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Thales
Guest
It is equally baseless to say they do. Neither side can claim to know for sure either way. You can’t even prove definativly that you exist as matter and that existence is all not just a dream.
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Oreoracle
Guest
And thus ends the thread in a Descartes’-ish finale. Can the thread resume with a consensus of the debators that perceived things exist? If not, there’s not much point in continuing…
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Thales
Guest
Sorry about that
I think we can continue on and assume perceived things exist, as long as we’re not stretching it to assume only perceived things exist.
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Leela
Guest
I am always amazed by the lengths people will go to try to explain the horrors on the Bible.
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Thales
Guest
Is this the extent of your exegesis?
It amazes me that people just pick and choose pieces out of a text that sound bad, and speak definatively about them.
Why don’t you try explaining to me why you think my interpretaions of the text are wrong, instead of insinuating dramatic statements.
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Leela
Guest
Because I don’t think there is any way for me to argue the issue. If you are willing to go so far as to argue that that the passage I quoted where God commands discrimination against the blind, lame, deformed, etc and calls the presence of such “defectives” as desecration of his temple is not really discrimination and not really about morality but about sanitation, then all I can do is be awed by the way morality goes out the window when the Bible comes up.
It reminds me of a study by an Israeli psychologist named George Tamarin cited in Dawkin’s God Delusion:
Tamarin presented to more than a thousand Israeli school children, aged between eight and fourteen, the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua:
Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. . . But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.’. . . Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword. . . And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
Tamarin then asked the children a simple moral question: ‘Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?’ They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 percent gave total approval and 26 percent total disapproval, with rather fewer (8 percent) in the middle with partial approval. Here are three typical answers from the total approval (A) group:
In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.
In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.
Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.
The justification for the genocidal massacre by Joshua is religious in every case. Even those in category C, who gave total disapproval, did so, in some cases, for backhanded religious reasons. One girl, for example, disapproved of Joshua’s conquering Jericho because, in order to do so, he had to enter it:
I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.
Two others who totally disapproved did so because Joshua destroyed everything, including animals and property, instead of keeping some as spoil for Israelites:
I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.
I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.
Once again the sage Maimonides, often cited for his scholarly wisdom, is in no doubt where he stands on this issue: ‘It is a positive commandment to destroy the seven nations, as it is said: Thou shalt utterly destroy them. If one does not put to death any of them that falls into one’s power, one transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said: Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.’
Unlike Maimonides, the children in Tamarin’s experiment were young enough to be innocent. Presumably the savage views they expressed were those of their parents or the cultural group in which they were brought up. It is, I suppose, not unlikely that Palestinian children, brought up in the same war-torn country, would offer equivalent opinions in the opposite direction. These considerations fill me with despair. They seem to show the immense power of religion, and especially the religious upbringing of children, to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas. I cannot help remarking that two out of Tamarin’s three quotations from group A mentioned the evils of assimilation, while the third one stressed the importance of killing people in order to stamp out their religion.
Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua, but with Joshua’s own name replaced by ‘General Lin’ and ‘Israel’ replaced by ‘a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago’. Now the experiment gave opposite results. Only 7 per cent approved of General Lin’s behavior, and 75 percent disapproved. In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation, the majority of the children agreed with the moral judgments that most modern humans would share. Joshua’s action was a deed of barbaric genocide. But it all looks different from a religious point of view. And the difference starts early in life. It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it.
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Thales
Guest
Just a quick request. I know you pulled this right from Dawkin’s book but does he have any reference for the Maimonides quote? I’d like to see the source for a better context.
Thanks
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Leela
Guest
It looks like Laws of Kings and Their Wars 5:4
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Thales
Guest
How do you reconcile that the “defectives” can retain the priestly status and do most things any other preist can do except a few certain things? It doesn’t say to kill these people or to make fun of them, to ridicule them, or anything like that. Those who aren’t of the priestly class (sons of Aaron) can’t approach the veil either. Is this discrimination as well? Again, this is not a moral code or law. This is a situational rule.
