You can find New Atheist sentiments expressed in the 1940s. So what’s new about ’em?
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Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
You can find New Atheist sentiments expressed in the 1940s. So what’s new about ’em?
you said it, Charlie
Can somebody explain what is happening at 2:03 ?
Although most of the sentiments are consistent with New/Gnu Atheism, I wouldn’t tag this as a speech promoting new atheism: it’s a speech promoting humanism. A theist could easily claim that these are the values of God (as easily as they could claim that these values are anti-god, of course.) Despite the Bible quote re the “Kingdom of God” in ourselves, the God issue doesn’t really come up.
I liked Jacob Brownoski’s take on fascism: “When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”
When you make yourself so small you can no longer distinguish between the fallible human being who obeys and the infallible God who commands, you transcend humanism. Dangerous stuff.
I wouldn’t call Chaplin an atheist. The point is that those are pretty much the same sentiments you’ll find New Atheists stating, especially the importance of science and reason at the end. It’s why to many of us the whole “New” Atheist term is so annoying — we aren’t asking people to accept something radically novel, we’re picking and choosing from the best ideas of the past.
They’re also compatible with liberal Christian thought…as long as they leave out the superstitious nonsense.
Huh. I’ve been operating under the impression that “New” atheists were the current crop of atheists who were proud, vocal and uncompromising about their atheism, as opposed to the “old” atheist who was hushed, frightened, accommodating and deferential for fear of being ostracized.
Never thought is was a question of differentiation of values, thus have never quite found the term annoying or otherwise negative.
Eh… maybe I’m wrong. But if so… fuck it, I’m still gonna think of it that way.
Very moving.
On a lighter note, the first speech in the movie is one of the funniest Hitler parodies I’ve ever seen.
That speech made me cry, and it takes a lot to make me cry.
I guess I’m being extra cynical today. I didn’t really care for that one.
I had a feeling when I read the title that that was the speech you were talking about.
One heck of a sermon. It’s pretty ecclectic: a quote from St. Luke, a lot of sentiments that sound Daoist (including “we think too much,” and “we have lost the Way,” though the latter is also Confucian, as are the political concerns), New Agish images, Zinnish snapshots of American presidents as “dictators,” capitalism as “greed,” and yes, a good slice of humanism.
If the latter is all you mean by “New Atheism,” then no, there’s nothing Gnu about it. But this is not Karl Marx’ cult, and it is not Ayn Rand’s cult, or really even Bertrand Russell.
I do think the New Atheism is distinct from old forms, by (a) the context of 9/11; (b) a “Hitler’s Pope” read of Christian history; (c) a preference for “Jesus myth” or other hard-core NT interpretation, as opposed to, say, the more careful scholarship of Marcus Borg or EP Sanders; (d) an “American fascists” type read of Christianity in America.
You get some similiar views in David Strauss, Karl Marx, and Russell. But I think this school is distinct enough that the title makes some sense.
David Marshall never tires of blowing his one note ass trumpet.
Janine, in fairness, there’s nothing wrong with telling people to do the research. I happen to think there was at least one “historical Jesus,” more likely close to half a dozen actually, whose stories got melded. Much as I love Bob Price, I cannot for the life of me understand why he’s so insistent that there never was any such person or people.
That said, “do the research” is the ONLY point he had. So-called “new atheist” sentiments date back even earlier than this, and come from former insiders as often as not. Joseph Wheless is a perfect example, and an extremely scholarly and well-researched one too. Bob Ingersoll and, you may argue, even Voltaire expressed some similar sentiments despite Voltaire being a Deist.
That was kind of awesome.
Hazuki, David Marshall has a history here. “Do the research” is not his message. His message is this; the only true knowledge comes from sharing the same faith as David Marshall has.
This was not just some random insult tossed at a well meaning person.
It’s funny, I hadn’t realised until now that I’d only ever seen Chaplin in his silent works. It never occurred to me what an incredible speaker he would be. I need to brush up on my classic films.
I’d like to understand the context of this speech a little bit better. Taken at the surface, it can be inspiring, but clearly, CC is reacting to Hitler. Is he making a parody or trying for true inspiration or something else? I have no problem repurposing art and taking new meaning, that happens all the time.
Just curious if the artist was hoping to achieve what appears “so obvious” to us 70 years later.
That sounds…like… SOCIALISMMMMM!
Oh the horror, the horror, ill go watch some Bachmann to get “cleansed”.
Andy @ 2:
You might be referring to the clip from “Pink Floyd, The Wall”, specifically from “Just Another Brick in the Wall–Part 1”
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control …
Hazuki:
I think as soon as you start having an amalgam of people represented as a single person, you can honestly say that person never existed. If your claim rests on, “Well, the person identified as Jesus in the Bible really existed, but was nothing like the Jesus as represented in the Bible,” you can honestly say that Jesus never existed. At least, the one presented in the Bible never existed.
Honestly, I never understood why people got so het up about the existence or non-existence of a person on which the Biblical Jesus is based. That would make the New Testament historical fantasy at best, which still leaves it as fiction. The New Testament is so demonstrably non-historic, it’s impossible to trust basically any of it. This renders the historicity of Jesus moot.
Near as I can tell, Christians try to use the possibility of a real Jesus as proof that the fictional Jesus in the Bible was real, and really said and did the things reported in the Bible. And that’s just illogical and wrong.
Sorry, that was “Just Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). Google “Just Another Brick in the Wall” for full lyrics.
Of course, that makes Diagoras the Godless of Melos a New Atheist. After publishing several sacred mysteries to make them ridiculous, he chopped and burned a wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips – and then called the boiling of turnips the Thirteenth Labor of Hercules – in the 5th century BCE.
Andrew Philips, the speech is from Chaplin’s movie, The Great Dictator. He played a duel role, the great dictator and a doppelganger who was one of the Jews that was being oppressed. The doppelganger finds himself replacing the dictator and the speech was meant as a denunciation of the dictator and, by extension, of Nazism.
It made me laugh. :-) Rather, the scenes from Full Metal Jacket in this context made me laugh.
