Replies

Sorry for the long delay in replying; but I've been free from the bondages of work, only since yesterday:

You had said:

"Insofar as reading the Holy Bible beneficially is concerned, tell we what metaphoric message would you read into the injunction to not steal? Or, what metaphoric lesson might we take away from the injunction against covetousness?"

I replied:

You then replied:

"Probably for your purposes, certainly."

No, you didn't answer my question there.

“I asked a very simple question. The entity in Genesis 3:14 that tempted Eve to take the fruit, was it a metaphorical serpent or the real animal?

And now you wish to dictate the very simple answer so that you may get on with your point: Either that the Judeo-Christian God is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, and capriciously malevolent bully as prophesized in the First Book of Dawkins, or that nothing in the Bible is really real so we can all heave a sigh of relief and relax?

In asking you what metaphoric lesson might be taken away from the injunction against covetousness, or the commandment to not steal, I was telling you that nothing in The Bible can be taken entirely metaphorically or, in all likelihood, entirely literally. I understand that my reply will not please you, but I’m not here to please you.

So, when you read much of the Old Testament, and some of the new, through the lenses of what your own opinion thinks is what they should mean, what are those passages wherein your deity is ordering in plain language, the slaughtering of infants and children, conveying to you? Aren't you forced to ignore them, precisely because of the problem of ethical and moral incompatibility that they present vis-a-vis the Golden Rule (do not do unto others what you do not want done unto you)? You don't have to please me, but ignoring the fact that violence is mandated in your scriptures, and then attempting to contort them to become metaphors that mean the opposite of what they really say, is not going to wash in any rational analysis of the sections.

“Do you see everything else as metaphors, as well?”

No. If you had paid heed to my reference to post # 1481(in post #1482), also copied to you, you would know that I do not (“I do accept scripture literally (as in “Thou shalt not steal”). I also accept scripture metaphorically, allegorically, historically, doctrinally and literarily”).

This is possible to an extent. When words can't be minced any further, such as when your god orders its protagonists to slaughter infants in 1 Samuel 15:3, it fails so thoroughly, it only serves to leave the believer in such theology forced to accept that the deity in question isn't a moral one, or to ignore them completely like an uncomfortable, unchangeable aspect of the deity - a particularly Islamic-like quality, I must declare.

“The slaying of the Amalekite infants by divine order in 1 Samuel 15:3”

And, we’re back to the misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, and capriciously malevolent bullying motif.

It's not a motif when the words plainly declare themselves the orders of your deity. What other metaphorical lesson can be taken from "Go and kill the infants and children!" - 1 Samuel 15:3?

This text (1 Samuel 15:3) is a subject that has occupied Hebrew scholars and ethicists from time immemorial. Some point out that the Hebrew people reacted when they were subjected to an unprovoked surprise attack, extermination being the intent. Others note that since Amalek does not exist today, the commandment cannot be carried out. Most seem to agree that lessons from that time may have application today where over 7.5 million Israelis, including over 1.5 million Arab Israelis are surrounded by 200 million hostile Arabs bent on Israel’s extermination.

Nonsensical answer. Since when did it suddenly become moral to slaughter the innocent, targetted specifically and deliberately, and not as a casualty of war? Furthermore, even in the New Testament, the moral invalidity of a deity ordering the slaughter of innocents is never discussed. Why? For a "time immemorial" ethical dilemma, Jesus surely would have had to make some clarifications now, wouldn't he?

If you wish an in-depth discussion on 1 Samuel 15:3, take it up with the Hebrew scholars who have pursued this subject for millennia.

The scriptures are yours, as well. You cannot simply shy away from the responsibility of explaining them, both to yourselves and others who've pointed out the moral voids in what you accept as your beliefs. For someone observing this peculiarly selective loss of interest in discussing the elements of, it only appears as a way of trying to "solve" a problem by ignoring it.

