Abandon Ship
It’s fundamental disagreement time. I disagree radically with a line of argument at Cliopatria, and what’s worse, the kind of argument it is makes it very difficult to dispute as directly and bluntly as I would like to – or as I would like to in one sense but would not like to in another. That’s exactly the problem. I may decide to leave Cliopatria as a result – because as it is, I seem to be semi-acquiescing in views that are anathema to me.
My politics are derived from my faith, not the other way around. When I was younger, and a secular liberal, my politics were the only faith I had! Since coming to Christ (and yes, I do call myself “born again” without embarrassment), I have had to rebuild my politics from the ground up. When I consider political questions, I am forced to ask myself what position I believe Christ calls me to. This isn’t easy, for any number of obvious reasons, starting with the fact that the New Testament is not a modern political manual. This is why I can’t merely allow myself to hunt and peck through Scripture, finding passages that support my already-in-place suppositions about justice. (Many liberal and conservative Christians alike do this; it’s an understandable habit, but a bad one). Rather, I have to be open to what the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and my church community are telling me about right, wrong, peace and war and so forth…The Christian left must be faithful to Christ first, not secular dogma. Where our agendas and our understandings coincide, so much the better. But at times, we will stand with our Christian brethren on the right of the political spectrum, not out of sectarian loyalty but out of a sense that, as Carter said, “discerning God’s will and doing it is prior to everything else.” It is no easy thing to claim to have discerned God’s will. No wise Christian tries to do it alone. We do it in the light of (thanks Wesley) Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience; above all we do it prayerfully, humbly, and together.
History is a secular subject. Historians work in archives and libraries, they don’t seek revelations. They examine and analyse evidence, they don’t ask what Jesus would think about it (at least I think they do, most of them, and when they’re doing their job properly). They rely on logic and reason, not prayer and the Holy Spirit. I don’t even know how to have conversations that have to do with mental constructs like God’s will and what Christ calls people to. In fact I’m having a hard time even writing this, here at B&W, where regular readers know perfectly well that I’m an atheist and a secularist, and where most regular readers are similarly inclined. I’m having a hard time saying bluntly how I react to talk of the Holy Spirit.
I can say this much though. I think this: ‘This is why I can’t merely allow myself to hunt and peck through Scripture, finding passages that support my already-in-place suppositions about justice. (Many liberal and conservative Christians alike do this; it’s an understandable habit, but a bad one).’ is a truly terrible and dangerous line of thought. It is not a bad habit to ‘hunt and peck’ through the Bible, leaving out the disgusting bits. It is not a bad habit to have pre-existing suppositions about justice that are better than those of the people who wrote the Bible three thousand years ago.
Either there is an omniscient benevolent being taking care of us and the world, or there isn’t. If there is, it does make sense to rely on what it tells us to do. But if there isn’t, then it doesn’t. If there isn’t, we need to get very very clear that there is no force that will make things come out all right ‘eventually’ – just for one thing, there is no ‘eventually’! We need to get very clear that however appalling it is that humans are the most intelligent compassionate beings we can look to – that is nevertheless how things are. Thinking we get to overrule human judgment because there is some kind loving wise person in the sky running the puppet show is a hideous irresponsible delusion. It’s a recipe for abdication at best and theocratic tyranny at worst.
Hugo cites this article by Stephen Carter. I’ve mentioned Carter here before – I think he’s the source of a lot of the guilty leftish spinelessness about religion – the deep unwillingness to resist it, to point out that it is in fact a comforting fiction and should not be treated as if it were on all fours with other more rational ways of thinking.
And if the narrative is truly about the meaning God assigns to the world, as Christianity’s narrative is, the follower of the religion, if truly faithful, can hardly select a different meaning simply because the state says so. If a religionist believes that God’s love does not allow some human beings to enslave others, no amount of teaching by the merely mortal agency of the state should cause the religionist to change. Quite the contrary: the religionist, if he believes that the state is committing great evil, has little choice but to try to get the state to change.