All of them. Have you never watched The Great Dictator?
Huh?
Americans like to claim that 9/11 changed the world. Only the airports and the USA, my friend. Only the airports and the USA.
Please explain.
Rather accidental.
Not “Christianity in America”. Christian fundamentalism in America. Christianism in America. Dominionism in America.
@Andy:
I’m guessing someone stepping on a landmine.
Janine: Your comment is inane. I’ve posted here on many different subjects, and often other posters have agreed with what I said. Maybe you’re tone deaf and are only able to HEAR one note. Or maybe you’re just stupid, and conflate all views that you disagree with into one big blur.
Like David Marjanović and nigelTheBold just agreed with you in this thread.
Sorry, dipshit, but you are an one note commenter here.
David Marj: I’m glad you challenge my analysis. People often ask me what the “New Atheism” is, and I posted my usual explanation, more or less. Maybe you can improve my understanding, so I can give a better answer, next time.
By a “Hitler’s Pope” read of history, I mean an attempt (Hector Avalos is a good example) to read Christian history in the most negative terms possible — when you get a pony, look up its rear end and find the apocalypse, as I put it reviewing his chapter in The End of Christianity. So Pope Pius XII was in the back pocket of Hitler, and Christianity is mainly responsible for inquisitions, killing Hypatia, inspiring Hitler, but not ending slavery, etc. I’m sure you’ve heard it all.
As for (c), Jesus Myth ideas seem more common among the second tier of New Atheists; Dawkins relies more on Ehrman and Pagels, it seems. Why do you think that’s coincidence?
(d) Yes, that’s true; I should have put that more carefully. Gnus tend to conflate “fundamentalism” and “dominionism,” and exagerrate the popularity and threat of the latter, IMO.
from the wikipedia article on the film.
When interviewed about this film being on such a touchy subject, Charlie Chaplin had only this to say: “Half-way through making The Great Dictator I began receiving alarming messages from United Artists … but I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at.”
I love Caarlie Chaplin.
Thanks for making me cry, PZ…
@19
Fair enough. But I still think the mythicists are overplaying their hand. One of the several people I suspect became our composite Jesus WAS a person who lived at the time, is my point, and likely not only led a rebellion but did better than we’re told.
Hyam Maccoby has a fascinating piece about this, in which he points out that the early parts of the Passion narrative make more sense if you place them at the Feast of Booths instead of Passover (among other things, palm branches aren’t fresh at Passover). It also sheds some light of the riding-a-donkey-or-two prophecies by showing what ELSE the authors of the Passion narratives intended to fulfil from Zecharias, the prophet who supposedly said the donkey bit.
David Marshall:
Dominionism is actually quite a large threat. Its influence over some of our worst legislators is fairly well documented (Jeff Sharlet’s The Family is an excellent example). While the popularity might be overestimated, the influence isn’t, I think.
Consider a similar group, the Tea Party. Their influence over the Republican party is far greater than their numbers. This is in part due to very rich people funding them (Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and so on). Dominionism has a large overlap with the Tea Party, which also contains quite a few fundamentalists. In that regard, the fundamentalists effectively support the dominionists.
As fundamentalism is basically the only form of Christianity not shrinking in the United States, I think we have reason to be concerned. Hell, even more moderate Christian sects should be concerned.
Fixed that for you DBM. Your only non-inane post will be when you say goodbye and really mean it. You aren’t a solid historian, just another presuppositionalist and Xian apologist. The correct apology is “I am wrong”.
@31
Oh, but I’m sure they’re not TRUE Christians, as they can’t see the Tao of Christ *rolls eyes.* I wonder sometimes if apologists just get so bogged down in the minutiae of their work (or so hepped up on smelling their own farts) that they forget how many foundational problems their religions have.
Charlie Chaplin once said that he made this movie mocking Hitler because “he stole my moustache.”
The real reason that non-religious mentality is different from the religious mentality is the role that science plays.
For example, a Christian or Islamic fundamentalist from 1710, 1810, 1910, 2010, would presumably all have the same views, based on their reading of their respective holy books (though they might also be busy killing members of their own faith over interpretive disagreements).
On the other hand, a non-religious person’s view of the world they lived in would be constantly evolving as science delivered new information about the size of the universe, the structure of matter, the evolution of life, and so on. There is no ‘holy book’ for such questions.
Today’s dogmatic Social Darwinist atheists, however, can fairly be accused of being members of a religious faith, since their views are based on a view of evolution that’s about 100 years out of date, and they’ve sanctified Darwin as some kind of holy figure. Likewise, communist atheists who hold up the writings of Lenin and Marx as their holy book fall into the same category, for largely the same reason.
P.S. What do you call someone who has a constantly evolving science-based view of the universe we live in, and who views religious texts as interesting semi-historical fantasy literature? We need a label too, don’t we?
Hazuki:
snort
Ouch. Coffee is hot when it gets snarfed out the nose.
I feel like I just got permission to criticize DM for all of the claims made by other christian troll who show up here.
DM, why the fuck do you spend so much time defending catholic monarchy as the most godly form of government?
Oh! Thanks for the new moniker!
Wrong. What became known as Social Darwinism predates the writings of Darwin. They just hijacked a powerful idea.
ikesolem:
Uhm, atheist?
Just a guess. Did I win anything?
ikesolem (#35):
Oh, you’re talking about libertarians. But I thought that they’d santified Ayn Rand, not Darwin.
PZ @4:
Watch out – the godbots are surely picking and choosing this comment as we speak…
Hey David Marshall!
Got that sweet book deal yet? Has Random House come crawling to your door in the vain hope of singing for your custom?
Or is it reward enough that God knows what you’ve written?
To Nigel at #39:
Excellent one word reply there:)
To Iain at #40:
Wrong – You described objectivists, not libertarians. Of course, the two overlap a lot and many people are both.
OT but is there killfiles for this blog?
S (#43):
Technically, your correction is entirely apt – you’re quite right, and I misspoke (mistyped?).
