Freedomain Radio

Stefan Molyneux:

Well, you say love your parents, and they are your best friends, but they subscribe to a belief system that wants me, my wife, my friends and most people here dead - how would you feel if we openly discussed and advocated killing the children of Christian parents here?

Again, I apologize for the bluntness bro, I really do, but we're just talking about the facts...

You certainly don't need to apologize for being blunt. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't interested in asking difficult questions, or wanted to be lied to.

To answer your question, I would not visit this site if you were advocating the killing of people, Christian or otherwise. It's the fact that you're advocating the exact opposite that I am here. :) On the other hand, my parents don't openly discuss or advocate the killing of you, your wife, etc. And I'm pretty sure they don't discuss or advocate those things in secret, either. So that doesn't quite seem like a fair analogy, although I don't take it personally.

If you think it's relevant, I'm happy to provide more details about that aspect of my life. My original question was basically about how one can genuinely know if they have a good relationship with their family (if their bridge is strong, as you said). The impression I'm getting - and please tell me if I misunderstand - is that, if one's family is religious, then the answer is no?

I see - so, as I understand it, your parents thus openly reject as evil all the parts of the Bible where God commands or commends such things as:

• murder
• genocide
• rape
• slavery
• the physical and sexual abuse of men, children and women
• incest
• etc
  

 

Is that right?

What about things that are obviously impossible, like men living to be 900 years old and so on?

Thanks! 

I don't think there's any argument over whether my family believes things which can't be proven, and which are probably false.

As for rejecting the things which you mentioned, I doubt it; they don't reject anything in the Bible, or the BoM. But that's quite a bit different than advocating your list. Maybe that's one of the more frustrating aspects of these books: Mostly they don't come right out and say, "Do this, Do that". Sometimes they do, of course, but usually it's couched in example and metaphor. So it's open to a lot of interpretability and wiggle room.

More than that, though, my parents, like most religious folk, just don't think about those things. Are there passages in Leviticus that are deplorable? Sure. I don't know anyone, though, who actually reads those passages literally. So while in principle my family accepts the entirety of their holy books, in practice they - like everyone else - only ever consider a small portion of their contents.

Again, there's no argument that my family believes things which aren't real. But to say that my parents advocate murder, incest, etc. is quite absurd. If they're guilty of anything, it's of not deeply investigating their religious beliefs. You'll get no argument from me about that. But does that mean that they don't love me? I mean, you could probably fill a set of encyclopedias with all the things that I'm wrong about, but I hope that doesn't mean that I can't ever have a genuine relationship with anyone. Am I wrong?

Tyler:

 Are there passages in Leviticus that are deplorable? Sure. I don't know anyone, though, who actually reads those passages literally.

     I know I'm jumping in here on something that may not be the main topic of relevance, but nearly everyone I've talked to that really holds stock in the books (as opposed to people who will just say things like "well, I don't think there's a hell" or whatever, based on their own desires) does take those commands literally. They typically justify it by something along the lines of "The people back then were brutal, and killing was all they understood". When I ask if it is just to kill someone for these things they say "not anymore", and I find as I question further the result boils down to "Whatever god says to do at the time should be done." This is clearly an absolutely amoral statement, from people who claim to hold the absolute answers to what is moral. I was raised in the same branch of the Christian cult as you were - these statements come from my Mormon relatives (all decently intelligent people), missionaries, and upper church-level officials.

     Have you directly asked your family what their take on these vile commands are?

blackacidlizzard:

Have you directly asked your family what their take on these vile commands are?

Have I talked to them about religion? Of course. At length. However, I don't start the conversation by saying, "Mom, can we talk about your vile beliefs?", because (1) I respect people enough not to pick fights with them, and (2) I'm not aware of any beliefs that they, themselves, hold which are really vile. Again, I'm not saying that my parents aren't wrong about a great many things. But let's be clear: If my parents, or anyone from any church that I've ever known, saw their neighbors stoning a woman to death, they would stop them--regardless of the reason given, or the scriptures cited. We can debate whether that's hypocritical of them, given their purported beliefs in these books, but that sort of behavior would quickly deflate a claim that they advocated some sort of murderously literal interpretation of every Biblical passage.

I originally asked for advice about how I could genuinely know if I had a good relationship with my family. The responses I've heard so far haven't really addressed that. Instead they seem to presuppose, given my family's religious beliefs, that such a good relationship is impossible. Am I wrong? I would really appreciate a straightforward answer to this question, because I value the opinions of the people on this board. I'm at a major crossroad in my life, and I'm looking for some guidance.

Tyler:

blackacidlizzard:

Have you directly asked your family what their take on these vile commands are?

Have I talked to them about religion? Of course. At length. However, I don't start the conversation by saying, "Mom, can we talk about your vile beliefs?", because (1) I respect people enough not to pick fights with them, and (2) I'm not aware of any beliefs that they, themselves, hold which are really vile. Again, I'm not saying that my parents aren't wrong about a great many things. But let's be clear: If my parents, or anyone from any church that I've ever known, saw their neighbors stoning a woman to death, they would stop them--regardless of the reason given, or the scriptures cited. We can debate whether that's hypocritical of them, given their purported beliefs in these books, but that sort of behavior would quickly deflate a claim that they advocated some sort of murderously literal interpretation of every Biblical passage.

