Is Christianity moral or immoral?

[Too Few Lions]

I think we can all agree that Christianity is a nasty little religion that has caused untold suffering in the world. It helped bring about the Dark Ages, and has opposed a lot of the positive steps and scientific and cultural advances Western civilisation has made in the past 2000 years. Nothing like a good bit of Christianity bashing 

[DeterminedJuliet]

But....
This is like saying that the author of a book or the people referring to these books to teach others, have no accountability when the students act upon the teachings based on the book.

The authors of the Bible can and most certainly were immoral. That's the point I'm trying to get across. It's the people involved that are moral or immoral. Words on a page are simply a means of communication and record. A word cannot hurt without someone actually using them, and then it's the person using them that's responsible, not the words.

The people using them, the people authoring/publishing/distributing them, the people teaching them...
Especially when the teacher claims to be divinely guided and infallible and that if not followed the student will be tortured for eternity.

I must say I'm with Will on this one. Words on a page have no impact until read. How dangerous, or otherwise, is a closed book on a shelf? Now the intent of the author may have been good or bad, but how the reader reacts to what is written is the responsibility of the reader and how they react will be influenced by their genes and upbringing. The words on the page are simply a transmission medium of ideas that may, or may not, be considered moral or immoral by the writer or reader dependent on their respective reasons for writing and reading.

Consider a photograph of the body of a murder victim. The image is morally neutral. Was the photographer moral or immoral for taking the picture? That depends on the motivation of the photographer, were they a police phorensic photographer or a voyeur who want's to post the image on the internet to troll the victim's family? Neither motivation affects the content of the image, which is morally neutral.

But what about literature inciting hate? I'm not saying that the bible explicitly does this (though there could be an argument for it), but there are certainly some cases where a medium demands an action. If I write a thesis about white supremacy and instruct my readers to kill everyone "impure", there certainly is intent in the book itself.

We ban trolls here all of the time for what they write, we aren't necessarily passing judgement on the people themselves, but there is a standard that we find acceptable, and moral, for content. I agree that context is totally relevant, but how often is there a piece of media without any context whatsoever? It rarely happens. How often do you find a picture of a murder victim lying on the side of the road? You don't, you find it somewhere; either in a police file or on a serial killers trophy wall (I'm being hyperbolic here, but you get my point)

Part of the problem with the bible is that people take it out of context. Religious folk think it's "beyond" context because it's the word of God, or whatever, but it does have a context just like nearly everything else and should be judged accordingly.   

[Tank]

Christianity is not a book.

The foundation of the belief system date with the beliefs of the ancients Jews, even before they were Jews through oral tradition. Doctrine is not an inanimate object. Christianity was not a book until well after the supposed central character was dead. People believed this stuff way before the book was written. Christianity is immoral as a belief system/worldview - even in its myriad consistencies of proto-Christianity. To say Christianity is amoral because it is written in a book is faulty thinking when you do not consider the immoral pre-published doctrines/dogma/tenets of Judaism and proto-Christian beliefs as the rocks in which Christianity was built upon.

The Bible is simply the immoral doctrine in written form instead of the immoral oral tradition (which came first) of those that believed it.

Yes, that's the point really. So while technically accurate about the written word as being amoral the written word is only a 'place holder' for the intent of the author.

[Tank]

to a

But....
This is like saying that the author of a book or the people referring to these books to teach others, have no accountability when the students act upon the teachings based on the book.

The authors of the Bible can and most certainly were immoral. That's the point I'm trying to get across. It's the people involved that are moral or immoral. Words on a page are simply a means of communication and record. A word cannot hurt without someone actually using them, and then it's the person using them that's responsible, not the words.

The people using them, the people authoring/publishing/distributing them, the people teaching them...
Especially when the teacher claims to be divinely guided and infallible and that if not followed the student will be tortured for eternity.

I must say I'm with Will on this one. Words on a page have no impact until read. How dangerous, or otherwise, is a closed book on a shelf? Now the intent of the author may have been good or bad, but how the reader reacts to what is written is the responsibility of the reader and how they react will be influenced by their genes and upbringing. The words on the page are simply a transmission medium of ideas that may, or may not, be considered moral or immoral by the writer or reader dependent on their respective reasons for writing and reading.

Consider a photograph of the body of a murder victim. The image is morally neutral. Was the photographer moral or immoral for taking the picture? That depends on the motivation of the photographer, were they a police phorensic photographer or a voyeur who want's to post the image on the internet to troll the victim's family? Neither motivation affects the content of the image, which is morally neutral.

But what about literature inciting hate? I'm not saying that the bible explicitly does this (though there could be an argument for it), but there are certainly some cases where a medium demands an action. If I write a thesis about white supremacy and instruct my readers to kill everyone "impure", there certainly is intent in the book itself.

We ban trolls here all of the time for what they write, we aren't necessarily passing judgement on the people themselves, but there is a standard that we find acceptable, and moral, for content. I agree that context is totally relevant, but how often is there a piece of media without any context whatsoever? It rarely happens. How often do you find a picture of a murder victim lying on the side of the road? You don't, you find it somewhere; either in a police file or on a serial killers trophy wall (I'm being hyperbolic here, but you get my point)

Part of the problem with the bible is that people take it out of context. Religious folk think it's "beyond" context because it's the word of God, or whatever, but it does have a context just like nearly everything else and should be judged accordingly.   

