Pharyngula::Christian Love

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Thursday, December 09, 2004

Christian Love

PZ Myers • 102 Comments (last page)

The mother of the suicidal girl told the Daily Times-Call newspaper said her daughter was singled out because she is tall and openly rejected creationism. She said the girl endured shoulder checks, tripping in the hall and other physical abuse.
The mother said that on Nov. 30, a group of girls surrounded her daughter and called her a ''pagan'' and said she ''would burn in hell.'' Later that night, she refused to return to the school and her mother protested.
''she just grabbed the kitchen knife and just started slicing her arm,'' said the mother, who was not identified by the newspaper.
Louise Benson said her son - who is no longer at the school - suffered intense religious bullying by fundamentalist Christian students.
''Non-Christian children are viciously bullied for their different beliefs, and the perpetrators are not disciplined at all,'' Benson said.

It happens here where I live, although I hope not to the degree of savagery suggested here. Teenagers can be cruel, and teenagers who have been taught by their parents and other authority figures that the 'other' is damned and evil will have little to restrain them.

(via Evolving Thoughts)

I'll also add this bitterly accurate quote from Noam Chomsky, found via James Wolcott:

You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible--not only did he order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide--...but was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide--you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive--that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful.

Christianity is built on a barbaric foundation. It's great when individuals can transcend the primitive morality of their bloody holy book, but let's not credit the faith for the virtues of the person—Christians accomplish good things in spite of their unfortunate upbringing. And let's not be surprised when children steeped in biblical brutality and xenophobia turn out brutal and xenophobic.

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Comments:

#10614: paperwight — 12/09 at 11:05 PM
That kind of vicious behavior is actually profoundly un-Christian. People who would allow their children to do this are no more Christian than the undead are dead.

#10615: PZ Myers — 12/09 at 11:14 PM
Well, sorta. The thing is, there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing, and who say they are Christian, and whose behavior is not disavowed by very many other Christians.

If you define "Christian" as what Christians do, it's Christian. If you define it by what Christians say they should do, then you have a point. A point in fantasyland, but still...

I'm a simple guy. I tend to avoid the No True Scotsman morass by accepting that when someone says they are a Scotsman, they're a Scotsman.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#10616: — 12/09 at 11:22 PM
Yes.

Unfortunately it is an unintended consequence of requiring teenagers to attend school. The social sorting that adults engage in to minimize their contact with people of ill will is harder to achieve in high school.

Fortunately, most teachers even in smaller towns do try to discourage uncivil and bigoted behavior. However, many have trouble applying this to homosexual and atheistic bigotry. That Christian influence at play, thinks I.

Issues like this reinforce my perception that the college structure might be a better model for high school age students, with continued 'free' access of course. (Free access to higher education too would be even better.) I actually had the unusual opportunity to attend Junior and Senior high school under college style scheduling. Having the flexibility to extend my education outside the school walls and work part time during the day, while being responsible for my actions worked great for me. It also allowed me to choose who I associated with for much of each day.

There is more than one way to skin this cat.

#10621: — 12/09 at 11:39 PM
paperwight; while I will accept that Christianity can be used as a basis to teach civil behavior, it has also often been used to reinforce blind loyalty to the cause. The corollary being that those on other teams are seen as the enemy (spawn of Satan perhaps?) and deserve to be crushed. The Crusades, for instance, were not some benign misunderstanding.

#10626: paperwight — 12/09 at 11:52 PM
Collective - I guess the problem I have is that I know a *lot* of Christians who would never have any truck with that kind of barbarity. I understand the bloody tribalism inherent in pretty much every monotheistic religion (the Jain may be an exception, but I don't know much about them). To be frank, I think identifying these behaviors as un-Christian is at least aspirationally accurate, and far more profitable than pointing at them and saying "Lo, Christian."

#10627: Ben — 12/10 at 12:10 AM
Let's call it neither Christian nor un-Christian. Bigots are bigots. Of course, it doesn't particularly help to belong to a dominant exclusivist cult with delusions of persecution, but let's not go there...

