.jpg)
By Morris Dean
When my views were labeled "nihilistic" by a Christian last year, I couldn't think at the time how to respond. I'd never thought much about "nihilism," and I didn't really know what the label meant, or was supposed to imply.
Now that I've looked it up, I suppose that I was simply being characterized as believing that life is meaningless. No wonder I was baffled — my life has had, and continues to have, many meanings.
Or perhaps the person meant one of the other senses of the term, maybe that I think traditional values and beliefs are unfounded, or that I deny any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths? [These two senses are specified by Merriam-Webster.]
Since the person was a Christian, I guess that the "foundation" or "objective ground" he would have been supposing me to be denying was the one he presumed to be provided by Christian revelation (i.e., the Word of God as set down in the Bible). For it's true that I don't consider the Bible to be a "revelation from God," but understand it to be the various opinions of human writers, and I decline to accept their prescriptions of meaning for me, or for mankind generally.
But my understanding isn't everybody's – certainly not the people's who believe that the Bible simply is the Word of God telling us what we are meant to be here for, what rules we are meant to follow, how we are to behave, what we are to do with our lives.
I realized, in writing this column, that I expect Christians to accept that I can be as morally good as they, and that's no doubt part of the reason I was offended to be labeled nihilistic. I took it as a put-down, as a sign of disrespect.
But I further realized that I need to reciprocate and accept that they can be as morally good as I, even if they accept someone else's word for what they are meant to do, etc. I shouldn't hold that against them, and I hope that they won't hold against me my refusal to go along with them and accept someone else's dictates – whether the "someone else" is God or just whatever human wrote the particular dictate they have in mind.
But if we are looking for some external revelation about what we are meant to do here, we might look to the Book of Nature. A survey of the animal kingdom (of which we humans are a part) seems to reveal that we are here to eat, reproduce, and die, and we can refuse to do only two of those things.
Virtually everyone goes along with eating, and most go along with reproducing. But humans, whether Christian or not, commonly assume the role of testator and, like God as portrayed in the Bible, speak the Words that give their own meanings to their lives. They create art, they start or work for an enterprise, they help or take advantage of the weak and oppressed, they struggle to join the ranks of the rich and powerful, they support or abjure popular or unpopular causes, they join society or avoid it, they praise God or revel in Nature or Freedom or Love or Sacrifice. They do any number of other things that humans have learned to engage in before they die.
Both Christians and non-Christians make their own meanings, choosing as well as they can from the same set of natural possibilities.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
Very well said.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ed. I thought it turned out pretty well also, but it wasn't easy; I did four or five drafts.
DeleteI quite agree, Ed! There are a few strings of conversation to be had with the subject of nihilism as far as I can see in Morris's post:
ReplyDelete1. Morality: Yes, both Christians and non-Christians can be moral. Morality is something with which we humans seem to be stuck. The question that matters though is "What is the basis for that morality?" The Christian worldview offers a transcendent answer: the personhood of God. Ultimate morality exists. The nihilist worldview offers no basis for morality; as Morris noted, it is all subject to interpretation. The reason this worldview becomes problematic is twofold: how can we say to the sadist that his infliction of pain for the sake of pleasure is actually wrong? That's just our interpretation of morality, and we would have to admit that our sense of morality is ultimately illusory. The really big problem is that nihilism faces David Hume's is-ought fallacy: just because we have morality doesn't mean we ought to obey our inclinations to do what is right; you can't get an "ought" from a statement from an "is" statement.
Thank you, too, Kyle. I appreciate it.
DeleteNote that the Bible is just another basis among many possibilities, of which there are many, including other theistic traditions. The basis I am currently most intrigued by is Sam Harris's, as expounded in his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. Here's a useful summary from the Wikipedia article on the book: "...promotes a science of morality and argues that many thinkers have long confused the relationship between morality, facts, and science. [Harris] aims to carve a third path between secularists who say morality is subjective (e.g. moral relativists), and religionists who say that morality is given by God and scripture. Harris contends that the only moral framework worth talking about is one where 'morally good' things pertain to increases in the 'well-being of conscious creatures.' He then argues that, problems with philosophy of science and reason in general notwithstanding, 'moral questions' will have objectively right and wrong answers which are grounded in empirical facts about what causes people to flourish."
