Pascal's Wager is a load of balls.

[chaletian]

Having read a series of articles about religion, I went off on a tangent with a little thought about universal morality, or, at any rate, the idea of morality requiring a God.

Unsurprisingly, I don't subscribe to this view, and I will admit to finding it strange that some people are genuinely puzzled by the concept of morality as distinct from any religion, but how does it work? When there is a world full of different religions with differing moral codes (and, indeed, differing moral codes even within the same religion), how can one blithely assume that, natch, God presented man with the rules for living? Is it just a natural by-product of the belief in one's own religion and its corollary that all other religions are wrong? But what about, say, people who work on the basis that the Christian, Jewish and Muslim "God" are all basically the same thing? Because I'm fairly sure that those religions do not have identical moral/social beliefs.

And if morality (for Christians) is based on the word of God which, by my understanding, is what is writ in yon Bible, what about all the stuff that lots of people don't pay attention to any more? All that stuff in Leviticus about stoning people and selling people and different skins? Was that not the word of God? Does God not care about certain things very much, that people can ignore them? And, fine, standards change. But then, surely, it's man deciding what morals should be, not God. Or do we look to our respective churches to tell us which of God's words we listen to and which we ignore? Do they decide our morals?

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Andrew Brown spends a hell of a lot of time whining on about how the 'new atheists' are a pack of meanyheads, doesn't he? Did one of them steal his parking space or something?

[katherinea.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I was reading some stuff the other day and it was saying that Christianity=Bible is a bit of a 19th C idea and too simplistic to see it as just the word of God. TBH I’m not quite sure what it is at all; is the main distinguishing feature just that you take Jesus as God’s son?

I don’t really see how anyone can see the Bible as anything other than a human document – it’s full of inconsistencies and very much of the time it was written. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some useful messages but as soon as you start adhering to particular bits of it too strongly foolishness results (as it does, frankly, with any belief system). Certainly the Christian attitude to the Bible is very different from the Muslim one of the Koran (I generalise of course) in terms if how ‘true’ it seems to be held to be.

And the NT is more important than the OT – I have trouble getting a handle on the OT as that’s where you find a lot of the stuff that is, to me, a little mad. I always wondered why we always seemed to read the NT at Sunday School – then I read bits of the OT and understood. Or is that unfair?
Frankly I am confused as to what is Christianity’s view of the OT. I suspect the answer it is varies – a lot.

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

And WTF is a "New Atheist" supposed to be, anyway? I thought his article was ridiculous.

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

I think it *is* confusing. I know when I did RS at school, our teacher (who was a Christian) told us it was mostly just made up, especially the OT, and wasn't meant to be taken literally. But then there seem to be a lot of Christian groups (well, some, anyway) seem to prefer *just* looking at the Bible for the True Truth, and not any of the instutional religion constructed by official churches.

Reading my way through the OT, I can confirm that it is, to my eyes, mental.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think if you say 'I don't have faith myself, but I respect those who do, and also I respect Andrew Brown's bizarre ideas about the class system' you're OK, whereas if you say 'A lot of this is completely mad. Jesus going on about how you should beat some slaves harder than others? Prophets sending bears to attack children? Two different 'Don't rape and kill this man, rape and kill my female dependent instead' stories? All of this in a book that's supposed to teach morality? I don't get it.' you are not in fact saying 'I don't get it', you are saying 'I hate all Christians because I'm a smug knowitall'.

It's really perfectly simple.

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

Ah, it all makes so much more sense now!

[euphrosyna]

Have dug up notes from my (Catholic) theology lectures: "The Bible is the word of God in human words and therefore the sense and knowledge of God that we receive through the Bible is fully accurate, it is still coloured by human experience. However, it must be remembered that while the Bible is inspired by God, it was written by humans, who are fallible and whose writing must be coloured by their experiences and by their cultural and historical circumstances and we must be aware of this while reading the Bible. Taking this into account also explains many apparent fallacies and contradictions in the Bible. If the Old Testament says something that seems to contradict the New, or if a book of the Bible says something that contradicts another, or even if a book contradicts itself (i.e. in the two Creation stories in Genesis) this is explained by the different experiences and life-situation of the author of that section (historical context) or by the genre the author was employing, whether myth, folktale, history etc (literary context). Theologians must look for the God-inspired meaning within the text, taking the contexts into account. We also must take our own life-situation into account - our own understanding of the word is always impaired by our own context. We may never find the true meaning but we keep trying."

This is the Catholic viewpoint of the Bible - and then the theologians come up with a specific Catholic morality that changes as the contexts change. The idea is that the underlying morality is the same - basically love one another, love God - but the way in which this is applied changes.

As for other Christian religions - they are very different. I don't think there is a Christian view of it. It's different for every Christian denomination.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Oh, and don't forget that being a bit rude about vicars is 'fundamentalism' and just as bad as suicide bombing.

Every time someone like Andrew Brown starts banging the drum about how atheism is so a religion, I want to snarl 'So if you honestly believe that, are you prepared to give atheism the respect you think religions deserve, then?' I bet I can tell what the answer would be.

(Sorry to rant at you. It just drives me nuts when people start telling me I don't believe in God because I'm an intellectual snob or I had a nasty childhood or I just get my kicks from stomping on other people's beliefs, when actually I don't believe in God because the world seems to me to make a lot more sense without him. I don't believe in the Easter Bunny, either, but people don't write editorials in the papers claiming that therefore I have a repressed wish to spread myxomatosis).