Wow.
I don't know where to begin, especially as I'm going on vacation and won't be online for the next four days.
Merry Christmas, everyone.

And now I have to get used to this keyboard again, just as I was finally getting used to the old one again, lol...anyway, on to FlemGem:

@FlemGem:

"1. Are you a doctrinaire pacifist (I happen to be), or is violence sometimes justified?"

The latter, though I'm against capital punishment (partly because of the cost, partly because I'm not wholly convinced it does deter people--not saying it doesn't, I'm just not wholly convinced one way or the other on that point--and partly because, though I do think violence is the last response and is sometimes necessary, I'd like to think that we can reach a state where we can act more morally than those we imprison as murderers.

One of the best lines in "Macbeth" (see, you shouldn't have gotten me started, dipplayer! lol) is "Blood will have blood," and it's true.

That was half my argument for "Titus" being moral and not merely crass violence, really--Shakespeare uses violence and revenge tragedies, but if he shows us anything in these tragedies, one of the most clear lessons has to be that, indeed, revenge is very, VERY rarely if ever the way to go in life.

It takes a whole play for Hamlet to agonize over this (And just about everything else.)
The revenge Tamora takes (letting her sons rape and dismember Lavinia) isn't just, isn't shown to be just, and in fact, leads to Titus' revenge (baking those two sons into a pie and making Tamora eat it)...thus, revenge helps rob BOTH parents of their children, their livelihood, and ultimately their lives.

And so on...about the closest it comes to a "just" revenge is Hamlet finally killing Claudius and Macduff killing Macbeth...and those aren't really moments glorified, they're treated more as the regrettable ends to a regrettable, terrible chain of events.

So for those three reasons I'm against capital punishment.

Even so, there ARE instances where war is necessary...but really, it follows that model of Macduff/Macbeth, ie, regrettable end to a regrettable series of events...case in point, after Pearl Harbor, YES, it was necessary and just for America to enter WWII...whether we should have dropped the Atomic Bomb is another matter (and WAY OFF TOPIC, so if you want to talk about that or steer the conversation that way, ye readers, PLEASE start a new thread instead of derailing this one, as that subject is so complex and so off on its own tangent that it really deserves its own thread rather than spinning out its course here) but yes, sometimes violence and force IS necessary.

In this regard, I'll say I'm far more pragmatic than you seem to be--

For instance, I don't think Israel is being particularly admirable right now, as much as I believe it has a right to exist as a state, but for all that, I'll take Israel and it's faults over a Hamas regime or Hezbollah or most of Israel's opponents...

Israel is by NO MEANS a perfect state or a state with a clean slate or conscience (though I think a lot of that has to do with the party and ideology in power there right now, not a great fan of the current regime) but, being pragmatic about it, I can be "for" Israel insofar as I'm for it on principle and insofar as I'm certainly against the alternative opponents.

"2. Are there any circumstances in which it is moral for one human to punish another?"

That's WAY too broad a question..."punish" can mean everything from "This is a verbal reprimand" to "Strap him into the chair and throw the switch."

Assuming you mean violent punishment...even there it's violent punishment, CONTEXT is needed to determine the answer here--WHO is being punished, WHAT the punishment is to be, WHEN this punishment will be carried out, WHERE it will be carried out, WHY this is person is being punished, HOW it will be carried out...

All of that and more needs answering first (but in context or in today's context, the chopping off of a woman's hand for crushing a man's testicles is wrong. Full stop. How can I be absolutist here and yet claim to be pragmatic? Because I've heard the circumstances and from that come to the conclusion that exactly 0% of the time is that punishment warranted...really ever--if you have a counter-example, go ahead and give it, when it'd EVER be acceptable to cut off a woman's hand as punishment for something--but even that broader claim aside, given this particular crime/punishment lineup...give me one good example of when and why it is OK to cut off a woman's hand--to permanently dismember her!--for crushing a man's testicles...and I'm sorry, but hurting a man's standing and pride in regards to a holy site or order does not equal a sufficient cause for chopping off her hand.)

"3. Given the basic tenets of secular humanism and some basic science: that the universe is impersonal; that life is an aberation, comsically speaking (and if it is not we will almost certainly never know due to the vastness of space); that life is the product of the impersonal plus chance plus time; that all life on earth will be gone in the blink of an eye, cosmically speaking; that life has no intrinsic meaning to begin with; that man is a machine; that we are biologically determined and choice is illusory; on what basis can we then speak /rationally/ about morality? Or about hope, justice, love, or beauty?"

A short answer (gasp!) and then my own personal answer.

The short answer: Therein lies the question which the Platos and Pauls and Aristotles and Aquinuses and Shakespeares and Sartres ask.

The longer answer, ie, my opinion (brace yourselves):

Morality, Truth, Justice, and all that good stuff...

None of it existed before humanity--and therein lies the beauty of it.
When Shakespeare or Keats or Dostoyevsky or Dante or Homer talk of beauty...
It's their idea, that they came up with...
Based off of a cultural background and a patchwork of other human ideas and creations.

In other words, FemGem, Mujus--

God doesn't make you OR the idea of you beautiful...

YOU make the idea of God (in your own interpretations of that abstract human creation) beautiful...

Which is why you love God and I don't.
YOUR God is one taken from a patchwork of quotes and stories and thoughts and ideas that paint a picture, in very broad strokes, of a loving, caring God...
And MY God, reading those same texts but with different glasses than you (as it were) is a vindictive, incompetent, cruel, evil, sexist Big Brother who is neither loving nor caring and deserves neither from me.

I'd also like to add that if you're going to "speak *rationally*" about morality...
Given the example of morality from God's holy book that started this debate was "Should a woman crush a man's testicles in defense of her husband, chop her hand off and show her no pity"...yeah...not exactly a "rational" start to the conversation of morality or justice, is it?

What's more, there are a WIDE variety of godless/worshiping-different-deities folks out there, and surely they're moral with their guiding lights the same as you're moral with your created concept of God and godliness...yes?

If not...are you really suggesting, to play off Animal Farm again, that all religions are equal...but some religions and opinions are more equal than others?

This is part of the reason my two favorite characters in all literature are Hamlet and Sherlock Holmes--

At the end of "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," Holmes essentially asks Watson "what it's all about," life, the universe, and everything that just went into this rather-tragic crime they've just solved, and all the others...what's the point? That there is no point, Holmes goes on, seems absurd, and yet he can see no point to all this senseless violence and to all the quarrels of the world on the whole.

And then of course Hamlet basically spends an entire play asking such questions.

What's more, FlemGem, they both take very understandable, very clear routes--

Holmes, ever the logician, figures there HAS to be a rational reason for it all to happen, and so he approaches the question from that perspective, from the viewpoint of The Great Detective, skilled in all things crime, science, music and logic, and just from his statement you can tell he thinks there must almost be some sort of cosmic equation to it all, that This Plus Thus WILL Equal That, and That will lead to something else, and so on and so forth until finally there is an answer and, more importantly, that there IS an answer at all to be had.

Hamlet's route's very different; he hangs out with actors, after all, and is acting himself a lot of the play in feigning madness, so for him, the question "What's the point?" almost becomes performative...when he feels like the point should be to delay and to question, he takes that route and is intellectual...when he feels ashamed for delaying and feels he should be as moved to action as Fortinbras' army is, he gives a grand speech to that effect, and suddenly the point of life isn't rooted in high-concept ideas, but raw emotion and manliness and action...and back and forth, throughout the play he changes, inventing one new reason for life after another, and then, naturally, inventing one idea towards death, and then another, and another, and so on.

Holmes is very logical and linear; Hamlet's intellectual but impassioned.

And those are two ways to approach your question:

Either you can take life as set-sum sort of deal, and try and work out the equation as you go along, Kantian or Spinozan proposition by proposition, or empirical fact by empirical fact, until such time as the answer rings forth (and hopefully it's not 42, with the followup statement that, perhaps, the answer's wrong because you're asking the wrong question to BEGIN WITH)...

Or, as Hamlet swings rather violently from religious to atheistic and nearly nihilistic, life can be performative and all those concepts--morality, truth, justice, beauty--all of them can simply be defined as you go, and so long as your take on it sticks and is consistent and your performance of it catches on, your ideas might catch on, and so it's always in flux, but that means you're never really defeated, you can always redefine life, and yourself.

Take the REAL Holy Trinity, the triad on which the Greco-Roman foundations of literature and so much of culture are based:

The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.

