In your opinion, do the Bible and other religious writings maintain order among masses of people?
Because I was thinking, if we took away the Bible and it were to have never existed, what would the world be like?
Do you feel that a lot of laws we have in society today were created in part due to the Bible’s “laws”?
For instance, murder, incest and theft all have laws and all are mentioned in the Bible. Granted, there are some whacky things mentioned in the Bible, but for the most part, our major laws are based in part on the Bible’s “laws”. Fair statement or not? I’m speaking of the U.S. Opinions?
Only certain kinds of order. It’s good for producing docile victims, tyrannies and bloodthirsty hordes, but not much of anything more benevolent or sophisticated. It’s a Bronze-Age mind control virus, basically, with all the limitations that implies.
Less bloodshed, less tyranny, greater technological and social progress; good things.
No, not a fair statement. Plenty of cultures had and have prohibitions against those things before the Bible or without it’s influence. Nor do I think the American prohibition against those things has it’s origins in the Bible.
About the only commandments that could be said to be based on Bible laws or useful to the US constitution we are left with 3:
Thou Shalt Not Kill
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor
Thing is that the Code of Hammurabi mentioned those hundreds of years before the bible, for killing: Hammurabi Code #210, 214, 229 and others. Not steal. Hammurabi, Codes #6, 8, 9, 21, 22 and many others. Not bear false witness against your neighbor. Hammurabi, Code #1-3 and many others.
Praise Marduck then? Nah, many of the rules were cruel and that cruelty was also copied by the bible writers. I will praise that the founding fathers recognized that the bible god could be in the constitution as only a decoration, not as the law giver.
You ask about the bible and “other religious writings”, and then go on to opine about a worldview not encompassing only the bible.
And then you go on to ask for only US opinions (hope I’m allowed to answer as an ex-pat yank!)
So, my questions to you, so that we can narrow the debate are:
What religious writings do you wish to include, or should we discuss only the bible?
If only the bible, then do we then conclude that the early Christian cults/Paul/etc. never existed, or that they were never written about?
If you wish to discuss the bible’s influence on US law only, must we discount the source of US law, which is English Common Law? (Louisiana does differ in this respect, I admit.)*
You pose a debate seemingly to discuss whether man can govern himself without outside intervention - i.e., a god and the laws laid down by that supernatural entity. Is this what you’re aking?
Cheers,
G
*I expect a lawyer around soon to smack me on this point if I am incorrect. I see Oakminster floating around already. I will withdraw any incorrect point on his say so if he will only send me pralines, which I have been craving lately and cannot get in Australia.
Mmm, I think I also need to give a warning, this link contains immediate colorful language told to deserved targets like former Alabama Chief Judge Roy Moore.
And I praise that the founding fathers didn’t even put Him in there as a decoration. These wise, God-fearing Christian men had the good sense, when it came time to actually writing the rules that would form the new government, to refrain absolutely from mentioning any god by name.
…although from that and the DofI they do restrict the playing field to monotheistic religions. Alas that they were not so praiseworthy to ignore religion entirely.
The decoration part, outside of the Articles, comes at the end:
But no sooner he is mentioned than then “he” is reminded that others are making the law from now on:
And that is, the only part in the constitution were the God of the bible was mentioned (well, the new testament’s Jesus actually), and only as a time piece.
The Declaration of Independence mentions a monotheistic “Nature’s God” but the Constitution’s mentions of religion don’t privilege monotheistic religions over non-monotheistic religions, or religions over non-religion: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”–nothing in there about Congress not making any law prohibiting the free exercise of monotheistic religions or restricing freedom of religion to those who profess a belief in a Supreme Being or anything like that.
That’s the thing I find most interesting about the Declaration, actually. “Nature’s God”? With a bit of poetic license you could even suggest that they were referring to evolution, had the theory been realised at that point. There’s also the mention of human’s rights being assigned by “their Creator” which can be only really be taken as a singular god, as assigning requires consciousness.
I agree; the Constitution makes no assumptions about whether a god, gods, no gods, or whatever interesting combination of thunderbolts and symbols you can think of exists. The Constitution is in itself a religiously neutral document. The Declaration, however, is not. So when I say “that (the Constitution) and the DofI” i’m taking a religiously neutral document and a pro-monotheistic document, resulting in a general monotheistic slant.
I agree it’s praiseworthy that they removed religion from the legal system. I’m just saying it’s less impressive that they felt the need to invoke a Deity when declaring independence. “We don’t think all people should have to believe in the Deity we do, but when writing a document representing the entire American colonies we’re going to talk about our Deity-given rights”.
I am just talking about religious writings in general. And since I wanted to bring up “laws” into the question, I narrowed it down to the U.S. only. Because The Bible isn’t the only exclusive religious text in the U.S.
There (as I’m sure you’re aware) are all kinds of religions in the country.
My main question is, do you think these writings maintain order among the masses that follow them? I guess I could summarize it better with that question.
Sometimes I type so fast and have so many questions, I forget context.
Well, that’s a somewhat different question than in your OP, IMO.
Opiate of the masses, I think is where you are going? It is true that religion in general does produce a certain cohesion amongst it’s followers, but would you call that “order”?
In today’s extreme example, jihad. Is that “order”? Well, it is if you’re a radical, minority Muslim, yes? Is that order good for society? If one group is following one religion that encourages working against the religion of another group, then I would have to say no, it doesn’t follow that those masses have order.
If you want to talk about the law as written in the US, then that’s another question entirely, IMO.
Personally? If you’re the type of person waiting to off your neighbor with a shotgun for accidentally weed-whacking your begonias, and the only thing stopping you is your understanding of what your god would have you do via a religious text, well, glad you follow it. However, realise that that example is a tiny minority of people.
I think a better way to look at it would be how societies with no religious texts got along and compare, but that goes right past my limits of both time and Google-Fu.
What it does do (The Bible or other ‘holy book’), is establish a higher authority, which stops the question, why should I obey the local ruler, as he is just a man like myself, so what makes his morality superior to mine. With a holy book, this doesn’t apply as people know that the ruler is going on God’s authority, which is surperior to man’s.
But if that didn’t work with another person as an authority, democracy wouldn’t work. People wouldn’t be happy voting for someone else to lead them, since they’re just another person like themselves. Not to mention any business with a hierarchichal organisation, in which people obey the person above them because, well, that’s how you get the money. And of course there’s authority from education; a doctor or physicist or anyone with expert knowledge is given authority in that particular subject, and rightly so.
People don’t need a god in order to be happy with a higher authority.
If you can convince the people that there is an all-seeing Being watching over their every move, you’ve got some measure of social control. If people believe they can’t get away with something, they’re more likely to obey the rules, espeically if there’s eternal reward/punishment waiting in the afterlife.
I don’t think we’d be any better off. Another religion would have stepped in to take its place. Religion fills a need in humans:
It gives them some feeling of control over the world around them. They can pray for miracles and surrender worry, believing that their deity will take care of them.
That no matter what, someone loves them and they’re never truly alone.
That even if someone who wronged them gets away with it in this life, their actions have not escaped the notice of their deity and they will be punished-- if not in this life, then the next.
Exclusivity. Humans love to discriminate and religion gives them a reason to do so. It gives them a sense of belonging, and of having something special that others do not.
Forgiveness. Everyone has “sins” of which they’re ashamed. Religion allows a person to stop beating themselves up for their actions because they’ve apologized to the deity.