Such a basis as that would of course be firmly "consequentialist"; what follows from the various moral choices? Utilitarianism is consequentialist, as you know.
I guess Biblical morality is sort of parental: "Do it because I say so." Does that seem fair?
The trouble with Harris's moral landscape (and he has admitted this in debates) is that the axiomatic assertion that the "well-being of conscious creatures" is the highest good (which, again, has no foundation other than "We seem to be as good as it gets") allows for potential scenarios where morality is actually quite low, but technically the conscious creatures are "flourishing." So imagine a society where our mortality and poverty rate is low, but your free will is limited: think Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Think perhaps of the end of the cinematic version of I, Robot: a world where humans aren't allowed outside because we are the greatest danger to ourselves.
DeleteOn the flipside, Biblical morality seen as parental raises two issues:
1. A parental ipse dixit like "do it because I say so" sounds naturally bad (because of the language used).
2. Who is the parent?
If we understand the character of God correctly, as an ultimate Good that is, in Himself, the highest Good, then yes, it would be fair to do whatever He says.
So then it becomes a matter of how we come to know God. There was a great blog post I read awhile back that summarized how Atheists typically become believers. It's an easy read worth checking I think:
http://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/why-atheists-change-their-mind-8-common-factors/4729/
Yes, there are difficulties with Harris's proposal, and I will follow developments as I have time and strength and continuing interest in philosophy.
DeleteWho is the Parent-God, indeed? Well, since one's experience of God (or No-God) is subjective, the question of God's character (as well of course as his/her/its existence), will continue to be a subject for wrangling. And individuals will mostly continue on with their own concept very or fairly firmly in place. I am heartened that, for a large part, Christians' concepts of God tends to be benevolent and their morality correspondingly constructive. We see what a violent few (relatively few but apparently growing), mostly in the Middle East and Africa, are encouraged by their concept of a wrathful, greedy Allah to plunder, rape, murder, and destroy. And I daresay that believers from either end, and all along the spectrum commonly believe that they know God intimately.
I suspect that you admire Matt Nelson's blog post ["Why Atheists Change Their Mind: 8 Common Factors"] because you could have written it yourself, which you can take as a compliment.
A compilation could no doubt be made of common factors why believers change their mind. And it would include reasons why I became an atheist. You always seem to forget that I came to atheism over the course of several decades, so it's not as though you find in me a fallow, naive non-believer hanging plump for picking.
I've attempted to summarize each of Nelson's common factors that lead such atheists to believe:
1. Reasonable atheists...are willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. [I am most familiar with this factor: it's a main reason I ceased to believe in God.]
2. Atheists can begin to read the Scriptures and talk to God. [Well, I did this for years, but no one seemed to be on the phone at the other end.]
3. An honest atheist sets out to establish once and for all whether the claims of the Gospels are reliable or not. [They clearly are not reliable, and I am grateful to former devout believer Bart Ehrman, who now professes to be an agnostic, for his books showing this.]
4. The philosophical atheist is willing to honestly consider the arguments from both sides and follow the best arguments wherever they may lead. [Following "best arguments" is only one side of the story, emphasizing cold log and rationality and ignoring emotion and feeling. Emotion and feeling were key to my early belief, and played a significant role in my journey to atheism.]
5. Atheists can be influenced by intelligent and reasonable believers in God who can engage atheistic arguments with clarity and logic. [I laud you for your articulate apologetics, even though I think you are wrong, I am sorry that I don't have the memory or presence of mind to engage you as you deserve. I suspect that you will never find someone capable of influencing you away from your belief. May your life of belief be fulfilling and happy, and may you always do good by your fellow man and fellow animals.]
6. The apparent fine-tuning of the universe can be a decisive reason for an atheist to change his mind about God’s existence. [...if he really, really has a problem accepting what is simply that it is.]
