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February 9, 2012 at 10:03 am 
Al Stefanelli “Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see that there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.” - Sam Harris
Any religion that requires the acceptance of its ideas on faith alone is admitting that its doctrines cannot stand on their own merits, nor withstand any critical examination. This goes for Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They require that adherents accept their authority as truth, and the Christian religion is a perfect illustration of this point. The belief in a god is irrational, and once this leap of faith is made it only takes short steps to abandon the standards of rationality and lose the ability to distinguish truth from falsehoods. When one examines the doctrines of the religion, it is not the bastion of wonderful moral standards it purports to be. As I am more familiar with Christianity, today we will be discussing…
The Immorality Of Christianity…
Christian religious morals are contrary to the well-being of individuals and also to society. The belief that there was a divine man who died for the sins of the world is an immoral notion. It’s human sacrifice. If this were even suggested in any other aspect of our existence, such as someone offering to take the place of a criminal sentenced to capital punishment, there would be cries from every corner of society. By what possible stretch of the imagination does such an obvious immoral idea suddenly become moral? The answer is simple. When it is put into the context of religion. In this case, when it is the murder of the Jesus character. Beyond that, it is still a substitution for the “crime” of another person or persons.
The only logical purpose for the crucifiction (pun intended), burial and resurrection of the Christ figure is to instill guilt. When you examine the base doctrines of evangelism, it is very apparent that fear and guilt are the basic emotions that are used by many fundamentalist Christians to convert their targets. Fear is a powerful ally of the church, but it takes more than fear to hold the converted to their allegiance to the flock. Those who eventually walk away from their faith were probably converted through fear alone, because once the fear is gone, they are more apt to rebel, or “backslide,” as it is called in Christian jargon. However, those who become life long adherents were more than likely converted or maintained through both fear and guilt, because a person with deep feelings of guilt is not likely to rebel. The alleged sacrifice of Christ has served the church very well over the millennia.
Unreasonable…
The basic problem with Christian religious morality is that it is nothing more than a primitive system of reward and punishment. Be good, don’t ask questions, stay in line and you will be rewarded. Be skeptical, ask questions and use your mind in a reasonable and rational manner and you are consigned to eternal punishment in the most horrible place, forever. Although some of the more progressive churches have modified this and a few have even eliminated it, this system has remained fundamental to Christian religiosity throughout the history of the church. The whole idea of heaven and hell is a perfect illustration of just how the core of Christian doctrine is antithetical to reason, rationality and even life. It elevates ignorance and non-productivity and suppresses creative and innovative thought. One competent scientist is worth more than a thousand evangelists.
Christianity teaches its followers to be meek, mild and accept their lot in life. This might seem like humility at its best, but consider the fate of a country that adopts this attitude and how easy it would be for any despot to seize and keep power. It would virtually assure the perpetration of evil and this doctrine would be seen as carte blanche for every injustice imaginable. Hitler and many other dictators over the centuries all looked to the bible for justification of their actions. And they have found it there.
Mental Gymnastics…
There are many other problems with the alleged “divine ethics” of the Christian religion. Slavery, which was widespread in biblical times and continues to be in many countries, is not only advocated in the bible, but instructions on how to treat slaves is part of holy scripture. The indoctrinated apologists will jump through hoops to try to explain how a slave is not really a slave, but there is enough written in our history books, even ancient history books, that explains exactly what a slave is. Also, as a general rule, women are treated as second class citizens because Christian doctrine is a male-dominated social hierarchy. The Apostle Paul even tells women to never speak in church, along with a plethora of other misogynist requirements.
Christian doctrine not only brings on feelings of guilt, but its promotion of death over life is morbid. The cross is a symbol of suffering, torture and death. Yet, it has been universally chosen as the icon of the religion, which illustrates that Christianity is a philosophy of death and has turned real, human values into non-values. Suffering has become noble and death has become eternal life. Pictures and illustrations of blood gushing wounds on the Jesus figure abound almost everywhere. Blood rituals, such as communion, are core practices in almost every church in the world. The bloody image Christ on the cross desensitized the faithful and causes them to believe the only escape from suffering and misery is death. Hope lies in the salvation of Christ. To those who do not believe, they will be eternally punished. I find it hard to contemplate a more evil system.
