Christians have been arguing over scripture for about two millennium. A non-believer telling us how to interpret the Bible isn’t going to change any minds, when even within the community we don’t agree.
Well, we non-believers have a little input, if only in terms of the overall social context of belief.
Believers and non-believers alike contributed to the marginalizing of Fred Phelps and his hate-filled interpretation of scripture. That, of course, is a very gross and coarse instance of a social rejection of a specific interpretation (as Phelps was a gross and coarse example of a religious believer.)
We all add a little to the debate, and, ideally, we all learn a little from it too.
To pick a nit, I and many other atheists entirely agree with Phelps’ interpretation of scripture. Mosaic Law clearly states that men who have sex with other men should be executed, and Jesus clearly endorses every line of Mosaic Law. I really don’t understand how anyone can see it differently. Which is why I would reject the Bible as having any kind of moral authority, even if it weren’t so riddled with errors, absurdities, and contradictions.
I had a huge problem with Phelps’ obsession with that one aspect of Mosaic Law, but that’s a different question. And I still don’t understand how Christians, Jews, and Muslims can venerate any part of a book that contains such hateful “morality,” but that’s also a different question.
Um, what?
Jesus also condemned the use of the death penalty (actually, in the context of sexual sin) in John 8. You can certainly argue about the scope of that condemnation- whether Christians should refrain from the death penalty entirely, or make exceptions in some instances- but it doesn’t take much exegesis to conclude that, at least for sexual sins, Jesus overrides and obviates the Mosaic law regarding the death penalty.
(In point of fact, the Jews themselves had, in practice, mostly abolished the death penalty during the first century, but that’s a separate issue).
Also, no, Jesus didn’t ‘endorse’ the Mosaic law, he (at least, purportedly) fulfilled it. I don’t believe the Mosaic law was ever infallibly valid to begin with, but whatever good purpose it served, that purpose was accomplished when Jesus died on the cross.
Regarding whether homosexuality is a sin or not, you can make arguments both ways, but in any case, the New Testament is quite clear: we aren’t saved by obeying the law and avoiding sin, we are saved by grace, and specifically by the atoning death of Jesus Christ, which paid the debt for all sin, past and future. You can believe homosexuality is a sin (I don’t, particularly, though I’m open to being convinced either way) and still believe that there will be a lot of sexually active gays and lesbians in heaven, come the Last Day.
Might be the first time I’ve agreed with Hector_St_Clare (oops, whose login name I almost misspelled, not noticing the underline characters!)
Christianity has almost entirely done away with the forms of the Jewish law – circumcision, sacrifice of meat to the Temple, death to you if you mix linen and wool, etc. You want clam chowder with bacon? Jesus, himself, wouldn’t have eaten it, but a modern Christian can have all he wants.
Much more importantly: Phelps taught hatred, and that’s hugely contrary to what Jesus taught.
Allow me to repeat myself: it isn’t the moderate Christians, who allow the Bible to be seen as metaphors, that we need to disdain. It’s the fire-eating hate-spewers. They’re the enemy.
It is fallacious – and counterproductive! – to try to argue that the moderates should behave more like the extremists! Phelps was not a good working example of Christian understanding. He was a cruel, sick, hate-filled lunatic.
If you want to argue that the Christian religion has changed over the centuries – well, obviously it has! We’re on the cusp of the faith accepting women as preachers, and aren’t all that far away from it dropping its objection to gays. This is a good thing! Don’t try to push back against the reforms of the ages: celebrate them!
I agree 100%. So he contradicted himself (assuming that passage is genuine — we have no evidence of it being known before the 4th century).
Congratulations, you’ve found another contradiction. Even if you think his alleged resurrection “fulfilled” the Law (and there is no hint of that in the Hebrew Bible, which refers to the Law as everlasting), he obviously was teaching men to break a commandment before that fulfillment, so he is violating his own admonition from Matt 5:19.
Absolutely wrong. He endorsed it as strongly as possible:
[QUOTE=St. Matthew (KJV)]
Mat 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
Mat 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Mat 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
[/QUOTE]
“Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, TILL ALL BE FULFILLED.”
ALL doesn’t mean just one thing, it means everything. The sun and moon darkened. The stars falling from the sky. The great tribulation, worse than anything that has happened since the world began (so, including the Flood), when except those days be shortened, all human and animal life would become extinct. The Son of Man coming down from the clouds with great power and glory. The elect disappearing, with two walking in a field, one taken, one left behind (all of that is from Matt 24).
Has any of that been fulfilled? No? Then even if Jesus hadn’t made it as clear as possible, even for the slow learners, by saying that the Law would continue until heaven and earth pass away, it should be obvious that all has not been fulfilled.
Besides, if he was referring to his resurrection, then he was devoting a major portion of his greatest sermon to telling people to follow the Law for just the next couple of years. Preposterous.
Sorry, but the Bible says what it says. Of course I agree that Phelps was a nut, but he wasn’t a nut because of the way he interpreted the Bible, he was a nut because he thought he should believe it.
