Paboss writes:
Is not that Religion is the only thing that is either used as an excuse or as reason for people to cause harm to others. It may be our tendency to think dualistically and see others as part of the in-group or out-group (friend or foe). This is probably legacy of our tribal ancestry. But religion has that added negative value of revealing the unquestioned truth to believers and move people to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Religion can be either the reason or the excuse; in any case it can be very influential in moral values.
See for example the conflict between Palestine and Israel. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a religious conflict. I think it all comes down to the needs of both nations to have a land where to live. But what is the one thing that has for decades fuelled the mutual hatred?
The one thing that has fueled the mutual hatred is the lust for land, power and wealth. It is basic tribalism. It is actually no different than a merger of companies that I experienced a few years back. There quickly developed a visceral hatred between the groups fighting over how seniority rights were to be integrated, and this was between well educated people.
Paboss writes:
I find this rather dubious. Are you saying that the institution of slavery that we know took place in the Roman Empire, where and when those epistles were written, was simply the equivalent to modern employment?
In some cases yes. In the case of the Romans though I would say no. Their slaves usually came from conquered nations, and even then wouldn’t normally be race based. In the case of the Jews the slaves, at least the Hebrew slaves, were generally forced into it due to poverty and in many cases chose it. Also after a specified number of years they could choose their freedom. I thought I’d look it up on wiki and found this.
quote:
Ancient Israelite society allowed slavery; however, total domination of one human being by another was not permitted.[16][17] Rather, slavery in antiquity among the Israelites was closer to what would later be called indentured servitude.[15] Slaves were seen as an essential part of a Hebrew household.[18] In fact, there were cases in which, from a slave's point of view, the stability of servitude under a family in which the slave was well-treated would have been preferable to economic freedom.[19] It is impossible for scholars to quantify the number of slaves that were owned by Hebrews in ancient Israelite society, or what percentage of households owned slaves, but it is possible to analyze social, legal, and economic impacts of slavery.[20]
The Hebrew Bible contains two sets of rules governing slaves: one set for Hebrew slaves (Lev 25:39-43) and a second set for Canaanite slaves (Lev 25:45-46).[1][21] The main source of non-Hebrew slaves were prisoners of war.[18] Hebrew slaves, in contrast to non-Hebrew slaves, became slaves either because of extreme poverty (in which case they could sell themselves to an Israelite owner) or because of inability to pay a debt.[16] According to the Hebrew Bible, non-Hebrew slaves were drawn primarily from the neighboring Canaanite nations,[22] and religious justification was provided for the enslavement of these neighbors: the rules governing Canaanites was based on a curse aimed at Canaan, a son of Ham,[23] but in later eras the Canaanite slavery laws were stretched to apply to all non-Hebrew slaves.[24]
The laws governing non-Hebrew slaves were more harsh than those governing Hebrew slaves: non-Hebrew slaves could be owned permanently, and bequeathed to the owner's children,[25] whereas Hebrew slaves were treated as servants, and were released after six years of service or the occurrence of a jubilee year.[26][27] One scholar suggests that the distinction was due to the fact that non-Hebrew slaves were subject to the curse of Canaan, whereas God did not want Jews to be slaves because he freed them from Egyptian enslavement.[28]
The laws governing Hebrew slaves were more lenient than laws governing non-Hebrew slaves, but a single Hebrew word, ebed (meaning slave or servant, cognate to the Arabic abd) is used for both situations. In English translations of the Bible, the distinction is sometimes emphasized by translating the word as "slave" in the context of non-Hebrew slaves, and "servant" or "bondman" for Hebrew slaves.[29]
Most slaves owned by Israelites were non-Hebrew, and scholars are not certain what percentage of slaves were Hebrew: Ephraim Urbach, a distinguished scholar of Judaism, maintains that Israelites rarely owned Hebrew slaves after the Maccabean era, although it is certain that Israelites owned Hebrew slaves during the time of the Babylonian exile.[16] Another scholar suggests that Israelites continued to own Hebrew slaves through the Middle Ages, but that the Biblical rules were ignored, and Hebrew slaves were treated the same as non-Hebrews.[30]
The Torah forbids the return of runaway slaves who escape from their foreign land and their bondage and arrive in the Land of Israel. Furthermore, the Torah demands that such former slaves be treated equally to any other resident alien. This law is unique in the Ancient Near East
Paboss writes:
It seems like this Onesimus was a person dear to Paul, and who both he and Philemon, found useful in Paul words. Note here that Paul is not pleading for slaves to be treated as brothers but for one specific person who found favour in Paul’s sight. Furthermore, for Paul to be asking for Onesimus to receive a treatment better than a slave, as a brother implies that they saw slaves not simply as employees but as inferior people, with lesser rights. He’s pleading for his dear Onesimus because he knows being slave is not nice. The slavery condoned by the New Testament is the horrible institution we know of.
