Pastor Protection Bill derail

[rogue06]

Many ancient peoples practiced infanticide. The Romans would expose unwanted babies to the elements.

The actual constitution of Sparta required that every new-born child was brought to the Council Hall and examined. Any deemed unfit and useless by the city elders were taken to a chasm on the slopes of Mount Taygetus a few miles outside the center of Sparta known as the Apothetae -- the “Deposits” -- and cast into it.

According to Allen G. Roper’s essay "Ancient Eugenics," the ancient Spartans believed that "it was better for the child and the city that one not born from the beginning to comeliness and strength should not live." This is precisely what Plutarch recorded about them in his "Lives”:

Source: Lives: Lycurgus, the Father of the Spartans

"Whenever a child was born, it was taken to a council of elders for examination. If the baby was in any way defective, the elders dropped it into a chasm. Such a child, in the opinion of the Spartans, should not be permitted to live."


Source

© Copyright Original Source

Infanticide was common throughout the rest of ancient Greece as well. Unlike in Sparta where boys were subject to infanticide more often, in the rest of Greece it was the girls who suffered this fate in higher numbers. They were usually abandoned on mountainsides to die of thirst, exposure or predation often wrapped in a piece of cloth or left in a basket where a very few fortunate ones were rescued by shepherd’s and woodsmen (a possibility those cast into the Apothetae didn’t have).

And things weren't really a whole lot different in ancient Rome either. For example, the Fourth of the Twelve tables of Roman Law (known as the "Duodecim Tabulae"), the core of the Roman Republic’s constitution and established in its early days, deformed children must be put to death: "Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto" ("If a child is born with a deformity he shall be killed").

Additionally, it appears that Roman patriarchs had the right to dispose of infants at they saw fit (including healthy ones), often by taking any undesired newborn and drowning them in the Tiber River. This practice openly continued up until the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

Yet unfortunately infanticide didn't stop there. According to William L. Langer, exposure in the Middle Ages "was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference." Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn. The point being whether sanctioned or not the leaving of deformed or sick babies in the woods or on a mountainside to die was a practice for many ancient cultures.

Finally, in the High Middle Ages, abandoning unwanted children finally eclipsed infanticide. Unwanted children were left at the door of church or abbey, and the clergy was assumed to take care of their upbringing.

[Teallaura]

Excellent. I'm pleased to see an actual logical argument happening.

As to the argument, I am skeptical of both (1) and (2)....l.

You're skeptical that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being? Seriously? So, if you're innocent (you aren't, but let's just assume so) you are not certain that you should not be killed? Really?

So, you'd necessarily support my argument that citizens should have the right to kill at least one really annoying person per year, right? At least, you can't oppose it since even if they are innocent, you aren't certain they have a right to not be killed. Which means you have no objection ifI pick you, right? I mean, we'll do it humanely, of course. Just rip you apart with rusty pliers - very humanely.

I feel like I'm talking to the talking cow from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe... except that cow was more rational...

[Christianbookworm]

You're skeptical that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being? Seriously? So, if you're innocent (you aren't, but let's just assume so) you are not certain that you should not be killed? Really?

So, you'd necessarily support my argument that citizens should have the right to kill at least one really annoying person per year, right? At least, you can't oppose it since even if they are innocent, you aren't certain they have a right to not be killed. Which means you have no objection ifI pick you, right? I mean, we'll do it humanely, of course. Just rip you apart with rusty pliers - very humanely.

I feel like I'm talking to the talking cow from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe... except that cow was more rational...

Or leave him in Antarctica with zero supplies and no way of getting help. Or on the Moon. Or in the middle of the ocean with no life vest or raft.

[Paprika]

Indeed, there are two general types of approaches that religious people can have to moral issues: The letter, and the spirit.

You know, there is much truth in this post that most Christians miss due to their commitment to deontology but you also miss out stuff which makes the following a extended "Yes, but..."

This approach is typically wedded to a divine-command theory of morality - where anything is moral or not moral simply because God says so, and therefore we have no way of knowing if any given thing is moral or not except by looking to see what God has told us about that specific thing.

The spirit approach, which see can see exemplified in Jesus and Paul, generally involves reasoning based on very abstract moral principles such as "love your neighbor".

Yes., but... (see below)

It is generally prepared to ignore the letter of the law on issues due to holding the general good of humanity to be more important.

No, the Mosaic Law is not followed as a whole due to Christians having died to it, though because it contains some of the universal moral principles (that preexisted it) naturally these would still apply. Deontology is very limited but that isn't the reason why the Mosaic Law is no longer binding.

