The Jesus Cringe
The etiquette of fessing up to being Christian
by James Robinson
On news of the re-publishing of this article, a brief comment in retort to the reactions beneath. Some of the comments, in my view, confirm completely my initial suspicions. Belief in Jesus is something that some people can categorically find ridiculous. I believe that most truths (I can not comment on the laws of mathmatics and science) are subjective. We make our own truth. So by that token, working oneself up about the faith of another is a completely redundant opposition.
My article has no intention of delving into a conversation about the merits of particular faiths. But I can see that this was quickly the direction response went in. The quote from Dostoevsky sought to bring attention to the fact that much of the morality we consider as basic tenets of decent living originate from the church, as well as the idea that humans are central in importance in the way the Earth operates. We can not escape the influence of the church – even if we can reject its central idea. The selflessness we identity in concepts like altruism and charity sit very awkwardly if we completely renounce the core senses of personal community that centuries of believing in greater forces has bought about.
Some comments made me quite curious. For instance, even if the church has been privy to covering up sexual abuse, perpetrating oppression and dishonesty – it is a long, long shot to claim they have a monopoly on such inglorious acts. To hold this against the followers of a religion is ridiculous By this token we would have stopped following rugby league and going to the doctor. Think of all the shitty things done in the name of Governments in the past ten years, far from the endorsement of the church. You’d be a complete jackass if you took that same sense of judgement out on an individual person. Just saying.
I wasn’t commenting on the church as an institution, but what we feel on a personal level to the religous individuals we come in to contact with. Holding up a torch to our condescension of the church – it is a snap judgement. Driven by our own prejudice. We let people think and act in anyway, but we raise our eyebrows when they believe in the “cloud fairy”, because we think it is strange. — James Robinson
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” – Psalm 14.1 “I’m not a bad guy, I work hard, and I love my kids…so why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I’m going to hell?” – Homer Simpson
In a 1996 essay on the importance of Fyodor Dostoevsky to American fiction writers, David Foster Wallace argued that Dostoevsky’s belief in the depravity of a life lived without a moral/spiritual core is still an example to writers, close to 150 years later.
Dostoevsky advocated his beliefs in his work. His books teemed with moral invective of the likes that Wallace claims we don’t see anymore. It isn’t cool to argue too emphatically for a moral standpoint these days. Writers won’t “dare try to use serious art to advance ideologies”.
Ideology now needs to be handled with tongs at a safe distance through the tools of parody, ridicule, satire or direct criticism. Hipster culture endlessly permeates into similarly detached derivations, each with the same nihilistic bent.
We don’t believe in anything too strongly these days. It isn’t immorality, more an emerging non-morality. But if you don’t believe in anything, is it a contradiction to definitively believe that there is no God?
This article has no concern with a philosophical or merit driven assessment of the Christian story. It is concerned with the idea that religion has become a smirking point amongst the young, the hip and the intellectual. If truth is infinitely splintered and defiantly subjective, what makes religious truth any less true? If it is now okay to believe anything and act in anyway, why do so many young people seethe at the notion that someone could devote their self to the church?
Close to fifty percent of those between the ages of fifteen and thirty do not identify with a religion. In a recent TVNZ-sanctioned survey, slightly less than 40 percent of those under forty believe that New Zealand could not classify itself as a Christian nation. While this religious identification rises in older age groups, there is no evidence to suggest that people are crossing back to religion later in life.
Between 1994 and 2004, the median age of marriage in men and women rose by over ten percent. The annual number of marriages fell by close to twenty percent. The number of people per thousand that are married fell by thirty.
New Zealand, the world, is undeniably less religious in 2009.
But consider the recent controversy of the atheist bus advertisements. Or the aggressive marketing of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Dawkins, alongside left-wing poster-journalist Christopher Hitchens is widely referred to as one of the ‘four horsement’ of atheism). Have half a dozen conversations about religion.
It seems that there’s an emerging culture that is not just not religious, but anti-religious.
You don’t have to cast a net too far to find a young, opinionated atheist ready to speak their mind.
“Anyone who believes in a man in the sky is crazy,” says Alice, 24. She adds that, “religion is for people who are too weak to believe in themselves and who have shitty friends who they can’t believe in either.”
“In a perfect world there would be no religion. Religion could provide a positive basis to a community if it wasn’t used a tool to repress and suppress.”
This is a common opinion, if an example on the stronger side of common. The Bush-era bought a base notion of ‘Christian conservatism’ into common vernacular, that is widely deriled. It is hard to see Alice’s harsh reduction of religion as unrelated. It is a blunt retort to the clichéd anti-intellectualism of religion personified by Bush-era conservatism.
Lauren, 24, cannot decide between agnosticism and atheism. She claims to not consider religion very much, but finds the culture and tradition of religion interesting.
“White, educated, middle class people, and especially the children of such people, do not typically hold strong religious views. Of the friends I had growing up that occasionally went to church, I know none that follow that same tradition as a young adult.”
Lauren points out a common, but interesting, talking point – people generally socialise with those with similar core beliefs and ideals. “There is a point when lifestyle truly influences the compatibility of two people in a friendship. People with strong beliefs about religion will gravitate towards others who share their views. Just as those who are passionate about music will do the same.“
The point comes up often. And is revealing. While people who enjoy music may find it easier to form friendships, no one would claim that a disagreement over the merits of the Cure would end a friendship. You can easily have gay friends, you can have right-wing friends, and can have friends who wrongfully undermine the cinematic output of Tom Cruise. But religion is the deal-breaker, posing a potential mismatch that is hypothetical friendship Kryptonite. To a point, like does seek like. But is it innocent that religion is a disqualifier?
Lauren continues: “Generally I am taken aback when discovering that a person has a markedly strong religious view. People my age that reference activities with Christian church groups, I know I’m unlikely to have many similarities with them. And maybe I don’t care to. I don’t want to be around sheltered, rule abiding, simpletons any more than they want to be around some sinner. I simply cannot relate to people with extremely religious lifestyles.”
Jon, 26, agrees. “Christianity is one of the powerful dividing commonalities.”
Jon moved to Auckland and discovered that many of his new group of friends had Christian ties and affiliations. Conversely, “my girlfriend and I worried at first that they wouldn’t want to be friends with us because of it. Our worries were unfounded.”
Jon presents an alternative to the common dismissal of religion, or friendship with the religious. “Christians make me feel safe. They’re less ironic and ascerbic. They’re not as judgmental and don’t make mean or rude statements that throw off a conversation. I like knowing that I’m in the presence of people who have an agreed sense of morality.”
Jon says that he is constantly aware and made to feel awkward by thoughtlessly negative comments towards religion, often around alcohol. He mentions having to point out to people that they are putting down Christianity, in front of Christians. “It is conversation that seems like easy laughs and no laughs come easier than from demeaning people that you don’t know.”
Chris, 27, echoes a similar theme as Jon. Chris moved to Vancouver, and realised that his new social set was part Christian. “I was really surprised by how aware of it I was, and how I had never even considered how unused to spending time with Christians I was.”
