Christianity invented atheism
I shouldn’t say anything about Giles Fraser, it’s what he wants, he’s just doing it to provoke me, I should ignore him – but there are just one or two or three or four things I want to point out, ever so gently, that are tendentious and incorrect. I know (because Allen has told me) that the Guardian just does this, and no one pays any attention, but – just these few little items, very gently and politely.
His overall point is what one might call the Michael Ruse Move: claiming that atheists are IDers’ or fundamentalists’ best friends and that the only really okay sensible good nice okay people are ‘mainstream’ Christians like – well, rather like Giles Fraser, actually.
Fundamentalism was invented only in the 20th century.
The word was, yes, but the thing itself? Uh, no. All Christianity was ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense of orthodoxy-enforcing and heresy-punishing for centuries; that didn’t start along with the hip flask and wireless radio.
Many Christians don’t believe homosexuality is a sin. Far from it. We think it’s a gift of God – a means by which many show love and commitment and compassion. This is not an eccentric view within the church. It’s also the view of the Archbishop of Canterbury, though, admittedly, he is insufficiently bold in expressing it.
Well, that’s sweet, but why does the Vicar of Putney get to pretend that it’s inherent to Christianity? One, belief that homosexuality is indeed a sin ya youbetcha is not a novelty, and two, he’s simply talking about moral intuitions which trump religious rules and which anyone can have; there’s nothing specifically Christian about them. Why does he give Christianity credit for it?
But bigots who dress up in the clothing of faith are being encouraged by media atheists in the view that orthodox biblical Christianity is intrinsically anti-gay. That’s rubbish.
Is it. Is it really. So Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, 1 Kings 14:24, Romans 1:26-28, those are all – ? What? Not part of ‘orthodox biblical Christianity’? Er…since when? And according to whom? And how do we know? And why should we trust it?
Ignoring the fact that Christianity invented secularism, on these pages last week Toynbee described the row over sexual orientation regulations as “a mighty test of strength between the religious and the secular”.
Christianity invented secularism, did it. So what was all that about the popes then? The Vatican being a sovereign state? The monarchs who were defenders of the faith? Calvin’s fun-loving regime in Geneva? That was all just the early days of the Enlightenment was it?
Christianity also invented elevators, toilet paper, steam, rayon, and capitalism. Little-known fact.
Thank you for stopping by, Dr Fraser, it was a pleasure having this little chat with you, have a good week.
There, see? Quite polite.
much, much too polite. a very dangerous move, OB. you’re gonna make people think you’re not a devout militant atheist after all: you seem to be losing your faith in atheism!!
people like Dawkins are gonna start ignoring you when you run into them in the grocery store. no more will you be invited to our monthly immorality worship services, which are usually followed by gun (and other military props) distribution among the most pious atheist (i.e., the fundamentalists). you’ll soon be excommunicated, i’m afraid, if you don’t run a quick follow up on how you still, despite this silly post, plan to eradicate christians from the face of earth … – or your career may be over!
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btw, since i’m already writing this, and it’s 2:30 in the morning (a very important detail, i know), i wanted to let you and other commentators know that i too run a blog on similar issues, which is unfortunately written in slovene, but all the quotations are kept in original english. i’ve quoted you in at least one of the posts a few months ago, and it’s also pretty obvious that i get most of my ideas from B&W, and then try to present them to slovenians (there’s only 2 millions of us, but still too many are religious.)
i wish you had an option for us (commentators) to leave our blog url’s just as we do our e-mail addresses, so we could also stay connected to what others have to say when they’re not saying it on N&C. but since you don’t have it (yet), i’ll take a shot and post it here:
http://tea.sopca.com/
like i said, it’s default in slovene, but some is in english, and maybe there are even some croats or serbs among the readers who might be interested in reading a slovenian blog.
that being said, if you think of this as some abominable form of advertising, please feel free to delete this comment (or at least this part of it, which is not actually a comment on your post), and accept my apologies for being this unskilled at blog-etiquette.
am exhausted. have a good night, everyone.
We poofs know Giles Frazer is more or less on our side. We know there are those in the C of E who are supportive. But, apart from one evangelical called Malcolm* – somebody who was interviewed (at that rally, I think, though rallying for the other side) – and now this from Frazer, we don’t exactly hear loud cries from bishops, suffragan bishops, archbishops, deacons, parish priests, priests’ organisations and so forth saying, ‘Christianity has no problem with poofters.’ Where, if we’re looking at mainstream Christianity as opposed to the right-wing nuts Giles Frazer speaks of, were Sentimu and Nazir-Ali? They, we know, are in favour of discrimination against gay people. One or two other C of E bishops are, too. So, while I agree that most of the noise is made by the fundies, why don’t we hear some louder Christian noise from those Christians who believe sexuality is a gift of God and have no problem with gays, gay lifestyles or gay marriage (and I mean marriage)?
