Does Science Piss Off God?

[matmat]

i dunno... anytime a JW or someone from another faith tries to convert me I feel it my duty to try to upset their sensibilities in some way or another.

[Codo]

I'm sorry if anyone considers this insulting. But IMHO, anyone who seriously believes that a mythical super-being intercedes on the behalf of individual humans is delusional; it's the adult version of believing in Santa Claus. And if you actually depend on this being to solve your problems, you're really in trouble.

I personally know people who found help in their church and/or in their believes.

So religion definitly is one way to care about problems. You may argue that religion did more harm then good. But to deny the possibility that religion may help is simply wrong.

 

No, I don't bugrudge a disabled person the use of a true crutch. But some types of crutches are appropriate, others are not. Many people with problems turn to drugs or alcohol. Although religion may not be as self-destructive as they are, I still see it as the wrong way to solve your problems. You're not actually DOING anything, you're praying for someone to solve your problems for you. How is this different from a beggar on the street, hoping for people to give him money?

 

Drugs and alcohol are a crutch for you? Religion "may not be as self-destructive"?

You can use nearly anything in a self-destructing manner. Bridge and other games, Internet, food, sex, name it. So what is your point?

Your example of the beggar isn´t too bad. You are in a situation where you are not able to help yourself. No you ask others to help you. Sometimes it works sometimes it does not. What is wrong with that?

Oh wait, in your world the beggars are all guilty off their faith? They should just stop drinking, find a job and help themselfves? if you really believe that life is so simple-dream on.

 

My religion (Jewish) teaches that we were once slaves in Egypt, and God used his powers to get us liberated. .

 

I doubt that you are jewish, but you had been. What is your point? That you only can be proud if you fought for your rights? Just if you payed with blood sweat and pain, it is valuable? You deserve no grace? No good luck? This is a point of view. It´s not mine and it is depressive.

 

That's one of the problems with religious: if you couch a belief in a religious context, you can get away with practically anything. It's lucky that Catholic bishops never found anything in the Bible that they could interpret as commanding priests to fondle little boys -- if they did, parents would be actively pulling their kids' pants down. If you don't believe this, remember that we cut off a piece of little boys' anatomy because of one line in the Old Testament.

 

And this proves exactly what? That there had been injustice in the name of god? We knew that already. It had happend and it still happens.

Does it prove that you cannot take the holy book word for word? All intelligent christs do know this. Else we had a lot to do, burning our neighbour houses and making them our slaves. You must understand the bottom line of the religion, not just pick around on one or two sentences.

But if you stop believing in the bible anything gets better? There will be less cruelty? You may believe this- some BBF posters do- but reality does not confirm this.

To be cruel is a big part of the history of mankind. In the name of a god, a state, an idea. From single persons at home, from small troops and whole armies. Cruelty had been anywhere. It is a part of us. Religion is not able to stop this.

But I believe that without religion, things would be much worse. Not better. There would be even more cruelty, not less.

[helene_t]

The concept of god (or gods) was created when our species was in its infancy and was very ignorant.

is there an unspoken IMHO here? if not, prove it

I thought it was generally accepted that religion is older than science (!). And obviously humanity was (scientifically) relatively ignorant before Galileo, Darwin etc. This does not necessarily suggest that religious ideas are obsolete, since many old ideas are still useful. But if the raison-d'etre of God originally was to account for observations now accounted for by science, then the God idea needs be updated (or abandoned). Something which does take place, of course. Non-fundamentalist theologists think differently today than they did before Galileo and Darwin.

 

My guess is that Helene's point was that by asking "why" you make the hidden assumption that there is a "why", while this may not be entirely clear.

I was actually not sure what "why" meant. I can imagine:

1) How did the universe come into being?

2) Is it a logical necessity that the universe exists? If so, why?

3) What purpose does the universe serve?

 

As for 2) the antropic principle comes to mind. I wouldn't personally consider that a scientific theory but some might disagree.

