Originally Posted by
masterjanuarius
Good quotations. Well researched ideas. But then, is it right for us to judge the past by the standards we have of our present reality and moral measurements? I think it would be unfair! However, St. Paul would also exalt Christians of his time: "to be magnanimous to their slaves .. treating them as brothers in the faith". That might be very revolutionary in those times; but moot and academic for us. It only means to me that moral standards evolve just as culture develops and progresses. The only constant are the Universal Truths. They remain valuable from the beginning until now. Our fickle mind and cultural environment are somehow limited in their understanding and acceptance; hence what was acceptable in the past, might be abhorring today. What was unacceptable yesteryear are now politically correct in our societies. I can cite many examples on these, too.
Let me just put your St. Paul's command to be magnanimous to slaves out of its misery first...just to prove I can juxtapose a contradiction from the Bible just as easily:
Exodus 21:20-21
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.
pwede ra diay mo-torture ug slaves basta lang dili sila mamatay...for the next two days pa gyud!
Okay, moral standards evolve just as culture develops and progresses. I agree. But I'm criticizing the universality of the moral codes in a bronze-age text to the modern world. Remember, this is claimed to be the word of God, so the stakes are high; the standards we should be measuring it with must be high. If you say those biblical injunctions (for slavery, burning of witches and heretics, etc) were perfectly fine back then but not now---like you said, because our moral standards evolved---then that defeats its universality feature, doesn't it?
We must have better self-respect than calling our minds "fickle" and blaming our cultural environment for our moral climate. We must give ourselves some credit. Just take stock of how far we've come as a species and as a civilization...in spite of religious opposition at every turn.
Sorry to plug in Mark Twain once again. Here, he describes how we rose up against slavery and fought it to its bitter end:
But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not mollify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations-- but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England-- was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.
Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.
Yes, priests and parsons always joined the procession at the tail-end, after resisting and thwarting the anti-slavery movement at every opportunity. Mankind often had to struggle to right a rooted wrong against the religious and their stubborn adherence to the sacred texts (which of course was their ordained duty).
And here's how Twain ended his essay:
There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency.
Indeed, the text remains...which is a good thing, actually, so that we have proofs of the doctrines that were followed passionately in the past with tragic consequences. I perfectly understand that the religious impulse to submit to God's will requires one's abdication of reason and sense of morals in favor of a set of "revealed" dogmas which give an excuse for self-appointed "God's transmitters" to order people around. But that's where I beg to differ.
Let's not wander into political correctness. I'm talking about slavery, burning people at the stake, subjection of women, etc...things Christianity used to do in earnest. How can you say that the regulation of slavery and the injunction to burn heretics and witches are universal moral codes (because it's written in the Bible) while at the same time point out that our moral standards have evolved to see them as utterly misguided? If we take your argument on
relative moral standards to its logical conclusion, we might just as well say there is no right and wrong...because in the future, we can always look back and see that such actions were perfectly alright under the circumstances and moral standards of this age. What would the future know about the moral standards of today? Or to borrow your objection, what right do they have to judge the past moral standards?
You might say "Ah...but those barbaric stuffs are Old Testament, my friend. That's why Jesus had to come to earth to make the point clear." Many Christians believed that Jesus did away with all these Old Testament barbarisms in the clearest terms imaginable, and delivered a doctrine of pure love and toleration.
He didn't. In fact, at several points in the New Testament, Jesus can be read to endorse the entirety of Old Testament Law.
Matthew 5:18-20
For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Either the Bible is a perfect moral guide or it is not. You have to make that choice. I submit to you that it is not...and we can fill a thread full of Biblical contradictions. But I would probably agree with you that, in some respects, it was a useful moral guide in those days, in the same way Confucius' Analects were useful to the Chinese or the Egyptian Book of the Dead to ancient Egyptians. And likewise I don't dispute the fact there are common doctrines from these ancient texts that still serve us well today, like the "Do unto others" commandment, which is Confucian in origin (i.e. dating way before the Bible was written). But all this is saying that it is still up to us to discern which parts of the old rules still apply and which don't. Like Twain said, the practice changes but the text remains. If you say that every dot and tiddle in Bible must be followed, then you have a very indefensible position.
I'll just leave you with a very relevant Youtube video clip from a "West Wing" episode and a quote from the Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg:
PLEASE WATCH and let us know what you guys think:
The West Wing- Bible Lesson
With or without religion, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.
Guess what were the last words from the 9/11 hijackers: GOD IS GREAT! Weinberg was spot on with that statement!
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