Just so we're clear on this point: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart has nothing to do with the sort of take-no-prisoners discussion we're seeing here about religion. No one should shy away from the book thinking it's just more of the same.

That said, and continuing on the tangent, I don't think we need to make arguments tinged with politics to show that the only good option is to reject God as warlord, to condemn what that character commands. We don't need to call him racist or genocidal; all we need to do is ask anyone who defends him if he has a child or a wife. In any circumstance whatsoever, could dashing their heads against rocks, raping, beheading, or slaying them be justified, unless that person is willing to cede his humanity? It's dismaying to see attempts to moralize murderous orders, to harmonize this God with a loving universal God. It suspiciously resembles the moral relativism that people of religion condemn in other circumstances: "It's okay in this case when you take into account the special circumstances, and the fact that God is God."

God is supposedly a moral exemplar, but he can't be if he's going to say it might be all right to murder my family. People who claim otherwise are trying to square the circle. This God is an artifact of Iron age tribalism whose morality is, to say the least, as imperfect as any human's.

Flann 5 wrote:you and Dawkins et al interpret these text to support your agendas.

Yes, exactly right. And the agenda I try to share with Richard Dawkins is to promote an accurate scientific understanding of reality, and to expose the false delusions of traditional religion. By contrast your foolish agenda is to promote error.

Flann 5 wrote:You ignore Christian responses which show that the command to destroy the Canaanites is not morally equivalent to racist genocide.

I watched that feeble apologetic video you linked, and it shows nothing of the sort. Your assertion that it does reveals your intellectual incapacity. If anything, that video gives a good basis to understand how genocide is justified by stigmatising the victim, with the speaker explaining how the Bible condemns the Canaanites as wicked and abominable. The appalling thing is that Williams takes this assertion as Gospel Truth, saying that since God called them wicked it must be true. How many racial genocides have started that way?

Flann 5 wrote:For instance the Israelites themselves were exiled to Babylon by God and punished for their sins, so it was not a matter of tribal race.

What a completely illogical argument! The Bible notes that the Jews were taken into captivity by the Babylonian Empire because of their evil behaviour, and somehow this is meant to justify the genocidal Bible dogmas such as the Real Ten Commandments beginning with smash the groves of the heathen. I understand that Flann and ant will go into denialist meltdown over that comment, but it is very simple for anyone to read it and form their own view from Exodus 34.

Flann 5 wrote: if God judges wickedness historically that's not the same as genocide.

That is an extremely disturbing view you are presenting Flann. You start from the assumption that God is revealed to some and not others, and that this revelation can then be used to accurately and absolutely define a culture as “wicked” so its land can be stolen and its culture obliterated. Don’t you get why that is an evil dogma?

Flann 5 wrote: Here's the link to William's talk and you might watch it and engage with his arguments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7B5jokJsqk

See my comments in previous post on this disgraceful justification for genocide.

Flann 5 wrote: As a matter of interest do you think the French revolution was morally justified?

Justification in politics is an extremely complex question. The revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity involved a moral advance over the old regime dogma of the divine right of kings, as an effort to bring modern reason to bear on politics. But the revolution had its own dogmas and bigotries, seen in the destructive use of terror as an instrument of total war, paving the way for Napoleon. I like Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France as a great statement of conservative values, indicating how the English approach to common law precedent provides more sensible outcomes than the French civil code with its effort to apply coherent rational principle.

Robert Tulip wrote: If anything, that video gives a good basis to understand how genocide is justified by stigmatising the victim, with the speaker explaining how the Bible condemns the Canaanites as wicked and abominable. The appalling thing is that Williams takes this assertion as Gospel Truth, saying that since God called them wicked it must be true. How many racial genocides have started that way?

You are supremely confident,Robert, that God does not exist and therefore could not have pronounced judgement on anyone for their wickedness. And if there even is such a thing as wickedness from your naturalistic evolutionary worldview is itself questionable.
So from your worldview perspective God could not have commanded this and therefore it must be Israelite stigmatizing of them for racial genocidal justification.
You ignore of course the warning to the Israelites (in the same book) not to imitate the abominations of the Canaanites or the land would vomit them out too,as it colourfully puts it.This happened in the Babylonian captivity which for you is simply a coincidence of history.So the issue was not race but wickedness.