7. The more-and-more airtight case for Christ’s resurrection can have a significant impact on atheists. [I laugh at the opinion that Christ's resurrection is on solid historical footing. Disbelief in the resurrection was of course a significant factor in my own trajectory.]
8. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience can draw atheists to believe in God. [Aesthetic experience plays no small part in my own life. It's at the core of valuing experience (my own and others, including animals as small as toads and worms) and holding it sacred.]
The pull away and toward God is certainly unique to everyone. I can't even fathom how He manages it with so many billions of people. That's actually been one of my recurring curiosities over the years: how does God manage justice for everyone? I'd have to assume everyone has some sort of equal 50-50 chance at choosing to be in relationship with him. But then what do we do with all the hypotheticals?
Delete1. Those who have been actively deceived into believing in false gods?
2. Those who have never heard of God?
3. Those who didn't believe in the false gods with which they were raised, but never fully understood who God truly is?
I think those sorts of questions tie atheists up in quite a few knots. There's some solace in being able to point to others and say, "Well he has his objections, and he seems reasonable enough." Ultimately, an experience with God must remain objectively subjective. Any experience with a "being" is. As with our relationships with all people, our intellectual and emotional understanding changes with time.
Hopefully who we are changes with that understanding.
Kyle, I think such questions are much, much more likely to tie a Christian apologist in knots, unless he is blythe and confident that he is so far above it as to be unaffected. Or are you practicing your skills as a humor writer?
DeleteIt's just that I've heard Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and the late Christopher Hitchens bring up those questions more than anyone else. It seems to be a common rhetorical tactic that is quite effective in the atheist playbook: why question God's relevance in my life when there are other people I can worry about?
DeleteKyle, now that you've given the context in which you raise the three points listed, I can say, with respect, I think you malign Harris et al. by so characterizing their objections to various Christian apologies.
DeleteAnd the situation isn't saved by your humorous caricature of a frazzled God scurrying around trying to dispense justice. There is no such God.
Apologists have wrapped themselves so securely in knots of their own invention, very few will ever find themselves free again.
To the Christian apologist (I think you meant apologist rather than apologies), these are merely hypotheticals. The question of one's relationship with God is enough to worry about before one frets over others' souls. To the atheist, those questions become objections, used as red herrings more often than not.
DeleteI did not attempt to humorously caricature God as "frazzled" in His dispensation of justice. I don't think that notion was even in my personal curiosity of how He manages it; I simply just don't know how He does it. And to axiomatically deny the existence of God does little more than say "nuh-uh" in the conversation.
I find that the knots in which apologists find themselves wrapped are often the definitive questions that make apologists apologists. After all, "apologia" was the Greek word used for the defense offered in a court of law. Apologists offer atheists answers to tough questions in order to alleviate conundrums of the mind so that work can start on the hard heart. When apologists wrap themselves up in questions, it is often out of the sheer enjoyment of utilizing the magnificent minds God has granted us in His image: the "imago dei" that sets us apart from everything else in creation and gives us the opportunity to discuss things like the origin of morality in the first place.
Kyle, no, I meant "apologies" - you know, the English word for Latin "apologias." Harris's and others (and my) concerns about people who have been misled or who are ignorant of the Gospels are of course not frets over their souls.They (and I) leave it to Christians and Muslims and religious Jews to worry about others' souls (and their own).
DeleteOkay, so it was I who was trying to be funny about your sketch of God dispensing justice.
I am happy for you that apologetics affords you such sheer enjoyment of utilizing your magnificent mind. It isn't so joyful to be offered answers that someone only imagines are capable of alleviating real conundrums.
2. Subjective Meaning:
ReplyDeleteIf there is no ultimate meaning or purpose in life, and it is entirely subjective, then as a society, we open ourselves to any number of interpretations that are potentially harmful.
If we adhere to the Christian worldview, then loving God and your neighbor become our two primary imperatives. Those are ultimately the "rules" prescribed in the Bible and oral transmission of the Bible. These objective rules, the fiats of an ultimate authority on reality, establish a basis for human flourishing.
