Were the teachings of Jesus really that great?

[McQ]

Well, bandit...McQ and any other Christian reading this or anyone who thinks Jesus's teachings were good...

Gawen, I'm not a Christian, or haven't you noticed. I'm an atheist and a charter member of this forum.

[Sandra Craft]

Thanks for the useful and clear response. Could you do a bit of number crunching for me. Do you have an idea about the relative numbers of christians in the US who support/oppose capital punishment? My impression from afar was that it was enormously pro-death penalty. As always, I could be mistaken. Returning to the greatness of JC's teachings, it appears that either they have had no impact on his followers' behaviour or, if the bulk of christians favour the death penalty, they have  had an extremely adverse effect on his followers (assuming of course that we agree that capital punishment is twisted, sick and wrong).
Does this make sense to you?

I'm probably the worst person in the world to be doing this since my web-surfing skills stink.  I did find an interesting site called Death Penalty Information Center that had some numbers that were generally backed up in other, less informative sites (one place only polled attitudes among white Xtians, which seemed to me very skewed). 

One thing I found is that approval of the death penalty overall in America is very high (around 80%) which did surprise me -- I knew it was high, just not that high.  As for the percentage of religious opinions, according to a 2004 Gallup poll, mainline Protestants approved the most (71%), Catholics came in second (66%) and a category called "no religious preference" was last (57%).  That "no religious preference" category irked me since I thought it was so fuzzy as to be useless.

But anyway.  There were some other interesting statistics -- among the religious, approval in the death penalty went down the more a person attended church services.  Not by much, admittedly, but still it was a definite trend.  Also there was a Zogby poll in 2005 that recorded a substantial drop in Catholic approval of the death penalty -- down to 48%.  That's such a huge difference in one year that it makes me wonder how the two polls were taken.  I found a poll on another site that I can't remember the name of which indicated that death penalty approval among fundamentalist Protestants was lower than among mainline Protestants, again not by much, something like 68% I think, still that really surprised me.  I'd have guessed it would be higher for fundamentalists than mainliners, and I wonder if an increased tendency among fundamentalists to go to church was part of it.

At this point I couldn't guess how much of approval in the death penalty is religious and how much is cultural or some other influence, and without being able to easily separate those influences I'd be reluctant to dismiss Jesus' teachings as worthless or even harmful, esp. since increased church-going exposure to them tends to decrease approval of the death penalty. 

[Attila]

Oh BooksCatsEtc, now I feel guilty. I didn't mean to make you work. I thought you might have some ideas off the top of your head being closer to the area of interest than me. You are quite right about trying to get reliable data and what we read informally can be quite misleading of flat-out wrong. I agree completely with your conclusions. Back to the question of the thread, it does seem clear that there is no discernible christian effect on attitudes towards the death penalty. If anything christians of many different groups seem to favour it more than non-christians (also of many groups). I believe the RC's have officially come out against it but consider murder by the state to be somewhat less sinful than masturbation. Consider the reaction to figures like Pinochet or Franco compared to response to "liberation theology" whose proponents were summarily ex-communicated (as would be any functionary who ordained a woman). I conclude that the teachings of JC were utter crap if the behaviour of his students is anything to go by.
Thanks again.

[Gawen]

Well, bandit...McQ and any other Christian reading this or anyone who thinks Jesus's teachings were good...

Gawen, I'm not a Christian, or haven't you noticed. I'm an atheist and a charter member of this forum.

Oh no, I know you are an atheist, McQ. I used a poor choice of words. Sorry.

[Sandra Craft]

I conclude that the teachings of JC were utter crap if the behaviour of his students is anything to go by.

No need to feel guilty, I was curious myself.  My only hang up here is that it's only some of his students -- admittedly it appears to be the majority, at least in some places, but I can't dismiss those in the minority or discount how much of the majority's behavior may be affected by other influences.

[Attila]

I conclude that the teachings of JC were utter crap if the behaviour of his students is anything to go by.

No need to feel guilty, I was curious myself.  My only hang up here is that it's only some of his students -- admittedly it appears to be the majority, at least in some places, but I can't dismiss those in the minority or discount how much of the majority's behavior may be affected by other influences.

This is true but if we are using this criterion (judging the the greatness of teachings by the actions of those receiving them) you would have to claim that the majority who behave rather disgustingly were not so influenced whilst the minority who do not behave disgustingly were influenced by his teaching. This is really  forcing things a bit, don't you think? It's making the case for greatness at all costs. Secondly judging by the numerical minority of the decent ones and the violent vociferous nature of the disgusting ones who probably claim or believe that the are following JC's teaching and certainly have been exposed to it rather intensively, then the case for greatness by this criterion seems very weak indeed .

And of course we can return to the content of his teaching which is trite, unoriginal and leaving very much to be desired according to the examples of it given on this thread. To use a different example it would be like claim that Thomas More was a decent human being.

[Sandra Craft]

This is really  forcing things a bit, don't you think?

I kind of agree, and I kind of don't.  Just like with Jesus' teachings.

[Attila]

This is really  forcing things a bit, don't you think?

I kind of agree, and I kind of don't.  Just like with Jesus' teachings.

And I totally respect your point of view. In fact I would die defending it. One final question (I promise), if you took those teachings, forgot complete about JC, and put them in the mouth of say Billy Graham (or whoever has replaced him), would that change your opinion of them at all?

[Sandra Craft]

One final question (I promise), if you took those teachings, forgot complete about JC, and put them in the mouth of say Billy Graham (or whoever has replaced him), would that change your opinion of them at all?

I don't think it would -- I grew up listening to preachers after all and there were still teachings I disagreed with (however much I may have held my tongue at that point), as well as those I thought good ideas. 

[Attila]

One final question (I promise), if you took those teachings, forgot complete about JC, and put them in the mouth of say Billy Graham (or whoever has replaced him), would that change your opinion of them at all?

I don't think it would -- I grew up listening to preachers after all and there were still teachings I disagreed with (however much I may have held my tongue at that point), as well as those I thought good ideas. 

Fair enough. We'll agree to disagree about the value of those teachings. Thanks.