On Monday I attended a talk by Robert McCauley, Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University. The title of the talk was, “The Role of Maturationally Natural Cognition in Science and Religion,” which doesn’t really mean anything unless you already know what these terms mean.
Basically, McCauley’s conclusion is that religious thinking is cognitively ‘natural’ while scientific thinking is cognitively ‘unnatural’.
What does that mean, exactly? Well, natural cognition involves those thinking processes which naturally develop as our brains develop and mature and are not dependent on education or other culturally distinctive support. In other words, these are all a part of normal human cognitive development. Our basic understanding of simple physics. Our capacity to acquire and master language. Facial recognition and other reflexive actions that do not require much, if any, deep thought on our part.
Unnatural cognition, therefore, are thinking processes that require deep levels of concentration, logical deduction, go against intuitions, and/or require at least a limited amount of training to effectively implement. For example, doing a calculus problem.
McCauley made a few basic observations to make the point of why this matters or why the issue of why the cognitive processes underlying science and religion are important:
First, religion of some kind is ubiquitous. All cultures in all parts of the world extending down to the beginning of our species have developed religion. The existence of religion within human society is not dependent on literacy. Illiterate and literate people alike both have an easy time acquiring and passing on religion. Science, on the other hand (as opposed to technology), is not ubiquitous. Not all cultures have developed science and science does not extend nearly as far back into civilization as religion does. Scientific thinking and some amount of literacy go hand in hand.
Science relies on extensive institutional and educational support to develop, flourish, and continue from one generation to another. Scientists are specially trained to think in ways which defy conventional ways of thinking and often involve concepts and conclusions that are counter-intuitive. For example, science has largely banished the role of agency in causal explanations. This means that we do not seek explanations that appeal to the wants, desires, goals, or purposes of some conscious, thinking agent that resembles ourselves.
Religion, on the other hand, only relies on minimal variations of our naturally developed knowledge systems and does not restrict the role of agency in causal explanations (something that we find easy to comprehend). A ghost that walks through a wall only requires a minimal modification of our basic intuitions about the solidity of objects, etc. More importantly, however, is that such beliefs not only grab our attention but are also memorable and therefore lend themselves to cultural transmission. Science, while often attention grabbing, is not especially memorable, hence the ever-present problem of scientists attempting to explain their findings to the general public. It takes great effort to generate and transmit scientific explanations.
All of this actually sounded quite familiar to me while I listened to it, and I realized that I had read similar, if not nearly identical, arguments in Pascal Boyer’s book Religion Explained
What makes scientific knowledge-gathering special is not just its departure from our spontaneous intuitions but also the special kind of communication it requires, not just the way one mind works but also how other minds react to the information communicated. Scientific progress is brought about by a very odd form of social interaction, in which some of our motivational systems (a desire to reduce uncertainty, to impress other people, to gain status, as well as the aesthetic appeal of ingenuity) are required for purposes quite different from their evolutionary background. In other words, scientific activity is both cognitively and socially very unlikely, which is why it has only been developed by a very small number of people, in a small number of places, for what is only a minuscule part of our evolutionary history. As philosopher Robert McCauley concludes, on the basis of similar arguments, science is every bit as ‘unnatural’ to the human mind as religion is ‘natural.’
Given this, McCauley proposes the following consequence: Wherever there are human beings there will be religion, but there is no guarantee that science or the institutions that support it will endure. Scientific thinking, therefore, will never replace religious thinking no matter how strong of an effort we mount, despite the possible wishes of Richard Dawkins and others.
Of course, this does not explain the existence or persistence of non-believers. But ask yourself this: how likely is it that you could find a truly non-religious person in a backwater village? And that’s the point. Science requires a monumental effort on the part of society to maintain a foothold into our brains.
What do you think? Are we really doomed to always have to live with religion or do you see a candle in all of this darkness?
(By the way, I am making this my new poll question. Check it out on the right sidebar)
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Concluding my apparently hopeless quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I now turn to the last four commandments.
#7 – Thou shalt not commit adultery.
My dictionary defines adultery this way: “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.”
If I were drawing up a moral code and was limited to ten rules, I think I’d use the space to forbid rape or child molestation rather than “voluntary sexual intercourse” of any sort, but maybe that’s just me, eh?
And maybe it’s rude to point out that the same God who allegedly gave us this Commandment is the same God who allegedly excused Abraham’s having sex with his wife’s handmaid (Gen. 16:1-2
), who killed Onan for refusing to impregnate his dead brother’s wife (Gen. 38:7-10), and who allowed Moses to order his men to take captured enemy virgins for themselves (Num. 31:14-18).
And maybe – just maybe – this strict Commandment against adultery made sense in ancient times when arranged marriages at a young age were common, divorces were difficult if not impossible to obtain, and men needed all the help they could get to keep their wives from succumbing to the desire to have sex at least once in their lives with guys they were actually attracted to and maybe even loved.
I still don’t think posting “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in classrooms and yards is going to stop married people from having sex with people they aren’t married to.
If anything, it’ll probably just stop people from marrying in the first place. Because – when you get right down to it – this Commandment seems to allow unmarried people to have sex with whoever they want, doesn’t it?
Is that the message we really want to send to our grade school students as they sit in their classrooms or walk to school?
Tsk tsk.
#8 – Thou shalt not steal.
I’m not a thief. And, as a general rule of thumb, I don’t like people who are. Even so, I’m not comfortable with an absolute rule against stealing. Was it wrong for the starving peasants at the time of the French Revolution to steal the bread they needed to survive? Was it wrong for Allied spies to steal Nazi secrets during World War II? Is it really appropriate for Americans to post this Commandment on land that was quite possibly stolen from the Indians? Was this Commandment itself stolen from the Code of Hammurabi or from other, earlier commandments from other, earlier gods? Can it really be taken seriously when it comes from a God who repeatedly commanded the Hebrews to steal the land of others when He could have given them an entire, unpopulated galaxy or two of their own had He wanted to?