The Iliad starts it all and paints the Greeks and thus Greek society as victorious...
The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus and his wife Penelope, and is more humanistic...
And the Aeneid tells all that from the Trojan/Roman perspective...

And suddenly those heroic Greeks are reinvented and are shown as treacherous,
The clever Odysseus is depicted as conniving and almost evil in destroying Troy...
The once-antagonistic Trojans are now sympathetic survivors of a diaspora...
And it ends with the foundations of the Roman Empire being laid...

And empire which, after all, conquered Greece, absorbed it into the culture, and saw the marriage of the best ideas of the two cultures.

For someone like Hamlet, that's one way to tackle life--constantly reinventing yourself and your ideas and shifting paradigms..

I think a marriage of the two approaches is best.

NOW.

From all this arises the natural question and response,

"But Obi, if we take Holmes' method, then you're claiming far too much subjectivity and too much of an open field if it's a to-be-solved equation, and if we take Hamlet's performative approach, then what right do you have to say that one "performance" of an ideal is lesser than or even flat-out wrong in comparison to another?"

My answer is that, again, since I'd like to think I can take something from Hamlet and Holmes alike in life, that the approach lies between their extremes:

There ARE wrong answers to certain questions, and that has to be accepted.
2+2 is 4 and, as Orwell put it, if you allow that, everything then might follow.
2+2 can't equal 42 no matter how much you "feel" like that's the right answer.
Likewise, there ARE moral boundaries which can be secularly derived...
Again, to take the running example, one should NEVER cut off a woman's hand.
How may I say this?
Because, generally, absolute statements of morality, if correct, apply to the fringes.
To put it another way--none of us (presumably) WOULD cut off a woman's hand.
Ever.
None of us would see that as a just form of punishment.
I'd argue no matter where you lived, that idea of justice--cut off a woman's hand--isn't natural.
It might be INSTILLED in you after birth via, oh, say, Deuteronomy...
If this were 200 B.C. we might answer that question differently after reading it...
But no person would NATURALLY assume that cutting off a hand is moral,
Partly because morality itself is a construct, so naturally assuming no hand = OK is absurd,
And partly because there'd be no impetus to do that in the absence of a law demanding it.

NOW.

Someone is probably ready to answer with "An eye for an eye" at this point.
And that DOES seem to be, perhaps, somewhat more natural of a response.
However, it's important to note that crushed testicles =/= no hand for the rest of your life,
So this punishment is not equal, the idea behind "eye for an eye," EQUAL retribution,
If there IS a "natural" impulse towards justice and morality, it's probably one built on
1. The basic idea of equality and 2. The basic idea of understanding and fairness,
That is "an eye for an eye" is/was popular as a theory of justice because
1. It's equal, 1 eye for 1 eye, there's no disproportionate charge being made here,
2. It's understandable WHY 1 eye for 1 eye is the ruling, it's equivalent, and
3. The idea that it's fair, ie, you take my eye, so I get to take yours, again, equal, so fair

All of those (#3 in particular) are troublesome cornerstones, and that's why we don't generally use eye for an eye anymore in the civilized parts of the world...

After all, some damn humanist in the back might pipe up "How is it FAIR to cause further suffering and deprive the world of one more eye...it won't bring back the eye lost, after all, so how is that just?"

So we can see why, rationally, an eye for an eye might fail (as Gandhi famously put it, it just leaves the whole world blind) and thus why we might discard all or part of it as a theory of justice, morality, or anything of the sort...

And if it's unfavorable or makes us feel ill at ease, or--even better--if we have a better solution, there's no performative reason to play out an eye for an eye if one eye (or even both) may be spared via negotiation, mediation, other -ations, and other mitigating forms and forces.

Now take the Bible. Take Deuteronomy.

Plug Deuteronomy 12 into the first test...is that a rational, equal response?
No...having your hand lopped off cruelly seems unequal to crushing testicles in defense.
Is it an ideal of justice or morality which speaks to some other idea and is thus desirable?
No...it doesn't seem to...and thus it doesn't seem to be a theory one would wish to put into performative practice.

So there's no good reason provided by either approach to carry out this particular law of the Bible...

Which brings us to Concept #3, besides Equality and Fairness/Understandable...

"Someone--ie, God--Told Me to Do It," better known today as "I Was Just Following Orders!"

Is that EVER a good reason to do something ALONE?
No.
If one of the other two reasons are conscripted...maybe...
If you're following orders and they're rational...maybe...
If you're following orders and they're for an ideal of fairness you wish to see...maybe...
If you're following orders and you have a rational fear of reprisal if you don't...maybe...
But if you're just following orders to follow orders, regardless of how you feel...

It's illogical, immoral, and unjust.

NOW.

By now, I'm willing to be the Bible-believing community would argue that this isn't fair.

After all, that's a pretty specific and warped law given in Deuteronomy, even by God's standards...and most believers don't believe that and, as dipplayer put it, MOST believers would probably rather focus on God's Greatest Hits, as it were, rather than these awkward miscues, in the same way dipplayer argued you'd teach Hamlet and not Titus Andronicus...

Which I disagree with for beginners, but leaving that aside, let me first say why, dipplayer, I feel that charge doesn't work for the Bible (as I feel that's a connecting strain in the thoughts you, FlemGem, and Mujus all have) and then we'll proceed to one of those Greatest Hits and be fairer about things.

But before we do that, again, why I don't think you CAN make that "Take the best, Obi, like you would with Shakespeare" argument here...

That argument only works IF YOU ADMIT THE BIBLE IS ONLY AS TRUE AS SHAKESPEARE.

You have to drop ALL claims of the Bible being divinely inspired at all (after all, if it's divinely inspired, why should we prune it or need to be selective, shouldn't a perfect, divine being creating a perfect Bible to communicate his word be able to have 100% hits and no misses?) or it being perfect (same reason) or that it can be taken as "Gospel Truth," as it were (Shakespeare's works are only the opinions of one man, after all, they don't claim to speak unalterable truths that you must agree or adhere to or else face punishment) and so on.

In short, it works for Shakespeare because Shakespeare doesn't claim to be holy or perfect.
I can toss away "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and never read it again...
And not say to myself, "My God, er, My Shakes, what am I DOING, I'm editing or not paying heed to some of the World of Almighty Will!"

;)

Obviously that's not a problem for Shakespeare, or for most literature.
I'd never destroy a work of fiction, we're all a little less whole when that happens..
But if, say, the Twilight Books suddenly all vanished one night...
Aside from the Twihards, few would mourn their loss of eternal or holy insight.

To be a bit more fair, Edith Wharton wrote "The Age of Innocence" of course, and good for her, it won the Pulitzer (she was the first woman to win it) but if, say, "Ethan Frome" was forever lost to us, I'd be unhappy, but only as much as I would be for any literary work being lost, because I really feel that work's as tedious and insufferable as...well...

One of my posts. :p

Let's be to the point--Shakespeare wrote 38 plays.
If, in that 38, I say "Most of these are great...but 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' is crap"...
I'M FINE.
I can still say I'm a Shakespeare fan and call that play stupid, wrong, a failure, etc.

You CAN'T do that with a work that argues it's holy, perfect, or otherwise eternally true, ESPECIALLY if you're arguing that earlier parts of it are necessary for later parts of it.

You can't say "I LOVE the New Testament, but the Old Testament is a load of sexist, racist, bigoted, violent garbage, there's no love there, who needs it, get rid of it!" if you're a believing Christian.

If you're a believer, heck, even the Gospel writers make clear that they're trying to tie their Jesus story to older stories and prophesies in the OT to keep and/or enhance the credibility of Jesus as the Messiah...

You're stuck with The Books of Kings and David, Jesus has to come from that line...
You're stuck with Exodus' Commandments and laws, whether you rework or redo them...
You're stuck with all the backstory that the Gospel writers try to retroactively make fit (which is quite often like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, but anyway)...

And then of course there's all sorts of fun things Revelation takes from earlier books, Genesis in particular...

So you're STUCK with the OT.

You don't GET to say "Genesis is wrong, but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are right."\

You need one for the other.

If you're Jewish, of course, you can reject M/M/L/J, and do, but that's all written after what you consider "holy," so it's OK; you couldn't, however, reject, say, the truth of Exodus or Genesis and claim to be a religious Jew.

And that's why you can't apply that argument to the Bible, dipplayer, the "take the best and evaluate THAT" argument...

