Most people reply that it is god (or her representative) who wrote these texts and therefore their writings cannot be doubted or altered.

I cannot speak for the Jew or Muslim, but as a Xian I am not sure what the point of altering the text would be.

You do understand that Deuteronomy was not written for all cultures, right?

In fact, as I see it (though I could be mistaken) the “rules” were not as rigid for the non-Jew (ironically enough) as they were for the Jew.

Those who cling to worthless idols (Non-Jews) forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

When God saw what they (Non-Jews) did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.

I revealed myself to those (Non-Jews) who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation (Non-Jews) that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.

Again, I could be wrong.

I am curious what your solution would be (without mentioning god) for situations where we as a culture cannot agree on certain laws that are clearly important, i.e. abortion?

What would you say to the atheist who thinks that it is murder to abort an unborn child?

Or conversely, what would you say to the pro abortionist if you happen to think that abortion is murder?

Could you offer an objective secular resolution to this?

I find that it is easy to diagnose and that it is very difficult to objectively prescribe.

Perhaps you can offer help.

All the best,

Michael

Michael,

I do agree with you in MANY points:

-That the Hebrews had a system of laws and the Deuteronomy presents part of them. (Just like the Hamurapi Code in Mesopotamia.)

-That the text (Deuteronomy) has probably lost its original meaning and intent.

-That a theocracy is very dangerous, not only in our days; it has always been so.

-That there are many in the US wanting religious establishments to play a major role in the government (e.g. Tony Blair: he couldn’t quite do this in the UK, so he went to Yale to preach, after he became christian-catholic.)

What I don’t agree with (and this brings us back to the main point) is the implicit assumption that the Old Testament (the Deuteronomy is part of it) is a religious text, i.e. one written by some divine being. And I don’t see any point in having such ambiguous texts (Old and New Testament) in a church.

To reply to your question:

> Do you really believe that children were stoned to death by merely disobeying their parents?

My answer is: I do not know. First, it’s not what “I believe” or what I do not. It’s not a matter of belief. I just read what it says in the Deuteronomy (and other parts of the Torah). Stoning is still practiced today in certain parts of the world. Fortunately, Judaism and Christianity have gotten rid of it. But not Islam. So how do I know what was being practiced 3000 years ago?

As to your last implicit question

>B) I am not sure I understand what you are asking,

The answer is: because most people reply that it is god (or her representative) who wrote these texts and therefore their writings cannot be doubted or altered. As I said above, there was a code in Mesopotamia too: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6074404/Hamurapis-Code)

The difference of this and the Deuteronomy is that Hamurapi’s code seems to be part of no religion nowadays (even though it does mention the word god), whereas the Deuteronomy is part of (I think) Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The choice is arbitrary!

You changed the text and made it suit your purposes.

Without getting into the Hebrew, the word “glutton” need not mean simply one who over eats. Some translations use the word “profligate”,which is an acceptable translation I feel. I gave you the definition of the word profligate (utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute).

Now if you will at least concede that this is a fair translation I think that we can both agree that such a person is in fact, a serious danger to his community.

Some definitions of the word profligate include, “licentiousness” which is defined as, lacking legal or moral restraints; especially: disregarding sexual restraints.

I do not feel that a label of rapist is off the mark here. If you choose to think that the offenses are petty, please be reminded that it was the parents who were to turn the man over to the elders.

Do you really believe that children were stoned to death by merely disobeying their parents?

The offenses must have been extremely egregious to warrant any parent to act such.

But it is silly, irresponsible, and dangerous to have religious texts replace laws. The Deuteronomy may have been a set of laws 3 thousand years ago. We do not use them any more.

I am not sure who in America is lobbing for this, but I certainly agree that a theocracy would be in our day, very dangerous. Consider the following quote from C. S. Lewis, I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme—whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence—the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

We may perhaps agree more than you think. The passage that you have the problem with is not too far from our current system of justice.
You answered my question with, I would bring him (or her) to the court of law. And this is exactly what the Hebrews did, Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city.

