Some points missing from the syllogism i think.  Let's assume that i accept that for moral statements to be meaningful a good God has to exist (which as you know, i do not).  First of all, you are assuming that accusing God of bad behaviour necessarily has to be a meaningful statement.  In a world of moral relativism, it would still be possible for someone to critique the behaviour of a fictional God, unaware all the while that they were making a factually empty statement.  By neglecting this possibility you are essentially begging the question in the first few sentences of your blog post, because criticising the conduct of God would only prove his existence in a world where all your other assumptions hold true.

Uh, I think he pointed out that in a world of moral relativism accusing God of bad behaviour is essentially a pointless statement. Accusing anyone of bad behaviour is essentially a pointless statement. That's the whole point. As a-theism logically demands a-morality what constitutes "good" and "bad" reduces to personal opinion. For an accusation that God is guilty of bad behaviour to be meaningful you essentially have to concede evidence for his existance exists - objective morality.

Secondly, even assuming that to make a moral statement necessarily entails the existence of a moral God does not automatically lead to the conclusion that your God is that God.  Yahweh as an evil deceiver, successfully luring trusting fools away from his much kinder elder brother (from whom all morality is really derived, etc etc) is a logically possible scenario.  Where's your counter-evidence?  So despite the laudable moment of critical reflection at the start, the rest of this paragraph reads like an inferior re-statement of the ontological argument, which, most philosophers agree, already sucks a larger quantity of @$$ than all the other arguments in favour of God's existence put together.

It's a nonissue. We can basicly concede objective morality is evidence for basic theism at bare minnimum. And since one objective law is only evidence for one Lawmaker, polytheism doesn't enter into it. That still throws a-theism out the window. Getting to Christianity when you don't concede God's existance takes one step at a time.

Also - as i note that Timaahy has already corrected you on - atheism does not logically entail moral relativism.  The fact that you can quote an atheist who thinks it does is no more compelling to me than the fact that i can quote lots and lots of Christians who think that creationism/ID is a load of hogwash will be to you.

Seeing how your's and Timmy's "corrections" have always basicly amounted to saying 'nuh-uh', I don't think either of you are any more compelling than you find the other atheist's belief. Besides if you were paying attention, you'd notice SJ already acknoweldged there's disagreement on this point, but the fact remains we still believe you are simply trying to have your cake and eat it too. If atheists can point out the different views exist in Christiandom, we can certainly call you to task for yours.

And i think you give up a little too easily in saying that discussing morality with atheists is pointless.  Not simply because all of your premises are factually incorrect, but because you should never give up hope of making a connection with someone who holds a different viewpoint to yourself.  i am very happy to discuss morality with you, or any other species of religionist, even though your assumptions and reasoning may make little sense to me.  The better i understand you, the less likely we are to end up in conflict, and i would advocate that approach to you when dealing with atheists.  Sticking to your preconceived notions of what atheism must entail (backed up by selectively chosen quotations) is no more helpful than if i were to bring to our discussions a firm belief in the logical inevitability of your being a racist misogynist zealot based on my interpretation of the necessary consequences of believing that the Old Testament was written by an omniscient being.

You must have stopped reading in the first few paragraphs seeing how SJ explicitly stated it's "ALMOST a waste of time" and went on to describe the reason. 

Posted by: End Bringer
« on: Today at 09:42:22 AM »
Quote from: Dannyboy on Today at 08:47:29 AM

   Within an hour EB!  Here was me imagining that you might be engaged in some sort of activites all this time apart, possibly work and/or leisure, but if you only take 55mins to respond to the first thing i write in more than a fortnight then i can only assume you've been hunched over the computer* since our last exchange.  What took you 55 minutes?  Had to take a bathroom break?

Uh, I think he pointed out that in a world of moral relativism accusing God of bad behaviour is essentially a pointless statement.

While that may have been a part of his point, what he said was that "as soon as you open your mouth to charge God with evil conduct, you have proved he exists, and also that he is good".  This is only true in a non-relativistic universe where the ability to utter moral statements is contingent upon the existence of a deity.  Hence, it is begging the question.  What was your objection again?

It's a nonissue.

And yet here you are.