It ALL has to count or stand together if it's to be taken as a holy text.

If you want to take it as just literature...sure, I can take it book by book.
THEN it's no longer holy.
THEN it's no longer professing to be perfect or professing to have eternal, perfect truths.
THEN it's no different than the Greco-Roman myths of Homer, Ovid and Virgil.

No problem.

But the second you bring in any semblance of religion or the idea that these texts are in any way holy or sacred, that argument becomes invalid, as if you're to make the argument it's a perfect text, it ALL has to be perfect.
So that's that.

BUT, as promised, let's take one of God's Greatest Hits, as it were, and see if it stands up to the dual tests of morality and justice (ie, is this rational/equal and is this something I'd like to do/should do performatively) as laid out earlier.

Let's take the Ten Commandments.

In order, let's test them:

1. "I am the LORD thy God, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me"
Rational/Equal? Well, nothing's really equal/unequal here...but nothing's really rational here unless you believe the religion...and in fact this commandment really doesn't have anything to DO with morality or justice, it's just reiterating what anyone who was going to believe this list already believes, ie, that God exists and is in charge...and you can't really "perform" this commandment one way or the other, either you believe the premise or not...so not really immoral, but nor really, well, moral either, because it's not a moralistic commandment, more of a self-affirming (and rather extraneous if you already believe this) commandment, so no harm done, I guess, but likewise, no moral-plus here.

And then on the "no other gods before me" part...
Rational/Equal? I'd argue no, as that's rather against freedom of religion, now, isn't it? Which, of course, is why we have #1, as unless we buy that God IS the one, true, and only God, this commandment from a moral standpoint makes little sense (and if there ARE other gods, it just seems a way to limit their business, as it were, and make sure your clients don't change providers, to stretch the metaphor.) So unless you can PROVE God exists (and thus win the Nobel Prize for Pretty Much Everything Ever in Mankind's History) this commandment isn't rational or equal, as it prohibits freedom of religion, and that's certainly not equal, allowing some religions but not others. As to whether or not you'd want to perform this one...well, I assume most believers here do, but only for themselves, I hope, as to infringe upon the rights of others to pray to their conceived-of deities seems unfair...so it IS performatively-desirable, but only to the already-converted.

Thus, this is not a just commandment, as it prohibits freedom of religion, it isn't really making a moral claim either way, and is only desirably-performative in a very limited scope, ie, yourself.

2. "Thou shalt not make any graven images or likenesses"
...This one is just...bizarre? I don't think I need to waste time saying WHY this commandment has no bearing on morality or justice, and it seems rather counter-performative, telling you something you shouldn't be doing rather than something you might endeavor to do...obviously this one's stemming from cultural traditions that are against creating idols of worship and the like...though this says just images, really, so if that's the case...well... Michelangelo's in big, BIG trouble if God does exist, isn't he?

3. "Thou shalt not take the name of thy LORD thy God in vain"
Rational/Equal? ...Equal, maybe, but as what it means to "take the name of God in vain" has been subject to debate for centuries, this isn't particularly helpful or clear, and again, it's counter-performative, what can you really perform here but NOT perform an action...an action which is itself muddled and confused as to what it's meaning is...and again, this has nothing to do with morality or justice.

4. "Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy"
Rational/Equal? If you believe, sure, if you don't believe...seems an unfair commandment, to force you to honor a day you don't take as holy (how would everyone here like it if everyone was forced to keep Ramadan, believer or not?)

5. "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother"
No complaints here of any substantial measure, equal, rational, and something that clearly can be desirable in a performed sense, so +1 for God here.

6. "Thou shalt not murder"
(And I put "murder" as that's the version I learned as a kid growing up, I understand some translations have it "kill," but hey, I'm the one typing this, and "kill" raises a whole host of problems for the God side, so I'm being as fair as possible here.)
Yeah, again, nothing unequal or irrational about that, abstaining from murdering people is probably a good performative action (or inaction?)...the only problem here is God seems to want a lot, a lot, a LOT of people killed or murdered throughout the Bible, so this one may as well receive the Animal Farm treatment...when the pigs needed to carry out executions, they changed the law so No Animal Shall Kill Another Animal "WITHOUT JUST CAUSE," and that may as well be the addendum here as well, as unless you believe there was a "just cause," God was perfectly alright with those little Amalekite children being brutally massacred and murdered...so good moral and judicial commandment, even if God and his followers have had trouble following it themselves sometimes.

7. "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery"
No essential complaints here on the moral side of things...as far as the judicial side, however, things become trickier, as, well, it IS still someone's choice to be an adulterer as long as they don't harm anyone else...and yes, it harms their spouse, but you can hardly outlaw something based on the emotional pain it might do to someone, as just about everything we do can somehow hurt someone someway emotionally....and outlawing it would seem to be an infringement on civil liberties--it IS your right to sleep around and screw up your own marriage and morality if so you wish--and what's worse, if this is applied to law, we get into the territory of "The Scarlet Letter" or Islamic stoning territory, and that's not AT ALL just or moral...in a performative sense, it seems like good advice, but then again, it's also everyone's choice.

So, good moral groundings here, but you can't use it as the basis for law.

8. "Thou Shalt Not Steal"
Obviously a +1 on all three measures, though I'd point out that just about every culture has this rule (no civilized culture endorses stealing...well, I guess except for viewing full videos or listening to free music in YouTube, but that's another story) so good job here, but I'm not crediting God with being particularly insightful or original here. ;)

9. "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness"
This one's tricky...on the surface "Don't lie" seems a good moral standpoint...but I've already said I'm a pragmatist, and I think already pointed out absolutes really only work on the fringes of idealism and humanity (ie, of course I can say "Chopping a woman's hand off" is wrong, that's an extremist, fringe view, and not one natural to humanity in general) whereas lying...that's not really a fringe area AT ALL, there are a LOT of grey areas where it's not only acceptable to lie, arguably, it's morally reprehensible not to...the now-overused example of this probably being "If the Nazis came at your door and asked if you had any Jews hidden, would you honestly tell them the truth and give them up?" Kant says yes via his Categorical Imperative, and I think, and he, are dead wrong here, and have to think most here would agree with me...NO WAY would anyone here do that, I hope! It's not only acceptable in that situation to lie, I'd argue it's almost morally required, as surely preservation of innocent life ranks higher on the moral scale than telling a lie to a murderous totalitarian enforcer? You may say that's on the fringe level of things as well, but consider that this is an absolute...no lying means no lying when your mother asks what you got her for Christmas, or telling your kids a fat man in red clothes delivers toys to billions of people in one night. ;) So morally, lying is problematic, I'd say, there are enough cases where it's acceptable and even some where it seems the moral thing to do to call the matter a grey area for me...then again, obviously in COURT you have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that's a good judicial practice. Performatively, as stated, it can go either way, depending upon the situation...

So this one has a nice (if again not at all original, I mean, what society says "Go ahead, lie, lie your ass off to the government and in court and on your taxes!") idea behind it, but is nowhere strong enough for the absolute claim it makes.

10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
FIRST of all, on the subject of equality...I just love that women (and to be fair, men) are being put on par with oxen, donkeys, houses...so man IS just on par with a material object...but anyway...
Not rational or equal, not performative and not just...
I agree with Orwell and Hitchens here--it's an early example of Thought-crime.
It's not condemning you for what you DO, but for what you THINK...
Which is inexcusable any way you slice it, you can't control or ban what people THINK.
That's simply not fair, not rational, and not in keeping with any sense of liberty, which generally stems from the rational and fair.
Even if taken at it's most generous--ie, "Don't be jealous of others/want what they have," it still doesn't work because 1. It's still Thought-crime, 2. That's KIND of what keeps the economy going, I see someone with a brand new blazer or some of my favorite cognac or--even better!--a stable job, and hey, I want that too, and work for it!
NOW, if the intent here is "Don't covet it lest ye STEAL," that's already covered by #8, now, isn't it...so applying that here is superfluous and, again, done worse as, again, it's banning what you can think, and that's a problem.

So.

Not exactly a stellar outing for the Decalogue.

#5, #6, and #8 are reasonable and alright, but not exactly original...
The rest are either theology-dependent and not really morality in practice,
Or else have mixed or even bad morals at their root, and are in no way--pardon the pun--to be set in stone as absolutes.

So, we've taken on one of God's Greatest Hits now, dipplayer.

Oh, I responded, FlemGem...that just took a while ;)

I'd like to make a motion that obi only ever debate within the confines of a Great Debate style debate.