But what if a religionist believes that God’s love does allow some human beings to enslave others? Eh? Has Carter forgotten that that’s exactly what a great many ‘religionists’ did indeed think not very long ago? What recourse is there then but to disagree with them? To apply one’s ‘already-in-place suppositions about justice’ to the matter and say that they’re wrong? To argue, in fact, in a secular manner? None that I know of.
Your question toward the end of your post is quite apt. Bear in mind that slavery was ubiquitous in the early modern world. When something is ubiquitous, the interesting question isn’t “how could it have been tolerated?” because it was commonly and widely accepted. The interesting question is: who challenged it and on what grounds? What we know about early anti-slavery is that it came from a very mixed lot of Anglo-American religious dissenters and continental philosophe — odd allies, indeed. Their reasoning was not the same. Some believed they had discerned that it was not G_d’s will that some people should be enslaved to other people. Some believed that the notion of a divine authority was itself enslaving. Working together, they wrought a revolution which is not yet complete. They need to figure out ways of continuing to work in tandem for their work is not yet done.
For my part, I’m perfectly willing to work with people who say that their moral suppositions come from the Bible. I don’t much care so much about the provenance of someone’s moral suppositions so much as what those suppositions are and how they defend them.
What matters is how they justify and work with these suppositions once developed – whether how they are evaluated and molded has to do with physical goods and evils that happen in the real world, or if everything comes down to a close reading of scripture.
Basically, is it a religious point of view where our job to find out what the right thing is to do because ‘doing the right thing is God’s will’ or is it onw where our job to ‘find out God’s will because doing God’s will is the right thing to do’?
Well, the question of who challenged it is certainly apropos, but so is the question of who defended it and how, and the answer there is also that religion played a strong role. At best, it’s a draw.
“because ‘doing the right thing is God’s will’ or is it onw where our job to ‘find out God’s will because doing God’s will is the right thing to do’?”
Yeah, that’s a version of Socrates’ classic question, from Plato’s dialogues.
There was a woman in one of my recent graduate classes who violently opposed homosexuality, on the ground that the Bible condemns it. I pointed out that the Bible makes a great many condemnations we find outlandish today, such as prohibiting people with vision defects from approaching the altar, or demanding the death of people who work on the Sabbath. She explained that these particular instructions were only temporary, provisional laws needed to help the chosen people survive. But then there’s a big problem – how can we tell, from reading the Bible, what was meant to be taken as temporary law, and what was meant to be taken as eternal law? Why wouldn’t somebody be justified in saying that the condemnations of homosexuality were also just temporary injunctions with no relevance today?
Really, God should have made things more clear for us. He should have arranged it so that eternal laws are printed in the Bible in a different color and font size than the temporary laws. Better yet, He could have arranged for all the
temporary laws to be written in disappearing ink, so they’d vanish from our Bibles when no longer needed. Pretty irresponsible of God to let that confusion stand, isn’t it? Almost enough to make you wonder why anyone would rely on Him for ethical guidance.
Phil
Blimey, looks like we’ve been invaded by Clio… whatever it is.
Ralph, I hope you don’t ever write a history of the Third Reich. Because:
“When something is ubiquitous, the interesting question isn’t “how could it have been tolerated?” because it was commonly and widely accepted.”
is just very silly. It’s the kind of thing that people should lose tenure for writing.
And what’s with the G_d thing? If you were a student, I’d mark you down for not knowing how to spell the word.
Sorry, I have a tendency to lapse into ad hominems when confronted by silliness.
But really, OB mixing with religious maniacs. Now that is pretty funny!
Sorry, there was probably another ad hominem in that sentence. Who was it who told me off before for this? Oh yes, sorry Chris.
With all due respect, Jonathan, of course established authority of whatever origin — religious or political — defended established institutions, including slavery. Challenge comes from the unestablished. What interests me about the examples often cited against believers is that they most commonly are of some ill-informed believer. Hugo at least cites Stephen Carter. Disagree with him, if you will, but Stephen Carter is nobody’s fool. Phil Mole’s argument should be raised to its ultimate level: why take for your life’s example one who was crucified? Good question. It’s the foolishness of the gospel.
Yes. Even in the Third Reich, the really interesting question is who challenged it and the embarrassing answer is not many. The history of the Confessing Church in Germany is quite interesting. It was the underground church which left when the established church was co-opted by the Nazis. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a remarkable spokesman for the Confessing Church. He died in prison. My teacher, Franz Hilderbrandt, was another. His father was Jewish and he escaped only when the Gestapo were knocking on the front door of his house. “religious maniacs” — do you call yourself a serious scholar?
Jerry S: Perhaps Ralph’s statement over-reaches some, but his general point is well taken and certainly not something one should “lose tenure” over! There is a danger in analyzing a common and widely accepted practice/attitude from a specific period in history through contemporary morality and ideology outside of the appropriate historical context. The risk is a sort of morally superior finger wagging. “Bad 17th century European man! You thought women were inferior, therefore I’m better than you and everything you did or said is invalidated.”
As Ralph suggests, perhaps a better line of questioning would be what forces within and outside of the dominant strain evolved to work to change those assumptions (to the extent that they have).
“What interests me about the examples often cited against believers is that they most commonly are of some ill-informed believer.”
Well, these examples are necessary to counter the prevailing assumption that belief in God leads to good moral principles. Of course it’s true that both believers and non-believers have contributed plenty of heroes and villains to the historical stage. Granted, all well and good. But then, when many people talk about religion, they only mention the heroes. If this bias wasn’t continually perpetuated, we wouldn’t need to continually refute it.
Phil
“Perhaps Ralph’s statement over-reaches some”
More than some. It simply ignores a whole literature which is tremendously interesting. More than one literature actually. I could give references, but I’m not a serious scholar, so I’m not going to.
“There is a danger in analyzing a common and widely accepted practice/attitude from a specific period in history through contemporary morality and ideology outside of the appropriate historical context.”
With respect James, this is blindingly obvious. But the key word here is *danger*. You’ve got to be careful how you do it. But the idea that there is nothing interesting to say about widely accepted practices, mass political movements, etc., is just nonsense.
Didn’t the Goldhagen thesis, for example, trace how anti-semitism endemic in European culture led to the holocaust? Or something like that (it’s ten years since I read his stuff). Okay, he may be wrong, but he’s not uninteresting.
Just so, what Phil said.
True up to a point, James; I get very bored with people who write off, say, Montaigne, because he wasn’t a 20th century feminist. But the slaveowning South was hardly insulated from opinions in the rest of the world – in the rest of their own country, for that matter. The virtue of owning slaves was not universally acknowledged in 19th century America.
And then it’s a case of eating cake and having it. Religion inspired abolitionism, but when it didn’t, well, it was just upholding what was established. Which is it then?
Jerry S.: Ralph’s decision to write “G_d” is one with deep roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions. It is not an error, and I think it is a tradition that has passed beyond its superstitious origins to become deeply meaningful, at least as I understand it.
Ralph: Social systems are neither static nor dynamic without cause. To emphasize the successful dynamic challenges and ignore the unsuccessful challenges and the forces which stabilize society is to create a falsely heroic and simple history. I don’t believe that heroic individuals or groups are irrelevant, but that heroic history is incomplete.
“It is not an error, and I think it is a tradition that has passed beyond its superstitious origins to become deeply meaningful”
Do you think a behaviour is justified by the fact that it is deeply meaningful to someone?
Jerry S: Neither does your mockery of a practice mean it is unjustified. It merely means you are a mocker.
I suspect I know a whole lot more of the historiography of slavery than you do and a good bit about the rare occasions when it was challenged. Of course, Ophelia, there were the rare anti-slavery figures in the early 19th century South. You’d have found then, for the most part, insufferably religious. But look back at my original post. Does it attribute _all_ anti-slavery to religious dissenters? No. Only part of it. Why, then, the determination here to deny that part? Because it’s not the part with which you are most sympathetic? Tough.
Jerry S and OB:
You both seem to be arguing something *much* stronger than what is contained in the content of my post. I don’t nor did I say that Ralph’s statement re: opposition is the only way to go. Jerry dismissed Ralph’s point, and I wanted to say that I thought Ralph’s point is relevent (if over-stated). At any rate, it is worth thinking about and he certainly doesn’t deserve loss of tenure for it!
Also Jerry, with respect, the “obviousness” of my comment re: the dangers of this sort of moral historicizing, is certainly not always recognized within academic circles where it is all too often done. So, no, the statement is actually not *blindingly obvious* and, even if it were, sometimes obvious things still need stating.
And, yes, my statments about moral historicizing hold true only to a point, but I never meant them to hold true in any other way—hence my qualifiers such as the “danger” or “risk.” My statements were guideposts not absolute destinations.
I don’t think anything I said is really incompatible with anything either of you are arguing in kind, perhaps only in degree.
Ralph, I’m not determined to deny the part that religious dissenters played, but I don’t think that part amounts to a good argument for why religion is a good thing in the public realm. That is the way the argument is very often used, for instance in the bit I quoted from Carter. Since slavery got at least as much support from religion as it did opposition (in fact that’s probably a gross understatement), I don’t see why that’s an argument for the beneficence of religion.
I was struck by a different part of Hugo’s post, which resembles a common accusation of Christian-bashing:
“I have to say that most secular liberals whom I meet impose a double standard on me. When I quote Scripture on the subject of war and justice, ala Martin Luther King, they applaud. When I quote Scripture to explain my position on abortion, they are enraged at my effort to “impose my personal beliefs on them.” “
As I see it, Hugo’s liberal friends cd just as reasonably complain of his double standard in accepting their opinions on war and justice, but rejecting their opinion of abortion.
But I don’t see a double standard here. Instead, I see the perfectly normal tendency to take agreement at face value; as long as someone is going along in the direction we want to go, the question of motives just doesn’t come up. It is only after we have disagreed that we realize that we never really agreed at all. Hugo’s surprise and discomfort are unwarranted.
Well, James, that’s exactly what I said – isn’t it? True up to a point? So if we differ it’s only in degree.
True, wmr. I was going to address the double standard thing eventually. Just for one thing, there is far more than one kind of double standard at work in these issues, and they by no means all work to favour secularists.
Back at it again, OB, beating the holy dead horse! Obviously, religious believers have no monopoly on conceptions of justice and compassion, nor does their belief guarantee that they would be better at its practice and exercize. On the other hand, unbelievers could scarcely claim to deduce their versions of such conceptions and would fail at it, if they tried. But it is not incomprehensible that religious believers would understand their conceptions of justice and compassion as deriving from a religious source and it does not follow that this must mean that they fail to take account of reason and fact in their application. Nor is it necessarily the case that serious religious believers would think that “things will come out all right ‘eventually'”; what they would believe is that, regardless of how things come out, they are held to a standard of judgment. And as for there being no “eventually”, well, in the long-run, we are all dead. It is a matter of taking an attitude to the mortality of creatures, human or not.
History is not simply a matter of facts and reason. Crucially, it is a matter of interpretations and their frameworks. Only within a framework of interpretation can the immensity of events be sifted, selected from and unfolded. And the matter concerns the orientations and effects of agents and their actions. There is no “self-evidence” in the matter.
But, speaking of history, you seem to fail to appreciate how much the secularism and consequent liberalism that you espouse arose from the pluralism of religious beliefs and the need to maintain boundaries for the sake of tolerance and cooperation. Since then the scope for unbelief has considerably expanded, together with the “progress” of knowledge and de-mythification. If the issues of tolerance and the usurpation of boundaries need to be brought to bear on religious people and their role in political and civil society, equally, they must be observed in the other direction. I don’t think it is possible, nor desirable to eliminate conflict from the matter, for conflict can be productive. If religious people are manufacturing fantasies of persecution, then no doubt they need to be called to account in a butt-kicking manner. But if they are stand out against persecution, in all its forms, then that is a quite different matter. Though the vagaries of human paranoia are not solely a religious specialty.
You seem to have misread your correspondent’s comment about not chicken-pecking the Bible. The criteria of “Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience” are at least reasonable ones from a religious point of view and imply an effort at coherence in the direction of belief. And “anathema”- LOL.
The fact of the matter is that there is no foundation for authority. Simply put, an imperative always exceeds the conditions from which it emerges. (It may aim at changing those conditions). But this does not mean that issues of authority can simply be eliminated, nor that “reason” can be established as a self-sufficient source of authority. The paradox between freedom and authority is always at the core of the political. Reason too is caught up in an hermeneutic circle.
Ben Keen:
The issue goes back to an old dispute between Scholastic realists and nominalists as to whether God’s will is good because he (necessarily, from his nature) wills the good or whether something is good because God wills it. There is some thing to be said for the harsher nominalist view though. At least, it eliminates the pretence that one is “necessarily” doing God’s will.
Jerry S:
More arrogant piss? Ralph Luker was transliterating the Jewish convention into English. It denotes the imageless transcendence of the fellow. Such a separation is designed to avoid confusing the issues.
Ralph
“Neither does your mockery of a practice mean it is unjustified. It merely means you are a mocker.”
As if I’d think that my mockery had any bearing on whether it was justified or not…
“I suspect I know a whole lot more of the historiography of slavery than you do and a good bit about the rare occasions when it was challenged.”
And I suspect that I know a whole lot more about the sociology of mass movements than you do, which is what is in question here, since what I challenged was your assertion that:
“When something is ubiquitous, the interesting question isn’t “how could it have been tolerated?” because it was commonly and widely accepted.”
Why not just admit that this is at best over-reaching (as James put it) and at worst just plain wrong?
Yes, John, I’m back at it again (as are you). But the horse is not dead, obviously! Since what I’m disagreeing with is Hugo’s post and he just made it yesterday, the horse is nowhere near dead! So what’s the point of saying that?
OB: Agreed. I just didn’t want you to think I was arguing for 100% no moralizing in history. I wasn’t; as you say, only up to a point. :)
James
“the dangers of this sort of moral historicizing, is certainly not always recognized within academic circles where it is all too often done.”
Well, we could have an argument about whether the fact that something is blindingly obvious automatically means that it is recognised in academic circles (have you seen B&W’s About Page?), but since we don’t appear to disagreem substantively, let’s not!
James
I was kidding about the loss of tenure thing!
Since I cross-posted a #5, let me add this to the slavery question. It is true that there was some oposition to slavery, mostly in the North, but let’s not exagerate. The North too benefited from slavery and was deeply implicated in it. At the time of the Civil War, the nominal market value of slaves was 3 times that of industrial capital. And whatever the differences between North and South over slavery and its extention or maintenance, both were in entire agreement about white supremacy.
Anyway, I reckon any divine command theory of morality is highly suspect.
Look, let’s admit here that much of the hostility aroused here derives from the failed expectation that religion would die out in the modern world. It hasn’t happened and almost certainly won’t happen. Ophelia’s inclination to ban it from the public sphere would be one way to exercise an authoritarian control of free speech. But it is one we should avoid because banning religious language and symbols from the public sphere would vastly impoverish it. Suspect this, Jerry: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream …”
I wrote, regarding Ralph Luker’s decision to use “G_d”: “It is not an error, and I think it is a tradition that has passed beyond its superstitious origins to become deeply meaningful”
Jerry S. wrote: “Do you think a behaviour is justified by the fact that it is deeply meaningful to someone?”
What a wonderful trap, so transparent and yet so elegantly set!
What I meant (no, I’m not going to answer the question you posed) is that the decision to transcribe the divine indirectly instead of with direct name, started as superstition about the power of the name of the divine, but has become a linguistic manifestation of the mystic transcendance of the First Cause, an idea present in all of the monotheisms. The Creator is beyond language and comprehension, goes the theory, and therefore no name which I apply can be accurate or meaningful in any but the most limited and contingent manner. Believers of this position (including myself, in private life) often use a variety of names for the Heavenly Judge (Islam, I believe, posits 99 names; Arthur Clarke posited 9 billion; some modern Jewish prayerbooks use a multitude of translations for the single Hebrew term whose pronunciation was lost with the destruction of the Second Temple), with the understanding that they are describing aspects of the whole. Others simply refuse to complete the name in print, at least in secular situations, as many Jewish magazines and newspapers did and still do.
The decision by Ralph Luker to leave the name unsaid and incomplete is (I believe) a part of a philosophical tradition and theological position which in no way interferes with clear and reasonable communication or understanding.
Well that depends on which bit of the modern world one is talking about. And as for hostility – well, Ralph, you see what I mean? This is exactly what I was talking about last week. This is why I’m thinking of leaving Clio (which you’re probably delighted to hear by now!). Because it’s not considered ‘hostile’ to post religious statements, but it is considered hostile to take issue with them. That is, in fact, a double standard. To put it mildly.
And what do you mean ‘ban’? That’s a pretty hostile word to use. Equating disagreement with banning or censorship is a rhetorical move.
“The Creator is beyond language and comprehension, goes the theory,”
Yes but Jonathan, the trouble with that is that apparently the Creator isn’t beyond language – hence posts talking about doing his will and how his will is prior to politics. That’s what I’m saying I think is dangerous – very dangerous in fact.
Actually, Ralph I’m not so much worried about banning religious language and symbols from the public sphere – though that’s an idea – as much as this web site (which, after all, I pay for; though I hasten to add that it is much more Ophelia’s site than mine).
There is a serious point here. More in a different post. And I hope you’ll stick around to see why I at least reacted with hostility.
But mainly, I just think you’re wrong about how interesting historical consensus is…
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream …”
Whose notion of justice, and whose version of righteousness? Hopefully not the kind of righteousness that views the drowning of Egyptians as a justified pre-requisite to liberating the chosen people.
And what’s this? Now, criticism of religion is an attempt to “banish it from the public sphere,” and establish “an authoritarian control of free speech?” Interesting. Liberals and conservatives can say some nasty things about each other, but I’ve seldom heard a liberal (say) claim that a conservative’s criticism of liberal economic policies (say) attempts to ban discussion of those policies from the public sphere. The kind of heedless hyperbole you used seems to be limited to defense of religion. I wonder why.
Phil
Ophelia, I love your being a part of Cliopatria and you’d prefer religious language not being in the public arena. Right? It’s probably going to continue to be there.
Jerry, Since you shifted the discussion from slavery to mass movements, I’d be happy to talk with the about the civil rights movement, in which I participated and of which I am an historian. A few good mass meetings, with the prayers, hymns, and pep talks would probably do you some good. They should did encourage and energize us. We absolutely accepted support from our secular allies — but we needed to consult with greater authority when we faced jail, bullets, and beatings. But, then, you as a sociologist of mass movements already knew about all of that, didn’t you?
Ralph
I think you’re misunderstanding my objection. If you look at what I quoted, I deliberately didn’t include the bit about “who challenged it and on what grounds”. I’m aware that religion can play a part in radical movements, etc (the labour movement in the UK is a case in point).
But that isn’t all that you said. You said that when something is ubiquitous, the interesting question is not how it is tolerated.
That is not true. That is an interesting question (to me, and to a lot of other people). It is particular interesting when thinking about the Third Reich, for example.
Jonathan
“What a wonderful trap, so transparent and yet so elegantly set!”
Shame you didn’t answer the question, though!
Given that signs are arbitrary, I’m not convinced any of that stuff amounts to much. But hey, what do I know?
OB:
Well, yes, but you do nothing to advance the issue and are constantly trying to simply draw the same old, hoary battle-lines. I think that that is insular and, in the end, self-defeating. I did not find that Hugo fellow so objectionable and unreasonable, even if he’s not dead, and even if I disagree with him about abortion, (though, to what degree, I don’t know, as I did not click his link.) If you want to discuss scientific views and matters, well and good, but they neither stand, nor fall on religious grounds. (Though it is doubtful to what extent science actually or necessarily contributes to moral, social, or political “progress”.)
Personally, I think the likes of Rev. Falwell and, for that matter, George Bush, should be attacked for their thoroughly bad conceptions of religion and their grotesque political instrumentalization of such religion, rather than for their failure to meet standards of scientificity. But that is a much less polite discussion. As for science, it is to be defended on its own grounds. I find Bush’s pandering to the fundamentalist religious right on science policy matters less disturbing than his pandering to corporate interests, though it is not as if there is not a connection.
The claim that there is an asymmetry in public rights for the avowal and the criticism of religious beliefs occurs on both sides of the divide. But, like I said, it is a manufactured fantasy of persecution.
Speaking of science’s contribution to moral, social, and political progress:
As an example I’d put forward our present knowledge of genetics and evolution. I think that this is *scientific* knowledge, and it utterly answers the toxic notion that some races are somehow innately superior to others.
Ben Keen:
I would not deny your example. But, of course, in the past, the “authority” of science has been used to promote racist and eugenic notions. I did not say that there was no relation between scientific “progress” and socio-political “progress”; I meant that the relation is ambivalent and nonlinear. We live in a world inevitably cross-sected by power relations, and science, no less that anything else in the world, is implicated in and cross-sected by such power differentials. And saying this does not reduce the validity claims of science as such, but merely draws out the questions about how they are developed and applied. But “progress”- (and the scare-quotes are because that is inevitably a comparative historical perspective and not a separately determinable objective fact)- in the socio-political realm, with respect to working out and justifying power relations and “progress” in the scientific realm operate in separate dimensions and only have a highly mediated relation.
Well, John, so I don’t advance the issue, so what? I didn’t say I did. Of course what I say is old news. But that’s because the religious rhetoric is also old and stale. I’m simply responding to what turns up. I haven’t advertised it as new and thrilling. If it bores you, don’t read it.
I only just discovered this site and am sorry but am going to completely ignore the (quite interesting) discussion and refer back to original post.
I disagree that it is neccesarily bad or logically inconsistent to take moral guidance from the Bible, assuming you believe in the judeo-christian God (Which, as it happens, I don’t)
When I was christian I decided to try to get Gods Message and read a fair bit of the Bible. I decided that Jesus’s teachings clearly superseded the whole old testament, which nicely cut out all the nasty slavery etc stuff. I then came across the passage where jesus says something like “All that really matters is believing in God and doing unto others as they do unto you”. The rest of the new testament I took as (possibly distorted) examples Jesus gave to help us to follow these laws. Things like give away all your money, settle all cases out of court and never swear on Gods name etc etc
I didn’t find any major contradictions. It was just a really impractical way of living, and I became increasingly convinced that Jesus was a well meaning but flawed idealist who would have been very surprised to see governements trying to implement what are clearly very individual monastic ideals. Thus I became an atheist :)
My point is basically that it is possible to follow the bible in the same way one follows any ideology. Sure, following an ideology isn’t the best way to run your life but it can lead to positive behaviour.
The only problem is when people pretend that you can follow the whole Bible at once!
You make the point that following the bible is bad if theres no God. But since religious people DO think theres a God, its the right thing to do in their moral framework. Of course one can construct moral frameworks justifying anything, I’m simply arguing against your claim that their behaviour is illogical, not arguing that they’re _right_
Hi Sophie,
I agree with you that Jesus had some good things to say. But what I was specifically taking issue with is Hugo’s contention that it’s wrong to do precisely what you recommend (and what, fortunately, most people who use the Bible as a moral guide recommend, or at least do in practice, whether they admit it or not), to wit, pick and choose. That is, reject the stuff about smashing infants’ heads against walls in favour of less, er, controversial suggestions.
“But since religious people DO think theres a God, its the right thing to do in their moral framework.”
I know, and I said that.
“Either there is an omniscient benevolent being taking care of us and the world, or there isn’t. If there is, it does make sense to rely on what it tells us to do.”
Of course, they’re wrong to think that (a benevolent being? Please!) but as you point out, that’s a separate question.