Certainly slaves had lesser rights, but frankly so do modern employees have lesser rights and are often treated as inferior by employers. It is human nature.
This is a total aside, but we were discussing this issue in church the other day and I had to admit that I am completely unsure of how I would have viewed all this if I had been living in Alabama in 1850. I would like to think that I would have been horrified by slavery but I certainly have my doubts.
GDR writes:
Firstly it doesn’t say that women can’t teach men
Paboss writes:
Yes, it does:
1 Timothy 2:11-12 (ESV):Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
That is certainly the most difficult verse to deal with in this regard. Firstly again let me say that to read it at face value puts it in contradiction to how Paul actually had women functioning in the early churches. Also Paul was writing to Timothy and it is generally believed that Timothy was in Ephesus at the time. The primary religion with the biggest temple at the time was a female only cult, which had as its god Artemis or Diana as the Romans called her. The Temple of Artemis was massive. The deity was female as were all the priests. They ruled and kept men in their place. It is very possible that this was to speak in opposition to that. In general Paul’s writing in general represented a huge advance for women so it seems to me that we can accept this statement as being in response to some specific situation. Also, at the time most women weren’t educated and Paul is encouraging them to become educated.
However, going back to my last post Paul also wrote that men should love their wives as Christ loved the church essentially meaning that a husband is to put the life of his wife above his own.
Paboss writes:
That’s because the Bible is contradictory, so you can find biblical support for contradictory arguments. Being supposedly inspired by God, this should not be the case.
There are lots of contradictions in the Bible. If I am inspired by God to write a song that doesn’t mean that God dictated it to me. If an ancient prophet was inspired to write the history of his culture that doesn’t mean that God dictated it.
Paboss writes:
if this scriptures are to be taken as inspired by God, they shouldn’t look immoral by our modern standards. But they look as what they are: fabrication of the men of ancient times with no evident divine insight.
Firstly they have to be understood within the context of the culture at the time. If I wrote today that it was raining cats and dogs maybe somebody 2000 years from now would read it literally. It also, however doesn’t mean that there was no divine insight. It is written though with Paul’s insights, having had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus as well as with those who had been followers of the Pre-resurrection Jesus.
Paboss writes:
When you say that God speaks into the hearts of many of the writers of the OT, you imply is not into all of them. So how do you decide which writers are listening to God’s voice in their hearts and which are not? I think the answer is you have to use your own criteria; which in your case, is informed by modern moral values.
I’ve said this a number of times before. To understand Jesus from a theological POV you need the OT. Jesus was a Jew, speaking to Jews and using the Hebrew Scriptures as a background for His teaching. In order to understand the OT I understand it by using the lens provided by what we have of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Epistles also should IMHO, as well as the whole Bible have to be taken in the context of Jesus and the culture.
As far as modern moral culture is concerned I’d again point out that it varies from culture to culture and I assume that the culture you have grown up in has judeo-christian roots.
Paboss writes:
But this is something that you take on faith, from what you consider to be good. So it doesn’t work as a criteria for others because it’s dependent on everyone deciding if John’s testimony is true or not. There should be some criteria that could be equally used by believers and nonbelievers to tell what comes from God and what doesn’t. If your criteria is an statement taken on faith it doesn’t get you any closer to the truth; there is no reason to rely on those claims.
As Bob Dylan said you gotta serve somebody. Each of us have some form of moral code that we follow and our own reasons for doing so. It can extend from being completely selfish or completely unselfish. We are all somewhere between the two. It is for all of us a faith. My Christian faith leads me to believe that I should be a person who loves unselfishly and sacrificially. That does not mean that someone who believes atheism represents all that is true can’t hold those values. We just have different foundations for our beliefs. The golden rule is in the majority of world religions, (as far as Christianity is concerned it is both the NT and the OT), in one form or another. It is also something a secularist can support.