Judge Not…
The Christian religion purports itself to be non-judgmental, as the notion of “judge not lest ye be judged” is often cited by Christians. Literally, this means that only the Christian god can judge any actions to be immoral. This is one of the most damaging doctrines because it assures that the weak will be perpetually doomed to suffering under the strong. However, much like the ecological issue, the Bible makes up for this by assuring the weak that they will eventually inherit a new earth. It is the pinnacle of ignorance not to judge people like Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, but to just turn the other cheek, believing that in the next life everything will be sorted out.
By design, the Christian religion demands ignorance. Both naiveté and willful ignorance is at the core of a faith that is contrary to the development of knowledge through reason and rationality. It clearly teaches people not to trust in reason, and to only accept – without question – the dogmas of the church. Faith is elevated above reason and there have been countless lives wasted in convents and monasteries. These lives are spent in poverty, reading the bible and praying. However, this subservience to Christ only amounts to a staggeringly immense loss of much human potential.
The fact that billions of people are convinced that all the answers they need lie in the bible results in little or no incentive to look beyond it. The religious withdraw from the world while the reasoned seek to improve it. This withdrawal from the world, coupled by the teaching that the earth was created solely for the benefit of the believer has contributed to widespread ecological disaster. This belief makes it easy to justify the destruction and wanton depletion of our natural resources because, after all, Jesus is coming soon and will give us a new earth.
Closed Minds…
The history of religion shows us that it is inherently evil in its insistence that rational thought is to avoided, sometimes at all costs. Religious doctrine keeps believers in line through fear and guilt. It is the chief source of a vast majority of crime, either directly, indirectly or psychologically. The fact that atheists and agnostics are a small minority of the prison population in the United States makes it clear that the Christian religion is not only nonessential to morality, but in many cases, the antithesis. Evil has a completely different meaning to an atheist than it does to a Christian. From a Christian point of view, evil is not following orders, thinking independently and questioning doctrines, dogmas and myth. In short, anything that serves to disenfranchise its adherents or fall against a wide variety of thou-shalt-nots.
For unbelievers, evil can best be described as the abandonment of our minds to the minds of others. It is a travesty to blindly accept any doctrine on faith. Atheists understand that the pinnacle of virtue is the ability and willingness to stand alone, when necessary, and to tell the majority that they are wrong. Thus, atheism is the only honest, rational, and moral position to hold.
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One thing I’ve come to realize about christianity is that it’s not so much of a religion as a marketing campaign. They’re out to sell a product (redemption) so they create a demand for that product using guilt and fear. If you see it as a business out to gain power and wealth and not as a religion to teach morality, its actions and claims make a lot more sense.
For example no business wants to have its claims about what their product can do questioned. That’s why they have the pre-emptive strike against doubters by calling them fools and why they claim faith, not reason, is a virtue.
True and amusing.
So… religion is basically listerine. Can’t sell your product as a floor cleaner or dandruff remedy? Invent HALITOSIS and convince everyone they’re suffering from it. Genius – tell everyone they’ve got a disease that doesn’t exist and market your product as the cure.
… yeah, this basically holds true for all religions. Scientology takes it even more seriously than most others, too. Scary!
The Christian concept of morality is even weirder than that.
The entire “ultimate purpose” of your earthly existence is for your soul to reach heaven.
Life is nothing more than a soul-sorting exercise for god.
And according to Christians, your soul gets sorted into the “heaven” bin primarily on the basis of your thoughts at or near death. If you think correct thoughts about this Jesus fellow, then your soul gets sorted into heaven. If you don’t think correctly about Jesus, you don’t get into heaven. (Not forgetting the branch that believes your thoughts about Jesus must be correct on the day he “returns” or else.)