____________
*Yes, Malcolm was a bit of an oddball in this. An evangelical in favour equality in the provision of goods and services to gays. He said he was against sex outside a marriage between a man and a woman (so he is homophobic in by the current definition of that word) but thought it unfair to deny people services on the grounds of their sexuality (so 1 out of 10, then).
Nice of Giles Fraser to say that “many Christians don’t believe homosexuality is a sin”.
He does appear to have ignored the fact that of the 26 Archbishops in the House of Lords, only five of them showed up at the debate on the 9th of January, and of those five, only one voted against the motion to deny a ban on discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. The other four voted for the motion to let discrimination remain perfectly acceptable.
Presumably the other 21 all had pressing reasons why they couldn’t attend and let us see whether they don’t believe homosexuality is a sin.
I think Matthew Parris is right on this. He purports to be very glad that there are Christians who are not homophobic but insists that their reading of Christianity is, in fact, the wrong one, that the homophobes are right when it comes to dogma. I think it very hard to make a case for accepting homosexuality from the Christian Holy Books, even if we accept that leviticus et al are not required reading since Christ came along.
I’ve already posted to the Grauniad, and got a rise out of Fraser, I’m glad to say …
So I don’t need to say it here.
However, there’s a really good pub, just round the corner from GF’s church that sells really good beer.
Called the Bricklayers’ Arms, and selling Timothy Taylors’, if you want to know.
Much more useful than all his blackmailing religious b*llsh*t.
I would love to know more about this xtianity invented secularism claim. Exactly when did this happen? Certainly not in the “dark ages”, not in medieval times (genocide of the cathars anyone?), not during the inquisition or when the other variety of xtians were burning catholics. So there’s nearly 1,500 years of xtianity already passed by.
humanistsforlabour.typepad.com
Well, over at The Guardian, Giles has resurrected himself, and posted this (less than convincing) riposte:
And Grayling wrote that “Secularism is the view that church and state (religion and national government) should be kept separate. The first secularists were medieval churchmen who did not wish the temporal power to interfere in church affairs.”
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2006/11/post_604.html
good grief, just cos there’s the odd quote in the bible that could be interpreted as supporting some kind of state church seperation are we really supposed to ignore real world evidence about the history of xtianity and what has really happened?
It reminds me a little bit about the apologists for the worst excesses of the soviet union under stalin, breshnev etc. They tried to argue that this wasn’t “proper” communism and that key texts could be read differently. And so we had the concept of “actually existing” communism. I suggest we need the same on these debates about religion. It doesn’t matter how many different ways you can read religious texts, we have to base our judgements on “actually existing” xtianity, islam etc. ie what are these religions REALLY like in the REAL world.
Andy A
Globally, Christians represent 33.03%of the population, of which Roman Catholics 17.33%, Protestants 5.8%, Orthodox 3.42%, Anglicans 1.23%.
I wonder in actual fact how ‘many’ Christians would therefore agree with Giles – stating that they don’t believe homosexuality is a sin. And also agreeing with the statement “Far from it. We think it’s a gift of God – a means by which many show love and commitment and compassion. This is not an eccentric view within the church. It’s also the view of the Archbishop of Canterbury, though, admittedly, he is insufficiently bold in expressing it.”
The numbers don’t stack up, as usual.
GTingey – mines a pint of Landlord please !
OB
“Christianity also invented elevators, toilet paper, steam, rayon, and capitalism. Little-known fact.”
No, Scottish !
(Oops, wrong thread.)
While the new Anti-Discrimination Act certainly restricts freedom of contract and freedom of conscience, Giles Fraser’s assertion that [m]any Christians don’t believe homosexuality is a sin depends on what you define as a ‘true’ Christian and what you mean by ‘homosexuality’. I side with Ophelia on this point.
From the conventional Christian perspective, it is the homosexual act that is the sin, not the inclination. For example, according to the Catholic Church’s interpretation of the Gospel, homosexual acts are just one form of mortal sin along with many others (masturbation, fornication, coitus interruptus or balcony sex, gomorrhy, entertaining bad thoughts, mass murder, adultery, rape, breast-fondling, tworgon abuse, etc.). From the theological angle, the term ‘homosexuality’ is about as meaningful as ‘fornicality’ or ‘adulterality’. At any rate, whether the homosexual act is performed opportunistically by a heterosexual (e.g. faute-de-mieux pederasty with a pretty boy on a desert island) or by males or females with deviant sexual inclinations, is theologically and salvationally quite irrelevant. Fraser is a bad theologian. The sin lies in the deed, not in the deviance or maladaptiveness of the sexual orientation.