It is usually not associated with a divine-command view of morality, and may be associated instead with any other theory of objective moral.

Wrong. For example, Paul doesn't say 'calculate the sum of good and then act to maximise it' which would be a type of utilitarianism.

What he does expound on is the development of the virtues: faith, hope, and love, hence Paul advocates a Christianised form of virtue ethics (though interestingly enough he doesn't use ἀρετή in his exposition). And though this approach requires, as you say, critical reasoning - not just any critical reasoning but reasoning in the light of the Messiah and his death, as Paul emphasises in Philippians (which is why the anti-intellectualism in the Western Church is appalling, but I digress) - rules still have a place. Certainly, they aren't central anymore but they're still important especially for those who are new - just like barriers on a highway help to safeguard one from going over the cliffs but certainly do not teach one how to drive.

Now rules are hardly the be all and end all (not that they were all that mattered morally in the OT ). For rules are limited in scope and principles are more general but in many situations still unclear and clashing; it is the virtues and the Spirit who guides the mature.

[Starlight]

Paprika,

I'm not sure we actually have any disagreement. My own moral views (unchanged from when I was a Christian) are pretty much a 50-50 combination of ideas from both virtue ethics and utilitarian viewpoints. If forced to give a label for my views I would say I hold to virtue ethics. I would say Paul holds a fairly similar view... the differences, if any, between him and my own viewpoint are not clear enough to pin down (obviously he holds 'Christ crucified' at the center of his reasoning, which I as an atheist obviously don't, but I would point out that as a matter of fact that doesn't make a whole lot of difference because the principles and teachings for which Christ was executed were generally things I also hold).

So... I'm not sure we have a disagreement.

So, in light of that, some questions for you:
- do you agree with my general point that some Christians make the mistake of adopting a "letter"-based divine-command theory of morality and wrongly read the bible looking for "things God condemns" in light of their ill-conceived moral foundations? (and that Cow Poke's entire approach is an example of that?)
- do you agree with my general point that Jesus and Paul quite deliberately set forth an opposing paradigm of morality (of the "spirit" / abstract reasoning) over and against such a "letter"-based view that they saw exemplified in the Pharisee's approach and/or following "the law"?
- do you agree with my general point that our approach to the question of "what the bible says" about slavery and homosexuality is significantly impacted by the above two points and that this can lead to different answers than what a letter-of-the-law reading might claim that "the bible says"?

I'm genuinely curious about your answers to those.

[Paprika]

I would say Paul holds a fairly similar view... the differences, if any, between him and my own viewpoint are not clear enough to pin down (obviously he holds 'Christ crucified' at the center of his reasoning, which I as an atheist obviously don't, but I would point out that as a matter of fact that doesn't make a whole lot of difference because the principles and teachings for which Christ was executed were generally things I also hold).

I do think that there'd be large areas of divergence when the center is vastly different but we can proceed anyway:

So, in light of that, some questions for you:
- do you agree with my general point that some Christians make the mistake of adopting a "letter"-based divine-command theory of morality and wrongly read the bible looking for "things God condemns" in light of their ill-conceived moral foundations? (and that Cow Poke's entire approach is an example of that?)

- do you agree with my general point that Jesus and Paul quite deliberately set forth an opposing paradigm of morality (of the "spirit" / abstract reasoning) over and against such a "letter"-based view that they saw exemplified in the Pharisee's approach and/or following "the law"?

- do you agree with my general point that our approach to the question of "what the bible says" about slavery and homosexuality is significantly impacted by the above two points and that this can lead to different answers than what a letter-of-the-law reading might claim that "the bible says"?

It's not completely wrong to look for "things God condemns" since God does condemn quite a bit, not just in the OT but the NT. But such a mere deontological route flattens out the rather dynamic process of reasoning and acting morally that the NT envisions for the mature; one is just not supposed to just look for rules and rules alone.

To use an analogy of bringing children up (which is apt given that a virtue ethics approach practically must involve maturity, which is possibly why Paul used the imagery of the Law being the παιδαγωγός in Galatians): when they're young one uses rules to guide and protect them. But as they grow up they need to think for themselves using general principles for situations when the limited number of rules don't apply, and developing the virtues for situations where the principles are unclear or clash. So rules no longer are the main guide. Yet though the person is older, rules still exist and the demands are actually more stringent; precisely because one is more mature, one is held more accountable.

Hence though Jesus was expounding in contrast to what was a highly deontological approach ('You need to keep all these meticulous and precise list of commands') he tightens some of them, one key example being divorce:

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

As above, with the new hearts of the New Covenant comes more stringent demands, both by Jesus and Paul, just as adults have more demands on them compared to children yet have much more freedom.

