Christianity Versus Moral Relativism
I recently had a short but troubling conversation...er...argument with someone who smugly identified himself as "not a fundamentalist" as if being a fundamentalist is something to avoid. Well, I guess I am a fundamentalist if "fundamentalist" means you believe what God tells you is true, instead of what mankind tells you.
As I pointed out, there are really only two religious philosophies in the world. They are:
1. God is God
2. Man is God.
For the sake of literalists, the word "Man", in this case, refers to Mankind, which includes woman. Perhaps, for the sake of brevity, I should change that definition to read, "Man and/or Woman is God".
Those who believe that man is God are what I call moral relativists. My definition of a moral relativist is one who claims to believe that truth is relative. All truth. What I mean by "relative" is this:
According to the moral relativist, what I believe to be true, may not be true to someone else, and what's true to someone else may not necessarily be true for me. Got it?
For example, if I say up is down, and I truly believe up is down, then up truly is down, and if I am a good moral relativist, anyone has the right to dispute me, but I am nevertheless correct in my belief. By the same token, if you say up is up, and I don't happen to agree, we can at least agree that your truth is good for you, and my truth is good for me.
No one has the corner on truth to a moral relativist.
I am not a moral relativist, and for some reason, moral relativists usually won't admit to being a moral relativist. I would suggest that if being a moral relativist is such a good thing to be, why don't the majority of them admit to being one? Could there be some hypocrisy in moral relativism?
Some will go so far as to say they are Christians. I will not be so arrogant as to say they are not Christians.
But if they are Christians how does their belief that truth is relative square with God's pronouncement that He is truth?
It does not, and it cannot. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me." (John 14:6) If Jesus is the truth, wouldn't someone who implies that he (or she) knows God, but does not believe what God says, be lying?
"The man who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:3-4)
In what ways does the moral relativists version of truth conflict with God's truth?
Let's use the ten commandments as an example. The sixth commandment says, "Do not murder." Yet the moral relativist says that a woman has the right to murder her unborn child if she thinks the birth of that child will cause an undue hardship, or if it will impair her quality of life in some way, either physically, or psychologically. This essentially, puts the decision to terminate life in a mortals hands, and does not take into account that God is in control and knows what is best for both the child and the mother.
Even if one can successfully make the argument that abortion is not murder, it nevertheless violates another commandment, the first one, which states "You shall not have any other Gods before me."
Taking the decision to terminate life out of God's hands and making that decision yourself is placing oneself on the same omnipotent level as the Creator of the Universe. Thus, the first commandment is violated. If you believe you are an equal to God, you are putting another God before Him. Namely, yourself. At this point, you are in conflict with God's truth.
I must be a fundamentalist, for I believe that God is God. I don't have to go through all the mental gymnastics that a moral relativist does, in justifying why God is wrong on whatever topic I happen to disagree with Him about.
If I am to choose between whether to believe something God says is true, and what mortal man says is true, I'll take my chances with God.
If I am wrong, and truth is relative, then I will insist that there is no Hell and everyone goes to Heaven, and I insure myself everlasting utopia.
If I am right, since I believe in God's truth, I will go to Heaven. It is a win/win situation for me.
But if the moral relativist is wrong, He will go to Hell. He may not believe in Hell, but nevertheless, that is where he will end up. For eternity. He will believe in it then, but of course, then it will be too late.
What is the safer bet?
About Me
- Mark
- I don't borrow, cut and paste, or otherwise echo other Conservative blogs and talk show hosts. I sometimes refer to other opinion pieces, but the opinions presented herein are my own. Just because some talk show hosts or bloggers sometimes say the same things I do, any apparent similarities between myself and other commentators is purely coincidental.
48 comments:
Hi Mark,
Very well said. Of course, a moral relativists will disagree completely, but then, do they ever agree with anyone other than themselves?
Blessings
BTW, I tagged you on my site, for this site. If you don't want to do it, don't worry about it. My feelings won't be hurt...
"What is the safer bet?" It's a no-brainer, Mark!
Good post. Thanks for stopping by and leaving the link. I really didn't know you ran another blog. I guess it's been a long time since I checked out your profile. Sorry!
It would be hard to add anything to what you've said. The spirit of it, at least, is pretty clear.
I always wonder how it all got to this point. To have on one side, those like ourselves, who hear what we believe to be obvious, and then to have those on the other, who hear...whatever. Certainly, I don't have a problem with anyone questioning and debating and considering Scripture in a different light. I think we all do that to some extent. But there seems to be those who start with an agenda (for lack of a better word) and begin their questioning and debating and such with an aim that is apart from understanding.
When I read the posts of some of our "opponents" that speak of the "scholars" from whom they derive their beliefs, I can't help but get the feeling that they are carving out for themselves, room to carry on as they've been carrying on. So much of what they relate seem to be grasping at straws or even blatant misinterpretations. Some of it even seems convincing at first, though it doesn't "feel" right, until some traditional scholar speaks to the same issue in a manner that doesn't seem so forced, or relates important points not even mentioned before, or provides other evidences that just make my original position seem so logical and right.
Then there are those who say things like, "Take the Bible seriously, but not literally." Is that even possible? Certainly some parts are metaphor, some poetry, some probably composite-type renderings, but still, within there lies actual truth that needs no 21st Century post-modern liberal theologian to decipher.
I don't trust these "theologians". They have stripped the soul from Christianity until it means so little, or rather, it means what each Christian says it means. Moral relativism again. We DO know what God wants from us. We don't have to judge another's heart, and we certainly don't need to judge another's actions since his actions speak for themselves.
