretation, mine included, will be limited. That however does not mean that there is no meaning. What I have always said is that there is enough.
So, you want an example, OK.
You raised the story of Abraham, Isaac and Moriah, so let's run with that one.
Abraham, from Ur, would already have been familiar with the concept of human sacrifice long before he was called by God to, 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.'
So what is Abraham learning? Could it be that Abraham is learning that this God does not demand that humans provide their own sacrifice as an atonement for sin, but rather, that He Himself will be propitiation for the sins of the world.
Is that, in any way, a *possible* interpretation?
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Hi Peter:
I was beginning to think you would avoid my question, but in the end you do get down to specifics. I see your interpretation, but the problem(s) I have with it are:
(1) God doesn't let on it's a bluff until near the end, which is cruel;
(2) If God is himself a 'propitiation' for the sins of the world, why then did he earlier condemn all women for Eve's 'sin' and later send a flood which kills nearly everybody? Or are these stories different? They didn't really happen, perhaps, whereas the Abraham one did? If they happened, then God's propitiation for the sins of others is highly selective and arbitrary. Indeed, sometimes it seems to work in reverse: punishing the many for the crimes of the few.
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Hi Non-plussed
Glad you came back!
When I talk about a lack of understanding and a rush to judgement, I mean in the first instance how all athiests seem to assume that all OT law is taken on board by the church, for example.
Paul clearly refutes this in Romans and Galations but it is a favourite tactic of athiests to pull out an obscure law out of all context and insist that they have a foolproof interpretation of it and that therefore the bible is wrong and there is no God.
There is just no intellectual integrity to it at all.
It is very very basic doctrine.
Do you insist that Deut 21 condones rape of war captives but refuse point blank discussing the fact that personal consent was rarely given in the consumation of eastern marriages; nor the issue that it appears to require a voluntary religious conversion from the woman without which the marriage could not proceed.
I repeat, I have the human desire to justify my worldview and assumptions but I am willing to let you batter them around. However you refuse to do this with any integrity and retreat to the "shant - I'm just right cos I said so position".
It appears to me that while I acknowledge my fallible knowledge on everything the athiests are the ones here who more easily pronounce their absolute knowledge on all matters, with neer a shred of doubt.
So I do maintain my accusations of violent prejudice and bias to those who leap to make fundamentialist interpretations on scripture and refuse all reasonable discussion of context, original language and culture.
You have every right to repeat that to me if you think I am using another passage in my favour or course, and doubtless you will, and will be justified.
I am easily open to that accountability, even from athiests.
On the one hand you say that progressive revelation disproves the bible is God's word, but I dont consider that you have proven your case.
This is and always has been a central tenet of the faith. Hebrews, Romans, Galations and also Christ's teaching on divorce.
There are of course common values which are restated throughout the old and new testament of course.
The other obvious point is that the question posed by this thread is not "Does God exist and is the bible his word?"
No, the question is, is religion a social evil.
Have you any evidence that Deut 21 every caused social evil? where? when? how? to what extent? to what extent was the law ever used and could it be that it was delierbatly framed to discourage its use, as many commentators suggest?
How many battlefield rapes did it stop, as it was designed to do?
It is perfectly feasible for a complete athiest to argue that religion in the broadest sense gives social cohesion, stability and community and in particular Christian faith.
I would certainly agree that "religion" has many negative aspects in history.
But a casual reading of the facts in recent days affirms that the church has been responsible for the foundations of western morality, culture and law (common law); and the drive throughought the world towards organised public healthcare, education, welfare, the global abolition of slavery, third world aid, and care for those in extreme poverty.
I am not saying secularists made no contribution to modern life nor that ancient cultures had their own healt and edcuation systems etc. but it does appear quite factual that the foundations of the systems we now enjoy in these times were laid by churches and later adopted by the state to some extent.
eg how may of the worlds top universities and hospitals where founded by churches?
So perhaps just about every social good and thought of morality that western athiests enjoy can be traced back very easily to the bible and the church.
And best of all, as far as this thread goes, none of this even requires a belief in God or the bible as his word.
It is simply historical fact.
And this being the case, non-plussed, the track record of such faith in making such desireable western society in terms of quality of life and human rights is (ironically) a very strong argument indeed towards it actually being from God, IMHO.
It certainly makes for stable and workable society and therefore has reasonable precedent in a conservative approach to law making, as opposed to radical secularism.
Pick a radical law and see what precedent and context it had in ancient history to see if it is good for our society today, I suggest.
I suggest you are on a hiding to nothing if you try this, but be my guest.
Because I can see subtelty in scripture and because I know it is not always precise do not mean I think it is not divine or accurate.
And I think my critiquie of Christian culture and yet still having a strong faith is rather a credit to such faith than a reason to scorn it.
Never do I see athiests attempt such self examination on this blog, I note.
Again, I say it is pure laziness to say that differing views and interpretations of Christian faith through history discredits the faith; what has been held in common is by far the major part of the story.
Again, I say there is no evidence from you that you have seriously attempted to examine in your own time that which you profess to honestly test, but which I suggest you simply wish to reject.
Foir example, you speak conclusively of "genocide" when we talk of God's judgement against nations which were burning their babies alive to demons, which were sexually abusing animals, practising incest and communing with demons.
You conveniently ignore the question as to how you would have dealth with any of these problems in the region.
But your easy and absolute conclusion on the matter (genocide) does indeed betray a violent prejudice and closed mind when you come to discuss the matter.
Lastly, you will note that in judeo-christian thought there is no distinction between sacred and secualr and therefore it is quite legitimate to consider my views have political implications.
This is a norm through many cultures though history and jarrs with your enlightment approach.
Your views on God and his laws eqaully inform your own views and to prescribe how I should form mine would of course be a form of moral imposition in itself.
I assert again that it most certainly is rushing to judgement if you are asserting that you most certainly have a complete understanding of what the passage in deut 21 really means.
This is self evident, imho.
You show no evidence nor interest in examining the context of the passage, other related passages in different books or chapters or the cultural meaning of actions described which have no obvious parallel in modern western culture.
That is most certainly rushing to judgement and evidence of violent prejudice against the text.
But more importantly, the burden of evidence of what the church has done to create civilised modern society in education, health, law and culture is a mountain compared to the pebble you are jumping up and down and shouting about ie deut 21.