 

As for 3), the word "purpose" has meaning (at least to me) only in the subjective sense of a purpose to a specific human, so something that happened before the first humans cannot have a purpose. But some use the word "purpose" in the adaptionist sense of "survival value". Actually there is a theory that new universes emerge out of black holes so that it has survival value to the "genome" of a universe to have values of the natural constants that allow the formation of black holes (or something like that, cosmology is not my field of expertise, you can probably discern from this paragraph).

[hotShot]

I thought it was generally accepted that religion is older than science (!). And obviously humanity was (scientifically) relatively ignorant before Galileo, Darwin etc. This does not necessarily suggest that religious ideas are obsolete, since many old ideas are still useful. But if the raison-d'etre of God originally was to account for observations now accounted for by science, then the God idea needs be updated (or abandoned). Something which does take place, of course. Non-fundamentalist theologists think differently today than they did before Galileo and Darwin.

Please state your definition of science. There is proof of brain surgery back in the stone age. We know that they knew a lot about astronomy, plants and animals. They discovered agriculture and farming.

So I don't think that religion is older than science.

Science and Religion are siblings, everything that science can't explain, is explained using religion. Since science can never explain everything and answer all questions, there will always be a need for religion.

 

During the middle ages church dominated science and slowed down scientific progress for about 500 years. So Galileo and others helped science to a "come-back", but it was there long before them.

[jdonn]

Since science can never explain everything and answer all questions, there will always be a need for religion.

Why is there a need for everything to have an explanation before we truly understand it? I feel no need to make up stories to explain things I don't understand. I either wait until we understand, or accept that we won't/haven't in my lifetime.

[helene_t]

Please state your definition of science.

OK, religion is older than Darwin, Galileo etc., then. Of course the ones who invented religion were not completely ignorant, just relatively scientifically ignorant.

 

Do you really think that religion answers all question that science doesn't answer? I'm sure science can't tell me whether I should transfer my Dutch retirement scheme to the UK. OTOH if someone claims to have found the answer to that question in the bible I wouldn't trust them. The same applies to some 99% of all the questions I face in my daily life.

[Gerben42]

I personally know people who found help in their church and/or in their believes.

 

Me too. But although religion might have helped them, I still think it would have been nicer if these people would have found help in a more realistic way. A church is more than belief, it is a community of people, just like this forum is.

 

Unfortunately I know too many examples even in my close surroundings where religion is just a source of intolerance. And what's worse, it starts with the kids. The following story happened to my sister:

 

Protestant kid A tells my sister (age 6 at this point) a joke which involves Jesus, and my sister then of course tells the joke to another friend, protestant kid B, who then tells his parents that my non-protestant sister makes fun of Jesus. Then the parents of kid A and B forbid their kids from playing with my sister.

 

A church creates a feeling of "us" which may help people, but it also creates a feeling of "them" which is completely unfounded and hurts people.

 

Of course the ones who invented religion were not completely ignorant, just relatively scientifically ignorant.

 

Religion was not invented, it evolved. There have been many ideas about life, the universe and everything, and the popular ones become a religion. Who knows how many prophets there have been like Jesus and Mohammed, but their ideas just never became popular? Maybe they lacked charisma, maybe they were oppressed into oblivion, all sorts of things can happen. A religion is only as powerful as its followers.

[Codo]

Protestant kid A tells my sister (age 6 at this point) a joke which involves Jesus, and my sister then of course tells the joke to another friend, protestant kid B, who then tells his parents that my non-protestant sister makes fun of Jesus. Then the parents of kid A and B forbid their kids from playing with my sister.

Chapter 23, Matthäus:

 

Gegen die Schriftgelehrten und Pharisäer

Da redete Jesus zu dem Volk und zu seinen Jüngern und sprach: Auf dem Stuhl des Mose sitzen die Schriftgelehrten und Pharisäer. Alles nun, was sie euch sagen, das tut und haltet; aber nach ihren Werken sollt ihr nicht handeln; denn sie sagen's zwar, tun's aber nicht. Sie binden schwere und unerträgliche Bürden und legen sie den Menschen auf die Schultern; aber sie selbst wollen keinen Finger dafür krümmen. Alle ihre Werke aber tun sie, damit sie von den Leuten gesehen werden.

