J. P. Moreland is against it. Me too. More generally, I oppose any amalgamation of classical theism and materialism about the mind. (See my "Could a Classical Theist be a Physicalist?" Faith and Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 2, April 1998, pp. 160-180.) Here are some excerpts from Moreland's piece:
Christianity is a dualist, interactionist religion in this sense: God, angels/demons, and the souls of men and beasts are immaterial substances that can causally interact with the world. Specifically, human persons are (or have) souls that are spiritual substances that ground personal identity in a disembodied intermediate state between death and final resurrection . . . .
[. . .]
In my view, Christian physicalism involves a politically correct revision of the biblical text that fails to be convincing . . . .
[. . .]
The irrelevance of neuroscience also becomes evident when we consider the recent best seller Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander. Regardless of one’s view of the credibility of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) in general, or of Alexander’s in particular, one thing is clear. Before whatever it was that happened to him (and I believe his NDE was real but no not agree with his interpretation of some of what happened to him), Alexander believed the (allegedly) standard neuroscientific view that specific regions of the brain generate and possess specific states of conscious. But after his NDE, Alexander came to believe that it is the soul that possesses consciousness, not the brain, and the various mental states of the soul are in two-way causal interaction with specific regions of the brain. Here’s the point: His change in viewpoint was a change in metaphysics that did not require him to reject or alter a single neuroscientific fact. Dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent views consistent with all and only the same scientific data. Thus, the authority of science cannot be appropriated to provide any grounds whatsoever for favoring one view over another.
I'm with J.P on the irrelevance of neuroscience to the philosophy of mind, and vice versa, but with three minor exceptions that I explain in the third article cited below.
But if one needs institutionalized religion, one could do far worse, assuming one can stomach the secular-humanist liberal namby-pambification and wussification that the post-Vatican II church can't seem to resist, the dilution of doctrine and tradition that empties into the nauseating Church of Nice.
There was something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction kept going by human needs and desires noble and base. Suppose there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem reward or punishment, no moral world order. Suppose we are nothing but a species of clever land mammal thrown up on the shores of life by blind evolutionary processes, and that everything that makes us normatively human and thus persons (consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, reason, and the rest) are nothing but cosmic accidents. Suppose all that.
Still, religion would have its immanent life-enhancing role to play, and one would have to be as superficial and ignorant of the human heart as a New Atheist to think it would ever wither away: it inspires and guides, comforts and consoles; it provides our noble impulses with an outlet while giving suffering a meaning. Suffering can be borne, Nietzsche says somewhere, if it has a meaning; what is unbearable is meaningless suffering. Now the deep meaning that the Roman church provides is tied to its profundity, mystery, and reference to the Transcendent. Anything that degrades it into a namby-pamby secular humanism, just another brand of liberal feel-goodism and do-goodism, destroys it, making of it just another piece of dubious cultural junk. Degrading factors: switching from Latin to the vernacular; the introduction of sappy pseudo-folk music sung by pimply-faced adolescents strumming gut-stringed guitars; leftist politics and political correctness; the priest facing the congregation; the '60s obsession with 'relevance.'
People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians. The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clienetele, the conservatives and traditionalists. The church should be a liberal-free zone.
Man is godlike and therefore proud. He becomes even more godlike when he humbles himself.
The central thought of Christianity, true or not, is one so repellent to the natural human pride of life that one ought at least to entertain the unlikelihood of its having a merely human origin. The thought is that God humbled himself to the point of entering the world in the miserably helpless and indigent way we in fact do, inter faeces et urinam, and to the point of leaving it in the most horrendous way the brutal Romans could devise, and from a most undistinguished spot, a hill in an obscure desert outpost of their empire.
Richard Swinburne, Revelation, Oxford, 1992, pp. 102-103:
. . . there has been a strain in Protestantism, with its immense reverence for Scripture, to write of Holy Scripture itself as the original [propositional] revelation; what was given by God was the Bible. But that surely fits very badly with other things that those same Protestants wish to say: for example that there were Christians in the first four centuries AD. For the books of the New Testament were not written down until from twenty to seventy years after Christ taught on Earth, and were only put together and recognized as a New Testament in final form in the fourth century AD. If the books themselves were the revelation, how could there be Chrsitians when there were no books? [Footnote 6 not reproduced: it quotes Iraneus and Papias as quoted by Eusebius.] Holy Scripture must be regarded by Protestants as it is by Catholics, as no more than a true record of a revelation which existed before it.