If the question really is, is the christian religion a form of social evil, I think the answer must be no if it is made on the basis of a sweep of history and the broad activities of Christian churches today.
I dont consider that any serious case has yet been made on this thread that the overall contribution of the church to history has been social evil. It is quite ridiculous.
But I throw down the gauntlet and challenege anyone so to demonstrate.
OriginalPB
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IS ATHEiSM A SOCIAL EVIL?
1) It teaches no morality at all (except what it borrows from western culture ie judeo christian values)
2) It teaches no care for one's neighbour as you would wish to be cared for, regardles of race or creed.
3) What history does it have in starting universal education?
4) What history does it have in starting universal healthcare?
5) What history does it have in fighting against historical slavery or modern human trafficking?
6) What history does it have in caring for the urban poor since the industrial revolution?
7) What history does it have in campagning to cancel third world debt? (Jubillee campaign was church led)
8) What history does it have in starting aid to third world countries?
9) What history does it have in creating a legal and cultural foundation for western civilisation?
10) What history does it have in inspiring the scientific revolution?
11) What history does athiesm have in founding homes for orphans and widows?
12) How many millions were murdered under athiestic soviet regimes?
In local countless communities across Northern Ireland today, what are athiest believers doing to provide an organised response to (please note I am not asking what are a handful of athiests doing in these fields, I literally do mean across every townland and village in Northern Ireland);-
1) Adding consolation and meaning to the experience of the bereaved?
2) Visiting the sick and shut-ins?
3) Providing a meeting place where stressed mothers can meet regularly with their children and encourage one another?
4) Providing constructive sports and activities and moral instruction and community service in regular programmes for youth?
5) Providing a community with a paramount ideal of mutal help and moral encouragement which has been proven to provide social cohesion and stability here for centuries?
6) Take weekly collections which go towards various charitable humanitarian causes?
7) Provide various other regular acitivies which contribute towards their community?
At the regional level we could also ask what athiests are doing in practical terms to;-
1) Address the physical needs of widows and orphans - churches provide adoption services and elderly homes. Barnardoes was founded by a Christian etc etc.
2) I know many churches across Northern Ireland have numerous facilities dotted across the country which provide a safety net for the destitute - salvation army, numerous Christian hostels and homes of various types for alchoholics and drug addicts. What humanist equivalent is there to the salvation army?
3) I know people of faith also reaching out to those fraught by their involvement in prostituion or caught in human trafficking.
In contrast, William Crawley has rebuked the organised humanists of Northern Ireland for being obsessed with knocking Christianity and suggested they get a positive message of their own. Brian McClinton's website clearly reflects William's concerns in its content, tone and proportions of information.
So is athiesm a social evil? this requires a definition of good which in our cultural context has been defined by christianity, either directly or indirectly. And if athiesm truly wishes to refute and reject the historical and current contributions of Christianity to social care and good, arguably the root of all social care/good in western civilistion, then it is not a difficult conclusion to reach that athiesm is the stark social evil in our midst. If Christian faith has consistently been the root and inspiration of such good and athiesm has little or no track record in these matters, except to oppose Christian faith then what a disaster it will be for society and what a measure of self-judgement and destruction it will be if our society tries to root out and destroy such benevolent faith from its midst.
PB
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Enc Brit shows the major contributions Christian faith has made in all manner of social good....(all extracts are clearly marked in quotation marks)...
Not only is Christianity not a social evil, it is arguably the root of every social good that athiests might presume to have had no connection to the faith. While nobody can deny that atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ, can anyone seriously argue that these were a fair reflection of his life and teaching, or that they have done anything to seriously challenge the inestimable contribution to all aspects of social good across the globe that churches have made through history and still do today?
Following are extracts from the following article in Enc Brit entitled;
"Christianity; The Christian community and the world; The relationships of Christianity; Historical views"
In summary the article states that schools, Universities, hospitals, international aid, abolition of slavery, scientific revolution, orphanages, care of the poor, pastoral care,
Overseas aid;-
"Under the leadership of an American Baptist theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), the so-called Social Gospel movement spread in the Anglo-Saxon countries. A corresponding movement was started with the Christian social conferences by German Protestant theologians, such as Paul Martin Rade (1857-1940) of Marburg. The basic idea of the Social Gospel-i.e., the emphasis on the social-ethical tasks of the church-gained widespread influence within the ecumenical movement and especially affected Christian world missions.
"In many respects modern economic and other forms of aid to developing countries-including significant ecumenical contributions from the World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Roman Catholic Church-have now succeeded the Social Gospel."
Slavery;
Affirms that slavery was overcome by Paul's writings in the early church and outlines in some detail the fight of Christian church across the world against slavery since 16th century, not shirking from South Africa and US slavery, racial abuses. Cites Luther King and AB Tutu as examples of church fight in this field.
"The fight against slavery has passed through many controversial phases in the history of Christianity. Paul recommended to Philemon that he accept back his runaway slave Onesimus, ?nolonger as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord? (verse 16). Although the biblical writings made no direct attack upon the ancient world's institution of slavery, its proleptic abolition in community with Christ-?There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus? ( Galatians 3:28)-has been a judgment upon the world's and the Christian community's failure to overcome slavery and all forms of oppression."
Education;-
"The Christian Church created the bases of the Western system of education....
...Only in the 18th century did the school system start to separate itself from its Christian roots and fall more and more under state control....The Christian system of education led to the early founding of universities. The university was a creation of medieval Europe and spread from there to other continents after the 16th century..."
Health care;-
"...These efforts provided a significant contribution to the development of modern welfare, which in the 20th century is mainly the responsibility of state, communal, or humanitarian organizations but is still characterized strongly by its Christian roots."
Care for urban poor;-
"The other major effort to deal with property and poverty at this time was through rational direction and administration. As cities developed into political corporations, a new element entered welfare work: an organizing citizenry. Through their town councils, citizens began to claim the authority to administer the ecclesiastical welfare work of hospitals and poor relief. The process was accelerated by the Reformers, whose theology undercut the medieval idealization of poverty..."
Science;-
"The biblical faith in God as Creator and incarnate Redeemer is an explicit affirmation of the goodness, reality, and contingency of the created world-assumptions underlying scientific work. Thus, in the 20th century, William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury, could assert that Christianity is an avowedly materialistic religion. Positive tendencies concerning education and science have always been dominant in the history of Christianity, even though the opposite attitude arose occasionally during certain periods. Thus the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) spoke of celebrating God in science."
