Luna del'Corvo

I got into a (very civil, actually) discussion on FB about this. The other person began with a CS Lewis quote about how "I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God" is a fundamentally ludicrous idea. I replied that, given what we know of both history and text, the notion of accepting the ethical 'love your neighbor, care for the sick and the poor' message of the historical teacher, while remaining skeptical of claims to divinity is quite reasonable.

She reasserted that it was not really logically possible to accept even an ethical dimension to Jesus without accepting the divine, because Bible. And also CS Lewis. *eyeroll* Essentially, the argument is this: 1) Jesus was a great moral teacher (bible says so). 2) Jesus said he was divine (bible says so). 3) If he said he was divine and was not, he lied. 4) Great moral teachers do not lie (I say so). 5) Therefore, either Jesus was not a moral teacher, or he is divine.

Oh, the fallacies just abound in that little bit of reasoning! So here is my response: ( (cut for length; I do get rolling!) )

I've probably come across as a bit more 'appreciative of the mythology' than I am, but one must pick one's battles. In all honesty, I find a few of the supposed teachings of Christ to be quite fine, if stunningly basic and unoriginal, and others to be every bit as archaic and (in contemporary terms) backwards as one would expect from a male member of a first century patriarchal sacrificial cult. I do appreciate the tenacity and creativity of Christianity as a movement in the first few centuries; as socio-political or cultural trends go, it is certainly a unique success story in terms of adaptation, integration into society and having a knack for surviving....

Even if I DID believe...
Essay ©Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally posted here, Dec 30 1983. (Reposted, with permission from author pending.)

I am not a Christian. In my discussions of this fact with Christians, I have repeatedly run into one major misunderstanding. The Christians assume that if I believed the Bible were true, I would become a Christian; that is, they believe that my reason for not being a Christian is that I don’t believe in their god. This is not the case.

One disclaimer: The thesis of this essay is that even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship due to his low moral standards. Consequently, I speak sometimes as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not.

If I had undeniable proof of the existence of Yahweh, aka Jehovah, aka Adonai, aka El Shaddai, aka Yahweh Elohim, the father of Jesus and the ancient leader of the Semitic peoples, I still would not worship the bastard. If an angel appeared to me and removed my appendectomy scar so I could never deny the reality of divine power, I still would not be a Christian. My primary reason for not being a Christian or Jew has nothing to do with my lack of belief in their god. My primary reason is that the Bible is a disgusting book describing the behavior of a god without the morality of an average high school student.

( The rest of the essay under the cut )

---

This essay thanks to the ever-erudite doctoreon, who shared it in response to my last post. And I am sharing it because, alongside the applications of my logical and rational facilities which reject religious literalism of any stripe, lies a deep ethical abhorrence for so many aspects of the Judeo-Christian construct. This is one of those aspects, and the good Mr. Maroney has elucidated it better than I ever could.

And yes, it seems I am going public (in a limited fashion) again. I will be going back and re-opening a lot of my posts, though due to the recent blog-stalking unpleasantness, many will remain f-locked.