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

[Sweetdeath]

Going with Juliet here.  Words have power, spewn.g hatred of gays and saying unmarried couples live in "sin" mean something.  How many times has words made peole violent or hurt others?

So yea, the bible is harmless if it is unread or better;  looked at as fiction. But it is not. Therefore, it is dangerous because so many  people take it VERY LITERALLY.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

Oh yeah, I agree there. And I do think it's possible to swing too far in ascribing moral "responsibility" to an author, for sure.

[xSilverPhinx]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

Oh yeah, I agree there. And I do think it's possible to swing too far in ascribing moral "responsibility" to an author, for sure.

And that's just what they do! They accept what books and churches tell them because they're holy books and holy churches, or so they believe. Makes things incredibly easy when you have another person or entity that decides for you.

[Stevil]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

But if you are taught that you will go to hell for eternal torture if you don't live by the words of the book. This is emotional blackmail. The author should have been shot.

[Tank]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

But if you are taught that you will go to hell for eternal torture if you don't live by the words of the book. This is emotional blackmail. The author should have been shot.

Yes, but the authors died millenia ago. Ever since then it's been meme infection.

[Stevil]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

But if you are taught that you will go to hell for eternal torture if you don't live by the words of the book. This is emotional blackmail. The author should have been shot.

Yes, but the authors died millenia ago. Ever since then it's been meme infection.

Some people believe god is the author, and that god is alive today

[Sweetdeath]

I take your point. The only addition point I would make is that just because somebody writes a thesis on white supremacy there is no obligation on the reader to agree with it.

But if you are taught that you will go to hell for eternal torture if you don't live by the words of the book. This is emotional blackmail. The author should have been shot.

Yes, but the authors died millenia ago. Ever since then it's been meme infection.

Some people believe god is the author, and that god is alive today

Too bad we can't kill something that doesn't exist.

[Will]

Christianity is not a book.

Sure it is. Everything that Christianity is today comes from the Bible. The church of the first century bares basically no resemblance to the church of today or even the church of a few centuries after the supposed death of Christ. The entire organization, the teachings, philosophy, and dogma, everything Christian today comes from the Bible. It's cherry-picked, of course, but regardless it's all rooted in scripture. Without that scripture, there's no Christianity.

The Bible is simply the immoral doctrine in written form instead of the immoral oral tradition (which came first) of those that believed it.

Had it continued to be oral tradition, Christianity would be lucky to be a minor historical footnote. It's too adaptive as oral tradition, too divergent. In the beginning that's fine, but over time what what means is the original religion ceases to be and what you end up with, eventually, is nothing.

[Gawen]

I see your points, Will. And I agree with them, well, most of them. And I would agree that Judaism is not the same as it was when the Torah was written around 250BCE. But it's not the point I am making or trying to make and I seem to be at a loss at this time as to how to make it clear, which is what I thought I did in my big post. What you seem to be saying is the Torah is not immoral because it was written down; only an amoral book and the person who reads it and agrees with it becomes immoral.

Well, a 300 page bound volume with no words in it is amoral. Another book like the same with only one word written in it ("kill", for example) is amoral. Now the book has a phrase:
Deuteronomy  22:20-21: But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house.  Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst.  

Yup, the book itself is amoral. Books do not have morals. Books don't think. It's the concepts thought about by the people who wrote it down and those that believe who act upon it is what is immoral or not. Christianity is not JUST a book. It is the concepts, doctrines, what have you that were written down. Christianity as a concept, whether written or oral is immoral. The book has nothing to do with it as long as people believe the concepts.

What if there were no Bible, but just a collection of various letters and testimonies that if read all together would provide the same concepts as the Bible? What if there were no written words on the subject and it was all oral? Well, the concept remains and is still immoral.

Of course, we now have to consider if a concept (written, oral or thought) is immoral. Is it immoral for a person to think he wants to kill or hurt his boss for perceived injustices done to him by his boss? Is it immoral to think out loud to someone that when your baby was born deformed to have just taken it out into the forest and leave it there? Is it immoral to read that a Son of God tells his people to have no thought of the morrow, that all will be provided AND to give away all your possessions to the poor, while at the same time loving and fearing the ManGod that tells you so?

Or, is it immoral to disbelieve all the stuff in the Bible?

I have to be somewhere in 20 mins. I'll be back later.

One last thing. The title of the thread is Is Christianity moral or immoral? It is not, Is the Bible moral or immoral?  Christianity is not just the Bible. Please take that into consideration.

[Gawen]

I reckon, all I needed to say is that Christianity, leaving the Bible out of it,  as a belief system is immoral.

[xSilverPhinx]

You're judging the behaviours contained in the book to be immoral, and people have immoral or moral behaviours, not words. If you took a passage which did not talk about some behaviour from the bible or any other scripture, would you even ask the question if it was immoral, amoral or moral?

The bible itself is amoral, but some passages describe immoral behaviours.