The Book of Nature actually doesn't give us human flourishing. It puts us in a very Hobbesian state. We would have to ignore our instinct to be selfish to get anywhere with civility. What would impel us to do so? Morality one might say. But then that puts us back at square one: whose morality?
Indeed, many meanings that various individuals give to their lives are harmful. Take ISIS as a prominent current example. And its collection of individuals even think they are doing God's work!
DeleteNote that "the Christian worldview" is itself subjective, in the senses that (1) the view varies among individual Christians, and (2) the human beings who wrote out the various laws did so from their own experience and perspective.
Not that there aren't good interpretations of Christian morality under which things would go pretty well among a community of individuals practicing it. But notice the letters to the editors of countless newspapers in which various stripes of Christian argue over "God's judgment" as to homosexuality and marriage. Some Christians are utterly opposed to gay marriage, and others support it.
Nature has produced "semiotic beings" (to paraphrase yourself) capable of civil society and producing things like religious scriptures and consequentialist morality. We have come some way from the Hobbesian state, although not nearly far enough.
I'm glad you bring up ISIS. I think the Islamic understanding of Allah can naturally yield radical violence. But I would here say that anyone touting the banner of "Christian" ought to look at the example Christ gave and ask if His example would ever yield the same result. Again, it depends on your understanding of who God is.
DeleteThe difference between the subjectivity of the Christian worldview and the nihilist worldview is that nihilists are united by a philosophical understanding of the universe, which is a non-person. So there really is only one correct way to understand nihilism correctly. Christianity involves understanding a person though (Christ), which is naturally subjective. But then, so is understanding my fiance. Just because someone else's understanding of my fiance is different doesn't mean my perception of her holds no water.
And again, the ultimate summary of the "various laws" written by people in the Bible is "love God" and "love others." That law comes from Jesus Himself. Unless you assume that the authors of the New Testament had some sort of evil agenda when they actually wrote those words down on paper, I don't see why their humanity would be a stumbling stone to someone's belief in Christianity.
Now the idea of "gay marriage" is a complicated issue. The obvious problem is that by "marriage" we mean two very different things in America: the state-issued license and the covenant before God. The homosexual community wants the former, and I think they have a constitutional right to that for all the civil benefits it grants them with taxes and such. The latter however is a misnomer. It would be like an atheist recovering from drug addiction and saying, "I want to be baptized to show the world I've changed!" To that we would say, "That's really not what baptism is for." Likewise with marriage. What Christians actually do about the legality of gay marriage is a matter of how they understand Christ as well.
And of course I would question the grounds of the assertion that "nature" has produced us. I wrote about that in my blog post about natural selection. I'd have to fish for that link though.
I have to admit to some annoyance at your conceit that you have the only correct understanding of "nihilism." By your lights, I even AM a "nihilist," and I don't pretend to understand it myself.
DeleteInjunctions to "love others" are too vague to offer much real guidance in the myriad of actual situations people find themselves in.
The Christian view of marriage overlooks that "man" and "woman" are but two of several possible categories into which to sort the sexuality or gender of actual human beings. There are hermaphrodites, for example, and other variations currently gathered under the label "intersex." (I excerpt a book on this subject this coming Thor's Day. But I'll give you a look-ahead, a link to the NY Times review of the book.)
Of course you would question the grounds on which evolution has been demonstrated – you desperately don't want it to be true!
I apologize if my understanding of nihilism seems conceited. Given that it is a philosophical position that axiomatically denies anything transcendent to our material universe, I just think it naturally falls into the category of worldviews that have textbook definitions. Naturally there will then be a myriad of ideologies that need teasing out (anthropology, teleology, etc.), and those certainly would need volumes to explain how that basic worldview affects every aspect of human life.
