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Beloit College Round Table 12/10/2007
Mr. Heesen - use your brain, not your bible by Steve Harrison, Editor-in-chief
First let us examine a few of “god’s laws” and then we’ll approach the bible as a source of morality This is a list of IN CONTEXT bible quotes assembled by my brother and me over the past year (some parts underlined for emphasis).
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Firstly I would point out that these quotes are NOT in context. Quoting a couple sentences doesn't equal the context of systematic or biblical theology.
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In support of slavery:
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
When a man strikes his slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
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I'm not really sure how to defend against this other than by returning to his inability to provide a reason why slavery is categorically immoral. Your friend could also point to the discussion of slaves in Paul's epistle to Philemon.
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The inferiority of women:
You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24 NLT)
Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes,, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (I Timothy, chapter 2 NAB)
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Even if these texts were teaching the inferiority of women, this man (again) would have no reason to assert gender equality. People have decided that it is a good thing (this decision by "society" is something he actually refers to later in the letter) but so what? Morality cannot be statistical average. If that should be the case, then women would have been "inferior" to men in previous times but have somehow become equal through nothing more than a change in public opinion. It can be shown that he doesn't actually consider public opinion a source of truth.
Furthermore, the bible doesn't teach the inferiority of women. It teaches an
essential equality but a
functional hierarchy. Of course he refuses to quote the passages showing women to be made in the image of God and that there are no longer male or female in Christ. He's only concerned with "what women are allowed to
do" (symptomatic of our culture's general obsession with practice over theory) according to the bible. Well, we can't be ashamed that this is what the bible teaches. Remind him that he has no rational reason to assert that things should be otherwise.
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Punishment for rape victims:
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to the girl because she did not cry out for help though the was in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)
Kill a woman on her wedding night if she does not have proof of virginity:
But if this charge is true (that she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girl’s virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father’s house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB)
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Deuteronomy 22:23 is not talking about rape. It is referring to consensual sex between a man and an engaged woman. This would be clear if he had actually provided the verse in context (something he arrogantly claims at the beginning of the letter). That the woman was in the city and didn't cry for help means that she wasn't averse to the man's advances! Verses 22-23 talk about adultery and verses 25-28 talk about rape.
I'm not sure how to respond to the second passage since this is one I've wondered about myself. Moses is apparently talking about the intact hymen as proof of virginity but it is my understanding that the hymen can be gradually destroyed without having sex and is not even very large to begin with in some women. I'll let someone else take this one.
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The sun stops in the sky (otherwise known as the sun moves around the Earth):
The sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. (Joshua 10:13)
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Ever heard of a figure of speech? Sheesh. He wouldn't criticize other works of literature this harshly.
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Eye for an eye, hand for a testicle:
If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)
If kids mock you, send bears to eat them:
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. (II Kings 2:23-24)
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Again, there is no rational reason why these punishments are unjust.
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While the bible explicitly says that slavery is acceptable, women are inferior to men, and that rape victims should be stoned to death, I never came across a passage that said “thou shall not abort an embryo” or “evolution is a lie perpetuated by heretics.” I find it odd that people like Mr. Heesen want everyone to fall in line with god’s teachings when they refer to things that are inferred, though not expressly stated, in the bible. The rules of morality that are clearly written in the bible seem monstrous to any rational person (see page 6) yet are never touted by people like Mr. Heesen, and I challenge him to try and support any one of the laws stated above. I mean, I would dislike being mocked by youths or receiving a blow to my testicles but I would never respond by killing the children or cutting off a woman’s hand, like our oh-so-moral god would have us do. If god were running for president, the bible would be his voting record — would you support a candidate with those kinds of skeletons in their closet?
Then why do so many people want us to follow these laws if they reflect an outdated, uneducated, sickly version of morality? Because it is a convenient replacement for reasoned thought that adds immediate weight behind an argument. Some bible-phile has an agenda and wants support, so they claim that god is on their side and POOF!, instant solidarity.
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The section I have set in bold type is important. He is saying that he should be God and that he should be able to determine morality. This is his "logic." Then he throws out some more hot air about Christian morality being "outdated, uneducated, [and] sickly." He talks about "reasoned thought" but has absolutely nothing to show for it.
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Our society evolves over time. Guided by science and a sense of true morality, we have slowly learned that women are equal to men, slavery is deplorable, and that the sun does not revolve around the Earth. Over time ideas that are initially labeled as heretical eventually become common sense. In the next century I am confident that oppressing gays will be as distasteful as segregation, abortion will not be equated to murder (most people will differentiate between a collection of cells and a breathing, thinking human being), and evolution will be regarded in the same way as gravity — as truth. A staunch anchoring to these religious ideas simply slows progress, it cannot stop it.
Think long and hard for yourself, Mr. Heesen. Many people would agree with you that the number of sexually active young people has its consequences, but why tarnish your argument by siding with a school of thought that supports the death penalty for being raped?
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I really try not to get so angry when reading something like this that I can't think straight. There's zero intellectual substance here. He commits every informal fallacy in the book but thinks that he's defending rationality and logic. It's amazing to me that he thinks that the secular world has some kind of accepted morality.
Does morality really evolve? Or is it just that we evolve and begin to get a grip on morality? If the former, why should one be moral? If the latter, of what metaphysical stuff does morality consist and where did it come from? And where did the logical principles come from with which we derived this nonexistent accepted body of morality?
What I've added here is certainly basic but there's nothing here that goes past the basics.