Why Christianity?

Arts & Sciences Religion & Spirituality
21

I don’t think so … my point was that, in a universe driven only by physics, with no higher meaning or purpose, then even ‘innate’ moral codes are nothing more than a mechanistic expression of evolutionary programming. It’s neither here nor there if we choose (and what is ‘choice’ in that context?) to violate those codes.[/quote]

But people in general don’t act this way, even if they believe in a universe driven only by physics. Speaking for myself, it’s against my morality to act in such ways. When people DO act this way, their beliefs don’t seem to be a factor, as far as I know.

I’m not sure why you reach this conclusion. There seem to me to be a number of possible explanations as to why humans are moral. It seems to me to be a circular argument you’re making here. “There must be a God because he made us moral, otherwise we wouldn’t act like God wanted.”

I agree with AB–it’s not difficult at all :slight_smile: For me beliefs are based on facts as best as I can perceive them, and not what I would prefer to be true, or what is fearsome.

And which have been strikingly amoral by current standards for most of the long run of that heritage.

As has been said below, where?

People survive. I believe that Urodacus makes a good point, that morality becomes possible when people are no longer engaged in a daily struggle for basic survival.

I can’t say I agree. First four have the pure ring of straight-up human jealousy to me. It’s even explicitly said–“for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God”. Last six are a good code, but could have been written by anyone with just a little thought.

I’m sticking with my original criticism of your argument here. To clarify, strong Atheism does not imply that nothing matters, because life in itself matters–a moral concept. “Humanism” does not imply humanity as a deity, but refers to the value of human life in its own right.

22

Yes, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

23

[quote=“urodacus”]OTOH, it can be argued that societies like Islamic State and the Taliban are also extremely moral, just that their moral code is different to ours in the “civilised” West.

But that still predicates an innate morality, or at least the capacity for brains to hold a set of values that can be called moral, even though that definition may vary from culture to culture, place to place, and time to time.[/quote]

That’s close to what I was trying to say. I think we have innate meta-morality: the ability to create moral codes, but not a compulsion to do so, nor any hard-coded rules. Jesus explicitly told us to do this and gave us a framework to create a conscience upon. Atheists can decide to do so, but have to create the framework themselves. That’s why I assert that ‘weak’ atheism is indistinguishable from humanism, and may be influenced by Judeo-Christian tradition.

Certainly. But that’s why I suggest (a) most atheists don’t appreciate (or consciously reject) the logical implications of their beliefs and (b) humans are good at holding inconsistent opinions.

It occurred to me the other day that modern rationalism is too obsessed with causality. We see X correlate with Y and then obsess over whether X causes Y, or vice versa. We seem unable to accept that some things just occur together and reinforce each other. I suggest that dysfunctional or missing moral codes result in a struggle for survival, which in turn prevents the construction of a moral code. That’s where religion becomes useful: it’s an external force that drives the creation of moral codes in the absence of any other reason to do so.

They do, don’t they? Nearly half of the Decalogue is banging on about respect for God. Why? IMO, it’s because that embodies the theme of the Code. Jesus explicitly restated that theme as:

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

If you conceive of God as the Creator and architect of the universe, then you will express your respect for him as respect for his creation (including, we assume, other humans). That goes an awful long way towards making the world a nice place to live in. The ‘jealousy’ aspect is fascinating because it suggests that there are other gods. I believe God warned us away from them because history (and contemporary experience) suggests that societies that worship those other gods usually fail in miserable, bestial ways. Idols are an interesting case because idols become what they are expected to be. A hand-made statue of a god that demands human sacrifices becomes every bit as real and god-like as a supernatural entity.

And yet for several thousand years, they weren’t.

The Jewish Law in Numbers, Leviticus, etc - which is obviously contemporary with the Decalogue - is notable for its immorality. It’s inconceivable that the same minds created both sets of laws.

Why does life matter? There’s no natural reason why it should. Life, in the context of Atheism, is just a complex collection of molecules resulting from millions of years of stochastic processes.

Life matters to you simply because you’ve decided that it does - perhaps because you’ve been influenced by the society you grew up in.