If we really want to reduce theft (rather than merely demonize thieves), maybe we’d do better posting reminders like “Lock your doors” and “Remember to guard your credit card numbers.”
Just a thought.
#9 – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
This is often interpreted to mean “No lying!” But if that’s what God meant, why didn’t He say so? It sounds more like “No perjury!” to me – which of course means “No lying when under oath in a court of law.” Which would seem to excuse lying at other times. Is this really what we want our kids to learn every time they go for a walk? Or do we tell them that God really meant “No lying!” – He was just having a bad day when He wrote this Commandment?
And of course even that perjury interpretation isn’t quite right. What it really seems to be saying is “No committing perjury against your neighbor!” The kindest interpretation I can put on this is “No lying to other members of our tribe.” Well, and maybe the Mexicans and the Canadians if you happen to be an American like me. Is that what we want our kids to learn? That it’s ok to lie to foreign businessmen, leaders, tourists, and exchange students unless they happen to be Mexican or Canadian?
Of course not. And I’ve never yet met a Christian who would say that that’s exactly what he or she wants the kiddies to learn. The problem is that to avoid saying that, one has to pretty much twist this Commandment into a simple “No lying!” rule – and that’s just not what the Commandment says. And if we say it’s ok to twist this Commandment in this way, what’s to keep anyone from twisting it in other ways? What’s to keep anyone from twisting anything the Bible says into anything they want?
The fact that the authors of the Bible themselves seem to have lied repeatedly really doesn’t help matters….
#10 – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
Questions: Is coveting your neighbor’s wife the moral equivalent of coveting his farm animals? Is coveting your neighbor’s manservant - a euphemism for “slave” – worse than your neighbor having a “manservant” in the first place? Is it ok for your wife to covet your neighbor’s husband?? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE U.S. ECONOMY IF WE STOPPED COVETING THOSE THINGS WE DIDN’T ALREADY HAVE???
Sorry. It’s just that old Newsreel visions of the Great Depression came roaring back to me.
Ok, so maybe we’d be better off not letting our desire for material possessions control so much of our lives. And maybe coveting our neighbor’s spouse really is more a personal moral failing to be condemned than an instinct that’s evolved because it’s resulted in our genes being perpetuated farther and wider than they otherwise would have been. I mean, I’ve been wrong before – maybe I’m wrong in thinking otherwise here.
I think it remains rather obvious that we could spend our time and energies in a lot worse ways than in pining away for our neighbor’s new ratchet set.
I mean, here we are – at the end of the Commandments – the best and only moral guide we will ever need, according to many people – and there’s no prohibition against torture, there’s no ban on slavery, there’s nothing that says we really shouldn’t trash the planet or cause mass extinctions just to make a buck – but wanting our neighbor’s ox – THAT’S bad??
It’s really no wonder that Christians didn’t think the Ten Commandments all that hot or important before the 13th century.
The wonder is, why in the world do so many think differently now??
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Valiantly continuing my apparently hopeless quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Sixth Commandment.
#6 – “Thou shalt not kill.”
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Just when I was about ready to abandon my quest, I come to this – the Commandment that perhaps has the most going for it of any of them. It’s short (in fact, the shortest of them all at just 4 words totaling 16 letters); it apparently leaves little room for misunderstanding; it touches on an obviously important moral issue with obvious real world consequences – behavior that’s truly a matter of life and death; it’s perhaps the most quoted of all the Commandments; it seems to be the one people have most in mind when they say we ought to be posting the Ten Commandments in all our schools to prevent future Columbines; and it seems to be part of virtually every rational moral system I’ve ever heard of (though often qualified or modified a bit).
Alas, things are never simple when it comes to the Bible.
First off, it’s odd and troubling that such an important law is buried in the middle of the Ten Commandments. Less significant ones bracket it. Less important ones are given far more room and emphasis. This creates the impression that God didn’t take it as seriously as He should have. And if He didn’t, why should we?
Secondly, it’s one more Commandment that’s just given – plop. No explanation accompanies it. No rationale is given for its inclusion here. The consequences of following or not following it are not described. This further undermines its significance, and it also seems to reduce the likelihood of people actually following it.
Thirdly, it turns out that it is neither as obvious nor as understandable as it seems. Some people think it actually means or should read “Thou shalt not murder.”
By saying this, they force us all to go on another long detour down a rabbit hole….
Imagine you’re a teacher in a classroom. Imagine that you’ve given the following assignment: “Come up with a list of ten guiding laws or principles for moral behavior. You have as much time as you need to complete this assignment. You may have anyone and everyone help you. Go!” A couple thousand years later, a student comes in and gives you the Bible. The student tells you it was in effect written by God Himself. You spend a lot of time looking it over very carefully. In the course of doing so, you read “Thou shalt not kill,” and have a few problems with that. You whip out your red pen, leave a few comments, grade the Bible accordingly, and hand it back. Next day, the student comes storming back in and says, “Unfair! It really meant to say ‘Thou shalt not murder’!” What do you do? Do you say, “Oh, silly me – of course!”? Do you say, “Yes, I can see how thousands of years might not be enough time to polish a simple, 4-word sentence – here’s an extension”? Do you say, “Oh, sure – every perfect God is entitled to a few mistakes even when it comes to what’s perhaps the most important thing He’s ever said.” Do you decide to practice your own sort of “an eye for an eye” justice and say “Well, if YOU get to say ‘kill really means murder,’ then I get to say that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ really should read ‘Thou shalt now steal’ – so hand over your lunch money – NOW! – and nobody will get hurt!”? Or do you do what I’d do and reassign this student to a remedial reading class before he or she can waste anymore of your time?
Ok, that’s admittedly just my initial, visceral response to being jerked around this way. Here’s my completely logical, rational response for those who might be interested.