I, too, am fine with being called a "fundie". I'm thinking of putting it on my business cards.
Art, I think many moral relativists who call themselves Christian really do believe they know Christ.
But I think there is a difference between a head knowledge of Jesus Christ and a Heart knowledge.
When I was 8 years old, I walked an aisle and prayed the obligatory sinner's prayer with the preacher, and was duly baptized, and for 12 years, I truly believed I was a Christian.
When I was 20, I realized I was lying to God and to myself. I knew Jesus, but He wasn't Lord of my life. When I finally really came to a heart knowledge of Christ, along with a tremendous burden being lifted from my shoulders, the scales fell from my eyes, and I began to understand with startling clarity things that I merely pretended to understand before.
Do you know what I mean?
Gayle, I have three blogs, but one is dormant, probably forever. It is a catalog of lyrics to obscure songs, mostly Gaelic. Some were extremely hard to find, and others were hard to understand, but I have a friend who lives in Scotland, and she helped me understand the accents that, in some songs, made it nearly impossible to understand the words.
Still, if you are ever curious about what some Irish or Scottish folk song's lyrics are, you may very well find the lyrics on my site.
Yes, I do know what you mean. I think the moral relativist will say something similar. In fact, I have little doubt they would. Why shouldn't they if it's what they believe? The one thing with which I agree with the relativist is when he says only God knows for sure what is what. But to me, and you as far as I can tell, that doesn't meant we can't know anything now. It seems to me that to the relativist, only sins such as killing (any kind), stealing, (unless you're really in need), and lying (except for white lies?) are unChristian behavior. They don't much have a problem with other types of commandment breaking such as sexual sins and things of that nature. That's where they get ambiguous, so despite their claims to the contrary, it doesn't seem as if all the scales have fallen from their eyes. Oh, of course, my making that statement is unChristian to them as well.
I think it's much more difficult to observe a post-modern liberal moral relativist Christian and have any idea of just what separates them from the rest.
I am not a moral relativist, and for some reason, moral relativists usually won't admit to being a moral relativist.
How can you not be a moral relativist when you think that sometimes killing children is an acceptable thing to do? As in the Bombing of Hiroshima, for instance.
Aren't you saying that "It's always wrong to kill innocent people - especially innocent children...but sometimes it's okay to do it..."?
Asked and answered, Dan, ad nauseum. You insist on bringing up that subject as if the question stands alone, as if there can be no possible scenarios in which it must be done for the benefit of a greater number of people, as if the mere suggestion that it might be necessary means that without question, one is eager to commit the act, as if such an act can be perpetrated by a will reluctant, yet determined by intentions that would suffer God's forgiveness, as if it is upon YOU that God relies for judgement. It seems that it is YOU, Dan, that knows God's Mind so well as to eliminate our need to seek elsewhere that ultimate knowledge. We can all now rest easy knowing where to find the answers to life's great mysteries. Thank you, Dan.
Now go away.
Marshall, I'm just saying that moral relativism is moral relativism. I'm not even offering a judgement on it in this comment, just saying that, objectively speaking, those who say that killing children is sometimes good or necessary can't claim to be NOT moral relativists.
You seem to be reproducing pascals wager here, and missing the rather critical point that there are some 30K christian sects, most of whom consider each other mutually doomed. The options are not simply Door A or B, but literally tens of thousands of doors.
Besides, could you really pull the wool over Gods eyes if you didn't genuinely believe?
Brian, I'm not sure what you're getting at. There is only one way to Heaven, as Jesus Himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the Life. No man comes to the father but by me."
There isn't 2 doors or thousands. There is only one.
And by the way. You can't pull the wool over God's eyes whether you believe or you don't.
There isn't 2 doors or thousands. There is only one.
Mark, I guess my point is that there are very many christian denominations, many of whom consider each others dogma heresy. How is one to differentiate the right "brand" from among this blizzard of noise?
Worse still, the bible actively supports the idea that only a few will actually work out the details to salvation, how can anyone be sure we've got it right?
The dice just seem loaded from the get go.
What an interesting discussion.
And by the way. You can't pull the wool over God's eyes whether you believe or you don't.
The problem I see is that what most religious people believe seems to depend on the religion of their parents. I know this, because I was raised Catholic. Does this not indicate that there are many ways? Otherwise would God condemn people simply because of the family they were born into?
Yes, Steve, It is an interesting question. And yes, it is a problem that so amny different religions have so many different theologies.
Sticking with the religion of Christianity, however, I will make one point:
There is only one way to Heaven.
That is Jesus Christ. Any other way leads to destruction.
I have known many and known OF many Catholics and if I were to udge, (which I have no right to do)I would say many of them are not Christian but many of them are. I am a Baptist. Many Baptists are not really Christian. It goes back to the prophecy of Jesus when He said "Many people will say, Lord. Lord, but will not enter the kingdom of Heaven." Or something like that.
For exaample Phil Donahue was once asked if he was a Christian. His response, "I was raised a Catholic", made it clear that he didn't have a clue that there is a huge difference.
Conservative Commentator Laura Ingraham was raised a Baptist, but converted to Catholic later in life. I have no doubt she is a Christian, regardless.
To put it simply, being raised in a church doesn't make one a Christian any more than being raised in a garage makes one a car.
There is only one way to Heaven.
That is Jesus Christ. Any other way leads to destruction.
By "destruction", I take it you mean hell. You don't have any problem with this doctrine?
I have no problem with that doctrine. Jesus Himself said He is the only way to eternal life. The scriptures are very clear on this point.