From direct experience, I can categorically state that the Ten Commandments are a culturally alien artifact in the Philippines. Adultery, idolatry and witchcraft, ‘false witness’, theft/extortion/blackmail, and covetousness are completely normal, accepted, and often approved of. Murder is not exactly mainstream, but it is routinely unpunished; I’ve met several families who have lost a relative to murder (usually shootings) over some petty argument. A significant fraction of the population do not consider murder immoral (or don’t care whether it is or not). Maybe 50% of the African states operate along similar lines, as does Pakistan, Haiti, Jamaica, and a lot of South America and the Middle East. That accounts for maybe one-third of the world’s population.

Anyway, where’s the OP gone?

24

OK. What experiments could we devise to check if morality was innate or learned?

The Milgram experiment is one example.

25

Looks like he schlepped out on us. Kind of unethical.

26

[quote]Why does life matter? There’s no natural reason why it should. Life, in the context of Atheism, is just a complex collection of molecules resulting from millions of years of stochastic processes.

Life matters to you simply because you’ve decided that it does - perhaps because you’ve been influenced by the society you grew up in.[/quote]

Why does God matter?

The value of life is implicit–I haven’t decided anything.

From my atheistic viewpoint, such ideas are really frightening. I hope your faith is strong–it sounds to me like a thin line between myself and unrestrained mayhem. Of course in reality when people lose their faith, they don’t lose all concern for their own or others’ existence.

Of course I grew up in a basically Christian society, and there’s no way to strip myself from my upbringing to see if my morality could survive the experience. My own experience though tells me that regardless of the reasons why religion has been so prevalent in human society, there is no appreciable connection between religion and morality–immoral acts are committed by the religious and irreligious alike and the religious societies that were the foundation for my upbringing have all manner of immoral behavior in their histories.

27

Um, that’s a fail right there.

it is written down, isn’t it. therefore it has had human intervention. Prove to us that it has not also has human invention. Same as all of the Bible, Koran, Talmud, etc.

Remember all of the extant bible dates from at least 300 years post Jesus. Jesus is an apocryphal amalgam of stories that have grown over an original minor story of some guru. Nothing new about that, apart from the claim that it’s all God. One God and such.

notice the change in narrative as the age of the gospels grows. The gospels were adapted as the marketing program matured.

God sucks. Look, I said that and the omnipotent bastard has not slain me by lightning and fire and brimstone. Who can get brimstone these days anyway?

28

I’m not in the business of proving God to anyone. I’m just describing my own personal rationale. I didn’t say there was no human involvement, simply that the mode of thought expressed in those laws is distinctly non-human, especially considering the cultural context (legal codes of the time were generally designed to provide a public spectacle of gruesome punishments, rather than maintain law and order).

Yes, most likely, and that’s a big problem. Jesus also didn’t have an official biographer so you’ve got a whole lifetime condensed into a few anecdotes. OTOH nobody disputes the accuracy of (say) Herodotus or various Chinese historians, and the Bible contains an explicit prohibition against fiddling with the text, so what’s there is probably close enough. There are also several religions which explicitly add to the existing Gospels (Catholicism, Mormonism, etc) while leaving the originals untouched, suggesting that they accept them as accurate but want to add their own ‘marketing programme’.

Why would he care? There are a lot of people who consider God as some sort of magic santa in the sky who deals out teddy bears or (burning) lumps of coal. I said earlier that most of the universe is probably beyond our comprehension, and if there is a God, he’s probably one of those incomprehensible things. We have metaphors for God and Christians believe that Christ was his personification. Any Creator is unlikely to fit neatly into human cognitive abilities. The thing that irritates me most about militant atheism is the assumption that humans already know everything knowable; God can’t be seen or touched or trapped with a proton pack, therefore he isn’t there. That’s been an endless theme throughout history - and certainly more so during the Age of Reason - and yet human knowledge marches on, and the people who already know everything are proven wrong. Agnostics are on much firmer logical ground.

29

Sure they do. Since ancient times, Herodotus has been criticized for filling his book with hearsay, some of it frankly mythological.

30

Hey, but throughout this whole conversation it has been you making a ‘necessary’ connection between God and morality! And you’re accusing us weak atheists of being inconsistent. The nerve! :laughing:

31

jen de.

or, in Japanese,

‘hon to.’

32

OK, I stand corrected :slight_smile: I admit I lost interest about one-third the way through …

Well, I think that’s what the OP was talking about. He matters (to me) because if he doesn’t, nothing else does. The universe I see cannot possibly be without purpose or meaning.