In connection to the actual point I was making … not so relevant.
Andy said (2nd post):
“Can somebody explain what is happening at 2:03 ?”
About that clip; I think I remember seeing it and reading that those children were enacting a make-believe suicide bombing. One child pretends to wear a bomb under his clothes. The other children form a crowd. The first child walks over and another one throws handfuls of sand up in the air to look like an explosion. It was cheered on by adults who wanted to idealize martyrdom. So, sick stuff, basically…
Sure, very moving emotional video, nice pictures of flowers.
But – as the reality of global warming, resource exhaustion and overpopulation set in, I have a suspicion that genocidal warfare among groups of humans over land, food, water and raw materials will become more prevalent, not less. When 100 million Bangladeshis seek new homes as their entire country goes underwater, will they be welcomed with open arms by the rest of the world? What will they eat, considering that extreme weather and heat waves are predicted to devastate agricultural production on a global basis? Will some bright patriot decide the best solution is to use biological warfare as a means of population reduction, rather than try to absorb the excess population?
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 21st century genocides end up making the 20th century ones look minor by comparison, is all.
The real criminals here are the ones who deny that this is happening – the climate science-denying fossil fuel and mining corporations, the banks who finance them, the shareholders who benefit from their dividends, the politicians who rely on their campaign donations, and the media actors who go along for the ride. You can add in the religious groups who oppose birth control, too. These are the ones who are driving the world to ruin today, that’s clear enough. History will not remember them kindly.
Inane Janine, OM; Conflater Of Arguments
your new ‘nym is divinely inspired !!!11!!!
I disagree with Chaplin on this.
It is not that we have allowed thinking to replace feeling, it is that we have allowed feeling to replace thinking.
My first reaction to a lot of negative things is destructive – I feel like breaking things when I hear of parents who dose their kids with olive oil rather than giving them proper medicine.
I feel like breaking people when I hear about how some preacher got away with conning those parents because it was a religious con-job.
I feel like “Bombing them back to the stone age” when hearing about how bronze age savages throw acid into little girls’ faces because they dared to try and get an education, I feel like declaring wars against people who feel it is okay to blow people up over cartoons.
Then I stop and think. I think about what I actually want to achieve – and how violence doesn’t seem to achieve these things, or if it does it achieves them in sub-optimal ways that only leave me with more things to feel violent about.
I stop and consider if my perceptions are being skewed by my biases, if the evidence supports my way of looking at it. It is not when I don’t feel that there is a problem, it is when I don’t think.
And I recognise that hatred is a valuable and in fact good emotion in its correct place. To hate injustice is necessary to fight it in oneself, hate can inspire better behaviour as we strive to avoid becoming what we hate. And sometimes love is not the answer.
The answer is not to deny a portion of our humanity for the happier side of it, but to embrace all of what we are. Religion has sold us this idea that we are flawed yet our flaws are often our greatest strengths. They are necessary to our survival, to our individuality and yes, to peace.
Inane Janine #37: “DM, why the fuck do you spend so much time defending catholic monarchy as the most godly form of government?”
The title becomes you, but maybe “Innebriated Janine” would be better. This comment is even more ludicrous than the earlier one.
This may be a waste of time, but what the heck. I’m a Burkian conservative, with glimmers of interest in Chesterton’s Distributism, and deep respect for the market theories of Adam Smith, De Toqueville, and Rodney Stark — most of which are on the other side of the planet from “catholic monarchy.”
The claim that I “spend so much time defending” what it has never once crossed my mind to believe in, is almost as ludicrous as the claim that I always harp on the same subject.
If you really want to attack me, toss your little rubber darts in the opposite direction: call me a dilettatte and radical “free market of ideas” proponent. That, at least, would prove that you’re sober.
But sure, if you want my permission, attack Christians here all you like: now that I’ve turned you around, hopefully we’ll at least notice where your next little thunderbolts land.
Ikesolem @ #35
Ahh – Could you perhaps give us an example or two of these ‘dogmatic Social Darwinist Atheists’ who have ‘sanctified Darwin as some kind of holy figure’? See, I think you’re just making up this category entirely, and I’ll bet you won’t be able to provide us with any real examples.
Let’s see, shall we?
-Ermine!
It is so cute when a person who is easily impressed by their own perceived intelligence so blatantly misses the point.
Would anyone like to help explain it to him?
DM @ 50
Name dropper.
Ha! I posted the text of this earlier this week.
/@
Janine said:
Happy to oblige.
Janine previously said:
Get it, David?
Ha! You stupid oblivious bastard.
Janine was conflating you with someone else.
Aaaand now you know why we think the label “New atheist” is fucking stupid.
The only thing really new in this generation is that we reject enforced atheism as an example of monumentally missing the point. God is neither here nor there, it is the various lousy forms of reasoning that are encompassed in the word “faith” that is the problem.
Awesome speach.
Check out this article about dinosaur feathers found in amber. Very cool.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/15/science-dinosaur-feathers.html
The speech is brilliant, the imagery not so much. Chaplin’s words are worth listening to, even now.
Another motion picture worth noting from that era is the 1935 classic “Things to Come”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028358/
story and screenplay by H.G.Wells. brilliant work. rent it, buy it, go steal a copy or something.
Chaplin: “We think too much, and feel too little”.
What does this even mean, particularly in the context of the speech? Does anyone truly believe that the Nazis suffered from a shortage of emotion, or an excess of rational thought? Is it even possible to “think too much”?
Lovely speech, but the editing in the video is kind of awful.
“More than machinery…” (cuts to shot of machinery)
“… we need humanity” (cuts to shot of humans)
“More than cleverness…” (cuts to shot of Einstein)
“… we need kindness” (cuts to shot of Gandhi)
Moggie @60
He’s not talking about just “emotion”, I believe, but compassion and empathy.
I don’t know who the “we” doing too much thinking is, but the problem these days it exactly the opposite: people are stupid goddamn sheep who can be completely manipulated through their emotions. We don’t think ENOUGH. If we did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
According to my therapists, yes. Yes it is.