GDR writes:
God confirmed Jesus’ life and teaching. Taking that as a given, (which I am fully aware you don’t), then I can read through the OT where it has God commanding genocide and public stoning and be able to confidently say that those commands were not of God but of very fallible humans.
Paboss writes:
So what do you make of those passages? Why did God allowed such horrible texts to be present in the book that was supposed to convey his truth to people?
You seem to keep wanting to understand the Bible in the same manner as Faith. I wouldn’t say that God allowed it but I would say that we can find God’s wisdom in it. We still hear people say today that God had told them to do something. I would say that those passages tell us to be very careful when someone makes a statement like that. It is very obvious when we read about God’s forgiveness, sympathy and commands to love our enemy that those passages are driven by human sin and not by God.
Paboss writes:
We are not perfect, but I can confidently say we are morally better than the people of previous ages. This is only because we have a vantage point: we can look from the present towards the past, evaluate history, decide which mistakes of the past we don’t want to commit again and try to be better than them.
In our society that is generally true, but it isn’t true for all societies. I’d add to that and say that when we read the Bible as a single narrative, I contend that it is clear that our understanding of the nature of God is a progressive revelation which would be consistent with your statement.
Paboss writes:
We do have evidence, we know that as social species we have had to develop the ability to cooperate in order to survive. This ability to cooperate has been naturally selected, which means the most cooperative humans have had better chances at surviving. The sense of empathy that we and other social animals developed, helped our tribal ancestors to survive as a group by caring for each other. In tribal environments, this also meant we developed the tendency to think dualistically in terms of in-group/out-group (as I mentioned at the beginning of this very long post), thus translating into a sense of hostility towards those who belong to the out-group. As the development of technology, knowledge and awareness that we are not so different from each other, has helped us to transcend our tribal borders, empathy has been progressively extended to people belonging to other cultures, countries, groups. This is how moral values have improved through History.
That sounds very much like Dawkin’s memes. It is an evolving process that requires intelligence amongst other attributes. That again tells us nothing about why that process and capability exists at all.
Paboss writes:
If you look at history and anthropology, morals change from time to time and from culture to culture. If we were to consider morals to be absolute and to adopt those of Yahweh we would degenerate into an absolutist morally sick regime. Morals change with time, but they also tend to improve because we are standing on the shoulders of past generations. We can see what they got wrong and improve.
We can call our deity God, Allah, Zeus or whatever we like. It is all religion and all religion is about trying to understand the nature of our deity and what that means to our lives. Yes morals change but the basis of those morals comes from somewhere. I believe that our morality is not so much what we do but our motivation for what we do. It is all about the heart and, once again is it all about us or can we live to love others, and all creation for that matter sacrificially.
GDR writes:
In the future we may come to the conclusion that it is morally right to commit genocide because our tribe needs the resources of some other tribe and that becomes our moral imperative.
Paboss writes:
That would be highly likely the case in a scenario where our whole civilisation collapses and a new one has to start from scratch. That is precisely what the movie The planet of the apes, in its original version illustrates. But if future generations keep building upon our achievements the tendency should be for better moral values. For example, people in the future may get to the point where all their energy comes from renewable sources and their impact on Earth is neutral. They will certainly look down on us as immoral because of the way we treat the environment but they would also understand we were product of our time and ignorant on things they will have figured out by then.
We still see genocidal cultures today and nazism was a major force during the life time of some of us.
Paboss writes:
I’ve learnt a lot from watching his talks and debates. I think he was a great critical thinker and able to present very compelling arguments. Although by the time I heard from him I was already well in my way out of Christianity, his arguments helped me make more sense of the way I feel about Religion, and specially, Christianity. If you have read his book God is not great, he starts explaining how as he puts it Religion poisons everything. The arguments he offers for that have helped me inform my position that religion has exerted a negative influence on people, and its influence has been way more powerful than that of other ideologies.
Followers of Christianity have also done a great deal of good in the world. Christianity is a religion formed around the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. People have twisted the Scriptures into something that is self serving and have used it to do despicable things. That tells us nothing about the truth of Christianity. In the end, God resurrected Jesus or He didn’t. If He didn’t then we should be looking elsewhere, but if He did then we should all be looking to Jesus to understand how that should impact our lives, and as Jesus said it is all about loving our neighbour as ourself.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
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