Freedom of Religion and Its Limits

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Peter Kirk

As I mentioned in passing yesterday, there has been quite a row here in the UK about what the Pope said about British equal rights laws. Meanwhile from quite a different angle I was challenged about the limits of freedom of religion in a comment at Debunking Christianity, from Gandolf who is an atheist or at least an agnostic from New Zealand. He or she wrote (in part):

At which case Peter i ask you do you feel laws of religious “freedom of faith” is so fair? or (HONESTLY completely inline in keeping with the genral golden rule?)

Because right at this very moment somewhere in Africa today EVEN in the year 2010!,somebodys likely even being hunted down to be WRONGFULLY killed!! as a witch.

Simply because humans worldwide still support and even promote,the (willy nilly)! promotion of laws of “freedom of faith”.

So should something that CAN often effect all our lives so very serriously,be promoted to be allowed to be run so willy nilly Peter?.

In reply to this I wrote:

Gandolf, I certainly believe in freedom of religion, even for those whose “religion” is witchcraft. But there must be limits to that religion, e.g. that religion must not be used to harm others – so no Christians hunting down witches, and no witches making spells (regardless of their effectiveness) to harm others.

On that “regardless of their effectiveness” point, even from an atheistic world view (according to which spells are ineffective) African witchcraft cannot be considered harmless, because it often involves intimidating people with spells which they believe to work, and intimidating people is harming them.

Yes, there must be a limit to the freedom of religion when the freedom is claimed to harm others. But who is to define what might be called harm? The Pope is probably concerned about the proposed legislation here in Britain which would, among other things, force churches to offer equal employment rights to practising homosexuals – to extend to youth workers, if not to clergy. (This proposed clause has been rejected by the House of Lords, but may be reintroduced in the Commons.)

Now it is surely fundamental to freedom of religion that a church, or other religious organisation, can select those who uphold its own teaching to work with its own young people. But does this harm gay and lesbian youth workers by limiting their employment prospects? Maybe. I can hardly imagine them wanting to take a job in which they could be required, by the clergy or church board, to teach that homosexual practice is wrong.

But how small an inconvenience can be called “harm”? Some people in this country have tried to have churches closed down on the grounds that they can hear worship music in the street outside, or because of the traffic generated on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning. Clearly some perspective is needed here. If the great British tradition of tolerance and human rights is to be maintained, we must allow that some people will sometimes be inconvenienced by this. But we need to draw a line between inconvenience and harm. The problem is, where do we draw that line?

Hebrews: Only One New Priest and Sacrifice

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Peter Kirk

I decided I had had enough fun taking on the toothless lions of modern atheism. So I found new opponents to spar with (not enemies, but people to have a bit of fun with) in the Roman Catholics, and on this matter probably also the Anglo-Catholics.

No, I am not getting involved in the row about the Pope’s forthcoming visit to Britain, and about what he said about British equal rights laws, not least because I agree with him on this matter.

However, I have expressed by disagreement with Brant Pitre, a Roman Catholic professor of theology in New Orleans. Brant asks a question at The Sacred Page: Does Hebrews Envision a New Ministerial Priesthood? That was how that epistle was interpreted at the Council of Trent in the 16th century – very likely in reaction against Reformation scholars who argued that there was no support in the New Testament for a specific class of Christian priests.

The Council of Trent found its support for a new priesthood in Hebrews 7:12. But it could only do so by wrenching that verse entirely out of context. For it is clear from that context that the “changed” priesthood of that verse is that of Jesus Christ – and that one of the main changes is from having many priests to having just one (7:23-24).

Brant finds a positive answer to his question not so much in 7:12 as in 13:10, where he sees the new altar and the mention of eating as a reference to the Eucharist, which to him, as a Roman Catholic, is a sacrifice and implies a priesthood.

This verse again needs to be seen in context:

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by the eating of ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who observe such rituals. ¹⁰ We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

¹¹ The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. ¹² And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. ¹³ Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. ¹⁴ For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Hebrews 13:9-13 (TNIV)

Here is my first comment in reply to Brant:

Surely (at least it seems sure from my Protestant perspective) the altar in Hebrews 13:10 is the one in the new holy place described earlier in the book. Chapters 8-10 spell out how the Jerusalem temple has been replaced not by church buildings with altars but by a heavenly sanctuary of which the temple was just a copy (8:1-6), a “greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands” (9:11). It is in this sanctuary, and so presumably on its altar, that Christ was sacrificed once (9:24-28). So the author proclaims the end of the old system by which priests offer daily sacrifices in a man-made building (10:11-14). Thus there is no way that in this author’s thinking the altar of 13:10 is one for daily sacrifices like the mass. He or she may have been thinking of the cross as the “altar” on which Christ died, but more likely of the altar in the heavenly tabernacle, from which flows the grace, contrasted with ceremonial foods (13:9), by which Christians alone are fed and strengthened.