 

Sorry for the "minority" which cannot read german, I did not search an translation :) But this sentence fits so well to these B-type so called christians.

 

Yes there are too many of these B-types. What is the english word for Pharisäer?

 

A church ...  also creates a feeling of "them" which is completely unfounded and hurts people.

Which is very common and the worst thing a church can do. (IMO)

[blackshoe]

I suspect that "Pharisäer" = "Pharisee", but I could be wrong.

 

It is human nature that where there is an "us" there will be a "them". If it doesn't start out that way, we create the necessary "them". This can lead to such fun things as religious wars and police treating all non-police as (probably, at least) criminals. The solution to this dilemma, afaics, requires a fundamental change in human nature. I'm not holding my breath.

[hotShot]

Do you really think that religion answers all question that science doesn't answer?

Please note that I said: Religion is used to explain ....

Which is different from : Religion has all answers ......

[gwnn]

Christianity is NOT a scientific theory to explain cold fusion and the formation of electromagnetic waves.... It's general guidelines as to how to talk to God and how to relate to Him, after accepting His existence a priori. Many non-Christians and (what's infinitely more serious!!!!), many Christians don't understand this distinction.

[mikeh]

Science and Religion are siblings, everything that science can't explain, is explained using religion. Since science can never explain everything and answer all questions, there will always be a need for religion.

It surely is not currently possible to state, with assurance, that 'science can never explain everything'

 

'Science' as we currently use the term, seems to be a recent innovation, notwithstanding your point that some actual knowledge was learned many centuries ago. Empirically derived knowledge, no matter how useful, is not 'science' unless and until there is a theoretical explanation, testable by experiment. I have read extensively in the history of science and know of no basis for stating that the 'ancients' (ie before the Greeks of Pythagoras et al) had what we would now recognize as 'scientific' theories

 

So science, in terms of longevity, is a relatively recent intellectual development. Given the age of our species, it is largely irrelevant to quibble if science has been around for 350 years or 3500 years. In any event, it is probably fair to say that the great bulk of our current understanding of the physical universe has been developed in the last 150 years.

 

Looked at in that light, we have come a long way in a short time, and the pace at which we accumulate knowledge is accelerating.

 

So my thoughts are that it is true that use of science (and science is a way of thinking, not a thought or a state of knowledge) cannot currently explain everything, but that the field of human curiosity not yet explained by science is continually shrinking.

 

It may be, as I have speculated before, that our brains, having evolved in such a manner as to afford our ancestral species competitive advantages re survival, lack the capacity to even formulate concepts that may 'explain' the universe.

 

However, our brains (and our bodies) lack the ability to perceive many aspects of the universe that have become accessible to our thinking by virtue of technology, and physicists continue to enlarge the scope of hypotheses by way of mathematics and thought experiments. So maybe there will come a day when our species does develope a 'true' understanding of the universe.

 

In the meantime, as human knowledge expands, the perceived need to address our innate insecurities by resort to superstition should be diminishing..... and indeed it would seem that the percentage of the population willing to be known as atheists is increasing. I doubt that Dawkins or Hitchens would have made the best seller lists 100 years ago.

 

But it seems (to me, anyway) clear that religion retains its grip on many for a variety of reasons... and I concede both that I may be wrong (certainly, I expect my list to be incomplete) in many cases... but here are some:

 

1) Early indoctrination. Many people, once indoctrinated at a young age, are going to be stuck with their beliefs. Not all, else we'd never have new religions nor any atheists.

 

2) I heard a prominent psychologist (whose name escapes me now) state that, in the US population (which was his topic, I am not saying he meant that this was unique to the US population), there are many who need a paternal authority structure in their lives. They need to be told what to do, and what to think. These people may not even be aware of this. Religion obviously has great appeal to those with this kind of personality. He was speaking, in fact, of the success of the Bush campaign based on the War against Terror, in the last election. But it struck me, listening to him, that this paternalistic authority need fits well with organized religion.

