Bad Templar said:
Sorry, I don't follow what you mean.
Are you saying people ignore Christ's exhortation to 'love one another' in preference to the legalism of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments?
Yes, more or less. Pauline theology, off of which is what Christianity was based, believed that Jesus' coming had rendered the Old Testament obsolete, and, as such, all the pages and pages of legalism were henceforth void, replaced solely by Jesus' commandment to love one another.
Where people get complicated regarding that subject is that early Christianity was not in agreement and St. Paul's "Gentile Christianity" was in direct competition with St. Peter and St. James' "Jewish Christianity," which believed that one had to be fully Jewish to be Christian, and that meant adhering to every and all ridiculous aspects of Mosaic Law. "Jewish Christianity" was completely wiped out by the second century A.D. (no one said that they got along enough to coexist), so when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, thus starting the chain of events that made Christianity a major world religion, it was 100% Gentile Christianity. The New Testament, however, still has Jewish Christian texts, most notably Matthew (which was extensively edited by Gentile Christians, so that "the law and the prophets" in one section was later defined as "love one another").
What I wanted to know is whether secular humanism is fatally flawed because it is dependent on the primacy of human nature which, as Indra suggests, is the cause of the pettiness of religion.
I tend to think that people equate "secular humanism" with "atheism," which is then equated with Stalinist communism and all the baggage that goes along with that. In fact, the term "secular humanism" is actually a derogatory term for the philosophy coined by conservatives in the 20th century.
However, that's clearly not the case. Most people I know who fall into the category of secular humanist have more of a moral backbone than most of the religious people I know, mainly because I think a lot of people in religion don't live up to the letter of "love one another," but, instead, look for what I call "Biblical exception clauses." That is, "I don't have to love my spouse if (s)he cheats on me, because a (mistranslated) verse in Matthew says I can divorce my wife if (s)he commits adultery." Or "I don't have to love homosexuals, because these (mistranslated) verses say that they're evil sinners." Or, if this were still the first half of the 19th century, "I don't have to love black people, because the Bible says for slaves to be obedient to their masters, and, as such, the Bible says it's okay if I keep people in slavery."
If humankind has always created God in its own image, if humankind kills God (Nietzsche), doesn't humanity just replace God with the same reflection of itself?
Religion has always been a reflection of mankind, perhaps unfortunately. As such, I lament that, in many ways, we're stuck in the same petty despotism that plagued the people of 2000 years ago, merely because we've raised the level of their writings to the level of a deity. I hate to say it, but the secular world has been infinitely more moral than over all the past 2000 years that was controlled by an imperialist theocracy.
So I guess the question, perhaps, is not if secular humanism is flawed, per se, but why religion is so flawed to the point that it's more violent and intolerant than secular philosophy. In other words, why does it seem that secular humanists can "love" more than religious folk?
Melon