London Karl points us to this interview, some of which I reproduce here:
It would be silly, foolish, to object to the Church on the grounds that it is "traditionalist". The whole strength of the Church is that it is faithful to its tradition – otherwise, what is the Church for? If the Church is going to become a political party which merely adapts its beliefs to changing opinions, it can be safely dismissed altogether, because there are political parties doing such things. If the Church is there to sanctify and bless in advance every change in intellectual and moral fashion in our civilisation, then again – what is the Church for? The Church is strong because it has a traditional teaching, a spiritual kernel, which it considers its immutable essence. It cannot just yield to any pressure from people who think that whatever is in fashion at the present moment should immediately be adopted by the Church as its own teaching, whether in the field of political ideas or of daily life.
I think the Church is not only right in keeping its historically shaped, traditional identity. Its very role, its very mission on earth would become unclear if it did not do that. And so I would not be afraid at all, and I would not take it as an insult, that critics describe the Church as traditionalist or conservative.
There must be forces of conservatism in society, in spiritual life, by which I mean the forces of conservation. Without such forces, the entire fabric of society would fall apart.
[. . .]
In my view, there is no way in which Marxist teaching could be reconciled with Christianity. Marxism is anti-Christian, not contingently, not by accident, but in its very core. You cannot reconcile it.
There is no Christianity where no distinction is made between temporal and eternal values. There is no Christianity where [the word 'where' is wrong; should be UNLESS] one accepts that all earthly values, however important, however crucial to human life, are nevertheless secondary. What the Church is about essentially is the salvation of human souls, and the human soul is never reducible to social conditions.
There is an absolute value in the human person. The Church believes that the world – the social world, the physical world – is merely an expression of the divine, and as such it can only have instrumental or secondary value. Without this, there is no point in speaking about Christianity.
Kolakowski is absolutely right about this. His is an exceedingly penetrating mind. I recommend his work. See my Kolakowski category.
I would like to return to the practice of the religion of my youth, I really would. Nothing of the usual sort holds me back: not the sex monkey, not illicit loves or addictions, not worldly ambition or the demands of career, not the thoughtlessness of the worldling mesmerized by the play of transient phenomena, not the Luciferian pride of a Russell or a Sartre or a Hitchens, not the opposition of a wife: mine is a good old-fashioned Catholic girl who attends mass on Sundays, ministers to the sick, and embodies the old-time virtues.
Philosophical and theological questions and doubts are the main impediments to my return.
. . . in the Novus Ordo rite of Mass the Liturgy has been effeminized. There is a famous passage in Caesar’s De bello Gallico where he explains why the Belgae tribe were such good soldiers. He attributes this to their lack of contact with the centers of culture like the cities. Caesar believed that such contact contributes ad effeminandos animos, to the effeminizing of their spirits.
[. . .]
In its Novus Ordo form . . . the Liturgy has been devirilized. One must recall the meaning of the word, vir, in Latin. Both vir and homo mean “man”, but it is vir alone that has the connotation of the man-hero and is the word that is often used for “husband”. The Aeneid begins with the famous words: arma virumque cano. (“ I sing of arms and the man-hero.”) What Cardinal Heenan presciently and correctly saw in 1967 was the virtual elimination of the virile nature of the Liturgy, the replacement of masculine objectivity, necessary for the public worship of the Church, with softness, sentimentality and personalization centered on the motherly person of the priest.
But not only the Liturgy has been devirilized; the priests have been too. The priests of my youth were manly men. But this soon changed in ways that are well known.
There was something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction kept going by human needs and desires noble and base. Suppose there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem reward or punishment, no moral world order. Suppose we are nothing but a species of clever land mammal thrown up on the shores of life by blind evolutionary processes, and that everything that makes us normatively human and thus persons (consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, reason, and the rest) are nothing but cosmic accidents. Suppose all that.