 

3) fear of death: in particular, a fear that if atheists are right, death is the end... 'we' cease to exist, and this is abhorrent to almost everyone. I find it abhorrent as well, at least on one level, and so recognize the power of any mode of thinking that allows us to deny it

 

4) fear of insignificance: this is both in terms of our 'role' as a species and our importance as individuals. I think it was Freud who observed that major shifts in understanding of the universe were usually resisted because they tend to diminish our view of the significance of humans.

 

5) desire for 'purpose'.. associated with the other factors, we tend to think it terms of 'reasons for being': we all know people who comfort themselves by saying 'everything happens for a reason'...

 

Religion answers all of these needs and only asks that we refuse to think critically. Now, I know that many religious people will argue that this is insulting, and will point to the admittedly sophisticated arguments that theologians use. I don't pretend to be a theologian, but my limited understanding of such arguments is that they require, as a given, that we assume that some concepts are ultimately beyond rational analysis: which always strikes me as circular reasoning of the worst type.

 

There seems to be abundant evidence that many phenomena once felt to be mystical are susceptible to rational investigation, so that the contrary premise (that all facets of the universe will eventually be explicable) seems equally valid.

 

That's my rant for today :P

[hotShot]

Christianity is NOT a scientific theory to explain cold fusion and the formation of electromagnetic waves.... It's general guidelines as to how to talk to God and how to relate to Him, after accepting His existence a priori. Many non-Christians and (what's infinitely more serious!!!!), many Christians don't understand this distinction.

The ancient Greek had a god Helios, who drove a chariot across the sky each day.

 

This is a typical example of religion filling in for the lack of scientific knowledge.

[mycroft]

lack of scientific knowledge != lack of knowledge.

 

science != right

lack of science != wrong.

 

Without science, the native Americans had a lot of knowledge. A large fraction of it was much more accurate than the knowledge of the "scientific European" of the day - and another large fraction was much more conducive to *survival* than that of the white man.

 

However, the scientific method is a useful tool, like language and sport techniques. As these are the tools we wish to give our children, we teach the scientific method. Unfortunately, the "religion of science" (in my opinion, what exists when a person rejects at least one of the three non-equations above) also seems to be being taught. That is unfortunate.

 

To Barmar specifically - I did consult therapists, several of them, as well as two ministers and that which happened that I believe was supernatural. Eventually - after 5 or 6 medical practitioners who couldn't believe that what they were doing wasn't actually helping - some very serious, intensive, and invasive work was done with me, the upshot of which was "your particular version of this condition is one that doesn't respond well to the normal treatment. Try this instead" - and I'm Much Better Now, Thanks. But had I relied solely on Science, I would have not lived long enough to find that out.

 

Sorry about that, eh?

 

Strangely enough, I know more people who were abused by therapists than were abused by priests (multiple years in therapy will do that to a person). Religion can be destructive, to self as well as others. I am the first to admit that. Unquestioning belief - of *anything* - can be destructive, to self as well as others; and a lot of the lure of religion to the power-hungry is that when it asks for unquestioning belief, it is very hard not to comply. A lot of the lure of patriotism (and medicine, to be frank) to the power-hungry is the same.

 

Michael.

[mycroft]

I guess I should qualify my previous post's starting statements with Damon Runyon's famous line:

 

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

 

The reason that the scientific method is useful is that it rejects the false; tests the potentially true; and continually searches to fill the holes in what it can't explain. So it's more likely to be right than most things. But then again, from the School of Hard Knocks, Old Wives' Tales are likelier to be right than one might think, because what was tried and failed didn't get passed down to the next generation of Old Wives.

 

Michael

[gwnn]

Christianity is NOT a scientific theory to explain cold fusion and the formation of electromagnetic waves.... It's general guidelines as to how to talk to God and how to relate to Him, after accepting His existence a priori. Many non-Christians and (what's infinitely more serious!!!!), many Christians don't understand this distinction.