I think you may be under the impression that there's an angry vengeful God up there who condemns anyone He doesn't like to Hell. That is not, nor has it ever been the case.
The book of John says "for he that believes not is condemned already" That means man consigns himself to everlasting punishment, not God. God is not willing that any should perish, but He has given man free will and man, using that free will can elect to disobey God or Obey God. It's man's choice. he condemns himself to Hell.
The problem I have with your whole approach Mark is that it is based on the Bible. Basing one's life on any ideology is risky, but choosing a book of such dubious origin is especially dangerous.
Hopefully, your own moral intuitions will screen out the worst of leviticus and deuteronomy, but if you are cherry picking already (and if you are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers, you are), why not dump the whole thing in favour of common sense?
That aside, an "omni" everything God that creates creatures in complete foreknowledge of their fate is a logical absurdity.
Either God is all powerful, or all good, but it can't be both and condemn people to hell. It's quite absurd, and not a little offensive actually.
As an ex-christian I understand how powerful the hold can be, I don't subscribe to the idea that extremists like yourself are idiots, far from it, I used to be exactly the same!! But for the sake of our species, you and your fellow theists need to engage in some serious self examination.
I really don't know what I can add to the argument Mark, as you have stated things extremely well. As an Orthodox Catholic priest, I can only say that "the Bible states it and I believe it". True enough, there are many groups, each calling themselves "Christian", but I firmly believe that those who pick and choose what they will or will not accept out of the Bible, and those who will twist the meanings of Holy Scripture to fit their specific agendas, are no Christian than I am an elephant. There is TRUTH (God's Truth) and then there is man's Truth which is often deception of self.
This self-deception of moral relativism is, unfortunately, being crammed down the throats of our children in our public schools, colleges and universities, by the majority of teachers and professors who are dyed in the wool humanists. This type of person needs to "Kill" God, so-to-speak, so that they can do what ever they deem is "right to them" no matter how vile or immoral, without having to feel guilt. If there is no God, then there can be no right or wrong no good or evil. Since this is obviously what the moral relativists believe, then why do we even need man made laws? Should we not all be able to do what we want any time we want without fear of punishment?
I mean, after all, if my TRUTH tells me that there is nothing wrong with committing theft, arson murder, rape, child molestation, adultery, sodomy, etc.,then what right does society have to impose their TRUTH on me?
Thank God there is THE TRUTH and that can be found in Jesus Christ.
Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong, Good is Good and Evil is Evil and no matter how much one tries to sugar coat evil or a lie, it does not change its true identity. No matter how much gravy you put on dog poop, it will never become Swedish Meatballs.
"if you are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers, you are [cherry-picking]"
As an ex-Christian you left the fold without gleaning so much as a 'basic' understanding between Old and New Testaments. Jesus asked the Pharisees and the crowds who it was among them without sin; such a person could, in Jesus' mind, cast the first stone. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The Old Testament has its place, but stoning homosexuals and adulterers is not part of ANY walk with Christ. The trite, but apropos 'what would Jesus do?' works in this regard.
"Either God is all powerful, or all good, but it can't be both and condemn people to hell."
Again, God consigns no one to hell; we do that to ourselves. Furthermore, if God is Just-- Justice personified --He MUST punish sin. Would you call a judge "good" if he said to the convicted murderer/rapist: "It's been shown that you are indeed a horrible murdering rapist, but I believe there's some good in you yet. Therefore I am releasing you. You are free. Don't do it again!"
Such a judge would be anything BUT good, and he has broken the law besides, and is himself a criminal.
God is holy and righteous. He cannot sin. And therefore cannot break His holy law. Sin must be punished. Sinners must be punished. He gives each and every one of us however many years we have on earth to decide for Christ. Failing that... the only sacrifice CAPABLE of cleansing us from sin... God has no choice but to house our eternal souls in the one place he wishes He didn't have to house ANYONE but the Devil and his angels... in Hell.
It doesn't take a degree in rocket-science to grasp the truths plainly evident in the Bible. If anything, a degree in rocket-science hinders the soul from seeing anything of worth in the Bible, or in seeking God.
If there is no God, then there can be no right or wrong no good or evil. ....
Should we not all be able to do what we want any time we want without fear of punishment?
This is merely an absurd theistic conceit. One I might add, which few of you fully understand, simply parroting the interesting (but circular) musings of deeper thinkers.
Morality is (and has been since the dawn of written history) simply what a given group of humans say it is. However, and this is the clue, we are biologically and socially disposed to the application of the golden rule, because this is what has produced coherent and stable societies. So there is baseline behaviour, and we see this documented by anthropologists the world over, but it's genes, not magic.
In addition "morality" is observable in many mammals and primates, thus it clearly has absolutely nothing to do with a primary transcendent lawgiver, unless that lawgiver looks like a chimp or a dolphin, after all, retorviral checkmarks in their DNA prove they evolved first. This is the observable reality, not vague speculation about some poorly defined transcendent "law".
Finally, the relentless history of schism in the christian tradition, and religion generally, is surely a clear warning bell that these institutions are not now, and never have been a conduit for anything approaching an internally consistent body of truth.
This should help clear up the confusion.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB411.html
theft, arson murder, rape, child molestation, adultery, sodomy,
Does the Bible prohibt all of the above, in every circumstance? Are you sure. Are you really sure?
If you have even a passing familiarity with that body of literature, you'll know some pretty awful stuff is sanctioned by "God". The Bible, as a result, is tainted and largely useless as a moral guide.
Ask me for the scripture references. I dare you!
Okay. I dare you.
"...tainted and largely useless as a moral guide."