Still, religion has its immanent life-enhancing role to play, whether true or false, and one would have to be as superficial and ignorant of the human heart as a New Atheist to think it will ever wither away: it inspires and guides, comforts and consoles; it provides our noble impulses with an outlet while giving suffering a meaning. Suffering can be borne, Nietzsche says somewhere, if it has a meaning; what is unbearable is meaningless suffering. Now the deep meaning that the Roman church provides is tied to its profundity, mystery, and reference to the Transcendent. Anything that degrades it into a namby-pamby secular humanism, just another brand of liberal feel-goodism and do-goodism, destroys it, making of it just another piece of dubious cultural junk. Degrading factors: switching from Latin to the vernacular; the introduction of sappy pseudo-folk music sung by pimply-faced adolescents strumming gut-stringed guitars; leftist politics and political correctness; the priest facing the congregation; the '60s obsession with 'relevance.'
People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians. The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clienetele, the conservatives and traditionalists. The church should be a liberal-free zone.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:
The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron is necessary.
'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)
Apparently, there are some atheists who are adopting Lenten-type practices without abandoning their atheist beliefs. This ought to be cautiously applauded: we all can profit morally from a bit of voluntary abstinence. One cannot live well without (moderate) asceticism. (See William James on Self-Denial.) Better self-controlled atheists than atheists 'gone wild.'
But I would urge these atheists to go further and practice doxastic abstinence. Without rejecting your atheist beliefs, put them within brackets for the Lenten period. Practice epoché with respect to them, that is, withhold intellectual assent. That is not to doubt them or disbelieve them, but simply to make no use of them. Leave them alone for a time. In the strict sense epoché goes beyond even suspension of judgment. If I suspend judgment with respect to a propositional content, I neither affirm it, deny it, doubt it, nor even just entertain it. For if I do any of those things I admit that it has a coherent sense. In epoché, however, I leave it open whether the content has a coherent sense. Epoché is the ultimate in doxastic disengagement. Practicing total doxastic abstinence, I totally disengage from those propositions that ignite often acrimonious disagreement.
You can always go back to your atheist beliefs. Another excellent form of self-denial for atheists and religionists alike is to abstain from all theological controversies and polemics from time to time. One could call it a 'belief fast.' I hope we can all agree that being just is better than developing a theory of justice. And if discussing the Trinity only makes you angry and combative, then it might be best to drop theology and cultivate piety.
But while atheists can profit from voluntary self-denial, bringing such practices under the Lent umbrella makes little sense. Will the period of self-denial go from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday? Why tie it to these dates freighted as they are with Christian metaphysics? When a Christian reminds himself on Ash Wednesday that he is dust and shall return to dust, the whole point of that memento mori is situated within the context of the hope for and promise of eternal life. Christian mortalism is toto caelo different from atheist mortalism. And what the Christian celebrates on Easter Sunday is precisely the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of God and the hope that death will be conquered eventually for all. No atheist believes that.
In the final analysis, Lent secularized is no longer Lent. Atheists ought to exercise their imaginations and come up with a secular analog free of Chistian trappings.
Atheists ought also to worry that if they take up Christian practices, the beliefs may follow . . . .
"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.
How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?
The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence. This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't. If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist. That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.
Bill O'Reilly does a lot of good, but he made a fool of himself last night on his O'Reilly Factor. It was painful to watch. In the course of a heated exchange with David Silverman, president of American Atheists, O'Reilly claimed that Christianity is not a religion, but a philosophy. At first I thought I had misheard, but Mr. Bill repeated the ridiculous assertion.
And yet O'Reilly was right to oppose the extremism of Silverman and the zealots who seek to remove every vestige of religion from the public square, though they seem to be rather less zealous when it comes to the 'religion of peace.'
It is not enough to have the right view; one must know how to defend it properly. A bad argument for a true conclusion gives the impression that there are no good arguments for it. And this is where conservatives tend to fall short. See my Anti-Intellectualism on the Right and Why Are Conservatives Inarticulate?
O'Reilly's bizarre assertion shows that he has no understanding of the differences among philosophy, religion, and Christianity. For part of my views on the differences between philosophy and religion, see here. There is room for disagreement on the exact definition of 'religion,' but if anything is clear, it is that Christianity is a religion. O'Reilly only dug his hole deeper when he claimed that while Christianity is a philosophy, Methodism is a religion!