My scroll bar.... my poor, poor scroll bar.... #obiisascrollbarkiller

Can we have a "mute post" option? I don't mind the thread or obi, but that's a little much.

LOL dubmdell...

tl;dnr*3

...yeah, pretty much.

But to be fair, I wasn't talking to YOU, now, was I, Santa? ;)

I have insomnia, so I'll respond a little.

No, one doesn't have to take it all as holy. That's what I've been arguing all along. That is based on the modern view of the Bible that has totally gone astray. For the millionth time, the Bible is not a monolithic work that was dictated by God. It is a collection of many different texts, of varying value, provenance, and origin. It is a library from which one can draw. I am not saying we jettison the Old Testament, or any particular book in it (though there are a few I will probably never need to read again--I'm looking at you Nehemiah). You are the one insisting that every verse, every chapter be pertinent and be acceptable to your sensibilities! Number one, that's rather arrogant of you, to think you are a better judge of such things than the many generations that have come before. Number two, the Bible does not make such a claim for itself, and so it cannot be put on trial on that basis. Yes, I can disregard parts. The Bible isn't the Master Handbook that has all the answers. It is an anthology of the texts of the religious tradition of the Jews and the early Christians. It is not a magic book straight from God. It is a book written by men (and maybe even women?) who wrestled with the Divine. It is a book of questions even more than it is a book of answers.

Now, I want to address your analysis of the Ten Commandments.

1) "No other Gods before me." The foundation of Monotheism. Why is monotheism important? Because it asserts that there is One Truth. There is Right and Wrong, and they are not relative. There is One Reality. This is the foundation of everything in Western Civilization. That there is Truth, and it is knowable. That there is a Right Way to live, and we should strive for it. You don't get to make your own Reality, and you don't get to make your own Right.

2) "No graven images." Your comments on this were juvenile. The material world is what we see before us all the time. We easily become enamoured by our possessions, by beauty, by wealth. This commandment reminds us that there are things above the physical, that are more important. That we shouldn't worship the things we make, and by extension our own brains and talents.

3) "Name of God in vain." This is a tough one to understand, but consider the context: people invoke the name of God to bless, to curse, or to give a promise. This commandment tells us to think about what we say, to mean what we say, and to keep our promises. IMO

4) The Sabbath Day is the foundation of the modern work week. It is a recognition that man is not simply a beast of burden, and that there is more to life than making a living. It is a reminder to take a break--to ponder and to think and to lift ourselves above our mundane existence.

5) "Honor father and mother." I'm glad you can see some merit in this one. :-P By extension you might apply this back further generations, and honor the many people who kept the faith and traditions alive.

6) "Don't murder." Yeah, yeah, you can take the easy pot shots. Not going to address the Amalekites here.

7) "Don't commit adultery." Such a modern sensibility you have. You can't see any harm to society from sexual sin? You can't fathom how broken homes and broken families is bad? It's not about feelings. It's about preserving the best and most important unit in human relationships: the family. The Bible is really really big on the family. That's what the book of Genesis is all about, which you obviously missed in your reading.

8) "Don't steal." Why do the Ten Commandments have to be original? There's no pleasing you.

9) "Don't bear false witness." Honesty is pretty essential to a functioning society. You talk about the exceptions, but that's not the point here. We're talking about the rule.

10) "Don't covet." You really missed the boat on this one. There is a reason Envy is one of the deadly sins. You want to be miserable? Spend all your time wishing you had what someone else does. Covet their wealth, their hot girlfriend, or their talent. This is the commandment that teaches us to appreciate what we have, to be grateful, and also not to waste our time in a dream world. Instead of coveting Megan Fox, I need to love my wife. Instead of coveting that 2013 Ford Mustang gt500, I need to take care of my old boring Saturn. As a society, I'd say this is the commandment that reminds us that Taxing the Rich! is not going to solve all our problems. :-D

" Number two, the Bible does not make such a claim for itself, and so it cannot be put on trial on that basis. Yes, I can disregard parts."

Actually, it does.

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." From 2 Timothy 3.

But what is Scripture? It's too easy to say "The Bible." Paul was not referring to the Bible as we know it, because such a thing barely existed in his time. There are writings by St. Augustine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Soren Kierkegaard that like scripture to me, but they are not in the Bible. They are more inspired and useful for teaching righteousness than the Book of Nehemiah or Philemon. God gave us brains. We are not robots that just need the right software uploaded--and the Bible is not some killer app that will make us perfect. It's actually pretty buggy code, but like buggy MS Windows, it's still the essential program. (How's that for stretching an analogy?)

Certainly there was no canonical Bible (at least not including the NT) when Paul wrote those words. On the other hand, it's pretty clear Paul would have meant, at least, the entirety of any book that he did consider scripture. (The "all" is merely tautological otherwise). God did give us brains, but those very brains can be used to realize that, on analysis, these high-sounding arguments just lead to incoherency and to no guide in Scripture at all, whether in Nehemiah or Romans.

Certainly there are discussions to be had about the canon, and those should be had (though not by me, here, over Christmas break). But those are completely different from denying the existence of a canon, which is in essence what you're doing (though you would never put it in such flat terms).

No, the canon is important. It establishes what the foundational texts are, and the Bible, OT and NT, is still the essential foundation book. And I'm sure Paul did mean whatever texts he had available to him, the Septuagint or whatever. (But there was not a canon even with the Septuagint--the NT writers quote from other Hebrew sources outside of it.) There are things to be learned in Chronicles, or Lamentations, or 2 Corinthians, to name some of my least favorites. I am just arguing that we realize what the Bible actually is, and not judge it based on criteria that are not appropriate to that. Obi wants it to be the perfect book, hand-delivered by God. It isn't. And it doesn't claim to be. That also doesn't mean it isn't inspired or "useful for training in righteousness," because it obviously is.

Dip, no offense, but you have described what is known as "cafeteria plan Christianity" where I come from. If you water things down enough, what's left to believe in? The golden rule? "Don't be a dick"? That's in every religion, even satanism. There are plenty of reasons to discard whole chunks of the canon, but once you do, there's not much left to believe.

"No, one doesn't have to take it all as holy. That's what I've been arguing all along. That is based on the modern view of the Bible that has totally gone astray. For the millionth time, the Bible is not a monolithic work that was dictated by God. It is a collection of many different texts, of varying value, provenance, and origin. It is a library from which one can draw. I am not saying we jettison the Old Testament, or any particular book in it (though there are a few I will probably never need to read again--I'm looking at you Nehemiah)."

I know it began as a disparate library (in fact I've argued as much here before.)
I agree with you there.
My question, then, is how do you possibly argue for these texts on a religious basis?
Do you suggest we go back to picking and choosing a la the Early Christians?

If so...well, interesting premise, I'll give you that, but 1. Good luck getting that through the heads of people who've had this canon in place for hundreds of years and 2. What would you then use as your measuring stick to say what need be taken and what not?

After all, if we can pick and choose which words are to be taken and which not...well, what's your authority over mine? Religions tend to demand some sort of structure...how are you going to do that sans a codified canon of texts, or with a flexible canon?

What makes Text A permissible but Text B something to cast aside, in your view?

"You are the one insisting that every verse, every chapter be pertinent and be acceptable to your sensibilities!"

Not ME, actually...if I might use my fancy new knowledge from this past semester:

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book."

--Revelation 22:18-19

(Apparently John didn't like editors very much.) ;)

So it's not from ME that this "Keep every word or else" ethos is originating...
Part of it's Church-bound, as you identify...
But part of it's also going back and can be found in the text itself.

So the same way I find it pretty absurd to argue some parts are literal and some intentional metaphor (with the exception of the Psalms, which I almost feel shouldn't be in the Bible, they feel like they belong in a book of poetry ABOUT the Bible, but it was probably easier at the time just to put them in the Bible itself) I find it hard to accept you can take this as a holy text and pick and choose at the same time.

"Number one, that's rather arrogant of you, to think you are a better judge of such things than the many generations that have come before. Number two, the Bible does not make such a claim for itself, and so it cannot be put on trial on that basis."

Number one, as you yourself have pointed out, many people besides me have taken a take-it-all-or-leave-it attitude towards the Bible's overall arguments and ethos, and Number two, at least Revelation makes such a claim for itself, as I just quoted...and it's in the Bible, and is supposed to be the last, final, punctuating piece...so...yes, yes it does make such a claim for itself, that it is unalterable and true...