The ancient Greek had a god Helios, who drove a chariot across the sky each day.

 

This is a typical example of religion filling in for the lack of scientific knowledge.

so? many people try to prove unprovable or close to unprovable maths theorems with high school maths without being religiously fanatical, it's just human nature, try to assume the role of "the All Explainer", whereas Christianity postulates the exact opposite --- we cannot explain everything, we're too small, the world is too big, et cetera.

[blackshoe]

I am large, I contain multitudes

:unsure:

[Codo]

But it seems (to me, anyway) clear that religion retains its grip on many for a variety of reasons... and I concede both that I may be wrong (certainly, I expect my list to be incomplete) in many cases... but here are some:

 

1) Early indoctrination. Many people, once indoctrinated at a young age, are going to be stuck with their beliefs. Not all, else we'd never have new religions nor any atheists.

 

2) I heard a prominent psychologist (whose name escapes me now) state that, in the US population (which was his topic, I am not saying he meant that this was unique to the US population), there are many who need a paternal authority structure in their lives. They need to be told what to do, and what to think. These people may not even be aware of this. Religion obviously has great appeal to those with this kind of personality. He was speaking, in fact, of the success of the Bush campaign based on the War against Terror, in the last election. But it struck me, listening to him, that this paternalistic authority need fits well with organized religion.

 

3) fear of death: in particular, a fear that if atheists are right, death is the end... 'we' cease to exist, and this is abhorrent to almost everyone. I find it abhorrent as well, at least on one level, and so recognize the power of any mode of thinking that allows us to deny it

 

4) fear of insignificance: this is both in terms of our 'role' as a species and our importance as individuals. I think it was Freud who observed that major shifts in understanding of the universe were usually resisted because they tend to diminish our view of the significance of humans.

 

5) desire for 'purpose'.. associated with the other factors, we tend to think it terms of 'reasons for being': we all know people who comfort themselves by saying 'everything happens for a reason'...

 

Religion answers all of these needs and only asks that we refuse to think critically.

Mike,

 

besides that you are an atheist and so must be obviously wrong, I really enjoy all your statements. :unsure:

 

I had taken other timetables for the development of science, but I agree with the overall picture. If I remember it correct, the wisdom of the world needed five hundred years to double till 1850. Just 100 years more for the next doubling till 1950, 20 years thill 1970 and it may double in any single year in 2050. This is an unbelievable accelaration.

 

And I absolutely agree with your 5 reasons to believe. Maybe there are some more. We talked about:

6. When we are wrong, we just wasted some month of our life, but when you are wrong, you may be grilled in hell for an eternity.

And there is:

7: In case of trouble it is very nice to believe that your life won´t end here and that you will be in heaven after your death. This works if you have just a few more month to life, because of a disease, illness or age. Or if your state is in war or occupied by another state. Or when you are part of a depressed minority.This aspect of comfort is measurable. If a state has bad times, the churches are full of people. If everything is nice and easy, less people believe.

 

And I must contradict your sentence that you must refuse to think critical. Of course all big societies tend to search for non-critical members. They are simply much easier to lead. This is true for states, parties, big companies, churches and football clubs.

However, there are at least some churches who wish critical and mind open members. (F.E. the lutherian christs here in my country.) I agree that this is the minority, but it is possible.

[barmar]

Christianity is NOT a scientific theory to explain cold fusion and the formation of electromagnetic waves.... It's general guidelines as to how to talk to God and how to relate to Him, after accepting His existence a priori. Many non-Christians and (what's infinitely more serious!!!!), many Christians don't understand this distinction.

The problem is that religion IS often used in debates about homosexuality, abortion, stem cell research, cloning, etc. This is usually justified as these being moral issues, not just science, but religion has even interfered with basic sciences like astronomy, as when the church force Galileo to recant on the Copernican view of the solar system.