Over to humanists/athiests....
will be interesting credentials in comparison...
PB
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Oh wow, pb actually wrote of atheists
'There is just no intellectual integrity to it at all.'
I'll leave it to the long-time posters of this blog to judge that one (after they've finished laughing)
You repeatedly mention violence pb. As in
"So I do maintain my accusations of violent prejudice and bias"
Of non-plussed you said
"your easy and absolute conclusion on the matter (genocide) does indeed betray a violent prejudice"
I've heard all your other lies many times before, but could you elaborate on the violent bit please?
Finally, in your silly rant posts 129 and 130 you ask if atheism is a social evil. Yet you only mention the things you claim atheism doesn't do. You assert atheism is absent in a number of areas. But absence is something different from actively being a source of strife, intolerance etc as religion so often is. Rather than noting how little visible atheism is, could you name how it is a social evil in present society? For all your multiple lengthy posts on it, you have thus far not shown anything why atheism would be a social evil.
xXX
Peter
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Pb:
Your postings really are a bundle of confusions, contradictions, repetitions and misrepresentations. Make your mind up. You tell others off for their take on the subject and then proceed to adopt the same take yourself. The christian religion is not the only religion in the world, and it is also bigger than the churches, though they are organisations which form part of it. Sometimes, you refer to religion, sometimes to 'churches' in the plural and at others to 'the church'. Which is it? Are they all equally guiltless?
Your are quite right about atheism. It has no morality because it has no beliefs. Atheism is defined as the absence of belief in a god or gods, nothing more or less. The same would apply to agnosticism and scepticism. But, please, get this into your head, Pb. Are you paying attention? In the past, these opinions were not organised at all. Indeed, it was dangerous even to express them because the religious, Pb, were not exactly a tolerant lot. You might get burned at the stake like Bruno or tortured like Galileo.
Even today these opinions are not generally organised. There are millions of atheists who are not joiners, who do not want their various and diverse opinions organised into a collective which might impose some beliefs on them. Instead, they join other groups as appropriate. Thus they might belong to a political party and work through it, or a trade union or pressure group such as Amnesty or Friends of the Earth etc. Or they might even work in a caring capacity for state authorities.
So when you compare 'religion' with 'atheism' it is a totally meaningless comparision because you are not comparing like with like (some atheists might even say they are religious if by this you mean having a sense of awe at the wonders of the universe). Religion covers (or at least in your thinking it does) not only a set of beliefs but also the organisations which seek to spread those beliefs.
Humanism, unlike atheism or agnosticism, does seek to develop a positive philosophy (therefore one can be both an atheist or an agnostic and a humanist) and does try to organise, but it lacks the resources that the churches have had. A potential difficulty Humanism has is that once it goes behold a statement of general principles, there will be disagreements about specifics. This is inevitable as humanists, athests etc. are by their nature freethinkers and resent being told what their opinions should be by others. Indeed, this is a good thing. So, I hope, we applaud and celebrate our differences of opinion. I hope that humanist organisations would welcome people who are left and right, liberal and conservative, unionist and republican, pro and anti-Belfast Pride and that they would be happy to express these differences to one another and in public. There is no party line or unanimity to be defended. But we are all highly moral individuals with a strong sense of right and wrong. We may not agree on some of these questions but we always approach them with thought and consideration for others.
You are quite wrong in saying that humanism teaches no care for one's neighbour as you would wish to be cared for. I've had this out with you before and pointed out that the Golden Rule as expressed in this form predates Jesus and comes from humanists such as Confucius and the Buddha. Many of the early humanists before Jesus were also heavily involved as teachers in ancient Greece and played a big part in the spead of education, as did the Renaissaance humanists and many others since.
But if you want a sweep of history, well here it is. Frederick II wrote: "The world has been deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed". The first impostor was Moses. He almost certainly never existed. The traditional version of the Ten Commandments as given In Exodus was a late invention created no earlier than the seventh century BC (we shall omit Mohammed but if you like we could discuss Islam and its impact on the world).
The emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in 313 AD. As Bury says (History of Freedom of Thought), "this momentous decision inaugurated a millennium in which reason was enchained, thought was enslaved, and knowledge made no progress". During the two centuries in which they had been a forbidden sect the Christians had claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief is voluntary and therefore unenforceable. Now that it had the power of the state behind it, they abandoned this view and sought to create a complete uniformity of opinion. Salvation was to be found exclusively in the Christian Church. It was a 'Christian' duty to impose the only true doctrine and thus save souls from damnation. In the words of St Augustine (died 430 AD) persecution was necessary to 'compel them to come in'.
PB, I suggest you read The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman. He says that the Greek tradition of rational thought was destroyed by Christianity. BTW, he also writes that Christians from the 4th century on accepted slavery as part of normal life and wealthier Christians owned slaves themselves. (he quotes Ephesians 6:5-7: "Slaves, be obedient to the men who are called your masters...").
At the same time, the myth itself was broadened and fortified. The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD decided to replace the myth of the Jewish Messiah by an even more fantastic claim that Jesus was God incarnate.
The millennium of Christianity triumphant was characterised by anti-intellectualism, anti-reason, anti-science, anti-feminism, anti-semitism, anti- Islamism, and slavery. Heretics, women and Jews were killed or burnt at the stake (The Inquisition), Muslims were slaughtered on Crusades, writers and scientists like Bruno and Galileo were burnt, tortured, or humiliated. No other religion has such a bloodstained record as Christianity.
The Renaissance, spearheaded by Christian Humanists, many of whom came into conflict with the church, brought the possibilities of emancipation from these Dark Ages of the human spirit. Christianity itself split, especially after Luther's 95 Theses of 1517, and, in 1534, Henry VIII?s rejection of papal authority. In 1545 the Council of Trent condemned Protestantism. Christians were now fighting or insulting one another, and in a few countries (notably Ireland) are still doing so. The Reformation unintentionally helped the cause of human liberty because it substituted a number of theological authorities instead of one and thus weakened religious power in general. Protestantism also promoted reason because it stressed individual conscience.