Of course I would rather have liberal Christians for neighbors than fundamentalists. But that’s not because the fundamentalists’ interpretation is wrong; it’s because the scriptures themselves are full of crap.
And of course, as a practical matter, it makes more sense to encourage liberal Christians to pick and choose the parts of the scriptures they want to follow, and pretty much abandon Mosaic Law, than to try to convince them to renounce their religion altogether.
But I’m not trying to get along with my neighbors here; I’m having an internet debate about what the Bible says. And the Bible is full of hate. The Israelites are told to wipe out various tribes down to the last infant, because of a grudge from generations before, or even just for the crime of living peacefully in the land “promised” to the invading Israelites. That’s about as hateful as you can get.
Many of the Sharia laws regarding women, gays, and apostates, which Christians point to as examples of how barbaric the Muslim religion is, come straight from the Law of Moses.
Jesus himself says you have to hate your father and mother and brother to follow him, and he throws a tantrum and kills a fig tree for not having fruit when he was hungry, even though it was the wrong season (wouldn’t it have been better to make fruit magically grow out of season?).
If you read the Bible without the indoctrination that Jesus is so perfect, you can see that he’s kind of an asshole. He is continually saying to his disciples the equivalent of, “What the fuck is wrong with you? How can you be so stupid? Why can’t you see this?”
He sometimes reminds me of my ex-wife. In Matthew 16:17-19, he blesses Peter, and says he’s the bestest disciple ever. Then just four verses later, when Peter innocently says that Jesus should not allow himself to be taken and crucified, Jesus lays into him: “But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”
It’s better than nothing. But as you say, it’s the religion that has changed, not the scriptures. The scriptures still suck, and the fact that intelligent, educated people can read them and not see how full of shit they are continues to baffle me.
Well, at least we know where your attitude originated. 
She was hard to live with, but she had a heavenly body.
The OT is pretty hate-filled. The joy of the NT is that it emphasizes love, forgiveness, giving away your treasure to charity, bearing a burden for another, etc. There really is fairly little hatred in the NT. Jesus, being crucified, asks that his tormenters be forgiven.
I confess, I’ve never been able to make sense out of the fig tree incident. But as far as “hating” one’s father and mother, he doesn’t mean it the way I hate Rush Limbaugh. That would be a violation of the Commandments. He just means you have to take yourself away from them, leave them behind, reject their authority. When he says, “I come to bring a sword,” he only means that the faithful are to be separated from the unfaithful, not that they should start fighting with weapons.
Agreed. Jesus isn’t my idea of a good leader or role-model. But he was light-years ahead of the curve! He was teaching kindness and love, in the middle of the damned Roman Empire! It’s as if Gandhi came along inside Nazi Germany. It was pretty impressive.
Jesus failed. He was all set up to proclaim himself Messiah, and choked. He stood on the Temple steps, and stopped short of making the declaration. At that point, the movement pretty much collapsed. The throngs that had cheered him from the gates to the Temple faded away. Nothing to see here, just another preacher cowed by the might of the city.
Well, yeah. So what? You’re not a Christian. I’m not a Christian. What’s your point here?
Idiot Christians say, “There are no contradictions in the Bible.” We hear that and we laugh at them.
Sophisticated Christians say, “Well, yes, there are contradictions. We choose to emphasize this verse over that verse, on the basis of our faith.”
What’s wrong with that? You seem to be saying, “No! Not acceptable! You have to be idiots! You’re not allowed to be sophisticated!” Why? It’s their faith; they can interpret it how they want. I’m glad that there is such a thing as modern liberal Christianity, and, frankly, I see very little wrong with it. We’ve lived through so much worse!
Christianity doesn’t appeal to me either, although I am a little more willing to admire the better ideals that are contained within the message. I’m pissed at the Catholic Church for its heavily politicized stance on various social issues. I disdain the ultra-right-wing hyper-literalist idiots. (Same for hyper-orthodox Jews and extremist Muslims.) But when faith is spoken softly and with kindness, promotes good ideals, and generally leaves me alone, I’m happy. The religion has changed…immensely for the better.
Well, let’s take your contentions in order.
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Yes, I think the passage is historically authentic, the contentions of ‘higher criticism’ notwithstanding. This isn’t a debate about the nature of biblical inspiration, though, so I’ll leave it there, but we can have that debate if you want.
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‘Another’ contradiction? You haven’t convinced me that Matthew and Luke contradict each other in the nativity stories. All you’ve shown is that each supplies a side of the story that the other doesn’t, and that Joseph and Mary had a busy travel schedule in the first twelve years of Jesus’ life. I don’t know why each of them fails to mention the details supplied by the other, and it’s certainly intriguing, but it isn’t impossible for them both to be true.
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Regarding this specific contradiction, there are a few ways to resolve it. One is, as I mentioned, the possibility that Jesus meant the Law only to persist until it was ‘fulfilled’ by his death. (And no, in this context ‘till all is fulfilled’ doesn’t necessarily mean the apocalypse: it’s much more likely that it refers to Jesus’ death, which marks the transition between the age of Law and the age of Grace).
