[Vision2020] Religion and Morality

[Christopher Witmer]

(My comments are interspersed -- Chris)

[[Nick Gier, proud Unitarian and religious liberal . . . I will not dignify with a response your objection that the scholars who argue for an earlier date have an anti-Christian bias. ]]

Thanks for signing as you did because it really does indicate the distinct set of glasses that you wear as you approach the "facts" about anything. I freely admit my own bias as a Bible-believing Trinitarian Christian and I hope you can see that you have a corresponding bias of your own, as does any scholar. 

[[Even the traditional dates of Zoroaster antedate the Babylonian captivity. You claimed to have evidence that Zoroaster came after. Where is that reference? Obviously, you cannot provide it. ]]

I never claimed to have evidence that Zoroaster came after the Babylonian Captivity, however, My "Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult" (Zondervan, 1993) gives Zoroaster's date of birth as 660 B.C.; "Cults, World Religions and the Occult" (Victor Books, 1990) mentions 628-551 B.C., and the article on Zoroastrianism in the "Evangelical Dictionary of Theology" (Baker Book House, 1984) mentions that Herzfeld gives 570-500 B.C. and Jackson, 660-583 B.C. If these dates are even relatively accurate then it is quite possible that Judaism did not borrow from Zoroastrianism. For example, on the thesis that Judaism borrowed the concept of the resurrection of the dead from Zoroastrianism, we have to deal with the fact that Ezekiel mentions Job, and Ezekiel predates the Babylonian Captivity. This is important because of Job's very clear testimony in a belief in the resurrection of the dead. So from that alone we already have clear evidence of this believe before the time!
  that Judaism would have come into contact with Zoroastrianism. Add to this the fact that Abraham clearly believes in the resurrection of the dead from the details surrounding the sacrifice of Isaac, and Psalm 16 talks about the resurrection of the Messiah. I'm just offering this as one example, of course. Again, Isaiah presents us with a very clearly, very strongly monotheistic conception of God, and Isaiah was writing before the above-mentioned dates for Zoroaster. The earliest reference to a Messiah in the Bible is in Genesis chapter three, and there are numerous references throughout the Psalms, and again very clearly in Isaiah so it does not seem likely that the concept could have been borrowed from Zoroastrianism. Again, angels are mentioned several times in Genesis, so this would have been difficult to borrow from Zoroastrianism. 

As I have been saying from the outset, I am willing to consider earlier dates for Zoroaster, but not for the "evolution" of Judaism and Christianity out of Zoroastrianism, and even if we go back as far as 1,000 B.C. like you are suggesting, too much of the Bible was already intact at that time to seriously entertain the possibility that Zoroastrianism as a "source" for Judaism and Christianity. Influence in the opposite is far more plausible. Of course, if you want to get out a crystal ball and start talking about how the books of Bible were repeatedly redacted so that all those "Zoroastrian" features were latter insertions into the "sacred" text, I suggest we cut short this conversation and discuss real estate, because I know this great bridge in New York City that you're just going to love. (Seriously, that sort of higher criticism is just too convenient -- the text could plausibly be anything at all, with the sole exception of one thing -- what it appears to be on its fac!
 e. And has there ever been a higher critic who failed to discover that the deeper message of any given biblical text just happens to be in harmony with his own pet beliefs? It's enough to restore one's belief in miracles.)

[[ By using a book dated 1899 on Japanese prostitution, you completely discredit your attempt to show that Japan's Buddhists support sexual immorality. ]]

Uh, no, actually, during the centuries in which systematic, legal prostitution flourished in Japan, the nation was only inhabited by Buddhists -- the only Christians were literally hanging dead from crosses until there were no more to crucify -- so Japan's Buddhists get systematized legal prostitution all to themselves. 

[[ During that time many American cities were flourishing centers of prostitution ]]

This is an argument against me? Did I not say as much myself?

[[ Equally weak is your mention of the Japanese military using Korean and Chinese women as sex slaves. ]]

Yes, that would be "weak," seeing as I didn't mention it at all . . . 

[[ I'm sure your pastor's proposal that only propertied males should vote would be viewed as a form of oppression by many, many Americans. ]]

Well, perhaps it would be viewed as a form of oppression by people who don't own property and were looking forward to voting themselves some, but more importantly, where did my pastor say that? Do you know my pastor's name?
 