Andy @ 2:
“Can somebody explain what is happening at 2:03 ?”
If you’re talking about the 3 children throwing dirt up in the air, it appears to me to be children pretending to be suicide bombers. Keep in mind that they think that doing so is a great honor. It looks like one child runs at the other, they all throw dirt up in the air to represent the explosion and fall over as if they are dead.
If I had to make a guess, this would be it, not that I agree with it of course.
-Kuipo
I wish I could figure out a way to stop thinking when I’m trying to sleep. Oddly enough, one of the few things that seems to be helping right now is watching sciencey documentaries, preferably about geology or cosmology.
I think that’s open to interpretation; I read is as allowing dogma (rigid thinking) to replace empathy, as churches do regarding abortion and choice in dying.
Chaplin is very clear later on his commitment to reason.
/@
The line about thinking too much and feeling too little kind of bugs me. I know what he’s getting at, but still. To be more precise, people think uncritically too much and feel for others too little.
Yes. While there are Gnu Atheists who hold all these positions (it isn’t a single position!), none of them is necessary. The argument is just that Christianity in particular, and religion in general, has not been the force for good it claims to be.
BTW, I cannot resist commenting on two of the ones you mention. Pius XII has a mixed, complicated record; from what I’ve read, which isn’t terribly much, I best like the idea that he was scared shitless because he believed Hitler was possessed by the devil. Slavery… it is much easier to use the Bible as a source of arguments for than against slavery, and indeed the former is what Christians did pretty much universally till the 19th century. What happened then is that people with common sense tried to find arguments against slavery in the Bible, found the bits about God’s goodness and stuff, and ran with those.
As for (c), Jesus Myth ideas seem more common among the second tier of New Atheists; Dawkins relies more on Ehrman and Pagels, it seems. Why do you think that’s coincidence?
Well, if you come to the conclusion that there was no Jesus (as portrayed in the Bible), you’re not likely to stay a Christian, are you. On the other hand, if you take the Gospels and only remove the supernatural parts (sort of like Jefferson did), you arrive at a Jesus that doesn’t contradict atheism – Dawkins once publicly wore an “Atheists For Jesus” T-shirt.
Its popularity and its threat aren’t the same thing. There are only two Koch brothers, but the number of their money is legion times legion times legion… and they fund political campaigns all the time.
Dominionism is a sliding scale. Sure, few want to live in an outright theocracy like the rule of Mullah Omar. But many want the government to give preferential treatment to their religion, up to and including antiscience education in schools and the army. And, well, once you have the latter, chances are you’ll get the former anyway pretty soon.
Like a few other things, this reeks of an author who didn’t know Jewish culture well enough to get such details right in his fiction.
What? How many such people are there left? Didn’t they pretty much die out in the 1950s or so?
This I agree with.
:-D Awesome!
See comments 55 and 56. The troll in question is Piltdown Man.
Where is this Toqueville place?
Were those people marching into a meat grinder?!
Great video.
Chaplin employs brilliant choices of words and timing and delivery, (agree with several who had second thoughts on some of the visuals) but I gradually developed the feeling that perhaps there’s a wee touch of irony in his message – or ought one to view the entire film in order to fully grok his oration? Powerful stuff, regardless, & well worth the brief glimpse. Now I’ll try to obtain the entire thing.
@ #71
Those were schoolchildren in Pink Floyd’s The Wall being ground into homogenous mediocrity by the school system & society in general. A dark visual pun, since the schoolmaster in the dining hall says to those same children (fairly close quote), “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding; how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”
When thinking becomes a substitute for action rather than a precursor, you’re in trouble. Life is a physical activity, it’s about doing stuff, even for Stephen Hawking. Writing books, giving lectures etc. If you think too much you never DO anything, because you will inevitably find good reasons not to do whatever you’re thinking about and talk yourself out of it. It’s an intellectual trap. At some point you have to stop thinking, make a decision and ACT!
Sorry, got a problem with one of my kids doing this, it’s not working for him.
Honestly, I never understood why people got so het up about the existence or non-existence of a person on which the Biblical Jesus is based. That would make the New Testament historical fantasy at best, which still leaves it as fiction. The New Testament is so demonstrably non-historic, it’s impossible to trust basically any of it. This renders the historicity of Jesus moot.
Well, one (non-religious) reason why you might get “het up”
is if you have the historian’s desire to know “how it actually happened.” Given that interest, there’s a non-trivial difference between believing in the charismatic Jewish preacher hypothesized by Bart Ehrman or Geza Vermes and believing that someone excogitated the whole thing, like Joseph Smith fabricating the Angel Moroni–to state the extreme version of the “he didn’t exist” position.
I’d add that, like Erhman and Vermes, I’m not convinced that the New Testament is completely without historic value; otherwise I might agree that the question of historicity is moot.
David Marj: I looked at your Piltdown Man reference, and was surprised to see this:
“John Kwok: Pompous name-dropper and stunningly maladroit clown.”
Now that rings a bell. To give him his due, though, Kwok is original in his death threats.
I’ll pass on most of the issues, and just issue a brief note on the following:
“It is much easier to use the Bible as a source of arguments for than against slavery, and indeed the former is what Christians did pretty much universally till the 19th century. What happened then is that people with common sense tried to find arguments against slavery in the Bible, found the bits about God’s goodness and stuff, and ran with those.”
I won’t argue the exegesis, though I don’t agree, but historically, I don’t think that’s true. See the timeline at the end of one of my rebuttals of Avalos, google, “Slave to Cherry-picked Footnotes: 19 problems with Hector Avalos on religion and human bondage.” Slavery was the norm in the ancient world: this pattern is enough, I think, to show that the piety of the early abolitionists was no coincidence.
It’ll be interesting to see what Avalos comes up with in his book on the subject: I suspect he’ll take a few shots at me, and may also make some valid points in response.
Slavery was the norm for some parts and some times of the ancient world, but not all of those parts or all of those times.
Ah. And what did you think of that remark?
