"The sense in which you meant the word "proof" appears to be "not proof"."

As I said, I'm pretty sure my phraseology was consistent with uses of the word.  I think we've gone as far as we're going to go on this very *ahem* important point of dispute. 


"i am only focusing on this because the claim which you made appears to be entirely oblivious of an argument i recently made to you about the possibility of objective non-theistic morality, in a conversation that you declined to persue (fair enough, you're a busy man), and then act like it never happened.  Frankly, my feelings were hurt!  "

Was this on Facbook?  I remember dropping a thread on FB.  I did get busy, but I think also finding old conversations on FB to be annoyingly difficult.  I tend to drop a lot of FB conversations, I'm afraid.  I wouldn't take it personally.  Or was it the thread that you and Joe took over?

Still, I didn't gather that you were saying that you accepted the possibility of an 'objective non-theistic morality.'  My take on your new view is that it is an non-arbitrary relativistic morality.  I gather that you think there are reasons for a given moral judgement, but those reasons can shift and change, which in my book still makes it fully relativistic.  If this doesn't jibe with your actual position, well, you already know I'm confused about your new position.  :)

"Why should the safety of your family justify your infliction of violence on the member of another family?

Because my need to protect my family from harm takes moral priority over their need to have a good time looting and burning stuff."

That's like defining a word by including the word in the definition.  I agree that you have a moral priority to defend your family.  I also expect that you will see it that way, too.  Even more when you have kids, I reckon.  But is the basis for this 'moral priority' merely a 'non-arbitrary' recognition that you have been evolved to spread your genes?   You say you've got an objective standard here, so what is it?  What makes it objective?  Why should we obey it?  If its objective, why doesn't everyone see it?

"Right to life beats right to party."

My sentiments exactly.  :)

"i guess the reason i might be confused is that you seem to think that bits of the Bible which to millions of Christians are obviously allegorical, like the Garden of Eden or Noah's flood, are literally true."

At one point you agreed with me that my reading of Genesis 1-11 was that the author intended it to be taken as real history.  (This was a long time ago).  You also saw that as a reason to dismiss Genesis 1-11.  When I walked the streets of London with you I explained a bit how this position came together for me.   I don't know if you remember.  Anyway, let's be honest.  The reason why 'millions of Christians' take it as 'obviously allegorical' is because they believe that macroevolution is a scientific fact and only idiots could think otherwise.  I think macroevolution pathetically fails as 'science' and don't care if someone thinks me an idiot.  Therefore, I don't feel driven to rationalize away the plain reading of those chapters.  Note that I am not saying that macroevolution is false because the Bible says so.  I'm saying that macroevolution sucks as science and I find it extremely unlikely to be an actual record of the history of life on this planet.  If I believed otherwise, I still wouldn't allegorize Genesis 1-11.  I would probably just drop it as false and leave it there.

"Even better, why not eliminate the time factor and compare societies of high literacy to societies of low literacy in the present day."

I'm game. 

"That's what a literal reading could justify."

That's where you are quite wrong.  A literal reading does not justify that kind of behavior.

I will be teaching a year long (18 week) survey of the OT beginning in October (virtually).  I think you might get something out of it.  Let me know if you're interested.

"Except that things like witch hunting (for example) are explicitly in line with what parts of the scriptures say."

A case in point of exactly something the Scriptures do not say.  Oh sure, it was said to a particular people at a particular time in a particular circumstance... but it does not follow that such a thing extends to all people at all times in all circumstances.  This is where a good knowledge of the Old Testament would really come in handy.  The reason why Christians have stayed away from that kind of thing is because, well, they know the OT.  The reason why atheists think that such things should be done by Christians now is because, well, they DON'T know the OT.