First correction to Fraser’s claim:
“Many Christians do not believe that sodomy and related acts such as the use of dildos or fresh fruit and vegetables for the purposes of sexual gratification are a sin.”
Next comes our definition of the ‘true Christian’. One has to be very much a Red-Queenish liberal to include the whole gamut of a la carte believers, i.e. those who ‘pick and choose’ the bits of the Gospel that suit their own likes and dislikes. If you include sodomy then you presumably include fornication (i.e. extramarital sexual acts performed by unmarried persons), and that more or less takes the fizz out of the Christian belief system. Anyhow, Chrisitanity need sexual ‘liberation’ like a fish needs an oxygen mask.
One thing is certain: Fraser’s definition of Christians excludes all devout Roman Catholics (i.e. Catholics who believe in the Pope’s infallibility) and most traditional Protestants.
Second correction of Fraser’s statement:
“Many people who call themselves Christians do not believe that sodomy and related acts such as the use of dildos or fresh fruit and vegetables for the purposes of sexual gratification are a sin.”
Of course this final version is somewhat clumsier than Fraser’s initial statement but it is at least a more accurate representation of reality.
Objection, m’lud. I think Giles Fraser would expand his claim on the lines: “many thinking Christians, who reflect on the bible as a whole to inform their own consciences, instead of just quoting particular texts which match their prejudices, don’t believe that the physical expression of homosexuality in the context of a committed one-to-one relationship is a sin.”
Gosh, never thought I’d find myself defending a delusional cleric here. But fair’s fair.
‘But bigots who dress up in the clothing of faith are being encouraged by media atheists in the view that orthodox biblical Christianity is intrinsically anti-gay. That’s rubbish’.
Oh yeah, the Bible is a handbook for a handbook for liberalism! It’s hard to believe nonsense like this gets published. What next, the Bible is not intrinsically anti-polytheism?
Much of the “Old Testament” is henotheistic. “Our god’s a better smiter than yours.” And note Psalm 82: “YHWH has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Item 1: apologies for absence: Baal. Item 2: Justice for the weak and fatherless.
What next, the Bible is not intrinsically anti-polytheism?
Good stuff, Edmund. The garbage these liberal clerics produce is an insult to the intelligence. They draw their conclusions first and then work their way backwards to select the premises that suit them.
Of course, everything is interpretable: the Bible condones whatever Red Queen Fraser wants it to condone. Sodomy. Polyamory. Fornication. Abortion.
And Jesus said unto them: follow the dictates of your conscience and drop your knickers (an old Private Eye joke, actually).
Giles Fraser, postmodernist.
Nicholas:
For almost all male homosexuals, “the physical expression of homosexuality in the context of a committed one-to-one relationship” drops to about zero after the first couple of years (or months or weeks or days or minutes).
Do you seriously believe that gays would accept a version of Christianity that only permitted a non-promiscuous homosexual lifestyle?
There is something almost ludicrous about a ‘sexually faithful’ male homosexual. Do they exist? Are there any statistics on the subject?
Besides, since middle-aged male homosexuals find one another physically unattractive, they often have to rely on the sexual services provided by young male prostitutes if they are to have any sex life at all. How do we fit that in?
So here’s how the truly gay-friendly liberal cleric would put it:
“Many thinking Christians, who reflect on the bible as a whole to inform their own consciences, instead of just quoting particular texts which match their prejudices, don’t believe that the physical expression of homosexuality in the context of a committed one-to-one relationship or, if that gets boring as it almost always does after the first couple of orgasms, in the context of a less committed but deeply loving 10-minute relationship even if this involves an exhgange of cash for sexual services is a sin.”
‘Are there any statistics on the subject?’
Don’t know, but the lack of data doesn’t generally stop you.
“There is something almost ludicrous about a ‘sexually faithful’ male homosexual. Do they exist? Are there any statistics on the subject?”
[cough, splutter] dear god, did someone really just say that?
PM, yes, I did say that. I repeat:
“There is something almost ludicrous about a ‘sexually faithful’ male homosexual. Do they exist? Are there any statistics on the subject?”
