[This post is taken from the IPA and Mannkal Economic Education Foundation's Foundations of Western Civilisation Program. It is very good and deserves wide exposure.]
Almost every civilisation has had slavery at one time in their past. Two recent, and very different movies concern its abolition in the United States: Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
Spielberg’s film depicts Abraham Lincoln’s struggle during the Civil War to secure passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Tarantino’s film is set three years before the start of the war, and concerns a freed slave trying to liberate his wife from a plantation. Here’s an interesting piece from George Mason University’s History News Network on what both films say about slavery and the law.
But there remains a story to be told about slavery: how liberal economists fought slavery in Britain.
One common nickname for economics is “the dismal science”. Few people know that the dismal science was dismal because it assumed that all people – of all races – were equal.
Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of Nations that “The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education.”
But to the English writer and proto-socialist Thomas Carlyle this meant economics was a dismal science. He found there was something “dreary, desolate … quite abject and distressing” about a discipline that advocated all humans be treated as if they were the same.
Carlyle’s essay is available here – the title is too obscene to quote – and a withering reply from the great English liberal John Stuart Mill is available here. The best book to read on the relationship between free market economics and the anti-slavery movement is David M. Levy’s How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics.
One slightly better known aspect of the crusade against slavery in Britain is its Christian origins, depicted in the 2006 film Amazing Grace – reviewed here in the New Yorker with barely a reference to William Wilberforce’s Christian beliefs. The National Review was more forthright, in this piece on Wilberforce and classical liberalism at the time the movie was released. Andhere’s an interesting discussion in the Weekly Standard about how Britain celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 2007.
As the IPA’s Chris Berg has pointed out, the Gillard government’s National Curriculum seems to treat slavery as if it was caused by the industrial revolution and economic progress.
[Rabz - unnecessary. Sinc]
Rabz
27 Jan 13 at 9:48 pm
God alone knows.
stackja
27 Jan 13 at 10:17 pm
Jesus mullah Omar is quick tonight
Tal
27 Jan 13 at 10:24 pm
even less mention is made that William Wilberforce was an independent Tory.
his collaborator, close friend, cousin and financier of Wilberforce’s campaigns, Henry Thornton, was a great economist and father of the modern central bank.
Wilberforce was deeply conservative when it came to challenges to the existing political and social order. for a long time he opposed Catholic emancipation.
Jim Rose
27 Jan 13 at 10:26 pm
The Islamic Caliphate of Morocco was the centre of slave-trading throughout the Mediterranean and Atlantic region as far north as Iceland, as far west as Newfoundland, through the 16-17-18th centuries.
The Barbary Corsairs operated out of Sale,Tangier, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the largest slave trade by far in those centuries was in what was called “white gold,” or Europeans, stolen from coastal villages throughout the Med, the Iberian Peninsula, France, the British Isles.
In fact, it’s recorded that in 1625 an entire village at Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, comprising 60 men, women and children, was abducted by muslim raiders from the local church during Sunday morning service.
According to records, more than 1 million europeans were kidnapped and sold into slavery by muslim Barbary corsairs in the 16-18C.
It was only after decades of ransom attempts (Jizzya) that combined European and US naval forces destroyed the Barbary fleet and wrecked the white slave trade in the 1780s that the black African slave trade came under attention (It also was run by North African muslim interests).
See for reference “White Gold” by Giles Milton, Picador ISBN-13:978-0-312-42529-6.
And may I add, the ME is still full of indentured servants from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia,Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, who earn next to nothing for a life of slavery and the chance to send a few dollars home to their families.
Nothing changes in Islam.
mareeS
27 Jan 13 at 10:36 pm
yes not only is she dim, she has little or no knowledge of history.
Gab
27 Jan 13 at 10:45 pm
islam contines to enslave people, as it has for the duration of its existence.
Removing my comments doesn’t alter that fact.
Rabz
27 Jan 13 at 10:56 pm
Wilberforce is like an English St Paul and Oscar Schindler.
.
27 Jan 13 at 11:00 pm
Speaking as an historian, Sinc, the use of terminologies which have altered their meaning over the centuries is not “obscene”.
The correct way to note contemporary usage of terms now considered unpalatable, such as Carlyle’s essay heading, is to place it in quotation marks, ie: Thomas Carlyle’s 1853 essay entitled “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question“. This makes clear that the word is used in its contemporary context, and not its current one.
This convention means that we can also freely quote the most worthy of works as well, without causing offence, ie: in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass routinely refers to himself as a “nigger”, not without a searing bitterness. IMHO it detracts from the power of his work not to use his own words.
By this convention the contemporary use of words now regarded as grossly offensive (but not so considered then) can be used without offense.
Mk50 of Brisbane
27 Jan 13 at 11:29 pm
I have just finished White Gold, what got me was the absolute cruelty shown to citizen and slave alike in Morocco. With sawing people in half maybe from top maybe from bottom, and nailing heads, not to mention having the feet tied together and held upside down so the neck and shoulders alone rested on the ground then having the soles of the feet beaten for maybe 500 wallops, breasts burnt with candles, inner most parts filled with molten lead, just having your head cut off would be a mercy.
Most of the slaves either turned moor (converted) or died quickly of malnutrition or disease. Plenty more where they came from. Those that converted were no longer thought worthy of rescue by the British, there must have been tens of thousands left behind becasue of this. Thomas Pellow was one, he eventually escaped after 23 years as slave and soldier. He was beaten for many weeks before he converted, at about 11 or 12 years of age.
These converts formed a large part of the expertise in engineering and weapon making and soldiery for the Caliphate.
So I think the British were bloody unchristian in leaving their citizens to their fate and not rescuing them as well as those who had not converted.
Helen Armstrong
28 Jan 13 at 12:09 am
So the people living in the UK and US and the Carribean islands descended from people enslaved by the British 200 years back are whining that they should still be living in Sub-saharan or west coast africa enjoying the starvation, wars and massive rates of interesting diseases. The British have forced them from that paradise into a satanic hell of Diabetes and Consumerism. Oh the poor whining ingrates. Their antecedents had a very large complaint. These people have nothing. The benefits of just law and relatively healthy and peaceful lives makes up for the past injustices. For them to deny this is to expose their base monetary motivations. They can have a sorry when they go home and herd goats.
WhaleHunt Fun
28 Jan 13 at 12:16 am
MK
Carlyle is a first rate arsehole even for those times and even if he used the N word, which didn’t carry the same sort of weight it does now.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 12:21 am
But in terms of economics of paying to free slaves, 300 years of appeasement and treaties and buying slaves back amounted to nothing.
Imagine the impact on trade with the risk of piracy by the corsairs and the loss of people to the villages. For 300 years before the British, emboldened by the Americans, did anything about it!
The final solution should have been the first solution, and yet it seems forever more we are to learn the lesson again.
Helen Armstrong
28 Jan 13 at 12:23 am
Thanks, Helen yet another book to add to the reading list. Yes, people think only the blacks were traded as slaves, probably becuase they’re still lamenting the fate of their ancestors at every opportunity to remind white man how evil they are today.
History records:
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 12:31 am
Lol Oh yea… the Barbary Coast stuff. It was basically the genesis of the US navy.
Even then the Euroweenies were doing underhanded deals that got them into more trouble and the US had to bail them out. Nothing’s changed since.
I read a book on the period. The US really got tough on the fuckers to the point where it no longer paid off because they directly threatened the lives of the Emirs or whatever they were called.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 12:39 am
Simply put, the slave trade moved for centuries along tracks from Africa to the muslim buyers around the Mediterranean, forged by black chiefs further up the caste chain flogging off other blacks further down the caste chain.
The two groups who most contributed as supplier and client have ducked responsibility forever, by pointing at whitey and screeching “It was him, he’s to blame.”
Britain and the US became customers much later, but not for long, and they soon moved decisively to stop the trade – the only nations to have so acted.
I’d not given the whole thing much thought until a discussion, in Auckland a few years back, with a wealthy black exporter from West Coast USA, and his history professor wife. He spoke of numerous successful blacks in commerce, science and the law and recommended some reading.
He was disparaging of the mob in his own country who are raised on pithing and moaning about their lot in life but too dumb and lazy to enquire about the truth of it.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
28 Jan 13 at 12:59 am
Interesting and well-documented accounts from the Royal Navy which finally put paid to the Barbary white slave trade in the late 1700s included the extensive reports by Sir Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth, Vice Admiral of the RN Mediteranean Fleet.
He documented the first strategic mass use of human shields: european slaves lashed to the ramparts of Algiers by the Bey in the belief europeans would not kill their own people, whereas muslims would have no hesitation.
Pellew was badly underestimated by the Bey in his determination to end the Corsair trade, and he basically bombed the shit out of everything in his fleet’s firing line at Algiers, including his own country’s consulate.
It has taken 250 years or so for the islamic world to get up the guts to go against the west again, and that was only because they thought they had the short and curlies in their hand with oil.
Not so any longer, the rest of the world has moved on from the hostage-takers to new abundant fuels and technologies that don’t originate in the ME.
Even the attempt at a return to islamic piracy out of the Suez has ended now that ships carry unofficial russian “crew” who shoot on sight of a boarding attempt.
Back to the camels and goats, boys.
mareeS
28 Jan 13 at 1:01 am
Carlyle was a great literary critic.
The brutality of the Moors was on par with medieval and Elizabethan England.
Cheers
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 1:09 am
Since I have spent the last 36 hours watching Christopher Hitchens debates and speeches on Youtube, I’m going to stay out of this one this time.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 1:15 am
He was still and arsehole Abu.
Sluttish Ireland?
ummm…
He was a dickhead even for those times.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 1:19 am
Did you eat and sleep in between?
JC
28 Jan 13 at 1:20 am
Only for a few hours. Couldn’t look away for long. Here’s the highlights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQorzOS-F6w
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 1:22 am
Nah, he was awesome.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 1:23 am
As was Hitchens.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 1:24 am
“As the IPA’s Chris Berg has pointed out, the Gillard government’s National Curriculum seems to treat slavery as if it was caused by the industrial revolution and economic progress.”
The ignorance required to believe that is astounding. Even the most cursory look at African slaves in America reveals that they were used in agriculture. That the industrial north fought the agricultural south in the Civil War should give a hint as to what slaves were used for.
That said, I can easily imagine an entire generation coming to believe it thanks to the Department of
IndoctrinationEducation.The Beer Whisperer
28 Jan 13 at 1:28 am
Something else that’s weird about religion and present perceptions of its various Christian varieties:
Quakers escaped to New England from the religious Cromwellian civil war in Old England as fundamentalists seeking a new life as non-conformist peaceniks.
They then went about establishing the wholesale industrial slaughter of whales out of places like New Bedford, Mystic, etc, using the most cruel, bloody and direct killing methods by refined harpoons that not only decimated several whale species but killed thousands of their own boat crews.
Quakers were the wealthiest of the wealthy in their time due to whale slaughter, yet they were (and still are) consciencious objectors when it comes to taking up arms in war. They were absolutely opposed to slavery.
Richard Nixon was a Quaker. Does anyone recall the peacemaker that he was?
I understand his family didn’t keep slaves, though.
mareeS
28 Jan 13 at 2:21 am
Hitch was indeed polemically very good, but his disdain for relativising certain wrongs – with which I agree – lacked any ground given his atheism.
dover_beach
28 Jan 13 at 3:29 am
Yes, good point. It is very important to believe in God, otherwise you might be tempted to do things that are really bad, such as commit genocide and mass rape. Oh wait.
Fisky
28 Jan 13 at 4:00 am
Not true. Like Sam Harris, he understood that moral guiding principles arose out of a natural ordering from society, and philosophy. They aren’t dependent on one conception of god.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 4:33 am
The ten commandments, after all, were devised and set down by men. But ascribed to a higher power. That’s how you get the mouth breathers to get into line: impress them with your imaginary patron.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 4:35 am
1 Corinthians
Religion was the result of a species in its infancy trying to understand life, death and the natural world. Now we have grown up and have discovered science. Time to put that teddy bear down.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 7:40 am
I don’t think there’s been a strong connection between the two in the West since the renaissance, unless you are a Christian fundamentalist who rejects evolution etc.
Cynically speaking, I’m happy for religion to exist. Some people don’t have a moral compass and want to be told what to do. Better a series of competing voluntary associations doing that than the Government. Some people are basically amoral morons and religion helps them to be better people. You should feel sorry for them. Of course, not everyone who goes to church is like that.
Someone who can act morally without religious instruction is probably a thoroughly good person with more empathy and intelligence than the above clod.
Remember we live in a society where there is a lot of variation.
I see the threat from religion being the long march through institutions. It went from academia into the mainline churches in the 1980s.
The church I was raised in (Roman Catholic) is a mixed bag. It is more efficient and has better outcomes than the State in terms of primary and secondary education. They also push this social justice nonsense and implicitly push the ALP onto it’s adherents.
I don’t see them sticking up for free speech, indeed, I saw many of the congregation protest against free speech on the basis of ‘obscenity’. Their position on self defence is nearly passivist. They have not the sense to attack the cruel and usurious tax system for creating poverty and making housing unaffordable.
.
28 Jan 13 at 8:32 am
If economics is ‘the dismal science’, then what does that make “climate science”?
I was always taught that an economist is a sort of accountant with delusions of adequacy, but lacking the bookcooker’s numeracy skills and sparkling personality!
That probably explains why many of them are A.L.P. fans.
Up The Workers!
28 Jan 13 at 8:53 am
No, Fisky, not tempted, but given the power and the interest, no moral reason to refrain from genocide and mass rape.