But it isn’t. Everything that goes on in the world today makes it abundantly clear that life has no value to the majority. The word ‘life’ doesn’t even have a clear definition. What is ‘life’? What does ‘alive’ mean, in a Godless universe? What is the difference between ‘alive’ and ‘dead’, given that organic molecules follow the same laws of physics as any inorganic one? I prefer the word ‘creation’, because it gives value and meaning to things that aren’t obviously alive, or which exist on the margin between ‘life’ and ‘non-life’.

I don’t pretend to have any proof of God or metaphysical realities. It’s merely that, given what we do know about the universe and limits of human knowledge, it’s more than likely that we are indeed just watching shadows on the cave wall.

Yes, they are frightening, but I think you must agree that they are logically consistent. As I suggested earlier, several societies do take the non-existence of God to its logical conclusion. People often do so when it suits them: for example, modern agriculture shows complete disrespect for God’s creation and involves unconscionable cruelty to animals. If you read the literature on the subject, such things are justified by dismissing living creatures as things. And in a Godless universe, they are. Human consumers likewise are dismissed as things whose life has no value; if this were not so, 80% of the food now on supermarket shelves would be omitted because the manufacturers would feel bound by their conscience not to produce food which they know is harmful (or fatal) to ingest long-term.

IMO there is a huge difference between religion and faith. I’ve never experienced religiosity - religious organisations and people who profess themselves to be ‘religious’ or ‘godly’ - as anything other than toxic. Religion is invariably a cover for hypocrisy, political power play, and general human failings. I have no time or patience with Churches, Bishops, and Mullahs who pretend to be the mouthpiece of God.

Faith in God is a personal psychological state. It’s a way of viewing the universe and the place of humanity within it. It is not dependent on anybody else or with any organisation. There are many scientists who have faith because they perceive intent, order and mind-blowing elegance in the design of the universe; however, not many of them, I suspect, would call themselves ‘religious’.

I’m suggesting that those Atheists among you who have absorbed or constructed a conscience along Christian lines have adopted most of its details from the people around you. Whether you believe in the Christian God or not is irrelevant; you’ve implicitly accepted his existence and/or absorbed ‘Christian values’ by, for example, accepting without question that life has inherent value. When people ‘lose their faith’, they merely lose their belief in God. Generally, all of the other aspects of their faith - that they’ve lived with for years - remained firmly coded in their neurons. I think the existence of people-of-faith (I can’t say ‘religious people’ now) profoundly affects the society they live in by this mechanism.

I would go so far as to say that stable, safe societies that call themselves ‘secular’ are really not: they have adopted a set of values culled from Judeo-Christian tradition. Even societies like Taiwan and Japan, although they have never been explicitly Christian, have nevertheless absorbed those ideas from somewhere and incorporated them into their personal moral codes (Japan, pre-WW2 and American occupation, had very different moral codes). I don’t believe those values are innate because such societies are in the minority.

33

Il Doge must still be at the vets.

[quote=“finley”]I’m suggesting that those Atheists among you who have absorbed or constructed a conscience along Christian lines have adopted most of its details from the people around you. Whether you believe in the Christian God or not is irrelevant; you’ve implicitly accepted his existence and/or absorbed ‘Christian values’ by, for example, accepting without question that life has inherent value. When people ‘lose their faith’, they merely lose their belief in God. Generally, all of the other aspects of their faith - that they’ve lived with for years - remained firmly coded in their neurons. I think the existence of people-of-faith (I can’t say ‘religious people’ now) profoundly affects the society they live in by this mechanism.

I would go so far as to say that stable, safe societies that call themselves ‘secular’ are really not: they have adopted a set of values culled from Judeo-Christian tradition. Even societies like Taiwan and Japan, although they have never been explicitly Christian, have nevertheless absorbed those ideas from somewhere and incorporated them into their personal moral codes (Japan, pre-WW2 and American occupation, had very different moral codes). I don’t believe those values are innate because such societies are in the minority.[/quote]

I think moral people are in the majority in most societies. The Golden Rule is found in many cultures. And even the most violent societies on earth are not that violent - a quick check of Wikipedia says that Honduras, predominantly Catholic, by the way, has the highest homicide rate in the world at 90 murders per 100 000 people, which is less than 1 in 1000. That’s pretty bad, of course, but it’s not hell. The Philippines is only 8.8 per 100 000.

