I’m posting this in political theory because I can’t see where would be better. If a mod/admin wishes to move this, feel free, political theory seemed closest to what I was getting at.
My question is this:
Why do people, so rational when assessing economics, believe in ridiculous documents like the bible? I’m not saying a belief in some sort of God is stupid, but many of you seem convinced that any God other than that described (notwithstanding contradictions) in the Old and New Testaments. Am I making a mistake, or do you really place faith in an ancient book, you take, with no justification, to be revelation from God? Do you even believe that the morality described in this book (/these books) is acceptable?
This isn’t meant to be too confrontational. I wish to understand your beliefs.
Here’s a shocker for you: Most christians probably don’t even read the bible. If they have any religious beliefs at all it is something they made up or gleamed off of others or both. Personally I do both the latter from some of thomas aquinas the former from parents, priests, etc. At least for a catholic, reading the bible is an incredibly drawn-out process where the only way to get the whole meaning of it is to be a master interpreter; for there are four senses to a text inspired by God -the literal, allegorical, the anagogical, and the moral.
There is one interesting issue here and that is the idea of rationality being implemented in human life. While it is rather easy to be rational in respect to economics where there’s evidence to support one’s thesis, in the area of theology one is going beyond the realm of even the most rational attempts at a priori reasoning to the point at which one must decide issues based on faith due to the little evidence that there is. Many religions and schools of philosophy provide differences of opinion on whether one can prove the existence of a deity based on “rational” axioms and evidence, it does push the word “rational” to the limit for even the most pious believers and nonbelievers cannot base their stances on evidence, rather they must make a leap of faith in doing so. There is little room for what would be considered reason in other fields in that of religion; rather, it is one in which there are many point of views that truly can never validate their claims or falsify the claims of other where, as I’ve said before, each individual must make a leap of faith.
Ridiculous, yet not stupid. Hm. On your theology questions, there are differences between Protestants and Catholics on biblical history so you would have to be a tad more specific. Some believe they are merely ‘divinely inspired’ , some others believe the books of the bible are actually divine. Being that they were written over time by many early Church leaders, there are of course going to be differences between them.
The question of religion, as Rothbard rightly wrote, is irrelevant to libertarianism. Insulting large groups of people, such as Christians, is no way for libertarian ideals to spread to the masses. One may reach the same conclusions with or without faith. Getting side tracked by riding the hobby horse atheism of left-libertarians is one of libertarianism’s biggest hurdles right now.
You do seem a bit confrontational, altough it could just be the medium. This is kind of an odd place in general to post a question like this; we’ve had these threads before, and they usually end up in a flame-war between 2 or 3 users that is ignored by everyone else.
Also, it really doesn’t have anything to do with political theory. I’ll move it to “General”.
Maybe rational wasn’t the correct word. And obviously I’m all for religious freedom, diversity etc. Nor do I dislike or oppose all religion. I just find it hard to conclude that Christianity is correct, where there is no evidence, or at least there is a similar amount of evidence for the Greek or Roman or Persian ancient Gods, or for the Muslim God. Why then accept a creed which rejects these out of hand, and says that its equally unjustified worldview is the only way of explaining “things”?
I agree, but if we become pedantic, faith in a literal Christian God of the bible would surely go against anarchism in certain respects, e.g. punishing people for things seen as crimes in the bible, but not by most of “us”. For example, adultery punished by (correct me if i am wrong) stoning. The bombing of abortion clinics and murdering of doctors prepared to end the “lives” of multicellular organisms seen as “humans” by some, would be an example of Christianity by-the-book in action.
Strawman; unless you think that a Christian belief in God is the only one you can have. For example, I can endorse a general belief in God, but argue that it is somewhat silly to accept such a specific set of beliefs as Christianity, when it is just as likely that instead of angels there are gigantic pink teapots wearing leotards.
I agree here. But I think I disagree as to where the points where one makes leaps of faith are. For example, I might make the leap of faith that freedom is good, or instead justify freedom on utilitarian principles, thereby making the leap of faith that what is good is maximising happiness, and then in my addition of “utilities” in calculating the “total happiness” of an action (because hopefully utilities are not purely ordinal when it comes to happiness!), I must make leaps of faith in my definition of happiness. I make leaps of faith every day assuming the sun will rise, that gravity will continue to work etc.
For me, it seems like a very random leap of faith to accept biblical Christianity.