We can basicly concede objective morality is evidence for basic theism at bare minnimum.

[shrug]  Obviously i don't concede that, and we've been over the reasons why at great length.

You must have stopped reading in the first few paragraphs seeing how SJ explicitly stated it's "ALMOST a waste of time" and went on to describe the reason.

No, i saw that.  i thought that the title, which didn't include the word "almost", sort of negated that concession to reasonableness.  Lucky you're here to explain what SJ means though.

* - in what i can only assume is your parents' basement.

  Within an hour EB!  Here was me imagining that you might be engaged in some sort of activites all this time apart, possibly work and/or leisure, but if you only take 55mins to respond to the first thing i write in more than a fortnight then i can only assume you've been hunched over the computer* since our last exchange.  What took you 55 minutes?  Had to take a bathroom break?

Sculpting a miniature image of Presidents from ear wax only takes me 54 minutes.

While that may have been a part of his point, what he said was that "as soon as you open your mouth to charge God with evil conduct, you have proved he exists, and also that he is good".  This is only true in a non-relativistic universe where the ability to utter moral statements is contingent upon the existence of a deity.  Hence, it is begging the question.  What was your objection again?

And given that's the universe we live in it's true. Because despite your concious denial, moral statements ARE contingent upon God's existence, and despite concious denial by those who don't believe objective morality exists, we can't help but behave as if it does and even appeal to it (which is evidence for it's existance). It's not question begging. He simply laid out that he was arguing from his personal beliefs and didn't go too deep into a point he and many atheists don't buy even while acknoweledging it's existance.

And yet here you are.

Because frivalous objections that simply blow smoke on the issue always need to be pointed out.

[shrug]  Obviously i don't concede that, and we've been over the reasons why at great length.

I was mostly refering to the theistic side of the fence with the "we" term, if you were basicly going to concede theism is right but hold Christianity is still wrong with your statement.

No, i saw that.  i thought that the title, which didn't include the word "almost", sort of negated that concession to reasonableness.  Lucky you're here to explain what SJ means though.

I'm always happy to bridge the gap in intelligence between you and him, DB. But I would suggest you start arguing with the actual argument rather than a title.

EB,

...despite your concious denial, moral statements ARE contingent upon God's existence, and despite concious denial by those who don't believe objective morality exists, we can't help but behave as if it does and even appeal to it (which is evidence for it's existance). It's not question begging.

This may be a waste of time, because i suspect that you will reflexively deny anything i say here, but for the record, the fact that you agree with his conclusion does not mean that it was not question begging.  Let me put Tony's statement into a syllogism to make it clearer:

P1 - people say "God has behaved badly"
P2 - judging something as "bad" requires an objective moral framework
P3 - a moral framework can only come from a good God
C1 - a good God exists

P1 is uncontested.  P2 is dubious, because i see no reason why someone couldn't make such a statement in a relativistic universe - it just wouldn't be meaningful.  People are quite capable of making meaningless statements (i assume that you agree with this).  So P2 implicitly assumes that the universe is the way that you and Tony believe it is, which is what he suggested that these premises proved.  That is the definition of begging the question.  i also disagree with P3 as you know, so from my point of view, the argument is not only circular but also mostly based on false premises.


Tony,

Soon YOU are going to be one of those silly doctors of philosophy that atheists smoothly dismiss when cited. 

i wont reach the lofty heights of being dismissed by atheists for quite a while yet.  The qualification i am studying for is Master of Public Health, so ironically enough i'll probably being dismissed by Christians instead (well, those who are committed to abstinence-only sex education anyway).

It does in fact prove that God exists and that he is good, because of the other point I am persistently making:  no one really thinks their moral judgments are "factually empty statements."

You're trying hard to climb out of this, without much success that i can see.  Making moral statements proves nothing in itself, whether or not people think that they are semantically meaningful, because as we all know people are quite capable of being mistaken en masse about things like this.  There are about 1.5 billion people in the world who believe in Allah, who make statements which they certainly think are meaningful about his feelings and desires.  People write books about this stuff, argue with each other about it, and agree with great collective certainty on certain key points.  They are all, we would both agree, deeply and regretably confused about the nature of reality.  So unless the fact that Muslims don't think they are making factually empty statements when they talk about Allah in some way proves his existence, then i don't really see your point.

In a hypothetical (for you) universe in which God did not exist, do you really believe that moral statements would be impossible to utter?

If a moral statement is the sort of thing that only has meaning if it 'pushes off' of something, and we insist on making such statements, this requires that we admit at some level something to push off of.

But you can hardly apply that standard consistently without admitting the existence of Allah and many other Gods besides.  Otherwise what do those billions upon billions of Allah-related statements made since Mohammed push off of?

I have a feeling we need a few beers each to figure out how your views are not currently best described as 'moral relativism.'

i would be open to participate in such a project.

I think this is funny that you think I even with my 'certainty' that a theocracy would be my plan.  A theocracy strictly speaking is direct rule by God, and I do not think I am God.  I hope you are teasing me on this one because I think I've been very consistent over the years on this score.

A man of your intelligence will clearly see the problem with your envisaged ideal political system.  A system of literal direct rule by God is a ship with no one on the bridge.  i do not say that just as an atheist, but as someone who can't help noticing that God just ain't as active in human affairs as he reportedly used to be.  God has a problem with public speaking, so obviously he needs deputies - people who will transmit his policies to the masses.  You want that job?

Here you go:  http://sntjohnny.com/front/uncertainty-the-only-absolute-moral-value/659.html

i think i do recall that one.

I think you may want to delve into Christianity a little more deeply than you have.

i don't.  Frankly the idea of trawling through pages of theological contorsions to explain why God can both love us so much that he sacrificed his own son etc etc, and yet also hate the sight of us, just makes me feel tired.  i know that you are driven to evangelize, but this would just waste both our time.  i know that you think it is the sublime truth, but to me it seems like poisonous rubbish.

Its a strange, strange thing that we create standards for ourselves that we cannot keep and then don't merely drop the standards after we fail to keep them.

No more strange than many other things about human beings.  i would say it is not unrelated to the psychological finding that a belief, once formed, is likely to endure even if the evidence which initiated the belief is demonstrated to be false.

We can condemn the 'holy slaughter by the pious' because we recognize that it isn't an 'empty statement.'  Such actions were wrong, but more to the point, if we were face to face with them we would be having a discussion with people who ostensibly had a moral code,which we could appeal to and try to convince them otherwise.

Yes, but that a) doesn't necessarily mean that the content of such statements is derived from God, and b) doesn't remove the salient fact that people are capable of making statements which relate to nothing that either of us would agree to be real.

There is a reason why you will not be able to name very many (if any) examples from more recent times- once people began to be able to read the Bible in their own language.

And yet you also suggest that the worst atrocities in history have occurred in this age of secularism, when religious people (i.e. nearly everyone) can read quite well.  Germany in the 1930s and 40s was Christian by an overwhelming majority.  Rwanda is mainly Catholic.  So what is the restraining effect of biblical literacy again?

Seeya,
Dan

P2 is dubious, because i see no reason why someone couldn't make such a statement in a relativistic universe - it just wouldn't be meaningful.

It's hardly dubious when no one truly considers or behaves as if it's not meaningful. As has been stated.

People are quite capable of making meaningless statements (i assume that you agree with this). So P2 implicitly assumes that the universe is the way that you and Tony believe it is, which is what he suggested that these premises proved.  That is the definition of begging the question.

I can concede people are capable of making meaningless statements. However I also note that if it WAS actually meaningless, few if any would ACTUALLY make the statement. Yet we see the statement brought up quite often (and not just about God's behaviour) and used as if it WAS meaningful. And that's the flaw to your whole argument - when everyone can't help but behave as if there's an objective standard, it's good evidence that there IS an objective standard.

And in all honestly I don't know why you're barking up this tree if you (supposedly) agree we do in fact live in an objectively moral universe.

i also disagree with P3 as you know, so from my point of view, the argument is not only circular but also mostly based on false premises.

Naturally, but I have dismissed your disagreement numerous times and shown it to be based on little more than denial, given that little, but significant, detail of a guideless universe without intent not caring whether we live or die (let alone how we behave). As that's basicly the summation of existence under atheism, you're simply never going to be able to jump out of that bottomless pit.

"Always possible, but i would need to be shown the flaw in my argument to be convinced that this was the case."

I hate to be quibble, but I'm going to have to.  Actually, if I'm saying that you aren't following my argument, then the flaw in your argument IS that you aren't following my argument.    Perhaps a better exercise might be if you try to put my argument into your own words and I can tell you if you succeeded in capturing the substance of it.

P1 - people say that if we really existed, [fill in your quantum related assertion here]
P2 - in order to make such statements, you must first exist.
C1 - therefore you exist.

No argument with any of that.

Good.  Now what about:

P1 - people say that if we really existed, [fill in your quantum related assertion here]
P2 - in order to make such statements, you must first exist.
C1 - therefore you exist.
C2 - I do not exist.

Now, your first instinct is to say that this makes no logical sense, and I'm not going to dissuade you from saying that.  That is the case, at the least.  But it runs much deeper than that.  We are assuming there is a correlation between this logical series and actual reality, so that a person cannot say, simultaneously, that they exist but don't exist.  You could argue with a person who says this, but it would really be all for nothing, because there is no disputing the fact that for him to be sitting across from you arguing that he doesn't exist, he must actually exist to make the argument... yet he disputes it.  And is this not his right?  But what you and I must come to understand is that C2 looks like a meaningful comment, but in the context of the argument, is actually nonsensical.  There is no logical content to C2.  The words are strung together according to grammatical laws, but it still means nothing- it does not correlate to reality.

What I'm saying is that there are a category of statements that are like this.  One thinks that they are making a meaningful statement but in fact they are not.  The logical form of the argument may be valid, and the sentences grammatically correct, but there is no correlation to reality, because in order to make the statements at all one must assume the very thing they are refuting.

Note, I am not saying that arguing about one's existence 'proves' you exist.  It ASSUMES you exist.  This is a very important distinction.  Likewise, saying ANYTHING is right or wrong assumes a standard of right or wrong.  If one then attempts to remove the underlying standard, the statement is gutted of its meaning.

"there is no logical reason why moral statements could not be made in a godless universe."

That's absolutely right.  They could be made in a godless universe.  But would they be coherent?  Would they have any content, or would they actually just be gibberish, akin to saying "I don't exist" when in order for one to make the claim one must assume the opposite?  But actually, you're getting ahead of my argument here.  Right now, I'm only trying to show the necessity of recognizing the existence of objective morality... or more to the point, showing that moral relativists still run around making moral statements, expecting to be taken seriously.  This can only mean that despite their words, in reality, they are assuming a moral framework.

"Their belief proves nothing about whether or not objective morality actually exists."

You've again reversed things, thus failing to understand what I mean about there being a category of statements.  Their belief does not PROVE there is an objective morality, rather for them to make the statements and expect them to be regarded as having sense they ASSUME there is an objective morality.

If you thought about it, you could identify a whole number of statements in this category.  I gave one example as I recall- one person says 'this food is hot' and another says 'this food is cold' and in order for either statement to have meaning at all, one presumes the existence of temperature.  You could think of others, too.  We're surrounded by them so much that we take them for granted.

"For the record, i believe that it does, although my conception of it is rather different to yours."

heh heh, so you're fighting me tooth and nail over the proposition that there is an objective morality but you believe there is an objective morality.  That's kind of funny, no? 

So you don't like my argument for it and have your own.  Perhaps we should dispense with all this and return to that old abandoned thread where you first tried to explain to me your new position.

"Apologies.  ... was in a hurry.   "

Alright.  :)  That makes a lot more sense.

"Do you not think that the events in Norway this weekend rather support my distrust of certainty?  This guy clearly had huge certainty, in this case of a nationalist variety with some religious elements.  Anyone who saw a benefit in ambivalence would not have done such a thing."

