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This story originally appeared in Tiktok Nov. 25, 2023. You hear it very often said by people of a vague faith that, well, it may not be the case that religion is metaphysically true. its figures and its stories may be legendary or dwell on the edge of myth prehistoric. Its truth claims may be laughable. We have better claims, excuse me, better explanations for the origins of both of our cosmos and our species now, so much better so in fact, that had they been available to begin with, religion would never have taken root. No one would now go back to the stage when we didn't have any real philosophy. We only had mythology. thought we lived on a flat planet or when we thought that our planet was circulated by the Sun instead of the other way around when we didn't know there were microorganisms as part of creation and that they were more powerful than us and had dominion over us well than we then when we were fearful the infancy of our species we wouldn't have taken up theism if we'd known now what we did then but Allow for all that, allow for all that. You still have to credit religion with being the source of ethics and morals. Where would we get these from if it weren't for faith? I think if in the time I've got, I think that's the position I most want to undermine. I don't believe that it's true that religion is moral or ethical. I certainly don't believe, of course, that any of its explanations about the origin of our species, or the cosmos, or its ultimate destiny, are true either. In fact, I think most of these have been conclusively, utterly discredited. But I'll deal with the remaining claim. Is it moral? Again, I can only do Christianity this evening. Is it moral to believe? that your sins, yours and mine, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, can be forgiven by the punishment of another person. Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I might if I wished, if I knew any of you, you were my friends, or even if I didn't know you, but I just loved the idea of you. Well, sly love is another sickly element of Christianity, by the way. But suppose, I could say, look, you're in debt, I've just made a lot of money out of a god-bashing book. I'll pay your debts for you. Maybe you'll pay me back someday, but for now I can get you out of trouble. I could say, if I really loved someone who'd been sentenced to prison, if I could find a way of saying I'd serve your sentence, I'd try and do it. I could do what Sydney Carton does in A Tale of Two Cities, if you like. I'm very unlikely to do this unless you've been incredibly sweet to me. I'll take your place on the scaffold. But I can't take away your responsibilities. I can't forgive what you did. I can't say you didn't do it. I can't make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive Middle Eastern society was scapegoating. You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat, you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger, and you think you've taken away the sins of the tribe. A positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and normality must depend. It has a further implication. I'm told that I have to have a share in this human sacrifice, even though it took place long before I was born. I had no say in it happening. I wasn't consulted about it. Had I been present, I would have been bound to do my best to stop the public torture and execution of an eccentric creature. I would do the same even now. No, no, I'm implicated in it. I myself drove in the nails. I was present at Calvary. It confirms the original filthy sin in which I was conceived and born the sin of Adam and Genesis. Again, this may sound a mad belief, but it is the Christian belief. Well... It's here that we find something very sinister about monotheism and about religious practice in general. It is incipiently at least, and I think often explicitly, totalitarian. I have no say in this. I am born under a celestial dictatorship which I could not have had any hand in choosing. I don't put myself under its government. I am told that it can watch me while I sleep. I'm told that it can convict me of, here's the definition of totalitarianism, thought crime for what I think I may be convicted and condemned. And that if I commit a right action, it's only to evade. this punishment and if I commit the wrong action I'm going to be caught up not just with punishment in life for what I've done which often follows back semantically but no but even after I'm dead in the Old Testament gruesome as it is, recommending as it is of genocide, racism, tribalism, slavery, gentle mutilation, the displacement and destruction of others. don't promise to punish the dead. There's no talk of torturing you after the earth has closed over the Amalekites. Only till when gentle Jesus, meek and mild, makes his appearance, are those who won't accept the message told they must depart into everlasting fire. Is this morality? Is this ethics? I submit, not only is it not, not only does it come with the false promise of vicarious redemption, but it is the origin of the totalitarian principle which has been such a burden and shame to our species for so long. |