Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
An interesting set of historical echoes in a MidWeek article. (Not sure about all of Don Chapman’s analysis, especially on Iraqi attitudes to democracy and their nation — thought some recent evidence would have suggested otherwise — but an interesting recap of some facts nonetheless.)
Marion Maddox concludes her God under Howard: how the religious right has hijacked Australian politics with an interesting reminder of the power government legislation to effect social change for the better. “[T]here is good evidence that governments can bring out people’s better side” (p. 317). The example is worth keeping in mind in order to counter the cop-out less progressive governments like to use that politicians cannot make people nicer. Continue reading “Legislating to make us nicer”
Completion of this series of section by section review and comment: Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18g”
Bauckham attempts to set the Holocaust in an historical niche designed to make it appear as some sort of historical syzygy of New Testament miracle stories. The conclusion readers are meant to draw is that to believe in the testimony of one leaves no excuse for disbelieving in “the testimony” of the other. This is buttressed by the claim that the uniqueness of the holocaust makes it incomprehensible — just as the miracles are incomprehensible.
Before continuing with my chapter by chapter comments of his book (how many books I have read since B’s!), I thought it worthwhile to ply a bit of historical perspective and rationality to B’s premise (which is really a wholesale deployment of Elie Wiesel‘s propaganda) by outlining some points as discussed by Norman G. Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. The whole notion of the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust has broader ramifications than B’s argument. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18f”
Gee, maybe we are not immortal souls wrapped in mortal coils after all. Check this Reuters article for the details.
And another (maybe slightly better) link here at BBC news.
Richard Dawkins has a section in his God Delusion (pp. 222-226) that discusses Marc Hauser‘s Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.
Hauser conducted a study with Peter Singer to test whether atheists differ in their moral intuitions from religious believers. The expectation was that if people need religion to give them their moral values then there should be a significant difference between the moral values of atheists and the religious.
Three hypothetical dilemmas were the focus of the comparison: Continue reading “Atheist and religious Moral Minds / Dawkins on Hauser”
Holocaust Testimonies (pp. 493-499)
Bauckham proceeds to wax lyrical over a paragraph of recorded oral testimony from Auschwitz survivor, Edith P. He concludes:
“The most accomplished Holocaust novel could not equal the effectiveness of that story in conveying the horrifying otherness . . . . [Her testimony] discloses to us her world, the Nazi’s kingdom of the night, in a way that no novelist could surpass and no regular historian even approach. This is truth that only testimony can give us.”
Bauckham elaborates in reverential tones speaking of how “deep” and “authentic” is the “unique” experience. Some instances:
“the deep memory reaches us and we are stunned by its otherness”
“in its visual and emotional clarity we hear an authentic moment . . . ”
“This too is ‘deep memory’ that he relives by remembering it . . .”
So how ironic to read the same reverential tones with the same “deep” and “authentic” in the following words written by a former inmate of Auschwitz (Israel Gutman): Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18e”
By now it ought to be obvious I can only handle Bauckham in very small doses. Maybe it’s age. I used to love downing a whole bottle of whisky straight in very short shrift but have learned to cut it back to occasional nips if I want my brain and body to survive a bit longer. Maybe that’s a metaphor for my misspent youth in the coffin of religion, leaving me nowadays only ever able to spend occasional minutes at best engaging in silly (ir)rationalizations that pass as scholarly arguments for belief in miracles and semi-human miracle performers. Anyway, if sticking at something one has promised oneself to do is a virtue then my ongoing sticking with this review bit by bit proves I am at least not totally bereft of virtue whatever my other faults. And addressing these final parts of B’s argument calls for every ounce of virtue I can muster. Must reward myself with another whisky when finished.
Testimony and its reception contd. (pp 492-493) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18d”
Have just completed Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto and can’t go past the review of the book you can find at that link — so won’t bother with my own. (The original French title could more literally be translated “Tract on Atheology” which would do more justice to the contents of the book, it being less a rationale for atheism per se than a polemical essay against the respected status and functions theology has long held among inheritors of the Judea-Christian and Moslem worlds.)
It is refreshing to see in print ideas that one has arrived at on ones own and only hitherto shared with trusted audiences. I imagine many who have rationally worked their way from faith to atheism have similarly found themselves afterwards thrilled to find such luminaries as Nietzsche having long before paved a way in the direction are now treading. Although as Onfray rightly reminds us, to learn from Nietzsche is to pave one’s own path, not to walk in his same steps.
Anyway, Onfray’s book reminded me of a list of ethical values that to my mind would be one huge advance on the current values that dominate our species. Most are not even hinted at in his essay, so this is really my own list of some of the changes — rooted in science and humanism as opposed to archaic mythical views of what makes us human — that I would think would make for a far more humane society: Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto”
The foundational institutions, attitudes and values of our modern societies are still based on a legacy of Christian and pre-Christian assumptions of human nature that take no cognizance of the modern advances in biology, neurology, genetics, psychology. The power of the black book still binds our ethical senses. Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment”
“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. Allow me to give a few examples of the rules that must, yet cannot, be followed.” (God is Not Great, p.212)
Hitchens then cites the biblical command forbidding people to even think about coveting goods. I’m not sure there is a command not to even think about it, but the principle is certainly there. The New Testament certainly echoes this with its injunction which says that to even look on a woman in the wrong way is to actually already have committed adultery.
There can only be two possible responses to such commands: Continue reading “Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great””
Christian Zionists are Christians who believe that the Bible prophesies and validates the migration of Jews to Palestine as a sign of the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ. They support the establishment of the Jewish state in the Middle East today, and their claim to the whole land of Biblical Israel, and accordingly deny Palestinian rights.
Gary Burge contributed “Theological and Biblical Assumptions of Christian Zionism” (originally as a conference paper) for Challenging Christian Zionism : Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2005). He discerns six steps by which Christian Zionist theology is developed (pp.51-53): Continue reading “Christian Zionism: assumptions and a humanist’s critique”
There is another more subtle way that the Sermon on the Mount has the potential to cripple true believers psychologically. (I have already addressed the self-absorbed, fear-driven, irresponsible submissiveness that its supposedly noble teachings actually promote.) Some of its most exalted sayings are really guidelines for anyone taking them seriously to go through life playing the victim game. (But firstly, I am well aware that there are two types of victims: there truly are those who have been cruelly victimized, but there are also many who find the victim game an alternative to getting on with more positive and productive mentality. Unfortunately few among one of those types can tell the difference.)
Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure . . . . Continue reading “Victimhood and the Sermon on the Mount”
. . . . I would not follow Jesus and let myself be angry with thieves in the temple or let myself denounce hypocritical clerics who rob the poor. Continue reading “If I lived like Jesus tells me to . . .”