Extract from online material:
“David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison conducted a non-random study of 156 stable committed male homosexual couples. They found that none of the over 100 couples that had been together for more than 5 years had been sexually monogamous or exclusive. The authors, themselves a gay couple, argued that for male couples, sexual monogamy is a passing stage of homophobia and that many homosexuals separate emotional fidelity and sexual exclusivity. What matters for male couples is emotional not physical faithfulness.D McWhirter and A Mattison, “The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop”, (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall).” [emphasis mine].
Emotional v. physical faithfulness — liberal thinking, at its most profound.
So that’s OK then.
As Jesus said: just play it by ear.
“A 1994 study in The Advocate, the largest national gay and lesbian magazine, reported that 52% of the gay male couples described themselves as being monogamous (“The 1994 Advocate Survey of Sexuality and Relationships: The Men,” The Advocate, August 23, 1994, pp. 16-24).”
Your turn.
Tea,
Not abominable form of advertising at all, of course you can mention your website here. I wish my Slovenian were better…
…52% of the gay male couples described themselves as being monogamous
PM, thanks for the info. I am really interested in learning more about this gay fidelity ‘disorder’. And I’ll try to ignore the Bayesian Inference factor.
But if ‘monogamy’ simply means ’emotional’ rather than ‘physical’ fidelity then it doesn’t really mean very much at all.
At any rate I’ll have a closer look at your data, if I can find the stuff.
Do you have any figures for heterosexual couples or gay women?
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED, BY AUNT CAROLA
PM: Do you have any figures for heterosexual couples or gay women?
Carola:
Thank you for asking me that question. I have no figures. However, heterosexual couples are certainly less promiscuous than gay male couples — if only because even in our liberated age a male normally has to go through a song and dance routine before the girl will lie back, while gays don’t have that problem. If my own gay acquaintances are in any way representative, gay courtship rituals are split-second events without any ‘beating around the bush’. That’s the way it is when you have randy men on both sides of the sexual equation.
As to lesbians, I have no idea. But given that both are female they may well be more ‘faithful’ than straights.
I was rather incensed (pun intended) with Fraser’s piece, but I didn’t bother to reply in the Guardian as there were too many comments already. Anyway, let’s pretend that atheists are the fundamentalist’s best friend. Now, what shall we atheists do? Shall we renounce our commitment to evidence and argument because of the political consequences? Can we insist that Chrisitanity is superstition, but that the moderate form of it is more “true” than the fundamentalist form? The only way I could say that would be by recalling that moderate, watered down, modernized Christianity is closer to secular-based morality and is closer to the my refusal to believe that there is a supreme being as described in the fundamentalist creeds. So, in practice, what separates me from the moderate, gay-friendly, Christian advocate of birth control and human rights would simply be that I don’t have an imaginary god friend who I believe to be pleased when I warmly embrace all those modern secular moral attitudes. Of course, the thing is that moderate religionists do not speak out nearly enough against their fundamentalist companions, but rather waste their energy battling against us atheists.
I think I’m beginning to understand. What really riles Christian fag-haters is that homosexuals can have lots of orgasms with lots of different people without worrying about getting pregnant.
Cathal, as usual you can have any statistics you want. And as usual, it rather depends who asks whom what question. However, for example, Box Turtle tries to find some facts under the mud-slinging.
So I think Giles Fraser meant “many thinking Christians, who reflect on the bible as a whole to inform their own consciences, instead of just quoting particular texts which match their prejudices, don’t believe that the physical expression of homosexuality in the context of a committed one-to-one relationship is a sin; and they forgive homosexuals who fall short of the monogamous ideal, reflecting that the behaviour of many heterosexuals gives them no right to cast the first stone at imperfect homosexuals.”
Angelo:
“The only way I could say that would be by recalling that moderate, watered down, modernized Christianity is closer to secular-based morality and is closer to the my refusal to believe that there is a supreme being as described in the fundamentalist creeds.”
But what is secular-based morality? Could be anything from the most morally virtuous to the utterly immoral. Secular is a negative concept, it implies the absence of overt religious factors and nothing else. What I think you mean to say is something like “Enlightenment-based morality”: a morality centered on the autonomy of the individual and his conscience, rather than any dogmatic precepts. But I think it’s important that it is said in such a fashion. Because I don’t think the word “secular” nowadays in any way implies a commitment to the central values of the Enlightenment, even if secularism as such is a child of it.
On Giles Fraser’s piece: seems to me that by stating that “Christianity invented secularism” or that “Fundamentalism was invented only in the 20th century”, Fraser indulges in the same kind of sweeping simplifications that some people who regard Christianity or religion as the root of all evil do. It may well be that some currents in Christian thought contributed a lot to the rise of secularism as an idea. But historical processes are never simple, and there’s bound to be a host of other factors at work as well. Likewise, the correct statement that fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon negates the many ways in which it resembles earlier theocratic features of Christianity. I seem to see simplistic assertions like Fraser’s a lot in the CiF comments you link to. Perhaps it’s a feature of the medium. But Giles Fraser – who does seem to be “my kind of Christian”, is cutting corners here, and he should have done better.