If God or the Bible meant “murder” instead of “kill,” God and the Bible should have said “murder” instead of “kill.”
On what grounds do I grant you the right to amend them? If you have the right to amend the Bible to better fit your beliefs and arguments, why don’t I? Why is it that defenders of the Bible always seem to claim the right to re-interpret the Bible to better fit current sensibilities but they never ever grant others the right to re-interpret it for the worse?
The claim has been made that “kill” is the result of a mistranslation or a silly error if not an outright act of stupidity. If so, it is an error that the scholars who put together the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the Catholic New American Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the Geneva Bible, and others have all made. If these scholars managed to mangle something so simple and important as the Sixth Commandment, it would be foolish to trust them with regards to anything at all, really, so we might as well throw all these Bibles away as inherently unreliable and untrustworthy.
The New International Version, on the other hand, renders the Sixth Commandment as “You shall not murder.” But then it also differs from other versions of the Bible in rather interesting ways. For example, the KJV and the RSV say that Ahaziah began to reign when he was 22 years old in 2 Kings 8:26 but 42 years old in 2 Chronicles 22:2. The NIV changes this to read “22″ in both locations. Apparently we are to believe that hundreds of previous translators had as much trouble with simple numbers as they did with simple words like “kill.” Forgive me for thinking it more likely that the translators of the NIV are merely fudging inconvenient words and contradictions for their own purposes.
Going one level deeper, the original Hebrew version of the Sixth Commandment seems to use the word “ratsach.” When “ratsach” appears in Deut. 4:42 and Num. 35:27, however, even the NIV renders it as “kill.”
The New Testament, on the other hand, seems to have been written originally in Greek. The KJV and the RSV quote Jesus as saying “Do not kill” in Mark 10:19 where he repeats some of the Ten Commandments. It also quotes Paul as saying the same thing in Romans 13:9. If the translators of these Bibles are confused, it’s a complex multilingual confusion which casts further doubt on their ability to do anything right.
For what it’s worth, Quakers and other Christian pacifists have sacrificed a lot over the centuries in the unshakable belief that these translators got “Thou shalt not kill” exactly right.
Of course it’s possibly that we can sidestep the whole “murder/kill” issue by simply going to Gen. 9:6 – “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” The KJV, RSV, and the NIV pretty much agree here. That sounds like a prohibition against killing to me – but then it also sounds like it mandates the execution of the executioner, too. That doesn’t make sense to me, but I read the Bible with an open mind and refuse to impose my version of sense on it. If it wants to be nonsensical, hey – who are we to clean up after it?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that the correct translation or interpretation of the Sixth Commandment is in fact “Thou shalt not murder.” The sad fact is, God often excused murder in the Old Testament – when He wasn’t actively ordering it. Cain, after all, got away with murder (Gen. 4:15). So did Moses, who murdered an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-12). Jacob’s sons murdered all the men of a city, yet were protected by God for it (Gen. 34; 35:5). Moses and Joshua both conducted wars of extermination against their enemies in which countless men, women, and children were murdered, and they obviously pleased God in the process. Jael – called the most blessed of all women by the Bible (Judges 5:24) – lured a man to her tent and brutally murdered him while he slept (Judges 4:17-21). Samson murdered and robbed 30 men after he lost a bet because of his own stupidity – and he allegedly committed these murders with God’s help (Judges 14:19). David in effect murdered Uriah in order to steal Uriah’s wife for himself and God punished him by killing his innocent baby – not him. Jesus is commonly considered the Prince of Love and Peace, yet Luke 19:27 quotes him as saying, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” Paul consented to the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58-8:1) and generally terrorized Christians before joining them. After joining them, he said “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient….” (1 Cor. 6:12).
If “Thou shalt not murder” can be made the basis of a sound moral system, it would seem that there’s no evidence for it in the Bible.
Do we have any better luck if we assume the correct translation of Exodus 20:13 is “Thou shalt not kill”?
Let’s see.
We get as far as Exodus 29:11 before God orders the killing of a bullock, and as far as Exodus 29:20 before He orders the killing of a ram. In fact, God orders the killing of animals at least 16 times after giving Moses the Ten Commandments. Clearly, the Sixth Commandment – at best – must be rephrased as “Thou shalt not kill other human beings.”
Alas, this won’t work either. Exodus 21:12 says “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.” The Sixth Commandment has to be modified again to allow for the execution of murderers.
But wait – Exodus 21:15 says that “And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.” Apparently, non-fatal blows delivered by children to their parents merit a bit of killing, too.
Exodus 21:16 extends the killing to those who steal and/or sell men.
Exodus 21:17 extends the killing to those children who merely curse their parents.
Exodus 21:29 extends the killing to the owners of murderous oxen.
Exodus 22:18 extends the killing to witches.
Exodus 22:19 extends the killing to those guilty of having sex with animals.
Exodus 31:15 extends the killing to those who work on the sabbath.
Leviticus 20:2 extends the killing to whoever “gives his seed to Moloch.”
Leviticus 20:10 extends the killing to adulterers.
Leviticus 20:13 extends the killing to men who engage in homosexual acts.
Leviticus 20:27 extends the killing to mediums and wizards.
Leviticus 24:16 extends the killing to those who “blasphemeth” the name of the Lord.
Number 1:51 extends the killing to strangers who approach the tabernacle.
Numbers 31:17 extends the killing to the male children of enemies defeated in battle. It extends the killing to the enemy’s non-virginal women as well. (The virgins are merely forced to marry their holy rapists.)
Deuteronomy 13:5 extends the killing to those prophets and “dreamers of dreams” who would lure people away from God and the Ten Commandments. (Do you think Jesus was aware of this when he told people it was ok to work on the sabbath? Just wondering.)
Deuteronomy 13:6-10 extends the killing to family members and friends who try to convert Jews to other religions. (Do you think Paul was aware of this passage?)
