On Christian Civilization & Morals

Christians will sometimes point to other cultures' repugnant practices as a means of highlighting the supposed superiority of "Christian" society and values. To those people, I ask them to consider Christian society in the fifteenth century, which was very devoutly Christian and certainly had more church involvement in human affairs:

-- St. Joan of Arc burned at the stake
-- St. Thomas Moore burned at the stake (refusal to recognize the religious authority of the kind over that of the pope.)
-- Jan Hus and some of his followers burned at the stake for heresy, and several other followers were beheaded for questioning indulgences.
-- Heinrich Kramer and Johann Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), a guide used by the Inquisition for the diagnosis, behavior, trial, and punishment of witches.
-- Jews expelled from: Styria - Austria as well as the rest of Austria, Berne, Speyer - Germany, Eger - Bohemia, Spain (3 or 4 separate occasions.)
-- Jews required to attend conversion classes in Sicily (first third of the century)
-- In 1452 Pope Nicholas V, in his Dum Diversas, instituted the hereditary enslavement of "nonbelievers".
-- In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon, and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility;[15]


Life for women was substantially different too:

married women did not have a legal existence apart from their husbands. They were considered inferior property of their husbands.

If that society was Christian, then many, if not all, of the practices reviled by many in modern times in other cultures are Christian as well. If we consider modern society to be Christian as well, then Christians need to describe what scriptures have changed, or how our interpretation of them have changed between then and now.

My impression is that no such change of values occurred in Christianity. Civilization in Europe (and the colonies) evolved regardless of it's Christian heritage to the more modern state. Peoples attitudes changed and dragged the churches along with them, rather than the church providing any particular guidance. The values of modern society are not actually Christian at all, but indicative of progress on an absolute scale.

Since medieval European society was as Christian, or more so, than today's, Christianity has little to no moral value or lessons for us.

mostly from:
-- http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_medieval6.htm
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus#Indulgences
-- http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castlezb.htm
-- http://books.google.ca/books?id=pN-GTGzOngAC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=medieval+women+property&source=web&ots=bjQUs_8xOM&sig=6ydeePVQJdkrAHmH8ylUBdqj-84&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA4,M1

On Pascal's Wager...

Pascal's Wager is the following:

« Vous avez deux choses à perdre : le vrai et le bien, et deux choses à engager : votre raison et votre volonté, votre connaissance et votre béatitude; et votre nature a deux choses à fuir : l'erreur et la misère. Votre raison n'est pas plus blessée, en choisissant l'un que l'autre, puisqu'il faut nécessairement choisir. Voilà un point vidé. Mais votre béatitude ? Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant choix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas : si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu'il est, sans hésiter. »,

- Pensées, Blaise Pascal (1670)

The basic argument here is that

1- believing is harmless, and that if you believe and it doesn't turn out to be true, then you have lost nothing.
2- You have a pure dichotomy, only two choices, which sets the probability.

Let's take the first point. Religions do not only prescribe beliefs, but also actions. Accepting simply the existence of a God is unlikely to guarantee, in and of itself, entry into heaven. Action and belief need to work together to be sincere. So if one is to take Pascal's wager, then one must act on the belief in order to demonstrate that one's beliefs are sincere. Consider the person who actively learns of Pascal's wager, decides to lead a life of sin, with the calculation that one can always repent at the last minute in order to make good on Pascal's wager. Some may say that such a person is insincere in his repentance, since it was calculated from a young age, and at no time during his life did the person consider himself bound to act in a religiously correct way. Some may say that a pre-meditated deathbed acceptance is sufficient to satisfy the lord.

What is clear is that this person is making the minimum investment possible to earn God's grace. With this level of effort, it is clear that Pascal's wager is a good deal. One has literally lost very little effort. However, many would say true sincerity and salvation requires that one accept to do their best to live virtuously immediately from the moment of accepting the wager. In that case, what effort is required? well at minimum, say 3 hours of preparation etc... around a weekly mass, 1 hour a week of prayer. Over 60 years, that is 520 days of prayer. Consider that for every two hours one is awake, one will need an hour of sleep, and the cost rises to 780 days, or around two years. In addition, some percentage of income is also typically required. Say 10% as per the Catholic tithe. Over a thirty year career, that is three years' wages.