DeleteFortunately, we have a pretty solid definition of love that is still recited at most weddings (be they Christian or not). Perhaps this scope will help keep the injunction from sounding too vague (and it even comes from one of the texts that even Bart Ehrman admits is undeniably written by Paul the Apostle). 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
I would agree with your point about the Christian view of marriage containing oversights only if marriage was merely a union of two people who wanted to have sex. But then the word marriage tends to have three very different definitions in America today. I think you are using it in the sense of "we want to express in a sort of ultimate form how sexually attracted to each other we are," which is not the Christian view in the first place.
I've written about it elsewhere (I'd have to dig through the Thor's Day posts), but the myth of natural selection offers no "grounds" nor demonstration of evolution. It is an atheist's last-ditch philosophical effort to avoid attributing God's efforts in biology to what we see in the world, and instead the atheist attempts to invent something somehow mechanical yet unavoidably anthropomorphic. It is an invented god that does everything God could have done in the biological world (as many Christians think today), but we don't owe it anything.
Again, this all ties back into the nihilism inherent in the "well, it just happened" view of the origins of life. We have no moral responsibilities with unguided (yet somehow guided by natural selection) Darwinian evolution. It is man's best effort to say with a sneering lip to his Creator, "What do I owe you?"
The Christian answer of course is "everything." The nihilist answer is nihil: nothing.
Kyle, I wasn't at all talking of marriage in the sense of "a union of two people who wanted to have sex"; it says something ominous about you that that is what you thought, and I am baffled as to what your problem might be.
DeleteYour handy characterization of evolution as a "myth" is cute but ludicrous.
The responsibilities we have in a "well, it just happened" life are precisely the responsibilities that humans today believe they have. These beliefs arose, after all, through a period of imagining gods onto whom to project the morals that were growing up in human societies. Christianity arose in this same "well, it just happened" world; I'd think you'd be grateful that the workings of the natural world didn't prevent it from happening.
The "well, it just happened" world permits answers of either sort, "everything" or "nothing."
I had assumed you were getting at sexual compatibility once you brought up sexuality and, specifically, hermaphrodites or intersex people. Were you more-so leaning on gender identification? I went to a very liberal Cal State university, and so was taught that sexuality and gender are two different categories in one's identity (I had assumed you were differentiating in the same way).
DeleteTo clarify, and I've written on this before on your blog, it is natural selection--the mystical mechanical agent that merely replaces the word "God"--that is the myth--not the concept of evolution. Is that what you found ludicrous? Do you have any grounds for that retort or would you like to leave it at "nuh-uh"?
You seem to be in a loop of circular reasoning: you are essentially arguing "we just have moral responsibilities" because "they just arose over time." That doesn't actually offer any evidence-based claim though. Is there any historical anthropologist who can identify when humans didn't have morality and then invented gods to make morality? I've heard that theory plenty, but never any evidence to back it up. And again, we would have to acknowledge that those responsibilities are purely illusory if the anthropomorphic power of natural selection stumbled upon them by accident. As David Hume pointed out quite logically (I've yet to hear you respond to this): you can't get an "ought" from an "is" statement.
Logically speaking, the Christian worldview actually offers us a transcendent and ultimate basis for morality that defies our selfish nature. We all have an innate sense that authoritative fiats ought to be obeyed: the greater the power that issues them, the more reverence owed. The trouble is that human fiats naturally don't have any basis of authority; we've just gradually constructed social climates that make some humans more "powerful" than others.
The Christian worldview, on the other hand, offers the notion of a being Who, in His very nature, has ultimate power and authority. He is the whole show. The namesake of your blog, Aristotle, called Him the unmoved mover: the first cause.
I suppose that might be the concept that ultimately divides the Christian and the atheist. The Christian can conceive (however imperfectly) the notion of an ultimate authority (God) by which the universe owes its existence and we owe our sense of right and wrong, and the atheist either cannot contemplate that answer or cannot accept it (I suspect that latter option involves personal reasons that every individual must sort out in his or her own unique way).