Where we might have a problem would be in what we considered just punishment. And if we disagreed with the Hebrews, it would not be on the grounds that they took a cavalier approach to good and evil.

Surely you agree that such a person as described in the passage you site deserves to be punished by the state? I can respect your opposition to the punishment, but can we agree that the offenses were not petty?

As to your questions, A) I have no idea and B) I am not sure I understand what you are asking.

Sorry for the length.

All the best,
Michael

Michael:

POINT No. 1:

I am sorry but I cannot read ancient Hebrew. The information I have is obtained from English translations (always written in arcane kind of language so that they appear authoritative, i.e. written by a divinity or something; and, like in any other culture, deities avoid modern languages). Here is the text:

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

The text only mentions “rebellious”, “glutton”, “drunkard”, “stubborn”.

You added: “dangerous behavior”, “profligate”, “shamelessly immoral”, “dissipated”, “thoroughly dissolute”, “serious danger”, “rapist”.

Well, you changed the text and made it suit your purposes.

If you continue, you can think that the text is talking about a son who has raped 150 human beings, about a son who has gone to war and killed several innocent ones,etc. But the text is as above. (In the translation I found on the Internet.)

POINT No. 2:

I absolutely agree that there should be laws governing our society. But it is silly, irresponsible, and dangerous to have religious texts replace laws. The Deuteronomy may have been a set of laws 3 thousand years ago. We do not use them any more.

POINT No. 3:

You ask me a question (which was asked in order to divert from the main point, but I will answer it):

Q: I am curious what justice (if any) would you have meted out on a habitual rapist?

A: I would bring him (or her) to the court of law. But I would not invoke “religious” texts as legal documents. If we started doing this, then we might as well use the Odyssey as a legal book, right? You probably think that the Torah was written by your god, and that the Odyssey describes gods who do not exist, but this is a personal interpretation.

So then, let me ask you a question:

Who wrote the Deuteronomy and why is it considered a religious texts so much so that it is in every (I presume) Presbyterian (say, but not only) Church?

Takis said, “If one’s son is rebellious and does not comply with his parents teachings then his parents should stone him to death. (Deuteronomy, 21:18,19,20,21)”

This is not exactly what the text says. The text does not describe a five year old who sasses his parents. Nor does it say that the “parents” are to stone him. The text is talking about an ADULT who is to be held responsible for his actions.

So what are the actions that he is to be held responsible for?

1. His unwillingness to change his dangerous behavior after repeated
attempts at correction.

2. He is a profligate (utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute). In others words, he is a serious danger to those in his community.

3. He is a drunkard. Should one be surprised, if one were to discover that this man made a habit of raping women?

Something else that should be mentioned here is that it is “the parents” that is to bring him before the elders.

Perhaps you have no children, but I, as a parent, can only imagine the pain that must accompany the knowledge that you have done all you can do and must take such an action as the above to prevent your child, whom you surely love, from being a threat and danger to those around him. 

There is a lot in the Hebrew Scriptures that make modern folks like me feel uncomfortable, but this passage is not one of those.

It is unfortunate that you have misunderstood it.

I am curious what justice (if any) would you have meted out on a habitual rapist?

Talking about atrocities committed in the name of religion, let us recall what Deuteronomy (a book found in the Torah or Old Testament and therefore accepted by Jews, Christians and-I think-Muslims too) teaches:

If one’s son is rebellious and does not comply with his parents teachings then his parents should stone him to death. (Deuteronomy, 21:18,19,20,21)

This is not a question of religious fundamentalism. This is what is found in books provided by, say, the Presbyterian Church. I was in a Presbyterian Church last Sunday, invited for the baptism of a friend’s daughter and was reading the bible during the (boring) service. So I revised certain topics. And the above is taken from the book of Deuteronomy. It is a book which is provided to the attendees of the service, in many copies. It is not a book provided by fundamentalists but one provided by a main-stream Christian church to its members.

Fortunately, most church-goers never read the bible. Most are unaware of the dangerous passages of the bible (e.g. the extreme hatred in the book of Revelation) and so no harm is caused. But let’s say we want to read the bible and take its teachings for granted. Then what?

One of the big problems of religion (and one which makes it totally distinct and incompatible with science) is this: Its texts (written by blood-thirsty self-righteous people thousands of years ago) are accepted unaltered. Nobody ever proposes a revision of these nonsensical texts. Science never accepts anything for granted: it puts everything to test and modifies a theory accordingly.

Well, if religion had a scientific basis then it would put the writings of its texts in test (and it has done so, we now know that stoning someone is not a terribly good practice--but it still happens in Islam) and revise them. Someone should say: Wait a minute. These things written in Deuteronomy (or in Revelation or whatever book) are silly, idiotic, dangerous, nonsensical. Let us revise them.

But no! The answer of a religious person is totally absurd: “The texts were written by God and cannot be altered.” Then is this God so vile? Or is this a different God than the one revered by the Presbyterians?

Of course, a religious person will often circumvent a direct confrontation of the above dilemma and will provide the following unsophisticated response: “The texts do not mean what they write; they are allegories; stoning does not mean what it says, but something else.” Problem solved

[re: Terry Woodhouse on 19/01/09]

I’ll just respond to the first sentence: “Hitler is an example of someone from a supposedly christian environment who acted totally immorally and unethically.”

Whatever Christian element Hitler’s upbringing might have had, it didn’t stop him from saying that “the heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew.”

Hitler despised Christians and planned to eradicate them when it became possible for him to do so. In the meantime, he imprisoned and killed thousands of priests and clergymen (the next largest group to suffer after the Jews, I believe). He also made it illegal for children and teachers to attend church in annexed states. (Some of these churches might have been trashed anyway, and their books burned.) This list could go on and on. It suffices to say that if Hitler saw anyone as a god, it was himself.

I’ll leave others to respond to allegations against God and the church concerning the holocaust. But the argument that Hitler was somehow motivated by his Christian beliefs is exceedingly weak, from a historical (or even logical!) perspective, and not worth pursuing.

More broadly, I would urge readers of this comments section to take a look at the theology taught in universities and (some) churches at the start of the 20th Century in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. “Supposedly Christian environment” is exactly right.

Hitler is an example of someone from a supposedly christian environment who acted totally immorally and unethically - I wonder what sort of a God created such a human being (free will notwithstanding) and then allowed him to actively perpetrate such atrocities on humankind - where is the Almighty’s justification for the holocaust whether it be 1 million or 60 million? Or is it just that we are all capable in different circumstances of carrying out similar atrocities? If we are so capable, then it doesn’t say much for the capability of the so-called Creator in creating such a flawed humanity.

I believe that Tariq is attempting to break down the religious groups into groups of people with substantially similar belief systems.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with this.  This points to the concept that the christians which participated in the crusades had a different belief system than the christians like, say, John Lennox.  The fact still remains that it is dangerous to pool the criminal actions committed by some of these groups with the peaceful intentions of other religious groups(which I believe is the central argument in this talk).

I agree with the overall argument. However, I think there is a small but immensely important correction that needs to be made. The distinction identified between “atheist and atheist” and “religion and religion” should really be a distinction between “atheist and atheist” and “religious person and religious person”.

The “religion and religion” description would make the same logical mistake of generalizing all followers of a religion.

This points to the deeper issue here - a person, at the end of the day, can and should only be held responsible for his or her own individual actions. Even when these actions are performed in a group, it is still a decision made by that individual as to whether he / she wants to participate in the action or not, and whether it is a good or bad thing to do.

Once you look at things from the point of view of an individual making a decision and put that in the context of that person’s specific circumstance (religious, economic, psychological, etc.) only then can you make a determination of why that person chose to act a certain way. However, rarely does one get a chance to have that complete picture available to evaluate someone else’s act.

We have history, but we all know that it reflects the point of view of the person that wrote it or had it written. So, we can not really say that Stalin, crusaders (both Christians and Muslims), or any other person or group or people acted solely because of their religious belief or aversion to it - even if they themselves state so publicly.