[Vision2020] Religion and Morality (Was Seeking Some Defintions)

[Christopher Witmer]

My comments are interspersed.
-----Original Message-----
Nick Gier wrote:

[[ Tell us all how a Calvinist such as you can also be a libertarian.  The
basic contradiction I see is that one cannot support the absolutely
sovereign self of libertarianism and the absolutely sovereign God of Calvin.
]]

If a libertarian is defined as someone who holds to the absolute sovereignty
of the individual, then I am not a libertarian, but neither are Protestant
Ron Paul or most of the key people associated with
http://www.LewRockwell.com or http://www.mises.org/, most of whom seem to be
Catholics. If it is Ayn Rand and her followers you have in mind, I find most
of those ideas repugnant. There is a limited sense in which individuals are
"sovereign"; i.e., individuals are created in the image of God, and God is
certainly sovereign. However, God is also a society (of Three) and thus man
is created as a social creature in order to image that aspect of God as well
and thus truly absolute sovereignty of the individual is impossible. Anyone
who tries to make himself absolutely sovereign as an individual is trying to
become God. This sounds like it would lead to the position of Sartre, who
wrote in No Exit that "Hell is other people." That would be the case if all
are "sovereign individuals" competing to become God. The would-be "sovereign
individual" needs to remember that God is love. The implication of this for
us as God's images is that although God, as Triune, is capable of fully
expressing and receiving love from all eternity in and of Himself, without
the creation of anything, we humans need other people in order to express
and receive love, without which we cannot attain to the fullness of
humanity. This naturally entails mutual submission, mutual indwelling, and
the dedication of the self to the other. This would seem to preclude an "Ayn
Rand" type of sovereign individuality entirely. At least in the libertarian
circles I move in, these things are understood, at least implicity if not
explicitly.

[[ Second, since you have reaffirmed the future necessity of a trinitarian
oath, I want to know if you can defend the Trinity better than Doug Jones
has.  ]] 

Possibly not. I think the fact that we need to give and receive love is one
proof that God is Triune. Created reality is what it is because uncreated
reality is what it is.

[[ So much for Christian missionaries making Asians morally better. I would
like for you to tell us which Asian countries have legalized child
prostitution, infanticide, and caste discrimination. The latter is
proscribed by the Indian Constitution and federal laws setting aside jobs
for Dalits (politically correct word for "untouchables") have been in place
for over 20 years.  Furthermore, Indian families who encourage widows to
perform "sati" (self immolation on funeral pyres) are rigorously prosecuted.
Individuals in countries all over the world commit atrocities every day but
this anecdotal evidence says nothing about the general morality of any
particular country.]]

Article on Karayuki-san [Japanese women sent overseas as sex workers]
http://zimblog.typepad.com/tanuki_ramble/2005/06/karayukisan.html
The above article does not go into detail except to say that the Japanese
began to regard the export of prostitutes as a national shame, but the
background to this view of the export of prostitutes as a national shame is
the pressure applied by Christian missionaries and Christian converts in
Japan. Obviously Japanese exports of prostitutes did not start until the
re-opening of Japan to international commerce with the Meiji Restoration in
1868. However, by that time Japan had already had legalized and systematized
prostitution for centuries. The Yoshiwara "Pleasure Quarters" of Edo/Tokyo
is infamous. It is interesting to note that OFFICIALLY the prostitution
system in Tokyo (Yoshiwara) was discontinued in February 1869. This is
primarily because as soon as the country was re-opened to foreigners,
Christian missionaries pounced on prostitution as an evil that should be
eliminated immediately, and they were of course supported in their views by
all the Western diplomats and modernization experts that the Meiji
government brought in to help the nation modernize. However, the practice
never died out at all. Throughout the latter years of the 19th century there
were still laws being made requiring the registration of prostitutes, along
with medical examinations, so the practice was far from outlawed.

The following book by De Becker is very interesting, informative and has
been reprinted under various titles, all of which have "The Nightless City"
in them, so anyone wanting to locate a copy should search on that part of
the title along with the author's last name:
http://search.abaa.org/dbp2/book345369418.html
Note that not only sexual trafficking in women but also young boys continued
to be a booming business in Japan, despite the steadfast opposition of
Christian missionaries.

This UNESCO book published in 1961, "The Changing Social Position of Women
in Japan" by Takashi Koyama, indicates how prostitution was finally made
illegal in Japan ONLY after Japan's defeat in World War II.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000028/002807eo.pdf 
Concatenated quotes from the above book:
"The institution of prostitution had a long history extending back to feudal
Japan; it was recognized as a business and was supervised by officials. In
the Meiji era, efforts were renewed to regulate and supervise prostitution
as a business. The increase in industrialization, urbanization, and
universal military conscription were the significant factors which helped to
expand the business. This official recognition of the institution of
prostitution gave to those engaged in the business a strong incentive to
extend their activities and, in turn, greater inducement was given to young
women to become prostitutes. This occupation, sanctioned
and recognized as a business by public officials, depressed the position of
working women in general . . . opposition to prostitution had not been
sufficiently mobilized to eradicate this long-standing evil practice until
just a year ago (1958) . . . The year 1958 was memorable in the history of
Japanese women, for the age-old practice of prostitution which was condemned
as contrary to human dignity and as debasing women was then for the first
time legally abolished and appropriate measures were taken to protect the
women concerned and to set them on the way to a new life. Licensed
prostitution was condemned by some leading thinkers of the Meiji era,
ESPECIALLY CHRISTIANS [emphasis mine -- Chris], who supported a movement for
its abolition, but their aims were not realized. After the war, the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers issued a memorandum calling for the abolition
of licensed prostitution, and in response to it the Japanese Government
promulgated an imperial ordinance providing for the punishment of anyone who
forced a woman into prostitution . . . The Council on Women's and Minors'
Problems finally condemned prostitution as having a debasing effect on the
position of women and made a recommendation to the government urging its
prevention. For its part, the government took up the serious study of the
question, instituted inquiries into existing conditions and set out to
devise means of prevention. Subsequently, the bill for the prevention of
prostitution was presented to the National Diet and passed unanimously in
1958. In this way, the prohibition of prostitution, a problem that had
existed for many years [many centuries -- Chris], was at last dealt with by
legislation."

Although there is also a lot in her article to disagree with, Aiko Goshi's
"Women and Sexism in Japanese Buddhism" on pages 130-136 (according to the
page numbering assigned by Adobe) gives some very interesting historical and
sociocultural background to the problem of widespread prostitution in Japan.
She does not define the problem as I do -- i.e., the near-total lack of any
Christian influence on the society -- but at least to my mind that stands
out, especially when combined with the other things I linked above.
http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/politik/Mitarbeiter/Hummel/badboll.pd
f

I'm not so naive as to believe that becoming a nominally Christian country
will eliminate the abuse of women. There were parts of Lincoln's army that
suffered greater incapacitation from venereal diseases than from military
confrontations with Confederate soldiers on the field of battle, so it is
clear that baptism in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit does not magically purge the society of such evils. But it is clear
that Christianity elevates and protects oppressed women from such evils as
prostitution, both directly and also indirectly by inculcating values
conducive to the elimination of poverty.

Japan's story has been widely repeated throughout Asia. The Philippines,
albeit nominally a Christian country, has such a thin veneer of Christian
values that there are many ways in which it could be called a Christian
society in name only, and it has a problem with prostitution similar to that
which plagued Japan for centuries, until only relatively recently. The
situation in Buddhist Thailand is well-known. Chinese and Korean cultures
went through processes not unlike Japan's, where long-standing traditions of
prostitution were eliminated only relatively recently, through the direct
and indirect effects of Christianity. 

The situation in India is a disgrace and the things you point out about
India only serve to make my point, which is that the maltreatement of people
in these countries has a religious basis and it is only changing in India's
case very grudgingly due to pressure that originally came from the Christian
West, although I don't doubt there are now Indians who now embrace these
values without embracing Christianity outright. Not long ago here in Tokyo I
received a presentation from an Indian real estate developer who is building
some of India's tallest buildings; he was seeking Japanese investment in his
company's projects. He had recently built what was at the time India's
tallest residential building. He boasted to me that one of the things making
his company's buildings so wonderful -- one of their selling points why we
should want to invest in them -- was the fact that they are able to
effectively exclude the entry of all other castes and religions from their
properties. He explained that they do it primarily on the basis of diet;
discriminating on the basis of religion is illegal but discrimating on the
basis of diet is not illegal, and that suits their purposes just fine. So
you cannot legally enter their properties in India if you happen to eat
certain foods, or if you don't happen to eat certain other foods. The
reality is that their entire world is built around religious discrimination.
And that, in a nutshell, describes what is going on throughout India: it is
"business as usual" but only thinly disguised so as not to be immediately
recognizable for what it really is, but nothing has changed, and nothing
will change, so long as India continues to reject Jesus the Messiah. He
alone holds the solution to India's problems.

[[  I challenge you to prove your absurd response that Europeans somehow
cheat on their crime rates.  ]]

Theodore Dalrymple says it best -- the overall picture he paints is pretty
convincing:
http://tinyurl.com/yw7zjo
http://tinyurl.com/ypb24q
http://tinyurl.com/28j7yw
http://tinyurl.com/ynwrpp
http://tinyurl.com/2coeju

[[ For one who follows the pastor who wrote "Southern Slavery As It Was" to
decry the sad state of American race relations is really quite remarkable.
How much sadder would those relations be if we condemn President Lincoln and
follow Pastor Wilkins and the League of the South?! The mind reels from the
cynicism of such a position! ]]

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow you. Just what position are "we" talking about?
 
[[ Yes, it is really "nutty" to do an end run around the empirical truth
that Jesus was 500 years late on the Golden Rule by saying that Jesus as the
Second Person of the Trinity was there before Confucius!  You are just like
Wilson and all his top males:  never concede but always evade, which is
actually not a very manly thing to do.  ]]

Yep, nutty but true. So what would be the "manly" thing for someone who
believes the 66 books of the Bible are true, divinely inspired and uniquely
the word of God? I'm well aware that the incarnation of the Second Person of
the Trinity came after Confucius, but I'm also well aware that the
incarnated Second Person of the Trinity said, "Before Abraham was, I AM."
Abraham is earlier than Confucius, is he not?

[[ Chris: you need to do some more reading from the most recent scholarship
on Zoroaster.  You've not mastered the "bulk" of it. Contrary to your
incredible claim, no scholar I know ever claimed that Zoroaster came after
586 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews of Judah to Babylon. The dates
for this great Persian prophet are being pushed back to at least 1,000 BCE,
long before the Babylonian captivity.  Cyrus the Great was a Zoroastrian and
he is called "Messiah" for letting the Hebrews to return from captivity in
537 BCE (Is. 45:1).  ]]

I don't know if I need to do more reading from the most recent scholarship
on Zoroaster -- a lot of "the most recent scholarship" in a lot of fields
deserves to be viewed with suspicion. Anyone with an axe of any sort to
grind against Christianity is likely to be predisposed to push the dates for
Zoroastrianism back as far as possible in order not only to avoid having to
admit that it was the result of influences from the Jews during the
Babylonian Captiviity, but also if possible to be in a position to assert
that Judaism and hence Christianity "evolved" out of Zoroastrianism. (For
example Jon D. Levenson argues in his "Resurrection and the Restoration of
Israel The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life" that the idea of the
resurrection of the dead came from Zoroastrianism.) I freely concede that I
have not mastered the bulk of the scholarship. I have only nibbled on a tiny
corner of it. I did not mean to suggest that Zoroaster came significantly
after the Babylonian captivity so much as that he was most likely
contemporary with it. My understanding is that Darius (or Ahasuerus or
Artaxerxes) was both a great protector of the Jews and also a great advocate
of "Zoroastrianism" (also known as Magianism) apparently having been taught
by Zoroaster himself. Zoroaster's teaching is so similar in so many ways to
Judaism that it strongly suggests the influence of a Jew or Jews upon the
formation of Zoroaster's beliefs, which centered on a revelation of God in
fire, which would have corresponded to the revelation of God in the fiery
glory cloud and in altar fire in the Hebrew scriptures. It featured a
satanic opponent to God, who is often said to be equal to God, but may not
always have been viewed as such. Authentic Zoroastrianism was rigorously
monotheistic and creationist, and there were always those who held to the
old, pure form of it. Zoroaster's own poems speak of God (Ahuramazda) and
His attributes: Good Word and Holy Spirit. The magi who visited Jesus at His
birth were Persians, and almost certainly were faithful God-fearers.
Everything indicates that Darius (as well as Cyrus), was a true God-fearing
gentile. The religion of the Persian God-fearers came to be called
Zoroastrianism, but we should not let the dualistic and polytheistic later
variants of it confuse us: there were faithful Persian God-fearers in Jesus'
day, just as there were faithful Jews. One cannot avoid making speculations
when one gets into this subject area, but in any case I am pretty sure that
any Zoroastrian who read the Hebrew scriptures would think they were saying
the same thing he believed.

To go back to the dating issue, it is not at all hard to find contemporary
scholarship placing Zoroaster around the date I use. Here is one example:
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/cgi/reprint/190/1/1.pdf

So it may not be the lastest and greatest scholarship, but it is not
off-the-wall either.

-- Chris

----Original Message----- 
From: Nicholas Gier wrote: 
 
[[ Using the example of the Ik people, who lived under extreme 
circumstances, is a tad misleading. ]] 
 
Is it really? I was only trying to show that the Golden Rule is not truly 
universal. Even if they lived under extreme circumstances, it makes my 
point. Also, it behooves us to ask whether their morality resulted from or 
caused the extreme circumstances under which they lived. 
 
[[ Only very few schools of Hinduism or Buddhism following the theory of 
absolute monism, so that generalization is false as well. ]] 
 
I have been living among Buddhists most of my life, so I think I know a 
thing or two about Buddhism. I grant it would be false if I tried to apply 
it indiscriminately to everyone who is a Hindu or Buddhist, but that's not 
what I'm trying to do. "Only a few schools" establishes my point quite well.