Matt, 26, is a recent convert to Christian faith. He contradicts a lot of the notions that Christians are separate and unintellectual. Matt came from a Christian home, but was not captivated by religion, and stopped going to church when he was 13. His parents were accepting of his decision, and the argument stopped there. He went to University and studied Philosophy. Which makes his recent conversion (after a chance invitation to a service by a friend) even more unlikely. He remembers studying ideas at University that directly undermine faith. “I remember doing an essay about how religion works as a supernatural police force and builds cooperation within a group, advantageous in competition against other groups that do not have such a social glue.”
Matt seems to understand why the university culture is geared against someone finding singular truths in their own life. “People often say that doing a philosophy degree, and studying moral relativism, should lead one to becoming more of a moral relativist. How could I come out the other end as a Christian with absolute moral rules when you spend time finding exceptions to moral rules?”
Ultimately, the process of learning and expanding analytical capabilities was not satisfying. Matt sees it as being geared away from fixed realities and truth and sends you into a process of endless searching and deconstruction. “During my study I found that in order to extend my analytical brain I had to step outside of belief systems. But I could conceivably keep doing that forever.”
Reconciling new beliefs with old beliefs was an extensive and frenzied process, Matt says. He does not believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, and accepts evolution and science as tools to reveal God’s majesty. “I am in awe of Richard Dawkins’ mind and biological discoveries, but he seems to think that science and faith can’t be compatible.”
There are huge amounts of questions that Matt still thinks over. Like the fact that he has gay friends in loving relationships, or whether the creation story can be taken at its word. But he knows that his journey is just beginning, and possesses a great enthusiasm for it. He seems to have bought a spirit of intellectualism and questioning into believing in God, that isn’t extremely present these days amongst many who dismiss religion offhand.
“Atheists who label themselves freethinkers frustrate me. I have challenged every part of my belief before locking it in, and some parts are still up in the air,” Matt says.
How was the conversion received amongst friends? “Friends have supported me in my journey but have certainly not shared my enthusiasm.”
It is hard to draw conclusions from conversations with young Christians or young atheists about the explicit nature of their own attitudes towards their own, and others beliefs. Matt illustrated an insight and inquisition into his own belief that might surprise a hard-line atheist. He also acknowledged the tensions between University and religious culture, but in no way saw intellectualism and religion as an either/or scenario. From the atheistic and the agnostic there was no dismissal of why they did not belief in God, just general acknowledgement that it was slightly nonsensical dogma. There was a recognisable sense of condescension in most people spoken too. Which locks in a near un-answerable question; why is a belief in God so laughable to those who believe the opposite?
Tim McKenzie is the chaplain at St. Aidans in Miramar, and was formerly the chaplain at Victoria University. McKenzie points to a cultural shift that has its antecedents in the 1960s. “People really argued about religion in Universities in the 60s and 70s. It opened up conflict between religious and Marxist groups on campus, with huge debate over where specific right and wrong fell.”
It opened up an intolerance and hostility towards religion, that McKenzie feels has dissipated somewhat. “Modernism gave way to post-modernity, and people started to leave people alone to do what they pleased. A separation has come out of this. And now with electronic media, people live in silos. You can program things so that you only ever read and hear what you want.”
McKenzie identifies a sense of condescension towards religion, especially from academic and intellectual spheres. But the academic snobbery is nothing new, and is driven by ever-changing strands of thought. He does feel very strongly about the supposed separation between intellectualism and religion. “Religion and intellectualism, religion and science are deeply connected.”
“They aren’t separate, and it is deeply ironic that so many think so. The west is built on Judeo-Christian reality, including Universities, which are all Christian foundations. Science today is greatly influenced by the early Western view of the ‘trustworthy’ world. All information we get from ancient cave-drawings, every well-preserved ancient skeleton, it was all from ancient religious ritual.”
Increasingly in recent years McKenzie has seen a defensiveness rise amongst Christians. The Bush-era had an extremely negative impact on this – bringing into popular consciousness a perceived set of values that was quickly stereotyped on to all Christians. “All of a sudden you had people saying ‘I’m Christian, but I don’t believe in such and such…”
Christians have been directly linked to a right-wing agenda in recent years, which amongst the typically left-leaning, educated young has inevitably set off some reactionary rhetoric. McKenzie is not in denial that this is a factor, while aware that the clichéd ‘Christian conservatism’ is a slightly crass notion. “I see how it happened. You have people who in the face of shifting sands retreated into religious conservatism as a way of dealing with modern life.”
But it is not helped by New Zealand’s adversarial media environment. “We’re so small. Opinion generally falls to one end of the spectrum or the other. No one really wants the moderate Christian opinion.”
Many church groups (including the Anglican church) supported Section 59. Many have moderate middle line opinions on gay marriage. Most believe climate change is man made. But these just aren’t the opinions called on by the media. And as a result images like 2004’s “Enough is Enough” Destiny Church march continue in our heads as images of religious belief and action – when in fact such events are an extreme part of the spectrum.
It is a cruel habit, only calling on a certain spectrum of church opinion for dramatic effect. And will continue to play into a cycle of tension, with two sides struggling to understand the other, and accept the others as is. McKenzie says that amongst young, he often sees a “nervousness in self-identifying as Christian. Not so much amongst those who have recently converted, but amongst those who have grown up in religious cultures, it is more deeply rooted. You can see that they’ve started to feel a bit marginalised.”
McKenzie mentions the notion of a post-religious world. He says that a slight demeaning of religion is strongly tied to the fall in marriage rates, and many probably see that religion “functioned as a means of social control which we’re well rid of.“
So what?
On one hand, you have a rift of understanding rising out of young people generally associating with similar people, and having limited exposure to religion in an era when the church is waning in influence and number. Younger people, more forcefully opinionated by nature are then exercising their own right to an opinion and expressing an assessment of the church as they see it.
But.
Religious affiliation has clearly been singled out as a defining, separating characteristic. It is hard to think about Christianity as some sort of friendship roadblock without feeling uneasy about the sort of systemic judgmental bent in society that that implies. This is the church. A dismissal of the church is an acceptance of ignorance about your own history, whether you respect or not the institutions it passed down.
And.
We’ve put paid to so many prejudices in the past decades, do we need to really build more up? Even if religion was a source of many prejudices, prejudice against religion is backward and hypocritical.
There is no conclusions. Only newly contorting opinion to shine a light on. This is the post-religion era. And for the church, this is their new reality.
“This is what we face,” McKenzie says.
Dostoevsky came to despise Nihilism, finding faith while imprisoned in a brutal Siberian jail. It is hard to see too many conversions in the futures of the rising tide of young atheists.
Tim McKenzie says, “people believing in nothing is not a new thing. It is a timeless, and stark, metaphysical dilemma.”
The faith we don’t find in ourselves does not put us in the wrong. But it does not give us the right to judge the faith of others.