There does seem to be achaeological evidence supporting the biblical claim of ritual child sacrifice being practiced and what can be known of their religion and gods is sordid at best.
You hedged your bets on the revolution of reason. I wonder why?

Flann 5 wrote: You are supremely confident, Robert, that God does not exist

My confidence is that in principle natural explanations are superior to supernatural explanations. I had an interesting chat about God the other day, around the hypothesis that the laws of physics could be driven by an entity outside our universe. But that cosmological speculation makes no difference to our ethical understanding of wickedness, and there is absolutely no evidence to support the existence of God. We have no way of knowing whether the laws of physics are intrinsic or extrinsic to the universe. And the relevant point here is that the laws of ethics, if such can be said to exist, can best be understood within an evolutionary scientific framework as intrinsic to natural reality.

Flann 5 wrote: and therefore could not have pronounced judgement on anyone for their wickedness.

When people proclaim that others have been judged by God, they violate the Biblical principle ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord’ (Romans 12, Deuteronomy 32). I do think the Bible is correct in saying the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth (Rev 11:18), so God=Nature has pronounced judgement on the wickedness of current destruction of biodiversity. I disagree with the traditional imperial Christendom line that the unbaptised will go to hell, although the psychology around baptism is complex. I especially disagree with the history written by the victors which says the vanquished deserved their fate, as for example in Joshua’s condemnation of the Canaanites as abominable. It is a self-serving hypocritical claim that might is right and that God is on our side.

Flann 5 wrote: And if there even is such a thing as wickedness from your naturalist evolutionary worldview is itself questionable.

Anything that reduces natural complexity is wicked from my naturalist evolutionary worldview. The arrogance of traditional dominion theology is supremely evil with its alienated creationist nonsense.

Flann 5 wrote: So from your worldview perspective God could not have commanded this and therefore it must be Israelite stigmatizing of them for racial genocidal justification.

Yes. The Bible agenda is to justify land theft. As Joseph Conrad said in Heart of Darkness, the conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing.

Joseph Conrad wrote:They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it's the idea only.

Flann 5 wrote:You ignore of course the warning to the Israelites (in the same book) not to imitate the abominations of the Canaanites or the land would vomit them out too, as it is colourfully put it. This happened in the Babylonian captivity which for you is simply a coincidence of history. So the issue was not race but wickedness.

Flann you are so taken in by propaganda, what Conrad calls the redeeming idea. The Jews went to captivity because the Babylonians did not want to allow them to be free. It was not because the Jews worshiped idols. The claim that the Jews conquered Canaan is entirely unsupported by archaeological evidence, which shows that the Exodus never happened. To say the Canaanites deserved their fate because they worshipped idols is a thoroughly arbitrary assertion of divine right to rule, a post hoc moral justification of conquest. We still see this principle of power today in the British Royal slogans God and My Gun (Dieu et mon droit) and Fuck You (Honi soit qui mal y pense). Pardon my rough translations from the Latin.

Flann 5 wrote: There does seem to archaeological evidence supporting the biblical claim of ritual child sacrifice being practiced and what can be known of their religion and gods is sordid at best.

The relation between monotheism and cultural evolution is highly complex. Many former cannibal societies welcomed Christian evangelical missions as representing the coming of the light. But others say the church taught them to close their eyes to pray, so when they opened them again their land would be gone. Child sacrifice is a purported practice that sits on a moral continuum which also includes modern practices of adoption and abortion, and the common practice in primitive societies of allowing disabled children to die. It is not a simple matter to suggest a hunter-gatherer society should have the same compassion practices as a modern industrial society. Ancient Judaism can also be depicted in a negative light, as seen in the writings of the Biblical Jewish prophets who were highly critical of their own society. Demonising the Canaanites as child murderers to justify the theft of their land plays into an ongoing colonialist trope.

Flann 5 wrote: You hedged your bets on the revolution of reason. I wonder why?

It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices. The problem with the Ten Commandments, both in their well known version from Ex20 of the tablets of stone broken by Moses and in the lesser known version from Ex34 of the replacements supplied by God, is that they present a revolutionary morality (have no other Gods = smash their groves) which denies any value to the society it is conquering.

ant wrote:These matters will always fall on theological deaf ears.

But you're not providing any arguments at all, cogent, nonsense or otherwise...

