Right on cue — following the previous post “the bad Jesus” — comes a fundamentalist’s defence of Bible ethics:
- Yes, slavery is not wrong at all if the system is run by “good people”, no doubt the Christians. Indeed, the implication is that slavery is a good way to treat people who have been guilty of “misconduct”.
- The Bible’s laws on slavery were designed to “mitigate evil”. Of course. No-one was allowed to beat a slave so severely that he actually died within a day or two of the flogging (Exodus 21:21).
- The down side of slavery is that “in a fallen world” there is a certain “imprudence” to give non-Christians such powers over another. The worst that can happen, it seems, is that such masters might stop the slave worshiping God.
And what sort of god does the Triablogue author lament the slaves are unable to worship?
- God is allowed to commit barbaric and genocidal acts because he is God. Only God can kill a baby to punish a parent or snuff out whole populations. Only God can do such things and still be Good and worthy of our worship so that we all willingly submit ourselves to him as his slaves.
Meanwhile the Pope, the Great Whore of the Apocalypse, quite rightly protests: Pope Francis Calls Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism a Sickness.
But isn’t the sickness itself the consequence of lending public respectability to the same sort of unverifiable faith-based reasoning that Pope himself defends?
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I didn’t take them long, did it?
“Meanwhile the Pope, the Great Whore of the Apocalypse, quite rightly protests: Pope Francis Calls Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism a Sickness.
In other words, a mental illness.
But isn’t the sickness itself the consequence of lending public respectability to the same sort of unverifiable faith-based reasoning that Pope himself defends?
Which is why some athiests, like the youtuber Calpurnpiso paints all of Christianity with the same braod brush as a dangerous mental illness: Christ-Psychosis! And even Roman Catholicism has at various times degenerated into fundamentalism, sometimes for centuries. Now we’re seeing it with Russian Orthodoxy So he’s got a point.
It didn’t take them long, didn’t it?
Can we have a preview key now? Thanx. 🙂
Hey. Shouldn’t “Great Whore of the Apocalypse” be in quotes or something?
The linked article about Pope Francis makes the same mistake many other articles do – thinking that the Pope’s remarks are aimed at right-wing fundamentalists outside of the Catholic Church. As an ex-Catholic who is still fascinated by the politics of the church, I think this is a huge mistake. Those remarks are aimed primarily at right-wing Catholics who have conflated their political ideology with their faith and think they’re the same thing (and possibly also aimed at some left-wing Catholics who have done the same thing, though given the Pope’s history and the recent history of the Church I suspect he’s more concerned about the former than the latter).
That it’s stated in the form of a universal towards Christians in general might make it seem otherwise, since many non-Catholic Christians have it drilled into them that “Catholic” and “Christian” are two distinct groups. But remember that to a Catholic Pope all Christians are Catholics – the Protestants are just Catholics who have lost their way and need to be returned to the fold eventually. So when he’s speaking of “Christians” he means all Christians, but he’s specifically directing it towards the Christians who are supposed to recognize his authority.
His language is equivocal. Technically he condemns “ideology.”