Random crazies in history don't change that.  I just had an email exchange with an atheist giving me an example of one crazy Christian.  I told him that I hope his atheism is built on something stronger than one crazy Christian.  (he agreed, and said he did).  The Salem witch trials were random craziness THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO without much (maybe none at all) endorsement by later Christians.  Depending on how you answer my question below about the nature of the 'increasing levels of education and knowledge of the world' I have to wonder why Christians as a whole didn't hunt witches wherever they were from 1700 until modern science came to set us right.

"i don't need to produce an explanation of my own to point out that yours is faulty."

No, but you actually need some actual evidence and documentation.  Your assertion isn't going to cut it.  I don't think you can dispute me on the facts:  the high abuses by Christians throughout history were done during times of great illiteracy in general, as literacy and access to the Scriptures has generally increased, the abuses have tapered off.  This is a fact. 

"People who can read the Bible quite well are fully capable of doing terrible things to other people in its name, as well as coopting it as a secondary justification in ethnic or political conflicts."

Yea, but what do you have?  Ireland?  Bosnia?  Nothing in the last century done by Christians comes close to what was carried out by the Nazis, Communists, and Muslims.  It isn't even close, and I'm not going to let you pretend it is.  At the hands of those three groups hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have been willfully slaughtered, not to mention the casualties and policies.  And the Christians- at the same technological level or even further with higher access, it could be argued- do not come even close.  You're welcome to total it up for me.  If it even compares with what Pol Pot did I would be surprise.  You're welcome to surprise me.

"i am saying that you have little or no support for the idea that increasing Biblical literacy causes a decrease in atrocities perpetrated in the name of Christianity."

I have lots of support.  I haven't given it to you here, I admit.  I didn't think we were at that point.  Right now, I'm just trying to get you to admit that it is a historical fact that there is a correlation between literacy rates and access to the Scriptures and abuses by Christians.  We can get to causation if and when you accept that I'm giving you the truth.

"Increasing levels of education and understanding of the world (for example)."

Increasing levels of education?  You mean... like.... higher literacy rates?  By 'increasing levels of education' it doesn't count that one of the things they were increasingly educated on were the Scriptures themselves?  Aren't you making my argument?  Or do you secretly mean secular humanistic education?  I don't know if I'd go that direction if I were you.  The things that secularists were teaching for the first half of the 20th century are precisely the things that make the 20th century one of the bloodiest on record.  But if that's your claim, I'll be happy to address it.  Otherwise, to be frank, it looks like special pleading to me, admitting that people had higher levels of education- as I said- but denying that they had higher levels of education... uh.... ? 

As for 'understanding of the world,' I think you would be hard pressed to show how that helped anything.  Remember, evolutionary theory and old earthism (what else could you mean?) began to take hold at exactly the same time that the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and eugenicists were going at things.  It's certainly true that Liberal theology, which had pervasively de-mythologized the Bible, had put down deep roots in the 20s, and was spreading from... Germany.  Oh yea, that's right.  Liberal theology was headquartered in Germany in the 1920s.  Ah, but what am I talking about?  I'm sure that it had nothing to do with events in Germany a scant 10 years later!  :)

"i'd stick with the one you've got if i were you - it's a lot cooler than the baseball cap guy."

I can't think of the last time anyone associated the word 'cooler' with me.   Thanks.  :)

"No, that may be how morality developed, not just in us but in animals as well - kin selection, reciprocal altruism, etc - but my evolutionary benefit has nothing to do with what is or isn't moral."

On your position, this cannot possibly be the case.  If there is any part of the human creature that cannot be tracked back in some way in some measure to our evolution, then your attempt to reduce reality and human existence to the purely material fails.  In this instance, 'evolutionary benefit' merely stands in as the place holder for 'physical explanation.'  Your position requires that all of reality reduces to physical stuff, physical processes, and the like.  If you tell me that evolution 'has nothing to do with what is or isn't moral' then I insist that you tell me which physical thing or process does have something to do with what is moral or isn't moral.  If you cannot do this, then I submit that your philosophical materialism fails.