I would like to hear your explanation of the passage. Do you think it is just meaningless nonsense?
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Thales
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I’ll agree there are some problems here. History is full of people who, in the quest for power, do great evil. One of the greatest is using the Lord’s name in vain. Some people seek power over others for self gain, riches, pleasure, ego, etc. Some think they know what’s best for others and need power to impose their will. None of these ventures usually end well for the masses. This is why our Lord, Jesus Christ, teaches us of humility being one of the highest virtues, to protect against desires for power. It’s not uncommon for people to invoke God, or use a religious text to gain the approval of the people. They attempt to use God to manipulate the masses for their own agenda. This is the meaning of the 2nd Commandment. Nothing does greater damage to religion than those who vainly use God’s name and religion to manipulate people to their will. Individuals of all faiths and no faith have done this and I’m sure there is a right place in Hell for them all. This is the cause of many past wars, slapped with the “religious war” label, when in truth they were about territory, resources, or power hungry leaders. This is a problem in the Middle East today, on both sides.
Another point directly concerning Dawkin’s argument is the difficulty in dealing with stories from history, especially those of ancient biblical history like the fall of Jericho. What I can say is, the Jews had many specific rules and laws when it came to doing almost anything and some laws depended on specific circumstances. Their guidelines for war were divided into two categories, obligatory war and voluntary war. Obligatory war only applied to 7 specific groups or tribes of people, the inhabitants of Jericho being one of them. This type of warfare dictated the total destruction describe in the biblical passage. Voluntary war was much different and could only be pursued on the “biblically grounded obligation to sue for peace prior to making war.” (“War and Reason in Maimonodes and Averroes”, Noah Feldman) Fortunately the 7 tribes, the ones the Jews had a mandate to war against in this brutal manner, no longer exist. Along with them the obligatory war doctrine also does not exist. All wars must abide by the voluntary war guidelines which, quickly glossing over, do not seem that different from modern armies codes of war.
I can’t disagree that this manner of war was brutal. I don’t know why God insisted on it being carried out that way and I’m not going to pretend to know. Even still, we see that it was a situational thing not to be taken as some kind of standard or law like the Ten Commandments. It is also clear from later in the text that God punishes the Jews for unecessary brutality against an enemy. For our consideration in this thread, the morality that has decended from the Jews is not reflected in this passage. The Jews do not practice this kind of total war today and I doubt it is from some atheistic enlightenment.
I hope if a Jewish child has questions about this passage or a teacher makes a lesson about it they tell them this is not the practice of the Jews today. It was from a time long ago in special circumstances that cannot occur again.
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Thales
Guest
I think this control group portion of the study is flat out bogus and unfair. If you were a Jew in the holocaust or let’s say a person from China during the Japanese occupation during WWII and the Japanese invaded your homeland, killed your family, and terrorized your village, don’t you think you would have a slight bit more emotional reaction to the invaders, the one’s immediately threatening you? Wouldn’t you hold more contempt for them than some far removed people? Ask the Chinese man if he would like to wipe out the invaders in brutal fashion. No wait; ask their children, living in fear, who probably haven’t learned to fully control their emotions and give reasoned, thought through reactions to such a tumultuous situation. It has no reflection on religion specifically, as much as it does with loyalty to what you are familiar with, be it country, religion, or family and dislike for the enemies in front of your face. Vengeance may not be a right attitude, but it’s natural, and not fair to judge children and their religion, for disproportioned feelings.
Overall, I think the problems you’re having with certain biblical texts belong in a different thread. There is a scripture forum where you can post your concerns about specific passages.
The OP asks; if there is no afterlife, which I think we can assume means no transcendent God, why would man act morally? So, the atheists taking part in this discussion, please tell us where you learned your morals? Why do you act morally? What basis do you have to tell others to behave similarly? Do you think your morality is right where it might differ with someone else’s? Why?
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