David Marshall:
Man, you are one stupid rude SOB. The name is Marjanović, not Marj, you ass. Marj is a cheap butter substitute. You’re too rude to take the time to type out the full name, and too stupid to copy-paste it; and you expect anyone else to take you seriously ??
Go play with the middle school kids where you belong.
But why?? When I have my Bible in one hand and credit card in the other, in readiness to receive your wisdom?
Hm. I smell cherry-picking. I feel like you are doing the pre-Christian Stoics a disservice, for one.
Were the early Christian abolitionists significantly more prolific in their activities than their non-Christian counterparts?
Aaron Baker:
Oh, I don’t mean to claim the New Testament is completely without historic value. Its historic claims are questionable on all fronts, and in many (perhaps most) cases, completely unreliable. But it as an historic document is important. It at least defined the shape of an important movement. I’d even argue that the tracing of the edits of the Bible, from the original Mark (which don’t even mention the resurrection) through the later gospels is intensely interesting, historically-speaking.
And I also agree that some might find an historic interest in discovering whether Jesus is based on a real person (such as Elvis) or not (such as The Most Revered Bob Dobbs). There is some academic interest there (and I know how some folks get all excited about their academic specialty).
But really, the Jesus in the Bible is essentially a fictional character. He’s like the Bubba Hotep Elvis of his time, only without the great dialog. While Paul might’ve been the Joseph Smith, straining under a blanket while someone literate wrote out all he spewed forth, the truth is probably much more organic — but no less fictional.
That’s really all I was getting at. I was just trying to explain why I think the “mythological Jesus” isn’t an extreme interpretation. Even if there was a charismatic person that provided the basis for the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus presented in the Bible is mythology.
So you are right: the question of the historicity of Jesus isn’t entirely moot. When I wrote my original comment, I was thinking of the theological implications of an historic Jesus. In that case, it is moot. For those interested in the actual objective history, there’s still some amount of interest, along the lines of asking whether Beowulf was based on a real person.
David Marshall:
I’m not sure which pattern you reference. Slavery as standard? Does that provide a moral justification for slavery in the Bible, or the use of the Bible to justify slavery for more than a few people, even today?
Some early abolitionists were indeed pious. A more telling pattern, of course, was the widespread persecution of those who were not religious during those times. When that is factored in, their piety isn’t nearly so notable. In fact, it would take someone with at least a veneer of religious justification to affect society so profoundly during the early years of abolition.
I think the actual social causes of abolition are far more complicated than simple piety. As the Bible condones (and sometimes encourages) slavery in both the Old and New Testaments, it’s difficult to create a case for the Bible being the driving factor, let alone something as specific as being Christian.
Jesus was clearly mythical. There may however have been a Yeshua.
David M.@ 21: Your line of thinking made me wonder how many works of atheistic nature were destroyed at the library of Alexandria and what could have been changed in the world if they were picked up and spread by the Romans instead. Humanity has been so good at taking wide detours past eureka moments.
Every time DM posts I lose more and more respect for him. The irony of him accusing others of cherrypicking looms large. Jesus never said anything against slavery, y’know. And trying to extricate him from that doesn’t work; the best you can say is “Well, he thought it was a moot point because he thought the world was ending soon anyway,” which looks…bad…almost 2000 years later (cf. Mat. 10:23, the Olivet discourse, and lots and lots of Pauline material…).
Hazuki, anything can be justified via the Babble.
(Cf. 2 Peter 3:8-9)
Re slavery and Christianity: see Dum Diversas (a papal bull issued on June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V).
Though the motives are patently good, I really don’t like the “we think too much, and feel too little” bit. It’s dangerously simplistic in its phrasing. Granted, one must always make horrendous oversimplifications if one is to make a stirring speech; if you make it strictly, scientifically accurate you’ll run for pages and leave too long between each point either to let emotion build up, or a coherent picture form. What’s dangerous is that certain groups of people have the disastrous tendency to take terse metaphors and stirring but grossly simplified sound bites and treat them as if there were nothing more to it than that.
Consider that teabaggers, for example, are the diametric opposite of “think too much and feel too little,” and are also just the kind of idiots to take a statement like that at literal face value, explore no implications and search for no subtle catches, and assume that by condemning their opposite it thus supports them.
Just the other day I read someone’s remark on how they admired Americans, as a people, for being so passionate about politics. Sure they are, but so many seem to be so unthinkingly passionate about it; wonderfully enthusiastic in their support or condemnation of this or that (and, really, it is wonderful that they care so much, and plenty of other places could certainly stand to be less apathetic), but utterly incapable of producing a sound argument for doing so or discussing it in any detail without resorting to dogmatism or one of the emotional logical fallacies. I must admit, I find it deeply troubling that a kind of human being can apparently exist who feels intense passion for something, yet never makes any effort to learn more about it, when you’d think they would be perfectly motivated to do so.
One can certainly think too little, or feel too little. One can perhaps feel too much, and become catatonic or apathetic via depression or euphoria. One can also be unbalanced in one’s feelings, either for oneself to the detriment of others, or for others to the detriment of oneself. But is it ever possible to think too much?
chigau () #70
It’s a suburb of Poodunk, which is either in East Virginia or Old South Wales, I misremember which.
Poodunk sounds like the worst carnival game ever.
[OT]
Tom:
Sure. Haven’t you ever read Hamlet? ;)
igel,
We may not differ a great deal. The Jesus presented to us in the NT is cleary mythicized.
I would add this qualification, though: societies in which people believe unquestioningly in the supernatural and its frequent interventions in the world produce narratives that are chock-a-block with miracles and apparitions. It doesn’t automatically follow that such narratives are always, or even mostly, unreliable when describing non-supernatural events. Each such narrative has to be specifically evaluated.
The importance of NT scholarship in peeling away some of the mythic accretions is, as you say, academically interesting, but it may also have some practical value in that it tends to throw cold water on specifically Christian claims. The lateness, for example, of the surviving resurrection accounts; also the “Messianic Secret,” i.e. the lack of specifically Messianic preaching in Mark’s narrative, with Mark’s obvious post-hoc effort to explain that lack.
