Lies and False Narratives of Christianity

My main point:

"But i submit that ALL moralizing about governance, human rights, natural law, or 'justice and fairness!' are ALL 'religious', or philosophical concepts."

The 'religion' of progressivism, a blend of marxism & darwinism, (among others), has an interesting and colorful history. It is The State Religion, is promoted, established, and the competition demeaned, by an ever growing, aggressive, ideology that dominates the human institutions in western civilization.

I can only point the way, and warn of danger. I cannot make indoctrinees see.

 

Well, Jesus was progressive, and I'm pretty sure you aren't going to make progress there, at least.

I love how you blend in philosophy - a great way to inoculate yourself in the hopes of eliminating any meaningful discussion.

 

The fact that you haven't constructed a logical argument to defend your bare assertions is not the fault of anyone's "indoctrination." And Marxists hated Darwinism. They preferred Lamarckism. No need to concoct an imaginary religion.

 

Try plugging that definition into the establishment clause.

 

For sure there are other ways to derive rights from a secular perspective and the golden rule was not invented by Jesus. Hammurabi had this rule in his law code 1850 BC. Confucius expounded on this rule as did Buddha.

It is interesting to note that Jesus took a passage straight out of the pages of Rabbi Hillel the Elder 100BC to 10 AD. "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.

Interesting that this fellow says that this rule "IS" the whole Torah don't you think ?

What is more interesting is Matt 7:12 "Do to others what you what you would have them do to you. This rule sums up the law and the Prophets"

Now you tell me - is this divine inspiration or is Jesus being inspired by his teacher .. or smart humans from the past ?

Regardless - the enlightenment thinkers were after a secular justification for authority for Gov't - not something that was divinely inspired.

This is the Cole's notes version:

They envisioned a state of nature with no law. Anarchy or something similar. Humans would naturally gather in groups. Sure there are social and survival reasons (finding food and so on) but, they also did this for protection "Strength in Numbers".

It does little good if one is protected from outsiders - if one does not have some protection from members withing the group. Over time codes of conduct developed.. in particular in relation to protection from harm- direct harm - murder, rape, theft and so on.

Groups that had these codes did better over time than those that did not - if people in a group are fighting each other the group becomes weak. "United we Stand - Divided we fall".

It does little good to have a code of conduct if there is no punishment for violators of the code. Members of the group then had to select and give power to an authority that would carry out this punishment. This power however was to be extremely limited as "No man wants to be ruled over by another".

That power was then given 1) only for protection from direct harm and 2) what constituted this harm was on the basis of overwhelming consensus .. "no man wants to be ruled over by another"

Enter the social contract. If one man says to another - "lets make an agreement" - "I will agree not to kill you and your family if you agree to the same". Each party to the contract then has what was referred to as a "Moral Obligation" to keep up his end of the bargain.

If you don't want your neighbor to kill you and your family - you then have a moral obligation not to kill your neighbor and his family.

And there you have it .. the Golden Rule Springs naturally out of the Social Contract.

The contract with the authority is an extension of this contract - the authority is a necessary evil to carry out punishment of code violators. As such it exists at the sole direction of the overwhelming consensus.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

 

I don't see evidence of Jesus intending to justify government authority. I think he mean for people to treat others as they would themselves. When else did he ever state precepts of good governance? I don't believe he addressed that.

OK, well here it seems you are saying the GR comes from principles of a social contract, whereas before it seemed like you were saying the reverse.

My take is that Jesus stated a commandment on behavior that applies regardless of what anyone else might do. That would apply even today, even with all our government, our belief that we have rights, etc.

Jesus (and religion in general) is about man's duties. The GR can be viewed as one of those duties. It says that regardless of what's going on, you are to behave in this way.

As you indicate, I think the concept of rights came later and was derived from principles other than the GR.

 

I agree that Jesus was not trying to justify Gov't authority. The Golden Rule however, can be used to put limits on Gov't authority.

You are correct that the Golden Rule come out of the Social contract - it is also the basis of that contract however - its kind of a chicken and egg thing. One can not exist without the other.

I stopped prior to getting into rights and so on - how long a post do you want It is important to let the basic ideas simmer for a bit. Ideas that are the foundations for Classical Liberalism - and later the principles on which this nation was founded . Its all connected.

The main idea is that the Golden Rule/ Social contract sets the limitations to Gov't power and is part of the basis by which Gov't authority is granted by we the people.

Equality of rights - and other concepts can be derived out of these basic principles - not just the Golden Rule but the rule in conjunction with other ideas outlined previously.

 

He never told the government to do anything. This is from the late Malcolm Muggeridge, on Jesus' total lack of interest in worldly affairs:

"Jesus never once call for justice in this world, nor did he at any point give any indication of expecting justice. To cry for justice in human terms is as foolish as calling for iced water in the middle of the Sahara…….it is interesting to reflect that if Jesus had consented to join the Zealots and take a leading part in the Jewish nationalist movement, it would have been with a view to transferring sovereignty in Judaea from Roman hands to some indigenous monarch like Herod; comparable to transferring sovereignty from a gild-coated British Excellency to a Kuanda or Kenyatta or Amin. Such a transference would scarcely have needed an Incarnation to bring it about."