Chris OConnor wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:After rebuking the caller for his rudeness, Matt when on to say that if the person is believing in something he knows to be false because of some personal benefit, then it is imperative to find what it is about that belief that is causing the benefit and figuring how to replicate it without the ties to the false belief.

I'm surprised Matt didn't simply say, "Impossible. One cannot believe in something he doesn't believe in. A person cannot believe in what he knows to be false. This is a contradiction in terms. A person can pretend to believe in anything they want, but if they know something is false they cannot actually believe in it."

He has said on another episode (I can't remember which one, or else I would provide the clip) that very same thing, that One cannot believe what their mind cannot accept.

The reason, I think, why he didn't say that here (besides dealing with the rudeness of the guy hanging up), is because in the context of the situation posed by the caller the beliefs are held on a superficial, pop-psychology level. We're talking about positive-thinking techniques and the like built around religion; it's like the Prosperity Theology espoused by Joel Olsteen and his ilk. This type of situation is a bit different from just believing in something you cannot accept on a higher level of thinking.

Robert Tulip wrote:Child sacrifice is a purported practice that sits on a moral continuum which also includes modern practices of adoption and abortion, and the common practice in primitive societies of allowing disabled children to die. It is not a simple matter to suggest a hunter-gatherer society should have the same compassion practices as a modern industrial society.

Robert Tulip wrote:It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices.

Thanks for your reply Robert.
On what basis can you say that the Caanaanites were hunter gatherers?
Could they as human beings not possibly have known and understood that burning their children to death in sacrifice to their gods was morally evil?
Ethics equals reason plus evidence: How do you determine what is good in existing practices? Who decides?
In naturalistic evolutionary terms how can anything be evil or good? It's just a freak of chance that life started and it has no moral intent or purpose underlying it.What happens,happens and just is.
As a random un-purposed product of evolution how do your opinions on good or evil have any relevance? Is not survival the greatest good if any objective pattern can be discerned in evolutionary history? Surely then whatever means achieves survival and genetic self propagation justifies that end as it does in the animal world.
The French revolutionary ideology was rooted in the primacy of reason, yet you say it severed reason from evidence. As rationalists how did they fail to consider evidence since it claims to be based on natural evidence and reason and not superstition?
Were they just unreasonable rationalists?

Flann 5 wrote: On what basis can you say that the Caanaanites were hunter gatherers?

None. I didn’t.

Flann 5 wrote: Could they as human beings not possibly have known and understood that burning their children to death in sacrifice to their gods was morally evil?

The Judeo-Christian ethic of human rights and universal compassion has brought moral advances to many societies, including by its opposition to human sacrifice and cannibalism. But at the same time, these advances have been accompanied by massive destruction of cultural heritage, with lore and tradition condemned to the flames as devil worship. It is not simple to say that one group is morally superior to another.

Sometimes alleged moral evils of a primitive society are exaggerated in order to find a pretext for conquest and theft of their land. In a primitive society that wishes to prevent population growth due to the lack of technology to guarantee ability to feed itself, some level of euthanasia is actually very common. Given the level of spin that pervades the Bible, especially on this ‘promised land’ lebensraum issue, we don’t really have enough information to judge the moral standing of Jews v Canaanites.

Simply accepting the Joshua invasion justification on face value is naïve, ignoring the motive the Bible authors had to foment hatred to justify their cultural domination.

Flann 5 wrote: Ethics equals reason plus evidence: How do you determine what is good in existing practices? Who decides?

There will always be dilemmas where the evidence is insufficient to assess the actual moral harm of a course of action. But my point is that we can set moral goals, such as to maintain and increase human flourishing and ecological complexity, and then systematically assess actions in terms of their effect on these goals. Moral dilemmas only arise due to rational evidence that values are in conflict. My point here has been that the Biblical Ten Commandments provide a deeply flawed basis for assessing moral priorities. Having no other Gods before Yahweh is a recipe for justifying cultural genocide. A ban on coveting slaves might get some antebellum juices flowing, but is not exactly a relevant moral guide today.

Flann 5 wrote: In naturalistic evolutionary terms how can anything be evil or good? It's just a freak of chance that life started and it has no moral intent or purpose underlying it.What happens,happens and just is.