What's more, if we look outside the Judeo-Christian sphere, Islam claims the Koran (taking many of these same stories and, ahem, "remixing" them, shall we say) is the direct, unalterable, eternal, perfect word of Allah.

So it's not ME holding these monotheisms to such a standard...if anything, they themselves started it...

"Yes, I can disregard parts."
1. Which, 2. Why, 3. What makes YOU capable to pick and choose what's holy and what's not, and 4. Say, hypothetically, a fellow believer on the site agrees that he's a Christian but disagrees that a section you chuck out--what then? How would you resolve that? More to the point...if I ask Believer A and Believer B whether a text should be heeded in their opinion and A says yes and B no, what's the overriding theological law of the land, as it were?

"The Bible isn't the Master Handbook that has all the answers. It is an anthology of the texts of the religious tradition of the Jews and the early Christians. It is not a magic book straight from God. It is a book written by men (and maybe even women?) who wrestled with the Divine. It is a book of questions even more than it is a book of answers."

I agree with nearly all of that, but again, that sounds a lot more like a secular approach (hence my agreeing) to the Bible than the typical believer's approach I hear.

"Why is monotheism important? Because it asserts that there is One Truth. There is Right and Wrong, and they are not relative."
1. If monotheisms are supposed to assert there's One Truth, they've done a splendid job fracturing that oneness into thousands of denominations if the 3 Abrahamic religions...
2. Unless it's something empirical (something God seems to often have trouble with) or otherwise necessarily one...that doesn't seem a good stance at all, there being one monolithic "Truth"...there are many different "truths" or interpretations of "Hamlet," and while I personally don't think he (at least at the start) is insane, someone could present an interpretation of the text with just as much truth and textual backing behind it as me...where's the beauty in there being only one truth in matters like that, seems rather stifling, what's more,
3. Who gave these desert-dwelling Hebrews and Christians the authority to proclaim their deity The One Truth over Zeus and Thor and Apollo and Buddha and Vishnu and the Aztec gods and all the rest? THEY profess to be The Truth as well...
4. Right and Wrong ARE, IN MANY CASE, *VERY, VERY RELATIVE,* which is a HUGE reason why in most cases I feel the Bible fails in its philosophic and moralistic attempts, it DOES argue that right and wrong aren't relative, and I'm sorry, but the world's simply more complex than that and right and wrong are not only often relative, I'd even go so far as to argue they are relative more often than not.

"This is the foundation of everything in Western Civilization."
HALF the foundation for everything in Western Civilization...
We have Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Democritus, Hippocrates, and the foundations of art, music, philosophy, theatre, democracy, architecture, medicine, and half of our literary and poetic underpinnings from the Greek and Roman side of our cultural family tree, as it were.

And considering that group includes the three foundational philosophers for Western thought, the Father of Western Medicine, the man who first proposed the most rudimentary atomic theory, the fathers of tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry, AND folks who figured out the Earth was round and even tried to measure the size of the Earth...

That's a pretty damn good lineup on THAT half...it'd be an interesting contest for sure if we pit the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman halves against one another to compare and contrast what each bequeathed to us...

After all, without EITHER side, Shakespeare doesn't come into being, now, does he? :)

"That there is a Right Way to live, and we should strive for it. You don't get to make your own Reality, and you don't get to make your own Right."

I again think that's not only incorrect, but, apart from empirical and scientific approaches, almost entirely a terrible idea, especially in the argument that there's a right way to live...there are PLENTY of ways one might live and be a happy, healthy, moral, productive member of society.

"Your comments on this were juvenile. The material world is what we see before us all the time. We easily become enamoured by our possessions, by beauty, by wealth. This commandment reminds us that there are things above the physical, that are more important. That we shouldn't worship the things we make, and by extension our own brains and talents."

While I'll admit that's an interesting take on the Commandment, I would also say I think you're reading a bit too much into it, maybe infusing your own ideology with the actual ideology given?

After all, Islam takes this one rather literally and to this day in Islamic countries they stick close to that commandment and don't allow a certain "Prophet" (ANY prophet, actually) to be depicted, and the same for God.

Add to that the fact the Church HAS has a dispute over this one and the use of icons before, to the point where it was a factor in The Great Schism, to say nothing of Calvinism and later sects taking this one up as well.

Where in that Commandment do your get your ethereal interpretation from or, more to the point, do you have textual evidence to back it up? (And I'd ask for something Exodus or earlier, as after all, something written after can suffer the same fault as I'm alleging your interpretation to have, namely, reading into those Commandments from the vantage point of their already being written and infusing one's own ideology into a subsequent interpretation of them.)

Sorry...interesting take on it, but it also seems something of a stretch textually (after all, he just announced himself Lord and God, he could've used some positive languages and Thou Shalts rather than Shalt Nots and said "Thou Shalt Consider Me Thus..." especially if he was in the business of representing One Truth, clear-cut.)

"This is a tough one to understand, but consider the context: people invoke the name of God to bless, to curse, or to give a promise."

Fair enough, but my overriding point still stands--even for the supposed foundation of morality, telling us not to swear or use his name as a swear in vain isn't all that helpful in terms of establishing a moral or judicial code...

"This commandment tells us to think about what we say, to mean what we say, and to keep our promises."

The first two I'll grant...where do you get "keep your promises" from that, and in any case, isn't that covered later with the whole "bear false witness" bit, after all, if you're bearing false witness, you're lying, and if you're lying, you're probably not keeping a promise...

"The Sabbath Day is the foundation of the modern work week. It is a recognition that man is not simply a beast of burden, and that there is more to life than making a living. It is a reminder to take a break--to ponder and to think and to lift ourselves above our mundane existence."

Interestingly enough, a quick search turned up that both the Babylonians and Jews had a 7-day week, so depending on which Babylonian period we're talking about, as that was a rather long-lived kingdom, it could be they had the idea before the Jews and passed it onto them...

But in any case, I don't have a problem with someone wanting to take a day off out of seven to worship, or even to contemplate, but I'd again say that's really not establishing a moral basis for humanity.

Telling me to contemplate God and all that is all well and good, or even just to have one peaceful day out of seven, but these are (allegedly) laws for the foundations of morality in the West, and while a day off and even the idea of occasional contemplation are nice social ideas, they're hardly great cornerstones of morality.

We agree on #5, so onto...

"Yeah, yeah, you can take the easy pot shots. Not going to address the Amalekites here."
1. Not a pot shot when it's a big, glaring incident right in the middle of a book you endorse,
2. Not a mere pot shot when it's infanticide and genocide being advocated for by God,
3. WHY NOT address the Amalekites, that seems to be God breaking his own rule,
4. If THEY don't count, how about the first-born Egyptian children he kills, and
5. If NEITHER of them count and we use the argument "Well, God made the laws, so he can break them or be above them, the laws are for our benefit," how about when Elisha sicks bears on children who are taunting him for being bald and has them brutally ripped to shreds? The best we can say here is "Oh, well, Elisha was a a man of God," but so was David and so were other people before THEY committed sins and, indeed, killed others in instances...so why's God seemingly OK with the Amalekites, Egyptian kids, and kids Elisha killed all getting the death sentence? I'm just saying, God is NOT at all very consistent on that one, breaks it himself, and has those he endorses break it.

So I have to say I think the Amalekites constitute more than a mere pot shot, but even if they did, I have plenty, plenty more ammo in regards to #6 being broken with God's consent, in accordance with his commands, or by his endorsed people all throughout the Old Testament.

"Such a modern sensibility you have."

Thanks, I try not to have one tied to 1600-era values, love of Hamlet be damned... ;)

"You can't see any harm to society from sexual sin?"
1. Define "sexual sin," as frankly, Cole Porter said it best, "In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now God knows...ANYTHING GOES." As long as it isn't causing physical or legal harm, your sex life is none of my business, and no one should insult another and say they're in sin for their sexual choices.
2. I think a bit of a looser attitude towards sex would be a bit more healthy for America, yes...says the Asexual Internet Shakespearean Romantic SURE to never get laid, but that's another story. ;)
3. The point is, it's THEIR CHOICE whether they want to chance or wreck their marriages or not, or heck, if they want to have an open marriage, as some couples do...

