It has been claimed that whether or not we can glean our moral knowledge from scripture is entirely missing Mayer’s point, that the subject he discusses in moral ontology rather than moral epistemology. However, while scripture is not itself the ontological foundation of ethics, any theory of morality must provide some account of morality which goes beyond ‘Morality is the character traits of God, whatever those may be’. It must provide concrete moral statements which must then be accountable themselves to reason and common sense. Theological moral injunctions and their sources are not reasonable, and for this reason we must have a good look at the source - in Meyer’s case the Bible.
This
system does not, on the
whole, provide a usable ethical system.
It is not an answer to any moral problems, it is nothing but a
signpost. The apologist’s ethics simply
point beyond.
Question: What is right
to do and
wrong to do?
Answer: The actions and character
are good.
Q: What are they?
A: We can know them through the Bible.
Q: Then I shall look at the Bible.
A: We can know them through the Bible.
Q: Then I shall look at the Bible.
A: I’m afraid you can’t
read
anything in the Bible without my commentaries.
Simply
put, it seems to me that
the apologist has a set of ethics and then attempts to back them up with
scripture. Anyone who follows the ethics of a religious
person cannot know the character or voice of their god, so they must
either
become an apologist to determine their own reading of scripture, or they
must
put their faith in an apologist and do what the apologist says.
Problems in the Old Testament
Let’s have a look at the
commentaries of the Bible, provided by one Christian group. We are told
that the rules in the Bible are
divided into three types: moral law, judicial/ civil law and ceremonial
law. The evidence comes from a number of sources:
1.
John Calvin said this was true.
2.
Thomas Aquinas said this was the
case.
3.
Augustine of Hippo said something
very similar.
So there is a long
tradition of
saying that this is the case, yet no proof has been given. Worse yet,
the division in unclear when
applied to specific passages of the Bible.
Let us take any given segment, say; Leviticus.
●
Leviticus 1 details how to make a
burnt offering that is pleasing to Yahweh.
So this is ceremonial law, right?
We have established that Yahweh likes burnt offerings and we know that
Christians no longer give them.
●
Leviticus 2 and 3 are the
same. Leviticus 3 ends with the note
that these instructions are lasting - they are to apply to the
generations to
come. Since Christians do not give burnt
offerings then (a) Yahweh has changed his mind or (b) the Christians
have
decided not to bother any longer.
●
Leviticus 4 tells us that the
remainder of the passages are for the Israelites, so apparently verses
1-3 are
not for the Israelites, or at least not for the Israelites alone.
●
Leviticus 5-9 is a story about
Moses performing ceremony.
●
Leviticus 10-17 involves more
offerings and details of which things are clean and which are not
clean. These are clearly hygiene laws, and not simple ceremonies. In
among them is the command that women on
their periods are unclean, and so not to be touched. This is terrible
hygienic advice and terrible
ceremonial (or symbolic) advice as it is unnecessary and sexist. This
statement was given by the ‘lord’, i.e.
Yahweh. If we can agree that indeed this
was Yahweh, then we know that Yahweh gives terrible advice. If we know
that Yahweh did not give this
injunction then Leviticus is unreliable.
It would then be suspect, along with all of the other scripture which
has no relevant difference.
●
Leviticus 18 details laws
concerning sex. Is this a ceremony? It seems not.
According to Jonathan, we are to believe that this is moral law, not
because it says so but because cities have been destroyed for disobeying
it. What I wonder about is what the
apologist must think of Yahweh’s previous inaction. For instance -
sleeping with half-siblings is
quite acceptable in many cultures (e.g. among the Yanomamo). Despite
this, Yahweh seems not to have
destroyed them, even during Biblical times.
●
In Leviticus 19, without half a
warning as to a change from Judicial to moral law, the flavour of things
changes:
○
Do not steal
○
Do not lie
○
Do not deceive one another
○
Do not seek revenge or bear a
grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as
yourself. I
am the Lord.
○
Keep my decrees.
○
Do not mate different kinds of
animals.
○
Do not plant your field with two
kinds of seed.
○
Do not wear clothing woven of two
kinds of material.
So we
are dealing with,
what? Moral, judicial or ceremonial
law? The first few are clearly moral
injunctions. The later ones look more
like ceremonial law. Are we to understand
that, in the manner of a doddering old man, a god switched from talking
about
ceremonial precepts to morality, without half a warning?
And
what of these:
●
27” ‘Do not
cut the hair at the sides of your
head or clip off the edges of your beard.
●
28 “‘Do not
cut your bodies for the dead or put
tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.
●
29 “‘Do not
degrade your daughter by making her
a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with
wickedness.
●
30 “‘Observe
my Sabbaths and have reverence for
my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
●
31 “‘Do not
turn to mediums or seek out
spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.
●
32 “‘Stand up
in the presence of the aged, show
respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the Lord.’
What
are these? They seem to switch. They are certainly not all ceremonies,
but
then again they are certainly not all good judicial laws or moral laws.