I have been on both sides of this. I was once a Christian, in fact, a “Born Again Christian”. I often kick my former self for believing what I once did. Belief in a religion is extremely emotional and sometimes (though not always) has familial connections. The closest parallel I can think of is love. Have you ever had a friend who went out with a lying creep? “He/she lies to you and is cheating on you. Why do you put up with that?” The reason they put up with it is similar to the reason I once put up with Christianity – there is a powerful emotional connection.
The answer to your question about Biblical morality will differ from person to person. My own view was that with the arrival of the Messiah many of the harsher “Old Testament” rules fell away into mere historical relevance and were no longer in force (ask a Christian if he eats bacon or shellfish). This idea was buttressed by Jesus’ attack on the harsh justice around him “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” and also his attack on symbolism over substance in parables such as the “Good Samaritan” story. To fully understand the context of the Good Samaritan story it is important to remember the original meaning of “Samaritan”. Samaritan once referred to a very discriminated against branch of Jewish believers. If Jesus really is coming back and he wants to tell the same story again, he might rename the story “The Good Atheist”. His point in the story was that helping others is more important than observing strict religious rules. The fact that most Jewish people at the time hated Samaritans added to the impact.
As far as making the leap of faith that “freedom is good”; one must remeber that Austrian economics proves the fact that freedom is good through its economics theories thus you have evidence to support that “freedom is good” and ergo you don’t have to make a leap of faith at all. With your choice of happiness, which it could be debated whether that is even a possibility or not yet that’s non sequitur here, again you have the benefit of experience and empirical evidence derived from it to guide your decisions; again, leading to a situation that isn’t a leap of faith but that can be made through rational reasoning thanks to all that evidence. Assuming that you must make a leap of faith for the latter two is quite absurd for physics has discovered laws that have been nearly perfect in predicting such phenomena since the late 1600s.
One makes a eap of faith when there is no evidence to guide one’s decision, yet one must make a decision to have some sort of sentiment about the matter - all of the above can be derived from evidence and thus arn’t leaps of faith, but rather something that can be reasoned about,.
The occurence of giant pink teapots anywhere is pretty low and I’m not sure how a teapot would even wear a leotard. Yet there are literally millions of books movies etc about angels all more or less settling on a comon form for gods messenger. So the circumstantial evidence seems rather against a giant pink teapot theory. The same can be said of many ancient religions they didn’t hold up to scrutiny as well as current religions. Turns out apollo is not driving his chariot across the sky Its a giant ball of gas burning millions of miles away. The other interesting things is that they have evolved. Eating meat on a friday or worshiping a different god were all stoneabale offenses but these views have shifted over the past thousand or so years. There are still your extremeists and religious zealots but should we see anarchy I beleive a religion will evolve to meet the needs of the people
I don’t believe what I am about to write but as a hypothetical, libertarianism can be reconciled to christianity even with these objections recognized and this is due to two factors:
In a free society there is nothing that will stop everyone from acting violent -that is there can still be abortion bombers and whatnot and the point being that good works are still possible although illegal. (Whether or not there will be less bombings is an empirical question, though I think there will be less).
And secondly those parts of christian politics labeled “burning heretics”, “punishing usury”, and “abortion bombing” (and maybe catholic social teaching) are contingent parts of the religion and are implicitly followed if political science says such means (like burning) will affect the intended ends. But being that this question is answered in the negative under libertarianism -theology and politics are thereby reconciled.
I do not necessarily agree. Revealed religions overwhelmingly endorse a God who will punish people for victimless crimes. States wage wars for religious reasons. Religion also gives people the idea that just like they can have faith in a God, they can have faith in a State.
However, it does also seem that the non-religious seem to be very statist/socialist as well. “Conservative America” seems to lean to the religious right as well.
I myself first gave up religion, before giving up my political beliefs. Of course that may just be because I was thinking about religion more.
So, I think it is really hard to say that being religious or not is better for freedom.
When was the last time a state waged a war for religious reasons? States also wage wars for financial reasons, does that mean that money or commerce cannot be reconciled with libertarianism? Funny though, the groups in the US that have tried to break off in some fashion in recent times were religious groups and not communes of atheists. So there are religious motives to want to be free of the state, even those that have tried may have been fringe groups.
On your last point, it isnt any of your business whether someone is religious or not and believes in freedom. The point is hope that they do, no matter what frame of mind they bring to the table.