Atheism and our Response

Dave and I have been posting recently in response to an article on About.com and I am putting some of mine up here. This isn't all of them, but about half way though.
The article is about a Catholic school expelling two girls for purportedly being lesbians.

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The post-modern paradigm of relativity haunts us these days. One of the posters, Drew, noted a case that seemed to prove relative morality: that of date rape. From a Christian perspective, that certainly wouldn’t prove relative in the least! Any pre-martial sex is against the law - a law not intended to prevent our fun, but to protect us from such evils as we are wont to commit on one another in accordance with our own desires - particularly by disregarding others. What you “want,” almost by definition is relative, and if we might remember, coveting also ends up on the list of Ten. It keeps us from making ourselves the center of our own universes - in essence, playing God. I’m not saying its bad to want something for ourselves, God wants us to desire and enjoy (probably more than we can ever imagine) the goodness and bounty that Christians and Jews believe He has created, but there are certain boundaries that keep us, as well as those around us, safe (mostly from ourselves.)

ChristianDave made a great point in comment number 12: that in holding to a relative morality, it becomes very difficult to judge correctly, but we should at least extend those moral freedoms we hold to our enemies. I don’t condone judging anyone anyway, neither did Christ if I remember correctly. Actions on the other hand, we should have something to say about and as for ideas, we should aim to be elitist.

Slavery is evil - but one that, if you know anything about history, was put down by Christians (note William Wilberforce and John Newton). It never was condoned by God in the OT. Slavery, as is imagined by the modern mind differs greatly from slavery in the OT. For one, in Jewish terms, slavery in the OT should be viewed as indentured servitude, not necessarily so for the surrounding cultures. Often one became a slave in order to pay off a debt owed. And, usually, slaves held “secretarial” jobs within the household and outside the household could viewed often as the master’s “right hand man,” so to speak. This can be seen many times in how Job treats his slaves, Joshua, Joseph, and how even Jesus refers to them in parables. Besides, slaves were freed and debts were forgiven completely at the end of every seventh year, known as the year of Jubilee.
It may also be noted that just because something was *done* in the OT, does not mean that God *approved* of it. The OT is just as much a history as it is Holy Writ. Therefore we see things there that are often embarrassing, tragic and sometimes downright horrid.

Now, as ChristianDave says, “slavery” seems to veer from the subject of discrimination towards sexual preference, so I will say little more, but I would like to point out that the laws concerning the beating of a slave, the master’s punishment and the understanding of all that, though horrible beyond measure, for one, must be viewed within the context of how slaves were actually considered in the Jewish OT. God “permitted” slavery to the hard-hearted as I “permit” my daughter to do somethings that may be viewed as awful and make me look like a bad father, but in the long run, I can use to teach a lesson. God set certain other rules in place that insured that the slaves were treated well and freed, as both Dave and I have shown.
Also, in particularly Christian terms, the beating of a slave, the punishment of wrongful action and the freeing of slaves in the year of Jubilee go beyond measure in relating the seriousness and sacrifice, the wages and punishment that go with sin. Christians believe that Christ came to “set the captives free” and proclaim the year of Jubilee. Without the historical context of slavery and the comparison made to sin, the gravity of sin and the joy of its forgiveness really have little else to parallel to.

Now, back to the subject at hand - that of the apparent discrimination of two apparent lesbians.

Discrimination against someone of different race, sex or nationality is, as is slavery, also evil (argued against by the great Martin Luther King, Jr. - a Christian), however race, sex and nationality are not things we can choose - your ideas and actions are. We indeed should discriminate against certain actions and even beliefs, e.g. theft, arson, murder. You should discriminate against certain ideas, not against people for natural attributes. It is that that is evil. (In the case of the school, I get the feeling, though I may be wrong, that we don’t know all the facts. It would be hard to imagine the writer of this article giving them all as his intention seems to come from a more editorial standpoint.)

Why the Christian (and Jewish) religion do not condone homosexuality seems a bit beyond the scope of this article or these comments, but the fact that the school expelled the girls for such really doesn’t count as “bad” discrimination. Shop owners do, in fact, “discriminate” against thieves: They don’t want their items stolen. The school in question legally and rightfully can “discriminate” against the actions of students, or students themselves, that they hold to be wrong and run contrary to their goal. The article seems to insinuate that the school kicked those poor girls out on their hind-ends without a shred of evidence. We do not know that. The girls didn’t say they were lesbians, but the school perceived them as such: for all we know, they may have been caught kissing in the hall - something in my day, I would have been given a pretty hard knock for as well even with the opposite sex. It doesn’t belong in school, learning a bit of discipline does (it proves a hard lesson to learn later in life.)

Elaine: (Christians believe that) God made you and made me. He gave you the ability to choose, on your own, to have your own will. People’s sexual preferences are just that: *their* preferences. Choice of sexual preference doesn’t fall under the same lines as, say, preference in ice-cream. Honestly, we are biological creatures, and (again, Christians believe) spiritually dead until reborn in God’s Spirit. So, that being the case, given the opportunity to let completely loose, we are really capable of any type of physical or sexual perversion, any one of us. People do some strange things - strangest of all is blaming God for decisions they made themselves.
Once again, in calling condemnation evil… you are condemning them.

Okay, so I will continue with Paul’s excellent critique of OT/NT and Erhman and then atheist_Dave’s comment,
“Also, if ‘God permitted (slavery) because his people demanded it’, then how does that not contradict a standard belief of Christianity and some other theistic religions, namely that it is the job of (a) god(s), not humans, to decide what is moral and what is immoral, what is licit and what is illicit, what is allowed and what is forbidden, what is Kosha and what is not?”
which looks as if it will fall right in like with Bart Erhman’s view of Bible inerrancy.

I have to say Paul, really great post. For the most part, even though I will be responding to your questions, I won’t really be responding *to you* per say, as I imagine, being so well read, that you have also read the contending side of those arguments and have quite clearly made up your mind as such utilizing information from both sides - something I highly respect, even if I don’t come to the same conclusion. I would rather put this down for those who may not be quite as aware as to how the Christian theologians have responded.
Please, don’t anyone get the idea, and I think Paul did a great job of noting this, that either side just foolishly sticks our fingers in our ears to the things we don’t like or understand - the reason for our beliefs, whether in God or the absence of Him, must be well thought out. We are in essence, looking for truth. If truth is relative, then there cannot be any real definition of truth and our search ends before it begins. If it is absolute, then I would really like to know that truth.

In the end, we should face the truth and base our world view around that, not change or ignore the truth as we see fit.
Let me emphasize, there are answers to these questions. The Christian religion would not have lasted as long as it did had its adherents just gone and stuck their heads in the proverbial sand. It just takes seeking. And if you seek God with all your heart, mind and soul, you will find Him. If you set out with a priori disbelief, then as Yoda says, “that is why you fail.”