I should add here that one problem I have with what I’ve called the extreme position (a complete fiction a la Joseph Smith & Moroni) is that we have no evidence of a 1st-century Joseph Smith. You mention Paul, whom I’ve seen pressed into this role (or, often, into other creative roles in early Christianity); but in fact we know almost nothing about him–we certainly don’t have evidence that he made the whole business up. Paul is, I think, a largely empty vessel into which lots of people have found it convenient to pour their hypotheses.
For this and other reasons, I do happen to find an actual charismatic preacher plausible.
That should have been “Nigel,” not “igel.”
Mr. Fire #42: Yes, Random House came crawling to the door: unfortunately, the dog assumed the subservient posture was directed at him, and chased them off when they got near his food dish.
But I’m David, not Goliath; it’s more fun that way.
Nigel: In the right forum, I’ll debate anyone on Christianity and slavery. Most fair-minded observers will, I think, admit I did well enough, vs. Hector Avalos. But my point here was to answer PZ’s question, about what defines the New Atheism, and see if anyone had comments about that. On slavery, I was answering David’s specific comment, not challenging the whole village to a general brawl. Read the chapter in Stark’s For the Glory of God, and the timeline I give, for a good introduction.
David Marshall:
Yet your timeline is a wonderful exercise in hagiography. Where are the accounts of non-Christian opponents to slavery, such as the Stoics? And as we move to more modern times, why had this 1500-or-so year march toward emancipation not reached a universal crescendo amongst the Christian diaspora, but was instead limited to more anomalous movements such as that of the Quakers?
Talk about cherry-picking.
David Marshall:
Excellent point.
With this claim, you paint with a very, very broad brush. Each individual clumped together under the New Atheist label has specific thoughts concerning each of your attributes. Most of those given that label have not even communicated their thoughts the matter, whether its Jesus mythicism or what you call “Hitler’s Pope” or the threat of dominionism or fundamentalism.
But even these thoughts aren’t so new — except the threat of dominionism, which is a specific modern instance of a recurring sociopolitical threat. But these threats aren’t new. Not really. They’re just more liberally expressed, as we live in an environment in which it’s easier to be a Very Loud Atheist. We’re less likely to be threatened with death, for instance — though as you can see, that happens quite a bit even yet. Fortunately, those threats aren’t carried out to nearly the degree they were a hundred-and-fifty years ago. (Perhaps modern Christians just don’t have as much faith in their convictions.)
For instance, your “Hitler’s Pope” label is nothing more than noting that many Christians are not very good people, and they use their holy book to justify the things they do. Thomas Jefferson was noting this back over two hundred years ago. You’ve just taken all the nuance out of the position, created what amounts to a strawman version (“New Atheists think all Christians are evil!”), and sanitized your own view of what Christians have done.
Second, the views far more nuanced than you present. Note my “extreme” mythicist view. The point isn’t that Jesus never existed. The point is, it doesn’t matter if he did. The Jesus of the Bible is clearly mythologized. This is especially notable in the reworking of Mark (the earliest versions of which have no virgin birth, and no resurrection). So ultimately, it makes no theistic difference whether or not a charismatic Jewish preacher roamed around, on which Mark is based, to be later pillaged by the authors of Matthew, Luke, and John (and the later edits to Mark). The Jesus in the Bible is so far removed from any original source, it’s impossible to distinguish any kernel of truth in Biblical accounts of his words and actions. It will take secondary sources to do that, secondary sources which are sorely lacking.
How is this view “extreme” in any way?
So, to sum up: you create a strawman version of attributes. You attach them to the group labeled “New Atheist” without concern that these views aren’t nearly universally espoused within the group. You ignore the fact that the non-strawman version of these views have generally been around for a very long time, or are based on recent scholarship or current events. And from there you claim this somehow sets New Atheists ideologically apart from Old Atheists?
Aaron Baker:
I too think we hold essentially similar views on this.
Good point. Yeah, I use Paul like that, lacking anyone better — but note, it was in an hypothetical situation, prompted by an earlier mention of good ol’ Joe Smith.
It seems far more likely that Paul merely used an existing body of belief for his own ends. To me, this is very apparent from the fact that Paul is a fucking asshole. His views on women and homosexuality seem to be different from those that the character of Jesus might’ve expressed, for instance. Where Jesus is generally portrayed as mild and loving, Paul was a frothing maniac. If he were the Joseph Smith, his characterization of Jesus would’ve been more along the lines of the shit he preached.
Yeah. That’s about what I tend to think. Either Jesus was a recognizable name used in religious writing at the time (like Sven and Ole from all those droll Minnesota stories), or he was an actual person on which those later religious texts were based (like Elvis in Bubba Hotep — for some reason that view of the Bible amuses me).
If he were the Joseph Smith, his characterization of Jesus would’ve been more along the lines of the shit he preached.
What characterization of Jesus? Pretty much the starting point for considering the idea that no such itinerant exorcist as Jesus ever stalked the wadis of Galilee is that Paul’s gospel (proclamation, not narrative) never even refers to such a figure. Paul’s risen Christ is a figure of myth, whether or not a real person existed. Myself, I have trouble believing that Jews were composing hymns and liturgies with a crucified criminal as the figure of worship as early as within a decade of his death.
If you’re looking for a Joseph Smith analogue, the author of the gospel of Mark is a better one. But “evidence of a 1st century Joseph Smith” is not going to be forthcoming in my view, because I think we have the outcome of a long process of more or less authentic collective mythmaking, not a cynical fiction attributable to a single charlatan.
Either Jesus was a recognizable name used in religious writing at the time (like Sven and Ole from all those droll Minnesota stories)
Well, as you probably know, it’s derived from the Greek transliterration of Yehoshua (Semitic, “Yahweh saves”), the same name as the Old Testament figure Joshua. (Exactly the same name is used in the Greek Septuagint– copies of it made in the Christian era always appended “Son of Nun” to the OT figure’s name to differentiate the two, and of course later translations into vernacular languages gave them different transliterations entirely.)