I think I addressed this sufficiently in my post regarding certainty.   But to add something new, you seem to think that certainty inexorably leads to such things and that uncertainty will prevent them.  And yet, you are certain that certainty should not be trusted.  Do you trust your own certain distrust of certainty?  This is a mad sort of reasoning.  And you say I'm the one with weird beliefs.  :)  This is another one of those examples where one presumes the very kind of thing they're trying to attack.  You are attacking certainty;  because it is dangerous, of which you are certain.  :)

But what about the certainty of the police officers who (eventually) managed to get out there and arrest the guy?  Do you fault them for their certainty that slaughtering dozens and dozens of people in cold blood is wrong?  I bet you don't.  You play a bit fast and loose with your distrust of certainty.  When someone is certain in a manner you approve, you don't mind.  Indeed, I bet if the police officers had instead been ambivalent about the whole slaughtering of innocents thing and done nothing, you would have been pretty angry.  What?  I thought ambivalence is what you wanted?  Not quite;  you want people to be certain on some things, and not on others.

The way out of this rabbit hole is to chuck the whole 'certainty is dangerous' thing and focus instead on talking about what things we should be certain about.

Apparently, we both agree that slaughtering 80ish people is wrong and (I am assuming) that when someone is doing that, they should be stopped- certainly.  How do we get there without an objective moral standard? 

"Our conceptions of the term may be different, but i reject the idea that in deviating from your interpretation i am necessarily wrong."

Which is precisely why I am prompting you to take some time to look into it.  Are you deviating from MY interpretation?  Or are you actually out of step with actual Christian thought?  No way to know unless you crack open some books and do some studying.  Lewis's "Mere Christianity" is a great start because 95% of all Christians concur with it.  Hence the name, MERE Christianity.  But there are others that would be good, too.

"What i was objecting to was your simplistic suggestion that people being able to read the bible for themselves is associated with a reduction in religiously inspired slaughter."

There's just one big problem with this.  You've conflated 'bible' with 'religiously inspired.'  Look at your own example.  The Tamarin study (which I am now familiar with, thanks) is not from the 'bible' but rather just the Old Testament.  No?  This is like Richard Dawkins going nuts about how dangerous religion is and then all his examples are from Islam.

The proof is in the pudding:  can you point to any event in the 20th century where Christians, acting in the name of Christ, and  carried out any kind of atrocity?   Let's keep it reasonable and put a 1,000 death threshold on it.  You may be able to scare up one or two psychos (Jim Jones, maybe?), but I doubt you'll get very far. 

"This seems an especially strange claim given that we're talking about a book which contains approving references to divinely-sanctioned genocide."

Yet, how strange that in the last two centuries there have not been any attempts to carry out any putative 'divinely-sanctioned genocides'.  Maybe there is something you're missing that explains this absence.

"In any case, a less narrow view of people's motivations for engaging in violent slaughter will show many different influences, some religious and some not."

I'm not going to deny that there are a variety of motivations for such things.  But I will hold your feet to the fire, here.  I am not defending 'religion' to you.  I'm defending Christianity.  If you have a beef about some violent slaughter, you could at least do me the kindness of making sure they were carried out by Christians. 

"During WWI the Bishop of London said, "Kill Germans—do kill them;"

10 to 1, A. F. Winnington-Ingram was a eugenicist.  That statement reeks of eugenics.  I had a bit of difficulty tracking down the original source for the comment.  He appears to have run around the same circle of people trying to find a way to reconcile Christianity with evolution that was common in the era.  You will recall that to do this, while they did know their Bible, they didn't actually BELIEVE their Bible.  This was the era of de-mythologizing.  I don't know if it really counts to blame Christianity for the conduct of those who know their Bible but do not consider it an actual authority in their lives.  But I had trouble getting info about him.

Indeed, I cannot find the full context of that particular quote.  It seems to be a Sam Harris quote mine, coming from this particular book:  http://www.archive.org/stream/christianattitud013214mbp/christianattitud013214mbp_djvu.txt

If so, then you missed a possibly important part of the quote:  "to kill those who have shewn kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian Sergeant"

If he isn't a raving eugenicist as I suspect, one might begin to understand his anger if in fact it stems from the belief that Germans crucified an ally.  World War 2 vets from the pacific didn't have very nice things to say about the Japanese, and for good reason... if you knew what the Japanese actually did to American prisoners, and the like.  Not that I know anything about this incident, or really much of anything.  The quote seems to be plucked from the ether.  What I linked to gives this citation:  32. Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram speaking on November 28, 1918, cited in Keith Bryant and Lyall Wilkes, Would I Fight? (Oxford, 1935) , p. 43.