 
[[ Hindu and Buddhist societies are generally more moral if one takes crime 
statistics as a basis. For example, a census taken in the 1880s in British 
India founded that one in 3,000 odd Buddhists, one in 1,700 odd Hindus, but 
one in 700 odd Indian Christians had committed a crime. . . . How does 
Witmer account for the fact that the most evangelical Christian society in 
the world (the US) has the highest crime rates, and a post-Christian Europe 
has very low crime rates and a general incarceration rate that is is 
generally ten times lower than the U.S.? ]] 
 
When child prostitution is legal in a society, I don't call that moral. When

baby girls are killed by their parents because they are girls, I don't call 
that moral. When caste discrimination is built into a society, I don't call 
that moral. When helping people who are suffering is declared to be a 
criminal activity because it violates the law of Karma, I don't call that 
moral -- regardless of what the official crime statistics might be. I would 
turn the question about the most evangelical Christian society in the world 
suffering from a high crime rate and ask, does anyone seriously believe that

the more people emulate Jesus, the more the crime rate will tend to 
increase? Does anyone believe that the huge numbers of people in America's 
prisons are there because they were emulating Jesus? That's what 
evangelization is all about, and it means that America has a long, long, way

to go with regard to evangelization. By the way, I strongly suspect that 
most people in American prisons are there for drug-related crimes, and an 
awful lot of people are in prison because they are black. That last 
statement has a number of possible meanings and many if not most of them are

probably correct to varying degrees. I don't paint blacks in American 
society purely as victims, but as a group it is true that they were 
victimized by chattel slavery and they have also continued to be victimized 
by their "emancipator" dishonest Abe Lincoln and the statist American 
society that steadily emerged in his wake -- a society that has come to 
actively encourage black dependency, which might be thought of as just a 
different form of slavery. The failure of race relations in the USA is the 
single greatest failure of our nation, and as a society we are nowhere near 
to properly identifying the cause of the problem, let alone solving it. I 
see it as a failure to complete the evangelization of American society. 
Jesus is the answer. God does not want to settle for a nation of halfway 
Christians. If you go halfway and falter, God is going to deal with that, 
and it seems to me that He has been dealing with that, and it has not been a

bed of roses but we are, as a nation, proving to be slow learners. 
Apparently God has got all the time in the world to keep teaching us until 
we finally get it figured out. Finally, with regard to European crime 
statistics, we can point out that a lot of actual crime never makes it into 
the official crime statistics in Europe. In some supposedly civilized 
countries the negligence of the authorities in this regard is notorious. 
Statistics can prove just about anything . . . 
 
[[ Jesus was very late in declaring the Golden Rule. It is found in 
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Socrates, all pre-Christian sources. ]] 
 
Yes, Jesus arrived out of breath and he apologized for not arriving sooner 
before everyone else had already stolen his thunder, relegating him to the 
role of copycat . . . Seriously, some nutty folks (folks who talk about 
pre-babelic this and pre-Noahic that) actually believe that the second 
person of the Trinity created the world and gave man special revelation 
(i.e., the scripture that eventually became the 66 books of the Bible) from 
the very beginning of history. In which case the Golden Rule would certainly

predate Confucius, Buddha, and Socrates. For example, the Golden Rule is 
codified in Leviticus, which precedes all three of those personages. Since 
the second person of the Trinity is the divine author of Scripture, that 
means He beat them to the punch after all -- not that I expect you to agree 
with that, but it is certainly the perspective of Trinitarian Christianity. 
 
[[ I also object to Witmer's very objectionable thesis that a small number 
of Jews in Babylonian captivity had that much effect on the general morality

of the region.  He leaves out the profound influence of Zoroastrianism, 
which was the first monotheism religion based on personal responsibility. ]]

 
Sorry, it was just me believing what's written in the Bible again. I keep 
forgetting that it's all mythology and not to be regarded as fact. And 
please don't take my silence on Zoroastriansim to be a dismissal of its 
significance or influence. But when you consider that the general consensus 
is that Babylonian Captivity predates Zoroaster, by now you've just gotta 
know how someone like me is going to account for it. And if you want to take

the positon that it is much older -- conservative Zoroastrians would say 
their religion dates back to 6,000 B.C., which according to my 
understanding, predates the creation of the world by about 2,000 years -- I 
might be willing to accept that it represents at earliest a post-babelic 
corruption of the true global religion that came to an end at Babel. Going 
back much farther than that would be a bit of a problem since I don't think 
Noah and his family were Zoroastrians, and they are the only ones who 
survived the flood. But in any case the bulk of scholarship seems to be in 
agreement that Zoroaster postdates the Babylonian Captivity. 
 
Best regards, 
 
Chris Witmer