Joshua 1:18 extends the killing to anyone who disobeys Joshua in any way.
Joshua 6:21 extends the killing to all the inhabitants of Jericho save for one harlot.
1 Samuel 15:3 extends the killing to every enemy man, woman, child, ox, sheep, camel, and ass. (Apparently ancient Middle Easterners did not keep hamsters, gerbils, or goldfish.)
And Ecclesiastes 3:3 assures us that there is a time to kill – just in case there might be any doubt left in our minds after all this slaughter.
Did I miss anything? Probably. The Bible is one big book and I tend to lose patience with it after the first 10 or 20 moral outrages allegedly sanctioned by God. Suffice it to say that whatever system of ethics it attempts to establish with “Thou shalt not kill” it more than obliterates in succeeding pages.
No wonder those people who want the Ten Commandments posted in our schools in an attempt to reduce violence seem to me to be as misguided as those who might want to post the wit and wisdom of Genghis Khan or Jeffrey Dahmer for the same reason. Even if the wit and wisdom of these men somehow includes a few valuable moral precepts, their actions simply make it impossible for me to take them seriously.
So it is with the God of the Bible.
Continue to Commandments 7-10…
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Continuing my quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Fifth Commandment.
#5 – “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
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Some might say that the rarely quoted second half of this famous Commandment indicates that God was speaking only to the Hebrews to whom He was giving the Promised Land. Others might say no, God was speaking to all of us living on the planet He gave us for our home. I sympathize with the first view, but shalt not press it. Suffice it to say that once again, things are at least a bit murkier than many seem to think.
The first part of this Commandment seems clear enough, as far as it goes: “Honour thy father and thy mother.” My dictionary says that this use of the word “honour” means “To hold in respect; esteem.” Not much to argue with there.
So why does it rub me the wrong way anyway?
Is it because I think honour, respect, and esteem must be earned rather than commanded? Partly. God’s command here is part of an unfortunate pattern in the Bible – a pattern which includes the commands that we love God (as if love can rationally or in practice ever be commanded!); that prophets and others sent by God be believed and obeyed without question, delay, or doubt; that slaves obey their masters even when their masters are wrong or violent; and that everyone obey the authorities because (according to Paul) no one rises to power without God’s blessing. Time after time dissent is met not with reasoned debate but anger, ridicule, threats, violence, destruction, and hellfire. However noble God’s goals may or may not be, the means He employs are the means of a fascist and a bully. Commanding us to honour our parents - period – fits right in.
Does “Honour thy father and thy mother” bother me because it also seems to place a higher value on blood relations than objective merit? Partly. God could have said “Honour all good people,” after all. But according to the Bible, He didn’t. Instead, He demands that we honour the people who just happen to be our parents – apparently, no matter how good or bad they might be. If our parents happen to be Mr. And Mrs. Attila the Hun, slaughterers of thousands, God apparently would be angry with us if we showed them any less respect than we would show Mr. And Mrs. Abraham Lincoln had they been our parents instead. The bottom line is that God seems to be promoting tribalism rather than genuine morality, and that’s deeply troubling because it seems to provide no way for children to transcend the conflicts of prior generations such as divide Jews and Arabs (and others like the Serbs and the Albanians) to this day. And exactly what a child born to one set of parents yet adopted by another set is to do when those parents are at odds is anybody’s guess….
I think the main reason that “Honour thy father and thy mother” bothers me, though, is because it seems to commit the logical sin that I call misemphasis. In my experience – and every day in my newspaper – parents are far more likely to deny their children the love and respect they deserve than the other way around. Almanacs tell me that at least 500,000 kids are criminally neglected in America every year – yet God apparently has nothing to say about that. Instead, God’s sympathies seem to be entirely with those parents who neglect and otherwise abuse these kids. He tells the Hebrews He’ll use wild beasts to kill their children if they disobey (Lev. 26:22). He tells them to kill any child who curses a parent (Lev. 20:9). He killed every first-born child in Egypt without qualm. To punish David, he kills the baby of Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:13-18). Time and time again, God ordered the Hebrews to kill the children of their enemies. Psalm 137 seems to positively revel in the murder of little children. Hosea 13:16 and Isaiah 13:16-18 provide particularly gruesome accounts of “holy” child murder – and even the slaughter of pregnant women. And of course Proverbs 13:24 says that “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” I’ve been unable to find any modern child psychologist who would agree.
The question becomes: Is it likelier that an ignorant ancient people living in a violent, patriarchal society invented a God in their own imperfect image or that an actual, perfect God came up with such an abhorrent system of “morality”?
I personally cannot see how an absolute command to “Honour thy parents” has any place in a rational moral system. In a perfect world, yes – parents ought to be honoured. But in a perfect world, everyone would be honourable. In this world of all kinds of people, judgments and actions require much more awareness, discrimination, and fine tuning.
I think nearly every person can see this once they think about it.
Why can’t the God of the Bible?
*
(Note: I’m using the King James version of the Bible as my reference in this series of entries. It uses “honour” – the British spelling of “honor.” I’ve followed suit solely for the sake of consistency.)
Continue to the Sixth Commandment…
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Continuing my quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Fourth Commandment.
#4 – “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
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The first thing to note is that this is the fourth Commandment in a row now that seems to have far more to do with religious practice than with morality. That is to say, many people who fail to observe these first four Commandments can still be seen as acting morally (at least by those who aren’t part of the religious group which gave rise to these Commandments), while those who keep all four of these Commandments are still free to act in numerous immoral ways.
It wouldn’t have to be this way. Compare these first four of the Ten Commandments with this alternative:
“Thou shalt do no wrong! And by wrong we mean: 1) Anything that hurts yourself; 2) Anything that hurts other sentient life forms beyond that required for your own continued existence; 3) Anything that hurts the biosphere; and 4) Anything which hurts future generations.”
