From: strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: The Canaanites(was Re: Achilles heels for religion?)
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 22:56:20 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Research

In article <1992Apr16.052512.596@bmerh2.bnr.ca>, dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr14.162653.17626@watson.ibm.com> strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom) writes:
|> 
|> >Of course you don't start with the Bible.  And even when
|> >you get to the Bible, you definitely don't start with
|> >the conquest of the *Canaanites*.
|> 
|> Hell no.  There's lot's of other bloodshed, stupidity, superstition,
|> and debauchery to choose from.  Let the Canaanites wait.  I'm sure there's
|> an important lesson to be learned from having Abraham willing to
|> murder his son, but I'm damned if I can figure out what it is.
|> 
The lesson is that human sacrifice is an inappropriate
form of worship.

The tradition shows a progression: human sacrifice ->
animal sacrifice -> sacrifice not valid unless accompanied by righteousness ->
no more animal sacrifices

|> >But by the time
|> >a child becomes Bar/Bat Mitzvah (13/12) or is confirmed
|> >(about 16), he/she should, in my opinion, be aware of
|> >the bits of the bible which appear to describe God condoning
|> >violence and bloodshed.
|> 
|> Why?  What good does it do?  Assuming that we are still talking
|> about teaching morality, what possible benifit can come from
|> teaching any part of it from a book such as the Bible?
|> 
You want to use great literature and widely known literature.
For English speakers, this would be the Bible, and Shakespeare.
Both have lots of violence and bloodshed.  But it's useful
to have a book like the Bible which rejects the "might makes
right" view of the world.  If anything, the message of
the Bible is "right makes might".  I agree that this message
can be dangerous too if misapplied, but first you have
to reject "might makes right".


|> Yes, the Bible certainly is a most influential book.  That's something
|> that's going to have to be fixed before we can ever hope to achieve
|> anything close to peace and tolerance in the world.  I am not optimistic
|> that that will ever happen though.  I rather think it more likely
|> that the nuts will kill us all first.
|> 
|> Just on the off chance that the Bible was not inspired by God at all,
|> but rather is the cultural record of a barbarous, fanatic, and superstitious
|> people, can you not see how using this book as a moral guide, commentary
|> or not, might tend to keep us barbarous, fanatic, and superstitious?
|> 
You're more pessimistic than I am.  I believe that the Jews of
today are far less barbarous, fanatic, and superstitious than
the pre-Abrahamic tribes.  I'm not saying we're perfect.  But
we don't have child sacrifice, ritual magic, family blood feuds,
crucifiction.  We have a great devotion to literature, science,
and the arts.  


|> Certainly there are differences in the details, but the most important
|> difference as far as I can tell is that the Jews won, whereas the Nazis
|> lost.  That's why we consider Jewish morality righteous, and Nazi morality
|> unrighteous.  IMO, both leave much to be desired.
|> 
I think you're being too cynical.  Would Nazi morality
have been righteous had the Nazis won?

|> >However, even granting that
|> >there was symmetry between the Nazi treatment of the Jews
|> >and the Israelite treatment of the Canaanites, I hope
|> >you will grant that there is *no* moral symmetry between
|> >the Nazi treatment of the Jews and the Jews' treatment
|> >of the Nazis.
|> 
|> I will grant you that the Nazis were wrong.  Will you grant me (and your
|> children) that the Jews were wrong when they wiped out the Canaanites?
|> Can you not see how glorifying this massacre (if in fact it did happen)
|> can only serve to make similar things more likely to happen again?  Would
|> you not object if I used newspaper clippings from Germany during WWII to
|> teach morality to my kids?  Even if I added commentary to tell my kids what
|> lessons they are supposed to learn?
|> 
Of course the Jews were wrong (by modern standards) when
they "wiped out" the Canaanites.  (Remember that this is
not real history.)  And glorifying the massacre would be
wrong.  We don't glorify the massacre.  We don't even
glorify the destruction of the armies of Pharaoh, even
though they would have killed or enslaved us had they
not (supposedly) drowned in the Red Sea.

|> >If you accept this, then there is some
|> >notion of righteousness that you have and we can argue
|> >details.  If you don't accept this, then I'm not sure
|> >I can argue further.
|> 
|> I consider tolerance to be a primary part of morality.  I'll teach
|> my kids that there are many paths to happiness, no one necessarily
|> better than the other.  "Live and let live" might be the motto.
|> Teaching arbitrary standards of righteousness serves to promote the
|> opposite ideal.  The kid grows up thinking that his way is the only
|> way, and all else is evil.  This is just what the world doesn't need.
|> 
I agree, but not absolutely.  Tolerance is a very important
part of morality, and a pluralistic society is much healthier
than a homogeneous society.  However, IMHO, there are other parts
of morality besides tolerance --- e.g. the duty to improve
the world.  And there are limits to tolerance.  If your
neighbor believed in burning his children as an offering to
his gods, you probably wouldn't tolerate that.  The USA
would not tolerate that despite the First Amendment protection
of religious practice.


|> >For someone who seems (e.g. in your next paragraph) to be
|> >a moral relativist, you seem very judgemental in calling
|> >the "Yahwists'" sexual taboos "major hangups".
|> 
|> If believing in tolerance makes me a moral absolutist, then I
|> suppose that's what I am.  Yes, I think they had an unhealthy
|> attitude towards sex.  I also think that a mutated form of
|> Judaism (Christianity) managed to take all the joy out of sex
|> for a good percentage of the human race for thousands of years.
|> 
Christianity is a very different religion.  The
worship of the virgin mother, Paul's view that
the flesh is evil and that celibacy is a higher
state than marriage --- none of this comes from
the Jewish Bible.  Go argue with the Christians.