And even though there’s a “faith without works is dead” branch of Christianity, your actions on Earth have a lot less to do with whether your soul gets sorted into heaven than your thoughts. That’s the whole lesson of the thief on the cross — no one is irredeemable.
Which means, ultimately, that Jeffrey Dahmer’s “pastor” can claim that a serial-killer cannibal is in heaven, while his victims (unrepentant homosexuals – aka “lunch”) are burning in hell.
Now, Christians will say things like “but knowing Jesus makes me not want to sin,” to which I need to reply “evidence required.” The prisons are full of the pious. Ted Haggard is not the only preacher who got caught with his pants down (literally). The person called the “pope” excuses child rape on behalf of his employees — all believing Christians. If there’s a call to not behave badly by believing in this Jesus fellow, none of the hundreds of examples we can all bring to mind would have occurred.
And each and every one of those offenders are convinced that because they think correct thoughts about that Jesus fellow, their souls will be sorted to heaven after they die. That’s as amoral a position as you can get, yet Christians wear it proudly. Because it allows them to forgive themselves for their earthly torts with a wave of a hand. There’s no responsibility to self or others inherent in Christianity. Only right thinking.
This amoral position that no amount of good (or bad) behavior impacts your post-death state is even seen on bumper stickers. “Not Perfect, Just Forgiven”.
A point Al brings up and I discuss in more detail in respect of Newt Gingritch at the Guest Blog here – http://alstefanelli.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/holier-than-thou-redux/ – concerns the Christian concept of Confession and Absolution. As I point out, how can any morality that allows for total absolution be considered moral?
An example: Both Adolf Hitler and I were at one point practicing Catholics. Now had Adolf made a full and honest act of contrition and then went to confession and received absolution just before his death he would have gone straight through the pearly gates using the Catholic get out of jail free card that confession offers the faithful. I on the other hand, not being party to any such nonsense, would be refused entry under the selfsame system of morality.
So…tell me again….the system is moral? I call BULLSHIT!
Great essay, Al! The whole “absolution at the end” argument struck me right away as nonsense when I first heard it many years ago. Live a life of profound moral depravity, responsible for vast human suffering, and then … bingo! Instant redemption at the end and it’s on to heaven and eternal bliss? This always seemed absurd. Curiously, this theme shows up in Star Wars, Episode 6 where Darth Vader is redeemed somehow by Luke, even though he was responsible for all sorts of suffering and death as the henchman of the evil Emperor – like a science fiction version of Himmler to the Emperor’s Hitler. If Himmler accepted christ at the end of his life, does he get a free pass into heaven? I don’t think so!!
The thing that most people forget is that Christianity started as a slave religion. Teaching slaves to be patient and faithful under the whips of their masters because when they die they will be rewarded is just good sense from the point of view of the masters. Slaves who believe that their suffering is “good for them” will never rebel or demand better conditions, or try to escape. It is the perfect win for their masters. As the Church grew in the Middle Ages, they took over the roles that the former Roman Government had – Bishops replacing Governors, Cardinals replacing Senators and the Pope replacing the Emperor. There is a reason they are called “Princes of the Church”. They were wealthy and they stayed wealthy and the Church got wealthier. Where is their motivation to encourage people to ask questions, rebel, seek freedom or an end to their suffering and slavery? Just as the original slave masters, the Church leaders gained power and wealth by keeping their faithful subjects willing to bear any injustice or punishment they deemed appropriate because when they died they would be rewarded – just like the Princes of the Church.
Religion is not the problem – organized churches who need a way to keep their followers in line are the problem.
Sorry chum but I dont know what history book you got that from…but Id recc you throw it in a bin and start again.
Christianity started as a heretical form of Judaeism. In the original form you had to be a jew before you could become a Christian. When it started to grow and its senior members realised they could spread teh infection further by opening it up to all thats when it became permissable for non ex-jews to join. The slave religion thing is a myth.