"The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them." --Thomas Edison.

#10628: — 12/10 at 12:16 AM
I have not been granted authority to speak for the "Collective". Granted that a lot of Christians are good people and received much of their training for such behavior directly or indirectly from religious teachings. Also, All of the atheists I know are good people are no doubt abhorent of violence. But I am also quite sure that members of both groups are engaged in all sorts of vile and evil behavior. So, is it really appropriate to give Christianity credit for the good behavior of people if you dont also credit it with the bad?

#10631: — 12/10 at 12:58 AM
the god presented in the bible has always struck me as a vile monster.

I agree with Hitchens, who said that he was happy the christian god didn't exist, because waking up in a universe in which he did would be like waking up in a kind of celestial North Korea. The whole quote is worth finding. I think it's in Letters to a Young Contrarian.

#10632: — 12/10 at 01:00 AM
Reading this post, it reminds me that people who imagine all kids as unspoiled innocents are fools. Kids can be vicious animals, and maturity a taming process.

#10638: — 12/10 at 03:20 AM
Chomsky is right. This really doesn't get said enough: Christianity is based on a remarkably violent book.

The excellent Skeptics Annotated Bible has a list of Biblical cruelty and violence here:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

It's a long list.

As far as ethics goes, it always amazes me that people seem to think that the Bible is a good moral guide. It's not a philosophy: it's a heap. Legends are piled on top of fairly crude-wish fulfilment; sayings and poems rub up against trippy mystical rants. Out of that glorious mess you can pull whatever you want. There are enough contradictions to assemble and justify just about any doctrine you please. Ultimately, people find in the Bible what they put there.

#10651: — 12/10 at 08:19 AM
Hmmm...

Does Joseph Stalin exemplify all of atheist practice?

Shaggy

#10652: prometheus — 12/10 at 08:27 AM
As far as "pagan" and "godless atheist" go, a Christian friend of mine once remarked about a mutual atheist friend, "I don't get it! Frank is kind, he's honest, he's caring, he treats people with respect. He's one of the most Christian people I know, but he doesn't believe in God!"

I told him he forgot "trustworthy." He agreed, but then I noted "No, you see, he does all those things because he wants to do them, whereas many Christians do them to avoid infinite negative reinforcement and seek infinite positive reinforcement. In the absense of heaven and hell, you know how Frank would behave. How all your Christian friends would behave is indeterminate. I find it easier to trust Frank."

Last time I saw him, he said he was still haunted by this observation.

#10654: — 12/10 at 08:40 AM
Shaggy -

Many people on this post have admitted that some Christians are good people.

Are you to say we should ignore all the bigots, just because not all of them are like that?

The disturbing trend here, is that we are seeing more and more hypocrisy from a religion that proclaims to be peaceful and loving.

The reasons those "pagans" were treated so poorly by their "moral betters" in high school is more the rule, than the exception for how many religious people are brought into this world.

With a basic tenet for (practiced) religion being "Hate the different," it's not all that surprising - especially considering Christianity's violent past (and now, present).

Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

-Jerry Garcia

#10655: — 12/10 at 08:42 AM
The subject of being a non-Christian in public school came up in a LiveJournal discussion the other day, and I noted how celebrations like Christmas and Easter in grade school didn't make me want to become a Christian myself. However, I was pretty much like the other kids and if I'd somehow been different (like having a family name such as Goldstein) I might have been singled out for taunting as a non-Christian. But then I went to grade school back in the 1960s when conservative Christianity wasn't as voiciferously promoted as it is today. That it became a way to label that poor girl as an outsider ought to give pause to those who have been giving such religious instruction to her tormentors. I mean, you'd think that such 'Christian' behavior would be kind, rather than cruel. There has always been a 'bad cop' aspect to Christianity along with the 'good cop' aspect though. Christians are reluctant to admit that fact, but it's part and parcel of their faith whether they like to admit it or not.

#10656: Heliologue — 12/10 at 09:00 AM
Christianity can produce decent, moral people. The problem is that Christianity will always breed zealots and bigots. As a means to an end, it's inherently flawed. Being a good person has nothing to do with godliness.