I am reminded of the inarticulate George W. Bush. He once claimed that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. That silly assertion showed that Bush understood neither philosophy nor Jesus. Jesus claimed not only to know the truth, but to be the truth. "I am the way, the truth, and the life . . . ." That is a claim that no philosopher qua philosopher can make. A philosopher is a mere seeker of truth, not a possessor of it, let alone truth's very incarnation. A philosopher is a person who is ignorant, knows that he is, and seeks to remedy his deficiency.
Neither God nor Christ are philosophers. And we can thank God for that!
I've continued to think on one of our old disagreements, the one about religion and zealotry, and I'd like to continue the discussion. Previously, I'd put forward the argument attempting to show that religious belief is rationally unacceptable. Now, I'm thinking it might be profitable to repackage the argument for a more modest conclusion. I want to say something like, "Given other epistemic commitments that I have and, on reflection, find myself unable to give up, I find that I am rationally unable to accept religious belief of the sort in question." Since I take these commitments to be closely related to the conservative disposition which you and I share, perhaps you will find that you, too are committed to abandoning religious belief." This is, to use a phrase from Robert Nozick, non-coercive philosophy, and I am growing increasingly inclined to think that herein all real persuasion lies.
BV: I suggest we divide persuasion into nonrational and rational, and then subdivide rational persuasion into coercive and noncoercive. Noncoercive rational persuasion, I take it, would be rational persuasion that makes use only of propositions already accepted by the person to be persuaded in an attempt to get him to accept a proposition to which he is logically committed by what he already accepts but does not yet accept. I agree that in the vast majority of cases only noncoercive rational persuasion has a chance at success.
Let me now re-frame the argument that I have presented earlier, with the hope that I can improve on my earlier formulations. When I was a soldier in Afghanistan, I attended a ceremony for a fallen comrade. Nobody I knew. In main sermon, the chaplain said, "Sgt. So-and-so got a big promotion that day," referring to the day an IED [improvised explosive device] ended the life of this unfortunate soldier. His reasoning is that now this soldier was enjoying the loving embrace of Jesus. Whatever suffering this caused him or his family is comparatively small.
I found the chaplain's speech off-putting because his account robbed this soldier's death of its tragedy. He went well beyond consoling the survivors to telling us that we should be positively happy that this event occurred. What disturbed me more, though, is that the chaplain arrived at this conclusion very reasonably from very widely held set of religious beliefs. If one believes, as a majority of the people of the world do, that an eternity of happiness of a much higher grade than any that exists on earth awaits the righteous after death, then one is left to draw this, and other unpalatable conclusions. For instance, if you could inflict a great amount of suffering on an innocent person, and by so doing, influence that person's choice, or someone else's choice, to turn to religion, then it would seem one should do it.
I too am put off by the chaplain's speech but for a different reason. What I find offensive is his presumption to know that the unfortunate soldier is now in a far better state. No one can legitimately claim to know that God exists, or that we survive our bodily deaths as individuals, or that Jesus is the son of God, or that a given person is in heaven as opposed to the other place, etc. (Nor can one legitimately claim to know the negations of any of these propositions.) People can and do believe these things, and some have good reasons for (some of) their beliefs. Since no one can know about these things, the chaplain had no right to offer the kind of ringing assurance he offered or to make the claim that one should be positively happy that the soldier was blown to bits.
So I would say that the chaplain was doubly presumptuous. He presumed to know what no one can know, and he presumed to make a comforting assurance that he was not entitled to make. But had he said something tentative and in keeping with our actual doxastic predicament, then I wouldn't have been offended. Suppose he had said this: "Our faith teaches us that death is not the end and that this life is but a prelude to a better life to come. We hope and pray that Sgt So-and-So is now sharing in that higher life." I would not be put off by such a speech. Consolation without presumption.
What you are offended by is something different, the very content of the Christian message. But suppose it is true. Then there is nothing ultimately "tragic" about the soldier's death. (I also think you are misusing 'tragic.' Was hubris displayed by the soldier prior to his death?) He has left this vale of tears and has gone to a better 'place.' You see, if Christianity is true, then death does not have the 'sting' that it has for an atheist (assuming the atheist values life in this world). Are you then just assuming that Christianity is false? If it is false, then Nietzsche is right and it is a slander upon this life, the only life there is. But is it false? You can't just assume that it is.