Kyle, by mentioning both "sex" and "gender" I hoped to clarify something, not confuse it. As an article in Wikipedia on sex and gender differences says, "The current distinction between the terms 'sex difference' vs. 'gender difference' has been criticized as misleading and counterproductive. These terms suggest that the behavior 'of an individual' can be partitioned into separate biological and cultural factors. (However, behavioral differences between individuals can be statistically partitioned, as studied by behavioral genetics). Instead, all behaviors are phenotypes—a complex interweaving of both nature and nurture." Individuals are individuals - unique individuals. Not all are standardly "male" or "female," or "man" or "woman." Christianity's insistence (that is, Christianity as espoused by you) that marriage (a church-blessed institution for mutual loving commitment) is only for "one man and one woman" shows its limitations as to respect for individual human beings. How can you continue to insist that Christianity is a thing of God, when it so clearly bears the marks of human fallibility?
DeleteNatural selection is NOT a "mystical mechanical agent," or even an agent. It is the working out of competition among organisms in nature for limited resources; the more fit survive, and the less fit pass away.
I didn't mean to be saying that humans invented gods TO MAKE MORALITY, and of course no one knows precisely how morality or belief in gods arose. But that they "arose" is to me eminently more credible than any "God intervened" theory - for which there is an even greater paucity of evidence, by the way.
Natural selection stumbled upon YOU by accident – are YOU
purely illusory?
Logically speaking, since the Christian worldview evolved out of Nature, its purportedly "transcendent and ultimate basis for morality" – abetted by the human concept of "a being Who, in His very nature, has ultimate power and authority" – is no better than the width and depth of its acceptance among humans. Humans are just going to have to keep trying to "construct social climates" of respectful consensus around human (and animal) rights.
Kyle, this morning I came upon a paragraph in the book I mentioned above (its title is Galileo's Middle Finger, by Alice Dreger) that is pertinent to my contentions about Christianity's failings with respect to what we might call "marriage equality":
DeletePaul Vasey has been documenting that in Somoa little boys who are naturally very femme are welcomed into a special gender category called fa'afafine, a term that signifies living "in the manner of a woman," and are raised like the girls. The fa'afafine grow up in female roles, tending to the family and taking men as their lovers, although they almost never alter their anatomy, because their traditional culture doesn't require them to do so in order to live as women socially and sexually. The fa'afafine are understood and accepted this way by their families and their lovers, and have been for generations. In now-Christianized Samoa, they wouldn't be so well understood or accepted if they self-identified as gay men. [Emphasis mine.]
3. Ultimate Oblivion:
ReplyDeleteThis is the one that you either intellectually and emotionally grasp or you do not. If the worldview of nihilism is true, then life is crushingly bleak, meaning and morality is illusory, and oblivion is so near around the corner that there really is no ultimate difference between our dying today, tomorrow, or in 100 years.
Once again this leaves us the problem of what to do with the sadist, the serial rapist, etc. The worst we can do to someone is the death penalty. But what difference does that make to him if he truly understands nihilism? It all comes out the same in the wash: oblivion--the eternal dark--the lack of awareness that you ever were. By pulling the rug out from under morality and promising everyone "You won't remember this anyway," you give sufficient grounds for anyone to do anything.
Your dismay at the "bleakness" of the "nihilist worldview" continues to puzzle me. "Nihilists" and Christians both make choices as to what their lives will be about, and they generally pursue things that make for happiness and fulfillment. I listed a number of possibilities in today's post. And, please remember, in my post that I think inaugurated our interest in a "Christian-atheist" conversation ("Value experience for its own sake") I stated:
DeleteI consider it a sacred art to live in a way that values life and respects one's own and others' experience for its own sake. I accept as self-evident that experience must be valuable for its own sake, for this is it, this is all there is. We pass this way once. Here and gone. We need to cherish it.
For some reason, you seem to find that bleak. I have never been able to comprehend that. I have derived much joy of late abiding with a host of tiny toads who cropped up suddenly in our yard, and I am careful not to step on or unduly startle them, even moving with great care and deliberation in my attempts to photograph them, so as not to cause them to hurt themselves. I love these little creatures. Wonderful life!