"You can't fathom how broken homes and broken families is bad?"
It is bad.
So are children being shot with guns.
But for the same reason I'll never advocate taking away everyone's guns, I'll never advocate for infidelity and adultery to be a punishable offense (the entire pro-gun lobby of WebDip just had a heart attack.) :D ...Take it easy, guys, I STILL favor far stricter regulation, the same way I think for legal purposes (if not necessarily life-style ones as, again, that's YOUR own issue) polygamy is wrong.

"It's not about feelings. It's about preserving the best and most important unit in human relationships: the family."
But suppose two people now loathe one another, the love has died...
That's no longer a healthy relationship...
There's no healthy outcome in tying them together forever...
Let them drift apart.

Moreover, again, I cannot stress this enough, IT IS THEIR CHOICE WHETHER THEY WISH TO BE FAITHFUL OR NOT OR EVEN IF THEY *CARE* ABOUT FIDELITY.

Some couples just do not care, period. You might argue that's sad or a social ill; I'll argue it's their choice, they're free to make it, and as long as they don't inflict a REAL social ill on society and kill 20 kids or shoot up a mall, and as long as they don't physically assault one another or others, I couldn't care less what goes on in the bedroom.

Actually...you know, just for the heck of it--

What's Solomon and his thousands of wives and concubines have to say about that?

;)

"The Bible is really really big on the family. That's what the book of Genesis is all about, which you obviously missed in your reading."

See, that's a reason I'm not a fan, in general, of Post-Modernism in literature...
Because whenever I say "I think this is garbage, and here's why,"
No matter my reasons, the fans of Post-Modernism will always give me the same response,
"YOU JUST DON'T GET IT."

Which is basically your response here. :p

Yes, I GET IT.
It's pretty hard NOT to get it.
My point, as I've made painstakingly clear since I said that absolute Right and Wrongs are not at all good most of the time and relativity IS the way to go...

Is that I get it and I DISAGREE.

The Bible (and God) doesn't take criticism or disagreement very well.

I disagree with that ethos.
I disagree with their handling of the family unit.
I disagree with the heavily-patriarchal overtones.
I disagree with just how controlling and exacting it is.
I disagree with how it limits freedoms.

And so on.

I DISAGREE...I get it, but I DISAGREE.

"Why do the Ten Commandments have to be original? There's no pleasing you."

I'm not saying they do, per se...

I AM saying, however, that people tout this list as being foundational for Western morality...

When in fact so far the list for me either 1. Retreads basic ideas (ie, don't steal, don't murder--and even has trouble with that one--and be nice to your parents) or else 2. Struggles in living up to that moniker with the remaining, often-archaic, absolutist, theocratic or otherwise unnecessary commandments, several of which seek to curtail liberties in favor of absolutes, which doesn't seem a good foundation for the West at all when we tout the West now as being largely democratic, liberty-loving, and free.

"Honesty is pretty essential to a functioning society. You talk about the exceptions, but that's not the point here. We're talking about the rule."

Honesty is essential, but my point is the Bible doesn't ALLOW for exceptions, it's, as you said, absolute, black and white, right or wrong.

There are MANY, MANY times when lies or varying degrees or grades of the truth are morally called for, so as an absolute THOU SHALT *NOT* this commandment fails.

If you want to argue honesty's a good guideline, 1. Fair enough, but again, what society DOESN'T argue that, 2. That being a running theme, if the best of the Commandments are shared by virtually all cultures of the world in some form, many of which predate the Commandments, why should we consider the Commandments foundational or even special at all beyond the simple fact they're symbolically significant in a literary sense by this point in our history, and 3. Care to start a poker night with that honest approach?

:)

"You really missed the boat on this one. There is a reason Envy is one of the deadly sins."

I just didn't choose to get ON that boat.

I'd argue Chastity (you know where I stand on sexual freedom by now), Patience (I'm NOT patient and fine with that, if I or someone I know needs something done, I GET IT DONE...aggressively, passively, whatever it takes to get the job done, I actually think that's a rather false dichotomy, setting Patience beside Wrath as its corresponding Sin, you can eschew patience and yet not topple over into Wrath) and Humility (I agree with the Greeks and Romans here, I LOVE that Modernist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Muhammad Ali, "When You're the Best Show It Off and Be Proud Of It" idea, that does NOT mean you should or have to be rude about it, but I find humility rather condescending, actually...I'd rather someone who's clearly great and excellent in his field to pull and Ali and just say "I AM THE GREATEST" when he or she clearly is and clearly has earned that honor in that field rather than mumble an "Aw, shucks" and either pretend they think it's no big deal or, worse, ACTUALLY think it's no big deal, their accomplishments...for the same reason, not a fan of shyness, I'm NOT shy, face the world every day with the thought "I'm the best at what I do and if they disagree then I'll fight like hell to make my point, and if I STILL get knocked down, I'll dust myself off, keep my swagger, and try again to ever strive, to seek, to find, and NEVER to yield") are very much overrated as far as the Virtues go.

Likewise, as stated, I think our society could use a bit more Pride...

Or at least a bit more openness about it, that is, we claim to like the Humble, but who is it that advance in society? Very often it IS the brash, the bold, and the proud.

We claim to dislike proud starlets and rock stars...and yet we buy their movies and albums...

So we need to be open about it--we DO like Pride...we just are a bit guilty that we like it.

It's almost like a national James Bond complex, most of society secretly WANTS to be proud and brash and bold and shocking like some of these stars are, but have been told all their lives it's morally wrong, to be nice and humble and not show off...

So the desire for Pride, is a secret, guilty pleasure, as it were, hence why James Bond is so popular, that's Pride and Wish Fulfillment at its zenith. ;)

"You want to be miserable? Spend all your time wishing you had what someone else does."

I do.

I spend every minute not typing here thinking or typing or talking about my typing or whatever else...

Because I WANT that money to move out and, more than that, I WANT that legacy and sense of having accomplished something that the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds and D.H. Lawrences and T.S. Eliots left us behind...

I can't be Shakespeare...it took hundreds of years for Virgil to follow up Homer and then for Dante to follow Virgil and for Shakespeare to take the crown from Chaucer and Dante, I doubt anyone's ready to supplant the Bard just yet, let alone ME...

But I've probably written enough text on WebDip for it to be a book--

I CAN write a book, and take my shot at those greats, and I'm fueled because I WANT what they HAVE--

A legacy standing, leaving something behind so that they're still in the buzz and conversation of ideas decades or centuries after they've died.

If it's something worth wanting, let it fuel you...why not?

"Covet their wealth, their hot girlfriend, or their talent."
Wealth is a practical necessity, not to mention a great tool...
I'd rather a smart and cultured girlfriend than a hot one, but alright...
And OH YEAH, I'd LOVE to have Faulkner's talent, or T.S. Eliot's, or Virginia Woolf's...

If it's worth wanting...

Now, that being said, I'm not going to ROB anyone of their wealth or talent, and anyone who's seen me knows I'm not stealing any girlfriends (I bet you can tell that from just my chattering here.) :p

But wanting it? Again, if it's worth wanting...

Wealth, a worthwhile lady, and talent are all things worth wanting...

If a friend had all three, well, I wouldn't steal his, but yeah, I'd want it too!

Now, of course Shakespeare deals with jealousy--the green-eyed monster--in "Othello," but that's Iago trying to TAKE people's happiness out of jealousy...

As long as you covet and don't take, you're like the kid gazing at the candy bars in the store...and there's a reason we use the phrase "like a kid in a candy story" in a positive sense most of the time...

Again, as long as it's worth wanting, I get it myself, and don't steal it from anyone, why not use it as fuel? It's again a case of the Bible being far, far too absolute.

I also notice that you didn't even touch my problem with it being a ban on what we THINK and thus an early version of Thought-crime, by the way... :)

But to be fair, I wasn't talking to YOU, now, was I, Santa? ;)

How would I know, dnr.

@dipplayer -
"But what is Scripture? It's too easy to say "The Bible." Paul was not referring to the Bible as we know it, because such a thing barely existed in his time. There are writings by St. Augustine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Soren Kierkegaard that like scripture to me, but they are not in the Bible. They are more inspired and useful for teaching righteousness than the Book of Nehemiah or Philemon."

Technically, the Greek word we translate as scripture was, I believe, "graphe," which literally translates to "that which is written". So there is a definitely basis for arguing that Paul's belief is that all written material. Is that what you're claiming? If so, that's a beautiful academically liberal and tolerant argument, one I as a secularist would wholly endorse, but you'd have a tough time convincing most people that's what Paul meant.

