Well, at least the Christians claim to follow the teachings of the text where the paraphrased quote appears containing both parts of the statement (Gospel of Matthew, 22:34-40). And IIRC “love your neighbor as yourself” does appear separately in another part of the Jewish Scripture.
Meanwhile the Christians also claim to follow the teachings of the Book of Acts, Chapter 15, where the council of the Apostles ruled that Gentile Christians need not observe the Levitical laws, except for those forbidding “idols, blood and fornication”. Of course notice they left it as an exercise for the reader to figure the minutiae and people got to arguing WTF does that mean almost immediately.
But it does show that this was going on from the very start at least in one of the traditions – and as far as I can tell virtually the entirety of Judeo/Christian theological history is just filled with “picking and choosing” and rules-lawyering. I am not going to tell the religious believers that unless they are absolutist literal fundamentalists that are doing religion wrong, and I do not see how we get to where that should be the one sensible way of religioning.
In the OP, you described a religion in which the tenets that homosexuality is wrong, divorced people cannot remarry, and slavery is okay. There is no religion which has those beliefs as tenets. They have them as laws. The fact that tenets and laws are different is my point.
The tenets of Christianity are that there is one God who created the universe and Jesus was the earthly manifestation of God. Christians don’t update or change these tenets.
But laws can be changed. Either by religious authority or by a democratic vote.
I began to understand religion when I understood that they were actually cultures and that taking too much notice of their superstitious dogma is a waste of time. Expecting religions to be logically coherent and intellectually honest in the manner in which your OP assumes is like expecting Road Runner cartoons to obey the laws of physics - Road Runner cartoons have a purpose, but teaching physics ain’t it.
Religions robe themselves in superstitious dogma for a few reasons - partly just in order to have a shared belief system (which aids social cohesion). Partly also probably as a form of the “absent authority” negotiation technique. There’s probably other reasons. But both of these reasons mandate that one cannot change a religion’s tenets rapidly and obviously. You need to bring people along slowly (so that the shared aspect is maintained) You need to consult long and hard with the “absent authority” so it doesn’t seem too jarring when it is discovered that - actually - he preferred round pegs all along.
Your OP assumes that intellectual honesty is the standard by which religion is or should be judged, and of course you are free to do so. But if your aim is to understand, then what you need to do is judge them by whether they manage to adapt to a changing world. And if so, to your two paths you need to add a third - slowly change dogma, and keep going. Which is what religions actually do.
A religion is a social construct which reflects the values of the society that invented it. As those values evolve, a religion can (and maybe should) evolve to reflect that.
To invert the question, what is the point of a religion that fails to adapt and reflects a society as it was 2000 years ago?
It appears you’ve confused the OP @Velocity with this respondent, @Voyager.
FWIW, I think both you and @Voyager have the right ideas, one proceeding from a POV of faith and the other from a POV (like mine) of absolute atheism. Unlike our very doctrinaire OP, religion != eternal unchanging everything to the tiniest detail.
Let’s not nitpick on tenets. I don’t think god creating the universe is - one god is indeed, and by the definition of that god he created the universe. Though when and how he did it is in dispute.
But if God is the source of morals - which I think could qualify as a tenet - then the moral laws that God has propounded count. Like lots of preachers said, they aren’t called the 10 Suggestions. Christians didn’t throw away the old laws by vote, they did it supposedly using a direct line from God, either through Jesus or from dreams.
Mr. Dooley said “no matter whether the constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns” Some churches follow the election returns of the evolution of secular ethics. (And some don’t.)
Now more liberal Christians toss out the nasty stuff for various reasons, and hurray for them. I wish more Christians were like this. But I have yet to see a justification for this that isn’t equivalent to what you’d come up with a purely secular ethical system. Got any thoughts on a consistent way of defining religious morality without appealing to God?
I’m not sure what absolute atheism is, but I’m definitely coming from an atheist perspective. Which does not involve just saying “your god doesn’t exist, so there.”
It is pretty easy to see where all these rules came from, and their justification from those who wrote the books. It’s a lot harder to see how they come from a god who is supposedly morally perfect (plus or minus a genocidal flood or two.)
Hell, how many people died because the early Christians thought that washing hands before meals as part of the blessing process was just dumb.
Exactly right if religion is just an ethical system which should evolve as we figure out more about ethics from philosophical discussion.
But if religion has access to the ultimate arbiter of morals and ethics then it should not have to change. Unless that ultimate arbiter is playing with us. In Judaism this is not big deal but I can see it being a problem in Christianity if messing up morally causes all kinds of problems in the afterlife.
Do your reject the possibility that some of them really believe this stuff, and it isn’t all a game to ensure social cohesion? You must not listen to many creationists, for instance. And even the early religious leaders who were willing to see the Bible as not being perfect didn’t consider God as superstitious claptrap. I think they were going for what they thought God wanted, through logic.
And here you seem to be confusing success with belief in what they say they believe in. Now there are and were plenty of cynical religious leaders, like old Popes with mistresses and children. But you seem to be saying that religion is a con game - a successful one perhaps, but a con after all. See my favorite theologian, Lenny Bruce, in “Religion, Inc.”
From what I’ve heard, plenty of believers fervently believe that they are connected to something above themselves. Religious people are not necessarily like sports fans, rooting for whatever quarterback is playing today. I’m an atheist, but I give them more credit than that.
I worded my post all wrong by anthropomorphising religion, as if it were a conscious being, or consciously controlled by people. What I should have made clear is that IMHO religions are like life forms – the religions that survive are those that happen to have traits that aid their survival. Some of those traits may have been implemented very deliberately by people who wished to ensure the continuation of the religion. Some of them are probably relatively random traits that just happen to aid in a religion’s persistence.