"Consideration of other sentient creatures' wellbeing is something that is innate in us,"

Innate in us?  Really?  If this innateness didn't emerge as a function of evolution, where did it come from?  How did we get it?  And you are surely making a big assumption... what you really meant is "that is innate in [all of] us." How do you know this?  If you said that lungs are something 'innate' to us we could at least test that by extracting lungs out of people, but where exactly is the moral innateness located?  And isn't it odd that other creatures do not have this 'innate sense'?  Ah, but this is where you will tell me that indeed, chimpanzees and certain molds have exhibited behavior that looks very much like such consideration... but how could that be relevant, since you have said that what is or isn't moral has nothing to do with evolutionary development? 

Your assertion here that this is 'innate' in [all of] us is virtually indistinguishable from what I've been claiming all along, but you have denied, denied, denied.  I have been saying that that this 'innate sense exists' and you have fought me tooth and nail on every dot and dribble with that and I have been saying that this 'innate sense' does not, and cannot, reduce to physicality.  Now, in words clear as day you just said, "my evolutionary benefit has nothing to do with what is or isn't moral."  Unless you are suggesting that this applies only to yourself rather than the rest of humanity, we may suppose that you have isolated morality from a biological basis.  If not a biological one, what physical basis will you now give? 

If you are unable to give such a basis you have arrived at the threshold of theism.  Welcome home. 

"That proves that your morality, not mine, is the relativistic one."

But proves in what sense?  Do you mean 'logically' proves, or is this just a figure of speech?

(See how I did that?  You don't actually have to answer the question.  Just note how I am prepared to hold your statement to a different standard depending on what sense you intend for the word!)

"However, a quick glance at a relevant opinion poll would tell you that the people who reject evolution are overwhelmingly those who have a religious motive for doing so.  Doesn't that suggest that your creationism is a little more contingent upon your faith than you might think?"

Hmmmmmmm.... a relevant opinion poll of others somehow says something about my position?

"Correction, your reading does not justify that kind of behaviour."

Double-correction, any plain reading does not justify that behavior.  Period.

"if the reader felt that he also had such heavenly approval."

And the plain reading makes it plain that we do not also have any such heavenly approval.  It is therefore positively absurd, beyond being absolutely wrong, for you to insist that someone could take those passages and carry out similar behavior today.

"You seem to be playing the same game as EB here.  ...  The ten commandments were just local guidelines?  i don't think so."

It's because you are missing some extremely important context.  I have tried to explain it to you before.  I think it is useless to try to do so again until you are grounded more fully in your knowledge of the Scriptures, old and new.  I am not here to deny that it is a prickly issue, although I do find it very funny that only atheists think it so- every intelligent Christian I know has worked through it and this includes many of the dead ones.  The issue is not resolved via moral calculation.  That's where your analysis is off.

"Ok, although the numbers are likely to be very approximate:

20th Century Fascism - this diverse movement has frequently been tightly associated with Christianity, in many cases being indistinguishable from the right wing of the catholic church."

lol, hold up there partner.  You're not getting away with that one.  I think that is a flatly false claim.  However, I'd like to give you an opportunity to back it up.  Let's hear it.

"On the contrary, prayers were said for Hitler on his birthday in German churches all through the war."

Well, then, that proves it.  lol 

Passing over the fact that by this time opposition to Hitler had been purged from the churches, it is worth noting that every week in my church prayers are said for Obama and his minions, er, the government of the US at all levels.  And I can assure you, there is no great love for Obama within my congregation.  But obedience to God requires this... but it does not follow that we support every or even most of the actions done by the current administration (in particular, re: life issues).  Now imagine that the Gestapo had been through and rounded up all those in the congregation that had the gumption to speak out against certain policies.  Now, you tell me how to distinguish between those who are merely afraid for their lives against those in the congregation who might agree with those policies.

"Hitler was also widely praised by various protestant leaders in the US at the time.  The Nazi regime was nowhere near as secular as you would wish to suggest."

