Wow. I think this quote from Michael Savage applies here: "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Brad, you mean ADAM Savage, the Mythbuster, not MICHAEL Savage, the raging moron conservative talk show host.

Slavery doesn’t get abolished out of humanitarian or religious concerns. Only after slavery becomes uneconomic does it disappear.

Slavery on the other hand does not appear when cultures are not sufficiently able to produce economic surpluses.

When the economic value of slavery disappears or such value never emerges, then meagre notions residing in ethics, and less so in religion can have some influence.

It’s very hard to get rid of idealist ideology in American academic thought -- but, you might at least read some of Marvin Harris to get a sense of his view, cultural materialism. (To differentiate it from dialectical materialism of Marx.) I’d suggest “Cannibals and Kings” (1977).

You might look at “Atheist Manifesto” (2006) by Michel Onfray. He approaches the tenaciously presupposed idealism (the “collective dream work” as Harris calls it) of sociological and anthropological theory, but from a philosophical perspective.

In this cultural backwater we’re so far from a post-supernaturalist worldview that nausea sets in. Millions of American fat-heads gorging on junk-food faith. It may be only by “good fortune” that the US rejects a dogmatic dominionist, Sarah Palin, as a stand-in the presidency.

If the managerial irrationality of the Bush regime had not finally broken down in near economic collapse, the US might have capitulated to ultra-right xian religio-ideology. How easy it will be to create a Gulag Archipelago here.

bipolar2 ©2008

Having more leisure there than here for reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato's Republic. I am wrong however in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. While wading thro' the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? How the soi-disant Christian world indeed should have done it, is a piece of historical curiosity. But how could the Roman good sense do it?

Despite his honesty, Plato was still advocating a lie to control the masses.

As to your first point, he didn't want to end religion, merely censor it for the furtherance of his own (dressed up at the Republic's) ideals.

Neither trait is admirable. The guy was a genius, but his ideas were often abhorrent. He was, I believe, the first advocate of eugenics - babies deemed weak would be left to die in his Republic. How many others (the church included) have taken ideas that were originally Platonic and used them to justify great evils?

In any case, despite the rather totalitarian and quasi-theocratic nature of his Republic, one has to admire Plato for having the guts to:

1. Criticize his society's religion as full of bad examples. After seeing excuse after excuse after excuse for the Bible, that is SO refreshing.

2. Be honest enough to call his Republic's religion a "royal lie". Most people nowadays who claim that some religion is useful to believe in without being true are not nearly as honest as Plato and various other Greco-Roman writers.

ComplexStuff;

You could interpret the Bible (or for comparison, Plato's Republic) to defend almost anything you like. The fault wouldn't lie in the text but in the reading of it.

I really think that, in this case, you're letting the Bible off too lightly. No "interpretation" is necessary to make the text endorse slavery - the text does endorse slavery, explicitly and repeatedly. It's certainly possible that Southern slaveowners could have used a different text to justify the practice, but I would argue that it's no accident they chose the Bible. It gave clear permission for slave ownership, and moreover, it presented this as the will of God himself. Certainly an irrational person can find justification in almost any text to support his beliefs, but to the degree that the text itself cooperates in that interpretation, it is itself culpable.

Yes, theories similar to Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection were proposed, but most of the arguments about evolution being used to support slavery explicitly argue that principles like survival of the fittest and other specifically Darwinian mechanisms were used to support slavery. The argument isn't that evolution removes morality, but that evolution via natural selection creates a particular morality that is pro-slavery.

Not only that, but generally the arguments are made by people who call us "Darwinists," so I see no reason not to take them at their word and assume they are referring to Darwinian evolution as outlined in The Origin of Species.

Yes, I agree, it was wrong that many Christians used the Bible as an excuse for their support of slavery. But, it is still important to maintain the distinction between excuses and bases of beliefs. So on your point that: "religious texts and tradition often endorse terrible evils", I would still object: it's true that they can be used almost post facto to justify belief that the evil was right, but in the next 2000 years I suspect secular texts and traditions will be likewise misused. You could interpret the Bible (or for comparison, Plato's Republic) to defend almost anything you like. The fault wouldn't lie in the text but in the reading of it.

As for your point that: "evils which are defended in this way are far more tenacious and hard to root out than those given any other justification". I, regrettably must agree. But perhaps that is because any attack on the evil can then be framed as an attack on the faith (as appears to happen frequently in the Muslim world at the mo).

My point was that, in your original article, you appeared to overstep the mark between excuses and bases and that by doing so you gave ammo to apologists who would accuse you of the same kind of fanaticism of which you accuse them.

Must close by saying that, by and large, I find your articles very well argued.

That argument simply won't hold, however, as evolution as an idea has a long history that precedes Darwin. Darwin's genius wasn't conceiving of the idea of evolution, but rather for providing a scientific grounding for evolution in the idea of natural selection.

Lamarck is generally credited without outlining the first systematic theory of evolution, and he did so in public lectures in 1800 and published his theory a few years later. Other thinkers before Lamarck had pondered/advocated the idea of some sort of evolutionary process dictated by natural laws rather than special creation.

As Polly rightly, I believe, pointed out above, "economic imperatives [...] drove the institution of slavery". There were supporters of slavery that used Christianity to justify their position just as there were supporters of slavery that used secular ideas to justify it. They all made their decisions first and then looked for a way to defend them.

I don't doubt that, but I think it's orthogonal to my point.

Yes, it's certainly true that economic factors were the primary underlying motivation for slavery. Obviously, the South didn't read the Bible, decide it commanded the institution of slavery, and then set out to capture some slaves. As you say, they used the Bible to justify the institution of slavery because their economy depended on it.

But what's notable is that they did use the Bible as a defense of the practice. Their religious beliefs, which I have no doubt were deeply felt and sincere, did not persuade them that slavery was a moral evil outweighing whatever economic benefit it offered. On the contrary, those beliefs reinforced their conviction in the justice and rightness of slavery, providing a way to justify the practice both to themselves and to others.

This historical fact is twofold support of the arguments that I and other atheists have been making: first, that religious texts and tradition often endorse terrible evils; and second, that evils which are defended in this way are far more tenacious and hard to root out than those given any other justification.

Out of curiosity, does it really matter to you if the Bible condemns slavery? I mean, you are clearly opposed to it, so what difference does it make to you? Would, for example, an explicit approval of slavery by Paul make you pro-slavery, incline you to disbelieve the Epistles (or NT in general), or have no effect on you?

Leum,

I have several reasons for being here. One is to learn atheism from atheists, rather than from a Christian Polemic. In order to do this, I believe I have to feel the weight of your arguments in their strongest and most persuasive forms--and not just to throw up objections to them, but to absorb and understand them to the extent that I could argue them forcefully myself. You guys seldom disappoint. Cases in point would be the nuance that EM added to 1 Tim 1:10 last night, or Mike's strong point about Paul's constant lecturing.

Yes, an explicit approval of slavery would cause me trouble with the NT. I assume you folks are fairly intellectually honest. Your reading of the NT seems to reveal to you an approval of slavery or at least an acceptance of it; hence, you find fault with it. I figure I would feel the same with the same understanding of the text.