A statement that is wayyy subjective and therefore an opinion that is "largely useless" in terms of honest debate.
OK elashley.
For all of it, just read the book of Joshua. However, here some specific examples.
Rape & sodomy : Genesis 19.8
arson : Genesis 19:24
murder : Exodus 11:5, 21:15-17, 22:19, 32:27, Numbers 25 (this list is functionally infinite)
Adultery : Numbers 31:18, Hosea 1
Nothing is take out of context here.
These acts were either commissioned by, or personally perpetrated by, the "God of Love".
Only the most determined effort of denial and rationalisation can integrate this into a modern world view, I'm hoping you're sufficiently shocked and intelligent for this concentrated list of atrocity to give you some pause for thought.
The mantra "have faith" or "trust the lord" that you are currently hearing is a simple but effective brainwashing technique. It is just a mental firewall installed by the virus of religion to prevent you from objectively examining it's worst elements. It's a con. Don't let yourself succumb to it. Face this stuff with a geuninely enquiring mind.
Good luck:-)
Heron, I'd recommend you read the passages as well. There is nothing subjective about considering the Bible useless as a moral guide.
It's fact, just look at the variety in the christian church for a start. Any unity there, brotherly love etc.?
The standard response to this, is that it is fallen humanities fault. This is simply the most amazing kind of con!
God creates humans, knowing their fate. Refuses to correct the flaws, doesn't provide any clear direction and then blames us, and you suck this up! Genius:-)
It seems far likelier to me that religion is a human institution just like every other and as prone to the broad spectrum of cognitive failures that humans are subject to.
Genesis 19:8 The bible is not condoning rape and sodomy here. This was LOT's response to the threat. That does not make it right. He was a righteous man, which means that he was a believer, but in this situation, he was not trusting in the Lord.
The Bible is an account of God's goodness, not man's goodness. Even in those who are believers, we find them doing some awful stuff. But the book isn't about them, but about God.
I won't go through the rest of the list, but that was just an example of how things are taken out of context of the entirety of Scripture.
Well Timothy. From the piece, it's clear that Lot, a "righteous" man thought it perfectly sensible to have a group of men gangrape his daughters instead of his guests.
God calls him righteous, right there in the text, not me.
I hasten to add that you are the one that has to stretch the meaning of the text to explain away the obvious, not me. I'm just reading what the Good lord wrote.
OK BrianC, fair enough.
Blessings
It's obvious to me that arguing with brianc about Christianity is like a man arguing with his mother about how bad childbirth hurts.
First of all, there is no such animal as an "ex-christian".
God does not go back on His promises. You may have been raised in a christian household, gone to a christian church, hung out with all christian friends all your life...
But unless you have had a genuine life-changing personal Salvation experience, you have no idea what you are talking about when you discuss "Christianity".
And unless you have had such an experience, none of us can explain it to you while you harbor the level of doubt that you obviously have toward the whole subject.
You would immediately label all of us as kooks who hear voices in our heads.
You have rejected God.
We have not.
And you might be right.
But if I live my whole life listening to the voice in my head, and it makes me a better person while I'm alive, and I die and they throw my carcase into a hole in the ground, and I rot away to nothingness just as if I had never existed, and there is no God and I was wrong about ALL of it all along...
Then I have lost nothing.
I have lived a fuller, happier life.
If we are right, however...
Well, eternity is an awfully long time.
Wow. I b'lieve this is my first actual encounter with an anti-Christian. Weird.
Then you are running in the wrong circles, my friend...
I should be running in circles where there are a lot of anti-Christians?
You must have misread what I wrote. Why in the world would I want to hang out with people who are anti-Christian?
Weirder.
On the other hand, you, yourself, and the host of this blog, and some others here, have accused ME of being anti-Christian, when I'm actually anti-unthinking adherence to doctrine for the sake of adhering, and against a literal reading of the Bible, and against veneration of the Bible when it approaches idolatry, oh, and above all, I'm against any person, group, church, organization or sect claiming it has the One True Way and that all others are hellbound -- which is why I doubt just about everything y'all say.
But I see Brian's words wuith my own eyes: And he's anti-Christian.
BrianC,
Timothy responded well enough regarding the Lot situation. It could also be said that the potential homosexual rape was considered far more awful than raping a woman, who at the time, did not have the same status as a man. But it really doesn't matter, because the incident is not described as an endorsement of either and certainly not as an endorsement by God. It's, as stated, the actions of a man.
Gen 19:24--arson, typically, is setting fires for profit or out of some some psychosis. This is neither. It is God rendering judgement. Being God, He has that right. For us, it is in no way a mandate for action. One would have to be suffering from some psychotic episode to think that it is.
Exodus 11:5--Again, God's judgement for rebellion against Him. Thus, not murder. Notice again, you'll actually study the story, how God is giving a choice again, to follow/listen to Him or not.
Ex 21:15-17--I see what you're doing here. You're equating capital punishment with murder. Very weak, especially since again, we're looking at God's judgement for particular offenses. Just as with state sponsered capital punishment, this is not murder in the least. The same with 22:19. The same still with 32:27, even if you find it offensive. None of the above is murder, nor does any of it condone murder. But it does demonstrate that capital punishment is not "anti-God" or "anti-religious" or "anti-Christian" or in anyway contrary to the notion of God's love, for He cannot be a just God if He does not punish the wicked. Also the same goes for Numbers 25.
For Num 31:18--There is no mention why the virginal women were to be kept. They could have been kept merely as servants, or as possible wives for themselves or their sons. But if you insist they were to be kept for sex, go take a cold shower.