ENDS
Tags: Atheism, Christian Ethics, Christianity, Dostoevsky, Fundamentalism, Humanism, James Robinson, Jesus, Religion, Religious Bigotry, Social Stigma, Werewolf
The article seems to assume that Christianity has the monopoly on spirituality in the good sense, despite suggesting “…it does not give us the right to judge the faith of others.”
Meanwhile the phenomenon observed probably has a lot to do with the great deal of history people ARE aware of. circa Two thousand years of crusade, crusifixion, institutionalised child abuse, and murder during suicide – not to mention the history of judgement, abuse, and efforts to force others to the religious way of thinking.
That there are so many people who claim to be Christian and yet might generally be considered reprehensible, that so many who claim to be Christian do so little that is good, hardly leads the uninitiated to a positive view.
And meanwhile those with faith find the Church has less that is positive to offer, but empty words and it’s constant hypocracy.
We are judged by the company we keep.
> If truth is infinitely splintered and defiantly subjective, what makes religious truth any less true?
That doesn’t really apply to all truths. Truths in mathematics are entirely objective. Truths in the physical world can be supported via experiments. It is only metaphysical positions which the individual may promote to the status of “truth”.
Sure, you can make metaphysical arguments about stuff outside of the physical world. They are untestable, of course – because their actions are by nature indistinguishable from natural law.
The problem is really making concrete assertions that either;
1) contradict things which arise from empirical observation, or
2) indicate any form of irrational hatred (is there another kind? n/m that) towards another person
People balk at these things from first principles.
> The west is built on Judeo-Christian reality, including Universities, which are all Christian foundations.
> A dismissal of the church is an acceptance of ignorance about your own history, whether you respect or not the institutions it passed down.
These are bold claims, and given the history of the Church in general to view the work of scientists as “heresy”, I just couldn’t disagree more strongly with these statements.
To put that as a logical argument, just because a movement arose within a particular environment does not imply that a particular part of that environment was essential for its arrival.
Take the Chinese for instance – plenty of Science (their equivalent; though the rate of it dropped off in many ways once the civilisation got ‘old’); and not really religious, with a happy mix of the philosophical and non-dogmatic Taoism and the “atheist” (in some sense of the word) Buddhism. That they didn’t develop a scientific method and an emphasis on physical observation and measurement seems more a matter of chance than their flavour of religion.
Perhaps, if Christians stopped being dogmatic about their faith and more philosophical, viewing the bible as a book full of interesting stories and ideas which is worth studying (not a view I hold myself but hey) – and stopped making unsupportable assertions, people would stop laughing at them. Until then, all we see is people backing their actions with references to some old book written in a completely different epoch of civilisation.
The saddest thing about the trendy anti-religious (apart, perhaps, from their mistaking Hitchens for a left winger) is that they fail to realise the ubiquity of religion. It is in some sense the premium cultural artifact – every culture had or has one, and its influence, for good or ill is rarely neglible.
The post-modern failure to accept the existence of truth is self-serving and venal – and goes a long way to explaining the cynical media slant you find in the expression ‘don’t drink the kool-aid’. The Jonestown victims drank their cyanide in Coke, and they were hardly typical religious folk.
“Perhaps, if Christians stopped being dogmatic about their faith…” I doubt it, frankly. The trendy post-modernists have claimed the role of social arbiters and are determined to be even more censorious than the orthodoxy they replaced – evidently not realising that it was the censoriousness that made it inappropriate.
It is all part of the same process of decay that has destroyed western philosophy, classical music (no one writes it any more), fine art, and is presently trying to supplant literature with the vapid excursions of Dom Delillo & Paul Auster.
Since abandoning the classics, academia has been able to fool itself that it is frightfully clever, much more so than even their relatively recent predecessors. Let them read a little Aristotle, and if any of them remain honest they will be forced to admit that not one in a million of them has very much to add.
“If God is dead, everything is permissible.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
This quote pisses me off no end. Does Mr. Dostoevsky really believe that humans is like a naughty child, unable to act morally without fear of retribution from some omnipotent God? What a load of bullshit! Do Christians really believe humans are incapable of innately recognising what is morally right and wrong without a God to tell us? Again, bullshit.
Jesus Christ brought a message that was revolutionary. He had the idea that all people, rich or poor, are equal in the eyes of God. That idea has survived the polytheism of the Catholic church, the reformation and everything else and is so ubiquitous nowadays that one can probably claim everyone is a “christian” in that sense.
But just because christ had the greatest idea of the ancient world doesn’t make him divine or mean there is a God. Faith is just that – faith immune to objective analysis. If people are inclined to laugh at blind belief – which is what faith is – then deal with it. It’s that feeling every other minority gets when its laughed at, what makes Christian so special?
There was a recognisable sense of condescension in most people spoken too. Which locks in a near un-answerable question; why is a belief in God so laughable to those who believe the opposite?
What an easy question. Religion is so often ridiculed because so many religious beliefs are ridiculous. Believing that underpants are magic as the Mormans do is ridiculous. Believing that L Ron Hubbards science fiction is true is ridiculous. Believing that a former member of the Hitler Youth is infallible because he was elected by a group of celibate men whose organisation systematically covered up child rape is ridiculous. Believing saying hare krishna multiple times leads to nirvana is ridiculous. Believing that the earth is 6000 years old when there is no supporting evidence is ridiculous. Believing that a sky fairy created the entire universe but is so concerned with us taking every 7th day off is ridiculous. And ultimately that all these things are believed on the basis of no evidence is ridiculous.
The faith we don’t find in ourselves does not put us in the wrong. But it does not give us the right to judge the faith of others.
But surely one can’t have a religion without judging other faiths wrong. There are some faiths that should be judged, should the faith of the Cooperites go without judgement when their leader is a convicted sex offender? Should sects that condone the murder of infidels go without judgement? If faith is so beyond judgement how can it possibly claim to have any moral force in society if it demands that its beliefs are beyond questioning?
All dogmas are intellectual and spiritual opiates designed and distributed as a means to control and suppress curiosity and freedom of reason. Such cultist beliefs are not the purveyors of morality and ethics, this is simply the propagandistic facade that religionists hide behind while pedaling their snake oil. The “texts” that monotheism relies upon are, without exception, plagerized from earlier historical human mythologies and superstitions, edited to conform to a particular revisionist theory.
As a Christian all my life, I take exception to suggestion that people of Christian thinking are right winged in beliefs ..THAT is NOT TRUE …Christ was the worlds first socialist in his teachings he regularly preached carring for humans above money etc …he condemened people who put love of goods above the needs of the people.
As a follower of Christ I am proud to be a socialist in my beleifs and have been politicaly active for years to promote my socialist views ” that the greatest asset we have in our community is our people” ..
I beleive the people needs should always come in front of ecomonic interests…I am a greenie I believe strongly we should protect our environment not only out of respect for the now but also for the future generations ..In saying that I am concerned that so called socialist are pro abortion
This is hypocritical of them for Abortion is MURDER it deliberately kills our most innocent and vunerable citizens ie our unborn and mostly for very selfish reasons.