Christianity has been in slow, almost imperceptible, decline for many decades in its traditional heartland in Europe as well as in many other parts of the western world. Pews are emptying and vocations are in crisis even in 'Christian' Ireland. Religion, in the sense of worship of supernatural deities, is under relentless challenge from modern science and appears increasingly as a hangover from a more primitive past. As societies mature and become more liberal and democratic, they put away 'childish things' and seek spirituality in the beauties and mysteries of nature and companionship with other living beings. As a philosophy of life, Christianity has nothing new to offer and is undoubtedly well past its sell-by date. Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit: requiescat in pace.
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Brian
You freely admit athiesm as no morality.
Brian, in practise the absence of any morality in an individual is otherwise known as evil!!!
If it is a fair question to ask if religion is a social evil it is also fair to ask if the absence of religion is a social evil.
Anyway, in Christian thought sins of omission are at least as evil as sins of commission.
If athiesm does not teach a positive message of care for ones neighbour that, in Christian terms, this is sin.
The degree of your bias is indicated by your refusal to acknowledge the enormous contributions of Christian faith to the world, as historical fact.
May I paraphrase the question, it is not "has evil been done in the name of religion" (it has) but "is religion (generally) a social evil"?
I argue that evils done in the name of Christ are dwarved by the good done in his name.
You appear to argue the opposite, which is simply not credible from an objective historical viewpoint.
ie Your sweep of history of Christianity in post 132 is that Christian faith is simply one continual flow of evil actions, argument and decline from its inception.
Brian, this is a slender grasp on reality.
To emphasise the point, please could you advise where you read that Galileo was ever tortured?
Enc Brit says it was his faith that inspired his science and discoveries!!!
If athiests cannot even get so far as to agree a statement of belief never mind organise in order to do social good, that leaves athiesm trailing in terms of social good in comparison to religion, certainly the Christian variety. That much is fact.
The conclusion must be that you are borrowing any morality you have indirectly form religion, in that the bible is the foundation for all western civilisation and culture anyway, according to Enc Brit.
You also say that Moses "almost certainly never existed".
Utter nonsense Brian.
I challenge you to cross reference this claim to three MAINSTREAM historical reference works.
If they are special interest/agenda books they are not mainstream and therefore it is not a mainstream view by the way.
PB
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Pb:
QUOTE"
"You freely admit atheism has no morality.
Brian, in practice the absence of any morality in an individual is otherwise known as evil!!!"
END QUOTE
This is just crass. Atheism is a concept or opinion, not a person with or without morals. It describes a view of reality. Either there is a god or there isn't. This is a factual question. Morality has nothing to do with it. Atheists, I am sure, have lots of other beliefs AS WELL, which in their view are fully moral.
You seem obsessed with 'evil'. But then this is very 'Irish' thing, looking for evil lurking under every bush and every person who doesn't happen to share your own narrow, censorious, killjoy view of the world. You talk about the good people who do wonderful things, but your morality seems negatively obsessed with putting down 'bad things' and ;bad' people. You use the word 'atheist' as if it was some kind of recognisable poison to be exterminated. We keep trying to tell you that people who question religion have a VARIETY of opinions. Absence of a belief does not imply certainty. Not believing that something is true is not equivalent to believing that it is false ? we may simply have no idea whether it is true or not. So the certainty or lack of it varies from one atheist or agnostic to another. Yet you insist on lumping them all together as if they all had the same opinion. This is not very intelligent.
There are lots of good people out there, both Christian and non-Christian. Many Christians have made great contributions to the world, including Galileo, who was certainly persecuted and shown the instruments of torture. Do you deny that he was forced to recant? Do you deny that he recanted because he was afraid he would suffer the same fate as Bruno, who was burnt at the stake?
As for Moses, there is absolutely no documentation of such a character outside biblical texts, which are so unreliable about so many things e.g. the 'creation'. The onus is on YOU to give external evidence for his existence, not on me to prove a negative. Give me some real evidence that there was a Moses and I might change my mind.
QUOTE:
"If atheists cannot even get so far as to agree a statement of belief ...".
END QUOTE:
Again, this is inane. How many Christian sects are there, all disagreeing with one another? There must be thousands and thousands!! And they fight over it, whereas we humanists welcome and celebrate our disagreements as proof of our freedom of thought and common humanity.
Atheism is merely a statement of non-belief, nothing more or less. As a concept, it rejects religious belief and that is all it is concerned with. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Humanism is, however, a positive philosophy. IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE BOTH ATHEIST, AGNOSTIC OR SCEPTICAL AND TO BE A HUMANIST!!!
Why are you so concerned with sticking labels on people and fitting them into narrow pigeon-holes? They're just a substitute for thinking. Perhaps you could try it a little instead of throwing out dubious quotes from other sources.
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Brian / PB (Post 1)
I'm going to agree and disagree with both of you; I suppose some might call that a cop out! Anyway.
First of all PB:
In one way PB you are right, making a scape-goat of christianity, as some contributers seem to want to do, isn't helpful. Sometimes reading this blog is like reading an anti-God rant. And I find that strange given that God isn't supposed to exist. Christians have a long and established history of influencing the world for the good.
However, I'm not sure that asking the question, "what are atheist believers doing to provide an organised response to... " is going to get us anywhere. As soon as I read it I thought, but atheism isn't a movement, it is, as Brian explains, the absence of belief, and people who disbelieve so, are involved in all aspects of life, from the mundane to the notable. The trouble with arguing form this point of view is that there are many non-believers doing many good things - fact - we ought to get over it.
What concerns me is that the reason for being a christian in the first place is not that we are in some way morally superior, but it is because we have realised that we are not perfect, far from it in fact. Christianity is not about good, better, or best people, it is rather, about flawed people needing redemption, and I for one am prepared to say that that includes me.
There is an ocean of historical evidence which points to people of all faiths, and none, doing 'good works'. The real problem here, in christian terms, is, that the God of the bible says that our good isn't good enough. If we are christians we are called to repent of our good deeds as well as our bad deeds, and that's a bit of a bombshell. Of course it doesn't mean that either believer or non-believer is to stop showing kindness. It just means that our kindness is limited and, as a result, the real call in christianity is that we are to find our identity in God rather than in the ego.
Christianity says humanity is of the utmost value *and* it says that that value is a reflection of the God of the Bible.