The most plausible account is clearly that
they are simply laws, and terrible laws at that, even for the time in
which
they were given. There is nothing so
terrible about a clipped beard, and refusing to seek out ‘spiritists’
may be a
bad idea (because it is a waste of money) but it would have been better
to say
that there is no such thing as a magical spirit which does things for
you, no
matter what the price. Spirits are just
fairies by a different name. Observing
the sabbath seems to be a moral law, since Yahweh decreed that someone
should
be stoned to death for it, but it does not make for good law of any
kind.
As to the excuses for
ignoring
ceremony Jonathan comments that Peter once saw some food, and a voice
said that
if Yahweh makes something clean then we should not call it unclean, and
therefore all the rules of cleanliness are not to apply to us. Let’s
see that again:
Premise 1: If Yahweh says that it is clean to eat, then it’s clean to eat.
Premise 1: If Yahweh says that it is clean to eat, then it’s clean to eat.
Conclusion:
Nothing is unclean to
us (including women on their period).
Not
terribly convincing. This excuse and a number of other unclear
passages are given. Yeshua stated that
he had not come to remove any of the law, that if people did not believe
in
Moses then they did not really believe in him.
This part is clear and unambiguous, but rarely acknowledged.
So
the three way division which Jonathan gave has no basis in the Old
Testament,
nor in the new. It appears obvious that
some things look like ceremonies, but it is not obvious that they are
not meant
to be followed, for Yahweh specifically says that these laws are not to
be
abandoned. Many laws are concerned with
hygiene, and the hygienic advice is deplorably sexist, and unnecessary.
Despite people at the end of the article
asking for reasons to believe in this three way division, Jonathan
remains
silent.
Slavery
Jonathan
stated:
‘It is true,
however, that there are cases in the Old Testament where the Hebrew
people kept
slaves. There is no parallel, however, between this kind of slavery and
the
slave trade of Africans. The Bible outlines the rights of slaves, and
how they
are to be treated (Deuteronomy 15:12-15; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1’
Notice
at the end, the nice
passages are cited. The reader is gently
relieved of the burden of looking at the Bible and seeing what the
passages on
slavery are. However, there are more
passages concerning slavery. These
passages have indeed been ‘cherry-picked’, for taking the nice passages
and
ignoring the nasty ones is exactly what people mean when they say
‘Cherry
picking’. Let’s have a brief look at the
nasty passages:
However, you may
purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among
you. You may also purchase the children
of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your
land. You may treat them as your
property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.
You may treat your slaves like this, but the
people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
So
they are not always short term
servants, as in the passages Jonathan suggested. Sometimes they are
‘property’. The passages Jonathan cited, concerning
slaves being held for only six years, apply to Hebrew slaves, not
general
slaves.
Exodus 21:7-11 tells us the proper way to
sell a daughter into slavery, and the proper recourse if she is not
pleasing
the man who bought her. In Exodus 21:20
we are told that we can beat our slaves as hard as we like, so long as
they do
not die on the spot (they may die later).
They are clearly not just ‘hired hands’.
Problems in the New Testament
Jonathan
states that he does not
endorse cherry-picking the Bible, but states that some passages are not
appropriate for our time. As we have
seen, some passages are not appropriate at all.
Matthew
One
passage which I cited as
problematic was Matthew 27:52-53, in which many of the dead come back to
life. I cited this passage as
problematic as I thought that nobody could believe that a large number
of
people came back from the dead, but I could be wrong. It is certainly
not a passage which can be
swept under the rug by saying that Matthew is simply stretching the tale
for
effect. If we are to banish any verse
which is unrealistic, simply because it is unrealistic, then we may as
well
cast most of the Bible into the realm of fantasy in a single drop.
Hermeneutics and Reinterpretation
I looked at the proof for
Christianity’s teachings, and been told that a belief in a god is
necessary for
an understanding of moral ontology and that nothing else will do it. I
found fault with both of these claims, and
further found that the Bible was unable to give an account of what
exactly
morality consists in, as it is a jumble of different laws, many of which
are
bizarre and unnecessary, some of which are basic common sense and some
of which
are cruel in the extreme. Jonathan
re-labels these passages as he pleases, and states that this is okay, as
long as
Christianity is true. This is an odd position,
and I can only wonder why Jonathan believes this.
However,
more importantly, if there is any evidence for Christianity, where is
it? If the moral argument was supposed to amount
to proof then it seems that this is begging the question, for one of the
(many)
problems with the argument from morality is that if it were true, we
would have
no way to draw moral injunctions from Scripture.
I
suspect that Christians putting
forward these arguments have fallen into a trap which has taken many
before him. Specifically, I suspect that they think that
a lot of compelling arguments for a position can total up to a single
good
argument. This is not the case. For any position, including UFOs and
psychic
healing, a large number of arguments can be made in their favour, but
not a
single one is without fault.
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