Here you again commit the error that I have already pointed out regarding that era.  You mentioned some 1916 Anglican.  What you fail to realize (more accurately, to acknowledge) is that during this time period a great many people claiming to be Christian absolutely could not be construed as such.  I got into a bit of a debate about Hitler and Christianity not too long ago and I challenged the atheists with some very simple but very major differences between the Scriptures and Hitler's beliefs, and was given the standard "No true Scotsman!" bit.  I countered that fine, I am an atheist... an atheist that believes in God.  They called this lunacy and mocked me because atheism 'by definition' means not a belief in God.  I gave them the 'No True Scotsman' bit right back in return.  Of course they dismissed it.  But the only difference in the reasoning is that the label 'Christian' contains more information than the label 'atheist,' so it actually takes a little mental exertion in order to line up on one side the things that 'Christian' by definition means in order to see what it can't mean.  Ok, I say all of that in order to say this:

There were literally 'Christians' that did not even believe in God.  Protestants, Anglicans, and even a fair number of Catholics.  Now, I think in any estimation, if someone claims to be a Christian but does not believe in God, then that person ain't a Christian.  Can we agree that this escapes the NTS charge?

When you delve deeper than mere labels and produce actual examples for me of these 'Protestants' I would be willing to wager that in 8 cases out of 9, they were virtually indistinguishable from their secularist neighbors.

As for Naziism and Christianity in general, my ministry published Joseph Keysor's "Hitler, the Bible, and the Holocaust."  http://hitlerandchristianity.com.  Not that I think it is so difficult to demonstrate that Hitler and his Nazis were categorically NOT Christian that such a lengthy treatment is necessary, but no such charge can survive a fair reading of this book.

"It is estimated that about 30 million people have died of the disease, and 40 million more are currently infected."

Seriously?  You're going to put that on Christians?  So, all of these grown men and women running around having unprotected sex, knowing full well what could await them... they're not a factor?   I'm sure it has nothing to do with the pervasive African refusal to wear condoms even if they are provided?  And golly gee, you don't happen to think that if there were a market for condoms etc in Africa that businesses would be lining up to provide them for their own profit, no?  Why is it you think that the UN feels the need to GIVE THEM AWAY?  It might not be.... that no businesses will offer them because they aren't going to be purchased and used?  The Catholics have been taken to task for opposing the giving away of condoms using government/UN/NGO funds, but they do not have anything near the kind of presence in Africa to keep them off of shelves or out of people's hands.  They have much more significant influence in the United States, and oddly enough, in my Walmart, guess what I see!  Condoms!

Italy of all places must be regarded as the most under control of the Catholic Church, wouldn't you agree?

Heck, they're even running ads on television!  http://brandnoise.typepad.com/brand_noise/2007/12/condom-advertis.html

IN ITALY!  d--n THOSE CATHOLICS!  Don't they know that AIDS/HIV is in Italy, too?  How dare they prevent condoms from being sold and used in their country?!?!?  Oh wait, they can't, and don't. 

And if they can't do this (even if the wanted to) in little ol Italy, chock full of Catholics, there is no way on earth they'd be able to do it on the continent of Africa. 

"i have no idea how to enumerate the millions who have died as a result of nationalist, but always Christian, colonial ideologies"

I am down with taking issue with colonial ideologies.  But I think if we're going to be objective, you're going to have to find a way to enumerate.  :)

"the British Raj which were motivated, as well as by greed, by explicitly Christian proselytising ideals."

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... motivated by greed?  Which do you think was the greater motivator for such extensive investments in time, capital, and resources?  If we sit down to look at who funded the East India Company, do you think we'll find a long list of British congregations or the Anglican Church (it wouldn't be fair of you to say yes! because the Anglican Church is run by the crown and the crown heavily subsidized the EIC!)? 

I am definitely aware that a lot of Christians saw colonialism as a means and mechanism for reaching out to previously unknown and unreachable peoples.  In some cases, this missionary zeal was combined with the colonial mission itself.  But I think if we're going to be fair, it was greed that was the primary motivator to colonialism.