We as human beings have a genetic interest in the flourishing of our species. So it is reasonable to argue that action that is conducive to human flourishing is good. The false postulate of a supernatural God only confuses moral reasoning.

Flann 5 wrote: As a random un-purposed product of evolution how do your opinions on good or evil have any relevance? Is not survival the greatest good if any objective pattern can be discerned in evolutionary history? Surely then whatever means achieves survival and genetic self propagation justifies that end as it does in the animal world.

The interesting thing here is that flourishing of humanity in our modern global technologized world actually requires an understanding of ecological complexity, and how our prosperity is intimately linked to the wellbeing of diverse species. The transcendentalist mentality that sees spirit as superior to nature is evil and deluded against this biological imperative.

Flann 5 wrote: The French revolutionary ideology was rooted in the primacy of reason, yet you say it severed reason from evidence. As rationalists how did they fail to consider evidence since it claims to be based on natural evidence and reason and not superstition?
Were they just unreasonable rationalists?

Communism has an anthem, The Internationale, which includes the line ‘reason in revolt now thunders’. But this claim is based on the false premise that social inequality is always irrational and unjustifiable.

All moral reasoning has axiomatic premises. My own reasoning focuses on biological complexity as the foundation of the good. I maintain that this premise is able to engage with evidence in a coherent way. But if your premise is that inequality is the root of all evil, you will fail to see that sometimes inequality can be rationally justified, and you will be blind to relevant evidence. That was the tragedy of Robespierre.

Such ideologically motivated reasoning is widespread. It also applies in religion, where reasoning is motivated by interests to expand the reach and power of institutions, a desire that can easily outweigh evidence of harm inflicted in pursuit of that end.

DWill wrote: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart has nothing to do with the sort of take-no-prisoners discussion we're seeing here about religion. No one should shy away from the book thinking it's just more of the same.

Hi DWill, I fear you exaggerate the accommodation of this book to religion. It is more absolutist in support of materialism than your comment suggests.

DWill wrote: I don't think we need to make arguments tinged with politics to show that the only good option is to reject God as warlord, to condemn what that character commands.

It is deeply political to question the God of the Old Testament. Mainstream American Dominionist (MAD) Christianity largely ignores the New Testament, since Jesus presents inconveniently compassionate ideas.

DWill wrote: We don't need to call [God] racist or genocidal

Only in the sense that we don’t need to talk about the Bible. But it is quite hard to analyse the Bible seriously, let alone the Ten Commandments, without investigating the racist and genocidal ideas in the text. “No other Gods before me” is a call to cultural genocide and a racist assertion of Jewish manifest destiny and providential superiority. No wonder American Christians think of themselves as the New Jews.

DWill wrote:It's dismaying to see attempts to moralize murderous orders, to harmonize this God with a loving universal God.

Yes, that is a good point. The idea in the New Testament that Christ’s covenant of grace replaced Moses’s covenant of law involved just this dichotomy of murder and love. The God of Moses is a God of vengeance. The new values of mercy, forgiveness, love and grace introduced by Christ were meant to replace the murderous values of Moses, but Christ was crucified for promoting these ideas (in the myth).

DWill wrote:This God is an artefact of Iron age tribalism

Yes, and that is why the Ten Commandments in both versions (Exodus 20 and 34) are such an obnoxious morality. It is really strange that a morality aimed primarily at securing the political legitimacy of ancient Israel has come to retain such a prominent place in the modern world. We really need to base morality more on modern knowledge than ancient belief. Unfortunately there is a widespread hidden persistence of premodern colonial racism that finds the Ten Commandments a comforting ideology.

Robert Tulip wrote: It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices. The problem with the Ten Commandments, both in their well known version from Ex20 of the tablets of stone broken by Moses and in the lesser known version from Ex34 of the replacements supplied by God, is that they present a revolutionary morality (have no other Gods = smash their groves) which denies any value to the society it is conquering.

You might have to further explain your position here Robert, based on Ant and Flann's terrorist kid ethical problem on another thread. I think I get what you're saying; in the absense of morality based on what some God has established (such as the Ten Commandments, some of which are repetitive, and some of which needs ammending in order to have any value, etc.), we must come up with other methods of establishing right and wrong in our society. In doing this, we turn to our reasoning and collective altruism. Am I getting in the right place of explaining your position?