This alternative may require a bit of debate, refinement, and elaboration before it can give rise to a full system of morality, but I think it provides a pretty simple and clear basis for such a system – especially compared to what the Bible offers.
The next thing to note is that God defines the sabbath day this way in the next sentence of the Fourth Commandment:
“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath day of the Lord thy God….”
That would be Saturday. Christians changed that to Sunday (the first day) after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead on a Sunday and they took to celebrating Easter every week in hopes of his imminent return. Paul allegedly gave them the right to make this change and others in the laws of the Old Testament. But Paul obviously wasn’t God, and God clearly said and implied that the laws of the Old Testament were forever. Paul wasn’t even Jesus, who said “Til heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law… Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven….” Unlike the U.S. Constitution, God made no provisions for amendment or revision in His laws. He could have ended any or all of the Ten Commandments with the words “until further notice” – but He did not. How Christians can choose to follow Paul rather than God here is a mystery to me.
Moving on, we see that God for once tries to explain His reasoning behind a Commandment beyond merely saying “Because I say so” or “Because I feel like it”:
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
As luck would have it, this is a reason we can’t check and must simply take on faith. If God really didn’t make heaven and earth in six days and rest on the seventh (as even relatively few theists seem to believe He did these days), the Fourth Commandment appears to lose its point. One could still justify resting one day out of seven – as a way of reducing consumption and diminishing our harmful impact on the biosphere, say – but the Old Testament God once again doesn’t bother to ground His commandment in such high principles. Instead, the sheer religious nature of these Commandments is once again emphasized, and they further lose their ability to sway objective minds as a result.
One might even argue that by blessing only His day of rest instead of any of His days of work, God is actually undermining the work ethic by honoring inactivity over industriousness and in effect promoting what many might consider an immorally lazy mindset. Not that I would personally argue this, of course, since I feel a tad lazy myself right now.
One might also note in passing that this is one of the few times God actually says to people, “Do this because I did this” or “Emulate me.” The Bible says that Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden because they had acquired a god-like ability to tell good from evil by eating fruit and God feared that they would eat from the tree of life next and acquire god-like immortality. The Tower of Babel was destroyed to prevent people from exercising god-like powers through a common language. Again and again in the Bible, world philosophy, literature, and even Star Trek, people are warned against the hubris of thinking and acting as if they are gods. For the God of the Old Testament to say here “Rest on the seventh day because I rested on the seventh day” seems to establish a principle (“Do as I do”) that He Himself would condemn in most if not all other areas. As such, the Fourth Commandment seems at least a tad arbitrary and inconsistent with God’s other laws.
And a student of foreign films might object to the wisdom of emulating God here at all in any case by recalling the following words from Italy’s Oscar-winning “Cinema Paradiso“:
“They say that God created the world and everything in it in six days and rested on the seventh. I wish He would have taken a bit more time and done the job right.”
Moving right along, here is the rest of the Fourth Commandment:
“But the seventh day is the sabbath day of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.”
Unlike the murkiness of the previous Commandments, this really couldn’t be any clearer. And Exodus 31:15 underlines the point:
“Whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.”
Does all this clarity finally provide us with a firm foundation on which to base an understandable, workable, and efficient system of morality? No. Instead, this clarity seems to be directly responsible for the Fourth Commandment’s being almost universally rejected and ignored.
The ancient Jews really gave it their best shot, however. In Maccabean times (2nd century B.C.) they went so far as to allow themselves to be slaughtered on the sabbath rather than take up arms to defend themselves. When it dawned on them that this could led to their extinction, they decided this Commandment needed amending. Their Talmud ended up deciding that there were 39 general categories of forbidden works which could be suspended when life or health were seriously threatened. To the extent this makes sense and is moral is the extent to which the original Fourth Commandment is nonsensical and immoral.
Finally, there is, of course, the case of Jesus. When his disciples violated the Fourth Commandment by harvesting corn on the sabbath and he was called on it, he said, “So what? David violated the law, too.” Apparently this “defense” failed to sway his accusers, so he added “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” (Mark 2:23-27) Funny, when humanists put what’s best for man above ancient “God-given” law like this, they get lambasted for it. When Jesus does it, he’s called a wise and learned teacher. Seems to me that there’s far more justification for lambasting Jesus since humanists at least don’t contradict themselves by simultaneously saying they’re upholding that ancient law.
What strikes me as even odder is that so many Christians who first reject God’s making Saturday the sabbath and then reject the idea that it’s wrong to work on the sabbath nonetheless feel that a Commandment vehemently asserting both ought to be posted in all our schools.
As an absolute law to be obeyed, I mean – not as a joke or an example of hypocrisy.
The very idea leaves me suddenly full of the urge to go lock my doors for fear of what they might do next.
That’s a very bad sign for any moral system I’m interviewing, to be sure, but I’ll do my best to keep my fears in check until all Ten Commandments have been given a fair hearing.
If you have anything to say in their behalf, please be sure to pass it along.
I mean, I’d really hate to go through all this work only to discover I need to abandon my faith in locks altogether and have to start bricking up my portals….
Continue to the Fifth Commandment…
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Apparantly, in the state of Texas, if you assualt somebody it is okay so long as it is for religious reasons:
U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear Texas exorcism case
The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear the case of a former Colleyville woman who says that a forced traumatic exorcism left her so physically bruised and emotionally scarred that she later tried to commit suicide.
Attorneys for Laura Schubert Pearson filed an appeal before the court late last year arguing that the Texas Supreme Court was wrong in tossing out her case against the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God in Colleyville.
In the appeal, Pearson’s attorneys argued that the Texas court’s ruling “dramatically and dangerously departs” from the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions, adding that someone’s religious beliefs do not excuse them from being held accountable under valid state laws that prohibit such things as assault and false imprisonment.