For Hosea 1---This has a few interpretations, but one is connected with Chapter 3 and indicates that Hosea was to take BACK his adulterous wife. In other words, she was faithful, then unfaithful and that's when Hosea was instructed to take an adulterous wife---his own. Another is that it is an allegory referring to the relationship between God and Israel. In any case, though His reasons are not clear, this is a specific command for a specific situation and not permission for us to take adulterous wives. That would be plain silly.
You know, it would be far better for you to study the Bible in its entirety rather than search for out-of-context passages to lamely prove some fantastical point. Unless of course these are examples of areas that have stumped you personally, in which case, I'm glad I could help clear up your confusion. Anytime.
"That aside, an "omni" everything God that creates creatures in complete foreknowledge of their fate is a logical absurdity."
Who are you to claim to know His workings and all His ways? What Devine knowledge did you come across that assures you are the only arbiter of truth? What foreknowledge do you possess that leads you to make such a statement?
What is your basis for morality if not the Bible? You can't assume mankind can create his own morality. It has been tried and it has failed everytime. Even now, there are humans on this planet that are trying to create an alternate morality. They will fail as any mortal must who tries to usurp God's moral authority.
Your mistake is in your inability to understand the Nature of God. You are trying to assign finite boundaries to an infinite God. You can't define God by mortal human standards. He is above all that. God makes the rules. He can suspend them, change them, abolish them as He wishes. And if He does any of those things, it will be the perfect thing to do under the particular circumstances. No one can do that but God. There are no limits to what He can do. If He wants 1000 angels to dance on the head of a pin, they will.
Don't put God in a box of your own creation. He is much too big to fit.
I would suggest you search your own heart and let God work a miracle in your life, so you might have real life and have it more abundantly.
There are more things in Heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy.
And your arms are too short to box with God.
What BrianC fails to understand is that the Bible contains history. Really. Lots and lots of history. But another interesting thing about the Bible is that it is quite often unflattering to the many lives mentioned therein.
Lot offered his daughters, yes, but even righteous men sin. Lot's daughters got him drunk and had sex with him to give him descendants, but this is hardly a blanket approval by God of their actions... these passages record what was done; both the flattering AND the unflattering. The word of God doesn't "candy-coat" events.
Abraham was richly blessed of God despite trying to help God out by having a child through Hagar. Is that adultery? Are you sure?
How about some more incest? How about the fact that Sarah was Abraham's half sister. Nothing sinful about that since the Law wasn't even handed down yet, and it was a fairly common practice then; as was the use of a handmaid when the wife could not produce children.
You're straining at gnats and swallowing Studebakers. You're not even using basic comprehension skill in your interpretations, let alone the skills needed to rightly divide the word.
Hmmm ... interesting.
arguing with brianc about Christianity is like a man arguing with his mother about how bad childbirth hurts.
Could be ... maybe I'm missing the God gene, but whose fault is that, mine or Gods?
tugboatcapn : First of all, there is no such animal as an "ex-christian".
This is simply a meaningless tautology, no different from claiming "Anyone who agrees with me is a christian, you don't, therefore you're not."
tugboatcapn : ... Well, eternity is an awfully long time.
This is just a ham fisted version of "Pascals Wager", couched in the sort of terms an extortionist might use to frighten a sweet shop owner. "Lovely shop, pity if something were to happen to it .... ". It presents a false binary choice, choose or reject God. However, which God? There are 30,000 often mutually exclusive christian sects. There are also thousands of other religions you know absolutely nothing about.
How can you be certain you've latched on to just the right version/religion? After all, odds are, you were simply born into christianity, and that your current religious views are informed by geography and culture rather than any systematic investigation. The probability is that in much the same way as someone born in Teheran is a muslim, you are a christian. Had it been that way, you would currently be telling me about how inerrant the Koran is.
EurditeRedNeck: Wow. I b'lieve this is my first actual encounter with an anti-Christian. Weird.
You're right, that is wierd:-) Welcome to our world of 6.7 billion people, roughly 6.2 billion of whom are not fundamentalist christians.
Marshall Art & Elasley
Suffice it to say that an objective reading of the passages casts God and his "people" in a pretty appalling light.
I think we can take it as a given that you are not an objective party, well done to those of you who have read the passages in question and rationalised them to your satisfaction. You can take it from one of your own who wised up that this is no mean feat. Kudos.
I'd be interested to hear your views on this one : 2 Kings 2:23 - 24
Mark : Who are you to claim to know His workings and all His ways?
I'm not making that claim. You are, by promoting a narrow subset of christian dogma as absolute truth. I am merely observing the world, and highlighting it's inconsistency with an omni everything God, which is central to your dogma. I don't have to know gods mind, or even if any kind of god exists to come to my conclusions.
No. You're mixing things up, BrianC. I don't those who don't believe, or those of other faiths, as "anti-Christian." Just non-Christian. You, clearly, are anti-Christian, and that's fine with me -- and it really is a rare thing.
You won't find me worrying about you, knowing what you seem to know about the matters and assertions of Christian faith. No crocodile-Christian tears here!
Oh, and thanks, BTW. I am at odds with my conservative and fundamentalist brethren a LOT. First time in a long time, somobey do radically pro-self and anti-Christ has made it clear, at least to me, that we stand closer together than we think sometimes.
You might actually be a godsend, BrianC.
Brianc, You have brought up some interesting points. I disagree with them, but of course you probably knew I would.
It has been suggested that I invite you to guest blog here. Specifically, you ha e mentioned already that you are an ex-Christian. I and many others would be interested in knowing what led you to leave the fold. Would you please send me your "personal testimony"? I will post it here in it's entirety for you.