I find it very hypocritical people who are pro abortion yet express support and admiration as to the effort of our returned soldiers They went overseas to assure we had a safe haven in NZ to live our lives free of tryany and death ..yet these same hyprocitical morons have no problem with seeing the killing a class room of our unborn every day of the year by abortionist
To those who think I have no right to preach this I say to them BULL SHIT those innocent lives that are destroyed deserve to have someone preaching for their freedom of life …
“”Bad things happen because good people do not speak up against evil “”
Religion=TaxEvasion
end of story
I can’t help but find it ironic that after hunting down and killing people for centuries over the most trivial of theological quibbles, there are religious people today who whinge about being… ridiculed.
“If truth is infinitely splintered and defiantly subjective, what makes religious truth any less true?”
This assumes a metaphysical definition of truth, ie. contains character and meaning. The truth of the Christian resurrection is no less true, in that sense, than the resurrection of Osiris for example. But neither have anything to do with the other meaning of truth, ie. that which is in agreement with reality.
“If it is now okay to believe anything and act in anyway, why do so many young people seethe at the notion that someone could devote their self to the church?”
This assumes Dostoevsky was right. He wasn’t. Being a great novelist doesn’t necessarily make you “right” about everything. A lack of belief in a god-figure in no way implies that anything goes morally.
“The west is built on Judeo-Christian reality, including Universities, which are all Christian foundations.”
This is akin to a tyrannical King claiming credit for the egalitarian ideals of the revolution that overthrew him.
“Science today is greatly influenced by the early Western view of the ‘trustworthy’ world.”
This means what? Is he also claiming credit for the idea of trust?
“All information we get from ancient cave-drawings, every well-preserved ancient skeleton, it was all from ancient religious ritual.”
But not necessarily Judeo-Christian religious ritual which self-defeats the argument he’d spent the last two sentences constructing.
“This is the church. A dismissal of the church is an acceptance of ignorance about your own history, whether you respect or not the institutions it passed down.”
It most certainly is not. A dismissal of something’s worth doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of knowledge. In fact, I’ve found that the more you learn about the history of the church, the more reason you find for disrespect.
“We’ve put paid to so many prejudices in the past decades, do we need to really build more up? Even if religion was a source of many prejudices, prejudice against religion is backward and hypocritical.”
There’s a very real difference between what someone is, and the beliefs someone holds. A persons ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation etc are simple facts of their existence. We should be no more critical of them than we should be of hair colour or height or foot size. A person’s beliefs however should always be open to criticism.
I agree that ascribing an institution’s entire emotional and intellectual baggage to an unknown individual is prejudicial and should be avoided. However, if someone consciously claims membership of that institution, aren’t they inherently subscribing to at least some of the institution’s tenets. Otherwise, why do it?
James,
apart from all the other things you elided over in this facile piece of self-congratulation, I’d like to point out that Tim McKenzie was the Anglican chaplain at VUW when he supported Steve Nicholls during the Department of Labour mediation. Given the lies and evasions that happened that afternoon (you do remember being there, yes?), which Tim supported, I cannot understand why you are quoting this man as a source of information about ethics and morality.
Perhaps I can recommend an advisor on ethics to you – he teaches in the Reli School at VUW, his name is Ramon Das. In common with most of humanity, he’s not perfect, but he might just be able to give you a discussion on ethics that can enlighten you to the reasons why so many reject christian regulation of ethics and morals.
Fundamentalist christian churches in NZ in the past ten years have supported calls for a range of abusive legislation, and of all the possible outcomes, only the Catholic Church has been honest enough to release sexual abusers within it’s organisation for conviction.
If you had bothered to go check in on a few of the more outrageous ‘charismatic’ versions of contemporary ‘god-botherers’, you might have found out that quite a lot of them are primarily concerned with constraining the women and children within their orbit, and creating conditions that favourise the well-being and interests of men; along with a whole bunch of bog-standard bigotry and divisive behaviour aimed at stifling any kind of dissent or difference of opinion.
I have known many cases of women/girls who have done their best to get themselves excommunicated from some of the more extreme fundamentalist sects in NZ, so that the control their families and congregations held over them was broken.
Many of these women find it difficult to trust any social connections for a long time, necessitating counselling to overcome the negative effects of their early conditioning. Those who experienced sexual or physical abuse, even more so.
I am proud to call myself an atheist, because the greatest abuses that occurred to me in my adult life were perpetrated by people who did it in the name of “a God who loved me”.
Never have I met people with such a fluid definition of morality since; and the social network I associate with now is primarily concerned with having clear and open discussions of the personal safety issues that come up within our associations.
We don’t need God to tell us what is inherently moral and ethical; nor do we need Law (masters) to define the boundaries of commonsense ethics, although we do challenge the provenance of laws that appear to lack commonsense or to have been developed within a corrupted legal framework.
I think if you had bothered to ask a few atheists what they actually value in the way of codes of conduct, you may have discovered something more useful than just ‘got bored with going to church with my schoolmates’, or an assumption that young adults who walk away from the religious social connections they may have had in adolescence are just philosophically lazy or untutored, rather than having come to an adult appreciation of liberty, autonomy and responsibility for their own actions.
I am not very partial to religion especially old religions because it seems to me that the older a faith is the more myth and verbage is added to conceal the true essence of what the prophets taught.
I used to study theology with the Bahai faith whose prophet taught that science and religion must agree, if they don’t there is something wrong with either the science or the religion.
That makes a lot of sense to me I can live with that, that is putting both disciplines within the confines of a finite world/s, the laws of mathematics and physics etc.
I have problems with christianity, not with the ethical and social teachings of Jeshua (Sermon on the Mount etc,)but the latter additions like the book of Revelations, that I don’t consider a pertinent part of that faith.
The idea that a Messiah is going to come out of the sky, on a cloud and appear to all of us at the same time to sort out the shaft from the wheat,is in my view absolutely absurd. Metaphysics? Well it certainly stands out way beyond the pale of physical reality.
Yet some Christians really believe in the above scenario quite literally to be the answer to all earthly ills like our carbon foot print and the imminent eco catastropy that will result. I fear that this brand of pseudo-religion is politically motivated most likely by vested interests who have a huge stake in our old fossel technologies and see the left (inclusive of socialist Christians, Muslims, Budhist, Hindus etc.)as an obsticle to their agenda.
Then why should these pseudo-Christians claim their prophet above the others? This strikes me of being very intolerant especially when there is very little scientific evidence to support those claims.
In ‘the Jesus Family Tomb’ the archiologists have claimed (600 for to 1 against)to have found the tomb of Jesus.
The DNA between the Jesus ossuary and that of Mary Magdaline came up negative, conclusion man and wife. The DNA Jesus and mother Mary came positive and none DNA evidence with the smaller ossuary of his son. Some academics now think that Jesus also had an earthly father one Tiberious Panthera a Roman officer.
For those who have studied history of Roman imperialism it was standard practice for Roman officers to rape or seduce women in line of the first families to ensure that the first born will be loyal to Rome and that the dirty secret will blackmail that family into complience to Roman rule.