Distinguish the question whether Christianity is true from the question whether it can be known to be true (by anyone here below). I claim that it cannot be known to be true, using 'know' in a strict and intellectually responsible way.
Now one of the "unpalatable consequences" you mention is this: "if you could inflict a great amount of suffering on an innocent person, and by so doing, influence that person's choice, or someone else's choice, to turn to religion, then it would seem one should do it." But this is not a consequence of Christian belief, but at best a consequence of the fanatical and dogmatic belief that one knows that Christianity is true. Suppose I did know that Christianity — or rather some fire-and- brimstone variant of Christianity– is true, then why wouldn't I be justified in torturing someone until he accepts the saving truth, the truth without which he will spend all eternity in hell? What's worse, a day of torture or an eternity of it? Besides, if I really care about you, wouldn't I want you to have an eternity of bliss?
What you are giving us, I think, is an argument against religious fanaticism, not an argument against religion. Religion is a matter of faith, not knowledge. More precisely, genuine religion is a matter of a faith that understands that it is faith and not knowledge. Once that is understood your "unpalatable consequences" do not ensue. For if I understand that my faith transcends what I can legitimately claim to know, then this understanding will prevent me from torturing someone into acceptance of my creed. For surely it is clearer that one ought not torture people into the acceptance of metaphysical propositions than that said propositions are true.
Now, as our previous discussions have shown, one is not compelled to adopt a non-religious outlook, as I have done, because of these considerations. One is only compelled to adopt a non-religious outlook if one also accepts the idea that earthly goods are not negligible in terms of the reasons they provide. To be clear, I mean things like: the pleasures of laughter, friendship, sex, families, etc., as well as achieving important life goals (including the goal of living a philosophical life in a tumultuous world.) I accept that these things are non-negligible and I feel confident that any theory of the Good Life must afford them a central place. I don't think I can provide a further justification for why I believe this, other than I find the thought compelling. If an interlocutor is happy to accept that these are all axiological ciphers because they are nothing when compared with the goodness of God in the next world, then I must part ways with him. I would, however, be surprised for a conservative to take that view, since conservatives, more than progressives, tend to value the familiar.
I am not sure I follow this last paragraph, but I take you to be saying that there are certain non-negligible goods that this life provides (friendship, etc.) and that anyone who accepts that there are must adopt a non-religious outlook. Your argument can perhaps be put as follows:
1. If a religion such as Christianity is true, then the good things of this world are relatively unimportant as compared with the good things of the world to come.
2. But it is not the case that the good things of this world are relatively unimportant: they are absolutely important.
Therefore
3. Someone of conservative bent, someone who is capable of appreciating what actually and presently exists, ought to reject a religion such as Christianity.
I would respond to this by saying that the goods of this world are certainly not absolutely important, but they are not "axiological ciphers" either. A theist will say that what exists in this world is good because it comes from the source of all goodness, God. So the conservative theist has plenty of reason to appreciate what actually and presently exists, but he is also in a position to evaluate the goodness of finite goods properly and without idolatry because he appreciates that they are other than that which is wholly good. The goods of this world are neither negligible nor absolute, neither illusory nor absolutely real.
I would further argue that atheists typically succumb to axiological illusion: they take what is relatively valuable for absolutely valuable.
That article about political correctness in the universities you linked to reminded me of David Conway's comments in A Defence of the Realm about the 'systematic deracination' of the citizens of western liberal democracies since World War Two:
Through changes in educational curricula, plus other cultural changes, most notably in public broadcasting, the cultural majorities in these societies have been made increasingly unfamiliar with their national histories and traditions. Without adequate historical knowledge of their national histories and without encouragement and opportunity to participate in national traditions, the members of a society cannot be expected to have much understanding of or affection for them.
