Saturday - July 28, 2007
The Bible as a Tool for Those Unable to Know Right and Wrong
I met an interesting man the past two weeks. An
army ranger, a captain formerly, now a navy chaplain. He's a believer in the
Bible as a document that is to be taken literally to an extreme level. He
believes that evil angels exist that are induced to copulate with women if they
don't cover their hair. It seems bad angels have some fetish for hair, I guess.
Oh, and evil angels can be recognized by their three pairs of wings. He's only
met one so far in his life, when he worked as a prison guard. He knew him
because the prisoner's eyes glowed red. Despite this, I really like him and
think he is an otherwise good man, full of good, practical advice for my
Marines.
Before he became a chaplain
and a minister, before he became a missionary, before he became a handyman,
before he became a prison guard, but after he left the army he applied for a job
with the state department.
He didn't
get the job, and the reason fascinates me.
He didn't get the job because of a revelation he
had during the interview. He realized that one of his job requirements would be
to convince people from other countries to supply information to him. He would
get them to be traitors to their country. This horrified him because he
realized that had he done that to his country, he would consider it among the
worst crimes possible to commit as a citizen. The guilt for such a crime would
drive him to suicide. He did not want to put that burden on other
people.
After lengthy discussion,
finally it was clear to me that this good man was unable to distinguish between
nations, judging one as good and another as bad. His personal philosophy is
incapable of judging whether something is good or bad. He was incapable of
seeing that supporting a despotic regime was morally wrong and he believed the
old, tired canard that one's culture determines what is right or
wrong.
For example, he believed that
individualism is valued only in our culture, and is in fact what is leading us
to our downfall. Other cultures -- strangely he doesn't see how they are the
despotic ones -- value family and tribal relations that are more important. The
individual should be subordinate to the group. I suspect he comes to this
conclusion honestly, he gets it from his only source of
thought.
Although very intelligent,
this man is incapable of thinking in abstract philosophical terms. He knows
there is right and wrong, but is incapable of perceiving right and wrong. Being
thus incapable, and yet wanting there to be an answer to the question as to
what is right and wrong, he turns to a single source: The
Bible.
He is a moral absolutist, which
is good, but without the ability to percieve morality he is dependent on this
book. This explains why he is a literalist in interpreting the Bible. If the
Bible tells him absolutely what is right and what is wrong, then everything else
it says must be absolutely true as well. Thus we must have six-winged bad
angels that are seduced by women not covering their hair (I still am skeptical
that this is in the Bible.)
Right and
wrong are absolutes, and it is the role of civilization to come to an agreement
to understanding what is right and what is wrong. No civilization has ever, and
likely never will get 100% agreement nor even will any individual likely ever
get a fully correct understanding of all that is right and all that is wrong.
We can, however, certainly judge how well we are doing in a relative manner. We
can know that the United States is among the best even with its known flaws. We
can know that Cuba, China, Korea, and any muslim nation are among the worst.
These are facts, they are self-evident and all people on this Earth are
responsible to know this.
Convincing
someone from one of these or other nations to subvert their government is not
asking them to sin, it is allowing them to redeem themselves.
I enjoyed meeting this man for many
reasons, but especially because he is such a dramatic example of why belief in
god is often the catalyst for abetting or ignoring evil in others. There are
many who believe in god who are not like this man, but this is a common mode.
People like him believe in a god because they are personally incapable of
deciding right and wrong without being told by others or being told by some
ancient, dusty book of magic.
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