Judaism does have sexual taboos, but they had nothing
to do with a disdain for the pleasure of sex.  They
had to do with maintaining stable families.  Was
their opposition to incest, or temple prostitutes,
or adultery "unhealthy"?

|> >sure which taboos you're referring to or which story
|> >you mean where a tribe was slaughtered for not conforming
|> >to Israelite sexual customs.  There is a story from
|> >before the Mosaic covenant in which a sub-tribe is slaughtered
|> >as a revenge for a rape -- is that the one you mean?
|> 
|> No, that's not the one I mean.  That was certainly a fair
|> penalty, and should definitely be used to teach morality.
|> I can't find the one I mean.  Maybe it doesn't exist.
|> 
That was before the covenant!  Not everything in
the Bible is presented to show how things should
be, anymore than everything in Henry the Eighth
is presented to show how things should be.

|> >In any case I've read "Brave New World".  I believe that
|> >Huxley himself viewed this society as an unrighteous
|> >society --- as a dystopia.
|> 
|> Dystopia ok.  But unrighteous?  I wouldn't want to live there, but
|> I wouldn't feel morally superior to somebody who did.
|> 
|> >Not necessarily because
|> >of the sexual morality.  The society denied individualism,
|> >personal "attachments", personal creativity, the pain
|> >and struggle which are a prerequisite for art, poetry,
|> >music, science.
|> 
|> Aside from the sexual morality, this doesn't sound much different
|> than what we have today.  At least for most people.

Boy are you cynical!!!  Today's society is Brave New World
minus the sex??? Are you serious??  Our children are
born into pre-programmed niches in society?  The government
supplies us with free drugs? 


|> >Yes, I think this was an "unrighteous" society, don't you?
|> 
|> No, I don't.  It was just different.  I was mainly concerned with
|> their idea of sexual morality.  I can certainly imagine living in
|> a society where promiscuity was the norm, and those who didn't
|> sleep around were considered abnormal and immoral.  Both that and
|> what we have today are arbitrary standards, and I can't justify
|> calling one righteous and the other not.  In fact, I think that
|> encouraging sexual activity amongst adolescents might lead to a
|> healthier, less violent society.  (That was probably stolen from
|> Bertrand Russell)

In BNW, not only was sexual activity encouraged, but
going steady with one individual for more than a few
weeks was discouraged.  Individuals had no strong
attachments to anything --- whether to a family,
a goal, anything.  There was less violence because
everybody was the same:  A Beta-Plus accountant
was totally plug replaceable with any other Beta-Plus
accountant.  That society didn't advocate
"many paths to happiness" as you did, and they
certainly didn't tolerate the individual who
would rather be unhappy and struggle to change the world.

Personal note:  I actually used BNW as a "negative
moral lesson" in teaching my children.  My son
(who was 13 and who aspires to be a performing
artist) was struck immediately by the destruction
of the necessary conditions for art in that society,
and claimed that such a society would self-destruct. 

|> 
|> I don't think that "unrighteous" is the right word here.  Maybe
|> "unfortunate", but I'm not even sure of that.  I am not at all
|> convinced that we have much to be proud of.  Especially if we
|> manage to destroy the planet and take the "unrighteous" peoples
|> of the world with us.
|> 
Well you're being pessimistic.  But actually you're 
professing another moral position:  that we have
a duty to prevent the destruction of the planet.
I agree with that --- and this is a duty which
the Bible also teaches.

|> >It's wrong to wipe out "primitive" cultures.  But it's
|> >not wrong to change them so that their young
|> >children don't die horrible deaths because magic
|> >is used instead of medicine.  It is wrong to
|> >replace medicine with magic in our society.
|> 
|> I tend to agree with this, but I think we have to very careful about
|> how we "help" other people.  I'm sure that some of the Christian
|> missionaries who go spreading their destructive nonsense amongst
|> South American natives, think that they are helping those people.
|> I'm not at all sure that we have much to offer other peoples until
|> we get our own act straightened out.  There is a lot of misery in
|> our own society that could be avoided if superstition were not so
|> rampant.  Is it right for me to try to teach the Jews how to eat
|> their food without torturing it first?
|> 
The last sentence is unjustified.  Surely the canard
about Jewish shechting has been beaten to death here.

Also I think that your next-to-last sentence contradicts
the one before it.  If you think that superstition is
bad and science is good (as I do) then why is it wrong
to export medicine to societies that don't have medicine?

|> Anyway, I'm glad to see that you agree that it is wrong to
|> wipe out "primitive" cultures, and I hope you agree that it
|> is wrong to wipe out *any* cultures or peoples.  If you were trying
|> to teach this to somebody, would you show them some old John
|> Wayne movies where the indians are always the bad guys meant to
|> be slaughtered, or would you show them _Dances With Wolves_?
|> --
How about reading them the Book of Ruth?

-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598