As a simple man, I am involved in more humble matters such as working out what is one to do next if one turns the other check and is struck again by his enemy, or how is one to love his neighbor when the so-and-so throws garbage over the back fence. Or, on a larger stage, as a humble voting citizen of a great republic, what to do about a people who declare their intent to murder Americans wholesale and who demonstrate they mean to do it.

The Golden Rule, older than all religions and all scriptures, is enough arrive at the same understanding. Lacking a humble interest in searching for the truth, and moreover, selectively ignoring the uncomfortable aspects of the assumed truth, is certainly no innocent humility. It can also be malevolent, laced with the intent to conceal uncertainties.

But, with respect to investing in man’s humane treatment of his fellow man, we must observe that it is the Judeo-Christian West that has labored for a thousand years to regulate the issues of the meaning of lawful war, the origins of war, the avarice and cruelty of war, the treatment of prisoners, when the right of conquest and the claiming of the spoils of war are just and when they are not, the rights of discovery and the treatment of native peoples, the securing of peace as the prime objective of war, questions of maritime law, redress for injuries, restitution of property and recompense for wrongs done, and the laws of embassy and envoys. Can the same be said of Asian despots? Of Atheistic socialist tyrannies? Not likely, Pilgrim.

Not until the Age of Reason, post-1700s, was there such social movements that ultimately lead to freedom in its truest sense. Not until rationalism and free thinking mauled down the religious orthodoxy of Europe of the time.

Verses upon verses of Hindu texts discuss the aspects of ethical warfare - from such things as stopping warfare post sun-down, to specifically refraining from attacking women and children. Does that make Hindism any truer? Certainly not! When you have your scriptures calling for wholesale genocide and specific targeting of children, where did those post-1700s morality standards disappear? Where did they disappear during the slave trade? During the barbarism inflicted upon the natives - from slaughter to primitive germ warfar - through the usage of infected blankets? Or, as in my case, Australia, where the aboriginals were hunted down because they weren't considered to be human?

What set off this controversy (insofar as it concerns my participation) was my suggestion that it is not “fantastic tales” about talking serpents or talking donkeys that are central to Biblical Instruction, but rather lessons such as to heed the two great commandments, to honor one’s mother and father, to murmur not at the ways of Providence, and all the other familiar biblical injunctions. The scandal has not ceased since.

Although a considerable amount of dust has been subsequently kicked up and many great gaseous discharges emitted, that simple issue has yet to be confronted. Other than the exchange of talking points, little more can be done to have a productive discussion unless common assumptions are established. I’m not buying into the insistence that “fairy tales” are central to Biblical Instruction and must be accepted as a common assumption.

Plain words to that effect, in the scriptures would have been more effective, and more truthful. When a pattern is seen in your scriptures, of the slow, once-in-a-millennia-updated progression of the deity's change in stance from one that is trigger-happy in ordering genocide, to later complying with the Golden Rule, it shows not the divinity of the deity, but rather, the hallmark qualities of the hand of man, in inventing those words, and those religions - each and every one of them.

Apologies for the tardiness of my reply. I’ve been out of action for some two weeks.

“ I replied:”

You replied what?

”No, you didn't answer my question there.”

Your reply was a question? I thought it was rather declarative.
It’s quite true that I didn’t answer your “question” to your satisfaction or expectation. I don’t read from the scripts of others.

“Not until the Age of Reason, post-1700s, was there such social movements that ultimately lead to freedom in its truest sense.”

Really? Despite a paucity of knowledge and instruction, without the benefit of the ideas and research of Hugo Grotius, Johannes Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, Joannes de Legnano, Baron Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, Honoré Bonet, Franciscus de Victoria, and St. Isidore (and many another), the inhabitants of the Age of Enlightenment instinctively possessed the insights to cause such a “movement” to spring, poof!, full blown from a standing start?

So how is it that the Law of Nations was established in 1625 when Hugo Grotius published De jure belli ac pacis? Grotius’ work was a monumental accomplishment of compilation, organization, and integration of the disparate elements of the ethics of how nations should treat with one another. So much so, in fact, that it immediately gained general acceptance as the definitive authority on the subject.