I cannot find this anywhere online, which means this quote is the whole sum of what we have.  Without having more information about Winnington-Ingram's beliefs, I would be cautious, if I were you, in using this quote.  You may come to find out that Winnington-Ingram was very liberal and closer to atheism then you know.  C.S. Lewis complained a great deal about Anglican priests and bishops that openly denied Christ and Christianity but remained priests and bishops anyway.  So, be careful.  Sam Harris we expect to throw something out there willy-nilly, but you don't want his anchor around your neck if he goes down. 

I am currently traveling and will get back to you on this when I get home, but only after I've settled in.  Now to see what you're arguing about with EB now...

Tony,

Unfortunately, as soon as you open your mouth to charge God with evil conduct, you have proved he exists, and also that he is good, because unless there exists a good God, all moral statements are nonsensical.

Granted, how you get from one to the other requires some intermediary steps.  It is not my purpose to speak to them here.

Now, the first thing that I want to point out is that I immediately followed this statement by indicating I recognized I'd have to proceed through some steps in order to defend that assertion.  The second thing to note is that then I said it was not the purpose of the post to mount that defense.  In sum, what you are seeking to address and put a lot of weight on is something that I myself indicated I wasn't putting a lot of weight on.

i understand that it wasn't the main thrust of your post, but it stood out to me as something that needed challenging.  However, you put enough weight on it to say it, as an aside or not, so i think it's pretty much fair game.  Hope you're not going to do a John Kyl on me.

So, the third thing to note is you say:  "my impression of the "logical" proof" but I do not indicate in the post that I believe my proof is 'logical.'  I stand by my use of the word 'proof' because I think it is an acceptable usage of it, but I didn't mean at all that it is a 'logical' proof.

Well i assume that you don't think that the proof is mathematical either.  So what you really meant to say is that there is that when one accuses God of bad conduct there is an argument to be made that the very statement assumes the existence of a good God.  That i would have had no problem with (although i disagree, i acknowledge that the argument can be made).  Or you could have said "as soon as you open your mouth to charge God with evil conduct you have proved that he exists and also that he is good #notintendedtobeafactualstatement".  

But you didn't say that, you said "proved", without qualification, and that is unsupportable.

Is it 'logically proved' that you have to exist in order to say you don't exist?  Answer that how you will, but in fact, if you say you don't exist, it is 'proved' that in fact you do.  Logically?  How about empirically?

Logically.  Or rather, you could frame it in several different ways, but the proof is a logical one.  Empirically it is not quite as strong as proof, because the individual perspective comes into play - if i hear you say that you don't exist that does not prove to me that you do.

If you make a moral assessment one presumes you expect it to be taken seriously.  You clearly believe it has some sense and correlation to reality and hope and expect other people who perceive reality will see it the same way.  It is not a 'logical proof.'  It is a "I think the lady doth protest too much," proof.

i think you are ignoring the primary utility of language - getting us what we want.  Most of the time when people make a moral statement they are really expressing their own personal needs or desires formulated in the terms most likely to result in them being fulfilled - that is, the language of morality.  In that context, correlation to reality doesn't particularly matter, only the knowledge that your listeners will understand what you mean.

Where we do appeal to a commonly understood reality in moral talk it can just be the verifiable effects of happiness or suffering which result from a certain action.

In short, what you are discussing is quite distant from "proof".

Do you think you were certainly right to bash someone's head in if they threatened your wife?

i was going to aim for the knee-caps.

That person may very well be someone else's husband or wife.

Exactly, as well as being a human being in their own right.  But a couple of busted patellas won't kill you, and seems to me to be the least you should expect if you threaten the safety of someone's family.

"Well, you do believe that the Bible is the literal word of God.  It would take me a long time to catch up with that kind of weirdness."

Nice!  But I actually do not believe that in the sense that you mean.  There is another bit of weirdness- after all this time, you thinking that when in fact I don't!  

