From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re: The Canaanites(was Re: Achilles heels for religion?)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 05:25:12 GMT

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.

>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?

>Remember that the Bible is the most influential book in
>Western civilization.  It's much better to teach
>the passages and explain how our thinking has evolved
>since the time they are written than to let people
>read the passages from a "Sola Scriptura" perspective
>when they are 20.

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?

>|> I'm afraid that I really can't tell the difference between what
>|> the Nazis did to the Jews, and what the Jews purportedly did to
>|> the Canaanites.  If the Canaanites had managed to wipe out the
>|> Jews instead, do you really think that their history books would
>|> admit that they were unrighteous but won anyway?  I suspect it far
>|> more likely that they would tell stories of how their god helped
>|> the righteous to fight off the unrighteous invading barbarians.
>|> 
>
>Well there are some differences (the Nazis didn't just conquer
>land and kill the defenders, they wiped out those from their
>own midst who had "Jewish blood"; they used sadistic tortures;
>it was 1940 CE not 1300 BCE --- the standards supposedly
>went up in the interval).

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.

>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?

>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 would like to know more about what you think is righteous.
>|> For example, it seems that the Yahwists had some pretty major
>|> hangups about sex.  I seem to remember more than one tale where
>|> a bunch of people were slaughtered because they happened to
>|> be more sexually promiscuous than the Yahwists approved of.
>|> Do you think that sexual promiscuity is unrighteous?  If you've
>|> read Huxley's _Brave New World_ you'll remember that people
>|> were encouraged to sleep around as much as possible.  Was than
>|> an unrighteous society?
>|> 
>
>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.

>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.

>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.

>They did all this to create a "stable
>society", a soma-maintained virtual reality in which everyone was
>happy and nothing ever changed.  The encouragement of sexual promiscuity
>was just one of the forms of central social control
>which was used to discourage personal attachments.
>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)

>|> Is our society more righteous than say, a primitive tribe of
>|> aboriginal people running around naked in the Amazon jungle?
>|> Were the Europeans more righteous than the native "savages"
>|> of North America that they pretty much wiped out?
>
>The aboriginals weren't themselves unrighteous.
>But a society which starts with the level of
>Western culture and evolves towards the behavior
>of aboriginal peoples *is*, imho, unrighteous.

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.

>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?

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_?
--
Doug Graham         dgraham@bnr.ca         My opinions are my own.