Abu, Harris is to philosophy what Gittens is to economics. The difficulty for the atheist arguing the above is explaining this “natural ordering of society”; which seems to me to be a secularized natural law theory, which simply doesn’t work.
Let us say they were, what then is their ground? Or to put it another way, what is their objective validity? The best that an atheist might say is that such guiding principles are “mutually advantageous” or some such but this as true of driving on the same side of the road as of refraining from murder. Thus, mutual advantage tells us nothing of their objective validity. Confronted with a serial killer that manages to fly under the radar, the best that an atheist can say is: Hmmm, better make sure such people don’t win out.
Yobbo, except most of the Bible, for instance, doesn’t strike me as at all concerned with questions of science, and modern science is incapable of answering the sorts of questions that religion addresses. And when you add to this the simple fact that no God, no science, well, that’s a tough break for atheists.
Except Genesis, say, or Jeremiah, Job, Ecclesiastes, Mark, or even Corinthians, for that matter, don’t quite strike me as written by human beings clutching their teddy bears; in fact, quite the opposite.
True enough, belief in God is certainly a comfort, but even given the fact that I believe God is both mercy and love, I’m also inclined to the Will Money school of theology and so can never forget He is also justice.
dover_beach
28 Jan 13 at 9:57 am
Sirocco
28 Jan 13 at 10:56 am
“except most of the Bible, for instance, doesn’t strike me as at all concerned with questions of science, and modern science is incapable of answering the sorts of questions that religion addresses. ”
Oil and water. Trying to reconcile the two is pointless as they are mutually exclusive of each other. I’m a big science fan (hence my disdain for climate pretend science), but it is limited by what is verifiable and testable. Science, by definition, cannot verify the unverifiable, and cannot even identify what is unverifiable. Certainly there is capacity in known science for this to be possible.
“Live and let live” is the best philosophy for dealing with this conundrum. They each have their own domains (even if one is by definition unverifiable). Trying to reconcile their fundamental differences is pointless.
The Beer Whisperer
28 Jan 13 at 11:04 am
Well said Whisperer.
Sirocco
28 Jan 13 at 11:43 am
OMG, here we go again.
“The difficulty for the atheist arguing the above is explaining this “natural ordering of society”; which seems to me to be a secularized natural law theory, which simply doesn’t work.”
The difficulty for the theist is the non-existence of god, but leaving that aside, why can’t the natural order of society be an example of spontaneous order?
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 11:55 am
Far out. Christians only have to put in an hour a week at Church. You atheists take devoutness to a whole new level.
Infidel Tiger
28 Jan 13 at 12:02 pm
“Science, by definition, cannot verify the unverifiable, and cannot even identify what is unverifiable. Certainly there is capacity in known science for this to be possible.”
Isn’t it time we moved beyond this? It is true that we cannot prove the non-existence of god, but given what we do know, and the complete absence of any evidence for god, I think we’ve long reached the point where religion should get the same respect as other widely held but unevidenced believes like astrology.
Let me be clear about somethings so we don’t get the usual overreactions. Believing in god does not make your moral claims any less worthy than mine. It’s a free country and freedom of religion is a part of that. I countenance no discrimination against the religious or their believes and no control over their worship except to the extent to prevent obvious crimes like genital mutilation. Telling a believer that their believes are wrong or stupid is not a form of discrimination.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 12:05 pm
“given the power and the interest, no moral reason to refrain from genocide and mass rape.”
Bearing in mind the psychological experiments that showed people behaved more honestly when told their room was haunted, there is good reason to believe that religion served a behaviour-regulating purpose. But fear of punishment by your ever-watchful deity, while socially useful, isn’t a moral reason per se.
Jarrah
28 Jan 13 at 12:20 pm
“But fear of punishment by your ever-watchful deity, while socially useful, isn’t a moral reason per se.”
If you conceive of morals as rules handed down from on high then complying with those rules is morality.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 12:34 pm
That just raises the question of whether objective validity is important.
There is no biblical foundation for free speech/expression. In fact, The Bible is pretty against it. Its foundation is in mutual advantage. But people still get more worked up over it than which side of the road to drive on.
There is biblical foundation for keeping the Sabbath, but professed Christians often still don’t. So clearly there is another criteria that separates murder/parking fines and murder/cooking on Sundays.
AJ
28 Jan 13 at 1:11 pm
Yes there is actually. Conscientious objection would strongly fall in that category.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 1:17 pm
How does the bible come out against free speech?
So killing Jesus was the good bit? Okay.
.
28 Jan 13 at 1:18 pm
It has the same restrictions are the Koran. No craven images, no false gods/religions, no besmirching God in anyway. You don’t even have to go far, it is all right there in the previously mentioned 10 commandments and all before murder.
AJ
28 Jan 13 at 1:52 pm
AJ
You’re a professor of theology now?
JC
28 Jan 13 at 2:06 pm
It doesn’t say the state will or should grind you to a pulp for religious scofflaws. In fact, it never really happened in a systemic and chronic way in biblical Israel.
When the Israelites erred, God punished them. The High Priest and King didn’t have that role. Nemesis was usually a foreign army, or a pretender for the throne.
Only in the new testament when the state over zealously enforces religious laws, Jesus tells them to stop wetting their panties.
So from the Torah you might say “I am vengence sayeth the Lord”. In the Gospels, you might say “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”
Also…”render unto Caesar…”
.
28 Jan 13 at 2:13 pm
I didn’t realise you needed a PhD to comment on the internet.
Where did you get your doctorate in being a passive-aggressive fuckwit?
AJ
28 Jan 13 at 2:14 pm
Reconcile that with the story of Esau and Jacob.
Rebellion against man made cheating, stupidity and injustice is allowed.
.
28 Jan 13 at 2:17 pm
Religion is the old style of doing politics. Authority established, set of rules written down, and if everyone obeys the rules, things should work out. Priestly class to mediate.
Louis Hissink
28 Jan 13 at 2:22 pm
Funny I don’t recall reading “kill the infidels” in the New Testament, only in the Qu’ran.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 2:23 pm
Last comment was at JC.
That’s all fine you can find ways to interpret the bible anyway you want, but all those things I mentioned had specified punishments, and while I don’t know how justice was administered in ancient Israel, pretty much every christian society until 300 years ago had laws against blasphemy and proselytising false religions and the punishments where usually biblical in scope if not following exact methods.
AJ
28 Jan 13 at 2:24 pm
You don’t of course. But you’re trying to sound as though you’re some sort of expertologist.
You don’t need a PhD for poking fun at you, AJ. It’s not passive aggressive either. That’s your schtick.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 2:25 pm
But AJ reckons it’s in the New Testament.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 2:28 pm
Aj’s a fuckwit, to use his word.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 2:29 pm
AJ, I am not aware of any prohibition on “craven images”. I’m not even sure what they are – pictures of Julia Gillard at the Australia Day riot, perhaps?
Perhaps you are referring to “graven images”?
Anyway, back on topic, surely the central reason why slavery is immoral is that it involves owning another human being as a chattel. It doesn’t matter how well or badly you treat them, although that is a separate set of potential wrongs. It is the denial of each person’s individual autonomy and free agency that is the issue.
I’m not expert on theology, but the Catholic Church has a strong tradition along these lines, as do the Protestant churches that require a conscious decision to accept Jesus Christ as the Saviour.
Perhaps others who are more knowledgeable could comment on this, and on other faiths. For example, I suspect that Buddhism would not approve of the concept of owning another person either.
johanna
28 Jan 13 at 2:29 pm
Of course he isn’t, he’s a crack theologian.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 2:32 pm
I think slavery is immoral, however I never felt that way with my own carbon slave, Metromick. I purchased the boofhead at below market prices. However he proved that you get what you pay for. Such a lazy, lazy swine.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 2:34 pm
What punishments? What’s wrong with my narrative?
.
28 Jan 13 at 2:55 pm
Here’s an attempt to find biblical support for feedom of speech, it doesn’t get very far.
http://www.spartafirstbaptistchurch.com/1spartafirstbaptist-freedom.html
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 3:54 pm
Nicely put joanna, (as usual.) So my question is, Was it ok to own a slave as long as the slave was not Christian?
If so, this would fit with the British not bothering about saving their citizens who were taken as slaves and converted to Islam to survive
Slavery has been around since we started farming and as recently as the second world war, 12 million people were effectively enslaved, and even today the average weighted price of a slave is $340 and the value of trading humans is second only to that of drugs (wiki)
Life is bloody mongrel for some poor buggers, isn’t it?
Helen Armstrong
28 Jan 13 at 4:13 pm
Carlyle’s ingrained Calvinism explains his views on slavery — particularly Calvinism of the Afrikaner or white Baptist offshoot (in the Southern States) varieties.
Mill thought despotism was an appropriate form of government for “barbarians” provided it was intended for their “improvement”.
manalive
28 Jan 13 at 4:18 pm
You can’t find a biblical command defending free speech. There are several that say you should only speak what is true, death penalty for false witness, and the fact that the “prophets” routinely issued wild diatribes filled with vulgar language at the State and civil society, without penalty.
And when they were penalised it was taken as the ultimate revelation of the depravity of the State and Society at that time.
Again, Jesus is a pretty good example of saying exactly what you’re not supposed to. Reacting by silencing him, again, ultimate proof of evil.
So, apart from the fact that the prophets and Jesus said exactly what they wanted and exactly how they wanted, and apart from the fact that the society that punished them – even in the name of God and the Law – proved itself depraved… well apart from that there’s no defence of free speech.
And if you’re wondering about vulgarity in protected speech, go read Ezekiel.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:26 pm
“Pornography is a perversion of freedom of speech”
Or
“Things I don’t like ought to be banned”
What a bunch of redneck failures.
.
28 Jan 13 at 4:27 pm
You have to force Calvin pretty hard, but you can read him as saying total depravity somehow doesn’t extend to the upper reaches of society, if that’s what you want him to say. Maybe he even wanted to say it, but it’s incompatible with the principles he laid down.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:29 pm
Indeed. But pointing out the failings of one religion is not a proof for the existence of a different god.
All religions are man made. Morality is a social construct. The one was created to provide credibility for the other.
Since all morality is man made, we should have a little more faith in humanity and stop giving credit to a crude political mechanism. Look behind the curtain.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 4:30 pm
Pornography doesn’t say anything. Insisting that watching cocks in full technicolour was protected free speech may have been the beginning of the end for freedom of speech, I dunno.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:31 pm
No, but saying “all religions do X” when clearly, demonstrably, they do not all do X, is just incorrect. Go ask Sam Harris about that.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:36 pm
That cuts both ways. If humans have consistently found certain institutions and structures useful, might it not be that they are actually in fact useful?
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:39 pm
No not really. I think it errs on defending it though, in a very marginal sense.
.
28 Jan 13 at 4:39 pm
Larry Flynt is the creator of Roxon and her universe?
No.
.
28 Jan 13 at 4:41 pm
“Since all morality is man made, we should have a little more faith in humanity and stop giving credit to a crude political mechanism. Look behind the curtain.”
Well said.
“Pornography doesn’t say anything.”
Using an old definition of ‘pornography’ – eroticism without artistic merit – that’s effectively a circular argument. The problem is, what do we get to call pornography? At what point are we infringing ‘true’ speech?
Jarrah
28 Jan 13 at 4:42 pm
Thanks Helen.
Likewise.
The question you raised about whether unbelievers are entitled to the same consideration, and rights, as Christians is very complicated. It varies between denominations and periods of history.
The Southern white slaveowners who were also devout Christians tended to rationalise it by claiming that Negroes were mentally and spiritually incapable of fending for themselves. They needed to be looked after and given employment and housing on the plantations.
In Europe, there were deep divisions between Christians about whether missionaries should be supported. Some said that God intended the world to be the way it is, and meddling with His plans by trying to convert the natives verged on blasphemy. Others considered promulgating the faith a sacred duty. By Victorian times, the missionaries had gained the upper hand, but it was not so clear cut in earlier times.
Pragmatically speaking, defining a group as less than fully human has always been a popular justification for treating them that way.
johanna
28 Jan 13 at 4:42 pm
That is, indeed, a problem. But I think we agree that you can’t watch hardcore anal on a public bus. So there is a degree of restriction.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:44 pm
johanna, in the Old Testament, the Law applies to, and protects, “The foreigner that sojourneth among you”. And in the New Testament there is “make disciples of all nations”, so there’s no clear division between believer and non-believer as there was between Jew and non-Jew. So the case for unequal treatment is difficult to sustain.
Also worth questioning is the extent to which the British felt they needed to avoid the accusation of kidnapping loyal Muslims. What relations were they maintaining with what Muslim powers at the time?
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 4:48 pm
So all the libertarians say child pornography is just free speech?
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 5:02 pm
wreckage, I’ve found that there is usually at least one Biblical text that supports just about any proposition, so have never found it a useful tool for this kind of discussion. Can we say “Leviticus”, children?
My point was about the cultural and theological arguments of various historical periods and groups. The emphasis placed on evangelism still varies widely between denominations, and in pre-Victorian European countries there was a very substantial body of opinion against it. At the core of this argument was the question of whether a non-Christian was automatically doomed to perdition, and therefore not really a full human in the eyes of Man and God.
It is still being debated, though not quite so passionately, today.
johanna
28 Jan 13 at 5:04 pm
Gab; I’d like libertarianism to be totally coherent but it isn’t, no school of politics is.
I find it annoying when trying to discuss morality at all and people end up with a “mine is just common decency yours is MORALITY” or similar.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 5:05 pm
johanna, I’m just talking about the broad implications also. Otherwise we end up in proof-text pretext territory.