I originally asked for advice about how I could genuinely know if I had a good relationship with my family. The responses I've heard so far haven't really addressed that. Instead they seem to presuppose, given my family's religious beliefs, that such a good relationship is impossible. Am I wrong? I would really appreciate a straightforward answer to this question, because I value the opinions of the people on this board. I'm at a major crossroad in my life, and I'm looking for some guidance.

I think you'll know if you have a good relationship or not if you're honest and open about your feelings with your family, including your feelings about the vile commands that are in the book that they claim to base their morality on.  If you don't feel the commands are vile (the commands, not your parents beliefs), then you may be in the wrong place.  If you do think they're vile (and it appears this way from your posts), then tell them THAT, don't talk to them about their beliefs, talk to them about your feelings.

Thanks, Nexalacer; I appreciate the advice. I'm a little confused, though, about the responses I've gotten so far, including yours. Why, of all things, do you think I should talk to them about the contents of the Bible? My parents know that I'm not interested in their faith anymore, and although I know that they're disappointed, they've never pressured me to come back, or even tried to argue with me about the subject. The few times that we've discussed God (since I was young, anyway) have been almost convivial. So I don't have any complaints about their religious beliefs with respect to our relationship. In fact, I only mentioned it in passing in my original post. It was Stef who started asking about murder, incest, 900-year-old men, etc.

Probably this is due to me being a newcomer here? Is it generally thought that anyone who holds religious beliefs is corrupted? Do many (any?) people here have positive relationships with religious folk? I genuinely want to know what you all think about these questions, because (obviously) it's relevant to my life. What upsets me a bit - although this might just be me projecting - is that the questions I've been asked so far, by Stef for example, are ones that have prompted me to strongly repudiate my parents. When I haven't done that, it seems like the original questioners lost interest in helping me. Is that just in my head?

The reason this always comes up, at some point or another, with people who have relationships with religious people is because a big part of this conversation is integrity.  And at the most basic level, if you agree with the ideas talked about here, then you must be a proponent of the NAP (Non-aggression Principle).  If we take integrity as being the convergence of principle and action within one's life, then it is often difficult to see how you can have integrity (and as a result happiness), if your principles (non-aggression) and actions (stating that you enjoy relationships with people who base their morality on aggression) don't sync.  When Stef is asking these questions, he is attempting to get you to realize the contradiction in a much more Socratic method than the one I'm using here.

I hope this made some sense.  I'm happy to hear any comments on my reasoning!  And of course, the idea with all of this is not to point out that you're not acting with integrity, as we're all dealing with the same thing in different ways... it's just to point out that the goals of happiness and freedom are only attainable when you can actually see the obstacles to them! 

I can certainly understand your confusion, and I do apologize once more for being so blunt, but this is a site devoted to rational philosophy and ethics, and I was faced in particular with the following proposition from you:

1. My parents are happy, positive and loving people.
   
2. My parents are Christians.
3. Christianity is an irrational and superstitious belief system that commands the murder of others.
   
4. Therefore it is possible to be both happy, positive and loving, and subscribe to an irrational belief system that advocates murder, rape and genocide.

 

Of course, if your parents do not subscribe to any of the violence and evil in the Bible, then they are not Christians of course -- if they do, then they are not moral, as I'm sure you would agree.

It's nothing personal against your parents, of course, but as a philosopher, it is very important for me to resolve these contradictions in some manner.

My approach has always been that reason = virtue = happiness - if irrationality is placed at the beginning of that equation, I cannot see how you can get virtue and happiness out the other end. 

I'm perfectly willing to be schooled on this, as in all things. 

Does that help? 

Thanks to you both.

Stef, my impression from some of your podcasts was that what someone claims to believe is not so important to you as what they actually do in practice. My parents, and many religious believers, claim to believe in their scripture as the literal and binding word of God. That's well-understood. But obviously these billions of people don't have exactly the same religious beliefs. What's important is not what the book says, since the interpretations and adherences vary so greatly, but what people themselves believe - and more than that, what they actually do about those supposed beliefs.

You know as well as anyone that virtually no religious person, here in North American anyway, thinks that stoning a person to death is acceptable. They don't murder their neighbors for being heretics. If someone told my parents that he was going to sacrifice his child because God commanded it, they would take that child away for its own safety. Like most religious people in this country, religion plays a fairly benign, understated role in their lives. They go to church. They toss their prayers into the ether. They think about how nice it will be to meet Jesus after they die. That sort of thing. They don't advocate murder, incest, etc. The idea of my pedestrian, middle-aged parents even thinking practically about incest, murder, or genocide is kind of funny in an absurd way. It's just totally implausible.

And I think you know that, which is why you couch what you say. It's not what they advocate, but that they "subscribe to a belief system that advocates..." That's not meaningful, though. A belief system doesn't advocate anything; people advocate things. And the things you are giving as examples are plainly not advocated by any religious person that I know.

