[MD] False Messiah

Mon Mar 20 13:04:22 PST 2006

On Sunday 19 March 2006 5:16 PM david buchanan writes to Marsha, Ant and 
All:

<snip>

As a source of objective morality, the bible is one of the worst
books we have. It might have been the very worst, in fact, if we didn't also
happen to have the Koran....

..People of faith regularly allege that atheism is responsible for some of
the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Are atheists really less
moral than believers? While it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin,
Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not
especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more
than litanies of delusion--delusions about race, economics, national
identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In
many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the
Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick
was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries,
Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and
attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the
faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a
predominately secular way, its roots were undoubtedly religious-and the
explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued throughout
the period. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its
newspapers as late as 1914.) Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are
not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified
beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not
thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to
say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the
blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is
none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has 
more than its fair share. I know of no society in recorded history that ever
suffered because its people became too reasonable.

<snip>

Hi David, Marsha,, and all,

IMO the source of objective morality is dogma. The question becomes dogma 
based on what? Certainly there have been enough plagues, earthquakes, 
tsunamis, volcanos killing people to question the objective morality in the 
dogma of gravity. Oh! I guess I can't do anything about it! What can I 
change?

I am surprised on an MOQ list that you don't mention the man who was forced 
to suffer shock treatment because he was too reasonable. Our society 
suffered! and still does from that kind of violence.

Joe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] False Messiah

> Marsha, Ant and all:
>
> Marsha said to Ant:
> Nothing wrong with 'just sitting', realizing that (what is the saying?)
> 'thou art that', that you're already there.  The problem with the hero's
> journey, in the West, is that they are always accompanied by so much
> violence.
>
> dmb says:
> I think the macho violence problem is with the West in general rather than
> with the journey. But I certainly agree that its a problem. That's one of
> the reasons I like the hero as artist rather than as warrior. And the 
> gender
> equality implied in this is only my second favorite reason. The first is
> that it provides a more balanced offering of masculine and feminine 
> quality.
> I mean, the patriatchial bias distorts the whole culture and is bad for 
> men
> and women.
>
> But I don't want to beat a dead horse. Starting out on this thread, I was
> hoping discuss the present period of (neo-Victorian) moral decline in a
> larger context, and the comments about the hero's journey were only meant 
> to
> get at the MOQ's code of art. You know, I was trying to get at the moral
> regeneration of the hippies, the artists, revolutionaries and other
> contrarians. And, in my paper, Orpheus is painted as one of these types of
> heros too.
>
> I think its worth looking at Pirsig's metaphysical read on our time. The
> idea that bohemian types are the agents of moral change and that this
> conservative movement is a period of moral decline defies conventional
> wisdom and is, I think, quite correct.  I was hoping to discuss politics 
> in
> terms of the MOQ's evolutionary morality, in terms of the conflict between
> social and intellectual values, etc.
>
> Having said that, et me take this in a different direction. A while ago, 
> Sam
> Norton turned me on the a rather courageous thinker by the name of Sam
> Harris. Maybe you've heard of his book; "THE END OF FAITH: Religion, 
> Terror
> and the Future of Reason"? He studies Eastern and Western philosophy at
> Stanford. I found some of his posting, in which he replies to questions 
> and
> criticisms, at Truthdig.com Let me put some of that on the table for the
> sake of discussion....
>
> Responding to the assertion that "Religion is our only source of morality.
> Without it, we would be plunged into a secular moral chaos", Harris 
> says...
>
> "This concern is so widespread that I have responded to it at some length.
> A version of this response will soon be published in the magazine Free
> Inquiry (www.secularhumanism.org) as "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos."...
>
> ..If a book like the bible were the only reliable blueprint for human
> decency that we have, it would be impossible (both practically and
> logically) to criticize it in moral terms. But it is extraordinarily easy 
> to
> criticize the morality one finds in bible, as most of it is simply odious
> and incompatible with a civil society.
>
> The notion that the bible is a perfect guide to morality is really quite
> amazing, given the contents of the book. Human sacrifice, genocide,
> slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated.  Of course, God's
> counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get
> out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13: 24, 20:30, and
> 23:13-14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill
> them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark.7:9-13 and
> Matthew 15:4-7).  We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery,
> homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshipping graven images, 
> practicing
> sorcery, and for a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.  Most 
> Christians
> imagine that Jesus did away with all this barbarism and delivered a 
> doctrine
> of pure love and toleration.  He didn't (Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17, 2
> Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 20-21, John 7:19). Anyone who believes that Jesus 
> only
> taught the Golden Rule and love of one's neighbor should go back and read
> the New Testament. And pay particular attention to the morality that will 
> be
> on display if he ever returns to Earth trailing clouds of glory (e.g. 2
> Thessalonians 1:7-9, 2:8; Hebrews 10:28-29; 2 Peter 3:7; and all of
> Revelation). It is not an accident that St. Thomas Aquinas thought 
> heretics
> should be killed and that St. Augustine thought they should be tortured.
> (Ask yourself, what are the chances that these good doctors of the Church
> hadn't read the New Testament closely enough to discover the error of 
> their
> ways?) As a source of objective morality, the bible is one of the worst
> books we have. It might have been the very worst, in fact, if we didn't 
> also
> happen to have the Koran....
>
> ..People of faith regularly allege that atheism is responsible for some of
> the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Are atheists really less
> moral than believers? While it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin,
> Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not
> especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more
> than litanies of delusion--delusions about race, economics, national
> identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In
> many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the
> Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick
> was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries,
> Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics 
> and
> attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the
> faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a
> predominately secular way, its roots were undoubtedly religious-and the
> explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued 
> throughout
> the period. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its
> newspapers as late as 1914.) Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields 
> are
> not examples of what happens when people become too critical of 
> unjustified
> beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not
> thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to
> say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for 
> the
> blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes 
> is
> none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has
> more than its fair share. I know of no society in recorded history that 
> ever
> suffered because its people became too reasonable.
>
> According the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), the most
> atheistic societies--countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada,
> Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the 
> United
> Kingdom-are actually the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life
> expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment,
> gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50
> nations now ranked lowest by the U.N. in terms of human development are
> unwaveringly religious. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not
> resolve questions of causality-belief in God may lead to societal
> dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor
> may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of
> mischief.  Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove
> that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil
> society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing 
> to
> ensure a society's health."
>
> Thanks for reading,
> dmb
>
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