If there is a reference to the Eucharist at all in this letter, I would suggest that it is in the “strange teachings” about the benefits of “ceremonial foods” mentioned in 13:9.

In reply to a further comment from Brant, I wrote:

Brant, I will grant that the “ceremonial foods” of 13:9 are “the earthly food eaten in the earthly Temple from the earthly altar”. But they are contrasted not with the Eucharist but with “grace”. So surely the same contrast is continued in 13:10, and on into verse 12: what the old priests could not eat but we can is this same grace. Of course we eat this only metaphorically. I can grant that the elements of the Eucharist are a sign or sacrament of this grace, but not that they are the literal referent here.

This chapter goes on to explain that there are sacrifices which Christians should offer: praise (v.15) and good works (v.16). But it is not through these sacrifices, but only through the blood of Christ (v.12), that we are made holy and worthy to come into God’s presence.

Yes, I can accept some kind of allusion to the Eucharist at 13:10. But I see it as a complete misunderstanding of Hebrews to see it as arguing for replacement of the Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices with a class of Christian priests offering the sacrifice of the Mass. Such a thought could not have been further from this author’s mind. He or she makes the main point very clearly: in the New Covenant there is just one priest, Jesus Christ, who offered one sacrifice, his own death on the cross.

And yes, there are the sacrifices of praise and of good works mentioned in 13:15,16. But these do not make us acceptable to God; rather they are the response to him of people who are already holy in his sight. And they are not to be offered by a special caste of priests but by all Christians, who are in that sense a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9) of all believers.

An "Atheist" Perspective on Haiti

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Peter Kirk

While I have been arguing that atheist arguments prompted by the Haiti earthquake are toothless, my friend and fellow blogger John Richardson, the Ugley Vicar, has been questioning whether they are really rational. John looks from the perspective of an atheist (although he is in fact a Christian minister) mainly at what Richard Dawkins has written about Haiti. He finds in Dawkins’ article anthropomorphic language and an anthropocentric perspective. He finishes by condemning Dawkins for irrationally calling for aid to be sent to Haiti, when the rational response from an evolutionary perspective is to let even more Haitians die, to reduce the world’s overpopulation which threatens the survival of our species. Read it all here.

Of course John’s tongue is firmly in his cheek here. And he is perhaps attacking a straw man version of atheism in response to the way atheists often attack straw man versions of Christianity. But he shows how the thinking of people like Dawkins is in fact firmly based in the Judeo-Christian morality whose roots they want to pull out. Do Dawkins et al really want human society to go where their rationalism seems to lead it? They may be playing with fire. Is it really rational for our society to pay a pension to Dawkins, who is no longer productive or (I presume) reproductive? Wouldn’t it be better in evolutionary terms to have him put to sleep?

It is interesting to see how atheists like Dawkins and John Loftus seems to have as a basic presupposition that human death is the ultimate evil. They use it as an argument that God cannot exist because otherwise he would not have allowed multiple human deaths. But what is their ethical basis for that judgment? It is not originally a Christian one, as Christians have always held, at least in theory, that it is better for them to die and be with God than to suffer in life. It is not an evolutionary one, for as the Nazis infamously argued the survival of the species is enhanced by the death of the less fit and of those past the age of childbearing. It is not even the ethics of a popular culture which is increasingly coming to the view that the terminally ill should be allowed to die. So why are today’s atheists still presupposing that human death is the ultimate evil?

In the Toothless Lions' Den

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Peter Kirk

Their intentions were the best, but between them Joel Watts and Glenn Peoples have managed to throw me and my blog into a lions’ den, atheist John W. Loftus’ blog Debunking Christianity. I already reported on John’s first response to my post on Haiti. Since then he has responded twice more, here and here, with increasing length in each of his three posts.

In a comment on the second post John writes:

Peter, nice to see your comment but prepare to get fried. If the regular visitors here at DC don’t do this, I will later.

So he can hardly complain at me changing the imagery from a frying pan to a lions’ den. Or perhaps I should have gone for an earlier chapter of Daniel and the burning fiery furnace.

Now as a Christian I trust as Daniel did that God will protect me in the lions’ den. But I feel safe in this particular lions’ den not just because I trust in God but also because, as far as I can tell so far, there is only one lion in it, and perhaps a few cubs, and the lion and its cubs seem to have no teeth or claws. John Loftus is hitting me with childish arguments. He tries to pretend that they have some force, but they have none at all. I have already demolished most of them in my various comments on his posts.

As far as I can see, John’s main argument centres on a rather obscure point. He insists that God could have forced King Charles X of France to change his mind, about imposing reparations on Haiti, without violating that king’s free will. His evidence for this proposition is that some people in the Bible sometimes did what God asked them to do. He completely ignores my point that a lot of other people persistently refused to do what God wanted, and God did not force them to do it. So, John’s argument seems to run, since God did not force the king to repent, God cannot exist, QED. Or have I missed some step in the argument? Can he really not see how weak and full of holes this is? He doesn’t seem even to allow consideration of the possibility that God chooses to let people disobey him, that he has chosen to give us free will.

