R-E-S-P-E-C-T
by J.
I make it no secret that I am secular to the extreme.
I was raised Christian, went to Christian school for eight years, and went to church regularly until age seventeen. As I aged, I slowly began to swing toward the other side of the theistic spectrum, going from agnostic to tentative atheist to full-blown atheist. I’ve read extensive religious philosophy from a number of different viewpoints, with a particular focus upon Christianity (as it is my background).
Last year, during a discussion in myBeowulf seminar, someone brought up the religion of Odenism, which is, apparently, a belief in the god Oden, although I’m unsure of their tenets and beliefs beyond that. I scoffed when it came up, and the professor–whom I admire immensely–said, “Well, we have to have respect for all religions.”
While I recognize the need for tolerance and understand the desire to make everyone feel welcome in an academic environment, I can’t say that I agree with the necessity of respect for all religious beliefs.
I am glad to live in a place where I can speak (and write) freely about my lack of belief, and I know that some people who believe in gods have died to grant me that freedom, but I’m positive some atheists were in foxholes also. In fact, some of our famous forefathers were admitted atheists. However, we should not feel obligated to respect all religious beliefs just because we live in a country that grants religious freedom.
Some of the ridiculous stories, ideas, and precepts that go into some religions would be dismissed outright if they were expressed in a non-religious context. You’re telling me, with no sense of satire or irony, that all of the species on earth fit on a boat? And you don’t believe in evolution (despite the millions of pieces of evidence to the contrary)?
I’m not speaking from an unschooled standpoint here. I went to school and church with many people who blatantly rejected scientific principles because their scriptures said something contrary. Hell, I was one of them! But none of these people was an expert in the scientific field. I’m not either, but I’ve read enough in my spare time to know that evolution is a fact.
These same people who reject scientific principles would use science in a split second if it supported their viewpoints. But instead of proof they have faith: a poor substitute.
The issue I have here–especially as an educator of young people–is that the world is a better place when people are logical, rational, and open-minded. Anything that encourages people to act otherwise should be viewed with suspicion and even disdain.
Yet even some atheists feel the need to “respect” other people’s beliefs. The bottom line is that I respect people; I respect their inherent rights to pursue happiness in whatever form they so choose as long as it does no harm to others.
But I will not–I cannot–respect illogical, fanciful, outdated belief systems.
I agree with you and I do not adhere to a religion that neglects logic, science, reason, or open-mindedness. I don’t think the Bible teaches people to be that way either.
Really? So when the Israelites were instructed to stone a man because he was gathering sticks on the Sabbath, that wasn’t illogical? Unreasonable? Unfair? Or when Jesus causes a fig tree to wither because it does not have fruit for him (although it wasn’t fig season): this is not illogical? I could keep going, but the comment itself would be longer than my entire original post.
There is logic, reason, context, and purpose for everything that is in the Bible. Simply because at first glance it might not appear to make sense does not make it automatically illogical, unreasonable, or unfair.
And simply because a group of people use it out of context to justify what they believe does not make what they say true.
If you read the original post carefully, you know that I attended Christian school for eight years, so everything I learned was embedded in a context. I had Bible as a class along with all my other subjects. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover three times, once as a believer, once as an agnostic, and once as an atheist. So to make the assumption that I am judging the Bible “at first glance” is presumptuous and erroneous. I never once said that it was “automatically” anything. But it is illogical, unreasonable, and unfair in many places. In fact, I’m not sure how anyone can, in right conscience, worship the god of the Old Testament.
But since you seem to have divine enlightenment and us non-believers do not, please take a crack at just the few examples I gave and explain the logic, reason, and context behind them.
Never did I state I had divine enlightenment. Did my original comment offend you in some way? For a post about respect, I find you have little respect for a perspective that is not your own.
If my second comment was presumptuous I apologize. But I disagree that the Bible is illogical, unreasonable, and unfair. If you insist that I “take a crack at it” my comment will also be longer than your original post.
Actually, the post was about a lack of respect I have for belief systems that do not make logical sense. I ask again: did you read the original post carefully? It seems that you are either skimming the post or not paying attention to the details.
The offensive part of your comment is that you presume that I am someone who is part of a “group” who takes examples in the Bible out of context to support a belief system. You used the words “at first glance,” suggesting that I have not given the Bible any real thought or read it thorougly. I nearly have a Master’s degree in English Lit, so if there’s anything I know how to do, it’s read thoroughly and embed examples in a context, both textual and historical. I probably know the Bible better than many Christians do because, as I’ve stated, I’ve read it through three times.