To hide the real identity it was often the case that such victims in the ancient world had invented ‘virgin births’to avoid being ostracised by their society.
This does not necessarily mean the end of Christianity if all the evidence is conclusive, it just means that the churches of the 21st century will have to re-invent themselves in order to hold a viable position with other faiths.
The eleventh quote on the recent blasphemy.ie article does it for me…
Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”
Actually, #15 is a keeper, too:
George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”
Interesting posts you have, though I think Christianity is dead and will be redeemed and brought to fruition and perfection through Thelema. Check out my blog at http://christianityisdead.wordpress.com/ if you will. Love is the law, love under will.
Is it true that if you have been bad in this life you risk being in the field at silly mid on for eternity?
I don’t think myself that religion defines friendships. I am a young Christian myself, and of my two closest friends, neither is Christian. If I had to rank my friends, the top 10 are split fairly equally between Christians and non-Christians. I have had a number of very interesting discussions about religion in general and Christianity in particular with both groups, and it has never proved a “make or break” topic. Not with anyone. At least one of my atheistic friends did have some stereotypes about Christians – she said astonishedly after meeting several Christian friends of mine: “They were all Christians, weren’t they? They were so nice!” but it was the niceness not the Christianity that decided whether a friendship was made.
I also do not think a religion should be judged by the leaders of the faith. I know that some pretty terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity over the ages (though consider that none of Stalin, Hitler and Mao were Christians, but between them they’ve caused more deaths than any other men throughout the entirety of recorded history) but this is not what the Bible preaches, and it is not what Christianity is supposed to be. I identify with the part of Christianity that teaches about the God who saves me from sin and helps me every day to come closer to him and to become a better person, the maker of the universe, the Lord who can move the mountains and who loves perfectly and teaches others to love. I do not believe this God asks for the suppression of women or children; nor do I believe He wants His priests to wantonly take money from the people for themselves (in fact, Jesus specifically tells a rich young man to give up all his money to the poor and then he can find the Kingdom of God; this injunction is repeated regularly in other places, and at one point He sent all His disciples out with nothing at all to go and preach His truth). He does not call for what little people have to be forcefully extracted from them for the good of people who have a lot, but asks for aid and money to be willingly given to help those who need it.
Love is indeed the law, and it comes first above everything.
This is the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And second is to love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Against these there is no law.
Despite not being religous myself I find it a little odd that some people base their opinion on religon on historical wars. Wars do not need to be fought with religon as the basis and of the three great killers in the 20th century at least two were atheist (Mao and Stalin). People seem to forget the positive contributions that religon has made throughout history. Wars would have and will be fought regardless of religon and alot of historical wars used religon as pretext when in fact more selfish reasons where the real drivers behind the conflicts. Christians like people with any other world view should expect to be able to express their views without being ridiculed.
I am a dedicated fan of Frank Zappa I don’t think I would know any more about what God thinks than a flamin mud skark so what makes Christians assume that they know what God thinks!! Do they know something that we heathens don’t?
Like the date of the second coming? Or Nostradamuses’ BIG END? Which supposed to be 1999 (note the reverse of the 666) and before that 1968, before that 1666 when London burnt down after the bubonic plague.
But no Nostradamus has now been updated and the great apocolypse is supposed to be 2014 so you all better put that down in your dairies and start digging your nuclear fallout shelters because Armageddon may catch us all by suprise!!!
So Is this a regular business? or a regular racket? And after all most religions are only cults that are socially acceptable and like the occults they still speculate on the unknown and play on the fears of peoples superstitions and it is a bulti billion dollar business!!!!
I myself am an Epicurion, that is I don’t believe there is a life after death. Furthermore I don’t think the scribe of Genisis did either ‘From dust we came to dust we shalt return’, And of course one could investigate this with a scientific methodology (like Da Vinci) and pull corpses out of the graves to find that the only life that will be evident is the maggots and worms devouring the flesh!!!
But that is not very romantic is it? How many books, tracts and illustrated publications of scientific observations of decomposing bodies made it to the best sellers list? we all want to be heroes and have everlasting life in our spirttual state or our ghost state. Now I do believe that people have seen ghosts, angels, demons and extra terrestials. But how do we know that these are not states of hypnosis, waking dreams or hallucinations?
So my challenge to all bloggers out there is: Has anyone ever caught and bottled or caged a ghost, angel or whatever, measured it’s dimensions (or is it in the 5th dimention) analysed it’s molecular and atomic structure?
If one claims they have then the Australian Sceptic Society are offering a very generous reward.
People wouldn’t laugh at Christians for their silly beliefs if so many of the beliefs weren’t so silly. The simpsons said it best “religion shall keep 500 yards from science at all times”
If Christians promise to keep their religion out of schools, then I will promise not to think in their Church.
Wow, most of these comments are depressing, and arguments I’ve seen hundreds of times before when debating with atheists…
Tom Semmens, do you not know that “Mr” Dostoevsky is long dead?
The term ‘sky fairy’ is getting pretty old, as well, and enough already with the obsession with ‘child rape’ by priests! People who trot out that accusation against Catholics really need to examine the actual statistics of proven child molestations committed by priests – far fewer than those committed by sports coaches, teachers and scout masters!
For the rest, I put my hand up also, as a Christian left-winger, Greenie and all round antiwar person…
Deb
I can assure you it’s more depressing to see billions of people wasting their time worshiping myths and imaginary beings, let alone claiming ‘the will of god’ as a justification for an unspeakable act.
The main difference between sports coaches, teachers and scout masters and the Catholic Church (or Graeme Caphill or Hopeful Christian/Neville Cooper for that matter) is the the former do not claim to be an infallible authority on moral issues.
To claim that the repeated use of this example is an obsession is rather disingenuous, it is an important and relevant example of why religious organisations should not be placed beyond the judgement of others (let alone scrutiny) as the article above suggests.
“Sky fairy” might be an old term but then it’s so much shorter than writing “supernatural omnipotent being with strangely human personality traits for which no verifiable evidence exists”.
Simplistic categorisation is always lazy & depressing, and usually smug. Most Christians I don’t subscribe to a ‘sky fairy’ view, and have a more subtle belief, more akin to to Buddhist dharma, or Einstein’s cosmic spirituality. This is often personified in Jesus, rather than the “supernatural omnipotent being with strangely human personality traits for which no verifiable evidence exists”, etc, etc, etc.
This personification produces great work and I’ve often been inspired by seeing it in action. Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Day, Maximillian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s usually the religious people handing out the free soup and working with the drunks. Not so much the righteous Dawkinhideen.
Seems to be the problem is extremism in anything, and that extremism might find its expression in religion, politics, or anything else prone to cultivating mania in the predisposed. Because of that, I distrust strongly salvationist, utopian creeds, with their common concepts of martyrdom, piety, purity, enviable victory, heresy and righteousness. They’re dangerous. That’s why I’m not a marxist, free marketeer or hardline atheist.
Man.
I’m not intellectual but I know that there are ways to arrive at an intellectual decision on whether or not one wants to follow the Lord Jesus.
