From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re:      Re: God Is Unfair
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 15:10:44 GMT
Organization: IBM Research

In article <1992Nov18.032637.21553@bmerh85.bnr.ca>, dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
|> As for your suggestion that atheists use the Bible for wisdom, I can see
|> that I'm obviously not even coming close to getting through to you.
|> Why in the bloody hell should I even consider using a book of your
|> tribe's barbaric history to teach anything to my kids?  There *are* zillions
|> of competing books around.  I'd be about 1e20 times more likely to chose
|> something written by the ancient Greeks than I would the Bible.  When
|> I look at what the Greeks accomplished, and then listen to you speaking
|> of the lessons to be learned from reading the story of how Abraham was
|> willing to murder his kid, or from the stories about how the Jews asserted
|> their righteousness by slaughtering other peoples, it makes me want to cry.
|> 

OK.  Let's do the experiment.  Pick a package from the Iliad or
the Odyssey, which I imagine we can agree are the most famous
pieces of epic literature from ancient Greece.  Prepare
a commentary and a sermon which would allow you to teach
a public lesson from this passage.  I don't think it's
going to be as easy as you think.  Make sure that the
lesson can be understood at multiple levels --- by young
children and by adults.

Could you divide the Iliad into 52 weekly portions and
give a lesson a week throughout the year on them?

If my memory serves me correctly, the Iliad and the Odyssey
have problematic passages even more disturbing than the
"bad" Biblical passages like Elisha and the bears.  I'll
try to look up a few and post them.


|> 
|> You're right.  I do not have the fortitude for it at this point.
|> If I can't get you to express a little doubt at the thought of teaching
|> morality from the OT, I'm sure as hell not going to be able to
|> get you to see that your tribe wasn't the most advanced of the time.
|> You'll probably never understand that, for example, slicing off
|> a bit of a kid's dick, is as barbaric as the practices of any 
|> of the most backwards tribes in Africa.  I should point out that
|> I do not consider present day Jews to be any more backwards than
|> any of the rest of us, but that is now and that was then.
|> 

I'm going to ignore the ad hominem attacks on my supposed closed-mindedness.

I find the above one of the most perplexing paragraphs in our entire
exchange of postings.  

Please explain how circumcision of an eight-day-old infant is
as barbaric as excising the clitoris and sewing the vulva
of a young girl.  

Your last sentence just confuses me.  According to you, Jews
used to be more backwards than many other tribes, although
now they are the same.  In your opinion is that because
we have gotten better, or because the other nations have gotten
worse?  After all, we *still* perform what you consider
to be a barbaric rite.  

What do you think accounts for the relative improvement
(from more backwards to no more backwards) the Jews have
made over the centuries?

|> BTW, how do *you* think the Jews compared to the ancient Greeks
|> or even the Romans in terms of backwardness?
|> 

Well, I'm not sure "backwards" is a rigorous scientific term.
I find myself somewhat in a role-reversal here:  a theist
who appears to be more of a cultural relativist than the
atheist he is disputing with.  

Certainly the Romans appear to be out of the running.
Their entire history seems to be one of cruelty and
conquest, slavery, bread-and-circuses.  Their period
of ascendancy was brief, and their fall was due more
to their own degeneracy than to any advanced qualities
of their military enemies.

The ancient Greeks were also primarily a slave-based
society.  If I remember correctly, the average Greek
was a slave in a silver mine --- not very pleasant.
Their golden age was impressive, and left a lasting
legacy, but it was also brief.  Part of the Jews'
strengths were that they were willing to pick up
good ideas from their neighbors.  The postive
features of Hellenism influenced Jewish thought, e.g.
through Philo of Alexandria.  The Greeks did not
do so well in picking up the positive features of
their neighbors, and their brief golden age was
soon gone.  Their legacy was picked up more by
other tribes than by their own descendants.
As I mentioned above, I disagree that I could teach
a kinder gentler morality from the Iliad.


|> 
|> Try this:  Ask your daughter what she thinks of the Nazis for perpetrating
|> the holocaust.  Now ask her what she thinks of the Jews for slaughtering
|> the Canaanites in order to steal their land.  I'd bet any amount of money
|> that you will get radically different answers.  She will have no problem
|> condemning the Nazis, but she will make all kinds of excuses about
|> righteousness and the progression of morals when it comes to the
|> Canaanites.  When she fully understands that what the Jews did to the
|> Canaanites was just as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews, *then*
|> she will be an enlightened human being fit to live in the 21st century.
|> 

This part of the discussion has appeared on this newsgroup
before.  First of all, the Jews didn't actually do to the
Canaanites what some of the hyperbolic descriptions in the
Bible actually said.  Second of all, to use an expression
you used earlier, that was then and this is now.  What they
did then would, if done in the 21st century, be as bad.

But you have asked me to make an experiment, and I will.
I will ask Tamara to compare the destruction of the Canaanites
to the genocide of the Nazis.  I think you'll be surprised
at what she says.


|> I don't remember the details.  I'll see what I can find out.  Just
|> out of curiosity though, would it make any difference to you if there
|> were incontrovertible evidence that the Philistines had built a
|> more advanced civilization than the Jews of the time?
|> 

Do you mean would I renounce Judaism and take up the religion
of the Philistines?  No.  But I'd want to learn from
them nevertheless.

Part of my question included a little skepticism about the
interpretation of the archaeologists' report.  Scientists
try to be morally objective.  Archaeologists and linguists
tend not to use terms like "advanced" and "cultured" and "backward"
any more.  So my eyebrows go up when you say that they
were proven to be "a good bit more cultured than the Jews".
I'd be more interested in knowing more about the details
we learned about their life, their institutions,
and the artifacts they left behind.

Of course, the Jews never claimed to be the most advanced
in every respect.  The Bible itself describes occasions
when the Jews had to retreat because their opponents
had chariots with iron wheels, while the Jews didn't have that technology.
Similarly, the prohibition against graven images
meant that other cultures were more advanced in
painting and sculpture.


|> >That is turning the FAQ question on its head.  I'd love
|> >to see you start a spinoff thread called "Can a theist
|> >be truly moral?"  Why don't you post your position?
|> 
|> Some other day perhaps.

I'll be ready whenever you are.


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