From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Anti-religious fanatics
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 22:40:57 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <!lhynx+@rpi.edu> jacksonk@gehrig.cs.rpi.edu (Keith Jackson) writes:
>In article <BtAIrH.4Cn@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>
>If you read the Bible and understood the context of these things, you
>would realize that the New Testament claims to be the ultimate set of
>`rules' which override any previous ones.

  Actually the NT only overrides a very few rules from the OT, an
  explicit example being eating pork.  Most of the laws laid down
  in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc are left untouched and unmentioned.
  And indeed, most contemporary Christian scholars refer constantly
  to a great many OT laws on topics ranging from justice to homo-
  sexuality to child-rearing.   

>>  The vast majority of NAZIs didn't
>>  personally kill Jews, either but this doesn't make it incorrect 
>>  to say that "the NAZI's killed the Jews".
>
>Ahh, the obligatory Nazi argument!  Well, quite simply, they were a single
>concentrated instance of history, not a vast and varied set as the
>`Christians' are.

   OK, let's broaden it to "fascists".  There were many different fascist 
   governments at that time; they had identifiably different policies
   and leaders.  There are still fascists today -- in fact several re-
   cently won seats in the Italian Parliament and it is probably safe
   to call certain recent South American dictators (e.g., Pinochet)
   fascist, not to mention the late (and still dead) Franco of Spain.
   Along with various white-supremacist and similar groups in the US.  
   Can we say that Fascists killed Jews?                             


>As I've said before (are you listening!?) these so called `leaders' are in
>so many cases simply figureheads masquerading as religious leaders to gain
>some political power -- hence they do not represent the `real' set of
>ideals.

  Your model is that Christianity is a set of ideals.   I say that this
  is Usenerdism -- the idea that a formal, canonical, or dictionary
  definition overrides empiricism.   By this definition the recently
  deposed states of eastern Europe were not Communist or even socialist
  since they bore no resemblance to the society described by Marx, and
  we don't live in a capitalist country because it bears scant resemblance
  to that described by Adam Smith.   

  The thing that usenerds have to learn is that language is DEscrip-
  tive, not PREscriptive.   In other words it is defined by *usage*
  not by some formal, canonical algorithm.   You don't get to make up
  your own language, you have to bow to consensus on matters of lan-
  guage.   Consider the following statements:

  A.  Christians have been murdering each other in Ulster for years.
  B.  In the last 10 years no Christians have committed murder in Ulster.  

  I would argue that if submitted to a random sample of the population
  A would be chosen as "true" and B as "false".  You can argue all you
  want that B is true on the basis that it is inconsistent with Christ-
  ian ideals to murder, therefore the people who did it were not 
  Catholics or Protestants.    

  
>>  They have destroyed
>>  whole peoples and cultures, murdered millions, wiped out civil-
>>  izations, justified slavery, and so forth.
>
>Just who is `they'?  I haven't read anything about the Pope running around
>killing people.  Maybe those who followed corrupt leaders did so.

  Plenty of Crusades and similar ventures were blessed by Popes.  Plenty
  of Jesuits got their marching orders from the Vatican.  (not to single 
  out Catholics -- the Protestants have aquite a record, too)


>>  [ lots of historical examples]  So we're not talking about
>>  a few exceptions -- the current crop of "love thy neighbor" liberal
>>  Christians are the exceptions.
>
>But again (ARE YOU LISTENING!!?) these are simply the actions of people who
>happened to be `Christians' (in name only, mostly) because it was the
>prevalent religion in their society.

  Again (are you listening?) they were doing it *AS* Christians.   I judge
  people by their actions, not their words.  (Biblical advice, incidentally)
  The Bible is words.  All that other stuff is action.   

  We learn about the world by seeing instances of things and generalizing
  their features.  After seeing a few thousand trees you have a pretty 
  good concept of "tree" and if you see some new kind that you've never
  encountered you can still recognize it as a "tree".  The fact that it 
  does not exactly match the picture in the dictionary does not change
  this.   Ditto with Christianity.  If you read 2000 years of history
  you develop a pretty good understanding of the concept.  The fact that
  it may not match the formal definition is of no consequence.

  

---peter






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