Yes, it is the 21st century and yes that article does say “exorcism.” Feeling like I am being sucked into a timewarp, I continue reading, with a description of the “exorcism”:
Pearson described a wild night in 1996 that involved casting out demons from the church and two attempts to exorcise demons from her. The incident led Pearson, then 17, to eventually attempt suicide, she said.
According to court documents, Pearson and her brother Joey were involved in church activities while their parents were out of town and Pearson underwent two exorcisms.
One of those episodes was during a youth service, and Pearson reportedly curled into a fetal position and asked church members and staff to be left alone. Church members thought she was in distress and held her down in a “spread eagle” position. Pearson suffered carpet burns and scrapes on her back and bruised wrists.
After the incident, she dropped out of high school her senior year, began to cut herself as many as 100 times over several years and refused to leave the house. Pearson slit her wrists with a box cutter.
A divided Texas Supreme Court ruled last year that the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God staff and members are protected by the First Amendment because the case involves an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct.
Pearson’s attorneys said the Texas court’s decision expands the universe of activities that are protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of religion precepts.
Briefs filed for the now-defunct church — it has merged with another Colleyville church — contend that the case is a personal injury action regarding mental anguish damages that should be left for the state courts to decide.
Pearson is now 29, married and living in Georgia.
Lest you think this is just the crazy actions of some fringe Assembly of God demonination let me remind you that the Catholic Church itself will be mandating that exorcists and “demonologists” must be summoned to examine any alleged visions of the Virgin Mary. But don’t worry – those guys will be licensed professionals! Not to be confused with these amateur types.
What I want to know is this: Where does Texas wish to draw the line? If assault can be protected as part of a religious ceremony, then what else? Holy rape?
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Continuing my quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Third Commandment.
#3 – “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
In other words, don’t take the name of the Lord in vain, otherwise you’ll be found guilty of taking it in vain – got that?
Sorry, I don’t mean to quibble, it’s just that I really get the overwhelming feeling sometimes that this allegedly perfect Almighty God could have used a decent human editor.
The dictionary meaning of “in vain” that seems to apply here is “In an irreverent or disrespectful manner.” So, this Commandment seems to be basically saying, “Hey, treat Me with respect. Don’t be mocking Me none. It’s always Mister God to you. DON’T FORGET or I’ll whomp your ass but good!”
God seems very down on mocking. When a group of little kids mocked the prophet Elisha’s baldness in 2 Kings 2:23-24, Elisha cursed them in the name of the Lord and two she bears came rushing out of the woods and tore 42 of these kids to bits. One can only wonder how much worse their punishment might have been had they been over 18 and had mocked God Himself.
I guess I can kinda see how this Commandment might be advantageous to a God whose feelings are as easily hurt by humans as those of the God of the Bible are, but is it the kind of thing we can really base a moral system on?
When President John Adams tried this same sort of thing by signing the Sedition Act in 1798 which prohibited false, scandalous and malicious writing about the President, Congress, and the nation, he ran into a political firestorm from which he never really recovered. Attempts to safeguard the U.S. flag by passing a law banning its burning in protest have not yet succeeded because we generally seem to agree with Voltaire’s comment about “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” A WWII vet who was interviewed on TV this last Memorial Day actually said that he told school kids that he fought Hitler precisely so that misguided people would have the right to burn the flag if they so chose to do so. Somehow this seems a lot nobler and more moral to me than a Commandment that says, “Hey – no making fun of God Almighty or I’ll rip you limb from limb!”
Other countries at other times have taken a different course. Unwilling to rely upon the lackadaisical behavior of she bears in these matters, they have made mockery of their God and leaders a serious criminal offense. Are these countries happier, better places? Maybe we should ask Salmon Rushdie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or the surviving relatives of Anne Frank.
If you want to avoid mocking your God, that’s your right and privilege. But then if He’s your God, you probably wouldn’t even think of doing so, would you? To the extent this Commandment is a reminder to you to be sane and consistent in your relationship with your deity, you can have it. To the extent that it’s an attempt to impose your God on the rest of us, or shield Him from legitimate analysis and criticism, it’s an extremely unfortunate attempt to pre-empt free thought and free speech by fiat and the threat of force.
These words of Ben Franklin come to mind: “When religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
Putting it in my own words: Any God who has to command His own followers not to mock Him is probably a Bad One; and any followers who must resort to law and intimidation to protect that God from being mocked by others probably deserve to be mocked themselves.
Continue to the Fourth Commandment…
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Yesterday I raised the question “Can a logical, understandable, and workable system of morality be based on the Bible alone?”
In an attempt to answer this question, I began an analysis of the Ten Commandments – the part of the Bible that many seem to believe offers the best possible foundation for a system of morality.
Having examined the background of these Commandments as well as the First Commandment in detail yesterday, I’d like to continue that analysis today by turning to the Second Commandment.
#2 – “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them….”
That’s not quite all of it, but it’s enough to begin with.
Reading it as generously and as openly-mindedly as I can, it seems to be an attempt to re-emphasize and clean up the first: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Had that one just said “I’m the only God – accept no substitutes!” this one would have been unnecessary. I guess the tendency to worship “an idol or a fetish carved in wood or stone” (my dictionary’s definition of “graven image”) must have been a real problem back then and the author of the Commandments felt it merited special condemnation. As I look at the world today, however, I don’t see the bowing down before carved idols as one of our top ten problems. And I don’t think that’s because people have taken this Commandment to heart and cleaned up their act. I think the author of the Ten Commandments was just trying to stamp out an odd inclination among certain ignorant ancient people and that the demand of some people today that we post this commandment in all our high schools is about as bizarre as someone’s wanting to post a warning against The Evil Eye or bad vapors in all our medical schools.
That’s admittedly just my opinion, however. There are, of course, others, but I’m not sure you’ll like them any better.