"Again, you're engaging in very simplistic historical analysis to back up your theory."

You know, I don't think you understand where my analysis has come from.  One of the things that brought me to the Christian faith was certain observations about the nature of the 20th century.  But you apparently do not seem to understand that my formal education actually includes taking actual courses on the history of the Church, right up to the present day.   You may be unaware of the significant changes that swept the Christian churches from, say, 1800 to 1940, but that doesn't mean the changes aren't real and directly observable.  On top of this formal education, I have been actively researching the period from, say, 1850 to 1940, and actually give presentations on different aspects of the period.  Most recently, I gave a presentation on the Scopes Monkey Trial.  In my pro-life stuff, I have frequently presented on the eugenics movement of that era.  I always make use of primary sources in my presentations and whenever possible will quote directly from them in order to escape the charge that I am not representing them correctly.  And if I choose one person to quote, you can be sure that there were twenty others saying much the same stuff that I opted to leave out.

Now, unless you're telling me that you've examined this period of time with a level of thoroughness that would prompt you to stand up in front of hundreds of folks and put yourself out there, I'd hold off a bit on dismissing what I'm saying as being 'simplistic.' 

It's true, I haven't given you link after link after link to substantiate what I'm saying.  This has been in part for brevity's sake. I have already spent way too much time on this post.  For just a sampling, you can take a look at the resource list for a presentation I gave last year.

http://athanatosministries.org/resources-on-tracking-the-culture-of-death/395.html

(more on the actual presentation:  http://athanatosministries.org/culture-of-death-malthus-sanger-darwin-singer/414.html

There is a lot more to my arguments from history then you're giving me credit for.  I don't utilize this stuff only in forum debates.  I stand up and make audacious claims in front of dozens and dozens of people at a go, and I back up those claims on the spot, and bring copies of the primary sources with me and let people inspect the whole document if they want to look at the whole context.

If you felt inclined to sit through a ten hour presentation on this stuff, I'm sure that I could arrange it.  I could easily fill ten hours.  I had great difficulty keeping my Scopes Monkey Trial presentation to an hour, and I bet you've never talked to someone that actually read the transcript of not only that trial, but also several others that Clarence Darrow was counsel for.  Nor have you met anyone that went further and looked at each of the 'expert witnesses' Darrow presented in that particular trial and researched each of their attitudes on religion, faith, science, evolution, and eugenics. 

And you probably can't think of the last time you met someone that has done this with countless other examples and events from the time period.   I am not saying all this because I am annoyed with you, or that I'm trying to puff myself up.  I'm not saying I am a professional historian.  I am saying that you're going to be hard pressed to find anyone who has read as much primary source material from Christians, eugenicists, evolutionists, and non-Christians from this time period as I have. 

"Your desire to neatly pigeonhole it in accordance with your thesis doesn't change the facts."

On top of the above, having actually PUBLISHED a 400 page book on the subject, I don't think you appreciate my grasp of these particular facts.  And to have published it means to have read it several times and to have familiarized myself with the names, events, primary persons, and primary documents related to the 'thesis.'  I can say with great confidence that you have never personally interacted with someone who has a better grasp of the ACTUAL facts as I do.  (Although the author himself could wipe the mat with me.  He really knows his stuff.)

Again, I'm not trying to flatter myself here or anything.  And I'm not annoyed.  But I think you're going to have to work a *little* harder than that in order to move that particular argument forward. 

If you insist that I document my own assertions further, I'll completely understand.  However, I think it will have to be done through another format, such as a video conference.  I have now spent WAY too long on this. 

But Joseph Keysor's book is a great start.

By the way, i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how the "culture of death" influences right- as well as left-wing attitudes.  For example the "Yay, executions!" crowd response at the republican primary debates.  Assuming that your analysis can be applied to conservatives as well as to liberals.