Ok this is strange.  You mailed me a book pushing hydroplate theory to explain Noah's flood (i still have it somewhere), and you and i have argued about evolution for years.  This is not the behaviour of someone who can mentally allow bits of scripture to be allegorical.

So, you're saying that when Jesus called the pharisees a brood of vipers I believe in fact that Jesus was currently being accosted by a horde of snakes?  Is that what I am required to believe if I believe the Bible is 'literally true'?  (Matthew 23:33)

i half suspect that you are tweaking me with a faux equivalence to my understanding of your use of the word "proof" here, because if that was what "literalist" meant then there would be no literalists and the term would be meaningless.  i would say that as a literalist you are required to believe that Jesus said what he is reported in Matthew to have said - that is all that is required for the Bible to be literally, historically true - but you are allowed to think (as anyone would on actually hearing someone make a statement like this) that he was speaking metaphorically.

If you want to take all of history I don't think you'll fare any better.  I chose the 20th century because Biblical literacy has never been higher.  But if you want to expand it throughout all of history, feel free to stack up the dead at the hands of Christians to those dead at the hands of people who didn't believe in God at all.

That wouldn't really address your point would it.  Besides, I assume you agree that increasing secularism and increasing technology have to some extent shared a historical trajectory, and increasing technology makes mass murder rather easier to accomplish.  So the raw numbers don't seem to be particularly helpful in this case.  What you have claimed is that increasing Biblical literacy is associated with a reduction in Christians killing in the name of God, and if that is your position then you need to start looking back to the 1700s for evidence.

Moreover, you overstate the 'free access' and the level of literacy levels.  I once saw a chart of estimated literacy rates in Western Europe back some thousands of years.   If I find it again, I will certainly put it before you.  Hey, this is your big chance to get excited for public education!  And when did free public education get started?  With what level of education did people usually finish with prior to say 1900?

So now we've moved on to people being able to read and critically analyse the Bible?  Hey look, i'm happy to agree that there would be a gradient of literacy, and that might make the analysis more difficult.  There are a lot of reasons why people in the 20th century behaved differently from those in previous centuries, so i feel like you're ignoring all extraneous factors in an effort to support the conclusion that you want to come to.

Let's start stacking up bodies and see how it goes.

As mentioned, 20th century technology is a major factor if that is your only measuring stick.

"What you are asking for is massacres carried out by Christians because they were Christians, and that then becomes a matter of interpretation and debate."

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable thing to request.  I'm sure that in the first world war there were Christians on all sides slaughtering each other, but if none of them thought they had a divine command from God I don't see where your beef is.

Only with your increasingly apparent tendency to make unsupported statements - perhaps this is a sign that you are destined for high ecclesiastical office!  You are welcome to state as a matter of opinion that reading the Bible decreases the frequency with which Christians will kill people in the name of God - it's hard to see how any experimental proof could exist either way, and the period of history in which there has been the requisite change in biblical literacy has been characterised by so many other changes that it's near impossible to separate cause and effect from mere correlation.  That is what i am saying - you are welcome to believe this, but don't pretend that the evidence is compelling, because it ain't.

I think my point is that a lot of 'senior churchman' in the Anglican church of that era- and our own- don't even believe in God.  I do hope that you will grant that such a thing is at least a pre-requisite to being called a Christian?  I don't know about this case, but I know of others, so I merely urge caution.

My friend Steve used to go out with an Anglican minister, so i fully accept that some CofE representatives are on the very liberal extreme of the Christian church - if so diverse a worldwide group as "Christians" can even be thought of as being all the same religion.  This is not a particularly important point in any case, it was only intended as an example of how religion can be and has been co-opted into the justification for violent actions which are predominantly political in their primary motivation.  There are many other examples in the 20th Century, which i would say argues against your point.  However, if your criteria is now that individuals must "think they have a divine command from God" then we're getting into the realms of mental illness (a la Joan of Arc) the historical rates of which are largely affected by increased diagnostics in the last century.

Seeya,
Dan

I just noticed you're using the avatar image from the original DTF!  How long have you been using that?  Did I make them available at some point?  I was the guy with the ball cap, no?