Regarding the “thinking vs. feeling” statement: I seem to recall that a lot of educated intellectuals were in favor of communism during that time period. I took Chaplin’s statement to be a rebuke to all those “thinkers” who seemed to be overlooking humanistic values in their enthusiasm.
you know, thinking about it… As many have said, these days we think too little and feel too much… though I believe Chaplin was primarily referring to empathy. But in his time, I believe we did think too much and feel too little. Remember it was a different era.
Humanity needs to find a balance between emotions and thought. Too much of one does more harm than good.
Neither do the latest versions (with respect to the virgin birth). Mark starts pretty much at the baptism of Jesus.
CJO:
If Paul were the Joseph Smith of the New Testament, his characterization of Jesus would’ve been the New Testament. I should’ve said “his hypothetical characterization of Jesus.” That was the distinction I was trying to make: the morality of the character of Jesus was distinctly different from that of Paul.
Sorry about the ambiguity there.
Authentic collective mythmaking often takes an actual human being as its starting point, so once again I’m inclined to accept a charismatic Jewish preacher behind all the Alpha and Omega, Bread of Life, Lamb of God stuff.
Which reminds me of Wallace Stevens in Sunday Morning, one of the best things ever written about the poignancy of mythmaking:
But that’s all ‘John the Evangelist’ stuff, which is waaaay removed from the putative historical Jesus. If you want to find a historical Jesus, he’s going to be in Mark or something attributed to Paul. Or in Q. And it’s going to be hard to substantiate.
Authentic collective mythmaking often takes an actual human being as its starting point, so once again I’m inclined to accept a charismatic Jewish preacher behind all the Alpha and Omega, Bread of Life, Lamb of God stuff.
These kind of generalities don’t address the issues. What’s another example of such mythmaking taking a (better attested) actual human being as a starting point, and how does it compare to the development of the figure of Jesus in the 1st century texts, keeping in mind that Paul’s cosmic savior precedes the itinerant wonder-working rabbi of the gospels? Did any of the other mythical savior figures of the religious movements of the time begin with an actual human being?
And there are specific historical questions that are not well addressed by the conventional picture of Christian origins. For instance, Josephus gives us several examples of “false prophets” who gathered followers and created disturbances in the region to which the colonial administration had to respond. In all cases, the result was the same: execution of the rabble-rouser, and death by heavy infantry for the followers. How is it that the followers of Jesus were left alone to start a cult in the name of an executed enemy of the state with impunity, and were apparently left free to pursue this activity in the very city where the leader had been executed? If this small group was so insignificant that the authorities didn’t care or didn’t notice, why are people in Corinth and Galatia and Rome apparently so enthused about their cult within two decades?
I generally agree that if you don’t look at it too hard, the standard de-mythologized portrait of Jesus as the charismatic preacher about whom fantastic stories got told and embellished is plausible enough. But plausibility, on its own, can’t be determinative.
CJO:
If I thought the available evidence was determinative, I wouldn’t have used the word “plausible.”
Well, looking hard at Paul: he evidently regarded his cosmic savior as an actual human being, actually crucified. One reason (if not the only one) he might have done so is that an actual Jesus was actually crucified–and that Paul, as an early leader of the church, knew people familiar with those actualities. You’re making the Christ that Paul describes more ethereal, I think, than he really is.
I’d add that Paul’s sparse pre-resurrection details about Jesus (a descendant of David, had a last supper with the Disciples, was crucified) don’t differ significantly from the later accounts in the Gospels. It’s not as if we’re trying to make sense of fundamentally discrepant data.
It has been pointed out, re other savior figures like Mithra, that they are much more “mythical” than Jesus: Mithra doesn’t have an earthly life, career, and death, as Jesus is alleged to have had.
As for Josephus, I’d hesitate to generalize as you seem to want to here. A historical Jesus may not have raised a rebellion (none of the Gospels have him doing so)–and that by itself could explain the different outcome.
The mention of Josephus prompts an unrelated, but not irrelevant observation: The text of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities contains two mentions of Jesus–one clearly a later, Christian interpolation, the other possibly genuine. If we’re looking hard at this stuff, we have to look at that passage, too.
As for comparative treatments of mythologizing (featuring an undoubtedly existent person such as, e.g., Alexander the Great), I have no idea whether such studies have been done–and I’d just be talking out of my hat if I said anything here and now about such a comparison.
To change the subject entirely, here’s another fine treatment of the poignancy of myth: the end of Robert Frost’s Directive, with, amusingly, a good dig at St. Mark:
I know. That’s why I quoted it, because it’s so obviously mythological.
Not quite what you’re asking for, but it was around this time the Romans began deifying their rulers after death: the Emperor Augustus (born Gaius Octavius Thurinus) was the first to be raised to fully divine rank (Julius Caesar was a mere demigod). Gaius Caligula was the first Roman ruler to declare his own divinity, although Alexander (and IIRC some other Greek rulers) had anticipated him. Anyhow, the notion of human beings dying and becoming gods was clearly quite prevalent.
KG,
Yes, the Roman cult of deified emperors forms an interesting feature of the background of the New Testament. In particular, the term euangelion, “gospel” was associated with military triumphs and deifications prior to its use to mean “the good news of the son of God”. Before the Roman principate certain of Alexander’s successor dynasts were also pleased to be called “Savior” and other divine titles: so Ptolemy I Soter, Antiochus I Soter, Antiochus II Theos; and the Antigonid Demetrius I was addressed by the people of Athens as liberator with this paean c. 290 BCE, reported by Athenaeus:
However, I think its important to understand this in the context of Hellenistic pagan polytheism. For a pagan of the era, there were three types of what you might broadly classify as “fauna”: animals, men, and gods. Where universalist monotheism makes the gulf between the human and the divine an unbridgable distance, the gods of pagan antiquity were merely superhuman. The proper attitude of a free citizen toward them was not one of cowering, numinous awe, but healthy and affectionate respect, as a lesser man might have for a powerful patron who respects him in turn as a free man whom he treats with honorably. In this kind of conception of the divine, deification was a step up, certainly, an indication that one is set apart from even the greatest of men, but it didn’t carry the implications that it might had an omnipotent and unknowable figure been in view as the paragon of divinity.