John claims on his profile page that

I have three master’s degrees in the area of the Philosophy of Religion along with some Ph.D. work. I majored under William Lane Craig and earned a Th.M. degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1985.

My first reaction to this is to despair of the quality of American education, including at TEDS, if they give master’s degrees to someone who has apparently failed to master even the basics of the philosophy of religion, who does not demonstrate any understanding of metaphysical libertarianism or compatibilism – I link to Wikipedia articles which could help to introduce John to these subjects. Or perhaps he is not really ignorant of these things, only feigning ignorance as a debating tactic. Either way, that means it is a waste of time to debate with John, so I won’t do so any more.

magnumdb, commenting on John’s blog, linked to an interesting piece Why It’s So Tricky for Atheists to Debate with Believers, which describes

a pattern. Believers put atheists in no-win situations, so that no matter what atheists do, we’ll be seen as either acting like jerks or conceding defeat. … these “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” tactics aren’t really valid criticisms of atheism.

It seems to me that John Loftus has found a way to respond to these tactics: if you can’t beat them, join them by copying them. I already noted that by him I would be “damned whatever I write”. It seems he wants me to “be seen as either acting like [a] jerk[] or conceding defeat.” Well, I am not going to play his little game. I am getting out of the lions’ den unharmed by his childish arguments and without conceding any measure of defeat.

Haiti: damned whatever I write

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Peter Kirk

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am happy that atheist propagandist (and #2 biblioblogger) John W. Loftus has linked to my post about Haiti, and has in fact quoted a large chunk of it. I am pleased that, in his own comment, he endorses the Avaaz.org appeal which I also endorsed, for the relief of Haiti’s debts.

But I get the impression from what John writes that I would be damned by him just because I am a Christian, whatever I might choose to say about Haiti. In my post I explicitly denied any intention of explaining why God allowed the earthquake to happen:

That is not an attempt to answer the question of why God allowed this natural disaster.

That is the only place in the post where I even mention God. John quoted these words, but then immediately wrote:

Yet, Christians still try to open any window to show their God is not to be blamed for anything.

Well, some Christians may do this, but I quite explicitly denied making any attempt in this post to show anything of the sort. I can’t help thinking that John would have taken anything I wrote about Haiti as an attempt “to show [my] God is not to be blamed for anything”?

But perhaps I should blame not John but Christian blogger (and #5 biblioblogger) Glenn Peoples for this misunderstanding. In a comment which John quotes Glenn describes my post as

a better representation of a Christian response to Pat Robertson’s unChristian comments.

Well, thanks, Glenn, but it was not really intended to be a Christian response. Apart from that one sentence mentioning God, I wrote nothing in the post which couldn’t have been written by an atheist. Indeed I challenged John to find anything in the post that he actually disagreed with.

In fact, here is my entire comment on John’s post, to which I have now been awaiting any reply for nine hours:

Thanks for the link to my post at Gentle Wisdom. But I can’t help thinking that I would be damned for anything I wrote about Haiti (and you happened to read), just because I am a Christian. After all, I didn’t mention God in this post except to say “That is not an attempt to answer the question of why God allowed this natural disaster.” Is there actually anything in this post that you disagree with?

But in answer to some of your questions, yes, God could have for example spoken to King Charles X (or for that matter to today’s bankers) and asked him to forgive Haiti’s debts. Very likely he did speak to him. But the king, as a selfish and sinful man (like all of us), didn’t do what God asked him, or would have asked him. God could have forced him to do it, but only by turning people into robots.

And he did show the Haitians that their country was an earthquake zone, through devastating earthquakes in the 18th century. But they went ahead and built unstable buildings there anyway.

How about this argument: Suppose you have a teenage child who goes out, with your permission, and commits some minor offence. Are you to blame? Well, you could have locked the young person up at home 24 hours a day, so yes, by the standards you apply to God, that anything you could have stopped is your fault, you are to blame. But is that responsible parenting? No, it is child abuse. Similarly God could lock us up 24 hours a day so we are unable to sin, but that would be to abuse us, not to be a responsible and loving Father.

If atheists like John Loftus and Richard Dawkins want their arguments to be taken seriously, they need to make an effort to understand and interact with what thoughtful Christians write, rather than offering only ad hominem responses to them and directing their only attempts at proper argumentation at extremists and straw men.

Gentle Wisdom

Thoughts on life from Peter Kirk

Monthly Archives: February 2010

Freedom of Religion and Its Limits

Hebrews: Only One New Priest and Sacrifice

An "Atheist" Perspective on Haiti

In the Toothless Lions' Den

Haiti: damned whatever I write

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