And at least one school of thought regarding missionary work held that Christianity would spontaneously arise or move organically into other cultures or language groups without “foreign” intervention, so it’s not really as clear cut as all that.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 5:09 pm
Of course. Religions can be very useful. The issue I was discussing was this idea that there is no morality without [insert your local variety of god here]. That’s bollocks.
But yes, religion is a useful tool if wielded wisely.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 5:28 pm
We should also remember that the largest and most horrific slavery system in all of human history was the atheist USSR. It was passionately backed by leftists. Ultimately, it was destroyed by the Catholic Church – Pope John Paul II, specifically.
C.L.
28 Jan 13 at 5:28 pm
Which was itself a form of religion, capitalized upon by a cunning seminarian.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 5:31 pm
The issue I was discussing was this idea that there is no morality without [insert your local variety of god here].
True, although I am unaware to which religion, if any, Draco or Solon the Athenian belonged.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 5:34 pm
Are you trying to be a troll are are you out of your fucking mind?
Of course I’m shocked and chagrined that you’d say such a thing. Why Gab, why?
Obviously the answer is NO but such a question vexes me.
It is beneath dignity to ask such a question. However public education must go on and freedom advocated, these frustrating questions must be answered and misconceptions slew.
.
28 Jan 13 at 5:42 pm
Calvin said “All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death” (Wiki).
Now in early 19th century Dumfriesshire to the good simple folk sitting on the hard pews including the your Carlyle (and arcane theological arguments notwithstanding), there was no doubt who were the elect and that ‘niggers’ were decidedly not.
That’s why I think the racism, as expressed in Carlyle’s essay, was a natural product of Calvinism.
manalive
28 Jan 13 at 5:43 pm
It was just a question, Dot which arose from reading the comments stating pornography should not be banned. I just wondered how far in the name of free speech/expression would libertarians go. Sorry my question offended you so.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 5:45 pm
I’m not offended.
Shocked and chagrined.
I thought it was obvious, I’m sorry if I offended you, actually.
.
28 Jan 13 at 5:47 pm
I thought it was obvious
Not to me it wasn’t, hence the request for clarification.
I’m sorry if I offended you, actually.
Nah, that’s okay, I used to copping a face full of cold water here.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 5:50 pm
I’m actually quite worried Gab.
If us libertarians have these misconceptions about us (like, the misconception we approve or permissive about child porn), we’re fucked, basically.
But kids wear Che shirts in the mall.
Blinded with rage right now…
.
28 Jan 13 at 5:52 pm
i guess there’s exceptions to free speech then.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 5:55 pm
It’s not free speech to rape a kid and put it on film.
I’m the most ardent libertarian you will meet, and there ought to be no exceptions to free speech.
.
28 Jan 13 at 5:57 pm
A natural result of misunderstanding Calvin. Total Depravity IS an “arcane theological argument” by its nature; in Calvinism any who convert were always ordained to do so and any who don’t, weren’t. Thereby if you mistreat someone and he converts at a later date, you are guilty of mistreating one of the Elect, and there was certainly not any idea of racism inherent in the original formulation; after all Christianity had come to the Germanic peoples via the Greeks and then Rome, from the Jews, and acknowledged black Saints and the staunchly Christian black kingdom of Ethiopia.
So a half-learnt and grossly misapplied reading of Calvin could be used to support racism, but the same could be said of virtually anything, including, say, biology.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 6:04 pm
Okay my mind didn’t wander that far down the alley and I can understand now your reaction. I was thinking more along the lines of that photographer who photographs children in a sexual pose and people call it art. I forget the person’s name.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 6:11 pm
Of course, both have happened, but it’s more to do with humanity’s astounding ability to make what they read say what they want.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 6:11 pm
But to distribute that film?
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 6:12 pm
“Are you trying to be a troll”
I assumed that, so ignored it.
“It was just a question, Dot which arose from reading the comments stating pornography should not be banned.”
I can’t see any such comments.
“it’s more to do with humanity’s astounding ability to make what they read say what they want.”
Indeed.
Jarrah
28 Jan 13 at 6:17 pm
Henson did that?
I would never know, because such a concept seems as much like art as does “college music for college students”.
Idiots looking at a turd nailed to a wall and appreciating the anti imperialism and anti chauvinism it exemplifies.
I didn’t bother looking. If the cops didn’t lock him up, it was probably okay, but of course, terrible, attention seeking “art” with no creative merit.
.
28 Jan 13 at 6:26 pm
Very true. The end result of all God-hating creeds (atheism, Islam etc) is imprisonment & lack of freedom. There are no shining examples of peace or freedom burgeoning either on an individual or national scale as a direct result of accepting these beliefs.
Matthew 7:16 “By their fruits ye shall know them.” and
John 8:36 “If the Son therefore shall set you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
Chris M
28 Jan 13 at 7:18 pm
Lord it’s a cruel, cruel place.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-27/india/36576928_1_brick-kiln-sudhir-katiyar-balangir
JC
28 Jan 13 at 7:29 pm
Describing religion as “voluntary” is a bit of a laugh. Sure, they can’t force you to go to church or to pledge your allegiance to Jesus any more, but they sure don’t think that their beliefs are very voluntary. Evolution, Abortion, Condoms, whatever. Religious people, even in secular countries, think that their religious beliefs should be the law of the land.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:03 pm
And I should point out that in countries where those religions hold a majority in the electorate, many of the barbaric laws they want here are in fact law.
E.G. Divorce being illegal in Ireland until 1997. Abortion still is, even in cases of rape. Same goes for many catholic countries, and need I even mention the laws of most Islamic countries?
The only reason that religion is voluntary in our country and any other is that religious people are outnumbered by non-believers. Try to remember that.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:12 pm
Okay… I’ll bite.
Yobs, have you ever seen or heard of say religious Jews demanding their religious laws become the law of the land in say Australia.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 8:26 pm
Yes, massa. Thank you, massa. I’ll try to remember, massa. You atheists are wonderful to us religious freaks.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 8:28 pm
In Australia JC? No. They are a tiny minority. In Israel? Yes.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:34 pm
I should concede though that Judaism in general is pretty happy to let non-Jews do whatever they like. But like all religions, they do claim to have the right to tell members of their own religion what to do.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:36 pm
Austraya consensus 2011: 22% non-religious, 11% no response, 67% religious with Christianity the predominant faith, massa.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 8:37 pm
Gab, the question on the census does not ask “do you believe in God and follow his laws”. It only asks what religion you are. There are plenty of people who tick the box their parents told them to tick, but have never been to church, do not believe in god, and would not support any law based on the bible.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:39 pm
I’ll try to remember that, massa.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 8:42 pm
My brother for example, ticks Anglican on his form. But he has never been inside a church except for weddings, and for his own wedding had a non-religious ceremony conducted by a family member with no mention of any deity and no readings from any religious texts. As have about 80% of the weddings I have been to in the last 20 years.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 8:42 pm
Wreckage:
You might just have solved the mystery of where Shitfer went to.
Mk50 of Brisbane
28 Jan 13 at 8:44 pm
Yobs
WTF are you doing over there? Spending 36hours listening to Hitch?
JC
28 Jan 13 at 8:45 pm
I agree. Your vast vicarious polling trumps the consensus any day.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 8:45 pm
The strict jews in Israel are doing the same shitty stuff as some strict muslims and christians, attacking people in the street for not complying with their rules.Gab, what percentage of the 67% do you think really really care to have the church in control of their lives?
Child promo isn’t wrong because that type of speech ought to be outlawed, its wrong because doing that to kids is a vicious crime and publishing the porn is the act of an accessory.
People taking solace in the new testament ought to remember that its authors did not think it a repudiation of the old testament.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 8:52 pm
The problem you make is equating people like me and Yobbo with militant twats like Dawkins. That would be like thinking all Muslims are war-like and all Catholics vote labour.
The fact is, I don’t care what religion you adhere to and I don’t want to stop anyone from doing whatever they want, so long as it harms no one else. I just think a false view – that knowing right from wrong is dependent on a god – needs to be challenged.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 8:53 pm
Dawkins is pretty aggressive, but I don’t know if he says anything that’s so very wrong. He basically says 3 things:
1 it’s a fantasy;
2 on the subject of being horrible sometimes, pots shouldn’t call kettles black;
3 the claim to a necessary basis for morality is another fantasy.
The number of people murdered by the commies and the nazis is irrelevant.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 9:01 pm
I have already commented on that at 5.34pm. I don’t see where i have been militant at all and have never claimed that morality is the exclusive purview of religion.
It’s just that what Yobbo said was an extremely dumb remark, imo, and I just had to take the mickey.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 9:10 pm
I did not say you were militant. But the massa thing is tiresome.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 9:41 pm
Yes, almost as tiresome as the christian religion mocking and bashing that goes on here by the intolerant. Yes, yes, all the world’s ills are always due to the religious and there never was an bad atheist. We get it.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 9:47 pm
Why? It’s actually a great counter to people like Dawkins who is a leftwing tiresome bigmouth and seems to attract the loathsome leftists to his side. Dawkins has said a number of times that atheists have have never caused the wrongs the religious have. He’s seriously fucking wrong as both NAZISM and communism, it’s sister ideology
But in a lot of ways Dawkins is basically a lightweight. Why not listen to intelligent, not stupidly belligerent atheists like Dawkins? Why not listen to someone like Alain de Botton.
Dawkins is a typical loudmouth leftwing douchebag. He adds absolutely nothing to a discussion.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:00 pm
Here’s De Botton talking about atheism.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:04 pm
I don’t think you do. Peter Patton hasn’t been here for yonks.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 10:09 pm
JC, Nazism and Communism and Environmentalism are all surrogates for organized religion.
Totalitarian regimes are all replete with the trappings of religion. Iconography, doctrine, priest classes…
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 10:12 pm
JC, I don’t recall Dawkins saying anything like that. He simply says that some religious people have committed terrible crimes in the name of religion and that is a counterweight to the claim that religion is necessary for morality and meaning. I’m pretty sure that you’ll find the necessity claim is the main focus, other than the non-existence of god, which is candy from a baby anyway.
There’s probably some argument about whether anyone has committed mass crimes in the name of atheism. I’m sure that the commies would not have been nearly so murderous if atheism was all that was motivating them.
As for de Botton, there’s already a religion for atheists and frankly I can’t get past the nothing to believe problem. If you are a believer then the forms and dictums have a context, if you’re an atheist, how could you go through it without feeling a goose?
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 10:18 pm
I am not equating the catholic church (a good organization that provides services worldwide) with these regimes.
Just saying that people like Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and so on capitalized on what appears to be a genetic imperative to worship a greater power. They were treated and acted like gods. Just the way that many ancient states were ruled by men who claimed to be gods.
Were these men atheists? Certainly. Were the millions who worshipped them atheists? I think not.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 10:19 pm
“Nazism and Communism and Environmentalism are all surrogates for organized religion.”
I don’t know how you can say that, but I think it is plausible that religion and communism etc rely on the same inherent impulses for belief and conformity.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 10:20 pm
Snap
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 10:20 pm
That’s because they have borrowed from the religions, Abu. They have copied the way religions sell their ideas.
If you’re suggesting that because those vile ideologies share some of the same characteristics with religion in the way they communicate irrational garbage you’re are
deluded.
Christianity as I know it (don’t practice it) tells you to love your fellow man. NAZISM, Communisum and ‘vironemntalism tell you to hate people.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:24 pm
We are thus in agreement, JC.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 10:27 pm
He’s only saying that the evil doctrines of communism attract believers through the same internal propensities as lead to religions. Religion exists because of something generally inside us. It’s not equating the RCC with the USSR.
Pedro
28 Jan 13 at 10:29 pm
He self proclaimed to be a leftist on a Q&A program. This is the person you respect Pedro?
This dickhead is basically equating Thatcherism with Darwinism and you listen to him about philosophical issues? FFS.
If you’re going to defend this piece of shit, don’t even bother.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:32 pm
On your first and third points, at least. As to your second, I am clearly not deluded. But many others are. Some of the deluded follow a belief system that is harmful. Others follow a belief system that is for the most part beneficial.
As long as they don’t try to limit my freedoms, I could care less which conception of god they adhere to.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 10:33 pm
Yep agree.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:39 pm
It’s a voluntary commitment, Abu. Apart from Islam, no one has a gun to your head forcing you to be of the faith and no one kills you if you leave the religion. I find the hackneyed use of “sky fairy” quite repugnant but apparently that seems to be in vogue and the cool thing to say. I really can’t recall anyone here trashing the belief system of atheists.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 10:40 pm
Just another way of saying he doesn’t believe it.
I’m happy to run with that if he is… which he largely isn’t.
Actually it depends on what you mean by necessary, and morality, and a bunch of other things. He’s worked a morality into his worldview to his satisfaction, but I don’t find his reasoning, or his morality all that compelling.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 10:40 pm
Look in some ways, I would consider De Botton a leading atheist who offers respect and deserves lots back.
He isn’t in the least ambiguous in understanding and explaining the way both western culture and religion commingled leading us to where we are. In fact he suggests that without it we wouldn’t be here.
Perhaps I like De Botton because he seems to admire western qualities.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 10:45 pm
Abu, with respect, you’re walking straight into the no-true-scotsman fallacy, or circular reasoning.
NTS: no PROPER atheist would be worked up enough to commit evil.
Circular reasoning: religious impulses cause violence, because the impulses that cause violence can only be instilled by religion, therefore anything that causes violence is a religion.