I don’t really know what anyone will make of this but I’m just going to share the thoughts I had as I read this article and the first few responses.
Firstly.
“If God is dead, everything is permissible.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
This statement is crazy in so many ways. Someone said earlier that this implies that man is devoid of the ability to decide what is right and wrong. It does. It’s insane.
We are obviously able to make our minds up about that, but regardless of that fact, we continue to live lives that paint horrible pictures of immorality.
All of us.
Not one single person has a leg to stand on as far as that goes. Not because of “religious standards” but because we are absolutely incapable of being perfect. Our best efforts are nothing.
Thus our desperate need for Jesus.
Look at the laws of the old testament. The outlines of righteousness were SO outrageous that no one could uphold them. Those rules and regulations are far beyond the loose outlines of socially acceptable conduct, yet most of us still fail.
Second.
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” – Psalm 14.1
This is taken from a devotional that my wife and I read called “Meditations fro Quiet Moments”
I found it quite profound.
“There is no God”. That is what the fool says. But it is the way that he said it that reveals him as a fool.
There are souls which just whisper to themselves: “there is no God” and the secret utterance fills their hearts with benumbing fear. They have stepped from one calamity to another. The floods are out. Theirs ways are beaten up. The lines of their lives are filled with perversity and confusion; and as they move amid the encircling desolations, a fear steals across their minds and hearts with the chilling touch of a cold night wind.
“There is no God”. They stretch out their ‘poor lame hand of faith’ like blind, halt men feeling for some tangible support, and they seem to touch nothing. Are these the fools of the text? No, these are the seekers, and eventually all seekers shall be finders, and shall come into the satisfying presence of the unveiled glory.
Who, then, is the fool of the text? Let us read it again, and read between the lines.
“The fool hath said-”. Now you must insert a shout of hilarious laughter. We miss the meaning of the words if we leave out the laugh. How much the laugh reveals. “The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God”, and he said it with a laugh, a flippant laugh, a laugh which betokened a glad and welcome relief. Now the Scriptures affirm that the man who can say: “There is no God” and say it with a laugh, is a ‘fool’, and by ‘fool’ is meant something infinitely worse than senseless or unwise. The word fool, as used in the old testament, is not an intellectual term, denoting want of wisdom; it is a moral term, denoting a lack of virtue. Here, then, is the full force of the psalmists words. The man who can say: “There is no God”, and can say it with a light and jubilant laugh, is a fool; at his heart there is moral rottenness; there is badness at the very core of his being.
Why does “the fool” say: “There is no God”? Because that is what the fool wishes to believe. The wish is the father to the thought. Our wishes exercise a far more tyrannical dominion in our lives than we commonly suppose. Our wishes play around about our minds, and shape and colour our judgements. There are no ‘idle wishes’. All wishes enshrine a certain influence, and tend to determine the lines and issues of life. For instance, I wish that a certain thing may happen. That wish will not travel alone. It’s influence inevitably works to drag the judgement after it. Let the wish be persisted in, and I shall come to believe that certain thing has happened. There are multitudes of instances in which men have believed that certain things have occurred, when in reality the entire thing has been confined to the realm of desire. The judgement has been lured into practical deception by the sheer power of intense desire. The wish was the father to the thought. But where do wishes come from? They arise out of our character as naturally and as inevitably as fragrance exhales from a rose, or a noisome stench from a cesspool. If my heart be like a garden, abounding in beautiful flowers and fruits, the wishes that exhale from it will be full of sweet and pleasant influence. But if my heart abound in uncleanness, the wishes that arise from it will be noisome and impure. As I am, I wish. As I wish, I come to think. As I judge. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”.
Here, then, is the man of the text with the badness in his heart. He is a fool, morally degenerate. Out of his pollution corresponding wishes arise. He wishes there were no God. Then his wishing his thinking. He comes to think there may be no God. And at last, with impious hilarity, and with a note of most unholy triumph, “the fool says in his heart- There is no God”. He begins by defying God; he ends by denying God.
What is the lesson of it all? I it is just this- That all sin works towards unbelief. All godlessness creates a desire that there were no God, and tends to snare the judgement into a practical atheism. Let us pray for clean hearts. It is in these that safety lies. Let us pray the Lord to rid us of all defilement. And if perchance there be lurking within our hearts some hidden sin, which like a secret tumour is sickening the entire life, let us go before the Lord with the psalmists prayer on our lips: “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults”. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”.
I agree from a place of understanding
I was that fool.
I am now not.
Only a couple more things.
There is no such thing as moderate Christianity. It’s all or nothing. The Lord said “I will spit out of mouth that which is lukewarm”
And I’m not a religious person. Religion is heartless and cold. I choose to try to follow Jesus and the moral outline which He beautifully illustrated in His life.
At the end of the day. We are all faulted and we need to accept it.
Have an honest look at yourself and seek the truth no matter what it reveals itself as. Chances are you wont like it. But thats the truth for you. Hard to swallow and difficult to manage.
God bless you all.
Nicholas Tahana Tautuhi.
I wouldn’t want any of the bloggers here to be at all depressed, since I have stopped believing in a heavan & hell scenario I have stopped taking my prozac!!!
I think that Rowan Atkinson puts religion/superstition dichotomy into perspective very succinctly when he dresses up as the devil; -
‘Now I am here to inform you all that you are here for a very very long time.
Now will all the burglars and thieves come forth, thats right just move in that passageway to the left. Now where are the murderers? there are whole armies of you lot arn’t there? Adulterers? Oh there are an awfull lot you arn’t there? even more than the rapists, second passage on the left.
Now will the Christians come forth? Oh dear there seems to be a lot of nashing of teeth!! I am very sorry to inform you the Jews were right!’
May the universe bless you all!!
I am also sorry to say that Jesus was not the first socialist, according to the ancient Roman historian Plutarch the first diliberate socialist state was founded by Lysurgus (or Lysander) in Sparta. He had ideas of organising public eating houses and eventually phasing out the use of money he banned trade with any decadent state such as Athens.
At that time Judea was a theocratic backwash, and because the Greeks were mostly liberal and tolerant they were light years ahead in their thinking, they knew the world was a sphere and measured it, they were researching on a steam turbine and Democretus theorised the building blocks of matter and called it the atom!!
Simplistic categorisation is always lazy & depressing, and usually smug. Most Christians I don’t subscribe to a ’sky fairy’ view, and have a more subtle belief, more akin to to Buddhist dharma, or Einstein’s cosmic spirituality. This is often personified in Jesus, rather than the “supernatural omnipotent being with strangely human personality traits for which no verifiable evidence exists”, etc, etc, etc.
So simplistic categorisation is always lazy & depressing, and usually smug, but it is seemingly enlightened to describe the doctrine of every mainstream Abrahamic denomination unsubtle. I have great difficulty believing that most Christians (one’s friends at St Matthews in the City or St Andrews on the Terrace notwithstanding) are closer in belief to Einstein* or a Buddist than they are to the Pope.
*Albert Einstien – letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”
Richard; Einstein said thet two things were infinate (1) the universe and (2) human stupidity!!!!