In producing his work Grotius drew on an extensive body of writings whose beginnings dated back approximately to the demise of the Roman Empire. The range of the philosophical and legal inquiries conducted by theologians, canonists, and other scholars, was quite broad as I indicated some time ago (“when war might be lawful, the origins of war, on the avarice and cruelty of war, treatment of prisoners, when the right of conquest and the claiming of the spoils of war are just and when they are not, the rights of discovery and the treatment of native peoples, the securing of peace as the prime objective of war, issues of maritime law, redress for injuries, restitution of property and recompense for wrongs done, and the laws of embassy and envoys”).

Numbered among the writers of these works were many of the most illustrious names from those times:
Johannes Gratian, generally regarded as the true founder of the science of canon law, whose major work appeared between 1139 and 1150.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Born 1225-27 - died 7 March, 1274, whose great work Summa totius theologiae occupied the last nine years of the author's life. Therein he devoted the fortieth question of the Secunda secundae to four great issues of the law of war.
Joannes de Legnano, a jurist of note and a professor at Bologna, where he died in 1383. The author of the treatise De bello this writer had on several occasions been charged with diplomatic missions.
Honoré Bonet. His work l'Arbre des batailles is thought to have been composed about 1384. Therein he devotes 132 chapters to various issues on the Law of Nations. This work was reproduced in exquisite manuscripts and graced the library of many a great prince.
Franciscus de Victoria, died 1546, held the chair of theology at Salamanca for twenty years, restoring a high quality of theological teaching in Spain. A teacher and lecturer, Victoria was not a writer, but, following his death, many of his lecture notes were published by his students, including De Indis Et De Ivre Belli Relectiones, which, as the title suggests, deals with the issue of native peoples and the law of war. Prior to Victoria, there had been a long legacy of Spanish inquiries on the Law of Nations dating as far back as St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 596 to 636, who included in his work Etymologiae, a description of the Roman ideas “jus gentium” and “jus militare” which correspond closely to our modern concepts, respectively, of the Law of Nations and of the Law of War.

While the ecclesiastics, jurists and academics of Western Civilization were working through the ethical and legal issues involving the relations between nations and the moral conduct of war, neither were their temporal rulers idle. Besides attending with some considerable interest the labors of the learned community within their respective societies, these rulers were themselves developing ideas and theories about a society of nations based on the developing philosophies of Natural Law and Natural Rights. Europe was forming itself into an association of republics, principalities, city-states, and kingdoms, taking the first steps in the creation of what was to be a society of nations, and they were beginning to look upon their community of nations as functioning very similarly to how a society of individuals operates.

Influences from Byzantine institutions, from the sultanates along the coast of North Africa and the Moorish kingdoms of Spain, and borrowings from Greek and Roman antiquity, all played their part, according to most historians, but the major impetus seemed to come from within Europe itself. An important event in this process occurred in 962 when Pope John XII crowned Otto I of Germany as the first Emperor of a newly formed Holy Roman Empire. This new empire never attained the level of power or influence that had been exerted by the old Roman Empire, and its vigor steadily diminished over the centuries until it finally expired at the beginning of the Nineteenth. It nonetheless served to help solidify the idea of a Western society of nations.

When some European states turned to commercial interests over other interests (the rise of “Merchant States”), the flourishing of commercial enterprises, benefiting most from a harmonious intercourse between states, influenced European nations towards closer relationships. Moreover, the nations shared a common religion, and Latin, being the language of their church, their legal and academic institutions, their literature, and of their statecraft, provided them with a common language with which to communicate. Their growing close association came to be known as Respublica Christiana, and, at its height, allowing for some considerable variance in degree of independence, its membership came to an estimated number close to two thousand. This circumstance made supremacy difficult to attain. Any nation which attempted to achieve dominance, found an almost instant league of other states arrayed against it, which tended to dampen its enthusiasm for conquest, and which, in turn, tended to cause the states to admit to a certain level of equality amongst their members.