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Brian / PB (Post 2)
Brian:
You say, "Humanism, unlike atheism or agnosticism, does seek to develop a positive philosophy (therefore one can be both an atheist or an agnostic and a humanist)... I hope, we applaud and celebrate our differences of opinion. I hope that humanist organisations would welcome people who are left and right, liberal and conservative, unionist and republican, pro and anti-Belfast Pride and that they would be happy to express these differences to one another and in public."
Would it be possible to be a christian and a humanist? Remember I believe humanity to be of utmost value. Could I, a biblical christian, join Humani?
And so to history!
It was a pretty broad sweep! But what I found interesting was your differentiation, intentional or otherwise, between pre and post 4thC christianity. I would make a similar distinction and suggest that organised religion was the worse thing that ever happened the church. One of the problems was that christianity began to confuse the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, seeking to establish, often by force, the kingdom of heaven on earth. This was, in my view, misguided, unbiblical and just plain wrong, and we are still suffering the consequences. Did it do good too, yes, but the problem of the abuse of power remains. The reformation was, as you note, helpful in promoting freedom of thought, I would argue intentionally, however it did not go far enough, and fell into many of the same problems which it argued against. Ecclesia semper reformanda est has to all intents been forgotten.
What we ought to remember however is the almost unnoticed history of small unorganised christians, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Paulicians or the Bogomils for example and indeed today, the tradition of unorganised followers of Jesus remains.
Just one more thing Brian. You point to the The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and accuse it of penning myth. If 'myth' it was, And I do not believe it was, then they probably got it from Tertullian and his 'Apology' in which he writes:
"We have been taught that He proceeds forth from God, and in that procession He is generated; so that He is the Son of God, and is called God from unity of substance with God... Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light of light is kindled...so, that which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one... This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descending into a certain virgin, and made flesh in her womb, is in His birth God and man united." 197 - 212 AD/CE
And before that he got it from Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, and Paul.
Oh, and yes, you are right, "Christianity has nothing new to offer", as the Smyrnaeans wrote at the time of the death of Polycarp, we live 'in the reign of the Eternal King, Jesus Christ'.
They did, and we all still do.
requiescat in pace??
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.
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PB
Peter asked you some simple questions in M131...any resonse?
Peter Morrow
If only more Christians were like you!
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Hi Peter:
You ask if it would be possible to be a Christian and a Humanist. Certainly. There are some. Remember what DD, Heliopolitan, Peter Klaver, nonplussed, myself and others keep repeating to Pb (although it's largely a dialogue of the deaf): labels are only tags of convenience. Far too many people read too much into them.
Humanism is a very broad 'church'. We don't have any rigid tests of suitability for membership. Basically, you're a humanist if you think you are.
In the current issue of Humanism Ireland there is an article by a Quaker who is also a humanist and member of the HAI (he lives in Dublin).
If you look at Humani's website (contrary to Pb's typically personalising assertion, not 'my' website, nor do I maintain it) you will see a list of articles including some even by fully fledged, bible-believing (though probably liberal)
Christians.
I am giving my own opinions here. A basic tenet of Humanism is to value freedom of thought, and it would be a complete contradiction of this basic principle for me or anyone else to tell other humanists what they should think or say. That is one of the major 'crimes' of organised religion and why it is so bad for people. It tells them what they should think. It denies them their basic freedom as an individual to think things through for themselves.
Humanism stands for individual thought not group thought. Listening to the news yesterday and hearing that all the four main parties oppose abortion in NI made me really depressed. Is there no major politician who can actually think for themselves on this issue? Can't they see that their narrow patriarchal morality is the laughing stock of Europe? As they so blind to their own petty insularity that they are prepared to elevate a foetus above the rights of a real human being?
Yet I suppose we have to remember that, again in typically Irish logic fashion, some of us spent 30 years in a futile orgy of destruction, preaching hatred and intolerance and bombing and shooting one another and killing 3,000 people in defence of human rights too!
Let me quote Robert Ingersoll, a great American humanist:
1. "We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death".
2. "The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow men".
3. "The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites ? and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbour thinks".
4. "Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind and without it, the world is a prison, the Universe is a dungeon".
5. "I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men".
6. "Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul".
7. "Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest".
8. "There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven".
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DD, hi
"Bible-believing Christianity ie., dishonest, wilfully ignorant etc etc"
I don't want to make a meal of this, but (!)
I'm not really sure there is any kind of Christianity other than biblical Christianity. I know that poses a lot of problems for a lot of people, but without the bible we wouldn't have christianity at all.
PB, whom I do not know, and myself, are probably both biblical christians of some kind or another. As for being an example, it's not for me to comment about others, but in terms of myself, I wouldn't exactly term my example a 'shining' one!
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Peter:
What is 'biblical' Christianity? Does it mean that you believe everything the Bible says? Or some of it?
Is it not possible to be a 'Christian' because you think that the ethical message of Jesus is worth following, while rejecting all the supernatural baggage of virgin births, miracles resurrections etc?
can you be an ethical Christian without being a god-believing Christian?
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Peter Morrow, Brian
My main response to your last points is a defence based on the question which frames this thread -
Is religion a social evil?
While I applaud the free speech which allows such a question to be asked, as Peter Morrow points out, this blog operates in a medium which has a strong anti-God rant flavour.
So the thread question must reasonably be read in that context.
Most of the regular posters appear to be ardent discplies of Dawkins, judging by their arguments and explicit promotion of Dawkins.
In that context, if the thread question is framed in a pro-Dawkins context, which this blog arguably is, it is not an objective question but a deliberately controversial and confrontational one, putting people of faith on the defensive form the out.
This is, of course, virtually implicit in Dr Crawley's job description, after all ie to be controversial.
Moderate questions do not generate the hits BBC bloggers look for in their web states of course.
So, all that said and done, I make no apology for turning the tables on athiesm and putting it in the dock in the same manner. Is it evil?
Brian attempts to sidestept the issue, but he avoids my argument that athiests must look SOMEWHERE for their morality and that in western civilisation Enc Brit says that must uniquivolcally have come from the bible.
So, as a rule of thumb, any morality that western atheists have is from the bible. So without the bible western athiests would be shorn of all their moral conditions and assumptions, I argue.
So Brian, please dont hide behind semantics.
Brian says I am obsessed with evil, but it is the central question of the thread. ???!!!
Also, the onus is not on me to substantiate a mainstream historical view of Moses as a real person, it is on Brian, if he wishes to challenge this view.