That’s Einsteins theory of human stupidity.
I think people like Niko need to read more history of the ancient church, but getting them to accept the truth may be a whole different ball game.
During the Council of Nicea 325AD certain books were destroyed simply because they would contradict the myth of a very carefull construct of an architypal Jesus which is totally different from the real historical Jesus.
The political agenda behind this construct was that Constantine after defeating Maximillius needed to reunify the Roman Empire by creating a single religion. So the construction of the perfect architypal Jesus was created, he is not to be seen to be a married man as sex is of mortal humans, he is then not to be seen to have children and he is to be percieved as to have done anything wrong in his life.
So the original books of the new testament were obviously edited eg. in the original story it would plainly tell us who’s wedding the wedding of Cana was.
It was obvious that it was jesus and Mary Magdallin, but her name was completely erased.
The books that didn’t make it to the new testament Like the gospel of Philip were deemed heretical as it covered Jesus’ life as a child when he was not so perfect. This gospel has a story when Jesus pushes another child off the side of a building another one was found in Egypt a couple of years ago known as the gospel of Judas who grew up with Jesus, this gospel claims judas was given an instruction by Jesus to dob him in.
These gospels that have been found in the past seventy years tell a very different story to the orthodoxy of the Christian faith.
These books have been carbon tested so there is no way in the world that they are forgeries.
Jesus cannot be held responsible for people who made him out as someone he wasn’t, no I have a lot more love and affection for the real historical Jesus the rightfull philosopher and prophet nothing more nothing less.
Almost everyone here seems to have fallen into Dawkin’s fallacy, that somehow Christianity=Religion. Get past the Christian straw man, and many of the arguments prove to be empty rants. There are plenty of stones to be thrown at Christianity and other faiths, but to equate religion with Christianity (or any other individual faith) is misleading in the extreme.
Religion is the original social science. Disparage it if you will, but it has done remarkably well with what little it started with, (chimps with opposable thumbs), giving birth to philosophy and the scientific method itself. It’s willingness to keep asking the questions that science fears to even admit will keep it alive and kicking for many millennia to come.
“If God is dead, everything is permissible.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tom, you have, I think, misunderstood the meaning and, certainly, the significance of this famous quote.
The philosophic problem if God is dead, lies not in the absence of divine rewards or retribution for right or wrong conduct. It lies in the fact that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, used in the absolute sense in which they were traditionally used, become meaningless concepts.
There are then no objective, rational grounds (apart from possible personal advantage)for preferring right conduct to wrong or for even addressing the question of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.
Morality then becomes just a warm fuzzy, one option amongst many others or even a willful delusion, as opposed to being an absolute obligation imposed by the presumed author of our being.
This is not to deny that humans have an in-built tendency to benevolence (as do some other animals species). But, philosophically, you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. Moreover, humans also have a tendency to lie, cheat and indulge in pack rape. Should we also, by the same argument, consider these traits worthy of emulation?
The great freethinkers and atheists of the nineteenth century were often troubled by the ethical and philosophic challenges posed by disbelief. In contrast, our modern secular humanists seem blithely unaware of these challenges.
This is not necessarily an argument for religion. But it is an argument against the smug condescension with which thoughtful, religious people are often treated.
thank God for that last comment! For it is the only thing that comes close here to a saving sanity! Religion is the original human science indeed, and as such every one of yer mickifickis are obliged to trace its very path to that modern science we call ‘our own’ today, no matter what bloodsweat it costs you! And what Christianity’s exact relation is to religion itself is an investigation even more vexed perhaps than that one! Stay on your more or less unopposable toes, werewolves, for it is these and only these dancing dunces that remain to support you!
Another last bigotry accepted by most people is against people with red hair.
Paulinem: “To those who think I have no right to preach this I say to them BULL SHIT..”
Paulinem – I would disagree. You may feel yours is the right to preach, and to an extent you may be right. BUT. Do not think you have the right to preach at me. Yes, AT me. Few preachers engage in two-way discussion; you either accept it as fact, or be damned – mighty Christian approach there, in itself.
You do NOT have the right to invite yourself and your friends onto my property and tell me MY beliefs are wrong. You do NOT have the right to force your beliefs on my children. You do NOT have the right to act as moral arbiters when our soldiers are currently prosecuting an illegal, immoral war of aggression, led by a fundamentalist religious nation hell-ben on world domination.
Mike: you are a tool
“For instance, even if the church has been privy to covering up sexual abuse, perpetrating oppression and dishonesty – it is a long, long shot to claim they have a monopoly on such inglorious acts.”
True, but on the other hand it is the only institution which claims to take direction from a divine, perfect being. As Stephen Fry said so pointedly of the Catholic church’s complicity in the Holocaust:
“You sit there saying, ‘well, we didn’t know any better’. Then what are you for?”
The sexual indisgressions I always saw more as rogue acts of people abusing their power than Ministers abusing children in the name of Jesus.
Resile
I am
It seems
Practiced,
In the slippery art
Of resiling.
I can
I find
Slide both ways,
Backwards
And forwards.
Dawkins squats
On my bedside table,
A bookmark
Between his teeth.
I love him.
Such well heeled heresy
Makes my heart race,
Leaves me
Breathless.
But he is all
Crazy about Reason, all
Mad for Science,
And I must
Reject.
Must abjure
My rejection.
Be stretched,
Compressed,
Compelled, it seems
To resume
My original position.
My unoriginal sin,
My terror,
My familiar doubt.
I am
I suspect,
Damned.
James: Forgive me for going point by point but your retort to the comments on your article seems to highlight why one would ridicule religion rather than rather than provide a reason why it either is or should be beyond ridicule and judgement.
When you say most truths are subjective and made up by the individual, do you extend this to your own faith? Given that so many faiths are mutually incompatible, to classify them as all equally valid (all of them being subjective truths) simply runs away from answering the question of whether a belief is a reasonable belief or not. Is the subjective truth of Scientologists as reasonable or believable to you as Christianity? Saying that something sounds like nonsense or is too ridiculous to believe, particularly the supernatural, is not getting worked up – it is looking at the evidence and drawing a conclusion. To be specific, in circumstances like the faithful’s belief that they should empty their already sparse wallets to buy Brian Tamaki a new Harley it is not redundant to to oppose that faith. Nor is it redundant to oppose the views of many faiths that preach intolerance, ignorance or harmful nonsense.
You say that your article has no intention of delving into a conversation about the merits of particular faiths, but then say no one has a right to judge the faith of others. How can you say that a belief is beyond judgement without actually addressing the merits of such belief? This is, again, running away from answering the question of whether a belief is believable or not and similarly providing the Brian Tamaki’s of this world, who’s church’s activities you noted as being extremist, a free ride in their preaching of intolerance, ignorance or harmful nonsense.