As for the usefulness of religion, institutions, etc., I was only saying they’re adaptive, not that they’re needed to police people. But in the “electrocute him till he gets it right” experiments, people offered an alternative authority were more likely to act ethically. And there are a number of cognitive biases that traditions and other institutional memory don’t have, where all individuals do.
This is not to assert that you can’t have a morality without God, only to defend the original assertion that Christianity at the very least has, and continues to, provided a number of useful services to our society. It’s just a historical fact.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 10:48 pm
Not any more. They had no problems doing so when they could get away with it though.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 10:56 pm
New versus Old Testament. First up Christians aren’t Jews. This may be obvious. So while the authors of the New didn’t see themselves as repudiating the Old, there is certainly an at least reasonable case that they were.
Leaving that aside, regardless of the details of the Old Testament, the authors of the New did not consider “love thy neighbour” a repudiation of it. And in fact, the saying attributed to Jesus “love your neighbour as yourself” is also in the Talmud; so it is a Jewish tradition as well, and in both is regarded, along with “love God with all your heart and strength” as the working summary of a correct interpretation of the Law and Prophets.
Chronology is also important. Christianity and Judaism had both thrown that statement up as a summary of proper conduct 500 years before Mohammed came along and reworked the whole monotheism thing into an unabashed conquest ideology. Even taking a materialist view of the Bible; no in fact especially taking a materialist view, the intellectual leaders of Judaism had left that behind in the conquest narratives anywhere from 500 out to a thousand years before that.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 10:58 pm
Humans act like that, Abu. It doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t tell them repeatedly not to. And as mentioned above, so did the Talmud. But the fact that it carries on in so many contexts indicates that it is not, in fact, a feature of religion but of humanity, which is all that is needed for a defence against the accusation that it is somehow an imposition of awful religion onto innocent humanity.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 11:01 pm
OT Hey Sam did you have a nice Christmas and New Year?
Tal
28 Jan 13 at 11:03 pm
Something to aspire to, sadly we humans fail miserably in most cases. As the humans did back in the day, 300 years ago or so. It’s not so much that the religion fails, we do. Imagine all the people…
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 11:04 pm
The English dropped forced conversions centuries ago. Even the Puritans. They weren’t especially nice to Catholics, but there was no forced conversion. They even let Jews back into the country, after said Jews vowed publicly not to seek converts – which Judaism doesn’t do anyway.
Whatever the mob might have been doing, the Catholic hierarchy instituted official rules of tolerance for the Jews centuries ago.
The point here is that atheists didn’t turn up and suddenly make everyone be tolerant. The tendency towards tolerance started long before and was well underway. Claiming credit for it is intellectual dishonesty. It’s a nice fantasy that vindicates a particular group. Hardly an atheist virtue.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 11:07 pm
Wreckage, I don’t think I am engaging in that logical fallacy. Evil has been committed by atheists and the faithful – I agree and I think there’s no doubt Stalin was no believer. The point I was making was that those regimes replaced one theism with another. They were powered by what appears to be an evolutionary imperative to follow a higher power.
I suspect also a lot of bad has been done in the name of religions, led by men who themselves did not believe but were merely exploiting the beliefs of others.
Related, I doubt Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama believe there is a god. But they are very happy to manipulate expectations.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 11:14 pm
Equally, I find it offensive when people here stereotype atheists negatively. There are plenty of atheists here who would be far safer fellow citizens, and better house guests, than your co-religionists. So, just as you get pissed off when people demonize or ridicule the religious, I get annoyed when all atheists are equated with Stalin or Mao.
And please, remember: I am not Peter Patton, the appalling chap who appeared demented when it came to Catholicism.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 11:18 pm
Kevin Rudd is certainly a god-botherer. Even Steve Fielding – the Australian senator who believes in young-earth creationism – said he was surprised by the fact that Rudd, in their first meeting, pulled out a bible and started reading verses to him.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 11:19 pm
Like I said, I’ve not noticed that people here equate all atheists as evil.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 11:20 pm
Actually I don’t agree. The only thing I have in common with any of the notable leftwing figures in Australia is that we breathe the same air.
I don’t care for them in any possible way. I am totally indifferent to them if they live or die.
No kidding, how could anyone have those thoughts when say the Lying Slapper, Shane Wand, the Little Turd, Lurch, Benito Conroy, Tubbsie Milne, Mad Dog Bob, Von Roxon, Barrie Cassidy, Fran Kelly, Tim Flannery, Happy Hamilton, the Fairfax new room come to mind. To name a few.
That ideal is bullshit.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 11:22 pm
That was just a ploy. I wouldn’t think for a second the little turd was being sincere in that effort. He was just sucking up to Fielding. That’s all.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 11:24 pm
Yes.
I’m not denying that a human male in bronze age Palestine may have said those things which later became doctrine for a religious movement.
Yes! I agree! That was the point I was making.
Perhaps, but that’s not my argument in this thread. Perhaps you meant to direct that to Yobbo?
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 11:25 pm
I quite enjoy hearing the various viewpoints from my atheist friends as I get to see things from another perspective. See the world through different eyes, as they say. Never though have they disrespected my choice of religion or that I have faith in a God, or belittled any of the doctrine and practises. Conversely, I don’t see the need to belittle someone who does not believe in God.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 11:26 pm
Oh. Well that was unChristian of me to ascribe ulterior motives to the man. Perhaps that was my empiricist heart jumping to conclusions on the basis of his cynical political actions in other regards.
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 11:28 pm
It doesn’t mean I hate them. Nor does it mean I’m perfect, just something I think is worthy of a goal, for me. If gillard, for example, was on fire, I would get someone else to save her. I’m kind like that
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 11:31 pm
Abu; I think we’re about as in agreement as we can be until you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour
As for atheists being like Pol Pot, hell no. I know a few and most of them are fine. But Pol Pot, Stalin, etc., are an answer to the very frequent charge that Christianity is a primary cause of human evil. Not that you made that argument, but it circulates.
Anyway it has been very civil without PP spewing shyte all over the discussion.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 11:31 pm
JC: if I was grossly wrong I’d like to be convinced to be right, and if I said half the things they do I’d like to be slapped in the face. If I made a disgusting grab for power I’d like to be stopped. If I was a lying, cheating, amoral thief I’d like to be gaoled.
Thus, we treat these people with love. It is not hateful to correct or even to punish harmful or ignorant behaviour.
wreckage
28 Jan 13 at 11:36 pm
But why? I don’t understand.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 11:37 pm
I certainly don’t think Christianity is a primary cause of evil. Drawing on it’s Jewish and Greek philosophical roots, it is generally a good guide for civil society.
A man should not covet his neighbour’s ass!
Abu Chowdah
28 Jan 13 at 11:39 pm
I see the problems of Pol Pot, Stalin and the Islamists as being related in the sense that all these ideologies reject secularism, pluralism and propose an official ideology with no competitors. In fact, Communism has no theory of political opposition at all, and must result in a unitary state ruled by a vanguard party. Islamism does have a theory of managing diversity in that Jews and Christians are in theory not to be massacred as a matter of policy, however the conditions attached to this “generous” offer are that they are banned from proselytising, displaying their faith openly, and have to live under religious apartheid.
The Fisk Doctrine would be very light on repression compared to these alternatives.
Fisky
28 Jan 13 at 11:42 pm
Good points, wreckage.
Tolerance has been common to Buddhism and the more open and sensible streams of Christianity. Mostly every other belief system has been exclusionist.
For example, marriage in almost every belief system means marrying “in” whether by race, religion, colour, whereas marrying “out” means leaving, quite literally.
I’m a Catholic girl married to a Presbyterian boy who was baptised at birth in the C of E. Go figure that, so we don’t worry about it, but our families used to.
One of my sisters is married to a Jew, one of my brothers is married to a Methodist, one of our brothers is a Hare Krishna.
We have lively discussions about the philosophy of religion and where it is meant to lead, but never about any of the rigid ideologies.
Christmas lunch is always interesting, as we always accompany our 84yo mum and her sister (a Catholic missionary nun) to morning mass.
mareeS
28 Jan 13 at 11:43 pm
And only for 10 years, mind you.
Fisky
28 Jan 13 at 11:44 pm
Because I cannot stand by and do nothing when someone is in dire physical harm. I don’t believe it stems from a humanitarian drive, just that I could not abide myself if I didn’t do something to assist. So it’s more from a selfish point of view i.e. so I won’t feel bad.
Gab
28 Jan 13 at 11:45 pm
No, the point is that plenty of people throughout the world were able to come to the same conclusions as New Testament Christians were in regards to not killing each other and generally being nice without ever hearing of Jesus.
Buddha, Socrates, Confucious and in fact many others were laying down moral guidelines far before Jesus was ever born. And unlike Jesus, their very existence is not in doubt. Also unlike Jesus, they did not see the need for any kind of supernatural scare campaign to illustrate why being good to others was a good idea.
Morality is inherent in our genetic makeup. Understanding the value of not killing each other, protecting children, and mutually beneficial cooperation exists in many species alongside humans, including all primates and several lower animal species. Morality, like everything else about us, is the product of the process of natural selection.
Christianity, or any other religion did not give us morality. What it has given us is centuries of religious war, suppression of philosophy and science to maintain its monopoly, and the preservation of ancient superstitions.
Everyone here is an atheist. I would suggest that none of you believe in any of the thousands of other gods that have been invented by humans since the beginning of history. You consider it ridiculous to believe in the existence of Zeus, Apollo, Ra, Odin, Thor, Vishna, Shiva and thousands of other gods that people either believed in the past, or still believe in today.
In regards to 3000 or so gods that have been invented, you are atheists in regards to 2999 of them. The only difference between you and an atheist like myself or Richard Dawkins is that we go 1 extra.
Yobbo
28 Jan 13 at 11:45 pm
Fisk,
The 10 years would of course have to be a moveable target as you just don’t know what you’d find in the rat nest.
it would of course be an aspirational type of objective.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 11:46 pm
Yobbo
You talk about morality, that other religions were more virtuous, but there’s one thing you leave out.
The West trumped everyone else because of its culture that is glue to all the other stuff you mention. It what held it all together. And to deny that Christianity didn’t play a significant role is to be blind.
You mention all those other races and places. They were nothing compared to the west. Nothing.
There’s a book which attempted to standardize a way of figuring out the most important people in human civilization. It came up with around 4,000 people. 95%, if you drew a circle, came from core Europe … central and North.
The rest of the world were basically shit kickers for the most part.
You left out Hinduism which is basically a form of enslavement.
JC
28 Jan 13 at 11:57 pm
Yeah, yobbo, I’m actually with you right up to “What it has given us is…” where you basically assert that your culture was pure and noble before Christianity came along. Ahistorical bullshit. Sorry.
As for atheism and gods, the only other one in contention for what I think God is (regardless of whether God exists) might be some interpretations of Shiva, or the hypothetical but unnamed God some Greek philosophers were working on. We’re talking about believing or disbelieving in entirely different classes of thing, in most cases. So if you mean by God “the supernatural entity in charge of X” then sure, I’m an atheist, as were the monotheistic Jews, and the Christians.
It’s pretty laughable that you’re blaming Christianity for suppressing philosophy, when it was Christianity (and actually Islam) that preserved and revived the pagan and even atheistic Greek traditions on which all subsequent Western philosophy was built, either by extension or reaction.
Seriously, sometimes it’s a good idea to read something other than your favourite polemicist. Maybe a serious scholar you agree with for a nice easy start. Then you could work up to divergent viewpoints over time.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:04 am
Well actually, Socrates could just barely be in doubt, as could Buddha in much the same way as Jesus, ie., somebody said those things, but was it that guy? And did he say all those things? But it is generally accepted that Jesus, like Sun Tzu, probably did exist, even if we dispute who exactly he was. As for supernatural scare campaigns, gosh, have you read any of the aforementioned sages work?
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:08 am
I’ll give you Socrates, since everything we know about him comes from Plato, and he could just be Plato’s alter ego. Not Buddha though.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:10 am
They were right to worry. All your in-laws are heretics.
C.L.
29 Jan 13 at 12:14 am
Well, it’s not the point I was trying to make, and if it’s the point you were trying to make then I’m not sure who you’re arguing with? Jesus was the touchstone for what became Western European morality. Due to a quirk of history, if you like, that just happened to pick up, and carry,a suite of sophisticated moral reasoning from Judaism and Classical thought and spread the mix right out to through a very provincial part of the world previously noted for dense forests, raving barbarians, and the odd tin mine. that’s how it happened, and getting angry at me because it might have happened some other way, in some alternative timeline, given the chance, doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:14 am
There were accounts by Jewish scholars attesting to the historical Jesus.
I think denying his historical existence is starting to border on 911 trooferism.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:15 am
Fair enough. There’s plenty of things he was said to have said, and said to have done, that if we are atheists, we probably don’t believe at all. I would have put jesus in the same company, were I an atheist.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:16 am
Jews and Christians don’t believe in a supernatural entity that created the earth and stands to judge us in the afterlife?
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:17 am
Just in case it’s what we’re arguing about, I have not said nor do I believe that being an atheist makes anyone a bad person.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:17 am
I’m not sure Jews do actually. It’s pretty convoluted what they believe but I think it goes along the lines of…
we can’t know nor understand the mind of God, but if you lead a good life there is possible hope after the coming of the Messiah. Could be wrong though.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:20 am
It’s a bit complicated, but basically no. The pagan Jews might have. God isn’t supernatural, in the sense of a ghost in the machine. He’s more like the necessary cause of existence as a category. The Greek Gods weren’t anything like that; they were just another powerful entity on the way up a partially recursive ladder of powerful entities.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:22 am
Alright, gotta sleep. It’s been fun arguing without the trolls.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 12:24 am
I’m not even sure the three religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe in the same God.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:25 am
Some of those “raving barbarians” you talk about. I.E. The Norse, are not only the direct ancestors of the British (and therefore modern western civilisation), but had their own (by the standards of the time very liberal and democratic) society, their own religion, and their own successful society in a very inhospitable part of the planet. They also explored much of the unknown parts of the world half a millennium before Christian explorers did the same.
