[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[C. G. Estabrook]

That's true if we gloss "invented" in its original sense, = find, discover 
(Latin in- 'upon' + venire 'come').

A passage from my ghostly father (i.e., theological mentor):

     "Yahweh is the God of freedom and there are to be no other gods. 'The 
prohibition of "other gods" is the basic demand made of Israel'. The important 
thing is not just to be religious, to worship something somehow. The important 
thing is to find, or be found by, the right God and to reject and struggle 
against the others. The worship of any other god is a form of slavery; to pay 
homage to the forces of nature, to the spirit of a particular place, to a nation 
or race or to anything that is too powerful for you to understand or control is 
to submit to slavery and degradation. The Old Testament religion begins by 
saying to such gods ‘I do not believe and I will not serve.’ The only true God 
is the God of freedom. The other gods make you feel at home in a place, they 
have to do with the quiet cycle of the seasons, with the familiar mountains and 
the county you grew up in and love; with them you know where you are. But the 
harsh God of freedom calls you out of all this into a desert where all the old 
familiar landmarks are gone, where you cannot rely on the safe workings of 
nature, on spring-time and harvest, where you must wander over the wilderness 
waiting for what God will bring. This God of freedom will allow you none of the 
comforts of religion. Not only does he tear you away from the old traditional 
shrines and temples of your native place, but he will not even allow you to 
worship him in the old way. You are forbidden to make an image of him by which 
you might wield numinous power, you are forbidden to invoke his name in magical 
rites. You must deny the other gods and you must not treat Yahweh as a god, as a 
power you could use against your enemies or to help you to succeed in life. 
Yahweh is not a god, there are no gods, they are all delusions and slavery. You 
are not to try to comprehend God within the conventions and symbols of your time 
and place; you are to have no image of God because the only image of God is 
man."   --Herbert McCabe OP, "Law Love, and Language" (1968), pp. 118f.


Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> I guess what Carl is saying is that humankind displayed morality long before
> they invented God. My tho'ts precisely. --Jenifer
> 
> --- On *Mon, 11/10/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss]
> Bellicose rhetoric??? To: "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com> Cc:
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Date: Monday, November 10, 2008, 10:35 AM
> 
> God is not a necessary component of morality for the simple reason that God
> -- the answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there anything 
> instead of nothing?" -- is not a component of anything.
> 
> God is not a thing in the universe -- we can't point to something in the 
> universe as the reason for the existence of the universe -- and God and the 
> universe don't add up to two. (Two of what would that be?  Two things?  But 
> God is not thing in the universe, etc.)
> 
> Morality is a component of human nature (for the existence of which God of 
> course is the reason, as for everything), as grammar is a component of 
> language. Just as an intelligent visitor from Mars would think that all
> humans were speaking one language with regional variations, so human ethics
> might be regarded as the rules (or grammar) for humans' being together --
> with some interesting regional variations... (That's what makes horse racing,
> or at least philosophical argument -- and literature.)
> 
> Well over a thousand years of Christian philosophical reflection took it as a
> commonplace that the Decalogue is not a set of rules imposed from outside,
> as it were, that might have been different, but rather rational conclusions
> from reflection on what it is to be human.  (They did think it was a little
> hard to derive the 3rd/4th Commandment -- there are different numbering
> systems -- this way.)
> 
> Christian theologians thought that, although ethics could be descried 
> rationally, that took effort (and time) -- hence all that literature -- and
> so God generously provided in the Ten Commandments as it were an operating
> manual ("documentation," we would say) for being human.
> 
> More on this from me (quoting others), if you want, at "The Subversive 
> Commandments," <http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook03292005.html>. --CGE
> 
> 
> John W. wrote:
>> ... I'd be more interested in hearing one or both of you Bible
> scholars explain to Jenifer why God is a necessary component of morality.  Or
>  conversely, how one can be moral without a belief in God.
>> 
>> John Wason