In the end, we have to ask ourselves, "How far can this idea take us if we truly understand and adhere to it?"
ReplyDeleteA correct understanding of God's character yields more human flourishing than an incorrect understanding of "the void beyond."
I stand back in awe at your self-professed ability to understand God's character and I can only weep with gratitude that you are still willing to make an attempt to understand the likes of mine as well.
DeleteI'm just doing the best I can with the mind and heart I've been given. I'd clarify that I don't profess to understand God to the fullest; it's more like my relationship with my fiance: intimate, and all the more so with the passing of years. As for your character, I am only sad that we were born so many decades apart. I wish we still had many more guaranteed!
DeleteYou're both great writers, and I'm glad I already have a belief in God, as you can be very persuasive, Morris. Thank you Kyle for your writings.
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear sister! Know, though, that I really am not trying to persuade you to give up your belief, and I think I understand why you never will. But, if you ever waver, may your grandson Kyle be there to set you back on track!
DeleteI said I would never get pulled back into these discussions, but the idea that somehow the Christian worldview is a guidepost for morals Kyle is just plain BS. Christian leadership did not not stop immoral acts. It did however give cover to those within the churches who wished to commit the acts. The Jews of whom Jesus was one, were not moral people as we think of moral people today, and while Jesus taught many moral ways to interact with our fellow humans only a handful throughout history have ever followed that part of his teachings. Most Christians use the Bible not as a moral guide but a way to justify their own beliefs They take out of the Bible what enforces their worldview and refuse to be told it is not the word of God but hatred of all things and people who do not believe in (their) God. A God that changes faces and morals as the Christian Church needs in order to maintain control over the flock. Christians move from church to church not in search of God but in search of other Christians who believe as they do. So in effect you have in each church a different Christian worldview.
ReplyDeleteMorals are what is acceptable to the group you find yourself living among. What is moral in one group may not be moral in another, but both groups feel the moral right to believe in their morals. These same morals---with or without a church dictate---change over time. If this change is good or bad would depend on what your moral base is at that time. At one point in american history Christians did not believe Indians or blacks had souls. Time and enlightenment has more to do with morals than any Christian worldview.
Well I can honestly say I'm glad we can still get you to surface when you think it's necessary, Ed. I think it lends proof to how objectively significant these subjects are and how we can't be passive participants in "The Great Conversation" for too long.
DeleteThere are quite a few sweeping generalizations in what you briefly said, so I'll try to keep my responses brief to what I think you were asserting (though I'm sure you know by now I'm bad at that):
1. "Christians can be bad, therefore Christianity is bad."
I think this is hardly a case against Christianity as it is for it. It's like not attending a gym because you find fat people inside. At the center of the Christian worldview is the state of man that desires to sin. I don't think that changes "in each church." The fact that Christians have been immoral in the past and can still be immoral in the present is just further proof that humans need to be more like Jesus to be righteous (we are called "Christ"ians after all). The less Jesus you have, the less righteous a person would naturally be. Any sort of evil resulting from professed "Christians" is naturally of the human sort--not the Christian sort. It's a conflict of categories. You can't find any Biblical text for instance to support the idea that people with darker skin don't have souls.
2. "Christianity has resulted in more harm than good."
I think that's a historical debate too big for one blog response. Other than simply saying I disagree with you, I think we could easily point to the western cornerstones of the hospital and university as a source of a lot of good in the world. The fact that we are even having this conversation in English owes itself to the work of Medieval Christian monks.
3. "What is right and wrong is determined by the group."
I actually couldn't agree more if you are a nihilist. The question that matters (and I say that intentionally ironically, for nothing really matters if nihilism is true) is whether or not you are willing to live by that nihilism. Are you willing to admit that unspeakable evils committed by foreign social groups aren't necessarily evil so long as they all agree that it is good? Would you be willing to say to the sadist intent on murdering you, "My survival instinct tells me to defend myself, but there's really nothing ultimately wrong with your desire to harm me"?