The Christians, upon hearing of this, thought that it couldn’t be allowed to continue without a good old Jesus enema – including but not limited to a purge of all the remaining practitioners of the old religion in Sweden in 1066, at the same time as another man of Viking descent (William the Conquerer) was creating modern England.
The definition of “Barbarian” at the time was any group of people who were not Christians. So you see how it’s a bit of a circular argument, no?
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:28 am
That’s true. There is a provision for an emergency extension by 10 years. It’s not nice to contemplate, but the times could demand it.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 12:30 am
Yes Helen, it is. Always has been. As you (or in my quick scroll through was it Johanna?) note, one of the few to do so, slavery has been around since at least the neolithic (farming). Ancient societies were based on human energy, mostly non-free, by enslaved conquered peoples and long-term enslaved locals: By the Waters of Babylon indeed. The Vikings were practiced and mass scale slavers, good at transporting their prey. The word Slav means ‘slave’ because of Viking depredations into ‘Slavic’ territory. Ancient Ireland used the measure of a female slave as a form of ‘coinage’.
I went down the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mine in North Wales, which was not an occasional dig, but mining on an industrial scale, supplying a MAJOR part of the Bronze Age’s copper, transported throughout the Mediterranean and Aegean. It was horrific. Nine levels in the dark, where it was clear from the narrowness of some passages that only very small children (under six) could have been the miners: child slaves – the Victorians found them useful in mines too. This is where size really matters (being mordant here). Victorian chimney-sweep boys were virtual slaves.
Slave markets with a monetary price provide the obvious horror, but also ‘enslaved’ are indentured workers, prisoner slaves(convict heritage), perhaps even women in situations with no rights (Islamic repressions etc). Liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been available to so few in human history.
We should treasure the ideal, and value all who genuinely subscribe to it.
JC – Alain de Bottan, I read his book Religion for Atheists, where he recognised the sheer human value of the forms and symbols of religious thought and suggested some ‘take-over’ modes (e.g. secular temples of contemplation etc.) for those unable to subscribe to things of ‘religion’. I thought it was completely self-defeating, a book going nowhere. Religion does for itself, and non-believers merely coat-tail on its forms. We have those things secularised anyway: in art, architecture, music, spectacle, drama and in nature conservation etc. I like to keep religion as religion – even as a non-believer.
Many bad things have been done in the name of religion, but it seems to me that religion has done more to make people think about human freedom, its meaning and value and its limits, than most philosophies, probably because its appeal is so visceral and basic to our very biology (imho); religion pulls us up short against our own mortality and by extension to that of others, and that contrast is the first baby step to compassion and understanding. Like A de Bottan I have in mind here most specifically Christianity and its long and extended theological heritage, although as he does I would admit others at times.
This is a bit of a rave, we’ve just got in from a long drive home and the wine may have gone to my head.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Jan 13 at 12:30 am
Sure they do. Each is like James Bond by a different director.
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 12:30 am
That was directed at JC’s same god comment.
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 12:31 am
They all worship the god of Abraham. So unless they are talking about 3 different guys all called Abraham, then yes they do all worship the same god. They just disagree violently on how they should worship him, who his chosen people are, what his name is and – most importantly – how long ago he stopped appearing before and giving life instructions to live humans.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:36 am
It was used by the Romans well before Christianity and in fact it comes from the Greek.
Yobbo, stop kidding yourself. The barbarians were basically a bunch of uncivilized tribes. They may have practiced forms of expression etc, but it was mostly inside the clan. As for their exploration….dude, they were after plunder like everyone else at the time. The Romans just did it better and were far more organized. And the idea of the senate etc came from the Greeks to Rome.
You do realize that ancient Rome had running indoor hot water and they also built apartment buildings with Rome holding an estimated 1 million inhabitants.
The northern tribes were beer swilling sloths.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:41 am
MK50 Brisbane,
One can only hope he didn’t turn up in an emergency department.
Jessie
29 Jan 13 at 12:44 am
The way they understand the god is quite different. I think Judaism believes in the force of god that keeps the universe together. Christians believe in a mystical god while the Muzzos, or at least Muhammad told them God lived just above the clouds. Physically. So they are different.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:45 am
All 3 religions believe in the god of the old testament. The only difference between the religions is thus:
Jews believe the old testament is the final teachings of god.
Christians believe that whatever Jesus said is the updated teachings of god and trumps the old testament.
Muslims believe that whatever Mohammed said trumps both Jesus and the old testament, and is the final word of god.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:50 am
Moral?
Cats. They do not require washing in the shower.
Jessie
29 Jan 13 at 12:51 am
They didn’t explore freaking anything.
Here’s my theory. Why take an unstable wooden barge across uncharted ocean if you could just plunder and take the women belonging to the clan next door, or the door after that, or the one further down the line.
Rome.
If you wondered into their territory doing that crap, that military dictatorship would come after you and keep on doing so until every bone your clan’s body was smashed to pieces. So it wasn’t because they choose to sail big distances. They freaking well had to if they wanted to plunder and steal so as to avoid the Roman hammer.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:55 am
“Yobbo, stop kidding yourself. The barbarians were basically a bunch of uncivilized tribes.”
Sorry, that is just not true. Some of the “Barbarians” encountered by both Romans and Charlemagne were members of civilised, advanced nations. The main thing that made the Romans and the Christian crusaders of Charlemagne consider them “barbarians” was that they did not share their religion or language.
The definition of Barbarian in ancient Greek was “Anyone who is not a Greek”.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:55 am
Vikings made it as far as Canada before 1000ad, and the maps they made of their explorations, and the measured distances are within 2-4% margin of error of modern, satellite-measured distances. There is also evidence that suggests Vikings invented the telescope 700 years before Galileo.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:57 am
FYI, here’s the historical definition of barbarian from the Oxford dictionary:
The term “barbarian” at the time of the Greeks, Romans and Charlemagne literally meant “foreigner”. It is only in recent times that it has come to be a synonym for an uncultured person, and that is mainly due to the fact that the “barbarians” eventually defeated Rome.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:01 am
No, there’s a bunch of characteristic differences Yobbo. Like Christians and Jews agreeing God is rational (which causes no end of problems in theodicy arguments) while Muslims generally play the universal get-out-of-logic-free card of God being irrational and inconsistent, not even bound by his own nature.
Again, Muslims claim a whole bunch of things as being the original authentic scriptures even though they were written 500 years later and no earlier manuscripts exist. So again, different scriptures even down to the TORAH and prophets, different Abraham (same name) different concept of God. And then of course you can compare their actual teachings on pretty much anything, which are materially different.
wreckage
29 Jan 13 at 1:05 am
The point i was making is that if you’re in the raid and plunder game you would always go for the point of least resistance, which in this case wouldn’t mean traveling the north Atlantic in a wooden row boat unless you were shit scared of hitting the wrong place with harsh retribution.
Funny that. You doubt the historical existence of Jesus, which was more or less verified by independent sources outside of Christianity, but find credible that a bunch or raping beer swilling drunks discovered the telescope. Where is it? Surely a valuable seafaring contraption like that just doesn’t disappear from one generation to another, no?
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:12 am
oops… which would result in harsh retribution.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:13 am
How can you without longitude? Or did they discover that too but was also neatly forgotten until Cook helped “rediscover” it.
Where the fuck are you getting all this?
You can’t make a fucking map at sea without longitude and it was the Brits who found out how to did in the water.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:19 am
Also to JC, can you not see the irony that in the time that the “civilised” forces of Charlemagne, an absolute dictator with a mandate from god was at war with the Saxons and the Norse, the only places in the known world that had any form of democracy were the Nordic settlements of Iceland, Dublin and the Faroe Islands.
Nevertheless, Charlemagne conquered any of them within striking distance, destroyed their religious buildings, and the first law enacted in the newly conquered lands was the death penalty for any Pagan who refused to convert to Christianity.
He did all this to people who had no quarrel with them – in face they were nominal allies of the Franks – purely because they were not Christians and had no interest in being Christians. After the initial invasion, he kept his troops there for 30 years, slaughtering anyone who refused to accept Jesus, until the leader of the Saxons finally agreed to be baptised to save his people from extermination.
Who were the barbarians in this case, exactly?
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:24 am
It’s here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/702478.stm
on display for anyone who wishes to see it at the Swedish national museum.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:26 am
I don’t really doubt that he existed. I have severe doubts that anything he did is worth getting excited over though. Many of his teachings are the ravings of a madman, with the odd insight that was already available from many other sources in the ancient world.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:28 am
There were no saints then, Yobbo, which was really my point. You didn’t notice i referred to Rome as a military dictatorship?
The Nordic/Germanic tribes weren’t my idea of a bunch of saints walking on water, which you seem to think they were. They were fucking arseholes like the rest of them. Having said that, on margin Rome was more civilized in a relative sense, if we can use that word in the way we understand it now.
Look, you have a real hard on for Christianity. That’s fine, as I couldn’t care less. But what you seem to be suffering from is a huge blind spot that we see lots in lots of leftwingers. That is applying modern standards to the old and ancient world when in comparison it was like another universe.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:33 am
You missed this bit from your link.
In other words they fucking stole a few bits of glass like crystals and some fat raping drunk had it displayed on his fire place surround not knowing what it was.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:39 am
I’m not applying modern standards to them though JC, am I? I’m saying that Christian societies in the ancient world were no more moral than any other society who had never heard of monotheism, or indeed any god at all.
We do not get our morality from religion. Religion gets its morality from us. And the morality of religion has changed alongside our own changing morality – a sure sign that none of it came from any omniscient being.
If we got our morality from god, and god is omniscient (which is the claim of all of the abrahamic religions), then god’s first words to Moses would have been: “No slavery, No rape, no Paedophilia, no killing except in self defense”, “All people should have equal rights”.
But, in fact, god didn’t actually decide these things until very recently, conveniently a few years after normal humans had already worked them out. In some cases, god still does not agree with most people on the equal status of women, the right to life, freedom of speech and many other things that we now consider to part of a universal moral code (or Human Rights as we now call it). That should be all the proof you need that religion isn’t the source of morality.
In actual fact, morality comes from us. Man created god, not the other way around. God got his morality from man, not the other way around. Religious traditions have always lagged behind the popular morality of the day, which is why religious faith has been the source of so much misery in the last 3000 years.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:44 am
Yobbo if you bothered to read what I said, you’d find that I wouldn’t disagree with all of what you last said. The point I made earlier was that culture was the glue that put it all together for the West and a great deal of that came from Christianity. Not all of it, but a great deal of it.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:50 am
And I should expand on this. The reason that we are Christians today and not Confucians is that, unlike Christians, Confucians did not see the need to spread their philosophy to the rest of the world at the point of a sword. In fact, China as a whole was an isolationist, passive, civilised nation in comparison to most of the rest of the world until the European renaissance.
It has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. It’s mostly to do with the fact that the promise of eternal reward in the afterlife is a very good way to motivate soldiers.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:53 am
But again, that’s just not true. The underpinnings of our political society came from Pagan Romans and Greeks, and was further refined by Pagan Saxons and Norse before being transplanted here by their direct descendants, the now-Christian (by force) Vikings and Normans.
Christian belief was a good way to raise taxes and armies before the idea of Nationalism came about. That’s about the extent of its contribution to the modern world.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:57 am
Define civilized? Not attacking other places? If so how does that stand beside your portrayal of the Nordics?
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:57 am
And by “here” I mean England.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 1:58 am
T
You do realize they practiced infanticide and fed people to lions etc.
Yobbo, you have a hard for Christianity and you went as far as denying the existence of Historical Jesus and telling us that the Vikings had google maps without even possessing any understanding of longitude.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:06 am
I thought you live in Thailand.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:07 am
In this sense I mean that the Chinese had well-defined hierarchy of government and an ordered society. As did the Romans, and as did the Vikings and Saxons that you say weren’t civilised.
They were just as civilised as anyone around them. They were not wandering nomads like the Mongols. It’s just that their immediate neighbours didn’t like their religion or their military tactics that they referred to as “uncivilised”.
One of the reasons that the word “Viking” inspired fear into the heart of Europeans for centuries is that the Vikings were the first to use Hit and Run, “Shock And Awe” military tactics in a naval setting, rather than lining up their armies for days and then blowing a horn to kick things off, as if a war was a soccer match. That doesn’t make them uncivilised by our modern standards. Just clever.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:07 am
Sirocco, No, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is if you believe that there is an objective reality which is the criterion of correctness, you are very likely to be some form of realist, whether Platonic, Aristotelian, or Scholastic, and in each of these the concept, God, is a conclusion, not a premise. And as a matter of historical fact, science did in fact emerge in societies that harbored realist traditions.
True, you could be some variety realist that believed that the arguments therein for the existence of God were inconclusive, but sadly, most atheists, particularly, Gnu atheists are not. They are, generally, materialists, and materialism cannot ground morality. Morality for the such people is either going to be conventional and thus relative or subjective and thus individual.
No, but that is the wrong question to ask; the question that needs to be addressed is: What is the ground of atheist morality?