Sorry, I had an incomplete thought there. It should have read "So there is a definitely basis for arguing that Paul's belief is that all written material has intrinsic intellectual value, regardless if its literal truth."

@obi: Impressed by your depth of understanding, command of language and sheer tenacity/verbosity.

(continuing from above)
Moreover, someone had pointed to II Timothy 3:16, as cited earlier, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

Dipplayer seems to be suggesting that this means that all written material can be understood to have instructive value. In context, however, it seems clear that this refers only to certain texts believed to be holy, and not to all. This is from the prior chapter of II Timothy:

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness, and their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work."

Here, Paul clearly instructs against an open intellectual ecumenicism, in favor of the idea that some written word is holy and valuable, and other is unholy and destructive. It seems to read in favor of a closed understanding of what is scripture, rather than the open reading you've taken.

Whew, this got long. I'm probably going to have to duck out soon since family is showing up in town and what-not - starting to hope this thread will be dead by the time I come back from the festivities :-)

@ Obi- two quick things.
1. I asked if you had a rational basis for morality. The answer, if I interpreted the response correctly, was "No, we're making this up as we go along". If I understand correctly that is also what Kierkegaard, Sartes, et. al. are saying too. Here's the challenge: the secularist shows up in the thread and announces that believers are ignorant, barbaric, irrational, immoral, etc....and then admits that he's making up his morality as he goes along on an irrational basis. I believe this is what Schaeffer was referring to when he said that modern man has "sacrificed rationality on the altar of rationalism". And an altar it most assuredely is.
The believer, on the other hand, may well be quite delusional in his belief in God (although honestly so); but on the basis of that honest delusion he has a rational basis to begin to consider such abstract concepts as morality, beauty, hope, etc. A Kierkegaardian "faith" gives no such basis - it is fundamentally dishonest and deliberately irrational. Now, in all fairness, the believer can not claim to have exhaustive knowledge - the Bible certainly doesn't claim to give exhaustive knowledge on any subject whatsoever. It does give a rational starting point, which again, if I understand you correctly, the secularist does not have.

2. I think my main contention in this whole thread is that you aren't a particularly skillful reader - certainly not in regards to the Bible - and that you have indeed admitted to willfull ignorance/bigotry, and I think it's quite shocking that you haven't contested my assertion. May I assume that my point has struck uncomfortably close to home and you have chosen to avoid the issue and obfuscate instead?
You do have my apologies if I have offended or humiliated - I usually don't call people out in public, but it's kind of the nature of the internet.

@Dipplayer - nice summary of the decalogue. Thanks for saving me the bother of taking the time :-)

Actually, I feel my interpretation of the Decalogue gives a nice example of what I mean. Those things are there to be re-interpreted and re-defined as needed. There is no one true way of understanding them. There may have been a way that Rabbinic Jews understood them, but my way is equally valid, and much more pertinent to a 21st Century person. That's the point! The Bible is the text that we can respond to, wrestle with, and think about as we try to live a more Godly life. I'm not arguing that we throw any of it away, or edit the book, which some seem to think. I'm saying that there are parts that are less useful. On the authority of my own brains. I welcome arguments about how Nehemiah is useful: if you can provide an interpretation or an application of it, more power to you.

I have a problem with authority. I don't believe any church or "religious leader" has the right or the capacity to define what the Scripture means. They can give their interpretations and applications, and if I like what I hear, I'll embrace it. But nobody has the final say. That's also the point. Our interaction with the Bible is a never-ending, living process. It's not a "Thus sayeth the Lord, now go and obey."

And I don't care what the Quran claims to be; it's applying that sort of logic to the Bible that has gotten Christians into this mess of trying to contort passages like the one we started with into something useful. We don't have to do that.

Man, you guys can sure talk the ass off a donkey.

@dipplayer, I have an answer for "where does morality come from if there is no god?"

It isn't so much an answer really as it is another question. From where do lions get their morality? Strong family units, little in-fighting, cooperation, etc. They have no god. Why cannot humans have morality without a god? Moreover, one's morality does not have to be what we generally think of as moral. Morals can be "corrupt" yet held as part of the highest ethic.

So, how about that?

@Timur:

Well, thank you very much for the compliment...and yes, I can talk the ass off a donkey for sure...quite possibly because I'm rather something of an ass myself, I suppose. ;)

@FlemGem:

(Once more unto the breach, dear friends...here we go again!) :)

"I asked if you had a rational basis for morality. The answer, if I interpreted the response correctly, was "No, we're making this up as we go along.""

Partially, perhaps, but that's not the way I'd phrase it per se...I DO think we make up a great deal of it and that our conceptions of these things have changed over time, so yes, that much is true...

I DID also argue, however, that you can derive some rational, logical truths at the fringes, at the extreme ends of DO and DON'T, if you will.

We can say DO try and help others and say that's a "universal" law of human morality, and we can say that by nature of our being communal animals with empathy, to a certain extent, hardwired, as it were, into our genetic makeup...with the exception of psychopaths (who by their nature have a psychological issue) and the like, we're all, to varying degrees, empathetic for fellow human beings.

Now, this is rather like the Eight Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Steal, in that it's both nice to have and yet none to original; after all, several primate species (to say nothing of other mammalian groups and families) besides us share, to varying degrees and grades, this capacity for empathy towards their own kind.

Some people are more empathetic than others (I'm personally a lot more analytic and not so much the type to instantly empathize or have everything tug on my emotional heartstrings) but we all, on the whole, have a basic capacity for it...

So if everyone here, say, had before them 5 apples, ate one, and then saw 4 kids who were cold and dirty and hungry without parents, probably most of us would first give those 4 kids our remaining 4 apples and then call 911 or Child Services or maybe even take them home with us ourselves to take care of for a while, as if we were one of the nicer caretakers right out of a Dickens novel.

But that's BASIC...basic empathy, no more, a very, very meager moral start and, again, one we share with fellow primates at least, so nice to have, but none to impressive.

Conversely, on the DO NOT side of things...well...

BEING empathetic, we generally don't like to see harm come to people, especially if we don't feel they deserve it or if it's more than is warranted...

So all of us here, regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, background, politics, etc., ALL of us would immediately stop that madman with a butcher's knife preparing to cut off the hand of a woman as laid out in the case above from Deuteronomy.

But that's a rather extreme instance, we have to go to vast, vast extremes to get such an absolute, because the variety of human experience leads to different moral teachings (aside from those very basic ones implanted in us via genetic disposition, ie, a sense of empathy and a dislike of fellow human beings suffering unjustly or too harshly) and different cultural ideas, and so on.

So beyond the extreme poles of those very basic DO's and DO NOT's, which are more innate via genetics and the fact we live in a society (whichever one it is, the point is more that we're a communal species), beyond that...

Yes, the vast majority of moral ideals, that immense Grey area between the twin tiny slivers of Black and White morals, that's always an area shifting and changing, as that's where morality which is taught and derived from thought, feeling, and culture come into play, and those three are ever-changing aspects of life.

"If I understand correctly that is also what Kierkegaard, Sartes, et. al. are saying too."

Again, to an extent, yes, especially Sartre with regards to the idea of moral or intellectual ideas being performative...

It IS vital to note, however, that Sartre famously says "existence precedes essence," which is something I both agree with largely but must also disagree slightly on those grounds of innate genetic dispositions...naturally Sartre likely would not have known about genetic dispositions, or the extent to which they inform our being, but even so, yes, existence precedes essence, but I DO deviate in thinking that a few genetic seeds of moral essences ARE implanted within us when we are born into existence.

Again, not very big seeds and only about as much as fellow apes have, but still.

"Here's the challenge: the secularist shows up in the thread and announces that believers are ignorant, barbaric, irrational, immoral, etc"

Let's be clear:

I think your TEACHINGS and VALUES that you claim to be perfect and holy and both the deity you suppose to exist and the nature and ideal that is conceived for that deity are all barbaric, immoral, ignorant, or irrational to varying degrees...

The BELIEVERS THEMSELVES...that varies--I know believers who frankly ARE all those things and belong far more to 2012 B.C. than today, frankly, and believers who are perfectly nice, honest, cultured, friendly, smart people who happen to differ in their opinions but will readily admit their stance has its foibles--as does mine--and we can have a civilized discussion about it and a drink afterward. :)

So let's be clear about that, it's not the believer so much as the BELIEF I charge with all those things...for an analogue, I think there's some sort of saying to the effect of "Hate the sin but love the sinner?"

