Nothing frustrates me more than the suggestion or assumption that Christians are morally superior to others. I say Christians specifically because, at least in this country, many Christians claim moral superiority over other religions (especially Islam) as well as non-believers of all stripes. Therefore I will concentrate my diary on Christianity, though much of my arguments easily apply to all religious traditions
Statements of Christian moral pre-eminence are explicit, implicit, and ubiquitous in U.S. society. Things like the phrase: "he’s a good Christian," or clemency appeals for inmates who have been "born again" make it clear to anyone paying attention that our culture assumes a higher moral and ethical standard from professed Christians. Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to make the case that Christians or any other theist group is morally inferior to non-believers. It’s just that religion, or a lack thereof does not impart or instill greater moral character upon a person.
Many conservative Christians would like to see a monument to The Ten Commandments enshrined in every Justice Department building and courthouse in our land as part of some revisionist history fantasy that our Nation was founded as an explicitly Christian one. (I won’t dispute that people who classify themselves as Christian make up a significant majority of The United States’ population, but that fact, and others like it, do not override the First Amendment to our Constitution. Despite the establishment clause of said Amendment, the large majority of American Christians make for one imposing hill to climb when challenging an ingrained paradigm such as the one I describe). When you take a closer look at the religious laws that are the purported foundation to our own laws, you notice that there is very little overlap. ‘Do not steal’ and ‘do not murder’ are the only two directives that have survived intact in our criminal code, and they aren’t exactly unique to Christianity or religion as a whole. Adultery and bearing false witness (essentially lying) can be punishable under certain circumstances, but are not generally illegal in society at large. The rest deal with the Sabbath, false gods, taking the Lord’s name in vain, honoring your parents, and of course, coveting. (Our consumer culture, it can be well argued, is driven by and dependent on lots of people coveting lots of things). Where Arizona SB 1070 fits in with those hallowed tablets is beyond me, but the same people that wrote and passed that law would tell you that our legislative principles stem almost exclusively from Christian values. Laws and morals are not synonymous of course, but it is instructive to pick apart the argument that our Nation’s laws are firmly rooted in biblical canon.
It doesn’t take a long look at modern society to find many things that simply are not covered in the bible. Medical ethics, technology etiquette, feminism, the post slavery society, and modern science are all things that were not conceived of when Christianity’s seminal publication was produced. Does that not make it difficult for someone to assert a Christian foundation for our society’s moral principles in these and other areas? As an example, the word "Fuck" was not existent, nor was any of the English language in its current form at the time the Bible was written, yet I am told the word is "unchristian." It may be considered "unchristian" today, but nowhere in the Bible does it say "Thou shall not say the word ‘Fuck.’" It came to be a societal taboo word in the same way most moral principles are established, through conscious and unconscious social consensus.
The mechanism for this consensus is difficult to nail down, but it ultimately comes from a biological capacity for empathy that allows us to function as social animals and create functional civilizations. Religions become a reflection of the moral consensus of the time they originate. Would anyone suggest that our present-day moral principles are the same as they were 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 1000 years ago? Probably not, and yet the Bible and the Christian faith based upon it has ostensibly remained static, since the need to change it would seem to fly in the face of the conclusion that is a divinely inspired work. From this rhetorical exercise we can see that ideas of "Christian morals and ethics" are based on the broad societal moral and ethic consensus and not the other way around. It turns out that the Bible is a snapshot of a consensus of moral principles from about two millennia ago, and modern Christians reflect today’s ideas of morality, all while they quizzically claim authority based on a dubious but long history of, well, claiming authority.
The Bible and religions that stem from it are not novel things. They didn’t spring out of the ground filled with revolutionary ideas. It’s clear from an examination of pre-Biblical history and contemporary Biblical history that it is essentially a mishmash of concepts and principles borrowed from others, and a particularly barbaric mishmash by today’s standards.
Looking at it from an historical perspective, biblical Christian morality is not something we would want to implement wholesale nowadays. It would be functionally worse than the modern Sharia law that many Conservatives want to scare people with. Amongst other things, the Bible advocates selling children into slavery, stoning adulterers to death (Imagine the changes the show Cheaters would undergo), polygamy, incest, women as property, killing homosexuals, and the wholesale destruction of entire cities. Now, to be fair, much of these proscriptions are contradicted by other parts of the Bible, but how could the word of an infallible God contradict itself and therefore leave so much to interpretation? If we’re allowed to pick and choose the moral lessons we follow from any set that we’re given then our own moral judgment becomes the true creator of our moral code, not the document we cut and pasted from. In truth, the Bible itself was cut and pasted from many more chapters than are in the current version. People did that. People translated, interpreted, retranslated, and read it sideways over the years, but somehow it is still help up as an inerrant document by far too many.
The Bible ends up being a moral Rorschach test. It allows homophobic conservatives to claim homosexuality is immoral, and antebellum southerners to justify slave ownership. At the same time, Christians will continue to claim Jesus and his teachings as their moral compass while overlooking anything he said that doesn’t seem to fit with modern ideas of upright behavior (and there are many examples that must be ignored). In addition to repeatedly reasserting the authority of every single ghastly letter of the Old Testament, Jesus also made some eyebrow raising directives of his own (Luke 12:45, Matthew 11:20, Mark 7:9 to name a few). You can tell me your moral center is based on the teachings of Jesus, and I’ll believe you, but I guarantee you, whether you know it or not, you started with the accepted moral vision of your community and worked backward to Jesus, shoving contradictions and cognitive dissonance out of the way to clear a manageable path. I’m sure that with a sturdy pair of scissors and a few days I could make Mein Kampf into a visionary moral masterpiece Sarah Palin would happily refer to for guidance (she probably wouldn’t recognize the title so I’d only have to redact the writer’s name). People don’t do this with Mein Kampf because of the reputation of the author, but if you tell people the author is God? Break out the mental white out, we’ve got moral authority to create. Before I get angry comments about my comparing Jesus to Hitler, or some such nonsense, let me explain further that I was merely picking a dramatic example to prove the point that virtually any text of sufficient length can be transformed into a guide for living a moral life if you try hard enough. The Bible is unique in this country in that it is the only book that routinely gets this treatment.
I’ll leave you with this challenge, and you can take it up in the comments if you wish:
Name me one action that you participated in or observed that was based on Biblical writing. NOT something you think is based in some ephemeral sense of Christian values, but something based on the supposed center of the religion, the best selling book ever written. If it’s not rooted in the Bible then its origin cannot really be attributed to Christianity exclusively, if at all. Name me one thing you saw done in the name of Christianity that a non believer like myself wouldn’t have done for similar or equally compelling reasons. Don’t quote me statistics on charitable giving or anything like that. When Christians make up 76 percent of the population they are likely to dominate a lot of statistical measures. Give me an anecdote that definitively demonstrates why someone of the Christian faith is inherently more moral than me because of that faith. On to the comments we go.
Previous Atheist Digest Diaries:
Intro and How I became an Atheist By Xneeohcon
Glossary By Dr Rieux
Next diaries by me, XNeeOhCon:
Mon. August 23rd, About 10:30 AM PST- Ben Stein is a Moran, The Infinite Probability Fallacy.
Wed. September 1st, About 5:30 PM PST – Conclusion diary
Stay tuned for diaries from other users including Brahman Colorado, Commonmass, Dr. Rieux, Rfall, Something the Dog Said, Warren S, and Wilderness Voice. (Look for "Atheist Digest '10" in the Tags and Diary Title)