The hierachy of the Church was n place well before the Middle Ages. The Council of Nicea, called by Constantine 1 to formalise the faith, was a convention of bishops and archbishops. The Church traces the lne of Popes back to St Peter who was (supposedly) the first, and the head of the Church was always called Pope…its a Hellenised version of the word for Father. Church hierachy has nothng to do with Roman secular government positions….which by the way you massively oversimplify – for example a Governor and Senator were the same rank as you had to be a Senator first to be a Governor (who were appointed by the Senate from their own ranks). If its such a simple one for one transfer what about the Roman officials such as Aediles, Praetors, Magistrates, etc…..again mate that like for like thing is a myth.
“Princes of the Church” was a phrase that cropped up during the 1400s as a critique of the corruption of the College of Cardinals and Papacy, especally under Pope Borgias nepotistic rule. It was a swipe at the illegitimate sons and daughters that their fathers – senior churchmen – instituted into positions of power and wealth. The people who first used it ended up as firewood for The Inquisition or in exile from Vatican domains.
Church history is both complex and interesting….but you need to read better history books there bro.
Well, as long as we’re correcting each other on matters of ancient history,
Christianity started as a heretical form of Judaeism. In the original form you had to be a jew before you could become a Christian. When it started to grow and its senior members realised they could spread teh infection further by opening it up to all thats when it became permissable for non ex-jews to join. The slave religion thing is a myth.
None of this is known with any particular certainty, though your outline is I’m sure broadly correct. But there were obviously Hellenistic influences from very early on, and most of the fellow-missionaries and congrgants Paul addresses or names in the letters have Greek names. That’s the earliest stratum we have of Christian texts. That early Christianity was exclusively or even predominately a religion of slaves is false, but it appears from the attacks against it by Greco-Roman pagan elites that it was a cult that attracted many slaves, women, and poor people from an early date.
The hierachy of the Church was n place well before the Middle Ages. The Council of Nicea, called by Constantine 1 to formalise the faith, was a convention of bishops and archbishops. The Church traces the lne of Popes back to St Peter who was (supposedly) the first, and the head of the Church was always called Pope…its a Hellenised version of the word for Father.
There originally was no head of the church. There was a Bishop of Rome, but until the 4th century Rome was not the most important church. Antioch and Alexandria were arguably more important, and the Patriarch of Alexandria was first called “papa” (which was indeed the origin of the title Pope). It’s not known exactly when the Catholic church instituted the tradition of reserving the title for the bishop of Rome, but it wasn’t until the 5th or 6th century. The church traces the line of Bishops of Rome back to Peter (spuriously, probably), but that position was not synonymous with Pope or head of the church for centuries.
Church hierachy has nothng to do with Roman secular government positions….which by the way you massively oversimplify – for example a Governor and Senator were the same rank as you had to be a Senator first to be a Governor (who were appointed by the Senate from their own ranks). If its such a simple one for one transfer what about the Roman officials such as Aediles, Praetors, Magistrates, etc…..again mate that like for like thing is a myth.
Governors of Senatorial provinces were always proconsular legates of Senatorial rank, and so were governors in Imperial provinces who commanded a legion (appointed by the emperor, not the Senate), but emperors often also employed prefects of Equestrian rank in smaller, often recently conquered, Imperial provinces that did not have a standing legion (Pontius Pilate was not of Senatorial rank for example), and in the West they became more and more wary of entrusting Senators with posts from which could be mounted a coup attempt.
Aediles and Praetors were types of magistrate; there was no position “Magistrate”. And you are correct about “one for one transfer” but I don’t think he was implying anything so exact. It was the case in the Western provinces that bishops to some extent took over the mantle of local authority as the imperial administration crumbled, so there’s at the very least a kernel of truth in what he’s saying. Certainly, high status Romans, a group that included almost all bishops, became the forebears of the medieval nobility, with titles like Duke and Count being derived from late imperial military leadership posts, and some bishops in parts of Spain and Gaul acted as military leaders in the early middle ages.
