Religion and Ethics Forum

Seems fair enough, we want policy based upon demonstrable facts, not supernatural suspicions.

What policies are based on supernatural suspicions?

Not the root of all evil, but demonstrably a net negative in the world.

You might not think it but sufficient numbers thought it for Dawkins to answer it in his documentary “Religion, root of all evil?”

They don't pose a direct danger, but they validate the nonsense that's used by religious fanatics to justify their atrocities.

You will have to justify if, where and how they validate it. How for instance does the religion that gets people to wear masks so as to not hurt flies, validate atrocities?

I object - it's up there with having a hereditary head of state as something with a lack of an moral justification, but it's lower on the list of priorities than, say, sorting out education or the health and care services.

That presupposes that without religion health and care would be a priority, ignoring religions historic role in health and care and indeed education. None of which are guaranteed in a religionless society.

Moderator note: The Accountant's post copied from SfG as parts are more relevant here, and have generated a reply on this topic from jeremyp - see next post

VG,

No. Try two examples:

1. The God of the OT says, “slaughter the Canaanite men, women and children because their behaviour is sinful”. The Jews accept that as an article of faith and slay the Canaanites.

2. Netanyahu says, “kill the Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza because that way we may also exterminate Hezbollah and in any case our retribution for the October 7 killings will be so terrible that they’ll never attempt the same thing again”.

In both cases, as you note, lots of innocent people end up dead. In the former case though, the faith claim is the beginning and the end of the matter – there’s no way to know if the God of the OT is real and nor, even if "He" is, whether his instructions are faithfully written in a text. There's no particular, real world outcome other than delivering on the article of faith.     

In the second case though, either it works or it doesn’t – ie, either Hezbollah regroups and attacks again, or they never again try it. 

Note too that in the second case there’s no overt reference to a moral or philosophical imperative (which is all there is in the first case). Instead there’s a claim to a pragmatic, real world solution that demonstrably after the slaughter can be shown to have worked or not (regardless of how morally contemptible you or I think it to be whether or not it achieves its objective).

This difference clearly is a difference no matter how much you try to obfuscate that, and I happen to think it’s quite an important one too.   

You keep mentioning you think it's an important difference without ever explaining why you think it's important.

You're comparing a Bible story with a real event? Bible stories, like many religious stories are brief illustrations to make a religious point rather than historically accurate descriptions to be taken literally. Why not pick a real world event to illustrate your point about faith claims.

Are you suggesting with your Netanyahu example and the support he has from Western governments that Israel and its allies don't consider morality or values to be important in their decision to bomb civilians? It is just an academic exercise in recording metrics on how much bombing will allow a country to make an area so uninhabitable that it can ensure there is no resistance to illegal military occupation? Why is that demonstrating the superiority of making decisions based on metrics rather than religion?

The Israelis (supported by their foreign allies) have been bombing, killing and abducting tens of thousands of Palestinians for decades and it hasn't worked in ending resistance to Israel's illegal military occupation. They blockaded Gaza since 2007 turning it into the largest "open air prison" and it didn't work. All that happened was that other countries supporting Israel became targets for terrorism. So why are they ignoring metrics and continuing to do what hasn't worked in the past?

The US bombed and killed thousands of civilians during its War on Terror https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html - it didn't work in ending the Taliban.

Sanctions on Iraq and mass bombing of civilian infrastructure killed tens of thousands of Iraqis - ok the US got some oil revenue out of it and US taxpayers spent trillions killing people so it worked in terms of making some private US companies very rich. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-war-bush-twentieth-anniversary-b2302031.html

The US also bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese - it didn't work in ending Vietcong resistance.

The metrics you might want to look at is how much money are weapons manufacturers earning and how long  Netanyahu can delay his criminal trial by prolonging and extending the war -  to avoid facing up to corruption charges and prison.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/court-rejects-netanyahus-request-to-delay-testimony-in-criminal-trial/

Netanyahu’s defense team requested the delay because it said the prime minister has been unable to prepare for giving testimony, set to begin on December 2, due to the time pressures of managing the current, multi-front conflict.

I still don't get the "important" difference you are trying to highlight. What is the important difference between religious claims and people seemingly ignoring metrics and making decisions based on wishful thinking and their human psychotic urge to kill lots of people?

I said Papias was concerned with the oracles, not Matthew. You inferred the latter.

No I didn't. I inferred that Papias thought Matthew wrote a sayings gospel in Hebrew, not a narrative in Greek.

Lightfoot, in the link, gives several examples of the word logia being used where it refers to teaching incorporated into narrative.

So what? You are still inferring facts not in evidence.

He was that rare thing, an American evangelical on the political left. Years ago, I read his book "20 hot potatoes Christians are afraid to touch". I wrote to him complimenting him on it, and got a very friendly reply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Campolo

I remember Tony Campolo from my Greenbelt days. It was the time also of Ron Sider and Rich Christians in an age of hunger I recall.

On April 15th I put in a FOI request for my ex-employer's policies on gender identity. The first reply contained this:

"Your request is asking for all guidance, procedures, and policies available to staff relating to
diversity, inclusion, and equality. Given the vast number of policies, guidance, and
procedures available to staff and that diversity and inclusion are at the heart of many of the
policies and procedures, to fulfil this request the agency would have to manually inspect
every appropriate policy, procedure, or guidance file, thus exceeding the cost limit outlined in
the FOIA. There are nine directorates within the agency, with several teams within each
directorate. Each of these teams have their own policies, procedures, and guidance as well
as the agency wide policy, procedures, and guidance.
If you were to make a new request for a narrower category of information, we may be able to
comply with the renewed request within the appropriate limit, however, we cannot guarantee..."

It's concerning that HR don't know what procedures they've got where (must be a nightmare for staff looking for guidance) and that it would take more than 3 working days to find and collate it. Anyway, eventually (3 modified requests later, on August 20th) they sent me their guidance/policy on gender, attached.

You may, of course, disagree with my opinion that this is a waste of public money.