But it’s also possible (and seems likely to me) that by ‘the law’, Jesus didn’t mean the Law of Moses. Maybe he meant some deeper reality underlying (but not identical to) the Law of Moses. This would be moral law, or natural law: the kind of intuitive understanding of morality that tells us, for example, that murder is wrong. This is what St. Paul was talking about in Romans when he said that pagans also have the law written on their hearts. Obviously they didn’t have the Mosaic law, but they did have the natural moral law. Maybe Jesus was talking about this second sense of the law: moral law as opposed to ‘positive’ law.
Now, this would mean that Jesus was speaking in deliberately ambiguous terms, that he knew would mislead some of his listeners. But that wouldn’t be out of character: after all, he did so on some other occasions, for example when he uttered the line about ‘destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’. His interlocutors thought he was referring to Herod’s Temple, but he was really referring to himself, as John tells us.
The traditional conservative Protestant (I’m not particularly conservative, so it’s not really mine) reading is somewhere in between the two possibilities I mentioned above, and they hold that the ‘moral’ precepts of the law continued to be in effect during and after the life of Jesus, and continue to hold today, but the ‘ceremonial’ and ‘judicial’ portions were rendered null and void. Ceremonial law would be things like the kosher laws, and the ‘judicial’ portions would include things like the death penalty for adultery and homosexuality, so Jesus overturning the death penalty wouldn’t really affect whether the moral codes of the Mosaic Law were in effect.
Yes it is, but it doesn’t matter, since you have clearly demonstrated that even if you did allow yourself to see the contradictions, you would just explain them away as metaphors, or pull your own interpretation out of thin air about a reference as clear as “the Law and the Prophets.” I think that Kanicbird had better look to his laurels.
With that approach to evaluating scripture, how fortunate for you that the first scriptures you examined just happened to be those of the One True Faith. I envy you your certainty, and I wish you well.
St. Paul spoke about ‘the Law’ too, in Romans, but he clearly meant something other than the Law of Moses. I don’t see any reason Jesus wasn’t speaking about ‘the Law’ in an ambiguous way, either.
Nor is it true that 'the first scriptures * examined" was the New Testament. I had more exposure to Hinduism than to Christianity as a child, and in my teens I read the Tao Te Ching as well. And at the level of pure reason I’d say that, for example, Zoroastrianism makes more sense to me than any of the other religions I’m familiar with. Neither Hinduism, nor Taoism, nor Zoroastrianism (nor, for that matter, African polytheism, Vodoun, Norse paganism, Wicca, Buddhism, Judaism, or Islam) have, in my opinion, the same kind of historically credible witnesses as Christianity.
I endorse everything you’ve said in your last few posts, but this has me puzzled. You mean the entire faith? Or Catholics? Obviously plenty of the faith is find with women preachers and have been for years (my Lutheran Church as two female pastors and my girlfriend is currently at Seminary). Same goes for gays (the same Lutheran Church had, until recently, an openly gay pastor in a monogamous relationship - he left for a bigger church up in Minnesota, ie the Holy Land of American Lutheranism).
I do think it’ll be ages until the Catholics and right-wing fundies accept women as pastors (mostly, the Assemblies of God [Pentecostal] are fundamentalists but have had female pastors for decades).
I meant the entire faith, Christianity as a bulk. Definitely, the Catholics will be among the last to accept women priests, although I think we’ll see a gradual erosion of this as women are permitted closer and closer to the celebration of major rituals.
I also expect, over time, the Catholic Church itself to begin to crack, a bit. We might see a schism – “Reformed Catholics” etc. – or we might just see local churches beginning to flout the Dioceses. There will be punishments handed out at first, but they can’t excommunicate too many people without causing a schism. To quote from Star Wars, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
But…really, I was just noting that there are women ministers and preachers around today, and that wasn’t true, not very long ago. I think the numbers can only continue to grow.
Would you like to take a bet on that? I strongly doubt the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox church are ever going to have women priests. They’ve maintained an all-male priesthood for two thousand years (even when many of their rivals, like the Montanists and Marcionites, were admitting women to the highest levels of their power structures), so I fail to see why they would change now.
I don’t know what the future holds for Protestant churches, so I can’t say if women’s ordination in future will be more or less popular.
I don’t think that this is an accurate portrayal of the consequences of authoritarian leadership- not today, and not ever. As much as we might not like to admit it, repression works, at least when repression has real consequences. (In fairness, George Lucas wasn’t attempting to be a political philosopher).
This is why I’m often embarrassed to identify as an atheist on this board.
Well, ever is a damn long time. It might take another century, but I’m pretty sure it will happen.
They came around to heliocentrism and evolution; they’ll come around to women’s rights. Or…they might just fade away into insignificance. Don’t see many Shakers around these days, and mighty few Puritans.
I think it is an accurate portrayal of authoritarian leadership in the context of a free society. As long as people are free to leave an authoritarian sub-group – a church, a cult, a party, a faction – then the more control that is exercised, the more people will vote with their feet.
Obviously, when the law is an accessory, things are different.