I have to agree with BrianC. No such thing as an "exChristian." You either are, or you aren't. It's impossible to be a Christian one day and not the next.
Actually, Lash, you are agreeing with me, when brianc quoted me.
Brian, you glossed over the main point that I was trying to make, and that is, absent a personal Salvation experience, you have no idea what you are talking about.
And that type of knowledge is impossible without faith, of which you have none.
I know that there is a God because He changes things in my own life.
He changed me personally when I gave my life over to Him, and for that, I am a better person.
Not perfect, but a whole lot better.
Your brand of "enlightenment" would take away the peace and hope that I feel every day, and replace it with... what?
The constant need to argue with christians about whether they are wrong or not?
No thanks.
As I said before, if I am wrong about all of this, I lose nothing.
You however, have nothing to offer me.
Believe, don't believe, whatever. It's up to you.
I hope you find whatever it is that you are looking for.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
ER, I was not trying to pick a fight with you...
I simply meant that you must be running in the wrong circles to meet anti-christians.
I know several.
It has been suggested that I invite you to guest blog here. Specifically, you ha e mentioned already that you are an ex-Christian. I and many others would be interested in knowing what led you to leave the fold. Would you please send me your "personal testimony"? I will post it here in it's entirety for you.
This is a very gracious offer, particularly given, what could very readily be construed, as my rudeness.
I'd love to do that. However, I really am a godless atheist now, a non american to boot, and I have a particular agenda which I shamelessly promote:-)
Let me try and give you a glimpse into the heart of darkness, as well as snipe a little at tugboatcapn's recent post.
I don't consider any longer that I have "beliefs" in the same way that most of you do. I simply accept the provisional consensus amongst the relevant experts with regard to the major disciplines of cosmology, astronomy, biology, physics, geology and archeology. Practically all of which contradicts the theistic view, and emphatically knocks on the head the biblical literalist position which you represent. This is why 90%+ of the most learned scientists on the planet are atheists, and the other 10% are what you would call wishy washy liberals:-)
The reason I hammer on the doors is not because I have a specific ideology to replace yours with, I don't, that you'll need to work out for yourself. I do it because, I consider fundamentalist christianity, in the heart of the most powerful nation state on the planet, the most powerful nation state that the world has ever seen, a threat to the personal survival of me, my kin, and a large number of mostly innocent fellow creatures in the middle east.
If you think all of this gasthly secular drivel is stuff you really want to hear, then by all means, give me the thumbs up and I'll ship my life story over:-)
I think my readerrs would be interested in learning why the change? What disillusioned you? I'm not really all that interested in whatever beliefs you have now,just why you converted to athieism.
So yes, send away.
Brianc,
What troubles you about the 2 Kings verses that you need our humble opinions regarding them?
Could you provide the poll that shows 90% of the most learned scientists are atheists, and the other 10% wishy washy libs? Oh, but before you do, what constitutes "most learned"? Being atheist? I think you pulled that stat from a southerly location.
I don't think there's much of anything in any of those -ologies that contradicts the theistic view.
Tug, we're misunderstanding each other (surprise!) :-) I didn't think you were trying to pick a fight, and I didn't think I was encouraging one. ?? Merry Christmas, dude.
Allow me to open this can:
One need not be a theist to be a Christian.
Hi Mark,
There doesn’t seem to be a contact email on your blog (that I could find), so I’ll just post this here. Feel free to present as you like, all at once or in chunks as you see fit. Enjoy.
Mark has very graciously suggested that a number of posts explaining how I got from bible believing Christian to my current state of apostasy, might by instructive, or at the very least serve as a terrible warning of what to avoid, for the true believer. It’s a longish story, but I hope sufficiently novel to keep most readers engaged.
I grew up in the republic of Ireland in the 1960’s and 70’s, running the entire obligatory catholic obstacle course, of communion, confirmation and lectures on the specific and exquisite methods of torture, God had in mind for the non, or wayward roman catholic. This left me with a fairly clear idea of where I stood in relation to God. He was THE BOSS and I was in his absolute and total power. Disobedience was not merely a dangerous idea, but the very definition of insanity, given the potential downside. Even as a callow youth, I could see the logic of Pascal’s Wager:-), and I remain sympathetic to the compelling logic of the worldview, which embraces the idea of eternal rewards and punishments.
As a twelve year old, I moved to South Africa. Quite a shocking change of climate, culture and religious milieu for a young Irish lad, and it gave me an opportunity afforded very few. I was suddenly forced to switch perspectives, from being the citizen of a small country suffering some low key oppression at the hands of an overbearing neighbour (the UK), to becoming part of a ruling minority (the whites) participating in the markedly more robust oppression of a powerless majority. I was also exposed to my first real brush with protestant Christian sects, and frankly, I rather liked it.
The emphasis on salvation through the acceptance of Jesus, as opposed to the catholic obsession with penance, categories of sin and more than a hint of real world mortification of the flesh, struck me as a far more palatable and internally consistent message. Yes we were all sinners, but Jesus had taken that sin on our behalf. Plus, there were no priests, and I had always considered these grotesque elderly virgins rather creepy. Some kind of sixth sense I suppose.