Amazingly enough, through this period of time, right up to the present, it is the Christian nations of Western Civilization that have most scrupulously sought to adhere to the laws of nations and the laws of war.

Though a milestone of considerable proportions, the work of Grotius was but a step in a continuing process. There were important writers to follow:
Samuel Pufendorf. The Law of Nature and of Nations, published in 1674. Further development of Natural Law as it applied to ideas of justice and the Law of Nations.
Cornelius van Bynkershoek, Questions of Public Law, published in 1737. Expanded on the work of Grotius and Pufendorf on questions of the Law of Nations and Constitutional Law.
Emmerich de Vattel. The Law of Nations, published 1758. A favorite of Jefferson’s. Basing constitutional and civil law on the Law of Nations, Vattel’s effort became perhaps the most often quoted work on state matters with regard to the Law of Nations.

By the time the United States declared their independence from the United Kingdom, the epoch treatise of Grotius had been known and referenced for 150 years, and his work, along with the subsequent works of several other authorities, had provided the states of Western Civilization with what amounted to a series of organized protocols to which they could refer in the conduct of their foreign affairs.

Whenever we undertake to study historical events or the acts of historical figures, we are "privileged" (as the historian Bernard Bailyn describes it) to know of subsequent events and outcomes, of which those earlier figures had no more than a glimmer, if even so little as that. If we study and judge events and human actions out of the context of their particular historical time and not on their terms, then it must lead either to error, or the examination, from the beginning, was intended to lead to a self-serving preordained conclusion. That is what you are doing when you attempt to divorce the Age of Reason from the civilization out of which it arose.

From its inception, Western Civilization seems to have been blessed with an instrument of self-correction, residing in the idea of the Perfectability of Man, its roots being deeply sunk in our culture’s Judeo-Christian tradition going back some five thousand years. The idea does not necessarily imply that Man can achieve perfection, rather that he is capable of bettering himself and his condition; that, indeed, his very nature impels him to seek an elevation of himself and his condition. It is this idea that allows Western Civilization to correct its faults and liberate its virtues.

And, all of this strangely enough coming from a time before the “post-1700s”.

“The scriptures are yours, as well. You cannot simply shy away from the responsibility of explaining them, both to yourselves and others who've pointed out the moral voids”

I feel no obligation to explain anything. “Burden of proof (be it scientific, philosophic, or otherwise) does not come into play until common assumptions are established.” You’ve not come for an explanation, in any event. You’ve come to pick a fight.

Let’s review:
I proposed that it is something other than “fantastic tales” of talking donkeys and snakes (serpents) that is central to Biblical Instruction. This in response to another poster’s obsession with the topic. After some discussion, there seemed to be a general disagreement over the proposition. Then came you with the formulaic theme of a some three hundred years plus old list of scripture scoffer grievances, a multi-page indictment to which there can be only one verdict: GUILTY. All this making it clear that the dispute centers about something other than the issue of whether or not talking donkeys, talking serpents, and other “fantastic tales” are central to Biblical Instruction.

“Plain words to that effect, in the scriptures would have been more effective, and more truthful.”

So you assert. The assertion does not prove the fact. What you assert is your interpretation, contrary to five thousand years’ cultural tradition and understanding. Discussion of the issue between us is not possible. No common assumptions have been established, nor are they likely ever to be. I try to read scripture with understanding. You seem to read scripture with malice.

“When a pattern is seen in your scriptures, of the slow, once-in-a-millennia-updated progression of the deity's change in stance from one that is trigger-happy in ordering genocide, to later complying with the Golden Rule, it shows not the divinity of the deity, but rather, the hallmark qualities of the hand of man, in inventing those words, and those religions - each and every one of them.”

Really?! A once-in-a-millennia update, huh. Using your example of the Golden Rule, from which millennial “update” comes Leviticus 19:18 (“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:”)?

Using your millennium standard, can you identify the scriptural revelations that have been sprung on us unannounced sometime approx around One Thousand CE?

There are patterns that are “seen.” Then, there are patterns that actually exist.