The Time for God book by Joe Luna…
[...]Christianity And The Corruption Of Morality | Al Stefanelli[...]…
Al thanks for your work in general – you do a service.
I basically agree with your post but I’d like to add illustratively some cautions in general.
As with any human endeavor there are good players and bad players, and there are bad players that do good sometimes, and good players that do bad sometime. When we bring anything down to the human (essentially person(s) level) we have to watch application of the general concept to the specific.
For illustration: I can rationalize (in apologetic way) your statement “One competent scientist is worth more than a thousand evangelists.” I get your drift because I am into your basic general premise. But the statement is not rigorous nor science worthy – it is just rhetoric and thus subject to the same derision as any other rhetoric with an agenda. It makes the speaker’s case for reason weaker because it does not show itself as being well reasoned.
I am confident that what you meant was something along these lines: “One competent scientist [working scientifically to solve something plaguing mankind] is worth more than a thousand evangelists [praying for Jesus to save us from it].” That has historical validity and can be tested and found true.
I am not confident that it did not sound to some as “One competent scientist [as a person] is worth more than a thousand evangelists [as people].” That is not definitively true and makes us look to some I’d guess like we’re just angry vindictive people out to unfairly malign religion and the good people in it.
The other point I’d like to make is do not neglect the power of the “Jesus loves you” mantra. It is today more powerful than the guilt and shame in many quarters. The appeal of an all powerful sky-daddy friend is immense for people that are hurting. Yes it comes with the baggage you mentioned but the recruiting and retention ploy that is most common in mainstream and even marginally fundamentalist religions is one of comfort and help in this life as well as the next. Religion is a con, it uses all the tricks. It can play on all emotions and emphasizes those that reel-in the mark. I’d say the love of the sky-daddy and his son, and the social infrastructure (camaraderie, club-nature, help system, entertainment) of religion, are the selling factors that are most effective today in general.
Ohhh man, Al, you just opened the floodgates to all sorts of Calvinist bullshit a la Divine Command Theory from Heddle and company with this one.
So, I’ll short-circuit it before they even start. The objection to Divine Command Theory is older than Christianity and is called Euthyphro’s Dilemma. Briefly, “Is what is good good because God(s) command it, or is it commanded because it is itself good?” In the second case, there is an external standard of morality which even God is subject to, and in the first case “God commands what is good” reduces to the trivially-true “God commands what God commands.”
Craig attempts, taking a page out of the Thomists’ book by invoking “divine simplicity,” to break out by insisting that although there is a standard of goodness, it is internal to God and part of his nature (see Tekton for example). This, of course, only pushes the Dilemma back further: “is this standard good because it’s part of God’s nature, or is it part of God’s nature because He saw that it is of itself good?” Leaving aside that an internal but separate standard is incoherent, this solves nothing.
Furthermore, DCT actually destroys the idea of objective morality! If what is good is defined solely by God, there is no objective morality because this can change at any time (and God is under no obligation to tell us when it does…). Using Billy boy as an example again, his stomach-turning defense of the Canaanite genocides is a case in point. He tries to weasel out of it with non-sequiturs (excuse me, the idea of Heaven as he has it DID NOT EXIST back then for example), but when you get right down to it, he’s really going “God commanded it, they did it, that settles it.”
I’m not going to get into all the other issues with DCT here, or point out how even if some version of DCT is true Yahweh does not even display consistent commands. But this is a good if quick primer for those who deal with Calvinists.
Azuma: That is a very small menu to choose from. Who says God commands anything (other than the authors of the Bible)? Aside from all the ridiculous personality characteristics attributed to God in the Bible, God is simply the idea that material reality constructs from non-material causes.
The concepts of good and evil are the problem. In morality, the issue is health and well-being versus illness and misery. All living things need health and well-being to live, which some may say are good things. All living things thus avoid illness and misery, which some may say are bad things.
One does not need God’s judgment, or anybody else’s judgment. Health and well-being are self-evident.