What I invited you to do was explain how the two examples I gave represent logic, reason, and fairness. I don’t think it would be a huge task to try to justify how stoning a man who was picking up sticks on the Sabbath–most likely to build a fire to feed his family–is fair and logical, nor would it be herculean to ask that you explain how Jesus rendering a fig tree infertile is reasonable and fair.
The fact is that I’m not some atheist who is dismissing all religion offhand. I’ve studied it–I continue to study it–and I’m making educated observations, not flinging accusations devoid of context.
It was how you invited me to explain that was offensive.
That’s the only reply you have to the entire comment above? You asked me if you had offended me, and I explained why you had, based upon your condescending presumptions about my lack of Biblical knowledge and lack of attention you claimed I gave to the Bible. Thus, the offensive part of my invitation was actually defensive.
When it comes down to it, justifying many parts of the Bible, including those two examples I gave, is a very difficult task. I do actually believe that trying to explain how those verses demonstrate logic and reason is a herculean task. And in the end, the argument that Christians and other theists have to fall back on, which is really no argument at all, is that one just has to have faith. Faith is an admission that the belief lacks empirical evidence. As I said, I have studied the Bible, and I know Christianity well. It is not a religion of logic and reason, at least not in the empirical sense. Belief in resurrection, water turning into wine, and other impossible acts (deemed miracles precisely because they violate natural laws) is not logical.
I would never want the task of a biblical apologist. To argue for the logic and accuracy of the Bible in a convincing fashion would be a miracle in itself.
You deserve an explanation of my original statement. I don’t feel the bible teaches people to have an “illogical, fanciful, outdated belief system.” You took this as “Really, look at all this stuff that is illogical, fanciful, and outdated.”
You missed my point. We filter everything we read and research through our belief system. So if it doesn’t fit well with what we believe we question it. For me, my belief system allows me to question the Bible and the things people say for or against it and either come to an agreement or a disagreement about it. What I believe the Bible teaches people is a deeper understanding of God, mankind, and the world we live in. You believe the Bible to teach people illogical, fanciful, and outdated beliefs.
You asked me about Numbers 15:32-36, how stoning a man for gathering sticks is logical?
1) What is God trying to do with the Israelite’s in this part of the Old Testament?
2) What is the Law’s purpose for Israel at this time?
There are a number of logical questions you can ask to put the verse into context. To ask questions from your belief system and worldview would take it out of context.
1) God was taking Israelite’s out of Egypt and setting them apart from all other nations.
2) The Law was to help Israel set themselves apart and to show the world God’s standards and the consequences of not upholding His standards.
Does this make sense in today’s world to stone someone for gathering sticks on a Saturday? No.
We have been freed from the Law of the Old Testament in that the consequences we face for breaking the Law or God’s standards are eternal. We can attempt to abide by the Law of the Old Testament (by our own works and effort) but we will fail every time, that’s why God sent His Son. The New Testament teaches us that it is not by our efforts but by God’s efforts we are saved.
The New Testament also teaches us that trying to make a religion out of God is illogical, fanciful, and will become outdated. God cannot be contained in the box of a religion.
Is it completely impossible for you to read the Bible and think, “People might hold on to a religion that is illogical, fanciful, or outdated BUT God will never be illogical, fanciful, or outdated.”
I question God all the time…why would you allow this to happen? What does this part of scripture mean to the world today? Etc.
I fully understand the idea of putting situations in context, but putting a situation in context does not excuse poor moral behavior. If you argued that Hitler was simply trying to set his country apart from the rest of the world by upholding what he viewed as the strict standards of a god, most people would be quite upset with you. Also, you’re not going to get too far arguing with an atheist if you use a plan of god to justify this sort of behavior. I do not judge things based on some supernatural scale of justice; rather, I am concerned with human welfare. SO if a group of people uses a god as justification for their heinous acts, I do not excuse them because it is placed in a religious context.
I know the verse to which you are referring: “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast.” In fact, that is still burned onto my brain from childhood. But faith is intellectually bankrupt, so I can’t follow that.
The problem when you talk about a god is that man has created gods and not the other way around. If you ask a thousand people about their conceptions of a god, you will get a thousand different answers: the relativity of the conception of god. What you are arguing is that the Israelite conception of god presented in the Old Testament is now outdated. So you mean to say that your conception of god is more conducive to our lives now? Then that’s you and not god.
Even the god which the gospels espouse has no place in our society today. I heard the argument you are presenting all through my childhood and adolescence: Jesus came to fulfill the law. But Jesus never spoke out against slavery–in fact, he condoned it; Jesus never spoke up for the rights of women, and had no female disciples. I could keep going on about the dubious morality of the teachings of Jesus, but it’s a long list.
