Before I proceed with my letter, I wanted to highlight the difficulty that I will face in responding to some issues I noticed in the book. David’s stance on religion makes nailing down specific points an arduous task. What I meant by that is the fact that he does not clearly define his philosophical view on religion. Implicitly, it is clear that he is a Christian and in most cases “religion” was really meant to read “Christianity”. However, at times, David transgresses the limits drawn by Christian faith to come across more as a monotheistic deist, rather than a Christian. On some occasions when he says “Jesus” it is apparent that he refers to the character depicted as a son of God in Christian traditions, although there are a few instances in his book in which he deviate from traditional views on Jesus and attribute some special properties to him that Christianity will not necessarily agree with. Here rises an issue: the flexible position on the literal correctness of Christian scriptures allows for shifting philosophical position from Christian beliefs to those of deists and back, which would aid circumventing any argument that is specific in nature.
The issue is not limited to views on Jesus. At times, in the book’s “religion” means exactly what it is – a religion. Other times, “religion” is a substitute word for “Christianity”. In many instances, in response to some ideas of the book I can contrast differences of diverse religious teachings that go for and against David’s argument. However, it will not necessarily work to counter David’s position, because implicitly he means “Christianity”. In other instances, David’s argument is contingent upon rolling all religions into one and pinning an argument on Christian beliefs will fail.
Lastly, I need to define axioms before embarking on the writing journey, as it will help to avoid unnecessary and lengthy explanations for each point. Axiom #1 is the Old Testament is inseparable from the New Testament. The simple proof of it is Jesus never rejected or corrected Yahweh, Abraham or Moses, predicating his teaching on the infallible foundation provided by the Old Testament.
Page 1 – The first page caught my attention with the phase of “God-professing but war-making American president”. I take that the “but” in this sentence is meant to suggest that war-making does not really belong to the God-professing camp. However, the history of religion shows that God-professing crowds didn’t really shun away from wars. An argument that can be made here, of course, is quite common: the deeds of individuals do not necessarily define the religion and may, actually, go against religions teaching. This is true. However, the history of religion shows that Gods made frequent calls on God-professing mortals to wage wars. Taking a sample of a handful of cultures, Huitzilopochtli, Mars, Camulus, Anhur, Ares, Chamunda and Odin, they all wanted us to fight and kill each other. Sure enough, these are the “foreign pagan” Gods. Closer to home we have Muhammad, who was a self-appointed prophet from the age of 40 and a bandit from the age of 42. He claimed his continuation of Abrahamic traditions and didn’t refrain from attacking others to seize their property, kill their men, and capture their women and children as slaves. Again, we can argue that Muhammad is a false prophet and thus does not deserve to be evaluated in the context of Biblical characters. However, God of the Old Testament sent its subjects to war on several occasions. From the Axiom 1, Jesus may not have continued down the same belligerent path, but he didn’t denounce his father’s violent ways. Long story short, believing in God does not imply belongingness to the peace camp.
Page 2 – “joining Dawkins in savaging religion by associating it with its worst extremes”. Having read all Richard’s books, I must jump to his defence here. While he does reference the worst of religions, such examples merely illustrate the point that religion does not correlate to righteousness. I find that Richard’s point is much more thoughtful, rational and deep than the primitive “look at him and he is an example of what religion is” as David presents it to be.
Page 2 – “Jesus, a radical critic of the religion of his days”. This is not exactly correct; at least not as it is articulated. Jesus did rebel against the ways of practicing religion, but not the religion itself. He did not abolish, reject or denounce even the most abominable facets of the Old Testament, establishing his teaching on the readily-available basis provided by Torah.
Page 4 – The book provides two assumptions that are called “axioms” in the next sentence. An assumption cannot be an axiom. I am positive that this is simply a case of unfortunate choice of words, but it also underscores the issue typical to all religions. It often happens that with time, assumptions erroneously become unquestionable axioms. Once becoming part of faith theoretical basis, assumptions are no longer questioned because the mountain of theories and the whole teaching would collapse if assumptions are removed.
Page 5 – I am delighted to hear that David does not consider sexual orientation as a choice. This is not, however, the underlying assumption of Christianity. The story of Lot unambiguously illustrates God’s view on homosexuality. God wrath suggests nothing, but that the practice is not from God and therefore it is unnatural, abominable personal choice. While I am happy to find David in the rational camp, his views go directly against the presumptions of the religion he calls your own. The question I want to ask is how to reconcile belongingness to two opposing camps: a camp that understands the nature of homosexuality and the camp whose ideology calls it an abomination?
Page 6 – “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and what he says does not come true, then it is not the Lord’s message.” If what he says does come true, it doesn’t mean that it was Lord’s message either.
Page 9 – “you accuse use of hypocrisy…” This is rather a hasty generalization. Most thinking atheists accuse religious groups of believing in something that has no evidence of existing, but not of the things David listed.
Page 9 – “Authentic biblical religion calls its followers to “do justice”. What they also suffer from is a total lack of definition of what that justice is. Usually, all three Abrahamic faiths imply “do what pleases your unjust, unfair, capricious and wrathful God” as “do justice”. Measured by the rules of common decency, these “do justice” rules sway far in the area of complete injustice. Was it just for Jews to kill native inhabitant of the land of Israel so that Jews had a place to live? Was it just for God to punish a Pharaoh who was, in fact, a victim of a con? Was it just for Muhammad to invade Banu Nadir simply because Muslims ran out of good targets to rob? Authentic biblical justice is not what we would define as one. There is as much of a problem with religious wisdom as there is with those who implement it.
To be continued …
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