But the above statement reeks of baby talk. If life is a ‘cosmic accident’, then it has no intrinsic value, and thus you have no moral reason to refrain from murdering you’re neighbor if you can get away with it.
Indeed, except you failed to notice that the Whisperer agreed with me.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 2:09 am
They raped the shit out of Britain.
At least the Romans helped the Brits advance civilization through the legal system and built roads etc.
The Vikings went there to rape and pillage. They added nothing.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:15 am
JC, I don’t have “a hard” for Christianity, whatever that means. There are plenty of other horrible religions. But since Christianity is considered the only “true” religion by most people reading this, and Christianity is also the topic of this post, I don’t see why I should talk about any other religions in this context.
I don’t really see Christianity as any more or less moral than a dozen other religions. And I can accept that some of the most brilliant people of history were Christians. That does not, however mean that their discoveries were the result of Christianity. Humans are naturally curious. A baby has no religion, but it will stick things in its mouth to try and ordain their nature.
The reason that people stop exploring and asking questions is when they think that they have all the answers – something religion purports to give you.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:17 am
This is ridiculous. Large parts of Britain were built by Vikings. The entire region of Yorkshire was a viking settlement. The English language contains a large amount of nordic words.
Our modern belief in personal freedom comes from the Vikings. Many Vikings were not, as you claim, there to rape and pillage. They came to settle, and they did so to escape their governments, just as the pilgrims did to the new world hundreds of years later. The Vikings gave us the concept that kings should be responsible to their subjects just as the subjects were to the kings. Nordic society had practiced this for hundreds of years before Hastings. There would have been no Magna Carta without Viking influence on British though. It is no coincidence that it happened in England.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:23 am
Oh okay, it’s an American term. Like having a grudge.
Try Hinduism, which is some ways is worse that Islam.
I don’t think i suggested you should, did i?
As I said try Hinduism and Islam.
How do you reckon funded it? Who do you think funded the first European universities? The Lying slapper and Shane Wand or the EU?
India, China and the Middle basically closed down. Nothing came out of there.
Bullshit.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:28 am
This has been discussed at great length by the atheist everyone loves to hate, Richard Dawkins. The grounds of all human morality are rooted in evolutionary biology. Empathy and Cooperation are instincts common to many higher mammals, not only humans. The good feeling that you get from helping others doesn’t come from god, it comes from instinct.
The ability of cognitive thought allows us to expand on and ponder these instincts like no other, but they are as natural a part of human evolution as toes and teeth. No supernatural explanation required.
We don’t need god to tell us how to feel any more than we need him to tell us we are thirsty.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:29 am
They did for ages.
And I suppose you think the locals were happy campers about this?
I wouldn’t be surprised. So what?
Many were.
Dude, there were local indig who weren’t stone age in Britain. Funnily enough there was a TV program on this very subject where a historian talked about the protection money English royalty had to give to the Nordics to try and stop them from plundering.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:34 am
I don’t hate him because he’s an atheist. I despise him because he’s a garrulous loudmouth leftist douchebag who suggested Thatcher’s Britain as resembling the law of the jungle.
This fucker understands nothing.
I’m surprised you have any time for him.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:39 am
Pedro:
Because spontaneous orders change. If you are going to determine the worth of a human being, not in their nature as a human being, but in terms of their function in a particular spontaneous order, you are going to have to admit that what is immoral in this spontaneous order (say, the abandonment of child to the elements) is possibly moral in another spontaneous order.
Three prima facie evidences of God’s existence: change (First Way); causality (Second Way); and the order of the universe (Fifth Way).
Jarrah:
Quite, the moral reason is their objective validity which requires some form of moral realism. Otherwise you’re stuck with convention or subjectivity, neither of which involves an objective standard of goodness.
AJ:
Sorry, but I’m Catholic; we don’t do sola scriptura.
Would that criteria be ‘convenience’? I’m not so sure, since abortion/ cooking seems to enjoy the same criteria in contemporary society.
Abu:
If this were true, our moral indignation at say the crimes of a Fritzl is mere sentimentality. But, thank you, Abu, for illustrating my point re atheism, morality and relativism.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 2:40 am
wreckage, oh, you wonderful scoundrel!
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 2:44 am
“How do you reckon funded it? Who do you think funded the first European universities? The Lying slapper and Shane Wand or the EU?”
The first University funded by a European person, the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, was funded by the Royal family of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a pagan Greek dynasty which succeeded Alexander the Great. It was later destroyed 3 times, Once by Julius Caesar and once each by the Christian pope and Muslim invaders.
Most Universities in history have always been funded by the state. Circa 1100 AD when the oldest existing universities were founded, the church and the state were the same thing in most of Europe. The entire continent was a theocracy. So I guess you can claim that a victory for organised religion, if you like. Also a victory for state-sponsored education, if you like.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:45 am
The introductory para for this blog ‘…Foundations of Western Civilisation Program. …….
But there remains a story to be told about slavery: how liberal economists fought slavery in Britain.’
There has been such interesting discussions, and much learnt, thank you.
Questions:
Was the work of Nadir Shah entering India and toppling the Moghul empire of concern to British, Portuguese and Dutch interests in India?
Presumably there was knowledge of the slave trade by Mindanao Muslims which extended down to Batavia/Java and the islands north of Terra Nullius/Australia at this time.
There has not been any comments on Orientalism, which burgeoned early and mid 1800s with a focus on language and culture. Not sure on missionary activity in this movement however. Did this intellectual movement, which extensively used the East India Co documents, hamper the Wilberforce team which was premised on morals?
Why was the East India Company exempt from the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act?
What effect may E Burke have had through Richard Shackleton/Quakers.
What effect did Joseph Reynolds with his naval network have in the tactics used by Wilberforce to introduce the first bill (abolish shipping of slaves)?
What work has there been reviewing articles such as this?
Jessie
29 Jan 13 at 2:46 am
He understands the important things.
I thought you’d be a fan of Dawkins. He’s a scientist who doesn’t consider global warming to be much of a threat to the human race at all.
He assumes we will have nuked each other to extinction over religious differences long before the planet gets that far.
One of the world’s most insane, backward theocracies is building a nuclear weapon as I type this.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 2:56 am
Dear oh dear. Empathy and cooperation, from an evolutionary point of view, might justify us cooperating with our tribe in the slaughter of near or distant tribes and empathizing with those from our tribe lost in the battl. It does not justify or lead to the idea that it is immoral to slaughter that near or distant tribe. It might also justify, given the circumstances, the abandonment of the weak and the elderly to their own efforts. Sorry, no, evolutionary biology does not provide an objective standard of the good; not even remotely.
Actually, Popper has given very good reasons to deny the reliability of our cognitive thoughts if one is a materialist; it’s called the argument from reason.
Whoever said morality was about ‘feelings’? I really don’t care if someone ‘feels’ that restricting political speech is important, or if they ‘feel’ that the unborn child is not a human being, or if this is conceded, that they ‘feel’ it is less valuable than a woman; I want to learn their reasons for believing so and so.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 3:12 am
Sounds a bit like Numbers 31.
Those reasons are the school of human thought we call philosophy. Which, might I add, are significantly better reasons in the most part than “because some invisible guy in the sky will punish us if we do bad things”.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 3:19 am
Sorry, God doesn’t agree with you. He’s all in favour of slaughtering other tribes. Here:
The “moral relativists” have no idea what they are missing out on!
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 3:26 am
Same passage I just linked to.
In god’s defense though, he just said “avenge them”. He didn’t say how. For all we know god meant to avenge them by posting embarrassing photos of their enemies’ bad teenage haircuts on facebook.
It was Moses who was the psychopathic ethnic cleansing murderer and child rapist. Makes you wonder why we based 3 whole religions on what Moses said, and didn’t just wait for god to be interviewed on Fox News and give us the real story before killing umpteen millions of people in his name.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 3:34 am
I’d simply like to refrain from following God’s orders to commit genocide, rape and dispossession on one hand, and to abandon my family on the other.
Naturally, being a non-theist or a dreaded “moral relativist” is no guarantee of good behaviour. But follow the Good Book as it is written and you’ll be lucky to wind up in the Family Court; The Hague is more like it.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 3:40 am
This is just wrong. The university of Paris, for instance, emerged from the cathedral school in Paris. Many universities all over Europe subsequently emerged from identical cathedral schools, receiving their charter from the Church. To pretend otherwise, by conflating Church and State, is simply bizarre. On this conflation, the kingdoms and principalities of Europe were independent of the Church. The major conflicts that emerged in the 11th century and onward between the two were in fact conflicts over one or the other’s independence, i.e. the appointment of bishops, etc. being a matter for the Church and not requiring the approval of the King.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 3:42 am
He did divide up the plunder with Moses. God took a generous portion of the women and livestock. See verses 25-40.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 3:43 am
I’m willing to bet Moses was lying about that too.
God is the supposed almighty creator of the universe and all life on Earth. If he wanted concubines or livestock, he could just snap his fingers and create as many as he wanted.
What actually happened is that Moses just took god’s share too. Makes you wonder why god kept dealing with that psychopathic charlatan.
As Hitchens was fond of saying: Even if there was an all-powerful god, why on Earth would he choose only to appear to a small bunch of illiterate, nomadic desert savages in an extremely war-torn and uncivilised part of the world rather than, say, China or India who were already literate and had the benefit of pre-existing codified laws. Appearing to the Chinese would have ensured that his laws and guidelines would have been preserved intact by literate scribes, rather than lost in thousands of years of oral tradition.
Why would he then tell those same savages to march thousands of miles through hostile territory, slaughtering everyone in their path, only so they could settle in the only part of the middle east that was surrounded by enemies and completely lacking in Oil?
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 3:56 am
Good, I see you’ve given up on evolutionary biology as a ground for morality.
Well, I give you the school of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas, and all you read is ““because some invisible guy in the sky will punish us if we do bad things”. How is this my failure?
No, it has nothing to do with a “guarantee of good behaviour”. Being a moral relativist simply means there is no objective moral standard by which you could possibly refer to those verses in Numbers and have any objective basis for your moral indignation. None at all. That is the plain truth you are avoiding.
(IIRC, given your views re Operation Gomorrah, etc. you have no problem with the wholesale slaughter of old men, women or children, anyway so the moral indignation re Numbers, apart from being without substance, appears contrived.)
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 4:04 am
Beats the hell out of having to endorse them without reservation (careful – you wouldn’t want to backslide on any parts of the Good Book, or you too would necessarily join the ranks of those awful “relativists”).
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 4:18 am
I don’t believe I’ve ever expressed any views on Operation Gomorrah. In fact, I’m not even sure I know anything about that Operation. Was it a hearty continental brekky just like Keelhaul?
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 4:22 am
Of course there is an objective moral standard. I don’t consider myself a “moral relativist” at all. I am saying that morals do not come from religion, in fact most of what is written in religious texts is completely immoral.
There are many parts of Christianity and other religions that are completely abhorrent and immoral. Not least the fact that we are supposedly required to submit ourselves to eternal judgement by a jealous, murderous, psychopathic dear leader in the sky who can judge us for thoughtcrimes while we sleep, and will not even give up his tyrannical stranglehold on our thoughts even after we die. And the punishment for not pleasing him is eternal torture and suffering.
One of the most immoral things I have ever heard.
Even the Ten Commandments, which many Christians want hung in our law courts and schools, have edicts against thought crimes.
The Golden Rule is the only moral statement in the bible worth listening to, and it was espoused by Confucious 600 years before Christ, and in the Mahabharata 400 years before Confucious. Humans have understood this rule before they understood language. Even Chimpanzees understand it.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 4:24 am
The whole “chosen” thing is obviously a gag. The Jews got nuttin’ out of the deal but trouble.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 4:26 am
However did those civilizations figure out that murder was wrong if they hadn’t read the bible?? I don’t understand!
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 4:31 am
You could not have objective reservations; I certainly could.
Honestly, Yobbo, you haven’t a clue about what you’re saying. You failed to provide anything from a materialist position that could possibly qualify as an objective moral standard. Given this, what you consider yourself is neither here nor there. Further, I’ve never said that “morals come from religion” or achieve their objectivity from such a source; I’ve argued that unless you are a realist, which most atheists, particularly Gnu atheists are not – having actively rejected realism for at least the last three centuries – you can have no grounds for such an objective moral standard nor objective reason to consider yourself anything other than a moral relativist. Given this, you have no objective basis for arguing that this or that part of this or that religious text is immoral or not. You simply lack an objective measure with which to do so.
Setting aside the fact that people condemn themselves or more importantly that we cannot know the ultimate fate of even the most evil human being, we legitimately judge ‘thoughtcrimes’ now, we simply call these charges, conspiracy to commit A or B, and the like. The fact that such a crime requires certain acts doesn’t obviate that they are nevertheless thoughtcrimes, since the acts themselves are simply used as evidence of this or that intention (to murder, to rob, to rape, to torture, and so on) now manifest.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 4:50 am
The Hindus were still burning widows on the Ganges in the 19th Century and the Chinese were still practicing infanticide well into the last millenium. The Gnu atheist has nothing other than a shit-eating grin; and even this is done poorly.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 4:59 am
You’re right DB. I have absolutely no idea what you are asking or telling me in this passage. Nor, I expect, does anyone else.
I am not a literary genius. I type my comments in plain English, and I expect you to respond in plain English if you want me to participate.
Your comment is a load of flowery words of the kind that people use to confuse when they don’t have a real argument.
Actually, yes, it pretty much does.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 5:00 am
And Christians were still burning witches in the US and Europe the 18th century, and it’s still happening in Christian Angola today.