#10658: — 12/10 at 09:22 AM
Bitterly accurate? Not quite. Chomsky is shooting first and checking his citations (or not) later. The God of Genesis decides to wipe out mankind not "because humans irritated Him," but because of their evil. I give the passage (Gen. 6.5ff) as translated in the New English Bible:

"When the Lord saw that man had done much evil on earth and that his thoughts and inclinations were always evil, he was
sorry that he had made man on earth, and he was grieved at heart. [And to move on a bit, God says:] 'I am sorry that I ever made them.'"

An interesting passage in a number of ways (note that unlike later models, the God of Genesis appears NOT to be omniscient and is capable of making, and acknowledging, mistakes). More relevant here: we see a God horrified at the vileness he's unleashed on the world. Given this motivator ("Holy Christ, I've created a race of scumbags!"), I'm just not that horrified by what the old man next chooses to do.

Is there genocide in the Bible? Yes (the Book of Joshuah is a good starting place for investigating that subject). Is Christianity built "on a barbaric foundation"? Well, yes and no. Browsing through the Bible for unpleasant proof texts and compiling an anthology of barbarism therefrom makes inevitable a partial, distorted view. Ezekiel's insight, for example, that moral guilt cannot be inherited (18.5ff.) marks an ethical advance as important as any in the ancient world. The unrelenting insistence of the Hebrew prophets on decent treatment for the poor also comes to mind. Chomsky is taking a lazy, village atheist's approach, pulling out a dimly remembered proof text rather than giving the document the careful attention it merits.

I should say, btw, that I regard Yahweh as a completely fictitious character; but he's much more interesting (and less monstrous) than some wack-job dictator.

#10659: — 12/10 at 09:30 AM
My basic complaint is that this thread seems to exemplify a demonization of Christianity in total on the basis of the actions of a subset. Admittedly, there may be lots of rural areas where fundamentalist, exclusionist forms of Christianity predominate, and I am certainly not speaking in defense of the the kind of ostracization described in the leading post of this thread. We seem to be ingnoring the fact that there are large bodies of Christians whose biblically-based theology does not lead to the kind of behavior that is the subject of this thread. If, as PZ has suggested, a Christian is what a Christian does, then it seems entirely too convenient to simply disregard the majority of Christians who do not behave this way.

Look, no one can deny the the bible is full of stories fraught with violoence. But so is the full body of literature to which young people are exposed. Yes, under some interpretations the violent elements of the biblical narrative may transfer to contemporary practice. But there is nothing uniquely insidious about Christianity in this regard. In the end, I think the latter analysis is just too simplistic, and IMO lazy, to be taken very seriously.

#10661: John Giotta — 12/10 at 09:55 AM
I like the tangent dicussions, but none of views really express the issue at hand, the behavior.

Christianity in the US is slowly poisoning itself. Devote numbskulls are listening to the zealots and bigots. The problem is that these devote numbshulls are a large part of Christian public.

That is why it essential that the walls of seperation are once again solidified. Of course, it's unlikely to happen and most of us know why.

#10663: — 12/10 at 10:05 AM
Too bad Christians don't bother to read their book. If they did, they would find some lessons attributed directly to Jesus. For example, he essentially rejects the entire existing Bible by summing up its precepts as "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." Or, "Judge not that you be not judged." Should we judge Christianity by what Christians do? Of course. Jesus said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." In other words, Christians are as Christians do.

#10664: Chris Clarke — 12/10 at 10:06 AM

Chomsky is shooting first and checking his citations (or not) later. The God of Genesis decides to wipe out mankind not “because humans irritated Him,” but because of their evil.

A distinction without a difference.

Chomsky is taking a lazy, village atheist’s approach, pulling out a dimly remembered proof text rather than giving the document the careful attention it merits.

Oh, come on. This was a response to a question from a magazine interviewer, for crying out loud. I recognize that it's fashionable these days to reflexively criticize the guy - usually without reading any of his actual work - but this is just silly.