Brian I see you are now airbrushing out your claims that Galileo was tortured. Not so fast, come clean, you were totally wrong there Brian and your response does you, humanism and your arguments no credit at all.
You accused me of throwing around quotes from Dubious sources. Enc Brit is mainstream and of international standing as a generall knowldge ref work.
I think all that says alot about the quality of your arguments Brian, not mine.
If humanism is not about attacking God Brian why is so much of your website devoted to attacking the bible?
And if labels are useless you will surely ask DD, PK and Helio to stop calling me a fundamentalist, which I clearly am not.
I wont hold my breath for that from your Brian.
DD - if you want me to engage with questions, try apologising for yours and PK's sexual harrassment.
What does it say about the confidence and integrity of your arguments?
When Peter, a physics phd, finds he must resort to this against me I just imagine all the viewers on the blog laughing.
What an intellectual giant.
PB
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DD
Pick any thread and count the number of ad hominems to me and from me.
Then come back and give us the results.
I have never told a lie on this website, I have certainly made factual mistakes and freely acknowledge them.
I think perhaps "lies" in your mind are when some contradicts or challenges a value from your worldview which you consider to be an absolute truth.
How can "everyone" have civil conversations with everyone but me?
Perhaps only you can answer that DD as you are constantly engaging in uncivil comments and I am not.
Off to fix that blown gasket!
;-)
PB
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DD
I took no offense. I enjoy the debate, even when it gets heated.
I hope however that none of my comments have, in any way, contributed to ill feeling.
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PB
Try and learn what ad hominen means-you see PB you have wasted so many peoples time here with your wilful ignorance that people have grown quite tired of you.
"I have never told a lie on this website, I have certainly made factual mistakes and freely acknowledge them."
Oh have you now!? You see PB there has been a hell of a lot of "factual mistakes" but I do not see much of you freely acknowledging them.
Lets start here...
"Current scientific assumptions (including those underpinning the evolutionist viewpoint) are increasingly being undermined by quantum science."
"QM has little respect for the laws of scienmce"
" Catastrophism is now mainstream" and the "mainstream evidence points to a much younger earth"
(you repeated this 3 times got slapped down and still repeated it!)
"Without any question, ID was not thrown our of the Dover trial because it was not credible science (the judge carefully said it might be and that he took no position on this)."
"Why ignore the fact that Darwin's prediction has been completely demolished ; Despite millions of new fossils since Darwin, the transitional fossils he predicted and said his theory required have never been found."
"I am not arguing from silence to say that a very conservative review of the fossil record suggests lifeforms abruptly appeared out of "nowhere". That is what the evidence suggests."
and
"few labs do radiometric dating"
You did repeat this several times but on each occasion when asked simply to back it up you...ran away!
Talking about running away, I did ask you a series of very simple questions that would back up your stunning, make billions, win the Nobel prize etc views on science but you always ran away! BTW I did not see much "acknowledgement" with the examples above! But then again you were just repeating crap that you copied from creationist webistes/pamphlets etc
"I think perhaps "lies" in your mind are when some contradicts or challenges a value from your worldview which you consider to be an absolute truth."
Really! well my views on science are held by those of all faiths and none-it is completely immaterial and this has been pointed out to you from day one(sigh-we are full circle again!) you know that Francis Collins agrees with me! which sorta "undermines your argument" :-/. Indeed the only ones to emphasise worldviews are...creationists!
"Perhaps only you can answer that DD as you are constantly engaging in uncivil comments and I am not."
Look sweetie the rest of us can get on just fine but you are "special" PB! But you do engage in uncivil comments just look at the amount of "factual mistakes" you made over the past year and a half in order to pervert and deceive the good readers of these threads.
What this PB!? oh it appears to be a dummy tit! it seems that you spat it out of the pram!
;-)
DD
ps.All I want to know is where you stand on evolution/creation(personally I am not interested in linking this issue to atheist/theist)? Do you now agree with McGrath/Collins eg., the world is 4.6 billion years old, life developed with natural selection, man and ape sharing a common ancestor(and that we are both apes), you have no problem with transitional fossils and evolution being fact and theory?
Also Peter Klaver asked
are you now holding a radically different position on other areas of science as well? Do you still think QM undermines science and has little respect for the laws of science? What are your thoughts on thermodynamics, specifically the second law? Do you still hold that there is a fundamental difference between macro and micro evolution, and if so, where is that limit exactly? And please explain your current position on anti-gravity and faster-than-light travel. To name just a few of the areas where you've come up with such deceitful YEC rubbish in the past and where I'm curious to learn what you think of them now.
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Brian Post 141
"What is 'biblical' Christianity? Does it mean that you believe everything the Bible says? Or some of it?"
"can you be an ethical Christian without being a god-believing Christian?"
First on the point of Christ. The term/name means, anointed one, i.e. king. This is who Christ's ones believe him to be.
And Jesus also said of himself, (John 8:58) "Before Abraham was, I Am." i.e. YHWH. The reaction of the religious leaders in verse 59 explains how they thought of this as blasphemy.
The trouble for all of us is that Jesus was claiming to be more than an ethical teacher. If it were a matter of ethics alone then I suspect more people would have less problems!
Second, do I believe the bible? "What?! All of it?!" I hear you say.
Do you have time to debate this (?) because it raises questions about the type of text, the style, the genre, the purpose, the writer etc.
So here's the short answer. If you mean do I take everything literally, no; but, do I believe its central message to be true, yes.
Put it this way, do I believe, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. (present tense!)
Yes.
Make of it what you will!
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Pb (#142):
EVIL
Yes, the thread has evil in the title and the term was used in the survey . But you will notice that I have never once said that religion is a social evil. I don't like that word. It has connotations of absoluteness in a world which is relative, and I don't think it is applicable to morality. Certainly, I have not argued that religion is absolutely bad. I have said that it has some good features and most Christians are good people (and so are most people). My argument throughout has been that it has done more harm than good, not that it is an 'evil'.
Would you say that atheism has any good features, Pb? Or is it totally evil? It does seem to me that you are obsessed with the concept of 'evil' and do see it lurking everywhere. This is unfair to the world. There is a lot of badness but there is a lot of goodness too. And much that is wrong is the result of stupidity, not 'evil'. For example, Seamus Mallon said that the GFA was Sunningdale for 'slow learners', and he has a good point.