The second aspect of this wager is that one has only two choices. Belief or un-belief. But in order to sincerely express ones belief one has to adopt a method of practice, a religion. Each religion prescribes the behaviors required to join the lord at the end of mortal life, and the behaviors and required beliefs differ. Many, perhaps most of these religions state that theirs is the one and only way to achieve grace, and that all others are damned.

So one must not make a choice of two options, but choose the correct religion among the ones on offer. According to Religioustolerance.org there are roughly 34,000 choices within Christianity. So the chance of choosing the correct way to God is not 50%, but less than 1 in 34,000, without considering the possibility that the correct path might be some form of hinduism, buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, or any of the thousands of other paths available. let's generously assume that there are 50,000 paths in total.

So Pascal's wager is realistically stated as: Are you willing to bet two years of your life and three years salary against the 1:50,000 chance of getting into heaven?

When all else fails, try sarcasm...

It's good that someone religious has read Dawkin's God Delusion. One would hope for some debate of facts and attitudes, but instead there is only sarcasm.
Specifically, I'm skeptical that such a poorly researched, self-contradictory book could really be the product of such a brilliant, rational mind as Richard Dawkins.
So you expect some examples of poor research, or self contradiction in the essay, you will be disappointed. The writer sets up "sources" of inspiration for Dawkins:

The first source is opposed to what he or she calls the "God Hypothesis." For this reason, I will label this source "H". This hypothesis is stated by H to be:

There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. (p. 31)

The second source is opposed to the very idea of a deity:

I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented. (p. 36)

I will label this source "A" because he or she is opposed to *ALL* gods.

Unfortunately, the two are not in conflict at all. The negation of the hypothesis of a particular concept of deity is just one small part of getting rid of all deities. The supposed opposition of these two hypotheses is the basis of the rest of the essay. Negating "H" is supposedly conciliatory, while "A" is somehow more aggressive. I fail to grasp why 'your god does not exist' is more conciliatory than 'no gods exist'. oh, well...

Next paragraph carries on with the supposedly contrasting sources A and H, and represents A as "factually challenged". Interesting assertion, but no challenged facts are brought up. oh... he thinks Dawkin's got Mendel's religious sincerity wrong, implying he was a cloistered, mute monk whose devotion to God alone only increased at his elevation to abbott. Hmm...
He was actually a physics teacher, with a gardening hobby, and when appointed Abbot, was hoping to spend more time gardening, and less time teaching. The Catholic encyclopedia says:
Mendel, already much engrossed with his biological experiments hoped that he might have more time for his researches than was possible in the midst of his labours at the Realschule. But this was not to be. The jurisdiction and privileges of the abbey are somewhat extensive, and its abbot must, in ordinary times, find himself with plenty of occupation. Mendel, however, in addition to the multiplicity of his duties as abbot, became involved in a lengthy controversy with the Government which absorbed his attention and embittered the last years of his life.
So his time being taken up with administrivia was not a choice, but an obligation, and was not at all what he hoped for. Dawkin's was not far off at all. The next "error" is supposedly the addition of ''nowhere to hide" to a sentence referring to Bonhoeffer. Firstly, the sentence does not purport to quote the source, but merely to reflect the spirit of his thinking. Here is a substantial reference:

A phrase that is often deployed in his letters on the world come of age is a Latin quotation from the Dutch jurist Grotius, ‘etsi deus non daretur‘ which can be translated as, ‘even if there were no God.’ Allow me to quote at length from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated July 16th 1944.

“God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics or science has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion (Feuerbach!). For the sake of intellectual honesty, that working hypothesis should be dropped, or as far as possible, eliminated. A scientist or physician who sets out to edify is a hybrid.”

“…we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur. And this is just what we do recognize - before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34) ['My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?'] The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand constantly.

Again, there really is not any basis for complaint. Dawkin's has not mis-represented Bonhoeffer's views at all. There are no other "mis-represented" or "challenged" facts to speak of. There is just a distinct feeling on the author's part that one should respect his feelings. Does he respect Raëlians, Moonies, Scientologists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Wiccans, etc... ? Where does respect stop, and ridiculous begin? With Brights, it is clear: if you invoke the supernatural, you are being ridiculous, unless you have some pretty hefty proof. Respect the people always, but the beliefs? no.

Dawkin's Quijote-esque desire is to save all the world´s people from the waste of time, money, love, and blood that is religion. That the people do not understand they are infected is understandable, but his vitriol is for the destructive beliefs, and his compassion is for the people saddled with them. I wish him good luck, but this review shows how long a slog it will be.