Some people interpret this Second Commandment as meaning that we shouldn’t reproduce the image of any life form at all. Some Christians think Catholics violate this Commandment when they bow down before statues of Mary. Others look at all those paintings, statues, and other depictions of Jesus and others in Catholic and many Protestant denominations alike and shake their heads. Catholics and others defend these practices by saying that they’re not worshiping the depiction of Jesus or Mary but the holy person the depiction symbolizes – and through them, God Himself. Most Muslim artists seem to have traditionally concentrated on patterns and intricate designs because they believe God forbids most if not all depictions of the human face and form. Still others say that virtually all visual images of any kind are bad – that TV is a modern “graven image” and that anything at all that distracts from God is to be shunned because of this Commandment.
Adding to the confusion: The fact that Moses himself made a bronze serpent after he allegedly got this Commandment from God. (See Numbers 21:9.)
My conclusion: Any law that is open to so many radically different interpretations is badly written.
You say God wrote it and so it must be well-written – we’re just too stupid to figure it out? Well, guess what – the Bible itself says that sometimes God writes bad laws! He does it to lead people astray so He can punish them.
Ezekiel 20:25
Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live.
How… special. But then this is a God who allegedly hardened Pharaoh’s heart just so He could hit him with another plague for having a hardened heart, isn’t it?
Moving on to the rest of the Second Commandment…
“… for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God…”
My dictionary defines “jealous” this way:
“1. Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of losing affection or position. 2.a. Resentful or bitter in rivalry; envious. b. Inclined to suspect rivalry. 3. Having to do with or arising from feelings of envy, apprehension, or bitterness. 4. Vigilant in guarding something. 5. Intolerant of disloyalty or infidelity; autocratic.”
Fearful… wary… apprehensive… bitter… envious… vigilant… autocratic…. Gee, are you starting to understand why the Hebrews might have preferred a golden calf?
Why is it that qualities and emotions we dislike in people we’re expected to accept and love in a god? Any ideas?
And if anyone can explain how the God of the Old Testament is better than the highly emotional, mere-humans-with-super-powers gods of the ancient Greeks, feel free to pass that information along, too.
But wait – let’s put the above fragment in context first. It’s wrong to take things out of context, after all.
“… for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto the thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”
Ok. Alright. This clears everything up, doesn’t it? If you hate God and show it by violating God’s law, your children, your grand-children, your great-grandchildren, and your great-great-grandchildren are gonna pay – apparently even if they themselves happen to be the holiest, most God-loving people who ever lived.
All those who think this makes perfect moral sense, raise your whip hands.
All those who think this provides a rational basis for a system of morality, please help us pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing for the great-great-grandchildren of Benedict Arnold to be hunted down and hung for treason and the great-great-grandchildren of Jesse James to be imprisoned for holding up a stagecoach in 1871.
Ludicrous? If so, you really ought to be used to it by now – the God of the Bible does this sort of thing repeatedly. Adam and Eve allegedly sin, and all their descendants are punished as a result. Humanity sins, so God sends a flood that allegedly destroys virtually all animal life on earth. Pharaoh refuses to let the Hebrews go, so all Egyptians suffer plague after plague after plague. In Joshua, chapter 7, one Hebrew steals and God punishes masses of other Hebrews. When David takes a census against God’s orders in 2 Samuel, God kills 70,000 of David’s people – and apparently doesn’t even slap David’s own hands. In fact, 1 Kings 15:5 says David always did right in God’s eyes save for that little matter of sending a man on a suicide mission so he could legally steal away his wife, Bathsheba, whom he’d already gotten pregnant.
Now consider what happened to the Hebrews after they made their beautiful golden calf. What happened was that Moses ordered 3000 Hebrews put to death even while doing nothing to Aaron, the guy who made the calf in the first place.
Some may be able to look at all this and see a good foundation on which to base a moral system. Inherited guilt. Collective punishment. Punishing people not because of their own personal crimes but because of the ethnic or national group they were born into. Failure to make the punishment fit the crime. Punishing people and making them guess why they’re being punished. Delaying the punishment of some people like Cain (and Hitler) until they’re dead while striking down others like Onan almost instantly for the high crime of “spilling his seed upon the ground.”
I think it’s nuts, but maybe I’m misguided.
Maybe things will get better as I examine the remaining 8 Commandments.
At the moment it’s hard for me to imagine them getting any worse.
But then I’ve been surprised countless times in this regard before….
Continue to the Third Commandment…
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If God sent us a message, would you know what it meant?
How about the following:
Collapse of Brazil church roof kills 9
Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil — Fire department officials in Sao Paulo sorted through tons of debris Monday as they tried to determine what caused the roof of an evangelical church packed with worshipers to collapse just as evening service ended, and the toll in the disaster climbed to nine dead and 113 injured.
Inspectors theorized that the Sunday collapse of the building owned by Renascer, one of Brazil’s fastest-growing evangelical sects, may have been caused by the weight of air-conditioning ducts.
Rescue officials worked late into Sunday night pulling victims from the ruins of the neo-Pentecostal church, a converted movie theater built in the 1950s in the middle-class Cambuci neighborhood. All of those killed were women.
The collapse occurred as 600 people were filing out of a service that included a videoconference address from church founders in the United States. Without warning, tons of roofing material fell on top of the assemblage.
Now, if this was a message from God how would you interpret it? That God disapproves of air-conditioning? That God doesn’t like it when too many people pack into one of his churches? Maybe those nine women were not being submissive enough, as made plain by 1 Timothy 2:11-12: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.”
Or how about the interpretation of Patricia Madi Farelli?
Patricia Madi Farelli, 19, told Globo television that she and her mother arrived late to the service after a stop for coffee. As she stepped from her car, she heard a noise that sounded like a “hurricane.”
“The dust came up. I wanted to go in and help people, but my mother wouldn’t let me,” said Farelli, who on Monday passed leaflets asking for blood donations. “God saved us. Maybe with a cup of coffee.”
