From: strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: The Canaanites(was Re: Achilles heels for religion?)
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1992 21:51:01 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Research

In article <4327@pharaoh.cyborg.bt.co.uk>, martin@pharaoh.cyborg.bt.co.uk (Martin Gorman) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr06.210827.25916@watson.ibm.com>, strom@watson.ibm.com (Rob Strom) writes:
|> > 
|> > The Canaanites (the mythical ones described in
|> > the story, not necessarily the real ones) are
|> > described as being a people of depraved but
|> > attractive *practices*, not merely beliefs.
|> > That they fall before the Israelites is expressed
|> > via God causing them to lose.  There are episodes
|> > where some from among them appreciate the
|> > righteousness of the Israelites and help the
|> > cause.  
|> > 
|> I don't doubt your sincerity in believing this to be an alternative
|> explanation, particularly in the light of your mistrust of holy
|> wars that you explain later, but this still sounds exactly like
|> the bible quote, and is morally abhorrent to an atheist in
|> exactly the same way, and demonstrates why using a religious
|> book of rules as your source of morality is dangerous in
|> exactly the same way. The passage is still saying that the
|> jews massacred a bunch but that was ok because they were
|> not jews, doesn't it? Its only when you define righteousness
|> in terms of relious dogma that this sort of act becomes
|> acceptable, and that's why I don't find religious dogma
|> acceptable as a source of morality.

I reread my posting, and I don't think I made myself as
clear as I should have.

I shouldn't have used the term "holy war" without a disclaimer.
The disclaimer is that the (mythical) Canaanite war was not a holy war
in the sense that that term is used today.  The Torah version of
the story is not that the Canaanites were driven off the land
by the Jews for not being Jews.  They were driven off "by God",
not by military might.  And their sins were not that they
didn't accept religious dogma (the whole idea of religious
dogma came much later), but that they did barbarous things
like burn their children as sacrifice or force their
daughters to be temple goddesses and submit to what today
would be called "non-consensual sexual practices".  The image
you should have of "depraved" practices was *not* failure
to wear tfillin but burning children at public orgies.
And the stories don't describe real Canaanites but symbolic
Canaanites designed to (a) teach a lesson about righteousness,
(b) serve as a myth of how our nation showed up in this land ---
a once-in-history event.  They're not supposed to be
generalized to allow *us* to judge some other nation
whose land we want as unrighteous and to wipe them out.

I'm glad you used the word "morally abhorrent" in your post
because although we may disagree as to which things fit
in this class, we seem to agree that there is such a class.
Other responses to my post seem to imply that some posters
believe that there is no such class.

Now let me clarify my "mistrust" of holy wars.  I was vastly
too wishy-washy in my posting before.  What I teach my children
is that the whole idea of a holy war is barbaric and pernicious.
That wars with a completely different objective are sold
to the gullible masses as "holy wars".  That overshallow
reading of passages in the Bible like the book of Joshua
make us susceptible to this kind of manipulation. 

We don't teach the passage in Joshua in isolation.  Joshua
is in the Prophets.  It's history written in the usual
gloating style of the victors.  (For a modern example,
go to a library archive and read the New York Times
account of the Dresden bombing the day after it occurred.
"A beam to light the way for General Zhukov's troops, ...")
Elsewhere in the Prophets it is clear that the Israelites
did not in fact kill the Canaanites down to the last man.
And in the Torah it is taught that the unrighteous nations
will decay of their own accord --- their crops won't grow,
they'll be timid in battle, etc.  

One other point in your post I'd like to comment on.
You make it sound as if the "source" of morality
is the holy book.  The reasoning sounds a bit
inverted to me.  It's not that the commandments
are righteous because they're in the book;  they're
in the book because the Jews viewed them as
righteous.  Over time they became etched in
tradition and became "God's law".  So today the
Orthodox Jew will say that thus-and-so is right
because the Torah says so.  But unless you
take the story of Moses and the burning bush
literally, the laws are the writings of
our ancestors' attempt to intuit "God's law".
-- 
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,rec.scouting