I was struck by an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In it she says a moderate version of Islam cannot exist without disregarding parts of the Koran (and without thinking, questioning and debating). I'd always assumed this was true and thought it wouldn't bother me but I was surprised when it did. About half way through the interview she was prompted to give support for her claim that Islam does promote violence. She says there is a criteria for determining whether something is true and she quoted Sura (4:34). Without dancing around the subject it says when faced with a disobedient wife: shout at her, ignore her, and finally beat her. And as far as I can tell this is not up for dispute. It's a bit hard to describe and I'm sure I'd heard it before but for some reason it finally got to me.
So like, Timothy 2, 12 this is a religious statement, without allegory, that is clearly in conflict with modern laws and morals (assuming that morals can exist outside of religion).
I guess I'd always assumed people ignore bits that don't make sense. But as someone reading Timothy said, "What do you do when you are confronted with a finding in scripture that either goes against what you've always believed or at least contradicts what you would like to believe? There are really only two choices. Understand it, accept it and conform to it or reject it and go on doing whatever you want."
3 comments:
This interpretation/discussion of the biblical text in 1 Timothy reflects our normal western way of approaching the text - with a lack of axioms on how to understand the text. Do we take the words of the text literally? If so, the bible (as a whole) is already in contradiction with itself. If we don't, how do we interpret/understand it? One approach is to examine the context further - the author will have (naturally) been framing their point in the context of their life/culture at the time. In this case what roles did men and women play? Was first century christianity counter-cultural? etc.
I'd say Christianity was counter-cultural but not in a good way at all. It destroyed any good female images.
In Timothy it says women shall be saved by child bearing because they were deceived.
Betrand Russell's, "Why I'm not a Christian", cites forcing women to reproduce until they died as one of the greatest travesties of religious teaching.
There is this great gulf between what's right (say simply less people dying and suffering) and what has been taught and understood.
G'day Andrew,
You will find apologists for an incredible variety of non-concepts attempting to prop up their alleged existence with apparent consistency (and failing, often very miserably). Cognitive science goes a long way to explaining this behaviour and I strongly urge you to look into this field to appease your apparent bewilderment with these observations. In fact, I think you're smart enough that a single lunch session would be enough to convince you of the ability to make some very accurate predictions.
"...assuming that morals can exist outside of religion". I'm not sure why this assumption needs stating, apart from appeasing a popularly held misbelief.
I find an interesting question to be, can religion give rise to morals? Then the more proactive, is it possible for religion to not give rise to immorality (i.e. religion -> immorality)?
My thesis is that religion is the anti-thesis of morality. It is what you'd choose if you were intent on being the most immoral person that you could possibly be (religious apologists: note the lack of converse here).
Have a nice day :)
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