MORAL THINKING
A humanist morality, I think, has a number of sources, religious and non-religious. The first group relate to thinking. We need to think right in order to do right. The Greeks knew this. Indeed, philosophy as the love of wisdom was really invented by the ancient Greeks.
Here are three. Think for yourself, respect truth and reason, be sceptical yet open-minded. We need to think right in order to do right. Very little of this comes from religion or, specifically in the west, Christianity. Most of it comes from pre-Christian Greek thought. Socrates is a key figure. The unexamined life is not worth living, he said, and he encouraged his students to challenge their own prejudices and ideas. Christianity, on the other hand, encourages the opposite: be as little children, don't think for yourself, follow me. Very dangerous.
Truth is important because a humanist believes that morality has to be based on the facts of human nature. There is no point in having a morality which ignores the way we are in favour of an impossible ideal. The concept of truth also springs from the Greeks. It is also present in Judaeo-Christianity ('the truth shall set you free', but its considerable supernatural baggage of virgin births, miracles, resurrections etc is in my view (and that of many others) factually untrue. Reason and logic, which were stressed by Aristotle, are necessary to think through the consequences of our actions.
RECIPROCITY
The Golden Rule in the form 'do unto others' or 'do not do under others', dates back to ancient China, India and Greece. Jesus repeats it. So, yes, I take this principle partly from Christianity but I also take it from Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tzu and from Epictetus, who wrote: "What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others".
It is an excellent guide. However, it is not an absolute. Remember what Shaw said about making allowances for differences of taste. Also note that its golden feet are firmly on humanist not religious ground, because it is based upon human and utilitarian principles not on revelations, commandments or taboos.
RESPECT LIFE AND RESPECT NATURE
Humanists do not say that life is sacred but we do accept the commandment ?thou shalt not kill? as a general rule. Some humanists are out and out pacifists (like Quakers) and others argue that in special cases like self-defence or justified wars, it may be moral. Some humanists extend the principle to other animals and are vegetarians or vegans. In other words, they are like most Christians: there are differences of opinion. The same applies to nature. Some humanists are very strong Greens, others less so.
I should say that as far as the 10 Commandments are concerned, from number 5 on humanists would generally agree, subject to reservations and special circumstances. But generally we prefer to put our ethical principles more positively as dos rather than don?ts.
HAPPINESS AND WELLBEING
We believe that human wellbeing is preferable to human misery. This principle derives from the ancient Greeks such as Epicurus who taught that the prudent pursuit of pleasure was the main aim of life. His ideas, after a thousand and more years of the dark age of Christianity, were revived by Bentham and Mill, both atheists/agnostics, who along with Francis Hutcheson, formulated the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number, again a basic humanist tenet today. Many humanists would say that the meaning of life lies in our contribution to the happiness and wellbeing of others.
LIBERTY
Another principle is that people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do not harm others. This principles derives above all from Mill and his crucial work 'On Liberty'. Humanists generally do not believe that personal morality is a proper target for the law unless one?s actions cause suffering or harm.
HUMANITY
Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in their joint declaration (written by Russell and agreed by Einstein) put it thus: "remember your humanity and forget the rest". In other words, ultimately we are all equal members of the human race and should be treated as such.
In sum, Humanist morality is an eclectic amalgam of principles derived from various sources: Socrates, Epicurus, Confucius, Epictetus, Aristotle, Jesus, Bentham, Mill, Russell, Einstein, and so on. It uses the wisdom of the ages and does not depend upon one source (the Bible) which has a few good things in it but a lot of bad and is hardly a useful road map to a sophisticated and human ethic.
PS
What?s your point about Galileo?Do you deny that he was several times threatened with torture? Do you deny that the pope personally threatened Pico della Mirandola with burning for his Oration on the Dignity of Man in 1486? Do you deny that Campanella was imprisoned for his writings by the Inquisition for 27 years? Do you deny that Bruno was burned at the stake in the Piazza dei Fiori in Rome in 1600 because he was charged with atheism and for championing the Copernican system? Do you deny that Thomas More used an allonym in one of his writings because he feared the wrath of the Church?
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DD
Very interesting examples DD - like I said, every time you accuse me of a lie, you believe that to be the case because you believe that your worldview is founded on absolute truths.
Now, if you are so convinced of your case against me, DEMONSTRATE that I have told lies here in front of witnesses instead of just claiming it.
I suggest that I have merely challenged the validty of your strongly held assumptions and also double standards.
The real regular long term posters on this blog are yourself Helio/Amen and Peter Klaver.
All are avowed Dawkins fans and he is known to be very personal and agressive. Likewise you guys.
So, the height of nonsense to blame me for your boorishness and ill manners.
As for Peter K, your threats to rape and and crucify me and constant sexual comments... well not so impressive for a scientist arguing "science".
The PSNI have expressed an interest ref "hate crimes".
;-)
PB
What caused the universe to begin?
Where did matter come from?
What caused the universe to organise?
how did life first begin?
what is life?
if evolution cannot prove there is no God then isnt the logical position to be agnostic rather than athiest?
Where does conscience come from?
where does beauty come from?
what is truth?
why is torture wrong?
Why are scientific laws stable in a universe of chaos and chance?
How do we know they will be in future?
what are the chances of the anthropic principle happening at random?
What happens your consciousness after you die?
how certain can you be that observations made by human senses for scientific purposes truly represent reality?
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PB
It is noted that you are obsessed to the point of paranoia with Dick Dawkins. You do go on and on about Dick, indeed you do seem to obsess about Dick all the time. It seems to be Dick, Dick, Dick with you all the time-you seem to have Dick Dawkins on the brain at all times. I think you should get it looked at-that's your brain not Dick.
Personally speaking I think Dick is all right, sometimes I like him more than others. However it is a bit of a compliment to compare us to someone who is so intelligent, erudite and witty!
Regards
DD
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DD
It is quite illuminating that you actually believe that you havent got a worldview.
This underlines my point that you really do believe you have absolute truth, no matter how hard you protest.
The very fact of insisting that you will believe nowt until you get scientific evidence for it is a stark defining point of a very definite worldview.
If you really want to prove that I have told lies you would need to cite EVERYTHING that I said on each subject and not just pull one line out of context.
Remeber, all those scientists you suggested I talk to.. be honest and tell that you went to them and asked for arguments to counter my discussions on QM, while admitting that you hadnt a clue what I was talking about.