Maybe not quite the same thing, but you can get the gist, I can find a person's views wrong or worse and still think the person on the whole is OK.

"I believe this is what Schaeffer was referring to when he said that modern man has "sacrificed rationality on the altar of rationalism". And an altar it most assuredely is.
The believer, on the other hand, may well be quite delusional in his belief in God (although honestly so); but on the basis of that honest delusion he has a rational basis to begin to consider such abstract concepts as morality, beauty, hope, etc."

1. That sounds itself a rather slanted viewpoint, but more importantly,
2. Yes, you sacrifice some things in the sake of rationality, but I think this is an argument towards the absurd...the idea that it's a tragedy to give up superstitions and non-truths in the name of reason and that this leads to some sort of dreary world or world view de facto is laughable and simply incorrect...I don't NEED a superstitious, metaphysical world view to enjoy Shakespeare (and quote him until your ears fall off), or to take pleasure from Mozart's Requiem or anything like that...and before the argument's made (as if often the case and seems to be hinted at here) that we wouldn't HAVE the Shakespeares and Mozarts of the world, remember that not only are there a slew of atheistic authors and artists--Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf and John Lennon, to name a few--but that authors especially write in response largely to the culture of their time...sure, Shakespeare has references to God and religion, he lived in a very religious (and very tumultuously-religious) England...you don't know that he couldn't have written or wouldn't have written about another deity or with no deities in another time...if he'd been around in the time of Sophocles, he'd perhaps invoke Zeus and Athena instead...and finally, on that note, just in terms of Shakespeare, I agree with George Bernard Shaw--ANOTHER great writer who happened to be an atheist--when he says that he sees Shakespeare as largely pessimistic in some areas while Romantic in others, and to THAT end, some characters (the aforementioned Titus definitely comes to mind, as well as Hamlet and Macbeth) seem to toy with a nihilistic world view and reject spirituality, the idea of divine justice, or both by the end of their plays and lives, so perhaps Shakespeare WAS Christian, he certainly fits that camp, but I think there's a case to be made that, like Milton and Dostoyevsky after him, he was a GREAT CHRISTIAN WRITER in that he recognized there WERE immense problems with belief and faith and sought to give ear to the other, humanist side of things, even if he himself didn't agree with them.
3. I find that logic also rather flawed, I must say--to say that you can build any honest idea of truth, justice, morality, or anything of the sort from an "honest delusion" sounds no better than Plato's arguing that for the creation of a perfect state you need a "noble lie" told to everyone about their origin in order to maintain a state nursery, abolish the family, and start up his eugenics project...you can't come to a truthful idea of those concepts from an untrue premise, that's like trying to build a house on a foundation that's crumbling and sitting on a fault line, and take it from a California native, that's NOT a good idea. ;)

"A Kierkegaardian "faith" gives no such basis - it is fundamentally dishonest and deliberately irrational."

You ARE aware Kierkegaard's idea of faith includes the concept of a Knight of Faith and leans Christian (or, maybe more aptly put, leans in favor of a belief in God and Christ, as Kierkegaard was no fan of the Christian Churches of his day and their inaction), yes?

Because I agree, there's something very flawed with Kierkegaard's idea...but then I also reject theism and you don't, so...?

I think maybe you want to pin this one on Sartre's atheistic existentialism, rather than Kierkegaard's more theistic version...?

Even if that's the case, while I agree Sartre's too subjective in places for my tastes as well (see my statement on the innateness of primate empathy above) I hardly think that overall that's a deal-breaker, as he's addressing his subjectivity largely to already-grey areas.

Unless you can prove those areas are NOT grey...Sartre's subjectivity's no more dishonest than faith; far from it, it's MORE honest, as Sartre even openly admits you're essentially "playing a role" and performing and ideal of morality rather than claiming that's an actual, concrete, absolute, perfect morality that exists itself.

"Now, in all fairness, the believer can not claim to have exhaustive knowledge - the Bible certainly doesn't claim to give exhaustive knowledge on any subject whatsoever. It does give a rational starting point, which again, if I understand you correctly, the secularist does not have."

The secularist DOES have a rational starting point...

Many, in fact, they being what empirical knowledge, science, and logic tells us, as well as who and what we read.

Further, for the believer to have a rational starting point int he Bible we have to then take the Bible as rational, which 1. I disagree with and would ask for proof of and 2. Seems to contradict your earlier assessment of it being analogous to faith and tying faith to an "honest delusion."

And now to tackle Point #2...

"I think my main contention in this whole thread is that you aren't a particularly skillful reader - certainly not in regards to the Bible -"

I'll stop you right there and ask on what grounds you make that claim...

An English professor of mine likes to draw the distinction between interpretation and misreading.

As far as I can tell, the only misreading I've had so far is, ahem, which pair of testicles were being crushed...which really, in the grand scheme of my argument, is rather inconsequential when you consider that in neither case (in NO CASE) is it OK ti chop off a lady's hand.

The REST are my readings of the texts, my interpretations, usually on the literal side as I'm generally quoting more legalistic texts here (we've agreed Deuteronomy's a legalistic text, and I think we can agree the Decalogue is at least in part legalistic, it is, after all, giving laws to live by) and so a literal reading is more suited for legal matters.

I'm not reading it figuratively or metaphorically except where the text allows for or invites that, and I've already given such an example, ie, the Psalms are perfectly OK to read that way, they're poetry (if you wanted to, I could see reading Job as allegorical as well, since it's written so very differently from the other texts and is more a parable and Socratic Dialogue on the Problem of Evil than part of the overarching Biblical Meta-Narrative.)

But here, so far...no, I'm taking the text in a legalistic sense or, in the case of 1 Samuel, a quasi-historical sense...in both cases, a literal reading is favored, and I can back that up rationally just as well if not better than I dare say you can argue that I shouldn't.

So I'd submit those are not misreadings but reaching choices which are fair interpretations, if not the ones you agree with, and as they're not misreadings, they're NOT wrong and you cannot claim that I read it poorly simply because I don't read it your way or come to your conclusions.

Unless I make a concrete, factual mistake--like, erm, which testicles are being crushed--you cannot say my reading is a poor one, certainly not without further rational or evidence to refute my reading.

"and that you have indeed admitted to willfull ignorance/bigotry,"

When and how so?

As I've read most of the Bible now (or at least most of the "major" books) and have endeavored to read it, you can hardly say I'm willfully ignorant when I'm actively intellectually honest in saying I'm reading it...as for bigoted, well, what race am I bigoted against, exactly?

If you mean prejudiced...against whom?
The Jews?
Not likely, as I am one...a secularist one, but one by blood and in the secular tradition...
Christians?
I've said above it's the belief and not the believer I generally am railing against...which Christians would I be bigoted against?
Or someone else...
Who?

"and I think it's quite shocking that you haven't contested my assertion."

Well, I'm aware of it and contesting it now... ;)

"May I assume that my point has struck uncomfortably close to home and you have chosen to avoid the issue and obfuscate instead?"

No, as I don't recall that charge, see the above...again, how am I willfully ignorant if I'm reading the text and discussing it, and who am I "bigoted" against, exactly?

If you mean, in general terms, that I am prejudiced against believers...no.
Again, I'm against BELIEF.
My friends are split about down the middle, theist and agnostic/atheist...
I obviously disagree with their beliefs, the theists, but don't have a problem with THEM.

Likewise, I think Mujus and dipplayer are wrong, and when the latter (and I only use you as your brought this example up, so don't take any undue offense, dipplayer) argues that there should be an absolute sense of Right and Wrong, or that this would be a good thing...well, I wholeheartedly disagree, as I think that firstly the textual basis on which we'd derive that idea of absolute Rights and Wrongs is itself in error, antiquated, obscure in places, outdated, or otherwise suffers from, well, the problems you might expect a moralistic or legalistic document written thousands of years ago to suffer from, and secondly on the notion that I just feel life is far more complex than that and that, aside from those extreme poles, most things are in a grey area where there IS a lot of room for relativity and discussion and, ultimately, the freedom to decide for ourselves as human beings what's right and what's wrong, to what degree, and why.

So I don't have a problem with dipplayer, nor am I bigoted towards him...

I simply disagree with that idea of his in full.

"You do have my apologies if I have offended or humiliated - I usually don't call people out in public, but it's kind of the nature of the internet."

That is the nature of the Internet...
And also part of the deal when you're as confrontational, opinionated, verbose and unabashed as I am in expressing my opinions...
So no, I'm not offended. :)