The Bible is not all bad. But it’s not original in its teachings, not revolutionary in its message. People can be morally upstanding individuals without its teachings. Will they go to a heaven whose existence is not proven? Perhaps not. But if a god is willing to deny people who care about others and try to make the world a better place a spot in his heaven for a lack of belief, then I don’t want to be a part of that heaven.
In stating that “your conception of god is more conducive to our lives now…therefore that is you and not god.” Is a logical fallacy. Our conceptions of the world around us can change. Your argument is falling back into “Well prove you god is more real than Zeus, Oden, or Ra?”
Our conceptions of other god’s over time have become obsolete. But why not the God of the Bible that is found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam/Muslim? Even in Hinduism, not many people worship Krishna or Vishnu today. Buddhism is also more of a practice than what I would consider worshiping a god.
Why won’t this pesky God of the Bible just go away? People are just so stupid aren’t they?
People who care about others and try and make the world a better place get half of the equation right…at least according to Jesus. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. On these to the entire Law and prophets are fulfilled. Caring about the world and the people in it is what Jesus means by Loving Others.
Not Loving God, would mean that you’ve missed the mark. I mean IF the God of the Bible is real why would He let someone just because they’ve “done good things” but haven’t acknowledge Him which would be to sin against Him? If you know someone who has done a lot of good things but they have threatened your life time after time, would you invite them into your home just because they have done all these “good things,” at the risk of you and your family?
Have you ever considered that Israel in the Old Testament only won the battles that God authorized? You might argue that when it was written they just glossed over it so “there god didn’t lose.” But why would they write about it in the first place? Why include the losses? If Israel “didn’t want their god to lose” why not just write about the victories?
It was you who said that Jesus came and so people no longer need to follow the laws of the Old Testament. It seems convenient that when the rules of a religion no longer prove necessary or logical to a current time period one can say, “Oh, but so and so came to fulfill the law. We don’t need to follow it anymore.” It reminds me of the Mormons in Utah. The U.S. government would not allow them to become a state if they (publicly) continued the practice of polygamy, and so, lo and behold, God sent a message that they were no longer instructed to continue this practice. Very convenient.
I never asked you to prove your god is more real than any other god. By definition, the proof of god is impossible, thus faith. The point I was making–and anyone would be a fool to deny it–is that human perceptions change, mostly because knowledge increases. The sun used to be a god; now we know it as a ball of nuclear reactions. It’s very religiocentric of you to say that your god is the only one that people still worship regularly or on a wide scale, as if, somehow, he is the only one who has stood the test of time. Many gods are worshiped all over the world. My point is the god of the bible has changed based upon the changing perceptions of people. I have heard sermons in which the pastor is weighing in on what god thinks of the Internet. He uses verses which, as you point out, are embedded in the context of their time to support his points, verses written thousands of years ago in an era that had no way of conceiving of the Internet. We change and so gods change.
You conveniently side-stepped my points on the lack of morality in the teachings of Jesus, yet you use his teaching to explain why a lack of belief gives a moral person only “half the equation.” Do you support slavery? Do you believe women have a defined place in society and should not extend their actions beyond these definitions? If you don’t believe these things, then are you not contradicting the teachings of Jesus?
Your parallel of someone threatening my life but doing good things holds no weight. A person, with whom I can interact because he talks back, lives on this earth and is real because I can see him, touch him, and talk to him. I can ask him why he has been threatening my life and he can answer. But all arguments regarding existence aside, a lack of belief in a god does not, if he exists, threaten his life. He has more than enough believers who believe in him. And bringing up the notion of sin is not logical. People writing about god wrote down what is sinful and what is not in the eyes of god they created by their words. What concept of god do you have beyond that of the Bible? Talk about logical fallacies: people use the Bible to glean their conceptions of god, and it is this same book which then outlines what this god whose existence they have put forth views as good and bad, and the writers of this book know this because they are divinely inspired by the god whose existence they established. To use the Bible to prove the existence of god is circular beyond reason.
As to citing the military wins and losses of Israel: you will get nowhere with me on that account. I am certain that not every battle was recorded in the Bible; it is way to brief for that. But if we just focus on these victories that god gave Israel, we encounter even more heinous behavior by this god: instructions for genocide, rape, and ransacking. Not a god I wish to worship. But because he’s god, and because these actions are his plan, and because humans cannot know the mind of god, we should just accept these sorts of instructions? It sounds dangerously close to Hitler believing that his work was glorifying to a god.