As far as I can tell the only thing special about Christianity is the tendency of its practitioners to believe their religion has a monopoly on human goodness, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Atheists are subconsciously Christians. Japan’s safe and orderly society is explained by a mysterious osmosis of Judeo-Christianity, despite less than 1% of Japanese identifying as Christian. I suspect that if I found a study showing that the global cow population has a murder rate lower than even (largely non-Christian) Singapore’s 0.2 per 100 000, then it would immediately be inferred that the cows have somehow been reading the Bible.

34

“The good parts of the Old Testament come from God; the bad parts are the fault of the Jews”

This is an old Christian trope that has historically not boded well for Jews.

35

:smiley:

Probably, but I think it doesn’t matter. Once the number of immoral people reaches a certain fraction, the spillover of their activities poisons the entire society.

Little-known fact: the Italian economist Carlo Cipolla postulated (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) that dumb people are far more dangerous than bad people, because they unwittingly wreak random havoc on anyone who comes into contact with them.

The people who live there would most likely differ. Murder is the tip of the iceberg. The fear of murder is crippling: petty criminals are not confronted because guns are easy to get and murder is unpunished.

Most countries that are nominally Catholic are deeply immoral and certainly not Christian: I would again stress the distinction between faith and religiosity. Those countries perpetuate the moral values of violent conquistadores and colonialists who used religion as a cover for their wrongdoing.

Those are officially-recorded murders. My impression is that the vast majority are not reported, recorded or investigated (because the most likely outcome would not be justice but retribution). Same applies to any third-world country without a functioning government or legal system. Theft, extortion, non-fatal violence, and various forms of psychological violence are routine and barely even remarked upon.

I think basically we’re just watching different news channels :slight_smile:

A fairly unique point about Christianity is that it explicitly recognizes the human condition, viz., that nobody is or can be ‘good’. Some derivatives of it make a fetish of sin, guilt and absolution (as does Islam) but ‘being good’ is not really the point. It is not a rule-based religion (apart from the quote earlier) which promises eternal salvation in return for doing X,Y,Z.

I completely agree that (nominally) Christian organisations have been (and continue to be) responsible for decidedly un-Christian behaviour. I would draw your attention to this quote:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

He elaborates on “The will of my Father”; as I said before, it boils down to developing a conscience - which, of course, anyone can do without explicitly saying “I am a Christian”.

How would you explain Japan’s rapid transition, during the period (roughly) 1945-1970, from a culture in which extreme violence and nihilism was a routine part of life to the one we see today? Where did the new ideas come from? Certainly there was a lot of national introspection during those years, but American influence was deep and pervasive.

36

So which are those deeply Christian countries that have such moral behaviors? Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Holland i.e. wealthy countries that are noted for crashing numbers of Christians and are largely secular. The one thing we can say apparently say is less of any kind of religion leads to more moral behavior.

A fairly unique point about Christianity is that it explicitly recognizes the human condition, viz., that nobody is or can be ‘good’. Some derivatives of it make a fetish of sin, guilt and absolution (as does Islam) but ‘being good’ is not really the point. It is not a rule-based religion (apart from the quote earlier) which promises eternal salvation in return for doing X,Y,Z.[/quote]

So, aside from Islam, then. And Buddhism

[quote]I completely agree that (nominally) Christian organisations have been (and continue to be) responsible for decidedly un-Christian behaviour. I would draw your attention to this quote:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

He elaborates on “The will of my Father”; as I said before, it boils down to developing a conscience - which, of course, anyone can do without explicitly saying “I am a Christian”.

How would you explain Japan’s rapid transition, during the period (roughly) 1945-1970, from a culture in which extreme violence and nihilism was a routine part of life to the one we see today? Where did the new ideas come from? Certainly there was a lot of national introspection during those years, but American influence was deep and pervasive.[/quote]

Um, No True Scotsman? Judge us by what we say, and them by what they do? Anything unique about western culture that is good is because of Christianity, anything bad (Holocaust, anyone) is :whistle:

37

[quote=“finley”]

How would you explain Japan’s rapid transition, during the period (roughly) 1945-1970, from a culture in which extreme violence and nihilism was a routine part of life to the one we see today? Where did the new ideas come from? Certainly there was a lot of national introspection during those years, but American influence was deep and pervasive.[/quote]

How would you explain Germany’s transition over the same period? Or Alabama’s? Say what you want about ISIS, at least they regard burning someone alive as a solemn event, not an excuse to break out the banjos and hooch and pack your ladies along for a party.

