Dawkins : "I'm a cultural Christian".

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Professor Richard Dawkins has said the he is ' A Cultural Christian'.
In a news story on the BBC website, he declared that he has no wish to see Christmas cancelled, or see Britain lose any part of it's Christian heritage. This may come as a surprise to some, but his website tends to direct its venom towards the more negative aspects of religious belief.

These include the Catholic Church's stance on child molesting priests, it's opposition to contraception, and its condemnation of gay people. Yet Protestant believers come in for criticism too. It isn't simply a belief in Adam and Eve that Dawkins criticises, it's the Old Testament's account of Joshua's conquests, the concept of Hell and the moral standards taught in the O.T. that also provoke his ire.

Well, my take on it is as follows -
the Jews didn't really do the conquest of Canaan like the Bible says,in fact they didn't conquer Canaan at all - Joshua's campaign was largely a propaganda exercise done in a later period;
the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment rests upon misinterpretation and misunderstanding of certain Biblical passages, as well as a certain amount of Hellenistic influence;
the sexism, racism and homophobia are all there in the Torah, but the Jews themselves got over a lot of it before Jesus came along and finished the job.

If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society. We can dump all that stuff and still have a version of Christianity that is different from Atheism. And, yes, I would be happy to explain the specifics in the comments - if I get any:)

Comments

Re: 'Crap' theology?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

First, that's not constructing an argument. It's instatiating an assertion.

I am still saying that the OT contradicts itself, and points to a faked early history, however you want to slice it.

This is the conclusion I'm refuting.
Um , I don't see where you have refuted a single claim I made. Nor does Telemann sound that convinced to me. But, please, run it past me again.

Abraham can call a place by a name of God he doesn't know because...?

Uriah the Hittite is allowed to marry a Jewish girl after all because...?

And David gets to be king in spite of the edict in the Torah because...?

So, the fact that they found this book is no problem. It was really there and the Jews never faked their own early history.

Telemann has called you on it in a previous comment, and I call you on it again, right here.

The Bible contradicts itself, in all the examples shown here. Abraham and the Divine Name; Uriah the Hittite living and working in Jewish society, David the king as a fourth generation Moabite.

If we can agree that these are contradictions that show that the Hebrews wrote themselves a false history, we can then look at Gehenna and Sheol as they appear in Scripture and hopefully accept that many Protestant churches miss the point in original passages and go for a doctrine that does not reflect well on God.

Fourth, heroin is illegal in the US. I regularly hang out with heroin users in the US. HOW CAN THIS BE????? THIS COMMENT MUST NOT BE TRUE!!!11!!!

But heroin is illegal, and this does not stop people from breaking the law.

In the Bible, however, we see that although the Jews had a Legal Code containing many features that might well have put them ahead of their neighbours, they do not come up so well against the standards of our day.

Like for instance, when the prophet Elisha calls down the wrath of god on a bunch of kids who are mocking him.Two she bears burst out of the woods and maul the youngsters, killing 42 of them. Not what I would call 'minimum use of force'.

Then we have Saul offering his daughter to anyone who will kill Goliath for him. Er, since when does he have the right to hand over
his daughter to just anyone without her consent? And does God object to this view of women being mere pieces of property? Apparently not.

Again, it seems to me that God in the OT simply reflects the Jewish standards of the day. Quite advanced in some ways, and very sexist in others. So, that is another can of worms you have opened.

Re: 'Crap' theology?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

You have not in any way defended your position that "If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society. We can dump all that stuff and still have a version of Christianity that is different from Atheism."