Solzhenitsyn put this chillingly: 'to destroy a people, you must first sever their roots'.Nothing is more important to remedying this than reclaiming education. Blogs like yours help. I teach English, and I try to do my bit by enunciating the following politically incorrect truths to all my classes. Like the author of the article you linked to, I'm frustrated by 'engagement with political presuppositions often quite peripheral at best — and more often directly opposed — to one’s own scholarly purposes', but the fact that it is necessary is a reminder that the spiritual reality that the scholar defends is vaster, richer and more profound than the narrow intellectual lists where he fights. The advantage of this list is that it frees one up to get on with the more important matter of showing why, for example, Shakespearean tragedy is worth reading. And it prevents one from assenting to falsehoods – to do which is to be complicit in evil.
I doubt you'll learn anything from it, but you might find it interesting anyway; the ones in red are, I think, the most politically incorrect.
The slave trade
The British weren’t the first to practise slavery, but they were the first to abolish it, first at home, then in the colonies, then throughout the world. Be proud of that.
More than three quarters of the captives sold to Europeans were provided by the Africans themselves from raids and war. The African powers remained in control of the slaves as long as the slave trade lasted. They entered into the slave trade entirely of their own accord. There was no opposition to slavery even in principle in black Africa. Western-style abolitionism had no impact: African chiefs sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of the slave trade because they found it so profitable.
Muslims were the greatest slave traders, enslaving seventeen-million people. There was never a Muslim abolitionist movement. The Koran assumes and accepts slavery.
Marxism
Communists murdered over one-hundred million people in the twentieth century.
Note how the Western intellectuals who criticise capitalist democracies vote with their feet by living in them, tellingly opting not to emigrate to North Korea or a Cuban prison state.
Sexism
Historically, nowhere in the world have women been better treated than in Christian nations. In his Confessions, St. Augustine wrote the first tribute in history to an ordinary woman, his mother, Monica. The Divine Comedy is highest praise of a woman ever. According to Christianity, the Virgin Mary is the greatest human being ever to have lived. Be proud of that.
The accusers during the witch hunts were overwhelmingly women.
One-hundred and fifty years ago, ninety-five percent of men didn't have the vote.
In nineteenth-century England, more novels were published by women than by men. And they wrote under their own names, contrary to the feminist myth that women were obliged to take male names.
Western literature starts with an account of men fighting over a woman. Listen to Achilles: ‘Why must we battle Trojans, men of Argos? Why, why in the world if not for Helen with her loose and lustrous hair?’And Odysseus endures all perils and resists all temptations – even immortality – to get back home to his wife. Medieval chivalric literature also testifies to the fact that women were highly esteemed.
Homosexuality
Plato made sodomy illegal in his Laws.
Poets and orators did not express longings to return to their catamites.
Adult Athenians who acted as catamites were excluded from all offices in public life, not even being permitted to address the assembly.
Dead White Males
Most great literature is written by dead white males. Postmodernists think that’s explained by ‘oppression’ and ‘privilege’, but there are good reasons for it:
Whites have the highest IQ of any race (see the cold-climate theory of IQ).
Men are disproportionately represented at the extremes of intelligence (morons and geniuses): above the IQ level of 170, the genius level, there are thirty timesas many men as women. (Again, there are evolutionary reasons for this.)
Before writers are acknowledged to be great, their work must be subjected to the test of time, which outlasts any individual's lifespan.
Christianity
William E. Lecky, an atheist, makes the following point in his History of European Morals: ‘The vast change in the status of women must be manifest to all after Christianity had superseded the unlimited license of the pagan Empire.’ He mentions:
Christianity's absolute prohibition of sexual indulgence outside marriage
The security of wives by the prohibition of divorce
The legal rights of guardianship of children hitherto reserved to men
The inheritance of widows
"There can be little doubt that reverence for the Virgin Mary has done much to elevate and purify the ideal of woman and soften the manners of men."
The "redeeming and ennobling features of the age of chivalry which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly destroyed."
Also:
Christians preached that there was no separate baptism for men and women. All were one in Christ.
Christians did not expose baby girls at birth.
Christians honoured women who defied emperors, centurions and soldiers to witness to the Faith.
Christians were the first to educate women.
Christians were the first to have separate prison cells for men and women.
The following is from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous but who wants me "to hear a different perspective on the matter than that of the Calvinists who comment on your blog: I don't want you thinking they are the ones rightly interpreting the Christian texts."