38

What transition? There has been no wholesale reconstruction of German culture comparable to what happened in Japan. Maybe the Germans here can comment, but IMO the rejection of Nazism did not require any such reconstruction. Germany today would (broadly speaking) be culturally recognisable to a German from 1900. A Japanese person from 1900 would feel somewhat adrift in modern Japan.

Alabama? No idea, but I get the impression not much has changed there in the last 100 years either :wink:

39

I don’t think atheists assume that in general. Any I’ve heard recognize that there is much unknown about the universe. Even Dawkins admits to be agnostic on this point, and I am as well. I think most Atheists aren’t making any assumptions about it. It’s incomprehensible–currently–end of story for now. It doesn’t make much sense to me to admit that most of the universe is beyond our comprehension, and then admit a strong belief in a creating “god”. For me strong atheism simply denies such beliefs and doesn’t imply complete knowledge about the nature of the universe.

There may be an incomprehensible “God”, but there may be an incomprehensible anything for that matter. It’s not likely to be anything like what you imagine it to be. I’m not imagining anything, is all.

Well, I think that’s what the OP was talking about. He matters (to me) because if he doesn’t, nothing else does. The universe I see cannot possibly be without purpose or meaning.[/quote]

Why do you get to say that? Life matters to me because if it doesn’t, nothing else does.

But it isn’t. Everything that goes on in the world today makes it abundantly clear that life has no value to the majority.[/quote]

? It is to me. And if you’re right it doesn’t say much for the value God provides.

I know what’s alive. I don’t need a fancy-schmancy definition for it. I’m alive. A rock is not. Sure we’re all just molecules in the end, (us more interesting but the rock a lot more permanent) but so what? I might throw a rock but I won’t throw a puppy. I’m not sure about the relevance of the word ‘creation’ here.

Yes, they are frightening, but I think you must agree that they are logically consistent.[/quote]

What I’m saying is they’re not–people in general don’t act this way and your entire argument is based on assumptions about an admittedly incomprehensible situation.

I don’t see how any of this has anything to do with belief or non-belief in “God” at all. I could substitute “mother nature” for “God” here easily. The people engaging in the cruelty are probably more likely to believe in God than not.

[quote]IMO there is a huge difference between religion and faith. I’ve never experienced religiosity - religious organisations and people who profess themselves to be ‘religious’ or ‘godly’ - as anything other than toxic. Religion is invariably a cover for hypocrisy, political power play, and general human failings. I have no time or patience with Churches, Bishops, and Mullahs who pretend to be the mouthpiece of God.

Faith in God is a personal psychological state. It’s a way of viewing the universe and the place of humanity within it. It is not dependent on anybody else or with any organisation. There are many scientists who have faith because they perceive intent, order and mind-blowing elegance in the design of the universe; however, not many of them, I suspect, would call themselves ‘religious’.[/quote]

Fair enough. I respect your beliefs.

I disagree completely, for the variety of reasons I’ve previously stated. :slight_smile:

I think you’re selling this Judeo-Christian thing too high. Again, the history is really spotty. People today have radically different moral values than those of a hundred years ago even. I don’t see any strong reason to believe our modern morality has everything to thank to it. We seem to have broken away from it more than anything. To me it seems there are moral and amoral people everywhere you might go, regardless of their particular beliefs.

40

Japan’s transformation was economic - prosperity always leads to better behaviour. Humans, like many social animals, are not violent towards each other when their needs are met. Here is a picture of some happy cows.


Perhaps they, too, are Judeo-Christian? :ponder:

Yes, they are frightening, but I think you must agree that they are logically consistent.[/quote]

What I’m saying is they’re not–people in general don’t act this way and your entire argument is based on assumptions about an admittedly incomprehensible situation.[/quote]
I don’t see how they are logically consistent either - God isn’t a magic santa in the sky, he doesn’t take any special interest in humanity and likely isn’t even comprehensible to humankind yet, in the next breath, a magic santa came to earth to give us moral code in the Bible.