Stefan Molyneux:

Of course, if your parents do not subscribe to any of the violence and evil in the Bible, then they are not Christians of course -- if they do, then they are not moral, as I'm sure you would agree.

I'm still perplexed by what you mean by "subscribe". Either my parents advocate murderous activities or they do not. It seems that, knowing nothing about them except that they are religious, you are putting forward some undeniably extreme claims about what they specifically believe. If one has to advocate murder in order to be a Christian, I think my parents would happily opt out.

It certainly seems that you aren't much interested in the specifics of religious belief. And that's fine, but it's a bit baseless to categorize all people who are "religious" as endorsing atrocities, regardless of what behavior they actually perform in their lives. Isn't that what really matters? Or would you say that anyone who holds superstitious beliefs should be cut out of one's life?

Thanks; I hope you'll help me get to the heart of this.

Excellent, I think I totally understand where you're coming from!

So if I've got it right, you're saying that your parents reject most of the moral commandments that are in the Bible, although they accept that the Bible is the divine word of a perfectly moral and omniscient being.

So either they believe that they are smarter, wiser and more moral than God, in so far as they can pick and choose what is "correct" in His commandments, or they believe that God is mostly evil, since they reject as evil most of his moral Commandments.

I hope that you can help me unravel this knot. Perhaps there is a door number three that I am not aware of...

Tyler, I certainly understand your difficulties. My father and grandmother both consider themselves Christians, not because they've put their religion to rational analysis, but simply because they have spent their entire lives in rural South Carolina and know nothing else. I personally do not think that means I can not have a positive, loving relationship with them. They understand my rejection of the Bible and have never been nothing but supportive and accepting of me. The subject simply doesn't come up. I dig my dad and grandma and love being around them; that's how I know the validity of my relationships. I experience it.

Well it's obvious that Christians do not do the things which Stef supposes the bible preaches. Otherwise we'd hear about them killing and doing other amoral things on the news all the time. As far as to the actual bible passages in which these propositions come from, one has to look over not just the text in question, but also the context the scripture is being used in. In all honesty this is an area I have not looked into with detail yet, I can thank Stef for putting me on the case..

But the answers are out there... I have already learned about a few instances where God had people killed, like in Sodom and Gommora... But in those cities there were gross moral offenses going on like the rape and murder of children, etc. And mostly everyone was doing it. I cannot deny that God has been an instrument of destruction at times but now I am interested in finding out the reasons why.

Jasonanarchy:

Well it's obvious that Christians do not do the things which Stef supposes the bible preaches. Otherwise we'd hear about them killing and doing other amoral things on the news all the time.

Um...  you know that the vast majority of americans, including gang members, murderers, child molesters etc. call themselves Christians, right?  You know that the man who effectively ordered the death of more than a million iraqis and thousands of american soldiers has been the posterchild of the evangelical christian community here in america, right?  You heard about the catholic priest child abuse scandal, right?

We DO hear about christians doing immoral things all the time.  (we don't hear about the amoral things very much because making toast isn't really a newsworth event, usually)  :-p

That said, when was the last time you saw someone on the news identified as an atheist or anarchist convicted of, or even accused of a crime?  Note that since the majority of Americans are Christians, they would surely have motivation for vilifying the atheists, and an atheist murderer would make headlines nationwide as it would be viewed as a justification for all that stuff the bible says about us.

As far as to the actual bible passages in which these propositions come from, one has to look over not just the text in question, but also the context the scripture is being used in. In all honesty this is an area I have not looked into with detail yet, I can thank Stef for putting me on the case..

But the answers are out there... I have already learned about a few instances where God had people killed, like in Sodom and Gommora... But in those cities there were gross moral offenses going on like the rape and murder of children, etc. And mostly everyone was doing it. I cannot deny that God has been an instrument of destruction at times but now I am interested in finding out the reasons why.

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/who-has-killed-more-satan-or-god.html

All that said, I have a few aquaintances who identify themselves as christians and I am fine with that.  What I mean is that I am willing to hang out with them and talk about fluffy irrelevant things like movies and TV shows.  They do not actively visibly support any of the violence advocated in the bible. They are, at worst, thoughtless.  I generally prefer to hang out with my circle of friends with whom I can and do actively discuss actual real life personal issues.  But hell, sometimes its nice to have a few cheap laughs with the gang.  It doesn't really cost me anything emotionally or personally. 

I say that if you're happy with your relationship with your parents, then keep at it.  My dad still performs the ceremonies of his religion because they're a psychological comfort to him, and when I visit him, I do the same, for the same reason.  I know god doesn't exist and there's no supernatural reason to perform the ritual, but it makes him happy (or reduces his anxiety or something like that... whatever it is), and it doesn't cost me anything.  We talk about politics and morality and our jobs and women and all that.  That's good enough for me.  He is a stand up guy.  I feel I can rely on him. I think I lucked out with my parents.  You may have as well.

I truly believe that if we love people, then we must help him overcome their irrational fears, dependencies and superstitions.

Only the truth can bring us true happiness, not the conformist drug of religion.

I believe that by ignoring the unhappiness caused by superstition, we are enabling the unhappiness of those we claim to love as surely as if we were handing drinks to a drunk.