Without God are not morals relative?

[KarenNC]

The moral philosophy of the Greeks …

Understand that for the Greeks, morals were the province of the philosophers, not religion. There is no concept of imitatio dei in Hellenic thought as there is in Christian. The vast majority of the stories involving the Gods interacting with humans are best read as cautionary tales against hubris. One of the Delphic maxims is “Know thyself.” Know that you are human and not Gods, know your place in the order of the cosmos. Humans are humans and Gods are Gods, Gods are not bound to human considerations of behavior and humans are not to use the behavior of the Gods in the sacred stories as a pattern card for their own behavior.

Also, the sacred stories of the Greeks should be read with the same understanding as to the levels of meaning and intent as the sacred stories of any other religion, including Christianity. For the Greeks, these are not revealed Scripture. They are poetic forms of expression, human attempts to describe interactions with and understandings of their experiences with the Divine. They are not and were not considered inerrant or unchanging.

Slavery existed throughout the world at the period and still existed in the Christian West until the mid 19th century. It was wrong in all the cultures in which it was practiced.

I would be interested in your sources on child marriage. The information I have seen lists the usual age of the girl to be about 15. Aristotle suggested the best age was at least 18
classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.7.seven.html
“The union of male and female when too young is bad for the procreation of children; in all other animals the offspring of the young are small and in-developed, and with a tendency to produce female children, and therefore also in man, as is proved by the fact that in those cities in which men and women are accustomed to marry young, the people are small and weak; in childbirth also younger women suffer more, and more of them die; some persons say that this was the meaning of the response once given to the Troezenians- the oracle really meant that many died because they married too young; it had nothing to do with the ingathering of the harvest. It also conduces to temperance not to marry too soon; for women who marry early are apt to be wanton; and in men too the bodily frame is stunted if they marry while the seed is growing (for there is a time when the growth of the seed, also, ceases, or continues to but a slight extent). Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.”

I would also be interested to see your sources on the use of temple prostitutes as young as five. You might find the following article interesting on the subject of sacred prostitution. biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_ephesus_baugh.html
It is an article from the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, by S. M. Baugh, associate professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, hardly someone who would be considered an apologist for Greek religion.
His conclusion?
"Despite the received opinion to the contrary, I do not believe that cult prostitution was practiced in Greek (and Roman) regions of the NT era. The evidence thought to support this institution in the cities of Corinth and Ephesus was found wanting in our brief survey of Strabo and a few other authors. Finally, we looked at some of the positive evidence from Ephesus to show that the priestesses of Artemis - wrongly thought by many today to be a fertility or mother goddess - were no more than daughters of noble families, whose terms of office involved them in the honorary public roles and the financial obligations which typified priestly offices in Greek state cults. A priestess of Artemis compares better with a Rose Bowl queen or with Miss Teen America than with a cult prostitute. Indeed, there are some hints in the literature (e.g. Xenophon of Ephesus) that the girl-priestesses may have been chosen because they best resembled the chaste maiden-goddess.

Hopefully Ephesian cult prostitutes will soon disappear from our literature and from our pulpits, for these chimera exist only in the minds of people today, not in the past. This is particularly desirable, since the issue has moved beyond the realm of purely historical accuracy into that of ecclesiastical controversies over women’s ordination; indeed, the false notion of Ephesian cult prostitutes is a central prop for a radical reinterpretation of 1 Tim 2:9–15 which must now be given serious reexamination."

Pederasty did exist as a rite of passage. It was not something that I consider admirable, but neither do I find the behavior of the great men of the Bible to always be admirable.

For information on the morals of the Hellenic world, you need to look to the philosophers.

 

[rossum]

Are there materialist Buddhists? I know that Buddhism as a religion does not require that one believe in, “God” (at least not according to the western conception), but does it require some level of belief in spiritual realties? I know you’ve already answered me saying that Buddhism is not materialism, but I’m just a bit curious as to how far one can go, or believe (or not believe) and still be, “Buddhist.”

Buddhism is a Path, a series of techniques that have been found to work. The goal of the Path is peace, happiness and nirvana. Nirvana is not something that happens after you die, the Buddha attained nirvana aged 35, he died aged 80. For 45 years he was alive in the world and at the same time in nirvana.

To start on the Path you need to have some level of faith that the Path is worthwhile following. The Path delivers the initial results that it promises. One of the common things that Buddhists say when asked why they are Buddhists is “Buddhism works.” On that level Buddhism is very materialistic - it asks to be judged by its results.

If your library has a copy of “Buddhism Without Beliefs” by Stephen Batchelor you might be interested to have a look at it. It is an attempt to remove almost all of the “religious” elements from Buddhism. An interesting book, if not completely successful. There is a review here from a more traditional Theravada Buddhist standpoint. As with Christianity, Buddhism has an internal debate as to how to engage with the Western secular world, and as with Christianity many different solutions are proposed.

rossum

 

[Greg27]

The moral philosophy of the Greeks often left room for massive slavery, child marriage, pederasty as a rite of passage and temple prostitution involving children as young as five. The religion of Hellenic Greece posited many competing, feuding, pranking gods. The customs and laws at least partly reflected those legends and the lessons they taught in cruelty. Reason didn’t have the power to alter many people’s hearts.