[[ I've looked at your links about your claim that Europeans have cheated on crime statistics and found no proof. ]]

I figured you wouldn't, as Dalrymple had you pegged when he wrote, "So great was the pressure of the orthodoxy now weighing on the minds of the British intelligentsia that Fraser might as well have gone to Mecca and said that there is no God and that Mohammed was not His prophet." But the fact of the matter is that whereas you are an ivory-tower intellectual (with primary emphasis on the ivory tower part), "A Land Fit for Criminals" was written by a person who spend three decades inside the British penal system, documenting it in great detail; this you dismiss as anectodal evidence while uncritically accepting statistics that are much more amenable to your pet theory, and saying that anyway even if the Europeans do doctor their statistics on crime reporting it must surely be counterbalanced by similar doctoring of statistics in the USA. For a skeptic, you've got a lot of credulity.

[[ Theodore Dalrymple is not a criminologist; rather, he is a medical doctor who is a fellow at the far-right Manhattan Institute. ]]

Yes, by all means be sure to look up the piece of damning dirt that means his entire testimony must be jaundiced because he is not sufficiently politically correct. By the way, this fellow who you claim is "not a criminologist" had a long career as a prison psychiatrist, so he is able to write on that particular subject with an authority that even the most genuinely ivory tower intellectual can never hope to muster. 

[[ Your pastor also said that a racial caste system that included slavery was the best multiracial society in human history. ]] 

Again, I need to ask you if you even know the name of my pastor. Whoever he is, you are obviously much better read in his writings than I am.

[[ I supported an Indian Christian student for his American graduate studies for five years, and it took me a long time to learn that he was a Christian Dalit. In the church where he grew up there was a curtain down the center of the sanctuary so that the high caste Christians did not have to look at the Untouchables on the other side. Christian missionaries made their first contacts with high caste people, primarily because of their literacy, and through them the evils of caste spread to many Christian congregations. ]]

That is a great example, thank you. I am definitely going to keep that on file. It just goes to show that being nominally "Christian" does not instantaneously transform a society into a Christian paradise. It takes many generations of ongoing evangelism. The situation in the USA is different primarily in degree, but we are far from truly manifesting the Christian virtues the way that God calls us to. I think we have got many millennia of global Christian evangelism ahead of us. Even the most consistently Christian society in the world is still nowhere near where they need to be in this regard.

[[ Wilson's view that women should not vote (Wilkins, Grant, and he said it in "My Town") would set up a sexual caste system just as invidious as India's. Just another example of chilling parallels between Christian, Hindu, and Islamic fundamentalism. ]] 

No, it is just another chilling example of your refusal to allow the facts to impinge upon your pet theories: ". .. on women voting, Gier also has it wrong. In our church polity, we have a system of household voting, and we have women who vote. Gier needs to do some actual research before pronouncing on things like this." Isn't it high time you started actively pursuing more intellectual honesty?

[[ Finally, it is now clear to me that you are a Tritheist just as Wilson and Jones are. When you say that God is a society of three persons, the very logic of a society of individuals undermines the basic principle of a unitary Trinity. In any society individuals maintain their own integrity and will, but Augustine set the orthodox doctrine of Trinity in stone by saying that the Triune God has only one will. You are making the same fundamental mistake that so many theologically illiterate Christians do: you are assuming that the "persons" of the Trinity are like ordinary persons, and orthodox theologians, always leaning towards modalism in doing so, have always rejected this simplistic, heretical idea of the Trinity. ]]

Blah blah blah blah blah. It would be a serious problem if anyone could get his mind around God. A god that man can fully comprehend cannot be much of a god. We human beings don't even fully understand ourselves and yet you insist that there cannot be any mystery remaining on this point concerning God. Aren't you being a bit unreasonable? If the Triune God presented by the Bible really exists, why should you expect to be able to fully comprehend him? Yet the fact of the matter is, we can't turn around anywhere, in any field, without being continually being confronted by mystery. But, no, where the Trinity is concerned, Nick Gier insists, that if he can't understand it, it simply can't be. Nick, I've got news for you: I don't understand it either. Your Unitarianism has many philosophical difficulties that I think are insurmountable. Can a unitarian God can be omnipresent without becoming a pantheistic deity? Can a unitarian God create? Communicate? All unitarian gods are logi!
 cally required to be either unrelated to the world or ultimately identified with it. As a unitarian, you ought to be really worried about the fatal difficulties in a unitarian cosmology.

-- Christopher Witmer
_________________________________________________________________
Explore the seven wonders of the world
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=7+wonders+world&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE