The moral character of Christians (David Lewis on religion)
Those who do not believe in god, when they die, will be cast into eternal torment.
This is a punishment out of all proportion with the offence.
Christians hold that the person who inflicts this unjust punishment - God - is worthy of worship.
So what is one to make of the moral character of folk who hold someone who tortures folk unjustly in the highest esteem?
If you made the acquaintance of someone who thought highly of a person who tortured dogs as a hobby, would you befriend them? Ought you associate with them?
This argument come up towards the end of the podcast The Many Worlds of David Lewis. I was unaware that Lewis had written on such topics.
This seems to be the related paper: Divine Evil
https://philpapers.org/rec/LEWDE
The interesting variation here is that the argument asks us not to consider the morality of such an evil god, but of those who consider him worthy of praise or worship.
This is a punishment out of all proportion with the offence.
Christians hold that the person who inflicts this unjust punishment - God - is worthy of worship.
So what is one to make of the moral character of folk who hold someone who tortures folk unjustly in the highest esteem?
If you made the acquaintance of someone who thought highly of a person who tortured dogs as a hobby, would you befriend them? Ought you associate with them?
This argument come up towards the end of the podcast The Many Worlds of David Lewis. I was unaware that Lewis had written on such topics.
This seems to be the related paper: Divine Evil
https://philpapers.org/rec/LEWDE
The interesting variation here is that the argument asks us not to consider the morality of such an evil god, but of those who consider him worthy of praise or worship.
Comments (841)
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/04/26/heartsick-boy-asks-pope-my-dad-heaven/553844002/
No they don't. There is indeed a portion of Christian fanatics who might believe this but the main majority don't.
There are even more Christians who believe that God judge people by their acts not just their belief to him. I don't know how you or David Lewis get that.
Except if the thread is about that minority of Christians who believe this thing. If so, fine.
Two responses: what is it that you think will happen to those who do not believe in god but nevertheless lead blameless lives when they die? But further, even if someone leads a life of corruption and evil, and so on some view merits divine punishment, their evil acts were limited, whereas hell is eternal; the punishment is totally out of proportion to the crime, and hence is unjust.
I invite you to read the article, which is accessible and entertaining, and addresses your reply.
I also invite you to consider the actual question here: what attitude ought we rightly adopt to those who think an evil god admirable? Consider the character Fritz in the article.
I have often felt this way when listening to the baleful preaching of Pentecostals or other fundies. 'God loves you; but you will burn in hell for atheism.' Anyone advocating such a Mafia-boss, protection racket style of deity is complicit in perpetuating a cycle of cruelty and abuse.
Take as evidence the present discussion concerning the supposed "religious freedom" bill.
I like 'advocates of evil'. Yep. As you know, if you go with a divine command theory of morality then anything goes... God wants you to sacrifice your fist born and marry your 13 year-old cousin - it must be good because god asks it of you.
"If you made the acquaintance of someone who thought highly of a person who tortured dogs as a hobby, would you befriend them? Ought you associate with them?"
Some would wonder how millions of people came to believe in hell, attempting to bring history and psychology to bear on the question. These people want to understand.
And then others judge. Period. No further understanding needed.
The first group is danger of failing to take a stand. What is the second is danger of bigotry.
Which would you rather be?
Yeah many believe that indeed. From my personal experience the majority of religion people claim is that God will judge all those who don't believe, in Christ's resurrection.Second Appearance. That will be their second and last chance to believe, according to them of course.
With Lewis claim is the same as saying "that Christians believe that people who believe in other religions (Muslims etc) will be eternal tortured too!" which is something that of course most Christians don't think that way.
This is a question that really bothered me at the past a lot. And I did a lot of "personal research" on that. By personal, I mean reading, talking with religious people, priests etc. Not a scientific research of course. But really I strongly insist that this isn't the main way that religion people think about atheists.
I also add the way that if you noticed Pope talks about atheists. It is always about "God's hug being open to everyone" and shit like that. But never aphoristic to them! And not just Pope. Most priests.
Quoting Banno
I m not sure how to answer that cause I m an atheist. But I ensure you that there are many who think that these people will be in paradise also. Same as a guy who believed in God (or said he did) but did terrible acts, will go to hell.
Quoting Banno
As to be honest I wasn't about to read it cause from the beginning seemed like a claim based on a total false premise .And I thought it will be a waste of time.
But wtf. I will now. What harm could come even from a bad argument?
Perhaps you could make your point more directly?
Or is your reply simply that we ought not contemplate, let alone discuss, the evil of Christianity?
And think of the good you will do when you explicate Lewis' errors!
I used to ask fundamentalists; 'How do you know that the god of the Bible is not actually Satan? Wouldn't that be the kind of trick Satan would pull? Look at the evidence - genocides and hatreds by the score - is all that not from Satan's style manual?' When they invariably say, 'But it says in the Bible that God is good.' The answer is obvious - 'Wouldn't Satan contrive it like this?' It doesn't work all the time but the fulminating faithful are often rattled enough for this to be satisfying.
My interest here is as to the extent to which Christians (and Muslims) ought be allowed at the table when ethical issues are discussed. Given their avowed admiration for evil, ought we trust their ethical judgement?
It was direct. Is it better to judge? Or to understand?
It's their own fault, though. They were granted free will. They knowingly reject God, or commit mortal sin without repenting.
Quoting Banno
Nah. It's not a big deal anymore. In my distant youth, in Catholic grade school, we were shown films and slides which depicted sinners burning alive in the flames of hell (or maybe purgatory, depending). We saw screaming faces sticking out of the fires (well, not real ones). But now, hell is merely deprivation of the presence of God and the vaguely named "blessed" for all eternity. It's nothing worth weeping or gnashing your teeth over anymore. There's no longer a "lake of fire" to be tossed into. It would be like never being invited to a really good and very lengthy office party, or being forever persona non grata at the country club.
I think that is an excellent point and a very practical approach to the matter. Why would we let apologists for hatred and violence help build an agreement around ethics?
I think this depiction relies on a peculiarly modern conception of God as a kind of camp commandant. The Christian view would be more that due to humanity's inherent predeliction to sub-optimal behaviour (consequence of 'the original sin') then the outcome of their life choices is likely to be poor ('hell'). They are offered a way to avoid this fate ('salvation') but should they reject it willfully, then the consequences are on them. I believe this is what is behind C.S. Lewis statement that 'the doors of hell are locked from the inside.' It's not imposed on them except as a consequence of their decisions.
Quoting Ciceronianus
[quote=Baudelaire]The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.[/quote]
Well, these are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, a judgement that does not involve understanding is a poor judgement.
So let's understand. Lewis raises issues that are pertinent, and argues his case clearly. This thread asks others to view and assess that argument. The ensuing discussion improves our understanding.
And then we have no choice but to judge. It's our existential condition. As you judge me.
And again, you've made it clear in PMs that you do not like me or my approach. It is also clear that you are not obliged to read nor to respond to my posts.
And yet here you are, again.
There's a short yet quite brilliant little argument concerning this, and making use of possible worlds, second paragraph of p. 234.
And then Lewis goes on to address your second point.
When your face is printed on the money, you can do what you want. But until such a time, you just might have to find a way to get along with others, regardless of their morality.
It's old stuff. New to you I guess? Have at it.
The metaphor is of a parent who leaves sharp objects, explosives and matches in the nursery. "... the consequences are on them".
But your birth is imposed on you, by God.
God, supposedly in his infinite wisdom and goodness, made you inherently sinful and deserving of eternal suffering. Nevermind the "inherited sin" theory; God knew it all, he put it all in motion, nothing happens without his will, he is reponsible for your birth and your nature.
And the only way you can avoid your horrible fate is by believing what some people tell you, people who beat you, rape you, and generally don't care whether you live or die. Truly, people whose word you should take for gold!
Will do. And others will join us. Thanks for your contributions.
Given that we want some kind of democracy and that they make up a considerable portion of the human population, what choices do we have?
Where does the Bible say that?
Quoting baker
Buddhists believe that you are born out of the karma of previous lives, and that your condition is one of 'beginningless ignorance'. Should you not avail yourself of the opportunity to devote yourself to the Dharma in this brief sliver of time that your life occupies, then your fate might be a hell that is equally dreadful to any of those depicted in Dante's Inferno.
Quoting Banno
So far, on first reading, don't agree with this assessment at all. The problem with your reading, and Lewis' reading, is that it plainly starts from the premise that religion is tosh, and will then proceed to interpret every argument accordingly. Of course nearly everyone here will then join the pile on. It is an exercise in religion-bashing, and the seeking of self-satisfaction that 'us atheists are far more humane than those beastly Christians and Muslims could ever be'. So I don't think I'll play along.
You and them have two foundational beliefs that are incompatible:
You believe that the world can and should be changed for the better.
The Abrahamic monotheists believe that the world is incorrigible, a vale of tears.
This is your essential and unbridgable disagreement.
"You formed me in the womb" says the Psalmist.
Besides, it follows from God being omnimax that nothing happens without his will.
Ha! Now you're getting there.
An excellent assessment. The more so, for you, since you now have no need to address the arguments presented in the article, or hereabouts.
That's too bad. Maybe you could help. Many of us have quite traumatic experiences with Abrahamic religions. Recovering from religious abuse is still a taboo in Western culture. And you're helping to perpetrate it, helping the hardened atheist materialists become even more so.
I hope that's not where I'm coming from. I should add that I have several friends - and have known many more - who started as Christians but in thinking through issues such as these, left the church to be deists or atheists. It's also the case that many progressive Christians I've read and met would agree with @Banno and express grave concern over the hideous barbarism and nasty judgement of so much religious writing and practice. Where they differ is they just see it as metaphor that is wrongly interpreted.
On the other hand, if we subscribe to the Theory of Evolution, we must subscribe to Social Darwinism.
And fire-and-brimstone religion is Social Darwinism.
Those who rejoice at the thought of seeing others suffer in hell for eternity while they themselves are happy in heaven everafter can always say to you, "See, this is survival of the fittest."
Whose beliefs are based on what? Feel-good love-dovey gut feelings.
Or perhaps question _our_ ideas of virtue?
Ya, I agree with you, this kind of thinking is really weird. I don't know how any person with an ounce of moral aptitude could possibly think that this kind of God could be loving or just. Moreover, how could this God create anyone knowing full well that they would make choices that lead to torture or their destruction?
I'll tell you something else that seems weird to me, and I was talking to a friend about this the other day. Even if you assume there is a God with some of the Christian attributes, omniscience, omnipotence, loving, for e.g., I couldn't imagine a being like this wanting people worshipping him/her, that seems like a human construction. When I think of how people worship God in church, it seems bizarre, raising their hands praising him, etc. What kind of God would want people doing this? The idea seems to come from our understanding of Kings, viz., how a king might want his subjects to respond, but this seems like an ego trip, not worthy of a God.
I spent 35 years of my life thinking like this, and it wasn't until I was willing to examine my beliefs more closely, that I removed myself from this kind of thinking. It's like being in a cult, you don't really see what's happening until you remove yourself from it. However, to be fair, this happens in other kinds of ideologies, including politics. This has driven me to think more carefully about what I believe, but even so, we're all susceptible to varying degree of weird thinking.
On interpretations like anyone else.
Leaving that aside, is your point that good catholics, the pope included, do not actually believe the doctrine they espouse? That would indeed be a good thing. Would that they did not then feel obligated to pretend that they do, when dealing with events in the world.
I admit being galled by what I've called the presumption of moral rectitude that one sometimes encounters in believers, most especially when they espouse banning abortion, isolating queer or trans teenagers and so on - when their actions are to the detriment of others.
Why? Looks plain wrong to me. "Survival of the fittest" is not what evolution is about.
This: Divine Evil
The argument is extensive.
That’s just your mortal judgment. You can’t begin to conceive how God judges stuff.
Sure it is. You are right. We are all obliged to judge using what we have at hand. And what we have at hand indicates that god is evil. Despite this, there are those who chose to worship him.
So the question is, what are we to make of their judgment? They choose to believe, not in the light of the evidence, but in the face of the evidence. They admire the worst conceivable torturer.
Such folk are ripe for manipulation.
Many Christians believe this Tim, and they infer it from verses like 2 Thess. 1: 8,9 "...in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction [my emphasis], away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might"
However you interpret this, it's not a pretty picture. In flaming fire is not something I want to be associated with, figuratively or not.
I think we should judge other’s moral character based on the totality of their actions. Beliefs, in and of themselves, do not cause harm. So their beliefs are irrelevant. Even if we take things a step further and say that this belief causes them to ridicule, belittle, etc. atheists, that alone isn’t enough evidence to judge their moral character. Perhaps they also believe in giving to the poor, forgiving others their trespasses, etc. Are we to exclude these other, more noble, moral beliefs when we judge them?
What do you find questionable about the common ideas of virtue?
The gnostics beleived that the 'god' (actually a minor arrogant and deluded demiurge who imagined himself omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent) who created this imperfect world was himself flawed through and through. They called him "Yaldabaoth" if my memory serves.
Quoting Tom Storm
Exactly. :up:
Indeed, with this i will pretty much agree.
But I would make the observation that this is incompatible with the Christian view that one must hold to specific beliefs to be saved.
On investigating, there are a few such articles written not long before his death. I'm enjoying his humorous style.
Let's take as an illustration two notable christian philosophers, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine:
[quote = Aquinas]That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.[/quote]
[quote= Augustine]In that day true and full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them only.[/quote]
Is there a way to persuade someone who, like them, sees nothing wrong about eternal damnation? I doubt it, here their faith in God's goodness in the long run despite working in “mysterious ways” seems to be at the core of their belief, combined with how much importance they attach to the sufferings of others. Or else they are wholly indifferent to the suffering of the people they regard as wicked, which is also not something that can be changed by way of arguments.
As for whether I'd associate with Aquinas or Augustine, I think I still would, because it'd be a shame to lose the privilege to get more insight into such interesting subjects as Aquinas' interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle or into Augustine's theory of time, or their more recent philosophical ideas.
Knowing their views on hell, I'd try to avoid that subject as much as possible, and just leave if they insisted on talking about it.
I don't think one should judge a person based solely on one contemptible view that they have about a certain subject, since they may have other redeemable views or qualities. Augustine, for example, was opposed to judicial torture, which I think is morally quite lofty.
If those beliefs they hold had some important consequences in the sense of making them act in a wicked fashion in their day to day life, then it's probably better not to associate with them, depending on how strong that effect is.
If the person who sees nothing wrong about hell has no redeemable qualities, then I think it's best not to associate with them.
Well, it's debatable whether having a belief can cause harm. Having any belief is assenting to something, so it's a kind of action. It may not be overt, but it requires a willful mental act on one's part. And, if you take things a bit further, as you say, and include ridicule and belittling, that to me does say something about someone's moral character. However, all of us have flawed moral characters, so it goes for all of us. And yes, when judging someone's character, one should look at the totality of their character. We all know people who generally have good characters, but are flawed in this or that way.
Heaven therefore is fairly easily obtained and hell the consequence of sin, not the consequence of lack of faith. Salvation is the gift, the solution to The Fall, obtainable through faith.
I don't hold to this theology, so I won't defend it, but the responses to theodicy questions are involved theological discussions, which would require delving into the various positions taken by the various Christian denominations.
Do you really want to, for example, learn of the Mormon response to this and debate its consistenty and coherence? Would that be at all interesting to you?
I find generic attacks inaccurate caricatures, treating religion as this monolithic belief system, as if they are all the same. Some religions largely reject the literalism you find so repugnant, denying the literal eternal damnation you attack.
That is, if your atheism is the result of the evil you find in the God you describe in the OP, you might be better served to find a more suitable religion for you. It's not as if religion must rely upon the sort of God you describe.
Yes, this is often said. I guess for me (not that you asked) Christianity and Islam (our most popular brands of God) seem to head into literalist and vengeful space so regularly and from so many directions (impacting upon governments and the legislature world wide) that the problem seems comprehensive and endemic, regardless of the liberals who no doubt exist in many faith traditions. And it's not just atheists who characterize religion in this way. My friend who is a Catholic Priest (a follower of Father Richard Rohr) believes that Christianity is largely a story of bigotry and judgmental zealotry. I may have a vested interest in this idea, he doesn't.
My understanding of the Christian doctrine is that everyone that is human will eventually die. The reason for this is "sin", or that humans are unable to live in accordance with God's laws. Anyone who doesn't follow God's law, dies. There is essentially very few who are worthy. There are various interpretations, but Jesus is seen as an incarnation of God as a human being. Its the idea that God wanted to live as a man to see why they couldn't uphold the laws God set.
So you have God as a man, living, and feeling like a human being. Trying to teach the mortals around him. Due to the fact that Judaism is a very law like religion, God didn't want to break his law, so he willingly suffered incredible pain and death, perhaps to see what it was like, but to also "pay for the sin of all of humanity".
The idea, is that you've been paid for. We all have. It doesn't matter whether we believe it or not. I believe St. Paul states something to the effect that the only advantage Christians have over non-Christiains, is that Christians have the joy of knowing this sacrifice, and that we all have eternal life. This joy is to make you want to spread the word, and inspire people to live more fulfilling and better lives, knowing that death is not the end.
On "the last day", the dead are supposed to rise again once more. Jesus will let them know that their life has been paid for, if they simply accept it. Some will reject it. Some may not want to live forever. But all are essentially forgiven. If you refuse, you die. That's it. No torture, no eternal fire, you burn away to the ash you began as.
Of course, over the years mankind has taken a hold of this and twisted it for its useful purposes. The church needs people to come to mass and donate, or it will cease to function. So you have to give a reason to come to the pews. While Jesus' message is mostly a one and done, that doesn't keep institutions going. So a lot is done to keep people fearful and thinking Christianity is something its not.
Do we blame the person who merely wants to do the right thing, and trusts in an institution to tell them this? Many people are not into thinking deeply about ideologies, and the church forms a social tie and connection to family and friends. The same can be said of extreme political ideologies, sports teams, and many other social groups with strong ties. I feel it is unfair to pick on religion in particular, when I see the same "evils" coming from so many other social groups. I suppose a mac person doesn't tell a pc person they'll burn in hell for all eternity, but they might wish it. :)
Likewise, though these social groups can form evil ideologies, do we neglect their good as well? I feel if we examine our own lives honestly, we might find we have our own blind spots and illogical inconsistencies we live by. The older I get, the more difficult I find it to judge others, when you realize we're all human at our core, and we all get caught up in things that aren't always ideal.
No doubt about it. The Old Testament supports slavery, genocide and rape and depicts a monstrous and evil creature who insists on being worshipped. This is not a creature that deserves anything but scorn.
I'm not saying there is no God, I don't know, and neither does anyone else. I don't believe there is such a being as presented in the Bible, or any other religion. Now some people use the concept God in a very general way, that's fine, but to think the Bible is some divinely inspired book just seems a bit out there. People had all kinds of strange beliefs 2000+ years ago.
Agree. Ditto for any holy book and there are many of them.
I don't say there is no god either - I have simply heard no argument or seen any evidence that is convincing to me. The concept of a god seems fairly incoherent in the first place and more of a placeholder idea - a raison d'etre and an explanation in one unknowable package.
You have no idea as to how much care I put into studying the Bible, or theology for that matter, that's pure speculation! I was interested enough to study the Bible for years, including going to a Bible college and some master level classes, so I think I have a right to be dismissive of some of these ideas. And, I never said anything close to "it means what I say it means." I was giving you the view of many Christians. I've associated with these people for years (mainly Protestants, but also many Catholics).
I think that inaccurate. The PDF I cite - did you use it? - does not have the footnotes; but they are copious.
Quoting tim wood
I think it sufficiently "orthodox" - a pair of church fathers have already been cited as in agreement - that if you wish to challenge it, then we might leave it to you to present an account.
Quoting tim wood
That made me laugh. I infer you have not had much to do with Sam.
Is it now? When someone believes s/he has the final solution (vide late Christopher Hitchens) to all our problems, rejecting it would be utter folly or, worse, siding with the devil, no? What would be an appropriate punishment for such wilful stupidity or evil?
Quoting Banno
I think God is bluffing! We all say things we don't mean, especially for a good cause.
Bluff charge:
Well, yes. No finite offence, or conjunction of such offences, could possibly merit infinite punishment.
:ok: You're right. The offense & the punishment, if geometrized into a rectangle, the sides are not in the golden ratio (proportio divina). It looks ugly, can't be God's work or God has to be bluffin'.
:clap: Of course we don't actually know what god thinks about anything. At best we have claims by people and old books written by... people. God has been suspiciously absent.
People should be punished for not believing someone who claims to have the solution???
Someone comes along, claiming to have the solution to all our problems -- and this alone should justify us believing this person, and if we don't, we deserve eternal punishment???
Do you even hear yourself?!
The gravity of the threat (or warning) or a solution doesn't mean that the threat/warning is about something that is actually true, or that the proposed solution is efficacious.
You don't actually know that. You have simply ruled out the possibility of God being what would usually be called "evil".
I do know that. This is from first person conversations with many Christians I know who interpret the Bible in a liberal way. And there are many books that explore how this interpretation is more accurate - David Bentley Hart being one academic theologian in this space.
Secondly, I have never ruled out god is evil. In fact, I have argued this as a potential and realistic take in several threads, just not here. :smile:
Finally, all versions of god are interpretations. There is no interpretation free deity. Until the Great Mofo shows up, we have no knowledge of god other than 'some old book said a thing and this is what we think it means...'
If you get to pick what to think about Christianity, Christians get to pick and choose what they think about evolution.
Quoting Banno
Nah. Because:
Quoting Banno
I suspect such is the case generally among Christians. I've seen too many instances where Christians ridicule those who actually, really believe the doctrines, and even more so those who act accordingly.
The most plausible explanation seems to be that Christian doctrines, esp. the ones about eternal damnation, were devised as a means for combat, or at least that they function as sand thrown into the eyes of the enemy.
The strategy appears to be as folllows: Always present yourself as formidable and with powerful allies. Do whatever you can to make people fear you. This way, you will maximize your chances for success in the world.
Quoting Banno
Really? You can peacefully coexist with someone who believes you should be dead or suffer forever, and you know they believe thusly?
No, you can't possibly know that, for empirical reasons, because you haven't investigated every theist that has ever lived.
The only way you could know that "all versions of god are interpretations" is if you were god, and could this discern what is merely an interpretation and what is actually the truth.
Acting in line with them makes one a loser.
Now that's a "generic attack".
The issue at hand is how to deal with those people who actually do believe in eternal damnation, or for whom we have reason to believe that they believe in eternal damnation (ie. people who declare to have an affiliation with a particular religion which has, as part of its doctrine, the doctrine of eternal damnation).
Roman Catholics, for example, are bound by their affiliation to the RCC to believe in eternal damnation, because eternal damnation is part of RCC doctrine. Even if occasionally, one can find Catholics who don't believe in eternal damnation.
The bottomline is that if someone professes affiliation to a particular religion, then we are justified to treat them as having assented to all the doctrinal points of said religion.
Religious individualism stops the moment someone declares affiliation to a particular religion.
Jews should associate with Nazis?
Blacks should make friends with KKK members?
Women should pursue intimate relationships with misogynists?
And if we ask, "Who is a true Christian?", we shall be accused of a No True Scottsman fallacy?
Quoting tim wood
And for this, you shall burn! :fire::fire: :fire:
I see what you are trying to say here. Yes, you are probably correct, but how useful this frame is is moot. You also don't know if there is a god to match any given interpretation. As far as humans are concerned, we can't say any more than to the best of our knowledge all accounts of god are interpretations. Call it a presupposition. We certainly have no way readily identifiable method for determining which interpretation is true (if any) so what does it leave us with?
Then how do you know it's an interpretation?
Transcendental dread. Probably the original aim of hellish doctrines.
IOW, set ourselves up as the judges over other people's religious identity.
How do you know it is not an interpretation?
It is true that people have used the arguments of justification to support terrible acts. Christianity became a dominant idea through violence, both physical and rhetorical.
The Christain idea also brought up various renouncements of that power. The element of personal testimony has long since been a thorn in the sides of dogma, however it is expressed.
Outside of saying what happened versus what did not happen in history, the arguments between sincere belief are our inheritance.
So, are you arguing that such discussion is no longer necessary? The past is a mistake and the future is ours?
I don’t think anyone said they believe I should be dead or suffer forever. They simply believe that is what will happen if I do not change my ways. It’s God’s will, not necessarily theirs. So long as they’re “good Christians” they will also love their enemy (me) as themselves and love their neighbor. If they’re consistent with their adherence to Christianity they’ll at most pity me, and perhaps try to convert me. Sure, I can live with that.
Someone has to take the first step towards change. Treating others with permanent disdain does nothing positive. Daryl Drake is a great example of what I’m getting at.
You have to go to the Bible, the New Testament in particular, to find the answer.
The punishment for those who don't become Christians -- whatever your definition of it is -- is eternal death. Not eternal punishment in horrible torture in the bowels of the Earth in Hell. No. That is a myth. It's in the Bible. You just have to read the words carefully.
I mean, some of the words. There are two different passages between which there is actual discrepancy.
And what's so horrible about eternal death? Nothing. It's infinitely better than eternal life.
So god actually rewards disobedience and civil unrest.
obviously god is not Christian. He is not a Christian because he does not love his own enemies. Love is NOT sending someone to hell for all eternity.
A typical case of hypocrisy. "Do as I say, don't do as I do." Back to morals: God would not pass the first test of morality based on empathy. Just like the OP said, except for a different reason.
Well in fact there are many passages in Bible which there is discrepancy. That's why there are so many different "versions" of Christianity. Cause many Churches give different "translations" of Bible. As in any other religion also.
Quoting god must be atheist
I have heard that too. Some Christians believe it also. But from my personal experience most Christians believe God will give a second chance to atheists and people who believed in other religions.
Quoting god must be atheist
Well I think most people would still "vote" for eternal life though. At least a "paradise life" that God promises to them. Doesn't sound that bad.
Only a philosopher could believe such nonsense. It is like the suggestion that the Germans ate babies or that martyrs will be rewarded with virgins - something said to encourage the troops.
This thread is unworthy of you. Demonising religion is as easy as demonising capitalism or communism, and almost as productive. Thank no one we are so fucking righteous and sensible!
Well, all three subjects remain dominant narratives worthy of continuing robust exploration and criticism. It's not as if the matters are settled. One person's demonising is another's bone fide exploration...
Having known a good many Catholics, I have discovered that it is actually the case than some of them don't believe in God or the doctrines they espouse. It's a fairly common phenomenon. In fact, many clergy do not believe in god - but it's all they know and the community remains important to them. It's not that they are deliberately doing harm, they just don't believe. There is even an international support group, The Clergy Project set up to help these folk.
Ah, if only it was dead! Or a horse.
“An evil god” according to what principles? I’m always interested to know where people acquire their rules of what is good and evil.
Obviously Christians don’t believe that their God is an evil god so worshipping him isn’t a problem for them. David Lewis, both doesn’t believe in the Christian god and finds him evil and therefore has a problem with the morality of those who do believe in him.
But what is evil and what is moral or immoral, just or unjust? We know what Christians use to answer these questions (biblical texts, the church etc) but where does David Lewis get his definition of right and wrong, good and evil, just or unjust? And how does he know he’s right and Christians are wrong?
There have been other types of answers that go to God's infinite nature, how are we even capable of judging whether God is just or unjust, etc, given our limited view of the infinite. Other Christians argue that hell is not forever, that it's for a given period of time, and their are levels of punishment that fit the offense, so it's not as straight forward as one might suppose. And, to answer such a questions requires much more of a study of the psychology of belief, the logic used in thinking about such beliefs, and the conceptual framework these people work within. I don't think it's a simple thing to answer, and we have to be careful about making such sweeping generalizations.
Cheers.
Not really. It's pretty easy to see where the idea of an evil god comes from. The Old testament reveals a thuggish, vengeful god who supports slavery, genocide, rape and frequently behaves as a mass-murdering Mafia boss. People have been pointing this out for a long time and, as Isaac Asimov and others have pointed out, one of the surest pathways into atheism is reading the Bible.
I don’t think you understand my questions, Tom. I’m asking how David Lewis determines and defines what is good and what is evil, just or unjust, right and wrong.
(While I am aware of the many different interpretations of the Old Testament, I’m not at all interested in debating them.)
OK. I don't read very closely. Sorry. Yep, there is no point debating what is abundantly clear. Agree with you.
:rofl: I don’t read all that closely either, no worries!
Thanks for this. Those who have claimed that belief in hell is not central to Christianity would do well to consider your post.
If they would make the claim that Christian doctrine has changed over time, or that these two Church Fathers did not mean what they said, then there is significant further explanation needed. Changes in morality over time are prima facie incompatible with what is right being what god wills. It looks as if what is right changes along with human sentiment, such that what was once considered acceptable no longer is.
It does work that way indeed. Christianity as every other religion changes over time and its "translation" too. Following the humanitarian morality process.
And that's exactly the reason that in other threads, that we debated about Christianity and God, I try to convince you that it is just a human invention. Nothing more at the end. Don't blame religions(or any specific religion even worse) for all human disasters, blame people that are steal "weak" - as to live without religions.
So yes, of course religions doctrine will follow-transform according to human morality in general.
You can't examine it as a stable thing and being aphoristic to it all together! It is a "living thing". It progress and changing.
We have to see the bigger picture here! As every religion it is people who hold the wheel.And that's why we will see even more different doctrine from Christian Church in the future.Religions if they want to stay "alive", they have to "transform". See the rhetoric that Pope uses nowadays for example.
As for the article, though Lewis does have some points and presents them really vividly. He still does the same mistake I think. He starts his points from a total false base. Imo at least.
To know the official view of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on hell, you need only consult the Catechism (as to the heretical Protestant communities, who can say what those people think). You'll find hell addressed in Part One, Chapter Three, Article XII, IV (I've deleted footnote references, and have used italics to emphasize those portions of the text which may used to support the position that God is really a swell guy, hell notwithstanding):
"1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."
1034 Jesus often speaks of "Gehenna" of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire," and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!"
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." BUT WAIT! The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where "men will weep and gnash their teeth.
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance."
See? Hell isn't God's problem, it's ours. If that's where we end up, it's our fault. And okay, maybe there's some fire there, but the real punishment is "eternal separation from God" so the fire can't be that bad.
It's true that God sounds quite needy. He just wants to be loved. It's an odd thing for an all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal being to be needy, I'll admit, but just the same. Hell apparently is the fury of a God scorned.
The commonest reply here is that Christians do not actually believe in hell. This is actually addressed in the article, and I await someone addressing Lewis' response, which is that such folk are not following explicit Christian doctrine. You have justified the surprising claim, explicated most clearly by @tim wood, that somehow this is not Christian Orthodoxy. It's addressed and dismissed int he section titled "Varieties of Theism". Hell as separation from god is addressed - it doesn't seem to qualify as hell, or if it does qualify as hell, it does not get god off the hook of injustice. This is a recurring counter to those who say hell is our own choice, since god still forces upon us a "choice I was forced to make in ignorance".
Sure, but this is not what is in question here. Rather, it is that Christians believe god punishes those who displease him with eternal torture; that this is unjust; that nevertheless Christians consider God worthy of worship; and that hence Christians show themselves to be of poor moral character.
Lewis is one of the most interesting philosophers of the last fifty years. His astute yet eccentric analysis of smalltalk, of conventions, and the argument that the analysis of imprecise concepts should be imprecise, is world class. Of course he is most well known for his dealings with counterfactuals, and for modal realism, but he touched an most areas of philosophy.
It is disappointing that you dismissed his article so offhandedly. Perhaps the trite nature of most of the replies here, which do not address the article, has misled you into thinking the article itself trite. That would be an error.
Well, yours and mine, if you like. I say a god who inflicts infinite torture for finite offences is not worthy of worship. What say you?
Ethical relativism be damned; if you defend such a villain, your moral judgement is questionable.
But Banno... surely it's just the translation!? If we knew God's real intention as expressed in the Greek, it wouldn't be 'infinite torture' it would be more like 'endless torment'.... oh... never mind. :worry:
Sometimes the obvious does need to be stated, so than you for stating it. Thanks also for taking some time to understand the argument and the personality of the philosopher involved. Few others appear to have done as much.
Quoting Sam26andQuoting Sam26
What are we to make of this argument? For we are asked to decide in god's favour or against him. In the article Lewis points out a few times that god has forced our judgement to be made with insufficient information, yet at unimaginable cost.
See also my reply to @ laura ann, above.
So I don't see either of these defences of god as viable. They depend on our having faith, what the church fathers describe as believing despite the evidence. To be sure, many consider this to be the highest good - it seems to be pivotal to Islam, the very name meaning "submission". There is indeed much to question concerning the logic of such beliefs.
Ah, is that all? So stop trying to convince me of things I already hold to be so, and we might have more productive discussions.
:wink:
I see Lewis' point
The rest of my comment was given to show that generations of reactions to such declarations has also become what is 'Christian.'
That is not apology. I have my own objections as someone who wants to see things a certain way. Who knows, maybe you are right; No good can come from these beginnings.
But the assumption that this point of doctrine includes all who understand themselves to be Christian is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That will be all that you see.
Lewis invites us to consider two possible worlds. In the first, actions are somehow physically determined. In the second, actions are freely chosen. Yet in both possible worlds, the exact same events occur. Then he asks: "Why should we think of the second world as a great advance on the first?"
This is a cut-down version fo the argument. I encourage you to read it in situ.
I tend to agree with Lewis that there is no significant difference in value between these two worlds. So over to those who would defend their "favourite incompatibilist account" to explain the difference.
Neither I nor Lewis assumed such a thing.
The issue here is as to the puzzling inconsistency of certain common doctrines.
Here's a way of looking at it that, to me, weakens if not completely destroys Lewis' argument of disproportionate punishment compared to the offense.
What does it mean to not believe in God? That's the million dollar question. To renounce one's faith seems to be and is presented as an innocuous act; after all the atheist is still moral and that's what counts.
My hunch is theists (here Christians) treat belief in God to be the keystone of morality; remove it and morality collapses like a house of cards. So, in what capacity does God function in our moral lives? As a moral law-giver, as an all-seeing moral cop, as a judge. God's basically a legal system, purportedly perfect.
What happens if you reject i.e. defy the legal system? Chaos or, in theistic terms, hell (on earth). I've heard of many legends/stories about how allegedly evil people (atheists number among them) want to open a gateway to hell through which demons can enter earth and wreak havoc! I guess this is what theists fear the most. The penalty for atheism then has to be eternal hellfire! An eye for an eye! Proportionate but barbaric!
Basically, if you want to create (maximum) mayhem, go experience maximum mayhem! See how you like it!
It starts to make even more sense.
I have a knack for stating the obvious. :grin: I do it often. It helps keep us grounded.
I don't think it's necessary or even practice to worship god on moral grounds. You worship god if you are a Christian because he is a big thug, who can hurt you something fierce, and he says: "Worship me, cretin!" Then what are your choices? He don't even need to say "or else" but he does, just to make sure that the feebler in minds understand him too.
No, god is not worshipped for his behaviour of moral disleptitude. He is worshipped because he is big, fearsome, and he asks you to do this small favour for him already.
Quoting god must be atheist
I took it as given that this was part of the OP.
Tom Storm: you are picking on me.
Of course it was part of the OP.
And it is part of my post.
So far so good.
But you said that in a manner, that indicated that my post was not of merit.
For your information, I noticed that there are other, incongruent parts between the posts, which you so conveniently ignored for the sake of taking potshots at me and my post.
This is not the first instance you are doing this. Please stop this.
I complained about other posters doing the same things to me. You don't appear to be so vicious and vindictive, but you are consistently trying to undermine my opinions with invalid ways of invalidating them. I resent that.
The authorities asked me to report such instances, and as an immediate measure, to ignore the posts of those who criticize me on illogical grounds, supposedly due to personal dislike.
They advised me to laugh it off.
I don't find that a satisfactory way of responding to those who dislike me and due to their dislike they try to undermine my existence.
So please stop your habit of picking on me.
I just respond to ideas that I agree with, that require clarification, or those which might be seen differently. Often I don't even look who said it. I have no awareness of thinking you were particularly obtuse but I will read back over my responses to check.
1. He states that Christians worship god although god is not worthy of worship. He valuates this as moral failure on the part of God-worshipping Christians.
2. I stated that Christians may be worshipping god because of fear of retaliation, not because they esteem god worthy of worshipping.
You only sensed (according to your post which I called "invalidating" mine) that we both said, Banno and I, that god is a thug
You ignored the other parts, which comprised the difference. Why did you ignore it? In my opinion you ignored it to pick on me. If that is not true, then I wish to hear from you why you appear as if you did not comprehend that important difference.
O loser of what?
Is there a crime that isn't immoral?
Like lying to your friend about why you didn't show up at her b'day bash. There's perjury though, a legal equivalent. Also, gluttony ain't a crime but it's immoral. Sloth too isn't a criminal offense but it can land you in a legal bind sometimes.
I agree, the equivalence isn't perfect but it ain't completely off the mark either.
Could we discuss this matter? Why are some immoral acts not crimes? Perhaps because they aren't ones that endanger other people's health, life, and property. It appears that morality is an even more restrictive (oppressive?) set of rules than the law. It doesn't make sense to talk of Draconian laws then, right?
1. Is equivalent to spurning morality (you might as well call grow horns, a pointy tail, and call yourself Satan).
2. Is an insult, a theist's identiy and self-worth may have a lot to do with the faith he's part of. Atheism, in this sense, is an existential threat!
3. Left to the reader as an exercise.
Ergo, atheism bad, very bad! Go to hell, atheist scumbag!
On a more serious note, it's obvious that if theists feel hell is just punishment for atheism, there's something infinitely bad about denying God or eternity is finite!
Our task then is to find out how
1. What's so frigging, infinitely, bad about atheism?
2. How infinite (eternity) is actually finite?
Clues/false leads:
3. God is, I'm told, [math]\infty[/math] itself. So to revoke your belief in God is to negate the existence of infinity. Does that mean you need to be shown what infinity is in every sense of that word: subjective time dilation (pain) + actual eternity [the ultimate [math]\infty[/math] experience]. No contradiction.
4. Infinity is finite. Contradiction...or not! Infinity is fiction/imaginary. Goto step 3.
Either way, the atheist must experience [math]\infty[/math] i.e. God himself. Hell is not a punishment. It's a one-to-one with [math]\infty[/math]...er...I mean God. Rest easy atheists!
Thank you, that makes me feel better. Thanks.
So, accordingly, I must ask you again, now that we cleared the air on what was likely my misconception:
Why did you not take into account that Banno and I were saying deeply different things, despite we both used the idea that the Christian god is a thug, so to speak? Banno sees this as a reason to view Christians who revere god as morally failing; I see them as intimidated people who worship out of fear, not out of reverence or admiration for their god.
I saw Banno's OP as making that point too hence:
Quoting Banno
I generally hold that these two are foundational and abundantly obvious to most discussions of Christian belief. The first key moral failing of God being his protection racket Mafia boss approach.
I agree. However, I notice that you failed to answer the question I asked. How could you not see that this very one and the same component is used to treat the problem differently? How did that escape you? Why did you have to point out the obvious, and not refer to the not-so-obvious? Why do you feel compelled to point out what is or should be obvious to all, as an insight that you must show me because, by implication, I did not see that? Obviously I saw that, as I used it in my argument. So why pound on the obvious that all know? And show that to me as a lesson on something as if I hadn't realized that?
Please answer these questions instead of repeating the obvious yet a fourth time. The main question I wish to hear from you answered, is why you ignored the difference of treatment of the same component in Banno's and my posts? Did you not see that, or not comprehend that, or??? I am at a complete loss of why you put the post, other than to make me feel uncomfortable.
Now that you declared it was not personal, the question grows in its magnitude: then why did you put that post, since it only seemed to have one purpose, which was to needle me, but yet you claim your intention was not that?
Perhaps, but I did read the article. I think "demonising" is a fairly accurate characterisation. Generally, in my examination of any religious tradition, i like to back to the founder's words rather than those of later functionaries of the bureaucracy.
[quote=Matthew6:18]But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
[/quote]
This is about as condemnatory as Jesus gets, and even on the cross was forgiving. How one gets from the loving father of Jesus to the hateful antics of some 'followers' is by the same process that one gets from the Marx's
withering away of the state to Putin. An overwhelming infection with self-serving bullshit, and a passion for organising and control run riot.
Quoting Banno
This I agree with. And there is no shortage through the millennia, but it is a continuous betrayal of Christianity as characterised by the words and deeds of Jesus.
Well, two lines later he says :
So there's that. I remain unconvinced.
Quoting Banno
Me too.
How do we know that the punishment is unjust?
It just seems a little disproportionate. Love and worship me or else I'll kill you... Forever.
Well you're right about that, but nevertheless I would still be careful calling His punishment unjust...
For really, how could we know?
I infer that you mean we cannot know if god's punishment is just because we are finite beings. Yet the fact that we are finite beings strongly indicates the injustice. We do not even have the capacity to act contrary to our nature, which is the very thing the Bible demands of us. We are sinful creatures by birth and are powerless to redeem ourselves. God has created us one way but commanded us to be another way. So we are doomed to eternal suffering for our very finitude, for our lack of comprehension. Does it seem just?
Yes, there's a kind of "informed consent" argument available, although it can be said in response that we've been warned about eternal damnation. But I have no problem with what's said in Lewis' Divine Evil. I think intolerant, exclusive monotheism such as Christianity (with its one but oddly "triune" deity) necessarily condemns those who don't accept it to some form of punishment, extreme in its case.
Quoting Ciceronianus
As I understand it, some theologians these days take the talk of fire and torment to be “picturesque” or “metaphorical”, and take hell to be the state of being turned away from god. The torturous language would be an attempt to capture the magnitude of the difference between union with god and whatever else you might get up to.
The part I never understood was why there’s a deadline — right up until your last breath on earth, you can do the right thing, but after that forget it.
That doesn’t make sense to me theologically, but it makes sense if your religion is not about eternity at all — no matter what it says — but is about how one ought to live. Of course, you could also adjust your understanding of eternity to something besides “a whole lot of time, in fact all of it, or all the rest of it”. For instance, you could take the idea of eternity itself a somewhat picturesque way of claiming that history is real. If you hurt someone, that moment of you hurting them never goes away, is permanent in itself, lasts forever as the moment you hurt them.
To see how you relate to eternity (in some TBD sense) as the essence of how you live, to have turned toward or away from god (in some TBD sense), that’s a whole different thing from the fairy tale Lewis is talking about.
It is also wise not to attribute to Christians things that they would not intelligently admit. The religion of Jesus is a religion of mercy. Tomorrow you can be dead. Live honestly and freely, because today may be your last day. What the neighbor does or believes is none of your business. The true Christian lives for her/himself and without antithesis. sHe has no enemies. sHe forgives them. sHe even loves them: Love your neighbor as yourself! Saint Paul and his followers introduced other books into the religion of Jesus, ok, but the characteristic of an authentic Christian is that he does not demand anything of God. God doesn't even have to be good. Neither does her/his neighbor. It's up to you. Only you have to be good. Simple as that.
They assume God's got a really good reason they can't understand. Probably don't want to get tortured. It's kind of a hostage situation.
I always get nervous when people talk of 'true Christians'. Under what authority can such a claim be made? A closer reading of the text? A better translation? A feeling?
Setting this aside, I wonder, if the above is true - does this mean that a 'true Christian' can never be in the armed forces or own a gun?
The way the objection is framed assumes a kind of intellectual and moral hubris alien to the pre-modern world, and alien to much of contemporary religious life – it's not taken for granted that if we can't understand why something is right by our own moral standards, we are therefore allowed, or maybe even compelled, to condemn it based on that same understanding. That is, it was always taken for granted in religious life that God had reasons that were beyond us, and the tone of Lewis' objection, as with all new atheism (and especially that associated with Australia), is one that doesn't object to, but simply doesn't understand, the idea that there might be good reasons that one cannot understand.
I'm not defending this sort of world view (there are epistemological and moral problems with accepting the goodness of decisions you can't understand) – but it should be put in perspective that way. Modern people of the West, and this is particularly true of the English diaspora, have simply lost a mode of cognition that pre-modern people had, and so can't make sense of the morality contained, let's say, in Proverbs that leads to these sorts of conclusions. And so it strikes such people as ridiculous.
Think I might have mentioned that. Also, it's in the first few paragraphs of the article cited.
True. He obviously existed before Christianity did.
Quoting god must be atheist
True, but I don’t see this in the OP.
It's not something you know so much as something you decide. What do you think - is eternal damnation a proper response to not loving someone?
Your answer tells us about you.
Indeed, intolerance is apparently inherent in monotheism. "Thou shalt have no other god before me" and so on.
A more thoughtful reply - thanks. For those who haven't noticed, the section on "Universal salvation" in the article, this idea of a deadline is discussed. There's "Content atheist that I am, my state of alienation from the deity is not one for which torment is an apt metaphor" in the discussion of the varieties of theism.
Your argument, Srap, might be distinct but seems to me to be open to the same criticism - it relies on denying (or perhaps a "divergent interpretation" of...) certain of the scriptures. It remains difficult to see how a finite number of transgressions merits a non-finite punishment, even when one attempt to consider those transgressions from an eternal perspective. Some act of faith is required, an act that by definition involves grasping at something that is not supported by the evidence.
So again I remain unconvinced.
So true Christians pay no heed to at least some of the doctrines of christianity. They are far less common than True Scotsman.
Sharing a meal with someone who is homeless is not the sole province of Christians.
Indeed and I have met a number of devout Christians over the decades who think the homeless should be euthanized. I guess they are not true Christian/Scotsman...
It's not a true christian that describes but a good human.
There is no Christian monopoly on virtue.
So why the monopoly on not receiving eternal punishment?
Yep, the afore mentioned leap of faith, the unjustified conclusion, perhaps combined with what call the thug-god.
That's rather the point.
...or perhaps "Modern people of the West" have reached a point of not accepting conclusions based on insufficient and contradictory accounts.
This answer can also be related to @emancipate. I do agree with the both of you, but I still think it wouldn't be fair to call it unjust. Who knows? Maybe he has a killer argument for why He chose this Punishment. If the question isn't in relation to us, its really hard to assess things like good and evil.
Edit: Oh wait, it is in relation to us because it's attacking the worthy of worship bit. I missed that. Oops. My bad, sometimes I skim through the questions too quickly. If it demands whether He is worthy of worship to us, then yeah I would agree that it is unjust.
I beieve the unique true Christian died on the cross
Quoting Banno
You should read your own words. You characterized Christianity as a doctrine that condemns those who do not believe in God to hell. That was probably the orientation of Saint Paul. I have not said that the monopoly of doing good is the exclusive domain of Christians, but that you have a somewhat simple concept of Christianity. But Christianity is either a religion of mercy or it is nothing.
Some acts are considered immoral for entirely religious reasons. As modern secular people we are not so much inclined to accept religious reasoning about moral issues. As social beings anything which would disrupt social harmony to a significant enough degree would be naturally thought of as immoral, it seems to me. It's really a hugely complex issue shot through with all kinds of subtleties and nuances.
Sure. So what do we conclude from this - where does it lead us? We are left to make a decision that will have the utmost impact without sufficient information.
And it was god who set up this arrangement.
On this account god has behaved abysmally.
Or the christian account is incorrect.
I do. Do you read yours? You would save god from being immoral by denying basic christian doctrine.
Jesus himself, according to scripture, speaks of eternal hellfire and damnation. You are doing what we in the trade call special pleading.
Quoting Primperan
That's not the point; it is the supposed monopoly on salvation, not charity, that lacks coherence. In question is the judgement of those who think an evil god worthy of worship.
So it would seem.
There's folk as will give aid to the homeless, not because they wish to avoid torture, but because it is the right thing to do.
Christianity as a religion, as we know it, would not exist but for Paul of Tarsus. It's largely his creation, I think. There's no escaping him and his influence. Without him, it's likely it would have been a Jewish sect.
This thread draws out rational conclusions from the common doctrine of christianity. One might address the arguments. or one might, as you do, scorn the process. But that is avoiding the discussion rather than engaging with it or accepting it.
Is that an appropriate response?
So one supposes. But that is to not address the discussion.
As to Christianity, you're right, its view of eschatology probably makes no moral sense, and it's probably bad to believe it (though I do think Christianity's recommended virtues in life are far better, and it's unlikely that any better ones have ever been elaborated by people).
As to the believers, blaming someone for adhering to a traditional faith with unpleasant implications is probably a bad idea if it has any concrete consequences (such as eschewing or punishing that person), as it's all metaphysical stuff and thus not worth much. Thinking otherwise strikes me as hysterical and short-sighted, and indulges in a moral smugness we're not entitled to.
It also seems to me easy to blame people for things that don't matter (metaphysics), especially when we are heirs to what is in contention for one of the worst concrete evils in world history (the British Empire and its offshoots) – this changes the topic a bit, but I always see a kind of deflection from things that actually happened when we retreat to quibbling over things that don't exist anyway.
Quoting Banno
There are also christians out there who believe similarly I would think.
It's rude, untenable, and quite frankly uninteresting. Moral character is not decided by religion, it's decided by the person. Please tread carefully before assuming through "logic" that all christians are evil, or are of bad moral character.
Agreed, that's an unsolvable problem with the fairy tale.
I was trying to find a way to take 'eternity' as a way of conveying that our actions have inconceivably high moral stakes, rather than something to do with duration. (Nietzsche uses eternity to convey stakes, in a way. Thoreau had that line, "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity," and he doesn't seem to be talking about 'lots of time' either.)
I don't really see the point in arguing against what I'm calling the "fairy tale". You always have the option of taking lots of scripture as illustrative storytelling. (Hardly anyone doesn't take Genesis that way.) What the stories are meant to convey is a certain way of living a spiritual life, so if you focus on the fairy tale, religious folks will always feel like you don't really get it. Every time you say "evidence", for instance, believers yawn.
How does one determine the difference between the extraneous 'fairy tale' and the significant 'spiritual life'? How do you know what's in and what's out?
I have an additional moral question which may not have been directly flagged. What are we to make of an insuperable entity that insists on being worshiped and thanked in perpetuity? Set the punishment aside for a moment. What's up with the perpetual need for devotion and praise? This creature knocks out a cosmos and then require endless thanks? In human terms this sounds egomaniacal. It's certainly not a gracious or humble use of power.
Doubtless.
Quoting john27
You don't have to be here. But there might be more courage in staying than walking away.
I'm unconvinced. Where is the pursuit of truth? Where is my philosophical growth? What courage does it take to fester in these sorts of grand generalizations? Most christians that I know of haven't even heard of Epicurus, so why are we generalizing these complex ideological implications when their view on the matter is so much more simpler/contained? To me it just seems like senseless bullying. We know that Christianity is flawed-that doesn't mean the people are.
Indeed, there might be replies that rely on eternity outside of time in the place of sempiternity. It is difficult to see how this ameliorates the use of terms such as "everlasting fire". It's like claiming that sinners will burn in hell, then pretending the fire will not be quite as hot as expected... It doesn't seem to help.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm not sure I understand the term "fairy tale". I'd taken you to be referring to what Lewis called the "fantasy" that "allows the suffering of our mundane lives to be redeemed". It seems you mean something else.
Indeed. Apparently if we only understood, we too would join in the choir eternal.
Christians would consider themselves flawed, it being part of Christian doctrine. You're not the one who can save them, either. So, don't feel too bad about it.
Truth without coherence or consistency? Lewis is pointing out the consequences of certain christian dogma. Your response to what he says - growth or stagnation - is over to you.
I think Genesis is an indication of what I mean. Many many Christians take the story in Genesis to be, well, a story, just a picturesque way of conveying the idea of a creator. Only certain sorts of believers take it literally. A lot of the interpretation of scripture relies on various sorts of symbolic analysis. It's normal. I'm suggesting that it's open to a believer to take a lot as just storytelling to convey some pretty abstract stuff. Hellfire needn't be taken literally, nor torment. All that stuff could reasonably be taken as storytelling to convey ideas about one's spiritual state. (Didn't Kierkegaard somewhere say you could replace the whole New Testament with "There was a man among us whom we believe was God"?)
Quoting Tom Storm
Dunno. Biblical interpretation can get pretty sophisticated. It's clear enough that Christians do this, as the Genesis example shows. Must you believe Moses literally parted the Red Sea to be a Jew or a Christian? Obviously not. And theologians have often taken much, much more to be fairy tale than normal believers.
I grew up Catholic, so I've never even read the Bible. ;-)
Quoting Ciceronianus
Thats not what I meant by flawed, and I think you know that.
Quoting Banno
I'm not sure I follow.
Nevertheless, this discussion just missed the mark for me. I apologize, I got a bit heated. I'll see myself out.
I don't think it's anything special about the Abrahamic religions. Wisdom literatures always accumulate interpretations and theories of interpretation. Even Zen, which you might think would be immune. We still have knockdown drag-out fights here about our preferred ancients.
Hell as a place of torment was a Jewish idea, although they didn't use that word. "Hell" was a Norse goddess of the dead.
The bit in the Bible that mentions loving thy neighbor are true - all that other stuff about genocide, rape, torture, retribution, judgment, misogyny and homophobia and never wearing mixed fabrics - that stuff is allegorical.
Not what I was saying and missing the point of this discussion.
You're just saying that you don't agree with what gets marked as right and wrong in the Bible, and I'd largely agree with you, but so what?
The issue we were addressing was the afterlife story about heaven and hell, eternal reward and punishment. What you're rewarded or punished for is a separate issue.
An analogy: You're in a jail cell with a 230 lbs bodybuilder. You are no match for his strength. You are doing things you don't really want to do, because he tells you to do them. Once in a while you don't obey, and he severely beats you or tortures you.
Is justness in the picture? In your mind, maybe, and in the bodybuilder's mind. But basically justness has nothing to do with it. He says do it, and you do it.
God says "worship me", and you worship him.
Sartre said "life is hell". No. Life is life imprisonment. You don't get out of there alive.
But - and this is obviously of great urgency considering lunch time tomorrow in Australia - what about eating prawns?
I totally agree if you view it from our modern point of view. I wasn't there then, but I imagine that the Torah was accepted as physical reality in Jesus' time. The interpretations kept creeping in due to the fact that man's growing knowledge of the physical world rendered the stories untrue. What could one who wanted to continue to believe do? Invent the notion that they are allegorical.
I have news for the allegorists: everything can be viewed and interpreted as an allegory.
While that does not say much, it means as much as to say that "your allegory is never superior to mine, and mine is never superior to yours. Our allegories are interpretations, and totally at our will of imagination."
What I'm trying to say is that allegorical reading of the Christian scriptures is modern, because they need reconcile the book with reality.
ST I was just riffing off a theme for mild comic relief - sorry about that. The joke was referencing progressive Christians who energetically jettison the obvious discordant morsels of scripture in order to favor the construction of a liberal church built from a bowdlerized Bible.
's all good, man
*sigh*
So who decides who is a real Christian? You?
If you read the most original Gospel, that of Saint Mark, Jesus did not speak of hell, but of the Kingdom of Heaven. The concept of hell is Greek like Paul of Tarsus, who used it to convince through fear. If you read the episode of Jesus and the two crucified thieves (Lk 23), when one of the thieves defended him from the insults of another and begged him to remember him when he was going to the kingdom of heaven, Jesus replied that in that day he would be with him, because the kingdom of heaven is not a place, but a state of the heart, from which he lives without antithesis, from which he behaves honestly. A thief, also crucified, who did everything possible to prevent a righteous man from being mortified, had already transformed his condition, had entered the Kingdom of Heaven.
I don't know if you've ever fallen in love. If you fell in love you will remember that the world was still the same, but not you. You were completely another. You lived in the Kingdom of Heaven. Life was different. Completely.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Christianity is a sect of sects. There is an orientation chart here.
The threat of eternal damnation is Christianity's only selling point.
Quoting Banno
If someone who claims to have the "Truth about God" (in this case, a Christian) tells you to convert to his religion, and you refuse to do so, he interprets this as if you had said "I hate God, we're through". (Nevermind your actual reasons. Neither God nor Christians care about those.)
In that sense, you have indeed committed a finite, but most importantly, final offense toward God, and it's an offense that severs all ties between you and God, and between you and Christians, thus you earn eternal damnation.
To be clear, you wouldn't actually be believing in God, you'd be believing in what some people told you on the topic of God. Unless we have actual, first-hand knowledge of God (which most of us don't), it all comes down to just believing what other people say.
There is an explanation with the help of which it all makes sense: Jehovah is a _demigod_. Not the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Socioeconomic status. Happiness.
In order to be happy and to succeed in this world, it appears that a person must be willing to engage in and engage in a measure (the right measure) of lying, stealing, killing, cheating, gambling.
Official morality states that one is supposed to be fair, honest, kind, generous, goodwilled, respectful, responsible, hardworking, and such. But a person who actually behaves that way is a ninny and doesn't do well in life.
What use is that?
That way, you usually get an abstract, theoretical, bookish version of a religion that nobody lives and nobody actually wants to live. Such a version of a religion is so abstract that it is indistinguishable from fiction.
When the time came, Jesus didn't turn the other cheek. And he brought the sword, not peace. So, strictly speaking, Christians aren't actually far from Jesus, not at all.
They don't think he's an evil god. They don't feel addressed by your criticism.
Quoting Banno
Actually, I have found Christians believe precisely that.
For example, a Christian "friend" insisted that the fact that I try to be honest in my dealings with others and some other virtues that he saw in me was evidence of having accepted Jesus into my heart (or some such). For him, it was inconceivable why else would I try to be honest.
(He was actually using this as a springboard for accusing me of refusing to "fully" give myself to Jesus and getting baptized.)
A religion's claim to monopoly on salvation is the justification for choosing said religion. A religion has no selling point unless it claims to have monopoly on salvation.
Like I said, if we start with the premise that Jehovah is a demigod, then it all makes sense. Jehovah occupies the position of a creator* deity. In Dharmic religions, this position is called "Brahma". Brahma can get quite full of himself, the power that he has can go to his head, thinking he's the first and most powerful being, confusing himself with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vishnu/Krishna.
It's the demigods who are eager to be worshipped, while Vishnu is quite relaxed, knowing that nothing happens without his will.
*The destroyer deity being Shiva. Vishnu kind of outsources his activities that pertain to the day-to-day operations of the universe to demigods.
I don't think it's that, I think what you're saying is a rationalization.
There is an instructive scene in DeMille's Ten Commandments where one of the Israelites (Datan, IIRC), asks Moses in roundabout this: How do we know that God has indeed spoken to you? How do we know that what you're telling us is indeed what God has said?
And in reply Moses is furious.
There is an unspoken premise that we're not supposed to doubt the claims of those who claim to be messengers for God.
But since all kinds of people claim to be messengers for God, claiming all kinds of things, how are we to know who is a genuine one and who isn't?
This is a question that is tabooed in religion when it's asked by outsiders. I think it's because of this taboo that people aren't drawn to religion anymore.
That really is one of the most sensible questions one can ask of these claims.
And into Humpty Dumpty Land ...
Words should mean something, and they cannot simply mean whatever anyone wants them to mean.
It's one extreme to say that a Christian is whatever anyone who considers themselves a Christian says that a Christian is.
It's another extreme to say that a Christian is whatever anyone who doesn't consider themselves a Christian says that a Christian is.
Terms denoting political, religious, national, racial identity are usually difficult to pin down. People often fight about them.
I think terms denoting political, religious, national, racial identity should be used spitefully by outsiders/non-members, in order to force those who take pride in their political, religious, national, racial identity to clarify the definitions of those terms and to take up the fight amongst themselves, as opposed to with outsiders/non-members.
In other words, it's not mine to discern or define what is a Christian, but people using the term to describe themselves should work it out amongst themselves. My only potential task is to encourage them to do so.
Not agnosticism, but spite.
And nothing to do with bicycles.
So who or what is Christ? The Son of God? One who brought the sword, not peace? One who taught to turn the other cheek, but when the time came for him to do so, he didn't? One who bemoaned his fate on the cross? A magician, able to turn water into wine and such? A necessary intermediate between us and God? An ancient itinerary preacher? An allegory? ???
Like I said.
Oh, those who call themselves Christians should put their money where their mouth is and fight it out amongst themselves. It shouldn't be too hard, since they believe they have the most powerful entity in the universe exclusively on their side.
We outsiders should not allow ourselves to be dragged into this fight any longer.
Doing advanced math is easier than talking to you.
What on earth are you talking about??
That being a Christian is all about believing, that cognitive-emotive activity the main point of which is a certain feel-good feeling in one's heart?
Which person? The believer?
Do you want to argue that beliefs have no implications for actions?
So do you deny that there are christians who believe in hell? Of course not. It is these folk that the article concerns.
And of course you may change the narrative, deciding that Jesus was sent not to save us from hell, making up something else from which we require redemption. Perhaps you could re-invent the christian narrative so that it did not involve redemption at all.
Those views would remain uncommon amongst those who call themselves christian.
Nothing you have said impacts on Lewis' critique. Those Christians who chose to worship a god they believe will damn fol for eternity remain morally reprehensible.
Perhaps an argument can be made that they acted under duress. Convinced that they must be Christians and believe Christian doctrine to avoid eternal punishment and be saved, they're compelled to accept both--hell and the Christian God who created and tolerates hell. If they worship because they fear eternal punishment, can they be said to be morally reprehensible?
I can't remember if this was addressed in the article, but I don't think it was. Believe in hell or go to it, saith the Lord, or at least his Church.
Even if Mother Theresa was a slug as you suggest, there's nothing you can do about it. You're outnumbered.
What is it then?
This is a discussion of an article by a prominent philosopher.
It's what we do.
So you agree it's not to any concrete end. We don't need to bring John Locke into it. :up:
That'd be up to you. Go ahead, if you think it might be interesting.
I think you already agreed that it's unnecessary. There's nothing you can do about religion, whatever you may think of it's adherents.
But the criticism you make is unfair. Whoever erects an altar does so with the intention of burning at the stake the one who does not bow down to his god. That is not the exclusive heritage of Christianity. Read the article "Genealogy of Fanaticism" within Cioran's Short History of Decay book. It seems to me that you describe the behavior of the Gestapo, the Church of Scientology and the fans of Detroit Pistons.
Take this up with Maslow and his followers.
Not quite so, I said they should fight it out amongst themselves. This way, only one definition of "Christian" would be left.
Dictionary definitions of "Christian" (and yes, there are many such definitions) are so general that they don't help when trying to determine whether Joe Smith is a Christian or not.
So you know God, first hand?
Really, I "failed to admit" that?
Then educate me: What is the significance of this creed?
Although from what I've seen, Christians don't merely believe, no, they know, they are sure. So sure they are willing to kill in the name of that surety.
Well, at least you compare me to a man.
Indeed. Threats of damnation are common, so common.
We still somehow have to live in this world with the religious/spiritual.
This is why such themes as brought up in the OP matter.
We can't just crawl into a dark corner and die, even though this is probably what the religious/spiritual expect us to do.
The topic of conversation is the definition of god. Specifically, that a god who instigates hell is not worthy of worship.
As noted above, it's apparently a characteristic of monotheism. But yes, the criticism applies to islam, and to any religion that worships a god who is so unjust. Both Lewis and I have said as much.
The difficulty with this thread is that it veered sharply into what Christianity is, or is not, about rather than sitting with your question. I am not sure, however, that you (or Lewis) is actually interested in the answer, but the thrust of what is taken for granted. Maybe Lewis is the better source:
The deck is stacked and the conclusion certain: Orthodox Christians are evil.
But is anything that Lewis went on about even close to right? We can start with two simple questions:
1) What is it to worship God?
2) What does it mean about a person that they can correctly identify cause and effect? e.g. "If you don't believe in God you'll go to hell because God sets the rules."
It is worth noting that Lewis does a good job of getting wrong the "distinctive ideas of Christianity." Although he hand waves in the direction of Universalism and then stumbles all over himself to lay out why reward and punishment theology is the way things are ("I find the option of limited punishment mysterious."), Christianity may not be what he supposed,
Lewis was no Scotsman.
Just because...
So maybe Lewis really has a problem with Catholics (and those heavily influenced by its historic theology). Just a thought.
You are right the the thread has diverged markedly from the article, and when time permits I intend to head back to the argument in the final section.
It was predictable that folk would attempt to blunt the force of the criticism by claims that it applies to those christians, but not to us. Doubtless one can formulate forms of christianity that are in some way immune to Lewis' critique, and in that regard Lewis has done a service to theology. But that such less perverse versions exist does not excuse the likes of Israel Folau.
What you want is to negatively characterize Christianity and religions. That is why you take the part for the whole. But politics and sports produce the same kind of reactions. The man from the United States hates the man from Mexico. The Confederates hated the Yankees. Gangs in one neighborhood hate gangs in another. Neighbors of one block hate those of another. The one from the 102 family hates the 103 family. It's not very good to walk around Miami with the Los Angeles Lakers jersey ... Religion is not bad in itself. There are aggressive people who make it a bad thing, but the same thing happens with politics or sports.
Sure. Though I imagine that folks on a philosophy forum can be more nuanced in their critiques of theology to other folks on a philosophy forum without excusing him or those like him. Rhetoric is employed by the weak and the powerful using the metaphors, narratives, etc. that they believe will achieve their ends (be they convincing people to turn from their ways, scoring points with your in group, or being an asshole). There is a saying in another context - bad facts make for bad laws. If we simply reject anything associated with bad people, we may end up losing much of what good people enjoy.
This discussion is tedious. Yes, there may be folk who call themselves christian who do not hold that god torments souls for eternity. But there are folk who do so hold, and the criticism in the Lewis article applies to them.
"It's not me, it's those nasty Catholics, or those Southern Baptists..."
That you are both so keen to avoid the criticism speaks to it's truth.
Absolutely. I agree. I went through a phase of trying to understand it. What I can't do is just condemn 1/4 of the species (or whatever it is) and leave it there. That's a dangerous mindset.
You need to re-read Lewis's article. His critique applies to those Christians (on his definition) that agree with "God" in eternally damning people. That is why I wasted the time to quote his argument. First you have to find someone that matches his criteria and then argue with that sort of a person. Despite Lewis's assumption that such people constitute the majority of Orthodox thinkers, you might find that after some exploration there are markedly fewer than he supposes. Not because I don't think the majority of Christian's hold some view of eternal damnation, but because I don't think that the majority of Christians worship god for that reason or agree that if they were god, they would make the same choice.
Accepting that a person will be executed for speaking ill of the king, telling your child, "If you speak ill of the king, you will be executed", saying to your child after they have spoken ill of the king that they will be executed if they get caught, crying after your child has been caught, and staying passively by the execution knowing that if you question the authority your head will be on the block next does not strike me as the sort of mental/behavioral disposition that would make me question the parent's judgment or moral sensibility.
All I ask you to do is take his argument seriously and discuss it. If you want to just say that there are bad Christians, we agree. But you don't need Lewis or his argument to make that point.
And I agree in advance (as I have said to many a person), reward and punishment theology is perverse and people that advocate for some sort of "divine desert" are demented. The "baddest bad ass around god" is not a god that is compelling from an aesthetic perspective, but it may be compelling enough from a perspective of getting what you want.
So either the question asked is, "Can we trust the judgment of a Christian with regards to ethics given that the Christian is a Christian?" or it is something else. If we are analyzing what it is to be a Christian for this purpose, it is absolutely on point to say that AS A CATEGORY you cannot lump all Christians together, but must dig further into both the TYPE of Christian that they are and what they PERSONALLY believe. This isn't that tough of a point to understand.
I have all sorts of reason to critique Christianity on theological grounds and reject it - but the willful failure to engage with various types of Christianity is not one of them. Intellectual charity to the other's position leads to a better understanding of why they are wrong - in whole or part.
And just to remind you:
I am considering those who consider him worthy of praise or worship, not simply defining a strawman class. I am merely asking you to do the same.
I agree entirely too little.
Quoting Banno
You said what you wanted to talk about. I tried to talk about it. You claim that I am talking about something else. Before we exclude someone (especially the sorts of someones that might have otherwise had a place at the table for the discussion of ethical issues) based upon their belief in something, I'd like to at least know what belief it is that they have. Why don't you want to know?
Quoting Banno
Does no one wish to defend incompatiblist freedom?
Maslow.'s criterion of happiness is "self-actualization" "being all you can be". It's akin to Aristotle's eudamonia and arete; not dependent on having a lot of money, material possessions or what others think of you.
The Fritz analogy shows that the worship of the perpetrator of an injustice implies the condoning of that injustice.
Lewis argues that the perpetrator's evil extends to those who worship him, that those who admire evil are tainted by it. Again I refer you to the article for the full version of this argument.
To be sure, following 's point, we might excuse those who fein admiration in order to avoid becoming victims themselves, although presumably god will be aware of their attempted subterfuge and treat them accordingly.
Lewis sets up "chains of contagion", pointing out that those who admire those who admire the perpetrator share in the taint of evil: "The more we are prepared to be tolerant of religious matters, the more we will be prepared to overlook the details of other's theological views... and the contagion will spread."
Lewis himself thinks the conclusion absurd, and seeks to avoid it by seeing admiration as selective. We might admire Mother Teressa for her charity but not her theology.
It always strikes me as odd what you think I am pretending. I think virtually everyone that worships worships a torturer. But then we have to come to terms about what worship is. Which is what I asked you and you said you will get to when you have time. While you are there, you might get to thinking about reverence and veneration. While there take a pause and consider how admiration contrasts with those things and whether Lewis is playing a bit fast and lose with language when he shifts from "worshiper of the bad god" to "admirer of the bad god" or "admirer of the worshiper".
Getting to the point, worship does not suggest approval, but a display of subservience to something higher on the power chain. Sure, that display can be ritualized, but it doesn't change what it is - that which you do try to avoid suffering. Yes, it would be nice if people worshiped god because god was the A numero uno head honcho, but that isn't how it is. Worship is typically justified as a debt (for being created or permitted something desirable) or acknowledgement of power. If you like, find some examples of people (or Christians as a group/whole) saying why they think god (as Jesus or otherwise) is to be worshiped.
So I concede that worshiping the god that would damn people to hell for eternity would be worshiping a torturer. I am asking whether such worship indicates approval of the torture specifically or the god generally. The difference between god as Jesus (or at least the specific god that is to have acted in history and be in charge of our souls) and god as the omni-god is immense. Trying to reconcile the two may be where you are running into problems.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Both would appear to be nonsense. I see no need to reconcile them, and will leave that to the subservient - er, faithful. It's not my problem.
Apparently people make choices. The argument against it is purely logical with no empirical support.
Purely logical arguments are nice, but they're frequently knocked down by observed facts on the ground.
So I have no good reason to doubt my first hand experience with decision making.
I’m Jewish. Therefore, I don’t think the god Christian’s worship is worthy of worship because I don’t believe he exists.
Still I don’t think Lewis makes a fair assessment of the god that Christians believe in. What Lewis is actually describing, imo, is his own view of god. A view many people share, the view that the Christian god is a genocidal-maniac-power-hungry-nutjob who will happily throw you in a pit of fire for eternity should you cross him.
And if you see god as such then you will surely label him a villain as you and Lewis have done. No argument there.
Where I think Lewis falters however is when he decides that we should question the moral character of Christians based not on their god as they see him and describe him and believe him to be, but on Lewis’s depiction.
Christians do not believe they are worshipping a “villain”. The god that Lewis describes is unrecognizable to them. Christians do not believe that god is responsible for all the pain and suffering in the world. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.
Another problem with his assertion that we should question their moral character is, Lewis doesn’t believe in god or Jesus or what Christianity teaches. He doesn’t believe that his soul is at risk of eternal damnation should he anger the Christian god or “deny Jesus”.
Christians do believe that. Many because they believe Jesus or god has spoken to them, many read their religious texts and it made sense to them, many had some other conversion experience which left them 1000% convinced god and Jesus exist, many were taught that since they were very little children and are scared to death to even question his existence.
Whatever the reason, Christians belief god and Jesus are real. They believe Heaven and Hell are real. Very very real!
Therefore, Lewis is able to look at god and Jesus without any fear or any reservation whatsoever and he can feel free to be as critical and judgmental as he wants to be in assessing god’s actions and behavior. And he does that brilliantly.
Many Christians literally can’t stomach criticizing their god even a little bit. Much less as harsh as Lewis has done. For whatever reason, (their upbringing, they’re too afraid, they think he is perfect..whatever). They just don’t.
The reality is Lewis nor anyone else will ever be able to know why every individual believes what he or she believes or even precisely what they believe or how they interpret religious texts.
If you find it useful and moral to judge a group of people based on something you don’t entirely understand, then you should do that. You should always do what you feel is morally right. Always.
Personally, I feel individuals and their religious beliefs are far too complicated and complex to just focus on what they believe their god might do to dead people as a means to judge everything about their moral character.
I’m trying to read the article — no, I hadn’t read it before — and I come to this:
Evidently David Lewis doesn’t know any Christians, and hasn’t so much as eavesdropped on any conversation among Christians, because no Christian ever talks this way. Christians don’t believe that you gather information and then make a decision about how you’d like to spend eternity; they believe you either open your heart to His grace or you deliberately shut Him out.
Whatever Lewis is talking about, it’s nothing remotely like what Christians in my experience actually believe.
Ugh. He sent His only begotten son here to die so that our sins might be forgiven, and Lewis says, “Big whoop.” And, again, grace: Christians believe God is constantly luring and urging us, offering us His love unconditionally, and reminding us that He will forgive any sin, all we have to do is ask.
Christians believe you are “fully informed” right now. What does Lewis mean? By “fully informed” he seems to mean, when he sees the afterlife with his own eyes, and finally knows what’s what. Such knowledge is irrelevant to Christians. This whole paradigm is wrong. No sensible evidence is needed because God is happy to speak to us directly, creator-to-soul, and does so all the time.
In this little section seems, Lewis addresses my “hell is a spiritual state” thing, but he interprets his experience as “contented atheism”, not something for which “torment” is an apt metaphor. But, of course, he’s just wrong about that. If there is a bliss surpassing all imagining that he knows not, then from that point of view, his contentment looks like torment.
I think there is a good question here, about why some people experience themselves as touched by God and some people don’t, but it’s nothing like this intellectualized business Lewis is on about.
I’ll try to read the rest, but the whole thing seems to me — and I’ve been an atheist at least my entire adult life — extremely shoddy and ill-informed.
"Tis a busy day, and you both deserve longer replies. But in the interim, it strikes me that you share in the view that christianity ought be judged only (or mainly) from a christian perspective; that seems to be what is implicit in the admonition to understand christianity before commenting.
I don't see why we should. First: not being a christian, one has no choice but to judge christianity from the outside. Also: which christianity are we to use as our stoa? There are so many, and each will provide a differing perspective. further: both Lewis and I have said that there may be those who consider themselves christian but deny the existence of eternal damnation, and that the argument does not apply to them except in so far as they admire those who do accept eternal damnation.
You know, the way you say this, it’s as if a Christian might say, “I approve of the job God Almighty is doing.”
You see how ridiculous that is, right? [hide="*”](Reminiscent of a comment Melville made after hearing Emerson lecture — a fine speaker but I can’t help feeling that, had he been around when God created the universe, he would have offered several helpful suggestions.)[/hide]
Quoting Banno
If you want to shun Christians because their ethical views don’t align with yours, have at it. But you want to find their faith wanting, without bothering to understand it. Indeed, there may be a barrier there: I’m not sure you can really understand that life without living it. I don’t, and I don’t, that’s all I can say.
That could be partly true but I don't think you need to understand a life to understand where it is objectionable. After all (to change focus from Christianity for a moment) fundamentalist Islam likes to kill gay people - do we need to understand the life in order to understand and incorporate this perception of homosexuality? Surely, no.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't read either the article, nor @Banno's OP as an attempt to 'understand' why Christians think they way they do. We could invoke upbringing, group membership tokens, and cognitive biases to have that job done in a jiffy... I read it more as a simple ethical question. God is presented as behaving in ways which we humans think of as unethical (or at the very least ignoble). The Bible is quite unequivocal on those matters, no matter what might later be said about his many redeeming qualities. So we're left, no matter our actual beliefs, with a quandry to solve.
Is God beyond our petty and all too tellurian morality? But if so, then why follow his edicts, why pursue a place in heaven? Simply having created the place doesn't seem sufficient ( I don't follow the moral code of the architect every time I enter a new building).
Is the Bible perhaps a loose allegory, not to be interpreted so literally? But if do, then whence organised religion? If all that remains is a general message to be kind, share stuff, and forgive, it seems our ancestors of many thousand years ago already had that nailed. The message seems more like a wistful reminiscence than the bureaucratic edifice of scripture, sermon, authority and rite we see in modern Christianity.
Is the accusations that believing in God equates to approving of him misguided? Maybe, but this then raises the interesting moral question of doctrine/law vs morality. If Christians don't follow God's law in any way then I think we're back to the problem above (Christianity becoming a meaningless distinction from just 'nice'). If they do, then what are we to make of the relationship between morality and law? That the former should be subservient to the latter?
Understanding Christian psychology and discussing Christian ethics are two separate things. The OP, as a understand it, is about the latter.
Sure. But there's nothing in philosophical about "They suck"
Hell is about divine justice. It's about bad people getting away with their crimes.
In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus , it's about an oppressive class who is never punished for their sins while on earth.
More later, gotta go.
That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that you argue with fallacies. You take the part for the whole. As it is true, then the subject seems tedious to you. The tedious thing is that you use argumentative fallacies. You attribute as characteristic of religion what also appears in political and sports rhetoric, but you no longer like this and you go back to talking about what offends you.
True. I hardly think that's a fair summary though.
Quoting frank
Is it. How do we know they're 'bad' people if the arbiter of justice must be divine. If we abdicate moral judgement to some higher authority, then it might be the 'good' people being punished, or we end up only tautologically concluding that it is 'the punished' who are punished.
For us to have faith that God will punish the 'bad' people we must also have faith that his notions of 'good' and 'bad' are similar to ours.
But if they're similar to ours, then what need do we have of scripture?
If they're dissimilar to ours (as the Bible seems to indicate), then why support them?
David Lewis may be good philosopher, but that quote above is unchristian.
No knowledgeable theologian or priest would ever say such a thing.
I understand that Christianity today is split into millions of dominations, no wonder philosophers use the fact of different teachings to construct dogma based on inconsistent teachings.
If I remember correctly, the original victims of the Jewish Hades or Gehenna were Gentiles and it wasn't eternal torment. Later they decided Jews could be punished too.
There's an incredibly poignant story here about oppression and the ways it twists the soul (so to speak.). It's sad that in the quest to shit on somebody else you folks are missing that story.
Ah, but there is the rub. The character, essence and teaching of Christ are up for interpretation. A bi-cycle (two wheels) is not for interpretation. Hence, a huge explanation, and supportive documentation is needed to sort out who is the true Christian. Sure enough: someone who is truly Christ-like. But the concept of likeness of Christ is undefinable, because it is interpretive.
I like the use of “invoke” there: you pray to your gods, they pray to theirs.
Anyway, I haven’t argued for an explanation of Christians faith, only that you ought to know what something is before judging it.
And I have suggested that this may be difficult from an outside perspective, because faith is not just an opinion someone holds, but that’s just how Lewis discusses it. (A view held in relative ignorance.) If you must, you could say it’s a language-game you just don’t understand, and move on, but there’s no point in insisting that those playing it must be playing a game you do know, and playing it wrong.
We’re here because @Banno believes Davidson refuted incommensurability in all its forms, and that means religious experience must be translatable without loss into terms he can understand. I doubt that, but I don’t even see much effort being put into the translation.
Quoting Isaac
I believe I made that point in the very paragraph of mine you were quoting, but your second sentence is clearly wrong: the OP presents an objection to Christian theology. No Christian is called upon to decide whether anyone else receives eternal reward or punishment; it is not only not an ethical choice they face, it is one they are, in so many words, warned against. As Lewis sees it, you do face such a choice for yourself — is that an ethical choice? — but are denied crucial evidence you would need to make an informed choice. I have suggested this is a ridiculous model of the experience of faith. Lewis’s principal point is that you might as well worship Hitler, but, and this should sound familiar, no Christian believes themselves to be in a position to evaluate God’s job performance.
Quoting Isaac
Because you have faith.
If, like me, you have no such faith, then move on. But my lack of understanding of someone’s faith is no objection to it.
From the perspective of somebody who is either not Christian or somebody who is in doubt or somebody who is agnostic yes, in that case interpretation is very much desired because it serves to search for God or to search for truth.
However from perspective of somebody who considers him self Christian knows that interpretation is the job of holly spirit. not because of blind faith but because that's fundamental to the teaching of Jesus who is the central figure of Christianity.
How can you make sense of this, SpaceDweller?
It's actually simple to answer, a Christian believes in Jesus such that it does not deny it.
Are you saying there is a possibility of being Christian but not agreeing to his teachings? isn't that denial?
If not, then what would be definition of being a Christian according to your interpretation?
But you failed this time. Just a declaration of one aspect of Christianity is NOT a definition. For instance, a car is blue.
How do you define "car"? By saying it is blue.
But blue does not define a blue car. An aspect of Christianity does not define who a Christian is.
Enough of this already. Blinded by faith. To you your religion is more important than logic and truth. I respect you for that, and I am exiting with these words -- please don't expect a reply from me again.
Well do expand then. I'd hate to miss a good story.
Oh no, religious/spiritual people will give you no such credit. To them, your lack of belief is the same as disbelief. If you're not with them, they say you're against them. They don't care about your reasons.
But why should I care?
Christians are specifically enjoined not to judge the state of another's soul. It seems to bother Lewis that they believe he will be judged, even if not by them. It bothers him that they "support" this judgy asshole in the sky, but Christians don't experience their faith as "supporting" God's decisions. They don't get a vote.
What you're describing holds for those who were born and raised into Christianity, and then less or more stayed in it.
It doesn't hold for prospective adult converts to Christianity.
This is most evident in the Catholic RCIA program:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_Christian_Initiation_of_Adults
It's entirely different to approach Christianity as an adult as opposed to having been born and raised into it.
Prospective adult converts to Catholicism thus have to learn the Catholic doctrine, study the Bible, and other church literature. They have to approach the matter deliberately, consciously. For them, there is no question of merely "feeling things in your heart". And they are tested for their knowledge of doctrine.
The Catholics who were born and raised generally have relatively little knowledge of doctrine. The local Catholic priest told me that many can't even locate a passage in the Bible, ie. they don't know what the name and the numbers mean.
For such Catholics, it would probably be demeaning, to say the least, to have to pass the RCIA program. They would probably also see no point in it. I think it's because they fail to appreciate what it was to be born and raised into Catholicism.
In other Christian sects, there are also restrictions as to whether a prospective adult convert may get baptized into a certain curch and on what timeline.
So in general, Christianity is a lot more intellectual, deliberate for prospective adult converts than it is for those born and raised into it.
Yes, indeed. Did you notice how I avoided using the word 'narrative'. I think I've grown.
I'm going to start at the end...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Faith in what?
Faith that God exists? Faith that he is what the bible claims him to be? Faith that he's right about everything? These are three quite different faiths with quite different ramifications for the matter in question.
One can have faith that God exists and still need to address the issue I raised in my previous posts. His mere existence (even as the creator of the universe) does not necessitate that one either agree with or worship him.
If one has faith that God is right/good, then one still does not escape the final two questions. Is one's faith (one's feeling) that God is right according to one's own definition of 'right'? Faith is still some sort of a feeling, and more so it's a feeling that such and such... so we can still analyse the implications thereof.
Even if we imagine the extremes of a Christian entirely overcome by rapture, they will emerge with a deep and unshakeable faith that...
So It makes sense still to ask, of this faith, what is it a faith in. Is it that God is good, that God is right? Both these terms ('good' and 'right') have meanings which are embedded in human culture. I still don't see how our gloriously enraptured Christian escapes having to decide what to do about the fact that he now unquestioningly has faith that, say, God is good.
If God is described as doing something which our COG feels is not good, then what does he do. His faith that God is good is unshakeable. Not, as you rightly say, a decision he makes, but a foundational principle. He's still got to decide if God's version of good is different to his, or if his version of good is no longer to be trusted. Some decision has to be made as to how to handle the dissonance. If God orders the genocide of the children of Belial for worshipping false Gods, does that mean genocide is OK, or that God's playing by his own rules? If the latter, then what about heaven. Is that only a 'good' place by god's rules (lots of genocide and psalms), in which case is that where our Christian wants to be? These are questions, note, that still need answering even with a completely unshakeable faith that God is 'good'.
Or maybe the faith is that God is 'right'. That whatever he does or instructs is the right thing to do? But again, our Christian has to answer to what he means by 'right' in his unshakeable belief that God is it. 'Right' as in best for everyone concerned? Best in the long run?, Best for the chosen ones, but not the others? Best for God?
Alternatively I suppose, he could have faith that x is simply the right thing for him to do (where x is some Christian doctrine or other). That gets us around what 'right' and 'good' mean (for they're interpreted just as the person concerned means them), but then every action is simply laid out before them. what purpose do the scriptures and the sermons serve?
...I've run out of ways I can think of that a person could have faith, but I may not have scraped the pot. Have I missed what you mean by 'faith'?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I doubt that too. @Banno and I have a difference of opinion about incommensurability, but I don't think it's relevant here. I'm trying to argue that we don't need to understand the nature of Christian belief to talk about the consequences and decisions for the Christian which result from believing that...
in summary...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Agreed. But they are, regardless, in a position to have to decide what to do about that.
Because they hold it against you. They may not burn you at the stakes, but they do believe you are a lesser being, less worthy of respect, less worthy of trust. It shows in how they treat you. And this can be bad for you.
As an example, I already described what things looked like for me back at school, and now with my Catholic neighbors.
In a work environment, I know Christians can become less than professional and even act in ways that are illegal on account of you not being one of them. For example, if something goes wrong at work, they could be more likely to blame you and to ignore any evidence to the contrary.
An of course in ordinary interpersonal relationships. Like having Christian relatives who don't eat what you cook because they don't trust you because you're a "heathen", who make promises to you and then casually don't keep them.
They have a fundamental distrust of you that negatively affects the interactions you have with them. It's a tedious way of interacting, and they blame you.
And yet that has never stopped them from doing so.
I think what Lewis is getting at is his/the unreflected, unprocessed, unnamed concern that he is living in a dangerous universe and that ultimately, he can't do anything about it.
But this is a question: can faith be captured without remainder in propositions? I can't imagine any believer agreeing to that.
But, as you say, there may be more to faith than the propositions, but there are still the propositions: the believer must take some attitude toward them, and we are entitled to do so as well.
That's persuasive, on its face, but I don't think it can be right. Articles of faith don't hook up to whatever proposition-handling machinery you might imagine being handy elsewhere. (Gathering evidence, testing, refining, etc.) I mean, there is such a thing as theology, but I don't understand what that's supposed to be either! Hovering over all this is the problem -- as it would seem to a non-believer -- of revelation, which "links" to propositional knowledge in, let's say, a non-standard way... Everything about how a believer might characterize their faith -- much less their God! -- using ordinary logico-linguistic means, will be very misleading if you don't share the underlying experience. That's my hunch, anyway.
Oppressed people long for revenge. Their culture told them Divine justice is evident in this world because that's just the definition of good: to be blessed here and now for obedience to God's will
Time goes by, they get crushed into the dirt over and over so Hades is adapted to provide the solution. Revenge in the hereafter.
So basically, you can't condemn these people without condemning anyone who wants revenge.
I don't think anybody's reading this far, so merry Christmas!
But why should I care?
What do you imagine as the remedy here? I already don't share their faith, so reasons for me not to have no purpose. Must I "deprogram" them? Why? So that I don't feel judged by them? Why should I care?
Do you not fear their revenge for offending them and their God with your atheism?
That's an interesting observation, are you saying Jews or Muslims allow criticizing God more than Christians?
Quoting baker
True atheist does not defend atheism.
There are 2 kinds of atheists, those who don't believe in God and those who believe there is no God, they are a sort of believers.
You see, those who believe there is no God will defend atheism and sometimes attack those who believe in God, while those who just don't believe don't give a sh* about what believers believe, they simply don't believe God exists.
Therefore if you ever see someone "revenging" at atheists, it must be defense of their own faith rather than attacking atheists.
It's easy to spot both kinds of atheists, some of them judge, others don't, so who is taking the revenge?
Sure. But I learned the hard way that to theists, this distinction doesn't matter. To them, lack of belief is the same as disbelief.
I am intimately familiar with the problems unshared faith can cause.
I don't know what solution you're proposing, and I'm not convinced it's relevant to this discussion.
Near as I can tell, DL and @Banno think maybe they can, you know, refute Christianity. With an argument. I mean ...
Do you feel at peace living with people knowing that you cannot count on even the least common decency from them?
I don't have a solution, much to my dismay.
The OP says:
Quoting Banno
I stand corrected.
I've been discussing the premises of this argument, not it's suggested conclusion.
I once watched an interesting video on YT involving Richard Dawkins, unfortunately I can't find which one it was but you should really watch some of his videos on atheism to get my point.
Richard Dawkins is an example of an atheist that passionately believes there is no God, this belief is what makes atheism a sort of religion.
I have nothing against atheists really, I respect their choice and way of life, but some seem like they're worshiping some sort of a God.
Why? Could you elaborate?
Quoting Tom Storm
The problem is that it's objectionable per your standards (well, and those of your cronies, if you have them). Your standards are based on nothing but your gut feelings.
Someone who believes their standards are based on more than just their own gut feelings can object much more powerfully than you; they can make their objection matter, while you can't.
But you can't get to self-actualization unless the previous stages/needs have been met, and meeting those (and the relative ease of meeting those) is a matter of socio-economic status.
Like I said earlier:
I think what Lewis is indirectly getting at is the unreflected, unprocessed, unnamed concern that one is living in a dangerous universe and that ultimately, one can't do anything about it.
Many people, religious or not, operate on the assumption that they should be free to live life as they see fit and that other people should not stop them in doing so, much less endanger them. They also operate on the assumption that having a moral code of their own should never be a liability or something that would come at a cost in terms of personal wellbeing and safety.
We can reconstruct that they have these assumptions from the way they respond to challenges to their personal wellbeing and safety.
Can you convince any other Christian of this? Including Jehowa's Vitnesses, and Baptists?
I actually agree with your definitions, Tim Wood; I am only concerned that other Christians have different opinions on what constitutes being a Christian. That's neither here, nor there (or either here, or there, as per your wish or desire stated earlier), as per myself.
I've heard Christians claim that I am Christian, because I had been Baptized. Which I have.
I read the first few pages. The writer judges God by human lights and that is suspect from the beginning. The problem of evil is concerned with free will and while free will exists it is possible for people to misuse it. It is not that God punishes anyone - 'punishment', in scripture, seems more like a rhetorical admonishment, or warning, from God. But reality must be more complex than simple scripture can tell us. (the writer seems too literal about scripture)
The essence of the doctrine of The Fall is disobedience. And disobedience is its own punishment. You can see this any day of the week: the teenager is told, repeatedly, of the dangers of drug abuse. Does that deter him? Very often no. He will rebel and he will create his own hell on earth, because that is what hell is, our own creation. People create their own hell every day of the week.
But can't God show us how to live wisely so we won't turn our lives into hell? This is what religion is meant to do.
But people don't always listen. They want to live by their own lights even if that leads to hell. They will drink even if they risk ending up in the gutter. They will commit crimes even if that risks ending up in jail. God is the light by which we should live and if we turn away from it there is only darkness. Some are determined to go their own way. "My way or no way" - self will. No matter what the danger and no matter how many warnings "I will not serve". So be it.
That depends on what you mean by Christian. If by that you mean a person who lives according to God's Will - and indeed, if I live by God's Will - I guess I will have avoided many disasters and tears.
No. I didn’t say anything at all about Jews or Muslims or any other religious people. Nor was implying anything about them. The topic is about Christians, so that’s why I am talking about Christians.
The essence of Christianity is 'I am the Way.' The Tao is the way. So is Buddhism. Enoch, in genesis, 'walked with God'. There is a way of being and the way may have existed from the beginning.
I'm afraid the church is like a wagon that picks up a lot of sticky things on its wheels as it goes along. Christianity is full of pagan or useless ideas because some people like to decide what God wants before He even has a chance to tell them. One needs to be very discerning when it comes to what God wants of us.
It sets the stage for immoral action. Any time you condemn a class of people, your unconscious, which holds all sorts of anger and frustration, will set on that class as deserving of punishment.
Then it only takes a weak moment and bad timing, and woops, you just committed an injustice and you should have known better.
What? Does hell come up often in the sports programs you watch?
I suspect you are taking standard arguments against atheism and applying them here. But this is different - there is a very particular topic and paper being addressed. The observation is simple, and strong. It is that those who accept eternal damnation are morally bankrupt. If that upsets you, you might better do some self-reflection rather than the tangential posts you are producing here.
Edit: this last applies to several other posters who have taken this thread as a general pro-atheist attack on god. It isn't. The observation here is quite specific: hell is immoral. The simple answer is that assuming god is good, then there is no hell, and various popular forms of christianity and other religions are simply wrong.
The standard reply, repeated multiple times by various folk, is that the observation that hell is unjust does not apply to this or that special group of folk.
The thread has become a Christmas feast of special pleading.
The reply, found in the cited article, in my own posts and in those of a few others, is that even if there is such a group, there remain those who do worship a god who indulges in eternal punishment, and it is to them that the criticism is addressed.
Here's the article again. Read the last three paragraphs.
Yep.
I find it odd that so many who profess not to be christian are so quick to jump to the barricades when they perceive an attack. Did you notice that?
If we were to follow @Srap Tasmaner's argument, we would be debarred from critique of any worldview unless we had been properly initiated into it's creed and understood it from the point of view of the true believer. I doubt he would apply this argument to Cartesianism, liberalism or Cricket, so again it is a form of special pleading.
Worldviews - I dislike the term - are not incommensurable, one with the other. We must be able to understand at least part of other views, in order to be able to recognise them as worldviews.
It is obvious to the point of tedium that christians will not be dissuaded from their belief by the arguments here. They are not the audience, either for Lewis' article or for this thread. That Srap supposes otherwise is just plain odd. It seems to be little more than a veiled ad hom directed at Lewis and myself.
Quoting Isaac
Again, yes to this and what follows. Belief in hell has implications in terms of explaining the behaviour of the believer. Perhaps there is some potential to understand the cruel behaviour of so many who call themselves christian in understanding the cruelty inherent in their belief. How much of their behaviour can be explained as resulting from fear of damnation? ?
For my own part, it puzzles me that a religion supposedly founded on love of one's fellows can result in the Australian Christian Lobby, in the insanity of Texas abortion law, and the horrors of Canada's residential schools. Lewis may have identified the common thread.
It's not why they think what they think, so much as why they do what they do.
Got it. Good to know. Go ahead and explain everything. The world is your oyster.
All you you seem to be saying here is that some people who believe that an old book says a thing think they have more authority than someone who challenges received opinion. They might object more powerfully me, sure, and still be wrong. My standards are based on humanism rather more than a gut feeling.
I've tried, a little, to suggest how I think it's different from these examples. To me, faith seems to imply a meaning-world I am not privy to. I think believers experience the world quite differently from me. I think cricketers experience cricket different from how I would if I experienced it as a spectator, which I don't, but you get the idea. Some of that can be translated, with effort, but I'm not sure whether that's almost everything or quite a bit less. I do not know, for instance, how to see the natural world as created, and I can't imagine how people who do experience it.
Quoting Banno
It's worth mentioning, in a sort of defense of Lewis's argument, that a great many Christians are uncomfortable with the traditional teaching on hell that Lewis takes aim at. It's not hard to find well-known Christian authors and theologians who have struggled with the idea, including at least one Catholic priest I used to know. I think I've known people who left the church (if not religion altogether) over this exact issue.
It is indeed a tough one, and many Christians consider themselves Christian despite deep misgivings about the concept of hell.
Atheism is a bit more nuanced than this.
From American Atheists:
"Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods."
I am an atheist about gods in the same way as I lack belief about the Loch Ness Monster. There is no compelling reason for belief. But I do not say that Nessie does not exist. That would be making a positive claim.
Well chosen words. Believers do not experience a different world. We have, therefore, some basis for discussion.
I submit that we are in a position to judge the notion of eternal damnation, and do find it wanting. On this at least we might agree.
I don't know. My belief says that my soul dies with my body. Do they take bodies at the pearly gates?
I genuinely don't know what the right thing to say here is. I'll admit I'm tempted to make Christian faith "adverbial": they experience loneliness, for example, "jesusly" (meaning they feel His divine presence) but I don't. There'd be something you could call "the same" there, but they're still having an experience I just don't. They could try to describe that for me, and some Christian writers have tried to do so, but without the experience, I don't really know what they're talking about.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression there's "something it's like" to have faith, something not describable as holding certain opinions but something that saturates your experience.
Fair enough. We're at the edge of the usefulness of language.
We've dealt with similar situations before, in discussion of other supposed ineffable items such as qualia. My approach would be much the same here as there. As the qualia drop out of consideration, so the ineffable "jesusly" sensations... a poor expression, but one that comes down to not using such phenomenological explanations as an excuse to forgive those who consider hell appropriate.
The "something it's like to have faith" goes the way of the "something it is like to be a bat", joining the beetle in the box on the sideline.
What we can put into words trumps what we can't.
All this to say, I'm unconvinced by the objections you have presented to Lewis' argument.
Something like a conceptual scheme?
I wouldn’t think so, not exactly. I suppose when I hear “conceptual scheme” I think “taxonomy”, more or less. But I don’t mean what categories you assign things to.
On the one hand, there might still be something here like a conceptual scheme, as my “created natural world” example indicates: there’s an over-arching category into which, well, just about everything goes. But it seems to me the nature of the (now) sub-categories changes if you relate them to a creator — there was no such relation before.
And you can say something similar elsewhere, but with similar issues. If I perform an act of kindness for a stranger, I don’t experience that as following the example of Jesus, for instance. You could say that this is a matter of categorization, but is that all it is? I don’t know, not having experienced the alternative, but I suspect it isn’t. Categorization would be retroactive, right?*** But we’re talking about me comporting myself as someone who believes himself to be within the sight of God. That’s not just a matter of how I categorize myself or my behavior, is it?
*** That’s not right. It would be both: if I’m emulating Jesus, that would also be forward-looking, seeking to perform an act that I will later, if successful, be able to categorize in the desired way.
What exactly is it you would be forgiving them for? For having a thought, one you consider a fantasy? Why would that be something that needs forgiving?
You have gestured at a connection:
Quoting Banno
but Lewis doesn’t, does he? He upbraids Christians for going along with divine evil — which Lewis believes, as an atheist, is just a fantasy. No one is eternally tormented by a god who doesn’t exist. Hell isn’t real. Christians aren’t collaborators because there is no tyrant to collaborate with. They are willing to collaborate, he says, and that in itself is evil, somehow, even though they’ll never get the chance to act on that willingness.
But you draw a direct line from Christian theology to Christian behavior you disapprove of. (I’ll admit I read the paper hastily, but I don’t think Lewis makes this part of the case.)
Here’s a question for you, Banno. You say above, that “perhaps there is some potential” to explain Christian behavior you find abhorrent by reference to Christian doctrine. And you finish with a question, not a claim. So I take it you don’t consider the case made, at this point, that the doctrine of eternal damnation explains why Christians suck so hard. Will you stick by that? Or are you now going to treat this “potentiality” as established fact?
I don't think so. It seems clear to me that religious faith is an affected (not in the sense of being "put on") disposition, akin to being in love.
It also seems clear that there are many believers who don't really believe at all, but pay lip service in order to benefit from belonging to the religious community.
Then there may also be some who genuinely, viscerally believe in the possibility of eternal damnation. If you believed that it would be so terrifying that you would render worship unto God out of fear. If you were a thoughtful person in this position, then I think the cognitive dissonance would be such that you might divert, subvert any sense of criticism of God by telling yourself that "God moves in mysterious ways" but that He is all-good. all-knowing, all-powerful and all-present. You might tell yourself that he is beyond human conceptions of good and evil.
Is faith exactly a matter of your opinions on certain questions (the reality of God, hell, and so on)? Is it just some propositions you assent to?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, that's mine.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well, I would hope not to be alone in being unimpressed by the items listed.
Now I do not think this sufficient. My suspicion, voiced above, is that hell is unjust, and further that belief in hell may sometimes lead to cruelty here on earth.
But you may think it sufficient. IF faith is belief that is not justified, then the argument here are irrelevant to your faith anyway.
And for evidence, we need look no further than the all but indistinguishable lives of Desmond Tutu and Steven Anderson. Yeah, I see what you mean.
That doesn't seem to address my comments, You said: Quoting Banno
I implied that I don't think being enraptured by religious faith is ineffable any more than being in love is,
In any case the point was that religious faith does not consist in some set of beliefs so much as it does in a feeling.
I think that's true, but they must have some ties into the world, else what are they by little antigonish's? They need coherence, implication, consequence...something like that, to be real at all in a social world. I'm happy with incomplete commensurability, but not with no commensurability. No commensurability just means we have an entire mental world without a single tie-in to ours and that seems completely implausible on the face of it. It's not a good model of the behaviour we actually see.
So if there are some threads of commensurability, we can tug on them.
Not to mention the fact that Christians, bless them, are a part of our world, and moral actors within it. If we simply set them outside of our moral talk we undermine the whole project of morality (which is about us, not about me, you, them). Morality relies on at least a sufficient degree of commensurability to give a baseline of understanding common to all in the community.
I think that baseline, that commensurability, is in the concept of moral judgement. A Christian child doesn't need to understand the bible to understand that hitting people to get sweets is wrong. Christian adults don't routinely consult their bible or their priest in novel situations to work out who they should and should not spit in the eye of. So it seems 'wrong' comes first, religion then tries to piggyback off that to say 'here's some other things that are also 'wrong' you might not have thought of'. So with the most charitable interpretation I can muster, I find it virtually impossible to believe that a Christian has an incommensurable understanding of 'wrong'.
Happy with that.
Almost the exact reply I've just written to Srap. I think we're very much on the same page here.
Are you doubting that it is a propositional attitude - that it is faith in something...?
'cause that's not right.
Believers understand the world differently. Even a mathematician or artist experiences the world differently. That is because they are conscious in a different way and is that not equivalent to experiencing a different world, if consciousness allows us to enter realms of reality that are beyond normal experience? But that would require levels of being beyond ordinary, everyday experience and this is exactly what theists would say exists.
What you are really saying is that a different world does not exist. More precisely, this physical world is all there is. But even some mathematicians believe mathematics is a 'Platonic' realm that is in some way real.
I am a theist, an artist and I study mathematics. These three aspects of consciousness do lead into levels of being that transcend the physical world.
So do bats, I'm told.
How can you tell?
Possibly, by way of a bridge, I think the difference being expressed here does not require the 'just'. It is sufficient to carry Lewis's concerns that faith cashes out to propositions you assent to, it needn't be 'just' that, it could be an entire boatload of completely incommensurable feelings/understandings in addition to that (though I doubt it is, personally), but Lewis's argument stands if any component of faith ends up as consenting to some proposition, regardless of what else faith constitutes.
I think it'd be a hard argument to make that any Christian could talk about their faith without assenting to a proposition as an integral part of that discussion.
Hear Desmond Tutu's faith being discussed above. It's replete with propositions about the nature of the God he has faith in and the consequences of that nature are cashed out in exactly the way they would be if 'God' were replaced with 'King'. there seem to be no special laws of cause and effect invoked, no unique moral concepts (he uses 'good', 'right', 'awful', 'reverence', 'autonomy'... and fully expects us to know what the words mean). His faith seems to be describable in ways which require no incommensurable concepts here.
Even though the cause of his faith might be incommensurable - he might have to say "It's just a feeling, you wouldn't get it unless you had it" - what it is he has faith in seems entirely translatable to secular language -
He (Tutu) can do the 'wrong' thing and God won't strike him down with a thunderbolt because God cares about Tutu's autonomy and wants him to make the 'right' choice on his own.
We (the subjects) can do the 'wrong' thing and Our King won't strike us down with a sword because Our King cares about our autonomy and wants us to make the 'right' choice on our own.
At the very least, if Christians really do believe that the subject (rather than just the origin) of their faith is non-translatable to secular terms, then one would expect them to do a good deal less talking than we actually find!
That is my point. Do bats live in our world? The world of art, literature, commerce, finance, politics? If bats are not conscious of these worlds they can hardly live in them. And that's my point, it is a question of consciousness and whether theists are conscious in a different way.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As said above, faith has more to do with consciousness than teachings or intellectual beliefs.
:up:
To the extent that this strategy is successful, the behaviour in question ceases to be a moral behaviour, and becomes common sense selfishness. Which is right and proper for merely human authorities, concerned with social functions. But from a moral god's perspective, where the concern is to produce freely moral subjects, such threats and promises are counter-productive, so sensible moral gods never make them. Rather it is the human authorities that do so for their own administrative purposes.
The confusion between gods and organised religions is one that philosophers would do well to disentangle, especially as 'believers' commonly fail to do so.
The argument is decidedly not aimed at Christians - rather it is aimed at the "we" in Lewis's net. His entire article is largely about what you asked initially, Banno, as to how we should respond to "them."
This is why I have tried to focus the conversation about what you understand them to be and whether your understanding is sufficient to result in actual behavior towards them or beliefs about them. Lewis says that he wants to bring the problem of divine evil to their attention precisely to force them to commit to some belief that he can then make sense of and act on. He is talking about individuals, not groups. Those that he knows have committed to the reprehensible belief, not those that can claim some excuse as to why their "faith" is not as ignoble as he supposes it to be.
So rather than seeing any discussion about individuals as special pleading, I think you should see it as essential to Lewis's argument in the first place. Once we have established that someone meets Lewis's criteria, then we have to cease our admiration of them to break the chain of contagion. He is trying to illuminate that which before was hidden about individuals - he isn't simply casting aspersions at the entirety. Can we still admire a self-described Christian who is made aware of the neglected argument without passing on the taint of the asshole god to us? Why Lewis engages in the no-true-Scotsman stuff is a bit beyond me - perhaps he has a bit too much personal investment in what a Christian IS that is not otherwise fleshed out in his (posthumous) short article.
Your suggestion that we simply question any Christian's moral judgment without individual evaluation strikes me as contrary to the article you asked to discuss.
There are indeed a whole lot of propositions!
Suppose you’re a Christian and you’ve been struggling with the concept of hell. On its face, it doesn’t look like something an all-loving god would set up. It’s a problem; how will you go about dealing with it?
First step for a lot of Christians would be talking to their pastor. There will be recognizable propositions here, sure, in the pastor’s explanation, but there will almost certainly also be some statements that strike us as paradoxical, and some statements that are deliberately incomplete (apophatic). It’s unlikely there will be anything you can test empirically, say, in a lab. There may be some reference to experience though: the pastor might connect the concept of hell to the feelings you had when you had done wrong; he will almost certainly counsel you to pray on it.
It just seems to me that whatever’s going on here, whatever the purpose of all this talk (right through to prayer, which is also a sort of talking), it’s not well-modeled as decision making under uncertainty. Consider this: Christians can believe that a proposition is true without understanding it, and will freely say so. That doesn’t fit our model of language use at all! You’re supposed to figure out exactly what’s claimed first in order to figure out whether it’s true. (Meaning and truth are always running mates in our world.) Christians are not expected to understand everything that they believe. Surely that has some implications for analysing their beliefs as a system of propositions, as if it were a scientific theory!
I’m bothering with all this because the argument presented here is not that some Christians have done things we non-Christians consider wrong — bombed an abortion clinic or something — and we need to rule out their faith as a defense for such wrongdoing; the argument is that their holding of certain beliefs is in itself wrong and their persistence in doing so is evidence of their moral bankruptcy.
I’m skeptical of that project in general, I’ll admit. I think people ought to be judged for their actions and the effects of their actions on others, not for what was in their head at the time. *** That’s a bias of mine I have trouble getting around. But here we’re not even talking about what any Christian has done on the basis of their beliefs, but whether the holding of those beliefs at all is morally acceptable. I don’t think we should go down that road, but if we are then I think it behooves us to consider carefully what we mean when we say someone holds the forbidden belief. I think religious faith is peculiar in a number of ways that haven’t been adequately addressed, and is not exactly like everyday or scientific occasions of ‘assenting to a proposition’. I don’t even share the faith in question, but I can see the mismatch without half trying.
Lewis argues that belief in hell is per se immoral, even though he believes those who hold such a belief are merely indulging in fantasy. We’ve barely talked about whether that argument is any good, but I think we get off to a bad start by not bothering to understand what the word “belief” means here.
*** Oops. That's obviously not right. Intentions matter, but as they inform the act. (Hurting someone intentionally is morally different from hurting them unintentionally, duh.) To focus on the thoughts and desires themselves, independent of any action they might or might not inform, as moral or immoral, strikes me as a needlessly "Christian" view.
I don't have any good answers here, and I'm not even sure my questions are good.
I agree with the intuition that it's not 'just' a matter of categorisation. I believe that if someone loses a faith they've grown up in and dearly/habitually held it, the loss has the capacity to change much of their intellectual beliefs and feelings about the world, in perhaps the 'adverbial' way you referenced earlier.
I think perhaps there's still a way of thinking about it in terms of categorisation - if you imagine a conceptual scheme as a way of putting experiences and concepts into the buckets of a taxonomy, maybe transitioning from a faith to a non-faith isn't just a 'rearrangement of extant buckets' - recategorisation given the same categories - it's 'creation' of new buckets, a 'deletion' of old ones, merging some old ones to make new ones and finally intersecting some old ones. Maybe you can't have a wank without bringing up a cluster of ideas regarding lust, punishment etc.
I think if a person has to go through a 'deprogramming' to lose a faith, or a 'programming' to gain one, faith should be expected to radically change how the world is evaluated; and that goes for moral as well as metaphysical matters.
So perhaps when considering differences in worldview:
Quoting Banno
the assumption that the worldview of someone with a faith and someone without a faith are commensurable doesn't suffice to allow the practical evaluation of the faithful's claims to the other through any feasible use of language. In principle possible commensurability does not entail in practice achieved commensuration. IE, just because there might be a theoretical guarantee that you can talk about the same thing, doesn't mean you're ever talking about the same thing.
Perhaps a sticking point between both the faithful and the faithless in the debate is a matter of whether it even makes sense to call the entity believed in's morality into question like they're a person - as if the divine were a hypothesis the faithful cling to, or the divine were an agent.
I think it's a reasonable expectation for the atheist to hold that the faithful could articulate it that way, but it's also a reasonable expectation for the faithless to hold to actually spell out why they're not evaluating their divinity like any other inflicter of great pain - what's the resistance to that evaluation rooted in, really?
Quoting Banno
I'm left with the impression that going down to a church and asking for an itemised list of things the congregation believes in rather misunderstands how they believe in the divine.
The impression I'm left with is that having a faith requires a certain necessary compartmentalisation of questions like this away from god, to the level where there's no feasible commensuration between someone who compartmentalises like that and someone who doesn't. To put it another way, moral language games involving Hell or God don't resemble moral language games without either in them. How can you tell? Well, look to use, people talking past each other...
Judging Christianity as a religion and making moral judgements about the people who call themselves Christians isn’t the same thing. Lewis isn’t judging the religion, or suggesting that we judge the religion. Lewis is suggesting that we should judge harshly all the people who believe in Christianity.
On one hand, OP seems to be saying we should agree with Lewis and question the moral character of all Christians because they think a villainous god is worthy of worship.
And on the other hand, when someone says, “but that’s not what Christians think”, the OP says we don’t care about what they think and we don’t need to understand what they think before we question their moral character.
So it seems like what Lewis and the OP is saying is, we should question the moral character of Christians based on what WE think they think. I disagree with that approach.
Obviously I like a lot of this, so thanks.
Not much time at the moment, so more later, but one thing I found myself struggling with was that putting things into language is, at least for the cases we usually deal with around here, a sort of categorizing. You can deliberately avoid that, either through paradox, as mystics and zen masters are wont to, or through notation as Frege did (who complained that talking about concepts is to treat them as objects).
One bit I've been thinking about is this: imagine teaching someone how to pray. You tell someone they can ask God's forgiveness. "How do I do that?" First you must have a contrite heart. "How do I do that?" Open your heart to His grace. "How do I do that?" I've run out of words here, though an experienced pastor may have more. At some point you will have to give up describing the experience of prayer as you might a technique and suggest your pupil try it and see what experience they have. I think this is true as well of, say, woodworking or meditation or rock climbing. A lot can be put into categorical propositions, maybe eventually everything, I don't know, but every learner will have the experience of the teacher's words not making sense right up until they have a particular experience and then everything is clear. "This is what he meant!"
See .
Yes, bats do live in the same world as us.
Religion can be part of that system of the coercion that brings about our acquiesces to the powers that be. And, as Tutu showed, it can be part of the revolt.
Well, is this just about admiration? Worship may be based on fear, which isn't admiration. I think worship has been based on fear in many cases. That would be the duress I refer to. If an all-powerful being commands worship and eternal punishment if it's not given, worship would be rendered out of fear, not admiration. One doesn't have to admire such a being, but will do what's necessary to appease it. Such a being wouldn't necessarily require admiration--that's the "Let them hate me so long as they fear me" stance of such as Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known now as Caligula.
Rubbish. What you have here is two descriptions of the very same world.
Claiming that there are two worlds will result in incommensurable descriptions. Yet you do read what I write, and make sense of it. Hence, we share a world but differ as to the details.
I agree completely. So I don't think one can generalise about the moral character of Christians in the way that Lewis appears to be doing.
Sure, all that - see Confirmable and influential Metaphysics
Belief in hell does have implications for behaviour. Those implications are complex and varied. And again - by now this should not need saying - those supposed characteristics of belief that are ineffable are also irrelevant, except in so far as we can talk about their consequences.
So, to you and to , here is an aspect of christian belief for our consideration. Sure, it doesn't apply to all christians. One need not conclude that we should avoid conversing on the topic.
Well, yes, they do - because they result in actions, and these actions can be evaluated.
Adopting a certain religious belief does not somehow place one outside of the moral considerations of others.
And if moral evaluation as a practice differed depending upon whether someone had faith or not?
The way you phrased it makes it sound like how people evaluate actions is something they share, even if they disagree on which things get evalauted as good or bad. Whereas precisely what's at stake is whether how people evaluate actions morally depends upon whether they do or do not have faith. Method of evaluation, rather than result.
So, how will you evaluate the actions?
Also no argument from you on the matter. Can you demonstrate that how the faithful evaluate moral actions is the same as how the faithless do?
Why would it matter - for the same reason you referenced commensurability earlier.
Why would I want to do that?
Still not seeing your point.
I want to make sure I understand your comment. Are you implying that you think those of us who disagree with you are lying about being Christians in the first place? Because that’s how that reads to me, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.
I'll drop it then. Thought it would be evident seeing as you already saw the relevance of commensurability.
I've no idea if I'm included in this grouping or not (and I hardly think I have defended Christianity), but some of us happen to know Christian theologians and clergy that have done lots of good things and otherwise advocated for the down-trodden that you would exclude from the table of ethical discussion merely because you willfully misunderstand their faith and can't be bothered to consider them on their own merits/beliefs. That you can't see how your OP and follow up comments made it clear that your thread is an attempt to render Christians reprehensible, unworthy of admiration without sullying ourselves, and not worthy of our acquaintance is what I puzzle over. Your unwillingness to actually engage with the article you posted makes the entire thread smack of being disingenuous and simply a hit piece on a group of people that you have made incapable of defending themselves.
It's a morality thing dude. We defend our brothers and sisters of every creed or colour or none. Solidarity, it's called.
Of course any feeling of faith can be more or less framed in propositional terms. What I am saying is not about that, but about what I consider to be the fact that people of faith (who are not fundamentalists) are not much concerned about propositions, but about feelings. Have you considered the possibility that you may have a "tin ear" when it comes to religion?.
That's an interesting analogy.
Quoting Banno
Just how general is this maxim? Does what we can put into words about, say, playing music "trump" playing music? In what possible sense? And how does the case of faith differ from playing music?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
That's just not right. The doctrine being critiqued is their own, in their own words. Tutu's god crying while he commits folk to the hell he created is not sufficient explanation. The doctrine has uncomfortable consequences, to which the Lewis article draws attention.
Further, I gave reply to your points and addressed the article. Your accusations are ill founded.
Ah, I'm oppressing christians again. My bad.
As if the object of faith were irrelevant so long as the "feeling" was right. What twaddle.
Do I have a tin ear? No, I'm pointing to an interesting discord in the melody.
It applies very specifically to discourse. Feel whatever you like, but express yourself with care.
I also find it reprehensible that there are many people who think communism is a good thing. Especially if you consider how many people have been murdered under this ideology in the 20th century, too many to count. People fall victim to all kinds of crazy beliefs. This is why I continuously point out that most beliefs have nothing to do with logical arguments, it's more about how people were raised, what their friends believe, what their family believes, group think, etc., etc.
What doctrine? What is being critiqued is those who admirer a tyrant. What is not explained is whether someone that worships the tyrant admires it and/or approves of the tyrant’s conduct. The article is not about what the tyrant does - it is taken for granted that it is a tyrant. The article is also not about convincing people not to admire the tyrant. The article is about judging a person on their relation to the tyrant and whether we can admire that person. Your question was about whether such a person should be denied a seat at the table discussing ethics. Show me where I misunderstand, please.
Eternal damnation.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Well, what is being critiqued is the notion that a god whois so unjust ought be worshiped.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
There was an exchange on this earlier. Someone who admires the tyrant shares in the injustice. Someone who feigns admiration is not admirable.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Yep.
Your point?
As I said, there is something funny about the inheritors of actual world-historical evil clutching pearls about non-existent evil. And the new atheists in particular often then hop over to 'well, it's just rational to profile Muslims at airports,' and so on.
What is the real motivation behind this sort of moral suspicion? Is it idle moral speculation? Is it a worry that Christians, or some other religious group that believes in hell, is a moral danger to everyone else? But this is a fantasy – the powers in the West are firmly secular.
There was no exchange on this and nothing but a equivocation in the article. How does worship equate to admire?
Quoting Banno
That if we are trying to critique an individual, we need to understand that individual rather than your preconceived notion of what that person believes. Rather than dwell on your refusal to do so (even after it was pointed out by multiple people), I’ve tried to directly address the Lewis article. What little discussion was had in the post (such as pointing out that worship is a fear response) was not met with your clarification of what “admire” means so-far-as I recall. I’m happy to be corrected, but it seems more straightforward to just address the question in response to this post.
The trouble is, again, that the view being criticises - eternal damnation - is a part of christianity as understood by christians. Their admiration for the torturer is demonstrated in their devotion.
And again, your part in this conversation is tedious.
Please stop doing that.
I wasn’t complaining about your typing skill, but about your habit of what one might call “controlling” or “manipulating” the conversation, rather than participating in it.
Ah. See PM.
Sacred cows and their defenders... I've been watching with some surprise. Curious that people sniff out 'bigotry' when a perfectly reasonable critique of a doctrine is provided. It's as if there's a need to call it prejudice in order to distract from a psychologically difficult truth.
Finite offense, infinite punishment: Offense << Punishment
The law is usually such that
Offense > punishment
except in the case of capital punishment or so I'm told.
Allah the merciful
Crucial difference between religious justice and secular justice: Repentance & conversion (infidels).
The legal system has no (known) provision for remorse (either it's legally meaningless or has only minor relevance to the severity of the sentence).
Not so in religion. If you regret your actions, all is forgiven and your slate is wiped clean.
So, the solution to Christian hellfire is child's play. This, in my humble opinion, makes punishment in Christianity one big joke! All you have to do is genuinely repent one's immoral actions. Easier said than done! Can be said but can't be meant!
Who cares, if none of this stuff is real anyway?
So, I'm going to come out and say that I don't think Christians, by and large, actually believe the things they say they believe. I think the simplest explanation for why the things they say make no sense to a secular audience is that they things they say make no sense. I think the simplest explanation for why it seems contradictory for God to commit genocide yet us be repulsed by it is because it is contradictory. The simplest explanation for why the Bible condones stoning adulteresses, but we are sickened by it is because it's just a book, it was written thousands of years ago and isn't relevant to modern sensibilities.
We could raise an objection on private-subjective grounds - only they have access to how they feel. But do they? Have you never found yourselves confused about how you feel, never found you have biases and prejudices that you didn't realise, never caught yourself justifying something post hoc? So it seem our private-subjective access is sketchy at best.
It seems more than a little like special pleading to say that Christians have some incommensurable world-view which makes sense of these contradictions when, in everyday life, we know full well that we personally juggle a half dozen contradictory feelings and urges every day. Why would we assume the Christians have somehow got it all beautifully stitched together when we can't even make a consistent choice between the ease of driving to the shop and the harm of additional greenhouse emissions?
Unless we're actually going to believe religious claims to divine access, it seems far more parsimonious to believe that the mess of contradictions, inconsistencies and post hoc rationalisations we perceive in Christianity are, in fact a mess of contradictions, inconsistencies and post hoc rationalisations. After all, our secular world is similarly constituted.
So what's happening here? Lewis has said something about Christianity, you (referring generically to those critical of @Banno's approach), take him to task, point out where he's gone wrong, where what he says doesn't make sense to you, where you think he's missed an inconsistency, or might be looking at things through an unhelpful frame... it's what we do here, right?
But the original protest, that the Christians have said something which doesn't make sense, something inconsistent, perhaps an unhelpful way of looking at things... That's out of bounds, they are assumed, not to be mistaken, benefiting from our discussion, but rather to be completely self consistent in a flawless, neatly stitched together world-view whose utter perfection we just fail to understand?
It just seems really odd that a group of people who - let's be clear - do take part in the world of discourse, do say things to the secular, do expect to have their beliefs acted upon in our shared world... are given a sort of diplomatic immunity as if merely ambassadors from some other world where their beliefs have only impact on them and not us.
The object of faith is irrelevant of the feeling is right. The right feeling for the religious is love and compassion. And I think it's fair to say that those who are authentically religious, whether Buddhists, Christians, Hindus or Muslims, believe in compassion and love for others regardless of cultural or religious differences.
You have said that your argument applies only to those who admire God for punishing the unfaithful with eternal torment. In other words you admit it applies only to radical fundamentalists. That you make that concession is in your favour, but I think the title of your OP betrays your real intent, since it generalizes to "Christians" and "religion".
Those who admire God for punishing the faithless I imagine would be a very small percentage of Christians, and much less of a percentage of the religious in general. This thread seems like at best a pointless exercise, and at worst a lead in to anti-religious bigotry.
Yikes, I hope I haven’t given that impression. I pointed out that it’s not unusual for Christians to struggle with or have misgivings about the concept of hell. And it’s not a secret either. There’s lots of writing. There’s lots of public discussion.
Quoting Isaac
That point I like a lot. I think it’s a great idea just to take Christianity as an example of a process of meaning-making that is of a type with what non-Christians do. As you pointed out before, though, the psychology here is almost too easy for you.
There is a real sticking point — which I mentioned before as well:
Quoting Isaac
What are we supposed to do here? I don’t believe in God, so I don’t believe in revelation either. I don’t seem to have much choice but to say that revelation must be somewhere on a spectrum running from delusion to misinterpretation.
But on the other hand, all I can really say is that I haven’t experienced anything I understand as revelation, and I can recognize that if I had such an experience, I might be exactly on the other side of this argument.
I get the impulse to say, all I can do is judge things by my own standards, rely on my own faculty of reason like some Enlightenment hero — it’s what a lot of people here find exhilarating and liberating about philosophy. If an argument doesn’t convince you, then by god it doesn’t! Aaarrgh!
But I’m not inclined to shrug off my recognition that I could hold different beliefs from the ones I do, could have had different experiences from the ones I’ve had, and possibly understand a great many things quite differently. Maybe it’s just that I’m not all that committed to what I happen to believe at any given moment. However it works, I lean away from being as dismissive of other’s views as I was when I was twenty.
Special pleading. This claim involves wilfully ignoring swaths of christian writing, as well as their actions.
I can't make sense of this. The right 'feeling' is love and compassion (as if it isn't also for the non-religious!), but later you say they "believe in" it? What would it mean for someone to not "believe in" it? That they don't believe the emotions exist? That they don't believe they'll work (for what)? That they don't believe they're 'right (by what measure)?
Quoting Janus
You see here you're equivocating (a common theme - it's not just you). When we treat Christian doctrine as it's written we're told that it's not literally what it says, but rather it all hangs perfectly together - if you're a Christian. (see my response to Srap above). Yet here you take eternal damnation literally, as it's written and say that most Christians don't believe it.
Either Christian doctrine is written in a special allegorical language that non-Christians have no access to, or it's written in the same language we all use and the secular critique thereof is fair. In the former case, there necessarily need be no crossover between the Christian world and the secular one. We'd have to each have our own reservations with independent government (where have I heard that idea before?). In the latter, if it is written that those who do not worship God will be cast into eternal damnation, then that's a proposition we (the secular) can take on it's face and critique the implications of.
I think it's extremely disingenuous for us to have pages and pages of dispute about the nature of belief, the meaning of truth, the morality of veganism, the solutions to overpopulation, the morality of certain presidents, the value of autonomy...and quite heated ones at that... all based on the very simple premise that when an expression is used, it's used to mean what it appears to mean and responded to as such. Yet when religious statements are made, we're implored to assume they make sense and it's us, the secular, who merely don't understand.
The religious are somehow thereby immunised from making the same mistakes of inconsistency, incoherency as are the bread and butter of the discussion we have here.
Oh absolutely. But here I find these struggles are presented as segregated from ours. We can't understand theirs, they can't understand ours. The point I was making was that since we seem to all be in the same boat (and they hardly seem to have it all worked out), a more parsimonious approach (and dare I say possibly even a better one for all) would be to assume, for starters, that we're not so incommensurable after all. That, if the Christian is struggling with the concept of hell, Lewis might actually be able to help - just in the same way as your (sometimes quite pointed) critiques of my positions have helped me. It's what we do. Put our positions into the crucible of public debate to have the edges taken off, the loose ends picked at. We do this by sharing a language.
If we (the secular) aren't 'getting' what the Christians are saying, then we need to try harder. All of us. So that the baffled secular and the agonised Christian can help each other sort out the painful contradictions. Simply saying that the Christians issues are not within our understanding, by fiat, seems a bit of a cop out.
Lewis has raised a concern about what Christian doctrine says. His argument (as I read it) is basically "Isn't is a moral danger to allow people to worship a torturer whose punishments are out of proportion to the crime?". That's a legitimate concern on it's face. There's lots of evil in the world to account for. Much of it is religiously motivated or carried out by the religious (or those raised in a religion). So pointing out a potential cause seems to be well within the wheel-house of normal conversation.
If Lewis has made a mistake, then that mistake can be pointed out in specific terms. What I find odd is the implication that Lewis most likely has made a mistake. That Christians most likely don't really believe that. That it most likely isn't a problem. That it most likely is not responsible for much of the evil we still see. That @Banno probably ought to back off. Where are we getting all these 'most likely's from?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We could discuss that which is revealed. We don't necessarily have to get into the method by which it was arrived at, do we? Kind of like I was saying about God being the creator of the universe having no implications at all for whether we worship him. A thing being divinely revealed doesn't have any necessary implication for whether one follows it. If I said that it's been divinely revealed to me that I should jump off a cliff, I'd rather hope you'd have the courage to say "I still think you didn't ought to do that"
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, I agree entirely. (I mean such an assumption is literally my life's work, so...) but...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this is good, but needs a guide (which I think is what's missing here). You thought @Banno made a point which was wrong in some way (and here I mean 'wrong' in the broadest sense, maybe missing something, an unhelpful frame, an inconsistency...not necessarily empirically wrong). You pointed that out and we proceeded to discuss it (quite robustly!). All of this took place in normal language with expressions we all assumed the other would understand without having to literally stand in our shoes.
Should we beat each other over the heads for our incommensurable beliefs? No probably not. But no-one's advocating Christian-beatings here. We're just saying they're wrong, using their own words as written (or spoken).
Do I need to stand in your shoes to fully understand why you believe the things you believe? Almost certainly, yes. Do I need to stand in your shoes to even critique the things you believe? I hope not, that would rather render the whole forum (not to mention the whole of consensus-building politics) pointless.
This is the problem with the thread. It purports to be a criticism of the doctrine of eternal punishment, but the title is"The moral character of Christians" as though no Christian has ever had the moral fibre to even consider the problem. The separation thus has to be maintained even as the difficulty is denied and puzzlement expressed at the feeble and off topic objections. and this from one who is won't to complain of the low quality of philosophy of religion on the site.
I don't get that from it. I don't see anything in the presentation of the problem that excludes Christians from joining in the dissection of it. On the contrary, the view of some Christians in this would be very interesting - so long as that view isn't "you wouldn't/couldn't understand" that's the response (albeit by proxy) that I'm objecting to.
If, rather, you're merely saying something like "obviously the Christians themselves will have already thought of this", then I think that's an excessively reverent special pleading. We secular folk are constantly starting discussions about moral claims, they're never shut down with "well, I expect the people concerned have already thought about that"
The 'I worship an evil God' -> 'I am evil' connection comes out more in the paper. Section 'Can we admire the believers?'. It would've been nice if more people in thread engaged with the argument. I think the difficulty and puzzlement of Christians with the faith is actually a decent point of attack on the article - not what they're puzzled about, the fact that it is a puzzle for them.
The article seems to require that believers have a 'clear headed' conception of their God's atrocities to be simultaneous with their worship in order to transfer that veneration to the atrocities of God and tarnish the believer's character.
The final paragraph references nonbelievers being understanding of believers due to lack of a clear/ unified conception of God the Benevolent and God the Eternal Punisher - salvation through cognitive dissonance or avoided thought.
I wonder whether it is even possible to worship the God of the bible in such a 'clear headed' fashion? It seems to me to have faith is to have your mind distorted around the object, rituals, practices, values, developmental environments and communities of faith. That would block the force of the argument: God forgive them, they know not what they believe. And they cannot know.
Quoting Isaac
I cited an article describing the current pope's view, in the very first response to the op. It was dismissed thus:
Quoting Banno
Bish bash bosh, Christians not actively evil are merely hypocrites.
Anyway, I'll leave you all to it; I'm getting depressed.
I wonder if it's even possible to do something with Marxism that doesn't end up catastrophic.
Early Christian church fathers didn't take the Bible literally. Fundamentalism came later. Yes, it's fucked up. Can you judge the moral character of christians by virtue of that?
Why does this even need to be asked? Of course not.
Noticed that as well. Has it become politically incorrect to criticize assent to neverending damnation? :brow: Lewis' note is fairly specific (sometimes excruciatingly); wouldn't you expect responses to be on-target?
[quote=Divine Evil]I concede that the neglected argument doesn’t apply against deism.[/quote]
[quote=Divine Evil]Most Christians follow a version of the religion that is committed to divine evil, evil perpetrated by God. Most, therefore, fall afoul of the neglected argument. Perhaps some do not. Perhaps some are inclined to accept the universalist fantasy I have just outlined. Can that count as a genuine style of Christianity? I shall leave that for the theologians to decide.[/quote]
But none of this means that Christians should be burned at the stake of course. :wink:
Quoting Isaac
:up:
There could be dissonance involved. (After all, the Bible also tells tales of supernaturally feeding 5000 and 4000 people with a handful of food, which continues to be preached to children.)
Quoting Agent Smith
There is some ambiguity, though it seems eternal torment is the most common belief among Muslims. The Quran displays the usual contrast between (their versions of) heaven and hell.
Quran 4:13-14, 4:56-57 :fire: (graphic violence), 4:93, 4:122, 4:137, 4:168-169, 5:37, 5:72-73, 7:179, 18:105-106, 67:7 :fire:, ...
This is the part that is confusing. Lewis makes it explicit that he will not tolerate any form of Christianity other than that which he sets out because he doesn't think it is real Christianity or he thinks that Christianity can't survive without his requirements. I've quoted the sections from his article.
His argument form is simple -
god is reprehensible as defined,
people that admire god share in that reprehensibility,
Christians cannot be determined to admire god until they are pointed to the "neglected argument",
once he has pointed them to it, then he can evaluate them,
if they remain Christian, then he knows they are not admiration worthy.
We can formalize the argument or refine it however you like, but what you can't do is change that Lewis has made explicit his own requirements for Christianity - if someone does not admire the reprehensible god, they are not Christian.
There is nothing even remotely novel about Lewis's argument. At twelve I was perfectly able to articulate the argument and tell Christians that they believed in a bully and that they were demented for doing so. The argument is obvious on its face and is regularly discussed as a failing of Christianity.
Your god is a tyrant and yet you exalt it - what is wrong with you?
Agreed, and to the extent that’s what my take looks like, that’s on me.
There is the spectre of believers getting a “free pass” — Dennett wrote a whole book about it, and @Banno has invoked the idea of a “taboo” hereabouts. Am I claiming Christians should get a free pass? A free pass for what? To believe what they believe? To experience the world as they do? Well, none of that is up to me anyway, not a choice I face. To remake my country’s political institutions in accordance with their creed? Fuck no.
I think I’m being asked to disapprove of their beliefs, yes? Well, I already don’t share them. Is there a stronger form of disapproval I should plump for? Yes, there is: they shouldn’t believe what they believe either. Why not? Because what they believe is irrational, inconsistent, contradictory, unsupported by the evidence, or morally reprehensible, something from that list. Because presumably that’s why I don’t believe what they believe, paragon of rationality and morality that I am. But here’s where I get stuck.
Quoting Isaac
When a deity speaks to me, I’ll let you know. People worship human beings, of all things, how do you expect them to react to what they take to be actual divinity? Something or everything in the range covered by the phrase “fear of God” would be my guess. I keep coming back to such experiences because I don’t see how it could be anything but overwhelming.
I’m not trying to dodge the question about doctrine, just put it in some perspective. Without the feeling of having encountered the divine, it might be much easier for a Christian just to call bullshit on the concept of hell and bolt. On the other hand, such experience is exactly what empowers some to leave: the loving God they know is misrepresented by what Lewis calls the orthodox view.
I’m still not much addressing the intended thrust of the thread, I know, which was not supposed to be about what believers go through, but about how non-believers should think about believers, insofar as they accept some version of eternal damnation. There is, as the paragraph just above suggests, room for us to expect a true believer to hold onto their personal religious experience but abandon certain chunks of Christian doctrine. (And loads of Christians do this. American bishops are more or less continually frustrated that a whole lot of American Catholics don’t believe everything they’re supposed to.) That seems like a pretty reasonable course, but in practice it means holding people accountable for not breaking with their family, their friends, their social circle. It’s a big ask, as the kids say, but maybe it’s the right one:
Of course, That Guy thought he was divine. I don’t feel like I quite have the standing to ask something like that of people. Also, I by and large don’t give a shit what people believe in the privacy of their own homes and places of worship. (Until a couple generations ago, evangelical Christianity in the United States was almost uniformly and resolutely anti-political. Same doctrine before as now.)
What Francis said was frankly surprising, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Even more interesting to me was the chorus of children who thought God would not send this non-believer to hell. Where did that come from? Had they been improperly catechized? Were they too young to remember the right answer? The article makes them sound pretty confident they knew the right answer. Were they relying on that clever Catholic fallback, purgatory? (Hoping I end up in heaven’s waiting room if it turns out I was wrong to leave mother church.) Were they ignoring their catechism and substituting their own morality for what they had been taught? Geez, I don’t even know what doctrine is here, so maybe I’m roughly in the position of those children.
No. The problem is that we judge the character of an individual by her actions. We don't judge classes of people. Period.
Sure. To know a person's moral character, we look at that person's ACTIONS. (I'm making the words bigger so they cross the confusion barrier a little better.
ACTIONS ARE WHAT WE JUDGE.
A person could be a devil worshiper, but if they're good in all they do, we have to say they appear to have good character because we don't have
X-RAY VISION
into their psyche.
See?
That's like saying that drugs are bad because one disobeyed the order not to take them.
And not perhaps because they are toxic substances that mess up one's body.
The way religions expect women to readily risk health and life is hell.
This is not generally true. A rich and powerful person can kill, rape, and pillage, and it has no bad consequences for them. If, in contrast, a poor person kills, rapes, and pillages, this tends to bring them a lot of trouble.
Rich people can afford drugs that have few negative side effects and they can afford doctors that can fix those side effects. Poor people can't afford that.
What I mean is that it leads to its own punishment.
What happens to them in the next life?
That's like saying that the police and the justice system are immoral, and that if they were good, there would be no arrests, no judicial processes, and no prisons.
Most people are on the conventional level of morality per Kohlberg's theory of moral development:
Christians tend to be this way as well, except that they believe the true law and authority comes from God.
Christians don't think that God is evil; they don't feel addressed by the type of criticism your OP sets out.
The law is the law and it must be obeyed, or else, "there are consequences".
Quoting Banno
All this can be explained with Kohlberg's theory of moral development.
The salient point isn't "people who don't do as God says deserve to burn in hell forever", it's "people who transgress the law should be punished, and we must not question the justness of the law".
The latter is a very common stance, and can be found among the religious and the non-religious alike.
They rejoice in heaven.
What if good ultimately involves allowing creation to risk suffering by being free?
I agree, but I contend that that "feeling" is the feeling of certainty about the Christian doctrines. And that this feeling is due to having been born and raised into the religion, ie. having internalized it from an early age, before the physiological ability to think criticially has developed. The effect of this early internalization is then that "feeling", the "mystical experience", the sense of the "noumenous".
It's a feeling, an experience that is impossible to recreate at will for an adult person.
Except perhaps to some extent for adults who are going through an existential crisis and who in the process of their existential quest turn to religion/spirituality.
(The frequent call to "become like little children" is, in effect, a reference to just this, an infantilization of the adult.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's why it's so important to start early in life, so that the person internalizes the right propositions at the right time, so that later on, those propositions appear self-evident to them, they can take them for granted.
This way, the difference between Christians and non-Christians is that Christians can take some propositions for granted that non-Christians can't.
(Often I see that neither Christians nor non-Christians are aware of this. So Christians believe we have "hardened our hearts" or a "stiff-necked", and non-Christians believe Christians are believing things "without sufficient evidence".)
Forgive me, but this is just a stupid comparison, and needs to be called out. We are talking about a God, according to some Christians, obviously not all, who sends people to eternal damnation for not believing or accepting certain beliefs. We are also talking about a God, who created humans knowing full well that many would reject these beliefs, given their free will. So, God would have known that creating this or that person, at the very least, would result in, or at least there would be a good chance, that that person would go to hell. If such a God existed, I would do all that I could to oppose that being. Moreover, such a view makes this God responsible for the resulting evils that occur given God's knowledge. It would be like me creating a robot, giving it free will to do whatever, knowing that it's probably going to result in a certain amount of evil, sometimes even great amounts of evil. I would be responsible for the evil that ensued as a result of such a creation, and I should be held responsible for that evil and punished.
Furthermore, eternal punishment or damnation, is excessive by definition, even if you don't think of it as torture. Most people go through their lives without committing the most egregious of sins, yet because their not within the fold of Christian beliefs, they are damned, forever (according to many Christians, Protestant and Catholic). This is not just, and should be rejected as part of any Christian belief, and many Christians do reject it.
Finally, to compare this belief with what we do in our legal system, is just ridiculous, to say the least. Even we recognize that sending someone to prison forever for minor crimes is not just, period. Yet this is what the God, as defined by some Christians, does! We at least try, although not always successful, to be just in our deliberations about punishment. We can recognize, generally, what's just and not just, given the crime. But the concept of God as defined by these particular beliefs (I don't believe such a God exists), is outright immoral. So, on the one hand you have no justice, or very little justice, and on the other hand you have an attempt to be just.
Except for the portions on "creating humans", the above is just like the things human lawmakers know: they know that some people will not abide by the laws and will be punished.
But could you oppose it? The being that created you? You cannot draw a breath without this being approving of it, and you think you could oppose it?
"Excessive" is a matter of degree and opinion. Some countries have capital punishment, some don't. I live in a country where up until recently, the longest possible prison sentence regardless of the crime was 20 years. When recently a man here was sentenced to 30 years in prison, a prominent lawyer here remarked that the country has set on a course of barbarism. On the other hand, even some first world countries have capital punishment and lifelong imprisonment.
Why would it not be just? Can you explain?
Is capital punishment ever just?
No. Do that, and you cut yourself off from religiosity.
Why?? They aren't willing to do the same for us!
Or it's simply a case of "not my circus, not my monkeys".
This naively neglects the reality of daily life, which is all about power hierarchies, and having one's career, and more, on the line.
The one thing that religious/spiritual people understand very well, but ivory tower dwellers not so much, is the earnestness of life, the reality of the struggle for survival.
Quoting Isaac
Not if we take the Catechism of the RCC as an example. They've worked for centuries to make it internally consistent.
(Although, ironically, the Catholic doctrine is probably the most lenient as far as eternal damnation goes, given the many exceptions that are listed in its Catechism.)
Christians, and religious/spiritual people in general believe that they are in this world, but not _of_ this world, so this explains their aloof attitude.
Quoting Isaac
It's not like they care about us, so ...
One part of this is actually simple: Once the eternal damnation believers discover that you don't believe like they do, _they_ will ditch you. They will be the ones who will be the first to set boundaries between themselves and you.
You are free to think about them what you want, but on their part, they will limit their association with you, so that the question of whether you should associate with them or not becomes moot. (Unless you want to force yourself on them.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's only fair to assume that Christians do things for Christian reasons.
But you hold to humanism with your gut feeling, don't you?
Or do you feel an overwhelming certainty that humanism is the right doctrine, for which you are willing to live, die, and kill?
Quoting frank
That's only a problem if you're poor and powerless.
Quoting frank
Even monkeys can discern intent, and judge an action by the actor's intent.
They did those experiments with chimpanzees (?, some primates) where a chimpanzee accidentally dropped and damaged a banana, and then deliberately dropped it. It turned out the chimpanzees can tell the difference. They punish the deliberate damaging.
All I am saying is that love and compassion are the feelings advocated by the scriptures and that those who are genuinely religious; those who really have a feeling for it, will manifest those feelings towards others. What "non-religious" do is irrelevant, since I haven't made any claim about them.
If that were true then adult conversion would be impossible, which it obviously isn't.
Again, this is where Kohlberg's theory of moral development comes handy, esp. on the point of how a person goes from one stage of moral reasoning to another. It takes time, and it cannot be done simply through reading arguments.
Instead of conceiving of the problem as "us vs. Christians", we can conceive it as "person on level 1 of moral development vs. person on level 2 of moral development" and so on.
It's the same type of problem. It's why, for example, telling a small child that it is wrong to steal because it hurts the other person's feelings will do nothing, the child doesn't understand this kind of reasoning. Or if you try to argue for Social contract orientation with someone who is hellbent on Law and order morality, or someone set on "What's in it for me?", all you say will fall on deaf ears.
No. The Christian child has been taught, per Christian doctrine, about right and wrong. Sure, later on, Christians don't routinely consult the Bible etc. -- but that's because by then, they have already internalized Christian moral principles, not because they would have moral principles that would be quite separate from Christian doctrine.
I find it entirely possible. Ideally, religious people do things for religious motivations, with religious justifications.
For example, ideally, a theist eats in order to get sustenance so that he can be a good steward of what God has entrusted him with. Ideally, a theist shouldn't eat to satisfy his hunger, or to enjoy the food (that would be selfish, ignorant of God).
Ideally, a theist brushes his teeth in an effort to take good care of the body God has so kindly provided him.
And so on.
Like I said in the same post of mine you quoted:
Quoting baker
And you are the judge of who is "genuinely imbued with religious feeling"?
Machiavelli's The Prince, Green's 48 Laws of Power, and other such literature and its popularity suggest that it is possible to deliberately, in a 'clear headed' fashion think that way, and to think that way about God as well, such as in Kalomiros' River of Fire.
The River of Fire is certainly worth the read (and it's not for the faint of heart).
Plus generalizations like these offer nothing but more fuel to the atheists / theists battle. Which has its immediate impact to our common societies we share.
And when you attack theists with arguments like these, you make them stick to their beliefs even more.
So if your actual "goal" as an atheist is to make them see how wrong they are, you achieve the exact opposite. You make them even more dogmatic. In all occasions it's a lose-lose case for both sides.
Theists and Atheists should learn to coexist. We share the same society.
And judging someone as moral or not in general,cause of his belief or not to any kind of God(especially since everyone "experience" belief in his own personal way) is a logical fallacy.
Right, I didn't see that. I think feelings in general are impossible to simply create, in the sense of instantly just "conjure up". I also agree that existential crisis is often involved in religious conversions.
Quoting baker
No, why would you think that? I think people who are imbued with a feeling of religious reverence inspired by the scriptures of a religion; will experience the feelings that are advocated by the scriptures they are enraptured by. At the very least they will sincerely try to cultivate those feelings.
BTW my computer will not download the River of Fire you linked; it advises that it is a security risk. Maybe the computer is concerned that I might feel insecure if I read it. :wink:
I think there's a relevant difference between believing literally like a fundamentalist and not believing "clearly"/in a "clear-eyed" way in the article's sense. The article is not aimed at fundamentalist Christians, it is aimed at those who believe in God and eternal punishment and nevertheless venerate/worship God. That it's a thorny and intimately felt question even by nonfundamentalist Christians isn't in question. If you worship a God who you believe tortures people forever, what does that say about you?
The answer could very well be 'nothing', however most would not say 'nothing' for admiring (pick divisive or perverse or monstrous figure of your choice). The moral force of the argument, as I read it, is pointed at a contrast. On the one hand how we would treat a Christian who believes literally in the claim that God eternally punishes with torture and worships the figure and on the other how we would treat just as sincere a believer in a mundane tormenter.
I don't buy the argument in the article, but I don't think it's bigoted and can immediately be dismissed as such. The author doesn't seem to show any prejudice towards Christians, and he goes quite a distance to provide rigorous argument and analogies. Worth looking at in depth if you don't agree with it.
I cordially invite the thread to up its game.
I think that would have to be based on their respective actions.
I have reasons for privileging humanism over other belief systems. Are the presuppositions I hold informed by gut feelings? Are all people's belief systems in the end expressions of emotional states? I've often thought so.
I don't have certainty about anything. I'm probably willing to live and die by my beliefs, but kill? I leave killing to fanatics. But there might be a context where I could do it... :death:
This has natural consequences:
What follows is that people should not be judged on account of their beliefs, but on account of their actions; which makes this OP seem wrongheaded, although I guess we should not judge @Banno for believing that those who believe in a God who allows eternal damnation, of the most simplistic kind as envisaged by the OP, should be reviled.
Why do you say that?
Quoting The City of God by Augustine (354-430)
Quoting Summa Theologica by Aquinas (1225-1274)
Quoting Summa Theologica by Aquinas (1225-1274)
Anyway, it's fairly clear that people have believed (and some do believe) neverending damnation.
Quoting frank
:up: Yep (and what they say). Of course, blanket-dehumanizing is bad.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Right, for the most part anyway. Morals are performative, prescriptive, though. Decision-making is involved. If someone expresses assent to neverending damnation, then we may express repugnance.
Well, either way, I'm not seeing Christians being taken to the guillotine (even if they express assent to neverending damnation), and certainly wouldn't want to. Hmm...then again, there was that case...
Finnish Lawmaker Faces Trial for Hate Speech After Quoting the Bible About Homosexuality (Apr 30, 2021)
Well, that’s what we’re here to talk about, isn’t it.
What are the options?
1. You believe in the Christian God and hell.
2. You believe in the Christian God but not hell.
3. You believe in neither.
Given those, we get a list of questions:
1. How does one come to be in one of those buckets?
2. How might they move from one bucket to another? (Several permutations available.)
3, What might someone in one bucket say about someone in another bucket?
Given the source material, we’re supposed to be focused exclusively on what those in bucket 3 have to say about those in bucket 1. I’m not crazy about that, but it’s the topic I’ve had trouble staying on, and I’ll try not to make it worse.
So is it okay, within the parameters of this discussion, to ask questions 1 and 2? Are we at all curious about how the people in bucket 1 got there? I’m betting almost everyone here is ready to say, that’s how they were raised, explanation complete. I was raised to be in bucket 1 but I’m not and I have no idea why. At what point did I become a morally acceptable human being? More to the point, what did I do to merit this improvement in my moral status?
"Origen did not believe in the eternal suffering of sinners in hell. For him, all souls, including the devil himself, will eventually achieve salvation, even if it takes innumerable ages to do so; for Origen believed that God’s love is so powerful as to soften even the hardest heart, and that the human intellect – being the image of God – will never freely choose oblivion over proximity to God, the font of Wisdom Himself.". -IEP
Aquinas isn't an early Church Father, jorndoe.
Depends on waht you interpret damnation to consist in. I have read that at least some of the early Christians believed that eternal damnation consists in the realization that one has chosen to forgo heaven, and that eternal suffering consists in the realization of just what one has refused.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting jorndoe
Also at @Srap Tasmaner.
So one response seems to be that it's (bad for some reason) to judge Christians for worshipping an entity they believe torments sinners forever after death assuming that the Christian doesn't really 'do anything about it'. The idea is like privately holding a prejudice vs acting on it, some peoples intuitions are that so long as someone keeps their prejudice quiet and doesn't discriminate it doesn't matter. Similarly, if someone kept their adoration for an entity which they also believed tortured people forever quiet, it wouldn't matter.
A challenge for that view is that it elides the distinction between worship/veneration/admiration and intellectual belief. If I hero worshipped Mengele, it says something highly negative about who I am - I might be confused on the specifics about who Mengele was ("an uncompromising great scientist"), I'd still be worshipping a cruel torturer. If I worshipped all that he did, I'm sure all of you would find me a monster. What would put that hero worship on the rap sheet of my character but wouldn't also apply to someone who really believed in some of the most unpalatable things God has done? Even if I privately wrestled with Mengele's... inherent tradeoff... between an uncompromising pursuit of science and the atrocities he committed, should I really be excused for my hero worship because of my own ambivalence of commitment?
I'm genuinely interested in how people see the dis-analogy between those cases, it's not intended as a 'checkmate theists' since I genuinely don't have a definite take on the matter.
The second flavour of response is that Christians who believe that sinners go to hell don't really believe that God tortures people forever in hell. Which could be true for a couple of reasons - they don't see it as torture, they privately wrestle with it, they don't see 'it' at all for whatever reason, or maybe that the 'really believing' something is quite a different beast from holding something to be true.
The privately wrestling one is asked about above - why should privately wrestling with discomfort over God's unpalatable acts and neglects make less of a mark on their character?
I think the other reasons are related to the discussion that Christians don't 'really' believe in Hell etc. Let's take the ones who 'really don't' believe Hell exists out of the equation - the kind of Christian that gets disgusted by the very idea of Hell, or otherwise rejects it. They're not particularly interesting to talk about in this context I think, since they don't believe God even sends people to hell or has done those things. Let's focus on the ones who believe in it in Hell and eternal torture in some regard + worship the entity that tortures - regardless of their attitude towards it.
@Isaac and @jorndoe seem to have made points in this quarter.
I find it quite plausible that they don't 'really worship' or 'really believe in' the God that tortures, but I'd struggle to spell out why. If you boil it down to the level I believe @Isaac has done, where no one has reliable access to their beliefs and culpability itself is a process of social branding, I think that makes the issue disappear as well as renders and assignment of culpability/blame arbitrary by that standard. To my mind that move can be made in too broad a sense which 'sweeps the rug from under the discussion', we have to be able to play the game of culpability to get the current discussion off of the ground. And if we can't in principle play the game, then it seems we can't do most of the moral flavour chit chat we tend to.
In this case, I'd be interested in what, if anything, distinguished the Christian's 'lack of access' to their own belief states regarding their object of worship to the arbitrary lack of access we have moving around the room. Maybe that's where cognitive dissonance comes in; perhaps the object of worship is not the same as the object of intellectual belief, even if both are held to be identical in some discursive context. If called to defend Christianity, the God of worship and the God who punishes are the same, in practice perhaps they are not.
There's also arguing from something close to the article's position, which I believe @Banno is doing. In which the object of the Christian's faith is the same as the object of worship as they share a common referring phrase, and all the beliefs and entailments hang together as a system of propositions. It is a strong argument if you grant that 'hanging together as a system of propositions and entailments' accurately describes faith, like faith is rational intellectual system, but the main points of productive disagreement with this track seem precisely to be rooted that everything 'holding together' in this way is a poor model of how faith, worship etc work in practice. I'd invite Banno to reconstruct the system of propositions and entailments that connect belief in God to worship of an entity which tortures without assuming that because they seem to be referred to in the same way, they are the same entity. That coreference appears to be in dispute.
Fritz is a neo-nazi. Fritz admires Hitler. Fritz knows about Hitler's evil deeds, and would never presume to join in perpetrating those deeds.
The argument goes that we should judge Fritz only by his actions and not by his beliefs.
Amongst Fritz's actions is his expressed admiration of Hitler's evil deeds. He runs a regular podcast in which he sets Hitler's evil out in admiring detail, relishing the consequences.
What do you think of Fritz?
Folk are not responsible for their beliefs?
As if beliefs have no consequences? AS if folk could not choose between this or that belief?
Are you sure you want to propose that?
Christianity is not coherent.
Great! So how do you judge what the beliefs and practices which form part of an incoherent system say about someone?
There is no significant ambiguity in saying god loves you unconditionaly.
There is no significant ambiguity in saying god will throw you into hell if you do not worship him.
There is an inconsistency in conjoining these proposals.
What are you trying to get to?
In this scenario did the Nazis produce a Martin Luther King Jr? A Dorothy Day? Did the Nazis educate chaplains to help hospitals with grieving relatives? Are the Nazis behind just about every functioning soup kitchen, charity medical assistance, and emergency housing available throughout the US? Did the Nazis make slavery illegal in the UK?
C'mon.
Suppose Fritz runs a soup kitchen. Does that excuse his podcasts?
Nah. Christians aren't Nazis. Try again.
Bill loves Dracula. He goes on and on about it. How should we treat Bill?
According to his actions.
Fritz is inciting violence. Do you see Christians in general as doing that?
Quoting Banno
No. My point wasn't that Christian accomplishments excuse anything. It's that we have to evaluate their effects the world differently from Nazis.
Cheers. That's all that was needed.
Sure. So we agree that like Nazis, Christians must be judged by their actions. :up:
No, Nazis are judge by their beliefs. Granted, if there is no behavior manifesting their belief (speech or action), you wouldn't know what their belief is, but if they have told you, you take them seriously and scorn them as all Nazis should be. You don't simply smile and get back to letting your child marry them.
Actively expressing approval of and admiration for the bad acts of others is both a moral failing and an indication of suspect moral judgment. It isn't that Frtiz likes Hitler, it is that Fritz likes that Hitler is exterminating Jews and admires Hitler for doing so. Outside of agreeing with Hitler and Fritz, there is no way to see them as anything but morally repugnant and of bad judgment.
Giving Nazis a moral pass in an effort to save other morally repugnant people that you sympathize with seems a bad play. Beliefs (if others know them) are of necessity manifested - there is no innocent Nazi sympathizer. Even Fritz's admission to you that he admires Hitler is a bad act with nothing else. From that moment on, Fritz should be treated with caution and disdain.
P.S. The first paragraph is about beliefs, the third paragraph is about how speech is an act that has a moral status independent of the content of the speech.
I doubt more words will help at this point. I suspect you know approximately what I mean?
I thought Heidegger's first name was Martin...
Judging people by their beliefs alone is dubious. You can't control what people believe, so you're pissing in the wind.
You can control a person's actions. That's a meaningful way to spend your time.
A guy gives an example of obviously abhorrent dispositions and you don't want to judge. I can't fathom why. What value is advanced by refraining from acknowledging that the guy telling Hitler he is doing a great job exterminating the Jews is morally bad?
You're just making stuff up now.
Maybe, maybe not, getting into psychology...
, Christianity was not any one particular single movement in the first centuries after Jesus' demise (? 30-40).
There were all kinds of zealous factions and cults and whatnot fighting each other and, well, anyone really, often refusing to discuss things for that matter.
And this continued after Constantine's (272-337) organized efforts to get them all together under Roman Catholicism and do away with the rest.
Celsus found them a nuisance, and Origen later complained about Celsus.
Theodosius I (347-395) officially decreed them "dementes vesanosque" (demented lunatics) in 380 — everyone but the Roman Catholics of course, since they were now rubber-stamped by the empire, or more accurately, Roman Catholicism was now part thereof.
Backing by the empire and its resources was a "seismic" turning point in history (to use one historian's word).
And, naturally, another few centuries later yet another religion hit the market with Muhammad, swiftly splitting up into two factions due to some succession disagreement.
It's a bloody story laced with fanatics, strife, and antisemitism, not a mere neat story about the righteous innocents being persecuted.
The Romans tried to deal with the cesspool of zealous cults, countryside preachers, resentment/dissidents, etc, of Middle Eastern antiquity, in their brutish ways, yet Christianity (Catholicism) outlived the empire, and so here we are, with some folk raising Jesus to divinity and perfection, and apparently assenting to neverending damnation.
Actions are explained in terms of a desire and a belief.
I went to the freezer (action) because I wanted some ice-cream (desire) and thought there was some in the freezer (belief).
From there on it gets complicated, but this should be sufficient to convince most reasonable folk that there is an intimate link between belief and action.
Let's look at a couple more examples. Fred is a candidate for the position of security guard at the capitol building. He believes that Trump won the election and that there are members of the senate who are members of a satanist cult.
Do you think his beliefs relevant to his appointment?
Jenny is a creationist. She does not believe evolution, and believes that the earth was created a few thousand years ago. She wishes to sit on the panel writing the science curriculum for your child's school
Do you think her beliefs are relevant? Does she get your vote? Given that she has not acted on those beliefs, do you judge her as of equal standing to Ann, who believes that the earth is billions of years old and that animals evolved?
OF course not. And with good reason. If one's beliefs can be used to explain one's action, one's actions can be predicted from one's beliefs.
A specific belief can reasonably be taken to imply a specific action.
A belief is a propositional attitude. That just means that a belief is a belief that such-and-such is the case, where such-and-such is some statement, or if you prefer, some way the world might be.
I believe that the chair is blue. Your belief that the moon is full is accurate. And so on.
Consider what would be the case if this were not so. If you met someone who claimed to have a belief that was not about how the world might be. What could be done with such a belief?
Folk do say such things "I believe in family"; "I believe in Democracy". What are we to make of such utterances?
Yes, they pretty much say nothing until they are put into a more concrete form - until they are put in terms of a belief that families should be the primary caregiver, or families deserve more funding. "I believe in family" is perhaps a sentiment, or a rhetorical ploy, rather than a belief.
You can see why this is so from the relation between actions and beliefs set out in my previous post.
And you continue to back up my point. Excellent.
Faith is just belief. But it can be, and here it should be, used for those beliefs in which there is insufficient evidence. I've no evidence that you have understood this analysis, but I have faith in your ability.
Yes, you, the person reading this.
Faith becomes problematic when insufficient evidence is replaced by contrary evidence. That Trump won the election; that the wine is the blood of christ, despite it still looking and tasting like wine...
Faith relies on trust.
Not sure how relevant this is but I generally draw a distinction between faith (belief without good reason) and reasonable confidence in, for instance, a plane's capacity to fly and land without crashing. I personally never use the word faith because of its religious associations and how believers will often make asinine claims such as - 'but you have faith in science' etc.
Are you planning to link this account to the OP or a claim like "A belief in the Christian God is a bad mark on someone's character"?
Still an open question. There are those who think they have, but the consistency of their ideas is a topic of some debate.
Your analogy doesn't work.
Link up the stuff about belief and action to the OP. You haven't done that yet, have you?
Fine.
I asked before for you to consider what a belief would be like without a subject.
Consider what faith would be like without a subject. "I have faith in you", like "I believe in you", is an expression of trust. If it means anything then it pays out in "I believe you will replay your debt" or "I believe you will keep your promise".
Why would faith in god be any different?
Quoting Banno
Same for "I have faith in the Lord".
Quoting Banno
This topic has not, so far as I am aware, been discussed in this forum before.
I mentioned before that I think for some Christians it has. There are a few possibilities here too:
I don’t happen to know what various denominations teach about who exactly goes to hell; it’s natural to distinguish (a) those who haven’t heard the good news from (b) those who have, and natural to distinguish among those who have, (b1) those who haven’t accepted it as the truth from (b2) those who have, and lastly (b2+) those who then worship God from (b2-) those who don’t.
It’s plain that at the top of everyone’s list is (b2-), the person who believes in God, believes the Bible to be the truth, believes the teachings of his church, but takes the other side — hatred of God, hatred of what is good, and so on.
That makes our option (3) rather complicated, because you are supposed to see God as evil, and therefore oppose him, but in the name of what is good. That doesn’t really look like (b2-).
Suppose the teaching about hell that you learned is wrong, but you assume it’s true so you set yourself against God the tyrant, in the name of good. Will God reward or punish you? It’s tempting to say God would judge your opposing him as exemplary, in accord with the message you should have received had it not been garbled by weak human understanding. But by hypothesis, he wasn’t going to send you to hell anyway, so what difference does it make? Maybe it doesn’t matter to God whether you worship or oppose him, whether you’re good or bad. Maybe God was just trying to do you a favor by telling you what is good, since it’s better to be good than bad.
As for the others, there’s a whole lot of (2) out there, but it’s irrelevant to the paper under discussion. Which is too bad. (1) either happens or it doesn’t, in my view; I don’t see this as a choice. Some people find faith; some people lose it.
What about people stuck believing. Some will hold onto their belief in God and continue to worship Him even if they cannot understand how hell could possibly be consistent with the goodness of God. This is a difficult position to be in, but it’s not a unique one for a Christian. People endure tragedy which, given their faith, will seem to them unjust: why would God allow this to happen? This too they must somehow accept without understanding. It cannot be easy. If you ask them about hell or about their suffering, they will probably frankly tell you they don’t know how to reconcile their feelings with their faith.
Which brings us round again to the question of worship. In previous posts, I’ve mostly ignored (b2-) the believer who sets himself against God, not because God is evil but precisely because of his hatred for what is good. I’ve mainly been imagining the case where to believe is — quite directly — to love and to worship. I don’t see the gap there that @Isaac does; I think unless you are that rare Luciferian sort, to believe in something at all like the Christian God is automatically to love and worship that God.
There’s more we could say about (2), but there’s a problem here that is woven into the question of worship or rebellion: what is the truth? Suppose what you were taught about eternal damnation is more or less right, hellfire and torment and all. Does your belief in such a place and in God having some policy regarding it make you a collaborator? I don’t see why, no more than believing Hitler actually did what he did does. It’s worship that matters. Now suppose you cannot accept your church’s teaching on hell, so you find another you like better and go on worshipping your cleaned up and more modern God. You’re still exempt from Lewis’s criticism even if it turns out you were wrong and God does send people to hell.
But hold on there. Yes, this is just restating the criteria for being vulnerable to Lewis’s attack. But if you look at the criteria as ways of avoiding the attack, you get a pretty strange result. Lewis says you ought not worship someone (human or divine) you believe to be evil; to please Lewis, you can of course (1) not believe in him at all; (2) not worship him; or (3) not believe he’s evil. What’s odd is that (3) is apparently entirely up to you — you can just choose to believe God, being good, would not countenance eternal damnation, declare your disbelief and be rewarded with Lewis’s approval, even if hell is real. That’s right, even if hell is real, all you have to do is not believe in this part of reality, and you get a free pass from Lewis. What the actual fuck?
I couldn’t say.
You and I agree, however, on the main point - people who believe something that is evil is good can be judged for both their belief in the bad thing and the inadequacy of the process they used to arrive at that belief. When someone reveals that they believe something horrid, you should act accordingly. To the extent that such a person is being called upon to pass judgment upon a matter and that judgment is of necessity complicated and not prone to efficient inquiry, excluding them from making that judgment based upon their expressed beliefs seems a reasonable heuristic/proxy. I only disagreed that self-identifying as a Christian of necessity demonstrates poor character - a point that Lewis does a poor job of establishing in his article.
As an aside, as an out group member I have had to learn far more about Christianity (secular or otherwise) than I would have liked to. Being in the out group, the essential nature of Christianity takes on a heightened importance because it often has to be appealed to to stop the Christians from murdering us (or otherwise persecuting us). Further, as an out group member you must be careful to find friends where they can be found, which requires that you not just write all in group members off as worthy of condemnation in all contexts/respects. Having a place at the table was not easy to come by for the out groups; taking your chance to sit at that table to demand that everyone in the in group leave (thereby ending the the collaborative process you were trying to join) is dangerous.
[quote=“Genesis 18:25ish”]
. .It is profane in You to do such a thing, to kill a righteous one with a wicked one, rendering the righteous one like the wicked one. It is profane in You. Will the Judge of all the land not do justice? [/quote]
It is for people to demand justice even from god, not to sit idly by the blood of their neighbor. So from my perspective, it is abundantly obvious that one can worship/love/etc. god and still call god out for being an asshole. Cheering as god does bad things is demented and contra god. Indeed, even when god decides to do justice (horrible as it is), it is not for people to take issue with justice not being done.
[quote=“Jonah 3 to 4”]
And Jonah commenced to come into the city, one day's walk, and he proclaimed and said, "In another forty days Nineveh shall be overturned!"
. . .
And God saw their deeds, that they had repented of their evil way, and the Lord relented concerning the evil that He had spoken to do to them, and He did not do it.
Now it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was grieved.
. . .
8Now it came to pass when the sun shone, that God appointed a stilling east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head, and he fainted, and he begged to die, and he said, "My death is better than my life."
9And God said to Jonah; Are you very grieved about the kikayon? And he said, "I am very grieved even to death."
10And the Lord said: You took pity on the kikayon, for which you did not toil nor did you make it grow, which one night came into being and the next night perished.
11Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?
[/quote]
Worship is not, and has never been, blind cheering for all that god does. One can reproach god, is expected to do so, and should be criticized for encouraging god to do bad things.
I’m probably missing this suggestion in the passage from Jonah you quote. Was it in there? Or do you have another source?
On its face, reproaching God sounds impious, and the suggestion that some of the things God does are bad also sounds, on its face, impious, so I’d be really curious to know if there’s either scripture or theological (patristic or later) support for either idea.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This part is a bit easier to swallow. I know there’s plenty of writing to support the idea of Christians taking pleasure in the eternal suffering of those in hell, but “Let he who is without sin ...” seems pretty clearly on the other side. (And there’s a counter-tradition anyway.) Christians may be called to accept God’s justice, maybe even to love him for being just, but there’s no way to make taking pleasure in another’s suffering look moral.
It is Abraham that reproaches god for going to kill a bunch of innocent people in Sodom. Abraham, as a Biblical character worthy of emulation, models expected behavior. Jonah is the jerk that runs from god and whines that he wasted his time going to Ninivah because god didn’t bother to kill them all. He actually antagonizes god a bit in the passage, “I disobeyed you and didn’t go to Ninivah because I knew you wouldn’t do it.”
[quote=“Jonah”]
… And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Please, O Lord, was this not my contention while I was still on my land? For this reason I had hastened to flee to Tarshish, for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, with much kindness, and relenting of evil. And now, O Lord, take now my soul from me, for my death is better than my life."
And the Lord said: Are you deeply grieved?
[/quote]
Ah, I see. Didn’t know that was Abraham addressing God. Well, yes, Abraham is a pretty convincing precedent.
This is a very generalized heuristics, and thus often unfair or useless for judging people.
By the time someone does something that could be problematic, it's often already too late. Such as discovering only a few years into your marriage that your spouse is a thief, or serial killer.
On the other hand, judging people merely by their actions results in the kind of absolute stigma of convicted felons, who, even though they have served their prison sentence in full, are never really allowed back into society, no matter what they do.
I don't think something so basic was seriously disputed. It just looks like you've tried to demonstrate that people can be justifiably judged on their beliefs, not why Christians should be judged for their belief, or whether Christian faith counts as a belief in the sense you've dealt with (an attitude towards a statement).
It opens fine on my computer. There used to be quite a bit of talk about the River of Fire about 10+ years ago (and several online sources for the text, with easy copy-paste option). It's an Eastern Orthodox take on eternal damnation. What I find esp. interesting about it is that it literally spells out that in Western Christianity, God is portrayed as a threat, as the danger from which we seek salvation.
Quoting fdrake
Actually, this is precisely what was disputed by some posters this thread, and is in general disputed in society about some beliefs.
Ultra political correctness would have us not judge anyone, in any way (except, of course, those on the official list to be judged).
Religious beliefs and believers, given that they are protected by the constitution, are also not supposed to be judged.
You could find yourself sued for criticizing a Christian for his Christian beliefs.
There is a loophole in secular constitutions that gives religions a free pass. Religions and religious people thus have special constitutional protection that ordinary non-religious people don't.
Because they themselves might not be safe from hell yet.
A proper Roman Catholic, for example, is expected to his last breath to consider himself capable of the ultimate betrayal of God, and thus even though he has lead a pure Catholic life, lose everything on his deathbed. Ideally, a Catholic is always supposed to be in a state of anxiety about his own salvation, given his capacity for mortal sin. (This is why scrupulosity is also called "the Catholic disease".)
Protestants generally don't have such concerns, insofar as they believe that their salvation is guaranteed by Christ dying for them on the cross, and doesn't depend on the purity of their conscience on their deathbed.
Religious people tend to be authoritarian, and their critics tend to be such as well.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That shouldn't be too hard. If a family are only Sunday saints and don't put in much effort into teaching religion to their children; if they are religious, but there is domestic discord; if religion was practiced primarily for socio-economic purposes; then it seems more likely that children born into such families will not develop a deep religious affiliation.
The arguments we're addressing want us to draw conclusions about the character of Christians for what we take to be their belief (or the logical outcome of their beliefs).
*You worship a torturer, so...*
So what? So you must approve of torture? You think torture is a good thing? Have 100s of millions of Christians all believed it's good to torture people?
How about looking at their actions to see if they believe that instead of worming our way to it via a logical argument?
Am I really alone here in this? Because it seems bloody obvious.
If you're a member of a gang, you are accountable for what another gang member does. Even if you were nowhere near when he committed the crime, even if you knew nothing about the crime being planned. Simply by being a member of the gang, you make yourself accountable.
Making use of the name and demanding special treatment on account of one's gang/tribe membership, makes one such a gang/tribe member and it makes one accountable for anything other members of the gang/tribe do.
[sup]Oct 17, 2019 · In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
Dec 14, 2021 · About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated
[/sup]
and in some other places
[sup]Apr 05, 2017 · Christians remain world’s largest religious group, but they are declining in Europe
Jun 13, 2018 · 2. Young adults around the world are less religious by several measures
Jun 13, 2018 · 3. How religious commitment varies by country among people of all ages
[/sup]
The US has been and is an outlier if you will
[sup]Jun 13, 2018 · 1. Why do levels of religious observance vary by age and country?
[/sup]
I doubt it's because they've been reading "Divine Evil" and such, though. :)
But, anyway, what Pew calls "the religious landscape" has been changing some.
That doesn't sound reasonable to me. You're responsible for what you do. That's it.
I distinguish between bias and prejudice, with bias being something you cannot just choose not to have, may not even know you have, and prejudice, which is bias you have reflected on and approved. As a ‘view’ you hold, know you hold, and approve of holding, the reasons for not acting on prejudice would be only practical. Bias you’re likely to act on if you are unaware of it, but if you’re aware of it and don’t approve of it, you can at least attempt to be scrupulous, and you can take steps you believe could lead to the weakening of your bias.
Is any of that business relevant? Maybe. Bias, as I conceive it, is a bit like faith in that it’s not something you just choose to have or not have. I’m tempted to say that puts theology in the space of prejudice, the reflected on shaping and filling out of the underlying belief. But I don’t really know how to make such an analogy work: the ‘content’ of a bias is pretty robust and identifiable — that is, it’s a tractable topic even without being further conceptualized as prejudice; religious experience is not so clear at all. Without being conceptualized as an experience in line with some particular creed, people only have very vague and mystical things to say about it. (The oceanic feeling, and all that.) A casual glance at the world’s religious landscape would suggest that the underlying experience type, if there is one, can be initialized conceptualized in a great number of ways. (Has anyone ever said, “I’m a Lutheran, but last night when I was praying, the Presbyterian God answered”? Why not? This is such a messy area to talk about conceptualization. I’m not getting it right, and maybe the whole approach is useless.)
In short, bias looks pretty simple by comparison, and way more tractable to analysis.
But the question of remedy is interesting, because it looks like @Banno wants to treat ‘Christian’ as the moral equivalent of ‘racist’ or ‘Nazi’, something we don’t have to put up with, something we might, for instance, add to the Site Guidelines as grounds for summary banishment. On my approach above, ‘being a racist’ means reflectively choosing to endorse the bias you find you have and acting on it. So the answer to “How can you be mistrustful of Black people?” is “I can’t help that, not much anyway, but I’m working on it; I can be aware of my bias, and try not to let it influence what I say and how I act.” Having that ‘gut reaction’ makes you biased, and a racist in one sense but not in another.
Is there a similar remedy available to the Christian?
All of this analysis feels pretty shallow, but there’s still so much to get out of the way before we can get to the nature of worship, which looks more and more like the key issue here.
I want to address your Mengele analogy, but I’m late for work!
Not if you claim membership in a group and demand to get special, preferential, or lenient treatment on account of such membership.
I'm making the argument that it is fair to interrogate the beliefs of Christians in the same way we interrogate the beliefs of non-Christians, we do not need to 'stand in their shoes', nor understand their faith, nor give special dispensation - that if we find something apparently contradictory, incoherent, or morally objectionable, we can legitimately point that out and expect some justifications in return (normal discussion methods - exchange of justifications).
Some points of contention have been..
1. That Christian faith is different from more ordinary belief and so not a proper subject for the same kind of interrogation (or that the grounds - coherence, consitency etc. - are different) - this mostly from @Srap Tasmaner. I think this is plausible but I don't see much by way of a clear line at religion. I can see the idea that not all beliefs are of similar kind (we already have such a notion with hinge propositions), maybe some beliefs are 'revelational' such that they're not subject to sensible interrogation. The thing is, how would we go about identifying such beliefs. I've raised the problem of us not having unfiltered access to the causes of our beliefs. I think this gets in the way of a good category of 'revelational' belief. A second issue I see with this is the generally vague nature of 'revelational' belief. It may be my limited experience, but I don't know of many such beliefs that we should not eat chicken on Wednesdays, they're usually so vague as to need interpreting anyway...and it's the interpretation that can then be interrogated. Which leads to...
2. How do we judge people's beliefs if we're admitting that their beliefs cannot make sense as a whole? If someone believes that we should both torture (in the afterlife), and be kind to (in this life), sinners, then do we hold them accountable for the former and assume the latter to be something they 'don't really believe because it's inconsistent', or vice versa. Judging them for both seems odd, since they can't coherently hold both. I know not everyone agrees with this, but... the overwhelming majority of our beliefs are justified post hoc. The justification isn't to arrive at the belief, it's to check it. We don't start with a blank slate and work through an algorithm to fill it. So the fact that two of the Christian's beliefs don't match doesn't mean we have to pick which one to judge, it means that we interrogate the post hoc rationalisation that results from the two.
3. That the power of God somehow renders judgement of those who worship him either redundant or even unfair - he's God after all, whatcha gonna do? Well - Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings? That's what I personally expect. Sauron was a God, and a good deal more obvious a one at that. Bad is bad - we fight it. Our myths are full of people fighting the Gods, it seems more than a little weak-chinned to say "well, he's a God, we'd better do as we're told".
4. That many Christians don't hold to whole 'torturer' thing anyway. If one takes some parts of the Bible literally and other parts allegorically, then one is not following a creed. I think this is unarguable, because you could create any set of beliefs at all from the bible by doing so. We could say that that God's smiting of unbelievers is literal, but Jesus's kindness to the poor was only allegorical and didn't really mean the we ought to be kind to the poor. Once you personally (or some other group) are in charge of what's to be taken literally and what isn't, you no longer have a religion (from lig?re - to bind). You pick and choose which bits really mean what they say and which bits are just adding a bit of colour to a more generic message.
I also don't see how deciding (even arbitrarily) which interpretation is under this particular microscope makes any difference at all to the power of the argument - (mis)labelling a group is not excluding them, they're still welcome to argue the case. No-one is saying that Christians (or those who identify as Christians) are not welcome to talk about this conflict. If Lewis takes aim at all Christians, yet his accusation applies only to a subset, then it's on those to whom it doesn't apply to make their case - I don't think an assumption that Christianity necessitates a belief in a God, Heaven, and Hell is an unreasonable assumption to use as a starting point. The idea that sinners go to hell is hardly a fringe Christian sect that Lewis has dug up from the ruins of Alexandria to use as a straw man, if some Christians don't hold to it, then I think the integrity of their doing so (and remaining Christian) is fair game.
Well, no. (In my case anyway.) In practical terms ...
People don't often say they assent to neverending damnation, that I know of; seems almost comically embarrassing.
(Though some indoctrinate children so.)
If they admit assenting to neverending damnation, then we may express repugnance, and maybe vote them off "the ethics board".
Outside of that, they (or most anyone) remain "innocent until proven guilty" if you will.
As an aside, I know a few people whose moral judgment often derive from the Bible or the Quran.
They often evaluate moral matters so-and-so because their religious text says this-and-that.
To me, that's forfeiture of autonomous moral agency, to have their text define morals for them.
In principle at least, autonomous moral agency is a prerequisite for (would-be) autonomous actors.
Whatever rules they pick up from their text doesn't somehow absolve them.
In any given situation they still have to figure out if going by their text is the right thing to do.
Fortunately, when probing a bit, most still have (some) autonomous moral agency, and that's kind of reassuring.
Lewis' case is strong enough that it can't just be dismissed with a hand wave.
It's not clear how this is the case.
For one, the secular constitution protects religion, but it doesn't protect philosophy. Religious people can always fall back on the secular constitution and demand respect (which includes not demanding justifications from them). Discussing religion is pretty much a matter of walking on the edge of attacking another person's constitutionally given human rights.
For two, in practice, Christians and other religious/spiritual people not rarely act exactly that way. Ask them for a justification of a belief of theirs because it doesn't make sense to you, and chances are they will accuse you of being disrespectful toward them (and who do you think you are to even dare talk about that with them).
The bottomline is that as a matter of principle, religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be their epistemic or ethical peers, but necessarily lesser than them, and that's why they don't discuss their beliefs with them (at least not in any depth or in a way that would satify the outsider's standards).
In their eyes, it does. Just like the Nazis didn't consider the Nuremberg tribunal to be a valid judicial authority, so religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be people with whom to have a straightforward discussion of their religion/spirituality.
You probably do the same: Just because someone comes to judge you doesn't mean you are obligated to accept them as a judicial authority over yourself.
My argument is about what's fair, not about what's the case.
(don't want to veer off on a side-track though)
The Nazis didn't think so, obviously.
Anyway, the point is that you're setting yourself up as the epistemic and moral authority over Christians when you expect them to justify their beliefs to you. Why should they submit to you?
That's too bad, especially for the victims.
This bit is a huge failing of people unstudied in religion and I'm not sure why it keeps being repeated here. If Christianity (love it or leave it) is our model for what a religion looks like, then features of Christianity are features of religion. It is unarguable both that Christianity has seen major changes from 50 C.E. to the present and that Christian understanding/dogma/creed was not limited to some naive literalist interpretation of the Bible. Imposing a literalist requirement on religions is simply a fiction of the modern day atheist and Christian fundamentalists (which, by the by, exclude Catholics). If religion is X as defined by Isaac (or any other person) and Christianity does not meet those criteria, then Christianity writ large isn't even a religion and so shouldn't be discussed in religious terms.
This attitude of fundamentalism (founding document to be understood literally as the only source of religious authority/authenticity) is precisely the problem with people like Lewis - actual people are being judged for having beliefs that they do not have based upon a facially incorrect understanding of what religion is/says/etc. Lewis, however, at least does the courtesy of saying that he has to ask a person before judging them. Writing off a class of people without specific knowledge of what that person believes is NOT what Lewis advocates, and in that way extending his argument to group judgment is an error. Taking issue with Lewis' definition of Christianity is secondary to his main point - what do we do with people that admirer a torturer? Can we hold them in esteem or must we cease our admiration of them?
Your third number misses the thrust of the argument, I think. The argument around worship is that what makes god worshipful is not inherently what makes god admirable (if at all). Lewis critiques those that admire. If someone worships a god that tortures people for fun, are they in the same boat of moral repugnance as someone that admires a god that tortures people for fun?
Then there are probably no religions at all. This argument is clearly overbroad.
It has been, and is, upheld by some.
And the topic has moral implications (whether upheld by one or billions).
None. You argued that the situation I described as 'fair' was not, in fact, the case. What's 'fair's and what's 'the case' are two different things. So the 'fairness' of x is not made illusory by showing that x is not the case. If you want to argue that x is not fair (ie, it's apparent fairness is merely illusory), then the matter of whether x is the case is immaterial.
It does indeed, but if you just rule out revelation, you're ruling out Christianity tout court. Which is fine, but then there's just no point in nitpicking about theology. It's a two-pronged attack: "What you believe is bullshit, and you ought not believe it, but this particular bullshit is bad bullshit, and you also ought not believe it because it's also bad." What are you asking of Christians? "I'd prefer you believed some different bullshit. Make up something else"? How are they supposed to respond?
This part is off for a number of reasons, but the most obvious in this context is that Lewis is addressing whether he (and those like him) ought admire a person that has horrid beliefs. There isn't even a question of whether the beliefs are horrid or whether the person that believes them thinks it good - indeed, a part of his criticism is that those who admire the evil god also believe that the god is good. Moral relativism has zero relevance to our judgment about the moral worth of others, it simply reminds us that people's moral judgments do not all occur in the same moral system.
Christians, or anyone else, have to justify themselves to whatever extent the situation requires. If you put up a sign and say, "I only admire people that don't admire an evil god," and a Christian walks over to your table and says, "I want you to admire me, but I worship an evil god," then the Christian is obliged to justify themselves as qualifying under your criteria. If, however, you are selling oranges and a Christian comes to buy one, they don't have to justify themselves for your admiration, they merely have to pay the price. People operate in a social sphere and are subject to all of the same conditions as anyone else. When discussing social interactions and the negotiation of power, justification is a basic means by which one person attempts to accomplish their purpose. You can't just exempt yourself from justification to another because you think some claim of yours is sacrosanct - the other person dictates the rules for what is required for them to cooperate.
Discussing your own personal conduct (which is what both Lewis and Banno do) is not the same as establishing what governments can or should do. A "human right" to religion is a claim made against states, not individuals. Anti-discrimination laws are things that states impose upon individuals. Conflating individual judgments with governmental judgments serves no purpose but to obfuscate the distinction between what justifies individual action and what justifies state action. You are capable of acting and making moral judgments independent of the state and in opposition to that state, be it secular or not. Indeed, groups of people acting as individuals (rather than state actors) can do a host of things and pass any number of moral judgments that would be considered inappropriate for the state.
It would be great if you could talk about your judgment rather than hypothesizing about the judgment of some nondescript moral agent cum state actor.
I agree. Why would Christianity be our model for what a religion looks like?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I'm not arguing that people must take the Bible literally. I'm arguing that if they do not do so then they have reasons for choosing what to take literally and what to not. Those reasons must, necessarily, come from outside the text (otherwise they're subject to the same problem). As such, they can be interrogated.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Well, yes. I think the case has been made quite clearly for people (if worshipped Hitler I would be morally repugnant). I'm simply saying that there's nothing inherent about a God which changes that.
Yes. I see @Ennui Elucidator has interpret it this way too, so I guess that's my bad. I'm not attempting a redefinition of the word 'religion' (given my fanaticism for meaning from use I hardly think such a position would be tenable for me). I'm saying that the distinction one might want to make for religious beliefs doesn't seem to apply if those beliefs are ultimately derived in the same way as any other belief.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Again, my argument is simply that religious belief is no special category - supporting the 'special pleading' complaint made earlier. If I'm asking anything of Christians it's that they take part in the usual social game of post hoc rationalisation that everyone else plays.
Absolutely. There is no privileged class of belief.
But if it's not 'special' in the sense indicated, then it's not true. Revelation can't be part of our usual game of justifying beliefs, so anything relying on it fails at the first hurdle.
What I have to justify is saying such an approach is fine for some purposes ("God told me to" doesn't excuse you from murder) but useless if our intention is to understand and judge how Christians believe and what they believe.
Your argument is that the voice of God has the same role in belief formation as the hidden unknowns we model, as the outside cause of whatever we do to end up with something identifiable as a belief -- is that it?
From 30,000 feet, that's kinda reasonable, but you can't add any detail to this picture at all. God doesn't even bother with your brain; He speaks directly to your soul. Or so I've heard.
But I think one might be being created nonetheless, by invoking a 'special language' in which religious texts are written. If I read in Mein Kampf that "the Jews should be exterminated" (Not a direct quote, I've never read it, it's just an example), and then say "I worship Hitler, we should act according to Mein Kampf", then I don't think it would normally be held to be unreasonable for someone to argue that "the Jews should be exterminated" is an awful thing to say and so worshipping Hitler is an awful thing to do. There's no special class of 'Nazi', that requires one, in advance, to assume the words don't literally mean that the Jews should be exterminated, to assume that most Nazis don't believe it literally and have some much more generic allegorical meaning. So treating Christians differently would be special pleading.
And if, after this first round of take-things-at-face-value, the Nazi explains that they don't take "the Jews should be exterminated" (but do take other similar instruction) seriously, then I don't think it's unreasonable to ask why, and expect some justification. So treating Christians differently would be special pleading.
I grant that Lewis's method might be a bit ham-fisted but at the end of the day, the words (of the bible) are still there to be explained one way or another. It's either 'why do you worship one who acts that way?' or 'why to you treat that as merely allegorical and not this?'
Maybe that second question is somewhat out of the scope here. But to me, the answer is exactly what Lewis is driving at, because I'd hazard the answer would be "well that's obviously allegorical because if it wasn't, it'd be awful"
As I believe the kids say 'well, duh!'. Yes. I think you're right, but I don't see such exclusion as z problem, rather the opposite, that if we don't exclude it thus, all interrogation of belief becomes meaningless.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I believe so. Difficult.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Spot on. Yes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ahh yes, but the signals from your soul are hidden states are they not? We are not instructed by our souls directly, else what role for priests and Bibles?
Quoting frank
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Spicy take warning:
One thing which makes me believe that religious people ought not to be judged so harshly, or given some leeway, for what they believe (especially if it doesn't translate much into practice), is that you hear things like that. It's a special relationship with a private entity, inculcated usually from very young, embedded in people's childhood developmental contexts - some people have a religious temperament because they were tempered into it. So I have quite a lot of sympathy with your 'doxastic involuntarism' view Srap, but maybe not in a nice way. I want to exclude from discussion here people who've picked and chose a consistent story from the Bible, and focus entirely on those who are 'otherwise lovely' but believe in the rightness of eternal torture etc.
There are a few characteristics of faith based moral belief that make me quite suspicious of it:
( 1 ) Doctrines are internally inconsistent - people pick and choose.
( 2 ) Over and above ( 1 ), what people pick and choose is extremely hodge-podge and highly emotionally charged. You're really putting a dagger into someone if you criticise their faith. There's often combination of capriciousness in what people say they believe (emotive post-hoc) and what they say in other contexts.
( 3 ) That makes the domain of application of faith in someone's life seem compartmentalised.
( 4 ) Belief (or at least acting in accord with it) can be and often is tied to social inclusion and access to institutions while growing up, if you're in a religious community, if you're not religious in the right way you can have a real bad time.
( 5 ) Losing one's faith is extremely difficult, wrestling with the internal inconsistencies of doctrine can be actively painful - that seems to confirm that religious belief grows in minds that were encouraged to accept it. If you lose your faith, maybe your mind is in the wrong shape for the more secular thought it can have. Loss of self, community, identity etc.
To my mind, the above makes religious faith something like a symptom of trauma? Disordered, highly charged experiences, sufficient challenge can lead to perceptions of loss of identity and self, extreme touchiness about the issue, often the beliefs are tied up in how the person experiences attachment. Or if not traumatic, being able to have a faith maybe requires that one has been shaped in this way by one's environment, and it seems that rarely this can be something someone chooses.
Perhaps it does not reduce culpability for acting on horrible beliefs, or even for believing in them, but pragmatically it makes it somewhat understandable. Ergo, forms less of a mark on their character because they have a good excuse.
That is a gigantic mess. (It hadn't even occurred to me -- probably my unconscious warding off the gigantic mess.) Since I can't help myself, I'll say that I think when you hear the voice of God, or are guided somehow by the Holy Spirit, that you need not model this 'input' at all. It's God and you know it is. Anyhow, I want to say that, but the Deceiver is also known to whisper in people's ears...
I just want a more neutral framework for having this discussion. I'm not comfortable beginning from a commitment to religion being bullshit. That's what I personally think, but I don't go around, ahem, pontificating about how believers ought to modify their bullshit religions.
Spicy take indeed! That's both a horrifying and plausible thought.
It's mildly surprising that we have somehow avoided doing much in this thread about the psychology of belief, probably for the best. (Wasn't there some promising research some years ago about the neurological substrate of faith?)
This is without argument and a case envisioned by Lewis. The trickier part is that when someone says to you "I worship Hitler" and you do not know the context in which they came to worship Hitler. What do you make of their statement? In an obvious effort to be charitable to people he otherwise admires, Lewis says that you should tell the person the bad stuff about the person(god) that they admire and see how they react. If they still admire the person, you know that something is wrong. If they stop, you can get on with admiring them.
What I think the confusion is here is that the typical Christian knows about and agrees with the objectionable stuff in advance. Putting aside whether the objectionable thing is necessary for Christianity, do all Christians know it and agree? At least as to eternal damnation, Lewis thinks not and calls the conversation around it the "neglected argument."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/636471
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/636480
I already explained that hell as a vehicle for divine justice emerged among Jews who were traumatized by defeat at the hands of Gentiles when their faith told them God should be protecting them. They didn't see the Gentiles punished in this world, so they arranged their punishment in the Hereafter.
The story of the Rich man and Lazarus shows that Christians adapted the idea for punishment of the wealthy.
Christianity was originally all about dealing with oppression.
Well yes, but there's also a bigger picture - we could also take the view that religions unexamined and not held to account may readily lead to bad decision making and primitive reactionary social policy - look at countries where religions officially persecute minorities for god. A constant vigilance is necessary because barbarism lies just below the surface of us all, with religious ideas regularly acting like an aphrodisiac for deficient actions.
I don't see that there is much difference between this and theists disparaging Daniel Dennett, say, for his eliminativism, and making a range of pejorative observations about his idiocy and the negative impact of those and other physicalist beliefs on truth, human flourishing and spirituality.
The last part of this was a rhetorical flourish I probably shouldn't have indulged. Sorry, gang.
I was thinking of this sort of thing from early in the thread:
Quoting Banno
We discuss ethical issues here. Is there any question about whether Christians and Muslims should be allowed to participate? It's hard to imagine, so I'm not sure what you meant there, @Banno. Can you clarify?
We've repeatedly discussed analogies between Christians and admirers of Hitler (starting with Fritz in Lewis's paper). I've promised @fdrake that I will get back to his analogy of admiring Mengele. Have I misunderstood the point being made here, or in calling Christians "advocates of evil"?
Presumably no one is calling for institutional sanctions against Christians, although the examples you gave recently were about job candidates. Can you clarify, @Banno, how you see someone who takes Lewis's argument to heart would put it into practice?
The topic was raised in a podcast I listen to regularly. There was no ulterior motive involved. The topic crosses my obvious interest in ethics and natural theology.
As I said in the OP:
Quoting Banno
Hence the title, which apparently a number of non-christians found offensive.
I reiterated this question in my next post:
Quoting Banno
My contention is that someone who believes in never ending punishment for limited offences has demonstrated a lack of ethical judgement, and hence one might treat their other moral views with some caution.
I do not advocate the persecution of christians and their families unto the sixth generation.
That's the sort of thing I will leave to god.
As I see it there are two distinctions to be made. First there are undoubtedly a certain number of people who believe that God will torture sinners for all eternity, who don't approve of that or take any pleasure in the thought of it, but are no doubt afraid, very afraid, of the Lord.
Then there are undoubtedly some others who both believe that God will torture sinners for all eternity, and who approve of that, even glory in it.
I think the first group warrant our pity, not our reprehension or scorn. The second group would seem to have lost something of the normal human moral compass. Should they be morally judged , though, if they are kind to others in this life? I would think not.
You say there are moral implications, but "implications" are only of import if they lead to actions, and only warrant reprehension if they lead to reprehensible actions.
That's helpful. Thanks.
Quoting Banno
Speaking for myself, as a non-Christian participant in the discussion, I was not offended by the title.
:roll:
Eternal torment:
There's another thread in the forum on nonmathematical infinity.
[quote=Brazil nightclub fire survivor (2013)]I was only there for seconds. It felt like an eternity.[/quote]
This fire survivor, let's call him X, experienced eternity but knew the time elapsed was only (a few) seconds.
Mirable dictu, hell is a place of fire which I suppose causes maximum pain. My belief is that when in (hell)fire, one experiences each insant/moment (infinity) rather than the length of time (seconds for X). Intense feelings (pain/pleasure) seem to have the power to reorient experience from lengths (finite time) to points (instants/moments of which there are an infinity).
If so, our (atheist friends) sojourn in hell is eternal only from a points perspective but finite in terms of actual timespan.
I think something important to distinguish here is 'judging' as in being judgemental (acting harshly, ostracism...), and being free to interrogate a belief (including even the morality of it). I realise it might sound like the cliché of an self-distancing academic, but I think there's a difference.
Quoting fdrake
I agree entirely with the sentiment, but the danger is the unfair treatment of those no less traumatised, but whose trauma lead them to a different, less well-labelled moral failing. I don't think 'Christian' is a very useful label for this, we should be aware all the time that people which are unduly touchy about having their beliefs interrogated may well be using them as crutches for surviving trauma. This is, in the main, my reason for the distinction above.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Indeed. Thus modelling is required. I've come across the odd 'God told me...' in my line of work (well, my daughter's in this case actually) very few, if any, show the level of certainty about the origin of the message you'd like to claim here. At the time there's enough conviction to act (we're talking about murder and attempted murder here - criminal insanity pleas), but on interview and occasionally in pre-act interactions, the doubt is written all over their face, their body language... Being spoken to directly by God is not nice. Maybe the occasional Guru, by the overwhelming majority are just tormented by the voice, by the doubt about it, as it clashes with what remains of their grasp of reality.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that's fair, but to achieve it we need an historical understanding of religion, not a metaphysical one.
For me, one of the most interesting parts of the Lewis article is not the argument itself, but the reminder of how 'hidden' it is. Arguments about whether God exists are two a penny, the misdoings of the Christian Church are well known, but what's less often accepted is the simple fact that we accept (even venerate in our political leaders), adherence to a religion which is fundamentally flawed. God does some abominable things in the bible - no doubt about that.
“A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death.” (Leviticus 21:9).
“But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.” (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
“Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” (Hosea 13:16)
“If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die.” (Deuteronomy 22:25)
Yes they can be interpreted in some way as to make them less abominable, but that's not the point. The point is that in any other circumstance can you imagine uncovering this kind of writing in a book one of our political leaders had in their briefcase - there'd be outcry, scandal, the politician concerned would be sacked and disgraced, interpretation go hang. It simply would not be tolerated in any other guise than religion, but religion is actually admired as a characteristic in our leaders. Why? History. Christianity has been with us for decades, so we've learned to live with it, learned to wear it as a badge on our sleeve, not to actually follow its edicts, but just as a token that we're the morally serious.
But it's a dangerous thing to use as such a token, for that very reason. It makes it difficult to dismiss homophobes, misogynists and child abusers - they use arguments from the same book we're using as a badge of moral authority.
Not wanting to repeat myself, but coming to respond to you here I note it's the same problem as I've just written about above. I think what is 'neglected' is the stepping-back from our historical acceptance of Christianity simply by familiarity. I think what Lewis wants us to do is put aside the historical familiarity and look at it with some more objectivity. Would we want our leaders associated with such a book? Would we be comfortable with their reassurances that they'd interpreted, the torture, misogyny, homophobia and abuse in such a way as to make it all admirable?
Step by step, this sounds plausible, but I think that’s only because it’s so selective.
“Hidden” from whom? Christian theologians have been arguing about the nature of hell for quite a while now. (I only made it through the first part of “The River of Fire”, a lecture from 1980 @baker recommended, and it’s eye-opening. I also found an orthodox blog that branded it heretical, but the author is talking about exactly this stuff as where Roman Catholic theology went wrong.) If there’s any substance to the “hidden” claim it’s that not many philosophers, or not many lately, have addressed the issue.
I think the main weakness is the connection between your last two sentences: Christianity is fundamentally flawed because of some things that are in the Bible. That’s hardly a new approach either. I read “Why I Am Not A Christian” as a young apostate, too. I know it’s their Holy Book and all, but if you tried this approach on someone of the caliber of, I don’t know, Niebuhr or Tillich or even C. S. Lewis, to say nothing of Kierkegaard or Aquinas, do you really think this would carry the day so easily? It has the flavor of the outsider coming in, without any real understanding of the tradition they’re jumping into, and telling Christians, “Here’s what you actually believe.” After all, it’s in the Bible, and they have to believe it! It’s the sort of thing you see when a physicist deigns to consider philosophy and finds it all in a muddle, which he can readily straighten out. (“Is this what you guys have been on about for a thousand years? Let me explain it to you ...”)
Quoting Isaac
All of which might just be me saying that you can’t have the latter without bothering with the former. There is a long and rich tradition of Christian thought I have close to zero interest in, except for some of the bits that have been picked out for me and labeled ‘philosophy’.
Back of my mind, this whole time, I’ve been thinking about Plato, because when I read Plato I feel completely alienated from the religious references — I don’t get it, I don’t get how it goes along with the nascent philosophy, I don’t know how to feel about it. We choose to just glide past them — some of us do, but some don’t and there’ve been some lengthy fights here lately about that gliding past — or treat them as picturesque or as an aspect of Plato’s historicity that’s not all that relevant, like what he usually ate for breakfast and that he lived in a world without bicycles.
But then we wander over to the church when we’re bored (or, lately, concerned about the politics that seems to be emanating thence) and point out all the weird shit in their holy book. And if the pastor says, we don’t spend a lot of time talking about hell here, we focus on helping our parishioners and our community, then we pronounce them not real Christians. It’s lazy (which is my complaint), but it’s probably some other unsavory things too.
I agree with the distinction, I think the point made in the article in the OP (and argued by @Banno) is closer to judging Christians though. Namely because once their beliefs are interrogated, it is arguably a sensible decision to take their ethical intuitions and reasoning abilities with, at best, a large pinch of salt. Something is definitely found wanting in the believer due to their belief, here.
Quoting Isaac
I don't understand this. What is the unfair treatment and the less well labelled moral failing?
this definiteness assumes that the believer can articulate the nuances of their own beliefs in a way that makes them coherent and understandable to the unbeliever. Even competent philosophers are incapable of articulating their beliefs so unambiguously.
Let me pronounce a thread heresy: everlasting =/= eternal.
If one supposes that the temporal world is created form 'outside', then one can reasonably imagine that it has a purpose. Humans are inclined to make themselves central to such a purpose, and being human myself, I don't have a major problem with that idea. So the Christian understanding is usually not one of reincarnation, but a one time chance to form a moral being through time. Death completes the process of moral formation, and the moral being is 'solidified' into a realm outside time and space, as an eternal being.
So if that is how things stand, it is necessarily the case without time, that whatever one has made of one's life for good or ill in this world is what one is stuck with - timelessly, eternally. Hell is being Hitler, or being unenlightened, with no more chance of reformation or redemption. It's not everlasting, because lasting is what time does, and there is no time. "It is what it is." "I am what I yam." "Before Abraham was, I Am."
I agree entirely here. It seems to me if you look at anyone's beliefs (closely enough), they're all smeared and ambiguous. Beliefs seem to me to be mostly conjured in their articulation, rather than an expression of a statement someone has held to be true for some time. Making the assumption that anyone can make anyone else understand something so personal might be implausible in itself.
I think this is especially true for those with faith - when someone says 'God is love', they've thereby rendered it very insensible to treat their beliefs like a system of statements with an underlying logic. Which isn't to say that their faith is incoherent or unintelligible, it's to say that it's more like a way of life than a logical structure.
Going down this avenue of thought, however, makes it difficult to distinguish the systems of belief of the believer and the non-believer, even though we have some (provisionally) fixed doctrines to pin to the former and the latter. In that regard, the doctrines which are commonly believed and which are criticised here perhaps don't fit into that deeply personal category above - some doctrines are mutually intelligible enough to be 'dogma' etc, and those are largely what's being considered.
I think it's true that the place that those items of dogma play in a believer's worldview can be incidental - and so stops the belief from being a mark on their character. But I don't think what would make them incidental is clear.
If sufficient ambiguity or consternation with a doctrine's proclamations is enough to make a faithful person's belief in those doctrines incidental in the above way, that makes a lot of sense, but it raises the issue of how you'd apply that selectively to the believer and not everyone.
That selective application is maybe what I was gesturing towards with the spicy 'faith is a marker of a transformed mind' take. Even then, though, that's talking about the presence of faith and not particular doctrinal commitments.
Quoting unenlightened
What relationship do you see this as having to the thread's argument that belief in Hell is a mark on their character or moral judgement? What application of a moral Black Spot does it block?
And I'll put in another plug for my idea that you could think of each moment of your life as forever, since there's a sense in which it is. Since God is love, I can think of Christian faith this way: I am called, every moment of my life, to act with love.
Appreciate you chiming in.
Quoting fdrake
Which I thought was obvious but kept forgetting, and anyway it's hard to talk about anything without getting sucked into logical analysis. (No, it's not always the right thing to do.)
Popular discourse. I mean, when our political leaders attend a mass, or the church presides over some national event, no-one mentions the issue. I don't doubt theologians discuss it, but that's kind of the point. There's an unresolved issue which could undermine the morality of the whole project (I assume it at least could otherwise the theologians wouldn't be tying themselves in knots over it). It just strikes me as odd that we treat, with such casual reverence, adherence to this religion which hasn't even quite sorted out yet how their main man isn't actually evil. As a mythology, it's very much 'come back when you've finished it'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Again, to be ultra clear, my argument is not that the words of the bible are damning and no counterargument could be constructed, it's that the words of the bible should not (given the esteem in which it's held) need to be carefully interpreted. You read the quotes right? It says that women who've had extra-marital sex should be stoned to death and children of non-believers put to the sword. I'm not interpreting it some convoluted way, that's quite literally what it says. Niebuhr, Tillich, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard and Aquinas can re-interpret post hoc all they like to justify their beliefs - and I'd be very supportive of that - at least it shows that they think there's something that needs re-interpreting when their book appears to say that girls should be stoned to death. But why the rest of us? Why the protected status, why the concern for Christians being morally judged? Their book's shit, I mean there can't really be any argument about that. It says that girls ought to be stoned to death for Christ's sake! That's a shit book.
In essence I'm not even judging Christians at this point, I'm judging us, as a secular society for holding such a religion in any esteem at all. If you're already steeped in it, then I can see you might prefer to , post hoc, re-interpret everything so that it's all fine. I don't have any problem with that. But the rest of us, with no good cause to undertake any of that 'interpretation'. A book which says girls ought to be stoned to death, and those for whom it's a moral guide, deserve little more than a disdainful harrumph. Surely you can see that - from a distance.
Religion aside, if I come to you with a book, say "hey Srap, this book's a great moral guide, the first instruction is to stone girls to death, but you have to 'interpret' that one, the rest is great..." I think you'd tell me where I could stick my book.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You might well be right there, yes. I suppose a purely historical approach would leave some questions unanswered, but I think I'm trying to get at the fact that Christianity is where it is in our culture for historical reasons. People believe it's edicts for cultural reasons, it's not metaphysically compelling.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Could be, but you'll have to join the dots a bit more for me. Why am I not allowed an opinion on whether they're Christian? I'm allowed an opinion on whether they're poor, or West Ham fans, or Journalists... If they say "we're all journalists, we write about the news quite a bit", and I say "I don't think you;re a proper journalist unless you're actually employed by a paper", that seems like a perfectly normal conversation. what are you seeing that's different with 'Christian'?
Quoting fdrake
It's tricky because the matter of what's moral is something we all have a legitimate stake in - and so becomes something I think it's fair to interrogate. But the consequence of concluding 'no it isn't' is judgemental in that first sense. I honestly don't see an easy way out, but if something seems immoral, my gut feeling is that our legitimate interest in that question, as a community, trumps any concerns about the consequences of the discussion. We have to have some way of being part of that discussion.
Quoting fdrake
I'm only saying that trauma has myriad consequences, not all of which are so easily labelled as Christianity. If we say of Christians "we ought tread carefully, their belief may be something of a crutch" then we're treating them a care we're not extending to say, UFO enthusiasts, or Qanon cultists whose beliefs may also be crutches to cope with some past trauma.
Just idly reading through some threads I notice our own version of God has already ruled on this matter.
Quoting Baden
Um, yeah, if you worship chocolate, I guess.
Well, yeah -- but maybe we should. How much more obvious can you make it that you need help?
My favorite bit of wisdom about parenting:
For what it's worth.
Yes. The mentalist approach is upside-down. Banno's belief analysis is incomplete; "I believe in justice." does not mean that I believe justice is real, or prevails, or is even possible. It is a commitment. Action flows from the commitment, and belief summarises action rather than guides it.
Quoting fdrake
Rather as one does not think of permanent tooth loss as a cruel and disproportionate divine punishment for not brushing one's teeth.
I mean, that's obviously not even close. The problem of hell is how to reconcile our ideas of it with the perfect goodness of God. Way out of my league here, but maybe one could imagine the jealous God of the Old Testament as a different sort of thing altogether, a god that can kick the ass of every other god, our guy, not necessarily the principle of goodness. (That local badass-god was long gone by the time the book was written, transmuted into something universal.)
(( Sorry for the little replies. Writing as I can squeeze it in. ))
I haven't been trying to give Christians any more deference than I would anyone else whose beliefs are quite foreign to me: I ought to put some work in before shooting my mouth off. Thoreau tells us that anyone who has lived truly is from another country -- so maybe there's no harm in generalizing the attitude.
Yes yes yes yes yes.
I don't know. First part is incontestably true, but the incarnation is pretty interesting, a god emptying himself of his divinity that he might be sacrificed (to himself). Big deal for the Greeks too with Dionysus.
Jumping in midstream here, so if what I say misses the point, ignore me.
The OT God is considered by all contemporary traditions as monotheistic, so he can't be posited as just the strongest god, but must be accepted as the only god (this is the monolotry versus monotheism distinction). The consequences of this distinction are significant. Yahweh is a significant departure from Zeus and the many other gods within that tradition.
If you begin with the notion that the text of the OT isn't meant literally and that it is meant as a guide to ethical behavior and a meaningful life, I don't think you'll be burdened by any particular passage. That is, read it with a positive bias and metaphorically, and you won't run into the problem of a horrible god unjustly punishing the weak.
No, no. That's good. I was practically begging for someone to correct me there. But I've sometimes wondered how to read the first commandment if not as a holdover from an older tradition.
Quoting Hanover
Sound. And is this the way it's commonly read and thought about, in your experience?
Quoting unenlightened
Also at @Srap Tasmaner - it seems there's some broad agreement regarding a Christian's faith, even when it doesn't behave like a system of statements linked by logic, can be summarised by beliefs. If we imagine that ascribing a belief to someone, including yourself, is ascribing a summary of that person's actions and commitments, what actions and commitments would be ascribed to a Christian by them:
( 1 ) agreeing with the statement "Sinners ought to burn in Hell forever"
( 2 ) worshipping a God under the aspect of a doctrine committed to ( 1 )
?
It seems, further, that such an ascription can misfire. If a person's commitments and actions are not summarised by the belief, then perhaps the ascription can be inaccurate. IE, someone can claim to believe whatever they like, but that claim is only accurate when it summarises their actions.
That seems to present similar issues to before; if someone who claims to believe in a God under the aspect of a doctrine, but doesn't share in its commitments. By that metric, they wouldn't believe in the doctrine, they would only claim to.
However, if the analysis was reframed to someone who really did believe that sinners ought to burn in hell forever, what would their conduct look like for that belief? Does it need to look like anything more than repeating the doctrines?
There's a prominent line of scholarship that differentiates between Yahweh and Elohim (El), making sense of the inconsistencies in the OT by describing it as the combining of books about two different gods. El was the nice guy, Yahweh was a bit of a Bastard. El presided over a council of gods, so monotheism was out. The books were later edited to make it appear monotheistic, post hoc.
Here's where Yahweh explains his name-change...
Exodus 6:2-3
I'm told El was a Canaanite god, Yahweh was Midianite.
I'm amazed you think children do not think deeply.
Different traditions read it differently. An orthodox Jew would read it literally. A reform metaphorically.
Quoting Isaac
You can't myth bust if you're opponent admits it's all myth to begin with. If you hold up the Bible and declare it's not what it presents itself to be, that the emperor wears no clothes, my snarky response would be to point out there is no emperor either. That whole story about an emperor with no clothes never happened. George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree and the native Americans didn't enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with the settlers.
I'm looking for existential meaning when I read the book. Stop pointing out the trees. I'm learning about the forest.
I think the argument from Akhenaten to modern day monotheism is weak. That was the belief of a single kingdom for a short period of time as opposed to Judaism's evolutionary advancement and long term acceptance. But anyway, such is ancient history. Much speculation.
It's a misconception that Zoroastrianism was monotheistic. That was propogated by some German guy who was intent on making Zoroastrianism attractive to his audience. They actually had tons of gods.
Do they?
The Gathas praise a single god.
The Persians were like Hindus (to whom they were related), they always had a lot of gods.
If the Gathas only talk about one god, what about Angra Mainu, the evil god? Was he not in the original texts?
So there were three deities originally.
Satan isn't a god. He's a fallen angel. This is from one of my books on Zoroastrianism:
"Such concerns were taken up by Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla (1875–1956), who came from a priestly family in Surat. By 1905, Dhalla had scraped together enough donations to travel to New York and study for a doctorate at Columbia University. His mentor for nearly four years was A.V. Williams Jackson, who held the Chair in Indo-Iranian Studies. Dhalla wrote his dissertation on the Nyayishn, the Avestan prayer songs to the yazatas. After his initiation as high priest in Karachi, Dastur Dhalla wrote several seminal works on the texts, history and evolution of the religion, in which he combined a rationalist ‘reformist’ approach with Western exegetical analysis, claiming that an original ethical monotheism revealed to Zarathushtra had been corrupted by polytheism and superstition. Dhalla is sometimes referred to as the ‘Protestant dastur’ because of his use of Western Christian terminology and rationalism, and his distrust of obsolete ritual, but as a high priest his devotion to his religion was also expressed through the ritual performance of the Yasna and the recitation of prayers to the yazatas, as well as compassionate concern for the welfare of his flock."
Some author I read said Zoroastrians always had a lot of gods. It's a living religion, so of course there's conflict. Need the academic view...
Yep.
The mentality of good and evil were incarnated in later versions. The original was, so far as we can tell, monotheistic.
Is this the view of scholars? I wouldn't take the word of a religious reformer.
"Zoroaster carried out a “reform” of Iranian polytheism, asking his followers to change their ways and beliefs but not to throw away all they had. Consequently, lesser divine beings or “gods” and many old rituals remained, to the dismay of modern European Christian scholars who were looking for a “pure” monotheism.". -- Mario Fererro
Quoting frank
The reforms took place long after his life; he may have lived as far back at the tenth C. BC, hundreds of years prior to his becoming the dominant religion.
Is it important to you that monotheism only be traced to Judaism?
No. Zoroastrians and Greeks influenced Judaism. I just gave you a religion scholar saying Zoroaster, who was a priest of the polytheistic Mazdaism, allowed his followers to keep their lesser gods. ?
Quoting Banno
If the father, the son, and the holy ghost are three separate entities, Christianity is a
Polytheistic religion.
Christians claim the trinity is three in one and therefore monotheistic. If you're not Christian, though, and reject the trinity as incoherent, I think the conclusion is that Christianity is polytheistic.
I would conted it is.
Willy Wonka? Complete power within his domain, cruel and excessive punishments for fairly minor transgressions, being both the creator of temptation and the punisher for giving in to it... I think your avatar makes a good candidate God.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Indeed.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Very nice.
Quoting unenlightened
But it is cruel and disproportionate for one who has it in their power to make it not the case. If my kids refused to brush their teeth, but I could slip some magic powder in their juice which prevented tooth decay anyway, it would definitely be cruel and disproportionate of me not to do so, and let their teeth rot, just so I could say "I told you so".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
...yet...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
...sounds exactly like what I described. Someone, only now, 2000 years later, still coming up with possible ways in which God isn't a dick. It's pretty much exactly what I'm saying. "Come back to us when you've finished working your religion out and we'll see if it's a useful moral guide then". what's of no use is claiming it's a moral guide, then when God's unarguably tyrannical behaviour is raised say "I'm sure that's all got a perfectly coherent explanation, give me a minute..."
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wouldn't for a minute think you'd do so deliberately, but I think it's the result nonetheless. I see an admirable amount of trying to see things from other people's point of view, throughout much of the forum, but the special pleading, I'm targeting here is the assumption that they've probably got it worked out, that we'd be ham-fisted in our interference, that we (like a psychologist on a philosophy forum) would be out of our depth. That is not an assumption I see with other sets of beliefs. No-one is approaching (to use an apposite example) say, active inference views of perception with the assumption that any contribution they make would be nothing more than a clumsy, outsider, speaking out of turn about something they know nothing about. No. There's a most endearing enthusiasm to get stuck right in.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. Maybe my old behaviourist commitments seeping through, but of the two choices (people believe just whatever they say they do -vs- people believe what they act as if they do) I'd choose the latter as the more pragmatic way for a community to proceed. The main reason being that we'd end up with a need to define and make use of that second parameter anyway. If we imposed the first as the definition of 'belief' it's role in any conversation would be relegated to a negation so that we could talk about 'the thing that's like a belief but not', which is of far more importance to us.
Quoting fdrake
Hence our problem (well mine anyway). I can't see a way in which a priest, considering a little 'extra-curricular choir practice' with the boys would actually think "I'll be tortured in hell for eternity if I do this, but at least I'll get my rocks off for a five minuets - whatever, I'll do it". No-one's thinking that way. Which means either a) they don't really truly believe the punishment they claim they do, or b) they really do think it's all about doing the rites properly and not about sin at all (even worse), or c) they're super psyched for choirboys and are prepared to face an eternity of torment for the pleasure. Of the three, I think the former is the more likely. The idea of an eternity of torment for any transgression is just as implausible to them as it is to us (parsimony again, if I can explain their behaviour with beliefs we could share, rather than incommensurable ones, I'll do so).
But that leaves Lewis's argument in trouble. Because the best explanation is they don't even believe what they say they believe. They're not really worshipping a torturer. It's all just an act to get to wear a socially (or psychologically) useful badge. So does the moral argument still have any force?
I think it does, but perhaps in a way that diverges from Lewis. I think the moral argument is to ask "how far are we prepared to let such token badges go before we step in?" If people play at believing in eternal damnation whist actually being perfectly moral citizens, then maybe we can let that slide. But if people's play at believing in eternal damnation leads them to mistreat those who would fit into that category (to make the play all the more real), then we might want to put a stop to the game before it gets out of hand.
Just to clarify, since there's been a lot of generalisation in place of specifics here, I'm not saying that all religious belief is make believe, I'm specifically saying that for those beliefs which seem incongruous with a person's normal moral sentiment, the most parsimonious explanation is that they're not really beliefs at all, just tokens.
As I said before, I think most rationalisations are post hoc checks. We believe first, find out why later. I don't see any reason to make exceptions for the religious. I'm sure that "a benevolent God created the world" for some is quite a good post hoc explanation for why they feel so happy looking at a sunset. But "a vengeful God will punish minor transgressions with eternal torture" just isn't an explanation for any belief about they way the world is, so I doubt it plays such a role.
Quoting Hanover
Can I ask why? Why would you search for existential meaning? Why there? The book opens with a vengeful God putting babies to the sword, advocating the stoning to death of just about anyone who has sex without his say so, demanding sacrifices etc. What is it, after reading all that, that makes you think "I bet there'll be some great existential nuggets in here, if only I can get past all the blatant misogyny and homophobia and see the bigger picture"?
There's a great 'big picture' message in the Lord of the Rings too, but very few babies being put to the sword by the main protagonist - and it's got fight scenes.
Maybe it’s this: Christianity has an outsize presence in the politics of my country, especially where I live, in the Bible belt. It’s been on my mind — a lot. (It’s entirely possible that what I’m concerned about isn’t even exactly Christianity anymore, but a heretical offshoot of Christianity. This is the Jesus and John Wayne idea, but I’ve heard a few variations at this point.)
For some generations now, young intellectuals have been cheerfully leaving religion behind as they went off to college — we had science and the arts and humanities and no need for religion, which we used to assume belonged to humanity’s infancy and would fade away. That didn’t work out. There are a lot of us who face no question about whether to be for or against Christianity and just about all religion; we’re against. But the world has changed, and we can’t just ignore it as we intended; now we need to understand it. I don’t have a problem with ‘external’ approaches, in general, with doing psychology or sociology of faith, that sort of thing; but that ought to include some phenomenology (at least as the term is used in qualitative social science) of the life of believers, else those theories might hook up to some fantasy of Christian life instead of the real thing.
Christian doctrine has no particular urgency for me, but how real Christians live does — they’re people, after all, and fellow citizens, and quite likely my political enemies. I think that might explain why I’ve approached this discussion as I have.
Why is the former more likely? It strikes me as equally plausible that either they accept the doctrine that one is justified by faith (and so belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation regardless of what evils one has engaged in, including child abuse) and so they don't believe they are risking eternal punishment by engaging in child abuse/rape, or that their decision to engage in child abuse simply isn't a rational one involving any calculation of the relevant risks (either of legal repercussions, or eternal punishment) at all.
And there certainly appear to be plenty of Christians who do behave as if they genuinely believe that unbelief can/will result in eternal punishment, going to great lengths to try to convert friends and loved ones and displaying apparently genuine concern over the fate of non-believer's eternal souls.
What role do you think cognitive dissonance plays in all this? I think maybe you've missed a fourth option that the expressed beliefs are put by the wayside contextually, no matter how hard one's current conduct contradicts the suppressed belief. I don't think there's anything about belief that requires such a contradiction to be felt without also feeling the connection between one's horrible actions and one's noble beliefs - suppressing the connection between the two seems precisely a form of dissonance.
The role I think that possibility plays is that it actually seems to block the direct transfer of a moral Black Spot from believing in the horrible crap in the bible to conduct, since someone very well could have the expression of of belief in the horrible crap occur in completely different contexts than it would be acted upon. The commitment to the belief is manifested in worship, rather than doing something tractably horrible.
But that still doesn't address the relationship that @Banno seemed to be gesturing towards regarding holding a belief and that belief imbuing a propensity for action to someone. Albeit a downgrade from 'believing in Hell is a sin' to 'believing in Hell is a little sus'.
Take a look at Religious Credence is not Factual Belief
The argument here is that religious belief is more make-believe than factual belief.
This theory explains why religious belief is inured to rational discourse.
Your mooted paedophilic priest (as if that would ever happen) keeps his religious beliefs and his beliefs about little boys in different boxes in his mind.
Quoting fdrake
The dissonance would only be exposed when the priest is held accountable by others.
Anyway, the article is interesting in itself, providing further analysis of differing sorts of belief.
Very true. But their contents are interchangeable. The religious belief of one can be factual belief for others, and the other way round.
God(s) can be fact and facts can be god(s).
You can't lock someone up on the suspicion that they might do something "problematic". Would you want to live in a society where that was common practice?
So we agreed that a child molester doesn't deserve eternal torture. What does he deserve? How do you calculate that? I kind of doubt you have an answer. What does that suggest?
Exposure within his community, removal of any privileges granted him as a priest, and prosecution under the law.
What does he deserve? No punishment will repair the damage he has done.
So, now your turn - Do you have an answer for your own question? I kind of doubt you have an answer. What does that suggest?
That I don't have a handle on the finer points of justice? I don't think much in terms of deserving things myself. I was raised to be thankful for the bare minimum. Capitalism?
Do leftist understand justice a little better?
But there’s also the question of what he gets — if he genuinely seeks forgiveness from God, he’ll get it.
When I say the molester doesn't deserve eternal torment, I seem to suggest I know enough about what justice demands that I can criticize. On closer examination, my insights are few.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Or he might hang out in Purgatory until his relatives pay the priest an indulgence. :joke:
Did you read the paper, would you mind briefly summarizing the criteria for a factual belief as opposed to a religious one?
(I don't mean to be lazy, I just can't read on a computer screen for too long before it starts to give me a headache, and it looks like the relevant section on Van Leeuwen's definition/criteria of factual belief is 10+ pages long)
This is one of those things that you can’t understand without having done it or being around those who encourage you to do so. It is sort of like your description of the book; within one sentence you get the contents of the book entirely wrong, but feel very assured that your description would ring true with someone who has actually spent time looking for meaning in the book. Maybe if the people summing up the book said things to you like, “It is a text with which our fathers and our fathers’ fathers and our fathers’ fathers’ fathers have engaged with for generations in order to make sense of their existence and their meaning/role in the world. Within its pages, countless people, learned, wise, and daft alike, have found wisdom. Sit awhile and read. Consider what others have written and said about it. See the ways in which our people are both great and detestable, the ways in which individuals and communities act to create a place in the world even as they are fallible. What matters in these stories is not whether they happened, but that those who came before you thought them worthy of attention and passing on to the next generation.” you would be more sympathetic to those who engage with it. Meaning making is something we do - if you come to the book not looking for meaning but for reason to object, you will find what you are looking for just the same as the person looking for meaning will find what they are looking for.
Other people read something and pass along their impression of it, but that doesn’t mean you will have the same impression if you read it. Sure, you can rely upon others to find the good stuff on your behalf and more efficiently communicate it without passing along the bad stuff, but you’ll never know what you would have found had you engaged with it yourself.
We can take any book and use it as our material for meaning making. Perhaps you prefer book Z over book X. Will they both have you think about the same things in the same ways? Probably not. Is there some categorical way to say that X is better than Z for purpose W? Probably not. What the Bible has going for it (even if it is the Christian one) is that it includes many stories with many people in many situations - some which play out as we would expect and some that are radically different. It is dissimilar from other books of the same length precisely because it is not a single narrative or a single authorial voice. Furthermore, the book explicitly engages with the sorts of questions that we generally consider have existential import - how to live the good life, how to make community, why we are born and why we die.
In the end, the flavor of religion (or religious text) that you pick to engage with can be thought of as that which best satisfies your aesthetic sensibilities. Someone who was raised Christian in a Christian community may feel partial to reading the Christian Bible. Someone who was raised in China may feel partial to Confucius and Lao Tzu. Will those two people end up thinking of the world the same way? Almost certainly not, but it is likely that by engaging with material that your community deems important, the conclusions you reach (and the conversations that you have) make you more functional within the community that you live.
The Bible is what it is. I do not make apologies for it or recommend it to you. But if you want to talk about it or the people that use it in their meaning making, I suggest that you try a bit more charity and little less cynicism.
Initially, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that ancient religion typically stoned people, at least not for the past 2000 years. If you want to use the biblical accounts as evidence that the stoning actually occurred, you would be taking a literalist approach to the OT and would be accepting is historicity. To prove the actual existence of stoning, you need a real historical source, not the OT.
The rabbinic view of the death penalty made its use so limited, that it was de facto impossible to ever occur. For example, the person who was committing the crime must have been instructed at the time he was committing it of the possibility of the death penalty and he'd have to acknowledge understanding it. The Talmud lists the last death penalty as having occurred in 28 CE. The exact date is debated, but we're looking at an ancient religion that was not quite as barbaric as you're suggesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Judaism
Regardless of that, you've asked a few questions I'll respond to:
Why I would search for meaning is in itself a teleological question, asking for what purpose would I make such an inquiry, which presupposes that meaning matters. So my initial question back to you would be why do you seek meaning in my behavior unless you're assuming meaning matters. But, to answer your question more directly, I want to understand the meaning of life because it's personally important to me for likely the same reasons it's been important to milliions of people over the past thousands and thousands of years.
I think Frankl answered this question better than me, describing the significance of the "will to meaning."
https://medium.com/mind-cafe/7-viktor-frankl-quotes-to-motivate-you-to-find-your-purpose-2ece0c64f1d8#:~:text=It%20was%20based%20on%20Frankl%E2%80%99s%20observation%20that%20those,find%20meaning.%20He%20called%20it%20%E2%80%98will%20to%20meaning%E2%80%99.
I look to the bible for meaning because there is a rich tradition over the millennia of scholars using it as a means to derive meaning and purpose. I can benefit from those efforts and that wisdom by reading what they've said. I also grew up in a Jewish environment, so the wisdom from that tradition comes to me with a higher degree of credibility than other sources, which is why people typically remain in the traditions they were raised in.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the book opens with God putting babies to the sword. That's not how it opens.
In any event, you are not limited to using the Bible to search for meaning. You could use the Koran, the Book or Morman, the New Testament, Dianetics, Lord of the Rings, Winnie the Pooh (which was attempted in The Tao of Pooh), or even Green Eggs and Ham to find meaning and inspiration. I'm not claiming that all other traditions are wrong, but will admit to multiple paths to finding meaning. I do think if you choose the Lord of the Rings as your primary source of inspiration, you're going to be limited in terms of the scholarship you can rely upon for your learning and there won't be much of a community you can share your beliefs and discussions with. There's also the possibility you won't take your mission quite so seriously, as it's doubtful your identity will tied to the belief system of Lord of the Rings as perhaps a Christian's identity is tied to her belief. If your quest is the search for meaning, and you honestly have found it through the Lord of the Rings in a comprehensive way, I'd find it unusual, but I wouldn't think it impossible.
None of this is meant to excuse any bad conduct on the part of any religious group. Subjugation on the basis of gender, sexual abuse, physical abuse, or any other criminal behavior is criminal whether in the name of religion or not.
When I was a kid, we used to pray for the souls in purgatory. Have they brought back indulgences?
Anyway, after twenty pages of the iniquitous punishment God doles out, I thought for a change people could be offended by God not being nearly harsh enough.
But this comment again literalizes the metaphysical content of the religious document. Yes, you are correct, the world was not created in 6 days, there was no ark that housed the entire world's creatures, and the sea did not part. There therefore is no actual hell. To the extent some accept these simple literalist notions, you've made your point that they are the thoughts of the unsophisticated or those who were raised in such insular environments, they cannot fathom there might be another perspective. You've put as many nails in that coffin as you need to.
Let's move then away from the metaphysical and to the ethical and existential and disregard the literalism you fall back on. We're looking for meaning, purpose, good, and evil and the meaning of life well lived, none of which are described as "factual beliefs" in the way you're using that phrase.
This is one of those comments that sounds really good to someone that thinks of religion as that which is left over after everything else is carved away, but really strange to someone that thinks of all beliefs as occurring within a religious paradigm. Liberalism (and “secularism” in general) has done a great job at letting Christians understand religion to be something private and particular, but much of the rest of the world tends to understand that religion is all encompassing and pervading all aspects of thought.
Is religious belief that Jesus (or some substantially similar character by whatever name) walked the earth? Is that factual belief? In what way do the claims about Jesus render a belief vis-a-vis his existence religious and non-factual? Is the belief in existence of Jesus the sort of thing that responds to evidence?
Do you, perhaps, mean that personal revelation is non-responsive to truth or evidence? Is it that the existence of hell is not currently subject to the typical forms of scientific inquiry that make it non-evidential? I just don’t understand the move to make religious belief of a different category than other sorts of belief. We have our experiences and our minds and they interact in some way that ends up in talk of beliefs.
While I know that you won’t equate knowledge with belief, if someone says, “I believe X”, it doesn’t matter what the content of X is - to the extent we care about their belief, we will respond with the same sorts of questions about how they came to that belief and whether they have warrant to maintain it (even if they are doxasist involuntarists as suggested earlier) in light of A, B, and C. Saying, “I believe religious X” doesn’t change the conversation in the slightest around how/why that belief is maintained, it just gives you additional information about the belief being discussed.
That makes sense. I suppose the matter is more pressing in some places than others. Not a lot of radical Evangelicals here in Cornwall.
I thought I'd explained that (or at least why I think that), but I did tuck it away in some parentheses, so 'll just highlight it.
Quoting Isaac
I basically don't see any reason to jump to a weird incommensurable belief when their behaviour can be explained using perfectly commensurable beliefs. It's just a pragmatic thing.
Quoting Seppo
Plausible, yes, but that kind of comes under the category of my (1), just with better post hoc justification. The point in my (1) was that they don't believe they will be condemned for eternity for committing the act in question. What they do in fact believe instead wasn't really relevant at the time. Interesting take on that though. I would make Lewis' argument more compelling becasue the last thing we want is dangling a story in front of people whereby they can get away with child abuse.
Quoting Seppo
Here I disagree. I don't think 'rational' enters into it. I believe that my cup is in the kitchen. I don't engage in any rational thought process to work that out, it's 'already there' as a conclusion in no doubt. It's still a belief. I get that some belief (such as punishment) might just not become relevant if one doesn't link up the consequences, but I think a priest, in a cassock, in a church, with a choirboy is going to have a hard time forgetting about his religion. That's some poor memory.
Quoting Seppo
Again, I'm only looking to see if the behaviour can be explained by more commensurable beliefs. I've seen the same enthusiasm for getting people to drink (in drinking cultures, such as student halls, or male sports fans) "Come on! Have a drink, it's Friday...etc", or even getting people to watch the latest Netflix series. When people have made a commitment to something which involves either strong abstinence, or strong abandon of such, there's an equally strong incentive to pull others in, as both abstinence and indulgence are harder to cope with in communities who do not join in (problems of temptation and moral approbation respectively).
Yes, I'd forgotten that. I'm suspicious of certain forms of cognitive dissonance though. It's not going to be easy to explain why without going into great detail about my theories of beliefs systems, but I'll try to be brief. Say if someone had a belief that one should exit the house by the back door, and also a belief that one should exit the house by the front door, and contextually they continued to switch between the two with a suppressive dissonance each day. If we model beliefs as propositions then we have a model including dissonance - but as merely propositions, where's the tension? At t1 the proposition is x, at t2 the proposition is y. Tension arises when we expect a person to act according to these propositions (and they can't act according to both). So we could look at what it is that they act as if were the case. They act as if it were the case that sometimes the back door and other times the front door were the most appropriate doors to exit the house by. Now we have a statement of their belief which is consistent with their behaviour. What we now need is an understanding of they post hoc rationalise that belief. In the case I described (and the priest, in your case), it's their post hoc rationalisation that's flawed. Instead of rationalising a perfectly consonant story involving context, they've rationalised it as two stories which cannot both co-exist in a unified narrative.
It's an approach which is a necessary model for my further work, so for me it's quite an embedded commitment, but (as an aside entirely) it has proven to have some useful therapeutic applications, so not entirely academic.
Interesting piece (but see by response to fdrake above for my concerns about the pragmatism of seeing beliefs as 'boxable' at all). I think this ties in with what I was arguing about religious belief being more like a token than an treatment of states of affairs, but I think it's more complex that that. Religion seems to be a mixture of several different type of belief propositions.
Some undoubtedly (in my mind) is mere token. Propositions with little to no belief content (no tendency to act as if...), we can see that in some manifestations of eternal damnation, but I think it's be a mistake to lump all religious belief into this type. Some is clearly analogous to non-religious irrational beliefs (such as sentimental values, ritual behaviour, good luck charms etc). Much is associated with externalising narratives for conflicting desires (one is internal 'base', the other must come from God). Some are re-reinforcement labelling (adding a more powerful narrative to 'authorise' otherwise challenged activities - slavery, misogyny clerical power etc) Here we're not really dealing with particularly foundational beliefs, but rather just strategy beliefs (if I do x, it will get me y).
It's a real mess. But then so are the secular so...
I don't see any evidence for these kinds of assumptions, but I'll take it on advisement.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I quoted directly from the book. It's in English, right?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Yeah, I probably would. But that assumes that any of that is actually true. You're no less ascribing motives and models of people's approaches. No less constructing a narrative about religion and it's place in society. I'm not disputing that other narratives are available. I'm asking why someone chose one over the other.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
You don't think that not having instructions to stone girls to death is an advantage? I'd say any book which didn't have such instructions had an advantage over one which did. This is the question I'm asking. If "We can take any book and use it as our material for meaning making" then why on earth choose one which contains such horrific misogyny, homophobia and abuse?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Seriously? Have you never read an anthology?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
But this is the point. It doesn't. It says we should stone girls who've had sex outside of marriage. That's not, under any decent person's morality, "how to make community". So barely a quarter of the way in, you have to already know how to make a community so that you know that instruction isn't to be taken literally. But if you already know, then what are you reading the book for?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Why? Or more accurately, why specifically? Do you think your responses are being charitable to those here who believe Christianity is a misogynist, homophobic crock of shit? I don't think so (nor do I particularly expect them to). It's more of the special pleading we saw earlier - Christianity ought to be properly understood before engaging with it. I'm a psychologist (academic, not clinical). I have theories about things like beliefs, perception and the role of social narratives (my general fields). Should I demand the same from anyone engaging in those areas on these threads? That they should all thoroughly read my papers and books before engaging (and when doing so read all my critics and supporters analysis to make sure they've understood it right)? That, further, they should all attend a few of my lectures, really engage in my belief system, perhaps work for a while in my research team, get a feel for what it's like to believe what I believe about the role of social narratives in belief formation. Then, and only then, can they comment on what I say I believe about it?
I think that's daft. I think if I say something here about social narratives, in perfectly cogent English, people are free to tell me it's bollocks (or not) on the basis of what the English words mean in the context I said them.
Happy to do that, I don't think I really had such a notion in the first place... but consider it disabused.
Quoting Hanover
To better predict your future behaviour (though not you personally, of course, I doubt we'll ever meet - a general picture suffices).
Quoting Hanover
How would you know? That there's a rich tradition of trying, is indisputable, but how would you measure their success? After all, if there was a rich tradition of trying and failing, you'd want to steer clear of that particular book for your task, no?
Quoting Hanover
It was a rhetorical device, I just mean it's quite early on in the book, Hosea I believe.
Quoting Hanover
Indeed. So why the Bible (given it's got such horrific aspects to it)? It seems your answer is about tradition, am I reading that right? It's a book with a long tradition of being used that way and that helps you personally to use it that way, yes?
If God (doesn't exist) is rejected, anything is permissible. "Anything" is the key word (limitless possibilities = [math]\infty[/math] offenses on the cards, ladies & gentlemen). The appropriate response/punishment has to be, proportionately, [math]\infty[/math]).
If anything is permissible there's no such thing as justice.
I did. I started a religion where your relatives will be punished for their sins in an infinite tickle box. You have to pay me $8.95 to get them out.
There are passages in the Bible which indicate that God has predetermined each man to his particular fate. Indeed many Christians believe this to be the case and I have personally known believers who considered themselves "blessed" to have been chosen to be believers. Of course this line of thinking means that the non-believers were also predestined to be non-believers. Considered in this respect, it appears that God has created certain men specifically to burn in hell for eternity. It puts a strange twist on this question of the moral character of Christians. Conversion would be more akin to waking up to a predetermined fate.
Regardless, there is a perverse rationality at play for Christians who try to convert non-believers, because they genuinely believe said non-believers will suffer eternal punishment. At least there is a rationality there, but the Christians who believe in eternal damnation and yet don't bother trying to convert others would seem to be more morally reprehensible.
I’m not sure what to say next that would have any value as philosophy, so I’ll give a couple examples.
A very nice piece of qualitative sociology is Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Her method is to try to come up with a sort of ‘story behind the beliefs’, and it’s interesting stuff. It’s another way you might try to deal with inconsistency you perceive that your subjects don’t.
There’s a preacher I know slightly, has a small church in semi-rural Georgia, and like a lot of communities theirs has a noticeably larger immigrant population than it used to, mostly from Mexico I think. Some of his longtime parishioners came to him to say they didn’t really like what he’d been doing, letting in all these new folks. “Which ones do you want me to chase off?” he asked, and they got all embarrassed, we didn’t mean that, it’s not like it, but he stood his ground, and told them it’s exactly like that. “Who do you want me to turn away?” (You might think the shame would be enough, but casual racism has been so normal here for so long that it’s tough to get around. What did the trick, he told me, was that he’s known some of these people since they were born, so he could say, “These people are new to our community and they come to us because they need a little help. As I recall, you’ve needed a little help now and then too.” And then he can remind them of such times in their lives. Putting it like that, he told me, he could see the light go on, and they could see that these new folks weren’t really so different from them.)
I don’t think you have to be a Christian to be this virtuous, but it’s a fact that being Christian is his way of being virtuous, and I think it would be just as big a mistake to say he’s virtuous despite being Christian. What about his parishioners? Aren’t they Christians too, but bad? I think they’re just not quite as far along as their pastor, and Christians do very much talk about being a Christian as a struggle to be the sort of person God wants you to be, not something anyone’s ever finished with. As it turns out, a lot of evangelical pastors have found their congregations changing, becoming more political and less religious, in a sense, and not all of them are handling it quite as well as my guy. A lot are quitting because they’re exhausted.
No you didn’t and it’s not in English, but translation will suffice.
Read the first story and show me the babies put to the sword. Or the second or the third or the fourth or the…. You get my point. Find the first story that supports your sentence and demonstrate that is how the book “opens”. Sentiment is great and all, but when verifiable claims about the book, it would be nice if those claims were accurate.
Yeah, I really don't want to be read as implying that no good can come out of religion. I've heard other stories like your pastor, but then people (as you have done) will say " of course the secular folk have done much good to", so I find it hard to see Christianity as playing any role here other than a narrative, a way of being kind, a story to explain the struggle, the need to help others, the falling back into bad habits, the group identity, the value of a spiritual leader... But one narrative among many, yes?
So we can look at those narratives and question how good they are at what they do. When people want to feel part of a group, want to find some meaning to the whole charity, forgiveness, compassion thing...do we want them reaching for Christianity as their story (the one with all the misogyny, homophobia and abuse in it too), or would we rather they reach for something a little less fraught? Less at risk of leading people astray.
See the trouble with narratives (post hoc though they are) is that we don't like to have too many of them. So there's a tendency to view other things through the same story. If people use a Christian narrative to make sense of their feeling of belonging, compassion, charity... they're more likely to reach for it to make sense of their feelings of othering and disgust at something like homosexuality, more likely to reach or it to make meaning of their sense of fear when people live less retrained lives (sex outside marriage, experimenting with drugs etc). It's not such a good story to have around to help people make sense of those aspects of their lives because it's answers there are not so friendly.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic in assuming we've any control at all over the prevalence of such a powerful narrative as Christianity, but narratives have been changed before
I'm no bible scholar. If my quotes are inaccurate I'm happy to be corrected.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
“Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” (Hosea 13:16)
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Not really, no. These things are in the bible - or at east the version I'm looking at
“A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death.” (Leviticus 21:9).
“But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.” (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
“If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die.” (Deuteronomy 22:25)
This is a bit like going in a circle. The audience that already finds the book meaningless finds it meaningless (or even evil). You don’t have to talk about it or advance any new proof to convince them of their position. Unless you are just sitting around having a laugh fest with your friends about how stupid the book is, I’m not sure what you get from taking another pass at the book. It isn’t even like this is Mystery Science Theater 3000 where you take crap source material and add some funny context that makes the crap you are reading somehow worth it. If the book sucks and has no value to you, great. As the saying goes - don’t yuck my yum.
If, however, you wish to speak to people that find meaning in the book, you have to speak to them about the book in ways that they will relate to. Everyone gets that in the first hundred lines or so god has destroyed the world by flood because god did a shit job of creating it in the first place. It is what the words say and you aren’t going to get far in denying that it says what it says. The argument is not about what it says, but what it means; what the value is in including that story both on its own and within the greater context/s of the book. If you aren’t willing to engage with the material on that level (be it as “because this is the unerring word of god as related to *** and then written down, copied, and translated from then till now under the guidance of god” or “because that was a cultural creation story of the region of the people who told the story and the editors/codifiers of the book had to include to maintain legitimacy” or any other such attempt to understand the material), you aren’t having a conversation with the people that find meaning in it.
There is no special pleading about pointing out ingroup and outgroup dynamics and the general context in which messages are more likely to be received positively (or accepted as the case, if you prefer). You don’t have to understand Christianity to reject it. You could be wrong or right in your rejection, but that is your choice. You don’t have to understand Christianity to say things like, “The Catholic Church in the 20th century willfully hid evidence of priests sexually abusing children” or that the Catholic Church has exercised its political influence and wealth to limit women’s ability to exercise reproductive choice. There are lots of facts about Christianity (or at least specific groups/actors) that can be understood without engaging with meaning in the Bible. Decontextualizing text is not, however, something that fits into the bucket of “facts” quite the same way.
If you want to talk about why someone reads a story about god destroying the world because god does a shit job at creating the world, you can’t just keep reading the words as if they, in their isolation, will answer the question. Foisting your opinion of what the words mean (e.g. “It is a literal telling of mythic history and the dinosaurs prove that the story is untrue and the Bible is a lie!”) does not mean anything to someone who cares about the story because your meaning is so far from theirs. But again, discussing meaning in the book is a separate activity than evaluating the role of Christianity in society or the behavior of individual Christians. Sure, understanding their meaning as they do might help you explain their behavior better, but since you aren’t interested in understanding that meaning, you aren’t really that interested in using it for explanatory purposes.
For what it is worth, one can be charitable both to the Christian finding meaning in the Bible and the secular-Christian rejecting the Bible. One can find merit in both positions (and even agree with one or the other) without willfully misrepresenting one position or the other. Texts can (and do) support multiple understandings.
What you perhaps misunderstand about what I am writing is that I am not suggesting that meaning is contained within a text or that authors can convey specific meaning in words. What you intend when you write your articles is entirely independent of what I understand when I read them. We may have overlap in behavior (and therefore presume that there is overlap in meaning) in response to the written words, but each time someone reads (or remembers) text, they are constructing meaning for themselves. There is good reason to believe that if I want to know what YOU meant when you wrote your article, that I need to know lots of things about you (your influences, your other writings, what you have said about what you wrote, etc.) in order to more (or most) closely approximate your meaning. But then I may not care a lick about you and be contented with understanding your writings independent of any awareness of things about you. Both methods lead to an interpretation of your writings, but one cannot objectively say which is right and which is wrong, just that they are different.
I am simply pointing out to you that someone interpreting the Bible can understand it to mean something different than you do. You cannot dictate to people that the Bible MEANS something because you say so. If you want to engage with their meaning (be it to describe or critique), you need to identify their meaning in the first place rather than supplanting it with your own.
I can’t help but think so, yes.
Quoting Isaac
When I was young, I thought the main problem with Christianity was that it wasn’t true — just a culturally transmitted delusion, wishful thinking and fantasy. I’m a bit more inclined to see it now as you describe here, with the caveat that the narrative Christians use to structure their world may not be the one in the Bible, or in the Catechism, no matter what they say. It’s connected to the Bible, but in a great number of different ways, and it’s complicated. I think that’s fine. We all agree there isn’t just one narrative in the Bible to start with, so why pretend it’s simple and people have a simple relationship to it?
I get the reformist impulse — Jefferson, the Enlightenment slave-owner — made his own version of the gospels where he snipped out all the supernatural bits to present Jesus of Nazareth as a guy worth listening to, not a divine presence. There’s lots of ways to snip. But I wonder if maybe it isn’t better not to. Maybe it is better to learn from a book with some prickly parts and some rough edges. If there was nothing in it to reject — or at least to have to wonder pretty hard about — you’d have a religion where everyone did believe everything in The Book exactly as it is written, and that starts to look like not such a great idea. I think it might actually be good for Christians that their book is such a mess. (Back to the rough ground, you know.)
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
You want to dictate what Christians think based upon your reading of the Bible, but you don’t even know what you said within a few posts in this conversation. The Bible “opens” with Genesis. You have yet to quote a Genesis story. Your claim (rhetorical or otherwise) was wrong. You can’t even concede you made an obvious error.
Think of how this sounds to someone that thinks the Bible is a meaningful book. You say it has no meaning, but you don’t even know how to a) make an accurate claim about what is written or b) be corrected. I get that religion seems really important and like every opinion should matter (whether informed or ill-informed), but it doesn’t work that way. If you wan to critique Christian meaning, learn what it is. If you want to critique Christian behavior, learn what it is. Critiquing one is not the same as critiquing the other. Nothing here is special pleading.
P.S. For what it is worth, I refer you to hermeneutics and biblical hermeneutics. It will provide some more insight about multiple interpretations from the same text if you are otherwise unfamiliar. You might also notice that literalism is thought about as dumb as it gets.
But they refuse to do so. Now what?
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Quoting Ennui Elucidator
You can hold up your sign all day long, for years, and no Christian will come along. IOW, the situation you describe doesn't happen in real life. Christians don't care if you admire them or not, they don't care about your standards of respect. They don't seek your admiration, nor your respect. If anything, they want you to obey them, to submit to them.
Except that Christians (and religious/spiritual people in general) don't care about this silly little expectation of yours. They very much do exempt themselves from justification.
On the contrary, it is from Christians that I have heard the idea brought up first; I hadn't thought of it before.
For example, a Christian lady once defended her case this way in a discussion, namely that she has the constitutionally granted rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The rest of us then had no choice but to shut up and respect her constitutionally granted rights.
Unless you live in a state that is only nominally secular.
I think religion/spirituality is the triumph of Social Darwinism. I don't admire the religious/spiritual, or the Jehovah worshippers, but I acknowledge that they have devised an evolutionarily advantageous way of life.
Look at us, talking about them, giving them our headspace and forum bandwidth for free. While they don't care about us. They surely know something we don't!
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Quoting Isaac
Would it?
Whom would a group of people who is intent on surviving and prevailing worship?
Someone very powerful, someone who can grant them victory, someone who can grant justification for their struggle for survival and power.
In short, someone like Jehovah.
Or it's a book that forces us to think in terms of existential urgency. A tribe that wants to survive and obtain and keep power has to maintain strict norms regarding everything that pertains to reproduction and the prospect of producing new members of the tribe. Hence all the rules about women and sex.
It's naive to think that nowadays, people are somehow above and beyond existential urgency, beyond concerns for survival and power.
Nowadays, we are actually no more existentially safe, our survival is no more guaranteed than it was for the old tribes millennia ago. It's just that these are largely tabooed topics, we brand them as "barbaric".
Quoting Isaac
No, it's more than just history. Politics is, literally, about matters of life and death, it's about survival, about wellbeing, people's careers being at stake, people's lives being at stake. Politicians decide about things that affect us all, that are a matter of life and death for us all.
Religion addresses those same fundamental existential concerns.
It's just that in "civilized" society, people don't talk about these things openly, straightforwardly. The Nazis, on the other hand, did spell it out, and "civilized" society called it "barbaric".
Quoting fdrake
Or the believer understands the urgency of existential issues in a way that a philosopher doesn't.
Refer to
Special pleading. Stoning is on the statutes of more than a dozen countries, and horrifyingly it is occasionally still used.
https://news.trust.org/item/20130927165059-w9g0i
Where do you think they got the idea...?
Stoning simply is not part of the Western tradition, at least not for 2000 years. You've offered no examples of the death penalty being carried out by any Western religion or theocracy in thousands of years. It's a part of our secular tradition however, but not by stoning. None of those examples in your Wiki article contradict that. Why stoning exists in Muslim nations, I don't know, perhaps there's a historical reason I'm unaware. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning
To the extent you argue the OT has caused these abuses, you have to explain why the other Abrahamic religions don't do it. The special case (i.e. the exception) appears to be in certain Muslim nations, but I no more attribute that to the Koran as I do to the OT. Politics typically offers the best explanations.
In any event, I believe you realize it's possible to be a devout Jew, Muslim, or Christian while fully condemning the exact things you currently do, so what is your point here? That to be a good Jew, Muslim, or Christian. I must accept that stoning is just one of those things I'm going to have to do from time to time?
So I believe I have almonds in the cupboard. I can imagine that these almonds are chocolate coated, but that does not change the almonds, nor my belief. I can't just make up new stuff about factual beliefs and then believe whatever I've made up. But that's not the case with other beliefs. Jesus said "this is my blood", so one imagines the wine really to be blood, and treats it as such despite the facts. One is uncomfortable with eternal damnation, but one is free to extemporise all manner of excuses.
Did you glance at the article? It clarifies how the consequence - it calls them forward effects or downstream consequences - are open-ended; one can extemporise on religious beliefs in a way that does not happen with factual beliefs.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Yeah, it does. It is in the nature of certain beliefs that they permit, even encourage, the making of excuses.
Folk like to talk of religion as "meaningful", as "giving meaning to our lives" and so on. Religion is like one of those incredible machines with vastly more moving parts than are needed to achieve the task at hand. Religious thought encourages the addition of even more parts, either disengaged with reality, or which when they engage lead to contradiction or abomination.
And yes, again, this does into apply to all ,"Jew, Muslim, or Christian". It doesn't have to for the point to be made that evil consequences flow from those texts.
No. See my post above or flick through the article.
Yes. Philosophers, myself included, have not talked much about differing beliefs so much as differing justifications. The alteration might be productive.
Maybe I'm missing context, but I don't see the difference in perspective the two accounts provide in thread. If what matters for the purposes of the thread is:
( 1 ) In order for a person P to believe X, P must act in accordance with X.
and ( 2 ) P acts in accordance with X at some times (contexts etc) but not others.
We're left with that either 'acting in accordance' doesn't need to occur in all times and contexts - and P's believing X is preserved. Or alternatively a violation occurred in ( 2 ), and P can no longer be accurately described as believing X.
It seems to me that if ( 2 ) being true automatically removes P's belief that X, that opens up a can of worms. If you require that someone follows X at all times or contexts in order to believe X, then contexts in which X is irrelevant and even momentary lapses in judgement suffice to remove P's belief that X. A less absolute position, that in the aggregate P acts in accordance with X is required for belief seems necessary, but it has rather a lot of wiggle room and doesn't seem to help with the puzzle.
The puzzle being when it's appropriate to transfer judgement from worshipping a God who is believed to have a murderboner for stoning to the moral character of the worshipper? (@Hanover - you seem to be taking on an easier version of the problem where a believer doesn't believe in the horrible bits of doctrine, which isn't the target of the OP's article)
As an attempt towards a solution, let's imagine that there are a collection of relevant contexts/times C in which P's believing X can be tested against their conduct. Ergo if P fails to act in accord or violates X in a context/time not in C, it doesn't remove their believing X. Conversely, if P fails to act in accord or violates X in a context/time in C, P's belief that X is removed by their conduct. P can still claim to believe that X, but they don't believe in practice.
I suggest that when we're talking about cognitive dissonance, we're imagining a context in which the believer's worship is present with the horrible acts of the object of worship. Like people in Warhammer offering prayers to Khorne for butchered innocents. I imagine that for the believer, the scenario of worship is less like 'blood for the blood God, skulls for the skull throne' or equivalently 'Praise be to the god who cursed humanity never to communicate adequately again", it's directed towards God as a placeholder in the context of their immediate concerns and general associations. If they manage to keep the literal horrible bits out of mind, or out of their faith entirely, I don't think it's right to say they worship a God who stones, curses etc.
Even if they believed in bible study that God approved of stoning, I don't think they'd have to worship the entity as if they approved of stoning. Albeit this comes with the price of making God's definitive properties, opinions and dispositions towards them depend upon what the believer is doing at the time.
With that in mind, the contexts in which P's believing X could be assessed would therefore be dependent upon P's state at the time of assessing their believing X. In other words, which contexts count as relevant for trialling P's accord with X vary with how P is and what they're doing at the time. There is a drought of neutral epistemic space for the contexts and beliefs to be assessed within.
It therefore seems plausible that a unified narrative over these is in principle impossible, but maybe that lack of unification is part of the structure of faith.
Or alternatively they have not rationalised it and live in the space of the open question?
Yes, it is literally in the scriptures, yet it's not advocated by the overwhelming majority of those who read the scripture, which means what I've been saying all along: you're misreading it as if the literal meaning is where the meaning lies.
My position is that it must all be read for its underlying message, not as an account of what happened. It's not that I don't believe the horrible bits didn't literally happen. I'm not committed to any of it actually happening. Whether it occurred or not is entirely irrelevant. It's metaphor.
You keep saying this, others including myself keep pointing out that there are folk who do take it literally, that ignoring them is special pleading. No, we are not "misreading". You are reading selectively.
We all understand that you do not believe the nasty bits in those books. But some folk do.
But also, I offered the Leeuwen article as a contribution towards working with the sort of non-literal meaning you espouse, in addition to the usual reference to unconformable and influential metaphysics. It's not that these alternate readings havn't been addressed.
Perhaps you did not recognise that these issues are being addressed?
So what? Outlining a theory that actions are driven by beliefs says nothing about restraining or punishing, or even judging, people by their beliefs. Even if it were granted that all actions are driven by beliefs, it certainly doesn't follow that all beliefs lead to actions.
Reading it non-literally is not special pleading. Reading it literally is. The majority of adherents to the Abrahamic traditions don't believe in stoning.
In any event, should you identify those who have used the Bible to advance their horrible agendas, I stand with you in fighting against them. But that really has less to do with theology than politics. Some preachers preached for civil rights, others against it. I'm not sure the opponents really cared what the book said.
Let me find the article you're referring to. 22 pages. I keep up the best I can
Sure. But ignoring those who do read it literally is. What are we to make of their moral character? Yes, on this we are in agreement.
And than there is the issue that, once one entertains non-literal readings, any reading will do... So we can add a nice derangement of epitaphs. There is no fixed meaning for the text.
You didn't answer my question.
Quoting baker
What use is fairness, when people can live just fine without it?
Quoting Isaac
Actually, it's the kind of thinking that some Christians impute upon outsiders. It's what all those "Knowingly rejecting God's mercy and freely choosing hell" are all about.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
By leaving the ivory tower, and going to live in the real world, the world of blood, sweat, and tears.
I'd start by saying that we have to agree upon an interpretive method, and there's nothing special about literalism that might lead one to think it's the default or primary method for interpretation. It's clear the Bible, as we know it, is a compilation of at least 4 different works sewn together, with duplicative and conflicting accounts of the same events. There are two flood stories and two creation stories, for example. One would assume the author therefore did not intend the story to be taken literally. Of course, to what extent you think author's intent is relevant for interpretation is another matter.
For some discussion on why we now have those who take it literally, see: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/21/biblical-literalism-bible-christians.
Attacking the literalists might be justified, but then moving beyond that and attacking religion generally would not be. It may just be you're attacking those with the weakest justifications for their beliefs.
I don't follow how non-literalism is more prone to lack of fixed meaning than literalism is. Words change meanings in very subtle ways over time as do the context in which they're used. The notion that we speak directly and clearly and convey exact thoughts with our words is the analytic philosopher's perfect dream, but that's not what really happens. How many books have been written on what Wittgenstein really meant and how many confict with each other?
And on the other side of things, we all accept that Aesop was not speaking of an actual tortoise and hare, yet the metaphorical meaning of that story seems to have withstood time. That is, despite it being literally false, no one would say that any reading will do when deciphering the metaphor.
And then let's look to the US Constitution. What does it mean? Are you a literalist when it comes to it? I don't read the word "abortion" anywhere in that text, but it apparently contemplates pregnancy and it divides it into three trimesters, each one allowing for differing amounts of state regulation that can be imposed. Do you look to the author's intent, or is it a living document, interpreted with the evolving morality of the times? If it is subject to changing interpretation, does it follow that "any reading will do," or are there is still incorrect readings.
My point here is that you've beaten the holy hell out of what any half-way sophisticated theist would consider a strawman.
I did locate your Leeuwen article (https://philpapers.org/archive/VANRCI.pdf). I note he went to my alma mater, apparently having benefitted from the wisdom I left behind. I really don't dispute that the religious versus the non-religious likely adopt very different epistemologies depending upon how divergent the two group's worldviews are. My position is that when it comes to facts about the world (the very type Leeuwen identifies), I rely upon the same methods for knowledge as you do. That is, I don't use religion to figure out whether I have almonds in my cupboard (his example). I use it to find meaning, purpose, and morality. I don't know how anything Leeuwen says addresses the credulity of those beliefs just because they are based upon religious doctrine.
His point is well taken, but obvious. If you want to know actual facts about the world, like where it came from, who first occupied it, whether sometimes manna falls from the sky, or sometimes bushes burn but go unconsumed, religion isn't where you should look. If you want to know what to do with the life you've got and why you might want to do that, religion might be where you want to look.
here, here, here, ... (has to do with moral character and such)
Quoting Hanover
Why morality? History (including legal cases) and living are the better teachers. I suppose you might find moral lessons in religious tales (if that's what you meant).
The article misses a bunch, I think. I am happy to discuss it more, but it strikes me as far afield of this conversation. Suffice it to say that “social facts” appear to fit in the box of “factual belief” as he is using the term. There are many social facts that come from a religious context, so it is difficult me to see in a straight forward way how those social facts are any less “factual beliefs” because of how they originated. Perhaps you can elaborate your view on it in a response to a particular situation: a man walks into a room and sees a piece of food - he then declares it haram. A man already sitting at the table says, “No, it is halal.” What type of belief are we discussing and why? How does that differ from the man who knows facts about the streets of Cleveland mentioned in the article (“ An evidential authority, who can produce factual belief, knows about some objective information, such as plant life or streets in Cleveland.”)?
With regard to the Leeuwen article, I see it as clearly showing the inherent weakness of relying upon religious doctrine to prove physical facts about the world. The scientific method is the proper epistemology for such questions.
Questions of good and evil and what to hold out as sacred and what to hold in low regard and what it means to live a life well lived are not addressed through the scientific method. We rely upon wisdom, derivable through our intellectual and spiritual histories, which includes, among other things, religious doctrine.
We have 2 categories here and therefore 2 methods of obtaining answers. The mental world doesn't derive answers from the same sources as the physical world.
As to those who insist we can look to Genesis to determine how we came to exist and disregard the fossil evidence, they make the same mistake as those who try to discover the meaning of life in a petri dish.
Anyway, do you take Leeuwen to contradict what I've said?
:clap:
I agree.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Why not? If I'm talking about the Lord of the Rings with someone, is it a mark of a reasonable adult conversation that I simply refuse to listen to anyone whose interpretation differs from my own?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Who says I'm not? Again, the same special pleading. I'm not entitled to an opinion about what the meaning is to me, what it's value is to me. Only positive interpretations are welcome. What other text gets that treatment?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Again, why am I refused an opinion on their position? I've spent an entire lifetime studying people, specifically people's beliefs and how they're formed and defended. Am I still not allowed an opinion on why people form their beliefs? Do you really believe people have such faithful and privileged access to their psychologies that my even venturing an opinion contrary to their own is nothing short of an insult?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Right, but one of those ways here is being rebuked. Or is it that you just thought I was unaware of the other and might benefit from having it pointed out to me?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
No, I've no interest in going that (at least not here). I'm talking about the danger inherent in the ways in which it could be interpreted.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
'Opens' is not a technical term, it's a conversational one. I'm not objectively wrong for referring to some of the early books as being in the 'opening' part. Just about anything in the first half could arguably be called the 'opening'. Again, more special pleading. I gave direct quotes relevant to the claims I was making and you're trying to wriggle out of them by quibbling over whether they're really in the 'opening' or not. Honestly, I doubt you'd find a single secular commentator who doesn't know that the Bible starts with Genesis, so even the slightest charity in reading would gather what I meant.
You might have to draw this out a bit for me. It seems like, if true, it would make a good counter to what I'm saying (that the book is an undesirable offering as one of the available narratives), but it's not quite clear what advantage you see the 'prickly parts' having.
I walk away I suppose. I'm not going to progress to fisticuffs.
Quoting baker
Again, you're misconstruing my intent. I never claimed fairness was indispensable.
I'm saying there's two ways to look at (2), we could see that they do, in fact seem to show two beliefs, or we could say that the belief is something we've yet to establish (something which explains both behaviours) but the story to rationalise that belief is confused) The difference, as I see it, is an important one. I hold that beliefs themselves are quite deeply ingrained and difficult to shift, they're almost directly causal of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. That we model X as x1 is a result of the properties of X as much (if not more) than it is about our priors about x2. The narratives we use to make sense of what we've just done (and which do influence our priors in future) are, however, much more malleable and depend largely on what narratives are available to us in our community. We'd rather pick one off the shelf than construct one ourselves from scratch, so it matters greatly what's on the shelf currently.
Quoting fdrake
It depends what you mean by 'aggregate', or rather how you intend to 'aggregate'. We could say that I believe I ought to go for a run every other day; or we could say, on a Monday, I don't believe I ought to go for a run, then on a Tuesday that I do believe I ought to go for a run, then on a Wednesday I don't believe I ought to go for a run... The former seems more parsimonious.
If, on the other hand, you're going to include every lapse in judgement or attention, we get a failure of pragmatism the other way - which is why I always refer to beliefs as 'a tendency to act as if...'. We've got to include the scholasticism of mental activity at the very least.
But the priest... Well, it seems unlike a momentary lapse of attention, or a few randomly firing neurons messing up the system. It seems we simply haven't described what he actually believes properly, relying too heavily on his poor explanatory narrative and not enough on his pattern of behaviour - what is he acting as if were the case.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, I don't think either account prevents us from doing this, but the problem with this, and...
Quoting fdrake
...is that we're left with shifting the important question further down the road. Why? Why then and not then? It's like the 'interpretation' argument. If we accept that there are these different beliefs at different times, then we're left with the actual belief no longer being the important question (after all, it might not be the belief in a minute). The important question becomes the connection between context and belief. I'd personally still couch that in terms of belief "the subject believes that in context A they ought do X, but in context B they ought do Y", but we could couch it in terms of two incongruous beliefs that one ought do X and Y respectively, beliefs which vary by context. I think we'd still need the meta construction in either case.
Canonical texts: Homer, Dante. Shakespeare. Goethe, Walt Whitman, other religious texts, texts with a long historical tradition of interpretation.
And verkakte Star Wars movies.. :gasp:
They don't have their critics?
Should I be saying "exactly"!?
Plato is described as advocating a censorship of Greek texts such as Homer.
Guido Vernani, called Dante's poetry "a poisonous vessel of the father of lies, covered with false and fallacious beauty, by which the author, with poetic phantasms and figments and the eloquence of his words, his siren songs, fraudulently leads not only the sick and ignorant but even the learned to destroy the truth which might save them"
Walt Whitman - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/venerate-walt-whitman-200/
...
The point was rhetorical anyway. I've no doubt the Bible has its avid critics. It was to ask if this constituted special pleading. It may do so for Shakespeare too.
The forum is positively suffuse with threads where someone has read a paper or watched a video on some aspect of physics, mathematics, neuroscience, economics, politics, psychology... and there's a generally lusty enthusiasm on the part of our lay membership to get stuck right in. Are any entreated to only provide constructive criticism in deference to the years of expert analysis that has gone into these various topics? No. And nor should they, this is an internet discussion forum, not a peer-reviewed journal. We'd like to hold ourselves above Twitter (or at least I would), so expect sources, citations, proper diligence..., but refraining from comment outside of a complete immersion in the text and its interpretors? That strikes me as ridiculous.
I think I really fell in love with Wittgenstein in the Preface to PI, where he says, “I should not wish to have spared anyone the trouble of thinking.”
If you want to help people develop a moral sense, and an understanding of their relationship to God, you need to give them stuff to really chew on, stuff that isn’t necessarily easy to understand or readily assent to. I remember being really impressed with the way Kierkegaard opens Fear and Trembling with four different versions of the story of the binding of Isaac (not the video game), drawing out its complexity, not just as a matter of faith but also psychology.
The alternative — well, you could shorten the Bible to the ten commandments, and maybe the beatitudes. A pamphlet. Maybe you could extract enough material to make something about the size of the Sayings of Chairman Mao. Or you could make a storybook with only nice things in it — like Bible Stories for Children. All of these look more dangerous to me than what we have, because people will be spared the trouble of thinking and feeling their way to a deeper morality, and though I’m not in principle concerned with their relationship with God, I think if they’re going to have such a thing in their lives, it shouldn’t be easy or simple.
Should we start with the belief that the Bible is the literal inerrant word of an omni-benevolent God, then any negative interpretation would necessarily be false and would be blasphemous. Under this assumption, it is not special pleading to treat the Bible as special because this assumes the Bible is special, a tablet etched in stone by the finger of God. The Lord of the Rings is treated differently because God didn't write it in the perfect way God writes. It was written by a mere mortal for profit.
On the other hand, if we start with the belief that the Bible was written by many different people over many years and that it reveals the collective wisdom gathered over the millennia, then we would recognize its importance, but we would allow whatever criticisms you might have of it, just like any other book. Of course, some books are better than others and we tend to think more deeply, for example, about the contents of the Lord of the Rings than of Green Eggs and Ham. We don't treat Lord of the Rings as a special case by holding it to a higher level than Green Eggs and Ham. We treat it as a better book because it is on an objective level more complex and meaningful. Such too is the case of the Bible when compared to other works.
I suspect some think the Lord of the Rings is stupid fantasy bullshit, while others that it has deeper meaning. As to the former group, I'll trust them when they say it's worthless to them. As to the latter group, I'll trust them as they say it is to them. All this holds true to the Bible. Take it or leave it, but to those who have found it a guide for life, then I trust it does as they say.
I'm trying to see where there's a problem here unless the focus of your attack is upon the proselytizing and evangelizing fundamental literalists who refuse to listen to your critiques, continue to try to convert you, and then condemn you to hell. The lowest rung on the religious ladder are clearly vulnerable to your attacks and have little useful or logical response. They have been thoroughly decimated and embarrassed by your onslaught.
Now, moving up a rung on that ladder, what are you attacks on those folks?
Just because @Banno says something doesn't make it so. I think religious beliefs, claims, interpretations, etc. are to be evaluated in the same exact way as any other belief, claim, interpretation, etc. You would be hard pressed to find in my writing something that says, "Because it is 'religious' you must think of it differently.'" To the extent that any of my writing gives that impression, I suspect it would be in a context where being "religious" is relevant to the thing being discussed (e.g. deciding if something is halal or harem must be evaluated within a context where those terms are meaningful rather than a context in which those terms are meaningless). You are welcome to provide me with quotes that you find troubling and I will address them.
Quoting Isaac
You are entitled to whatever opinion you want. No god or man shall rest it from your brain and some cosmic judge (that isn't god) deems your claim of entitlement correct. (Rights are non-sense on stilts, as the saying goes.) I can't help that you confuse advice about how to speak to a particular language community as somehow depriving you of your entitlement to an opinion, but I suggest that you re-read what I wrote and see where I said, "Your interpretation is wrong because it is mean." How many times have I called the god of the bible an "asshole", a "torturer", etc.? There are lots of unflattering things to be said about god and the sorts of injunctions/enjoinments that are contained in the Bible. Again, the text can support unlimited interpretations, no one of which is more right or wrong than other (though some of them have more support than others). As to what its value is to you, feel free to render it valuable or valueless, intrinsically or instrumentally.
Quoting Isaac
I am talking about Banno's OP and the article he linked. To the extent what you are talking about relates to that article, perhaps we are talking about the same thing. Lewis, for his part, was not talking about how the Bible "could" be interpreted, but how to respond to specific people that worshiped/admired an evil god ("In bringing the problem of divine evil to their attention, I am presenting them with a choice they have previously avoided"). He wasn't dealing in hypotheticals (amusingly, when he does give the hypothetical of Fritz, he makes it clear that knowing that Fritz admires Hitler is not enough to indict Fritz, but that we have to know that Fritz admires Hitler because of the objectionable things Hitler does/did - "Fritz ... admires Hitler. . . Simply admiring Hitler isn't enough [to be evil]. . . . Fritz knows very clearly what Hitler would want done. Even though he admires Hitler, he does not do it. Fritz is evil .. because it is evil to admire someone [evil] . . . in full recognition of the characteristics and actions that express their evil." ).
Quoting Isaac
Again, you are welcome to whatever opinion you want. But your belief on belief formation did not seem to be the topic of conversation. For my part, I wasn't asking why people formed their belief about X with relation to Y. I was commenting that when engaging with a language community, you need to speak their language. Where you demonstrate that you do not know the language (or minimally lack facility in it), members of that language community are less likely to take you seriously. Take the advice for what you think it is worth.
Describing a fact (members of a particular group tend to interpret text X through interpretive lens Y) does not mean that I agree with it or believe that there is justification for whatever judgment is being described. As far as "justification for belief", I tend to agree with you that justification is post hoc and that what you get in response to "Why do you believe X?" is not, in fact, why they believe X, but rather what they think accounts for reasons on your account. I do not expect people to understand why they believe things or to be able to account for their beliefs, I merely hope that they demonstrate pro-social behavior. (Someone asks you for justification, you give justification in the expected form, to the extent your justification is challenged and shown to be inadequate with respect to some socially established justification criteria, you acknowledge a lack of justification and alter your behavior accordingly.)
I get it. The Bible is a crap book and you can present lots of reasons for thinking so. I have zero problem with that conclusion. I also have zero problem with accepting that people who use the Bible for justification of behavior (as an appeal to authority) have problems inherent with a self-contradictory text.
Hopefully we can move on in the conversation and get to the substance of how the OP (or Banno's other claims relating to shunning Christians as a group because of their bad beliefs) relates to Lewis's article and/or the merits of Lewis's article in the first place. Evaluate any religious claim precisely the same way you would any other claim.
By the by, figuring the Bible (because we are talking about the Christian one) has around 750 pages (KJV), the New Testament is about 200 of them (which is the much less than half). You first quote from the Bible (which was in Leviticus 21) is found in the third book around page 70, or about 10% of the way in. Aside from trying to save face, you do yourself no favors by flailing about to make your case that anything "in the first half could arguably be called the opening". A simple, "I was speaking too freely and misspoke, but you are being an ass for making hey of it since we both know that it says stupid things" would have sufficed. Unwillingness to concede the obvious makes for poor conversation.
There's a lot I like about this. A thorny story which makes the reader think about right and wrong, certainly an improvement on the Disney version. But...
I think 'thorny' can go too far. If we feed our kids with tales of rapists and marauders just basically doing what they like and having a great time, would you not think we'd overdone the thorns? Would not a part of you worry that our hope that the children would simply see how 'bad' the protagonists were of their own accord may be a little 'high risk'?
So there's "think for yourself", and there's no guide at all. There's Wittgenstein writing a book full of really good questions but only pointing you in the direction of the answer, and there's Wittgenstein writing a book full of misdirection, tricks and outright contradictions, and then saying "work it out for yourself".
I think a book in which the main object of worship advocates stoning girls to death within the first 28% of the book (better @Ennui Elucidator?), is laying the thorns on pretty thick, with the whole love and compassion redeeming theme makes a very late and understated entrance by comparison.
But we needn't take my word for it. Has it worked?
Do Christians give more to charity? Maybe a bit, but depends on how you measure charity, and even then not by much. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2014/06/bbc-poll-shows-that-religious-people-give-more-to-charity-than-non-religious-maybe
Are Christians more compassionate? Maybe a bit, but comparable to just age or education https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/03/30/americas-immigration-quandary/
Meh. It's not not worked. Maybe it doesn't matter at all.
Personally, as far a themes go, I think we could do better, even if our 'better' version has a few prickly thorns and Wittgensteinian standoffishness.
[sup]• in 2006, a fifth of Christians believed that Jesus would return in their lifetime: Christians’ Views on the Return of Christ (2009)
• Millions of Evangelical Christians Want to Start World War III … to Speed Up the Second Coming (2012)
• Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy (2018)
• For many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics (2018)
• The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy (2019)
• The Evangelicals Who Pray for War With Iran (2020)
• Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying (2020)
• Vast Majority of Pastors See Signs of End Times in Current Events (2020)[/sup]
Not really an irrelevant minority on the fringe. Sometimes such beliefs turn to actions turn to everyone's concern.
It's easy to dismiss such beliefs as "stupid cult", "no self-respecting adherent believes that", etc. I know (and interact with) some of them; there's more to come by than the listed examples. Fortunately, many of them respect "the law of the land", at least unless their beliefs gain some wider traction.
Put simply. People select narratives to make sense of their lives, these narratives have a gravitational pull toward certain interpretations. some narratives are better than others. A narrative which has to be 'interpreted' carefully to avoid the impression that stoning girls to death is OK, is not one of the better ones.
What is the empirical basis you have for claiming that those who have carefully interpreted the Bible to read that it's not OK to stone girls to death to prove that the Bible is not a beneficial narrative for the living of their lives or for society in general?
The best I can see is that you find the interpretations farfetched, but shouldn't effectiveness be the determinant for preservation as opposed to lack of farfetchedness? That is, shouldn't we look at the value the current institution has on people's lives, as opposed to whether you personally find it preposterous?
The power of myth can be positive, and myth is what we're talking about here, not facts. Myths are typically created to advance positive societal perspectives. The argument you make is that the biblical myth is too absurd to be true, but if it were, it would be evil. My point is that I know the myth is factually false and I would have no motivation to create a factually false myth that leads to a negative result, so obviously it's positive.
One reason that the Bible gets such positive interpretation (i.e. special pleading) is precisely because it's the narrative we use for positive effects in our society. It's the "good" book. It is therefore specially interpreted that way by definition.
It's like you're running around telling me that George Washington really wasn't a perfectly honest person and that he did not really confess to chopping down the cherry tree. Yeah, I get none of it happened. I think the myth being advanced in that narrative is that America was founded by the most honest of men, explaining its higher sense of morality than all other nations. I'm not asking that you accept that narrative as factually correct or even as accurate myth, but the message I've noted is the point of that story. I don't find the criticism that the events didn't take place or that a tree chopper is an unredeemable character at all responsive to the narrative though.
I agree that 'why then and not then' is part of the crux of the issue, it's the psychological bit. There's also the normative bit regarding 'tendencies to behave as if' - a person can have a tendency to act as if X and a tendency to act as if not X, just in different contexts. If there is a notion of aggregate tendency which accurately describes the person's state of belief, there's a question of how you form the aggregate based on the contradictory belief components.
Does an abusive priest have a tendency to behave as if abuse is wrong? In some respect, they could very well preach against it and otherwise be compassionate. Therefore it would be true to say that they have a tendency to act as if abuse is wrong. But it would also be true to say that they have a tendency to act as if abuse is not wrong.
There's so much wiggle room with 'tendency' that you can probably make it mean whatever you like. Priest has a tendency to act as if abuse is wrong in context C, priest has a tendency to act as if abuse is not wrong in context D. We know you can't quantify over all contexts there since it's rather uncharitable, but what operation takes the priest's actions in C and the priests actions in D to their state of belief and who does the operation? Is it an impersonal process? Is it a bodily one? Is it both and neither?
I think it's fair to say there will be a salient distinction between someone else's summary of the priest's actions, and an accurate summary of the priest's belief state. IE, it could be true that 'priest acts as if abuse is wrong in context C and priest acts as if abuse is wrong in context D', nevertheless the priest may not have a distinction between C and D to hand, or even an evaluation of actions as acting as if abuse is wrong/right in either context.
Quoting Isaac
I agree you need the meta 'unified belief'/'unified tendency to act as if' concept, it just isn't clear how to spell it out without making it so loose and arbitrary anyone can be construed as believing anything. Not a criticism of the approach or an attempt to block it, I'm trying to inquire how it could be done.
What characterises a tendency? How do you use actions to evaluate a 'tendency to act as if' on those states? What scope of behaviours does any particular tendency require for its evaluation? And finally - how does the answer to those questions interface with the argument?
The absence of those answers I think interfaces very clearly with the argument - the lack of answers makes it ambiguous how a believer acts as if (stoning is good) based on their worship of a God who in some context of evaluation approves of stoning. It isn't clear how to get from a tendency to act as if God is worthy of worship to a tendency to act as if stoning is justified.
No. You should be taking a walk in the wind to blow the cobwebs out your butt.
There would be, if the notion of literalism could be made coherent. I don't see that you addressed my reply. There is no fixed, immutable thing that you might call "the meaning of the bible". If this applies to literalist interpretations, then more so for those who would interpret the text more freely. The notion of an "agreed interpretive method" doesn't help; this conversation is a recognition of the fact of disagreement.
It remains that the bible is understood by some to say very specific and morally repugnant things about the afterlife. This thread was proposed as an exploration fo that view. But unfortunately most of the thread has been taken up by those who would deny of excuse that view, including yourself.
So again, yes, there are other ways of reading the bible, but they are a side issue.
I take exception to your use of "attack". I suppose your excessive defensiveness is explained by your considering a critique of literalism as an attack on your own beliefs. But if you do not hold that god punishes sinners unjustly, then you are not the subject fo the critique.
Your repeated denial of the fact that there are folk who do hold that god is unjust is unfortunate for you, but good for the length of my thread. So thanks.
Quoting Hanover
Sometimes it is necessary to point out the obvious.
And I don't see that as a problematic objection any more than how it might apply to any other foundational document, as I noted in reference to the US Constitution. Quoting Banno
You misread my terms. Ironic I suppose. I use "attack" only to reference the opposing point of view. I have no personal investment in the outcome of this discussion. In any event, your exception is noted in the record.Quoting Banno
Of course there are those who hold God is unjust and there are those who hold that God is just. We're not speaking of the same God.
Laughed at this. Perhaps 'Merca was founded on a lie, and continues to believe its own myths in the face of its grossly immoral actions towards its own people and those around the world. A pertinent example of how myths hide reality, and why myths ought to be critiqued.
Myths aren't factual, which was my point. They are aspirational. If we critique our myths, we realign our aspirations, not the facts. It's for that reason we see an evolution of our myths and why the US Constitution, for example, today affords rights it never did before.
If the myth hides reality, then the myth is being used to determine reality, which isn't to treat it as myth.
You really misread my post. You act as if I were trying to herald the US as being honorable and true. My comments were neutral as to the truth of the myth. I pointed out the myth upon which the nation was built.
Yes, repeatedly.
Quoting tim wood
A generalisation that exists only in a parochial misreading of the article.
But not always.
And again, the counter to my posts amounts to little more than "Banno, you can't say that!"
Also, noted the cross-posting without context. It's pertinent that the things listed occurred prior to the widespread acceptance of the neo-liberal notions of 'enlightened self interest'
"...government 'aid' is always necessarily accompanied by governmental controls."
The Marshall Plan Did Not "Save" Europe
:grin: Why? If God doesn't exist, anything is permissible and that being so, justice is moot. I'm agreeing with you!
I keep writing these posts that are somewhat complementary to yours — trying to add in whatever I feel you’ve left out that’s important — and I never really get around to trying to deal head-on with the arguments, such as they are. (And I’ve never given @fdrake that response to Mengele I promised.) Maybe it’s just my temperament, but when an argument is at loggerheads like this, I tend to think both sides are wrong (and right, in their own way) and try something else.
In this case, we might consider a claim like this: Christianity condones stoning. and is therefore bad. I am invited to defend the other side — either that stoning is actually okay, or that in fact Christianity does not condone stoning if you read the Bible with some special sophistication.
We know that Christianity, like other religions, does change over time — here taking “Christianity” to denote a sort of big tent that can hold people holding newer views, newer versions of older views, and people who hold to that old time religion. If we consider, rightly or wrongly, stoning to be a practice recommended in the scripture, and possibly also an element of the old time Christianity, then we might want to ask something like this: how does an individual Christian decide where to sit under the big tent? Why would an individual Christian choose to sit among stoners or non-stoners?
We can approach this in a slightly different way. If a Christian and his fellows do not practice stoning, despite whatever the Bible says and despite what their parents and grandparents (and so on) said about the virtue of stoning, why not? Why would any Christian not practice something condoned by scripture and their forebears? How do they come to think this is a possible way of being Christian, and how do they convince others to accept this as a kind of Christianity?
As it happens, stoning is a terrible example, and it’s odd that it’s come up here, because if you were to listicle the all-time top five quotes Jesus of Nazareth is famous for, one of those would be: “Let him that is among you without sin, cast the first stone at her.” So stoning’s not one of the interesting cases at all, because Jesus made it awfully clear where he stood, and he did so without giving the Pharisees reason to accuse him of going against the law. Christians are all set on this one.
On the other hand, we might look at what Jesus did here as an example of the technique. There’s the law that authorizes and even requires the stoning of the adulteress. Jesus does not question the law or those calling his attention to it. Elsewhere he even says that he comes not to destroy but to fulfill the law, so what’s the deal? Our question now might be, why doesn’t Jesus agree to join in an afternoon’s stoning? And further, how does he get away with it? That is, how does he not stone the adulteress and still manage not to be accused of impiety?
The question of Jesus’s piety is slightly odd. You could say the gospels assume it’s an impossibility, what with his being God and all; but then again, what with his being God and all, the idea of him being pious doesn’t quite make sense. Nevertheless, Jesus provides here an example of how religious practice can change without directly challenging existing doctrine. He just adds a little twist that makes it impossible for people of good conscience to engage in that practice.
Does he, in doing so, implicitly condemn any who, in the past, engaged in stoning in his father’s name? That strikes me as a prickly question. I expect he’d wriggle out of it somehow.
I gave the quote...
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
You're dismissing my engagement (the current one) on the grounds that I've not met some arbitrary threshold of contextualising that you consider necessary. That's the special pleading. Maybe you do, in fact, make exactly the same demands for contextual embedding of everyone who expresses an opinion on any subject, but I've not seen such a tendency in your posting history... yet here you are.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Ah. You'll forgive my misunderstanding, but in my defence I neither asked for such advice, nor is the giving of it anything to do with the thread topic so it was a bit left-field to hear that this is what you're doing. I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine with my current approach, thanks anyway.
Possibly, but - and this seems to be something that's consistently missed, so I'm going to emphasise it - I'm talking about risk, not necessarily just contemporary issues. Using a book which has to be carefully interpreted in order to avoid the conclusion that stoning girls is OK, as a guide to moral behaviour and community living - that's a big risk. In contemporary America, it may not be causing any problem at all (though I'd argue the contrary), just as the unexploded WWII ordinance might not have caused any problems for the last 80 years. You still wouldn't want one in your back garden would you?
As for evidence that it's a risk, that it has caused problems in the past, that it causes problems in other parts of the world? Do you still need to ask?
Quoting Hanover
Indeed. Nor would anyone here I suspect. Unfortunately we live in a world where we cannot rely on the quality of upbringing that's given you the moral sense to see that 'stone girls' is obviously wrong, and 'love thy neighbour' is more like it.
Quoting Hanover
Now I'd ask you in turn for empirical support. Christians are no more charitable than average, no more compassionate than average. Highly religious societies are no more equitable than secular ones, no more happy, give no more development aid... I'd be interested in what measure you're using to determine the 'positive effects'. Possibly an historical one? But this fails on historicism. There aren't any societies which haven't been effected by Christianity, so you've no control group.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, but confessing to chopping down a cherry tree is a 'good' thing. So it was put in the myth. Stoning girls is 'bad' thing. We're talking about why 'bad' things are in the myth. Can you think of a similar myth in which the main protagonists advocates stoning girls to death, punishing people for eternity who don't worship him, killing the babies of non-believers... What the fuck kind of myth is that?
Right. Starting from the beginning. No-one has access to our beliefs-as-models, not even we do. If we say "I believe that..." it's a post hoc story to make some unified sense of the behaviour (or intended behaviour) which actually results from a whole set of, often completely contradictory, models in various separate cortices (and yes, before I get ripped to shreds, this model I'm describing is itself a post hoc justification for the behaviour I enact - such as writing this post, and, no, I don't think the circularity is a problem - I've yet to have anyone sufficiently explain why it might be).
So when we talk about 'beliefs' as in "that priest believes that X" we're already in the realm of post hoc storytelling. If we wanted to go deeper than that, we could (although still storytelling) look into what the various models in his brain might be outputting that could provide a better story. Or, we could choose any level in-between for our story.
The point I'm making is that a story which says "When in context A the priest believes Y, but when in context B the priest believes X' is... a) more complex than necessary (but this point could be argued, I agree), and b) superfluous - because we're going to have to come up with a story anyway covering what it is about A and B which causes such a shift.
Let's say that A is 'in church' and B is 'in the vestry'. We could say the priest believes "it's OK to molest boys" when he's in the vestry but believes "we should protect the innocent" when he's in the church - two belief-stories which are contradictory, but never meet. Or we could say the priest believes "it's OK to molest boys when in the vestry and we should protect the innocent when in church" (note the changed quotation marks). So the second story captures the effect of the context within the belief. Then we can interrogate that belief-story because there'll be a hidden belief about the vestry and the church that might yield a better story (less painful dissonance). The vestry is private, the church isn't so maybe it's "it's OK to molest boys when hidden but we should protect the innocent when in view".
I'm not claiming here to have uncovered why priests molest children and then preach protection of the innocent in church, it's just an example. I don't doubt it's much more complicated than hidden/public, but I don't see the complication as a barrier to producing a non-(or less) dissonant story which helps better understand the behaviour.
Quoting fdrake
When people are looking for these stories, they'll more readily pick one off the shelf than make one up themselves. The myths and narratives that a society offers matter a lot to the kind of society that results because of this. It' my belief that a contradictory mythology such a Christianity offers - with the sort of contradictions Lewis is highlighting - offers a narrative which allows for such horrors as priestly child abuse, much more readily than better mythologies might, precisely because of these underlying themes (that God's actually something of a git himself. That he sees the rites, cassocks and prayers as more important that the behaviour...).
It's not just the bible. I feel the same way about, say, gangster culture which offers a hero-narrative that's become detached from any need to protect the innocent. I've argued extensively about the effect this has had on criminal behaviour, particularly on stripping away narrative choices from the young men in many of our inner-city neighbourhoods.
Thanks. I thought maybe it might be veering off topic to get into 'risk' as well as just 'actual Christians right now', but I think there's still sufficient overlap with what Lewis is saying.
Not a bad idea.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I think that's where @fdrake and I were going in asking "why 'interpret' this, but take that literally?"
My answer would be that we have better narratives which make 'stone those girls' sound awful, but 'love they neighbour' sound good. The social token of 'being a Christian' gets re-interpreted to fit the more powerful social narratives we have these days around tolerance and moderation.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This is interesting, given my beliefs above. It's entirely possible that the narrative offered by the New Testament is the manner by which the narrative offered by the Old Testament is 'interpreted' without falling into stoning girls. If so, Christianity as a whole is somewhat rescued by being both problem and solution. It provides a dangerous narrative in which various xenophobias can turn very nasty indeed, but then also offers a solution narrative by which we can re-interpret all those.
Maybe, but I'm not sure offering both problem and solution is better than offering only solution. Maybe a kind of deep psychological game whereby we're shown the false way only the more to feel the redemption. God's a bastard so that his son can show us how not to be?
You have reduced the Bible to a single passage you do realize, as if the entire book goes on and on about stoning girls. Perhaps if you give the specific cite we can see how it has been interpreted and how it has been placed in context with the greater story.
In any event, we don't have a single instance of a stoning you can cite to in the past 2,000 years in those nations that have adopted the Bible as a guiding document (although I'm sure there were some somewhere). Those limiting stoning (and the death penalty generally) have been the believers in the text (i.e. the rabbis). More recent trends within those nations that have historically accepted the Bible as a foundational document have been to secularize their societies to even further reduce the power of those who interpret the Bible. In current Western societies, the death penalty has been eliminated in many countries and in many states in the US and the total number of death penalty cases where it is legal has been in decline.
I don't see the danger you see. Quoting Isaac
By the past, I'm not sure what you're referencing. I can assume that stoning might have occurred in the bronze age and iron age by the desert dwellers in the near east, but I don't know what reliable historical or archeological record you're using to show that other than the dubious historical accuracy of the Bible itself. Even in those instances where stoning was deemed acceptable in the Bible, there's no evidence it was carried out in any significant way. I'll concede barbarism is part of every people's past and we should always remain concerned that our most base instincts don't prevail, but I don't live in fear that one day we'll adopt a strict literalism and start stoning little girls. That doesn't seem to be a reasonable worry.
As to other parts of the world where stoning occurs, that seems limited to Muslim nations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning#Judaism
Why that is is a much more complicated question than looking to a single book. A society's norms are determined by its peculiar history, which includes its political system, its interaction with other nations, specific leaders it might have had, philosophies it might have adopted and on and on. Why the US has the laws it has goes far beyond what the Bible says. It owes its culture to the English, the French, the Greeks, the Hispanics, the ancient Hebrews, the many diverse African nations, and many more than I need to recite.
Why some Muslim nations engage in stoning seems not entirely related to the biblical text, but to a much larger political and social reason, but I really don't know enough about those regions to speak without more knowledge. I'm also not that clear on Muslim theology and what weight they afford the OT versus the Koran versus various other Muslim sacred literature. But to those who may know, that'd be interesting to learn.
“If two men get into a fight with each other and the wife of the one intervenes to protect her husband from the one striking him and she reaches out her hand and grabs hold of him by his private parts, 12: [you must amputate her hand. You should not feel sorry.]"
Is this advice to be taken taken literally by a true Christian? How is it to be interpreted? Will this not result in a one-way trip to hell, without a stay in the intermediate state of limbo purgatory, if he has taken it seriously and decided to realize the advice after he has seen his wife grabbing the balls of his opponent? What about the poor rescuing woman? Will she go to hell if she is punished already by axing of the sinful hand?
Or is it meant emblematically? What if the man rescues his wife from an assaulting woman by embracing her private parts? Should his hand be cut off? If man and women are treated equal it should.
This oral tradition is what is now written in the Talmud.
And all of this is just to further point out that those who wish to open up the Bible, read a passage, and then comment on what it must mean in a vacuum without referencing the religious doctrine as a whole aren't providing a meaningful analysis of any known religion.
Isn't the problem then that people reading it are generally unaware of the history of the words or of the just interpretation, and possibly take it litteraly (especially in the old days and it is the Bible)? How one knows this wasn't done for real back then? Did the cutting off of a hand once mean that money was involved? It's maybe more probable a contemporary interpretation. Like it can mean: "A rib should be cut out of his chest". And why should the woman give money for saving her husband from a cruel attacker? Shouldn't the attacker be given a fine?
And I would assume it is. If you show both, you show not just an answer (Rubric 15 in The Little Book of How to be Perfect — memorize by Wednesday), but how solution and problem fit — which is, what having a solution looks like, and what solving a problem looks like. Of course it’s better.
Quoting Isaac
The word ‘dialectic’ fair lunges to mind here.
I’m no Bible scholar, so I can’t tell you what’s really going on here. After the would-be stoners leave, Jesus also refuses to condemn the woman — is Jesus not without sin? Couldn’t he have cast the first stone? But he never offered or agreed to; the first stoner was to come from them. — All he says to her is, go and sin no more. He doesn’t deny that she has sinned. He denies only that men are to be enforcers of the law he acknowledges. Where is that in the law? Why are the Pharisees ashamed, instead of arguing that whether they’re also sinners has nothing to do with it? It feels like what Jesus pulls off here is not a reinterpretation of this particular edict, but of the sense in which the law is law: it’s not something we are to enforce, so that means it’s not other-facing; and that fits because he gets there by getting the would-be stoners to look inward, to look at themselves rather than the adulteress — and that makes the law a matter of what God expects of you, not what you are entitled to expect of others.
Which is somewhat curious, because the original problem is adultery, which is something of a threat to family and community stability, for which this religion offered a solution — tell them it’s forbidden, and if they keep at it, go nuclear on their ass. (These fuckin’ adulterers, man, it’s like talking to a wall, amirite?) Jesus calls bullshit on that, without saying that adultery is just fine. Right here, you can see a flip from a proscriptive scheme — these specific behaviors are forbidden — to a prescriptive scheme — here’s how you should live. That raises the troubling specter of human perfectibility, but you only get that idea, as here, by acknowledging human imperfection. There are some hints here about how to feel about that, but not everyone took the hint, so instead we have sometimes gotten a new, much more sweeping enforcement regime — because under a prescriptive model, any deviation is by definition forbidden.
But that’s a tangent. (He said, as if he had a point.) The question is what resources could Jesus draw upon in the existing Jewish tradition he was born into to pull off anything like this sort of reinterpretation? Because besides being, you know, God, he also looks a lot like a really interesting Jewish rabbi.
First, a modern day example:
I have an automobile insurance policy that reads "your liability coverage shall be $10,000." My question then is, how much liability coverage do I have? The answer is $25,000. That seems a strange reading, right?
The reason though is that in Georgia, there is a statute that requires that the minimum liability limits are $25,000. So you might say that I have no coverage because the insurance company failed to provide the minimum limits, so therefore the policy is void. Well, no, the courts have already addressed this question and have decided that if an insurance company sells a policy with less than $25,000 in limits, those limits will be increased to $25,000. The reason for this is that the public policy of the State is to assure people are covered against losses and not uninsured, so the courts won't void the contract, but they will make it compliant.
What this means is that there are various sources of rules and laws ( in this case: the insurance policy, the statute, and the judicial decisions). The same holds true for the Bible.
When it says we're going to stone the girl, that doesn't mean she will get stoned just like when the policy says you have $10,000 in coverage, that doesn't mean that's all you have.
"The meaning is exactly what it says. What’s the problem? The woman's punishment for improperly touching a man who was not her husband is to have her hand cut off.
By 21st century standards of human rights, gender equality etc (broadly speaking, at least, Christianity is still backwardly patriarchal, particularly in the RC church, Greek Orthodox and evangelical Christianity) the customs of the time were barbaric. The Hebrews as much as any, if not more so - Assyrian (1100 BC) law for instance says that the punishment for a woman if she injures a man's testicle during a quarrel is just to have her finger amputated, rather than the whole hand."
Just a finger cut off. While she rescued her man...
Point me to it. I try to respond directly and am willing to re-read (and read anew) a fair amount. If I am asking you for the courtesy of directing me to the issue, it is not rhetorical; it is vastly more efficient for the both of us and more likely to lead to a meaningful response.
Quoting Isaac
In what way have I dismissed it? Despite its obvious error (who is instructed to stone girls and whether such stoning is a good thing), I've taken it at face value that the Bible tells someone to stone someone. I haven't disagree that it says so (or that is says many other objectionable things) or even tried to explain the broader context or sentiment of various interpretive communities. What I did do is comment that reading something in isolation as if the justification for its inclusion in the book is that it stands self-evidentially wonderful all by itself is not the way that other interpretive communities understand such stories. If you wish to address yourself to those communities, you need to do so in a way that suggests you understand what they are saying. If you wish to address those outside the community and advocate for a position about what the book means to that community, again, it would behoove you to have a reasonable idea of whether your position is an accurate representation of that community's meaning.
I expect any intelligent participant in a conversation to meet these standards if they actually want to discuss a topic. Knowing something about what you are speaking and working together to understand it better makes, in my view, for a more worthwhile conversation. Where specific knowledge is required, speaking without it is a waste of time. Where generalized knowledge is required, speaking without it is a waste of time. Where people are discussing something that requires neither, you can make some progress in the absence of knowledge. Any of those conversations can be enjoyable (or at least a tolerable way to waste your time on the internet), but I prefer a reasonable level of knowledge as needed. This preference/expectation holds regardless of the topic. You'll notice (not that I've participated much in this forum) that I do not comment on topics that require specific knowledge when I have none and in general I do not try to authoritatively speak for anyone (or any group). For instance, regardless of my educational background in philosophy, you'll never catch me saying, "Spinoza meant this..." or "Kant intended that..." or "Novick's critique of Plato was..." I haven't studied philosophy in that way and I heavily rely upon secondary/tertiary sources to predigest specific philosophers/topics for me.
Quoting Isaac
Your current approach is great for something, I suppose, but it makes for terrible ethical reasoning or literary analysis. As someone in the thread has already said, we don't judge individuals for membership in a group, we judge them on their own merit. As Lewis said in his article, we must ask the individual whether they are aware that they admire someone horrible. Contrast that with the group exclusion @Banno (who I tag only because he asked that I not use his name without tagging him) suggested (or asked about) based upon someone being a member of a group alone (e.g. Christians). From what I can gather, besides your dislike for the Bible as source material and your opinion that other people should use some other book for ethical guidance (or wisdom or ...), you also think that something can be said about the beliefs of an individual viz-a-viz admiring a bad god by virtue of their identification as a Christian. What is offered as advice to you (if you want X, do Y) is sincere, but is also a straightforward critique of your seeming approach - ignorant condemnation of an individual based upon poorly constructed standards of judgment is wrong. Trying to educate you (as to any individual or group) is a waste of both of our time, so I am focusing on the method - what can we say about an individual based upon identification in a religious group?
If you like, discuss the topic at hand. If you want to continue this back and forth about methods of having a discussion, I can do that, too.
What the Bible says is up to the individual (within various interpretive influences and communities);
Your interpretation of the Bible does not dictate how others interpret it;
Knowing your own interpretation tells you nothing about what others think;
Identifying as a member of a group does not necessitate that the member believes/agrees with all group positions/dogma (to the extent the group has identifiable positions/dogma);
Your opinion as to what a group's position/dogma with respect to any position does not make it so;
Knowing your own opinion about a group's position/dogma tells you nothing about the beliefs of an individual group member;
Knowing that a Christian makes use of the Bible provides you no information about what that individual Christian believes;
Judging an individual based upon either your opinion about a book or you opinion about a group is both an ethical and intellectual error; and
Lewis's article cannot be used to support individual judgment based group membership given Lewis's own analysis of what identification in a group relates about them.
You are welcome to disagree with any (or all) of those statements. If you have a different thesis related to the thread you want to offer up, restate, or point to in prior posts, feel free. But please, stop the claims of victimization and that I (or anyone else) am somehow being intellectually unfair.
For what it is worth, this is sort of like the conversations about self-avowed Nazis. The justification for banning such a person from the forum upon site is not because of any judgment with respect to the individual, but that because the site administrators have deemed that declaring yourself a Nazi is sufficient warrant for banning. To their credit, the administrators have posted rules about it and offered up some justifications. The primary justification (if I can speak for admins/mods) is wholly unrelated to the individual being banned, but about the community that is being protected. It is simply unkind to forum participants (and counter-productive to the environment the admins are trying to create) to have to explore why someone thinks being a Nazi is a good thing or why Nazi philosophy should be given serious intellectual consideration. We don't have to judge the individual being banned - we just ban them. That is, where individual behavior poses intolerable risk to the community, individual evaluation is unnecessary and irrelevant.
This issue has been hinted at by several posters when they say things like, "Christians come from a long history with multiplicity of views and have done both great things and horrid things. Someone simply saying that they are Christian does not pose sufficient risk to the community to justify group treatment." There may be fruit in saying why Christians are more or less like Nazis, but Lewis's article does not go so far and actually says that even individual Nazis should be given the chance to explain themselves. I have not, therefore, explored the theme of group treatment based on communal threat in my responses.
If you can think of a third way to get to Banno's offered conclusion (that is exclusion from a conversation not based either upon 1) individual judgment or 2) group judgment based upon communal threat) using Lewis's article, go ahead an offer it up. As it stands, Banno's thesis is an unwarranted extension of Lewis's article.
Since you put this question so starkly I'm going to give everyone a quick Biblical lesson. God made people and gave some laws for all people (known as the Noahide laws in Judaism, but found as part of the story of Noah in god's covenant). Sometime later, god chose a specific group of people among the nations to make another covenant with (see Exodus) with laws that applied ONLY to that group. Anyone who was not part of the chosen people was not required to follow ANY of the laws given specifically to the chosen people.
Absent the Christian being a part of the chosen people to which the Bible refers, they are not required to do any of the bad stuff that people keep complaining about. A naive literal reading of the Bible gets you there. The thing is, you actually have to read it rather than just picking a sentence at random and then start asking why everyone in the world isn't doing whatever the sentence says at all times in all circumstances. It doesn't take any level of sophisticated textual analysis or weird interpretive communities to get you there. You just need to follow the pronouns and scope.
P.S.
For flavor..
The scary thing is that we're living in times where we feel we need to discuss such topics to begin with.
In an ideal society, the OP and the essay it refers to should not exist, or should be regarded as redundant, because in such a society, people would think, "But of course we should not admire those who worship a god who dooms people to eternal damnation! How can anyone even think to doubt that!!"
But we're living in times where we have to justify our basic moral intuitions with arguments. It's not clear it is possible to succeed in that.
(@Michael, would you join?)
Only for shorthand. There's lots of atrocities in the bible.
http://www.realbiblestories.com/10-biblical-atrocities-that-go-overlooked-part-two-2/
https://thechurchoftruth.org/god-committed-unspeakable-heinous-crimes-against-humanity/
https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
I'm trying not to make this about "isn't the bible terrible", but you force my hand by trying to make out that I'm cherry-picking a single incident. You know there are atrocities in the bible, we all know that, so let's not pretend my shorthand example is a lone aberration.
Quoting Hanover
Again, this is going to go smoother if we don't first have to get over the stage where we pretend that my specific issues can't be generalised. We know that there are a number of atrocities and other less horrific, but still dodgy, aspects in the bible. We also all know that numerous horrific atrocities have been carried out in the name of Christianity, from witch trials and crusades to child abuse and Calvinism.
Which is problem and which solution? If the antagonists presents a problem and the hero solves it, we have ourselves a classic myth showing how to solve problems. If the protagonist (A) does X and another protagonist (B) shows a way to get around X, which is the problem and which the solution? Is A the good guy and the conniving B keeps dodging the law, or is B the hero showing how to do the right thing despite the difficulties A seems to have arbitrarily created?
I like the idea of Jesus the hero showing people how to be good (without strictly breaking the law) even when the law is barbaric, but...
There's nothing in the book to say it's this way round, and not, say, a very highly contextualised and historically specific Jesus showing how - in that unique historical circumstance - one could get around God's law, which in most other cases should be interpreted literally.
I think you've got a great story there. Cruel laws laid down by a vengeful, but all-powerful being, a populous in terror, horrified by their own barbarism, but powerless to defy the lawmaker - along comes a carpenter, with nothing but patience, compassion and his wits he shows the people how to defy the cruel overlord without actually bringing on another famine/thunderbolt/hailstorm. In a classic scene he's defies the Lord's will that a girl be stoned by turning one of his own constitutional edicts against him! In the final death scene, in a brilliant twist, it turns out he's the cruel overlord's son! Cut to credits
A fantastic plot which you should definitely sell the rights to to some major Hollywood studio...but it's not the bible.
I did. It's the quote I pointed to. Just under the words 'the quote...'
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
It's in the quote.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
If I don't engage with the text in the way they want, I'm out of the conversation.
And again...
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
That, to my mind, is what I've done, so there doesn't seem much point in doing so again.
But those non-chosen people are also said to be doomed, are they not? They are automatically classed as the enemies of the Lord, as the enemies of the chosen people, no?
And there are those who would say that this is a naive literal reading of the Bible!
Sure, but the responsibility is also on those who popularize the Bible. Arguably, their responsibility is bigger. The Bible (usually in a simple version without footnotes) is available in many places for free. People are being encouraged to read it.
(One of the reasons Roman Catholicism discouraged literacy and reading the Bible for so long was precisely this concern that if ordinary people are left to themselves reading the Bible, they are very likely going to become confused, lose faith.)
Well no -- the villain here is the Pharisees.
That is odd. You are saying that I dismissed something by pointing you to the fact that other people will dismiss you?
You have yet to offer a third way, Isaac. Again, just point me to it (even a simple reference to the post number) and I'll try to find it to specifically engage with.
Or perhaps he doesn't see it as "molestation" at all. Maybe he read a lot about ancient Greek culture where paedophilia is regarded as a good and normal thing. Maybe he doesn't think children are automatically innocent. Maybe he himself was a victim of priestly sexual abuse as a child and is now repeating the pattern. Maybe he lost his faith and is since then in a volatile psychological state, more likely to engage in problematic or even criminal behaviors.
I'm not saying this to excuse the priests. It's just that these are also the realities of religious life.
(I don't know about English literature, but in some languages, there is a whole subgenre of literature the theme of which is the troubled inner life of priests. This is also the theme of some works of art. It seems plausible enough that actual priests have similar problems.)
When you look at this in the context of Christian culture as a whole, priestly child abuse is, sadly, not some egregious special case. People can be quite rough on eachother, and Christians are no exception. Physical violence, domestic abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, ...
But let's not pretend they are examples of condoned conduct.
See above and see here
I don't know that I have responsibility to defend the Bible. I don't care what people think about it enough to do that. My only point is that if someone is going to read a passage from the Bible, having some background into what it means is important.
Still, there is a considerable difference between 10 000 stones as written to be thrown while getting 25 000 and 10 000 dollar that is written while 25 000 is implied by local laws. Why writing 10 000 stones when one means 10 000 dollars? Were sticks and stones money in these ancient times? Should one be coined to death or should his wallet be cut in two? Why use the vivid imagery of cutting hands and throwing stones? Who says this didn't really happen and won't happen again if Christians seize power?
It's become an odd thread. We seem to have general agreement that hell is an unjust notion, and hence a disavowal of those who would claim otherwise, including censure of those who would praise such an unjust god. At this point we pretty much have unstated agreement on the merit of the Lewis article.
But it has been combined with a claim from avowed non-christians that those who would claim otherwise do not exist in great numbers nor do they understand the bible; this last based on some notion of there being a correct, non-literal interpretation. Hence comments such as folk Quoting Hanover
But of course meaning is imputed, as much as discovered.
@Hanover, do you agree that there are those who read the scriptures as giving permission for abominable acts?
@Ennui Elucidator and Hanover appear to wish for a reinvigoration of scholasticism; a narrow focus on defending the one true faith by any rhetorical means available.
Sort of, yes. If you read a single page of a legal document without putting it into the context of other controlling documents and opinions and rules, then you're out of the conversation in terms of what the import of the single document is.
Sure, you can keep pointing to the rule you've read and tell me that it makes my society horrible, but it doesn't.
No. The Bible was not a universal code and it anticipates the people Israel living in a world with many nations not subject to their local war god's rules for the chosen. That is one of the typical misreadings about the Biblical Israelites - that they wanted everyone to be like them. They didn't. They were special.
P.S. Go read about the stranger living in the land of Israel and the rules for the Israelites dealing with them.
Even so, how do we tell what it means? New Testament example - I was talking to a Catholic priest friend of mine yesterday about Jesus throwing out the money changers from the synagogue. I asked him if this was an example of Jesus as human, loosing it - a reaction based on dualistic thinking. He thought for a moment and then said - "Depends upon whether you think this actually happened and if you wish to take it literally." He's more of a Platonist who sees the stories as allegory.
I think it is futile to imagine we can arrive at what these old books mean. It will always be about communities of shared interpretation and radical re-interpretations and crazy outlier interpretations. A hot mess.
I believe there are those who read the kindest and gentlest of words, whether it be from the bible or wherever, to do terrible things. So, yes. There are some horrible people out there, Bible or no Bible.
There is no one true faith or one interpretation. I can't be any clearer. Tell me what words you want me to use that will make you understand that we agree that there are people that use the Bible to willfully say abhorrent things and that those people are abhorrent. If you ask someone, "Should an adulteress be stoned?" and they say, "Absolutely! That is what God commands and I think she deserves it for disobeying God!", that person is bad.
Saying I am advocating scholasticism when I say "read the text you keep referring to in sufficient context to understand the pronoun" is ridiculous. Even my six year old understands the difference between my saying "Your mother said 'you shouldn't go there', but I don't agree" and my saying, "You shouldn't go there." Decontextualizing words to make a point is lazy.
People are being judged for their beliefs every day, and punished. In job interviews; in relationships with family, friends, acquaintances; in courts. We are already living in the kind of society you asked me whether I wanted to live in.
Special in what way? That everyone owes them obedience?
So do we have agreement that, like you and your wife, there are contradictions here?
You both appear to be insisting that those who commit evil after the bible are reading it wrong, while also agreeing that there is no true reading.
I can't see sense in that.
But let's admit at least to the importance of looking at how the words have actually been interpreted by those who use them as opposed to how they might be interpreted by an outsider.
We have a civilization that is thousands of years old and there is a book that appears to allow for stoning in certain instances from a non-contextualized reading of their literature, yet we have no examples in those thousands of years of that stoning occurring in that civilization. In fact, we have evidence that those within that community of speakers have interpreted the book to say that stoning is prohibited. So, for those who have relied upon this book and use it, they don't run into the problem of horrific stonings that those who don't use this book indicate they will.
That's an odd result, right. It's like if I read the laws of Uganda and insisted they permit the eating of their young, yet there's not a single Ugandan who has ever heard of such of thing, but I keep pointing at their book and telling them that they do allow it. At some point you've got to trust the folks that are using that book and asking them what those words actually mean. That you might interpret things differently from your vantage point is academic, but of no meaningful value because you clearly don't know what those words mean to those who actually use them.
But not Southern Baptists. Again, this is special pleading. You ignore those who are using the book, who when you ask them what it means, provide an answer you do not like.
Quoting Banno
The Southern Baptists don't stone people.
What I've said is that people can read it however they want, but some readings have more or less support. My daughter saying, "You said 'You shouldn't go there!'" is accurate. What would you say I meant in the first case verses the second? Does the squishiness of meaning preclude our evaluation of what it means?
And again, I've never taken issue that it says abhorrent things. On my reading, it does, unequivocally. From the first story on, god is shitty.
Stop conflating the Bible (or the god described therein) being shitty with whether an individual Christian should be excluded from conversations about ethics. Those aren't the same things.
We already know what that looks like. Right wing political options tend to affiliate themselves with Christianity. You know what that looks like in your respective countries.
They would if allowed. One can of course provide all manor of examples of morally deplorable positions that folk claim are evidenced from the bible. Your claim appears to be that these are based on misreadings, while agreeing that there is no correct reading.
What?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
No one owed them obedience. It is like you aren't even trying. Read the book. Find textual support for your glib. If you can't, give it up. If you can, produce it.
Who is writing your posts? Who is saying the things that come out of your mouth? Someone other than you? Are you just opening your mouth when objective reality is the one doing the talking?
That we lack a unitary meaning doesn't mean we don't have well developed conventions for how to understand things. Some interpretations are acceptable in one context that are unacceptable in another, even by the same people. My daughter can quote exact words that I say - if she insists that I meant that she can't go in the first case (where I was quoting her mother and explicitly disagree with her mother), English speakers in the ordinary context are unlikely to agree with her.
You have to then insist on the authority of your own conventions over those of the folk who would stone adulterers.
But it being a question of convention, there is no fact of the matter.
Hence, the book does not provide moral guidance so much as rely on it. One has to know what is right in order to read the book in the right way.
Which I believe to be @Isaac's point.
That's fine.
I have no glib. I read the book, a lengthy academic theological edition with ample footnotes and commentary. I prefer the simple and the literal reading. So I noticed there was all that talk about what applies for the Israelites. Paul wrote letters to these and those people. And so on. I was not addressed in any of those writings. As such, I did not feel addressed by the book.
I have noticed, however, a marked difference between how I read the book and how the Christians I know read it. I don't know a single Christian who thinks that what the Bible says doesn't apply to me. Not a single one. They all believe that what the Bible says applies to all of mankind, that all of mankind must follow the rules set out in the Bible. (This is what themes like "Modern people are godless, sinful" are all about.)
In contrast, I distinctly remember a scene from an old biblical film where a character, played by the young Anthony Hopkins, addresses precisely this issue. Namely, a number of religious people argue that everyone must obey the law as set out by God. While Hopkins' character argues that such is not the case, that outsiders are not subject to that law, and also that insiders cannot force the law upon outsiders.
I thought this was extremely strange, because this is precisely not how Christians go about this matter.
Isaac, the fellow who thought the Bible was written in English? If that was his point - that language must be understood within a language community - I'm sorry I missed it; I agree with him. But again, what does that have to do with Lewis and your extension of his neglected argument to summarily writing off Christians without knowing anything about the individual?
The Bible doesn't do anything, Banno, people do. I can use the Bible to support my ethical arguments or I can use my ethical arguments to support the Bible. I can also go in the opposite direction. I already write enough words, Banno. You don't have to add ones I haven't written.
But why then do those people say they're getting their moral principles from the Bible?
A person stops being an individual the moment they use a group term for themselves. If someone wants to be treated as an individual, then they shouldn't make a point of calling themselves Christians.
(And that's leaving aside the huge topic of Christians refusing to treat other people as individuals.)
Sure, but the point is that there is a whole culture of people refusing to play by the rules. We cannot just ignore them, nor their success.
Then you don't have much of a case for fairness.
Quoting Isaac
The right to freedom of speech doesn't include the right to be heard.
Add to this the problem that we're dealing with events that are potentially rare statistically.
Realistically, how often does a person know an adulteress, and is in a position to stone her?
Perhaps once or twice in the whole lifetime. Definitely not enough to establish a pattern as far as actions go, so we're left with a theoretical examination of a person's beliefs.
So I shouldn't say that I am American? Or a person? Or a man? Or middle-aged? Or...? Hell, my body is but a bunch of cells, some of which I am proud of and some not, should I say I am a body? Or maybe a brain (damn you lymbic system!)? Feels an awful lot like group identity (you know, generalizations) allows mental efficiency but can be parsed when the need arises. Again, Lewis's article specifically disagrees that knowing someone is a Nazi means that they are non-admirable. Why are you going backwards (you know, being regressive)?
Like I said, it's about making a point of using a group term for oneself. It's about using a group term for oneself for the purpose of obtaining special rights and benefits for oneself.
It's one thing to check "American" or "male" on some questionnarie. It's quite another to say, "I'm an American, therefore, I'm free to invade other countries and the people there must kneel before me" or "I'm male, and women must worship me."
When people describe themselves with the term "Christian", they tend to mean the latter, ie. that on account of being Christians, they deserve special treatment and have special rights, that they are above ordinary people.
For what it is worth, Christianity is not Judaism (whatever that is) as understood/modified by Jesus, but rather the followers of Paul. So reading the Jewish Bible as universalist is a tendency of those trying to follow in Paul's sted rather than as an extension of the group that actually wrote the thing. Even Jesus is inclined not to share his wisdom with the non-Jew because he wasn't sent to talk to them. Noticing a major disconnect between the themes of the Bible, the themes of the Bible as re-codified/written by early Christians, and the themes of Paul is appropriate. People raised as Christian (or even as "atheists" or "non-religious" in a secular-Christian culture) have a super hard time not importing a Christian reading into the text and insisting that ideas are in it that simply aren't in the text.
It really takes a lot to pull yourself out of your cultural biases when engaging with a text. If an alien that understood English with no familiarity with Christianity should read the Bible, what it understood about the book would likely be at complete odds with what Christians will tell you is a literal reading of the text.
Oh, so we, the outsiders, are the dogs? And the Lord is our master anyway ...
They've had over two hundred years to pass whatever laws they wanted to where I live. If they wanted to stone folks, they would have by now. Maybe it's on next month's agenda.
I really don't know what to make of comments like the above. Is it ribbing or do you have this caricature view of Southern Baptists? I don't think they should get special protection, but I do think they ought be afforded the same respect as other religious groups.
Maybe next time you visit, we can visit the local Baptist church and you'll find them not terribly scary. It'll be fun. It'll be the first time for me at a church service.
Doubtless; but nevertheless there are those who woudl do so.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Well, perhaps they are caught in the same sort of circularity as @Hanover.
I tend to leave the to you; case in point: Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I'm presently at a lose to see what it is that I have said that you are finding so objectionable that you are persisting after two dozen pages.
But I am happy for you to make this thread as long as you can. It further puts the lie to your previous clim that the article was unoriginal and hackneyed. Keep it up.
You need to differentiate the writer and what's written (the topic at hand).
If this was a personal heart-to-heart over an intimate dinner by the candlelight, then it might be different.
And
Quoting jorndoe
This is all I have ever been discussing. Lewis, Christians, and whether his article has any bearing on your question.
If they admire evil, ought they be allowed to the table?
I failed to notice or you wrote “given that” which isn’t quite the conditional you suggest it to be? Also you pluralized both Christians and Muslims, so your syntax indicated you were speaking of groups of people, not a hypothetical individual with specific beliefs that happens to belong to a general class. Also, despite having quoted you on this post in several prior comments, this is the first you’ve suggested that I misread you. If I did, I did. Mea culpa. But now that you are clarifying, go ahead and put a period at the end of a sentence. Do you have to ask an individual Christian what their views are before acting as if they admire a horrid god?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I've been making your misfire apparent for page after page. From my very first reply to you on the toipc:
Quoting Banno
Anyway, perhaps we are finished here.
The Pharisees who made up the cruel laws? Or the Pharisees who misinterpreted the law so poorly written and ambiguous that it only got properly understood 1500yrs later. I can't say this new story about overcoming incompetence is better than the one about overcoming cruelty.
Yep, all good possibilities too.
Quoting baker
Sadly true. One of the issues I'm trying to raise here is that there's a lot in the bible (and in Christian tradition - obedience to authority, exceptional respect for religious leaders, cruel and severe punishments...) which provide a perfect environment for abuse.
Quoting baker
OK, what is it you suggest?
Quoting baker
I don't see how. Are you saying that I can only make a case the we ought have something if it's actually indispensable. That seems like an unreasonably high threshold.
Quoting baker
No. Nor should it, in all cases. But again, here I'm discussing what ought to be, not what is. I think it's reasonable for people to venture an opinion on the contents of the bible as any other book, without needing to become part of some peculiar game of make-believe.
I'm not. I've talked exclusively about narratives, not law, not history... stories.
Quoting Hanover
Maybe, but that's because there's a fact of the matter about how legal documents are interpreted. The reason I'd have no luck is because Judges are obliged to take the legal context into account. No-one is obliged to take the theological context into account, you just decide to, and then insist I must also.
Yep. Napolean Phenomena. You start a thread on religion, a lot of people will think "I know some talking points about religion". Religion-bashing has become passé since the new atheists lost their novelty factor, the new vogue is to defend it. I'm afraid the actual content of the the OP stood only a little chance in such a polarised environment, but there's been some genuinely interesting discussion (for me, anyway) through the haze of apologetics, so still an OP worth writing I think, thanks.
That's a keeper.
Quoting Wayfarer
I wonder why they always exclude Jews from this blanket condemnation... Isn't Yahweh a bitch too? :-)
This is just incorrect and largely why you're not afforded a seat at the table when offering interpretations of biblical sources. There's nothing meaningfully distinct between how legal documents are interpreted as opposed to religious except for the fact that you have respect for the Anglo tradition of legal interpretation, but not for the systems in place for biblical interpretation.
When interpreting a legalistic document, we need to look to how it is interpreted by those who actually use as a guide for their society, whether that be the OT, the Constitution, or any legal code. It makes no more sense for a Ugandan to interpret the US Constitution and tell me what it really means than it does for you to tell someone who relies upon the OT that it really means that stoning is acceptable.
The religious group that holds the OT as a primary source of law is Judaism. Christians, as you might have noticed, do not. Why they eat pork and Jews don't is something you can research if you'd like. So, now looking at Judaic interpretations (as that is the one at play here), we now need to look at which of the Jews consider the OT as a literally true document and we then limit ourselves to that subgroup within Judaic interpretation. That sub-group would be those who are generally considered to be the Orthodox. Their view is not a simple literalism however, but it's one of divine authorship, meaning they do believe God wrote the OT. As each word is from a divine source, each word is impregnated with profound meaning that must be deciphered. That is to say, they reject outright these simplistic literalist interpretations where you interpret by reading from the four corners of the document. You also have to include Talmudic sources in your interpretations as well, as that too is a primary source. That is to say, when we look to interpret the OT from those who use it, no one does as you have done. You are criticizing a view held by no one.
From all of this interpretation arises what is referred to as halacha, which are the determinations of what Jewish law is. The method by which these conclusions are drawn is not nebulous or vague, but is based upon a long standing method. This is to say, there are few people who live their lives with greater certitude than the ultra-religious Jews. They don't go bumbling about wondering what this ever evolving document demands of them..
So, no, nothing you have said means a whole lot. It's just simplistic nonsense that actually argues that adherence to OT law demands (or might one day be so misinterpreted as to demand) we stone little girls. If you are interested in what the OT does demand (and the better word is "command") to the Jews, look it up. There are 613 commandments, not one of which says you are to stone girls.
My special pleading is limited to what actually occurs, having eliminated the hypothetical concerns of those who have no idea what they're talking about, except that they might have engaged in a cursory reading of a document that they now wish to claim equal expertise in. Reading this nonsense is like when I have to respond to a pro se legal pleading.
We could be, but how would that help your page count? I think at least two more rounds of "Grouping Christians is..." and "I'm not not grouping Christians, I'm just using Christians as proxy for..." is in order. I will insist that you say, "People who admire morally abhorrent agents are bad and that includes some Christians (such as X) that admire a morally abhorrent god" and you will reply "Stop being dense and engaging in special pleading; I am obviously talking about the Scotsman left after my No-true Scotsman criteria are applied (while of course conceding that it is of no moment whether any of them are Scotsman because I am really just talking about a pamphlet that sets out rules for government for China), and those Scotsman are abhorrent, so stop saying they are moral." Then I, trying yet again to understand you because of what I see as your clear equivocation will ask, "Who's on first?" and you will say "Yes."
The straight man always comes out looking better.
The vogue is to get over being fart-sniffing atheists (new or otherwise) and just be malcontented nihilists playing at absurdists telling everyone that the know nothing by producing a mountain of evidence and talking points about why everyone is wrong all of the time. Or maybe just being contrarian. Hard to tell. In any event, you are at least 30 years late to the party of the cool kids shitting on atheists and defending the naive, romanticized "true" believers. Or maybe go read Tolstoy.
To see if I understand, the idea is that you've articulated a coherent narrative which describes the different contexts that the 'tendencies to act as if' arise in. That itself gets interpreted as a belief, because the priest does have a tendency to act (X in context A and Y in context B). It doesn't matter who made the belief, all that matters is how accurate the description is. On this account someone can believe something they are not aware of. Even if the priest doesn't think, articulate, realise, become consciously aware of their tendency to act as if X, that's counted as a summary of their belief, and thus is what their belief is.
The 'and thus' there follows because all there is to a belief that or in X [hide=*](in this account)[/hide] is an accurate summary of a person's tendency to act as if X.
Seem right?
Quoting Isaac
I understand that this drives a distinction between a person's post hoc rationalisations and their tendencies to act as if? For example, someone can make a rationalisation of their behaviour which inaccurately summarises their tendencies to act as if, and thus the resulting rationalisation does not reflect their beliefs as defined above.
I don't think that interfaces directly with the argument either. If I can reconstruct your argument, it seems to go something like:
( 1 ) Christians act as if X is good.
( 2 ) X is bad.
( 3 ) If someone acts as if X is good when X is bad then their judgement should be questioned.
( 4 ) Christians' judgement should be questioned.
Which is a perfectly valid argument. I don't think it's currently sound though, as premise ( 1 ) seems insufficiently justified. The reason being that despite the sophistication of the belief account you've provided, there currently isn't an articulated link between why worshipping an entity which approves of X means acting as if X is good.
Edit: eg this illustrative quote from the Screwtape Letters:
[quote='CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters']It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that is is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rhuematism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards are her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother--the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's soul to beating or insulting the real wife or son without any qualm.[/quote]
An additional point is that cognitive dissonance makes this argument on particularly shaky ground. If I've understood it right, the unified narrative for cognitive dissonance is: one acts X in context A and Y in context B, where X and Y are 'contrary'.
So ( 1 ) would be true for Christians act as if X is good, but under the assumption that a unified narrative would need to imply that in the aggregate the Christian acted as if X was good, this gives a strange conclusion. If a Christian acts as if X is good in church, but not at home, being able to substitute in 'Person act as if X is good' because they do in context C into ( 1 ) from the unified narrative makes you able to question the Christian's judgement. EG, hypothetical secret gay rights advocate in a Christian community worshipping the God preached in a gay bashing Church still gets their judgement questioned about the gays in the same way as the rest of the congregation.
I don't think that conclusion is tenable, so it highlights that one cannot take the constitutive elements out of the unified narrative and throw them into the argument. And if that is true, the necessity of coming up with a unified narrative in cases of cognitive dissonance blocks the argument from applying to any specific Christian without a theory of when you can rightly judge that someone in the aggregate is acting as if X is good. IE, a theory of accuracy for the unified narratives.
Nonsense. The legal interpretation can land me in jail or set me free. It has just about one of the largest meaningful consequences it's possible to have. Were it not for such s consequence I might well not give two figs for how legal instructions had been historically interpreted by the legal community either.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, but that's because a Ugandan, like it or not, is not under the jurisdiction of the US constitution and you, like it or not, are.
This is not the case with the Bible, which is just a book and people voluntarily follow some, all, or none of it's edicts as they see fit.
The difference is one of pragmatism. I can quite legitimately, intervene in people's interpretation of religious texts. I might say to the Pope "look at this line from the bible, isn't this all nonsense", and he could say "yes, you're right, sod this for a game of soldiers". In contrast, I could provide the best argument in the world to a judge about some line in a legal document and he'd still have to say "well, that's the way the legal community have interpreted it so there's little I can do".
Each individual member of the legal community is constrained to some extent by the others and subject to their interpretation regardless.
Each individual member of a religion could make up a new rule, walk away entirely, or not as they see fit and they'd be in no way bound by traditional interpretations. They could invent a new church, a new cult, an entirely new religion, or abandon the project entirely.
You're treating biblical law as if it applied in the same way as actual law. It doesn't. Biblical law is entirely optional. Take all of it, some of it, none of it, as you see fit. Make it up as you go along, stick to 2000yr old edicts, listen to your pastors, ignore them entirely, whatever you like. As such, there's no reason at all why a complete outsider might not take part in the discussion on the basis of what each line/section/story means to them, it's possible that their unique take might change the understanding of any individual, since there's no practical constraint on what the 'right' interpretation is.
I see I've created some confusion, I've probably veered too far from the topic and it's making it hard to see the relevance of what I'm saying.
Behaviours can be 'bad'. States of affairs can be 'bad'. Judging people as 'bad' I don't think makes any sense. I'm arguing here that the state of affairs where there's an influential narrative with such contradictions is 'bad', the state of affairs where a Christian believes in a vengeful god is 'bad', not that the Christian themselves is 'bad'.
The argument that their involvement in moral discourse should be questioned is...
When faced with a moral dilemma, I might ask myself "what would Aragorn do?" by which I mean what behaviours would fit with the story of Aragorn - the hero narrative, nobility, sacrifice etc
When faced with a similar dilemma, the Christian might ask "What would Jesus do?" by which they mean what behaviours would fit with that narrative, and they may well thereby come up with some 'good' behaviours. But with the Christian, they may also ask "What would God want me to do?", or "What would the pious do?", or "What would the Pharisees do?". They've got numerous (contradictory) narratives to choose from. The problem here is in deciding on behaviours where one course of action has a strong pull (such as much selfish behaviour does, instant gratification, hyperbolic discounting etc), the availability of an 'easier' option, but still very much fitting with the narrative is problematic (for the community).
The relevance of cognitive dissonance - the reason it's painful - is that we need to keep a united sense to the disparate internal models (which don't really discuss their outputs with each other much!). We do this by narratives (stories), the pain is when an understanding/behaviour doesn't fit with the story. If the story is a good one, this can keep us on the straight and narrow (it's actually painful to stray from it). If the story is full of holes, get-outs and contradictions, virtually any behaviour can be made to fit, there's hardly any dissonance, no pain, nothing to keep us on the straight and narrow.
So basically, it's not so much about judging the person, it's about judging the state of affairs where there's a weak narrative. The molesting priest will find it harder (experience more dissonance) if the only narratives available to him are those in which molesting young boys is always and unconditionally abhorrent, without redeeming consideration. As it stands, he could come up with a narrative where it's a grey area - the children should submit to his authority after all, shouldn't they; he is very pious, isn't he; he's got the frock on and everything...looks the part, does the speeches... Christianity is not the only flawed narrative in this respect.
None of this is intended to deny the fact that people compartmentalise, run two narratives at a time, it's only meant to emphasise that this usually comes at a cost, and the cost is the extent to which the two narratives are at odds. It takes a specific type of personality disorder to act like Aragorn in some instances, but like a slave-driver in others. That's because the two narratives are so radically opposed, it would create a lot of painful dissonance every time they crossed over (exploring these cross-overs is another therapeutic technique), but with the molesting priest, his two narratives aren't so different. In the vestry, the molester exerts his authority, for his own glory, believes he's owed the gratification - in church, he might have the story of Jesus to create a little cognitive dissonance (Jesus would protect the innocent wouldn't he?), but he's also got the story of the vengeful God, stopping at nothing to extract his right to adoration. So he can re-frame his past actions in the vestry to reduce the pain of these two stories clashing.
Nope, that's an irrelevant distinction. The question of what a document means is interpreted by the method agreed upon by those who use the document as to what it means. That would apply whether you're interpreting the criminal code in your jurisdiction that might land you in jail or whether you're interpreting Belgian zoning law that has no application to you, or even ancient Greek legal documents.
Quoting Isaac
No, that's not why. If I were truly schooled in Ugandan law, I would feel comfortable telling the Ugandans what their law said, but I'm not. I know nothing of their complex and nuanced culture, know nothing of what they rely upon for legal authority, know nothing about how they prioritize authority, know nothing of their unwritten customs, and know nothing about their political system. If seated at the table and asked what Ugandan law is, I'd say I don't know. I'd say the same if I were asked the same of Montana law. That I can read and flip through documents doesn't mean I add any value to that discussion.
Quoting Isaac
This is a long discussion about a distinction that makes absolutely no difference. If the question is what the French law of 1235 demanded of its citizens and you argued X and me Y, one of us would be correct, despite the fact that law applies to no one. In fact, we could consider a law that was never applied to anyone.
The penalty one might expect from the violation of the law (e.g. incarceration, financial penalty, revocation of special privileges, public scorn, embarrassment, eternity in hell, shunning from the community or whatever) plays zero role in interpreting what the law means. If the law says it's illegal to steal, it's illegal to steal, regardless of whether you have an expectation of getting caught and regardless of whether you have an expectation of Presidential pardon.
There are methods by those communities who adhere to the tenants of the Bible when interpreting it, and if you want to know whether some stone their girls, you need to use those methods to know. If you don't use those methods, then you will be saying nothing more than "hypothetically, the bible could be used to justify stoning based upon my two cents upon reading through it, so it's a bad document." So now we know it could be, as opposed to whether it is or ever has been.
But meaning is use! And we can't ask what the words mean to us privately, but have to look at the contexts in which those words are used and the resultant behavior! Oh wait. I see what you did there. Applied some analytic philosophy to the analytic philosophers that lost their way because you are talking about a book they hate. Surely Witty thinks you are wrong.
Yep. you nailed it! The lurking bigotry behind the feigned reasonableness of Lewis' article, and Banno's OP. Anachronism of the one-eyed dick.
Who says?
Quoting Hanover
That's not the point. The point is that if the law is ambiguous, ie one person thinks it prohibits stealing another that it doesn't, what matters is the interpretation of the legal community. That's where the consequence will be determined.
Quoting Hanover
No I don't, I can just observe their actions. It'd be a better test than asking.
Quoting Hanover
That's exactly what I am saying.
That book is written by a Mormon. The Mormons have their own canon (Bible, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Book of Mormon). They also believe in continuous revelation, meaning God continues to speak to people, and they can add to their canon as their President determines, as he is said to be a prophet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_works
They are not literalists by any means.
Explain how this is supportive of the argument that since the OT discusses stoning of girls, that is what it means without reference to its context (i.e. usage).
Your post did make clear your desire to judge a book by its cover though without engaging in even the most basic rigor of cracking it open.
Your first question ("who says?") is answered by yourself in your response to me.Quoting Isaac
You can ask or watch because they are the same thing, meaning they do exactly as they say they are.
Quoting Isaac
Every document can be hypothesized into a bad document. I could use the Bill of Rights to justify all sorts of chaos if I wanted to interpret it in a way that no one has ever interpreted and that defies all manner by which people have ever interpreted it.
They do. A most wonderful people. Their disaster relief is truly awe inspiring. I went on some hurricane relief trips with them into areas devastated by hurricanes and helped remove debris, save belongings, and offer assistance. They pitch tents around their local churches and then render aid throughout the week.
And then they go and stone little girls. Whatever. So ridiculous. It would be insulting if not so ignorant.
Excommunication can be the consequence for adultery in the LDS church, though.
Bear in mind that in an LDS setting, excommunication can mean that the person will lose their job, their home, their friends, their family (because Mormons tend to be very tightly knit socially and economically).
Excommunication is not stoning, of course, but it can critically worsen the person's socio-economic status, even to the point where they face homelessness or death by suicide for lack of socio-economic options.
As a translator for the local language, I once witnessed a regional organizational meeting of missionaries at the local LDS church.
"Get their trust! Get their phone number!" their leader instructed them.
And some of them say "Democraps" instead of "Democrats".
I'm not going to defend every practice with the LDS church, nor of any institution on the face of the planet. I'm also not going to recognize any similarity between stoning and removal from an organization. If you're truly interested in the nuances of LDS excommunication (versus disfellowship or simply probation), and the actual likelihood of it occurring, you can read it here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/1975/07/q-and-a-questions-and-answers/what-are-the-reasons-for-and-the-process-of-excommunication?lang=eng
There is also a path back through a new baptism as well.
In any event, most every organization has rules for admission and rules for expulsion. If you want to locate abuses within religious organizations, you needn't look to such subtle instances as the one you've cited. We are all well aware of the serious misdeeds performed by various religious institutions over time.
The question of whether a religious institution can be determined as per se evil from a cursory and decontextualized reading of their religious doctrine remains in the negative.
I once heard that Catholic priests were raping children and the Church covered it up. That's a worse misdeed. And there's even worse than that by many other religions. Even worse by many governments.
Link this back to what we're talking about.
Quoting Hanover
The currency of religion is trust.
Learning things like mentioned before (from aggressive proselytizing strategies to priestly abuse of minors) undermines one's trust in a particular religion, or in religions in general.
We are justified to expect a measure of purity and straightforwardness from the very people who promote them.
For me as an external observer (who is perhaps on a spiritual quest), the religious institution has one chance to prove itself trustworthy. Approaching a religion should not be an exercise in ignoring red flags or inventing excuses as to why said religious institution is justified to do whatever it's doing.
If some religious institution truly holds the keys to heaven, then it shouldn't have any blemishes. And by this I mean primarily blemishes that the religious institution itself recognizes as such (e.g. the way the RCC did, by apologizing on numerous occasions by now; I'm not even talking about things that I may consider red flags and blemishes).
If the religious institution wants total trust from us, it needs to earn it. If it wants us to stake our eternity on its teachings, it needs to be flawless (which was actually the line of reasoning for why the RCC denied any wrongdoing for so long).
So it's not about whether a religious institution can be determined as per se evil, it's about whether it earns a particular person's trust or not.
No. The first question is about the meaning of texts, the second about the observed consequences. If I wrote, at the top of my 'Rules of My Gang' - "Everyone must have a skinhead", and no-one on my gang has a skinhead, that doesn't change the meaning of the expression "everyone must have a skinhead", it's still an ordinary expression in English with a fairly uncontroversial meaning that any English speaker could have a crack at. The adherence, or not, of my gang members to that instruction isn't what all that determines it's meaning.
Quoting Hanover
Nonsense. A document which said nothing but "You ought to be kind to others" is not on an equal footing with a document which says nothing but "you ought to rape children". It's utterly absurd to suggest that the former is no better a document than the latter because "Every document can be hypothesized into a bad document.". Yes, every document can be interpreted badly, what matters is the ease with which that can be done.
Quoting Hanover
Quoting Hanover
Both of your points apply.
On the one hand, there are the Protestants and the Born-Again Christians, for example, who, basically espouse a DIY view of what should count for God's word and God's law. Or, if we look at the multitudes and versatility of religions, there ensues a relativism on account that religions espouse all kinds of views.
On the other hand, there are the Jews, and the specific schools within Judaism, for example, with their very definitive understanding of what should count for God's word and God's law.
We, as outsiders, are exposed to both views and practices by the religious people.
So the Protestants, for example, want us to consider ourselves subject to God's law and that everything said the Bible applies to us. Also, just yesterday, the head of the Orthodox church in his Orthodox Christmas speech on national television, spoke in a manner that his message applied to everyone, not just the members of the Eastern orthodox Church.
While on the other hand, there are those religious people who maintain that outsiders have no business even reading scriptures.
So what are we, as outsiders, supposed to do?
In the name of pragmatism, why would you intervene like that?
No, you couldn't. You can't just get an audience with the Pope.
And pretty much every religion/spirituality categorically disagrees with your claim.
Sure, but my religion does agree with me. And has for a few thousand years. People’s inclination towards certainty isn’t new, but it doesn’t mean that it dominates all traditions.
The claim of being “right” for all of time lacks the sort of humility required from fallible people in an ever changing world.
No, it's crucial to the topic at hand.
E.g. Banno's take on it:
Quoting Banno
If arguments or words alone could settle things on their own somehow, people would be redundant.
I want you to acknowledge the following point:
I agree with your take, and I believe in the supremacy of the emic. I think other people's religion is other people's religion and none of my business. However, usually, they don't think this way. No. They expect me to believe that their religion is the one and only right one and that I need to convert to it, or at least bow to it. They are the ones who don't respect the boundary between church and state, they are the ones who don't respect the boundary between their ingroup and the outgroup.
This has been very obvious in this time around Christmas, when high Christian clerics gave their Christmas speeches on national television in what is a nominally secular country. In those speeches, they did not address only the members of their ingroup, but everyone. They spoke as if Jesus' birth was a source of hope for everyone, and so on. There was also no warning from the national television that the speeches of these clerics were addressed only to their respective ingroups.
Why not? Are we, as outsiders to religion, and as viewers of national television, somehow supposed to understand that these clerics are addressing only their respective ingroups and that we should tune out for the time their speech is being televised?
And why do those clerics talk as if what they say applies for everyone, and not just their respective ingroups?
I don't watch Christian channels because I don't feel addressed by what they're saying there. But I expect that national, secular television should uphold the proper boundaries as far as religion goes; or else, what the clerics say there should be taken at face value (and thus subject to legitimate criticism).
What "religion" would that be??
The whole point of religion is about being right, for all times!!
But realistically, how much say do we have in such situations?
When you're actually on a board or a committe that discusses ethical issues, I imagine that at that level, there are going to be so many legal and procedural restrictions and guidelines in place that your objection to the effect of "But this person worships an evil god!" is misplaced. Perhaps if you're powerful enough, you can vote to remove the person in question from the board or committee, but beyond that, it's not clear how much you can actually do or how much your opinion of their religious status matters.
As for discussing ethical issues in a less formal setting: In such settings (such as between friends and family), the nature of the relationship between those involved is likely to be primary. For example, if you and your religious brother need to decide whether to place your elderly parents into a facility for the elderly, will whether your brother is religious or not really matter in your decision, or will it be the case that what will matter more that he is your brother?
I don't know what the solution would be. But for starters, better boundaries, holding back, less communication, fewer attempts at communication, more of minding one's own business. And I mean all this is a good sense, in the sense of protecting one's time and resources.
Your stance strikes me as unduly idealistic, bound to fail in the real world.
You expect Christians to openly engage in discussion of their beliefs, including justifying them to outsiders. I point out that Christians are loathe to do that. They simply won't engage in discussion the way you think would be fair. So it's on us to do something differently, lest we end up at a disadvantage (which usually comes in the form of wasted time and resources).
I'll argue that it is reasonable _not_ to venture an opinion on the contents of the bible as any other book, unless one is part of the epistemic and normative community associated with that book, or unless one otherwise becomes part of some peculiar game of make-believe.
(I'm reminded of a scene from Wuthering Heights where a young woman, infatuated with Heathcliff, giggles as he tortures her dog. Heathcliff later criticizes her severely for that.)
It's your second premise that isn't sufficiently justified. In a Christian setting (or, for the quibblers, in some Christian settings), eternal damnation is _not_ a bad thing. It just isn't. It's righteousness.
There is no “point” to religion.
Religions are not static and change over time. Some religions are more willing to acknowledge that change than others. At any moment in time, there are diversity of opinions among adherents. Some of those opinions are deemed “orthodox” and others “heterodox”, but that doesn’t mean that all disagreements require that there be only one answer.
When dealing with religions that are more rules based, e.g. Judaism and Islam, c.f. Christianity, the rules have to be applied to novel circumstance and as such different people may apply the rules differently and come to different interpretations - all within the confines of orthodoxy. By way of pointing to a much more established “religion” than mine, you may want to look at things like a fatwa, faqih, and ulama. Here is a random article discussing difference of opinion within Islam.
There also religions that are more loosely hobbled together such as Hinduism and therefore must have a wider tent of “orthodoxy.” This is Wiki on Orthodoxy with reference to Hinduism.
[quote=“Wikipedia on Orthodoxy”]
Orthodoxy does not exist in Hinduism, as the word Hindu itself collectively refers to the various beliefs of people who lived beyond the Sindhu river of the Indus Valley Civilization. It is a synthesis of the accepted teachings of each of thousands of gurus, who others equate to prophets, and has no founder, no authority or command, but recommendations. The term most equivalent to orthodoxy at best has the meaning of "commonly accepted" traditions rather than the usual meaning of "conforming to a doctrine", for example, what people of middle eastern faiths attempt to equate as doctrine in Hindu philosophies is Sanatana Dharma, but which at best can be translated to mean "ageless traditions", hence denoting that they are accepted not through doctrine and force but through multi-generational tests of adoption and retention based on circumstantial attrition through millennia.
[/quote]
Between Islam an Hinduism, you’ve got around 3 billion people out of a world population of 8 billion. Go tell them what their “religion” is supposed to be.
P.S. The random article I linked has a section entitled “Ontology of truth: How many answers are ‘correct’ in the sight of God?” that you may find of interest.
Additionally, since this is a philosophy forum and all, maybe you should consider the religion of the ancient Greeks and see if you can suss out some “one truth faith” or “one true interpretation” that is about being right for all of times.
Engage as the context determines. If I can't see a way in which someone's belief could harm my community, then I've no business interfering. If I can, I've reasonable ground to interfere.
Same for states of affairs, behaviours, books, laws...whatever.
What's not reasonable is suggesting that I ought to base my interference on someone else's judgement of whether the belief/text/law might harm my community. That would be absurd. We don't routinely act on the basis of other people's beliefs.
You can go on a philosophy forum and whine about it, though.
All along the fence surrounding the synagogue were signs warning you not to carry beyond the fence. My wife asked why the Jews were so concerned about the open carry laws currently being debated n the Georgia legislature related to the carrying of guns.
The sign actually was a warning caused by the eruv having fallen down due to recent storms. Under Jewish law, you cannot carry objects on the sabbath, as that is considered work and the sabbath is the day of rest. You are, however, permitted to carry within an enclosed area. Within the fence is OK, outside not. You can expand your enclosed area however with an eruv, which is simply a string from one telephone pole to the next, enclosing the entire Jewish community. The eruv was down though, so now no carrying beyond the fence.
What does this show?
1. Biblical law is not vague and ambiguous within the communities that use it as law but very specific with consistent methods of interpretation.
2. The religious community adheres strictly to the law without there being any legal method of enforcement but entirely from respect for the law.
3. Those outside the community who interpret the rules using a foreign context arrive at incorrect (and sometimes humorous) meanings that are obviously incorrect to those within the community.
I haven't been following this thread for a fee days; so there may be something I missed, but I don't see what it is you think i would find either objectionable, unreasonable or puzzling.
The eruv is a fine example of a pragmatic accomodation to an impractical interpretation of a law.
Your example instantiates PI 201, which I've long and openly advocated.
Have you ever tried this, and have been successful with your intervention?
Because from what I've seen, people act like this --
In other words, what I have seen is that people's concerns and interventions routinely get dismissed on account of "Well, this is just what you believe, your paranoid fear, not how things really are, so we don't have to do anything about it."
And, of course, the very popular, "Look at the beam in thine own eye, instead of criticizing me!"
Millennia of religion down the drain ...
Of course religions change over time (and place). But that never stopped their adherents from believing that their religion is the right one.
What on earth are you talking about??! If I were to go and talk to pretty much any religious/spiritual person, as soon as they would find out I am not a member of their religion, they would tell me, in less or more direct terms, that they are right and I am wrong, and that their religion is the one and only right one.
I can't find it.
Here is a snip-it.
Quoting baker
Repeating this time and again isn't all that helpful. If you ask a certain sort of religious person, that is the answer you will get. If you ask a different sort, they will give you a different answer. Unsurprisingly, Catholics and a broad swath of Protestants will claim exclusivism.
Here is a bad Wiki article on the topic.
And here is something that sounds more in Philosophy when speaking about pluralism.
I'm happy to discuss the topic if you like, but I can't help but feel that you are more interested in maintaining a view in support of your religious politics rather than learning something about religion. Just let me know which direction you want to go in.
If you are curious about a Christian view on pluralism, here is a random site.
The resources are out there if you care to find them. I'd rather not have to curate the internet for you.
Strange. I copy-pasted “Ontology of truth: How many answers are ‘correct’ in the sight of God?” and googled it, and nothing.
I'm interested in how to deal with the situation at the ground level, ie. day-to-day life, about peacefully and hopefully, meaningfully coexisting with religious/spiritual people. Of course religious academics will provide all kinds of theories. But those theories, just like the notions of religious freedom, religious tolerance, or religious pluralism are useless when, for example, one has to deal with a coworker (or worse, a boss) who aggressively proselytizes during workhours or in the times immediately preceeding work and after work. Or when your kid, who goes to a secular public school, is targeted for religious bullying by his religious classmates.
I don't know where you live, but my guess is that you live in a Christian culture surrounded by people that wouldn't identify as Progressive Christians. There is no easy answer at the ground level. People typically know little more about their religion than they do their government or political party - they are just engaged in tribalistic behavior where their tribe is the best and you are either in it or an enemy. My personal experience (both as a child and now with children in the "secular" school system in the US) is not good when it comes to keeping Christianity out of the classroom. Christianity is just the background of the living in the US - be it secular or religious. You can't get around it and people who are Christian have a hard time seeing how pervasive it is (though some see it and intentionally promote it). By way of ludicrous example, the assistant superintendent responsible for curriculum in my district said that Santa Claus is not a Christian symbol/character because he is not in the Bible.
My issue, and the motivation I engage with these sorts of topics, is not in order to give Christianity anymore legitimacy or reasoned defenses. It is, however, to point that religion writ large is not the bogeyman that people make it out to be. When critiquing particular sorts of Christians (even if it is the overwhelming majority of Christians), that critique is expanded to "religion" as if all religions are identical. Religion can be good or bad - they are, after all, created by people engaged in social behavior with all of the attendant perils. Because religion is popularly conceived so poorly in more educated crowds, there is no room for discussing religion in positive terms or even exploring why religion should persist.
My arguments (about religion) are met as poorly by the proselytizers as yours. We can yell and scream all we want, but they don't care and are glad to continue their bad behavior. For as much as people speak of special pleading around religion, it is pervasive. Anti-religion folk want to treat religion uniquely (consider legislation aimed at limiting religious expression specifically while freely permitting other types of speech) just as Christians want Christianity to receive special positive treatment. In either case, religion is deemed a relevant factor when there are fairly limited circumstances in which that is true.
Stop trying to fix religious bad behavior as if that will fix society generally. Issues like bullying are systemic/cultural issues and the systems/culture that permit bullying are indistinguishable from those that permit religious bullying. Focusing on preventing bad religious behavior (religious bullying) to the exclusion of others (bullying for having the wrong physical features) is, on my view, in error. Don't want school yard bullying? Do X. Don't want religious school yard bullying? Do... something other than X?
Want to hate Christianity? Go for it. Want to exclude people because they are Christian? Take a moment to consider whether their specific form of Christianity is relevant to your goals/agenda unless the mere inclusion of a "Christian" would compromise your other goals/agenda. But no matter how you feel about Christians, stop dictating what religion is, was, or can be. Especially stop questioning the legitimacy of someone's religion because it doesn't comport with your understanding of bad religions.
Religion will long outlive us both, maybe we should be fostering better religion (however you understand that) and not just kicking it.
David Lewis on Divine Evil
A small counter to the oddly reactionary and defensive response that dominated this thread.
I do realize that Lewis addresses my complaint here, but he misses a most critical point and he goes on to say the sophisticated theist isn't immune from the attacks because it's impossible to ignore the literal meaning of some of the passages.
You guys point out that God is terrible for having advocated stoning, but a few stoned little girls is child's play when compared to the story of Noah, where all inhabitants are eradicated, and we're not really sure why such a punishment was necessary.
So then I say there absolutely was no ark, no Noah, and surely not a mass migration of every animal on earth to the near east so that they could hop aboard the boat and avoid death. This isn't defensive to protect my sacred book from ridicule. It's because I don't believe it actually happened, but I still think the book has value, as terribly factually false as it is.
And so I draw you a distinction between mythos and logos, with the former being the mythical interpretation and the latter being the literal. These ancient cultures, and even modern religious ones, did not, and do not, suggest that the purpose of any of the Biblical stories was to provide an accurate historical account of anything (i.e. the logos), nor were the purposes of the myths purely ethical. The myth was to provide an understanding of the world in a mode that is entirely foreign to you (as @Ennui Elucidator has repeatedly said). That is, when the story of Adam and Eve is recounted, the writers never meant to suggest there was an Adam and Eve, and they never even committed to a single creation story in the Bible itself. It attempted to offer, among other things, a reason we must toil for all we earn, and to provide a teleos for our existence. We also learn we don't toil on the sabbath, but reserve that day to enjoy the rewards of our labor, but let us not get caught up into that being only a single, actual day.
If the Bible were written by a culture focused on the logos, I guess they could have just written what they meant and enumerated each claim as P1, P2 and so on, and then we could then debate what each meant. Perhaps they'd have even provided us a picture of a duck rabbit to better explain that sometimes people have entirely different interpretational schemes.
Your pointing out plain (and I mean screamingly obvious) absurdities in the Bible, as if believers could not have seen them as absurdities had it not been for your helpful guidance, must be missing something, unless you truly are baffled as to why such a large segment of the population could be so very blind to the obvious.
The best source I can cite to you for the position I'm arguing is The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong, which I've begun reading recently, whose position seems very much aligned with what I've been arguing.
From a review of her book at: https://religiondispatches.org/religion-is-not-about-belief-karen-armstrongs-ithe-case-for-godi/
“Until well into the modern period,” Armstrong contends, “Jews and Christians both insisted that it was neither possible nor desirable to read the Bible literally, that it gives us no single, orthodox message and demands constant reinterpretation.” Myths were symbolic, often therapeutic, teaching stories and were never understood literally or historically. But that all changed with the advent of modernity. Precipitated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and the rise of scholasticism in the late middle ages, rational systematization took center stage, preparing the way for a modern period that would welcome both humanistic individualism and the eventual triumph of reason and science."
So you agree with the argument in the article cited in the OP.
The rest is in your imaginings, and after 27 pages of stuff which is not related to that argument, can quite fairly be summarised as reactionary and defensive.
As can your need to reply to a simple link to a summary. You are engaged in special pleading on a grand scale: an oddly reactionary and defensive response.
Very poor response, but thanks anyway.
Yet this is the level that matters.
I refuse to just let religious people get away with this.
Oh, I don't think they are "bad" religions. It seems more likely they are accurate, evolutionarily advantageous religions.
If Tom can't handle the religious bullying in his otherwise nominally secular workplace, and quits his job and accepts a worse, less payed one, then this is a victory for the religious. Who laugh at him.
You're mistaking me for someone else. I believe religions are generally evolutionarily advantageous, in that they provide justifications for the Darwinian struggle for survival.
This discussion has been hopelessly hampered by political correctness.
It's still not clear why you consider it immoral.
Is the Darwinian struggle for survival immoral? If you don't think it is, then based on what can you consider the literal interpretation of the Bible immoral??
Why not? It's in the original article, in the one mentioned above and I've presented it several times myself, as well as even Hanover's repeating it in agreement just above.
Are you having trouble with your comprehension?
Is the Darwinian struggle for survival immoral? If you don't think it is, then based on what can you consider the literal interpretation of the Bible immoral??
I'm not going to reformat it for you.
I don't travel with the literalists. They're your kin.
But sure, to the extent there are those advocating throwing stones at little girls' heads, I stand opposed. Such a radical position for a theist, I know.
Is that how that works? We count how many evil acts you’ve committed? More is worser?
So the argument goes like this:
1. It would be appallingly unfair of God to allow Hitler and Stalin to experience eternal damnation (in any of the several forms contemplated, including annihilation).
2. At most they should get a lot of damnation, but not an infinite amount.
3. Honestly, they probably shouldn’t even get that, because how could they possibly know — really know — there would be a price to pay in the afterlife.
4. The whole system was rigged against Hitler (and Stalin!) from the beginning.
5. Guy that would set up a system like this, basically to entrap Hitler (and Stalin!), that’s not a good guy.
6. Anyone who thinks it’s okay to treat Hitler (and Stalin!) so shabbily, is also morally suspect.
Childish pranks punished by being eaten by wolves, Grasshopper attention deficit punished by being cast out of society and left to freeze and starve. You won't believe how immoral this collection is.
There are enough people out there that assent to neverending damnation, not just in the US.
Anyone that doesn't - kudos - good for you. :up:
On occasion someone asks you
only to threaten with the above if someone puts them on the spot.
Call them fringe or cult if you like, or distance yourself from them.
Has little bearing on Lewis' point.
If anyone wants to witch-hunt the assenters, then they're no better.
At some point someone ought be/come better, and yaay some have. :up:
[quote=Mario Livio]Is God a mathematician?[/quote]
That someone's moral character can be judged on this basis is questionable. It is evident that not all Christians, or more generally, all who worship a monotheistic God do not all have the same moral character.
But the assumption that the Bible represents a single, unchanging, universal God is simply wrong. We cannot begin in the beginning. The stories in the Bible are not ex nihilo. They were told and retold in various ways, by various authors from various cultures with various beliefs and values. They are more representative of those authors than of some single entity that informs their stories.
In addition there is a history of interpretation, often quite contentious.
Actually, the majority of modern translations of the Bible are flawed, at least in English and French. A literal translation of the Greek word 'aion', with respect to the passages concerning damnation, would be more appropriately rendered as 'age' and not 'eternity'. It is quite a severe error that drastically alters the meaning of the passages where it appears.
Therefore, for those who are aware of the original Greek meaning the concept of punishment is finite. Although admittedly, most Christians do indeed believe that hell is eternal.
If you have some free time and the inclination watch this video for further detail.
What the OP @Banno and D. Lewis are forgetting is that in no major monotheistic religion is killing, raping, and pillaging an automatic disqualifier from getting into heaven eternal (!!!). It just isn't.
You can kill, rape, and pillage and still get to heaven just fine.
Now how's that for "divine evil"!
In actual monotheistic religions, what is said to be the cause for eternal damnation is the act of rejecting god. Different monotheistic religions specify different criteria for what exactly counts as a rejection of god, but they do agree on this one point.
This way, for example, a person who has lived a pious, harmless life (one without killing, raping, and pillaging) but has a change of heart on their deathbed and rejects god, goes to hell, forever doomed to suffering, while even serial killers can go to heaven and enjoy eternal happiness in heaven as long as they repent and accept god.
Rejecting god is an infinite offense, an infinite evil.
That's an accurate assessment and probably well covered by the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins.
That is correct. Contrary to popular belief, we'll all make it to paradise, even me!
Yep but not without a period of punishment. This is the universalist position and there is even Biblical evidence for this. It's pretty uncommon among Christians but I have met a few people who believe this.
Quoting Tom Storm
Hitchens and Dawkins covered this but they presented it as though a murderer could simply repent on their deathbed and get instantly into heaven. That's a strawman of Christianity that conveniently leaves out the idea of purgatory.
Not according to St Polnareff.
Further, it's a strawman that leaves out that someone who has lived their life killing, raping, and pillaging isn't likely to repent on their deathbed.
Anyway, the point is that in monotheistic religions, killing, raping, and pillaging isn't the kind of automatic disqualifier from living a good life (forever) they way it is in a humanistic outlook.
The link to Lewis' paper that you originally posted is dead. In case you want to update the OP, this link works:
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/hum9/lewis%2520-%2520divine%2520evil.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjGj5S8ot-MAxVgHNAFHdqgJAEQFnoECAEQAg&usg=AOvVaw1CBUmYf6iWzju7jHvBjD70
I think this is false, unless you want to say they are sociopathic (likely). The average person carries those things out because they think they are 'right' (needfully, "average" here actually means "in the extremely small number of people who murder, the average murderer....") and so the fear of Hell will motivate any attempts to reduce the likelihood of Hell. This is a fairly common thing.. death-bed confessional and what not.
Quoting emancipate
Purgatory is a Catholic concept. It is not a standard Christian doctrine. Most Christians do think recanting gets you into heaven. The caveat, as I understand, is that it must be an honest recanting - "Lord, search my Heart". That is unlikely in someone who is prone to mischievous behaviour in life - not that they wouldn't try.
Evidence shows that being certain that they will be caught has a much higher deterrent force than the severity of the punishment.
Studies of the effectiveness of the death penalty show that it has no effect on crime rates. It;s ineffective.
High emotional arousal, drug use, and simple desperation commonly override fear of punishment.
Recidivism has been shown to be reduced by providing social supports and rehabilitation.
All god need do is demonstrate that He is watching; he doesn't need to torture folk.