Yet at the same time St Thomas based a lot of his philosophy, particularly his accounts of the virtues, on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and St Augustine clearly says that the Platonists are clearest to his own mode of thinking. The dogmatic formulation of the Trinity by the Council of Nicea, which is the centrepiece of the mainline Church’s creeds, would have been impossible without Greek metaphysics, and many of the arguments of the Church Fathers, East and West, were framed using Greek and Hellenistic Philosophy and Philosophical Theology, as well as ideas adapted from the Jewish exegete and Philosopher Philo. Christianity as we understand it today would not have been possible without the early Church extensively using Greek philosophy, philosophical theology, literature, and thought.

Turning this around, Christianity for centuries accepted slavery (at a number of times in the New Testament Paul and other writers urge slaves to obey their masters) and it is hard not to say the God of the O.T. is also not capricious and like a tribal deity at times, if one reads the Bible very literally. Many have used the Bible, especially the O.T., to justify acts of cruelty or injustice we would now regard as barbaric. Your example does not in my view establish the superiority of Christian ethics over those of the Greeks.

 

[strngrnrth]

Karen NC, I no longer have access to the materials I was using on Greek child marriage and temple prostitution, but I suppose I could find more sources. But maybe someone with more free time would like to take the challenge first. If not, I’ll get to it when I can. I was once a pagan and quite the Hellenophile, but these are a few of the things that disillusioned me. Just a few. It took a lot more bring-downs than that to turn me off to paganism, many from my own life experience, but when I read scholars’ views of cruelty in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as other widely-admired cultures, I felt shocked and sick at heart.
When we speak of girls of 15, of course, nowadays in the rich world even most poor girls are somewhere near sexual maturity then. (There is a big difference between puberty and maturity). But in the ancient world, the poor took a long time to recover from early childhood malnutrition, especially girls. Not to mention the emotional and intellectual stunting that may accompany a restricted early life. I think that for many even now, 15 is part of childhood, and probably more so then. But I referrred to sources that suggested a girl could be forced into engagement as early as seven.
I will try to look these things up sometime and start a thread if no one else does.

 

[KarenNC]

When we speak of girls of 15, of course, nowadays in the rich world even most poor girls are somewhere near sexual maturity then. (There is a big difference between puberty and maturity). But in the ancient world, the poor took a long time to recover from early childhood malnutrition, especially girls. Not to mention the emotional and intellectual stunting that may accompany a restricted early life. I think that for many even now, 15 is part of childhood, and probably more so then. But I referrred to sources that suggested a girl could be forced into engagement as early as seven.
I will try to look these things up sometime and start a thread if no one else does.

One cannot apply modern standards to ancient societies. The entire idea of a teenager still being a child is a very modern one. For the vast majority of history, teenagers were expected and required to take on adult responsibilities.

Betrothal and/or marriage of a girl upon hitting puberty was and is hardly limited to either the ancient world or to the Greeks. Shall we look at what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about it? Bear in mind this was published in 1907, so we are not talking ancient history.

newadvent.org/cathen/09691b.htm
“By the common law [note that this is English common law–Karen] the age at which minors were capable of marrying, known as the age of consent, was fixed at fourteen years for males and twelve years for females. Marriages under the age of seven years for both were void, but between seven and the age of consent the parties could contract an imperfect marriage, which was voidable but not necessarily void. The marriage of parties who had attained the age of consent was valid even though they lacked parental consent, until in England the marriage act of 1753 declared such marriages void.”

newadvent.org/cathen/01206c.htm
Betrothals [sponsalia] require seven full years in the contracting parties. The marriageable age is fourteen full years in males and twelve full years in females, under penalty of nullity (unless natural puberty supplies the want of years). Marriages void because of the absence of legal or natural puberty are held as sponsalia, inducing thereby impediment of “public decorum” (Cap. 14, tit. de despon. impub., X, 4, 2). Civil codes generally require a more advanced age than the canonical. Dispensations, however, as to the required ages are expressly granted by France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Roumania, and Russia.

Or in ancient Israel
theology.edu/marriage.htm
“The wife was to be taken from within the larger family circle (usually at the outset of puberty or around the age of 13) in order to maintain the purity of the family line;”

Shall we look at the age of Mary in the tradition of the Church?
newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm
"When she was fourteen, the high priest wished to send her home for marriage. Mary reminded him of her vow of virginity, and in his embarrassment the high priest consulted the Lord. Then he called all the young men of the family of David, and promised Mary in marriage to him whose rod should sprout and become the resting place of the Holy Ghost in form of a dove. It was Joseph who was privileged in this extraordinary way. …

Jewish maidens were considered marriageable at the age of twelve years and six months, though the actual age of the bride varied with circumstances. The marriage was preceded by the betrothal, after which the bride legally belonged to the bridegroom, though she did not live with him till about a year later, when the marriage used to be celebrated. "

So we are looking at a an age of between 14 and 16 for Mary at the time of her betrothal and the birth of Jesus, per tradition.

 

[KarenNC]

I was once a pagan and quite the Hellenophile, but these are a few of the things that disillusioned me. Just a few. It took a lot more bring-downs than that to turn me off to paganism, many from my own life experience, but when I read scholars’ views of cruelty in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as other widely-admired cultures, I felt shocked and sick at heart.

It can be very disillusioning to realize that something that has been held up as utopian actually was not so very different after all. Humans are humans and have been all along. All of them are capable of great and wonderful things, but also of base and terrible things, individually and corporately.

By modern Western standards, none of the ancient world was a great place to live. Neither was medieval Europe, colonial America, the 19th century, etc. It is most useful to examine ideas and actions within the context of the societies of the time. Doesn’t make things like slavery or pederasty something that modern society should emulate, but it gives a more realistic picture of it and how it was viewed within that time period.

 

[RobNY]

Thanks again for the post, rossum. God bless.

-Rob