 

When religious groups bring their private beliefs out into the public sector like this, it's no longer "how to talk to God and how to relate to Him." They're imposing their beliefs on others. So even in the case of moral issues, religion really has no place. Morals are cultural imperatives, and culture evolves. Atheists understand right and wrong just as well as religious people, we're not barbarians, heathens, or anarchists. In fact, there have been many attrocities perpetrated in the name of religion, but how many violent acts have been committed by atheist groups (good luck trying to recruit suicide bombers without promising them a reward in the afterlife).

 

BTW, to the person whose said that I'm no longer Jewish, I guess that's right. As is apparent from my comments here, I'm an atheist. But I still consider myself Jewish -- not in the religious sense, but in the cultural sense. I was raised Jewish, and feel a connection with the community. I still participate in some of the rituals -- I fast on Yom Kippur, eat matzoh during Passover, etc. However, I've overcome some of the indoctrination that was imparted in Hebrew School: I don't believe that the Torah is an accurate history text, and I no longer think that everything Israel has a god-given mandate that justifies everything they've done in their conflicts with Arabs and Palestine (however, I think that after 60 years of occupation of Israel, and 40 years in the territories won the Six Day War, they have "squatters rights" and are the presumed rightful occupants of these regions).

[helene_t]

Lack of scientific knowledge != lack of knowledge

I don't think anyone would dispute that. But scientific knowledge is relevant to certain problems. The construction of phylogenitic trees, for example.

 

Unfortunately, the "religion of science" (in my opinion, what exists when a person rejects at least one of the three non-equations above) also seems to be being taught.  That is unfortunate.

I must have missed that. OK, there are some low-end popular science media who preach that science will solve all our problems. But the "religion of science" is an oximoron.

 

One can imitate scientific jargon to promote religion in an environment in which association with "science" gives status (Marxism, Scientology and ID are examples of that).

[Codo]

The problem is that religion IS often used in debates about homosexuality, abortion, stem cell research, cloning, etc. This is usually justified as these being moral issues, not just science, but religion has even interfered with basic sciences like astronomy, as when the church force Galileo to recant on the Copernican view of the solar system.

Religion is often abused in these debates.

And sometimes it is used. F.E. You need ethics to decide at which point life starts.

What is the latest month/day for an abortion? Are stem cells already life?

This is about moral and ethics, not about science.

Now, the majority in the US and in Western Europe have a christian background, so it is quite obviuosly right to base these descissions mainly on christian ethics.

 

In a country with atheist background, you should use atheists ethics. This is nothing special.

 

When religious groups bring their private beliefs out into the public sector like this, it's no longer "how to talk to God and how to relate to Him."  They're imposing their beliefs on others.  So even in the case of moral issues, religion really has no place.  Morals are cultural imperatives, and culture evolves.  Atheists understand right and wrong just as well as religious people, we're not barbarians, heathens, or anarchists.  In fact, there have been many attrocities perpetrated in the name of religion, but how many violent acts have been committed by atheist groups (good luck trying to recruit suicide bombers without promising them a reward in the afterlife).

 

Ok, so religions try to educate others about their moral believes. They are allowed to do so. Some believers are too aggressive or too narrowminded, so that we don´t want to be educated from them. But this does not take away the right to convince others from our own believes.

In this threat there had just been one person who blamed another for not sharing his beliefs. And that was you, not one of the believers. So please don´t tell me about the good and ethic atheists compared to the ugly religion believers. There are good and bad atheists and good and bad believers. What´s new?

 

The worst and most bloody tyranns in the newer history had been Hitler and Stalin. There is a dispute about how much believe there had been in Hitler, but I am convinced that he had no catholic background even if he was member of the church till 45. But Stalin was an Atheist, so cruelty is not part of religion, it is part of mankind.

[barmar]

And sometimes it is used. F.E. You need ethics to decide at which point life starts.

What is the latest month/day for an abortion? Are stem cells already life?

This is about moral and ethics, not about science.

