Morality & Politics

Biblical Morality: Can a Religion Grow?

"From the most foul well of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather delirium, of liberty of conscience."- Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical, 1832.

Are the immoralities of the Bible shocking? They shouldn't be. The Bible, like any other historical document, reflects the prejudices of its authors (yes, its authors; even if you believe that the words were inspired by God, they were still filtered through human minds and human hands). We hold the sanctity of human life as paramount, but for the early Judeo-Christians, life was cheap and death was omnipresent. We regard racism and slavery as violations of "inalienable" human rights. But early Judeo-Christians had no idea that there could be anything wrong with racism or slavery, hence Jesus' failure to condemn them or contradict what the KKK calls the "old time gospel of racial separation". We consider "holy wars" repugnant, but early Judeo-Christians considered them "righteous". We value democracy and we believe in a system of bottom-up government, in which the leaders are held accountable to the people, but early Judeo-Christians' leadership systems were strictly totalitarian, top-down affairs (is it any surprise that their religion is similar?). We hold ethical concepts such as human rights above all other entities: every citizen, government, leader, and church is held accountable to those concepts. But early Judeo-Christians felt that morality was a matter of authority; rather than existing in and of itself, it is subordinate to authorities such as monarchs and deities, who expect the masses to obey rules which they don't hold themselves accountable to. In other words, "Do as I say, not as I do".

"As to the common people, ... one has to be hard with them and see that they do their work and that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply with the observance of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts."- Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism. Quoted from "Scary Martin Luther Quotations" at positiveatheism.org.

The Bible reflects the cultural values of its authors: brutal, racist, submissive to authority, intolerant, misogynistic, and utterly contemptuous of what we consider basic human rights today. The test of a Christian's morality is not whether he holds himself accountable to Biblical values, but whether he holds the Bible accountable to modern values. Frankly, what Christians need is an updated Bible (they could start by rearranging the commandments so that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is first rather than sixth). The idea that a religion should remain static and unchanging throughout eternity is ludicrous and indefensible. For example, the Roman state religion was continually evolving and changing until the Empire was taken over by Christians, who ran the Empire into the ground. The Bible itself was heavily altered and revised until about the second century AD, and most of its source documents were destroyed in various wars. Biblical values are incompatible with a more enlightened sense of ethics, so why not update them? The Bible had items periodically added and removed throughout much of its history, until Christians decided to freeze the Bible in one particular state forever by declaring any further alterations to be heresy, thus preserving not only the stories but also the twisted values of the time.

"I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers."- devoutly religious arch-conservative Jesse Helms, February 6, 1985. Quoted from "Scary Quotations" at positiveatheism.org. As someone he would refer to as a "slant", I'm less than impressed by his attempt to describe himself as "progressive".

Like it or not, modern ethics and morals are largely derived from humanism (which actually echoes from as far back as ancient Greek and Eastern philosophy, despite ruthless attempts to suppress it for two millenia), and not from the Bible. Christian moderates recognize this, and they've incorporated humanistic concepts such as plurality, tolerance, pacifism, democracy, female equality, and human rights into their ethical framework. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, fight tooth and nail against this process, under the misguided belief that Biblical morality is superior to modern morality. They seem to be incapable of understanding that racism and religious intolerance are wrong. For example, the mormons.org website actually has an entire page devoted to their condemnation of interracial marriage! They pussyfoot around the issue, but they say the same thing that racists said to my wife and I when we wanted to get married: "I don't really have a problem with it, but I think it's a really bad idea, for your sake". Uh huh ... and they attempt to deflect criticism not by removing this hideously racist tome from their site, but by insisting that they don't have a problem with other races ... so long as they stay segregated. This is typical of racists; they resent the "racist" label, but they insist on supporting racial segregation, so what else are we supposed to call them? Non-racist racial segregationists?

The Mormons are somewhat unusual among Christians. They have their own prophet, with his own twelve apostles. He isn't a replacement for Jesus, but rather, he is supposedly the latest in a long line of anointed prophets who hand our revelations to the unwashed masses until Jesus returns. A group of Mormons recently visited my house in an attempt to convert my wife (yes, the Jehovah's Witnesses aren't the only ones who engage in this intrusive behaviour). They showed her a picture of this new prophet and his twelve apostles, and without batting an eyelash, she asked "why are they all white men?" Their answer? The three white men looked at each other and confessed that they "never noticed that before". Of course not ... that's the problem with racists; they are incapable of seeing their own behaviour with the eyes of an outsider, no matter how blatantly obvious their bigotry is. The Mormons also kept blacks from entering the church until the government forced them to do it with the threat of removing their tax-exempt status, and they still refuse to admit that they did anything wrong (and of course, it's long been said that at a Utah basketball game, the only blacks in the entire building are the players).

"While so much of our economic life is thriving, too much of our moral life is still stagnating. As a people, we need to reaffirm our faith."- Joseph Lieberman, speaking at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit on August 27, 2000. Quoted from AA News #808. Notice how he assumes that strong religious faith will improve morality, even though there isn't a shred of evidence to support this idea; not only did Adolf Hitler's Christian-schooled Nazi youth grow up to be somewhat less than virtuous, but the American pro-Christian Barna "Research Group" has been trying to find statistical differences in moral behaviour of atheists and Christians for years, without success.

Are the Mormons the only ones? Sadly, no. The American fundamentalist stronghold known as the "Southern Bible Belt" fought a war over its desire to preserve its slavery-based economy, and its leaders at the time denounced Lincoln for attempting to defy "God's law" with "Man's law". That tradition persists to this day; interracial marriage was banned in Alabama until Amendment 2 was passed by 60/40 margin on November 7, 2000 (yes, that's right; at the dawn of the 21st century, 40% of Alabama's voters voted to keep an interracial marriage ban in their state constitution). And then there's the State of Texas, which is one of several states whose constitutions exclude people from public office unless they "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being". So if you're a Christian, which group do you fall into? Are you a moderate, or are you a fundamentalist? Are you open minded enough to recognize that Jesus himself actively preached against legalism and literalism and to do the same, or are you one of those fundamentalists who pines for the "good old days" when scientists were persecuted, racism was considered "God's Will", the church controlled the government, and neither speech or religion were free?

In my experience, the behavious and attitudes of Christians moderates are so much different from those of Christian fundamentalists that it's hard to believe they both claim membership in the same religion. Moderates are often willing to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution theory and they generally don't equate atheism to immorality. However, the right-wing fundamentalists are uniformly dogmatic, refusing to tolerate the existence or validity of ideas (either religious or scientific) that they don't like. The southern part of the United States (where fundamentalism is rampant) is also a hotbed of racist white-supremacist groups, and it's no surprise that they are always church-based. As the KKK points out, the Bible itself supports racism, and the fundamentalist attitude is that when the Bible and modern morality clash, the Bible must always win. People like this refuse to accept the fact that racism is wrong, they refuse to accept the fact that they can't force creationism down childrens' throats by fraudulently dressing it up as a "scientific theory" in school, they refuse to accept the fact that it is an abomination for the church and state to join, and they refuse to accept the fact that the peculiar beliefs and morals of their particular religion are not universal.

Continue to 8. Are the Crusades Really Over?

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