You said you knew I was completely wrong even though you hadnt a clue about the issues.
That that really is objective and evidence based inquiry isnt it?
Pete, you really are a funny chap,
later guys
PB
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Peter
the evidence for my "unfounded" claims is here;-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2007/12/are_religious_politicians_nutt.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/04/will_testament_bloggers_dinner.html
Which path are you choosing, civil debate or ....
I would much prefer civil debate myself.
RSVP
PB
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Pete
Under "are religious politicans nutters" you make constant allusions to having intimate relations with me.
In the bloggers dinner thread you suggest crucifying me.
I spoke to one police officer who said this was "menacing" and asked for your details.
RSVP.
PB
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PS Pete
Please think - the BBC moderators allowed it is not a defence that would stand up in court.
PB
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"The very fact of insisting that you will believe nowt until you get scientific evidence for it is a stark defining point of a very definite worldview."
just a small point PB, I am actually asking for scientific evidence for the scientific claims you are making!please excuse me!I am so sorry! how terrible and naughty of me. Unless of course you are claiming the your ideas are not scientific but based on your religion...?
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PB !
I thought that we were moving on!
"It is quite illuminating that you actually believe that you havent got a worldview.
This underlines my point that you really do believe you have absolute truth, no matter how hard you protest.
The very fact of insisting that you will believe nowt until you get scientific evidence for it is a stark defining point of a very definite worldview."
PB I did not say that I did not have a worldview! please engage-I said that the scientific method did not rely on worldviews but rather evidence based reasoning and that worldviews are quite immaterial. Francis Collins is a case in point-looks like you have not heard of him? obviously as he undermines your argument.
"If you really want to prove that I have told lies you would need to cite EVERYTHING that I said on each subject and not just pull one line out of context."
PB we would be here all day if I cited everything that you wrote on science, because as you know it was practically all dishonest and useless . I was very fair to you . I see that you are changing the goalposts yet again(sigh). You asked me to give you examples of when you have told lies-I gave them-then I gave the first example and gave you the opportunity to defend yourself-but as ever all I get is prevarication and bluster! It is quite obvious that you have told lies and are indeed a hypocrite.
"Remeber, all those scientists you suggested I talk to.. be honest and tell that you went to them and asked for arguments to counter my discussions on QM, while admitting that you hadnt a clue what I was talking about."
More prevarication noted . You must excuse me PB if I do not take everything that you say on science at face value-given your woeful record. I am so sorry PB that I am not an expert on QM-unlike yourself of course! You who are an expert on palaeontology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, dating methods, biology, zoology etc. Indeed it is very odd with all your "knowledge" that you post on this blog and not publish your ground-breaking work, which would earn you Nobel-prizes, earn you millions and would ensure you enter the pantheon of great scientists!
"You said you knew I was completely wrong even though you hadnt a clue about the issues.
That that really is objective and evidence based inquiry isnt it?"
PB you said that "the study of QM is undermining evolution", now I may not be the expert that you are! however I do read up a bit on science(obviously I do not have the extensive evidence that you have!) and this stunning news that you gave us-I could find nowhere(and I did look before I asked scientists working in related fields-how dastardly of me!). Now I am a bit more up to speed on the issues so...
Demonstrate that you told lies in front of witnesses...ok lets take the first example.
"Current scientific assumptions (including those underpinning the evolutionist viewpoint) are increasingly being undermined by quantum science."
Now I say that this is a lie, I say that the study of QM is not undermining evolution. You demonstrate that it is-simple as that! Some peer reviewed papers would be great.
You really would think it would be simple!
"I would much prefer civil debate myself."
So would I but...you keep making these grand claims but when asked some very simple questions to back them up...you run away!
later...
DD
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"Very interesting examples DD - like I said, every time you accuse me of a lie, you believe that to be the case because you believe that your worldview is founded on absolute truths.
Now, if you are so convinced of your case against me, DEMONSTRATE that I have told lies here in front of witnesses instead of just claiming it."
OK
"Current scientific assumptions (including those underpinning the evolutionist viewpoint) are increasingly being undermined by quantum science."
This is a lie, I can find not a shred of evidence to back it up-it is up to you to back it up-some peer-reviewed papers would be great. If you can't back it up, then it's a lie-simple as that.
Ps. Dear Mods I hope this post is self-explanatory. PB has made a bold claim about science-I say it is not true -it's a lie. It is up to said poster to back up his claims. had a look at the guidelines and fail to see how I fail them!?
Anyway regards
DD
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PB
Since you went on a Jihad against my posts, there are several points that I need to address.
"So, the height of nonsense to blame me for your boorishness and ill manners."
It is your fault PB, it is your boorishness, wilful ignorance and ill manners that have made us the way we are. Please note that we are not like this with every poster..it's just you. Indeed PB it is not just the atheists but also the Christians who are turned off by your behaviour-Peter Morrow gently rebuked you for misrepresentation earlier on this thread and PTL on another thread(who is even more fundamentalist than you!) stated that he wished to distance himself from you!?
As I stated you are wilfully ignorant-you post stunning "scientific" news and then run away when asked some very *simple* questions to back up these stunning assertions you run away! Now PB this does look like you are telling lies. The solution is very *simple*-back up your myriad claims.
This is a public message board for robust discussion-if you don't like it then leave! Your behaviour illustrates your fundamentalist character eg., cut of all dissent. If you don't like these threads (and you are constantly having a go at Will Crawley) then start your own! Probably (just as with Ken Ham) everyone would of course have to agree with you.
PB I did seriously consider reporting a few of your posts on this thread(and I have never complained about a post)but I noticed on the complaints page that the mods urge you to respond to the poster first and try and work it out-which I am attempting to do-Now you made some very serious allegations against Peter. Peter did try to defend himself but you got the posts pulled. The 'crucify' charge is ridiculous and obviously to anyone with a smigden of wit a pastiche of Monty Python's 'Life Of Brian'-no-one found it offensive on the original thread just you! and was obviously not meant to be taken literally-DOH! as for the 'rape' thing-please! grow up!
Please remember PB, this is a silly little message board(no offense to Will) that in reality amounts to little more than a hill of beans. Also you have never identified yourself, we know nowt about you etc likewise with me. You have taken it all way too seriously.
Regards
DD
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