According to univironmental determinism (The scientific assumption that
whatever happens to an xyz portion of the universe is determined by the
infinite matter in motion within and without), morals and ethics are constantly
evolving. Morals are mental road maps that help us to negotiate the macrocosm.
Morals tell us what goes and what does not go. They help us survive as
individuals and as groups. Thus, as the macrocosm changes, morals must change,
lest we suffer the consequences. There are indeterministic claims that morals only
can be received from on high or that ethicists are needed to help control the
unchurched. The fact remains, nevertheless, that we are all ethicists.
As Jerry Coyne pointed out recently, the Bible is one of the most
immoral books:
“For lo, if your son is obstinate and wayward, the
Lord not only giveth you permission to kill him, but decrees that
you kill him, and in a painful manner. From Deuteronomy, chapter 21:
18If a man have a
stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or
the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not
hearken unto them:
19Then shall his father
and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city,
and unto the gate of his place;
20And they shall say
unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he
will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21 And all the men
of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil
away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
The same fate befalleth those women taken unto
marriage and whose husbands, who do not like them,
discover that they have lost their maidenheads (Deuteronomy, chapter 22):
13If any man take a
wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
14And give occasions of
speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this
woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
15Then shall the father
of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the
damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate. . .
20But if this thing be
true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
21 Then they shall
bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city
shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in
Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away
from among you.
The stoning-to-death decree also holds for virgins who
are betrothed, but "lie with" another man. In that case they both get
stoned to death. If you know about stoning, at least as it's practiced in
modern-day Islamic countries, it is an excruciatingly prolonged and horrible
way to die.” (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/biblical-morality-part-2-killing-non-virgin-brides-and-rebellious-kids/)
These few passages put the kibosh on biblical inerrancy. Good thing we
don’t need the Bible to learn ethics and morality and that otherwise devout
believers seldom follow its dictates.
No comments:
Post a Comment