During the next 5 years or so, I went through, what for this audience is I expect, a fairly familiar evangelical cycle of salvation and backsliding. Often my returns to the fold were followed by speaking in tongues, periods of intensely emotional joy, laughing in the spirit and the like. Sometimes there was nothing, my re-dedications were followed by little more than an intellectual sense of having put things back in order, and that on totting up the balance sheet, I was once again, out of the red. Those catholic habits die hard:-) Other than an aggressive attempt by a Mormon friend to recruit me (I simply found the book of Mormon too silly, even then), and a bit of a close call with 7th day Adventists (I found their intense attention to detail rather compelling), things rolled along fairly smoothly. I was largely at peace with my faith, and seriously considering the ministry.
At the age of 18 I finished school, worked for about a year as computer operator in Johannesburg, and then began my two year stint of national service in the South African Defence Force, sometime in 1984. After a fairly grueling 3 months of basic training, I was stationed in a grim, dusty little support battalion, 7th South African Infantry, in Palaborwa.
Palaborwa was reputed to have two seasons, summer and hell. It was too close to the equator, much too close to Mozambique and in practical terms, as far from the real world (air conditioning, the opposite sex and beer) as the dark side of the moon. The career military in Palaborwa had little but contempt for conscripts like myself, thousands of flabby, wide eyed innocents, all harbouring in their lethal little breasts, a one in one thousand chance of loosing an eye, a hand or worse still, a whole staff sergeant to the statistical certainty of training accidents to come. To the further disgust of the professionals, almost all of whom were Afrikaners, most of us weren’t even South Africans, but force naturalized colonials. An imaginative government attempt to beef up the, even then, rapidly shrinking white demographic, had resulted in the conscription of thousands of pale English speaking foreigners. Plenty of whom could barely squeak out so much as a “Hoe gaan dit?” in Afrikaans. You get the picture;-)
After school, in the run up to my 2 years in the SADF, and intermittently when I had leave from the army, I attended a mega church in Johannesburg called “Christian City”. You know the type. High energy speakers, tithes (expected but not obligatory), the prosperity gospel, lots of bible courses (for a fee), speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit, a pretty good Christian bookshop where I recall buying and being so impressed by Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, that I later splashed out on the rather unimaginatively named sequel “More Evidence that Demands a Verdict”. They also had really well organized home churches and study groups.
This church and my experience with the narrow slice of protestant Christendom I had been exposed to, left me with a real sense of how chosen “we” were. At this time by “we” I meant people who explicitly had been born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit (with signs mind you) and who harboured a sympathetic contempt for anyone that hadn’t. Happily, my time in the SADF changed that rather bigoted view.
I had the incredible good luck (I considered it divine intervention at the time) to be assigned as a chaplains clerk. This was a very cushy number which required no dangerous shooting, throwing of grenades or any of that very unpleasant, “running while being shot at”. Basically, my duties were to keep the office tidy, carry hymn books, furniture and religious accoutrement back and forth to services, in short to be the chaplains general dogs body in all things. The chaplain was a Dominee (the Afrikaans term for pastor) of the Dutch Reformed Church. A rather austere denomination, very heavy on the Calvin, light on the "Jesus Loves you" and lumbered with the weird, disquieting and quite logical doctrine of predestination. However the Dominee himself was a wonderful man, a great Christian and it showed. He may not have had the fireworks of the spirit that I had come to expect from all true believers, but he certainly had the fruits in abundance.
This, I suspect, is where it all began to go off the rails. Ironic really, that the witness of such a humble Christian gentleman would sow the seeds of “destruction”. The thing was that I could see the fruits of the spirit, love, patience etc. the really good stuff, in all sorts of Christians. Even Christians that my pastor back in Christian City suggested were lost. I had been fed a fairly exclusive message for years, told that the embrace of that message should show in some tangible way, but reality was not stacking up like that. In fact, I began to see the simplistic “believe and receive” Christians of my old church as superficial and shallow, downright materialistic, when contrasted with the Lutherans, Anglicans and Catholics I had spent the last rather grueling two years with.
My stint in the SADF had also left me searching for a lot of philosophical answers on the subject of justice. Apartheid was alive and well in the SA of 1984, and the ideological incompatibility with the words of Jesus simply became more starkly obvious during my military service. My religious convictions although still strong and integral to my person at the time, were struggling to understand how an overwhelmingly Christian nation could endorse, justify and actively champion the cruelties being visited upon the majority black population, who were also Christians.
While chewing on these inconsistencies, I was drawn to the idea that true Christians appeared in all denominations, and that the specific dogma was secondary. Simply “accepting Jesus as your saviour” wasn’t producing noticeably better Christians, and I was bumping into a steady stream of people who had never “been born again” in any kind of ostentatious way, yet even with long term and intimate exposure to them (the army will do that!) they still seemed objectively “better” people. There had to be something else, something indefinable in the mix, not reducible to some cold scriptural formula.
In the late 80’s I left South Africa and returned to Europe, specifically the UK. I still had in the back of my mind that ministry was what I wanted to do, and after about a year I made contact with a Christian group I had first seen in school in SA in the early 80’s. The group was Covenant Players (http://www.covenantplayers.org/), their explicitly stated mission was to communicate the Lord Jesus Christ through the medium of drama.
This may well have been the best 4 years of my life. I was assigned to Germany where I quickly picked up the language, and within 2 years was running my own unit. People loved us, our message and the medium. I was good at the drama, as well as the business side of things and my unit became one of the first to use a computer. A ludicrous IBM 286 with an absurdly small amount of RAM, and a 10 MB hard “card”. I used to lug this beast around with me in a suitcase, but all of our correspondence was done on time, and we kept in such regular contact with our “customers”, that we had a steady stream of bookings generated by these mass mailing contacts alone.