I don’t ever believe saying that the religions of China or India were superior, or even more moral. I am saying that there are recorded examples of moral standards that we still hold today that were written 1000 years before the birth of Christ in countries that had never heard of the Christian god.
If morality came from the Christian god, that would be impossible. They would have had no idea how to treat each other until the missionaries arrived in the 1500′s.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 5:14 am
I don’t ever remember*
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 5:14 am
You had me going for a while there – I thought your “objective morality” was God-given (and presumably compiled in some kind of book so that the rest of us could access these brilliant teachings). If you are not satisfied with the Bible as it is written, then you’ll just have to point me to which alternative text you are basing your morals on and explain how they came to be “objective”.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 5:15 am
The transatlantic slave trade was enthusiastically run by Christians for centuries until they realised blacks were human too. Then there’s the Thirty Years’ War, a continent-wide religious holocaust. Somehow I don’t think comparative body counts are a very good way to validate Christianity’s “objective moral standards”.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 5:27 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1QmhVxyVkc
The day JamesK found Richard Dawkins’ email address.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 6:14 am
Dover Beach – Mathew Arnold
ella
29 Jan 13 at 6:58 am
The two points are in plain English. Materialism cannot establish an objective moral criterion; that is what Hume meant by the naturalistic fallacy. Now, a Aristotelian can in fact argue that there exists in nature an objective moral criterion that is available to any rational creature, but he can do this only because he rejected materialism. He argued cogently that human beings have a nature, evinced by what they are orientated towards, and that to act contrary to this nature just is to act immorally. On the second point, I wasn’t arguing that morality arises from religion. I was arguing that only a realist – some one who believed that there is a world separate to but available to our minds exists – could cogently argue that morality is similarly also out there and that we can come to know this by learning about our nature as human beings and as well as the nature of this or that practice. Added to this was and is the fact that realism is consistent with and in fact arguably requires the existence of God. Nothing more.
This is exactly that biblical literalists say.
And scientists err. So what? Neither of these facts suggest that their is no objective moral, or extra-mental, criterion that must itself must also be the basis of recognizing their error as error.
No, it doesn’t. All you have are circumstantial acts, that individually would be considered innocent enough, but are together seen as forming a criminal intention. The crime is still the thought since there is as yet no crime. The only reason we rely on acts here is the fact that we cannot literally peer into the criminals’ minds, so we are left with their acts and what they appear orientated toward.
The Catholic Church condemned slavery from the very beginning, and there were at least two African Pope’s before the fall of the Roman Empire, leaving aside the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that hailed from that continent.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 7:00 am
And they were not supposed to. My example was a counter-example to your aside meant to suggest that Hinduism and Confucianism were much worse than Christianity. I didn’t bring up that topic, you did.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 7:06 am
No, my aside was a counter to Fisky’s claim that other civilizations arrived at the same conclusion; they did not. If I was going to argue that Christianity was superior to Hinduism or Confucianism I would refer directly to what they each thought. I’m not even sure that Confucianism condones infanticide. I can say that I found the Analects, on the whole, very good. And because I believe in the cogency of the natural law, I wouldn’t be surprised that other civilizations arrived at similar conclusions; that is in fact what natural law theorists expect.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 7:31 am
So what you’re saying is that both Hinduism and Confucianism had no laws against murder because people were sometimes killed in those societies?
Christianity has had laws against murder for over 3000 years but people are still murdered in the name of Christianity on a regular basis.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 7:41 am
Yobbo is on fire and doing brilliantly. (But should acknowledge that a lot of his arguments appear to be copied from Hitchens’ debates. I.e 4:24 am)
Keep it up!
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 8:23 am
It is hard to see how anyone can see the killing pre modern times in any simple sense when discussing any period of time pre-industrial revelolution where the absolute majority of people live via desperate subsistance.
It is not hard to see that many of the people who “murdered in the name of Christianity” did so for economic and political reasons (e.g. the list of reasons for the Crusades is as long as the reasons for the fall of the western Roman Empire).
Token
29 Jan 13 at 8:42 am
Sure, that was one of Hitchens’ favourite analogies. He repeatedly said that believing in god and the afterlife would be like living in North Korea. I couldn’t agree more.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 8:44 am
I see, so the work of nuns like my great aunt who spent their lives looking after the sick and the dying in palliative care wards so people can die in dignity “would be like living in North Korea”.
Hyperbowl alert.
Token
29 Jan 13 at 8:48 am
Many of them did, yes. Many of them didn’t though, as in my previous examples of the Catholic Angolans who murdered children in 2009 because they believed them to be witches.
I don’t consider every murder or war committed by a Christian to be the fault of Christianity. E.G. The American civil war was fought by Christians on either side and had little to do with religion at all. Same goes for the Revolutionary war. Even people like the Conquistadors were primarily looking for land and loot rather than trying to glorify god in my opinion.
That doesn’t change the fact that though that millions of people have been killed, and plenty of wars started purely because of religion, and Christianity is not an exception.
In the specific case of the Crusades, that might be true of the people who were behind them. But they certainly didn’t motivate their troops by publishing a lengthy treatise on the social and political reasons for invading the Holy Land. They said “the holy land belongs to us, go kill whoever is there”.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 8:50 am
I’m sure the Nuns looked after them well, assuming they weren’t the ones from Mother Theresa’s sect who encouraged suffering because it brought them closer to the suffering of Jesus.
The point is that even death is not a release from the demands placed on you by god. There is no escape, ever. You will either continue to force yourself to think pure thoughts for the rest of eternity, or you will burn in Hell.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 8:54 am
So are you questioning the work of all people who dedicate themselves to bring relief because of the rotten few?
Very well considered words from a person who most likely has never lived through a period of time when you don’t know if you’ll live or die.
The relatives who survived reigns of terror and famine (natural or man-made) had a different view as life was more primal.
Token
29 Jan 13 at 9:00 am
“Otherwise you’re stuck with convention or subjectivity, neither of which involves an objective standard of goodness.”
Sounds about right to me. The vast majority think their subjectivities are objective, but they’re wrong.
“I was arguing that only a realist – some one who believed that there is a world separate to but available to our minds exists – could cogently argue that morality is similarly also out there”
No, you’re describing Cartesian dualism. Materialism makes no distinction between the world and the mind, between inside us and ‘out there’.
Materialists like myself say that morality exists only in our brains and central nervous systems. It is therefore inescapably subjective.
Jarrah
29 Jan 13 at 9:19 am
Sorry, dover, was reading two of your comments at once, my comment above doesn’t actually address your argument.
Jarrah
29 Jan 13 at 9:24 am
These are arguments that can never be won, merely put. There is pleasure in them though for the reader (speaking for myself here). Thanks to all participants in the late evening discussion on religion and morality.
Yobbo, I agree with you in part regarding the revalidation of the ancient Germanic and Scandinavian cultures, their impact on political history and the general lack of knowledge regarding the brutality of their forced conversions to Christianity. I am in agreement with you too regarding the interpretation you put on Northern England and its Norse heritage; JC needs to read more about this as there is good evidence that the movement in of ‘northern men’ had been going on for centuries and the ‘newcomers’ to Northern Britian came welcomed to a culture not unlike their own. The old received wisdoms about this period are currently under review (especially by me). However regarding the following sentence:
I am currently developing a hobby thesis concerning ancient Scandinavian (and early Indo-European)religion and think you need to recognise that the statement above does not just refer to Christian beliefs. The ‘afterlife’ in various iterations was a concept throughout the ancient world prior to Christianity, and in Scandinavia the Odinic ideal pressured fight-to-the-death warriors to become part of an eternal Valhalla of fighting and reincarnation, via rebirth through the rituals of Odin.
JC is right in that we cannot examine ancient worlds except in their own terms. Avoiding relativism though, we can assess them, finally, in our own terms while recognising theirs. We have to do so if we have any morality at all (probably you agree).
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Jan 13 at 9:33 am
Of course Christianity was not the only religion that used the promise of the afterlife to motivate soldiers. It was just the one that had the most and best-equipped soldiers. And as I was arguing, THAT is the reason why we grew up in a Christian society – because of the military might of the Christian societies of Europe, not because the qualities of the teachings of Jesus won over the hearts and minds of the locals in their own right.
Christianity (and Islam) was spread by the sword throughout the world. Even (as in the case of the Saxons I spoke of earlier) in cases where the locals were already our friends, but that wasn’t enough. They had to be our Christian friends, or die.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 9:51 am
@ dover-beach
“The Catholic Church condemned slavery from the very beginning, and there were at least two African Pope’s before the fall of the Roman Empire, leaving aside the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that hailed from that continent.”
———————
You are right that the Church opposed slavery in theory. However, there were plenty of devout Catholic slave-owners in the US, especially in Catholic States such as Louisiana. That was less than 200 years ago.
Selective application of religious principles is a feature, not a bug, as the most cursory study of history demonstrates.
johanna
29 Jan 13 at 9:54 am
How does that tally up with the Hun/Mongol invasions where the “tolerant” barbarians would ethnic cleanse?
The more I read history from across the globe, the clearer it is that religion forms part of the process of civilising the invaders and protecting the storehouse of human knowledge.
Whether you read about the influence of Buddhism/Confucianism in China, Islam in the Middle East or Christianity you’ll see that the conquering invaders took on the religion as part of the process of becoming settled.
Token
29 Jan 13 at 10:17 am
I’m sorry but as a historian, the Hitch was a scrub.
.
29 Jan 13 at 10:53 am
I challenge you to point to a single instance of where a conquering Christian force took on the religion of the natives after settling. Just 1, ever.
I know the Mongols adopted Islam when they arrived in Turkey and whatnot. But they had no religion of their own beforehand. I consider that to be an exception to the general rule of how religion spread. The mongols were unique in many respects, not least in how they were able to create an Empire without any kind of organised religion backing it.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 11:01 am
What is the point of following that line of argument?
The point I am making is that in pre-industrial times when ideas did not flow easily and most people lived via subsistence, might made right and religion was never the only detirmining factor for people to invade their neighbours.
You are incorrect. That is a statement made from ignorance.
The people’s of the steppes had many religions formed after 1000′s of years interacting with the culture bordering the steppes.
That said, their tolerance was built from a pragmatic desire to create conquering armies and was very effective.
Read about the Huns.
In summary, this revisionist view of history that a blames violence on religion is based upon a mountain load of fallacies.
We would not have the works of Plato & the other Greek masters without the civilising influence of religion (both Christian & Muslim).
Token
29 Jan 13 at 11:13 am
And yet the worst murderers in human history were the atheist zealots of the twentieth century. Atheists had their experiment. They failed. Never again.
C.L.
29 Jan 13 at 11:14 am
It’s so obvious I shouldn’t even bring it up but the way to go is politically secular and privately metaphysical.
.
29 Jan 13 at 11:20 am
“And yet the worst murderers in human history were the atheist zealots of the twentieth century.”
How much of that was a function of it being the 20th century?
Jarrah
29 Jan 13 at 11:26 am
You mean like the famous Catholic Adolf Hitler?
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 11:30 am
“In summary, this revisionist view of history that a blames violence on religion is based upon a mountain load of fallacies.”
Ummm, obviously some violence was and is based on religious impulses. If you merely mean that we have a tendency to violence and religion is one of the many things that lead to the expression of that tendency then fine. But I don’t think you’d get very far trying to claim that religion does not lead to violence.
“We would not have the works of Plato & the other Greek masters without the civilising influence of religion (both Christian & Muslim).”
I suppose it’s mean to point out that plato and many other greek masters preceded both christianity and islam. If you want to say that much of the great art in the world is inspired by religion then fine. If you want to say that there would be no great art without religion then I think that’s a bit silly.
Pedro
29 Jan 13 at 11:32 am
I’m not blaming all violence on religion, although it has certainly been guilty of it on a regular basis.
What I am arguing against is the concept that Christianity gives us morality, and that is the reason Christianity is popular.
Both these are wrong.
1. Christianity did not give us morality. We gave our already existing human reality to Christianity, and all other religions.
2. Christianity is so popular because it was the religion of the mightiest military empire in the history of the world, and the religion itself demands (or at least did demand) that its followers spread it everywhere possible, by force if necessary. Which is exactly what they did, with horrifically bloody consequences to anyone unlucky enough to be in the way.
Of course there has been plenty of violence and misery caused by all kinds of different things. Not just religion.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 11:37 am
I think he’s saying that Christians and/or Muslims somewhere kept these works safe in a library somewhere so we can still enjoy them now. And it was because Jesus told them to, because nobody would have come up with the idea to save a priceless and rare work of art unless god told them to.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 11:40 am
Yobbo
It seems to me that when people stop believing in god etc, they invariably end up believing in something else. Love of the State is one example and other crap such as having an obsession with nature like the ‘vironmentals.
It appears to me that religion is a better deal than than these two examples.
Look at someone like Harry for instance. The fucking guy is going around suggesting people ought to paint their roofs white to reflect back the sun into space so as to help against global warming. He was worried about fucking cow farts and supports taxes to get the riff raff of the roads and into public transport.
Now tell me, would Harry be better off spending an hour in his old Presbyterian church or believing that swill?
Be honest now.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 11:48 am
Yep, like other people around that time were basically the early hippies living on communes.
I keep fucking telling you to stop looking at the old world through a modern day prism.
And by the way, it was an absolute tragedy that the Roman Empire fell. It led to the slaughter of millions of people and changed the course of the world for the worst, not better. A reformed empire would have been terrific for the world.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 11:52 am
LOL yobbo, yes, looking back I see I was being unfair.