……………….
Jesus and Paul had a rather liberal interpretation of the Old Testament Law, by which I mean a non-literal, moralist interpretation. I shall explain this in further detail by offering a few exemplary statements from them both.
Jesus famously said that "What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them" (Mt 15:11), specifying what he meant a few verses later: "But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person" (vv. 18-20). This is directly contradictory to the teaching of the Old Testament Law; after a long list of animals the eating of which is strictly forbidden, Lev 11:24 reads: "You will make yourselves unclean by [eating] these." Jesus denies the literal truth of Lev 11:24 by denying the reality of ritual purity and impurity; instead he gave a spiritualized, moralist interpretation of purity and impurity: the only true (im)purity or (un)cleanliness is moral (im)purity or (un)cleanliness.
A further expression of the denial of the reality of ritual purity and impurity and, implied with this, a rejection of the temple sacrificial system of worship is involved in Jesus' quoting the verse from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." When the Pharisees see that Jesus eats at the same table as many tax collectors and sinners — i.e., those who would render him ceremonially unclean and incapable of participating in the temple cult, thus removed from the blessings of God — Jesus responds that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Mt 9:10-13). "Sacrifice" is connected to a concern for ritual purity, as well as participation in the temple religious system; what God wants is not this, but mercy towards those who are in need of love: particularly those rejected by the religious figures and "holy men" of his time. God evidently is not concerned with ritual purity; he wishes that men be kind to one another, and he makes an effort to show such kindness himself through Jesus. But a rejection of ritual purity, the requirement for sacrifice, the legitimacy of the temple, etc., is a rejection of a literal reading of many Old Testament texts.
Consider also Jesus' and Paul's affirmation that the true fulfillment of the Law is obedience to the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (see, e.g., Mt 22:34-30; Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14). This cannot be literally true, for the various ritual and ceremonial injunctions of the Law (e.g., regarding circumcision, dietary habits, sacrifices, etc.) cannot in any plausible way be interpreted as mere instances of love for neighbor; no one would ever get the impression that the command to circumcise one's child on the eighth day is an instance of "love thy neighbor" by reading the relevant OT texts. What this statement suggests, rather, is a non-literal and moralist interpretation of the Old Testament: what is really of value is the moral teaching about loving your neighbor; all that ritual and ceremonial stuff doesn't mean much of anything and can even at times be ignored.
One more example would be Paul's affirmations regarding the ultimate insignificance of circumcision: "A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:28-29); "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19); "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation" (Gal 6:15). No one would ever come to such a conclusion merely reading what the Old Testament says regarding the requirement of circumcision: "Every male among you shall be circumcised. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people" (Gen 17:10, 13-14). Paul elevates obedience to the moral commandments of God, especially "love thy neighbor", above the command of circumcision, so much so that the latter command is effectively annulled.
No one would come to the conclusions that Jesus and Paul did merely by reading the salient Old Testament texts themselves; their interpretation is non-literal and moralist, and is merely one manifestation of the tendency towards spritualized, internalized interpretations of inherited religion that appears in other places (e.g., ancient Greek religion with the advent of the philosophers) as well. (For more on this, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Contents of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Boston: Brill, 2004), 47ff.)
BV comments: I find the foregoing persuasive and would extract the following argument against inerrancy from it:
1. If the Scripture is inerrant, then no later passage revises, corrects, contradicts, annuls, or abrogates any earlier passage.
2. There are NT passages that contradict OT passages, e.g. MT 15:11 contradicts Lev 11:24.
Therefore
3. It is not the case that the Scripture is inerrant.
The argument is valid in point of logical form. If the first premise is not true, then I simply do not know what plenary inerrancy means. (I assume we mean by inerrancy plenary (full) inerrancy. Otherwise I could maintain that my blog is inerrant, provided you ignore all assertions in it that are mistaken. "It is everywhere inerrant except where it isn't.") The first premise is true and so is the second as the anon. contributor demonstrated. Therefore, the Scriptures are not inerrant.
ComBox open. But if you comment, be BRIEF and address PRECISELY WHAT IS CLAIMED by the anonymous contributor. Otherwise you will be unmercifully cast into the outer cyber-darkness where there is much weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