My basic complaint is that this thread seems to exemplify a demonization of Christianity in total on the basis of the actions of a subset.

I have not yet begun to demonize Christianity.

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

#10665: — 12/10 at 10:06 AM
My beef is not with the bible.

Shaggy, you are right in that we should not demonize the entire religion based on just a subset.

Unfortunately, it is NOT just a subset of Christians that engange in this exact behavior, or worse.

At least we have the common sense to look at the behaviors of religious people before we judge them as bigots. But Christians don't give us anywhere close to the same amount of respect.

Simply by saying that one is an atheist, or even just implying that everyone should treat non-Christians equally (as it says in the Bible) - will automatically result in us being "the damned." Or worse, we are all terrible people who don't deserve any of the rights afforded to the religious.

This is not right, and the attitude is ubiquitous in many religions, not just Christianity.

Why is this so? I'm just wondering, is there no way to worship God or Christ or Allah or Pomegranates without castigating those who don't?

No, I don't think that violence is inherent in much of the Christian population today. But the premises for that violence is being instilled into our children at an alarming rate, manifesting itself in ways just as oppresive as murder.

Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

-Jerry Garcia

#10666: PZ Myers — 12/10 at 10:11 AM
This isn't about demonizing christianity. It's about separating religion from morality.

Too often we see a statement of religion taken as a certificate of morality. It's even in the use of the language, that older people in particular will say "that's Christian of you" if you do something kind (some members of that same generation will say "that's White of you", too -- same parallel.) And from there, it's a shortcut to assume that atheism=amoral.

We need to take that excuse away. When people do bad things, like the teenagers in this story, they don't get to go and hide behind the church -- they don't get to use Christianity as an excuse.

I agree that Christianity is not unique, and that atheism does not bestow virtue. People are people. Judge them by what they do, not what church they go to.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#10671: — 12/10 at 10:16 AM
I forgot to add this one, the good ol' golden rule from the KJV: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."

If Christians would just follow the teachings of their prophet and god, they might be fairly decent people. But modern Christianity fails my personal test for any belief system: Does it produce an objective benefit?

#10672: M@ — 12/10 at 10:25 AM
I tried to imagine the inverse, where a devoutly religious kid is alone in a group of secularly raised children...Same scenario and it's simple to picture. The religious wacko is shunned and bullied. Or the nerd. Or the fat kid. Or...take your pick. The fact is, people tend to form groups and actively alienate outsiders. I don't think it's an especially Christian thing to do, although in this instance it seems to be one of the arbitrary pretext used by these kids. The piece also mentions that the children focused on her because she is "tall". It's really sad, the barbarity of short people, isn't it?

I'm thinking this has less to do with religion than it does with puberty and how this poor unfortunate girl is being taught to handle conflict. If hacking up your own arm with a knife is not barbarity, I'm hard-pressed to see how secular sophistication benefits us. If one of the students had hacked her up with a knife in the name of the lord, eradication of Christianity might be the way to go. As it is, we have a typical bully/victim situation where the bullies definitely deserve punishment and the teachers who did not adequately deal with the problem should as well. Maybe the victim and her parents have some issues to work on as well though. I doubt hanging the issue on which taunts the children favored is useful. And I'm sure this episode isn't helping her fit in, unfortunately. Looks like standard 8th grade stuff to me. Just my opinion...thanks for having open comments

Cheers,
M@

#10673: — 12/10 at 10:30 AM
I don't mean to abuse the random quote machine, but this last one is rather poignant, and it (unfortunately) kinda made me chuckle. Also, before anyone does anything drastic, I understand that this quote is not indicative of what most Christians think.

The World Trade Center destruction was caused by Pagans, Abortionists, Feminists, Gays, Lesbians, and the ACLU.
Jerry Falwell

Yes, PZ. I agree, let us not judge him because of his church. But, does he - can he - actually believe this? Or, does his church demand it of him? Of course, he is personally responsible for what he says, but remember, he probably thinks that this statement will actually get him into Heaven.

Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

-Jerry Garcia

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Thursday, December 09, 2004

Christian Love

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