Israel and the US: A Damaging Partnership?

After the 2nd World War the allied powers, led by Britain effectively handed a small movement a small strip of land in the Middle East known until then as Palestine. This movement had lobbied for decades to find a homeland for Jews who were experiencing persecution in Europe and around the world. When the ugly truth of the Holocaust emerged and the war was won, the allies decided it was the least they could do and the nation of Israel was formed and officially recognised in the 1940′s.

Mass migration of Jewish people from all over the world resulted in a rapid imbalance of ethnicity in the new state of Israel which, for thousands of years, had been almost exclusively Arab. A small collection of primitive people, historically ruled by the Ottoman empire and with no self-government, suddenly found foreigners with money streaming in, buying up land, building, organising and forming a new society with Western aid and western ideals. Today the modern state of Israel is arguably the best, if not the only, working democracy in the region. Living standards are high, health is good, the economy is as stable as can be expected. Israel has everything. Everything except Peace.

True Morality IIa – Scripturally Guided Immorality

And if a master strikes his servant with a rod and he dies under his hand he shall be punished unless the servant survives a day or two. In this case, the master shall not be punished, for the servant is his property.
- Moses (Exodus 21:20-21)

In part II on ethics without God I want to look at reasons why religion and specifically the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a deficient ethic and how brave folk called prophets went against the prevailing religious establishment and spoke up for real justice over against religious baloney. Prophets like Hosea, Isaiah and especially Jesus of Nazareth critiqued not only distortions of their religion but their actual religion per se as well as its holy texts! First, Part IIa, we will look at the deficient morality in the Bible.

Though this may seem strange to us, most early religions and especially cultic practices, are largely unconcerned with what we would call ethics or good behaviour and were focussed instead on obtaining and maintaining the favour of the local deities. The sacrifices offered are designed to appease the gods in order that they send rain, support battles or bless the tribe in other ways. In fact, the actual cultic practices – such as sacrifices – are often pretty darn unethical but the religions were mostly not designed to bring about ethical people but to ensure the survival and success of the group. Right behaviour was whatever it took to please the deity.

True Morality I – Modernist Morality and the Post-Modern Critique

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.
(The best is the enemy of the good.)
- Voltaire

The most common critique of humanism by Christians is that it promotes moral relativism whereby everything goes. This is a misrepresentation. As I will show in part II, not only does the Bible promote moral relativism, humanists have provided some of the best moral codes we have today (part III). It is the religious idea that a perfect morality has been objectively revealed that has opposed the best humanism can offer.

What many religious believers fail to see is that moral codes do not proceed from divine command or infallible scripture but are discovered by evaluating actions based on merit. The claim that a violent command does originate divinely can thus exposed for what it is: a power play used to justify human agendas.

But before we look critically at the Bible’s morality, we need to look at the modern fundamentalist idea that knowledge or morals depend absolutely on God and revelation. How do we get to sound morals, given that we are human and bound to err?

It’s imperative, we dare exist through all of the things that evil does

Hydroponikz:

still we creep thru the mud while the weakest is snubbed
no time to speak if speakers are aimed at nonbelievers of love
it’s imperative, we dare exist through all of the things that evil does
hatred grief and love to all of the people that we’re equals of

True Morality – Virtue Beyond Religion

How then shall we live?
- Francis Schaeffer

Questions about God and religion inevitably raise questions about morality. Many Christians believe that non-Christians are somehow less moral or even totally immoral and that, without God’s command or the Bible, there can be no proper morality. Before we allow morality to become a synonym for religious beliefs – and thus lose its meaning completely – we need to remember that morality is about right behaviour. I think that we can discover and approach a true morality without either God or the Bible and also that a both can actually stand in the way of decent behaviour.

When a Christian is no longer a Christian

I was running through my old church’s statement of beliefs this morning and I couldn’t find one I could agree with. Admittedly they are very conservative and, though there are other churches which do not hold to their extreme views on biblical inerrancy, hell and atonement, I have to be honest: the Sunday service of any Christian Church I have visited has almost zero value. I’ve thus left the Church, local and global, abandoned my faith in historic Christian doctrine, and am attempting to live out my respect for Jesus apart from the Church.

Farewell

On 21 August the domain criticalBelief.com will expire and this blog will only be accessible via the address http://cawoodm.wordpress.com.

UPDATE: The archived posts are available here: http://criticalbelief.wordpress.com/

What started as a series of critical questions, totally committed to Christianity ended in disillusionment not only with the Church but also with historic Christian Faith even in it’s most liberal forms. Calvinism, which I detest, is indeed the most systematic theology and universalism the most moral. It could be that Calvinistic Universalism is the answer but…

…given the brute fact that today, and every day hence, a young boy will starve to death and a young girl be sold for pleasure, I reject the existence, still less, the “worshipability” of any God who is in a position to prevent this. A powerless God maybe, but not the Good Powerful God of our monotheistic faiths. This is a problem requiring a solution, not a crafted answer nor any words and I’ll support any cause/religion working towards it’s end.

Thanks for reading!

Marc

PS: Jesus is Lord!

PPS: Honour in Defeat.