“I seem to see simplistic assertions like Fraser’s a lot in the CiF comments you link to.”
So do I. As I mentioned, Allen tells me that’s just as it were Guardianism, and CisFism just makes it more so (Allen tells me much more elgantly than that; that’s my from-memory paraphrase). Sometimes I simply ignore CisF for that very reason; other times I get drawn in, I know not how…
Do you have an figures for Christians?
“Next comes our definition of the ‘true Christian’.”
See: Scotsman, true.
“As to lesbians, I have no idea. But given that both are female they may well be more ‘faithful’ than straights.”
Not in my experience. Why on earth would two females be more faithful than a male/female mix?
Nicholas writes: “as usual you can have any statistics you want”.
Nicholas, I acknowledge that that is an almost unsurmountable problem in the ideology-ridden human sciences: data doctoring, data dredging, picking and choosing.
Ideally, adversarial scientists researching such controversial issues as gay ‘fidelity’ should get together beforehand and reach a mutual decision on their methodology (e.g. sampling techniques, data validation etc.) and only THEN proceed with their investigations.
Has this approach ever been adopted? I doubt it.
But let us dream on.
Thanks for the link BTW.
So Cathal, you concede that your claims starting “For almost all male homosexuals…” are based on no evidence but just personal prejudice?
No, of course not. What Cathal admits is that that is an almost unsurmountable problem in the ideology-ridden human sciences, but not at all a problem in his ideology-free impartial well-warranted comments. That’s no doubt because he got together with himself beforehand and agreed on a methodology. I think the methodology is something along the lines of ‘make wild factual claims with an air of total certainty such that everyone will assume you got them from somewhere other than your own imagination.’
… and then demand that the other side provide solid evidence to refute them, while hastily googling.
Oh yes, I forgot that bit. And then unctuously thank people for providing said evidence, thus applying a light coating of pseudoempiricism to his own claims.
PM writes:
So Cathal, you concede that your claims starting “For almost all male homosexuals…” are based on no evidence but just personal prejudice?
No, I concede no such thing. The evidence is overwhelmingly on my side. Probably the only place you will find sexually faithful gays is in squeaky clean conventional Hollywood movies.
If you want to read some high-quality material on this subject, try Richard Posner’s ‘Sex and Reason’ (1992), which infuriated both the god-botherers AND the homosexualists.
Always a good sign.
“Probably the only place you will find sexually faithful gays is in squeaky clean conventional Hollywood movies.”
That’s the methodology all right. Thanks for prompt demo.
If you do audio, you all (especially Cathal) might enjoy the BBC’s news quiz on Christian bigots, and YHWH’s poor procreation and parenting skills. A couple of minutes, starting about 16 minutes in. Lovely vignette of a Christian B&B: “Toast, or body of Christ?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/comedy.shtml?radio4/newsquiz
It’s last Friday’s show, and I guess will soon be replaced with this week’s.
Thanks, Nicholas, but I’m too busy transsubstantiating.
This week I’m trying it out on tiramisu and cider wine.
Merlijn: Thanks. I can accept the distinction between secular and Enlightenment. Even so: You knew what I meant by secular, so given the context, the word worked. Interestingly, even “Enlightenment Morality” would strictly speaking not be precise enough as one can recall Kant, great champion of the Enlightenment, who considered masturbation and homosexuality to be immoral, while he thought the death penalty for certain crimes to be morally obligatory – and these views given, not in some private jottings, but in the rigorous “Metaphysics of Morals” (not to be confused with the “Groundwork of MM”). Kant did of course maintain that morality is not grounded in religion, so I suppose that means his Enlightenment morality is secularly based. I’m sure you could find other thinkers of the Enlightenment, e.g., Locke, who are a bit more on the godly side. Maybe “progressive” or even “utilitarian” is the word I need rather than “Enlightenment” or “secular” to describe the moral attitude I mean. Bentham comes to mind as someone considerably more progressive than Kant on these issues.
What exactly leads Mr Cathal to assume the Jesus he talks of ever existed?
>I’m too busy transsubstantiating<
Cathal,
What, in the aftermath did the changing of the tiramisu and the cider wine do for your obviously frustrated
“priestly” soul? Also, when you eventually downed the lot did it bring out of you a deliciously priestly divine presence? Did you “come” in fine glory?