Yes, you need ethics; why do you think that means you need religion?

 

I don't see how anything in the Bible can answer the biological question of when life begins. The authors of the Bible didn't even understand HOW life begins -- they thought that God gives a magical "breath of life". Stem cells weren't even a concept until a few decades ago, how can you look to religious answers about this? Religious leaders are just making up answers by extrapolating from a text that was totally unprepared for modern scientific capabilities. Scientists, on the other hand, can tell you whether a stem cell could possibly grow into a viable fetus (it's my understanding that they're virtually always harvested from fetuses that were already aborted or extra cell cultures from in vitro fertilization, which all would have been tossed out as "trash" -- they only became a cause for debate when we realized they could be used rather than being thrown away).

 

Using religion in questions like these is like a nutritionist basing his recommendations on the Kosher dietary principles. It's remotely possible that these guidelines had a health benefit when they were originally devised, but they're obsolete now. Sensible people will go by the food pyramid (or whatever has since replaced it), not instructions written before we knew anything about vitamins.

 

As someone pointed out, our ignorant ancestors WERE quite successful in their time. They developed agriculture and animal breeding. We're a clever species, very good at discovering things by trial and error, and we have language that allows us to pass on what we've learned and build on it. But for the most part they didn't understand what they were doing, they just repeated what workrf. They made up explanations based on their common sense notions, and these were almost all totally wrong. E.g. they couldn't feel the earth moving, but they could see the sun, moon, and stars changing places, so they assumed the earth was still and everything revolved around it. Some things may have just been wishful thinking: praying for rain allows you to think you can do something about the arbitrary behavior of weather (i.e. it was their answer to "everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it").

[jdonn]

Now, the majority in the US and in Western Europe have a christian background, so it is quite obviuosly right to base these descissions mainly on christian ethics.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[helene_t]

Now, the majority in the US and in Western Europe have a christian background, so it is quite obviuosly right to base these descissions mainly on christian ethics.

Who has the mandate to interpret Christian ethics? GW? Jesse Jackson? The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement?

 

If, say, a politician calls himself a "Christian" I suppose it sounds good in the ears of many who consider themselves Christians because they associate the word "Christian" with their own way of being Christian. This makes it a dangerous way of presenting an (ethical or otherwise) viewpoint. Better just to state in concrete terms which political measures one is for and against. Pro-abortionist and anti-abortionist should suffice. No reason to link either of them to religion.

[Codo]

Now, the majority in the US and in Western Europe have a christian background, so it is quite obviuosly right to base these descissions mainly on christian ethics.

Who has the mandate to interpret Christian ethics? GW? Jesse Jackson? The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement?

 

If, say, a politician calls himself a "Christian" I suppose it sounds good in the ears of many who consider themselves Christians because they associate the word "Christian" with their own way of being Christian. This makes it a dangerous way of presenting an (ethical or otherwise) viewpoint. Better just to state in concrete terms which political measures one is for and against. Pro-abortionist and anti-abortionist should suffice. No reason to link either of them to religion.

Some use the label "Christian" (or muslim or..) as a label without being it. AS far as I can judge (and my knowledge is very limited) I think that President Bush is a kind of Pharisee. He tells us how to act and he tells us how christian he is. But I cannot see this in his doing.

F.E. One of the mainlines of christian ethics is: If your enemy hit you on your left side, let him hit your right side too. Another is: Don´t do unto others what you don´t want them to do to you.

With all respect, I don´t see him more as a christ then Barmar as a jew: They both took from their believes what fits them best and forget about the rest.

The difference is that Barmar does not claim to be a jew anymore and realiszed where he agrees with his former religion and where he does not. GWB is missing this realization and still labels himself as a christ..

 

For the interpretation of ethics: We all are able to interpret the ethics. And we all should do. There is noone to tell me what is right or wrong (I am not catholic...).

And most of us BBFlers are influenced by christian ethic anyway. We grew up in the christian world, so even if we are atheists, muslims, whatever, it had been very hard to escape the influence.