Ah ha! That must be it! God selectively chose Farelli and her mother to save from a catastrophe that He knew was going to happen rather than “miraculously” saving everybody – not even, say, by using His mastery over the laws of physics to hold the roof up at least until everyone exited the building – which they were in the process of doing when it collapsed. No – according to Farelli, she and her mother are extra special in God’s eyes, the people who were merely injured by the falling debris kinda special, and the 9 killed deserved what was coming to them. Or, maybe in an even more twisted sense of logic, God saved Farelli and her mother so that they could solicit blood donations for all of those other people He decided not to save. How special.
Perhaps God caved the roof in on this Church as a sign that He disapproves of this particular brand of Christianity and is warning others to stay away from neo-Pentecostalism and return to the One True Church (whatever that is)!
Or maybe this is really a sign from Vishwakarma, the Hindu God of Architecture, that he simply will not allow such sloppy building practices to go unpunished.
How much do you want to bet that Farelli has not even considered these last two interpretations? Leave your chips along with your comments – the odds here look pretty good.
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Yesterday I tried to show how sophisticated systems of morality have developed independent of the Bible.
Today the question for me is, “Can a logical, understandable, and workable system of morality be based on the Bible alone?”
Many people seem to think so.
Many specifically point to the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments as a firm foundation on which to base such a system.
This strikes me as odd, for a variety of reasons.
First of all, it strikes me as odd because these Ten Commandments (including the one commonly interpreted as “Thou shalt not lie”) seem to rest on a lie. They are presented as laws that God gave directly to Moses when in fact they seem to be plagiarized versions of the older laws of other people. Both Egypt’s Osirian Requirements and Babylon’s so-called Hammurabi’s Law pre-date Moses by centuries, greatly resemble his Ten Commandments, and almost certainly would have been known by the Hebrews prior to Moses’ days as a law-giver (especially if the Bible’s story about their captivity in Egypt is taken at face value). Indeed, there’s a stele in the Lourve which shows Hammurabi receiving his commission as a law-giver from the sun god, Shamash, a few hundred years before Moses allegedly lived and received his commission in allegedly much the same manner. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I doubt it. If a guy showed up at your door today with a copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights and said he got it straight from God without ever having read the U.S. Bill of Rights, would you be inclined to believe him?
Putting all that aside, a second problem immediately pops up: The God of the Old Testament doesn’t seem to be giving the Ten Commandments to everyone. He seems to be giving them to His favorite people, the Hebrews, alone. He could have appeared before every nation’s leader and ordered that these rules be imposed on every person on earth, but He didn’t. He could have told the Hebrews, “Here – take these and pass them around until everyone has a copy,” but He didn’t do that, either. He’s basically saying “These are for you people I brought out of Egypt alone – like all those other rules I expect you to live by, like circumcision, no pork, and no wearing of garments made of two different materials.” If He really expected everyone on earth to live by these rules, He sure went about it a mighty strange and inefficient way. And if He wanted just these Ten Commandments to apply to everyone rather than ALL the rules, laws, and regulations He set down for the Hebrews, He didn’t give any indication whatsoever. (True, Jesus much later is supposed to have told people “Follow the commandments – you know the ones,” but he appears to have been talking to fellow Jews at the time, and elsewhere said that he came for them alone. Indeed, he compares non-Jews to dogs.)
Ok, let’s put that aside, too. Let’s look at the Commandments themselves.
#1 – “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
This strikes me as a very strange, very problematic thing to say. Most if not all systems of morality are based on principles, not individuals. We Americans, in fact, pride ourselves on supposedly being a nation of laws, not men. Yet the Ten Commandments start off with something very different : “ME – not THEM!” Why should we follow such a command? “Because I brought you out of Egypt.” And if we don’t listen? “I’ll smite you!” Hmmmmm. Sounds like the hidden principle here is, “Might makes right.” And it sounds as if God is more interested in developing a domineering “cult of personality” than an objective, rational, and understandable system of justice. If that sounds like a variety of fascism to you, ask a Bible-believer to explain to you why you’re wrong. I can’t.
At least as strange is what God doesn’t say here. He could have said, “I’m the one and only God – listen up!” – but He didn’t. He doesn’t even say, “I’m your #1 God!” He just seems to be demanding, in effect, “most favored nation trading status” – i.e., to be treated no worse than any other god. After all, “Put no other gods before me” doesn’t say “Put no other gods even with me,” does it? The strange phrasing, of course, implies that there are other gods. (As does the fact that the Bible refers to other gods over 230 times.) And apparently the God of the Bible had to constantly compete with these other gods for the Hebrews’ allegiance. Often, He lost! In fact, no sooner did He give them these Ten Commandments than He lost out to a golden calf. Yes, the Bible would have us believe that despite all His miracles in Egypt, despite His leading them out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, despite the alleged parting of the Red Sea and all the rest, the Hebrews rejected Him for a silly little inanimate object they made themselves almost the first chance they got.
Which of course raises an obvious question: “If the Hebrews who knew this God best and most directly failed to see the merits of following His First Commandment, why should we?”
The whole story only makes sense to me as a tale told to frighten little children and extremely gullible adults into behaving. “You see, God said X, but the people He said X to said ‘Shove off!’ so God punished them. Don’t be like those silly people!”
Ummm, yeah. What this story really tells me is that this God has an ungodly difficult time convincing people He ought to be obeyed. You know, the Hebrews are always bitching and rejecting Him. Adam and Eve in effect rejected Him. Satan rejected Him. People in the New Testament reject Jesus right and left. These tales are always presented as warnings – “Don’t YOU be this stupid!” – but the message I get is that the God of the Bible is such a silly or disagreeable fellow that He has more trouble getting people to follow Him than many people do, let alone other gods.
If He really existed, I think I’d recommend He brush up on His social skills….
I know, I know – I should, too. Sorry, but I’m only human. Please don’t hold me to standards far more appropriate to hold allegedly perfect beings to.
Continue to the Second Commandment
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