So when I say “Religions robe themselves in superstitious dogma for a few reasons” I don’t mean someone consciously thought “I wanna start a religion, better think up some superstitious dogma to robe it in”. I just mean that religions that happen to do so seem to thrive.
Having given that background to my views, to answer your question, I don’t doubt that some religious people are “true believers” in the superstitious aspect, and some merely pay lip service and many who are somewhere in between. As long as they are basically maintaining at least an outward display of common worldview it doesn’t much matter in terms of the social cohesion that it creates. I don’t entirely understand your comment that I’m “confusing success with belief in what they say they believe in”. But if it helps, I guess I’m defining a religion as “successful” if it persists.
If religion has certain traits that mean that it subtly adapts its shared worldview to a changing world, then IMHO it is more likely to survive because a shared worldview assists with social cohesion within that religion, which is a survival trait for a religion.
Which brings me back to what I see as the problem with the OP namely that it discusses religion as if its dogma are an intellectual exercise, comparable (as the OP specifically does) to a mathematical theorem. I don’t think religions are that. On the contrary, a religion that was as intellectually rigorous as that wouldn’t survive, for the very reasons the OP outlines.
I actually thought that was a good way of expressing your point. And I thought about mentioning the evolution of religions, so I agree with you there. Pagans didn’t care if you believed in their religion or not. The need to give allegiance to the Roman gods which Jews were excused from was political, not religious. So the Christian argument that believe in Jesus or suffer for eternity was strong against the believe or not believe, who cares. We see this today in that converting to Judaism, that really old time religion, is not easy.
I don’t think any of the old religions would even think of getting rulers to do mass conversions on pain of death.
Alexander the Great, who though himself descended from the Gods, had no trouble marrying a Persian princess in her religion. It was politics, and Zeus wasn’t going to give a shit.
I think the OP was looking for an intellectual consistency not likely to be found in the religious. I’ve heard plenty of theists who think slavery is wrong today defend Biblical slavery on a number of grounds, including just ignoring inconvenient passages. If you see religion as a human activity which evolves, this isn’t a big problem. If you see it somehow connected to a deity who inspired those passages, it is a big problem.
It is striking how infrequently those defending religions here mention God. It’s like he isn’t involved in religion at all.
There is funny SF story which I read probably 40 years ago about a Christian missionary who goes to another planet to convert the local aliens who are innocent and highly logical. They take his biblical stories very seriously but find them somewhat implausible so they do the logical thing and crucify him.
They are baffled by his reluctance to go to heaven.
The point being, when it comes right down to it I think there are very few religious people who completely believe the superstitious stuff they say they do.
What you are missing here is that Christianity is a reform of Judaism, somewhat analogous to Buddhism as a reform of Hinduism. There are several important facets to this reform. One is “you shall love thy neighbor as thyself” or “Love one another,” --most celebrated on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday), named for mandatum, commandment, when he states he is giving his disciples this new commandment.
Another important facet is the idea that his teachings are not solely for Jews, and that the intricate laws of the Hebrew scriptures may be dispensed with if you adhere to the few important ones. Also, “go and make disciples” – Judaism was and is a non-evangelical religion.
The idea that every precept recorded in the Hebrew scriptures over two thousand years is valid and binding upon Christians is an anti-Christian argument that no Christian could take seriously. Jesus dealt with the subject that himself, although Paul was the explicator of what that could mean for the heterogenous communities he founded.
Depends on the religion. There are wide swaths of Christianity which believe that Scripture is man’s attempt to write down the story of God, and no human writing can adequately understand the entire thinking of God. It’s why we still have theology - to continue work these things out.
ARE most gods perfect? The Christian God is, but really, none of the Hindu gods strike me as in the least bit perfect. Pagan gods don’t tend to be perfect. And Buddha himself strives…that’s sort of the point in a lot of Buddhist sects. And I’ll defer to someone who is actually Jewish, but the Jewish version of God seems to change his mind a LOT through the Old Testament.
I think a lot of the problem in understanding “religion” for Westerners is that we are really trying to understand “Christianity.” And the omnipotent, omniscient God of the Christians is a study in complex contradictions that can only be believed in through faith, any trying to apply too much logic to the Christian God will wrap you around an axel.
I believe the OP is railing against a specific type of religion - one that includes these two tenets:
The laws and tenets of the religion are divinely inspired - they are accurate reflections of God’s will at the time they were recorded.
God is eternal and unchanging. What he willed yesterday is his will at all times past, present, and future.
Putting aside the fact that #2 above is clearly inconsistent with several parts of the bible, there is a considerable chunk of american christianity that claim that both 1 and 2 above are true. I believe that that is the sort of religion that the OP is talking about - and he has a point. Given 1 and 2, a religion has no legitimate avenue for changing any of their laws or tenets, no matter how society might change. Which is why so much of american christianity seems stuck in the dark ages.
Thanks, you phrased it better than I could. That’s pretty much exactly what I mean. If (certain types of) religious people believe that God commanded something, and that that divine command doesn’t change (or, that it supersedes human opinion), then they can’t amend or update that thing to accommodate a changing human society. To do so implies that either 1) they were lying all along, or 2) humans are king over God. And to “re-interpret” a passage of a holy text that says XYZ to make it seem as though it does not say XYZ, would be gaslighting.
Gaslighting seems to be the preferred choice - that and cherry-picking. (Sure, Q is in bible. It’s complicated and you wouldn’t understand it - mysterious ways or something. Now, let’s get back to talking about XYZ.)