The Defense of Irrationality
I knew a guy in high school who was on the basketball team. He could not practice or play every Friday evening due to his religious beliefs. It was accepted without comment.
But I want to ask: why are religious beliefs given such a pass? It seems that the acceptance of absurd religions has become so standard for most people that any nonsense belief will just be shrugged off if you say “it’s my religion.”
I wavered between considering myself an agnostic or an atheist for many years until I finally realized that religious beliefs should be held to the same logical standard any other assertion or belief. There’s no valid reasons I’ve heard for giving religion a pass. So now I am an atheist, because the negative is the logical conclusion when there is no evidence.
Yes, most religious beliefs cause no actual harm. The problem with giving a pass to harmless irrational beliefs (by saying it’s valid for people to believe whatever they want) is that it makes it that much harder to condemn actual harmful beliefs, some of which are very disgusting.
I realize that the vast majority of Christians would condemn those stories, as they should. But they would only condemn the actions and not the justification for those actions. If god can command people to do good/neutral things as we perceive them, why couldn’t he command people to do what we’d perceive as bad things? Faith, for most people, seems to only be a valid justification for action if they already agree with what’s being done. It’s just another example of people picking and choosing beliefs from their religion, and attributing only what they agree with to god. If people can pick stuff about hating gays, loving your neighbor, or taking Saturday/Sunday off from the Bible, why can’t people pick stuff from the Bible about executing people who dare to lift an arm on Saturday or enslaving women?
It’s the people in those articles who are choosing to rape young girls, just as it’s the people choosing to hate gays, or give to charity, or not allow women to become priests, or anything else attributed to a religious command, good or bad.
I should ask for Fridays off from school and work due to my religious convictions. Since god obviously started creating the world on a Saturday instead of Monday (who has time to create worlds during the week? He definitely waited for the weekend), my god’s day of rest is on Friday. I believe FSMism has Fridays off too; we’ll kick back while all you heathens work.
Credit for the stories goes to PZ Myers. If you don’t read his blog, you should.
On the comment of enslaving women and killing those who dare to lift a hand on sabbath. Jesus came as a fufilment of the OT law. He said “Love the Lord God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” So with all the laws and punishments, they kinda left. I mean the legalistic parts. I mean, there are always consequences for actions, it’s stupid to say otherwise. But yeah.
And on the topic of enslavement of women. Bible does say Women, submit to your husbands. However, the next few verses always fail to be quoted. “So too, husbands, love your wives, for just as Christ is head of the church, so too are you the head of your wife ” So basically, love your wife to the point that you will die for her.
And on the topic of hating gays. This is a human problem. Humans often confuse the act with the person. Bible says homosexual acts are wrong. It doesn’t say that the people are evil and to be hated. Unfortunately as humans we tend to personafy the act. If those are the right words.
However, I will concede that if your religious beliefs held that you got fridays off, in this society you would be entitled to fridays off. However I should think that you’d be required to make up your lost time on days when you are allowed to work.
A wife being obedient and a husband being loving doesn’t balance out. Similarly no matter how much you love a slave, the slave is still a slave. There’s nothing about women that requires them to be led or ruled by a man. That notion is and has been the cause of horrible evil in the world.
In response to homosexuality being evil, would you also say that murder is bad, but a murderer isn’t evil? I would say that a person who does bad things is a bad person because of their deeds. (But I don’t think being gay is bad.)
“However, the next few verses always fail to be quoted. “So too, husbands, love your wives, for just as Christ is head of the church, so too are you the head of your wife ””
I don’t see how that makes it any better, as it explicitly says again that the husband is the “head” of the wife, just as Jesus is the head of the church, meaning the wife must obey a husband’s commands. That line just admonishes men to be benevolent masters.
And the Biblical argument doesn’t change the fact that people pick-and-choose what they want to believe from the Bible.
This is true. However
“1Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.[a] 2But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.” 1Cor 7:1-4
Clearly this is mutual ownership.
What I was quoting before was Eph 5:22-33. But I didn’t quite get all of it. And when taken in context with the other verses, I feel that it clearly shows that women were not slaves.
You’re just proving my argument about picking-and-choosing. You don’t agree with the “women as property” lines in the Bible, so you ignore or deemphasize them; and since you do agree with gender equality (I’m assuming), you emphasize those portions which sound more like what you agree with.
No. It never says women are property. Not that I’ve read anyways.
Also. read the Biblical books of Ruth and Ester. Also, take a look in Judges about Deborah. Anything but slaves.
There are some arguably strong women in the Bible, yes. Miriam is arguably another. But these women stand out only because they are among the few women in the Bible who are anything more than baby factories. E.g. the wife of almost every patriarch, Jesus’ mom, John the Baptists’ mom, and so on. Baby factories. On the other hand the vast majority of the important figures in the Bible are men. Pretty much all the prophets were men. The 12 Apostles were all men. Jesus was male. God himself is male. Why? Because the women are too busy being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen to do anything important.
See here (at the bottom) for a nice list of Bible verses that list women as inferior to / property of men.
If you study the history of the cultures in which these books were written, it’s very clear that women held a very low position in society. Women in Greece and Rome at the time of the Jesus stories were a bit better off than women in ancient Judea, but not by much. The stuff in the Bible is no worse than what everyone at the time believed. But it’s no better than it either. It’s a reflection of primitive people and their primitive morality, which we’ve long since grown past. Look at Muslim societies today; that’s what Biblical times were like for women. If not worse.