Ultimately, although it is not specifically stated, the purpose of religion and government is to establish laws, rules, and regulations that lead to the good health and well being of individuals and communities. That is how religion and government obtain their purpose for purveying morality. Everybody wants to be healthy and happy.
God created the Universe and all the physics that makes life in it possible. Whether a given action is moral, or not, does not depend upon God’s judgment, but rather on the science that leads to the good health and the well-being of living things. In particular, morality is most often seen from the human perspective, and more specifically, from the perspective of each person. Religion and government are seen from the community perspective, and what it takes to perpetuate our species.
It is enough to question the moral usefulness of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in modern times. But we should not fall to the ignorant view that atheism is automatically the alternative.
Which means, ultimately, that Jeffrey Dahmer’s “pastor” can claim that a serial-killer cannibal is in heaven, while his victims (unrepentant homosexuals – aka “lunch”) are burning in hell.
I’ve actually encountered a Christian who made that claim. Of course, any of Dahmer’s victims who died in an unsaved state are shit outta luck.
One I like to bring up is a man who converts to Christianity and leads a good Christian life for 30 or 40 years. When he hits his sixties, he develops alzheimers and forgets that he is a Christian. One day he feels horny and patronizes a prostitute and dies from a heart attack while having sex with her. Does he go to hell for that or does God give him a pass because he wasn’t in his right mind at the time?
[...] no such thing as Jew history, Christian physics, Muslim algebra or Mormon sanity, there’s no such thing as Jew/”Christian”/Muslim/Mormon morality. Share this:DiggRedditStumbleUponLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
Claims of “religious morality” are not done out of a sense of reward and punishment. They are made to justify intolerance and violence against those who refuse to join the religion.
When someone says, “you have to be __________ to be good”, what he’s really inferring is that anyone who isn’t part of the religion is evil and immoral. Society makes laws on its sense of right and wrong, and when religion is falsely used as the basis of right and wrong, those who refuse to be one are criminalized, exiled or killed. Just look at a history book, the denial of rights for non-members has happened in many places for not sharing the dominant view (e.g. catholics and jews in mostly protestant US, jews muslims and christians in catholic Europe, non-muslims in muslim countries, etc.).
This is not about encouraging moral behaviour, it’s about encouraging immoral behaviour – intolerance of, and violence towards, those who choose not to participate. The exact same mindset can be found in those who pray in public: it is a confrontational act directed at those who don’t pray. The “other” are being told “Join us or we’ll come after you.”
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Al Stefanelli makes solid arguments for the faults of the Mosaic religions, but then makes a huge mistake by promoting atheism as the only substitute. Buddhism, Paganism in its many forms, and numerous other religions have not been examined.
The concept of a Creator God is not unique to Abraham’s descendants. As a belief, it long predated Abraham. Essentially, it means that a material world arose from a non-material cause. Even modern physics teaches this in its Big Bang hypothesis.
Atheism is just as irrational and ignorant as the religions it criticizes. Atheists teach that a thing can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, that all life on planet Earth evolved from a single-celled life form, that space cannot have structure (Aether), that calculus equations describe physical structures and processes, and that two men can mate.
Atheists are just as irrational and ignorant in their own ways as are religionists. This is not because there is a fault with religion or science, but because there is a fault with the limited understanding of human beings.
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My views on morality are unique to my lifetime of contemplation of the issue. Some sources mention that morality relates to health and well-being, but I do not know of any source that specifically defines morality as those actions and behaviors that lead to the good health and well-being of individuals and communities.
When I was fifteen, I read the Bible from cover to cover to try to find out how Jesus became such a good person. I was shocked at what I found in its pages, not inspired. I then began investigating all religions and systems of thought looking for the formula for being a good person. Eventually, I realized the key is simply to be moral, that is, to develop a life of health and happiness for myself and others around me.
Eventually, I was able to see that the successful elements of religions and governments intuitively shared this same goal and means.