The claim that it is a fact that the basic tenets of decent living comes from the church ignores or at least glosses over two important facts about what we now consider such basic tenets. First, these basic tenets are not exclusive to any particular faith, including most have existed prior to most modern religions, making all faiths equally as valid to morality and hence, since they are generally mutually incompatible, equally invalid to morality. Second, what we consider moral is not the result of divine revelation as so much of what any religion sets as its moral basis is little more than a pick and mix of the various possible interpretations of its scripture. This is particularly the case for Christianity which seems very careful in ignoring the more ridiculous bits of the old testament.
As for concepts of morality sitting awkwardly without belief in greater forces this can only be the case for those who think morality is something that you do because God told you to behave that way, rather than a true sense of personal morality. Would the faithful be immoral without God or just unable to judge right from wrong?
While some comments have made you curious perhaps that is because you are completely misquoting what was said. You imply that someone stated that the church had a monopoly on covering up child abuse. No one said that. I, at least, said that “Believing that a former member of the Hitler Youth is infallible because he was elected by a group of celibate men whose organisation systematically covered up child rape is ridiculous.” and, later, that this was relevant to the discussion as the Catholic Church does claim to have a monopoly on judging what is right and wrong. Likewise no one said that the crimes of the institution should be held against it’s innocent members. Indeed it would be a long, long shot to say that anyone implied such a thing, but you can see by what people actually wrote. To start throwing around the term jackass when you are not actually addressing what people said is just silly. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Just saying.
I too am curious, your final comment that “we let people think and act in anyway, but we raise our eyebrows when they believe in the “cloud fairy”, because we think it is strange.” What judgments are you making about what people think and how they act? Indeed, we have a rather full statute books saying how people can or can’t act and religious types are amongst the most enthusiastic about telling others what they should or should not think or how they should or should not act. I’m perplexed at how this relates to eyebrow raising about supernatural belief, be it God or astrology. It is ultimately worth remembering that it is eyebrow raising at supernatural beliefs, or those beliefs justified on the basis of the supernatural, that led us away from believing that the Sun was a god’s chariot, that the Earth is billions of years old and that women are not men’s equals rather than their subjects as the Book of Timothy tells us. Eyebrow raising at beliefs is only a concern to those who don’t want to hold their beliefs up to the torch of reason and evidence. Any view that cannot withstand such scrutiny is not worthy of being immune to judgement or condescension as you seem to suggest they should be.
caraka “Almost everyone here seems to have fallen into Dawkin’s fallacy, that somehow Christianity=Religion. Get past the Christian straw man, and many of the arguments prove to be empty rants.”
Absolutely. It’s odd how false premises are OK on this subject.
caraka “Almost everyone here seems to have fallen into Dawkin’s fallacy, that somehow Christianity=Religion. Get past the Christian straw man, and many of the arguments prove to be empty rants.”
Absolutely. It’s odd how false premises are OK on this subject
Caraka & Anthony: Your comments are beyond parody. Any brief look in any Dawkins’ books makes it abundantly clear he shares his scorn with religion in general. You’ve done exactly what you’ve falsely accused Dawkins of, making empty rants on the basis of straw men. Try reading what he’s actually written – http://richarddawkins.net/firstChapter,101
You’ve
James,
Thanks for this thoughtful article, based on some of the comments here Christians are indeed quite a misunderstood bunch. Most of the problem lies in simple ignorance; many people’s only knowledge of the Church comes from sensationalist media reporting, or from broadcasts on Radio Rhema which have a peculiar Conservative American flavour.
For me faith is a very personal and difficult journey. I would find myself agreeing with many of the disbeliever’s doubts, concerns and critiques of the present form and practice of Christianity. However if a person actually wants to engage on a serious level I would share my experiences of God’s grace helping me through many dark days and turning on a light in my mind and heart.
Martin Luther King and Gandhi both drew upon the profound spiritual traditions of religion. It was the influence of the Quakers in 18th century Britain and the thunderous activism of Evangelicals in 19th century America that powered the abolitionist movement and led to the end of slavery.
Religious people have a human right to free speech, and the vast philosophical perspective of religion easily triumphs over the childish hostility from people who cannot abide a subculture that runs counter to their fickle self-absorbed consumer lifestyle.
Ropata: your claims that people’s problems with ‘the church’ (I was sure there’s more than one) are not childish hostility or ignorance. They are generally well thought through conclusions that the institutions of religion offer no special moral or intellectual value and that the spritualism behind them is just myth. If you believe what you say about non believers you are more guilty of the things you have accused them of in your comment than most of them.
While I don’t doubt your religious beliefs are true and have offered you solace in the past that doesn’t mean your god exists or provides any more evidence than the beliefs of those Vanuatans that believe prince philip is a deity.
While you found james’ article thoughtful I was left wondering what his argument or assertion was.
James: “The sexual indisgressions I always saw more as rogue acts of people abusing their power than Ministers abusing children in the name of Jesus.”
Agreed, but unlike rugby league or medicine a priest’s sole purpose is to provide divinely-inspired moral guidance. If the church is then actively involved in suppressing this issue then it makes perfect sense to reject anyone’s assertion that the institution retains any kind of moral authority.
While you can decry a chauvinist culture in rugby league it doesn’t undermine the game itself, because the game is about rugby. This is simply not true of immorality in organised religion.
Does no one check spelling in these articles?! Atrocious.
I have stumbled onto this website by accident and have read and (accepted) the articles published because many years back I was taught how to read, write and to also think logically.
A number of years back I also stumbled onto an International Newspaper Report published in a prominent Australian Newspaper about the vistation of the Virgin Mary to three sheperd children in a field at Fatima Portugal between the months of May 1917 and November 1917. The children were ridiculed my many who thought they were hallucinating.
On the last day of visitation in November, the children made a request to the Lady to convince the vast crowd of people gathered that the children were in fact seeing the “Beautiful Lady” and asked that a sign be given to prove that those presentwould believe that Lady (and God)existed. As a result the Sun fell from the sky towards the crowd which cowered in fear, and it then retreated back into the heavens. A clap of thunder produced a rain storm from out of a clear cloudless sky which drenched all present, but they were immediately then made dry again.
To this very day many people visit the shrine set up at Fatima because those present on that day in 1917 saw the Miracles (that defy scientic explaination), and over the generations they had past down their experience to those who were not there.
The “Lady” had also told the children the following; a) The current war (WWI) would end the next year, (The Armistice came about on 11/11/1918), b) Russia would be consecreated to her, (today Communism is finished in Russian and many
people of that country attend Churches confidently and without fear of persecution, c) a major catastrophy would befall the World that only God could prevent to show his presence,( is this the problem of a hole in the ozone layer and global warming, both of which man cannot correct??….you be the judge).
I wasn’t around to witness the crucifixtion of Christ, but the Bible (the History Book of the Jews) tells me it happened, as does Roman history which tells me the Roman State executed a troublemaker, and I wasn’t around to see (WWI), but history books tell me it happened. I didn’t see WWII because I was born towards the end of that war, but the many Returned Service personnel who mach each ANZAC day (plus media/history reports) convince me WWII happened.
Why don’t YOU find the Newspaper reports about the visitaion of 1917, and then tell someone else. After all History speaks for itself.