Hence as regards slavery (I'm referring to the NT times slavery here and since we're both not Yankees we don't need to angst about recent examples) what was once permitted was slowly realised to be not allowed. I perfectly agree that Paul did not (to the best of our knowledge) forbid slavery, though I do not agree that because he was not explicitly condemning it that he was not against it. Paul was not an abolitionist, he was an evangelist. His main job was to preach the Gospel and allow it to transform lives, which would bring about the required reordering in its time, and not to add another rule "do not keep slaves" - which would also have caused massive social chaos (which is why of course after "submit to each other" in Ephesians he qualifies it by reinforcing 3 basic relations, but egalitarians gotta egalitarian and I digress).

While it is certainly possible that certain things might have to be rethought and a completely opposite answer given I don't think slavery and homosexual acts fall under that criteria. Regarding divorce an evil that was once permitted under certain conditions was greatly further restricted, and similarly for slavery as understood after much reflection. With regards to homosexual acts the evil still remains an evil.

I haven't been carefully following Cow Poke's or most of the posts in this thread, so I don't to intend to comment on his approach.

[Starlight]

he tightens some of them, one key example being divorce:

Well it's a somewhat open question of why Jesus tightens the divorce restrictions. That's also an interesting question to consider in light of the fact that almost zero Christians denominations today follow his literal teachings on this issue. (I've even seen Christians who do not follow Jesus' teachings on this issue, cite this very passage as proof that we cannot allow homosexual marriage or else we would be disobeying Jesus' teachings on the subject of marriage, since Jesus' quote about marriage in this passage includes the words 'man' and 'woman'. Apparently gay people ought to be required to follow the very letter of the law of Jesus' words while heterosexual people are not required to follow the commands of Jesus on the subject he was actually talking about. )

One explanation I've seen conservatives jump to for why Jesus had strong teachings on divorce, was that he had really strong views about the importance of marriage. This, of course, is an idea that's close to conservatives' own hearts, and they can imagine themselves saying the same sort of thing as Jesus for that sort of reason. The trouble I have with that sort of exegesis is that there's really nothing else in the gospels that would suggest that Jesus had those sort of motivations - that explanation involves reading into him a modern motivation to "defend marriage" that is an issue-of-today but doesn't show up in the gospels elsewhere and so indicates there might be some projection and eisegesis happening.

The proposed motivation for Jesus' teachings on divorce which seems most strongly evidenced in the gospels is: concern for the poor, the powerless, and widows. The idea of a woman with no husband being unable to support herself financially and suffering because of it, is massively attested to as the sort of thing that Jesus was really really concerned about. If he believed that no fault divorce was leading to the suffering of women who could not support themselves, there is every reason to think he would have been massively against it, since he shows himself repeatedly to have a massive concern for the poor throughout the gospels. His teaching on divorce can be explained with reference to this well-attested motivation.

So I don't think Jesus' teaching on divorce is truly an example of a "stricter" morality - but instead an example of an abstract moral principle "concern for the poor" being applied to, and overriding, the written law on a completely different issue (divorce). This kind of reasoning would then actually allow us to justify the current practices of Christian churches in their disobedience of Jesus' literal teachings on divorce: Since our society is set up in such a way as to ensure that divorced women have sufficient means to support themselves, divorcing them is not inflicting life-destroying financial hardship on them, and so it is allowed.

With regards to homosexual acts the evil still remains an evil.

I'm curious as to what logic you would apply to reach that position...? Given the type of moral framework you seem to have outlined yourself as holding, you ought to have arrived at the opposite position.

I haven't been carefully following Cow Poke's or most of the posts in this thread, so I don't to intend to comment on his approach.

The type of approach I am objecting to says:
- Every word in the Bible is God's Word.
- There are some bible verses that teach against homosexuality
- Therefore God says homosexuality is wrong.
- Any Christians that accept homosexuality are Not True Christians because they are in direct rejection of God's word.
- End of discussion.

I should have noted earlier that divine-command theorists obsessed with the literal letter of the law also tend to be obsessed with inerrancy. Because obviously it's important, if you want to be able to grab any single sentence in the bible as take it as a God-given definitive moral command, to be 'sure' that it is indeed God-given. Any teaching on biblical inspiration that falls short of absolute inerrancy is a serious threat to this entire paradigm of morality.

