Apparently JackBlack has not read me with due attention. He conflates me with the US fundamentalists who want to impose to everyone a Christian sharia.
(oops! I see now that “Christianism” in US has taken the derogatory meaning “political ideology centered around Christian fundamentalism”. So maybe is this the origin of a misunderstanding? Anyway, now I'm going to substitute “Christianism” with “Christianity”, in my previous reply too)
Or why don't we look at what Christianity allows, or the Bible in general.
Such as sentencing someone to death for the act of collecting firewood on Saturday?
Or how about multiple instances of genocide because they weren't God's chosen people?
Except they don't always kill everyone, sometimes they will keep the young girls to have as sex slaves which they will call a wife.
Or how about the permission to have slaves, including beating them to within an inch of death as it is your property?
Or how about the punishment for raping a non-betrothed virgin - marrying her and paying her father.
Or how about the punishment for homosexuality being death?
These are just the chilling things I alluded to
But, with all the chilling things in it (the commandments about slavery, and worse)...
which I quote when discussing with fundamentalists (or FEs who yell “it's in the Bible!”) and which are NOT part, not only of Christianity (Christians have never even observed the most innocuous dietary rules) but not even (at least, I hope) of the most orthodox Hebraism of today.
I said: the Bible is a FUNDAMENTAL step in the evolution of ethics, NOT the LAST ONE. Thanks to God – or whatever – we have progressed a good bit.
(yes, there are many black pages in the history of Christianity. Burning of heretics and so on. This happens EVERY time a faith or ideology gives rise to a “church” whose “high priests” see themselves as custodians of the absolute truth)
But our current ethics IS the Christian ethics, with its roots in the Bible (if not, where do you think it comes from?). With the notable exception, yes, of morality about sexuality – homosexuality in particular.
The question is: would we have the same ethics (maybe unrelated to any religious belief) if the ancient Jews had been wiped away from history?
Not easy to answer. We should look at societies relatively uninfluenced by Christianity. Primitive tribes are not reassuring. Some are meek, some cruel and aggressive. In ancient India, society was divided in castes, and anyway ethics was and is embedded in a religious faith. In China Confucianism was more a philosophy for the “superior man”, and the single individual has always been a speck of dust. As for Buddhism (but maybe I don't know enough about it), I have always regarded it as a sublime religious philosophy (or philosophical religion) which, though, abstains from trying to change the world.
One thing seems certain: the TOTALLY revolutionary idea that an orphan, stranger and destitute child is worth, in personal dignity, as much as the Emperor, is an outcome of Christianity only.
I understand how you can be enraged toward those fundamentalists who try to use the Bible as a weapon to impose their vision of the world (and I don't consider them so much Christians, they really lack charity) and how you can assume – as they do – that Christianity and Bible are the same thing (they are not. Christianity (especially modern Christianity) is based much more on the Gospels than on the Old Testament)
But saying that the Bible, or Christianity, are ethical BS just because we have progressed further is like saying that Eratosthenes, Ptolemy and Hipparchus were stupid because they didn't realize that the Earth rotates.
Just some other thoughts
I qualify it as BS because it is a work of fiction, so if you want to discuss that, that is science and history, not ethics.
I call fiction a novel. Texts, in all ancient cultures, which contain myth, a bit of history and reflections about good and evil pertain to the sphere of ethics, too.
If you want to discuss ethics, that would be discussing how Christianity is still holding society back.
Not Christianity but religious fundamentalism. Christian or, somewhere else, Islamic or Hindu. Popular masses, scared about the future, seek refuge in their past. If they couldn't use religion, they would use something else. Ethnicity, ideology, patriotism. The 20th century, during which the influence of religions has hit its historical minimum, has witnessed the worst massacres of history perpetrated in name of everything but religion
This is a CORNERSTONE of all modern morality, at planetary level. Because EVERY society today (at least at facade level) accepts the idea that there is a principle of justice ABOVE every human authority.
Which does not need any deity.
Could be, but I doubt that David (or anybody in the ancient world) would have agreed about this without the image of a thundering God behind Nathan. As I doubt that you could have turned the ferocious Vikings of old into the meek Norwegians of today preaching them the Kantian categorical imperative. You really had to tell them “You're going to burn in hell forever”
This idea has its beginning THERE, in the Bible (2 Samuel 12, 7)
No, it didn't.
This idea had it's beginning long before the Bible.
where, then? In Chinese culture, which anyway couldn't have influenced us? Or in the Greek “moral poets”, like Simonides of Ceos? Those were lucubrations of intellectuals, which had little or no influence. Anyway, there's not the least sign that such an idea had some effect at the time of the Roman Empire
But, with all the chilling things in it (the commandments about slavery, and worse), the Bible must be regarded, in its entirety, as a FUNDAMENTAL step (hopefully, not the last one) in the evolution of ethics (OUR ethics)
Which does not mean it has any place in a civilised society or that the world be worse off without it,
Greeks, with slavery and oppression of women, considered themselves a highly civilized society. So maybe Christianity still makes a difference
or that it isn't morally bankrupt.
you could as well call Euclid's Elementa as logically bankrupt, for their lack of rigorousness in stating axioms, primitive concepts and rules of inference. Should we lose all respect for Euclid, just because we can do better (as dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, Newton would say)?
e. g. let's not forget that the conclusion that slavery is inhuman was reached
In direct defiance of Christianity.
Because of Christians internally realising how morally bankrupt the Bible is and rejecting commands they don't agree with.
Abolitionists considered themselves Christians. What right have you to tell them they were not. You might argue that they were the product of the Enlightenment, not of Christianity. I offered the opinion that the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on the personal freedom – even in the religious sphere - of the single individual, could hardly have developed without the Christianity. Prove me wrong by showing an example of something similar to the Enlightenment (especially in relation to religious freedom) in a non-Christian society.
That isn't Christianity causing people to recognise slavery is bad. That is people recognising slavery is bad in spite of Christianity.
Where have you read that slavery is a Christian dogma?
Consider what Jesus' message actually was:
You will burn in hell unless you beg me for forgiveness for being the human we made you as.
I don't remember this from Jesus. Please quote
And there are even worse parts, such as Jesus saying you must hate everyone except him.
Are you referring to “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children....”? Inadequate translation of an Hebraic expression. And what about “Love thy neighbour as thyself” or “Love thine enemies”?