Several days after reading this I came to the conclusion that atheism is itself a sort of faith. There seems to be no sound proof for either the existence or the non-existence of God that cannot be challenged. I personally believe in evolution, although many Orthodox Christians and the Orthodox Church dismiss it. However, the reality of evolution does not preclude the existence of God. It doesn't even preclude that the world was created in "six days," given that "day" could have another meaning (e.g. millions of years). Even if life is a result of a random combination of elements, this still does not rule out the existence of God.
ReplyDeleteI am talking in purely scientific terms. There is no secure way to prove that God exists or does not exist, because we never have sufficient knowledge. Neither camp can point out an absolute, undeniable argument. The only thing that deferentiates the camps is belief. You believe that there is no God, I believe that there is. We both have evidence for our belief, but at the end of the day this evidence is not sufficient to answer the question of His existence: we must rely on our intuition.
One of the beauties of Christianity is forgiveness. I am not one hundred percent convinced in the accuracy of the Bible, but still the New Testament remains the best guess as to what Christ said. If you do not forgive you are terrorizing yourself. It means that something from your past is torturing you and you cannot forget about it, because it hurt you. If you are able to forgive, it means that you can overcome what happened. In an oversimplified scenario, if somebody did bad to you and you cannot forgive him you fall into a depression. The only way to permanently cure this depression is to forgive. If you forget, the depression will come back as soon as you remember. Only if you forgive can you get rid of the depression. I think that forgiveness does not necessarilly mean to go hug your enemy, it just means to stop blaming him, to overcome what happened, and to accept the past as it was.
I have been reading a book on alternative medicine (The Experience of a Fool Who Had an Epiphany about How to Get Rid of His Glasses, by Mirzakarim Norbekov) that suggests that forgiving and settling things from your past is an important aspect of curing any disease. Norbekov reverses the process of psychosomatics: if you can get ill through conviction, why not get healthy through conviction? Said in a very simplistic manner, one of the important bottomlines of his philosophy is to set your mind in such a way that there are no obstacles for you to implement your conviction of health. Such obstacles include greed, jealousy, hatred, feelings of loathing. Forgiving is the way to get rid of these, and thus in Norbekov's system forgiveness is an indispensable aspect of getting health back. Norbekov gives an example of an American lady – Louise Hay – about forgiving and getting healthy.
If this is true (i.e., forgiveness is an important aspect of being healthy), then the Bible presents us with valuable instructions for sound health. A good reason, I think, to recognize the Bible and its teachings as important for you and mankind in general.
Aside from the controversy around God, Christianity, and atheism, I think that The Experience of a Fool would make good reading for you. Even if you refuse to accept it as "pure truth" (whatever that means) it will be amusing. I haven't read the English translation, but the Bulgarian one was pretty well done.
Thank you, Christopher!
DeleteI do not claim to have proof for the non-existence of God. Strictly speaking, I'm more precisely an agnostic than an atheist. I nevertheless label myself atheist because I trust the arguments that there is no such thing as a personal God (as conceived by Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) who hears our prayers, etc. The interpretation of all such beliefs as having arisen evolutionarily and culturally from a number of converging human motives (needing to have an explanation, fearing death, loathing injustice, etc.) is much, much more credible to me. I.e., man created [the concept of] God in his own image, not vice versa.
I agree that the New Testament's teachings on forgiveness are valuable, which is not evidence either that Jesus was the Son of God or that God exists. I believe that Jesus was a man some of whose ideas were good and useful (if not his apocalyptic teachings, which he adopted from a strain of his Jewish teachers – as I understand from reading Bible scholar Bart Ehrman).
I've looked into the Norbekov book. Neither my county's library system nor the UNC libraries in Chapel Hill have it. Going by its title, I wonder whether it pronounces on the question whether it is possible to overcome nearsightedness without the aid of spectacles or contact lenses?
I am pretty familiar with Louise Hay, whose "affirmations" I read regularly about 20-25 years ago. She helped me get through some tough times when I was dealing with chronic fatigue and recovery from brain surgery (in January 1996). The "power of positive thinking" is no doubt useful, if realistically practiced.