I met my wife in Covenant Players, and when my daughter was born, the unit in Ireland drove us home from the hospital in their van. Although both of us have now rejected theism generally, and Christianity in specific, we both look back very fondly on our time in ministry, and the many wonderful Christians we met.
All through this period, my continued disappointment with simplistic evangelical Christianity, interaction with every Christian denomination under the sun, as well as positive interactions with Mormons, JW and even the occasional Muslim, deepened my conviction that God must accept all monotheists on whatever cultural terms the context of their upbringing provides. If “accepting Jesus” was the critical formula, did it really stand to reason, that someone born in Utah or Teheran had exactly the same chance at salvation as someone born into the family of a Baptist minister? This seemed absurd, the more so given the terrible penalty of making the wrong choice.
It gradually seeped into my consciousness, that Pascal’s Wager was not a binary proposition at all, that given the thousands of confident religions, sects and cults worldwide, the choices were in fact functionally infinite.
I wrestled with the idea that there had to be some way of giving everyone an equal shot at salvation, so to speak. Either that or the penalty couldn’t possibly be as severe as alleged. The concept, “accept Jesus as your saviour” had been (re-?) formulated during the reformation, with the very narrow horizon of European civilization in mind, and as a counterpoint to the Catholic Churches focus on sin. When I examined this dogma against the broader sweep of history and geography, it simply seemed vacuous, even cruel, and the attempts to explain this clear injustice were uniformly inadequate. I considered the thousands of years of Chinese history for example, utterly untouched by Christianity until perhaps two hundred years ago, or the South and North American civilizations that have risen and fallen in the last 2000 years, collectively, billions of people that lived and died without ever hearing a single solitary syllable about Jesus. That is assuming you don’t accept the book of Mormon.
A particularly important fork in the road, was the thought that every theist on the planet makes very similar claims, appeals and arguments, just for a different set of speculations. They are frequently certain they have evidence, reason and of course God on their side. To me, they all began to look very, very similar, including my own Christian convictions.
How could the different perspectives, dogmas and claims be objectively evaluated?
Not by reason, all the faiths and sects have what they consider excellent reasons for what they believe, and consider everyone else’s reasons insufficient. If you think I’m exaggerating, try arguing with a Muslim (they are all over the internet) about the inerrancy of the Quran or with a 7th Day Adventist, Mormon of Jehovah’s Witness regarding some of their more curious doctrinal claims.
Not by personal experience, people from all faiths and sects tell a steady stream of anecdotes about their interaction with the transcendent, miraculous and indefinable. I have a few such stories myself! To this day, the adherents of Hindu gurus will tell breathlessly of healings, resurrections and the occasional virgin birth. If I dismiss these claims without a thought today, what am I to make of similar claims of a far more illiterate, credulous and above all, distant age?
Not by example, all faiths have a history of angels and demons in their ranks. How then? How could one be certain that a particular set of religious Dogma was the correct one? My changing world view, the recognition that people were people everywhere eventually overwhelmed the capacity of my religious convictions to adapt. No matter how you examined it, either religious dogma was overtly unjust, and frequently absurd, or so denuded as to be worthless.
This thought process percolated in the background for a few years, and then along came the Iraq war. My sense of injustice was ignited by the in your face lies and the outrage that this war embodies, and that George Bush personifies. His cynical duping of the religious right in the US, made me think anew about the state of my own religious life. I began to aggressively investigate the details of my faith; I read books on comparative religion, church history, cosmology and evolution. I read Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, the unholy trinity of Atheism. I basically took a wrecking ball to the superstructure of ignorance that my faith depended on, and the whole thing came crashing down. Worse still, I realized I’d been duped as well, betrayed by people I expected to be honest with me. Especially that idiot Josh McDowell (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/newetdav.html) , I had genuinely thought that his books had informed me; when all they had done was to crudely inoculate me against actual knowledge.
The deep dishonesty of some Christian apologists, for example the cynical, relentless, and decades long conflation of the scientific definition of “theory” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory), with that of it’s everyday common usage, simply reinforced my sense that religions were run and directed, for the most part, by charlatans and confidence tricksters.
In defense, I developed a method for assessing the truth (with a lower case t) probability of any given assertion. In it’s simplest form, what proportion of relevant experts endorse assertion X? For example, scientific disciplines accept particular facts as given, only when a broad majority in the relevant discipline accepts them as such. Thus I weigh the position of astronomers vis a vis the ability of stars to predict future events, as of vastly greater value than the literally billions of people around the world that continue to give astrology credence. Ministers may be the relevant experts on theology or church history, but they are absolutely the wrong people to listen to on biology, cosmology and the like.
I embraced the reality, that I can’t know everything, about everything, but I can, and have a responsibility to, inform myself about the consensus amongst the experts. In a world awash in information, opinion and bald faced lies, it is vital to have a methodology to make sense of it all. This works for me, but it has side effects that have proven lethal for my religious faith. In brief, the experts in all the scientific disciplines that have any bearing on the question “Where did we come from?”, uniformly dismiss the literalist interpretations of all the major religions as nonsense, grouping them under the dismissive heading of “not even wrong”. A small minority (some 10%) of the world’s most prestigious scientists (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html ) do have a recognizable religious faith, but it’s generally a pretty ephemeral thing. For balance, http://www.findingdarwinsgod.com/excerpt/index.html, I include someone who seems to manage this feat, but they do appear to be a minority.
That’s how I got here, through decades long contact with lots of good Christians, followed by a 5 year force feeding of GWB’s criminal policies. GWB is possibly to the Christian faith what cholesterol is to the heart, it won’t kill you overnight, but it’ll get you in the end:-)
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