From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re:      Re: God Is Unfair
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 03:26:37 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.221917.35009@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>I wouldn't advocate "dispensing with the Bible, entirely",
>even for atheists, however.  (What would that entail, anyway?)
>It's not as if there were zillions of competing books
>with better lessons around.

Dispensing with the Bible would entail putting it on the bookshelf beside
the other books of mythology, and referring to it only when you need
to satisfy your curiosity about just how barbaric your ancestors were.
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.

>And in other postings I have argued that it is better for
>the children to have the ambiguity and the high literary
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>plane of the Bible than to have the whole thing reduced
 ^^^^^
>to a catechism.

All I can do is to shake my head in amazement at statements like these.

>|> >But we do succeed in teaching messages extolling loving kindness,
>|> >mercy, pluralism, charity, justice, study, etc.
>|> 
>|> Probably to some degree.  But there is something fundamentally wrong
>|> with the world as it stands today, something that is embodied in
>|> the following snippet from another Jewish poster:
>|> 
>|>   #The OT is a narritive of the growth of the human race as a moral species.
>|> 
>|> Now this is utter garbage.  Observe how he equates his little backwards
>|> tribe with the human race.  
>
>Whoa!  I think you are over-reacting.  To be sure, the poster
>you quote expressed himself poorly.  But so did you, since
>I don't think you're prepared to defend "backwards tribe".

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.

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

>|>  ...  It seems to me that any tolerance that most
>|> people might show towards others of a different tribe/nation/race/creed
>|> is really only a temporary truce until somebody gets the upper hand
>|> and begins the slaughter anew.  This is because most people, deep in
>|> their hearts, "know" that their tribe/nation/race/creed is the superior
>|> tribe/nation/race/creed.  I think that as long as we keep teaching kids
>|> that their ancestors were lilly white saints who were only interested in
>|> "righteousness", and that the other tribes/nations/races/creeds were
>|> all immoral beer-swilling sexual perverts, we'll keep doing what we've
>|> been doing for 1000's of years: slaughtering each other.  We must start
>|> teaching kids that they are human beings first, and only incidentally
>|> members of their tribe/nation/race, and that their tribe/nation/race
>|> is not the centre of the damn universe.  The Bible's perspective is quite
>|> wrong in this respect, and I don't think that all the obfuscation in the
>|> world will make it right.
>
>And yet you have to understand that when my daughter taught Vayera
>last Saturday to our congregation that was the *exact* point
>that she made!!  So we have succeeded in building an institution
>in which 125 people, mostly adults, will spend Saturday morning listening
>to a 13-year-old girl stand at a pulpit and explain that even though jealous
>Sarah cast Hagar and Ishmael out in the desert and left them to die,
>God rescued them and made them a great nation and a holy book
>was written about it to remind us that our tribe/nation/race is
>not the center of the damn universe!  So you're right.  We do
>teach kids that they are human beings first and Jews second.
>And we make sure that they can stand up in the synagogue
>and remind the adults to teach it again to *their* kids.
>And we praise them for doing a mitzvah as a Jew.

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.

>|> As an aside,  I heard on the radio a week or two ago that recent
>|> archaeological discoveries indicate that the Philistines were not
>|> the scumbags that the OT portrays them as.  It turns out that they
>|> were a good bit more cultured than the Jews.  But, the announcer went
>|> on to say, the Jews had a vision: monotheism.  O happy day!  Does anybody
>|> know any more about this?
>
>Not I.  How can an archaeologist discover that tribe X was
>"more cultured" than tribe Y?  Exactly what facts about
>the two cultures were being alluded to?

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?

>|> By contrast, this atheist believes that there is a difference between
>|> obedience and morality, and that theism emphasizes the former while
>|> often calling it the latter.  I don't believe that a theist can be
>|> truly moral.
>|> 
>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.
--
Should the human race not be extinguished by a nuclear war, it will degenerate
into a flock of stupid, dumb creatures under the tyranny of dictators who rule
them with the help of machines and electronic computers.  This is no prophecy,
just a nightmare.  -- Max Born.   **** dgraham@bnr.ca    My own opinions. ****