Whereas Christians who are interested in the abstract moral principles taught by the bible overall, will tend be quite happy with a view of biblical inspiration that simply says that the overall teachings of the bible were generally inspired by God, as their method of using the bible for moral applications doesn't require that every single sentence in the bible be absolutely true and from God. (In fact, it can potentially be of use to them to reject inerrancy, as their use of abstract reasoning based on overall biblical moral principles might lead to them wanting to reject/jettison various letter-of-the-law passages, and that is naturally easier to do if there is no belief that those passages are necessarily directly 100% from God)

[Cow Poke]

Many ancient peoples practiced infanticide. The Romans would expose unwanted babies to the elements.

Maybe that's part of why they're such a powerful empire today!

[Christianbookworm]

Maybe that's part of why they're such a powerful empire today!

Who???

[Cow Poke]

Who???

EGGzackly!

[Cerealman]

Whereas Christians who are interested in the abstract moral principles taught by the bible overall, will tend be quite happy with a view of biblical inspiration that simply says that the overall teachings of the bible were generally inspired by God, as their method of using the bible for moral applications doesn't require that every single sentence in the bible be absolutely true and from God. (In fact, it can potentially be of use to them to reject inerrancy, as their use of abstract reasoning based on overall biblical moral principles might lead to them wanting to reject/jettison various letter-of-the-law passages, and that is naturally easier to do if there is no belief that those passages are necessarily directly 100% from God)

This sounds like one of those moments where a "Christian" would say "No that's not what Jesus/God meant here's what he really meant..." even though the text tells you exactly what was actually said.
But that's just me.

[Paprika]

Maybe that's part of why they're such a powerful empire today!

Which doesn't bode well for your nation given the multitudes of children killed.

[Paprika]

Well it's a somewhat open question of why Jesus tightens the divorce restrictions.

It isn't. He makes it clear that i) what God has put together men shouldn't tear asunder, and ii) since new hearts will be given as promised by Jeremiah the previous allowances are removed.

The proposed motivation for Jesus' teachings on divorce which seems most strongly evidenced in the gospels is: concern for the poor, the powerless, and widows. The idea of a woman with no husband being unable to support herself financially and suffering because of it, is massively attested to as the sort of thing that Jesus was really really concerned about. If he believed that no fault divorce was leading to the suffering of women who could not support themselves, there is every reason to think he would have been massively against it, since he shows himself repeatedly to have a massive concern for the poor throughout the gospels. His teaching on divorce can be explained with reference to this well-attested motivation.

Which is precisely why he didn't mention this motivation at all, instead appealing to other reasons, such as the essential created sexual nature of Man.

So I don't think Jesus' teaching on divorce is truly an example of a "stricter" morality - but instead an example of an abstract moral principle "concern for the poor" being applied to, and overriding, the written law on a completely different issue (divorce).

Utter nonsense. As above, this is just ignoring what the text actually says in order to force in your own views.

I'm curious as to what logic you would apply to reach that position...? Given the type of moral framework you seem to have outlined yourself as holding, you ought to have arrived at the opposite position.

Hardly; my approach is teleological. Consider how Jesus appeals to a certain order in Creation - male + female - and the act of God in joining them together. Similarly Paul appeals to φύσις to denounce homosexual acts.

Pray tell, why "ought" I have reached at the opposite position? As I see it, the only reason I could possibly "ought" to is to first assume progressive mores are normative and try to force Holy Scripture to fit.

The type of approach I am objecting to says:
- There are some bible verses that teach against homosexuality
- Therefore God says homosexuality is wrong.

There's nothing wrong with that; as if statements about reality can be ignored because you want to focus on 'the spirit' to the exclusion of any inconvenient commands.

Whereas Christians who are interested in the abstract moral principles taught by the bible overall, will tend be quite happy with a view of biblical inspiration that simply says that the overall teachings of the bible were generally inspired by God, as their method of using the bible for moral applications doesn't require that every single sentence in the bible be absolutely true and from God. (In fact, it can potentially be of use to them to reject inerrancy, as their use of abstract reasoning based on overall biblical moral principles might lead to them wanting to reject/jettison various letter-of-the-law passages, and that is naturally easier to do if there is no belief that those passages are necessarily directly 100% from God)

Which tends to a smorgasbord approach: picking and choosing what commands and principles to follow to fit with one's own inclinations instead of treating the texts seriously as vessels through which the living God's authority is being exerted.

[lilpixieofterror]

Well it's a somewhat open question of why Jesus tightens the divorce restric...

Still trying to distract people from your baby murdering beliefs? I can understand why you'd want to quickly change the topic away from that, but perhaps you should first recant from your baby murdering philosophy before you try to lecture Christians on living a moral life? Just a thought.