It’s interesting to think how particular religions take hold. I expect that the world has been full of possible Jesus’s and Mohammeds and odds are that a couple will translate the smallish success of a David Koresh or Joseph Smith into something really big.
Pedro
29 Jan 13 at 11:53 am
And Yobbo
If you have a problem with the first early parts of the bible, take it up with Rabbi Rabz. It’s his problem.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 11:55 am
Horseshit. Most people I grew up around don’t believe in god, don’t have any particularly strong political views at all, and mostly just get on with their jobs and enjoying their lives with their families.
In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller:
We may have once needed religion to understand the world. The world would have been pretty frightening to someone with no explanation at all of how it worked.
Now we have science. Goodbye, superstition.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:03 pm
JC once you understand Yobbo ascribes to the Church of Satan doctrine then it’s easy to understand his perspective on religion. (That and a solid 36 hours of watching Hitchens). “Satanism begins with atheism. We begin with the universe and say, ‘It’s indifferent. There’s no God, there’s no Devil. No one cares!’ So looking at religion through those eyes, I can understand why Yobbo detests religion, and why he considers people with faith as whackos. It all makes sense.
Gab
29 Jan 13 at 12:03 pm
It’s not just the early parts. Pretty much the only part of the bible that aren’t completely offensive and immoral are the parts of Genesis that spend about 100 pages naming all of Adam and Abraham’s descendants in order.
Funnily enough, this is one of the most controversial passages for theologians, as they have to make up lies to square these genealogies with actual historical facts.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:08 pm
So anecdotal evidence proves the point, yea?
Especially when Aussie Yen is going higher.
WTF? You really think we’ve reached the end of history?
You mean like Climate science, right, which is basically a religion with its own popes and bishops and has gone some way to absolutely destroying the basic principles of science and the scientific method through fraud and lies.
What science is Tim Flannery, Happy Hamilton, Doc Pach the porn novelist or James Hanson offering eggsactly?
Here’s a deal for you. Take the present Statist, secular France. I would take Catholic France any fucking day of the week than the corrupt statist fucking mess there is now.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:14 pm
The Church of Satan is basically an egotistical version of atheist libertarianism. So it’s a fair cop to say that I subscribe to most of their beliefs.
The one I am a bit edgy about is that the Church Of Satan suggests that a good way to alleviate human misery is to develop intelligent, human-like robots to serve as slaves (presumably both for labour and sex), so nobody would ever feel the need to enslave an actual human ever again.
As a science fiction fan, I can’t see how this would end up working out in a good way.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:22 pm
basically an egotistical version of atheist libertarianism The Church of Satan belief is based on no suppression of human desire and human nature, so anything goes really. Religion is the antithesis then.
Gab
29 Jan 13 at 12:26 pm
Climate Science is real science, although there are a lot of people taking stabs at it who aren’t real scientists. Real scientists create models which allow for predictions which can be tested. So far all the doomsday predictions that I know about have failed. A real scientist, faced with the failure of their predictions, would declare a failed hypothesis and start again. They seem a bit loathe to do that, so in that way, many proponents of “climate science” are working just like a religion, trying to fit the model to get the result they want to be true.
It could use some improvement.
OTOH, when superstition wants to predict the weather, they throw virgins into volcanoes.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:27 pm
Yes, it was a tragedy, but it was quite a while in the falling, from the third century onwards certainly, slowly. The Dark Ages were truly dark. Rome failed because it failed to move on much from human energy, thus slavery, and it failed to condemn brutalities. Christianity offered a moral purpose.
Christianity gave hope to enslaved populations. It became routinised (in Max Weber’s concept), thus being incorporated into the structures of power, which allowed increasing populations of believers to be controlled and also to be expanded. Constantine 1 led the way. In this process, by 381ad the Emperor Theodosius and the Archbishop Ambrose of Milan, reconciling after a big spat, precipitated a conversion process that encouraged destruction of all old written knowledge, the end of Greek-style insitutions of learning, and a raging Islamist-style set of pogroms led by rabid fundamentalist Christian monks – as depicted in the movie Agora about the destruction of Alexandrian learning.
Paradoxically, traditional learning in the early dark ages was kept alive by Irish monks on the periphery of the old Empire, with more respect for ancient texts than was apparent in Rome or Constantinople. The Arabic scholarly world was tolerant of ancient texts, a contrast to today’s rigidities.
We could have lost all of it, which doesn’t bear thinking on. Christianity has much to answer for, as well as having made an extraordinary and ultimately civilising contribution to the West, much assisted by these lost learnings.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Jan 13 at 12:28 pm
False. The Church Of Satan specifically prohibits any action that would harm an innocent person. No matter how much you desire it, the Church of Satan would never condone rape, murder, assault, or even annoying people. It prohibits killing of animals for pleasure, saying that the only justifiable reason to kill an animal is for food or self-defense.
In fact the first Satanic Rule Of The Earth is “Don’t give your opinion unless you’re asked”. It also prohibits whining. So I guess I wouldn’t make a very good Satanist after all.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:33 pm
“You mean like Climate science, right, which is basically a religion with its own popes and bishops and has gone some way to absolutely destroying the basic principles of science and the scientific method through fraud and lies.”
For all the farago of lies, there is at least some evidence. Even Flannery’s predictions are more likely to be true than the existence of god.
“it was an absolute tragedy that the Roman Empire fell”
Not for you!
Pedro
29 Jan 13 at 12:38 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Satan
Gab
29 Jan 13 at 12:39 pm
Are you fucking kidding me. The entire apparatus of this crap area of ‘science” is corrupt. There is very little you could save and the top echelons are basically charlatans.
thanks for explaining it to me as I never knew.
What you actually mean to say is that the top body of climate science has failed, as embodied by the IPCC. This isn’t a joke by the way. This state based multinational religion has cost us fucking trillions around the world, possibly wrecked the European economy and now about to do the same to ours like a metastasizing cancer. But you’re fine with this because it’s adherents don’t spend an hour on Sunday worshiping a God.
They can’t because the operating schtick doesn’t allow for it as the state based mullah would run out. It has to keep up the bullshit like a ponzi scheme.
No fucking kidding.
Don’t exaggerate.
Which? Not witch. Which are? Who was the last Christian virgin sent down a volcano hole to help predict the weather?
In any event the pope of climate science, James Hansen wants to send fossil fuel executives to jail or execute them. Hindu, Doc Pach the porn novelist, wants people to eat less meat because it would cause less emissions. Nothing to do with mixing his evil Hindu religious beliefs there, right?
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:44 pm
Theoretically that must mean that satanists never have sex. What a bunch of wowsers, Yobbo.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:46 pm
Pedro
You realize how stupid this sounds especially when you’re trying to get that bald moron out of a hole he’s dug for hismelf.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:48 pm
Anyways… enough of this stuff. I’m calling it quits.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 12:49 pm
I don’t think he is JC. I think he’s just saying that there is a lot more evidence for Anthropogenic Climate Change than there is for god. And I couldn’t agree more.
As little evidence as Flannery might have at his disposal, he’s presented more evidence for Global Warming in the last 3 years than the entire world’s population of Christians has presented for god in 2000 years.
Not that it really matters anyway. We will have been driven extinct by religious war with WMDs long before global warming ever becomes too much of a problem.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 12:53 pm
“You realize how stupid this sounds especially when you’re trying to get that bald moron out of a hole he’s dug for hismelf.”
I’m not trying to get him out of a hole. The guy is a charlatan and sponger. And generally I have no more regard for the AGW industry than you. But yobbo nails it.
Pedro
29 Jan 13 at 1:09 pm
+1 for that rule.
.
29 Jan 13 at 1:29 pm
It’s so obvious I shouldn’t even bring it up but the way to go is politically secular and privately metaphysical.
Yeah to that brother. Currently reading: Losing my Religion: Unbelief in Australia. Tom Frame, Anglican Minister. He states Australia is one of the most secular countries in the world, that religion is declining, that Aussies aren’t so much opposed to religion as indifferent.
There is room to speculate but let’s be clear, it is just that. A number of books I read last year really shook up my understanding of the origins of morality. It is not unique to us and morality does exist in other animals, even altruism. I don’t know how this will pan out and I won’t live long enough to see that but there are indications that what is emerging now is a picture of morality that doesn’t need to resort to some higher purpose. Completely contrary to what the likes or O’Reilly and Coulter have asserted when the claim that the widespread acceptance of evolution will result in moral degradation. After all Australia is one of the most secular countries in the world and we’re a rather peaceful bunch.
John H.
29 Jan 13 at 1:41 pm
You mean like the non-acceptance on the left where it’s thought that human evolution stops at the neck and that a Japanese sprinter has an equal chance of winning the next 100 meter Olympics.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 1:45 pm
No he doesn’t. He’s hit his thumb instead of the nail. Over the period that the climate religion has been on front stage, count the waste and cost. Compare that to how much Christianity has cost us over the same period.
No estimate how much glimate science would cost us over the same period that Christianity has been around.
The bald idiot, Flannery, alone has possibly cost us billions.
JC
29 Jan 13 at 2:42 pm
Let’s accept that as a fact JC. I didn’t say AGW is better than the RCC or whatever, I only said there is more evidence for the AGW claims. It’s not a high bar to jump because there is no evidence for the existence of god. You can say that the RCC is a great institution and does wonderful things, but you can’t avoid the fact that the central mission of the RCC is the saving of souls and promotion of god’s message. (I’m not picking on the RCC BTW).
When Flannery’s nonsense is better evidenced than the nicene creed, that’s all we’re saying.
Pedro
29 Jan 13 at 3:25 pm
Yobbo, I never said anything specifically about Hinduism or Confucianism. Fisky referred to India and China and I referred to past practices within those societies. In response, I mentioned that the former practiced sati and the other infanticide even while they had laws against murder. And you’ve now characterized what were then widespread morally accepted practices as simply “people were sometimes killed in those societies”.
Johanna, yes, and the Church was repeatedly making statements that should have but failed to shame these same people. Human, all-too-human. They remind me of Biden and Pelosi.
John H, materialism will fade into eliminative materialism of the Rosenberg variety. Reason itself will be thrown under the bus.
How do you know altruism is moral?
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 3:47 pm
As I suggested above: Three prima facie evidences of God’s existence: change (First Way); causality (Second Way); and the order of the universe (Fifth Way).
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 3:55 pm
John H, materialism will fade into eliminative materialism of the Rosenberg variety. Reason itself will be thrown under the bus.
We discussed that years ago DB. We both agreed materialism is dead.
How do you know altruism is moral?
I have no idea what you mean by that.
John H.
29 Jan 13 at 4:01 pm
Then there are a few zombies in this here thread. Given my memory, we may have discussed this as well.
Just that looking at the behaviour of non-human animals to identify rudimentary moral behaviour presupposes that we objectively know what this consists of. That’s all.
dover_beach
29 Jan 13 at 4:12 pm
Yes, and his compatriot, the seminarian Josef Stalin. Two men who understood the potential of the religious imperative. Atheists both, fueled by the worship of millions.
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 4:23 pm
Just that looking at the behaviour of non-human animals to identify rudimentary moral behaviour presupposes that we objectively know what this consists of. That’s all.
Yes, that is a problem. It is also a problem with humans. Some experiments by Gazzaniga and Sperry raise some troubling questions about the explanations we provide for our behavior. But like I previously stated DB, I’ll wait and see how this pans out. Speculating about the causes of behavior is dangerous in my view, even in relation to humans. That speculation can go on forever with no clear resolution. But I see no intrinsic reason why we should reject the idea that animals can be moral. The work of Frans de Waal and others certainly suggests morality is in play. If you replaced the animals with humans we would label the observed behavior moral.
I think there is a lot of zombie in all of us. With regard to that issue though the problem I have is that if the world we experience is illusory then by golly it is a damned useful illusion!
John H.
29 Jan 13 at 4:44 pm
This quote taken from Chris Berg is stupid, what planet does he live on? The rest of his article is good but to say something so stupid could lead some readers to ignore his good points.
kelly liddle
29 Jan 13 at 5:02 pm
It’s much worse than that. The Left also believe there are no biological or cognitive differences between the sexes and that evolution “stopped” about 100,000 years ago. Somewhat contradictorily, they believe that homosexuality is genetic! If you doubt anything I have written, then you should stand up in front of a 100% Leftist audience and argue for biological differences between the sexes and watch the reaction. Even if the beta males aren’t quite on board, they’ll soon be whipped into line by the nasty hens that decide party doctrine.
The Left are far worse than biblical creationists.
Fisky
29 Jan 13 at 6:03 pm
The beta males of the Left are like male hyenas. Smaller than the females, congenitally ugly and puny, and shit scared that if they say the wrong thing they won’t get a root.
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 6:08 pm
Spot on Fisk..
JC
29 Jan 13 at 6:08 pm
Or bashed up (bitten)
JC
29 Jan 13 at 6:09 pm
I suspect after these beta males are shagged to a desiccated husk by their hairier doxies, the females bite their heads off, like bib and brace wearing Preying Mantises.
Abu Chowdah
29 Jan 13 at 6:18 pm
Then who is the elephant ?
( Only 156 seconds )
jumpnmcar
29 Jan 13 at 7:22 pm
You’re right, that is a contradiction. It’s not what all leftists believe though.
It’s fair to say Dawkins is a leftist. He is also one of the world’s most foremost writers on Genetics. He believes there is a gay gene, but would find the first 2 points ridiculous.
Dawkins discusses how a gay gene might have been propogated in this video.
Yobbo
29 Jan 13 at 10:49 pm