The first actual mass emancipation of slaves in the modern era occurred during the American Revolution, when the British government (from purely strategic rather than pious motives) offered freedom to any slave who deserted a rebel master. This episode led to the founding of Sierra Leone, as a place to send the freed slaves and other people of colour; the resulting settlement of Freetown produced another first – female voters (who were mostly black former slaves) in officially recognised elections. Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings and Adam Hochschild’s Bury The Chains both cover the episode. The next mass emancipation was a self-emancipation – the vast slave revolt on St. Domingue (now Haiti plus the Dominican Republic) led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1791. L’Ouverture was a devout Catholic, but some might think that a longing for freedom rather than piety was probably the main motive for the rebellion. Its success led to the formal abolition of slavery in the French Empire in 1794 by Robespierre’s government. Was Robespierre a particularly pious individual? I forget. Napoleon reversed this abolition in 1802, but Haitian ex-slaves managed to maintain their independence. Hochschild’s focus is on the British anti-slavery movement, in which notably pious Christians (Anglicans and Quakers mostly IIRC) were prominent – but their ability to sustain a campaign arose in the wake of the first Sierra Leone settlement in 1787 – it took fire quite suddenly in 1787-8 – and depended on wider social and technical innovations of the second half of the 18th century: an uncensored press, a recently reformed postal system, better roads making speaking tours practical, wider literacy, growing urban populations, coffeehouses. It was not the first such movement – that was the “Wilkes and Liberty” campaign against oppressive libel laws and George III’s ministers in the 1760s – but its national scale was new. According to Hochschild, the eventual abolition of slavery (as opposed to the slave trade) in the British Empire, owed a lot to a slave revolt in Jamaica, which convinced the government that abolishing slavery was the lesser evil compared with the kind of war France faced in Haiti, and the 1832 Reform Bill, which widened the electorate in the industrial towns where anti-slavery sentiment was strongest – as well as to a revived abolition movement, which had faded considerably after gaining the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
CJO@110,
Peter Heather, in The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History argues that from the Imperial point of view, Christianity could easily be combined with the imperial ideology formerly based on pagan polytheism: the Empire remained the vehicle of the divine, and the Emperor its chosen viceroy, with sacred status (as shown in the iconography of the late Roman Empire). But of course that was a fourth century Christianity.
Fire: Sure it was cherry-picking; that’s enough to rebut David M’s point, and show that the Abolitionist Movement didn’t appear in a vacuum. (There are other senses in which that’s true, too — Wilberfoce and friends did not, for instance, limit their reformist enterprises to the abolition of slavery, nor did Benjamin Lay, John Wesley, St. Anselm, etc.) The timeline doesn’t pretend to be of all opposition to slavery, though — it was a response to Avalos’ attack on the Christian record. And there are some pretty sweet cherries in that bunch.
I’d be interested in citations on Stoic opposition to slavery. I’ve read quite a bit of Stoic literature, and much respect their philosophy, but I don’t recall anything too overt. I know of a few instances outside of the Christian tradition, and would be happy to learn about others.
David Marshall:
<snigger>
(Is that a form of the “exception proves the rule”?)
Nigel #97: Relax. Yes, I’ve been threatened with death and wished to hell from your side, too; I’m not scarred for life. Likely I’ve met more Christians who have been imprisoned, tortured, and had loved ones killed by atheists, than you have met atheists who have suffered the same from theists. But that’s not your fault, and I don’t see that as a reason to be uptight around atheists, or bring the subject up at all, unless you do, first.
I didn’t say every Gnu is a Christ mythicist. But most Christ mythicists seem to affiliate as Gnus. And Gnus who think Jesus was historical, tend to rely on a relatively new body of interpretive spin — typified by the Jesus Seminar, Elaine Pagels, and Bart Erhman, and often stressing “Gnostic Gospels,” about which we know a lot more than we used to, thanks to Nag Hammadi.
My point about Christian history is NOT just that Gnus “note that some Christians don’t happen to be very good people” — something Jesus himself recognized. It is, as I said, emphasizing the bad (to the point of Ad Hitlerum), and downplaying the good (to the verge of invisibility). So did previous opponents of Christianity, sure — but charges have changed. You don’t accuse us of human sacrifice or using babies eyes for medicine — in Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Avalos, and Carrier, the art of slander has moved on.
This does not distinguish Gnus from, say, Bertrand Russell, who was very much of that mind, and who threw out similiar allegations. But it does distinguish them from Matthew Arnold, John Dewey, or Ernest Becker. The distinction is not absolute, but I think it is meaningful.
David Marshall:
Your bullshit erodes your credibility
Atheists can credibly threaten someone with death, but “wishing to hell”? I think not.
Your exposition is less than mediocre, “My point about Christian history” turns out to be a comment regarding atheists’ putative emphasis of the bad.
(How clumsily you avoid the implications of the bad existing at all)
… and by ‘slander’ you refer to statements of fact. :)
We accuse you of being Christian, Christina. Live with it.
Except that wasn’t remotely David M’s point.
His point was that the Abolitionist Movement appeared in spite of numerous Biblical verses that condone or even mandate slavery, and in spite of the overwhelmingly indifferent or even positive attitude toward slavery from most Christians of the time.
The take-home message is: it took well over a millenium for sovereign Christian societies to do abolish slavery. Perhaps something above and beyond Christian literature was spurring the abolitionists to act.
Quite the goalpost-mover and disingenuous qualifier, aren’t you.
It is enough that I give you quotes that are about as overt as yours. I do not discount that there were virtuous anti-slavery sentiments amongst the early Christians. I simply contend that they were not the only voices out there, they were not the loudest voices out there, and they were certainly not the originators of the idea.
Also, The Stoic Creed by W. L. Davidson. Here is a page with a call to the slave to consider himself an equal.
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